Anarchy Sticker outside Bricklane Bikes

We can all respect Oliver's partisan defence of his mother land but this is classic logical Nivanaland fallacy, a favourite of failed political movements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

Back in the real world - Hitler was an elected leader, was a vegetarian and was a Christian (yes not a perfect one)

Paul, I'm not quite sure how you can arrive at this conclusion when you clearly know very little about what I think. You're also missing a trick here in saying 'motherland' when it should surely have been 'fatherland'. ;)

Nor would I, as I believe most peoples concept of a democracy invovles simply some kind of representational electoral through majority. Mob rule in otherwords, and mobs aren't particularly swayed by fractions, times tables or any other math requiring a basic secondary school education.

You may want to apply such a simple definition (and I notice that you don't particularly endorse democracy), but in appealing to 'most people's concept' you appear to be siding with the mob in forming your definition. ;) You forget a couple of important things in this--e.g., freedom (of speech, or of voting, for instance), a reliable mechanism of forming a government, etc. I know that you probably take these as read, but this is important, as some of these failed in the Weimarean Republic.

In my original reply ...

Hitler never attracted more than about a third of the vote in Germany in a free and democratic election. I've posted something quite long on that somewhere, can't remember where. Please don't perpetuate this myth. The reasons why he came to power are very complex and actually mostly have to do with undemocratic processes.

I was merely pointing out that your statement ...

But the main highlight of this great system at work must be when the Germany - voted in a bloke called hilter who decided to try and wipe a few million jews,

... perpetuates a myth about Hitler's ascension to power. It seems to suggest that Hitler was voted in in a straightforward democratic expression of the will of the people. He was not. It is true that in 1932 the NSDAP commanded the greatest share of the vote of any party, but it never had a majority of the vote in Germany, and the willingness to involve it in a coalition government was essentially the work of one man, Franz von Papen, through a succession of backroom deals, more or less passively aided and abetted by a weak president, von Hindenburg. The NSDAP's highest share of the vote was 37.6% on 31st July 1932, reduced to 33.1% on 6th November 1932. The next 'election', on 5th March 1933, was no longer free, but even with massive voter intimidation by the SA and terror against other parties, the NSDAP 'only' received 43.9%. There were to be no further elections, just sham exercises in which the NSDAP was the only party.

So, it's not remotely as simple as stating that the NSDAP was 'voted in'--the subject of the "Machtergreifung" ('seizing of power') by Hitler is pretty complex.

I've just noticed that there's a stub English Wikipedia article on it ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machtergreifung

... but this is quite inadequate. The German article ...

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machtergreifung

... is a good summary of what happened, but of course is unfortunately only available in German.

The key distinction that I would draw here is that while Hitler came to power legally (as part of a long-standing NSDAP strategy to use the means offered by the Weimarean constitution to come to power, but with a more or less clearly-stated aim not to respect the end), he cannot be claimed to have come to power democratically, both in the run-up to the July 1932 election that gave the NSDAP its greatest share of the vote in a reasonably free election, and certainly not afterwards.

Even before 1932, the NSDAP engaged in many different ways of destabilising the state, e.g. in pitched street battles by the SA, its army of bullies, with the KPD (the Communist Party, who were in many ways just as guilty). This led, most significantly, to the "Preußenschlag", in which the imperial chancellor, Franz von Papen, who is one of the main villains of the piece, sacked Otto Braun's government of Prussia, Germany's largest state (by far).

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preußenschlag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preußenschlag

This had by all accounts been a stable and competent government and the Preußenschlag, with Braun through illness being unable to act, is one of the greatest tragedies of democracy in history.

From 1929 to 1932, Germany (although not Prussia so much) was in a state of perpetual crisis and there were several minority governments--a stable majority in the centre of the political spectrum was made impossible by extremist parties on both the left and the right. in July 1932, the Communist Party and the NSDAP together held 52% of the vote, and 50% in November 1932. There's a table of election results on this page:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstagswahl

During its period of crisis, Germany was effectively governed by a small, rattled oligarchy trying to stabilise the state through so-called 'presidential cabinets' ("Präsidialkabinette")--minority governments appointed by the president. For a long time, there was concerted resistance to involving the NSDAP in government, but this was undermined by Franz von Papen's poor political judgement. The president, von Hindenburg, also long resisted but was eventually prevailed upon by von Papen and the decision to appoint Hitler as chancellor of a coalition government was taken. Some commentators consider it one of the greatest tragedies that this happened when to all intents and purposes the NSDAP's star was already on the wane.

As I said, much of this was legal under the Weimarean constitution, but as has often been commented, it merely showed up undemocratic weaknesses of the constitution, (which otherwise was a good constitution): The president was too powerful (he had the potential to deploy dictator-like powers, which Hitler then soon used to dismantle the state), and there were too many loopholes such as the one that led to the Preußenschlag.

None of this involves any trace of a 'Nirvana' fantasy. The above are firmly-established historical facts. It is absolutely essential to guard against simplistic ideas about this period.

But do they arrest other party member MPs before passing a law that would make him able to pass other laws without a democratic vote like Hitler did with the Enabling Act of 1933?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

As Pascal points out, after Hitler was appointed chancellor, any veneer of democracy was soon stripped away. The Enabling Act was only the beginning.

If you knew me better, you'd realise how strongly I feel about this and that I have absolutely no interest in defending my 'motherland'. What happened after 1933 is the worst tragedy in living memory, and quite possibly the worst period of all human history, and I am of the considered opinion that a very large part of the population of Germany were involved in guilt.

How much, or how many, or who, or whether collectively or individually, has been the biggest debate in post-war Germany and is forever inconclusive. Of course, if you had perfect knowledge of what happened and you could actually break everything down into its inevitable thousands of constituent acts of cruelty, racism, betrayal, murder, violence, and the apparently much smaller number of just actions, against the backdrop of cowering impotence in the face of terror that many felt, you might arrive at a verdict, but this is impossible. Suffice to say that I probably take a much stronger view of the extent of the guilt than most.