From: Steve Grammont (islander@midmaine.com)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 23:57:07 PST
Hello Gene,
> The point is..there is a page where they had to list their
>party affiliation...only one of the 10 was in the NAZI Party, the NSDAP
Off the top of my head that sounds about the right proportion. Also note
that only 33% of Germans voted for the Nazis in the last semi-legit
elections of the Weimar Republic.
>...Some were in the SA..which was the Workers
>Party..like ...???
SA = Sturmabteilung (in English = Storm Troopers)
This was the initial "military" wing of the Nazi Party, which is
officially known as the National Socialist Worker's Party of Germany
(NSDAP in German). During the time of the Weimar Republic each major
political party had its own bunch of thugs, of which the SA were the
Nazi's. This system was an outgrowth of the instability following WWI
where the line between military and political movements was even thinner
(Freikorps era). After the Nazis assumed power they either absorbed the
other parties' thugs, disbanded them, imprisoned them, or killed them.
At this point many hardcore Communists had a change of heart and
switched sides and became some of the most brutal Nazis.
The SA became too powerful and rivaled Hitler's authority. He had
foreseen this and already had a cadre of thugs who swore loyalty to him
and not the party. This was the Schutzstaffel (SS). What became the
Night of the Long Knives saw the SS round up and murder, arrest, or
otherwise threaten the hardline SA members. It was then downsized and
nearly erradicated. It was basically only a traditional formation that
had pretty much no function of its own worthy of mention.
>the UAW..not NAZI's...
The Nazis wiped out organized labor along with organized anything.
Leaders of labor movements were treated the same as anybody else the
Nazis had it in for, like Catholic priests, Jews, Homosexuals,
Communists, Gypsies, etc. Replacing organized labor, sorta, was the Nazi
created organization RAD (Reicharbeitsdienst = State Worker's
Organization). Think of these guys as the worker's version of the Hitler
Youth. They were organized to serve the state not the interests of
workers. They were employed mostly in massive building projects.
Er... not strictly on topic I guess, but a lot more than the 200 or so
emails I deleted from this weekend... :-)
Steve
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