No, you are not lying. But you have a somewhat
incomplete understanding of history.
There were a lot of reasons that led to
the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime. The economic depression was certainly
one reason. The high reparations Germany had to pay after WW I another and there are many more reasons. I
do not want to start a discussion on this topic. Enough has been written about
it.
Now to your question, “…
did Germany's initial rapid economic expansion
and ascension to world power leave to deep and lasting and too positive an
impression on our own financial, industrial and political leadership?
In short, are they all *nazi* scum? “ --- What exactly is your question? Are
you looking for reasons of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” after WW
II? One reason was that economic regimes and institutions were still in
place. I define institutions as the rules that define social interactions in
society; this includes culture.
– Are similar economic and political
institutions in place in Iraq? No. Iraq does not have a history of democracy or what it takes to survive and
compete in today’s global market place by itself. Hence, it requires the
help of international organizations such as the UN, IMF, WB, etc. The dilemma
is that as long as the US military and the Bush cabinet does not yield more influence to the
UN, most funds will not flow. The Bush administration started a war which
violated international law. It cannot expect the UN to justify this war now. It
is naļve and I dare say arrogant and cowboy-like to think that only American
companies should win contracts for rebuilding Iraq. By the way, I wonder
if the Bush administration actually wants to rebuild Iraq or if it just wants to
keep control of the large oil reserves.
Are there similarities between the present
situation and post WW II Germany? Maybe. With regards to your allusion to the
Nazi regime, no.
Thomas Juli, Ph.D.
Germany
-----Original Message-----
From: wsn-owner@csf.colorado.edu
[mailto:wsn-owner@csf.colorado.edu] On Behalf
Of KenRichard2002@aol.com
Sent: Monday, October
27, 2003 9:31 PM
To: deforest@direcway.com
Cc: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: Similarities:
Contemporary US and WWII Germany
Tell me if I'm lying:
Germany, during WWII, boasted the largest, most powerful military
in the world;
a military Germany arrayed around the globe in order to project her military
might, secure natural resources in foreign lands, promote her political sphere
of influence, develop her domestic economy in order to increase national
wealth, which all attributed to job creation and social security, for the
German people. All of the previous also contributed to the vast personal
enrichment of a powerful minority of German politicians, military figures,
bankers and industrialists.
To that end, the German financial and industrial sectors worked closely with
the political leadership in order to stimulate the German economy through an
economic strategy which came to gravitate around the core activity of warfare.
The most obvious symptom of this strategy was Germany's constant need to
find enemies from which she must defend herself. Germany's dreaded
enemies were initially weak and militarily insignificant, countries such
as Poland made do quite nicely. But as
the military / industrial complex needed to expand it's base of production,
and as productive activity such as domestic economic growth required raw
material inputs which could not be had locally, the German alliance of
capital, industry and the political leadership saw fit to use military force or
the threat of the same to seize or acquire those resources abroad.
The Geman people did not mind all of this so much. For they were a strong
and proud people with a history of dominating and attempting to dominate other
local peoples. Many Germans also believed that their racial origin
bestowed a natural superiority on themselves as a people. Thus,
capital, industry, political leadership and race had for a short time,
far less than the envisioned "thousand year[s]", created a
magnificiently positive feedback loop for the German people. However, it
would not be entirely fair to blame the German people for their *superior*
behavior. After all, they had previously experienced a terrible crash in
their stock market, they suffered from an incredible rate of inflation,
they had a high rate of unemployment and they labored under a collousal
debt load. There experience, therefore, was not unlike that of and
perhaps worse than the psychic shock that hit America at the time of the Great
Depression. For the sake of fairness, it must be remembered
that the German outlook on the world was initially quite bleak: they
understood it as a world filled with political, military, economic, social and
racial conflict. The German attempt to control the world in which they
lived served to give the German people a sense of group security. It also
instilled in the German people a positive outlook on their future as well as
bestowing individual pride in their nation's accomplishments. The
problem though is this: they were a bunch of nazi scum. The
question is this: did Germany's initial rapid economic expansion and
ascension to world power leave to deep and lasting and too positive an
impression on our own financial, industrial and political leadership?
In short, are they all *nazi* scum? I must
confess, when Ted Kennedy squabbles about the lack of accountability and the theft
of Iraqi under*development funds*, I genuinely wonder if he's bitching
because his own political patrons aren't getting their cut on the deal.
KR