Did Hitler, Stalin and Mao make people register guns prior to their seizing of power? Did they make guns illegal?
How can you make people register guns before you seize power?
The German gun Control laws were from the Weimar Republic, before Hitler came to power. They included strict licensing arrangments.
As 3waygeek says, how can anyone make people register, guns before they came to power. It could be Stalin seized power (from Trotsky) within the Commnunist party in a palace coup, but he didn’t so much seize power as secede Lenin.
When Mao took power, China was in the midst of civil war and just recovering from foreign occupation and had no real legisture or executive at that time.
seced? suceed more like.
As MC wrote, China ended more or less a century of anarchy in 1949. There was little registration of anything much less guns.
I’m curious as to why you think they would NEED to do such a thing. Hitler and Stalin were wildly popular among their own people; and once the war was in full swing, both countries were absolutely awash in weapons.
I can’t say as much about Mao because I know less about Chinese history.
I belive germany did confiscate guns after hitler came to power, but before he became genocidal.
IIRC, the nazis did use registration lists and such set up by the Weimar Republic in order to disarm opposing political groups (when the nazis were still fighting various factions).
Hitler never got more than 37% of the vote before he came to power and even then the SA used coercive tactics and political violence to aid him and the elections after he came to power were a farce. Gauging he’s actual popularity when he was in power is nigh on impossible due to his repressive methods. The same diffculties in gauging Stalin’s popularity exist only *10. Stalin rose to power by taking boring but influential jobs within the Communist party which allowed him to manevour himself into power, after he was in power the absolute secrecy and repression that characterized his regime make it impossible to say how popualr he actually was.
Mao on the other hand was reasonably popular both before and after he came to power.
IIRC the Nazis did enact further gun controls in 1938, 5 years after they came to power.
Not to get into GD territory but I suspect some people would ask the same question in an effort to prove control and licensing of firearms are a prelude to dictatorship but I am afraid the answer does not support that. As has been mentioned, Hitler may have been a murderer of some minorities but he was wildly popular with the majority and the same can be said of other dictators. Whether he did or did not regulate firearms more or less than the preceding governments would not have made any difference.
Note that most western countries regulate firearms very strictly and cannot be said they are sliding into any dictatorship.
Note that under Saddam Hussein firearms were quite freely traded in Iraq’s open air markets (a practice the US occupacion forces are trying to stop) and yet the country was a dictatorship of the worst kind.
Whether Hitler, Mao or Stalin regulated firearms more or less I do not think would have made much of any difference in the course of their countries’ history.
I would hope I had the good sense to pick off some nazis had I lived in germany during the holocost. Kind of hard to do that with out a gun.
I have a hard time believing a significant minority (atleast) of germans did not find Hitler evil. Had there been guns in germany there might have been quite a few nazis soldiors picked off, ending the war sooner, and saving lives. the french managed a rebelion using cheap guns put together with rivets.
netscape6, there was a German Resistance movement focused around two groups, the German Socialists and Communists (which were the first two groups to be sent to concentration camps) and also among several high-ranking officers of the Wermacht. However you must remember the police-state atmosphere that pervaded Germany at the time, with informers on every block (for example a vicar was sent to a concentration camp for telling a joke about Hitler to a plumber who then reported him to the Gestapo).
As I said before it is questionable if Hitler ever truly enjoyed majority support (indeed in the election which saw him take control of the Reichstag more people voted for the various Socilaist and Communist parties, who due to internal squabbling did not form a coalition).
If this is where this thread is headed, “the best way to protect against a dictatorship” is to arm the citizens?
Then I’d like better evidence than your hopefulness that had you been around you would have thought to pick off a couple of nazis.
But, suppose you had lived there, and was weaponless, couldn’t you garotte the first, steal his weapon, shoot some others with it? Why is it a pre-requisite that you fight your one-man resistance with your very own gun?
Not really. You and a couple of friends ambush and jump on a SS guy in a dark street on his way home, kill him with a kitchen knife and take his gun.
Yes a significant minority did hate Hitler - - most of them ended up dead.
The idea that Hitler and a few Nazis forced the German people to do all sorts of things against their collective will does not stand up to scrutiny. The German people collectively fought WWII with a will. Dictators cannot hold on to power against a widespread opposition.
Look at Cuba today. It is a tiranical regime but the fact is that it enjoys very wide support from the Cuban people (as well as hatred from a significant segment as well).
The fact that a leader is popular or is doing popular things does not mean those things are good for the country. The ayatollah Khomeini was immensely popular when he came to power.
The idea that common people having firearms is some guarantee of liberty does not stand up to scrutiny. All people have to do to topple a regime is go on a general strike and stay home.
Again, firearms were widely available in Iraq under Saddam Hussein
Hitler may not have been wildly popular when coming to power in 1933, but by 1940 he had the German people solidly behind him. He stabilized the economy, provided lots of employment, and was winning nearly bloodless (for the Germans, at least) victories. Stalin, who did much less for his own people in the same time frame, was still beloved.
Why? Because everything was NOT an absolute secret. Both men had giant and effective propaganda machines, to trumpet their triumphs and to blame their defeats or failures on others.
I’m curious: if it’s so impossible to say how popular Hitler and Stalin were, why do you find it so easy to proclaim Mao’s popularity? Both Hitler and Stalin (AND their whole countries, for that matter) received a great deal more attention from western press than Mao and China did.
I think the GQ answer is “not really” and we are now getting into GD territory and we should ask leave from the OP and the mods. Maybe the OP can request the thread be moved to GD if that was his intention or whatever. I did not mean to sidetrack the thread.
As I said before it’s difficult to gauge Hitler’s actual popularity because of his stage-managed cult of personailty and program of forceful indoctrination, though that said in many ways he was more popular than is regime.Most people had portaits of Hitler and a copy of Mein Kampf in their house, but then you have to realize that if you didn’t, even though it wasn’t illegal, you would still be reported to your blockfurhrer as suspicous.
Again for Stalin don’t confuse a cult of personailty for substanial popularity, both these regimes operated on fear not popularity.
Mao’s popularity helped to bring him to power and was evident in the cultural revoltuion.
Ah, yes. Right. I suspected a “right to bear arms” axe to grind was the agenda of the OP. Definitely off to GD.