]]]]]]]]]]].         NAZI LIES ARE STILL WITH US       [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
                              By Sysop                     (1/25/1989)

     Lies have a life of their own; and some lies are incredibly long-
lived. The following is about two lies of Nazi origin that have
recently appeared on the editorial page of the WALL STREET JOURNAL, of
all places (it would take a full-time staff to report on them in the
NEW YORK SLIMES and other tabloids).
     The first crept into an article "Irredentist Perils in Faltering 
Soviet Europe"  (8/23/88) by Paul Johnson, a man whom I had hitherto 
admired very much, but now I ask myself -- how much do I really know 
to check out his statements, for example, in his "A History of Chris-
tianity? "
     The main idea of the article -- that national movements seeking 
freedom in a repressive empire are dangerous --  was repugnant to me; 
and the rest of it apparently offended others, too: in a letter to the 
editor (9/13/88), Prof. I. Lukes of of Boston Univ. wrote "To explain 
the Anschluss, the tragic debacle of Western democracies and decency 
in international relations at Munich, and the outbreak of the war 
itself without a single reference to Hitler's explicit desire to start 
the war is at variance with available documents as well as common 
sense."
     The particular lie of Nazi origin is Johnson's statement that 
"the Czechs treated the German minority more savagely than they had 
ever been treated themselves." The fact is that not only did the 
Czechoslovak constitution guarantee equality of all nationalities, but 
that the guarantee was (with some very minor exceptions that one can 
always find) scrupulously observed in practice. Until artificially 
disrupted by the Nazis, the peace among Czechoslovakia's seven natio-
nalities was second only to Switzerland's. The repression of Germans 
in Czechoslovakia (who enjoyed freedom of press, speech and assembly 
quite unknown in the Third Reich) was a lie fabricated by Nazi propa-
ganda -- most often flimsily based on episodes of local violence 
between Czech individuals acting against their government's policies 
and Germans carrying out policies set and organized by Nazi Germany. 
This Nazi propaganda was most welcome for the Western appeasers who 
used it to justify their policies; and now Paul Johnson has fallen for 
it, too.
     The other Nazi lie appeared in an article by Nathan Gardels 
(1/24/89), "Communism: all that us sacred is profaned." The well-
meaning Gardels has fallen for a lie that is less transparent, but 
more important, for it is used to justify giving credits and other 
support to the Soviet Union -- which might get desperate if not 
soothed.
     "Victims of a misleading analogy, many U.S. politicians during 
the Reagan era invoked the lessons of Munich when thinking of Moscow," 
writes Gardels. [Oh yeah? Shultz? Reagan? Crocker? Or who?] "But few 
remember the lesson of Versailles. Without the punitive reparations 
that decimated the German economy after World War I and gave rise to 
fascism, the lesson of appeasement wouldn't have been necessary to 
learn."
     Hitler did indeed use the Treaty of Versailles to gain a follow-
ing both because it allegedly ruined Germany economically and because 
it contained the "Kriegsschuldluege" (lie about war guilt), claiming 
Germany had started the war -- which it had, by assaulting Belgium, 
whose neutrality it had solemnly recognized, in order to assault 
France.
     It is true that the Treaty of Versailles was harsh. But Germany 
never paid the reparations imposed on it, it never really dismantled 
its army to the extent it was supposed to, and when it blatantly vio-
lated the treaty by marching into the demilitarized zone along 
France's border (the Rhineland), the West did nothing. The claim that 
the (unpaid) Versailles reparations decimated the German economy is 
flatly contradicted by the simple fact that the depression hit ALL of 
Europe from Britain to the Balkans and from Spain to Finland. The 
runaway inflation of the Weimar Republic (which did decimate the eco-
nomy) was caused by printing money, not by the Treaty of Versailles. 
Hungary, which had no reparation obligations, had a similar inflation.
     Both lies of Nazi origin, then as now, are being used by well-
meaning people to appease and prop up a criminal government, instead 
of hastening its demise by refusing them aid by credits and respite by 
disarmament.
     Don't believe these well-meaning history twisters, and for that 
matter, don't believe me, either. 
     Check it out for yourselves.

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