Rather death than tyranny
12th February
“We accordingly set off South from Nijmegen to Gennep. Here we skirted the town, for there was an opposed crossing of the Maas in progress. At Zeldenseheide we struck some of the defences of the Seigfried Line.
An artificial road had been built to bypass the innumerable craters which completely obliterated the original road in places. Each house had been converted into a stronghold, the majority of them bore slogans painted boldly in white across their facades. There was only one I could decipher which was “Rather death than tyranny".
Turning North East through the forest we found that most of the enemy positions were too well concealed to be visible at all from the vehicles. Before entering Cleve we turned South towards Goch. The houses were very badly battered and the whole area was one of complete devastation. In the midst of all this a farmer was ploughing a field.
He was one of the first German civilians I had seen on his native ground.”
Narrative: The slogan “Rather death than tyranny”, was directed at the invading British and American armies and their ‘tyrannical’ governments. This may seem confusing to the modern reader. Most of us think of Hitler’s Nazi regime as being tyrannical. This is a reminder that originally the Nazi regime had been popularly elected. Germany’s transition from democracy to dictatorship was astonishingly swift and complete.
In (what turned out to be) the last election in July 1933, Hitler became the leader of the largest political party. He had to do some manoeuvring to form a government and be appointed Chancellor of Germany, but achieved this on 30th January 1934. Once in that position he gained emergency powers on 28th February and full dictatorship (without the need for a Parliament) just seven weeks later, on 23rd March 1934.
Thereafter no political opposition or media criticism was permitted. By the time my father translated this slogan, ten years of propaganda had been fed to the people of Germany.