"Amerika Über Alles"
- Our Nazi Nation
by Captain Eric H. May
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/,
October 3rd, 2007
Peter Guenther's Prologue
The most persuasive anti-Nazi I ever knew
was my mentor, Dr. Peter W. Guenther, who believed that Nazism
was monstrous at every level. As a professor of humanities, he
thought it was both inhumane and inhuman. As a professor of art
history he thought its aesthetics were artless histrionics. He
readily granted that his intellectual opinions were molded by
his personal experiences. As a German veteran of World War II,
he regretted the loss of his youth, the waste of his friends'
lives and the devastation that they had inflicted on others. He
held Hitler accountable for all of this - after all, it was Hitler
who had drafted them into the war. He had served from 1939 to
1945, from Poland to Norway to France to Russia. He once quipped
that before every one of their invasions their leaders said they
were fighting for national defense, but after the shooting started
every soldier on every side believed that he was fighting for
his own self-defense.
By the time of the Iraq war he was retired
from academe, and I was writing military analysis for media. As
US forces began storming up the Euphrates Valley in the spring
of 2003, hell-bent on Baghdad, we began to discuss the limited
American mobilized manpower and materiel, and the overall limitations
of blitz tactics. Guided by his insights, I published a then-radical
op-ed in the Houston Chronicle that predicted a quicksand war
in Iraq, and maybe a world war as a result of it.
As the easy war promised us by the Bush
administration wore on into the summer of 2003, Dr. Guenther and
I began to note that there were more similarities between Post-9/11
America and Third Reich Germany than just over-reliance on Blitzkrieg
tactics. We finally determined that the two nations were following
parallel political courses. Most disturbing for my mentor, who
had become a patriotic American citizen after World War II, was
the painful conclusion that our American president, with his global
war for a New American Century, was just another German fuhrer,
with a world war for a Thousand Year Reich. "This is a bad
copy of a bad original," he said.
"Drang Nach Ost" - The Eastern
Offensive
George W. Bush came into office with a
secret war plan and no excuse to implement it - just as Hitler
had come into office in 1933 with the same predicament. Both of
them wanted the prize of Middle Eastern oil. In Hitler's case
that meant going through "Judeo-Bolshevik" Russia on
the way, while in Bush's case that meant going through "Islamo-Fascist"
Iraq. In Hitler's case the guiding document was Mein Kampf,
while in Bush's case there were two. A Clean Break: A New Strategy
for Securing the Realm was presented to the Israeli government
in 1996 by American neocons Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and David
Wurmser, among others. Restructuring America's Defenses was presented
to the American government in 2000. Its arguments mirrored the
Israeli document, and had been drawn up by the neocons as well.
In 2001 Feith, Perle and Wurmser became key Bush administration
members.
Neither Hitler's nor Bush's plans for
world dominance could have been pursued without some good luck,
though. Both leaders entered office with over half their nations
opposing them, and an avid opposition that wanted to pull them
down. Hitler's good luck came with the Reichstag fire, blamed
on Jewish Communists, which mobilized his fatherland to rally
behind him. Bush's good luck happened on 9/11, blamed on Muslim
Fundamentalists, which mobilized his homeland to rally behind
him.
In both cases, their followers smiled
at their good luck, and began their new order of things. Hitler
quickly instituted an Enabling Act for the protection of the German
people, slated for expiration in five years, which was quietly
continued. Bush quickly instituted a Patriot Act for the protection
of the American people, slated for expiration in five years, which
was quietly continued. Hitler created the Geheime Staatspolizei
(Gestapo) to further protect the German people, while Bush created
the Homeland Security Agency (Homeseca) to do the same for the
American people.
"Führer Prinzip" - The
Unitary Executive
Both leaders were believers in the authoritarian
concept. A few weeks before assuming office, Bush said outright
that he thought dictatorship would be a fine form of government,
if he could be the dictator. They both believed that power should
come from above and obedience should come from below, and they
offered protection in exchange for loyalty. Thus no one was surprised
when Hermann Goering made a fortune helping to run Germany, just
as no one was surprised when Irving "Scooter" Libby
received a pardon for his pro-Bush political crimes in America.
Both leaders supplemented their new security
police and security acts with concentration camps such as Dachau
and Gitmo, initially designed for only a small percentage of national
enemies. Both dispensed with international rules and regulations
in their treatment of enemies in those installations, and applied
a wide variety of innovative persuasive techniques to extract
information and obtain confessions. The lessons learned in these
proto-type camps proved to be invaluable in later establishments
such as Auschwitz and Abu Ghraib.
Both leaders relied on agreeable legislatures.
In Germany the Reichstag cheered enthusiastically as it endorsed
the increase in police powers, the reduction in civil rights and
the national march to world war. In America Congress did the same
things, but in more subdued fashion, even with a show of dissent.
In Germany, Hitler declared a dictatorship under Article 48, provided
by the old Weimar Constitution for the event of a national emergency.
In America Bush recently created National Security Presidential
Directive 51 (NSPD 51), thereby legalizing a dictatorship in the
event of a national emergency.
"Gott Mit Uns" - God's on Our
Side
Neither Hitler nor Bush could have effected
their radical plans without a party full of functionaries and
a compliant national media, of course. Hitler relied on his "Nazi"
party, a word derived from the name of his National Socialist
organization. He had a brilliant individual named Joseph Goebbels
to control the Reich Propaganda Ministry and rally the public
behind Nazi policies. Bush relied on his "Nozi" party,
a word derived from "Zionism," with the first four letters
Z-i-o-n remixed into N-o-z-i. He had a brilliant cartel of Zionists
to control the American Mainstream Media and rally the public
behind Nozi policies.
The greatest accomplishment of both the
Nazi and Nozi parties was convincing themselves and their citizens
that they were not conspirators of any sort, but rather the victims
of an international conspiracy. The Nazi party never tired of
saying that Judeo-Communism was the hidden enemy, against which
all the powers of a determined fatherland had to be directed,
and that they were the targets of anti-German propaganda. The
Nozi party never tires of saying that Islamo-Fascism is the hidden
enemy, against which all the powers of a determined homeland have
to be directed, and that they are the targets of anti-Semitic
propaganda.
The rest of the world didn't buy the pro-war
propaganda from Germany's Nazis three generations ago, and they
don't buy it from America's Nozis three generations later. The
way the rest of the world sees it, what we have been taught to
call the axis of evil is not so dangerous to the world as the
axis of America and Israel. They see American naval forces massing
in the name of national defense against Iran, and they remember
Iraq. They see Israeli air forces attacking Syria, and they remember
Lebanon. The rest of the world knows who we have become, even
if we don't.
Peter Guenther's Epilogue: He died in
2005, and was followed by his wife Andrea six months later. They
had been married for 58 years, and had been American citizens
for more than 50. For more about my friendship with them, refer
to the first and fourth volumes of my 2003 Iraq war correspondence
here.
Captain May is a former Army military
intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC
editorial writer. His political and military analyses have appeared
in The Wall Street Journal,
The Houston Chronicle and Military Intelligence Magazine.
Read other articles by Captain Eric, or visit Captain
Eric's website.
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