councilor.org
| Source | Steve Zeltzer |
| Date | 03/04/17/15:54 |
| Veteran German Socialist Speaks Against War
PARALLELS BETWEEN HITLER AND BUSH By Barry Sheppard and Caroline Lund [The following interview with Heinrich Fleischer was conducted in Minneapolis about one month before the U.S. launched its invasion/occupation of Iraq.] We met Heinrich Fleischer by accident, at a retirement home in Minneapolis while visiting Caroline¹s father. We soon learned that his remarkable life has enabled him to make important insights into what is happening today. Heinrich was born in Germany in 1912, and studied to become an organist. His lifelong profession was as a performer on that instrument as well as a teacher of it. Under the Nazis, Heinrich became a socialist. "At first, I was sympathetic to the Socialists and the Communists because Hitler was against them, and I was against Hitler," Fleischer said. "Then in 1937, when I was in a bookshop in Leipzig, the owner apparently thought I was trustworthy and would be interested, and dug out a copy of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. This pamphlet was of course banned by the Hitler regime, and possession of it could result in imprisonment or execution." Heinrich would later say that he became a Marxist in the course of the Second World War. We asked him how he felt after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. "I felt the same horror as I did during the December 1943 American fire-bombing of Leipzig, Germany during the war. I felt then like I imagine the people in the Twin Towers felt, those who died and those who survived, at the moment the planes hit the buildings. I was lying in bed in a fifth floor apartment when the window blew out at 2 a.m. The bombing was so intense that it looked like daylight outside. There were thousands of planes. I was paralyzed with terror and fear. I could only think, ŒSomeone in a plane above me wants to kill me. Why?¹ "The next day I met a professor of theology, a neighbor. He said, ŒWe are very grateful to God. No one in my family died.¹ How could he not feel sad and horrified that 10,000 people were killed? His God is either good but powerless, or is evil, or is good but doesn¹t care about people. When I heard about September 11, that is what I remembered. "Bush prays to his God very often. Those who attacked the Twin Towers prayed to their God. Israel¹s Sharon prays to his God. Which God is it?" Turning to the present, he said, "February 2003 today seems very much like August 1939 in Germany. Everyone knew war was coming. The German people were skeptical about the need for war, as many in the U.S. are today. Hitler claimed that tiny Poland threatened not only Germany but all of Europe, and Germany had to take action to defend itself and Europe. Bush claims that tiny Iraq threatens the United States (as ridiculous a claim as Hitler¹s regarding Poland) and its neighbors in the Middle East. Bush goes Hitler one better by claiming Iraq threatens the whole world. "Hitler believed he had a special mission from ŒProvidence,¹ like Mohammed, to lead the Aryan-Germanic race to dominate the world, an empire with Berlin as its center. Bush¹s mission seems to be to impose U.S. domination of the world, under the slogans of free markets and democracy, an empire with Washington or Wall Street as its center. Both Hitler and Bush claimed God was on their side, and had anointed their respective nations as superior to any other, which justified their "missions." "There are other similarities. Hitler¹s army was fully mobilized at the Polish border, as the U.S. army is mobilized on Iraq¹s. The Reichstag [German parliament] had given Hitler unlimited extraordinary power in 1933, and the U.S. Congress voted to give Bush extraordinary power, even if not on the same scale as Hitler got, with the adoption of the Patriot Act after September 11, 2001. "Mussolini followed Hitler¹s lead and Blair follows Bush¹s, like the character Leporello in Mozart¹s Don Giovanni. "Goering initially warned against an attack on Poland, as did Powell regarding Iraq, but both then gave in. "Both Hitler¹s invasion and the coming attack on Iraq made Germany and now the United States hated around the world. "The German people knew the war against Poland would be short, perhaps only three or four weeks, with the gigantic German war machine pitted against the greatly inferior Polish army. Victory was inevitable, though not particularly "heroic." But thinking Germans feared what would come after. And they were right. After the war against Poland, came the declaration of war by Britain and France, making the war into a European war. When Hitler, drunk with power and victory after the defeat of France, invaded Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Soviet Union and finally declared war on the United States making it a world war. "The situation is different today, but where will the invasion and occupation of Iraq lead? The military might of the U.S. will undoubtedly prevail over the weak and ill-equiped Iraqi army. But what happens next? Already the Bush administration has threatened Syria, Iran and North Korea. U.S. bases have been established in former Soviet Republics in central Asia as a result of the attack on Afghanistan. Former Warsaw pact nations have joined NATO. Russia is becoming encircled, and the prospect is for a massive long-term U.S. armed occupation force in Iraq on Russia¹s borders. How long can Russia remain passive in the face of such provocations?" We asked Heinrich what future he saw for the children of today and tomorrow. "It could be very bad," he said. "Not only Russia, but China too is now more encircled with the U.S. bases in central Asia. Both are atomic powers. There could be a nuclear war if America continues to behave like it is now. My feeling is that Washington thinks it can survive a nuclear war, and this is very dangerous." [After the war against Iraq started, Heinrich sent us a letter. "Monday, March 17, 9 p.m. -- I just heard and saw George W. Bush. It reminded me of Hitler¹s speech in the Reichstag on September 1, 1939," he wrote. [While not the speech referred to, the following proclamation Hitler issued to the Army on September 1, 1939 was undoubtedly similar: [The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired, and has appealed to arms. Germans in Poland are persecuted with bloody terror and driven from their houses. A series of violations of the frontier, intolerable to a great Power, prove that Poland is no longer willing to respect the frontier of the Reich. [In order to put an end to this lunacy, I have no other choice than to meet force with force from now on. The German Army will fight the battle for the honor and the vital rights of reborn Germany with hard determination. I expect that every soldier, mindful of the great traditions of eternal German soldiery, will ever remain conscious that he is a representative of the National-Socialist Greater Germany. Long live our people and our Reich!] "Of course, there is a big difference between the situation in the U.S. today and Germany in 1939," Heinrich told us in February. "Germany was a fascist dictatorship. The organizations of the working class, the Communist and Socialist parties and the trade unions, had been smashed. The Nazis crushed dissent in all areas of society. "In the U.S., demonstrations against the war are still legal. I have been tremendously happy to see student activity, antiwar newspapers, and the massive antiwar actions in the United States and throughout the world. It¹s good that people all over the world can see that there is a difference between the American people and the government. "This new worldwide antiwar movement, with its vanguard detachment in the belly of the beast, has become a force against Washington¹s imperial ambitions. If enough resistance is put up in the streets throughout the world and especially in the U.S., and by the Iraqi people and the people of other countries attacked by the U.S. in the future in its unending war, Washington can be held in check. To join this fight is the moral imperative of our times." Barry and Caroline |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho