Excerpt from Chapter Ten of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes."
byname Der Führer (German: “The Leader”) [born April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria died April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany] leader of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party (from 1920/21) and chancellor (Kanzler) and Führer of Germany (1933–45). He was chancellor from January 30, 1933, and, after President Paul von Hindenburg's death, assumed the twin titles of Führer and chancellor (August 2, 1934). © 1994-2002 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc
Download the entire 1.6mb .htm file and read Hitler's CHILLING autobiography to see where George Bush and his friends have been getting their ideas and inspiration .http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/politica/hitla002.htm
Perhaps you should go to the Disclosure Project website first, before you look at the NAZI electrogravitic vehicles (flying saucers) or read about the bizarre origins of the Aryans.
Your website authors are both former Official Disclosure Project Representatives.
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A very timely quote from
(Hitler's most loyal supporter and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany and the Holocaust. It was Göring who led the economic despoliation of the Jews in Germany and in the various territories that fell under Hitler's power.) "Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." |
History repeats itself because nobody listens!
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/01/26/hsorensen.DTL
Are Parallels To
Nazi Germany Crazy?
- Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, January 26, 2004
The customers always write. I get about 400 e-mails in response to my columns every week, which might explain why I didn't answer yours. Here, slightly edited, is one of the more interesting ones from last week. It's from Herr Moellers in Germany:
"Dear Mr. Sorensen,
"I have many American friends and used to go on business travel to the U.S. a lot (I stopped doing that after even our European governments have given in to Uncle Sam's appetite for information about individuals traveling to God's Own Country), and I am shocked by the deterioration of democracy in a country that I used to love. This administration is a shame and the destabilization they have brought to the world is scaring the s** out of me.
"My father was a Nazi soldier and he realized during the war what he and most of his generation was led into. I have learned from him that a nation can be guilty and that we must stop the arrogance of the powers at the very beginning. To me, America is becoming truly scary and the parallels to the development in Germany of the thirties (although the reason behind it are totally different) are sickening.
"Thank you for writing about this development. The world is waiting for signs of opposition in the Unilateral States of America!"
Herr Moellers' e-mail is typical of a half dozen or so I've received over the past year from people with intimate knowledge of Nazi Germany.
I respect experience, so I'm inclined to believe what these people are telling me. Perhaps their memories help explain the attitude of Germans toward the Bush administration these days.
They've been there, they've done that. They know what a corrupt government smells like.
But are they "over the top"? Are they overreacting to a normal swing of the pendulum in American politics?
To make a comparison between Germany in the 1930s and America now, I relied on a Web site called
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust." The passages in quotations below are taken from the site."With Adolf Hitler's ascendancy to the chancellorship, the Nazi Party quickly consolidated its power. Hitler managed to maintain a posture of legality throughout the Nazification process."
Whether by chance or design, George W. Bush is the most powerful American president in modern history. Not only does he have both houses of Congress beholden to him, but the majority of the Supreme Court is acting like a quintet of Bush lapdogs. And it all appears legal.
"Domestically, during the next six years, Hitler completely transformed Germany into a police state."
Civil libertarians insist that this is happening here now, with the USA Patriot Act in force and Patriot II on the table.
"Hitler engaged in a 'diplomatic revolution' by negotiating with other European countries and publicly expressing his strong desire for peace."
Nobody can accuse Bush of being overly diplomatic, but, like all political leaders, he is an apostle for peace, even while starting two wars during his brief tenure.
In 1933, the Reichstag, Germany's parliament building, was burned to the ground. Nobody knows for sure who set the fire. The Nazis blamed communists. "This incident prompted Hitler[,then Germany's chancellor,] to convince [German President Paul von] Hindenburg to issue a Decree for the Protection of People and State that granted Nazis sweeping power to deal with the so-called emergency."
The Reichstag fire parallels the Sept. 11 attacks here, and Hindenburg's decree parallels our USA Patriot Act.
Soon after Hitler took power, the concentration camp at Dachau was created and "the Nazis began arresting Communists, Socialists and labor leaders ... . Parliamentary democracy ended with the Reichstag passage of the Enabling Act, which allowed the government to issue laws without the Reichstag."
With Bush leading all branches of government around by the nose, there's a question whether parliamentary democracy still exists here. Certainly, concentration camps exist, if we're willing to call the lockup at Guanténamo Bay what it really is. And the USA Patriot Act allows the president to effectively take citizenship rights from any American-born criminal suspect.
"Nazi anti-Semitic legislation and propaganda against 'Non-Aryans' was a thinly disguised attack against anyone who had Jewish parents or grandparents. Jews felt increasingly isolated from the rest of German society."
How comfortable do American-born Arabs feel in the United States today?
While the German concentration camps were being built and Jews were being persecuted, in 1936 Nazi Germany hosted the Olympic Games and put its best face forward to the world. We have the Super Bowl.
In the mid- to late 1930s, Germany was able to annex nearby territories without firing a shot. That was because of the threat of the German military, the strongest in the world at the time. That might be compared with the sudden flexibility of Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Libya, all of whom are aware that Bush will do more than just threaten; he'll do it.
When one is comparing then and now, I think the most interesting factor is that most German Jews remained in Germany until it was too late. They just couldn't believe Hitler was as dangerous as some people said he was. The more prescient Jews (most often those who could afford to do so) got out, however.
Hitler came to power in 1933, but the killing of Jews (and others) didn't begin until five years later, in 1938, with the historic Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") on Nov. 9. On that day, "nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire and 76 were destroyed. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were looted, about 100 Jews were killed, and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps to be tormented ... ."
We haven't seen anything like that here, nor does it appear to be one the horizon, yet one must wonder about the hundreds shut away in Guanténamo Bay and in other lockups in the United States and throughout the world.
I haven't space here to list all of the apparent comparisons between then and now, but you can see them for yourself by reading the teacher's guide mentioned earlier.
My conclusion is that some comparisons between modern times and Nazi Germany are valid, and some are not. Enough are valid, in my opinion, however, for us to be wary, and as vigilant as humanly possible.
Whatever happens in this year's election, I would hope that Congress, the Supreme Court and the president himself start reeling in the power of the presidency. It has been expanding ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt, if not before, and now it is way out of proportion to what the Founding Fathers had in mind for our system of checks and balances.
Our current president has the power to turn the world into turmoil with a mere stroke of the pen. No man should have that much power, no matter who he is.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at harleysorensen@yahoo.com.
Los Angeles TIMES
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Camps for
Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0814-05.htm (free copy) http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes (pay $2.95, enter “camps for citizens” in LA Times archive search)
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by Jonathan Turley |
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Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace. Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants. The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties. The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government. Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va. This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a time of war." In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights. Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy. Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps. Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable. We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty. For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty. Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security. Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks. His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors. In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil. More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?" Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough." Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending. Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University |