Freedom of press.

[Dill]

(03-04-2017, 03:21 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Please, you're treating the German parliament like our Congress.  It didn't, and doesn't, work that way.  The NSDAP plurality didn't mean much as they could find no partners to form a coalition government with, a crucial task in that type of parliamentary democracy.  The fact that their political power was on the wane is a key point, their message was failing.  It is purely due to the machinations of von Schleicher and von Papen that Hitler became chancellor.

??If I say that the Nazi party plurality made Hitler the prime player in forming any government in the 1932-33 Reichstag, then I am treating the Reichstag like our congress???   That is almost as surprising as your claim a plurality doesn't "mean much" while presuming familiarity with the Weimar parliamentary system.

Claiming that the Nazi party could find no partners to form a coalition government is just factually wrong. A coalition with the DNVP was a condition of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and gave the Nazi Party a majority in the Reichstag. The Zentrum joined them to pass the Enabling Act with a two-thirds majority. At each step of this process, some party members failed to dissuade other party members from voting with the Nazis.   

Had Hitler's opponents dissuaded enough people from voting NSDAP, Hitler would not have been a player.  That violence attended the elections of '32 and '33 does not negate this point. How would it? If anything, that violence reduced the Nazi vote. Plenty of groups and individuals were publicly arguing against Nazis and other anti-Semitic groups, e.g., in newspapers and pamphlets. But they did not dissuade enough people from voting. 

Saying these people had only themselves to blame is cruelly indifferent as well as simplistic.  Yet you must conclude that if you stick by this claim:  "If your ideas cannot be articulated into words sufficient to win over the people then you only have yourself to blame."

My counter-point is still that there are many reasons why people lose arguments, court cases, and elections. They may themselves be to blame sometimes, but certainly not always. People do not have only themselves to blame when they fail to convince people not to vote for bad leaders.