"Part II"
"Part III"
"Part IV"
In attempting to conclude this article I must say at the outset that I have been astounded by the response to the first four parts of "America's Hitler." Especially since I am about as qualified to write a serious article about Adolf Hitler as Bush is to be president of the United States.
However, one woman who is a translator and teacher of German-language literature - a woman who lived in Germany for ten years and has immersed herself in the German culture for twenty years said that among the people in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and among Holocaust survivors in the United States, she hears the parallels between Bush and Hitler and the similarities between the United States now and Germany in the 1930's all the time. "She writes:"
"It's almost like this knowledge is a given--a basic assumption shared by everyone I know who is intimately familiar with the Nazi era (that is, 90% of my professional colleagues, clients, collaborators, etc.). It is like the unspoken known. Unspoken, and unspeakable"
In my department, at conferences I attend (here and in German-speaking countries), everywhere in Germanic Studies related professions, this parallel [between Bush and Hitler and todays America and 1930's Germany] is so evident as to be widely accepted as valid, but it cannot be articulated"because seriously suggesting anything of the kind""in scholarship, or the classroom, in casual conversation"is to commit professional suicide--
But, in spite of this woman's assertions, if you agree with my assessment of my own lack of qualifications, and dismiss every analysis I write, simply reading the words of Langer, the psychologist who analyzed Hitler in 1942, and Hitler's own words included in Part V as well as in Parts I- IV should be enough to give anyone pause.
Do those words sound familiar to you? They sounded eerily familiar to me -- frighteningly so. Which is why after reading "The Mind of Adolf Hiter" I felt compelled to write and put before the public what Langer and Hitler said.
As Langer stated in his analysis, Hitler's primary rules were: "never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it." (L. 75.)
During the 2004 campaign when Bush was asked what he considered his biggest mistake since taking office, he could not think of one mistake he had made.
Even the dullest person who has not been in a coma for the past five years should be able to list several: 1. Saying the tax cuts would only take some of the surplus and give it back to the people, when in fact this administration, after inheriting a surplus Clinton worked eight years to achieve, has now (according to some sources) spent more money and mired us in deeper debt than all previous administrations combined; 2. Believing or pretending to believe Iraq had WMD's and significant ties to Al Qaeda; 3. Not paying more attention to the warnings about bin Laden; 4. Not listening to experts who said going into Iraq would be the worst thing we could do if we wanted to stabilize the Middle East, or once Bush made the mistake of not listening to the experts and going to war anyway, 5. Ignoring the generals who said we needed more troops to secure Iraq; 6. Ignoring or denying global warming, etc., etc.,
"He cannot modify his course in the face of unexpected developments or firm opposition" When an unexpected question is asked, he is completely at a loss." (L. 83.)
Bush sat for a minimum of seven minutes with a lost expression on his face when told the 2nd plane had hit the World Trade Center on September 11th? Can anyone imagine Clinton, for instance or any other president not jumping up immediately and taking charge?!
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