Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Check out this extensive archive of Nazi and East German propaganda. It is of scholarly and not sensationalistic bent. (Obligatory disclaimer: I am, of course, not trying to promote Nazism or Communism, but rather the opposite.)

You might particularly want to look at Nazi anti-American propaganda, like this pseudo-historical tract denouncing the Americans as a money-mad "population" that did not meet the Nazis' criteria for being a "people"; this is still a common criticism among both right-wing and left-wing national socialists in Europe today. A couple of other Nazi points from this publication are that the US has no moral ideal and that it only values materialism, and that rather than being individualistic it is conformist; it has destroyed the old European social classes and therefore prevents people from being what they really are by forcing them into an Americanizing straitjacket.

Here's the conclusion of a 1942 book by a well-known travel writer, A. E. Johann, some of whose books are still in print:

It was not the goal of this book to discuss whether America can win the war, or whether it must lose it. But perhaps it has become clear —and that was my goal — that America does not deserve to win the war and spread its system over the entire world. There is nothing in the American system worth imitating, neither for Germany or Europe. If Americanism conquered the world, it would mean the end of all human values and of genuine freedom — the freedom to do something, not from something! — of all the values for which Europe has fought and suffered for millennia, for which it has given all its strength of body and soul.

You could very easily find that last sentence in today's Le Monde--or today's La Vanguardia.

There are several more anti-Yankee commentaries in rather the same vein, along with dozens more examples of Nazi propaganda on dozxens of different subjects. Warning: A lot of this stuff is viciously anti-Semitic, as you might have guessed, but if your stomach is sensitive you might want to avoid looking at it.

Julius Streicher's slime is especially foul. Happily, Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg. His last words were a curse on the Jews. They botched the hanging and Streicher strangled slowly to death; finally an American sergeant had to pull down on his kicking and thrashing legs to finish him off. Can't think of too many better ways to dispose of such a truly evil man.

Henry Ford is mentioned approvingly many times in the archives, especially in the earlier propaganda texts, as an authority on both Jews and economics. It seems to me that Ford should long ago have been exposed for his vile anti-Semitism, which he did not hide but rather used his position to spread as extensively and as shrilly as he could.

Not only was he anti-Semitic, but he also treated his workers like his subjects, spying on them and using his own band of hired thugs, led by the sinister Harry Bennett, to keep them in line. Ford was also a crackpot pacifist who was under the influence of what were called at the time "spiritualists". Finally, Ford spent a lot of time and money on agricultural experimentation, some of which was very useful (soybeans, for example) but most of which was crap. The exaggerated conspiracy claims of today's "hemp movement", that big business (to Ford, big business = Jews) wanted to illegalize marijuana because the plant had so many different uses that it would drive their companies out of business, can be traced directly to Henry Ford's paranoia.

You also might want to look at the Communist East German propaganda posted here and note its similarities to Nazi propaganda.

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