While much of the early gun prohibition was created with supposedly good intent, Halbrook carefully and meticulously details how a change in political regime was all it took for some well-intentioned gun registration laws and other prohibitions to be used in ways never intended.
Kline then notes the similarities between Nazi gun control and the gun control movement in the United States.
While Halbrook is careful to point out that a combination of factors led to the events of the Holocaust, there is no denying that many of the pre-war activities—activities that are being discussed and implemented in some states and nationally in the United States today—contributed to Hitler’s ability to disarm targeted groups, facilitating his campaign against the Jews… Halbrook lays out a well-documented analysis of four distinct periods leading up to and including the rise of the Third Reich, and the gun control laws that accompanied these periods in history. It is an astonishingly fresh and important look at this historical period, if for no other reason than to raise the question as to why no other research on the Third Reich and the Holocaust has addressed the role of gun control in the tragedies that occurred.
Kline shows how Halbrook breaks the analysis into four parts.
First, Part I spans from the start of the Weimar Republic (1918–1938) to its decline and the imminent rise of the Nazi party. This is the period when Germany first introduced gun control, requiring registration of firearms. At the close of this time span, confiscation of firearms was made law. Part II, reviewing circumstances in 1933, details the rise of Hitler and the use of Nazi power to confiscate firearms from political adversaries and the Jews. Part III examines the following five years of repression, which included instituting more gun control laws, such as outlawing issuance of gun permits to Jews and other “enemies of the state.” Finally, Part IV reviews how existing gun control facilitated the disarming of Germany’s Jews. Ultimately, the prohibitions enacted by the Nazi regime led to monopoly control of firearms by the Nazis and eliminated the ability of many groups in society to defend themselves. Halbrook offers further episodes of gun control in the conclusion, detailing how two decades of gun control unfolded during World War II.
What did well-intentioned laws mean for the Jews?
However, well-meaning clauses in the laws were subsequently used to provide the government with complete control over gun ownership, creating registries of gun and ammunition ownership, which ultimately fell into the hands of the Nazis. These lists were methodically used to disarm any citizens who were deemed enemies of the state, particularly the Jews.
Next began confiscation when Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
immediate utilization of the Weimar gun control policies to begin the Nazi campaign to seize arms and eradicate the so-called “enemies of the state” (all of whom were tagged as Communists). All political parties were under attack by the Nazis, culminating in a manufactured report that Communists planned to attack the Nazis (pp. 51–52). Enemies of the state included Jews and gypsies, as well.As a result, less than a month later, Hitler and Göring convinced President Hindenburg that an emergency decree was needed, which ultimately gave the Nazis the ability to suspend the “constitutional guarantees of personal liberty, free expression of opinion, freedom of the press, and the rights to assemble and form associations. Secrecy of postal and telephonic communication was suspended, and the government was authorized to conduct search and seizure operations of homes. (p. 52)” - Stephen Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State.”
Later the police were put under full control of government and replaced with the SS which had a devastating impact on Jews and others.
In the concluding section of the book, Reichskristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) is detailed. Jews had been systematically disarmed, and their identity and locations now on file with local police. It was simply a matter of time before the full shift into deportation and extermination of the Jews would begin. Records indicate that a campaign to arrest legally registered Jewish owners of firearms was now underway,
By 1938 complete confiscation was underway.
All Jewish weapons (including such things as letter openers) were confiscated, and all Jewish organizations were deemed illegal. With the Jews disarmed, Hitler’s plans could proceed with a defenseless populace. The majority of the non-Jewish German population was stunned by what had transpired but was too afraid to protest…
As has been well documented, Jews were methodically attacked…
Read more:
https://mises.org/library/gun-control-third-reich-disarming-jews-and-enemies-state-stephen-p-halbrook
