Quote of the Day

How did the lives of people change in Nazi Germany?

The biggest changes were in the lives of women and children:
• Books of nursery rhymes were published which encouraged children to play with guns and enjoy fighting. Children's songs were about bloodshed, violence and anti-Semitism.

Quote of the Day

The spirit of National Socialism was one of manliness, and individual self-defense and self- reliance were central to the National Socialist view of the way a citizen should behave. The notion of banning firearms ownership was utterly alien to National Socialism. In the German universities, where National Socialism gained its earliest footholds and which later became its strongest bastions, dueling was an accepted practice. Although the liberal-Jewish governments in Germany after the First World War attempted to ban dueling, it persisted illegally until it was again legalized by the National Socialists. Fencing, target shooting, and other martial arts were immensely popular in Germany, and the National Socialists encouraged young Germans to become proficient in these activities, believing that they were important for the development of a man's character.

Source

see also:

•  Adolf Hitler And Gun Control: What Did Hitler Really Say, And Do, About Gun Rights?
•  The Hitler gun control lie - Salon.com

Not only was the Nazi regime pro-gun, they were also pro-life.

In Nazi Germany, the penalties for abortion were increased. In 1943, providing an abortion to an "Aryan" woman became a capital offense. Abortion was only permitted if the foetus was deformed or disabled in accordance with Nazi eugenics policies.

The Nazi mother's cross award

A case in point, Marie-Louise Giraud (17 November 1903 - 30 July1943) was a housewife and mother who became one of the last women to be guillotined in France. Giraud was a convicted abortionist in 1940s Nazi occupied France. She was executed on 30 July 1943 for having performed 27 abortions in the Cherbourg area.

In fact, the Nazi execution of abortion providers seems to fall in with radical pro-lifers extra-judically killing abortion providers.

Quite frankly the Nazis had very firm ideas about the role of women in Germany. Hitler thought that the population of Germany had to increase for the country to become more powerful. Therefore women were forced to give up work and have children.

On 5th July 1933 the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage was passed. This act gave all newly wed couples a loan of 1000 marks which was reduced by 25% for each child they had. If the couple went on to have four children the loan was wiped out.

Girls were taught at school that women had to have children and look after their husbands. They were told not to smoke or diet as it could affect their ability to have healthy children.

Unmarried women were also encouraged to have children and for those without a husband they could visit the local Lebensborn where they could be made pregnant by a racially pure member of the SS.

Quite frankly, anyone who is not historically ignorant should be afraid of where the US right is has been going.

See:

•  Ferree, Myra Marx (2002). Shaping abortion discourse: democracy and the public sphere in Germany and the United States. Cambridge University Press. 
• The Legal Framework of Abortions in Germany : AICGS
• Women in Nazi Germany
• Gun Control in Germany, 1928-1945 

ANSWER: Historical trivia: What was the reason given by the Nazis for Kreystalnacht?

OK, I should accept "(4) all of the above" since to some extent they were all true.

But, the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a official at the German Embassy in Paris, by Herschel Grynszpan on 7 November 1938 was the event which most closely caused Krystalnacht.  The German government retaliated to this event by barring Jewish children from German state elementary schools, indefinitely suspending Jewish cultural activities, and putting a halt to the publication of Jewish newspapers and magazines, including the three national German Jewish newspapers

There is ironic twists to this event:  Vom Rath was a professional diplomat with the Foreign Office who expressed anti-Nazi sympathies, largely based on the Nazis' treatment of the Jews, and was under Gestapo investigation for being politically unreliable at the time he was killed.

But, an act of violence created far more violence.  In fact, looking at Krystalnacht points out the truth of  N. A. Browne's The Myth of Nazi Gun Control:

The Third Reich did not need gun control (in 1938 or at any time thereafter) to maintain their power. The success of Nazi programs (restoring the economy, dispelling socio-political chaos) and the misappropriation of justice by the apparatus of terror (the Gestapo) assured the compliance of the German people. Arguing otherwise assumes a resistance to Nazi rule that did not exist. Further, supposing the existance of an armed resistance also requires the acceptance that the German people would have rallied to the rebellion. This argument requires a total suspension of disbelief given everything we know about 1930s Germany. Why then did the Nazis introduce this program? As with most of their actions (including the formation of the Third Reich itself), they desired to effect a facade of legalism around the exercise of naked power. It is unreasonable to treat this as a normal part of lawful governance, as the rule of law had been entirely demolished in the Third Reich. Any direct quotations, of which there are several, that pronounce some beneficence to the Weapons Law should be considered in the same manner as all other Nazi pronouncements - absolute lies. (See Bogus Gun Control Quotes and endnote [1].)

A more farfetched question is the hypothetical proposition of armed Jewish resistance. First, they were not commonly armed even prior to the 1928 Law. Second, Jews had seen pogroms before and had survived them, though not without suffering. They would expect that this one would, as had the past ones, eventually subside and permit a return to normalcy. Many considered themselves "patriotic Germans" for their service in the first World War. These simply were not people prepared to stage violent resistance. Nor were they alone in this mode of appeasement. The defiance of "never again" is not so much a warning to potential oppressors as it is a challenge to Jews to reject the passive response to pogrom. Third, it hardly seems conceivable that armed resistance by Jews (or any other target group) would have led to any weakening of Nazi rule, let alone a full scale popular rebellion; on the contrary, it seems more likely it would have strengthened the support the Nazis already had. Their foul lies about Jewish perfidy would have been given a grain of substance. To project backward and speculate thus is to fail to learn the lesson history has so painfully provided.

The simple conclusion is that there are no lessons about the efficacy of gun control to be learned from the Germany of the first half of this century. It is all too easy to forget the seductive allure that fascism presented to all the West, bogged down in economic and social morass. What must be remembered is that the Nazis were master manipulators of popular emotion and sentiment, and were disdainful of people thinking for themselves. There is the danger to which we should pay great heed. Not fanciful stories about Nazi's seizing guns.

I would also add that you read this paper for further debunking of the Hitler non-sense.

But, the bottom line is that no one who knows anything about the Second World War and the Third Reich buys into the "Hitler was for gun control."

If anything, Hitler was pro-gun.  He probably would have welcomed armed Jewish resistance as a reason to exterminate the Jews. 

Remember that the usual result of Jewish Ghetto uprisings was a quicker trip to one of the dedicated Operation Reinhard extermination camps (e.g., The survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto were sent to Treblinka).

FYI, the first nation to have an actual gun registration programme was Great Britain (The Gun Licence Act 1870, Pistol Act of 1903, and The Firearms Act of 1920)--Where is the British Genocide?  I would also add that the Home Secretary ruled that self-defence was no longer a suitable reason for applying for a firearm certificate in 1937, and directed police to refuse such applications on the grounds that "firearms cannot be regarded as a suitable means of protection and may be a source of danger"

Historical trivia: What was the reason given by the Nazis for Kreystalnacht?

It's something which tends to fall out of the debate: especially if you are one of those people who think that Arming the Jews might have prevented the Holocaust.  So, the question is:

What was a reason given by the Nazis for Kreystalnacht?

1. They didn't need a reason--they just hated the Jews.
2. They were waiting for the right time to persecute Jews this way
3. The Murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a Jewish person in protest of the Nazi treatment of the Jews.
4. All of the Above

Part of me is interested in seeing your responses, which I probably won't read.  In fact, I have already posted the answer, which  I've set to post tomorrow.

NRA Official Criticized Over Nazi Argument in NJ by the Anti-Defamation League

The Washington Post

The Anti-Defamation League says a National Rifle Association board member from New Jersey was out of line to suggest similarities between gun control efforts and Nazism.

Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs executive director Scott Bach made the remarks last week on an NRA News program. The remarks came during a discussion of a Jersey City policy to ask gun makers about their safety records as part of their bids to sell firearms and ammunition to the police department.

Bach said Democratic Mayor Steve Fulop should know better than to institute the policy because his grandparents were Holocaust survivors.

The Anti-Defamation League has been campaigning against tying the Holocaust and Nazis to politics, particularly in gun control.