Chapter 3 Part 2
By Richard E. Noble
“...Many European States today are comparable to pyramids standing on their points. Their European territory is ridiculously small as compared with their burden of colonies, foreign trade etc. One may say, the point is in Europe, the base in the whole world; in comparison with the American union, which still has its bases in its own continent, and touches the remaining part of the world only with its points. From this results, however, the unheard-of internal strength of this State, and the weakness of most of the colonial powers ... England cannot be compared with any other state in Europe, if only because of her linguistic and cultural communication with the American Union. For Germany, therefore, the only possibility of carrying out a sound territorial policy was to be found in the acquisition of new soil in Europe proper ... If one wanted land and soil in Europe, then by and large this could only have been done at Russia’s expense.”
One problem here was that Russia already had people living there, but so were there people living in the Americas and all other of the European colonial expeditions. So Adolf s basic principal was a policy of German manifest destiny. Unfortunately the Russian people would have to be sacrificed in much the same manner and ‘necessity’ as the American Indian, or the natives of Mexico, or the indigenous populations of South America, or wherever colonization was incorporated. What’s the big problem, kill some Indians, or kill some Russians? A nation has got to do what a nation has got to do.
This philosophy I consider to be a key in the successful rise to power of Adolf Hitler. The free nations or Capitalist nations of the world were not happy with the direction that the Russian Revolution was taking. If they could use whatever influence that they had, dollars etc., to point Adolf in that direction wouldn’t this be a perfect ending to a very unpleasant political philosophy (bolshevism)? I am convinced that this is exactly what happened. And my reading and research on the subject of “Who Financed Adolf Hitler” has more than substantiated this notion. Even during the Depression gold by the millions and billions was exiting America and being deposited in Germany - and elsewhere in Europe.
Adolf goes on to contend that Germany’s past gov’t was basically too fearful to attack the Russians directly, and consequently were turned to compete with the British in trade, shipping and colonization. This eventually precipitated World War one. If Germany would have had the courage to simply attack Russia there would have been no World War One, contends Adolf.
Adolf, in a few pages gives his answer to Winston Churchill’s very long and winded explanation of the pre-World War One arms race.
“... Quite unintelligible threats came over from England; therefore, one decided to build a fleet, but again not for attack or for the destruction of England, but for the ‘defense’ of the already mentioned ‘world peace’ and of the ‘peaceful conquest’ of the world
the talk of the ‘peaceful economic conquest’ of the world was certainly the greatest folly that was ever made the leading principle of a State policy ... people today ‘learn’ history without understanding or even grasping it ... No nation has more carefully prepared its economic conquest with the sword with greater brutality and defended it later on, more ruthlessly than the British. Is it not a characteristic of British statesmanship to draw economic conquest from political force and at once to mold every economic strengthening into political power? But what a mistake to believe that England was perhaps too ‘cowardly’ to shed her own blood in defense of her economic policy ... England always possessed the armament that she needed. She always fought with the weapons that were required for success ... I will remember the astonished faces of my comrades, when in Flanders we faced the Tommies personally. After the first few days of battle the conviction dawned on everyone that these Scots did not quite correspond to those one had thought fit to describe to us in comic papers (as cowards) and newspaper dispatches ... In those days I formed my first reflections about the usefulness of that form of propaganda ...”
Well, one would like to say that Adolf s accusations here towards the British are hogwash, but when one looks at the British Colonization attitudes and history, one hasn’t much to say in their defense. The British attitude to the Scots and the Irish is well known, and the conflicts continue today. Here in the colonies we had our own uprising. We can read about British exploits in China, the Boxer rebellion, the opium wars etceteras. We can read Gandhi’s account of the attitudes of the British in India. We can read Exodus and find out about the modern Jew and the British. We can see the remnants of British racism in their South African legacy. I really don’t think we can come up with a very good historical argument here to defend the British against Adolf s accusations. The only argument that I can think of, is that there is no country that can defend their historical development in any brighter light as far as I can see. Even if we pick the most maligned and sympathetic cultures today, they come off not much better. The Africans are still slaughtering one another, and the American Indians weren’t peaceful grain eating flower children either. The only conclusion that I can come to here is that the history of all Humanity is for the most part a brutal experience. I recommend reading “The Rise and Fall of Practically Everybody” by Willy Cuppy. We can only hope that what we have been seeing is an evolution to a better more humane future. Let’s all hope that we are learning from the mistakes of the past, and that Adolf s resolution to the facts of life as he describes them is not the forever of human relationships.
But his argument is strong. At this point his country is wallowing in disgrace and defeat. Armed conflicts are still bubbling in the streets. His government is in the hands of an occupying force as far as he is concerned. He contends that if only past German leaders had attacked Russia directly, World War One would probably have been avoided. One might also contend that if the U.S. had sided with Germany in 1917, instead of with the British, there may have been no World War Two either. But the nature of ‘if’ is very difficult to analyze.
At this point Adolf has made his case, and he seems to be telling his followers and the world his plan. Actually I think that the remainder of this chapter, and possibly this whole book is an outright campaign finance endeavor. He makes the point that the Russians would be easy. The Japanese had no problem with them in 1904. Just imagine what we could have done to them in or about 1910 or 1914. He goes on for the rest of this chapter to point out to the world and all of his potential financial backers, that it was the Jew Communist Marxist that was responsible for crippling the German effort in World War One. That the real enemy of Germany and of the world is the Jew, Bolshevist, communist who are involved in their plot to destroy civilization, and that if you listeners will send your dollars and personal checks to Adolf Hitler in care of the third Reich, Nazi Germany; We will take care of them. He closes the chapter along these lines.
“… I expressed for the first time the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation is the question of the destruction of Marxism.”
This is clearly and obviously his bread and butter argument and it was successful. My question now is, who were his financial backers? Who were his backers inside Germany, and who, if any, supplied funds to his campaign from the free world?
Chapter five is entitled ‘The World War’. This chapter is a history lesson on World War One. He gets into his exhilaration as a young soldier. He was clearly impressed with death, destruction, and ‘the glory’ of War in general. On the very first page he hits the reader with a reality check.
“… ‘Peaceful competitions of nations’ that means a quiet mutual cheating, excluding forceful measures. The individual States began more and more to resemble enterprises which cut the ground from under each other, stole each others customers and orders, and tried to cheat each other by every means, setting this in a scene which was as noisy as it was harmless ... This development however, not only seemed to endure, but it was intended to transform the world (with general approval) into one big department store, in the lobbies of which the busts of the most cunning profiteers, and the most harmless administration officials were to be stored for eternity ... Why could one not have been born a hundred years earlier? For instance, at the time of the Wars of Liberation when a man really was worth something, even without ‘business’...”
I suppose a true Capitalist would call this sour grapes, but I can not think that there are any of us, born with a critical conscience, who has not felt this way at one point or other in our lives. The world of business seems so cold and calculating, and never involved in principle or morality. Business minded always seem to stand back aloof, and detached from all the devastation and tragedy that their ‘practical economic decisions’ cause in the lives of the average.
Factories move overnight, leaving thousands unemployed. A big term today is ‘downsizing’. Companies claim bankruptcy, and default on all their employee promises of the past. On the international scene whole countries are exploited for natural resources or minerals or labor, and when their usefulness is over, abandoned. We have a strange god in this Capitalist world, and when the economic decisions become devastating to whole populations, believers simply look at the devastation as an unavoidable natural disaster, much like an earthquake or volcanic eruption. But those who find themselves caught in the economic slaughter can not be so pragmatic or philosophical. They see the
disaster as manmade, and seek revenge. And always the business mentality is shocked by the ‘ignorant attitude of these uneducated to the natural laws of supply and demand.
This analysis by Adolf clearly hit the mark, and I imagine that it was even considered more on target back in the year 1923, and to a nation of unemployed, and to a people undergoing the ravages of the industrial revolution.
“… The Boer War appeared to me like a summer lightning. Everyday I was on the lookout for the newspapers; I devoured dispatches and reports, and I was happy that I was being allowed to witness this heroic struggle, if only from afar ... The Russo-Japanese War ... I had at once taken the side of the Japanese. In the defeat of the Russians I saw also a defeat of the Austrian Slavic nationalities.”
Adolf is obviously a frustrated European. He resents greatly the power of the English, and has a yet to be explained hatred for the Slavic races. And the Slavic lands seem to include a vast area east of whatever Adolf considers Germany proper.
“...When the news of the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand reached Munich (I was in the house and heard only vague details of the event), I was at first worried that the bullets might perhaps have come from the pistols of German students, who because of their indignation at the continued Slavization activities of the Heir Presumptive, wished to free the German nation from this internal enemy. One could imagine well what the consequences would have been in that case; a new wave of persecutions which now would have been justified and ‘motivated’ in the face of the whole world. When, however, soon after I heard the names of the suspected murderers, and read that their nationality had been established as Serbian, a slight horror began to creep over me because of this revenge of inscrutable Destiny ... The greatest friend of the Slaves had been felled by the bullets of Slav fanatics . . .Those who had an opportunity to observe continuously the relations between Austria and Serbia during the last few years could not doubt for even a moment that the stone had been set rolling on a course that could no longer be checked ... The fight of the year 1914 was certainly not forced upon the masses, good God! but desired by the entire people itself ... To me personally those hours appeared like the redemption from the annoying moods of my youth. Therefore I am not ashamed today to say that, overwhelmed by impassionate enthusiasm, I had fallen on my knees and thanked Heaven out of my overflowing heart that it had granted me the good fortune of being allowed to live in these times ... A struggle for freedom had broken out, greater than the world had ever seen before; because once fate had begun its course, the conviction began to dawn on the great masses that this time the question involved was not Serbia’s or Austria’s fate, but the existence or non-existence of the German Nation.”
I have to proclaim my amazement at how many times during the book Adolf makes reference to God, or heaven or the ‘spiritual’, Divinity or Providence. Adolf clearly has some sort of Faith, or spiritual belief. Without doubt his god is a cruel one, but never the less he is able to find some sort of inner strength and personal confidence in his religious beliefs. It is also amazing to me that from the beginnings of recorded history, we see country after country marching off to war with god on their side. And almost without question both sides in any conflict have claimed god’s support to their cause. And life in this world today is no exception. Religions of all types continue to claim god’s support for all of their prejudices and hatreds, and seem perfectly willing to kill other humans on “His” behalf. Here we see Adolf the preacher.
At this point Adolf gets into his soldiering experience. These next passages are quite something to me. Here is Adolf being exposed to his first combat fire.
“…Then at last came the damp, cold night in Flanders through which we marched silently, and when the day began to emerge from the fog, suddenly an iron salute came wizzing over our heads towards us and with a sharp report the small bullets struck between our rows, whipping up the wet earth; but before the small cloud had dispersed, out of two hundred throats the first hurrah roared a welcome to the first messenger of death. But then it began to crackle, and roar, to sing and howl, and with feverish eyes each one of us was drawn forward faster and faster over turnip fields and hedges till suddenly the fight began, the fight of man against man. But from the distance the sound of a song met our ears, coming nearer and nearer, passing from company to company, and then, while Death busily plunged his hand into our rows, the song reached also us, and now we passed it on; Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles, uber alles in der Welt...”
I don’t speak German, but my guess is that the song is the National Anthem of Germany ... and it is probably saying Germany, Germany ... above all, above all, in the world.
Adolf now continues with his experience as an evolving soldier. I think the above passage is about as close as Adolf ever gets to writing poetry. Clearly he was thrilled to find himself next to death.
Thus it continued year after year; but the romance of the battles had turned into horror. The enthusiasm gradually cooled down and the exuberant joy was suffocated by the fear of death. The time came when everyone had to fight between the instinct of self-preservation and the admonition of duty. I, too, was not spared this inner struggle. Whenever death was on the hunt, an undefinable something tried to revolt, tried to present itself to the weak body in the form of reason and was really nothing but cowardice which in this disguise tried to ensnare the individual. A strong pulling and warning set in and only the last remaining spark of conscience made the decision. But the more this voice tried to warn me to take heed, the louder and more urgently it lured, the sharper was my resistance, till finally after a long inner struggle my sense of duty triumphed. The struggle had already been decided for me during the winter of 1915-16. My will had finally become master. Whereas during the first days I was able to join exuberantly and laughingly in the storm, now I was quiet and determined. This was the most enduring. Only now could fate set out for the last tests without tearing my nerves or my reason giving out ... The young volunteer had become an old soldier
So young Adolf marched off to war. First he felt the glory of facing death; then he felt the doubt of his reason and his desire for self-preservation, which he calls cowardice. He then develops fearlessness in the face of death, and it transformed him into a brave and hardened soldier. Similar passages can be found in the memoirs of General Patton and in the writings of Theodore Roosevelt. Just recently I found a statement and description very similar to Adolf‘s in a recounting of an early battle written by George Washington - and in all the above cases I am referring to the glory of the wizzing bullets and the “afterglow”, not the second thoughts, fears or resignation.
One question that never concerned Adolf was the morality or justification for the killing of his fellow human beings. Killing is a given to Adolf. He seems to never have had any fear for the killing of others, rightfully, or wrongfully. His only battle with fear came with his conflict of saving his own butt on the battlefield, and once he overcame his own fear of death he was transformed into a heroic soldier. And Adolf is never lacking to call those who turned against the war, for whatever reasons, not only cowards but traitors. Even though, when these traitors returned home they continued to fight and risk their lives dodging bullets in the streets of Munich and Berlin fighting against what they considered a misguided cause on the part of their Government.
In their case, risking their lives under arms was not heroic but cowardly in the philosophy of Adolf. So it is not fighting, or facing death that makes one a hero in Adolf s eyes. It is fighting on his side for those things that he believes. I must also presume that Adolf must consider all of his enemies cowards because they were not fighting on his side. And then again we have no evaluation of all of those who fought on both sides simply because they were ordered to fight or be executed or go to prison in their own countries for refusing to do so. Is it a ‘brave’ man who is willing to kill another man simply because he is ordered to do so?
We find this philosophy in Dante’s Inferno and in our modern day Republicanism. I would imagine this has always been a Conservative foundation stone – “you are either with me, or you are against me/my country right or wrong.”
Adolf hated pacifists and considered any man not willing to fight and kill others in defense of his own life a coward. Mahatma Gandhi had an interesting answer to this attitude. He asked a very interesting question. I will attempt to paraphrase; Who is the braver individual, asks Mahatma Gandhi, the man who stands behind a gun or cannon and shoots and kills his fellow man in fear and defense for his own life, or the man who stands in front of the guns and canons, with no arms, and resists the oppression of the more powerful by accepting death from their bullets and bombs?
If the criterion for bravery is facing death fearlessly, then certainly Mahatma’s men are the braver. Mahatma’s men are not only braver physically by being willing to give their lives in resistance to oppressive power, they are also miles ahead by maintaining the moral high ground of refusing to kill others on behalf of whatever excuses have been offered to them.
When I offered this scenario of Gandhi’s to an individual on a past occasion, he said; “Well, I don’t know who is the bravest, but I certainly know who is the dumbest.” In other words, it was a dumb man who would die in his defense of not killing others of his kind on demand.
I think that after analysis, Adolf’s definition of bravery has little to do with the spirit of sacrificing one’s life for principle, but more with one’s willingness to kill and be brutal to ones fellow man. So I don’t interpret these remarks by Adolf as a defense of the brave and courageous, but much more in tune with placing a heroic taint and defense on his personal lust and passion for killing. I think also that his entire career serves as an adequate proof of this point. Adolf clearly enjoyed seeing other humans die - on either side of the battle line. This may be more the norm than many of us think – note the popularity of war movies; or raping and killing in general – maybe we all enjoy the slaughter somewhat, even if only vicariously.
It is interesting that it has been noted that Adolf would turn away from a screen in horror if a horse were to stumble or if a dog or other animal was pictured as being injured. If I am not mistaken, he was also a vegetarian.
[This is a part of a continuing series on this blog. This is my 8th entry. Click on “Search This Blog” to find other entries]
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