Nazi Germany
History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.— Adolf Hitler
Hitler survivor Kitty Werthmann has an enlightened perspective on gun control. She lived in Austria as a child when that country's population overwhelmingly voted to be annexed by Hitler's Nazi Germany in 1938. She tells of the outcome of gun control there:
- First the government said something like, "Guns are dangerous, children are getting hurt and criminals are getting their hands on them. We need to register all the guns to get control of the situation."
- Then a little while later, it was "Oh dear, registration doesn't seem to have helped. We need everyone to turn in their guns, that will take care of the problem once and for all." And by the way, the penalties were VERY severe for non-compliance, and because of the registration, they knew who had guns and were not complying.
- Overall, it took about five years from Austria to go from a democracy to a dictatorship.
Her advice: Keep your guns, and buy more guns!
In Germany, one of the things that made Hitler so successful at rounding up and killing Jews and political enemies was the fact that the liberal Weimar Republic had enacted gun registration laws in 1929.
It was a simple matter then, in 1938 when Hitler enacted his new gun control law, to go out and confiscate all firearms from Jewish citizens and political opponents.
On April 9, the Nazis staged the Night of the Broken Glass, during which thousands of Jewish businesses were burned and looted, and dozens of Jews were killed. Immediately afterward, 30,000 more Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. On April 11, Hitler issued a decree forbidding Jews to possess firearms, knives, or truncheons under any circumstances, and to surrender them immediately. During the subsequent, methodical racial cleansing program, about 6 million defenseless Jews were executed plus about 15 million others of various racial, ethnic, and political heritages. That is equivalent to killing everyone who lives in the state of New York, and then some.
Certainly, outlawing guns for Jewish citizens was an integral part of Hitler's plan to exterminate their race. Some people have argued that their arms would have been too ineffective against the Nazi firepower, but apparently Hitler didn't think so.
Jews from the Lodz ghetto are loaded onto freight trains for deportation to the Chelmno extermination camp. Lodz, Poland, between 1942 and 1944.
—National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia
