Charlie Sheen wrote:
Is it really that surprising given that the Nazis were funded by some of the most powerful people in America at the time? Prescott Bush financed them, Henry Ford (a great admirer of AH) help build their tanks, and the British Royal family were Nazi sympathisers?
A theory I've recently come across is, that the Nazi regime was seen as the first step to installing fascist rule through out the world. This was because the Monarchs of Europe, and the wealthy American investors were terrified of the Bolsheviks, and republican socialism spreading west. So the Nazi regime was put into power through American investors, and weapons manufacturers. The British monarchy also had the extra incentive because they were related to the Tsars whom had been butchered by the Bolsheviks.
It's surprising set against the context of politics - as it is
supposed to work. The kind of guff we are bombarded with from an early age. But I agree - politics has never worked in such fashion.
As for the forces at work which led to WWII - here we run into a similar dichotomy. Even before WWII had ended fiction and fact were exchanging places in recorded history. No war since records began has ever been as thoroughly written about and yet it's surprising how little of this stuff has any basis in fact. I recently read the biography of Joseph Goebbels by Peter Longerich, primarily because I wanted to understand how both the man and the party became so effective at the science of propaganda. From the outset I was dissatisfied with this book. I found it utterly impossible to believe that Longerich's Goebbels could ever have possessed the kind of managerial skills, clarity of thought and political clout which was required to manage a task of this magnitude. We're talking about the scientific management of an entire nation's culture right down to the finest details - by a man who, according to Longerich, could scarcely manage his own neuroses. The biography is supposed to be drawn directly from the pages of Goebbels' own diaries - but whether it bears any resemblance to them I really don't know. And even if it does - I'm still none the wiser. At some point I plan to look at them - but given that there is some controversy over the editing of these diaries immediately after WWII I suspect I'll be wasting my time.
For me it's just one in a lengthy list of a contradictions which have nagged at me for many years. For example, I've never been able to comprehend why members of the notoriously elitist Prussian General Staff would EVER agree to take orders from a former corporal who wasn't even born in Germany. I mean, it's like being asked to believe that Prince Philip would be willing to take orders from an NCO from Widnes.
I'm not suggesting that the likes of Hitler and company didn't exist. Of course they did. But I don't think for one minute that these people were the architects of Nazi Germany. I think it required the combined efforts of big capital, big industry, the aristocracy and the military who together co-opted the brightest minds in academia, the media etc. I think this plan was put into action perhaps even before the end of WWI by Ludendorff and Hindenberg with financing coming from the major US & British banks and technical expertise provided by companies such as Ford, IBM etc. Importantly, part of the plan demanded the creation of very visible leadership.
I mean, it's awfully convenient having all these egomaniacs ostentatiously strutting about on celluloid in the event of the question of BLAME emerging should the plan fail. So whilst Goering, Himmler and company took the fall at Nuremberg the directors of I.G. Farben, Krupp, Volkswagen all emerged from the war better off than ever. In the wake of WWII the US was practically crawling with former Nazis. It's a measure of how ludicrous the whole situation was when even the likes of J. Edgar Hoover (hardly a bastion of liberal freedoms) openly complained about America becoming a second home for the Third Reich.
On the question of eugenics - the partially successful Nazi defence at Nuremberg was,
"Look - it was the US which taught us this stuff. Why pick on us when eugenics was primarily an American creation?"Once Roosevelt was out of the way the establishment soon obliterated what remained of the New Deal in Washington with the phony notion of the "Red Menace". Attack dogs such as Joseph McCarthy and Dick Nixon were used to clear out any and all opposition to a wind-down of WWII military spending and then these very same Nazis were used to great effect battling the Communists (who themselves were not what they seemed).
It reminds me of the quote attributed to Col. Fletcher Prouty which was given by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone's seminal film, JFK:
"The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is for war. The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers"
