Propaganda machines in all totalitarian countries habitually depict the dictator as the saviour of his people from some danger real, or more usually imaginary, and as the man of action who decides what is best for his country with clarity of mind and singleness of purpose, and can always rely on his orders being carried out with devotion and meticulous care by an army of well-disciplined robots. So it was with Hitler.
From, Hitler: A Study in Personality and Politics, by William Carr (1978).
Terror and repression were highly selective in their application. Workers associated with left-wing parties were thrown into concentration camps in their thousands, especially during the initial onslaught of the new regime… .
Repression was aimed at the powerless and unpopular sections of society. Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, beggars and other ‘anti-social elements’ also fell under the lash of Nazi terror and oppression. Police harassment was far more prevelant in working-class than middle-class areas of big cities. There was no assault on the farming and small property-holding population of the countryside.
Little or nothing was done against the ‘big battalions’. Industrialists, landowners and bankers were left untouched.
Most of the ‘intelligentsia’, apart from the minority of intellectuals forced into emigration, needed no terror to make them fall in line with Nazi ‘Gleichschaltung’ (‘coordination’). Indeed, ‘self-coordination’ applied to many sections of society which willingly cooperated in the early Nazification of their professioanl and representative bodies.
From: Repression and Power, in Hitler by Ian Kershaw. Longman Group UK Limited, 1991.
Leaders are a danger to democracy if they have weak commitments to democratic rules, if they deny opponents legitimacy, if they insinuate or tolerate violence, if they show willingness to curb civil liberties, if they make a free Press the enemy of the people; and, of course, if they are pathological liars, psychotic narcissists, and have no moral compass.
Versions of these posted here 2020.06.02 and 2018.09.19
See also: Authoritarian Guide To Power: “I alone can fix it”
