Pondering Hitler's Legacy

Pondering Hitler's Legacy

By George Friedman

Happenstance has brought me today to a house on the Austria-Germany border, just south of Salzburg. That puts me about 3 miles from the German town of Berchtesgaden, on the German side of the border. Adolf Hitler's home, the Berghof, was just outside the town, on a mountain in the Bavarian Alps. To the extent that Hitler had a home, this was it, and it was the place where Hitler met with many notables, particularly before the war began.

As it happens, today is the 76th anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe. It is always a strange feeling to be here. There is a sense of history present here, but it is mostly a sense of the mind, since Berchtesgaden is an attractive but ordinary place. It always feels as if towns like this should have a patina of extraordinariness sticking to everything. But that isn't how history works. There is a patina of mind, but not of place. On Sept. 1 of any year since 1939, and at a place like this, there is a sense of urgency to extract the real meaning of the man who lived in a house on the mountain I am looking at.

After 76 years, it seems appropriate to try to figure out what Hitler and the war he initiated genuinely changed in the world. This is not an easy question, because to arrive at an answer I had to dismiss from my mind the many acts of gratuitous evil that he committed. It is hard to dismiss those, but in a sense they left little legacy to the world except for the realization that civilization is a thin layer over humanity's beastly savagery. But truly, we didn't have to have Hitler to learn that. We humans have always sensed what is beneath our surface.

The question is how the world changed as a result of Hitler's decision to invade Poland.

The Price for Europe

The first outcome, obviously, was that he destroyed Europe's hegemony over much of the world and its influence over the rest. Within 15 years of the end of the war, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands lost their empires. A handful of European nations had dominated the world. By the end of the war they had lost the will, the energy and the wealth to maintain their power. After half-hearted and doomed attempts to resist, these countries willingly participated in the dismantling of what they had once thought of as their birthright.

This changed the shape of the world, of course, but the change was less the result of the world's resistance to Europe than a result of Europe's exhaustion. After the war, Europe faced the task of rebuilding buildings. The ambition to rule had been exhausted. However flawed or wicked that ambition might have been, there is still something sad in the loss of all ambition, beyond the desire for comfort. The will to dominate, seen in its most extreme form in Hitler's appetites, chills the blood. The loss of any transcendent ambition merely cools it. Europe has lost its recklessness, which is on the whole good. Yet it has gained an excessive caution that makes it difficult for Europe to make up its mind over matters small and large. 

The world is certainly a better place without Hitler's reckless imprudence. It is probably a better place without British or French imperialism, although when we look at what they left behind, we wonder if the wreckage of empire is worth the wreckage of the post-imperial world, whoever we blame for that wreckage.

Hitler clearly didn't want this outcome. I think he was sincere when he said that he would leave the British Empire intact, along with its navy, if the United Kingdom accepted German domination of the European mainland. He wanted peace with the British so he could crush the Soviets. But the British as a nation could accept that deal only if they trusted Hitler's promise. However sincere he was in 1940, Britain couldn't bet on the endurance of his word. As a result, Hitler in due course committed suicide in Berlin, and Britain presided over the dissolution of its own empire — the only thing that would have disgusted both Churchill and Hitler. Churchill's imperialism and Hitler's racism met on that point.

There was another thing Hitler cost Europe: the metaphysical sensibility. It is startling, the extent to which Christian Europe has abandoned Christianity for secularism. Consider this map:

The decline of church attendance is the outer husk of a European sensibility that, at the highest levels of thought, contemplated the deeper meanings of things. It was not Hitler who destroyed the European metaphysical sensibility. In many ways it destroyed itself from the inside, with a radical skepticism derived from the Enlightenment that turned on itself. But Hitler provided a coup de grace to that sensibility by appropriating figures like Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner to his own political ends, thereby delegitimizing not only them but also the tradition from which they emerged. Hitler, in his own strange wanderings in the depths, made such wanderings no longer respectable, and indeed, suspect. There is a saying I once heard: "German philosophers go down deeper, stay down longer and come up dirtier than any others." I don't know about philosophers, but Hitler, the would-be philosopher, certainly did, and it cost Europe the jewel of its intellectual heritage.

It is said that Napoleon called the English a nation of shopkeepers. He obviously meant that as an insult, seeing shopkeepers as people of limited imagination, ambition and wit. There is some truth to the saying about the English, although George Orwell was enraged at the trivialization of their achievements. To the extent to which the English were suspicious of the wholesomeness and usefulness of French and particularly German philosophy, Napoleon was right. But if he was, then Hitler achieved something extraordinary: He made all of Europe into nations of shopkeepers.

After the war, the obsession of Europeans was to live. Then it was to make a living. Napoleon's insult was that there was more to life than simply making a living. What Hitler achieved was what he would have been appalled by: shopkeepers ruling Europe. But Europe is obsessed with making a living and suspicious of profound thinking. It has seen where that got it and it doesn't intend to go there again. The best minds get MBAs. The broad public sleeps late on Sunday. The train wreck that Hitler made of Europe created a secularism not only in relation to Christianity, but in all attempts to recreate the depth of European culture.

The Power of the United States

Of course in all of this, perhaps the most important thing that Hitler did was unleash the United States, a country where earning a living is the definition of life. Hitler believed that his defeat meant the triumph of Bolshevism. It really meant the triumph of the United States and its culture, which it distributed in Western Europe through occupation and in the Soviet bloc through imitation.

The United States redefined European culture. As I have written in Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, it was not Coca-Cola but the computer that was the carrier of American culture. The computer had nothing to do with metaphysics or with the true or beautiful. It had to do with the narrowest form of instrumental reason: It simply got things done, and in doing so, it justified its existence. The computer dominated the world — and Europe — and with it came a mode of thinking, contained in programming, that was so radically different from what European culture consisted of as to almost be from another planet. Of course, Europeans helped found the culture, but they bequeathed it to their heir, the United States. Paradoxically, the United States remains the most religious of countries, with church attendance at its height. Religiosity and instrumental reason are compatible in the United States — a point to ponder.

Hitler respected Josef Stalin. He understood the radical ideologue who was ready to kill. He had little respect for the United States. He understood Stalin, but he couldn't fathom Roosevelt. But as I sit here looking toward Berchtesgaden, I must recall that it was the 7th Infantry Regiment of the Third Division, U.S. Army, that captured the town and Hitler's home. The Americans occupied the area until 1995, using it for military purposes. This was the most important thing Hitler achieved, and the last thing he expected. Hitler drew the Americans into the heart of Europe and left the Europeans completely vulnerable to the emerging, and quite strange, modes of thought that a nation that holds shopkeepers in great regard can produce. Hitler destroyed the dams that Europe had built around itself. He crippled all of Europe, including the Soviet Union. He could not imagine the need to cripple the Americans, nor could he have had realized the need. And therefore, in the end, they rebuilt Berchtesgaden and I am sitting here looking at it.

Hitler will be remembered not only for great evil but also — and more important, in many ways — for the manner in which almost all of the consequences of his war were unexpected. 

Obama's List of Most Disrespectful Insults to the Military

Obama's List of Most Disrespectful Insults to the Military

by Dave Jolly

A lot has been written lately about Barack Obama’s ‘latte salute’ to his Marine guards. There has also been a lot written about his disrespect for the military and for America in general ever since he illegally assumed the highest office in the land. (Don’t know if you’ve noticed but for the past couple of months, I refuse to recognize him as president and will use other terms to denote his ill-gotten position. Yes the office of President deserves respect, but Obama so disrespects the office himself that I refuse to show any respect to him or the office as long as he holds it.)

Reading through many of the ways Obama has insulted or disrespected the military reminded me of when Bill Clinton was president. Both Bill and Hillary constantly treated their military guards as nothing more than hired servants to be walked on. I know a former Marine who was assigned duty with the Clintons and with George W. Bush and he told me the Clinton’s were very rude, harsh and unfriendly to him and his fellow Marines. He said they treated all military people with obvious disdain. If you remember, it was Clinton that started closing a number of military bases in the US, including one in my home area of Arizona that drastically hurt the local economy.

On the flip side, both George W. and First Lady Laura always treated them with the utmost respect. They both often talked with him and his fellow Marines and let them know how grateful they were for their service and protection. My friend told me that he would have taken a bullet without any hesitation for either of the Bushes but would have tripped or stepped aside when it came to the Clintons.

From what I read and hear, it seems that this is a basic difference between Democratic and Republican presidents and Obama is no different. If you need proof of Obama’s disrespect for the military that goes beyond his recent latte salute, here is a list of the top 30 most disrespectful insults Obama has made to the military, as compiled by Robert Moon of Examiner.com:

“30) Looking past all his civilian aides to order a Marine to hold an umbrella over his head like a butler for an entire speech at the Rose Garden, in violation of military regulations.

29) Forcing race-baiting class warfare propaganda, extreme PC "sensitivity" measures, and Gay Pride Month on soldiers.

28) Taking credit for the success of the surge he opposed in Iraq.

27) Taking credit for the success of the interrogation policies he opposed that located Osama bin Laden.

26) Skipping the funeral of the highest-ranking officer to be killed on foreign soil in over 40 years (Major-General Harold J. Greene), to play golf.

25) Smearing veterans as potential domestic terrorists.

24) Trying to make wounded veterans cover their own medical treatment through private health insurance plans, which would inevitably end up increasing their out-of-pocket costs.

23) Blaming our troops for the Taliban attacking them...for everything from objecting to pedophilia and advocating women's rights, to not wearing latex gloves while handling Korans and walking in front of Muslims while they are praying.

22) Rushing in to misrepresent the Ft. Hood massacre that killed 13 soldiers (one whom was pregnant) as mere "workplace violence."

21) Giving captured terrorists at Gitmo (who are drenched in soldiers' blood) a $750,000 soccer field, cable TV, entertainment, classes in painting, etc., while stripping away benefits for soldiers at every turn.
20) Ordering federal agencies to make the sequester cuts as painful as possible for the American people, which ended up cutting tuition assistance for soldiers and increasing other college costs for the Armed Forces across the board.

19) Denying veterans from all over the country access to the WWII Memorial in Washington over a staged government shutdown while allowing illegal immigrants to hold a political rally on closed federal grounds.

18) Cutting military health care benefits and pensions while increasing spending on unionized federal bureaucrats (Obama voters).

17) Ignoring a former Marine frivolously imprisoned in Mexico on trumped up weapons charges.

16) Using soldiers to help a terror-sponsoring dictator fight off outraged civilian protesters.

15) Purging the military of oath-keeping constitutionalists.

14) Imposing draconian cuts to the things we are actually supposed to be spending tax dollars on under the Constitution (like the military), while exploding spending on things the Federal Government has no authority to even be involved in, like Obama's trillion-dollar health care takeover.

13) Silencing and criminalizing Christianity in the military.

12) Banning time-proven interrogation techniques and insisting on treating foreign terrorists as mere common criminals to be tried in American courts, as civilians.

11) Suppressing military votes.

10) Imposing ludicrous rules of engagement on our troops that have needlessly gotten many soldiers killed.

9) Appeasing our enemies, backing down after drawing "red lines" in the sand, betraying our allies, and dismantling our missile defenses...all of which needlessly endangers our troops.

8) Cutting troops down to pre-WWII levels, and then allowing illegal immigrants into the military.

7) Allowing veterans to die on secret waiting lists at VA hospitals all over the country, after being warned about the manipulated numbers and obscene delays in care (welcome to 'universal health care') back in 2008.

6) Abandoning three decorated veterans and a U.S. ambassador to be dragged through the streets and tortured to death by bloodthirsty Islamic savages in Benghazi, and then falsely blaming it on Americans having the right to disagree with Islam in public.

5) Releasing numerous terrorists back onto the streets so they could return and attack our soldiers, including one who ended up becoming the leader of ISIS.

4) Releasing five major terrorist leaders to appease the Taliban into releasing one America-hating deserter.

3) Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq while handing Afghanistan back to the Islamic fundamentalists who facilitated 9/11 (the Taliban).

2) Openly funding and arming Islamic terrorists.

1) Endlessly trampling the Constitution that soldiers are sworn to defend and attacking the rights they fight, bleed, and die to protect.”

Thank you Robert Moon for compiling this list for us. When read through this list, it’s obvious that Barack Obama has no business to be Commander-in-Chief of our military. He should be charged with dereliction of duty, failure to obey orders (US Constitution and Congress) and treason (as defined by Article 3, Section 3 of the US Constitution). If not shot for his crimes against the military, nation and American people, Barack Obama should be imprisoned, the key thrown away and door welded shut!

Why We Must Study War

Memorial Day: Why We Must Study War

by Jarrett Stepman

As citizens of a free country it is necessary that we acknowledge the sacrifices of the men and women in uniform that died to defend it. Civil society only survives in a world of violence and tyranny if there are rough men ready to do violence on our behalf.

Andrew Jackson, after winning the Battle of New Orleans, reminded us of the necessity of the soldier when he said our sacred liberties would be in trouble indeed if we only employ “lawyers” to defend the Constitution.

Days of memorial for those that sacrificed and died in service to their country are common in American history, stemming back to the Revolution. But the modern practice of celebrating Memorial Day as a national holiday was established after the Civil War as a way for Americans to pay tribute to their Union and Confederate dead. Some of these earliest commemorations were held at Arlington National Cemetery, which this year turns 150 years old.

However, as we look back and remember those that have died defending us we must note the famous line by philosopher George Santayana: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Modern Americans are being failed by an education system that no longer teaches about war and neglects its study to a dangerous degree.

Instruction regarding war, especially those fought by the United States, is vital for every educated citizen and not just the tiny number who now serve in the armed forces. It is important to not just respectfully mourn those lost in battle on this Memorial Day, but to understand why they fought and sacrificed.

There was a time in American history when almost every student would learn about the intricacies of American wars from a young age. In famous historian George Bancroft’s History of the United States of America, the standard history textbook in the 19th century, the battles of the American Revolution played almost more of a role than the ideas.
Bancroft focused on the sacrifice, toil, and hardship that George Washington’s troops faced and highlighted the necessity for this service to the new republic. This encouraged young Americans to join the ranks when their country called in the Civil War; they were inculcated with a belief that they owed a great debt to the previous generation for the great Constitution that protected their liberties and a duty to defend it for those that would come after. Without their sacrifices, and the service of generations of Americans, our grand experiment in liberty and government of, for, and by the people would have faded long ago.

Unfortunately, for modern American students, the “mystic chords of memory” connecting them with past defenders of liberty and the Constitution are being lost. How many today are taught about the suffering at Valley Forge, the heroism at Gettysburg’s Little Round Top, or the world-changing Invasion of Normandy that set a continent free?
Worse, students are left with a serious lack of insight into human nature and will be unprepared when war finally comes.

Thomas K. Lindsay, director at the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, recently wrote about the frightening lack of military history education at American universities. “If the seeds of war are planted in human nature, the study of human nature, the humanities, needs to take account of it. For this reason, American history courses had always -- up until recently -- offered military-history courses,” he continued. “No more: Observers have noted an alarming decline in military-history courses in university history departments nationally.”

This lack of military history teaching is bad at the primary and secondary levels of education, but even worse at the university level where any focus on war itself is intentionally diminished. In an article by military historian Victor Davis Hanson he explains the results of a 2004 survey of the top 25 U.S. history departments:

When war does show up on university syllabi, it’s often about the race, class, and gender of combatants and wartime civilians. So a class on the Civil War will focus on the Underground Railroad and Reconstruction, not on Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. One on World War II might emphasize Japanese internment, Rosie the Riveter, and the horror of Hiroshima, not Guadalcanal and Midway.

Great works on war like Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, and Carl Von Clausewitz’s On War are now utterly neglected.

The burying of military history in modern academia may be a result of the generally anti-war views on college campuses, or a result of it not fitting in with the overall ideological agenda, but regardless of the specific excuse, it is a great disservice to those who want to be educated about the consequences of human nature. Citizens must have insight in how to avoid unnecessary wars and win necessary ones. Hanson had it right when he said: “A wartime public illiterate about the conflicts of the past can easily find itself paralyzed in the acrimony of the present. Without standards of historical comparison, it will prove ill equipped to make informed judgments.”

So, this Memorial Day it is important for Americans to re-learn the lessons of war, especially as the conflict in Ukraine continues to heat up and great powers like Russia and China become increasingly belligerent. We serve the honored dead by becoming informed about our nation’s great and small conflicts, and serve ourselves by cultivating a stronger understanding of human nature and the horrors of war, which will be priceless when, inevitably, the next battle comes.

Molon labe

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ! Molon labe   (mo-lone lah-veh)
	Two little words. With these two words, two concepts were verbalized that have lived for nearly two and a half Millennia. They signify and characterize both the heart of the Warrior, and the indomitable spirit of mankind. From the ancient Greek, they are the reply of the Spartan General-King Leonidas to Xerxes, the Persian Emperor who came with 600,000 of the fiercest fighting troops in the world to conquer and invade little Greece, then the center and birthplace of civilization as we know it. When Xerxes offered to spare the lives of Leonidas, his 300 personal bodyguards and a handful of Thebans and others who volunteered to defend their country, if they would lay down their arms, Leonidas shouted these two words back.
Molon Labe! (mo-lone lah-veh)
They mean, “Come and get them!” They live on today as the most notable quote in military history. And so began the classic example of courage and valor in its dismissal of overwhelming superiority of numbers, wherein the heart and spirit of brave men overcame insuperable odds. Today, there lies a plaque dedicated to these heroes all at the site. It reads: “Go tell the Spartans, travelers passing by, that here, obedient to their laws we lie.” We have adopted this defiant utterance as a battle cry in our war against oppression because it says so clearly and simply towards those who would take our arms. It signifies our determination to not strike the first blow, but also to not stand mute and allow our loved ones, and all that we believe in and stand for, to be trampled by men who would deprive us of our God-given – or natural, if you will – rights to suit their own ends.