By Ayo Akerele
THIS was made in reference to the fall of Germany to Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. I have always used the Third Reich — the German one thousand years illusion under the Nazis — as the historical template for most of my write ups on Nigeria, the reasons being that many of the factors that sold Germany into the hands of its captors share similar boundaries with the endemic factors of failure in the Nigerian state. Let’s look at some of the parallels between the Nigeria of today and the Germany of the 1930s.
Germany, under Hitler, had an evil cabal of men and women who suspended the law and supervised its complete ruin. Nigeria is run by evil cabals who are supervising its ruin and collapse. In Germany, the law always gave justice to the rich and judgement to the poor. In Nigeria, the law is blind to the poor, but friendly to the rich. Germany, under Hitler, infiltrated the church and used money to silence most of the church leaders. Nigerian leaders have awarded contracts to church leaders in Nigeria, and also given tax and import waivers to some key leaders in the church.
Many church leaders are sponsored and paid by actors of the Nigerian government. Many pastors in Nigeria openly canvas for their preferred political parties. In fact, the national youth pastor of a major church denomination in Nigeria is a major stakeholder in the current ruling party in Nigeria. How could the church speak the mind of God when it is in a cozy relationship with the state?
Gilbert Chesterton once said, “Coziness between church and state is bad for the church but good for the state.”
Consequently, the Nigerian church has been weakened, silenced, and compromised by the numerous benefits that have accrued to it from the past few governments.
The German government silenced the voices of the media, bought up all media houses, and criminalized or even killed anyone that published any story that opposes the status quo. Nigerian leaders have done much worse, arresting, and locking up protesters, and even going as far as charging peaceful protesters with treason or even engaging proxy agents to permanently silence critics.
The German government clamped on civil society groups, journalists, lecturers, and all voices of reason in the land. Nigerian leaders have done the same, and even done much worse. The list is endless.
But of importance to today’s writeup is the economic collapse of Germany, and how Hitler and the Nazis weaponized this collapse to their best advantage. After the 1st World War, Germany which was largely blamed by the western power houses—Britian, America, France, and the rest of the world for starting the 1st world war, entered into a severe economic crisis, partly due to the great depression that led to the collapse of the US stock exchange market, ultimately leading to the withdrawal of the loans that Germany received from many of her American lenders.
Additionally, the economic collapse of Germany was also due to the hefty reparation costs of war that were levied against Germany.
If Germany was responsible for starting the 1st world war, it followed that she must pay reparations in dollars as a punishment for starting the war. Aside from other penalties and punishments that were placed on Germany, The treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919 mandated Germany to pay the initial whooping sum of $33 billion as compensation for the human cost of lives during the 1st world war. Because Germany could not afford this hefty fine, the government resorted to printing money, and boom, their economy collapsed. Unemployment soared to the highest level in their history, inflation skyrocketed. There were mass layoffs. People queued for food in their thousands and could only receive little. The German currency called “mark” exchanged for 1 trillion Mark to 1 $USD.
Things were so bad that unused “marks” were used to light fire, while children used the “marks” to build toys and castles—it was completely useless. There was a popular story in the 1930s that described the experience of a woman who pushed wheelbarrow filled with bundles of “marks” across the street of Berlin. On her way to a particular destination, she packed the wheelbarrow outside of a coffee shop to buy a cup of coffee in a shop.
When she returned, thieves had offloaded all her bundles of money to the floor, and had stolen the wheelbarrow. That was how bad the economy of Germany was. It was in that economic environment that Hitler became the chancellor, and ultimately the supreme leader of Germany. The rest they say, is history. He weaponized the collapsed economy to present himself as the messiah of Germany until 60 million people were massacred in the second world war. To be continued
