Hitler Pardoned His Goons Too
Trump’s Actions' Parallels with Germany 1935
Released from long sentences for seditious conspiracy by the mercy of Donald Trump, the leaders of the January 6 insurrection are flush with triumph and vengeful purpose. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys whom Trump pardoned for his 22-year sentence, proclaimed, “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted. Success is going to be retribution.” Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, sentenced to 18 years, lobbied for full pardons for the 14 offenders, including himself, who received only commutations. He left jail a free man and immediately sketched out his plan to investigate police witnesses and prosecutors “on up the chain.”
Tarrio added, with perhaps the most inappropriate words ever spoken by a pardoned convict: “Now it’s our turn.”
Like Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Adolf Hitler came to power through lawful means in a weakened democracy. After a failed putsch and a prison sentence, Hitler emerged from incarceration and revived the Nazi Party. In the wake of widespread public discontent—triggered by both the one-sided Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and the Great Depression—Hitler consolidated power ruthlessly. He blamed Germany’s woes on the democratic Weimar government, which he called “criminals,” as well as Jews, communists, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals.
The message struck a strong chord with the German people, and by 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in Germany. Hitler’s buffoonish manner led political elites to believe they could control him if they gave him official power. In 1933, they persuaded President von Hindenburg to appoint him as Chancellor of Germany. It was a historic mistake with global implications. First bending the legal system that had brought him to power, Hitler, by 1934, had decimated the rule of law and established a totalitarian dictatorship.
A ragtag organization of ex-soldiers and thugs, known as the SA—or, informally, the “Brownshirts” for their brown uniforms—was a key component of Hitler’s rise. The Brownshirts’ job was to intimidate political opponents and help spread Nazi ideology. The most loyal among them eventually joined the SS after Hitler carried out a purge of SA leadership to consolidate power within the Nazi Party.
But it took Hitler some time to completely displace the political system in Germany. Early in the Nazi regime, existing members of the judiciary and legal professionals still tried to uphold and enforce the law. Many turned a blind eye to the SA’s crimes, including a series of gruesome murders of Nazi opponents, even as they attempted to assert some of their traditional prosecutorial powers.
It was the abuses at Hohnstein Concentration Camp—an early detention center for communists and other political prisoners—that were too savage and notorious to ignore. In 1935, local prosecutors brought 23 SA guards at the camp to trial on charges of torture and brutal mistreatment, including widespread “suiciding” of prisoners. The SA defendants were all convicted and sentenced to prison.
Within a year, they were all out, released on Hitler’s orders. After the trial, senior Nazi officials demanded their release and acquittal. Then, in November 1935, Hitler pardoned every last one of the convicted men. It was a brutal demonstration of his domination of the judiciary and a key benchmark in his complete conquest of the rule of law in Germany—one that paved the way for his unchecked rule and thirst for world domination.
In my earlier Substack post assailing the pardons, I singled them out as the worst betrayal of the country by a sitting president in our history. (Read it here.) I stand by that. A large component of my assessment is that the pardons are ultimately and fundamentally an assault on the country and the rule of law—that is, on all of us. It follows, as I wrote, that our 47th president, in his very first hours in office, has become a profound traitor and extreme menace to the country as a whole.
But the grievous national injury doesn’t mean the pardons didn’t have individual victims. Among the most justifiably anguished and outraged are the more than 150 officers whom the marauders savagely beat with baseball bats, flagpoles, and pipes. Several died, including by suicide, as a result. “Everybody’s angry and sad and devastated,” reported one officer-victim, Harry Dunn. As the brother of another officer said Tuesday, “We almost lost democracy on January 6. Today, I honestly think we did lose democracy.”
And then there are the scores of citizens now living in fear for their own safety due to the release of the marauders. Take Jackson Reffitt, for example, who reported his father’s involvement in the insurrection. He has already faced years of threats and harassment. But with his radicalized father’s release, he now has to relocate and buy a firearm to protect himself.
The public proclamations by Vice President J.D. Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi that pardons for January 6 offenders who harmed law enforcement would be abhorrent suggested that Trump planned to release only a small cadre of nonviolent offenders—or at least portray violent offenders as nonviolent.
That’s because it seemed inconceivable that Vance and Bondi would be freelancing—rather, they had to be spouting talking points provided by their administration handlers.
And yet, sure enough, it has now been reported that Trump’s decision to release all the marauders was impulsive and last-minute.
“F* it, release ’em all,” he’s been quoted as having abruptly declared.
Trump’s vicious impulse is the country’s great shame.
It is also the foundation of his own gang of Brownshirts.
One pardoned offender has already committed another crime.
Led by Tarrio and Rhodes, the very men and women who violently tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power are now a roving gang of Trump loyalists with a new purpose in life: exacting retribution on behalf of Trump and themselves.
Who can doubt that they now stand ready to bash heads at a wink and a nod from Trump, along the lines of “stand back and stand by”?
Or maybe, having already taken up weapons for Trump on January 6, 2021, and been outrageously rewarded, they won’t even need a wink and a nod next time.
Talk to you later.
Historian here - I think your analysis is apt, and people should understand how democracies can be swiftly and unexpectedly co-opted. But one relevant point that should give us hope that we can ultimately mitigate some of the harm inflicted. In Germany, the Weimar Republic was imposed upon a country without a firm democratic inheritance and as part of the consequences of losing WWI. Even for those who opposed Hitler, the Weimar government did not seem like an inheritance to be protected. Similarly for Hungary, which had been part of the Soviet Union, and before that only a republic for a brief and very tumultuous period after WWI. They were governed by a monarchy for the most part between the wars. The point here is that the United States has a long, if imperfect, history of democratic governance. Our democracy is part of our inheritance, not something imposed after a military defeat. I think that structural/historical factor will substantially shape how people respond to continuing attempts by the Trump administration to strip us of our rights. Right now I think we're in shock and trying to figure out a way forward, but I believe our long history of rights and democratic governance will ultimately motivate us to reject an authoritarian regime
Excellent post…thank you for being among those who research and speak the truth.