
'Hitler Tamed by Prison' (1924) - ayanai
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/03/new-york-times-in-1924-hitler-tamed-by-prison/
======
arbuge
Prison did in fact convince Hitler that armed rebellion was not an effective
means to seizing power in post-WWI Germany. He had been jailed for the "Beer
Hall Putsch" in Munich, which had in turn been inspired by Mussolini's
successful "March on Rome".

After his release he decided to focus instead on gaining power through the
political system, an effort that was ultimately successful.

So prison "tamed" him in that sense, but of course it did nothing to reduce
his political ambitions. If anything the opposite appears to be true - he
wrote "Mein Kampf" in prison, which laid out his vision for what the German
state should look like, including such details as gaining "lebensraum" \- more
living space for the Germans in the East.

~~~
johnchristopher
Yesterday I was in a theatre for a unique showing (at least where I live) of a
documentary on greece's golden dawn party rise to power (they have 17 (18 at
first) people in the parliament). Party leaders clearly stated that votes is
the path to power and legitimacy. They know this and they use the argument in
the rethoric: wer are nationalist, not neo-nazy or racists and people do vote
for us.

The fact they are neonazis... I don't see the connection with grabing power
through elections (I mean, it's not a neonazy strategy... any parties can do
that). But they read mein kampf. But again, I don't know how it plays out in
their violence and their conceptions of the state. And yet the parrallels ar
striking.

------
jszymborski
Interesting that the article seems to state that Hitler AND Luddendorf had led
the Beer Hall Putsch, as my understanding is that he sorta fell into it and
was pawned.

While Luddendorf was certainly in agreement of Hitler's rhetoric re: restoring
Germany's former military might, my understanding was that Luddendorf's role
in the Beer Hall Putsch consisted of Hitler waving a gun at him, putting him
in another room when he refused to join his movement, and announcing to the
audience gathered at the Beer Hall that he Luddendorf had agreed to lead the
rebellion.

Luddendorf then agreed to it when he saw the support, and the following day
when shooting broke out at a police standoff with some couple thousand Nazi's,
Luddendorf strode through the volley of bullets to the police line where he
surrendered himself promptly.

Or atleast that was the narrative that was presented to me in William L.
Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

It still amazes me today how anyone could walk away from such an incredibly
embarrassing failure as the Beer Hall Putsch, but it seems to have been
something of an acceptable occurrence at the time. I mean, Hitler often spoke
as death as the only alternative to him achieving his revolution, but ran off
after the first shot was fired to his country home!

Hitler was even received well when he was tried, and given a very lenient
sentence. I guess for Germany coming out of WWI, violence was a far more
acceptable and commonplace thing than it is in my world

~~~
digi_owl
Makes me think of similar events that played out in Japan.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_Incident)

~~~
JetSpiegel
> Aside from the murder of the prime minister, the attempted coup d'état came
> to nothing, and the rebellion as a whole proved a failure. The participants
> took a taxi to the police headquarters and surrendered themselves to the
> Kempeitai without a struggle.

Did they wore clown shoes too? This seems almost to silly to be true.

------
oh_sigh
How well known was Hitler in Germany at this point? He was a relative nobody
in WWI, so I'm curious how he can have been a 'demi-god' just 5 years or so
later.

~~~
dave_sullivan
He was an absolute nobody in WWI.

After WWI, the political situation in Germany was pretty volatile. Lots of
extreme politics. Hitler started giving talks about German politics and how
Jews were to blame for everything. At this point, his only income was a
soldier's pension iirc.

He was the 55th person to join the Nazi party (he later forged his membership
card to say he was #7). But the Nazi leadership (more organizers at that
point) were impressed with Hitler's speaking abilities and thought they could
use him to promote the party. So they started setting him up at different
venues and events.

He developed a reputation for being a guy with strong opinions about politics
and his speeches were pretty entertaining for people, so more showed up. All
of this was pretty local to Munich at this point.

Eventually Hitler and some of his friends got this idea that they could
overthrow the government, hence the Beer Hall Putsch. He wasn't really famous
at the time, but he was a popular figure in certain circles, so when the
Putsch failed, he was sent to prison instead of being executed for treason.

In prison he wrote Mein Kampf, essentially painting himself as a figure who
loved Germany persecuted by a government that had sold Germany to foreign
powers. As a best selling author, he became a celebrity.

Ian Kershaw's Hitler Hubris and Nemesis is really good if you're interested in
the topic.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _painting himself as a figure who loved Germany persecuted by a government
> that had sold Germany to foreign powers_

I wonder just how popular the "sold homeland to foreign powers" narrative was
throughout history. Kind of reminds me of the sentiment some of the people I
know have towards the situation in Poland - the narrative is that all our
industry was sold off to foreigners and that the government should reverse
this process to bolster the economy.

~~~
pavlov
Today the only country in the world that never sold anything to foreigners is
North Korea, and it's not a shining model of prosperity.

~~~
InclinedPlane
That's not even true, North Korea has many exports. It exports raw materials,
textiles, and garments "above board" to China and South Korea. It exports
technology and weapons less legally. Drugs, counterfeit currency and
pharmaceuticals, small arms, ballistic missiles, fighter jets, etc.

~~~
RugnirViking
While I understand you are listing things in a general sort of way and may not
quite mean it but I'd love to see a source that they export (or have developed
manufacturing capability) for a fighter jet or jet engine

------
rafinha
fake news since 1924 :)

------
3minus1
peace in our time

~~~
umbrai_nation
__for __our time.

I just learned this yesterday:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time)

------
drcode
Certainly the authors of that story put in a lot of spin and opinion that did
the article a disservice- Should have stuck to the facts.

~~~
542458
Pure "fact-based" reporting is in no way a solution.

For example, take the following paragraph; "The Fukushima Daiichi reactors
suffered a disaster in 2011, causing dangerous radiation leakage. Even six
years later, radiation levels are high enough to be instantly fatal. Even
brief exposure can cause genetic damage leading to cancer. The radioactive
dust from the disaster has been carried eastward, and has been detected
throughout the United States. This radioactive dust has likely been deposited
in millions of houses across the country. However, the United States has no
plans to initiate a domestic cleanup."

There are only facts in that paragraph, but it paints a very misleading
picture of a domestic emergency that simply doesn't exist (the domestic
radiation levels are so low as to be harmless to humans). Pure "fact"
reporting doesn't solve this problem.

~~~
parsnips
If you included additional fact that the domestic radiation is not fatal, it
does solve the problem.

~~~
diego
That is the point. Simply by choosing which facts to mention and which to omit
you can create an extremely biased news piece.

~~~
parsnips
Omission of facts is not reporting the facts. That's the point.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Yes it is.

How the hell do you report ALL the facts in any scenario?

Any publication in existance will have to pick and choose what to report in
order to keep a article to a manageable level.

Do you think Scientific Abstracts are all factually correct? Hell no. There is
actually a very well known issue with scientific experiments and articles
where scientists will simply repeat experiments until they get a result that
is within acceptable p-values and simply submit an article on that one
experiment, ignoring every single time it was wrong.

~~~
enraged_camel
You don't need to report ALL the facts. You just need to report the pertinent
ones. And the fact that domestic radiation is not fatal is pretty fucking
pertinent to the passage in the OP.

