Franklin
Roosevelt, the wartime president who helped Europe defeat the Nazi dictator,
Adolph Hitler, and who later ended up making concessions at Yalta to a tyrannical
Communist dictator, Joseph Stalin, is famous for having said years before in
his 1933 inaugural address, "The only thing we have to fear is fear
itself." It would have been useful
to add later on, before the anti-Semite, Henry Ford, and his main U.S.
competitor, GM, got involved in supplying Hitler for war, "The main thing
we have to fear is ignorance, and the fear and the racism that often accompany
it." If only someone had known to
stop the coming bloodbath! Hitler, who
began his career as a race baiting, xenophobic rabble-rouser in 1917 and who
advertised his intentions in the 1925 confession entitled
Mein Kampf, knew very well that fear is what drives the sheep, and
in the case of all like himself, fear fuelled by prejudice and contempt. In 1932, six million Germans were unemployed
and disgruntled. Hitler would lie and tell
German workers and farmers that their economic woes were the direct fault of
the Jewish people who, he said, were sub-human, Communists and world bankers to
boot. Ignorant and/or malicious citizens,
lacking in both knowledge and means, were willing to buy Hitler's trash. Yet in the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party
never got more than 36% of the vote. When
a group of ultra-conservative, non-democratic businessmen and advisers persuaded
old General Von Hindenburg, President of Germany, to make Adolph Hitler
Chancellor in January of 1933 so that they could form a coalition government,
assuring Hindenburg that they could control Hitler, the fate of Germany was
sealed, and with it, that of European Jewry and all opponents of Nazism. In February, within days of an upcoming election
called by Hitler to consolidate his power, Germany's Parliament burned. A young Dutch Communist was blamed. Hitler used the event as an excuse to be
granted "emergency powers." Suddenly,
all civil liberties in Germany were suspended.
It seems clear now that the fire was a black flag operation. Within months, freedom of the press was
abolished, all political parties were disbanded, and anti-Jewish laws were
passed. For the longest time, everyone
had assumed that Hitler's fierce language was "only for show". Had he said early on that it was time for the
Master Race to incorporate "shithole countries," starting with Poland,
anyone who enjoyed his audaciousness probably would have laughed. Hitler started out as the clownish champion of
an uninformed public's sense of helplessness on the heels of World War I and,
later, the Great Depression of 1929. But
then he turned into their iron-fisted dictator.
Under Hitler, public education was taken over. Respect for parents was undermined. Anti-Jewish propaganda began filling the
streets and the airwaves non-stop. "Heil
Hitler!" became a forced mantra.
Life for the German people, and soon, too, for the Austrian people, changed
overnight. The Brown Shirts and the secret
police made sure of it. What happened to
European Jewry and all the other untold murdered millions during Hitler's reign
of terror was the worst atrocity of the 20th century, followed closely by
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in my own opinion.
It astounds me that there was no global protest when Hitler began
passing anti-Jewish laws, although the writing had been on the wall. Today it should bother everyone to know that
a Republican senator from South Carolina said openly back in 2015, a year
before the last US presidential election, of the unlikely candidate who would soon
be elected, "He's a race baiting, xenophobic religious bigot." The victor's first wife had already confessed
to a TV interviewer, years before that election, that her ex kept a copy of
Hitler's speeches on his nightstand. Will we say again that the writing was on the
wall? Let's pray that after the
unforgettable lessons of 1930's Germany, there are finally more humans than
sheep in the world. UN’AMERICANA
A VENEZIA
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