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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
I've seen references to, and bumper stickers stating, that Hitler took all the guns away from law abiding Germans in 1936. The inference is that this led to the disarming of the populace and its fall into a dictatorship. I've read extensively about the Third Reich and have never seen a mention of this. Did he effect total gun control in Germany, or is this a bit of modern fiction to lend weight to the gun-lover crowd?
— John Greenwood, Jacksonville, Florida
The quote you are talking about is something along the lines of the following:
This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
The reference is usually given as a speech by Adolf Hitler--alternatively, some say it was in Mein Kampf, but that is easily checkable and proven false--with citation information as follows (all parenthetical material in the original):
"Abschied vom Hessenland!" ["Farewell to Hessia!"], ['Berlin Daily' (Loose English Translation)], April 15th, 1935, Page 3 Article 2, Einleitung Von Eberhard Beckmann [Introduction by Eberhard Beckmann].
I've seen this quote pop up many times, from political discussions to gun shows, where a friend told me he'd found it emblazoned on signs. I don't think anybody knows the origin of it, but several have tracked it back and found it to be completely false.
The talk.politics.guns FAQ (http://rkba.org/research/rkba.faq), which is pro-gun, includes a number of such false quotes in its "Pious Frauds" section and, to its credit, refutes them. The discussion there is based in large part on research done by Clayton Cramer for his book, Firing Back (currently out of print). Cramer is also a gun supporter, making his work in this area highly credible--and creditable.
The FAQ entry, which is duplicated in the archive of urbanlegends.com (http://www.urbanlegends. com/politics/hitler_gun_control.html), notes the main problems with the supposed quote. First, the quote itself has changed over the years.
Some versions start by saying, "This year will go down in history!" Others say, "1935 will go down in history!" (The former still has a 1935 date attached as a supposed reference.) That, in and of itself, doesn't prove anything, but it's a warning sign.
Another warning sign is the way the citation is generally messed up. The reference date isn't even close to a major public speech by Hitler. Furthermore, the texts of Hitler's various speeches have been checked, and no sign of this quote can be found.
An examination of the Berliner Tageblatt (reasonably close to "Berlin Daily") for the cited date shows that the page referred to was the paper's arts and culture page. There was no reference to a Hitler speech anywhere in the paper that day, or on days close to it.
The name given, Eberhard Beckmann, doesn't seem to correspond to anybody who was in a position to write introductions of this nature. While a person of that name was found, and he did indeed write introductions, said introductions were for photography books and he worked for a German broadcaster after World War II.
OK, so the quote and cite are screwed up. What about the supposed law itself?
Well, as described in the FAQ, 1935 "has no correlation with any legislative effort by the Nazis for gun registration." (Nor, for that matter, does 1936, the year you mention in your question.)
The Nazis did pass a weapons law in 1938, but that only added restrictions to the previous law, especially for Jews and other "non-citizens."
Cramer also told me that since the publication of Firing Back, the quote has morphed again (more indication of it being an urban legend, not reality) and now has a more detailed date and location cite. He asked a friend in Germany to check out this new (mis)information. As we might have expected, the quote was not to be found.
Some gun proponents like this quote because it compares current gun control attempts to those of the Nazis.
But as the pro-gun FAQ cited above freely concedes, "This quotation, however effective it may be as propaganda, is a fraud."
Did gun control, then, pave the way for the Nazi rise to power? If guns had been readily available, would the people have risen against their oppressors?
That seems dubious. The Nazis had a great deal of popular support. Much of their campaign of intimidation involved old-fashioned strongarm tactics, not guns.
Had opponents of the regime been armed, and had there been a tradition of armed resistance in Germany, the Nazis might have had a tougher time of it. But that gets us into a pretty speculative realm.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1791/did-hitler-ban-gun-ownership
