Hitler joins gun debate, but history is in dispute

[ellisonz]

By ADAM GELLER | Associated Press – 1 hr 33 mins ago

When the president of Ohio's state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.

In the months since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, some gun rights supporters have repeatedly compared U.S. gun control efforts to Nazi restrictions on firearms, arguing that limiting weapons ownership could leave Americans defenseless against homegrown tyrants.

But some experts say that argument distorts a complex and contrary history. In reality, scholars say, Hitler loosened the tight gun laws that governed Germany after World War I, even as he barred Jews from owning weapons and moved to confiscate them.

Advocates who cite Hitler in the current U.S. debate overlook that Jews in 1930s Germany were a very small population, owned few guns before the Nazis took control, and lived under a dictatorship commanding overwhelming public support and military might, historians say. While it doesn't fit neatly into the modern-day gun debate, they say, the truth is that for all Hitler's unquestionably evil acts, his firearms laws likely made no difference in Jews' very tenuous odds of survival.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/hitler-joins-gun-debate-history-dispute-134324118.html;_ylt=AwrNUbIY5k1ROlQA.53QtDMD

This argument which has been made with regularity on DU is perhaps the most tiresome and dishonest element of the gun extremists argument for why they need unlimited amounts of military-style weapons. Every time you ever see it made aggressively call it out for the true nonsense that it's makers are truly engaged in propagating.

[Kolesar]

1. My relatives in Ukraine barely had money for housewares, much less for firearms for self protection

They were so poor they shared their house with their livestock. My grandparents were Catholic, not Jewish: from what my grandfather told me, they did not have it any better. That is how it was in Western Ukraine and Poland, where most of the victims of the Holocaust lived.

[nonoyes]

2. Such a good point.

Also, as I recall, no nuts were walking around in Germany, Poland, France or Italy, with automatic rifles, killing middle class little children and teachers in a small town suburban school, with guns their mothers had legally purchased with the alimony money from GE executive's very high salary.

[jmowreader]

3. Using Hitler as a strawman leaves something out

Hitler's men under arms (Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, the various goon squads he had) were very well trained. The Jews were not. And training makes all the difference. Armed Jews wouldn't have died in the camps, they would have been shot in the ghettos by Nazi snipers on rooftops.

In the U.S., our "patriots" either have no training at all, are led by guys who patrolled in Nam in 1968, or are using Red Dawn as a training tape. Uhh...kiddies, the Russians aren't stupid. After the first Wolverines! attack, the Sovs would have sent up a plane with forward-looking infrared to find campfires and a couple of planes armed with 1000-pound laser-guided bombs to take out any they found. But the movie would have been 40 minutes long then...

[Progressive dog]

4. I thought the gun worshipers had shut up about Hitler

Now they are doubling down. How did Hitler take guns away from Polish Jews before he conquered Poland and how would they have gotten guns once he did.

"When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust."

The article's author left the gun nuts an argument by using weak language.
"the truth is that for all Hitler's unquestionably evil acts, his firearms laws likely made no difference in Jews' very tenuous odds of survival."

Think about what he said. First he implies by his first clause that Hitler did evil things and that one of them could have been the firearms laws and that second the evil firearms laws probably didn't kill many Jews because they likely wouldn't have survived anyway. This is after the author has already let the gun nut erroneously attribute Polish laws to Hitler.

[jimmy the one]

5. Ruthenia

kolesar: My grandparents were Catholic, not Jewish: from what my grandfather told me, they did not have it any better. That is how it was in Western Ukraine and Poland, where most of the victims of the Holocaust lived.

There is a small country called Ruthenia (~1 million) which is wedged in between west ukraine & poland (& also then czecho & now czech republic), which is comprised of a blend of polish & ukrainians. I trace ancestry to this region, mostly polish ; nowy targ near zackopane (no vee targ, zats ko panny).

link: Advocates who cite Hitler in the current U.S. debate overlook that Jews in 1930s Germany were a very small population, owned few guns before the Nazis took control

In january 1939 there were about 400,000 jewish in germany out of maybe 60 million germans (dunno but not far off). Of these 400,000, half were women & children of which firearms would've been of little help. Of the other 200,000 men, near half were children or elderly, and most the others were fathers, who would not have risked owning a gun due to threats of nazi reprisals such as sending his beloved family to a concentration camp or getting shot (death camps not yet in vogue in '39). So 100,000 jewish men spread out over the eastern half of germany, unorganized, untrained, lightly armed - the notion to put up armed resistance was never seriously considered (in strength) by them, they had endured anti-semitism from the nazis before & did not/could not comprehend how it would escalate post warstart.

conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust

Jewish in pre-war poland, about 10% of 30 million poles, were also subject to anti-semitism from polish (predominantly catholic), & whether they could own guns, or proscriptions, dunno.

here's what happened in the warsaw 'armed' uprising of jan-april 1943: ... only around 20 Germans were killed during the Warsaw Uprising while approx 13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto, and the 50,000 surviving captives were quickly deported to concentration camps.
.. {followup}: Longerich noted in his biography of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, “Under the impact of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, from April 1943 onwards the SS accelerated the bloody liquidation of those ghettos that still existed.”
good read:Gun Control and the Holocaust http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/119543/gun-control-and-the-holocaust

How many Jews were murdered in each country and what percentage of the pre-war Jewish population did they constitute? (Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust) Poland 3,000,000 - 90.9% France 77,320 - 22.1% Italy 7,680 -- 17.3% Germany 141,500 - 25.0% Soviet Union 1,100,000 - 36.4% Hungary 569,000 - 69.0% http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394663#30