Ode to the Corporal

In light of the ongoing transition of power, from one Corporate-Controlled regime to another, it seems prudent to recall what I recorded on pages 13-15 of the "Introduction" of my third book, On History:  A Treatise.

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.

The writer?  Adolf Hitler.  The passage is from Mein Kampf, the Nationalist Socialist bible of bigotry, oppression, despotism and conquest.  A blueprint for the subjugation of not only a nation, but a continent.  Yet the Third Reich the author built to last a thousand years died miserably after only twelve.  But in that time, Adolf Hitler did by force of arms what Maastricht later intended on paper.  His program of ethnic cleansing was of such industriousness and thoroughness that today's practitioners seem little better than amateurs of the utmost crudity.  His Geheime Staatspolizei (the dreaded Gestapo) served as a blueprint for many a post-World War II security service, including the Shah of Iran's American-trained SAVAK.  The suffering and death and horror perpetrated by the Swastika and the Jackboot will be an inerasable stain on the record of human history for generations to come.  Perhaps this is what is meant by the Thousand-Year Reich.

Adolf Hitler remains one of history's most frightfully interesting characters.  He was the first politician to campaign by airplane.  His speeches and methods of propaganda have been analyzed by public speakers, advertisers and politicians the world over.  Like Napoleon, he had a photographic memory.  He was a strict vegetarian and did not become a German citizen until 1932.  With the utmost Austrian courtesy, he would kiss the hand of any woman he was introduced to; and yet, in the same breath, order the extermination of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other so-called untermensch. As a military strategist, Hitler did show signs of sheer brilliance, such as outflanking the Maginot Line by sending his panzers through the Ardennes; and yet, he could make bonehead plays like allowing the British to escape the trap he had set for them on the beaches at Dunkirk.

The name Adolf Hitler is synonymous with torture, brutality and murder.  But beyond that, it symbolizes a national forfeiture of democratic ideals and high cultural and societal standards, when a people prostitute their faith in themselves to indulge their need for a hero, a larger-than-life figure who will lead them into Valhalla.  Like the Italians used to say about Mussolini, Hitler even made the trains run on time.

Yet like Il Duce, Der Fuhrer proved painfully fallible in the end.  The pontificate of the Teutonic ideal, the absolute who captured the loyalty of the Wehrmacht to himself in lieu of Germany, the unassuming Austrian with the comical Chaplin-esque appearance who seemed to send women swooning (four committed suicide over him), a modern-day deity of hatred who was everything to some and in the end was nothing to all, is a warning sign for those ready to follow the teachings of a false prophet.