Hitler Learns Of The 10:10 Climate Video (You Know, The One That Depicts Children Exploding!)

OS considered posting that horrible piece of trash momentarily, but decided against including anything that totally gruesome on his bit of the digital real estate. The goal is to lift the culture, not pollute it.

But, he is all about having a belly-laugh at the expense of the clown circus currently in charge in Washington. This is just too funny...sometimes, only laughter will do.

Hitler Learns About the Climate 10:10 Video from Steve Hayward on Vimeo.

An Interesting, If Chilling, Exchange Of Views: David Leonhardt In The New York Time

Let it never be said that OS doesn't read a variety of opinion during the course of a week. After all, this project is much about the education of the author, attempting to publicly make sense of what appears to be a nonsensical period of history.

So, in today's Yew Nork Times, we have this offering by David Leonhardt.

He has an interesting premise, that perhaps it wasn't the inflation of the 20's that paved the way for Hitler's rise to power in the early '30's, but rather the deflation that followed the 1929 crash. He debates a bit with another contributor, all very civil and informative. Then he concludes with this bit of insight:

Last year, I wrote a column pointing out that Germany was one of the few countries in the 1930s to try aggressive economic stimulus — and, as a result, escaped the Great Depression faster than other countries. Opponents of stimulus, on blogs and talk radio, then cited that column to suggest that Keynesian was a cousin of Nazism.

Well, that conclusion is a bit simplistic. Keynes was not even a second-cousin-twice-removed to a neo-Nazi. Puhhleeeeze!

At the same time, Leonhardt glosses over a chilling fact: Hitler's 'stimulus' did work, and made him a hero to 'der volk' in the late 1930's. He made the trains run on time, 'tis true. But he did it by building a massive war machine that was obviously designed for aggressive ends. How many hundreds of Stuka dive bombers and Panzaer divisions does one need to defend der Vaterland, after all? And as he pumped the economy up, civil liberties (and niceties like elections, free press, freedom of religion, etc.) went away, replaced by a blatantly pagan worship of the state and der Fuhrer. By April 1945, it could be stated with assurance that much too high a price had been paid for the Great Stimulus of the 1930's.

And then, there's that little detail of those trains that ran on time, and where they ran, and the millions of people packed upon them that were transported to their gruesome deaths.

All to emphasize, once again, the OS mantra about culture and economy. A lot more than a deflation or inflation allowed this monster to come to power and push the world over the cliff. By the time the little guy with the mustache, lunatic ideas, and ecstatic speech-making ability showed up, Germany was a disaster waiting to happen, a once-great culture in severe disarray, willing to listen to anyone who would tell them what they wished to hear whilst lining their pockets.

The Prisoner Who Broke Into Auschwitz

Denis Avey, one of the original Desert Rats of WWII, is an extraordinary man. After being wounded and captured, he was shipped to a POW camp near Auschwitz in Poland, and set to work in the Farben factory. There he befriended one of the Jewish prisoners. He determined to break into the camp, and document as much as he could for posterity.

His story is harrowing, a literal trip into Perdition.

As we passed beneath the Arbeit Macht Frei [work makes you free] sign, everyone stood up straight and tried to look as healthy as they could. There was an SS officer there, weeding out the weaklings for the gas. Overhead was a gallows, which had a corpse hanging from it, as a deterrent. An orchestra was playing Wagner to accompany our march. It was chilling.

And that was just the walk into the camp!

At 91, his story is finally being verified and told. It took two years for him to convalesce after he returned home from the war, and by 1947, no one in England wanted to hear the stories anymore.
So, he had to live with them by himself. 

This blog, in general, is about the culture--what makes it healthy or poisonous, and how that eventually plays itself out in the economic and political life of the country. OldSouth sits in the 'Amen Pew' when someone like Muggeridge reminds us that the abandonment of Christendom and its virtues will lead to the return of a Dark Age. Tolkien and Lewis hammer the same theme, each in their own way.

It is easy to sit back and say 'Those nasty, nasty Nazis, weren't they just awful!' It is much more sobering to reflect that the same culture that brought us Luther, Gutenburg, Telemann, Mendelssohn, Goethe, Beethoven, Schubert, Schiller, and Brahms later brought us Adolf Hitler. He was enthusiastically embraced by a culture that had already decided that that inheritance just didn't matter that much anymore. They were looking for a leader would restore the nation's pride, its economy, and make the trains run on time. Ethical details didn't much matter anymore.

The old story of Esau selling his birthright for a 'mess of pottage', e.g. a bowl of lentil soup, comes chillingly to mind.

Luckily, in the 1940's, there still remained an England, America, Canada, Australia, and a few others.

But what if we allow it to happen here, in America?

Lech Walesa visited a few weeks ago to ask just that question, and was ignored. Muggeridge made it his life's work after the mid 60's. Solzhenitsyn warned us of it in the 1970's, and was ridiculed--'it could never happen here'.

Are we so sure?

France in 1938--encore

Martin also covers in detail the quandry faced by the French leadership in the late 1930's: The Great War had decimated a great portion of a generation, creating a demographic 'hole' that ensued in 1935. Even had they had the wisdom and will to go toe-to-toe with Hitler (and they had neither), they didn't have enough young people to staff the armed forces. Which explains in great part why my mother's best friend was sent from a small town in Kentucky to die on a beach in Normandy.

Now consider this, a brilliant post from Bearwatch.

Life is sacred, period.

It's a truth, not just a fond sentiment.