Hitler? Primary responsibility has to lie with the German electorate.

That does not deny the continual (and continuing) efforts of all the major nations: US, China, NTH and STH Korea, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, et al to influence the actions of other nations as and when it suits “their interests”.

The means and techniques are manifold – Japan “selecting” little island nations onto the IWB with aid payments being made in return for supporting Japan; the sale of weaponry at bargain prices to third-world nations in return for unfettered access to natural resources; the list is long and open-ended…

If we were to return to the original topic – that of David Irving – then there is one question that must be asked.

How did he get to the prominence he actually achieved without being exposed?

Exposed he was, as was recorded in the head post here, by the media having the guts and determination to say “We are right” in a Court of Law. That is not all. The publishers also knew that if the initial findings went against them, they had the resources to appeal; Irving did not.

Now truly, Neo-Neocon, the path that question leads to MUST be the number of charlatans, the cheats, and outright liars who are not exposed because they have the resources (legal and monetary) to ensure that a definitive conclusion is never reached.

The tobacco companies almost pulled it off. The actions (I think there were three?) by individual States of the US did eventually make the breakthrough. But in large part solely because the States could match (and were prepared to) the resources of the tobacco industry.

As I said, how many in positions of power and influence hold those places through their ability to ward off challenges of process and exposure?

Readers, that many “elements in the West” supported Hitler & that many of these “elements” also had fascists tendencies & that many of these same “elements” also disliked communism is not disputed by me — a Hitler-supporting closet Fascist such as, say, Henry Ford could hardly be expected to view Communism with approval. And it is probably already known to many readers that, as Reeves pointlessly points out, pre-Pearl Harbor anti-war sentiment in the US ran high. That bit of wisdom, delivered excitedly by Reeves, is news to no historian I’ve read. I readily concede that the US had it’s share of pro-Fascists, pro-Nazis & by the way, pro-Communists. I seek not to “erase the historical record.” Rather, it is the historical significance of such mundane facts that I question. I agree with Reeves on one point: Anons observations are certainly “unremarkable.”

As an aside, the thought just occurred to me that the attack on Pearl turned a bunch of folks into that era’s version of Neoneoconism — Pearl Harbor seemed to have been a consciousness expanding event for many American Isolationists, much like 9/11 has been today.

But back to Reeves post: Isn’t it a form of circular reasoning? Some elements in the US liked Nazism & contributed support in various ways. Correct. Some of these same American elements also disliked Communism. Again, correct. Fascists rarely like Communists, after all. Therefore, these elements ‘created’ Hitler & ‘caused’ the Holocaust because they were fearful of Communism. Huh?

And with all this money & political support from Western fat-cats, did Hitler win? No, because the conduct & outcome of the war had little or nothing to do with the fact that Ford & others sent Hitler some bucks.

And I wouldn’t think of contesting Reeves unnecessary assertion that many people inside America, Europe & elsewhere supported Hitler.

Reeves writes: That elements in the west provided support for Hitler’s Germany, whether from visceral anti-Communism or simply for profit, is a matter of testable fact. Whether this implies a collective guilt on the part the United States and other nations as a whole is a separate question. One which I do not think Anon raised directly.

In response I’m afraid I must bore the reader with some extensive quotes from Anon’s posts with some pertinent phrases bolded:

It should be no surprise, but I’ll warn you anyway, that if Germany was threatened by communism, and Hitler and the Nazi’s were anti-Communist, that he may have had some powerful friends in the west. That his rise to power, and thus responsibility for the holocaust, might just lie with “us”, and the anti-Communist swamp Hitler’s political life was spawned in.

As a side note, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, Hitler’s finance minister, was American, his father a Wall Street investment banker (of German ancestry of course). Hjalmar was God-father of Montague Norman’s kids, England’s Central Banker, and Montague God-father of Hjalmar’s kids. As to the “why”, which you say has not been addressed here, I’ll offer the same answer I’ve read “everyone” who supported Hitler give: He was anti-Communist. And let your imagination, for now, wander.

Neocon offered this to Anon: “What is also quite an interesting question is why a person[Anon] would want to ascribe it[how and why Hitler came to power] to the US.”

Anons reply: Not only the U.S., rather the pillars of western society that felt threatened by communism, England, France, the Vatican and others.

Most people are absolutely clueless about the desperate times in Germany and how Hitler was being funded for his campaign contribution.

“Most people” perhaps but not most historians of the Nazi era. Exhaustive historical studies have been performed on the pre-WW2 German economy & on the funding of the Nazis, one of which is in a book by Taylor which is cited by Anon for other reasons. To quote one reviewer of the book: “a careful examination of the[funding] records.” Ooops.

Bankers helped him[Hitler] to stop the spread of communism, only to become a greater threat to the world.

Without industrial and political financing from the west Hitler’s well known views and plans could not have been realised.

Anon’s theories not conspiratorial? They sure seem that way to me but let each reader judge for themselves. I apologize to the readers for the extensive Anon quotes.

No, it isn’t a conspiracy theory. How perceptive of you. It is a propaganda line, an unremarkable one, and a very very bad one. If it wasn’t bad, then it might have had some justifications, but not as it is.

It will never erase the history of how Stalin’s communist Russia backed and supported Hitler in both his military and political endeavours. Pro-communists, not anti-communists as some may prefer, were behind the Peace party that allowed Hitler to do everything he planned with Stalin and his communists.

Reeves is a good wordsmith, but he needs to coordinate his story with the others.

But in a court of law “we” would go to jail as conspirators.

Anon nowhere asserts that the various players in these events were operating in concert according to a single agreed upon strategy. Nor is such an all encompassing conspiracy necessary to the case that he presents.

See, it is true that Anon nowhere asserted that such and such players were involved together to form such and such conspiracy. But like a very expertly crafted statement, while it doesn’t lie, it also doensn’t tell the truth either.

What he did say is that in the court of law “we”, meaning the West, would go to jail as conspirators because of our connection to Germany.

However the court record is shaped by those in the know, it doesn’t change the actual words written and spoken.

Anyone wondering how the likes of Irving could hawk his snake oil for decades before being busted need only look at the majority of responses to Anonymous posts.

Anonymous’ makes observations unremarkable to anyone who has investigated the historical facts. To whit: Hitler could not have built or maintained his monstrous Third Reich as he did without the aid, both political and monetary, of elements in the West and that such aid was rooted, primarily, in the fear of Communism.

Contrary to the hyperbolic rhetoric above, this is not a conspiracy theory. Anon nowhere asserts that the various players in these events were operating in concert according to a single agreed upon strategy. Nor is such an all encompassing conspiracy necessary to the case that he presents.

Prior to the outbreak of WWII there was significant pro fascist and pro Nazi sentiment in every major western Democracy. It was from such local reservoirs of sympathy that that collaborationist regimes like Petain’s Vichy government were cobbled together.

The existence of similar political currents in Great Britain encouraged the Duke of Windsor to escounce himself in Franco’s Spain, in direct disobedience to orders, after the fall of France in hopes of playing the role of “pretender to the Throne” should the “peace” party succeed in foiling Churchill’s War policy.

Again, contrary to some of the ill informed rhetoric above, the United States was not immune to this phenomenon. The Italian American Friendship Association, The German American Bund and anti-Semitic Radio commentators such as Father Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith all enjoyed popular followings. The sympathies of notables such as Lindbergh, Henry Ford and Joseph P. Kennedy are a matter of record as well.

It is pleasant to think that Fascist and Nazi racialist views found no purchase in America prior to WWII. Pleasant but utterly false. That elements in the west provided support for Hitler’s Germany, whether from visceral anti-Communism or simply for profit, is a matter of testable fact. Whether this implies a collective guilt on the part the United States and other nations as a whole is a separate question. One which I do not think Anon raised directly.

What is pertinent to the point Neo Neo raised is the response to Anon. Presented with inconvenient facts, the respondents have, for the most part, ignored them. They have resorted to invective rather than analysis. Having attended a few of David Irving’s traveling medicine shows over the years, I can vouch for the fact that this is Irving’s own prefered method of dealing with critics.

At the end of the day, all the frenetic shouts of “anti-American”, “America hater” and sinister imputations of “psychological” manipulation won’t erase the historical record. Our history, like that of every other democratic nation, is full of crosscurrents and ambiguity. Those who refuse to enlarge their perspective to accomodate that reality are paddling about in the same fetid intellectual swamp as Irving.

Anon lists some authors that have written about the complicity of Western corporations & important individuals in American, England & elsewhere in the Nazi rise to power, such as Henry Ford, the Duchess of Windsor, the Chase Manhattan Bank, Errol Flynn, etc. This has all been known & written about numerous times but there was never a war in which the enemy did not have sympathizers. Complicity occurred, yes — but it had no real significance — other than that the wealthy & famous can be as wrongheaded as the rest of us. Yet the paranoid & conspiratorial minded will latch onto these irrelevant facts-sometimes-shading-into-speculation & erect ludicrous theories around them — especially if they hate their own country & seemingly in Anon’s case, love communism & Stalin. Because Henry Ford & others favored the Nazis, because some corporations & banks performed some rather stupid acts of complicity, all of the Western world is to be condemned because Hitler & the Holocaust was ‘created’ by powerful Western individuals.

Anon mentions a name, “Sidney Warburg,” who was supposedly the author of a pamphlet listing acts of complicity by wealthy individuals. Yet Sidney Warburg seems never to have existed. I googled as Anon suggested & read an article on the pamphlet in which the New York Times is quoted:

The pamphlet[by the non-existent Warburg] repeats an old story to the effect that leading Americans, including John D. Rockefeller, financed Hitler from 1929 to 1932 to the extent of $32,000,000, their motive being “to liberate Germany from the financial grip of France by bringing about a revolution.” Many readers of the pamphlet have pointed out that it contains many inaccuracies.

Half truths, inaccuracies, well-known insignificant facts elevated to false positions of importance, such as the universally known, among historians, information that certain individuals, banks & corporations were contributors of money to Hitler, meetings between powerful individuals & a mysterious & erroneous book by a non-existent author is all patched together into a very unsatisfactory garment that falls apart when it is actually tried on.

To the reader who is unfamiliar with WW2 history it might be a bombshell to learn that notables such as Henry Ford supported the Nazis but to those who have happened to read a few books about such matters it is an “old story,” mundane & irrelevant.

Historians have not ignored Communism in pre-war Germany — scores of books have been written that cover the subject. Every detail & instance of the history of Communism has been explored by historians ad infinitum. A search using the words “german communism” on Amazon.com results in 3 pages of books. Nothing has been, as Anon claims, “swept under the rug” on this subject.

Don’t think he lives in any one country, judging by his words.

I can only offer a few things for those that aren’t blinded by our flag and goodness

Then

The Clivedon Clique, or Clivedon Set. The pro-Hitler international salon run out of Lady Astor’s palace in England.

How England […]

“Our flag” means basically, anything he wants it to mean really.

Most people who argue with me tend to get uncomfortable and retreat eventually. While that is one of the intentional end results, I always hope that my opponent can produce something more original than his current propaganda line of argumentation.

Those who have arguments with an internal logic of some sort, I tend to try and reflect their attacks upon their own reasoning. They either bunker up and repeat their assertations cause they feel threatened, or they can modify their own internal reasoning to adapt to the attack, forming around the force like water instead of meeting it head like a rock.

The reasoning of Anon’s latest post, has not changed from the first one. Same tone, same arguments, same facts even. Kind of boring really.

Here’s a classic case of what is a danger to the internal logic of “West creates Hitler”.

That Hitler and Germany were essentially evil, and must take sole blame, does not suffice in my opinion.

Quite a solid logical axiom. Hitler cannot take all the blame.

Without industrial and political financing from the west Hitler’s well known views and plans could not have been realised.

It is true.

Without industrial and political financing from the east, Hitler’s well known views and plans could not have been realized.

Oh wait, did a logic derailing occur? Boo,hoo.

Anon’s arguments cannot handle a precisely calculated attack, straight to his vitals. He can only ignore it, in the hopes that it might hit someone else.

Anon doesn’t want to talk about his logic, he wants to talk about the guilt and criminal competence of the West. I hate generals that attack by the book, they are so unaggressive, so lacking in creativity, and so easy to outmaneuver.

You say you’re traveling; hopefully, you’re scouting out another country to you can move to?

Grackle seems to have a problem with me “picking and choosing”
in Turner’s expose on the little known, yet vital events of January 1933 that brought Hitler out of the ashes and finally into power. I referred to it in the first place to those who wanted to familiarise themselves with it, particularly the Cologne meeting of Jan.4th, 1933 . Cross checking what happened in January with other academic works and newspapers of the day I agree with his findings. Cross checking his assumptions on domestic and international financing of Hitler, I cab say I don’t agree with him on that. I don’t see any contradiction in this. Someone can be right about one thing and wrong about another, ..me included. One must check themselves.

Concerning David Irving and “holocaust denying”, my original point was there was no sense insisting it happened, and that we must never forget it, if questions as to how and why it happened were utterly ignored. That Hitler and Germany were essentially evil, and must take sole blame, does not suffice in my opinion. Without industrial and political financing from the west Hitler’s well known views and plans could not have been realised.

That his plans coincided with many elitist aims of the west, putting Germany back on it’s feet and either destroying or checking communism, is known. What is missing is the “imagination” that western elite’s might wish to take advantage of this bad situation and turn it to our advantage, nor that these elitist sectors of western society have any influence what-so-ever over our political leaders or “democratic” process and decision making. In my opinion it would take one political-historic dilettante not to at least keep an open mind on the subject.

No way to “prove” western complicity in Hitler’s crimes in this short space and time, I can only offer a few things for those that aren’t blinded by our flag and goodness, and might want to investigate further by Googling, or looking up in your library some information on the following.

The Clivedon Clique, or Clivedon Set. The pro-Hitler international salon run out of Lady Astor’s palace in England.

The “Myth of Sidney Warburg”, especially Sutton (a conservative historian from the Wilson Institute).

The Bank of International Settlement, how money was funneled into Germany. How England handed over Czechoslovakia’s gold to Hitler, among other things.

The works and documentation of Charles Higham, James Poole, Isabel Vincent and others, on western elite financing and industrial and technical supplying of Hitler Germany, including the congressional record (Die Commitee). How U.S. patents for synthetic rubber, and others things, were given to Germany but not the U.S. How Ford refused spare parts to England, while continuing shipment to Germany. How Standard oil clandestinely shipped oil to Germany etc. etc.

Works and military assessments on Czechoslovakia’s military defences. Hitler couldn’t have taken it if even if he tried. .So why did “we” give it to him at Munich? .And the world’s largest arms exporting industry in the world? French leader Daladier said when he was in his 80’s “because the bankers told me”.

The St. Pierre incident. Why the Allies refused to take the little Vichy island off New Foundland that was radioing information to the Nazi’s on our shipping convoys to England and Russia. When de Gaulle took it on his own, after he promised he wouldn’t, the diplomatic fire-works were so great Sumner Wells, U.S. Secretary of State, threatened to resign if Vichy was not given it back.

U.S. funding, financial and military to Vichy France, under German occupation.

Why the Allies refused Russian diplomatic efforts, 1933-1940, to form an alliance to contain Hitler , economically, politically and militarily, receiving Russian envoys only with low level diplomats?

Refusing to hear German Generals warnings about Hitler, or assisting them in his overthrow by assuring their recogniztion of the new German government if they did.
(Peter Ustinov, son of a German diplomat, was one of the couriers in this).

Pro-Hitler elements in America and England pushing the isolationist cause with German money and propaganda, stalling U.S. entry into the war.

In my opinion, by lauding the victors in W.W.II, we are lauding the very elements that helped “make” it happen, or allow it to happen in the first place. For a holocaust victim I could think of no worse fate then that. With out taking a closer look at the players, the tangle of western-German business-financial-religious relations before W.W.II, then it is Grackle that’s “picking and choosing”.

To Aubrey:

There has always been a conventional wisdom that sooner or later is shattered. Maybe you’re just part of the stupid herd?