From radio and film to newspapers and publishing, the Nazi regime controlled every aspect of German culture from 1933-1945. Through Josef Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the German state tightly controlled political messaging, promoting deification of the leader—the Führerprinzip—and the demonization of the ubiquitous and duplicitious “racial enemy.”

A new exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., examines “how the Nazi Party used modern techniques as well as new technologies and carefully crafted messages to sway millions with its vision for a new Germany.” Reason.tv’s Michael C. Moynihan visited with museum historian and curator Steve Luckert to discuss the role and effectiveness of propaganda in the rise of fascism and what lessons can be drawn from the Nazi experiment in mass manipulation.

(more…)

Horror movie buffs may be surprised to know that the scariest scene in the history of cinema has no slasher or space creature or ferocious beast.  There’s a monster alright, but it’s a different kind of monster.  Not an imaginary monster, but a real one – the kind of monster that people choose to rule over them.

As the Book of Ecclesiastes explains: “There is nothing new under the sun.”  Throughout history, nations have fallen prey to charming, silver-tongued demagogues.  Once in power, they reveal their evil, tyrannical selves.  Too late does the subject populace feel The Leader’s boot on their throats.  Then comes time for the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The 1972 movie Cabaret has the scariest scene in the history of the cinema.  An idealistic youth sings about change he can believe in.  Caught up by his vision for the future, people begin to sing along with him:

The sun on the meadow is summery warm
The stag in the forest runs free
But gathered together to greet the storm
Tomorrow belongs to me

The branch on the linden is leafy and green
The Rhine gives its gold to the sea
But somewhere a glory awaits unseen
Tomorrow belongs to me

Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come when the world is mine
Tomorrow belongs to me

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee
But soon says the whisper, arise, arise
Tomorrow belongs to me

The audience then discovers that the young man is in the Hitler Youth.  Looking back at the rise of National Socialism, one can lose sight of the fact that back then Germany had one of the most advanced cultures on the globe.  Germans were too nuanced and sophisticated for a dictator to arise in the midst, right?  Wrong!

(more…)

The LA Times has a piece out today that is entirely worth reading, about a brave and crazy Englishman who, contrary to all self preservation instincts, sneaked into Progressive Socialist death camps during WWII.

Bearing witness to Nazi horror

Reporting from Bradwell, England – The men in stripes came in looking like boxers and ended up like skeletons. Denis Avey could see them wasting away in a place so evil that even nature had abandoned it, without a bee or butterfly in sight.

They were the Jewish inmates housed in the ghastliest part of Auschwitz, subjected to brutalities and atrocities that Avey, an English prisoner of war confined to another section of the camp, could barely imagine.

But then, he thought, why only imagine them? What if, somehow, he could see those horrors for himself — see them, remember them, bear witness to the world about them?

So the then-25-year-old pondered and plotted, soon hatching a plan so audacious that, more than 65 years later, he shakes his head at its absurdity. While so many Jews and others held at the infamous extermination camp were desperate to get out, Avey was actually devising a way to sneak in.

(more…)

Why are Barack Obama and other Democrat leaders so intent on passing a government takeover of healthcare now…Now…NOW?

They must know that costs will rise and the quality of care will fall, right?   They must know that Obamacare would destroy the economy, right?   Of course they do.  But, they also know that the federal government would tighten its grip on the nation.   They know that Obama’s czars and other appointees would be authorized to bypass Congress in enacting sweeping regulations on nearly every aspect of a person’s life.   And, they know that these new powers of the federal government would be concentrated in the hands of the Democratic Party and the President.

Here’s what else they know.   History affords many examples of regimes whose motto was “Never let a crisis go to waste.”   In 1933, having campaigned for “hope” and “change,” the National Socialist Worker’s Party forced through the German parliament a Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation, also known as the Enabling Act.

This new law enabled the German chancellor and his appointees to bypass parliament in imposing sweeping regulations on the people:

“In addition to the procedure prescribed by the constitution, laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government of the Reich [i.e., the Cabinet].”

(more…)