Germany is a nation in which I have been interested since I was old enough to find it on a map. Because the U.S. had been involved in combating them twice in less than a half a century I was curious about the Germans. What drove them? How was the pitch for war made palpable less than 20 years after the Versailles Treaty was signed? Why were they willing to endanger another generation of Germans? My curiosity even made my xenophobic father heap scorn on me as being a “Kraut in my mind.” He ridiculed my research and interest because he felt I was ignoring our British/Scot/Irish roots and claimed I just wanted to “be German” or “be a Nazi.” I wondered what he was so upset about. I wasn’t making excuses or gushing about them; I just wanted to find out how the Germans were drawn into war so quickly and easily in the 20th century. That meant I needed to study them.
My curiosity was stimulated because both of my grandfathers fought in World War One against German forces, and one of my uncles in World War Two. My interest was known to other family members. I went to a party at a relative’s house in the mid-1970s, and while there he introduced me to a woman named Geezy whose husband had been a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunner throughout the war. My uncle wanted me to talk with her partly because she grew up in Germany and lived in Berlin during World War Two, but mainly because of her stance. Geezy stated in no uncertain terms she loved Adolf Hitler and still thought he was a great leader. This was 30 years after the end of the war. I was stunned by her admission and probed hoping to find some rationale. She was unapologetic about his crimes against other countries and even against his own people. She didn’t care. If Hitler said it needed to be done, then it was the right thing to do. She was never a member of the Nazi party but she supported the Nazis 100%...even to that day. She said she would still vote for and support Hitler, despite all the revelations about what he did. She was proud of him.
Remembering her blind adulation stills seems eerie. But more disturbingly, it sounds just like today’s Trump supporters. It doesn’t matter what Trump does…they support him unconditionally. How do you reason with that kind of fanatic? Trump bragged he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose voters. He is saying they will support a cold-blooded murderer with no reservations. Trump also boasted that he loved “poorly educated” voters. He wasn't just talking about people who only had a limited education. He meant people who were deliberately ignorant; people who didn’t want to think things through, people that just took marching orders, people who didn’t read or question anything. These are the people we should be very concerned about because they are Trump’s sycophants, his supporters, his loyal base. They look upon Trump as a messiah. How are they any different than Hitler’s SS?
Like the SS, they throw out Nazi salutes to intimidate others. At Trump’s urging, they beat up protesters. Now they are even emboldened to march in nighttime torch-lit parades as though this is Nuremberg or Munich in 1938. It’s frightening because these Trump supporters are living among us like a fifth column by the millions. They believe it is Trump, or nothing else. This Trumpism is a danger to American democracy and its survival.
Germans have been addressing the Nazi Germany image for over 70 years but they will continue with that struggle for the foreseeable future. We in the United States are about to join Germany in our own long, difficult quest to improve our image and try to make amends for what Trumpism is doing to our country and to the world. Fifty to a hundred years from now, we will still be trying to shake off our own “Nazi-like” period. It will be much shorter than the twelve years Hitler inflicted on Germany, but the damage to the world will be the same. It will be a time in our nation’s history known as Trump’s America from 2016 to 2018. I’m no seer stating the end will be in 2018. It’s just that there are so many things roaring right at Trump at this point (undeniable Russian collusion, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, serial sexual assault, violation of the Emoluments Clause, violation of the oath of office…etc.) that I have no doubt one of them will most likely get him out of the White House shortly. Pence, Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, DeVos, Mnuchin, Tillerson, Conway, Miller, Huckleberry Sanders, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s kids, his son-in-law, and all the other enablers should be dragged out with him and left with broken bones, deep gashes, grievous injuries, missing teeth and hair and tossed in a bloody pile at the base of the Washington Monument. But we still have a ways to go to get there. I am concerned about what will happen to us before Trump is forced out of office. Trump unabashedly pits Americans against each other, claims white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers are good people, signed a tax bill to transfer the nation’s wealth to himself and his ultra-rich buddies, threatens nuclear war, attacks the free press, and lies even when the truth sounds better. His enablers in the Republican Party and his evangelical base cheer him on and urge him to keep it up.
Comparing the U.S. under Trump to Germany under Hitler seems outlandish but almost daily we are introduced to a new Trump outrage that makes us look more and more like a budding totalitarian regime. The world looked on in concern and then horror when Hitler turned Germany into a fascist state and finally launched a war. The world is now watching the U.S. do the same thing under Trump.
No one knows who originally made this quote, but it’s appropriate; for the citizens of Nazi Germany - to the U.S. in 2018…”We’re all in the same game; just different levels. Dealing with the same hell, just different devils.”
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