"Better dads than Nazis", is the new slogan of the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić. The President of the National Assembly, Ana Brnabić, thirds the boss with the attack of the "worst Nazis" on the regime's favorite student Miloš Pavlović. A banner was hung on the Niš fortress with the shout of a resident of Andrić's wreath with a swastika...
A day after that, a banner with the same inscription appeared on the plateau in front of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.
A fierce government campaign is underway with the aim of presenting Serbian students who are fighting for the rule of law as Nazis who, after the fall of the Weimar Republic in Germany, collapsed it in order to commit crimes that are among the greatest in the history of mankind.
The comparison is so absurd that there are only two explanations for it: either its creators and interpreters are corrupt to the core, pagans, unscrupulous, liars, bums, scum, or they are simply uneducated, unfortunate people who use a term they don't fully understand, but somehow, they know it's something bad, so they stick it to someone.
MILOĹ PAVLOVIĆMiloš Pavlović in the Presidency with Aleksandar Vučić / Photo: Tanjug/Sava Radovanović
On this occasion, let's start from the fact that they don't know what they are doing. When, therefore, ignorant top state officials are already introducing the slander of Nazism into the public space, then the structure of Hitler's unique and incomparably criminal government should be explained to them. National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), which if at all has similarities with anything in Serbia, then with the Serbian Progressive Party.
The principle of "one leader, one people, one country" was established in the SNS, that party "glaichshalt" the media, it disposes of parastatal formations, attacks dissenters with the occupied state force, which it declares to be alienated enemies of the people, talks about a false elite and creates castes in the state that are not equal before the law...
Vučić and his team compare those young people who splashed water, threw something and dragged Miloš Pavlović and his colleagues through the warm rabbit hole in Studentski Grad - which is reprehensible - and who were then taken into protection by the most powerful people in the country under whose control all the institutions of force are the Nazis.
They are compared to those who killed about 17 million people in Germany itself, of whom about 195.000 were German Jews (there are no precise data, but historians start from these figures), who put political opponents and "racial vermin" into death camps, who used those they declared second-class citizens as slaves to build infrastructure.
This is not the first time that the leaders of the progressives play with the notions as they are "fascism", "nazism", "Nazis", "SS"...
But let's start in order.
SS and SA
In order to protect his own and attack other people's party gatherings, Hitler entrusted one of his first associates, professional officer Ernst Rehm, with organizing a paramilitary group in January 1920, "Vreme" previously wrote.
At first it changed a few names, to finally be called "assault department" - Sturmabteilung - better known by the abbreviation of its name SA. It was a squad of thugs to protect NSDAP gatherings and disrupt other parties, as well as fighting other groups on the street, primarily communists.
Bundesarchiv_Bild_101III-Hoffmann-04-23,_Waffen-SS-Div.__Das_Reich_,_RusslandSS Division "Reich" / Photo: Bundesarchiv/Wikipedia.org
The career and death of Horst Wessel (1907–1930), a prominent leader of the SA unit in Berlin, is interesting. He died in a fight with a group of members of the (communist) Front of the Red Union of Fighters. NSDAP propaganda styled his death as a martyr's death, and a song was composed in his honor, "Song of Horst Wessel" (Horst Wessel Lied), became the Nazi anthem that was always played after the German national anthem.
Since that organization expanded too much, took on too many tasks, on April 4, 1925, Hitler founded a new "protection unit" as his personal guard - Schutzstaffel - better known by the abbreviation SS.
Initially, the SS units were part of the SA and subordinated to its commander Rem, but in 1934 the SS disarmed the SA, executed Rem himself and numerous high-ranking officials of the organization, and became independent. The SA still existed, but in a subordinate position.
Over time, the SS branched out into several groups. Formations of skulls were established to manage the concentration camps (Totenkopfverbände). Those units wore uniforms of the same color as the regular army, but with skulls on the collars. During the conquest of Poland, they were brought in to carry out violence that the regular army was spared.
In addition to them, there was the General SS (Allgemeine SS). Its members were not barracked, they were called when the need arose, they wore black uniforms, and that is why they were popularly called "black SS".
800px-Reichsparteitagnov1935Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg in 1935 / Photo: Wikipedia.org
At the beginning of the war in Poland, there was a need to use military organized units instead of Skull Formations, and the Armed SS was founded (Waffen SS). Its members wore uniforms like the army, but with skulls on the collar and with different rank titles. Tactically, they were subordinate to the military command, but they were better supplied, privileged in every respect. By the end of the war, 38 SS divisions were established, with 594.443 members at the end of the war.
While only German citizens served in the regular army, members of other nations were also willingly accepted into the SS units, so special divisions were created for them. For us, the "Prince Eugen" Division, in which there were primarily Swabians from Banat, and the "Skanderbeg" Division, in which Albanians served, are interesting. Those two divisions were used on the territory of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, they committed many war crimes. Less known is the "Kama" Division founded in Croatia, in Eastern Slavonia, mainly with the local Swabians and Bosniaks, because it was transferred to Hungary, included in the "Horst Wesel" Division and fought on the Eastern Front.
Gestapo
For the Imperial SS leader (Reichsführer SS) Hitler personally appointed Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945). For the sake of general control, he founded the Main Office for Reich Security, which consisted of six sections, and under it was the regular police. The Gestapo was the fourth section with the name "fight against the enemy". More important was the Security Service (security - SD), SS internal police, simultaneously an intelligence and counterintelligence service. Report IV-B-4 headed by Adolf Eichmann was also in charge of the "final solution of the Jewish question", in other words the Holocaust.
Hitler and the Autobahns: Nazi Germany's Major Propaganda Project
Towards the end of the war, starting in 1944, the SS armed units were treated as a branch of the army, so that recruited young men were assigned to those divisions without question.
After the capitulation of Germany in 1945, Himmler committed suicide. The Nuremberg court declared the SS a "criminal organization". Many SS men managed to escape to Latin America through the so-called "rat channels", among them Eichmann, who was kidnapped by the Israeli secret service to be sentenced to death by hanging in Jerusalem.
Gleichschaltung and the leader principle
Members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party are called Nazis. Just as in Serbia we call members of the Serbian Progressive Party progressives. This is not a comparison of the two parties, but only a clarification of who the Nazis actually were, without going into the phenomenon of neo-Nazism.
Among the 25 points of the party program of the NSDAP, two were the most important: the idea of absolute unification of politics and society, for which the term was used phasing (taken from the electrical industry where it marks the start of electric current in one specific direction by pressing one button) and the "leader principle" (Leader principle) - the unquestioning obedience of the people to the competent leader, who in turn reports to his leader and so on up to the supreme leader, leader, Führer Adolf Hitler.
Thus, the authority of each manager, leader, was directed downwards and responsibility upward.
Acquiring respectable people
Although his target group was increasingly disaffected workers, and thus the term "socialist" and "worker" dominated the name of the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler had already realized that he could not achieve political success surrounded by honest, uneducated workers. He started working on getting celebrities.
Among the first, he succeeded in getting a military pilot with the highest decorations from the First World War, Hermann Göring (1893–1946), a member of his party. He entrusted him with the establishment of the party's paramilitary units, a group of thugs with military discipline.
A little later, he was approached by the writer and doctor of literature Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945), who started a propaganda machine to address the wider layers of society and proved to be an excellent organizer. A new important member was the gifted architect Albert Speer (1905–1981).
Lieutenant Rudolf Hess (1894–1987), who was born in Egypt to a wealthy German family, joined the NSDAP in 1920, was Hitler's personal secretary, and later a minister without portfolio. He was given the official title of "Deputy Führer".
Anti-Semitism
There are many theories as to why anti-Semitism became one of the main guiding ideas of the NSDAP, to the extent that during the Second World War, the extermination of the Jews became almost a primary goal. One of them is that among the German masses there was strong opposition to capitalism and its representatives, which benefited the communists and social democrats. It was necessary to divert the hatred from Krupp, Thyssen, Siemens and similar companies to someone else, let's say to the Jews.
It wasn't difficult. The average German borrowed at high interest rates in small Jewish banks, spent his hard-earned money in Jewish department stores and shops, did not think about wholesale steel production, coal mine owners, electric motor manufacturers - truly large capital that Jews had no access to. Instead of the term "capitalism", Hitler's propaganda introduced "Jewish plutocracy" (the rule of money) as the enemy of the people, as the culprit for all personal evils that affect the individual.
Party state
After the Weimar Republic, Germany was transformed into a party state. The NSDAP was the source of power, it set up the government, the command of the army, practically regulated all aspects of life.
That is why, under his leadership, he also founded special organizations for boys (Hitler Youth), party organizations for girls, women, teachers, docents, had corps of car drivers, riders and aviators, farmers, lawyers and all other groups. The paramilitary formations SA and SS were also part of that party structure. Instead of a trade union, the German Labor Front was founded, in which both employers and workers were members.
The development of membership shows the growth of the NSDAP: at the end of 1919, the party had 64 members, at the end of 1923, 55.787, at the end of 1933 - when it was already in power - about 3.900.000. This development is logical because no office or better job could be obtained without party membership.
The law of September 22, 1933 established the Imperial Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer), which consisted of seven chambers for the written word, music, fine arts, theater, film, press and radio. The condition for membership was proof of belonging to the Aryan race. Thus, Jews were primarily excluded from business and artistic life. No one could publicly engage in one of those activities unless he was a member of the appropriate chamber, and that meant strict party control.
Building managers
The law stipulates that "block managers" take care of residential buildings (Block letter), the manager was popularly called "blokwart". The blocks were responsible for 40 to 60 households, that is, for one large or several smaller buildings, in the countryside for one larger or several smaller properties.
They were supposed to take care of everything: the cleanliness and lighting of the staircases and common rooms or the installation of national and party flags. During the war, the importance of these people increased, because they distributed tickets for groceries, took care of the blackout, the departure of tenants to shelters, setting up fire alarms, etc.
Blokwart could have been a man who proved that he was a pure Aryan, and if there were "non-Aryans" (Jews or Gypsies) in the two generations before him, he was out of the question. He swore an oath to Adolf Hitler. He was considered the lowest rank in the party hierarchy. He was instructed to "take care of everything and find out everything".
The organizational structure of the NSDAP, the control of every segment of life carried out during peacetime, the principle of absolute obedience to the leader, helped Germany survive its wars of conquest, and then one defeat after another, much longer than expected.
Even before the war, the party advocated "not maintaining worthless life", which meant the killing of moronic children in state hospitals, regardless of race and origin. It was a good introduction to the mass murders in the concentration camps, to the gas chambers. The organizer was the NSDAP, the SS was the organizational part of that party, and the blocquarts reported hidden Jews and anyone who spoke against the regime.
Let's go back to Student City in Belgrade. Those young people, therefore, who were dragged through the hands of the commander of Čaciland, Miloš Pavlović - which is inappropriate and reprehensible - and to whom that unfortunate man from Andrić's wreath puts the label of everything described above.
