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"The
most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the
subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who
have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own
downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the
supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the
overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or
native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for
the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian
territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to
cover the entire occupied country." --Adolf Hitler, dinner talk
on April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private
Conversations, Second Edition (1973), Pg. 425-426. Translated by Norman
Cameron and R. H. Stevens. Introduced and with a new preface by H. R.
Trevor-Roper. The original German papers were known as Bormann-Vermerke.
Nazi Weapons Act of 1938 (Translated to English)
- Classified guns for "sporting purposes".
- All citizens who wished to purchase firearms had to register with the Nazi officials and have a background check.
- Presumed German citizens were hostile and thereby exempted Nazis from the gun control law.
- Gave Nazis unrestricted power to decide what kinds of firearms could, or could not be owned by private persons.
- The types of ammunition that were legal were subject to control by bureaucrats.
- Juveniles under 18 years could not buy firearms and ammunition.
A Gun Control Law Passed by the German Government One Day After Kristallnacht
1573
Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons
11 November 1938
With a basis in §31 of the Weapons Law of 18 March 1938
(Reichsgesetzblatt I, p.265), Article III of the Law on the
Reunification of Austria with Germany of 13 March 1938
(Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 237), and §9 of the Führer and Chancellor's
decree on the administration of the Sudeten-German districts of 1
October 1938 (Reichsgesetzblatt I, p 1331) are the following ordered:
§1
Jews (§5 of the First Regulations of the German Citizenship
Law of 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 1333) are prohibited
from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as
well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons
and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police
authority.
§2
Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew's possession will be forfeited to the government without compensation.
§3
The Minister of the Interior may make exceptions to the
Prohibition in §1 for Jews who are foreign nationals. He can entrust
other authorities with this power.
§4
Whoever willfully or negligently violates the provisions
of §1 will be punished with imprisonment and a fine. In especially
severe cases of deliberate violations, the punishment is imprisonment in
a penitentiary for up to five years.
§5
For the implementation of this regulation, the Minister of
the Interior waives the necessary legal and administrative provisions.
§6
This regulation is valid in the state of Austria and in the Sudeten-German districts.
Berlin, 11 November 1938
Minister of the Interior
Frick
New
research into Adolf Hitler's use of firearms registration lists to
confiscate guns and the execution of their owners teaches a forceful
lesson -- one that reveals why the American people and Congress have
rejected registering honest firearm owners. |
It would be instructive at this time to recall why the American
citizenry and Congress have historically opposed the registration of
firearms. The reason is plain. Registration makes it easy for a
tyrannical government to confiscate firearms and to make prey of its
subjects. Denying this historical fact is no more justified than denying
that the Holocaust occurred or that the Nazis murdered millions of
unarmed people.
I am writing a book on Nazi policies and practices which sought
to repress civilian gun ownership and to eradicate gun owners in Germany
and in occupied Europe. The following sampling of my findings should
give pause to the suggestion that draconian punishment of citizens for
keeping firearms necessarily is a social good.
The Night of the Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)--the infamous
Nazi rampage against Germany's Jews--took place in November 1938. It was
preceded by the confiscation of firearms from the Jewish victims. On
Nov. 8, the New York Times reported from Berlin, "Berlin Police Head
Announces 'Disarming' of Jews," explaining:
The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf,
announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks
the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been "disarmed" with the
confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of
ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid
licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.1
On the evening of Nov. 9, Adolf Hitler, Propaganda
Minister Joseph Goebbels, and other Nazi chiefs planned the attack.
Orders went out to Nazi security forces: "All Jewish stores are to be
destroyed immediately . . . . Jewish synagogues are to be set on fire . .
. . The Führer wishes that the police does not intervene. . . . All
Jews are to be disarmed. In the event of resistance they are to be shot
immediately."2
All hell broke loose on Nov. 10: "Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn
Jewish Shops and Temples." "One of the first legal measures issued was
an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding
Jews to possess any weapons whatever and imposing a penalty of twenty
years confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in
possession of a weapon hereafter."3 Thousands of Jews were taken away.
Searches of Jewish homes were calculated to seize firearms and
assets and to arrest adult males. The American Consulate in Stuttgart
was flooded with Jews begging for visas: "Men in whose homes old, rusty
revolvers had been found during the last few days cried aloud that they
did not dare ever again return to their places of residence or business.
In fact, it was a mass of seething, panic-stricken humanity."4
Himmler, head of the Nazi terror police, would become an
architect of the Holocaust, which consumed six million Jews. It was
self evident that the Jews must be disarmed before the extermination
could begin.
Finding out which Jews had firearms was not too difficult.
The liberal Weimar Republic passed a Firearm Law in 1928 requiring
extensive police records on gun owners. Hitler signed a further gun
control law in early 1938.
Other European countries also had laws requiring police
records to be kept on persons who possessed firearms. When the Nazis
took over Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939, it was a simple matter to
identify gun owners. Many of them disappeared in the middle of the
night along with political opponents.
Imagine that you are sitting in a movie house in Germany in May
1940. The German Weekly Newsreel comes on to show you the attack on
Holland, Belgium, and France.5 The minute Wehrmacht troops
and tanks cross the Dutch border, the film shows German soldiers nailing
up a poster about 2½ by 3 feet in size. It is entitled "Regulations on
Arms Possession in the Occupied Zone" ("Verordnung über Waffenbesitz im
besetzen Gebiet"). The camera scans the top of the double-columned
poster, written in German on the left and Flemish on the right, with an
eagle and swatiska in the middle. It commands that all firearms be
surrendered to the German commander within 24 hours. The full text is
not in view, but similar posters threatened the death penalty for
violation.
The film shows artillery and infantry rolling through the
streets as happy citizens wave. It then switches to scenes of
onslaughts against Dutch and Belgian soldiers, and Hitler's message that
this great war would instate the 1000-year Reich. A patriotic song
mixed with the images and music of artillery barrages, Luftwaffe
bombings, and tank assaults compose the grand finale.
France soon fell, and the same posters threatening the death
penalty for possession of a firearm went up everywhere. You can see one
today in Paris at the Museum of the Order of the Liberation (Musée de
l'Ordre de la Libération). A photograph of the poster is reproduced
here, including a translation in the sidebar.
There was a fallacy to the threat. No blank existed on the
poster to write in the time and date of posting, so one would know when
the 24-hour "waiting period" began or ended. Perhaps the Nazis would
shoot someone who was an hour late. Indeed, gun owners even without
guns were dangerous because they knew how to use guns and tend to be
resourceful, independent-minded persons. A Swiss manual on armed
resistance stated with such experiences in mind:
Should you be so trusting and turn over your weapons you will
be put on a "black list" in spite of everything. The enemy will always
need hostages or forced laborers later on (read: "work slaves") and will
gladly make use of the "black lists." You see once again that you
cannot escape his net and had better die fighting. After the deadline,
raids coupled with house searches and street checks will be conducted.6
Commented the New York Times about the interrelated rights which the Nazis destroyed wherever they went:
Military orders now forbid the French to do things which the
German people have not been allowed to do since Hitler came to power. To
own radio senders or to listen to foreign broadcasts, to organize
public meetings and distribute pamphlets, to disseminate anti-German
news in any form, to retain possession of firearms--all these things are
prohibited for the subjugated people of France . . . .7
While the Nazis made good on the threat to execute persons in
possession of firearms, the gun control decree was not entirely
successful. Partisans launched armed attacks. But resistance was
hampered by the lack of civilian arms possession.
In 1941, U.S. Attorney General Robert Jackson called on Congress to enact national registration of all firearms.8
Given events in Europe, Congress recoiled, and legislation was
introduced to protect the Second Amendment. Rep. Edwin Arthur Hall
explained: "Before the advent of Hitler or Stalin, who took power from
the German and Russian people, measures were thrust upon the free
legislatures of those countries to deprive the people of the possession
and use of firearms, so that they could not resist the encroachments of
such diabolical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestapo,
the Ogpu, and the Cheka."9
Rep. John W. Patman added: "The people have a right to keep
arms; therefore, if we should have some Executive who attempted to set
himself up as dictator or king, the people can organize themselves
together and, with the arms and ammunition they have, they can properly
protect themselves. . . ."10
Only two months before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl
Harbor, Congress enacted legislation to authorize the President to
requisition broad categories of property with military uses from the
private sector on payment of fair compensation, but also provided:
Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed--
(1) to authorize the requisitioning or require the
registration of any firearms possessed by any individual for his
personal protection or sport (and the possession of which is not
prohibited or the registration of which is not required by existing
law), [or]
(2) to impair or infringe in any manner the right of any individual to keep and bear arms . . . .11
Meanwhile Hilter unleashed killing squads called the
Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe and Russia. As Raul Hilberg observes,
"The killers were well armed . . . . The victims were unarmed."12
The Einsatzgruppen executed two million people between fall 1939 and
summer 1942. Their tasks included arrest of the politically unreliable,
confiscation of weapons, and extermination.13
Typical executions were that of a Jewish woman "for being
found without a Jewish badge and for refusing to move into the ghetto"
and another woman "for sniping." Persons found in possession of
firearms were shot on the spot. Yet reports of sniping and partisan
activity increased.14
Armed citizens were hurting the Nazis, who took the sternest
measures. The Nazis imposed the death penalty on a Pole or Jew: "If he
is in unlawful possession of firearms, . . . or if he has credible
information that a Pole or a Jew is in unlawful possession of such
objects, and fails to notify the authorities forthwith."15
Given the above facts, it is not difficult to understand why
the National Rifle Association opposed gun registration at the time and
still does. The American Riflemen for February 1942 reported:
From Berlin on January 6th the German official radio
broadcast--"The German military commander for Belgium and Northern
France announced yesterday that the population would be given a last
opportunity to surrender firearms without penalty up to January 20th and
after that date anyone found in possession of arms would be executed."
So the Nazi invaders set a deadline similar to that announced
months ago in Czecho-Slovakia, in Poland, in Norway, in Romania, in
Yugo-Slavia, in Greece.
How often have we read the familiar dispatches "Gestapo agents
accompanied by Nazi troopers swooped down on shops and homes and
confiscated all privately-owned firearms!"
What an aid and comfort to the invaders and to their Fifth
Column cohorts have been the convenient registration lists of privately
owned firearms--lists readily available for the copying or stealing at
the Town Hall in most European cities.
What a constant worry and danger to the Hun and his Quislings
have been the privately owned firearms in the homes of those few
citizens who have "neglected" to register their guns!16
During the war years the Rifleman regularly included pleas for American sportsmen to "send a gun to defend a British home.17
British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need
arms for the defense of their homes." Indeed, the New York Times carried
the same solicitations. After two decades of gun control, British
citizens now desperately needed rifles and pistols in their homes, and
they received the gifts with great appreciation. Organized into the Home
Guard, armed citizens were now ready to resist the expected Nazi
onslaught.
With so many men and guns sent abroad to fight the war,
America still needed defending from expected invasions on the East and
West coasts, domestic sabotage, and Fifth Column activity. Sportsmen
and gun clubs responded by bringing their private arms and volunteering
for the state protective forces.18
Switzerland was the only country in Europe, indeed in the
world, where every man had a military rifle in his home. Nazi invasion
plans acknowledged the dissuasive nature of this armed populace, as I
have detailed in my book Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II (Rockville Center, N.Y.: Sarpedon Publishers, 1998).
Out of all the acts of armed citizen resisters in the war, the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising of 1943 is difficult to surpass in its heroism.
Beginning with just a few handguns, armed Jews put a temporary stop to
the deportations to extermination camps, frightened the Nazis out of the
ghetto, stood off assaults for days on end, and escaped to the forests
to continue the struggle. What if there had been two, three, many
Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings?
The NRA trained hundreds of thousands of Americans in rifle
marksmanship during the war. President Harry Truman wrote that NRA's
firearms training programs "materially aided our war effort" and that he
hopped "the splendid program which the National Rifle Association has
followed during the past three-quarters of a century will be continued."20
By helping defeat the Nazi and Fascist terror regimes, the NRA helped
end the Holocaust, slave labor, and the severest oppression.
Those tiny pacifist organizations of the era which called for
gun registration and confiscation contributed nothing to winning the war
or to stopping the genocide. Their counterparts today have nothing to
offer that would enable citizens to resist genocide.
Individual criminals wreak their carnage on individuals or
small numbers of people. As this century has shown, terrorist
governments have the capacity to commit genocide against millions of
people, provided that the people are unarmed. Schemes to confiscate
firearms kept by peaceable citizens have historically been associated
with some of the world's most insidious tyrannies. Given this reality,
it is not surprising that law-abiding gun owners oppose being objects of
registration.
1. New York Times, Nov. 9, 1938, 24.
2. Gerald Schawb, The Day the Holocaust Began (New York: Praeger, 1990), 22.
3. New York Times, Nov. 11, 1938, 1, 4.
4. The Holocaust, Vol. 3, The Crystal Night Pogrom, John Mendelsohn, ed. (New York: Garland, 1982), 183-84.
5. Die Deutsche Wochenschau, No. 506, 15 May 1940, UfA, Ton-Woche.
6. Major H. von Dach, Total Resistance (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1965), 169. Earlier published as Dach, Der Totale Widerstand (Biel: SUOV, 2nd ed., 1958).
7. New York Times, July 2, 1940, 20.
8. New York Times, Jan. 4, 1941, 7.
9. 87 CONG.REC., 77th Cong., 1st Sess., 6778 (Aug. 5, 1941).
10. Id. at 7102 (Aug. 13, 1941).
11. Property Requisition Act, P.L. 274, 77th Cong., 1st Sess., Ch. 445, 55 Stat., pt. 1, 742 (Oct. 16, 1941). See. Halbrook, "Congress Interprets the Second Amendment," 62 Tennessee Law Review 597, 618-31 (Spring 1995).
12. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Homes and Meir, 1985), 341, 318, 297.
13. Yitzhak Arad et al. eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports (New York: Holocaust Library, 1989), ii.
14. Id. at 233, 306, 257-58, 352-53, 368.
15. Reichsgesetzblatt, I, 759 (4 Dec. 1941).
16. "The Nazi Deadline," American Rifleman, February 1942, at 7.
17. American Rifleman, Nov. 1940.
18. E.g., Report of the Adjutant General for 1945, at 23-24 (Richmond, Va., 1946); U.S. Home Defense Forces Study 58-59 (Office of Ass't Sec. of Defense 1981).
19. See Rotem (Kazik), Simha, Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter,
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 118-19; David I. Caplan,
"Weapons Control Laws: Gateways to Victim Oppression and Genocide," in To Be a Victim: Encounters with Crime and Injustice, eds. Diane Sank and David I. Caplan (New York: Plenum Press, 1991), 310.
20. Letter of Pres. Truman to C.B. Lister, NRA Sec.-Treas., Nov. 14, 1945. |
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