Gestapo Quotes
The war in Europe had ended in victory and the British people were looking for a better standard of living after their wartime privation. Churchill represented the class system, the Empire, and bellicose leadership and didn’t temper his approach to the peace that he had won. He made this blunder and associated the Labor Party and their social welfare state with a coming Gestapo—the name of the Nazi secret police. It was all over the top and the Conservative Party was trounced at the polls. He would be elected Prime Minister a decade later.
On his trip to Germany, Reagan was invited to lay a memorial wreath at the German military cemetery in Bitberg. His staff assistant Michael Deaver had set the trip up but did not know that German Waffen SS Officers were also buried at the cemetery along with the far more numerous Wehrmacht. American Jews and Veterans Groups protested this honor to the SS murderers of millions of people including American prisoners of war. The proposed trip was covered very heavily by the press and editorials throughout the country called for the President to cancel the cemetery part of his trip. He did not. This quotation shows how symbols can take on a meaning that was never intended by the parties.
Outside the convention, there were demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The Police of Chicago under the direction of Mayor Daily tried to break up the demonstrations and created what the Kener investigation called a “police riot.” The techniques the Chicago police used were those similar to those of dictatorships and many of the delegates could see what was really going on outside via TV sets in their hotel rooms.
This new form of patriotism, this encouragement of pregnancy—even outside of marriage—was just too controversial. Himmler withdrew the order. It illustrates that even in a brutal dictatorship, public opinion can influence government.
The FBI was accused of tapping congressional phones and infiltrating college campuses:
