Saturday, July 4, 2020

5 March 1933: Fake News and the German Election

As the 5th started to roll around, Herman Goering escalated this plan of an attack to occur on election day (the 5th). 

The responsible party for the party?  The German Communist Party. 

The general plan?  Assault police, burn down stores, and riot through public buildings. 

So the word went out, to warn the police....who probably turned around throughout the country....to warn the mayors, and the city councils.

All fake?  Yes.  But it escalated tensions around the country and set the police to more of a defensive mindset...expecting trouble (of any type).

Goering even juiced up the report by suggesting that 100 to 200 of the Communists involved....would be in uniforms....which probably pushed the pressure up several notches.

Goering even went on to say 8,000 attacks were in the works.  Some involved bridges to be blown, other plans involved the families of Nazi officials to be kidnapped, and used as defensive shields. 

I've sat and analyzed the new book by Peter Fritzsche....Hitler's First One-Hundred Days.  There are simply a lot of lesser known facts that he blends into the book and really delivers a closer view of how political events and fake news shaped the 1933 period.

Did anyone go back to ask why nothing much happened on 5 March 1933?  No. 

It was simply a good story...woven into various details, which made it seem almost believable.  That's generally how fake news works.

How far did it get told by that evening (the 5th)?  Unknown, but a reasonable guess would be a minimum of half the people in cities like Berlin or Frankfurt probably had heard some element of the story and since it came from the police....it must be factual. 

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