Americans Are No Different Than Germans Were (and Are)

Daniel Goldhagen blamed the Holocaust on «the Germans» (by which he meant the German people), and said that they perpetrated the Holocaust because they positively enjoyed murdering «the Jews». But, as has long been well understood by historians (except when they fail to point to it as being a disproof of Goldhagen’s bigoted and indefensible anti-German thesis), Hitler had to work long and hard in order to bring about a consensus, first amongst his own leadership group, and then in the population as a whole, favoring the extermination-option. Hitler, Der Fuehrer, «The Leader», clearly was the catalyst turning the chemical mixture into the chemical reaction known as the Holocaust. Without Hitler, it would not have taken place. Thus, the issue that has always been failed by ‘historians’ is not why «the Germans» did it (which Goldhagen botched), but why the Nazi leadership did it, and ultimately why Der Fuehrer did it.

David Bankier, in his 1992 The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism, documented this — that the Holocaust came from the top of German society, its leaders, not from the bottom, the masses (such as Goldhagen said). Bankier showed the difficulties that Hitler had to overcome in order to bring the public with him on his anti-Semitic policies. While Goldhagen did deal cursorily with Bankier’s evidence, he never really came to grips with it, perhaps because Bankier brought Hitler back to center-stage and Goldhagen was committed instead to viewing German cooperation with the Holocaust as having been essentially spontaneous, which Bankier proved not to have been at all the case. It really was a Fuehrer-state. It really was not a democratic state. The Holocaust was a dictatorial phenomenon, not a democratic one. Aristocrats hire and fire the ‘historians’ (such as Goldhagen), but blaming things such as the Holocaust upon any public, is not history; it is myth.

In my own 2000 book about the subject, Why the Holocaust Happened, I addressed, in more detail than has elsewhere been done, why Hitler did it; I documented, from his own statements, the gradual development, in Hitler’s mind, of his idea for the Holocaust-to-come, beginning from the motivation’s original inception in the Fall of 1919, through to the closing words of his final statement, his «Political Testament», at 4 a.m. on 29 April 1945: «Above all, I enjoin the government and the people to uphold the race laws to the limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoner of all nations, international Jewry». Even when about to commit suicide, completing the Holocaust was his main concern. For Hitler, WWII was a means to an end: a Jew-free world. Even at his suicide, he still hoped that, somehow, the job would be completed successfully. He now recognized that he would lose the war, which war he had always thought would be the essential means in order to achieve his ultimate goal, but he did not lose all hope for that goal. Hitler’s goal was not merely that Germans would control the world (victory in WWII), but was also that the world they would control would have no Jews in it. At first, he had to deceive almost everyone about what his goal was; and part of the reason for this was that (unlike Goldhagen) he understood quite well that the German people needed to be manipulated toward this end — only a small minority of Germans would have voted for him if they had understood what he really had in mind.

This same misconception exists today with regard to Americans, though in a modified form. America’s shames are instead that America is today the world’s most aggressive, rabidly invasion-prone and coup-perpetrating country; and, in our past, slavery used to be accepted here. But, likewise, here as there, the shames are not against the general public: slavery was brought to this country and enforced by King George III, and polls generally show that the American public is far more inclined to avoid invasions than to seek them. In this country, just like in Germany, the atrocities come from the leadership-class, not from the public (regardless of what the aristocrats who own the publishing-houses might prefer to publish as constituting ‘history’ on the subject).

The most invasion-and-coup-perpetrating of all of the major U.S. Presidential candidates was Hillary Clinton, who received overwhelmingly more money from America’s billionaires than did any other candidate: «Whereas Hillary got 53.27% of her total appx. $775M as direct individual donations of $200+, Trump got only 13.94% of his appx. $425M that way». And Bernie Sanders (who would have won the general election if Hillary’s DNC hadn’t sabotaged the primaries) was even more of a «grass roots» candidate than Trump was. The U.S. aristocracy craves to conquer Russia, and toward that end has one-by-one overthrown the leaders of governments that are at all friendly toward Russia, but the public need to be dragged into the invasion-mode by the owners of the ‘news’ media and by the aristocracy’s many agents in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate — the American public don’t want World War III, but the top stockholders in corporations such as Lockheed Martin do.

If the U.S. aristocracy succeed in bringing about a war with Russia, the blame will rest upon the Americans who have purchased and are occupying their luxurious mulitimilliondollar nuclear bunkers (such as here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here), and not upon the Americans who had been given only a fake ‘choice’ between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and who had ‘chosen’ either the one or the other poison.

German democracy ended up being taken over by Germany’s aristocracy, and now American democracy has been taken over by America’s aristocracy, but in neither case is it the fault of the public, in either country. In neither country did the public want this — the aristocracy imposed it upon the public, in both cases. Bigotry pre-exists, everywhere, but genocides and other such atrocities are always the end-product of extensive organized and planned campaigns to deceive a mass of people into empowering some tyrant who is leading the dirty-work of his aristocracy. Almost all wars are between aristocracies; the public on the invading side need first to be deceived into invading — it’s not something that most people, anywhere, actually want to do.

Originally published on 2017-04-15

Author: Eric Zuesse

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

[wpedon id=”4696″ align=”left”]

READ MORE!

Serbs Survive in Ghettos in the Heart of Europe: The “Republic of Kosovo”, a Criminal Entity

After 19 years since a part of the international community, under the auspices of NATO and the US, took control over the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, following two ethnic pogroms of the Serbs and non-Albanians occurred in 1999 and in 2004, which resulted in ethnic cleansing of around 250 000 Serbs and other non Albanians, the rest of Serbian population still survive in ghettos across the territory of self-proclaimed independent Republic of Kosovo.Destroyed 14th-century Serbian Orthodox church Samodreža in Kosovo by Muslim Albanians in March 2004 The Self proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, as a creation of the USA/NATO joint ...

Why London Presented Hitler with Vienna and Prague?

State frontiers are established by human beingsand may be changed by human beings.Adolf Hitler. Mein KampfDiplomacy, with all the conventions of its forms,recognizes only real facts.Charles de GaullePart OneAll of Adolf Hitler’s actions, from the time he rose to power in 1933 until 1939, could be described as one triumph after another. He met each challenge he faced: he took over as head of the country, returned Germany’s lost territories without a struggle, and was given permission from England and France to rearm. But one further task lay before him, and failure now would make his previous achievements almost pointless. ...

Did U.S. and Allies Commit War Crime by Bombing Syria on April 14th?

INTRODUCTION Bombardment (or other military invasion) of a country that has not invaded nor threatened to invade the attacking country(s) is “aggression” under international law, and is the chief crime that the Nazis were hanged for at Nuremberg after World War II. The U.S. and its allies have routinely committed aggression, in places such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. A particular instance of it, to be discussed here, could be especially prosecutable, because the alleged ‘cause’ for the invasion could turn out to have been a provable lie, an intentional fabrication which had been concocted by the perpetrators so as to ...

The Origins and Ultimate Purpose of ISIS

ISIS is Born in IraqThe origins of ISIS are buried beneath the rubble of the US occupation.It was out of this crucible of war and invasion that the original grievances were born, leading analysts to conclude that "the basic causes of the birth of ISIS" were the United States' "destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq."1The framework underlying this being the exacerbation of Sunni-Shia tensions in the aftermath of the invasion, which previously have been inflamed through various other foreign interferences. These were highlighted by the sectarian brutality of the post-invasion Iraqi government, which then continued ...

America’s Recent Achievements in the Middle East

Here are before-and-after pictures, at https://twitter.com/MAL0mt/status/701077438525263873/photo/1, of what the U.S. government has achieved, in the Middle East:What’s especially interesting there, is that in all of these missions, except for Iraq, the U.S. was doing it with the key participation of the Saud family, the royals who own Saudi Arabia, and who are the world’s largest buyers of American weaponry. Since Barack Obama came into the White House, the operations — Libya, Yemen, and Syria — have been, to a large extent, joint operations with the Sauds. ‘We’ are now working more closely with ‘our’ ‘friends’, even than ‘we’ were under George W. Bush.As President Obama instructed his military, ...

How We Know the So-Called “Civil War” was not over Slavery

When I read Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s article the question that leapt to mind was, “How come the South is said to have fought for slavery when the North wasn’t fighting against slavery?” Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th President, Congress, consisting only of the Northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address, saying “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war in order to end slavery when on the very ...

Donald Franciszek Tusk: “Blood is Thicker than Water”?!

Donald Franciszek Tusk, (born 22 April 1957) is a Polish politician and historian. He has been President of the European Council since 1 December 2014. Previously he was Prime Minister of Poland (2007–2014) and a co-founder and chairman of the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) party.Tusk began his public career as an activist in his home town of Gdańsk, supporting Solidarity and organizing his fellow university students. With the exception of one four-year stretch, Tusk has served in the Third Republic Sejm (parliament) continuously since its first elections in 1991. He was Vice Marshal (deputy speaker) of the Senate from 1997 ...

Kosovo: An Evil Little War

Six Years Later, Kosovo Still Wrong In the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For some reason, many in the targeted nation thought the name of the operation was “Merciful Angel.” In fact, the attack was code-named “Allied Force” – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker. For, however much NATO spokesmen and the cheerleading press spun, lied, and fabricated to show otherwise (unfortunately, with altogether too much success), there was nothing noble in NATO’s aims. It attacked Yugoslavia for the same reason then-Emperor Bill Clinton enjoyed a ...

The Nation-State: Post-Mortem

“Balkanization” is the weaponized perversion of anti-colonialism taken to its ultimate extreme, and it’s being wielded by the declining Unipolar World Order to divide and conquer the Eastern Hemisphere in order to prevent the natural emergence of multipolar civilizational blocs as the inevitable outcome of Silk Road Globalization.The rising trend of separatist and autonomous movements in Western Europe, the cradle of the modern-day nation-state system, has prompted concern that the end of the nation-state era is drawing near. To be clear, a nation-state isn’t the same as an ethnic state, although there’s sometimes an overlap such as in the cases ...

The Balkan Vlachs (4)

The Vlachs in Romania The territory of Romania is considered by a significant number of the Balkan Vlachs as their real motherland (for the reason that it is the only state of the neo-Latin speakers in South-East Europe) or the national state of the Vlachs regardless on the fact that they are not originating from Romania. Outstandingly, the Romanian intellectuals (especially the linguists) and politicians expressed during the last century and a half a high level of attention to all neo-Latin speaking groups in South-East Europe claiming that all of them belong to the Romanian nationality. Accordingly, the leading theory about ...

The Human Rights Disaster in America

Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a 35-year-old Mexican national, was shot to death by police in Pasco, Washington last Tuesday as he was backing away from officers with his hands up. A video of the shooting clearly corroborates claims by Zambrano-Montes’s family that he was killed “execution-style.”Police claimed that Zambrano-Montes, who had lived in the city for ten years and worked as an orchard picker, may have been “armed with a rock” before he was shot multiple times. Protests erupted over the weekend, with more than a thousand demonstrating in Washington state on Saturday against the killing.The United States has invaded, bombed, and ...

Wartime Radio: “The Chetniks” (1942), Treasury Star Parade

Review: “The Chetniks” (1942), Treasury Star Parade Radio Play. Starring Orson Welles and Vincent Price. Treasury Department War Savings Staff Radio Recording, Program 101, Treasury Star Parade “The Chetniks” Starring Orson Welles and Vincent Price and David Broekman and his Orchestra and Chorus, 1942. G-1897-P-1 (matrix). “E.T. announcements included.” William A. Bacher, director and producer. 1 pressed radio transcription sound disc: analog, 33 1/3 rpm, mono; 16 in. Recorded on one side only. “This program for sustaining use only.” Manufactured by the Allied Record Manufacturing Company, Hollywood, California. “The Chetniks” “The Chetniks” radio play was a poignant and powerful dramatization of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia led ...

Human Rights Violations: North Korea vs the U.S.

UN Third Committee Resolution L.23 IN, Legitimizes Stranglehold Economic Sanctions., Used as a Means to "Obliterate" North KoreaOn November 15, 2016 the United Nations Third Committee adopted the resolution: “Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea".Among the co-sponsors of the Resolution were United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, etc.Disassociating themselves from the resolution, which they denounced as invalid, were China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, and three other countries opposed to the biased character and double standards that typify “country-specific” resolutions. The so-sponsors of this resolution are themselves guilty of criminal human rights violations.The very ...

The Western “Math-Gangsters” and the Kosovization of Macedonia

Introduction After the referendum’s results held in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on September 30th this year and the Western reactions on it (by the EU & NATO) it is absolutely clear that this small Balkan country is finally proven to be the Western puppet colony without its own real Government and above all the national sovereignty. To remind ourselves, the people of Macedonia were called to express their wish to change or not a state’s name into the Northern Macedonia and, therefore, its national name into the Northern Macedonians, in order to avoid further obstructions by neighboring Greece in ...

Russian Sanctions Latest Betrayal of Post-Cold War Agreements

While the US claims recent sanctions targeting Russia are based on alleged Russian interference in last year’s US elections, a careful examination of US policy post-Cold War reveals a systematic campaign aimed at undermining Moscow, encircling Russia and attempting to overturn the current, prevailing political order there in favor of one dominated by US interests.At each step, various excuses are concocted, mainly to mesh with current political narratives embedded within public perception at any given time. Currently, playing left and right-leaning Americans against one another regarding the 2016 election and still-unproven allegations that Russia played a hand at tipping the ...

Orthodox Christian Ghettoization and Anti-Serb Clampdown in Kosovo

If you reside in a parallel universe then welcome to Kosovo, the land of Albanianization and Islamization and all in the name of democracy. A flick back into history tells us that the Serbs were 98% of the population of Kosovo 600 years ago but today the Orthodox Christian Serbs are between 6% and 8% depending on various figures. Of course, the Kosovo Serbs became a minority because of the ravages of the Ottoman Empire, dhimmitude, Islamization, and Albanian support of fascism during the German Nazi period. Communism in the old Yugoslavia was the final nail in the coffin because Albanian long-term objectives ...

Untold History of Lithuania: A Chicago Teacher Showed Her Grandfather was a Nazi Collaborator

Barring unexpected delays, Silvia Foti is months away from fulfilling an old promise that’s become her life’s work: to write a biography of her late grandfather, who is a national hero in his native Lithuania. Foti, a 60-year-old high school teacher from Chicago, made the pledge to her dying mother 18 years ago. She has spent a long time studying the life of her grandfather, Jonas Noreika, as well as acquiring the writing skills necessary for chronicling it and finding a publisher. But rather than celebrating Noreika’s legacy as her mother requested, the biography that Foti wrote confirms and amplifies the findings ...

The 1967 Obsession, Trump and Trivia

I arrived in Jerusalem last night and as always during the weeks between mid-May and mid-June the media is full of romanticized memories. Within these weeks are the two most siginicfant dates in modern Palestinian history: May 1948 when Palestine was conquered and renamed Israel, and June, 1967 when the Israeli army completed the conquest of Palestine by taking East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For Palestinians these dates bring back bitter memories, but for Israelis the memories are sweet – those were the days when we were young and brave and innocent. Vintage photos of soldiers at the newly conquered ...

A Chess Game in Global Politics

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save

NATO: Lying All the Way to Barbarossa

Despite claims made during NATO Summit Warsaw 2016, that “NATO remains a fundamental source of security for our people, and stability for the wider world,” it is clear that the threats and challenges NATO poses as existing to confront are in fact threats of its own, intentional creation and continued perpetuation. From the ongoing refugee crisis triggered by NATO’s own global-spanning and ongoing military interventions, invasions, and occupations, to its continued expansion along Russia’s borders – violating every convention and “norm” that existed during the Cold War to keep it “cold,” NATO has proven that it is to the populations it poses as protector over, ...