Author Information
January, 1975
Forty-nine years ago, 1975, in January of my Junior year in High School, I was completing an elaborate (well, for high school) research paper, fifty-one pages including bibliography, fully footnoted, on the life of Adolf Hitler. I used, as my text, William Shirer's massive study, The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, with its copious quotations, some quite lengthy, for the only book Hitler wrote, Mein Kampf (a book which, by the way, the Innkeeper is said to have read recently; perhaps to pick up hints and tips from his historical mentor and spiritual father).
I enjoyed tracing the arc of Hitler's public life from relative obscurity as an unemployed transient, to his housepainting days, and so on and so on, until he blew his brains out in a bunker in Berlin as the Red Army of the Soviet Union closed in. I was especially fascinated by the beginning of Hitler's association with the Nazi Party---which, contrary to the belief of some, he did not found (Anton Drexler, a locksmither, founded the Nazi Party and led it until forced out of any position of influence by Hitler and his supporters). I wondered what this part of Hitler's public career would have been like to watch as it unfolded: a minor, and in many ways, brutally ignorant demigogue, characterized by my Sophomore year German teacher as "a little man with a big mouth," who used intimidation, deliberate falsification, armies of thugs, and blatant exaggeration to achieve, first, the chancellorship of the Weimar Republic (after losing the presidential election to retired Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg), and then, following Hindenburg's death, unchallenged dictator and Fuhrer of the newly proclaimed Third Reich.
Forty-nine years later, I need no longer wonder what it would have been like to watch: it is unfolding around us in the insidious machinations of the Innkeeper, a man facing who must now face many accusations of wrongdoing leveled against him by prosecutors in several jurisdictions (and yet maintains that they are all wrong), a man who, even more boldly than his historical mentor and spiritual father, has declared that he will be a dictator on Day One (and, as one of our leading comedians has pointed out, in that administration, every day that follows Day One will be renamed Day One). The threat to social stability, democracy, and peace that was represented by the Bavarian Housepainter has been raised to exponential proportions, and an even greater threat, by the Innkeeper. Forty-nine years ago, I could not have fully imagined what it would have been like: now, I do not have to imagine it, because, if we are not careful in the casting of our votes in November, it will happen here, and November 2024 will represent the final free election held in the United States of America, which will soon become---if the Innkeeper has his way and his deepest desire---the Divided States of Trompatica.
Starward
