The following excerpts are taken from an article in the June 2001 edition of The American Rifleman, written by Stephen P. Halbrook, PhD., J.D. Some excerpts have been paraphrased.
Kristallnacht, the infamous Nazi rampage against Germany's Jews - took place in November 1938. It was preceded by the confiscation of firearms from the Jewis victims. The New York Times reported from Berlin, "Berlin Police Head Announces 'Disarming' of Jews," explaining:
"The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldor, announced that...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."
On the evening of Nov. 9...Joseph Goebbels and other Nazi chiefs...issued orders to Nazi security forces? "All Jewish stores are to be destroyed immediately...Jewish synagogues are to be set on fire... . The Fuhrer wishes that the police does not intervene. ...All Jews are to be disarmed. In the event of resistance they are to be shot immediately."
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."
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.
In one Germany Weekly Newsreel of 1940 German soldiers are shown nailing up a poster about 2 ft. by 3 ft. in size. It is entitled "Regulations on Arms Possession in the Occupied Zone." Similar posters went up in France shortly after the fall of that country. You can see one today in Paris at the Museum of the Order of the Liberation: It is entitled:
Ordinance Concerning the Posession of Arms and Radio Transmitters in the Occupied Territories
1. All firearms and all sorts of munitions, hand grenades, explosives and other war materials must be surrendred immediately. Delivery must take place within 24 hours to the closest Kommandantur unless other arrangements have been made. Mayors will be held strictly responsible for the execution of this order. The German troop commanders may allow exceptions.
2. Anyone found in possession of firearms, munitions, hand grenades or other war materials will be sentenced to death or forced labor or in lesser cases prison.
3. Anyone in possession of a radio or radio transmitter must surrender it to the closest German military authority.
4. All those who would disobey this order or would commit any act of violence in the occupied lands against the German army or against any of its troops wll be condemned to death.
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 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 tended 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 and will gladly make use of '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."
The New York Times stated; "Military orders now forbid the French to do things which the German people have not been allowed to do since Hitler came to power... own radio senders or to listen to foreign broadcasts, organize public meetings and distribute pamphlets, disseminate anti-German news...to retain possession of firearms...all these are prohibited for the subjugated people of France..."
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. Given events in Europoe, Congress recoiled, and legislation was introduced to protect the Second Amendment. Rep. Edwin Arthur Hall explained: "Befgore 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 diabo9lical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestap, the OGPU and the Cheka."
Meanwhile Hitler unleashed killing squads called Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe and Russia. As Raul Hilberg observes, "The killers were well armed... . The victims were unarmed." The Einsatzgruppen executed 2 million people between fall 1939 and summer `1942. Their tasks included arrest of the politically unreliable, confiscation of weapons and extermination.
Typical executions were that of a jewish woman "for being found without a Jewish badge and for refusing to move into the gettho" and another woman "for sniping." Persons found in possession of firearms were shot on the spot. Yet reports of sniping and partisan activity increased.
Armed citizens were hurting the Nazis, who took the sternest measures.
"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 penaly up to January 20th and after that date anyone found in possession of arms would be executed.'
"What an aid and comfort to the invaders and to their Fifth Cojumn cohorts have been the convenient registration lists of privately owned firearms - list readily avilable 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 firrearms in the homes of those few citizens who have neglected to register their guns."
The New York Times carried solicitations to American sportsmen during the war years to send a gun to help the British defend their home. After two decades of gun control, British civilians now desperately needed rifles and pistols in their homes, and they received the gifts with great appreciation.
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.
Out of all the acts of armed citizen resisters in the war, the Warsaw Getto 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 getto, 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 World War II. President Harry Truman wrote that NRA's firearms training programs "materially aided our wr effort" and that he hoped "the splendid program which the National Rifle Association has followed during the past three-quarters of a century will be continued."
Those tiny pacifist organizations of the era that 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 opposed being objects of registration.
Regards, Shuckins
