If you’ve been reading the news lately (if you haven’t I don’t blame you) you know there’s been a bit of “controversy” over the choices to fill cabinet positions and other high-level government jobs. The interviews before congress has left me wondering about some of their responses. After reading about some of the choices to fill these positions and their views on various subjects, and some of their backgrounds and rhetoric, it makes me wonder if this has always been the type of people seeking higher political offices.
In the past few years there’s been a lot of comparisons between several U.S. “politicians” and the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. I thought I’d do some extensive research on those that came to power in Germany in the early 1930s.
In January 1933, Adolf Hitler, a popular German politician who had launched his career in the beer halls of Munich, reached the top of German government. He was known for inflammatory speeches and for his stances against Jews and Communists.
It’s said that Hitler’s inner circle were the most powerful leaders in the Nazi Party and that it was a finely balanced team of military commanders, administrative leaders and Ministers of the Nazi Party.
But if you look not too far below the surface, it appears that when Hitler assembled his henchmen to help him run the Third Reich, he chose an assortment of losers and failures that represented the bottom rungs of German society. Let’s check out some of that “inner circle.”
Joseph Goebbels — Propaganda master for Nazi Germany with control over all news media, arts and information. He was named in Hitler’s final will, as his official successor. But — although Goebbels propaganda machine praised the perfect Nordic physique, Goebbels himself had a physical disability — a clubfoot so badly twisted that it kept him out of World War I. In the university, Goebbels’ favorite professors were Jews and he was once engaged to a Jewish woman. After he graduated he tried (unsuccessfully) to make a living as a writer before drifting into the Nazi party. In hindsight, his Nazi career can be seen as a desperate overcompensation for his physical shortcoming.
Rudolph Hess — (Deputy Fuhrer) was born in Alexandria, Egypt and didn’t actually live in Germany until he was 14. Most Nazis started their careers as losers and achieved some sort of career satisfaction by successfully wreaking havoc, but Hess’s career went the other way. His reputation was cemented when he went to prison, voluntarily, to be with his Fuhrer. As his largely ceremonial powers began to recede, he hoped to gain favor with a strange peace mission to Scotland that ended with him being locked in the Tower of London.
Martin Bormann — Head of the Nazi Party Chancellery (a role previously called Deputy Fuhrer until Hess defected and Bormann replaced him with the new title.) He was Hitler’s Personal Private Secretary, controlling all information passed to and from Hitler and controller of all personal access to Hitler. But Bormann has one of the flimsiest resumes of any of the Nazis. A school dropout who worked briefly as a farm laborer, Bormann very briefly served in an artillery regiment during World War I, then went straight into far-right politics — or more exactly, far-right violence. He joined a group of disgruntled former soldiers who spent their time attacking Communists. He even helped murder his former elementary school teacher and served a year in prison.
Hermann Göring — Commander-in Chief or the Luftwaffe (German Air Force,) founder of the Gestapo in 1933, Minister of the Economic Four Year Plan, and designated by Hitler as his successor and second in command. Goring, a well-bred war hero, was the closest the Nazis came to respectability. He once even succeeded the Red Baron (von Richthofen) as leader of his flying aces. But his personal life was marred by scandal — he lured a Swedish baroness to divorce her husband and marry him and after the attempted government overthrow, he was badly injured in “the groin” and became addicted to morphine. He also became monstrously obese.
So from what I can tell, Hitler put together his team of henchmen to help him run the Third Reich, by choosing an assortment of losers and failures that represented the bottom rungs of German society.
I keep hearing that history repeats itself — I don’t know if that’s true, but I hope not…..
“Evil is unspectacular and always human
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.”
~ W. H. Auden
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