History’s Quiet Footsteps

Al Gore commenting on the Supreme Court’s unprecedented decision and intrusion into Florida Election law in 2000 said, “I had to either accept the decision or continue to fight it which could have brought about a revolution.” He is right of course, and a revolution could have potentially cost thousands of lives and millions of dollars and thrown the nation into turmoil. Instead we had the peaceful if unlawful transference of power and what has that brought us since?

But I’m not trying to place any blame on Gore, how could he have known? How could any of us have known? Because that’s the way history operates, quietly surreptitiously in small-unnoticed increments and you can’t blame the politicians that don’t notice. It’s like a Nostradamus quatrain it’s only after the fact we look back and say, “Hey that fits!”

On the night of October 11, 1940 fighter bombers from the British carrier Illustrious bombed the Italian navel fleet moored in Taranto harbor sinking or putting out of action 3 battleships and 2 cruisers and finishing Italy as a naval power in the Mediterranean. The Germans made no note of this as some new revolutionary strategy nor did the Americans who were watching events closely. The British themselves viewed it like a chess player when a piece is left exposed and could be taken with out retaliation so it was done. But to the Japanese half a world away this was important, but entirely missed by the rest of the world.

Earlier in 1931 the National Socialist’s were the largest party in the German Reichstag but totally lacking a majority, the ruling President Hindenburg was hounded and bullied by the National Socialist’s to name Hitler Chancellor. Hindenburg was not deceived by the Nazi’s Hindenburg was an honorable man and he sought only to keep the country from dissolving into bloody revolution. But by his sincere desire to try and hold the failing democratic republic together he had made the reign of the Nazi’s possible and legal.

He called Hitler that bohemian Corporal disdainfully in private and sought to hobble the Nazi’s by working with them but limiting their access to power. He was well aware of the Nazi’s abilities to take to the streets and foment unrest and to under mine the process of civil government. But Hindenburg misunderstood the Nazi’s abilities to subvert the system of civil government.

Al Gore like Hindenburg knew that paid operatives were behind the unrest, the threats of the S.A. or the Republican congressional aides at the Florida court houses that it was all in fact part of an organized campaign made to appear to be spontaneous. Hindenburg feared what would happen to Germany just as Gore feared for America, both men chose arbitration and conciliation trying to work out an agreement with those who only wanted power.

But Hindenburg couldn’t see into the future and as much as he had strong reservations about Hitler no one could have predicted what would come to pass. Gore and the Democratic Party as well couldn’t understand the full implications of what was happening right in front of them. They were still battling to win an election while the Republicans were planning a take over of power. The unprecedented awarding of the Presidency by a Supreme Court with two of it’s justices whom had family members actively working in the Bush campaign rivals any political atrocities committed by the Nazi’s during the Weimar republic. The courts ruling stating the exceptionalism that just this once is without precedent as justice can never be just this once. A travesty soiling their robes and a stain upon this nation which makes them unworthy to hold office.

On January 30,1933 Hitler holds his first cabinet meeting the next day Joseph Goebbels writes in his diary, “In a conference with the Fuehrer we lay down the line for the fight against the red terror. For the moment we shall abstain from countermeasures. The Bolshevik attempt at revolution must first burst in to flames.

Later in the month Goebbels wrote in his diary, “Now it will be easy, to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the state. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there will be no lack of money.”

On the evening of February 27th the German Reichstag burst into flames, arrested for the crime was a Dutch Communist Marinus Van der Lubbe. Van der Lubbe had been picked up a few days earlier after having been heard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next.

Rupert Murdoch employee and Fox Commentator William Kristiol publisher of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard chaired the PNAC. In September, 2000 the Neo conservative think tank Project for a New American Century authored a document entitled rebuilding America’s defenses it called for a Pax Americana’ was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), George W Bush’s younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). It says: ’New methods of attack — electronic, ’non-lethal’, biological — will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, then most chillingly, In one of their major reports, written in 2000, they noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

It is a clearly a roadmap for American foreign policy of the last six years and reads as
this century’s Mein Kampf.

It was established at Van der Lubbe’s trial in Leipzig that the suspect didn’t possess the means to set so vast a building on fire so quickly. The main fires, according to the testimony of experts at the trial, had been set by considerable quantities of chemicals and gasoline. I was obvious that one man could not have carried them into the building, nor would it have been possible for him to start so many fires in so many scattered locations in so short a time.

Van der Lubbe had been arrested on the spot and as Herman Goering later testified in court he had wanted to hang him on the spot. Interestingly the Reichstag fire admitted by all sides to have been fueled with gasoline and chemicals burned the building to a shell and yet did not damage any of the structural steel in the building and is still standing today 60 years after the attack.

The following day the German Chancellor prevailed on President Hindenburg to sign a decree “For the protection of the people and the state” The enabling acts suspended the seven areas of the constitution, which guaranteed individual and civil liberties. It was described to the public as a necessary “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,”

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Within days of the September 11th attack the Patriot Act already composed written and typed is presented to Congress and passed without debate. Mirroring the enabling acts it gives the American government almost the same identical powers as the proclamation passed by the Reichstag. Even down to being passed for the same reasons, to keep us safe from external attack and to root out internal terrorists.

On July 25,1934 members of S.S. standarte 89, dressed in Austrian Army uniforms broke into the Austrian federal chancellery and shot the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in the throat while blocks away Nazis seized the radio station and broadcast the news that Dollfuss had resigned. On September 11, the BBC and other media outlets announced the collapse of the World Trade Center’s building seven (CIA headquarters in New York) prior to its actual collapse.

Hitler received the news of the attack on Dollfuss while at the opera, witness Friedelind Wagner later told, after the performance the Fuehrer was most excited. This excitement mounted as he told us the horrible news. . . Although he could scarcely wipe the delight off his face Hitler carefully ordered dinner in the restaurant as usual.

“I must go across for an hour and show myself,” he said “Or people will think I had something to do with this.” Perhaps instead of dinner he could have read to schoolchildren, maybe they had a copy of my pet goat?

So you might ask, this is all very interesting but is it relevant? To me all history is relevant there is nothing new under the sun. The history of the past is like the seasons but it will only come again after it passes from our memories. So this time instead of giving the easy obvious comparisons of the events of the 1930’s to those of the first decade of this century I will give you in this episode future history.

On or about August 1939 the chief of the S.D., Heydrich, personally ordered me to simulate an attack on the radio station near Gleiwitz (Germany) near the Polish border and to make it appear that the attacking force consisted of Poles. Heydrich said: “Practical proof is needed for these attacks of the Poles for the foreign press as well as for the German propaganda.” . . .

My instructions were to seize the radio station and to hold it long enough to permit a Polish-speaking German who would be put at my disposal to broadcast a speech in Polish. Heydrich told me that this speech should state that the time had come for conflict between Germans and Poles . . .

I went to Gleiwitz and waited there fourteen days . . .Between the 25th and 31st of August, I went to see Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, who was then at Oppelin. In my presence, Mueller discussed with a man named Melhorn plans for another border incident, in which it should be made to appear that Polish soldiers were attacking German troops . . . Mueller stated that he had 12 to 13 condemned criminals who were to be given fatal injections by a doctor employed by Heydrich. Then they were to be given gunshot wounds. After the incident members of the press and other persons were to be taken to the spot of the incident . . .

Mueller told me he had an order from Heydrich to make one of those criminals available to me for the action at Gleiwitz. The code name by which he referred to these criminals was “canned goods.”

Alfred Naujocks, Nuremberg 1945

The event will probably take place along the Iraq Iran border maybe a border outpost or perhaps a naval attack in the disputed Shatt waterway. But American assets or personnel will claim to have been destroyed making the impending American attack on Iran righteous retaliation for the dastardly imaginary attacks on American Interests.

We wander in the familiar corridors of things yet to come and we see these things going on around us. We are guided by history’s map but we are alone an unable to ask the specter, “Are these things that will come to pass is there no escape or reprieve from them?” And how do you go about proving a negative fraud that’s yet to happen?

In the quiet of retrospect, how do we determine when the attempts to save what is already corrupted is to only create a more fertile fields for the maggots to corrupt the already corrupted even more and to fuel them by our refusal to simply say no. Is it in our pure desire to preserve the institutions and trappings of civil government? Or is it uncertainty? The fear that by saying no we could make it worse, worse than our rights gutted our currency debased and our treasury looted.

Worse is a word we must become well acquainted with for until we are willing to say no it will live with us and haunt us. The situation in Iraq will get, the situation in Afghanistan will get, the environment will get? The disparity between rich and poor will get? Many of us fail to see the parallels or refuse to accept them, refusing to see ourselves as anything but the good guys not understanding that Nazi soldiers belt buckles read God is with us.

Only one politician in the 1930’s understood National Socialist Workers party for what it was and if any in this country understand the symmetry of the Republican Corporate Neo con Party their voice is mute and unheard. But if we stop and listen closely over our own footsteps we can hear the echoes of truth ringing off the marbled walls,

“Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: "Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be." (Winston Churchill May 19th, 1940)