Perhaps this will answer that question: All regimes that are the rule of power rather than the rule of heredity or the “rule of the people” rely on fear. Fear is the key. It is their key to open the door to power for themselves and it is their key to close this same door to all others. The distinction arises from the fact that few “authoritarian figures” in politics have the necessary force at their disposal in order to take control over their “controllees”. Those people that the dictator wishes to control most likely outnumber the dictator and his personal friends. This means that the people could technically stop the dictator at any time long before he ever became a serious threat to them. The dictator is not stupid and so he sees this fact long before the people ever realize what is going on. He uses his tool, fear, in the first way. The first use of fear is as a unifying force. The dictator plays upon or creates a feeling of fear in the people that he wishes to control. This fear will not have him as its object though. It will be a fear of something else entirely. Fears used historically for such projects have been fears based on mainly on terrorism. (In modern times there have been some innovations in the field of fear-mongering. Among these new kinds of fear is fear for the environment of ecological crises.) (Griffin,) The dictator will take advantage of a terrorist act or an attempted one by promising to stop such a thing from ever happening again and probably by promising to execute vengeance on the perpetrators. This appeals to two of the most powerful instincts in human nature: the one of self preservation and the one of pride. In order to accomplish these ends the dictator will ask for the support and help of the group he wants to control. They gladly give him everything he asks for and they are even willing to give up some things in order to help. This is based on fear of what would happen if such a terrible thing ever happened again. People running for their lives run to any place that looks even a little safer than the place they are now and they don’t have a tendency to look very far ahead. This process continues as the dictator consolidates his power and the people allow their rights to be suspended. The people continue to run until they hit the second phase of the dictator’s plan. He uses the tool of fear again, but now the object of the fear is the dictator and his regime. Fear is no longer a unifying force for the people, but rather a divisive one. The people now no longer willingly support the dictator but they cannot unite against him because they fear the retribution that will follow resistance to his demands. This phase of fear has several salient points. One is the practice of making examples of the leaders of dissent, often in conjunction with false show trials. Another point almost always seen in such regimes is the use of anonymous informants. Informants of this kind are often coerced into helping the tyranny by threats against them or their families but they are sometimes really volunteers who try to satisfy their petty jealousies by tearing down their neighbors. In any case these informants make ideal tools for the dictatorship as they effectively expand the “law-enforcement” capability of the state without posing any threat to it. They provide information that the dictator could never get on his own and they fulfill a second and far more important objective at the same time. This is the objective of maintaining division between all the dissident parties in the state. In a regime of informants it is very difficult to meet with other people under any basis of trust and achieve any unity of operation against the established ruler. These informants are often recruited and helped by means of another instrument of fear. This is that of the multiplication of laws. As the laws multiply and make increasingly strict demands it is more and more difficult to know for sure whether or not you are breaking the law. An informant may be recruited by being told that he has broken a law and will be sent to jail for 20 years, or he can help out the “law enforcers” by reporting someone else who has broken laws. It is very easy for him to do this, since there is no person in the regime who has been able to perfectly follow the vast web of interlocking and contradictory laws. Fear has a tendency to override the one feature of man that elevates him above the animals, his reason. Men without reason are easily controlled, just like any other cattle and this is a fact that all tyrants use to great effect. As we have said, terrorist acts against the status quo are fairly traditional objects of fear for a dictator to play on. It fills the people with indignation that such a thing was perpetrated and a desire for vengeance against the perpetrators. It also frightens them that they or someone dear to them might be injured in such an attack and they wish to stop that from happening. For these two reasons, they will be willing to unite behind anyone who is willing to promise them security and who will lead them to some sort of vengeance. They will do just about anything that this leader demands from them as a price for the accomplishment of these ends. Excerpt from a college paper by Victor Melechinsky.
I must admit I don't really recall folk actually saying that. Making trains run on time I have heard, but even then not the first thing they'd comment on. This does remind me a little of the smiley SS thread we had either here or at the other place. "Oh they might have been a generation of murderous bastids, but they knew how to have a laugh." etc.
"I must admit I don't really recall folk actually saying that. Making trains run on time I have heard, but even then not the first thing they'd comment on. " Some Documentries i've seen show that he was real charsmatic.
Do you have a source that the body guard was jewish? Because it is UTTER bullshit. And there were no jewish SS guards (duh), they were Kapos.