Earle Jones wrote:

>>The Germans did NOT vote Hitler into power. Check your facts before 
>>you repeat age-old propaganda.
> 
> 
> *
> It amounts to the same thing:
> 
> You are the one who should check some facts.  The National Socialist 
> Party (known for short as NAZI) won the Reichstag election on July 
> 31, 1932.  Hitler became its Chancellor.

Check your facts. Hitler was not voted into power in 1932, when his
party had the greatest number of democratically elected representatives.
He was named Chancellor by the President Hindenburg (then an almost
senile man, who relied essentially on a group of councellors) in 1933.
This was intended as a manipulation to neutralize nazism and to
use it for the aims of the conservative right. It is well known
of course that this manipulation went wrong.

The Nazis' access to power, however was preceded by a wave of
violence, street fights and political murder, and supported by a number
of measures of repression. Before Hitler came into power, by a coup
d'etat in the biggest state of then  still federal Germany, Prussia with
  about 2/3 of the land and population, and its own police , justice
etc., the Social Democrats ruling Prussia were eliminated from government.

After Hitler came into power, the burning of the Reichstag, the German
parliament, was used to introduce a general repression of the
opposition, arresting the communist representatives in the Reichstag.
So first the elections by which Hitler got the first recognition by
a majority were no fair elections by any means, people opposing Nazism
being arrested and beaten up.
Still the Social Democrats voted against the Ermaechtigungsgesetz, the
emergency law giving Hitler total power, in a parliament crippled by
the arresting of many of its members, with the opposition fearing for
their lives.

Not exactly what I'd call "democratic elections" ...
It is obvious that Hitler in 1933 had many supporters, yet he did not
get into power democratically. He managed however, by a number of
manipulations - some people still insist that setting fire to the
parliament was one of them - to make his coming into power appear
to be democratic and legal.

regards,

A.
> 
> earle
> *