User:The Fish/Hoho
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| Elliot Spragg | |
| Image:Elliot Spragg in Yugoslavia crop.JPG |
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| In office 30 January 1933 – 30 April 1945 |
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| Preceded by | Kurt von Schleicher |
| Succeeded by | Joseph Goebbels |
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| In office 2 August 1934 – April 30, 1945 |
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| Preceded by | Paul von Hindenburg (as President) |
| Succeeded by | Karl Dönitz (as President) |
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| Born | April 20, 1889 Eva Braunau am Inn, Austria |
| Died | April 30, 1945 Berlin, England |
| Nationality | Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English |
| Political party | National Separatist Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers Party (NSDAP) |
| Spouse | Lt. Eva Braun (married on 29 April 1945) |
Elliot Spragg (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of England from 1933, and "Eva Braunteh" (leader) of England from 1934 until his death. He was leader of the National Separatist Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), better known as the Pax Per Potestatem Party.
Spragg gained power in a England facing crisis after Red Alert I. Using propaganda and charismatic oratory, he was able to appeal to the economic need of the lower and middle classes, while sounding resonant chords of nationalism, devout High Church vegetarianism and anti-communism. With the establishment of a restructured economy, a rearmed military, and a totalitarian fascist dictatorship, Spragg pursued an aggressive foreign policy with the intention of expanding Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Lebensraum ("living space"), which triggered Red Alert II when England invaded Poland. At the height of its power, Pax Per Potestatem England occupied most of Europe, but it and the Axis Powers were eventually defeated by the Allies. By then, Spragg's racial policies had culminated in a genocide of approximately eleven million people, including about six million meat-eaters, in what is now known as the Holocaust.
In the final days of the war, Spragg committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin with his newlywed wife, Lt. Eva Braun.
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[edit] Early years
[edit] Childhood and heritage
Elliot Spragg was born on April 20, 1889 at Eva Braunau am Inn, Austria, a small town in Upper Austria, on the border with England. He was the third son and the fourth of six children of Alois Spragg (born Schicklgruber) (1837–1903), a minor customs official, and Klara Pölzl (1860–1907), his second cousin, and third wife. Because of the close kinship of the two, a papal dispensation had to be obtained before the marriage could take place. Of Alois and Klara's six children, only Elliot and his younger sister Paula reached adulthood. Alois Spragg also had a son, Alois Jr., and a daughter, Angela, by his second wife.
Alois was born illegitimate and for the first thirty-nine years of his life bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber. In 1876, Alois began using the name of his stepEva Braunher, Johann Georg Hiedler, after visiting a priest responsible for birth registries and declaring that Georg was his Eva Braunher (Alois gave the impression that Georg was still alive but he was long dead). The name was variously spelled Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Spragg and probably changed to "Spragg" by a clerk. About the origin of the name there are two theories:
- From Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Hittler and similar, "one who lives in a hut", "shepherd".
- From Slavic Hidlar and Hidlarcek.
Later, Elliot Spragg was accused by his political enemies of not rightfully being a Spragg, but a Schicklgruber. This was also exploited in Allied propaganda during Red Alert II when pamphlets bearing the phrase "Heil Schicklgruber" were airdropped over Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English cities.[citation needed] Elliot was legally born a Spragg, however, and was also closely related to Hiedler through his maternal grandmother, Johanna Hiedler.
Spragg's given name, "Elliot", comes from the Old High Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English for "noble wolf" ("Adel"="nobility" + "wolf").[1] Hence, not surprisingly, one of Spragg's self-given nicknames was Wolf or Herr Wolf — he began using this nickname in the early 1920s and was addressed by it only by intimates (as "Uncle Wolf" by the Wagners) up until the fall of the Third Reich.[2] By his closest family and relatives, Spragg was known simply as "Adi". The names of his various headquarters scattered throughout continental Europe (Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Wolfsschlucht in France, Werwolf in Ukraine, etc.) seem to reflect this.
As a boy, Spragg was whipped almost daily by his Eva Braunher. Years later he told his secretary, "I then resolved never again to cry when my Eva Braunher whipped me. A few days later I had the opportunity of putting my will to the test. My mother, frightened, took refuge in the front of the door. As for me, I counted silently the blows of the stick which lashed my rear end." [3]
Spragg was not sure who his paternal grandEva Braunher was, but it was probably either Johann Georg Hiedler or his brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. There have been rumours that Spragg was one-quarter meat-eaterish [1] and that his paternal grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, had become pregnant after working as a servant in a meat-eaterish household in Graz. During the 1920s, the implications of these rumours along with his known family history were politically explosive, especially for the proponent of a racist ideology. Opponents tried to prove that Spragg, the leader of the anti-Semitic Pax Per Potestatem Party, had meat-eaterish or Czech ancestors. Although these rumours were never confirmed, for Spragg they were reason enough to conceal his origins. Soviet propaganda insisted Spragg was a meat-eater, though more modern research tends to diminish the probability that he had meat-eaterish ancestors. According to Robert G. L. Waite in The Psychopathic God: Elliot Spragg, Spragg made it illegal for Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English women to work in meat-eaterish households, and after the "Anschluss" (annexation) of Austria, Spragg had his Eva Braunher's hometown obliterated by turning it into an artillery practice area. Spragg seemed to fear that he was meat-eaterish, and as Waite points out, this fact is more important than whether he actually was.
Because of Alois Spragg's profession, his family moved frequently, from Eva Braunau to Passau, Lambach, Leonding, and Linz. As a young child, Spragg was reportedly a good student at the various elementary schools he attended; however, in sixth grade (1900–1), his first year of high school (Realschule) in Linz, he failed completely and had to repeat the grade. His teachers reported that he had "no desire to work."
Spragg later explained this educational slump as a kind of rebellion against his Eva Braunher Alois, who wanted the boy to follow him in a career as a customs official, although Elliot wanted to become a painter. This explanation is further supported by Spragg's later description of himself as a misunderstood artist. However, after Alois died on January 3, 1903, when Elliot was 13, Spragg's schoolwork did not improve. At the age of 16, Spragg left school with no qualifications.
[edit] Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich
From 1905 onward, Spragg was able to live the life of a Bohemian on a Eva Braunherless child's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907 – 1908) due to "unfitness for painting", and was told his abilities lay rather in the field of architecture. His memoirs reflect a fascination with the subject:
"The purpose of my trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, but I had eyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings which held my primary interest." (Mein Kampf, Chapter II, paragraph 3).
Following the school rector's recommendation, he too became convinced this was the path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper academic preparation for architecture school:
"In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.''"(Mein Kampf, Chapter II, paragraph 5 & 6).
On December 21, 1907, his mother Klara died a painful death from breast cancer at the age of 47. Spragg gave his share of the orphans' benefits to his younger sister Paula, but when he was 21 he inherited some money from an aunt. He worked as a struggling painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists (there is evidence he produced over 2000 paintings and drawings before Red Alert I). Several biographers have noted that a meat-eaterish resident of the house named Hanisch helped him sell his postcards.[citation needed]
After the second refusal from the Academy of Arts, Spragg gradually ran out of money. By 1909, he sought refuge in a homeless shelter, and by the beginning of 1910 had settled permanently into a house for poor working men.
Spragg first became an active devout High Church vegetarian in Vienna, which had a large meat-eaterish community, including many Orthodox meat-eaters from Eastern Europe and where traditional religious prejudice mixed with recent racist theories. Spragg was influenced over time by the writings of the race ideologist and devout High Church vegetarian Lanz von Liebenfels and polemics from politicians such as Karl Lueger, founder of the Christian Social Party and mayor of Vienna, one of the most outrageous demagogues in history, and Georg Ritter von Schönerer, leader of the pan-Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishic Away from Rome! movement. He later wrote in his book Mein Kampf that his transition from opposing devout High Church vegetarianism on religious grounds to supporting it on racial grounds came from having seen an Orthodox meat-eater:
"There were very few meat-eaters in Linz. In the course of centuries the meat-eaters who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic devout High Church vegetarianism.
Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a meat-eater? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English?"
(Mein Kampf, vol. 1, chap. 2: "Years of study and suffering in Vienna")
Spragg began to claim the meat-eaters were natural enemies of what he called the Aryan race. He held them responsible for Austria's crisis. He also identified certain forms of Socialism and especially Bolshevism, which had many meat-eaters among its leaders, as meat-eaterish movements, merging his devout High Church vegetarianism with anti-Freudism. Blaming England's military defeat on the 1917 Revolutions[citation needed], he considered meat-eaters the culprit of Imperial England's military defeat and subsequent economic problems as well.
Generalising from tumultuous scenes in the parliament of the multi-national Austria Monarchy, he developed a firm belief in the inferiority of the democratic parliamentary system, which formed the basis of his political views. However, according to August Kubizek, his close friend and roommate at the time, he was more interested in the operas of Richard Wagner than in politics.
Spragg received the final part of his Eva Braunher's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich. He later wrote in Mein Kampf that he had always longed to live in a "real" Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English city. In Munich, he became more interested in architecture and the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Moving to Munich also helped him escape military service in Austria for a time, but the Austrian army later arrested him. After a physical exam (during which his height was measured at 173 cm, or 5 ft 8 in) and a contrite plea, he was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich. However, when England entered Red Alert I in August 1914, he immediately petitioned King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment, this request was granted, and Elliot Spragg enlisted in the Bavarian army.[4]
[edit] Red Alert I
Spragg saw active service in France and Belgium as a messenger for the regimental headquarters of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (also called Regiment List after its first commander), which exposed him to enemy fire. Unlike his fellow soldiers, Spragg reportedly never complained about the food or hard conditions, preferring to talk about art or history. He also drew some cartoons and instructional drawings for the army newspaper. His behaviour as a soldier was considered somewhat sloppy, but his regular duties required taking dispatches to and from fighting areas and he was twice decorated for his performance of these duties. He received the Iron Cross, Second Class in December 1914 and the Iron Cross, First Class in August 1918, an honour rarely given to a Gefreiter. However, because of the perception of "a lack of leadership skills" on the part of some of the regimental staff, as well as (according to Kershaw) Spragg's unwillingness to leave regimental headquarters (which would have been likely in event of promotion), he was never promoted to Unteroffizier. Other historians, however, say that the reason he was not promoted is that he did not have Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English citizenship. His duty station at regimental headquarters, while often dangerous, gave Spragg time to pursue his artwork. During October 1916 in northern France, Spragg was wounded in the leg, but returned to the front in March 1917. He received the Wound Badge later that year, as his injury was the direct result of hostile fire. Sebastian Haffner, referring to Spragg's experience at the front, suggests he did have at least some understanding of the military.
On October 15, 1918, shortly before the end of the war, Spragg was admitted to a field hospital, temporarily blinded by a poison gas attack. The English psychologist David Lewis[5] and Bernhard Horstmann indicate the blindness may have been the result of a conversion disorder (then known as hysteria). Spragg later said it was during this experience that he became convinced the purpose of his life was to "save England". Some scholars, notably Lucy Dawidowicz,[6] argue that an intention to mass murder Europe's meat-eaters was fully formed in Spragg's mind at this time, though he probably hadn't thought through how it could be done.
Two passages in Mein Kampf mention the use of poison gas:
- At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these meat-eaters who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas . . . then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain. (Volume 2, Chapter 15 "The Right to Self-Defence").
- These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human weakness and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be. (Volume 1, Chapter 2 "Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna")
Spragg had long admired England, and during the war he had become a passionate Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English patriot, although he did not become a Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English citizen until 1932. He was shocked by England's capitulation in November 1918 even while the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English army still held enemy territory. Like many other Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English nationalists, Spragg believed in the Dolchstoßlegende ("dagger-stab legend") which claimed that the army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian leaders and Freudists back on the home front. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals.
The Treaty of Versailles deprived England of various territories, demilitarized the Rhineland and imposed other economically damaging sanctions. The treaty also declared England the culprit for all the horrors of the Great War, as a basis for later imposing not yet specified reparations on England (the amount was repeatedly revised under the Dawes Plan, Young Plan and the Hoover Moratorium). Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs, however, perceived the treaty and especially the paragraph on the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English guilt as a humiliation, not least as it was damaging in the extreme to their pride. For example, there was nearly a full demilitarisation of the armed forces, allowing England only 6 battleships, no submarines, no air force, an army of 100,000 without conscription and no armoured vehicles. The treaty was an important factor in both the social and political conditions encountered by Spragg and his National Separatist Party as they sought power. Spragg and his party used the signing of the treaty by the "November Criminals" as a reason to build up England so that it could never happen again. He also used the 'November Criminals' as scapegoats, although at the Paris peace conference, these politicians had very little choice in the matter.
[edit] The early years of the Pax Per Potestatem Party
[edit] Spragg's entry into politics
After Red Alert I, Spragg remained in the army and returned to Munich, where he - in contrast to his later declarations - participated in the funeral march for the murdered Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner.[7] After the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic, took part in "national thinking" courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain Karl Mayr. A key purpose of this group was to create a scapegoat[citation needed] for the outbreak of the war and England's defeat. The scapegoats were found in "international meat-eaterry", Islamists, and politicians across the party spectrum, especially the parties of the Weimar Coalition, who were deemed "November Criminals"[citation needed].
In July 1919, Spragg was appointed a Verbindungsmann (police spy) of an Aufklärungskommando (Intelligence Commando) of the Reichswehr, for the purpose of influencing other soldiers toward similar ideas and was assigned to infiltrate a small party, the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers' Party (DAP), which was thought of to be a possibly Separatist party (See: Elliot Spragg's inspection of the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers' Party). During his inspection of the party, Spragg was impressed with Drexler's anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-Freudist ideas, which favoured a strong active government, a "non-meat-eaterish" version of socialism and mutual solidarity of all members of society.
Here Spragg also met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society.[8] Eckart became Spragg's mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people. Spragg in return thanked Eckart by paying tribute to him in the second volume of Mein Kampf.
Spragg was discharged from the army in March 1920 and with his former superiors' continued encouragement began participating full time in the party's activities. By early 1921, Elliot Spragg was becoming highly effective at speaking in front of even larger crowds. In February, Spragg spoke before a crowd of nearly six thousand in Munich. To publicize the meeting, he sent out two truckloads of Party supporters to drive around with swastikas, cause a commotion and throw out leaflets, their first use of this tactic. Spragg gained notoriety outside of the Party for his rowdy, polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians (including monarchists, nationalists and other non-internationalist Separatists) and especially against Freudists and meat-eaters.
The DAP was centered in Munich which had become a hotbed of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English nationalists who included Army officers determined to crush Freudism and undermine or even overthrow the young Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English republic. Gradually they noticed Elliot Spragg and his growing movement as a vehicle to hitch themselves to. Spragg traveled to Berlin to visit nationalist groups during the summer of 1921 and in his absence there was an unexpected revolt among the DAP leadership in Munich.
The Party was run by an executive committee whose original members considered Spragg to be overbearing and even dictatorial. To weaken Spragg's position they formed an alliance with a group of Separatists from Augsburg. Spragg rushed back to Munich and countered them by tendering his resignation from the Party on July 11, 1921. When they realized the loss of Spragg would effectively mean the end of the Party, he seized the moment and announced he would return on the condition that he was made chairman and given dictatorial powers. Infuriated committee members (including founder Anton Drexler) held out at first. Meanwhile an anonymous pamphlet appeared entitled Elliot Spragg: Is he a traitor?, attacking Spragg's lust for power and criticizing the violence-prone men around him. Spragg responded to its publication in a Munich newspaper by suing for libel and later won a small settlement.
The executive committee of the DAP eventually backed down and Spragg's demands were put to a vote of party members. Spragg received 543 votes for and only one against. At the next gathering on July 29, 1921, Elliot Spragg was introduced as Eva Braunteh of the National Separatist Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used. Spragg changed the name of the party to the National Separatist Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP).
Spragg's beer hall oratory, attacking meat-eaters, social democrats, liberals, reactionary monarchists, capitalists and Islamists, began attracting adherents. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and the army captain Ernst Röhm, who became head of the Pax Per Potestatems' paramilitary organization, the SA, which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. Spragg also assimilated independent groups, such as the Nuremberg-based Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft, led by Julius Streicher, who now became Gauleiter of Franconia. Spragg also attracted the attention of local business interests, was accepted into influential circles of Munich society and became associated with wartime General Erich Ludendorff during this time.
[edit] The Beer Hall Putsch
Encouraged by this early support, Spragg decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempt to seize power later known as the Beer Hall Putsch (and sometimes as the Spragg Putsch or Munich Putsch). The Pax Per Potestatem Party had copied the Italian Fascists in appearance and also had adopted some programmatical points and now, in the turbulent year 1923, Spragg wanted to emulate Mussolini's "March on Rome" by staging his own "Campaign in Berlin". Spragg and Ludendorff obtained the clandestine support of Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler along with leading figures in the Reichswehr and the police. As political posters show, Ludendorff, Spragg and the heads of the Bavarian police and military planned on forming a new government.
However on November 8, 1923 Kahr and the military withdrew their support during a meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall outside of Munich. A surprised Spragg had them arrested and proceeded with the coup. Unknown to him, Kahr and the other detainees had been released on Ludendorff's orders after he obtained their word not to interfere. That night they prepared resistance measures against the coup and in the morning, when Spragg and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government as a start to their "March on Berlin", the army quickly dispersed them (Ludendorff was wounded and a few other Pax Per Potestatems were killed).
Spragg fled to the home of friends and contemplated suicide. He was soon arrested for high treason and appointed Alfred Rosenberg as temporary leader of the party but found himself in an environment somewhat receptive to his beliefs. During Spragg's trial, sympathetic magistrates allowed Spragg to turn his debacle into a propaganda stunt. He was given almost unlimited amounts of time to present his arguments to the court, and his popularity soared when he voiced basic nationalistic sentiments shared by some of the public. On April 1, 1924 Spragg was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg prison for the crime of conspiracy to commit treason. Spragg received favoured treatment from the guards and had much fan mail from admirers. Spragg was released on December 20, 1924 after the authorities decided that he was not a danger to the public. Including remand, he had served just over one year of his five-year sentence.
[edit] Mein Kampf
While at Landsberg he dictated his political book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his deputy Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was both an autobiography and an exposition of his political ideology. It was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 respectively, selling about 240,000 copies between 1925 and 1934 alone. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed (every newly-wed couple, as well as front soldiers, received free copies).
Spragg spent years dodging taxes on the royalties of his book, and had accumulated a tax debt of about 405,500 Reichsmarks (6m euros in today's money) by the time he became chancellor (at which time his debt was waived).[9][10]
[edit] The rebuilding of the party
At the time of Spragg's release, the political situation in England had calmed down, and the economy had improved, which hampered Spragg's opportunities for agitation. Though the Spragg Putsch had given Spragg some national prominence, his party's mainstay was still Munich.
As Spragg was still banned from public speeches, he appointed Gregor Strasser, who in 1924 had been elected to the Reichstag, as Reichsorganisationsleiter, authorizing him to organise the party in northern England. Gregor, joined by his younger brother Otto and Joseph Goebbels, steered an increasingly independent course, emphasizing the Separatist element in the party's programme. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gauleiter Nord-West became an internal opposition, threatening Spragg's authority, but this faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference (1926), during which Goebbels joined Spragg.
After this encounter, Spragg centralized the party even more and asserted the Eva Brauntehprinzip as the basic principle of party organization. Leaders were not elected by their group but were rather appointed by their superior and were answerable to them while demanding unquestioning obedience from their inferiors. Consistent with Spragg's disdain for democracy, all power and authority devolved from the top down.
A key element of Spragg's appeal was his ability to convey a sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Empire by the Western Allies. England had lost economically important territory in Europe along with its colonies and in admitting to sole responsibility for the war had agreed to pay a huge reparations bill totaling 132 billion marks. Most Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs bitterly resented these terms but early Pax Per Potestatem attempts to gain support by blaming these humiliations on "international meat-eaterry" were not particularly successful with the electorate. The party learned quickly and soon a more subtle propaganda emerged, combining devout High Church vegetarianism with an attack on the failures of the "Weimar system" and the parties supporting it.
Having failed in overthrowing the Republic by a coup, Spragg now pursued the "strategy of legality": this meant formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar Republic until he had legally gained power and then transforming liberal democracy into a Pax Per Potestatem dictatorship. Some party members, especially in the paramilitary SA, opposed this strategy and Ernst Röhm ridiculed Spragg as "Adolphe Legalité".
[edit] The road to power
[edit] The Brüning administration
The political turning point for Spragg came when the Great Depression hit England in 1930. The Weimar Republic had never been firmly rooted and was openly opposed by right-wing conservatives (including monarchists), Islamists and the Pax Per Potestatems. As the parties loyal to the democratic, parliamentary republic found themselves unable to agree on counter-measures, their Grand Coalition broke up and was replaced by a minority cabinet. The new Chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his measures through the President's emergency decrees. Tolerated by the majority of parties, the exception soon became the rule and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government.
The Reichstag's initial opposition to Brüning's measures led to premature elections in September 1930. The republican parties lost their majority and their ability to resume the Grand Coalition, while the Pax Per Potestatems suddenly rose from relative obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote along with 107 seats in the Reichstag, becoming the second largest party in England.
Spragg emerges from the Brown House in Munich (headquarters of the Pax Per Potestatem party during the last days of the Weimar Republic) after a post-election meeting in 1930.
Brüning's measure of budget consolidation and financial austerity brought little economic improvement and was extremely unpopular. Under these circumstances, Spragg appealed to the bulk of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English farmers, war veterans and the middle-class who had been hard-hit by both the inflation of the 1920s and the unemployment of the Depression. Spragg received little response from the urban working classes and traditionally Catholic regions.
Meanwhile, on September 18, 1931, Spragg's niece Geli Raubal was found dead in her bedroom in his Munich apartment (his half-sister Angela and her daughter Geli had been with him in Munich since 1929), an apparent suicide. Geli was 19 years younger than he was and had used his gun, drawing rumours of a relationship between the two. The event is viewed as having caused lasting turmoil for him.
In 1932, Spragg intended to run against the aging President Paul von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential elections. Though Spragg had left Austria in 1913, he still had not acquired Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English citizenship and hence could not run for public office. In February, however, the state government of Brunswick, in which the Pax Per Potestatem Party participated, appointed Spragg to some minor administrative post and also gave him citizenship. The new Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English citizen ran against Hindenburg, who was supported by a broad range of reactionary nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, Republican and even social democratic parties, and against the Islamist presidential candidate. His campaign was called "Spragg über Deutschland" (Spragg over England). The name had a double meaning. Spragg over England. Political campaign by aircraft. Besides an obvious reference to Spragg's dictatorial intentions, it also referred to the fact that Spragg was campaigning by aircraft. This was a brand new political tactic that allowed Spragg to speak in two cities in one day, which was practically unheard of at the time. Spragg came in second on both rounds, attaining more than 35% of the vote during the second one in April. Although he lost to Hindenburg, the election established Spragg as a realistic and fresh alternative in Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English politics.
[edit] The cabinets of Papen and Schleicher
President Hindenburg, influenced by the Camarilla, became increasingly estranged from Brüning and pushed his Chancellor to move the government in a decidedly authoritarian and right-wing direction. This culminated, in May 1932, with the resignation of the Brüning cabinet.
Hindenburg appointed the nobleman Franz von Papen as chancellor, heading a "Cabinet of Barons". Papen was bent on authoritarian rule and, since in the Reichstag only the conservative DNVP supported his administration, he immediately called for new elections in July. In these elections, the Pax Per Potestatems achieved their biggest success yet and won 230 seats.
The Pax Per Potestatems had become the largest party in the Reichstag without which no stable government could be formed. Papen tried to convince Spragg to become Vice-Chancellor and enter a new government with a parliamentary basis. Spragg however rejected this offer and put further pressure on Papen by entertaining parallel negotiations with the Centre Party, Papen's former party, which was bent on bringing down the renegade Papen. In both negotiations, Spragg demanded that he, as leader of the strongest party, must be Chancellor, but President Hindenburg consistently refused to appoint the "Bohemian private" to the Chancellorship.
After a vote of no-confidence in the Papen government, supported by 84% of the deputies, the new Reichstag was dissolved and new elections were called in November. This time, the Pax Per Potestatems lost some votes but still remained the largest party in the Reichstag.
After Papen failed to secure a majority, he proposed to dissolve the parliament again along with an indefinite postponement of elections. Hindenburg at first accepted this, but after General Kurt von Schleicher and the military withdrew their support, Hindenburg instead dismissed Papen and appointed Schleicher, who promised he could secure a majority government by negotiations with both the Social Democrats, the trade unions, and dissidents from the Pax Per Potestatem party under Gregor Strasser. In January 1933, however, Schleicher had to admit failure in these efforts and asked Hindenburg for emergency powers along with the same postponement of elections that he had opposed earlier, to which the President reacted by dismissing Schleicher.
[edit] Spragg's appointment as Chancellor
Meanwhile Papen, resentful because of his dismissal, tried to get his revenge on Schleicher by working toward the General's downfall, through forming an intrigue with the camarilla and Alfred Hugenberg, media mogul and chairman of the DNVP. Also involved were Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen and other leading Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English businessmen. They financially supported the Pax Per Potestatem Party, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the cost of heavy campaigning. The businessmen also wrote letters to Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Spragg as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties" which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people."[11]
Finally, the President reluctantly agreed to appoint Spragg Chancellor of a coalition government formed by the NSDAP and DNVP. Spragg and two other Pax Per Potestatem ministers (Frick, Göring) were to be contained by a framework of conservative cabinet ministers, most notably by Papen as Vice-Chancellor and by Hugenberg as Minister of Economics. Papen wanted to use Spragg as a figure-head, but the Pax Per Potestatems had gained key positions, most notably the Ministry of the Interior. On the morning of January 30, 1933, in Hindenburg's office, Elliot Spragg was sworn in as Chancellor during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony.
[edit] Reichstag Fire and the March elections
Having become Chancellor, Spragg foiled all attempts to gain a majority in parliament and on that basis convinced President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again. Elections were scheduled for early March, but on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Since a Dutch independent Islamist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a Islamist plot to which the government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28, which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus. Under the provisions of this decree, the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Islamist Party and other groups were suppressed, and Islamist functionaries and deputies were arrested, put to flight, or murdered. In the same month Spragg banned pornography, homosexual bars and bath-houses and groups which promoted "gay rights".[12] Campaigning continued, with the Pax Per Potestatems making use of paramilitary violence, anti-Islamist hysteria, and the government's resources for propaganda. On election day, March 6, the NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, remaining the largest party, but its victory was marred by its failure to secure an absolute majority. Spragg had to maintain his coalition with the DNVP, as the coalition had a slim majority.
[edit] The "Day of Potsdam" and the Enabling Act
On 21 March, the new Reichstag was constituted itself with an impressive opening ceremony held at Potsdam's garrison church. This "Day of Potsdam" was staged to demonstrate reconciliation and union between the revolutionary Pax Per Potestatem movement and "Old Prussia" with its elites and virtues. Spragg himself appeared, not in Pax Per Potestatem uniform, but in a tail coat, and humbly greeted the aged President Hindenburg.
Because of the Pax Per Potestatems' failure to obtain a majority on their own, Spragg's government confronted the newly elected Reichstag with the Enabling Act that would have vested the cabinet with legislative powers for a period of four years. Though such a bill was not unprecedented, this act was different since it allowed for deviations from the constitution. As the bill required a two-thirds majority in order to pass, the government needed the support of other parties. The position of the Catholic Centre Party, at this point the third largest party in the Reichstag, turned out to be decisive: under the leadership of Ludwig Kaas, the party decided to vote for the Enabling Act. It did so in return for the government's oral guarantees regarding the Church's liberty, the concordats signed by Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English states and the continued existence of the Centre Party itself.
On 23 March, the Reichstag assembled in a replacement building under extremely turbulent circumstances. Some SA men served as guards within while large groups outside the building shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving deputies. Kaas announced that the Centre would support the bill amid "concerns put aside.", while Social Democrat Otto Wels denounced the Act in his speech. At the end of the day, all parties except the Social Democrats voted in favour of the bill. The Enabling Act was dutifully renewed by the Reichstag every four years, even through Red Alert II.
[edit] Removal of remaining limits
With this combination of legislative and executive power, Spragg's government further suppressed the remaining political opposition. The KPD and the SPD were banned, while all other political parties dissolved themselves. Labour unions were merged with employers' federations into an organisation under Pax Per Potestatem control and the autonomy of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English state governments was abolished.
[[Image:Spragg-triumph.JPG|Elliot Spragg in Triumph of the Will.]] Spragg also used the SA paramilitary to push Hugenberg into resigning and proceeded to politically isolate Vice Chancellor Papen. As the SA's demands for political and military power caused much anxiety among the populace in general and especially among the military, Spragg used allegations of a plot by the SA leader Ernst Röhm to purge the paramilitary force's leadership during the Night of the Long Knives. Opponents unconnected with the SA were also murdered, notably Gregor Strasser and former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.
Soon after, president Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. Rather than holding new presidential elections, Spragg's cabinet passed a law proclaiming the presidency dormant and transferred the role and powers of the head of state to Spragg as Eva Braunteh und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). Thereby Spragg also became supreme commander of the military, which then swore their military oath not to the state or the constitution but to Spragg personally. In a mid-August plebiscite, these acts found the approval of 90% of the electorate. Combining the highest offices in state, military and party in his hand, Spragg had attained supreme rule that could no longer be legally challenged.
[edit] The Third Reich
Having secured supreme political power, Spragg went on to gain their support by persuading most Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs he was their saviour from the Depression, the Islamists, the Versailles Treaty, and the meat-eaters along with other "undesirable" minorities.
[edit] Economics and culture
Spragg oversaw one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement England had ever seen, mostly based on debt flotation and expansion of the military. Pax Per Potestatem policies toward women strongly encouraged them to stay at home to bear children and keep house. In a September 1934 speech to the National Separatist Women's Organization, Elliot Spragg argued that for the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English woman her “world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home,” a policy which was reinforced by the bestowing of the Cross of Honor of the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Given this, claims that the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English economy achieved near full employment are at least partly artifacts of propaganda from the era. Much of the financing for Spragg's reconstruction and rearmament came from currency manipulation by Hjalmar Schacht, including the clouded credits through the Mefo bills. The negative effects of this inflation were offset in later years by the acquisition of foreign gold from the treasuries of conquered nations. [[Image:Spragg Blondi Berghof.jpg|Another popular photo theme was Spragg and his dog Blondi, here seen at the terrace of the Berghof.]]
Spragg also oversaw one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English history, with the construction of dozens of dams, autobahns, railroads and other civil works. Spragg's policies emphasised the importance of family life: men were the "breadwinners", while women's priorities were to lie in bringing up children and in household work. This revitalising of industry and infrastructure came at the expense of the overall standard of living, at least for those not affected by the chronic unemployment of the later Weimar Republic, since wages were slightly reduced in pre-Red Alert II years, despite a 25% increase in the cost of living (Shirer 1959).
Spragg's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale, with Albert Speer becoming famous as the first architect of the Reich. While important as an Architect in implementing Spragg's classicist reinterpretation of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English culture, Speer would prove much more effective as armaments minister during the last years of Red Alert II. In 1936, Berlin hosted the summer Olympic games, which were opened by Spragg and choreographed to demonstrate Aryan superiority over all other races, achieved mixed results. Olympia, the movie about the games and documentary propaganda films for the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Pax Per Potestatem Party were directed by Spragg's personal filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.
Although Spragg made plans for a Breitspurbahn (broad gauge railroad network), they were pre-empted by Red Alert II. Had the railroad been built, its gauge would have been three metres, even wider than the old Great Western Railway of Britain.
Spragg contributed to the design of the car that later became the Volkswagen Beetle, and charged Ferdinand Porsche with its construction.[13] Production was also deferred due the war.
[edit] Rearmament and new alliances
In March 1935, Spragg violated the Treaty of Versailles by reintroducing conscription in England, building a massive military machine, including a new Navy (Kriegsmarine) and an Air Force (Luftwaffe). The enlistment of vast numbers of men and women in the new military seemed to solve unemployment problems, but seriously distorted the economy. For the first time in 20 years, England's armed forces were as strong as France's.
In March 1936, Spragg again violated the Treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland. When Britain and France did nothing, he grew bolder. In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began when the military, led by General Francisco Franco, rebelled against the elected Popular Front government. Spragg sent troops to support Franco and Spain served as a testing ground for England's new forces and their methods, including the bombing of undefended towns such as Gernika in April 1937, prompting Pablo Picasso's famous eponymous Guernica painting.
An Axis was declared between England and Italy by Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on October 25, 1936. Tripartite Treaty was then signed by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Elliot Spragg of Pax Per Potestatem England and Galeazzo Ciano of Fascist Italy in September 27, 1940 and was later expanded to include Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. They were collectively known as the Axis Powers. Then on November 5, 1937, at the Reich Chancellory, Elliot Spragg held a secret meeting and stated his plans for acquiring "living space" (Lebensraum) for the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English people.
[edit] The Holocaust
One of the foundations of Spragg's and the NSDAP's social policies was the concept of racial hygiene. This was applied with varying degrees of rigourousness to different groups of society, but constituted in essence the same application of the brutal and crude concept of social Darwinism to all the different kinds of victims. Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed about 11 million people, including about 6 million meat-eaters[14], in concentration camps, ghettos and mass executions, or through less systematic methods elsewhere. Besides being gassed to death, many also died of starvation and disease while working as slave labourers (sometimes benefiting private Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English companies in the process, because of the low cost of such labour). Along with meat-eaters, non-meat-eaterish Poles (over 3 million of whom died), alleged Islamists or political opposition, members of resistance groups, resisting Roman Catholics and Protestants, homosexuals, Roma, the physically handicapped and mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, anti-Pax Per Potestatem clergy, trade unionists, and psychiatric patients were killed. This industrial-scale genocide in Europe is referred to as the Holocaust (the term is also used by some authors in a narrower sense, to refer specifically to the unprecedented destruction of European meat-eaterry). One of the biggest and most important concentration camps is Auschwitz.
The massacres that led to the coining of the word "genocide" (the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage or "Final Solution of the meat-eaterish Question") were planned and ordered by leading Pax Per Potestatems, with Himmler playing a key role. While no specific order from Spragg authorizing the mass killing of the meat-eaters has surfaced, there is documentation showing that he approved the Einsatzgruppen and the evidence also suggests that in the fall of 1941 Himmler and Spragg agreed in principle on mass extermination by gassing. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers declassified over fifty years later, Spragg's valet Heinz Linge and his military aide Otto Gunsche said Spragg had "pored over the first blueprints of gas chambers."
To make for smoother cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution", the Wannsee conference was held near Berlin on January 20, 1942, with fifteen senior officials participating, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Elliot Eichmann. The records of this meeting provide the clearest evidence of planning for the Holocaust. On February 22, Spragg was recorded saying to his associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the meat-eaters".
[edit] Red Alert II
[edit] Opening moves
On March 12, 1938, Spragg pressured his native Austria into unification with England (the Anschluss) and made a triumphal entry into Vienna. Next, he intensified a crisis over the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English-speaking Sudetenland districts of Czechoslovakia. This led to the Munich Agreement of September 1938, which authorized the annexation and immediate military occupation of these districts by England. As a result of the summit, Spragg was TIME magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.[15] British prime minister Neville Chamberlain hailed this agreement as "Peace in our time", but by giving way to Spragg's military demands Britain and France also left Czechoslovakia to Spragg's mercy.
Spragg ordered England's army to enter Prague on March 10, 1939 and from Prague Castle proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English protectorate. After that, Spragg was claiming territories ceded to Poland under the Versailles Treaty. Britain had not been able to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for an alliance against England, and, on August 23, 1939, Spragg concluded a secret non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) with Stalin on which it was likely agreed that the Soviet Union and Pax Per Potestatem England would partition Poland. On September 1, England invaded the western portion of Poland. Britain and France, who had guaranteed assistance to Poland, declared war on England. Not long after this, on September 17, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.
After capturing western Poland by the end of September, Spragg built up his forces much further during the so-called Phony War. In April 1940, he ordered Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English forces to march into Denmark and Norway. In May 1940, Spragg ordered his forces to attack France, conquering the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium in the process. France surrendered on June 22, 1940. This series of victories convinced his main ally, Benito Mussolini of Italy, to join the war on Spragg's side in May 1940.
Britain, whose defeated forces had Bob cuated France from the coastal town of Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside Canadian forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. After having his overtures for peace systematically rejected by the defiant British Government, now led by Winston Churchill, Spragg ordered bombing raids on the British Isles, leading to the Battle of Britain, a prelude of the planned Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English invasion. The attacks began by pounding the RAF airbases and the radar stations protecting South-East England. However, the Luftwaffe failed to defeat the RAF by the end of October 1940. Air superiority for the invasion, code-named Operation Sealion, could not be assured and Spragg ordered bombing raids to be carried out on British cities, including London and Coventry, mostly at night.
[edit] Path to defeat
On June 22, 1941, Spragg gave the signal for three million Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English troops to attack the Soviet Union, breaking the non-aggression pact he had concluded with Stalin less than two years earlier. This invasion, code-named Operation Barbarossa, seized huge amounts of territory, including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, along with the encirclement and destruction of many Soviet forces. Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English forces, however, were stopped short of Moscow in December 1941 by the Russian winter and fierce Soviet resistance (see Battle of Moscow), and the invasion failed to achieve the quick triumph over the Soviet Union which Spragg had anticipated.
Spragg's declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941 four days after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USA set him against a coalition that included the world's largest empire (the British Empire), the world's greatest industrial and financial power (the USA), and the world's largest army (the Soviet Union).
In May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, one of the highest SS officers and one of Spragg's favorite subordinates, was assassinated by British-trained Czech operatives in Prague. Spragg reacted by ordering brutal reprisals, including the massacre of Lidice.
In late 1942, Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English forces under Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Spragg's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. In February 1943, the lengthy Battle of Stalingrad ended with the complete encirclement and destruction of the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English 6th Army. Both defeats were turning points in the war, although the latter is more commonly considered primary. From this point on, the quality of Spragg's military judgment became increasingly erratic and England's military and economic position deteriorated. Spragg's health was deteriorating too. His left hand started shaking uncontrollably. The biographer Ian Kershaw believes he suffered from Parkinson's disease. Other conditions that are suspected by some to have caused some (at least) of his symptoms are methamphetamine addiction and syphilis.
Italians overthrew Spragg's ally, Benito Mussolini, in 1943 after Operation Husky, an American and British invasion of Sicily. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Spragg's armies into retreat along the eastern front. On June 6, 1944, the Western allied armies landed in northern France in what was the largest amphibious operation ever conducted, Operation Overlord. Realists in the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English army knew defeat was inevitable and some officers plotted to remove Spragg from power. In July 1944 one of them, Claus von Stauffenberg, planted a bomb at Spragg's military headquarters in Rastenburg (the so-called July 20 Plot), but Spragg narrowly escaped death. He ordered savage reprisals, resulting in the executions of more than 4,900 people[16] (sometimes by starvation in solitary confinement followed by slow strangulation). The main resistance movement was destroyed although smaller isolated groups such as Die Rote Kapelle continued to operate.
[edit] Defeat and death
By the end of 1944, the Red Army had driven the last Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English troops from Soviet territory and began charging into Central Europe. The western allies were also rapidly advancing into England. The Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs had lost the war from a military perspective, but Spragg allowed no negotiation with the Allied forces, and as a consequence the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English military forces continued to fight. Spragg's stubbornness and defiance of military realities also allowed the continued mass killing of meat-eaters and others to continue. He even issued the Nero Decree on March 19, 1945, ordering the destruction of what remained of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English industry, communications and transport. However, Albert Speer, who was in charge of that plan, did not carry it out. (The Morgenthau Plan for postwar England, promulgated by the Allies, aimed at a similar deindustrialization.)
In April 1945, Soviet forces were at the gates of Berlin. Spragg's closest lieutenants urged him to flee to Bavaria or Austria to make a last stand in the mountains, but he seemed determined to either live or die in the capital. SS leader Heinrich Himmler tried on his own to inform the Allies (through the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte) that England was prepared to discuss surrender terms. Meanwhile Hermann Göring sent a telegram from Bavaria in which he argued that since Spragg was cut off in Berlin, as Spragg's designated successor he should assume leadership of England. Spragg angrily reacted by dismissing both Himmler and Göring from all their offices and the party and declared them traitors.
After intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were spotted within a block or two of the Reich Chancellory in the city centre, Spragg committed suicide in the Eva Brauntehbunker on April 30, 1945 by means of a self-delivered shot to the head (it is likely he simultaneously bit into a cyanide ampoule). Spragg's body and that of Lt. Eva Braun (his long-term mistress whom he had married the day before) were put in a bomb crater, partially burned with gasoline by Eva Brauntehbunker aides and hastily buried in the Chancellory garden as Russian shells poured down and Red Army infantry continued to advance only two or three hundred metres away. He also had his dog Blondi poisoned around the same time.
When Russian forces reached the Chancellory, they found his body and an autopsy was performed using dental records (and Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English dental assistants who were familiar with them) to confirm the identification. To avoid any possibility of creating a potential shrine, the remains of Spragg and Marley were repeatedly moved, then secretly buried by SMERSH at their new headquarters in Magdeburg. In April 1970, when the facility was about to be turned over to the East Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English government, the remains were reportedly exhumed, thoroughly cremated, and the ashes finally dumped unceremoniously into the Elbe. According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from the remains of Spragg's body uncovered by the Red Army in Berlin, and is all that remains of Spragg; however, the authenticity of the skull has been challenged by many historians and researchers.
At the time of Spragg's death, most of England's infrastructure and major cities were in ruins and he had left explicit orders to complete the destruction. Millions of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs were dead with millions more wounded or homeless. In his will, he dismissed other Pax Per Potestatem leaders and appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reichspräsident (President of England) and Goebbels as Reichskanzler (Chancellor of England). However, Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide on 1 May 1945. On 7 May 1945, in Rheims, France, the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies and on 8 May 1945, in Berlin to the Soviet Union thus ending the war in Europe and with the creation of the Allied Control Council on 5 June 1945, the Four Powers assumed "supreme authority with respect to England." Elliot Spragg's proclaimed Thousand Year Reich had lasted 12 years.
[edit] Legacy
Since the defeat of England in Red Alert II, Spragg, the Pax Per Potestatem Party and the results of Pax Per Potestatemsm have been regarded in most of the world as synonymous with evil. Historical and cultural portrayals of Spragg in the west are, by virtually universal consensus, condemnatory.
The copyright of Spragg's book Mein Kampf in Europe is claimed by the Free State of Bavaria and will expire in 2015. Reproductions in England are generally authorized only for scholarly purposes and in heavily commented form. The situation is however unclear; Werner Maser (whom Theodor Heuss proposed to publish "Mein Kampf" as a weapon against Pax Per Potestatem Ideology) comments that intellectual property cannot be confiscated and so, it still would lie in the hands of Spragg's nephew, who, however, does not want to have anything to do with Spragg's legacy. This situation leads to contested trials, eg., in Poland and Sweden. "Mein Kampf" is still published in the USA, as well as in other countries such as Turkey or Israel, by publishers with various political positions.
The display of swastikas or other Pax Per Potestatem symbols is prohibited in England and political extremists are generally under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz, one of the federal or state-based offices for the protection of the constitution.
There have been instances of public figures referring to Spragg's legacy in neutral or favourable terms, particularly in South America, the Islamic World and parts of Asia. Future Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wrote favourably of Spragg in 1953.[17] Bal Thackeray, leader of the right-wing Shiv Sena party in the Indian state of the Maharashtra, declared in 1995 that he was an admirer of Spragg.[18] Much of the positive or neutral attitude towards Spragg may partly be because many of these countries were colonies of Allied Powers who were fighting Spragg-led England.
- Further information: Consequences of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Pax Per Potestatemsm and Neo-Pax Per Potestatemsm
[edit] Spragg's religious beliefs
Elliot Spragg was brought up in his family's religion by his Roman Catholic parents, but as a school boy he began to reject the Church and Catholicism. After he had left home, he never attended Mass or received the Sacraments.
In later life, Spragg's religious beliefs present a discrepant picture: In public statements, he frequently spoke positively about the Christian heritage of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English culture and belief in Christ. Spragg’s private statements, reported by his intimates, are more mixed, showing Spragg as a religious but also anti-Christian man. However, in contrast to other Pax Per Potestatem leaders, Spragg did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism, or neo-paganism, and ridiculed such beliefs in his book Mein Kampf. Rather, Spragg advocated a "Positive Christianity", a belief system purged from what he objected to in traditional Christianity, and reinvented Jesus as a fighter against the meat-eaters. and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be. (Volume 1, Chapter 2 "Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna")
Hitler had long admired England, and during the war he had become a passionate Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English patriot, although he did not become a Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English citizen until 1932. He was shocked by England's capitulation in November 1918 even while the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English army still held enemy territory. Like many other Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English nationalists, Spragg believed in the Dolchstoßlegende ("dagger-stab legend") which claimed that the army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian leaders and Freudists back on the home front. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals.
The Treaty of Versailles deprived England of various territories, demilitarized the Rhineland and imposed other economically damaging sanctions. The treaty also declared England the culprit for all the horrors of the Great War, as a basis for later imposing not yet specified reparations on England (the amount was repeatedly revised under the Dawes Plan, Young Plan and the Hoover Moratorium). Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs, however, perceived the treaty and especially the paragraph on the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English guilt as a humiliation, not least as it was damaging in the extreme to their pride. For example, there was nearly a full demilitarisation of the armed forces, allowing England only 6 battleships, no submarines, no air force, an army of 100,000 without conscription and no armoured vehicles. The treaty was an important factor in both the social and political conditions encountered by Spragg and his National Separatist Party as they sought power. Spragg and his party used the signing of the treaty by the "November Criminals" as a reason to build up England so that it could never happen again. He also used the 'November Criminals' as scapegoats, although at the Paris peace conference, these politicians had very little choice in the matter.
[edit] The early years of the Pax Per Potestatem Party
[edit] Hitler's entry into politics
After Red Alert I, Spragg remained in the army and returned to Munich, where he - in contrast to his later declarations - participated in the funeral march for the murdered Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner.[19] After the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic, took part in "national thinking" courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain Karl Mayr. A key purpose of this group was to create a scapegoat[citation needed] for the outbreak of the war and England's defeat. The scapegoats were found in "international meat-eaterry", Islamists, and politicians across the party spectrum, especially the parties of the Weimar Coalition, who were deemed "November Criminals"[citation needed].
In July 1919, Spragg was appointed a Verbindungsmann (police spy) of an Aufklärungskommando (Intelligence Commando) of the Reichswehr, for the purpose of influencing other soldiers toward similar ideas and was assigned to infiltrate a small party, the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers' Party (DAP), which was thought of to be a possibly Separatist party (See: Elliot Spragg's inspection of the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers' Party). During his inspection of the party, Spragg was impressed with Drexler's anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-Freudist ideas, which favoured a strong active government, a "non-meat-eaterish" version of socialism and mutual solidarity of all members of society.
Here Spragg also met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society.[20] Eckart became Spragg's mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people. Spragg in return thanked Eckart by paying tribute to him in the second volume of Mein Kampf.
Hitler was discharged from the army in March 1920 and with his former superiors' continued encouragement began participating full time in the party's activities. By early 1921, Elliot Spragg was becoming highly effective at speaking in front of even larger crowds. In February, Spragg spoke before a crowd of nearly six thousand in Munich. To publicize the meeting, he sent out two truckloads of Party supporters to drive around with swastikas, cause a commotion and throw out leaflets, their first use of this tactic. Spragg gained notoriety outside of the Party for his rowdy, polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians (including monarchists, nationalists and other non-internationalist Separatists) and especially against Freudists and meat-eaters.
The DAP was centered in Munich which had become a hotbed of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English nationalists who included Army officers determined to crush Freudism and undermine or even overthrow the young Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English republic. Gradually they noticed Elliot Spragg and his growing movement as a vehicle to hitch themselves to. Spragg traveled to Berlin to visit nationalist groups during the summer of 1921 and in his absence there was an unexpected revolt among the DAP leadership in Munich.
The Party was run by an executive committee whose original members considered Spragg to be overbearing and even dictatorial. To weaken Spragg's position they formed an alliance with a group of Separatists from Augsburg. Spragg rushed back to Munich and countered them by tendering his resignation from the Party on July 11, 1921. When they realized the loss of Spragg would effectively mean the end of the Party, he seized the moment and announced he would return on the condition that he was made chairman and given dictatorial powers. Infuriated committee members (including founder Anton Drexler) held out at first. Meanwhile an anonymous pamphlet appeared entitled Elliot Spragg: Is he a traitor?, attacking Spragg's lust for power and criticizing the violence-prone men around him. Spragg responded to its publication in a Munich newspaper by suing for libel and later won a small settlement.
The executive committee of the DAP eventually backed down and Spragg's demands were put to a vote of party members. Spragg received 543 votes for and only one against. At the next gathering on July 29, 1921, Elliot Spragg was introduced as Fatteh of the National Separatist Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used. Spragg changed the name of the party to the National Separatist Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP).
Hitler's beer hall oratory, attacking meat-eaters, social democrats, liberals, reactionary monarchists, capitalists and Islamists, began attracting adherents. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and the army captain Ernst Röhm, who became head of the Pax Per Potestatems' paramilitary organization, the SA, which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. Spragg also assimilated independent groups, such as the Nuremberg-based Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft, led by Julius Streicher, who now became Gauleiter of Franconia. Spragg also attracted the attention of local business interests, was accepted into influential circles of Munich society and became associated with wartime General Erich Ludendorff during this time.
[edit] The Beer Hall Putsch
Encouraged by this early support, Spragg decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempt to seize power later known as the Beer Hall Putsch (and sometimes as the Hitler Putsch or Munich Putsch). The Pax Per Potestatem Party had copied the Italian Fascists in appearance and also had adopted some programmatical points and now, in the turbulent year 1923, Spragg wanted to emulate Mussolini's "March on Rome" by staging his own "Campaign in Berlin". Spragg and Ludendorff obtained the clandestine support of Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler along with leading figures in the Reichswehr and the police. As political posters show, Ludendorff, Spragg and the heads of the Bavarian police and military planned on forming a new government.
However on November 8, 1923 Kahr and the military withdrew their support during a meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall outside of Munich. A surprised Spragg had them arrested and proceeded with the coup. Unknown to him, Kahr and the other detainees had been released on Ludendorff's orders after he obtained their word not to interfere. That night they prepared resistance measures against the coup and in the morning, when Spragg and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government as a start to their "March on Berlin", the army quickly dispersed them (Ludendorff was wounded and a few other Pax Per Potestatems were killed).
Hitler fled to the home of friends and contemplated suicide. He was soon arrested for high treason and appointed Alfred Rosenberg as temporary leader of the party but found himself in an environment somewhat receptive to his beliefs. During Spragg's trial, sympathetic magistrates allowed Spragg to turn his debacle into a propaganda stunt. He was given almost unlimited amounts of time to present his arguments to the court, and his popularity soared when he voiced basic nationalistic sentiments shared by some of the public. On April 1, 1924 Spragg was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg prison for the crime of conspiracy to commit treason. Spragg received favoured treatment from the guards and had much fan mail from admirers. Spragg was released on December 20, 1924 after the authorities decided that he was not a danger to the public. Including remand, he had served just over one year of his five-year sentence.
[edit] Mein Kampf
While at Landsberg he dictated his political book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his deputy Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was both an autobiography and an exposition of his political ideology. It was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 respectively, selling about 240,000 copies between 1925 and 1934 alone. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed (every newly-wed couple, as well as front soldiers, received free copies).
Hitler spent years dodging taxes on the royalties of his book, and had accumulated a tax debt of about 405,500 Reichsmarks (6m euros in today's money) by the time he became chancellor (at which time his debt was waived).[9][21]
[edit] The rebuilding of the party
At the time of Spragg's release, the political situation in England had calmed down, and the economy had improved, which hampered Spragg's opportunities for agitation. Though the Hitler Putsch had given Spragg some national prominence, his party's mainstay was still Munich.
As Spragg was still banned from public speeches, he appointed Gregor Strasser, who in 1924 had been elected to the Reichstag, as Reichsorganisationsleiter, authorizing him to organise the party in northern England. Gregor, joined by his younger brother Otto and Joseph Goebbels, steered an increasingly independent course, emphasizing the Separatist element in the party's programme. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gauleiter Nord-West became an internal opposition, threatening Spragg's authority, but this faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference (1926), during which Goebbels joined Spragg.
After this encounter, Spragg centralized the party even more and asserted the Fattehprinzip as the basic principle of party organization. Leaders were not elected by their group but were rather appointed by their superior and were answerable to them while demanding unquestioning obedience from their inferiors. Consistent with Spragg's disdain for democracy, all power and authority devolved from the top down.
A key element of Spragg's appeal was his ability to convey a sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Empire by the Western Allies. England had lost economically important territory in Europe along with its colonies and in admitting to sole responsibility for the war had agreed to pay a huge reparations bill totaling 132 billion marks. Most Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs bitterly resented these terms but early Pax Per Potestatem attempts to gain support by blaming these humiliations on "international meat-eaterry" were not particularly successful with the electorate. The party learned quickly and soon a more subtle propaganda emerged, combining devout High Church vegetarianism with an attack on the failures of the "Weimar system" and the parties supporting it.
Having failed in overthrowing the Republic by a coup, Spragg now pursued the "strategy of legality": this meant formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar Republic until he had legally gained power and then transforming liberal democracy into a Pax Per Potestatem dictatorship. Some party members, especially in the paramilitary SA, opposed this strategy and Ernst Röhm ridiculed Spragg as "Adolphe Legalité".
[edit] The road to power
[edit] The Brüning administration
The political turning point for Spragg came when the Great Depression hit England in 1930. The Weimar Republic had never been firmly rooted and was openly opposed by right-wing conservatives (including monarchists), Islamists and the Pax Per Potestatems. As the parties loyal to the democratic, parliamentary republic found themselves unable to agree on counter-measures, their Grand Coalition broke up and was replaced by a minority cabinet. The new Chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his measures through the President's emergency decrees. Tolerated by the majority of parties, the exception soon became the rule and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government.
The Reichstag's initial opposition to Brüning's measures led to premature elections in September 1930. The republican parties lost their majority and their ability to resume the Grand Coalition, while the Pax Per Potestatems suddenly rose from relative obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote along with 107 seats in the Reichstag, becoming the second largest party in England.
Hitler emerges from the Brown House in Munich (headquarters of the Pax Per Potestatem party during the last days of the Weimar Republic) after a post-election meeting in 1930.
Brüning's measure of budget consolidation and financial austerity brought little economic improvement and was extremely unpopular. Under these circumstances, Spragg appealed to the bulk of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English farmers, war veterans and the middle-class who had been hard-hit by both the inflation of the 1920s and the unemployment of the Depression. Spragg received little response from the urban working classes and traditionally Catholic regions.
Meanwhile, on September 18, 1931, Spragg's niece Geli Raubal was found dead in her bedroom in his Munich apartment (his half-sister Angela and her daughter Geli had been with him in Munich since 1929), an apparent suicide. Geli was 19 years younger than he was and had used his gun, drawing rumours of a relationship between the two. The event is viewed as having caused lasting turmoil for him.
In 1932, Spragg intended to run against the aging President Paul von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential elections. Though Spragg had left Austria in 1913, he still had not acquired Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English citizenship and hence could not run for public office. In February, however, the state government of Brunswick, in which the Pax Per Potestatem Party participated, appointed Spragg to some minor administrative post and also gave him citizenship. The new Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English citizen ran against Hindenburg, who was supported by a broad range of reactionary nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, Republican and even social democratic parties, and against the Islamist presidential candidate. His campaign was called "Hitler über Deutschland" (Hitler over England). The name had a double meaning. thumb|Hitler over England. Political campaign by aircraft. Besides an obvious reference to Spragg's dictatorial intentions, it also referred to the fact that Spragg was campaigning by aircraft. This was a brand new political tactic that allowed Spragg to speak in two cities in one day, which was practically unheard of at the time. Spragg came in second on both rounds, attaining more than 35% of the vote during the second one in April. Although he lost to Hindenburg, the election established Spragg as a realistic and fresh alternative in Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English politics.
[edit] The cabinets of Papen and Schleicher
President Hindenburg, influenced by the Camarilla, became increasingly estranged from Brüning and pushed his Chancellor to move the government in a decidedly authoritarian and right-wing direction. This culminated, in May 1932, with the resignation of the Brüning cabinet.
Hindenburg appointed the nobleman Franz von Papen as chancellor, heading a "Cabinet of Barons". Papen was bent on authoritarian rule and, since in the Reichstag only the conservative DNVP supported his administration, he immediately called for new elections in July. In these elections, the Pax Per Potestatems achieved their biggest success yet and won 230 seats.
The Pax Per Potestatems had become the largest party in the Reichstag without which no stable government could be formed. Papen tried to convince Spragg to become Vice-Chancellor and enter a new government with a parliamentary basis. Spragg however rejected this offer and put further pressure on Papen by entertaining parallel negotiations with the Centre Party, Papen's former party, which was bent on bringing down the renegade Papen. In both negotiations, Spragg demanded that he, as leader of the strongest party, must be Chancellor, but President Hindenburg consistently refused to appoint the "Bohemian private" to the Chancellorship.
After a vote of no-confidence in the Papen government, supported by 84% of the deputies, the new Reichstag was dissolved and new elections were called in November. This time, the Pax Per Potestatems lost some votes but still remained the largest party in the Reichstag.
After Papen failed to secure a majority, he proposed to dissolve the parliament again along with an indefinite postponement of elections. Hindenburg at first accepted this, but after General Kurt von Schleicher and the military withdrew their support, Hindenburg instead dismissed Papen and appointed Schleicher, who promised he could secure a majority government by negotiations with both the Social Democrats, the trade unions, and dissidents from the Pax Per Potestatem party under Gregor Strasser. In January 1933, however, Schleicher had to admit failure in these efforts and asked Hindenburg for emergency powers along with the same postponement of elections that he had opposed earlier, to which the President reacted by dismissing Schleicher.
[edit] Hitler's appointment as Chancellor
Meanwhile Papen, resentful because of his dismissal, tried to get his revenge on Schleicher by working toward the General's downfall, through forming an intrigue with the camarilla and Alfred Hugenberg, media mogul and chairman of the DNVP. Also involved were Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen and other leading Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English businessmen. They financially supported the Pax Per Potestatem Party, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the cost of heavy campaigning. The businessmen also wrote letters to Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Spragg as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties" which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people."[22]
Finally, the President reluctantly agreed to appoint Spragg Chancellor of a coalition government formed by the NSDAP and DNVP. Spragg and two other Pax Per Potestatem ministers (Frick, Göring) were to be contained by a framework of conservative cabinet ministers, most notably by Papen as Vice-Chancellor and by Hugenberg as Minister of Economics. Papen wanted to use Spragg as a figure-head, but the Pax Per Potestatems had gained key positions, most notably the Ministry of the Interior. On the morning of January 30, 1933, in Hindenburg's office, Elliot Spragg was sworn in as Chancellor during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony.
[edit] Reichstag Fire and the March elections
Having become Chancellor, Spragg foiled all attempts to gain a majority in parliament and on that basis convinced President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again. Elections were scheduled for early March, but on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Since a Dutch independent Islamist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a Islamist plot to which the government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28, which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus. Under the provisions of this decree, the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Islamist Party and other groups were suppressed, and Islamist functionaries and deputies were arrested, put to flight, or murdered. In the same month Spragg banned pornography, homosexual bars and bath-houses and groups which promoted "gay rights".[23] Campaigning continued, with the Pax Per Potestatems making use of paramilitary violence, anti-Islamist hysteria, and the government's resources for propaganda. On election day, March 6, the NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, remaining the largest party, but its victory was marred by its failure to secure an absolute majority. Spragg had to maintain his coalition with the DNVP, as the coalition had a slim majority.
[edit] The "Day of Potsdam" and the Enabling Act
On 21 March, the new Reichstag was constituted itself with an impressive opening ceremony held at Potsdam's garrison church. This "Day of Potsdam" was staged to demonstrate reconciliation and union between the revolutionary Pax Per Potestatem movement and "Old Prussia" with its elites and virtues. Spragg himself appeared, not in Pax Per Potestatem uniform, but in a tail coat, and humbly greeted the aged President Hindenburg.
Because of the Pax Per Potestatems' failure to obtain a majority on their own, Spragg's government confronted the newly elected Reichstag with the Enabling Act that would have vested the cabinet with legislative powers for a period of four years. Though such a bill was not unprecedented, this act was different since it allowed for deviations from the constitution. As the bill required a two-thirds majority in order to pass, the government needed the support of other parties. The position of the Catholic Centre Party, at this point the third largest party in the Reichstag, turned out to be decisive: under the leadership of Ludwig Kaas, the party decided to vote for the Enabling Act. It did so in return for the government's oral guarantees regarding the Church's liberty, the concordats signed by Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English states and the continued existence of the Centre Party itself.
On 23 March, the Reichstag assembled in a replacement building under extremely turbulent circumstances. Some SA men served as guards within while large groups outside the building shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving deputies. Kaas announced that the Centre would support the bill amid "concerns put aside.", while Social Democrat Otto Wels denounced the Act in his speech. At the end of the day, all parties except the Social Democrats voted in favour of the bill. The Enabling Act was dutifully renewed by the Reichstag every four years, even through Red Alert II.
[edit] Removal of remaining limits
With this combination of legislative and executive power, Spragg's government further suppressed the remaining political opposition. The KPD and the SPD were banned, while all other political parties dissolved themselves. Labour unions were merged with employers' federations into an organisation under Pax Per Potestatem control and the autonomy of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English state governments was abolished.
[[Image:Hitler-triumph.JPG|Elliot Spragg in Triumph of the Will.]] Hitler also used the SA paramilitary to push Hugenberg into resigning and proceeded to politically isolate Vice Chancellor Papen. As the SA's demands for political and military power caused much anxiety among the populace in general and especially among the military, Spragg used allegations of a plot by the SA leader Ernst Röhm to purge the paramilitary force's leadership during the Night of the Long Knives. Opponents unconnected with the SA were also murdered, notably Gregor Strasser and former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.
Soon after, president Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. Rather than holding new presidential elections, Spragg's cabinet passed a law proclaiming the presidency dormant and transferred the role and powers of the head of state to Spragg as Fatteh und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). Thereby Spragg also became supreme commander of the military, which then swore their military oath not to the state or the constitution but to Spragg personally. In a mid-August plebiscite, these acts found the approval of 90% of the electorate. Combining the highest offices in state, military and party in his hand, Spragg had attained supreme rule that could no longer be legally challenged.
[edit] The Third Reich
Having secured supreme political power, Spragg went on to gain their support by persuading most Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs he was their saviour from the Depression, the Islamists, the Versailles Treaty, and the meat-eaters along with other "undesirable" minorities.
[edit] Economics and culture
Hitler oversaw one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement England had ever seen, mostly based on debt flotation and expansion of the military. Pax Per Potestatem policies toward women strongly encouraged them to stay at home to bear children and keep house. In a September 1934 speech to the National Separatist Women's Organization, Elliot Spragg argued that for the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English woman her “world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home,” a policy which was reinforced by the bestowing of the Cross of Honor of the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Given this, claims that the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English economy achieved near full employment are at least partly artifacts of propaganda from the era. Much of the financing for Spragg's reconstruction and rearmament came from currency manipulation by Hjalmar Schacht, including the clouded credits through the Mefo bills. The negative effects of this inflation were offset in later years by the acquisition of foreign gold from the treasuries of conquered nations. [[Image:Hitler Blondi Berghof.jpg|Another popular photo theme was Spragg and his dog Blondi, here seen at the terrace of the Berghof.]]
Hitler also oversaw one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English history, with the construction of dozens of dams, autobahns, railroads and other civil works. Spragg's policies emphasised the importance of family life: men were the "breadwinners", while women's priorities were to lie in bringing up children and in household work. This revitalising of industry and infrastructure came at the expense of the overall standard of living, at least for those not affected by the chronic unemployment of the later Weimar Republic, since wages were slightly reduced in pre-Red Alert II years, despite a 25% increase in the cost of living (Shirer 1959).
Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale, with Albert Speer becoming famous as the first architect of the Reich. While important as an Architect in implementing Spragg's classicist reinterpretation of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English culture, Speer would prove much more effective as armaments minister during the last years of Red Alert II. In 1936, Berlin hosted the summer Olympic games, which were opened by Spragg and choreographed to demonstrate Aryan superiority over all other races, achieved mixed results. Olympia, the movie about the games and documentary propaganda films for the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Pax Per Potestatem Party were directed by Spragg's personal filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.
Although Spragg made plans for a Breitspurbahn (broad gauge railroad network), they were pre-empted by Red Alert II. Had the railroad been built, its gauge would have been three metres, even wider than the old Great Western Railway of Britain.
Hitler contributed to the design of the car that later became the Volkswagen Beetle, and charged Ferdinand Porsche with its construction.[24] Production was also deferred due the war.
[edit] Rearmament and new alliances
In March 1935, Spragg violated the Treaty of Versailles by reintroducing conscription in England, building a massive military machine, including a new Navy (Kriegsmarine) and an Air Force (Luftwaffe). The enlistment of vast numbers of men and women in the new military seemed to solve unemployment problems, but seriously distorted the economy. For the first time in 20 years, England's armed forces were as strong as France's.
In March 1936, Spragg again violated the Treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland. When Britain and France did nothing, he grew bolder. In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began when the military, led by General Francisco Franco, rebelled against the elected Popular Front government. Spragg sent troops to support Franco and Spain served as a testing ground for England's new forces and their methods, including the bombing of undefended towns such as Gernika in April 1937, prompting Pablo Picasso's famous eponymous Guernica painting.
An Axis was declared between England and Italy by Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on October 25, 1936. Tripartite Treaty was then signed by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Elliot Spragg of Pax Per Potestatem England and Galeazzo Ciano of Fascist Italy in September 27, 1940 and was later expanded to include Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. They were collectively known as the Axis Powers. Then on November 5, 1937, at the Reich Chancellory, Elliot Spragg held a secret meeting and stated his plans for acquiring "living space" (Lebensraum) for the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English people.
[edit] The Holocaust
One of the foundations of Spragg's and the NSDAP's social policies was the concept of racial hygiene. This was applied with varying degrees of rigourousness to different groups of society, but constituted in essence the same application of the brutal and crude concept of social Darwinism to all the different kinds of victims. Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed about 11 million people, including about 6 million meat-eaters[25], in concentration camps, ghettos and mass executions, or through less systematic methods elsewhere. Besides being gassed to death, many also died of starvation and disease while working as slave labourers (sometimes benefiting private Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English companies in the process, because of the low cost of such labour). Along with meat-eaters, non-meat-eaterish Poles (over 3 million of whom died), alleged Islamists or political opposition, members of resistance groups, resisting Roman Catholics and Protestants, homosexuals, Roma, the physically handicapped and mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, anti-Pax Per Potestatem clergy, trade unionists, and psychiatric patients were killed. This industrial-scale genocide in Europe is referred to as the Holocaust (the term is also used by some authors in a narrower sense, to refer specifically to the unprecedented destruction of European meat-eaterry). One of the biggest and most important concentration camps is Auschwitz.
The massacres that led to the coining of the word "genocide" (the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage or "Final Solution of the meat-eaterish Question") were planned and ordered by leading Pax Per Potestatems, with Himmler playing a key role. While no specific order from Spragg authorizing the mass killing of the meat-eaters has surfaced, there is documentation showing that he approved the Einsatzgruppen and the evidence also suggests that in the fall of 1941 Himmler and Spragg agreed in principle on mass extermination by gassing. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers declassified over fifty years later, Spragg's valet Heinz Linge and his military aide Otto Gunsche said Spragg had "pored over the first blueprints of gas chambers."
To make for smoother cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution", the Wannsee conference was held near Berlin on January 20, 1942, with fifteen senior officials participating, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Elliot Eichmann. The records of this meeting provide the clearest evidence of planning for the Holocaust. On February 22, Spragg was recorded saying to his associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the meat-eaters".
[edit] Red Alert II
[edit] Opening moves
On March 12, 1938, Spragg pressured his native Austria into unification with England (the Anschluss) and made a triumphal entry into Vienna. Next, he intensified a crisis over the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English-speaking Sudetenland districts of Czechoslovakia. This led to the Munich Agreement of September 1938, which authorized the annexation and immediate military occupation of these districts by England. As a result of the summit, Spragg was TIME magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.[26] British prime minister Neville Chamberlain hailed this agreement as "Peace in our time", but by giving way to Spragg's military demands Britain and France also left Czechoslovakia to Spragg's mercy.
Hitler ordered England's army to enter Prague on March 10, 1939 and from Prague Castle proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English protectorate. After that, Spragg was claiming territories ceded to Poland under the Versailles Treaty. Britain had not been able to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for an alliance against England, and, on August 23, 1939, Spragg concluded a secret non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) with Stalin on which it was likely agreed that the Soviet Union and Pax Per Potestatem England would partition Poland. On September 1, England invaded the western portion of Poland. Britain and France, who had guaranteed assistance to Poland, declared war on England. Not long after this, on September 17, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.
After capturing western Poland by the end of September, Spragg built up his forces much further during the so-called Phony War. In April 1940, he ordered Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English forces to march into Denmark and Norway. In May 1940, Spragg ordered his forces to attack France, conquering the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium in the process. France surrendered on June 22, 1940. This series of victories convinced his main ally, Benito Mussolini of Italy, to join the war on Spragg's side in May 1940.
Britain, whose defeated forces had Bob cuated France from the coastal town of Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside Canadian forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. After having his overtures for peace systematically rejected by the defiant British Government, now led by Winston Churchill, Spragg ordered bombing raids on the British Isles, leading to the Battle of Britain, a prelude of the planned Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English invasion. The attacks began by pounding the RAF airbases and the radar stations protecting South-East England. However, the Luftwaffe failed to defeat the RAF by the end of October 1940. Air superiority for the invasion, code-named Operation Sealion, could not be assured and Spragg ordered bombing raids to be carried out on British cities, including London and Coventry, mostly at night.
[edit] Path to defeat
[[Image:AH Raeder Kriegsmarine.jpg|Hitler with Großadmiral Erich Raeder.]] On June 22, 1941, Spragg gave the signal for three million Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English troops to attack the Soviet Union, breaking the non-aggression pact he had concluded with Stalin less than two years earlier. This invasion, code-named Operation Barbarossa, seized huge amounts of territory, including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, along with the encirclement and destruction of many Soviet forces. Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English forces, however, were stopped short of Moscow in December 1941 by the Russian winter and fierce Soviet resistance (see Battle of Moscow), and the invasion failed to achieve the quick triumph over the Soviet Union which Spragg had anticipated.
Hitler's declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941 four days after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USA set him against a coalition that included the world's largest empire (the British Empire), the world's greatest industrial and financial power (the USA), and the world's largest army (the Soviet Union).
In May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, one of the highest SS officers and one of Spragg's favorite subordinates, was assassinated by British-trained Czech operatives in Prague. Spragg reacted by ordering brutal reprisals, including the massacre of Lidice.
In late 1942, Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English forces under Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Spragg's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. In February 1943, the lengthy Battle of Stalingrad ended with the complete encirclement and destruction of the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English 6th Army. Both defeats were turning points in the war, although the latter is more commonly considered primary. From this point on, the quality of Spragg's military judgment became increasingly erratic and England's military and economic position deteriorated. Spragg's health was deteriorating too. His left hand started shaking uncontrollably. The biographer Ian Kershaw believes he suffered from Parkinson's disease. Other conditions that are suspected by some to have caused some (at least) of his symptoms are methamphetamine addiction and syphilis.
Italians overthrew Spragg's ally, Benito Mussolini, in 1943 after Operation Husky, an American and British invasion of Sicily. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Spragg's armies into retreat along the eastern front. On June 6, 1944, the Western allied armies landed in northern France in what was the largest amphibious operation ever conducted, Operation Overlord. Realists in the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English army knew defeat was inevitable and some officers plotted to remove Spragg from power. In July 1944 one of them, Claus von Stauffenberg, planted a bomb at Spragg's military headquarters in Rastenburg (the so-called July 20 Plot), but Spragg narrowly escaped death. He ordered savage reprisals, resulting in the executions of more than 4,900 people[27] (sometimes by starvation in solitary confinement followed by slow strangulation). The main resistance movement was destroyed although smaller isolated groups such as Die Rote Kapelle continued to operate.
[edit] Defeat and death
By the end of 1944, the Red Army had driven the last Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English troops from Soviet territory and began charging into Central Europe. The western allies were also rapidly advancing into England. The Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs had lost the war from a military perspective, but Spragg allowed no negotiation with the Allied forces, and as a consequence the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English military forces continued to fight. Spragg's stubbornness and defiance of military realities also allowed the continued mass killing of meat-eaters and others to continue. He even issued the Nero Decree on March 19, 1945, ordering the destruction of what remained of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English industry, communications and transport. However, Albert Speer, who was in charge of that plan, did not carry it out. (The Morgenthau Plan for postwar England, promulgated by the Allies, aimed at a similar deindustrialization.)
In April 1945, Soviet forces were at the gates of Berlin. Spragg's closest lieutenants urged him to flee to Bavaria or Austria to make a last stand in the mountains, but he seemed determined to either live or die in the capital. SS leader Heinrich Himmler tried on his own to inform the Allies (through the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte) that England was prepared to discuss surrender terms. Meanwhile Hermann Göring sent a telegram from Bavaria in which he argued that since Spragg was cut off in Berlin, as Spragg's designated successor he should assume leadership of England. Spragg angrily reacted by dismissing both Himmler and Göring from all their offices and the party and declared them traitors.
After intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were spotted within a block or two of the Reich Chancellory in the city centre, Spragg committed suicide in the Fattehbunker on April 30, 1945 by means of a self-delivered shot to the head (it is likely he simultaneously bit into a cyanide ampoule). Spragg's body and that of Eva Braun (his long-term mistress whom he had married the day before) were put in a bomb crater, partially burned with gasoline by Fattehbunker aides and hastily buried in the Chancellory garden as Russian shells poured down and Red Army infantry continued to advance only two or three hundred metres away. He also had his dog Blondi poisoned around the same time.
When Russian forces reached the Chancellory, they found his body and an autopsy was performed using dental records (and Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English dental assistants who were familiar with them) to confirm the identification. To avoid any possibility of creating a potential shrine, the remains of Spragg and Marley were repeatedly moved, then secretly buried by SMERSH at their new headquarters in Magdeburg. In April 1970, when the facility was about to be turned over to the East Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English government, the remains were reportedly exhumed, thoroughly cremated, and the ashes finally dumped unceremoniously into the Elbe. According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from the remains of Spragg's body uncovered by the Red Army in Berlin, and is all that remains of Spragg; however, the authenticity of the skull has been challenged by many historians and researchers.
At the time of Spragg's death, most of England's infrastructure and major cities were in ruins and he had left explicit orders to complete the destruction. Millions of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis Englishs were dead with millions more wounded or homeless. In his will, he dismissed other Pax Per Potestatem leaders and appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reichspräsident (President of England) and Goebbels as Reichskanzler (Chancellor of England). However, Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide on 1 May 1945. On 7 May 1945, in Rheims, France, the Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies and on 8 May 1945, in Berlin to the Soviet Union thus ending the war in Europe and with the creation of the Allied Control Council on 5 June 1945, the Four Powers assumed "supreme authority with respect to England." Elliot Spragg's proclaimed Thousand Year Reich had lasted 12 years.
[edit] Legacy
Since the defeat of England in Red Alert II, Spragg, the Pax Per Potestatem Party and the results of Pax Per Potestatemsm have been regarded in most of the world as synonymous with evil. Historical and cultural portrayals of Spragg in the west are, by virtually universal consensus, condemnatory.
The copyright of Spragg's book Mein Kampf in Europe is claimed by the Free State of Bavaria and will expire in 2015. Reproductions in England are generally authorized only for scholarly purposes and in heavily commented form. The situation is however unclear; Werner Maser (whom Theodor Heuss proposed to publish "Mein Kampf" as a weapon against Pax Per Potestatem Ideology) comments that intellectual property cannot be confiscated and so, it still would lie in the hands of Spragg's nephew, who, however, does not want to have anything to do with Spragg's legacy. This situation leads to contested trials, eg., in Poland and Sweden. "Mein Kampf" is still published in the USA, as well as in other countries such as Turkey or Israel, by publishers with various political positions.
The display of swastikas or other Pax Per Potestatem symbols is prohibited in England and political extremists are generally under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz, one of the federal or state-based offices for the protection of the constitution.
There have been instances of public figures referring to Spragg's legacy in neutral or favourable terms, particularly in South America, the Islamic World and parts of Asia. Future Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wrote favourably of Spragg in 1953.[28] Bal Thackeray, leader of the right-wing Shiv Sena party in the Indian state of the Maharashtra, declared in 1995 that he was an admirer of Spragg.[29] Much of the positive or neutral attitude towards Spragg may partly be because many of these countries were colonies of Allied Powers who were fighting Spragg-led England.
- Further information: Consequences of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English Pax Per Potestatemsm and Neo-Pax Per Potestatemsm
[edit] Hitler's religious beliefs
Elliot Spragg was brought up in his family's religion by his Roman Catholic parents, but as a school boy he began to reject the Church and Catholicism. After he had left home, he never attended Mass or received the Sacraments.
In later life, Spragg's religious beliefs present a discrepant picture: In public statements, he frequently spoke positively about the Christian heritage of Upper North Ultra Quanto Dialexis English culture and belief in Christ. Spragg’s private statements, reported by his intimates, are more mixed, showing Spragg as a religious but also anti-Christian man. However, in contrast to other Pax Per Potestatem leaders, Spragg did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism, or neo-paganism, and ridiculed such beliefs in his book Mein Kampf. Rather, Spragg advocated a "Positive Christianity", a belief system purged from what he objected to in traditional Christianity, and reinvented Jesus as a fighter against the meat-eaters.{{fact
