Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah asked a question to President General Ayub Khan in 1964. She asked that American military aid to India was the talk of the town. And India would use this aid against Pakistan. "I want to know how it happened." America was your friend. Why did you lose this friend? Everyone living in the East and the West Pakistan wanted to get the answer to this question. This question came up in the early era of Ayub Khan when industrial development was fast taking place. Now it had become clear that this progress was due to Pakistan's support to America against Russia. In return Pakistan had secured economic aid from America. This aid was being spent on the construction of Tarbela, Mangla dams and many other projects. But the Indo-China war in 1962, changed the scenario. America turned its face on Pakistan and started to give military aid to India. On the one side, America was giving military aid to India on the other, India was annexing Kashmir to its territo
How
did Adolf Hitler, a tyrant who orchestrated one of the largest genocides in
human history, rise to power in a democratic country?
The story begins at the end of World War I. With the successful Allied advance in
1918, Germany realized the war was unwinnable and signed an armistice ending
the fighting. As its imperial government collapsed, civil unrest and worker
strikes spread across the nation. Fearing a Communist revolution, major parties
joined to suppress the uprisings, establishing the parliamentary Weimar
Republic.
One
of the new government's first task was implementing the peace treaty imposed
by the Allies. In addition to losing over a tenth of its territory and
dismantling its army, Germany had to accept full responsibility for the war and
pay reparations, debilitating its already weakened economy. All this was seen
as a humiliation by many nationalists and veterans.
They
wrongly believed the war could have been won if the army hadn't been betrayed by
politicians and protesters. For Hitler, these views became an obsession, and his
bigotry and paranoid delusions led him to pin the blame on Jews. His words
found resonance in a society with many anti-Semitic people. By this time, hundreds
of thousands of Jews had integrated into German society, but many Germans
continued to perceive them as outsiders.
After
World War I, Jewish success led to ungrounded accusations of subversion and war
profiteering. It cannot be stressed enough that these conspiracy theories were
born out of fear, anger, and bigotry, not fact.
Nonetheless,
Hitler found success with them. When he joined a small nationalist political
party, his manipulative public speaking launched him into its leadership and
drew increasingly larger crowds. Combining anti-Semitism with populist
resentment, the Nazis denounced both Communism and Capitalism as international
Jewish conspiracies to destroy Germany.
The
Nazi party was not initially popular. After they made an unsuccessful attempt at
overthrowing the government, the party was banned, and Hitler jailed for
treason. But upon his release about a year later, he immediately began to
rebuild the movement. In 1929, the Great Depression happened. It led to
American banks withdrawing their loans from Germany, and the already struggling
German economy collapsed overnight.
Hitler
took advantage of the people's anger, offering them convenient scapegoats and a
promise to restore Germany's former greatness. Mainstream parties proved unable
to handle the crisis while left-wing opposition was too fragmented by internal
squabbles. So some of the frustrated public flocked to the Nazis, increasing
their parliamentary votes from under 3% to over 18% in just two years.
In
1932, Hitler ran for president, losing the election to decorated war hero General
von Hindenburg. But with 36% of the vote, Hitler had demonstrated the extent of
his support. The following year, advisors and business leaders convinced
Hindenburg appoints Hitler as Chancellor, hoping to channel his popularity for
their own goals. Though the Chancellor was only the administrative head of
parliament, Hitler steadily expanded the power of his position. While his
supporters formed paramilitary groups and fought protestors in the streets. Hitler
raised fears of a Communist uprising and argued that only he could restore law
and order.
Then
in 1933, a young worker was convicted of setting fire to the parliament
building. Hitler used the event to convince the government to grant him
emergency powers. Within a matter of months, freedom of the press was
abolished, other parties were disbanded, and anti-Jewish laws were passed. Many
of Hitler's early radical supporters were arrested and executed, along with
potential rivals, and when President Hindenburg died in August 1934, it was
clear there would be no new election.
Disturbingly,
many of Hitler's early measures didn't require mass repression. His speeches
exploited people's fear and ire to drive their support behind him and the Nazi
party. Meanwhile, businessmen and intellectuals, wanting to be on the right side
of public opinion, endorsed Hitler. They assured themselves and each other that
his more extreme rhetoric was only for show. Decades later, Hitler's rise remains
a warning of how fragile democratic institutions can be in the face of angry
crowds and a leader willing to feed their anger and exploit their fears.
