[Peace-discuss] Is Bush like Hitler?

[Morton K. Brussel]

Following is an interesting history lesson, assuming it is all true.  
It posits, making provocative parallels, that America's actions in  
the world are quite similar to what the Nazis' were condemned for at  
Nuremberg.  It is worth considering from the point of view that  
things are really bad now with our government. I would only add that  
the Aryan or racist card, the concentration camps for Jews and other  
undesirables has not been played out overtly by Bush and company, and  
that we haven't YET had an equivalent repression of dissent quite so  
bad as what occurred under Hitler. Our repression is different. But  
read it.


ZNet Commentary
The US and the Nazis February 22, 2006
By Nikos Raptis

In previous Commentaries I mentioned that: "Of course it rests with  
me to prove that the comparison of the US to the Nazis is not an  
exaggeration." Recent events deferred the analysis of this statement.  
Finally, here it is:

Let us start at the top: "The Fuehrer told me then that the simplest  
thing to do would be to take as example the United States of America,  
where the head of the state is at the same time also the head of the  
government. Thus following the example of the United States, we  
combined the position of the head of the state with the head of the  
government, and he called himself Fuehrer of the German people and  
Reich Chancellor of the German Reich." (Robert E.Conot, "Justice at  
Nuremberg", Harper & Row, New York, 1983, p. 333)

The words in the above quote were uttered by Hermann Goering during  
his testimony, on March 13, 1946, before the Nuremberg Tribunal.

The head of a state used to be the King. Today a King or a President  
of a Republic is mostly a figurehead. However, Hitler chose the US  
President as his "head of state"-model. That, in itself, is quite  
revealing. That the US President is a real "leader" or a real  
"commander" of the American people, not a figurehead, cannot be  
disputed.The verb "fuehren" in German means to "lead" or to  
"command". So, Hitler chose for himself the role of the  
"Fuehrer" (leader or commander) of the German people.

One can ignore the words of Goering (and of Hitler) and (of course)  
ignore the above brief analysis. What one cannot ignore is that W.  
Bush is an uncommonly arrogant and violent "leader" whom, according  
to his loyal legal underlings, no one can touch, no matter what he  
does (they call it the theory of "unitary executive") or he can  
ignore any law he does not like (they call it "signing statement").

"Hitler ... made himself the unilateral arbiter of the Geneva  
Convention, and declared null and void whatever section was not  
convenient to him". This was written in 1983 (Conot, p. 308). It is  
easy, today, to find a similar statement about W. Bush even in the  
mainstream US press. It seems that the gang around him and his  
"loyal" underlings are bent to ruthlessly exploit the shibboleth that  
a war president has a "blank check" to do as he likes, three quarters  
of a century after Hitler.

[Note: The "loyalty" of underlings to their political leaders is  
morally an extremely low point in human behavior. Hitler describing  
contemptuously his underlings said: "Have you noticed how people  
tremble, how they try to say what will please me?"  The loyalty of  
Condoleezza Rice, of Carl Rove, etc, to W. Bush is a typical example  
of what Hitler meant.]


Now, moving to a level immediately below the top we discover a  
surprising list:

1. Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974), Hitler's Youth Leader and  
Governor of Vienna during World War II, was responsible for the  
deportation of 65,000 Jews from Vienna to Poland and to their death.  
Schirach was 3/4 American. His paternal grandfather, emigrated from  
Germany, had served in  the Union Army during the Civil War, had been  
selected as one of the honorary pallbearers at Lincoln's funeral and  
had married into the wealthy Norris family of America. His mother,  
also an American, whose ancestors included two signatories of the the  
Declaration of Independence, was the daughter of a New York lawyer.  
The Nuremberg Tribunal condemned Schirach in 1946 to 20 years  
imprisonment for crimes against humanity, which he served out.

2. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (1877-1970) was the financial  
architect of the Nazis who directed the preparations for Hitler's  
war. He was brought up in the US where his parents had emigrated and  
his father became an American citizen. His two middle names derived  
from the famous editor of the  New York "Tribune". At the Nuremberg  
Tribunal he was charged and found guilty but was acquitted, in spite  
of the protests of the Soviet judge, since the rearmament was not  
cosidered criminal in itself. However, a de-Nazification court  
sentenced Schacht to eight years' labour camp as  a "Major Offender".  
A sentence that he did not serve.

3. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1870-1950) was a German  
armaments tycoon who was appointed by Hitler as "Fuehrer of the Reich  
Estate of German Industry". Krupp's father, Gustav Halbach, was a  
member of a German-American family of coal mining entrepreneurs with  
properties in Ruhr and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Gustav Halbach  
spent his early years in Pennsylvania and married the daughter of a  
prominent Civil War hero, Colonel Henry Bohlen. In 1906, the Keiser  
selected Gustav as the consort of Bertha Krupp, heiress to the Krupp  
fortune. Their son, Alfried (1907-1967) was made "Fuehrer of the  
German Armament Industry" by Hitler and used hundreds of thousands of  
slave laborers from concentration camps in his factories.
At Nuremberg, the elder Krupp was indicted as a major war criminal,  
however he did not stand trial because of his "physical and mental  
condition". His son, Alfried, was sentenced (in 1948) to twelve  
years' imprisonment. He served only three years.

4. Charles "Chip" Eustis Bohlen (1904-1974) was a second cousin of  
Alfried's but also was working in the White House  as President F.D.  
Roosevelt's liaison with the State Department and as an expert in  
Soviet affairs, while Alfried was helping Hitler in his humanitarian  
endeavours.

5. Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1046) was Hitler's Minister of  
Foreign Affairs from 1938 to 1945. After he studied languages at Metz  
and Grenoble he spent four years in Canada as an immigrant occupied  
in business. He was the first of the defendents to be hanged at  
Nuremberg.

6. Luise Jodl was wife of Alfred Jodl, Hitler's closest military  
adviser and Chief of the Operations Staff . Her maternal grandfather  
had been British. Alfred Jodl was hanged at Nuremberg. Jodl's deputy,  
Walther Warlimont, was married to the daughter of Paula Anhaeuser- 
Busch of the St. Louis brewing family. He was sentenced in 1948 to  
life in prison.

7. Constantin Freiherr von Neurath (1873-1956), a German aristocrat,  
was German Foreign Minister from 1932 to 1938. Subsequently he was  
appointed as Hitler's man in Czechoslovakia. Also, he was a friend of  
Queen Mary of England. At Nuremberg he was found guilty of war  
crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. In 1946 he  
was sentenced to 15 years, imprisonment. He served 8 years.


The Nazi defendants at Nuremberg were 22. Of these defendants,  
according to the above list, about one third were related by blood,  
marriage, or otherwise to Americans (or other Anglos). Was this a  
diabolical statistical anomaly? Does this have any significance that  
deserves some kind of scrutiny? A general comment could be that at  
this level of the Nazi or American elites nationality is of no great  
importance. The members of this elite grow up and live in a separate  
and rather homogeneous universe. However, that this  
"Americanism" (acquired through blood, etc) did not prevent the  
evolvement of these individuals to Nazis and finally to the fate at  
Nuremberg should not be overlooked.

This Nuremberg "surprise" prompts us to reverse the question: what  
was the influence of "Germanism" on "Americanism"? There are two  
principal sources of influence of the Germanic peoples on the  
population of America. The German immigrants in America and the  
inundation of America with Nazis, starting a few days after the death  
of Hitler.

Let us start with the immigrants. The year of 1848 was a year of  
social revolution all over Europe. There were revolts in France,  
Italy, Austria, Hungary, England, Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany.  
The revolts were crushed by the various kings, Emperors, etc. In  
Germany after the revolt failed tens of thousands of the revolted  
Germans fled to America. These immigrants are known as the "Forty- 
eighters".
As a matter of fact, the leaders of the German revolt were greeted in  
America (in St. Louis, etc) as heroes through  mass rallies. Of them,  
F. Hecker, F. Sigel, and A. Willich, later became Union officers  
during the Civil War. ("Germans for a Free Missouri", S. Rowan & N.  
Primm, U. of Missouri Press, 1983, p. 24). These German freethinkers  
were a kind of "protosocialists" who had a dream to "enlist the  
United States as an agent of world revolution or as the center of a  
world republic" and they considred the American Revolution  as "the  
best remaining hope for a redemption of mankind".
(Rowan, p. 25 and p. 30). Of course, we know that not only this  
remained a dream but it turned into a nightmare of imperial  
proportions through the efforts of the US elites.

The contribution of the German-American immigrants to the advance of   
humanitarian radicalism not only in the US but all over the world  
should be honored (and should be researched dilligently by  
historians). The German Haymarket martyrs, the radical  Germans of  
Missouri, of Pennsylvania, of Wisconsin, of Texas, etc as  
protosocialists were a breed worthy of great respect.

If the Germany and the US of the mid-19th century era had these seeds  
of radicalism how come they ended up with respective  reactionary  
societies? The case of Germany has been analyzed extensively in the  
post-WWII era. The "volk syndrom" (or one could say the "chosen  
people syndrom") was a significant factor. The US case has also been  
investigated in relation to the birth of  the "corporation", the  
invention of the "scientific propaganda" and the barbaric destruction  
of the labor movement. Also, the Nazis planted in the US since 1945  
(see below) had a significant contribution. It seems that both  
societies have followed parallel paths towards the evolution into  
very violent states. Germany's trajectory peaked in the 1930s and  
ended in 1945 with the defeat of the Nazis. The US case is still  
pending.

Hitler commited suicide on April 30, 1945. The surrender of the Nazis  
was signed on May 8, 1945. Eleven days later, on May 19, "a military  
transport plane with windows blackened to hide its notorious  
cargo..." brought in Washington, D.C. the first Nazis, Herbert Wagner  
and his two assistants "and then kept [them] hidden from immigration  
authorities". ("Secret Agenda", Linda Hunt, St. Martin's Press, 1991,  
p. 6, 7).

The true number of Nazis planted in the US is impossible to know  
until the CIA opens its files. There were various programs with  
assorted code-names ("Overcast", "Paperclip", etc) designed to  
smuggle Nazi scientists (by the thousands) and (inexplicably) Nazi SS  
regulars (by the tens of thousands). It seems that the US militaries  
who were recruiting the Nazis after 1945 considered the SS as  
somthing similar to the US Marines, so they did their utmost to send  
them to the US.

Most of the older Nazis (scientists, etc) went straight to the US  
centers of power. Take the case of General Walter Dornberger. He was  
one of those responsible for the death of "At least 20,000 prisoners - 
many of them talented engineers who had been singled out for missile  
production...-  [and who] were killed through starvation, disease, or  
execution..." Dornberger, after working for the US Air Force, went  
into the private industry and "eventually rose to be a vice-president  
in the Bell Aerosystems Division of the Textron Corporation... He  
died peacefully in June 1980." (Christopher Simpson, "Blowback",  
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, p. 27, 28).

The younger SS Nazis, who were brought to the US with their families  
(!), given free passage, board, emergency funds (with taxpayers  
money), and assisted to find jobs (at a time when American engineers  
were laid off), dispersed in the lower levels of the American society.

Did these Nazis, planted in the US society, influence it?  The US  
government's "use of Nazis and collaborators in intelligence programs  
has left a mark on the life in the United States itself. This impact  
is what is known in spy jargon as "blowback," meaning unexpected-and  
negative-effects at home that result from covert operations  
overseas." (Simpson, p. 5).

Is not 9/11 a typical "blowback"? Is not bin Laden a "result from  
covert operations" in Afghanistan?

"It had taken the greatest war in history to put a stop to an  
unspeakable [Nazi] evil. And now the cutting edge of that nightmare  
was being  transplanted to America." Words of Linda Hunt in her book  
"Secret Agenda" of 1991 (p. 21).

[Note: It would be interesting if some Ph. D candidates, or young  
journalists research the expansion of the original Nazis and their  
families in the US society and also assess their political attitudes,  
etc.]

But, what is Nazism? The most accurate answer to that is found in the  
four Indictment Counts of the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Counts: 1.  
Conspiracy to commit the crimes enumerated in the other three Counts.  
2. Crimes against peace, i.e. the planning, initiating, and waging  
wars of aggression. 3. War crimes, i.e. violations of the laws of  
war. 4. Crimes against humanity, i.e. exterminations, deportations,  
and genocide.

Of these counts number 2 is considered the most important. "By 1939,  
the peoples of the civilized world had come to believe that the  
launching of aggressive war was a crime not only morally wrong, but  
one that warranted the most severe punishment. (Bradley F. Smith,  
"Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg", Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1977,  
p. 17).

Those were the counts for the Nazis. Now, let us apply them (very  
brieflly) to the US: Count 2: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada,  
Haiti,  Panama, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan Iraq I, Iraq II (not to  
add Greece with 160,000 killed through a US proxy army in 1947-9).  
Count 3: Vietnam "agent orang", Kosovo DU, Iraq I, Fallujah...,  
torture all over the panet since 1947. Count 4: Genocides in  
Indonesia and East Timore. Count 1: Conspiracy with the "poodle",  
i.e. Britain. Ignoring all counts except number 3 (about wars of  
aggression) we end up with "the most severe punishment" for W. Bush  
and his underlings.

One has to resist the temptation to delete all the text above the  
enumeration of the counts and leave only the text presenting the  
correspondence of the Nuremberg counts to the US acts in order to  
show that the comparison of the US to the Nazis is not an exaggeration.

Finally, the fitting way to close this Commentary is by quoting the  
words of two persons that are worthy of great respect:

- "We have to ask ouselves whether what is needed in the United  
States is dissent-or denazification." (Noam Chomsky, "American Power  
and the New Mandarins", Pantheon Books, 1969, p. 16).

-  Irmgard A. Hunt was only 3-and-a-half in October 1937 when Hitler  
had singled her out to sit on his knee. Her parents were living in  
Berchtesgaden, Hitler's village, and were "both enthusiastic  
supporters of the Nazis". Sixty years later, now an American since  
1958, Irmgard A. Hunt wrote a book about  Berchtesgaden: "On Hitler's  
Mountain".

In an interview to Michael Little of the "Washington City  
Paper" (June 24, 2005, p. 25) she says: "Karl Rove has all the skills  
of Dr. Goebbels and then some. It's just amazing  how people have  
stopped questioning the reasons for the war, how people will believe  
there were weapons of mass destruction. It's absolutely stunning how  
you can brain-wash people by fine-tuning the ideology... Hitler said,  
'I can't take on this job unless I have complete power...' And it's a  
bit like the emergency powers after 9/11... The American people had  
better watch what they're signing onto."