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Nazi Strategies
Nazi Strategies
Adolf Hitler knew very well that the independent individual presents a danger to herd, pride and pack. Lone wolves on the fringes including independent intellectuals must be eliminated. The Nazis suppressed a thousand newspapers - another three hundred papers shut down voluntarily. We have good cause to complain about the monopolization of media in our own time. Hitler complained on May 14, 1941 that numerous independent newspapers confuse the public, hence their number should be few and they should speak with one voice. The Nazis had a divine mission under their great God Germany and its Christ Hitler; to wit, the salvation of the world for their kind of democracy, a militant national socialism which was no democracy at all but was rather a totalitarian theocracy.
"We wish for no other God than Germany," Hitler declared.
"Fuehrer, my Fuehrer, my faith and my light, Heil my Fuehrer," was the Grace said by needy children before meals - provided by the Nazi Welfare Committee. The Nazis believed they stood on the highest moral ground, and all superior individuals should be submerged in the collective or exterminated. Hitler himself represented divine providence, the world spirit who directs the world. A 1936 primer read:
"It was evident to my eyes that a State which had at its disposal an inspired press and journalists devoted to its causes possessed therein the greatest power that one could possibly imagine.... (T)he liberty of the press constitutes a mortal danger par excellence.... What is called the liberty of the press does not in the least mean that the press is free, but simply that certain potentates are at liberty to direct it as they wish in support of their particular interests and, if need by, in opposition to the interests of the State.... Take the case of a town with, say, a dozen newspapers; each one of them reports the various items in its own way, and in the end the reader can come to the conclusion that he is dealing with a gang of opium smokers. In this way the press gradually loses its influence on public opinion and all contact with the man on the street."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Information, said: "The concept of the absolute freedom of press is definitely liberalistic and proceeds not from the people in its entirety but from the individual... The more freedom of opinion that is conceded to an individual, the more it can harm the interests of an entire people."
The anti-intellectual, "neoconservative" fundamentalism we witness today at the highest level of the current U.S. government was par for the course in Nazi Germany. "A young man," Hitler remarked, "who works with a spade for six months on the Western fortifications has done more for Germany than an intellectual has done during his whole life." Joseph Goebbels observed, "National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German people and led it back to its original primitive forms." "The concept of the Reich is based on the idea that the whole civilized world must be united under a single power. The Reich incorporates a higher moral principle which directs the fate of the world, bringing order and justice. The Reich must direct the life of nations, individuals and states. The Reich signifies a mission."
In a rare press conference, given on April 13, 2004, President Bush explained his mission on behalf of the United States and his almighty god: (I)t's important for us to spread freedom throughout the Middle East.... That's why I'm pressing the Greater Middle East Reform Initiative, to work to spread freedom. And we will continue on that. So long as I'm the President, I will press for freedom. I believe so strongly in the power of freedom.... I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom... is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom.... That's our obligation. That is what we have been called to do, as far as I'm concerned.... And my job as the President is to lead this nation into making the world a better place.... (W)e are making progress..."
Above all, we must be religiously optimistic about our mission in the world. As Hitler said, on January 4, 1942:
"Have pity on the pessimist! He spoils his own existence. In fact, life is endurable only on condition that one's an optimist. The pessimist complicates things to no purpose. What would have happened to us, by Heaven, if we'd been a group of pessimists!"
On June 2, 2004, U.S. President Bush compared his fight against terrorism with World War II, stating that terrorists share a grim ideology with fascists such as Adolf Hitler, one that seeks to crush dissent and personal freedom: "This is no time for impatience and self-defeating pessimism. These times demand the kind of courage and confidence that Americans have shown before. Our enemy can only succeed if we lose our will and faith in our own values."
Mr. Bush's speech was greeted with the strongest positive response when he denounced critics of his war effort; the President vowed to do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to do, strike first, even though he knew the Japanese were going to attack somewhere. Why? "This is a democracy," he said.
"Instead of waiting for them to strike again," Mr. Bush promised, "we will take this fight to the enemy." But he did not mention that the Iraqis had not attacked the United States in the first place, that at least there was no proof of any Iraqi involvement in an attack.
Unfortunately for those who do not like to see the application of the political philosophy of President Bush and his neoconservative hawks compared with Hitler and his henchmen's doctrines in action, the President's pre-emptive lightning strike, which destroyed the sovereign state of Iraq, resembled a shocking Nazi blitzkrieg. President Bush's massive campaign of organized terror has been followed by an awesome occupation. His pretexts for going to war were flimsy. In effect he is killing not only Iraqis but his own people. Alas, the shocking attack on Iraq has not awed very many "terrorists" - even more have been drawn to the battlefield: "Bring them on," said the President.
Hitler, by the way, fashioned the blitzkrieg after Frederick the Great's pre-emptive strikes, particularly Frederick's attack on Austria - Frederick said he wanted to free Austrians from tyranny. The Nazis were experts at such double-talk, especially when it came to making the world safe for democracy.
"It is silly to claim that National Socialism governs by a dictatorship. The government of the Fuehrer in Germany is the most genuine and the purest democracy in the world," said Dr. Frick, the Nazi Minister of the Interior.
Rudolf Hess, referring to the real (i.e. German) democracy, said, "Not the so-called democracies, no, we, the so-called dictatorship, the country with the authoritarian regime, we have made the goal of a free nation law and thereby we have done the most democratic deed."
President Bush has been accused of resorting to four big lies to justify his hysterical rush to war. The U.S. media oligopoly has been charged with unanimously selling out the American people, of organizing the jingoism and propagating the war with propaganda. Of course the Nazis were early masters of propaganda; as Goebbels once put it: "We have made the Reich by propaganda." As for lies and deceit, the Nazis admired the unprincipled Machiavellian principle. Professors of the world-power-state such as Max Weber set the national-socialist stage with their misinterpretation of the political works of the excellent anglo-saxon author, Thomas Hobbes, the protester who was, at least according to some Catholic authorities, the earliest father of the Enlightenment. And Hitler admired Luther's anti-intellectual misinterpretations of sacred scripture, taking note of Luther's strategic justification of nonsense by reference to "God's mysteries."
"A definite factor in getting a lie believed is the size of the lie. The broad mass of the people, in the simplicity of their hearts, more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one."Here we go yet again.
