Yes, but in terms of Constitutional structure and traditions, they are world's apart. The Weimar Republic and its constitution were invented in the aftermath of WWI and never really took root. And it was particularly foreign to the military -- especially the Junker officer class.
Here, we have a military culture, tradition, and officer corps that would not tolerate anyone openly exceeding their Constitutional authority in the manner contemplated by the Enabling Acts.
The Weimar Constitution was weakly held as a tradition, and it represented cultural change.
In our case, we do have a Constitution, but it has been incrementally obscured in the minds of the citizenry by pet programs, some of which are as old as most living. How many would step up to the plate and say that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Public Housing, and a host of other Federal activities are indeed extra-Constitutional, and without Authorization? (That's just a warmup.)
Add to that legislating from the bench which has added a host of alleged "Rights" which do not conform with original intent, from
Roe, to
Kelo, to Obamacare '
taxes', and the Founders would be hard pressed to find the tattered remnants of the Constitution and Bill of Rights woven into the fabric of the current Federal Government.
In short, most don't have any idea what the document says, authorizes, nor that it was intended to severely limit the size and scope of the government they take for granted. The affection of people for the actual document and original intent is nowhere close to waving it around when convenient. People have become as disconnected from that Original Intent as the Weimar Republic in that neither really knows nor understands the concept as written.
We also have our political class, the favored, the often exempt government multitude presiding over their individual fiefdoms of regulation and turf, who are similar to the Junkers, in that they are not quite military, not quite police, but carry the ability of the former and the authority of the latter, and are referred to as "Agent", "Special Agent", "Director" and a host of other titles. They are armed, they carry weapons, they are often veterans, and they follow orders.
Despite the oathkeepers in the ranks, there are many who will follow orders. Add to the Armed Forces, that 'shadow army' of tens of thousands of Agency Personnel, not limited to the FBI, BATF, and other more familiar agencies but down to the USFWS (US Fish and Wildlife Service) and Department of Energy which are authorized to carry and use lethal force.
The totalitarians would not use the rank and file Army or Marines against civilians (Legally, they can't Possee Comitatus prevents it), but that will not stop the agency 'police' nor those State and local police organizations asked to assist which have received military hardware including APCs, Bomb proof vehicles, drones, body armor, and other hardware with the same efficiency, and many of those officers are veterans.
With the rhetoric tending toward calling ordinary conservative, gun toting, and especially Bible-believing civilians "Domestic Terrorists" and "cults", it isn't a far cry to turn all that hardware and know-how on the "enemy" (us) in the event of any real or claimed acts of resistance, violence, or terrorism
.
What could spark such controversy that that would happen? Try an Australian style ban of semiautomatic weapons, or magazines larger than 10 rounds: turn them or the government will come get them. A major 'racist' disruption like Baltimore or Fergusson: Blood in the Streets, and the more it happened, the worse it would get until...Martial Law.
Because the media would spin the story as they were told or lose their broadcast licenses, the information contrary to the official story allowed to get out would be very limited, and immediately decried as AGITPROP aimed at causing trouble and getting the people unjustly riled against those officers and officials just doing their sworn duty. "Conspiracy theory" and dismissed, while the official version would be repeated
ad infinitum, ad nauseum, until it was widely believed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Like the VHS tapes I saw from Ruby Ridge, hand delivered copies of copies of copies, by way of a friend, the (officially) unfiltered information from the site would be traveling slowly, on thumb drives and CDs and DVDs, not through the interwebs where the file could be easily doped with a virus and the virus disseminated.
When you consider that an obscure church group was presented to a public, (some of which
still believes it engaged in sexual impropriety with children, manufactured meth, was in possession of illegal and fully automatic weapons, and ambushed and killed BATF agents just trying to investigate allegations of child abuse before a long standoff which ended when they set their own home on fire on a windy day and burned themselves to death, the power of the media controlling the message becomes manifest.
Although other accounts did escape the carnage and conflagration, and thinking people debunked much of the official story, there were no arrests of government officials, no convictions arose, and the government issue version of events remains the one told when the issue is revisited by any but those who did their own research. Even FLIR interpreters started waking up dead in the morning when those tapes became available, until one was found who would testify (before Congress) that the flashes on the video were reflections off broken glass and debris and not the result of gunfire.
Now, turn that same media machine loose on a different series of events, jam the cell phone towers, block the internet from the trouble zone (and blame it on the 'terrorists'), and you can do virtually anything, especially after evacuating people in the vicinity of the operation for 'reasons of public safety'. The government controlled version will be the only one heard, and if any got out, it can be tracked by keyword analysis and the perpetrators can be made to 'have an accident' or disappear. There are a huge number of boogeymen out there to blame for the messy demise of a person or their family and friends, and supporting information can be manufactured and disseminated at will. After all, they might have been your neighbor, but 'you never really know a person', right?
It all could sound horribly paranoid, but ask Lavoy Finicum, Michael Schroeder, Gordon Kahl, Vicki Weaver, or the folks down at M.O.V.E in Philly about that. Oh, you can't. They are all dead.
The tools are there, hanging on the wall for all to see, just waiting for someone to abuse them.
With information screened and restricted and with just a few facebook and twitter 'sources' singing the party line into the interwebs, the whole perception of any event would be whatever the government issued. Because that perception would be distorted, there would be little or no conflicting information, especially for the troops called in to restore order. Only those who knew someone in the area (and who could be mostly screened out of the op) would know something was amiss, if they caught on. The rest would follow orders, as they were commanded to do or face courts martial and a possible DD.
Now, for the Military, and God Bless everyone who has served or is serving, the Military is being used for social experimentation. The authority for this, the actual orders may be mandated by the POTUS, but are in fact delivered by officers of flag rank. As they say, a fish rots from the head down, but the lower ranks are following orders, no matter what they think of them, at least until their term of service is over.
Pack the military with homosexuals and minorities and you have stacked the deck with people from generally frustrated and angry backgrounds, who are more likely to harbor anger toward either whites or 'straights' and all those judgemental church going types who looked down their noses at best or "held them down" at worst, and you have a powder keg, like the SA.
I am sorry, there are some in the Military we could count on not to participate against civilians, hopefully the vast majority, but I think there are enough who would do what they are told to make things very, very ugly. Small arms, even well applied, are no match for a modern army.
