Word: free
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...their last free (or semifree) elections, held March 5, 1933, the Germans gave their new dictator 44% of their votes. Hitler never won a majority in an election, but that 44% brought the Nazis, along with their right-wing allies of the Nationalist Party, their first majority in the Reichstag. So Hitler presented the Reichstag with an "enabling act" that would surrender most of its powers to what was now very much his Cabinet. Some Communists and socialists -- those not already in jail -- protested, but while the Nazi delegates cheered and shouted, the Reichstag docilely voted itself out of business...
...Miklas, who had not experienced Hitler's persuasion, refused to accept the deal. When Hitler heard that, he ordered the Wehrmacht to mobilize, as publicly as possible. Schuschnigg tried to defend his regime by announcing a plebiscite in four days, on March 13, to decide whether Austrians wanted "a free, independent, social, Christian and united Austria." Hitler, apoplectic, ordered the Wehrmacht to invade Austria on March 12 unless Schuschnigg called off the plebiscite. Once again Schuschnigg surrendered, but Hitler kept increasing his demands. Now he insisted that Schuschnigg resign and be replaced by Nazi leader Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Schuschnigg again...
Without the slightest warning, Germany's General Walther von Brauchitsch sent the Fourth Army smashing through the disputed Polish Corridor, isolating the Free City of Danzig; the Eighth and Tenth Armies striking over the Vistula plain toward Warsaw; the Fourteenth Army driving across Silesia toward Cracow -- 1.5 million men in all, led by a fearsome new military force, the 2,700 fast-moving panzers (tanks) of the German armored divisions...
...worse than our fathers, who 25 years earlier had been drawn into the First World War. And we were no better or worse than our children, who today pass judgment upon us. We, like the soldiers of other countries, were trained to obedience. We had not been brought up free to demonstrate our opposition under the protection of a liberal constitution. We had the same sensitivities that all humans have, but during a time of difficult decisions, we lacked political vision...
...last piece of the legend this blues brother created for himself. In the film's one good laugh, a physician elicits Belushi's pharmaceutical history and then asks, deadpan, "Next of kin?" Belushi was delivered to his humongous family of fans, who mourned a talent that went up in free-basing flames. But where do you send a killer-B movie like Wired, with many enemies and no mourners...