Mother Jones: Disarming Jews in Nazi Germany Was a Good Thing!

That headline sounds like it has to be an exaggeration, but read on.  They did say it was a good thing, and they did mean it was a good thing for the Jews. 

So this morning I find out that Mother Jones published a piece called Was Hitler Really a Fan of Gun Control?  The dissembling involved is nothing less than spectacular.  So let’s fisk this sucker:

Near the outset of his rant on Piers Morgan Tonight on Monday, conspiracy peddler Alex Jones warned that the Second Amendment is all that stands between democracy and dictatorship. "Hitler took the guns, Stalin took the guns, Mao took the guns, Fidel Castro took the guns, Hugo Chavez took the guns, and I'm here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!" he screamed.

So liberal gun-grabbing move #1: pretend that Alex Jones is representative of all conservatives, or gun owners, or something.  Bill Ayers—in whose house our current President kicked off his political career—is not considered a typical Democrat, but Alex Jones who did this to Michelle Malkin...

...is your typical conservative or something.  Another domestic terrorist, Brett Kimberlin who has been the origin of memes such as impeaching Clarence Thomas, is not representative of the left, supposedly, but Alex Jones is.  (By the way, like Alex Jones, Brett Kimberlin is a truther known to illegally carry assault weapons—according to Mark Singer.)

And of course Mother Jones cements this supposed claim that Jones is a typical gun owner or something by writing:

Two days later, the Drudge Report published this visual echo of Jones' claim:

That refers to Drudge’s banner which I talked about here.  (Btw, Drudge was most likely objecting as much to the possibility of a gun ban to the possibility that the President might do it by fiat, which is very much like Hitler and Stalin.) It goes on and on talking about how the pro-gun-choice side invokes the Nazi experience and then it gets to this line:

So did Hitler and the Nazis really take away Germans' guns, making the Holocaust unavoidable? This argument is superficially true at best...

Um, yeah, another way to put it is: “yes.”

Of course what does shakes out in the next few paragraphs is this.  Everything to Hitler was about the volk, the German people.  As hopefully you know, Hitler believed that all of history was the story of racial struggle.  And by “race” understand that he considers what today we would call the ethnic group of “German” to be actually a race, which was actually pretty common in the language at the time.  So he believed that the Germans were a race, and believed that racial struggle was inevitable and he was all about making sure his race, his “team” came out on top.

So for instance, take the issue of abortion.  Abortion was illegal... for Germans.  If you were Jewish, they didn’t care (speaking in the time before they were rounded up and murdered wholesale).  It was all about ensuring that the good German volk had lots and lots of babies so that they could more easily take over the planet.  And of course abortion among Jews was a good thing in Hitler’s mind because they were gearing up for the Final Solution.

Similarly Germany had laws against homosexuality, but again the objection was to the fact that if you were not having sex with the opposite sex, you were not making babies.  So really it was German homosexuality that Hitler had a problem with.

Likewise, in the T4 program, handicapped people were murdered in what historians consider a dress rehearsal for the holocaust.  This was justified on the grounds that these “useless eaters” were a drain on the resources of the German people.

So when it came to guns, Hitler followed the model followed by the Democrats and the KKK in the South after the Civil War.  (I'm not being entirely facetious here.  Hitler favorably cited Southern Segregation in support for segregating Jews from everyone else.) In America, white racists believed in free gun ownership by whites and gun bans applied to African Americans.  Contrary to my sarcastic jokes, this was not done for the benefit of black people.  And Hitler believed in the ownership of guns… for loyal Germans.  Jews, dissidents and conquered peoples?  Not so much.

The additional wrinkle here was the Treaty of Versailles.  It required Germany to ban guns as part of its overall plan to rob Germany of military power.  As you hopefully know at the end of World War I, Germany had a number of restrictions placed on its military power.  It was not allowed to have a Navy and Air Force, and it lost key industrial and trade zones such as the Rhineland, Sudetenland and the Danzig corridor.

(Not to be confused with this Danzig.)

In addition to all of that, the German army was reduced to a very small number—100,000 troops, if memory serves.  But the authors of that treaty worried that the Germans would try to find some kind of loophole, so they insisted on strict gun control for the rest of Germany.  That way they couldn’t have informal armies of private citizens as a way to skirt around the treaty’s restriction on the size of the army.  So in other words, when the allied nations wanted to permanently degrade the military power of Germany, they insisted on gun control.

Oh, also to keep Germany from being a threat to anyone, they required them to pay massive reparations, ensuring that their nation would be under massive, crushing debt for years to come.  Which means it is borderline suicidal for any country to go into that much debt voluntarily.

And of course what played out was that each of these restrictions were ignored, one-by-one.  Many people felt that World War I was a dumb war and the Treaty of Versailles was bad, which according to that theory led Hitler to rise up based on the legitimate complaints of the German people.  So they let Germany get an army again, get a navy, get an air force and then start taking back the land it lost.  Appeasement wasn’t just being cowardly, although fear of war did play a huge role in it.  It was also about the belief that the German people really were wronged, and if we just set things right, they would stop being so aggressive.  In other words, the allied powers asked, “why do they hate us,” and decided that there was a lot of justice  in their complaints after all.  It wasn’t until they started threatening Poland that people finally realized that Germany was a bigger threat than they realized and by then it was almost too late.  Within a few months Britain saw Germany suddenly swallow—or ally itself—pretty much all of Europe and suddenly Britain found itself fighting for its life.  And there were moments when the British could have been broken; Hitler nearly won this thing, due to the doctrine of appeasement.

Indeed, to the extent that appeasement was designed to avert war, the bad irony is that it allowed for a bigger and much more bloody one.  Imagine if European leaders, instead of letting Hitler rebuild his nation’s military, had drawn the line and held Germany to its obligation.  Hitler might have backed down, for one, but if he didn’t there would have been a very small and relatively painless war.  And the further bad irony is that the Chamberlains of the world would have considered it another case of Europe picking on poor Germany, even though now we know it would have averted a massive and bloody war and saved a few million Jews and other “undesirables.”

I used to say that I could never understand how people could have been so dumb in the run up to World War II.  Since then, I saw people make the same mistake of logic with Iran and Iraq, and it hasn’t become more understandable, but it’s easier to believe.

Of course as Drew Carrey once pointed out (on his old sitcom), this also would have meant we never would have had the A&E channel, so there is that.

Back to the subject of gun control, a more serious examination of the evidence comes in “Nazi Firearms Laws and the Disarming of German Jews,” in the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative law:

This article addresses German firearms laws and Nazi policies and practices to disarm German citizens, particularly political opponents and Jews. It begins with an account of post-World War I chaos, which led to the enactment in 1928 by the liberal Weimar republic of Germany’s first comprehensive gun control law. Next, the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was consolidated by massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents, who were invariably described as “communists.” After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefitted Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state. Later that year, in Kristallnacht (the Night of the Broken Glass), in one fell swoop, the Nazi regime disarmed Germany’s Jews. Without any ability to defend themselves, the Jewish population could easily be sent to concentration camps for the Final Solution. After World War II began, Nazi authorities continued to register and mistrust civilian firearm owners, and German resistence to the Nazi regime was unsuccessful.

That is right, folks, Kristallnacht was about disarming Jews, too.

And I gently suggest you read the whole thing.

Of course the Mother Jones piece acknowledges this, in a backhanded way:

In 1938, under Nazi rule, gun laws became significantly more relaxed. Rifle and shotgun possession were deregulated and gun access for hunters, Nazi Party members, and government officials was expanded. The legal age to own a gun was lowered. Jews, however, were prohibited from owning firearms and other dangerous weapons.

In other words, the people Hitler liked were allowed to have guns, but not others.  Oh and by the way, the Jews were not allowed to have guns, but hey, why would they need them?  Of course that last question is rhetorical and facetious, but Mother Jones actually found a professor will to argue that it was good for the Jews in Germany to be disarmed:

"But guns didn't play a particularly important part [in maintaining Hitler’s power or the Holocaust] in any event," says Professor Robert Spitzer, who chairs SUNY Cortland's political science department and has extensively researched gun-control politics.... If Jews had been better armed, Spitzer says, it would only have hastened their demise. Gun policy "wasn't the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group."

Yes, what I said in sarcasm has become real.  I joked over and over again that when they disarmed one racial, ethnic or religious group that “this was done for their benefit, right?”  And Spitzer apparently believes the answer is yes!  Or at least they did benefit.

Of course I find myself quoting Judge Kozinsky’s gorgeous opinion (it’s a dissent but today can be cited as controlling law) in defense of gun laws, again:

If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

Really it is beyond bizarre to say that it was a good thing for the German Jews to be disarmed under the Nazis.  Even if their defeat was inevitable, maybe those Jews would have preferred to take a few of the bastards with them rather than being murdered without a shot.  And their defeat only looks as inevitable as it must have looked for the Americans in 1776, or the Jews in Warsaw.  And certainly Hitler was worried about Jewish resistance, which is why he disarmed them!

Sheesh.

The same idiot professor makes the same argument with Stalin:

Gun enthusiasts often mention that the Soviet Union restricted access to guns in 1929 after Joseph Stalin rose to power. But to suggest that a better armed Russian populace would have overthrown the Bolsheviks is also too simplistic, says Spitzer. "To answer the question of the relationship between guns and the revolutions in those nations is to study the comparative politics and comparative history of those nations," he explains. "It takes some analysis to break this down and explain it, and that's often not amenable to a soundbyte or a headline."

Again, if Stalin didn’t think an armed populace was a threat to his rule, he wouldn’t have disarmed them.  Oy!

And hey, just as Stalin’s and Hitler’s gun bans were not a problem for the people they were taking them from, we shouldn’t worry about Obama taking our guns, according to Mother Jones:

Even if President Obama suddenly unleashes his inner totalitarian, there's no chance he could successfully round up all of America's 300 million-plus firearms.  Such an idea is practically and politically impossible.

Yeah, practically impossible because we would have a revolution on our hands as I predicted the other day.  And politically impossible?  Well, the purpose of this Mother Jones article was to urge us toward a future where it is not so politically impossible.

But while I doubt they would try to take our guns in one fell swoop, beware of the attempt to do this incrementally.  Draw a strict line in the sand.  No new gun control laws.

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My wife and I have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years.  I know that claim sounds fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video evidence.  If you would like to help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please hit the Blogger’s Defense Team button on the right.  And thank you.

Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

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Disclaimer:

I have accused some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct.  In some cases, the conduct is even criminal.  In all cases, the only justice I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system.  I do not want to see vigilante violence against any person or any threat of such violence.  This kind of conduct is not only morally wrong, but it is counter-productive.

In the particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him.  Do not call him.  Do not write him a letter.  Do not write him an email.  Do not text-message him.  Do not engage in any kind of directed communication.  I say this in part because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want that to happen to him.

And for that matter, don’t go on his property.  Don’t sneak around and try to photograph him.  Frankly try not to even be within his field of vision.  Your behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).

And do not contact his organizations, either.  And most of all, leave his family alone.

The only exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might report.  And even then if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request.  That this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you refuse.

And let me say something else.  In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above.  But if any of you have, stop it, and if you haven’t don’t start.