Posted on 05/24/2013 5:43:41 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
Explosive book reveals former President’s praise for the Nazis as he travelled through Germany before Second World War
A new book out in Germany reveals how President Kennedy was a secret admirer of the Nazis.
The news comes embarrassingly close to a visit being paid to Berlin next month by President Obama - one week before 50th anniversary commemorations of JFK's memorable 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech pledging US solidarity with Europe during the Cold War. President Kennedy's travelogues and letters chronicling his wanderings through Germany before WWII, when Adolf Hitler was in power, have been unearthed and show him generally in favour of the movement that was to plunge the world into the greatest war in history
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The trouble is, Goldberg is a mental midget who doesn't know his history.
The Communists seized the property of and often executed industrialists, aristocrats, and landowners. The Nazis restored property that aristocrats lost under the Weimar Republic, and not only did (non-Jewish) industrialists keep their factories and money, many like Porsche and Krupp got very wealthy under Nazi patronage, as did many prominent German banking families. The same was true in Fascist Italy. That's why there was a great deal of sympathy for Nazis and Fascists among much of Britain's nobility and among many prominent industrialists in both the UK and the US.
In Latin America and Spain, the Soviets backed peasant uprisings, the Fascists and Nazis backed the old landowner patron families and the military juntas.
Fascists and National Socialists were intensely nationalistic, communists were internationalists who (at least in theory) opposed racialism and ethnocentrism.
Other than that, no, I guess there was really no difference at all!
One thing that JFK had in common with Hitler is that both managed to create mythical cults of personality. Hitler was seen as a demi-god by his followers, which wasn’t all too different from the “Camelot” myth cultivated by JFK’s sycophants in government and media.
I like to ask this question.
If you were suddenly taken back in time to 1938, and had ONE CHANCE to kill Hitler with a hand grenade, would you take it?
Problem: He is surrounded with adoring children. Would you take it knowing you might kill some of these children but save millions of lives?
It wasn't just Joseph Kennedy. In the 1920's and 30's, it was increasingly looking like the only choices for Europe were Communist or Fascist governments, and, right or wrong, many in the upper and middle classes saw Fascism as the lesser evil. Their thinking was that they may lose their political and social liberties under Fascism, but at least they would get to keep their property.
If you were suddenly taken back in time to 1938, and had ONE CHANCE to kill Hitler with a hand grenade, would you take it? Problem: He is surrounded with adoring children. Would you take it knowing you might kill some of these children but save millions of lives?
I would have to say no, and all moral implications aside, the reason would be that I doubt Hitler's death would have changed much in 1938. The Nazi party was firmly in control by that time and Hitler's replacement would have been a fellow Nazi with the same goals and ideology, he would also have the police state apparatus already set up to quickly quash any resistance. In fact, if Hitler HAD been replaced by a leader that wasn't stupid enough to start a war on two fronts, WW II might have an entirely different outcome, or at a minimum, taken much longer to win.
I've often heard it asked why Stalin's first wife didn't kill her husband first before taking her own life. The likely answer is that having someone like Beria in charge would have been even worse.
The same was true in Nazi Germany. If attempts to assassinate Hitler had been successful, you would have just had Himmler or Bormann or Goebbels running things.
So did grandpappy Prescot Bush, who did business with the tyrant Adolf Hitler.
Some context here.
The American progressive left craved traditional socialism almost from the start, and by this I mean (at the turn of the Century), the Greenback Party (aka the Independent Party, the National Independent Party, the Greenback Party, and the Greenback Labor Party), the Labor Reform Party, the Populist Party, the Democratic Party, and the Socialist Labor Party.
They were thrilled to death when the Russian Czar was overthrown, and first replaced by the squishiest and most incompetent liberals imaginable (even by modern San Francisco standards), and then by the far more determinately socialist communists under Lenin.
As a dictator, Lenin went by the book and implemented every single socialist scheme, and all at once. The result was an amazing failure of every scheme, across the board, and all at once.
Progressive education in the schools, for example, proclaimed by the American philosopher John Dewey, was an utter disaster, producing children that were almost feral. So Lenin ditched that idea and implemented strict, European (German) style schooling.
Lenin tried to collectivize farming. Result, a huge famine. So he went back to private farming.
Lenin ordered the Czarist bureaucracy (many of whom were German or of German descent) abolished, and Russia stopped functioning at all for a week or two, until he restored it in its entirety.
He even tried out the socialist idea of “free love”. Yeah, that failed after about five minutes.
Etc., etc., etc. Every socialist idea was a disaster. Not a single success. But Lenin was at least pragmatic enough to realize it and change back. And then he died.
And Stalin took over, reinstalled every socialist idea that Lenin had discarded, turned Russia into a huge disaster area, and instituted the communist terror in earnest.
Well, despite not wanting to see this happening, American socialists became rather discouraged, except for the few real nutbags, who said that Stalin was right. Communism in the US was pretty limited to just New York City, among immigrants.
But then, along came *National Socialism*. Now *here* was a form of socialism that American socialists could appreciate. They thought it fixed all the mistakes made by traditional socialism, and was the wave of the future.
And all too soon, with the Great Depression and the ascension to power of “Ol’ Frank” Roosevelt:
“What we were doing in this country were some of
the things that were being done in Russia and even
some of the things that were being done under
Hitler in Germany. But we were doing them in an
orderly way.”
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt
In any event, prior to the war, this was the opinion of much of the left in the US, that the fascists had some good ideas, that could do much to lift America out of the Depression. Plus they had such snazzy uniforms and liked to do calisthenics as a group! Such equality! It has to be good.
Even the communists, who at first hated Hitler as a competitor to Stalin, did a 180 degree turn and embraced Hitler, when the Germans and Soviets signed their non-aggression pact. They did another 180 degree turn when Hitler invaded Russia, and hated him again. But not enough to join the military and risk their own precious rear ends.
Well, with the war, Hitler and Mussolini and fascism fell out of fashion again.
This is not to say that their fascist economic policies and principles were discarded by the left. They weren’t, and several are still around today.
And the real nutbags are still around too, hoping to somehow bring back traditional socialism to add to the mix with National socialism. Zero pattern recognition.
Yeah there isn’t a whole lot of difference. The little guy still gets screwed no matter if the state seizes property and kills millions or controls it to its liking as we are seeing in this country.
The mobs still hung Mussolini despite making the trains run on time and still fled ‘paradise’ when the walls came down.
Socialists and communists just don’t understand economic markets. I will grant you the nationalistic/international movement difference, and Goldberg makes that distinction as well.
“Goldberg is a mental midget who doesn’t know his history.”
Have you seen the bibliography in his book Liberal Fascism?
I’ve rarely seen such an extensive bibliography. He didn’t make it up.
As for communists killing millions, so have the Fascist Progressive elites with their pogroms of racism, eugenics, and abortion.
Goldberg is a nonentity who got where he is thanks to his mother’s connections. That National Review sank from the level of Russell Kirk to Jonah Goldberg is quite sad.
Once again, take a look at proxy wars between Fascists and Communists such as a Spanish Civil War and various juntas in Latin America. The Fascists and Nazis backed Franco in Spain and the military juntas in Latin America against peasant uprisings and labor unions. The Soviet Union backed the peasants and the labor unions.
By any definition of left and right wing, political movements who back the ruling classes and property owners are the right, those who want to overthrow them are on the left. Therefore, industrialists and aristocrats in Europe supported fascism as a movement that would defend their interests against communism and against the labor unions.
Saying that they're ideologically the same because they both killed and oppressed people misses the point. They killed and oppressed different classes of people for different and often opposite reasons. A terrorist who blows up a building in the name of Allah and Islam may use the same methods as an atheistic anarchist, but it would be asinine to suggest that they're ideologically the same because they both use bombs and kill people.
The National SOCIALIST WORKERS Party in Germany was a left-wing group. The fact that they were competing with Marxists does not magically make them right-wing extremists.
Mussolini was a Collectivist. He ran a Socialist newspaper. He declared that Fascism was a Collectivist philosophy.
How about this classic quote: "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." -- Benito Mussolini
Does he sound like a Tea Partier to you? Do you think you can make the case that Mussolini and Hitler were somehow political opposites??
Socialists in the US liked Hitler well enough after Hitler signed the non-aggression pact with Stalin (they liked Stalin better, but American Socialists were ready to support them both as a Dynamic Duo). Well, after Hitler invaded Russia, socialists hated him. They didn't want to be on his team anymore. Therefore -- voila! -- he was a right-winger.
Look at the history of the Left -- they have failed for centuries and they continually change their name so that they can separate themselves from past failures. Socialist. Communist. Marxist. Progressive. Liberal. It goes on and on. The fact that Hitler was revealed as a back-stabbing, genocidal maniac did not make him a "non-socialist" (far from it!) but it certainly gave the Left a reason to play their classic "name game" -- Socialist? Hitler?? Oh, we don't like him anymore. So, let's call him right-wing. That way everyone will be real clear that Socialists are the good guys. Even though Stalin and Mao killed more people than Hitler. He's bad. He attacked Uncle Joe, so he's not a Leftist. No sirree!
Politics is bifurcated -- Collectivism and Individualism. Right-wingers support individual rights, property rights, and less government intrusion. The other guys don't. Where do you think Hitler fits?
He than noticed that many Italian communists were disillusioned with communism's international focus, just as patriotism for the nascent Italian nation-state was growing.
European parliamentary politics created many unlikely coalitions, but fascism and NAZIism were merely socialism/communism with a nationalistic bent.
Both deny the rights of the individual (natural rights, not the phony, made-up "rights" commies say they are trying to get for the "people.")
They all assuage the collectivist impulse to control those who do things you don't like.
The left/right wing definition goes back to the French Revolution. Those who supported the ruling classes (aristocracy and old landowning families) were the right wing, those who wanted to overthrow them were the left wing.
Communists drew their power from labor unions, peasant uprisings, etc. Fascists opposed these and represented the interests of the ruling classes - the aristocracy, the industrialists, against such uprisings. The Communists were all about class warfare by the workers against the ruling classes, the Fascists and Nazis came to power by promising to put an end to such class warfare. Krupp and Porsche weren't about to back a movement that would disenfranchise them.
Saying that Fascists weren't right wing because they don't sound like the Tea Party is an absurd attempt to retroject issues of our time and place into another. It makes the same sense as asking whether Alexander the Great was a Democrat or a Republican.
The NSDAP began as a socialist and nationalist movement when it was founded by Anton Dexler. In order to win the support of the aristocracy, the bankers, the military, and the industrialists, Hitler eliminated the economic radicals from his party during the Night of Long Knives. With people like Roehm and Strasser out of the picture, the NSDAP was "socialist" in name only. No property (other than Jewish property) was nationalized, the banks stayed in private hands, and the aristocracy held on to their land.
Similarly, the fact that Mussolini began as a communist doesn't prove much about your point either, plenty of the most militant anti-communists started out as leftists in their youth.
Your argument basically boils down to the idea that fascism isnt communism and therefore hitler was right wing.
A lot of leftist a make that point.
communism and socialism and fascism are all on the left, they are nearly identical.
Consider who supported whom during the Spanish civil war. Francisco Franco was backed by the clergy and the aristocracy in Spain. He was also backed by Hitler and Mussolini. The labor unions and other left-wingers who opposed Franco were backed by Stalin. So either Franco and his supporters among the nobility and clergy were "leftist," or there's something rather odd about "left wing" Fascists supporting a reactionary governments in Spain and Latin America.
However, if you want to redefine the political spectrum (not to mention the historical record) to fit with what Jonah Goldberg says, there isn't much more that I can say.
People keep repeating this mantra, with no evidence to back it up. Let's go back to how the left and right wing were originally defined. During the French Revolution, the "right wing" of the assembly supported the monarchy, the "left wing" wanted to overthrow it. From then on, left and right were defined in terms of radicalism (i.e. overthrowing those with property and power) versus reaction (defending those with property and power). Those definitions have nothing to do with the size of government or the methods used to implement those aims. The aims themselves define the ideology. The power of the state can be used to achieve either left-wing or right-wing aims.
When peasants and labor unions try to seize the property of old landowning families in Spain and in Central America, by any sensible definition they are the leftists in this conflict while their opponents are right-wingers. And guess what? The Soviet Union supported the labor unions and peasants, while the Fascists and Nazis supported the landowners and the military in Spain and in Latin American countries.
Denying that Fascism is at its core a right-wing movement is the same type of intellectual dishonesty as leftists who claim that Stalin wasn't "really" a leftist because he adopted some nationalist trappings and supported Soviet militarism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.