Having apologized to Rudy Schmidt and the Germans for believing Americans could never be deceived as they were by a popularly chosen leader, it is disturbing to view the similarities between the United States in 2012 and Germany in 1929-1939.

John Toland’s 2-volume Biography of Adolph Hitler published by Doubleday in 1976 describes a pre-World War II Germany in a way that reads like the headlines of today’s newspapers. Substitute the words “wealthy  (successful productive) Americans” for “Jews” and you have what began as the demonization of a segment of society that was blamed for the financial problems of the nation and ended with what has become known as the Holocaust.

Hitler made a pact with thirty-nine super rich “prominent businessmen” who signed a letter petitioning Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor of Germany. Toland writes, “Hitler, for example, had assured I. G. Farben that his government would definitely support production of synthetic gasoline.”

These top business executives were gambling that they could use Hitler to their advantage. “They were confident that Hitler’s socialism was a fraud and that, once in power, he would be the tool of capitalism.” They were wrong.

Hitler outlawed the Catholic Party, got an audience with the Pope and signed an agreement with the Vatican. “The Church agreed to keep priests and religion out of politics, while Hitler, among other things, granted complete freedom to confessional schools.”

“The Vatican was so appreciative of being recognized as a full partner that it asked God to bless the Reich. On a more practical level, it ordered German bishops to swear allegiance to the National Socialist regime.”

Hitler was obsessed with central planning, pollution control, green spaces and city beatification. Many popular programs were initiated. “Under the slogan ‘Beautification in Every Place,’ all offices and workrooms were kept clean and neat…The Labor Front provided subsidized concerts, theater performances, exhibitions, dances, films and adult education for workers. The most revolutionary project was subsidized tourism. The humblest laborer and his family could now travel aboard luxury liners for undreamed-of holidays.” It was redistribution of wealth at its finest.

Training and indoctrination of youth was given a high priority by the Nazi regime. After 1933, “the mission was to build them physically, educate them politically and train them to work for Fuhrer and nation. High schools, specializing in natural science and non-classical curriculum, were placed on the same level as the humanistic Gymnasia, with five hours a day for physical training and compulsory courses in racial biology… subjects such as ancient languages and science suffered.”

“The goal of our education is formation of character,” wrote one Nazi educator. “We don’t intend to educate our children into becoming miniature scholars. Therefore, I say: Let us have rather ten pounds less knowledge and ten calories more character.”

“The character building process was accompanied by semi-deification of Hitler. Before lunch the children of Cologne were required to recite this invocation,” writes Toland:

Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, bequeathed to me by the Lord,

Protect and preserve me as long as I live!

Thou hast rescued Germany from deepest distress,

I thank thee today for my daily bread.

Abide thou long with me, forsake me not,

Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, my faith and my light!

Heil, my Fuhrer!

Serious students of history may find it interesting that Adolph Hitler was an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and his views on powerful central governments and the brutal use of police powers. Authors Al Benson, Jr. and Walter Donald Kennedy in their 2011 book titled, Lincoln’s Marxists, reached the following conclusion:

“In this chapter we are not suggesting that Lincoln was an early Nazi or that Hitler based his total philosophy on Lincoln’s ideas. Yet, there is a shocking similarity between the views of these two men on these key points: endurance of government, supremacy of the central government over the ‘so-called states,’ and the belief in some form of mystical justification of what was being done, regardless of what the law stated.”

There are too many parallels to ignore.

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