It has been very effective, unfortunately.

Michael Wayne "Mike" Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the creator of the Internet adage Godwin's Law. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. In March 2011 he was elected to the Open Source Initiative board. Godwin has served as a contributing editor of Reason magazine since 1994. He is currently general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute.

Some people around these parts (*cough* hillary) don't respect the work that the EFF does and call what they do 'excuses' not to breal the 1st and 4th amendment.

He wasn't trying to silence anyone.

He travelled by plane from campaign-event to campaign-event, all over Germany. He seemed to be everywhere at once and gave speeches directly to the people. That impressed lots of voters who only read about the other candidates in the newspapers.

election of May 1928: 2.6%
election of September 1930: 18.3%
election of July 1932: 37.3%
election of November 1932: 33.1%
election of March 1933: 43.9%

You started out making a comparison to Hitler the conversation didn't end up at Hitler

It's more of an actual example of it. People should really learn what a phrase means before bandying it about.