Now that the Dems have caved to more fearmongering (I didn't say it, Jim Webb did) by the Cheney/Bush regime it seems an appropriate time to remind people of Milton Mayer's remarkable history of Germany from 1933-1945 through the words of the "ordinary people" - "They Thought They Were Free - The Germans 1933 -1945". Using remarkably insightful and restrained interviews with "ordinary Germans" Mayer tells the story of how, little by little, crisis by crisis, a totalitarian regime was created. Below is one of the most insightful reminiscences by a Professor of Middle German recounting exactly how the regime took shape.
But Then It Was Too Late
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security..."
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter...
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head."
The book is still in print. I highly recommend it.