The German Disease
A debate in the French weekly Courrier International (December 21, 2006) held between Polish political scientist Marek Cichocki and Claus Leggewie, a widely respected German professor at the University of Giessen, points to two diverging paths into the European future. Both commentators explain how their views about the end of the Second World War have affected their visions of Europe. For Cichocki, a relatively young Pole of 40, his national identity and the memory of Soviet oppression are the shaping factors in his understanding of the history of his region. He also stresses the unbridgeable difference between Western Europeans who fret over fascist dangers and the historical consciousness of his own country. (Cichocki’s most recent book, Wladza I Pamiec [Power and Memory] (2005) deals precisely with this theme.)
While in Western Europe, particularly among obsessively guilt-ridden Germans, “European integration would be a systematic form of institutionalized security to prevent Nazi recidivism,” Eastern Europeans, who had to contend with Soviet deportations and Stalinist concentration camps, have a less dated picture of the postwar past: “Since the countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain have been joining the European Union, this vision of integration as a response to Nazism does not suffice to create a sentiment of European cohesion.” Indeed Eastern Europeans are shocked by how little attention the politically correct leaders of the present European Union have bestowed on Communist atrocities. “When in 2004 the Latvian foreign minister affirmed on German soil that Communism was as criminal as Nazism, she aroused cries of indignation throughout Germany. It is undoubtedly for the same reason that when some Euro-deputies proposed in 2005 that the hammer and sickle should be treated the same way as the Swastika, their remarks elicited widespread jeers.” Perhaps because of their sharper memories of the recent past, concludes Cichocki, Eastern Europeans, unlike their Western counterparts, have a high regard for national traditions, and they do not embrace the multicultural imperative of Western intellectuals and politicians. And “while the memory of the Eastern Europeans have been shaped by Nazi tyranny” (over two and a half million Poles were killed by the Nazis during World War Two), their history was also disastrously impacted by the more recent Communist occupation. Any vision of Europe that “excludes” this experience and focuses on the imminent return of now largely irrelevant Nazi enemy cannot make room for Eastern Europeans.
Leggewie’s views, which contrast starkly to those of his Polish co-commentator, are in Germany so common that one would have to look there to what is imagined to be the “extreme Right” to find contrary opinions. As the former German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, has stated multiple times, “Auschwitz is the founding myth of our German democracy.” And in line with this morbid obsession, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who in the international press is deceptively characterized as a “conservative,” wants to use Germany’s succession to the EU’s presidency to impose on its members the speech controls that are the proud accomplishment of her country’s managed democracy. (Pleading their nation’s shame as an aggressor people, German politicians will not allow their countrymen to vote on the EU Constitution that would surrender what remains of German national sovereignty to the Union.) In Merkel’s peculiar understanding of “democracy” as a way of life, any European “trivializing” the Holocaust will have to face criminal charges before an international tribunal. For those who celebrate our success in bringing the defeated Germans a “democratic political culture,” it may be necessary to point out the difference between citizens of a republic and PC laboratory mice.
Leggewie seems taken aback that any right-thinking person would not be hot to trot for anti-fascist multiculturalism. Although admittedly “certain regions of Eastern Europe were occupied by Soviet troops even before the Nazi invasion as a result of the Soviet-Nazi pact,” and while some might “minimize Stalinist terrorism by appealing to Communism’s objectives and humanitarian arguments,” Leggewie is profoundly disturbed by the view that Nazi and Communist genocides were equally evil. He brings up the charge that “those who wish to play on the memories of the Gulag overlook the conscious and unconscious acts of collaboration with national socialism committed by Stalin’s victims.” Moreover, the Spanish Communist Jorge Sembrun, a former inmate at Buchenwald, has wisely insisted that “European unity will only succeed on the existential and cultural level if we share and unify our memories.” One can guess which set of memories Sembrun would like to establish as the authorized ones for the EU. Furthermore, while Communist misdeeds only affected “parts of Europe,” “the use of the Holocaust as a negative founding myth for Europeans is plausible to the extent that Anti-Semitism and fascism have been phenomena that have affected all of Europe.” Once this tool is properly applied, “at the national and international levels, the Holocaust can provide an invaluable basis for European integration.”
Leggewie’s observations can only be justified by referring to the professional situation in his country: No one can obtain or hold a position at a major German university these days, and particularly in political science or history, who does not sound as outrageously stupid as he does. The depiction of Stalin’s victims as Nazi collaborators, including “unconscious” ones, goes back to the Soviet propaganda of the 1930s, when those whom Stalin decided to kill, including Jewish Trotskyists, were routinely accused of being Hitler’s collaborators. Does Leggewie believe (perhaps he does) that the Poles who fought the German invasion and were then occupied and brutalized by Stalin deserved what they got, because they had really supported Hitler? Or did the Balts deserve to lose at least a third of their population to death or deportation under Stalin because a minority of them might have collaborated with the Germans after their occupation by Hitler’s Soviet allies in 1940? Only a robotized product of postwar German reeducation, often conducted by Stalinists, could say anything quite so repulsive.
And what kind of silly assertion is it that only isolated parts of Europe were affected by Communist abuses? The same mystifying assertion, incidentally, was cited against my book The Strange Death of Marxism by a reviewer last year for the neo-Stalinist Political Science Quarterly. In my rightwing zeal, I had apparently failed to notice that, in contrast to (an all-encompassing, mind-snatching) “fascism,” Stalin’s willing executioners were only found in certain carefully demarcated areas on the European mainland. This overlooks obvious facts. West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s teemed with refugees who had fled or were driven from their homes by Communist tyrants or by mobs whom these tyrants incited; the Communists in France and Italy had gone on a rampage of murder and looting after the German Wehrmacht had been pushed out of their countries.
Finally, the Second World War, rather than ending with a “day of liberation” for Germans and everyone else but Nazi fanatics, as Leggewie announces, came in the midst of an orgy of killing and rapes, many committed by Soviet troops. The notion that Communist atrocities were somehow more restricted in their scope or effect than those committed by the Nazis or generic “fascists” is sheer moonshine. But in German public life this concoction is to be found everywhere. In 2005, German Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had insisted on being invited to a celebration of VE Day, together with Germany’s former enemies. There he belabored his listeners with counterfactual gushing expressions of gratitude for how the Allies “had won a victory for the Germans, and not against them.” Leggewie no doubt would have applauded Schröder’s masochistic performance if he had been on hand.
It is never made clear why normal people would gravitate toward Leggewie’s “negative founding myth,” which is also Merkel’s and Fischer’s. In Germany such mythologizing has worked because freedom and nationhood have been sacrificed on the altar of antinational indoctrination; nonetheless, as Cichochki strongly suggests, not everyone in Europe wants to be like lobotomized Germans. Not all European nations would celebrate being told that they were historically and emotionally predisposed toward exterminating European Jewry, or would bestow honors on Daniel Goldhagen, Dan Diner, and other “Holocaust historians” for demanding their unconditional atonement—and the dissolution of their national identity. For all the corruptness and rhetorical extravagance of their current conservative nationalist government, the Poles seem a mentally healthy people, unlike the new “sick man of Europe,” which is no longer Turkey, as it was in the nineteenth century, but Germany.
A point that Cichochki and Leggewie both make is that “because of their different experience with Communism” and their relative indifference to the cult of antifascism, Eastern Europeans have rallied to the Americans. Their observation is correct but has more to do with our role as an alternative to EU control than it does with our government’s appeal to Eastern European identities. Our policies have in fact been to encourage the formation and strengthening of the EU and the use of public education in both Eastern and East Central Europe to foster anti-fascist, internationalist attitudes. The support of these liberated Eastern Europeans may be far more than we deserve, but we should make the most of the situation by teaching our allies to respect their national distinctiveness and above all, not to hand over their country to Islamic militants. Everything being equal, countries that respect their national identity and ancestral religion will outstrip the vanishing Germans in population replacement. (Germany’s demographic replacement level, at 1.3, is one of the lowest in the world; and by 2025, if current trends continue, 65 out of every 100 children born in Germany, will have foreign, which means overwhelmingly Muslim, parents.) Although the Poles, who are now barely replacing themselves, could do better demographically, their self-respect as a nation would seem to be a positive factor in preparing them for their collective future. In any case Poles have not “enriched” themselves, to use the multiculti lingo, by importing an Islamic Third World population. The Bush administration may have it right for the wrong reasons when they describe Eastern Europe as the “New Europe.” What makes this Europe, typified by the Poles “new,” is not its dedication to “American democratic values” but the reemergence of its historic nations following the Soviet occupation. To the extent that these mostly Slavic peoples have not caught up with Western Europe, and particularly with Germany’s experimental democracy, we should consider them fortunate.
Comments
The concept that Stalin’s victims are less deserving of sympathy or historical restitution because of an empathy for the Nazism can be applied to those who fell prey to Hitler. Devotion to international communism was a characteristic of many of those attacked by the National Socialists in Germany. It was used to justify concentration camps. Fascism versus communism was Europe’s divide in the run up to the second world war. This was just the sort of foreign entanglement that Washington advised against. Unfortunately we did not have the Virginian in the White House, we had Franklin Roosevelt and hundreds of thousands of our young died uselessly. The European quarrels were none of our business then. The fairy tales they use to sort it out today are none of our business today. The same holds true for the Middle East today.
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Let’s face it. The currency of the EU is the German Mark. And the EU’s Its purpose is re-establish the Unholy Germanic Empire*,” with central control in the Germany proper. Indeed, it strikes me as the relatively successful completion of the Third Reich minus the warfare and virulent antisemitism of Hitler’s attempt.
*I say “unholy” because the papacy is not even given a nod in this iteration; I say “Germanic,” not “Roman” because it never was Roman, not even back in the Kaling Frankish or Hapsburg salad days and because it covers the Western European peoples who are all ethnically Germanic in the broadest sense anyhow.
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Paul Gottfriend is on target by not just bashing neocons (whose day is done, or almost over, as far as I can tell) but also the local German chapter of Mickey Marx Club. As an unapologetic Germanophile (and Dixiephile), I join Paul Gottfried’s condemnation of the view – popular not just in certain German circles - that nothing else happened in German, Austrian, and Middle European history other than Auschwitz. And this same Hallmarxist view reigns in Gringo Potemkin universities and press. What is more, Germanophobia isn’t just a Hallmarxist phenomenon. Indeed, I wonder if Dr. Gottfried himself is excessive in attributing this view to all Germans. Cultural Marxism must be destroyed.
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I thank Cincinatus (sic) for proving my point about the ubiquity of Germanophobia. Truth be told, the EU resembles far more a bigger, bloated, and worse version the Richelieu/Louis the Great/Buonaparte vision of France: centered in one capital (Brussels), the members reduced to departments (local franchises of the central state), an imposed common currency,trampling on local culture, natural frontiers, driving out heretics, opposing the papacy, and grossly bureaucratic. The Holy Roman Empire was NONE of these things. And its greatest friends, Dante and Marsilius of Padua. were not Germans.
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“edgarh” wrote: “...The European quarrels were none of our business then. The fairy tales they use to sort it out today are none of our business today. The same holds true for the Middle East today.”
But not all “foreign entanglemnts” are alike. What was at stake in WW II was the survival of European civilisation, which is inseparable from American civilisation - although the Cultural Marxists say it’s not. (Raising a provocative eyebrow here.) Europe was worth fighting for - well, that is, if we agree that the survival of European civilisation is a vital interest of the USA - but Viet Nam wasn’t worth a single US soldier, and neither is Iraq today.
Do you REALLY want to posit a qualitative equivalence between America’s relationship with Europe and the Middle East? Isn’t America’s relationship with European civilisation a vital American interest? And far more so than America’s relationship with the Middle East? Paradoxically, your suggestion that the affairs of Europe and the Middle East are equally “none of our business”, reasserts the neocon premise that the affairs of Israel are of equal concern - or even of greater concern - to America than the affairs of Europe. Although you’re calling for radical isolationsism in contrast to the neocons’ radical/revolutionary interventionism, you’re agreeing with the necons’ premise that America’s relations with the Middle East are of equal importance with America’s relations with Europe. (Or even of greater importance, cf Rumsfeld’s idiotic quip dismissing the importance of “Old Europe.")
Or more simply, the liberation of Holland
was worth some American sacrifice, but the “liberation” of Kurdistan is not. Not to mention the defense of Israel. Yes I AM saying, Britain and France (and Germany for that matter) are (or ought to be) more important to America than Israel. Now, is that so hard to swallow?
Hm, now where is it - ah, here. From the chapter titled “1939” in John Lukacs’
“Thread of Years”:
“I am intrigued - intrigued? - no appalled - by the isolationists; and the America Firsters’ inconsistency, meaning that they were neither isolationists nor America Firsters at all. Because the same people who in 1940-41 were bitterly against an American policy opposing German domination of the ENTIRE continent after 1945 preached the cause of an American crusade against Russia that was subjugating the eastern part of the continent.”
...and look at where THAT interventionism took us! To Viet Nam and Cambodia - a world (and a civilisation) removed from Europe, the motherland of American civilisation, in which America’s truest (and most important) vital interests reside.
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Neoconservatives are hunkering down at the National Review, for the last stand between the bushists and sane America.
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Stan:
Ominous Neocon clouds are on the horizon and I suspect a “surge” is imminent. Neocons are as determined as they are bloodthirsty. Hunkered down they may be; in retreat they’re not.
Look and listen closely, there’s much activity behind their lines. Reinforcing numbers, reforming units, testing up and down the front for weaknesses, setting ambushes and raising false flags; it’s the lull before the next storm.
Count on at least one more desperate and savage full on frontal assault before the end of 2008. They know Bush is their last chance.
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Growing up in postwar Germany among German survivors of WWII, I got a first hand eyewitness account of the history of the war and the pre-war years. “Yes, we lost a war we thought was just, were treated like the loser typically is, paid a price for that, but ultimately we are human beings just like the victors are.”
I emigrated to America in 1980 and was shocked at the constant depiction of the German as the incarnation of evil. I was cursed - especially in Hollywood - as a Nazi and murderer, my daughter refused to learn German, because “that is how the bad people talk” and German-Americans seem to be non-existent. Well,this is the selfcongratulation of the victor and I thought that even this would eventually go away. However, I see less animosity towards the Vietnames coming out of the media than against the Germans even today.
Returning after twenty years in the US to Germany with my children in 2000, I was shocked to discover that in the meantime history had become something completely different than what I had learned just 20 years before. It was as if I had stepped into a completely different timeline. The eyewitnesses were now mostly dead, and, since they could not rebut, displayed with impunity as murderous monsters. Those, like me, who had known our fathers and grandfathers as decent people were not allowed to defend them, -appropriate “anti-hate laws” had been enacted in my absence. The depiction of WWII history in the US that I had found somewhat onesided, now seemed more balanced than anything that was dished out by the media, schools, and the politicians in Germany. The elderly last eyewitnesses that I talked to, including my 96 year old mother, are now afraid to say anything for fear of being ostracized and imprisoned. Plaques and monuments to the victim/victors are being erected everywhere at an ever accellerating pace and any challenge to the official recount of history is resulting in the loss of public acceptance, office, or even worse.
I took my kids and hightailed back to the US, where I can at least challenge those that distort the facts and depict me, my father, and my kids as the resident evil in this world.
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Mr. Ball quotes John Lukacs to advance the position that isolationists morphed into Cold Warriors. Some did, some didn’t. The NATO treaty was opposed by 13 senators, most notably Bob Taft. Outside the Senate Herbert Hoover was the leader. Many people who did switch were motivated by a sense of responsibility for the tragedy of eastern Europe. It was sort of a “you break it, you buy it” guilt trip for some.
In any case, Europe and Israel, cultural affinity is not a vital interest sufficient to squander blood or treasure over.
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One of my graduated college acquaintances is a self-identified “unitarian universalist, secular humanist, democratic socialist,” and has spent his efforts since ‘05 practicing “language imperialism” (his own phrase!) in Germany, on Fulbright funds.
That was apropos of nothing. What is apropos is that no one has done more than you, Professor Gottfried, to make me believe we’d be better off if the modern “academy” no longer existed. I now find myself pining for its destruction or collapse. In light of your writings on its vulgar, hegemonic behavior, Dr. Gottfried, I’d like to see you now try to convince us that it retains, on balance, any value, moral, social, political, or otherwise.
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edgarh wrote:
“In any case, Europe and Israel, cultural affinity is not a vital interest sufficient to squander blood or treasure over.”
But “cultural affinity” is your term, not mine. WW II wasn’t about “culture” (even barbarians have culture), but about civilisation.
I repeat: to reduce America’s relationship to Europe as one of mere “culture” rather than one of a shared civilisation, is to reassert the premise of the Cultural Marxists. Culture and civilisation are not at all the same thing.
As for Herbert Hoover, please don’t get me started, because he isn’t worth wasting Taki’s bandwidth on. Hoover wasn’t a Nazi sympathiser (although he was a guest of Goering two days before the Anschluss), but I’ll quote Lukacs from memory once more, in paraphrase: “If a man like Hoover instead of Roosevelt had been President in 1940, Hitler would have won the war.”
(And at that time it was not a war against Russia, but a war to control Europe.)
At any rate, the most important thing to clarify about WW II, is that what was at stake was European civilisation, and in that sense, it was not a “foreign entanglement” for America at all - unless you buy into the Cultural Marxist nonsense about America being “multicultural.” And a struggle for the survival of civilisation is not at all the same thing as a “quarrel” between sovereign states and their national interests - unless you buy into the Nationalist nonsense (the right-wing counterpart of Cultural Marxism) of refusing even to think about the superior
moral claims of civilisation over national interest.
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John Ball’sassertion that America’s entrance into WWII was designed to “save “ Western Civilization, shows either a deep ignorance about the historical facts or an identification with the ideals of communism over those of Christian Western Europe.
When the question came to enter the war on the side of the German civilization (and by this I mean the Beethoven and Goethe civilasation) and not the depravity coming out of Weimar’s Berlin, or the culture destroying, church burning and mass murdering communism, America chose to enter the war on the side of Stalin, ultimately condemning billions of people to slavery and death under this abomination. And what did America save at home? The stuff that Hollywood churns out? The multicultural, politically correct, indoctrination and guilt imposition on the generators of this Western Civilisation?
I do find very little to celebrate in the success of America to save Western civilisation.
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Once again Paul Gottfried does a great job in showing us the madness of political correctness - this time continental style. I particularly liked this sentence: “Leggewie’s observations can only be justified by referring to the professional situation in his country: No one can obtain or hold a position at a major German university these days, and particularly in political science or history, who does not sound as outrageously stupid as he does.” —Three cheers for Paul Gottfried!
Kevin C. Calhoun
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excellent article mr gottfried.
holocaustianity is the religion of western europe, they will be self flagelating for decades to come unless they can purge that mindset from their culture. in the east they are less tolerant of that religion (holocaustianity) since they suffered as much and can still remember that suffering, also they have not been subjected to decades of the zionist press drubbing the guilt into their collective minds. it is mystifying how hitlers fight against communism is obliterated from history and the west is given the narrative that the only reason for his nazi regime was the holocaust, they conveniently leave out that germany was a real target of the communist and would have fallen to them except for the rise of national socialism. history is better left in the past...reconciliation can only occur through forgiveness.
the communist and the national socialist were perfect antagonist to each other, they fought like rabid dogs for supremacy but alas the capitalist had to intervene only to surrender eastern europe to the communist stalin.
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In 1953 my family emigrated from Germany to Australia. I completed three years in primary school and looking back many years later, I’m glad I ‘escaped’ the de-nazification brainwash so many of my contemporaries endured. I learned long ago to be careful when speaking with Germans who grew to adulthood in that country after the war. In my experience they have invariably been lobotomised. Although since Germany imprisons around 3,000 people annually for holocaust ‘denial’ there must be a few who were missed. I ask, what kind of ‘truth’ requires draconian laws to protect it?
Moscow Communists deliberately starved almost the entire Ukrainian peasant class, millions of people called Kulaks, to death in the early 1930’s for the ‘crime’ of refusing to sell their produce for prices as little 1/8th (one eighth) of the market value.
I don’t see Ukrainians agitating for laws
making it a crime to downplay their Holocaust, quite the reverse actually. I see the Ukrainian disaster going down the memory hole, because in the opinion of our Jewish friends, we are permitted to have only ONE holocaust.
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Mr. Ball, it appears, buys into the devil theory of history. Mr. Hitler is the devil ex machina who is called in to obscure all the competing interests that brought about WWII by expanding what could have been a minor dispute resolving border difficulties arising out of the settlement after the first world war. It amuses me that I am accused of being a closet Marxist when his line is straight out of the 1930s Comintern handbook on how to create a Popular Front. Skip the economic, nationalist and ideological issues, Old Man Satan is in Berlin and a bogeyman is under the bed.
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All other issues aside, just think of all the intellectual oxygen sucked up my maintaining Hiler as the Central Figure in Human history.
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To Mr. Werner Hoermann and everyone interested in freedom and common sense, be alerted to the “hate crimes” legislation Ted Kennedy and his friends are trying to push through the Senate possibly as early as this tuesday. Please call your senators and tell them that you do NOT want this nonsense and that you are aware that they are trying to slip it through with some other bill.
http://www.truthtellers.org seems to be the best place to find informatiion about this frightening possiblity.
There will be no more free speech in the United States if they slip this though. They have tried several times over the past few years but have been blocked mostly by Christians who object to the New Testment being labeled as “anti-semitic” and who object to having homosexuality forced on the American people as normal and healthy.
The ADL or Anti Defamation League
which is really a defamation league constatnly defaming people with tthe label of “anti-semitic” is also intent on bringing in laws to stop the discussion, any discussion, about the “holocaust”.
Did you know that Solzenitsyn has just published a book called “Two Hundred Years Together” in whihc he discusses the cruelty of the Bolshevick Revolution and how they murdered, and not just by starvation, 66 million people.
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Werner Hoermann wrote:
“John Ball’s assertion that America’s entrance into WWII was designed to “save “ Western Civilization, shows either a deep ignorance about the historical facts or an identification with the ideals of communism over those of Christian Western Europe.
When the question came to enter the war on the side of the German civilization (and by this I mean the Beethoven and Goethe civilasation) and not the depravity coming out of Weimar’s Berlin, or the culture destroying, church burning and mass murdering communism, America chose to enter the war on the side of Stalin”
...well here is my response to that:
1. John Ball has spent the past nine years living in post-Communist Russia and in Communist China, risking his life and liberty while openly condemning Communism while he lived in Communist China, and so, John Ball knows more than a few things about Communism, and he is no Communist sympathiser. He has risked life and limb working and teaching in a Communist Country, openly telling his students and his Communist Party hosts, that “Communism is bullshit.”
2. To be an enemy of Hitler, is NOT the same thing as being a Communist sympathiser. Churchill was the most determined and most deadly enemy Hitler ever had, and Churchill sure as shit was no Communist.
3. Hitler was an enemy of what Mr Hoermann calls “Western Christian Europe.” Mr Hoermann ought to be ASHAMED of equating Hitler’s PAGAN state with “Western Christian Europe.”
4. The fact that Stalin was an ally of America and Britain, does not mean that America was “on the side of Stalin.” It means that Stalin posed less of a threat to the survival of European civilisation than Hitler - because European civilisation could survive Russia and Eastern Europe being controlled by Communists, but our civilisation could not have survived all of Western Europe being conquered by Hitler’s very European kind of Pagan barbarianism.
And now, parenthetically, I must say, sometimes it horrifies me to see some of our commenters on this forum parroting dead old apologetics for Hitler - usually in more subtle ways than Mr Hoermann does, usually by implying very carefully that it would have been better for America and for Europe if we had “come to terms” with Hitler and let him carry on his Pagan Crusade (a Pagan Crusade under the veneer of Christian symbols) against “Communism”. But then Hitler would have become the master of Europe. Good Good - all you real conservatives out there - can you HONESTLY say that that would REALLY be acceptable to you? All of Europe conquered by Hitler, the ultimate Revolutionary? The ultimate Pagan revolutionary?
And on that note, parenthetically, it always saddens me whenever I see SOME our commenters seizing every opportunity to turn good discussions into
a bashing of Jews. Yes, there has been a lot of Jewish influence among the neocons. And yes, Jews have disproportionate power in America’s media. And yes, the interests of Israel are only marginal to the interests of the USA (and of Europe.) But as Churchill said, “antisemitism is a good starter, but a bad finisher.” Even though there might be some good reasons to criticise what many Jews do, it’s a slippery slope from rational criticism of Jews, to Auschwitz. So, please, refrain from criticising “the Jews” unless there is a specific reason to do so in context of a specific issue. Or better yet, just don’t bash Jews at all. But bash Israel all you want, because Israel deserves more bashing - but the Jews don’t - and there really is a difference.
And then, “edgarh” wrote:
“Mr. Ball, it appears, buys into the devil theory of history. Mr. Hitler is the devil ex machina who is called in to obscure all the competing interests that brought about WWII by expanding what could have been a minor dispute resolving border difficulties arising out of the settlement after the first world war...”
No I don’t believe Hitler was the Devil. As a Catholic, I believe Satan is a real spirit who has supernatural powers above the powers of Humans. Hitler was all too Human. However, Hitler and what he
personified were radically evil, and he and the powers he represented posed a mortal threat to Western civilisation and to Christendom.
And as for what edgarh implies, about Hitler’s aspirations and deeds being merely a matter of “a minor dispute resolving border difficulties” - I say to you, edgarh, just like I said to Mr Hoermann: You should be ashamed.
That is just so, so, SO BLOODY dishonest! To equate Hitler’s bloody FANATICAL, PAGAN, REVOLUTIONARY purposes with a mere “minor dispute resolving border difficulties.”
Shame, shame and shame on you again, for just f---ing CHOOSING to LIE about this!
“Minor disputes” regarding “border difficulties” have never led to anything like Auschwitz (where, let me remind you, millions of Christians perished alongside the Jews - Auschwitz, and Hitlerism, were mortal enemies not only of Jews, but enemies of our civilisation, and enemies of Christianity.)
And finally, at the risk of supporting my argument with an ad hominem - well, as we’re all Taki’s guests here, an ad hominem IS appropriate - so let me just remind everyone here, that our host Taki’s father risked his life resisting the Nazis. This blog and this forum are hosted by a mortal enemy of Naziism and all similar threats to Western civilisation.
I have never met Taki personally, but I’m 100 percent certain that he would agree with me when I say:
Germany: Cool.
Wehrmacht: Cool.
Nazis: Not cool, must be destroyed - for the sake of Germany and Western Civilisation.
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Didn’t Taki once write that he would have fought with
Charlemagne Division of the Waffen SS? Assuming he did
say that, what did he mean? Maybe he simply meant that
would have committed youthful indiscretions for frivilous reasons.
Just I have no confidence in the current leadership of what
once was the West, I have no confidence in the leadership
of the Western Allies in WW2, who publicly rejoiced at
the execution of the 20 July plotters.
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Go anywhere in Europe and you will soon discover that so-called fascism is a completely marginal phenomenon. Skinheads et al. are only laughed at. Those fools couldn’t take over a village let alone a continent. So why this hysteria about “antifascism”? Because it is a method of controllin population. Speech laws are so loosely defined that anyone could be a criminal - and that is just the point. I’m from a small East European nation that suffered enourmously under communism. It is strange to notice that the more distant WWII gets, the more hysterical the wolrd seems to be getting about it. I have been called an antisemite just for saying that the holocaust was not THE defining moment in history, but one of many moments (how about Mao’s Great Leap and 20 million dead?).
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None of the sides in WWII were defending Christianity or Western Civilization, unless the latter is defined (as some would now define it) as what arose out of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. And in that case, it was a struggle among the various currents which arose from that evil event - liberalism, nationalism, and socialism of both the national and international variety. Whoever won, Christianity and Christian civilization lost.
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Mr Higdon wrote:
“None of the sides in WWII were defending Christianity or Western Civilization...”
Bullshit. Churchill in 1940:
“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=418
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“Bullshit. Churchill in 1940:” - Indeed it was bullshit, Mr. Ball. You must be terminally naive to take seriously the speeches of politicians, especially in wartime. Churchill was a ruthless killer as were his allies Stalin and FDR and his enemy Hitler.
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Well said, Kirk Higdon. It was Churchill’s implacable
hate for everything Grerman that killed (with butcher
Harris’ guidance) the flower of the British youth,
millions of innocent civilians and finally
condemmened Eastern Europe to decades of slavery.If
Hitler and Stalin had been left to slug
it out alone, victory would have cost a terrible price..
And even if Hitler won, he wouldn’t have lasted long.
He was a sick man already, ravaged by excessive
use of amphetamines, and with his demise the whole
Nazi spook would have collapsed within weeks.
Man the Hun
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To the commenter named “Man the Hun”:
Your fake and cowardly anonymous internet moniker says it all, you bloody coward.
I disagree with Mr Higdon, but I respect him as he has the courage to use his own name in this discussion. But I have NO respect for you, “Man the Hun”, you despicable bloody coward.
All that said: Mr Higdon, I disagree with you about a lot of things, but if and when we ever meet in person, the first beer will be on me, with a hearty handshake. :-)
But Mr “Man the Hun” is just a cowardly little dick.
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People used to laugh when American leftists described the shenanigans of the ‘60s as a revolution but in fact it was a genuine revolution, one of history’s most profound. It completely swept away the nation started in 1776, and what the Revolutionary War was to the earlier nation WW2 is to the new nation and civilization. New America rolls on the rotting mackerel of Auschwitz second only to Germany (and throws in a few other Negative Founding Myths of its own), indeed it is the chief spreader of self-loathing in the West, the Typhoid Mary of suicidal self-hatred. A little anti-racism may be good for you, but when it becomes an all-consuming addiction it is deadly, and America is just as addicted as Germany.
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Who really won WWII? Certainly not Germany or Japan. England lost its empire and is to this day trying to figure out its role in the world. Russia lost 20 million if we are to believe Uncle Joe. The US lost it’s soul for making common cause with the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century.
Now everytime it invades another country int invokes the gohst of Hitler to justify its agression.
If given a choice of whether to live under Communism or Nazism I would choose the later having lived under both regimes. At least the nazis didn’t burn down the Churches.
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Thank you Mr. Gottfried for not only sticking up for us Germans in your own way but telling the truth that forever needed to been said. As a German who nearly lost all of my family at the hands of Zionist America, Soviet, Imperialist British forces during WW2 and after Germany Surrendered in 1945 I have to say it’s long overdue. I know a lot about history and my family’s past as that is all I have studied my life. You hit it right on at how evil this all is and as a German who’s family was raped, slaughtered, and killed by American and Russian forces only to come to America with family ancestral book and my great-great- grandmothers German porcelin dolls and find that the tyranny was America in Trumans concentration camps. Stripped of every pride and heritage and forced to change Riemann to Rieman so Americans would not know are roots. Finally after getting citizenship to America we settled. Last Grandfather George Ruelle Rieman died after on police duty in a car crash shortly after dad Gregory was born in 60’s. WW2 is my excellence as WW1 and history in General. what was left of my family returned the day and night they tore down the Berlin wall in 1989. It’s a sad day to see Germany who I hope to soon move back to even if it means me living in the gutter again to see Her and and Europe being ruled by these Devil worshiping zionist who with the there most heretic lie of freedom and democracy only replaced with greater evil those regimes they claim were evil and tyrant. Capitalism is the new Facism, Communism, Imperialism.
True evil comes not in the form on National Socialism or Stalinism but those people today with evil hearts, evil souls, with evil intentions, who claim the work of God, Freedom, and Democracy, and to murder and oppress and destroy the European race from Earth as stated such in the Torah and Talmud as they so are carrying out. The EU needs not just be abolished and labeled as a rogue regime and outlawed but those such as Schroeder, Sarkozy, and Merkl should be sent to to grave with there Zionist families as the literally have blood on there hands that needs to be repay. Germany today as I keep up with almost everything going on is worse off then every other EU besides Netherlands and Britain. WW2 saw evil not from Hitler but the allies. 39 million Russians killed during the war while Stalin according to the History Channel which seems accurate to me on Stalin: Man of Steel that est 40 million were liquadated after the war. 20 million Ukranians. millions more Eastern Europeans and Germany before the war with est 80 million people and after including Soviet and Eisenhower rape, torture, degradation and slaughter of 20 million German civilians left no more then 30 million Germans left. Not to mention the unknown millions from the other Countries and those in the Communist republic of Yugoslavia now broken up. 40,000 Jews were in German Wehrmacht but I guess to Jews and there Zionist they do not matter cause they choose German identity and blood over there vile self. What is astonishing is that according to Axis History Factbook est 4 million Jews were killed in the Soviet Union and only 450,000 actually died in Germany. Every nation in Europe including America took part and history needs to set the records straight or else I will. The war took all my family who were Luthern in Religion while what happened to them is with them in there grave I’ll will not let it go.
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The myth of Churchill as the great statesman who saved Western civilization is secure. We would all be better off, no doubt, to recognize the man for what he was, a war criminal.
It is obvious to even the most casual observer that when they are off to war every Western politician in the English speaking world without exception claims to be Churchillian. The lot of them seem trapped in a time warp of 1938. The Churchillian virus was first caught by Thatcher and has now infected Bush and his poodle Blair. The advisary is of course always the same, a new Hitler. First it was Slobodan, then came Saddam, and now we have Amadinijad. Who was this Churchill that has earned such adulation in the West and why are contemporary politicians striving to become his clone?
Here is what he had to say about Germany during one of his few sober moments. “I don’t care if Germany is ruled by a Hitler or a Jesuit priest she must be destroyed.” This statesman initiated the RAF policy of carpet bombing civilian targets for the sake of terror which culminated in the destruction of Dresden. A holocaust in the true sense of the word. One can even find Churchill’s mark on the original Morgenthau Plan signed in Quebec City in 1943. A crackpot plan of genocide and crime against humanity, if ever there was one, dreamed up by Harry Dexter White, a Soviet agent, initialed by non other than the greatest hero of the 20th century. His appologists will most likely claim FDR and the Jews made him do it. There is of course a grain of truth to that.
So there we have it. This icon of the West wasn’t interested in regime change in Germany, saving the Jews, Western Europe, let alone Western civilization. No his primary interest was the destruction of a cultured nation in the heart of Europe. Bear in mind that it was England and France that declared war on Germany in 1939 over the Danzig affair not the other way around.
And what was the cost? England lost its thousand year empire. Europe its independence when the GIs and the Red hordes fell into each other’s arms at the Elbe not to mention Eastern Europe’s ensalvement for the next 40 years. That is Churchill’s legacy.
Of course Churchill the war criminal and his willing executioners were conspicuously absent in the defendants’ dock of the IMT in 1945-46. The greatest of all statesman was busy writing memoirs polishing up his image. There is nothing like gold plating horse turds and then selling it as jewelry to the unsuspecting customers.
In the meantime the customers, that is, Western intellectuals still claim the Allies saved Western civilization from German barbarism.
And what is this Western civilization that we hold so dear?
Is it rock music, drugs, sex and violence of the mass media culture, not to forget same sex marriage and other forms of perverted sexual proclivities?
Come to think of it life under Uncle Adolf was a good deal healthier. First thing he did was clean out the sex shops in Berlin.
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Gottfried should comes to terms he is a Jew and not a German. All he does is apologize for Germany while at the same time doping everything he can to downplay his Jewish background. Yes, while Communism was a pathetic ideology of no value whatsoever, countries Hungary, Romania, and East Germany deserved to have Communism imposed on them for their collaboration with the Nazis in committing mass murder. Hell, all of Germany deserved a ruthless punishment for their despicable behavior from 1933-45. In fact most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust have never been prosecuted. The Nuremberg Trials only put the “big boys” on trial. This itself was the crime of the century. So Gottfried remember, you are a Jew like me, get used to it.
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In case you missed it but Romania was invaded by the Soviet Union prior to it joining in the war with Germany against Russia. Bassarabia a Romanian province was attacked by the Red Army. So are we to punish Romanians for defending their country?
Get your history straight.
Incidentally as a former member of SS Das Reich I’m proud of my service to my country. The war has been over for better than 60 years and you people still are hounding geriatric members of that elite organization.
Unlike the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza we did not shoot nine year olds on their way to school.
Get a life.
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what few seem to understand is that life is not a mass debate. The sum of objective goals wins, every time. You have to want some positive thing, not just be “against”. Otherwise the other side controls the
The difference between communism and fascism is the difference between progressive and reactionary. The reactionary is defined in terms of the “other"- the reactionary is an “anti”. Whereas communism has goals, and achieves them, whether that’s good or bad.
The bigger picture will always trump the mean and petty. The reactionary is always several steps behind.
Everyone collectively gets what they deserve- it’s God’s 1st law of physics.
If it happened, you deserve it. We need His Mercy.
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0w6je949u1 http://www.1001956.com/300389.html wduqbcsgidn917
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