How To Overthrow Democracy
Alfred Hugenberg was a German industrialist and politician whom, between the world wars, hoped to overthrow the Weimar Republic by influencing public opinion, rather than constitutionally as favored by the Nazis.
… Hugenberg believed that the best way to bring down the existing political structure was through a strategy he called “Katastrophenpolitik”, or the politics of catastrophe. Rather than targeting the [Weimar Republic] Reichstag, Hugenberg aimed to fragment and polarize the electorate, as a means of hollowing out, then destroying the political center and, with it, the collective understanding that sustained the democratic polity. With the center fragmented, he thought, the political system would collapse of its own accord. Hugenberg’s idea was to move inflammatory public policy issues … onto the national agenda and into neighborhoods, taverns and would place the government in an awkward position, and force neighbors, friends, and family members to confront one another with uncomfortable opinions. Civil discourse would fracture, opinions would polarize, public consensus would collapse.
Ryback, Timothy W, Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise To Power, p126
Sound like any current United States politician?
Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful, allowing the Nazis (and Hitler) to assume power in January 1933.
War Debts and Reparations
My British mother-in-law insisted that only the Brits repaid their war debts after World War II, which I can’t find any reference to online; a loan made after WWII was completely repaid in 2006, but she made her statements prior to then. So this quote caught my attention:
The Young Plan, advanced in 1929 by Owen D. Young, an American industrialist who had been involved in a previous rescheduling agreement known as the Dawes Plain (1924), reduced German reparation obligations by 20 percent and extended the payment period until 1988. … The final debt obligation was met in October 2010, ninety-two years after the end of World War I.
Ryback, Timothy W, Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise To Power, p128 footnote
Very surprised: a country who lost World War I and thirteen percent of its territory and ten percent of its population, suffered hyperinflation in 1923, loss WWII and a further 24% of its territory, had three completely new forms of Government (Weimar Constitution, West Germany Basic Law, East German communist constitution), and yet maintained their credit-worthiness by repaying their WWI reparations. Wow. Who would’ve thunk it.
In 2014 Britain announced repayment of its WWI debts; the Soviet Union, on the other hand, repudiated the Russian Empire debts after WWI and never repaid the US after WWII.
