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Responses to my column 'Who was Hitler?'


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By Lev Navrozov
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
Lev Navrozov

May 23, 2005

My Internet column “Who Was Hitler?” (NewsMax.com, May 6, and WorldTribune.com May 9) received many responses.

One response, on May 6, from Barbara Luviano of San Antonio, Texas, began with one of those statements with which my readers spoil me: “I just love reading your columns. You are the most intelligent, most informed, and most correct writer writing today.”

I expected some remarks about my column “Who Was Hitler?” Instead, Ms. Luviano wrote of the prophecies (in the Bible, for example) about the end of the world.

The implication is: of what importance is Hitler or the Chinese dictators' ability to establish their world domination if the world may end tomorrow?

Indeed, at least the biblical prophets or Dante believed in one physical world — one Earth. We cannot have that illusion. We know that our earth is a tiny particle in a space, assumed in the 19th century to be infinite, and according to Einstein, finite, but also vast. Ms. Luviano correctly notes “the possibility of Earth being hit by an — as-yet-undiscovered — asteroid or a comet. You are so smart. What do you think of all this?”

There are those for whom life is meaningless unless it is eternal (in heaven), and so they believe in eternal life — just as three millennia ago. When an official who was formalizing my U.S. citizenship asked me “Religion?” I answered “Personal Mysticism,” and he put it down with apparent satisfaction. I believe that life cannot be eternal — it keeps changing even within one minute (listen to a Chopin Prelude),. and one minute may be as, or even more significant than, one million or one billion years. The meaning of Hitler's evil versus what John Stuart Mill called the protection against tyranny will not be canceled by an asteroid or a comet hitting the Earth. The death as a result of an accident is not the same as the death as a result of surrender to evil.

In his e-mail on May 7, Stan P. Nieweglowski, a medical operations planner in Florida, wrote:

After reading some of what you have offered about Hitler and the Nazi era, I wanted to get your feelings on something I have long pondered. In all my history classes from grammar school through my college there has always been this consensus that Nazism was the right wing extreme of conservatism while Soviet style communism was the left wing extreme of liberalism. It is my believe that this is totally incorrect.

I agree. Before the 20th century dictatorship, most rulers accepted the ideology of their country: thus European kings and emperors or Russian czars under absolutism accepted Christianity with or without freedom of other religions. The ideology of a dictatorship is whatever the dictator wishes it to be at the moment.

Between 1918 and 1928 the ideology of the Soviet dictatorship was revolutionary Marxist internationalism. But in 1922 Lenin introduced capitalism! Russian nationalism was ruthlessly suppressed because it might lead to the restoration of the pre-1918 Russia. Anti-Semitism was a criminal offense, and there was affirmative action for Jews wishing to study at “institutions of higher learning.”

In 1928 this affirmative action was canceled, the centenary of Tolstoy's birth was celebrated as a triumph of great RUSSIAN culture, and capitalism was about to be abolished!

The rise of anti-Semitism in Germany in 1933 stopped its further rise in Stalin's Russia until 1943, when Stalin began to plan his own Final Solution. Stalin attacked Engels, the co-author of Marx, and there was no doubt that Marx would be the next target. The Orthodox Church came to the for since it was to anoint Stalin as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The Nazi ideology was what Hitler created after 1918 on the basis of Alfred Rosenberg in order to take power and then expand it globally.

In his e-mail of May 7, Daniel Malloy wrote: “I absolutely agree that the communist threat is much under-appreciated in the current Third Reich understanding.”

Stalin had threatened the German middle class with death before Hitler came to power. No wonder the German middle class gave more votes to Hitler's party in the Reichstag election than to any other and thus made him Reichchancellor, a step to dictatorship.

Matt Hawkins of Indianapolis, Indiana, wrote in his e-mail of May 6: “I enjoyed your article on Hitler, and wanted to add a few comments.

In his drive to his power between 1918 and 1933, Hitler “could be compared to a gangster like Al Capone.”

So far I agree. But then Matt Hawkins wrote that he does not “necessarily think” Hitler “was a good guy gone bad in 1942.”

This is nonsense that I have never said. He was a good guy gone bad in 1918 (when he was 29), not in 1942! In 1942 he launched the mass extermination of six million Jews. But between 1918 and 1942 there were other victims of his drive for absolute power and of his absolutism itself.

Also, Matt Hawkins innocently asked: “Why did he [Hitler] rise to power?” Well, the German middle class did not want to be put to death by Stalin.

In his e-mail of May 6, Joel Thornton wrote: “An excellent insightful article. You have managed to get past the present view of Hitler. . . .”

Why is my view of Hitler important? The unsigned e-mail of May 9 said: “One of the interesting things I picked up in my travels was that Hitler started his speeches softly, calmly and worked his way up to the climax like any good showman. Newsmen being what they are waited until he was in the full throes of his performance to project his image on the screen which, of course made many American observers of the speech believe he was a madman. Which, of course, he was not. Best regards.”

Owing to the post-1945 misrepresentation of Hitler as a genetically insane, raging, screaming villain from a cheap melodrama, no one will believe that a dictatorship is coming when a new Hitler appears. Even between 1933 and 1938, few inhabitants of the democratic West considered Hitler evil or dangerous, and the United States went to war with him only after HE had declared war on the United States in December 1941!

Unfortunately, Wayne Nickerson repeated in his e-mail of May 6 the mistake of Matt Hawkins, who wrote that he does not “necessarily think” that “Hitler was a good guy gone bad in 1942” (instead of 1918!). Owing to his mistake, Wayne Nickerson wrathfully demands:

First, where are you getting your information regarding Hitler not being such a bad guy until after 1942 [I said: until after 1918] or until after receiving absolute power?

The reason I am asking this is I have read and studied World War II, specifically Germany and Hitler, and in no text have I come across evidence supporting the statements made in your article regarding Hitler not being such a bad guy [before 1918].”

Hitler was one of the very few (non-combatant) common soldiers of WW1 to be awarded the Iron Cross, First Class. His commanding officer, Fritz Wiedeman, has written that Hitler would not have received the honor if not for the special favor he (a non-combatant common soldier!) had won with the regimental adjutant Hugo Gutman, a Jew (!). Wayne Nickerson can read this in Wiedemann's memoirs (pp. 25-26), published in West Germany in 1964.

On the other hand, in reliable descriptions of Hitler's life before 1918, there is not a single example of his evil behavior, such as anti-Semitism, let alone any crime. If Mr. Nickerson communicates to me such an example, I will publish it.

Said he: “Hitler was just as evil in my estimation as Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others.”

Before his drive for power, Lenin was an even better guy than Hitler: Lenin had been a real gentleman. Before his drive for power, Stalin was an exemplary student at a seminary to be a priest. Lenin called him “our wonderful Georgian,” and this is why he was elected General Secretary by those very people whom he later ruthlessly destroyed as rivals.

Pol Pot was the dictator in Cambodia in 1975–79. In his drive for power a future dictator must be a good guy toward his future subordinates or they would not support him. But before his drive for power, why could not Pol Pot be a good guy in general?

Finally, Wayne Nickerson declared: “While the terms of Versailles may have fueled his [Hitler's] ire against the Allies, as it did many Germans, I do not see how even that could have led him to becoming the evil man he ultimately was.”

Let us suppose that the middle class of the United States, including Wayne Nickerson, faced Stalin's invasion and death. Would he have written that the Treaty of Versailles fueled his ire? No, not ire, but the horror of being put to death, along with all members of his family, except children sent to orphanages.

Hitler became the dictator. The “evil man”? Every dictator is an evil man by definition because he protects his dictatorship by killing all potential enemies and by expanding it forcefully — globally, if possible.

In his e-mail of May 5, Mark Grissom wrote: “I respectfully disagree with you on the reason for Hitler's rise.” In order to see the light, I must, according to Grissom, read Hayek's “The Road to Serfdom.” Well I read it many years ago, and I would review it in the Internet if it were not so mentally pathetic and already almost forgotten.

What did Hayak discover?

When I was ten, our teacher in Soviet Russia asked the class what Lenin introduced in 1922. No one knew, because the history of Soviet Russia was studied later, but as a bright pupil I answered “Capitalism!” He roared with laughter, and he told about my answer to other teachers in the teachers' common room and they also laughed. You see, Lenin was at the pole of good, socialism, while capitalism was the pole of evil. How could the founder of the pole of good introduce the pole of evil? Dozens of millions of Russian “patriots” would have been amused or shocked hearing this. Lenin introduced the NEP (New Economic Policy)!

Dozens of millions of American “patriots” would be amused or shocked hearing that, for example, the American SSI (Supplemental Security Income) is a socialist measure without which dozens of millions of low-income or no-income Americans would have died of curable diseases. You see, according to Hayek, socialism is the pole of evil. How on earth could a socialist measure be introduced in a country at the pole of good, that is, capitalism?

Though an Austrian count, Friedrich von Hayek was an exemplary American “patriot of capitalism” and regarded socialism as the evil root of all evil.

The word “socialism” was a good word in Europe (in contrast to the United States today) and Hitler coined the word “nationalsozialistische” (as one word in German), or Nazi for short, Hayek's book was entitled “The Road to Serfdom.” Anything connected with the word “socialist” is the road to serfdom, and it led to dictatorship in both Russia and Germany — to the rise of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler respectively.

Mark Grissom declares that Hayek's book “might convince” me “that the Treaty of Versailles had little to do with Hitler's rise.” Actually, Hayek's book convinced me that he cannot think, but can only rave as a functionally insane bigot that he was. Three German parties propounded what each of them called socialism: the Communists, the Independent socialists, and the Social Democrats or Majority Socialists. Why did they receive, in the Reichstag elections in March 1932, 12, 0, and 18% of the votes respectively, while the Nazis 44%? Were the Nazis more socialist than Social Democrats and hence more evil and more attractive to the electorate? Is Hayek insane enough to equate the social security and social benefits of Social Democrats and the genocide and WW2 of the Nazis because Hitler had used the fashionable word “socialist” to coin the word “Nazi”?

Jim Tanner wrote on May 10: “I always enjoy reading your column. It provides new insights that my other readings never mention.” Jim Tanner agrees with me that the life of Hitler and his rise power have been destroyed by “bad propaganda.”

Michael McCormack's response of May 10 is less than two lines, but is a happy ending of this column: “I truly enjoy your articles and the way you are masterfully able to put things in the proper perspective. I visit www.worldtribune.com often looking for your work. Thank you.”

Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.

May 23, 2005

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