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A Life Lived Well
August 17, 2010 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 11:45am | 30 Comments
I am in awe of and humbled by the life this man lived.
Then you really need to read
Then you really need to read his reminisces delivered at NYU in 1998. It opens with this fabulous anecdote:
"I first heard the remarkable phrase that serves as my title in 1946 when, fresh out of the US Army, I went up to New Haven, Connecticut for an interview with the chairman of the Yale Classics Department...To jazz my application up a bit, I had included my record in the US Army, private to captain 1942-45. The Professor, who had himself served in the US Army in 1917-18, was very interested, and remarked on the fact that, in addition to the usual battle-stars for service in the European Theatre, I had been awarded a Croix de Guerre a l'Ordre de l'Armée, the highest category for that decoration. Asked how I got it, I explained that, in July 1944, I had parachuted, in uniform, behind the Allied lines in Brittany to arm and organize French Resistance forces and hold them ready for action at the moment most useful for the Allied advance. "Why were you selected for that operation?" he asked, and I told him that I was one of the few people in the US Army who could speak fluent, idiomatic, and (if necessary) pungently coarse French. When he asked me where I had learned it, I told him that I had fought in 1936 on the northwest sector of the Madrid front in the French Battalion of the XIth International Brigade. "Oh," he said, "You were a premature anti-Fascist."
I was taken aback by the expression. How, I wondered, could anyone be a premature anti- Fascist? Could there be anything such as a premature antidote to a poison? A premature antiseptic? A premature antitoxin? A premature anti-racist? If you were not premature, what sort of anti-Fascist were you supposed to be? A punctual anti-Fascist? A timely one? .....You couldn't call Chamberlain, Daladier and Laval 'timely anti-Fascists'. They declared war on Hitler in 1939 as he invaded Poland, a declaration that gave no help to the Poles, who were crushed between the armies of Hitler from one side and Stalin from the other. So what kind of anti-Fascists were they? My French maquisards had a phrase for the Frenchmen who, in 1944, as the Allied armies broke out of the Normandy pocket and raced across France in pursuit of the retreating Wehrmacht, finally tried to join the Resistance. Resistants de la dernière heure was their contemptuous name for them - 'last- minute anti-Fascists'. It is a perfect description of Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax."
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/knox.htm
“There is a sort of
“There is a sort of general feeling among radicals that the whole of the Western tradition — and the Greeks are the heart of that tradition — is something that has to be repudiated,” he told The Washington Post in 1992. “I feel appalled. God knows what the world would be like if we were all brought up on the stuff they’d like us to read.”
Well, if God and Professor Knox didn't know in 1992, they've certainly both discovered since! (If they didn't know in 1992, which I suspect they did, they were exceptionally dense.) It was also once said that God had a special affection for fools, drunks, and the United States Government. Certainly His patience with the fools and drunks seems undiminished.
Because really, persuading the blue-pill-eaters not to read the Greeks doesn't matter that much. A lot of people read the Greeks. Certainly, if read correctly, Plato is a pretty serious red pill. But it's easy to misread Plato. No - the real problem is persauding one's subjects not to read the Victorians. The Greeks may be the heart of the Western tradition - the High Victorians are its brain. Letting them loose on the university of 2010 is like unleashing the hordes of Tamerlane on Columbia, Maryland.
"Premature anti-fascist."
"Premature anti-fascist." Ie, Professor Knox was a Stalinist. Well, that's no surprise. Pretty much everyone who mattered in America was a Stalinist back then - especially in OSS. At least he later repented. (For a real trip, buy, borrow or steal Francis X. Gannon's exhaustive four-volume Biographical Dictionary of the Left (1974) - Dr. Gannon, a student of Charles Callan Tansill, was research director of the John Birch Society.)
(I think the entire phrase "premature anti-fascist" is a CPUSA urban legend. I have never encountered any credible instance of anyone actually using this term seriously. I can't imagine anyone who would. Moreover, the entire urban legend of an alliance between right-wing US and European pre-war politicians is a total canard. If you had two drinks with Goering, you were a Nazi. Meanwhile, major figures in the American establishment Left were basically working as employees of the USSR, in its most murderous phase - like Evans Clark (married to Freda Kirchwey of the Nation), who was an actual Amtorg employee in 1919 and later wound up running the Century Fund. Stones and glass houses, you know...)
Too bad there is (probably)
Too bad there is (probably) no more room in today's hyper politicized environment for our country to use the talents of a Bernard Knox or Evans Carlson.
People like Josh Foust are a
People like Josh Foust are a dime a dozen though. All think and no play.
"In his later years, he
"In his later years, he found himself defending classical learning against the champions of multiculturalism."
“There is a sort of general feeling among radicals that the whole of the Western tradition — and the Greeks are the heart of that tradition — is something that has to be repudiated,” he told The Washington Post in 1992. “I feel appalled. God knows what the world would be like if we were all brought up on the stuff they’d like us to read.”
Hear! Hear!
This quote is worth looking
This quote is worth looking at:
"There is a sort of general feeling among radicals that the whole of the Western tradition — and the Greeks are the heart of that tradition — is something that has to be repudiated,” he told The Washington Post in 1992. “I feel appalled. God knows what the world would be like if we were all brought up on the stuff they’d like us to read.”
He's got a good point. The "multicultural left" did raise many issues that interested serious scholars enough to take a look, and that lead to some revelations about earlier acts of historical censorship - but only a fascist or a communist, a Khmer Rouge mentality, would insist on removing classical literature from the standard educational program. That's not the same as broadening the list of accepted "classics" by including things like 14th century Islamic texts on economic theory, or Il Milione. - yes, the fascists still sneer, but then, they are either stupid or Machiavellian, or influenced by the propaganda drumbeat. Many fascist states and their academic eugenic-minded allies had selectively distorted history by deleting all references that didn't fit their narrow views. This effort to rewrite history and erase culture was a central part of Nazi schemes - but mono-cultural narratives don't jibe with reality.
For example, a Greek trader in 20 BC would be as interested in intellectual and technological innovation as any modern venture capitalist would be. Egyptian imports, we know now, played a central role in Greek technology - the eastern Mediterranean was the world's technology innovation hub, and of course trade played a major role. Asking whether Greek or Egyptian influences were more important is like asking if Britain or France contributed more to the Industrial Revolution - probably, the trade between the countries was the real factor that spurred innovation, the growth of new markets, etc.
When the fascist Roman Empire seized control for good, they destroyed the whole thing - democracy and innovation alike. The Roman Empire was, at the end, a fascist organization. Consider Emperor Diocletian - some classicists praise him for unifying the Roman Empire, but Diocletian's creation looks rather like what Hitler hoped to achieve in Europe - a giant civilian-military bureaucracy organized along dictatorial lines, with Diocletian holding all the threads - the FuhrerPrinzip model. Perhaps his supreme act of idiocy was the destruction of all alchemical texts and knowledge, fearing that the chemists had really figured out how to make gold from base metals - setting technology back centuries. Typical fascist thinking in action:
The Roman emperor Diocletian (245-313) issued an edict in the late 3rd century calling for the destruction of all written works dealing with alchemy. Diocletian feared that artificially created gold would debase the value of the Roman currency and allow alchemists to amass huge fortunes with which they could bribe officials and gain power.
His military actions - well, he would have understood Hitler's tactics in Poland. So would Virgil.
That's a point worth emphasizing: despite 2000 years of technological innovation, Virgil would still have been un-surprised by Hitler's actions in Poland - or by the Spanish Inquisition, for that matter. Fascism is not new - it certainly pre-dates the dawn of recorded history, or of the written word - but if you didn't read the classics, you wouldn't know that. Bernard Knox saw that, right?
However, 20th century fascists out to construct eugenic tales of racial superiority ( as a justification for ethnic cleansing,wholesale theft, and aggressive warfare) were not going to allow any mention of non-Aryan contributions or historical blunders, classic or modern. As a result, there are some highly educated professionals who don't know that Galileo's discoveries relied in part on Jewish and Islamic technological and mathematical innovation:
The history of the astrolabe begins more than two thousand years ago. The principles of the astrolabe projection were known before 150 B.C., and true astrolabes were made before A.D. 400. The astrolabe was highly developed in the Islamic world by 800 and was introduced to Europe from Islamic Spain (Andalusia) in the early 12th century.
This is not a story for the Nazi-approved history books. Without the Wandering Jews and the North Africans & Arabs to at least preserve the ancient Greek and Egyptian technology (and literature), much more would have been lost - and their contributions, as in Al-Gebra, or Al-Jabru, "The Restoration" method of mathematics (the two sides of the equation are out of balance; restore the balance to solve the equation) - are also undeniable.
P.S. The Wahhabi radicals, don't forget, hate the idea of Islamic & Jewish contributions to Renaissance Europe as much as the Aryan fascists do - because that implies a Renaissance/Jewish influence on Islam, which is undeniable - trade routes are bi-directional. The radical Wahhabi fascists wish to scrub all Western influence from their "purified" version of Islam - as ridiculous a notion as the claim that European culture wasn't heavily influenced by what came back with Marco Polo & friends.
P.P.S. Ezra Pound,noted anti-Semite and Mussolini supporter, was the antithesis of Bernard Knox, by the way, but he reveals how anything can be distorted to serve political purposes - including classical literature and history. Such distortion is at the heart of fascist thinking.
In reply to Mencius -- who
In reply to Mencius -- who recommended the 4-volume Birch Society series, Biographical Dictionary of the Left:
Compare Francis Gannon's statements and conclusions in that 4-volumes to conclusions in FBI investigative files about many of the people discussed in those 4-volumes and you will discover that the Birch Society artfully selects "evidence" in order to manipulate readers toward the conclusion it wants them to accept.
FBI FILES ON BIRCH SOCIETY:
This report explains why J. Edgar Hoover and senior FBI officials within the Bureau’s Domestic Intelligence Division concluded in FBI memos that the JBS was “extremist”, “irrational” and “irresponsible”
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/jbs-1
CONSERVATIVE CRITICS OF ROBERT WELCH and BIRCH SOCIETY:
Contrary to claims made by the Birch Society about the alleged "left-wing" origins of JBS criticism, the most potent adverse comments about the JBS have always originated from the right-side of the political spectrum. This report presents a representative sample of such comments.
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/jbs-4
PERSONS DESCRIBED BY BIRCH SOCIETY AS “EXPERTS” ON COMMUNISM:
Two former FBI Special Agents who endorsed the Birch Society after they retired from the FBI are often cited by Birch Society members and supporters as knowledgeable, reliable, and authoritative sources of information on the communist movement.
However, their FBI personnel files reveal that senior FBI officials did not have a very high regard for their post-FBI endeavors.
In the case of Dan Smoot, just prior to his retirement from the FBI he was censured, placed on probation, and transferred to a small, insignificant field office as a disciplinary measure.
Both reports include detailed critiques of statements and assertions made by these former FBI Special Agents.
DAN SMOOT:
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/smoot
W. CLEON SKOUSEN
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/skousen
Prior to the public
Prior to the public revelations about Nazi Germany, some aspects of fascism and eugenics-based policy were fairly popular at Yale, supported by leading donors as well as other academic institutions.
Eugenics, let it be said, was a failed genetic theory of human breeding based on a misunderstanding of how genetic material was inherited. The publicly stated goal of the eugenics movement was to weed out such "genetic disease" in the population via forced sterilization (initially) and death camps (finally); the secret goal was to justify the old European and British system of aristocratic privilege using science in place of religion - which is why High Victorians supported Social Darwinism.
It would be a rare aristocrat, tho, who would submit his own daughters for forcible sterilization on eugenic grounds - not that such true believers might not have existed - top Nazis who, on discovery of a Jewish ancestor, hopped on the train to Auschwitz, aka the labor supply for the big Farben methanol & synthetic rubber plant in Upper Silesia?
Auschwitz supplied the labor for an additional 29 or so other armament-related factories in the region, which was rich in coal, lime and fresh water. These Upper Silesia factories have unpleasant associations with American firms around the same time, who were associated with Yale eugenics societies as well as IG Farben and other pro-Nazi German industrialists. The connections here were both ideological and financial:
Prescott Bush was the Connecticut director of the Mental Hygiene Society which originated at Yale University in 1908. The headquarters of the American Eugenics Society was also at Yale.
Despite the atrocities of the Third Reich, many American academics who owed their prestige to "eugenics research" argued that the concept was still sound, the Nazis had just got it wrong - plus, they were corrupt, and worshiped some Indian elephant god. That only began in 1942 or so, however - so being against fascism in the 1930s was "premature."
This attitude dovetailed with the light sentences given to executives from Farben, Flick and Krupp at the Nuremberg trials. Of course, if they had been charged with rearming Germany, or with knowingly using slave labor, then Standard Oil executives would be in the dock as well - specifically for shipping tetraethyl lead airplane fuel additives to Germany in preparation for the invasion of Poland. Open that closet, and much more spills out.
That's the side of fascism that the United States has never really come to terms with - the fact that in the 1930s, fascism was as much a threat to American democracy as it was to German democracy, and fascist interests undermined the U.S. war effort for years. The most curious revelation from the Nuremberg trials is that of Albert Speer, who claimed (accurately, as far as Yergin says) that the war would have been over in a few months if the Allies had concentrated on smashing German synthetic fuel production, along with enforcing a blockade on fuel imports. It took until 1943 for bombers to start targeting the fuel production system in Germany - and JJ McCloy was in charge of bombing schedules, and he'd been Farben's lawyer in the decade before. He vetoed plans to bomb Auschwitz repeatedly in 1941-1942 - all while Standard Oil continued to sell fuel to Nazi-linked governments - fuel for their Atlantic U-Boat fleet.
That's why the Congress had to pass the Trading With The Enemy Act in 1942.
The fact that fascism didn't take root here can perhaps be traced back to some difference in German and American character at the time, as evidenced by USMC General Smedley Butler, who exposed a fascist plot constructed along the same lines as Hitler's seizure of the German government (c.1934).
No one ever called Smedley Butler a "premature anti-fascist", though, at least not to his face.
Mencius, people who fought
Mencius, people who fought on the republican side of the Spanish Revolution weren’t necessarily Stalinists—this isn’t 1952, man!
Maybe they were Trotskyists,
Maybe they were Trotskyists, but they ended up being dupes for Stalin.
Mencius, Harvard has no
Mencius, Harvard has no problem assigning students to read Carlyle & Fitzhugh on race. Either they figure antibodies render their flock invulnerable, or figure nobody does the reading these days anyway.
www.fas.harvard.edu/~histlit/handbook/html/E.pdf
Ha. No one in 2010 could
Ha. No one in 2010 could possibly read the products of the Western Islands (JBS imprint), Devin-Adair, Caxton, or old Regnery (not to be confused with the new Regnery) publishing houses, and mistake them for reliable sources. They are to be read cum grano salis, just like the New York Times - which also has been known to select its sources to make a point.
The intellectual quality of anti-Communist literature drops off sharply after WWII and never recovers. The reason is obvious: for any young talented person in 1956, signing up with the JBS is the road to nowhere. Even the ersatz, Buckleyite right is pretty much the road to nowhere. Thus you are reading the work of B+ minds at best, often worse. As a broad generalization, this literature is almost always both sincere and accurate, but it has a lot of interpretation to do, and is beset by much traditional mythology that hinders this interpretation.
The McCarthyists did not understand the fundamentally American nature of communism - they fit it into a nationalist framework which often produced more heat than light. Communism was an export, not an import - not a foreign virus that infected America, but an Anglo-American virus that infected the world. If it seemed to come from Russia and Germany, it came from Anglophile Russians and Germans, just as an HIV strain might travel from Cameroon to Haiti to Cuba to Angola. America is and always has been the primary tumor of global leftism. It is not becoming a communist country - it has been one for your entire life, a fact most easily seen in its foreign policy.
This was beyond the McCarthyists as the moon is beyond a cat. But still, their writing is the only un-gleichgeschaltet material from this period. (A good introduction is John Stormer's None Dare Call It Treason (1964), a self-published book which sold millions of copies, one of which you can pick up for a penny.) if you study the 20th century without having read the McCarthyist literature, you're like a juror who hasn't heard from the defense lawyer. Of course, it's good to have the official CFR perspective as well, but any educated person has been marinated in this framework for his entire life.
Generalissimo Francisco
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is dead, you know. I suspect that those who remain so hilariously eager to take sides in the Spanish Civil War have never read a single piece of pro-Franco literature. Do you have a favorite team in the Wars of the Roses, too? If so, it's probably because you've been exposed entirely to Lancastrian sources, which have taught you everything you need to know about the illegal, murderous rebellion of the Yorkists.
And yes, anyone who collaborated with Stalin in the 1930s is ipso facto a Stalinist. Just as anyone who collaborated with Hitler and Mussolini in this period is ipso facto a fascist. I certainly don't have a problem attaching this label to Franco.
That the former label (try Eugene Lyons' The Red Decade) includes pretty much the entire American elite is not a mitigating factor. On the contrary - it says quite a bit about the entire American elite. To ignore the murderous nature of Bolshevism up until the late 1930s, you had to exercise quite a bit of wilful myopia. The same, of course, can be said for the Nazis. But it is said for the Nazis - witness the continued attention to the case of Professor Heidegger. Professor Knox and his ilk will have his turn in this game, even if it's a century from now.
I hold no brief for the
I hold no brief for the neoconservatives, but anyone who tries to tie them to Franco doesn't know a damn thing about the former, the latter or (more likely) both. I don't consider Franco a fascist either, though his falangist allies were. He was a monarchist, though he took a while to put a monarch on the throne. I don't think serving with the Republicans is analogous to being a Nazi (what about Orwell?). I'd say it's more analogous to serving with the Nationalists.
"the illegal, murderous rebellion of the Yorkists"
Isn't that phrase a bit redundant for a formalist?
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books has republished this 1977 review by Knox of a production of Agamemnon at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, directed by Andrei Serban.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1977/jul/14/chez-atreus/
Certainly, anyone who tries
Certainly, anyone who tries to tie the neocons to Franquismo doesn't know a damn thing about either. They're about as different as two right-wing parties can be. But, though a plausible defense of Franco against the charge of fascism can be made, I am actually quite comfortable applying this label with a small f.
Today's right is too quick to flee from the charge of fascism. The lady doth protest too much. The resemblance between the support base of Franco, the support base of Hitler, and the support base of Sarah Palin, is unmistakable. In every case the backbone is petty-bourgeois, and the goal is to restore some dimly-remembered simulacrum, transmitted traditionally, of the old regime. Sure, a Falangist is not quite the same thing as a Carlist, and Franco himslf was neither. But his coalition included both. It's important to see the forest for the trees, and the forest is that Franco fits quite well in the set of Salazar, Horthy, Antonescu, Pilsudski... Mussolini, Hitler.
The other day I found myself saying, quite unforethought, the phrase: "Nazi Germany, at its best..." Nazi Germany at its best? At its best, what? But everything has a best and a worst, doesn't it? We are certainly not uninformed about Nazi Germany at its worst. At its best? Very few people living today can finish that sentence. Try it. You'll certainly find yourself capable of describing the Soviet Union at its best.
As for the Yorkists, I was joking. I really don't have any opinions at all on the War of the Roses. This of course is the correct posture when you know nothing about a conflict. Which is the status of your mind when all your information about it comes from one side, as is the case for most educated people and most 20th-century conflicts.
Professor Knox's review of
Professor Knox's review of Agamemnon is nice, but a reactionary McCarthyist can't forget Robinson Jeffers' translation of Medea, which appeared in 1946 and lives up to all Professor Knox's criteria. Indeed, it was a smash hit on Broadway. But the next year, Jeffers published The Double Axe, which included many anti-FDR poems - 12 of which were actually censored by Random House. He was effectively purged, and never had a mainstream audience again.
I must say, it's really a little rich for a follower of John Dewey, whatever his exact relationship to Stalin, to lament the decline of classical studies in the 20th century. Professor Knox, like so many of today's elite, practiced a cultural version of Kim Jong-Il's commercial policy: Veuve Clicquot for me, juche juice for you. The insights of the Greeks and Romans can be preserved on Broadway for New Yorker readers - a million miles from inner-city Baltimore, where they're actually needed. And I'm not talking about a production of "Agamemnon" for Martin L. King Remedial Junior High, either.
"The resemblance between the
"The resemblance between the support base of Franco, the support base of Hitler, and the support base of Sarah Palin, is unmistakable. In every case the backbone is petty-bourgeois, and the goal is to restore some dimly-remembered simulacrum, transmitted traditionally, of the old regime."
Though to be sure, the "ideal" old regime that Franco, Hitler, and Palin's petty bourgeois support base yearned for was quite different, as the petty bourgeosie of 1930s Spain, 1930s Germany, and 2010s America are quite different in outlook (however much the Left in 2010 America would like us to think they are identical).
Though to be sure, the
Though to be sure, the "ideal" old regime that Franco, Hitler, and Palin's petty bourgeois support base yearned for was quite different, as the petty bourgeosie of 1930s Spain, 1930s Germany, and 2010s America are quite different in outlook (however much the Left in 2010 America would like us to think they are identical).
True that is. Antisemitism, for instance, is not exactly widespread in Middle America. When we look at the beliefs of these groups, we see a mixture of common sense, traditional sense, and traditional (but mostly benign) nonsense. Would I still rather be governed by the American Kleinburgertum than the Harvard faculty, with its malignant nonsense? I would - but I understand those who wouldn't. I'd take Henry VII over either, though.
Pilsudski was a leftist.
Pilsudski was a leftist.
Oh man, the spanish. We have
Oh man, the spanish. We have a memorial stone to the norwegian fallen of the intl brigades 3 bloks away from my house, i put down a flower every 1st of may.
Some of them were commies, true, but many of them were like me, syndicalists. And then there were the true anarchists like Durutti who fought the stalinists tooth and nail. Read Beevor.
Im off to Asturia in a
Im off to Asturia in a month, a propos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_El_Mazuco
And PPS: see the danish
And PPS: see the danish movie Armadillo... Best Afghanistan movie yet.
A Jedbergh. RIP. No more
A Jedbergh. RIP. No more need be said.
Funny comments - I don't
Funny comments - I don't think Moldberg intends anyone to take him seriously, does he? However, the question of interest is this: why did the anti-Franco forces fail in Spain?
German support is a nice excuse, but remember, this is hilly mountain country. When the Afghanistan communists faced a popular uprising against dictatorial Soviet rule, they called in the Soviets in 1982
This insurrection was met by a brutal Afghan and Soviet response that killed an estimated 24,000 Heratis in a single week and destroyed much of the famous Central Asian crossroad city.
So - why did the anti-Franco forces lose? The answer is simple: in contrast to the Afghan anti-communist freedom fighters, they had no covert supply train to keep them in business. Their fundamental error was that they did not FIRST develop that alliance BEFORE launching their anti-fascist insurgency.
Why couldn't they get covert support from Britain and France, however? The answer is again simple: pro-fascist elements in British and American government blocked such support at every step, just as they did when Germany invaded its neighbors. The Fords, Rockefellers, and others liked the fascist economic model, and believed in the eugenic model that the Nazis based their ideology on. It's all documented.
Indeed, the post WWII "War Against Communism" played a key role in covering up the crimes of the Nazi conspirators, and was even used to justify the early release of Nazi war criminals by JJ McCloy - a longtime Rockefeller and Kissinger pal. Those German planes that invaded Poland and backed Franco? They relied on Standard Oil's airplane fuel - without that, they'd be grounded. By the 1930s, Standard Oil and I.G. Farben had signed patent agreements - Standard would focus on fuels, and Farben would focus on chemicals.
Only a small selection of American corporations were willing to do business with the Nazis - Du Pont, for example, strenuously protested against building tetraethyl lead plants in Germany in the mid 1930s, because Germany appeared to be rearming. The Fords and the Rockefellers had no such qualms, and neither did their agents and sidekicks, like Prescott Bush and the Harriman Brothers - and they profited greatly from their treasonous actions, which continued up through 1942 - and then picked up again in 1946. The latest inheritors of this tradition of Machiavellian fascism are the neocons and their supporters - who are the ones behind this latest effort to whip up hysteria over "Islamic law in America."
"So - why did the
"So - why did the anti-Franco forces lose? The answer is simple: in contrast to the Afghan anti-communist freedom fighters, they had no covert supply train to keep them in business."
You're forgetting the other half of the equation. The anti-Franco forces lost because the Franco forces KILLED THEIR ASSES and terrorized the rest into submission. No hearts and minds, no courageous self-restraint, none of that politically correct horseshit. Concentration camps, torture, summary execution of prisoners, collective punishment, taking and executing hostages, exposure of enemy corpses by the roadside for public edification.... gee, it's like the Nationalists were determined to WIN or something, and "human rights" be damned. (Not that the Republicans were any better from a moral standpoint.) Funny how a man's heart and mind falls right into place when he knows the penalty for joining, or cooperating with, the enemy is death, along with the death of his entire family and village.
"The Fords, Rockefellers,
"The Fords, Rockefellers, and others liked the fascist economic model, and believed in the eugenic model that the Nazis based their ideology on. It's all documented."
Incidentally, those same fascist-lovers in the American financial and industrial establishment built the entire Soviet military-industrial complex from the ground up from 1929 to 1941. The Soviet Union was able to defeat the Wehrmacht ONLY because of US technical assistance in the preceding decades. Who built the steel works at Magnitogorsk, Kuznetsk and Zaporozhe? Freyn Engineering of Chicago and Arthur McKee of Cleveland. Who designed and built 77% of Soviet oil refineries, 96% of the lubricating plants, and 91% of the cracking plants? American firms. Who designed and built the tractor factories that produced tanks at Kharkov, Stalingrad, and Chelyabinsk? Engineers from Ford and Packard. In 1944, Stalin told Averell Harriman that two-third of the large industrial enterprises in the USSR were built with American technical assistance. Those Soviet tanks that rolled into Berlin in 1945 were built in a US-designed and built factory, ran on oil produced in a US-designed and built oil plant, and were transported on a US-supplied rail system.
The fact is that US assistance to the USSR before 1941 puts the supposed assistance to the Nazis totally in the shade. If we had supplied the Germans with the type of aid we gave the Soviets, the Swastika would be flying from the Atlantic to the Urals to this day. Strangely, the post-WW2 "War Against Communism" did a FAR better role of covering up treasonous US assistance to Stalin's criminal regime than aid to the Nazis. This is because the American political establishment was ALWAYS in bed with the Soviets, not the Nazis. The political establishment's successful efforts to distract people like you with talk of how the Rockefellers aided the Nazis would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.
http://books.google.com/books?id=dcAgT_2uiYgC&lpg=PP1&ots=g-OYQ0S6ZD&dq=...
Flagrantly off topic, I
Flagrantly off topic, I would pay good money to see MM take on Stefan Molyneux.
Fajna stronka lecz dla
Fajna stronka lecz dla polepszenia skutecznosci i reklamy zapraszam do skorzystania z naszej oferty np: [url=http://www.cyberpozycja.pl]Projektowanie stron www[/url] na pewno jestesmy konkurencyjni.
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