by Captain Eric H. May / 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 Nazis 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. He can be reached at: captainmay@prodigy.net. Read other articles by Captain Eric, or visit Captain Eric's website.
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