BC & PR

[Steve Barney]

DEMOREP1:

First, I thank you for the reference to another book on Hitler' rise to power.
I hope to get my hands on it. In the meantime, let me post a little excerpt
from the booklet, the 31st in a series of "Public Policy Pamphlets" published
by the University of Chicago Press, which I referred to in my previous message:

  "Thus in 1919 PR merely prevented the development of a Social Democratic
majority. Nevertheless, during this period the "Weimar Coalition" of Social
Democrats, Democrats, and Center party had a large majority, and this coalition
was organic enough to allow for a reasonable degree of government authority.
This became different, however, in the second phone of the effects of PR,
extending from 1920 to 1930, which may be called the period of "pluralistic
stagnation." It was followed by a period of reaction against this stagnation,
which assumed revolutionary proportions, and ended with the assumption of power
by Hitler on January 30, 1933."
  "The second period was inaugurated by the elections to the first Reichstag,
held under a PR system more proportional - and therefore more dangerous - than
that of 1919. . . All that kept [Hitler's party] alive was its chance to obtain
some measure of success in every election in which it participated. Otherwise
it would probably have disbanded, and Hitler might have resumed the peaceful
profession of painting houses."
--Hermens, F. A., _Democracy and Proportional Representation_, University of
Chicago Press, 1940, pgs 23-4.

SB

--- DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:
[...]
> D-  How many folks do not know political history on this list ???
> 
> Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922 in his infamous March on Rome with 
> his Black-Shirt fascists.  He survived until 1945 -- caught by anti-fascist 
> partisans in northern Italy and hung.
> 
> Hitler was APPOINTED prime minister of Germany in Jan. 1933 (by outsmarting 
> the morons who thought they could control him).
> 
> The nazis failed to get a majority of the seats in the 1932 Germany 
> Parliament elections.
> 
> After the Reichstag Fire in Feb 1933 Hitler got dictatorship powers in Mar. 
> 1933 ----- the infamous *Enabling Act* --- producing the 1933-1945 tyranny in
> 
> Germany.
> 
> He (and his regime) survived until April/May 1945 when he took poison and 
> blew out his evil brains with a pistol (at the cost of about 45 million dead 
> in Europe in World War II).
> 
> See the early chapters in the book-
> 
> The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer (a reporter in 
> Germany for many years)


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