PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN FEDERALIZED SHERIFFS - LEW ROCKWELL (WILLIAM NORMAN GRIGG)

tThe viral video of the Citrus County, FL cop threatening a law abiding, permitted gun owner for CC with shooting him in the back is on the link below.  The story is here.


http://lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w305.html

Home | Blog | Subscribe | Podcasts | Donate

Put Not Your Trust in Federalized Sheriffs by William Norman Grigg Recently by William Norman Grigg: From Narco-Creeper to Police Chief "You look depressed." "I was lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence." "You lost that some time ago. If you've only just noticed, it can't have been very important to you." Exchange between Thomas Cromwell – the Machiavellian Lord Chancellor of England – and Richard Rich, an ambitious functionary who had sold his soul in a buyer’s market, from A Man for All Seasons. "I will not enforce an unconstitutional law against any citizen of Smith County," insisted Sheriff Larry Smith. The sheriff wants his constituents to believe that he would refuse to participate in a federally mandated gun grab, or permit one to be carried out by federal officials within his jurisdiction. Yet ten days before Smith offered that assurance, his office had taken part in an early-morning SWAT rampage throughout East Texas in which 73 warrants were served as part of the federal government’s patently unconstitutional war on drugs. During a December 2011 campaign debate, Smith said that he wanted to "invest more resources" – that is, redirect wealth plundered from the productive – into a "Drug Task Force," and insisted that under his administration the Sheriff’s Office would embrace a "Task Force mentality" in dealing with law enforcement issues. The problem with the mindset Sheriff Smith was extoling should become obvious once it’s understood that the German term for "task force" is einsatzgruppe. By their actions many multi-jurisdictional task forces in contemporary America are increasingly faithful to their historic pedigree. Smith’s devotion to narcotics task forces might be the residue of his early law enforcement career, which included two years as a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration – an agency that could be considered the mentally deficient stepchild of the CIA, which is the world’s largest narcotics syndicate. Twenty years ago, an ATF einsatzgruppe launched a murderous raid against an isolated religious group at Mt. Carmel outside Waco. The warrant they were enforcing was clotted with falsehoods. The investigation that produced it was haphazard. Its target, Vernon Howell -- aka David Koresh -- was suspected of trivial violations of federal firearms regulations, and had indicated his eagerness to cooperate with ATF investigators to clear the record. If an arrest were to be carried out – and one was neither necessary, nor justified – it could have been performed during one of Koresh’s frequent solitary jogging expeditions, or one of his routine visits to town. Instead, the ATF – seeking a dramatic, high-profile enforcement action to generate headlines for the scandal-plagued agency – staged a paramilitary assault on the religious sanctuary. They did so even though the raiders had lost the element of surprise, and when they arrived at Mt. Carmel they opened fire on the building despite the fact that an unarmed Koresh had confronted the stormtroopers with his hands up, pleading for them not to shoot. Four ATF agents were killed during that Sunday morning raid. Their deaths were utterly unnecessary, and entirely well-deserved: They were attempting to murder innocent people, and the would-be victims acted within their rights in using deadly force to defend their homes against that assault. The criminal clique that had sent the ATF to attack the Davidians sent a larger contingent to lay siege to their residence, and eventually arranged for the holocaust that annihilated 76 people, including seventeen small children. Like most gun owners in Eastern Texas, Smith can remember where he was the morning of April 19, 1993, when the Mt. Carmel refuge went up in flames. He was on the scene as an agent of the ATF, which he had joined in 1989. Smith believes that the initial ATF raid on the Davidians was justified, and that the entire operation was at least a partial success. It’s doubtful that his assessment is shared by many gun owners in his jurisdiction. Larry Smith is among dozens of sheriffs who have gone on record in opposition to the Obama administration’s impending firearms restrictions. All of them have promised to intervene to protect their counties from federal tyranny. And all of them are active collaborators in the same. Kieran Donahue was sworn in as the new Sheriff of Canyon County, Idaho on January 14. Three days later he joined the ranks of "refusenik sheriffs" by promising not to implement any federal gun policy at odds with his responsibility to "uphold the Constitution." Unfortunately, that resolute statement of principled defiance was fatally undermined when Donahue – in the same press conference -- expressed his willingness to continue his office’s collaboration in the federal "war on drugs" and displayed his indecent eagerness to accept new federal subsidies to deploy deputies to guard public schools as soon as the funds are available. Wendy Olson, the official assigned by the regime to act as the federal regime’s legal sub-commissarina for Idaho, has said that her office will fully comply with new federal firearms mandates. She pointedly noted that the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office – like most others in the country – has officers who are cross-deputized to serve on federal einsatzgruppen. During last year’s campaign the future sheriff proudly boasted of his work as an "undercover officer" with the FBI-supervised METRO Violent Crime and Gang Task Force. "In these changing and difficult economic times it is a great benefit to have all law enforcement agencies working together in order to share costs and resources," insisted Donahue. Those words will almost certainly come back to haunt Canyon County gun owners when – not "if" – the Feds make it clear that they are willing to "share resources" only with sheriff’s offices who are on board with the gun grab. Donahue insisted on playing coy about the fact that he’s for sale. Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims was shameless. She told the local ABC affiliate that while she will not enforce unconstitutional gun laws, she also "backs the added funding for local law enforcement, especially in schools." Her office has a huge budget, a small but significant portion of which is derived from proceeds seized through a federally supervised "asset forfeiture" program. In 2009, Mims was the "local" face that was pasted onto the Obama administration’s "Operation Save Our Sierra" marijuana crack-down, which was personally supervised by federal Drug War Commissar Gil Kerlikowske. This campaign involved 300 personnel from local, state, and federal agencies – including military pilots that flew Black Hawk helicopters over targeted areas. The manpower and hardware were deployed in a mission best described as militarized horticulture. It’s quite easy to see how the personnel and assets used against "illegal" plants could be employed to confiscate "illegal" firearms in the future. A few years ago, when Mims and her department faced a $4 million budget deficit, the Fresno County commission had to scrounge up $10.6 million in plundered funds to prevent layoffs in the Sheriff’s Office. That money most likely won’t be available next time Sheriff Mims wants to avoid handing pink slips to her deputies. It’s quite easy to imagine a scenario in which her federal supervisors will introduce her to a new variety of alchemy -- converting confiscated "illegal" firearms into federal subsidies. Four sheriffs in Oregon have announced their opposition to the renewed campaign to disarm citizens. Among them is Sheriff Brian Wolfe of Malheur County (who, in the interests of full disclosure, is a childhood friend). In a letter to Vice President Biden, Sheriff Wolfe declared: "I believe that the Constitution stands above all laws and executive orders of this Country. I want to be very clear that no one employed on our team at the Malheur County Sheriff’s Office will enforce or support any laws or executive orders that are not consistent with the Constitution of this great land." If only those inspiring words were consonant with Sheriff Wolfe’s actions. Like every other sheriff in the country, Brian Wolfe violates the Constitution on a routine basis. Last August, the Malheur County Sheriff’s Department casually announced that it had found several small marijuana gardens during a two-week aerial surveillance operation conducted with the help of the National Guard. Acting as the department’s official stenographer, the Argus Observer newspaper reported that Sheriff Brian Wolfe will now "contact property owners and acquire search warrants if needed." Warrants would not be necessary, Wolfe observed, if the property owners consented to the searches. The Sheriff pointed out that the plants may be part of legal medicinal marijuana operations, or could have been planted without the owner’s knowledge or consent. At this point an actual journalist would have asked Wolfe why his office was conducting warrantless aerial searches of private property without probable cause. After all, the Sheriff has admitted that none of the property owners was a criminal suspect. The Malheur County Sheriff’s Department spends part of each summer arresting marijuana plants – that is, dispatching its SWAT team to barren locations in rural Oregon to clear out patches of marijuana. Sheriff Wolfe insists this is necessary to "protect the public," which is more acutely threatened by the unconstitutional, paramilitary operations of his own department. Wolfe’s department spends a great deal of time seizing contraband and prosecuting people who possess it. That experience will prove quite useful when – once again, not "if" – the Feds decide to treat legally owned firearms as illicit contraband. There isn’t a single county sheriff’s office in the country that hasn’t compromised itself by accepting federal funds, and collaborating in unconstitutional federal enforcement operations. They’ve long since lost their innocence, but are pretending that they’ve just noticed that fact. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution authorizes the Feds to prohibit the consumption of narcotics or any other substance. Indeed, last time the Feds undertook a campaign of national prohibition, they had to change the Constitution in order to do so. Unless they’re investigating charges of treason or counterfeiting, sheriffs should not collaborate with the Feds – and in such circumstances the Feds themselves should be treated as the primary suspects. If you take the nickel, you take the noose. If a sheriff’s office receives so much as a farthing of federal funding, it will be subject to federal mandates. That principle was underscored about seven years ago in the case of Josh Wolf, a 24-year-old video blogger imprisoned for refusing to turn over a portion of footage he shot of tumultuous street protests during the G-8 summit in San Francisco. The Feds claim that Wolf, who spent two-thirds of a year in prison on civil contempt charges, possessed footage of a police car being set on fire. Wolf maintained that he didn’t have the material the Feds were after, and that under California's very liberal journalist shield law, he wasn’t required to turn over his confidential, unpublished material. A Federal District Court Judge ignored Wolf's argument and incarcerated him in a detention center in Dublin, California for contempt. The alleged assault on a San Francisco police car would be a municipal matter, and the California shield law is obviously a question of state law. Why was this dealt with in a federal court? As Time magazine pointed out: "The Feds say they have jurisdiction over the case because the police car is partly U.S. government property since the SFPD receives federal anti-terrorism money." Note well that the Feds didn’t claim that the regime paid for the specific cars that were reportedly destroyed, only that the police department had been subsumed into the federal law enforcement apparatus because it had received some quantity of Homeland Security funding. What this means, in principle, is that any police agency that receives a dime of federal Homeland Security money is effectively an appendage of the Department of Homeland Security (or, to use the appropriate German expression, the Heimatsicherheitsdienst). This is obviously true of municipal police departments, which are innately illegitimate paramilitary bodies in no way accountable to the public they supposedly serve. We’re invited to believe that local elected sheriffs are different – at least where the incipient gun grab is concerned. The ranks of the refuseniks will continue to expand, and they will feed gun owners a steady diet of bold talk about their willingness to interpose on behalf of their constituents if the Feds come for their guns. Some of them may be sincerely committed to do so. But until they stop actively collaborating in existing federal abuses, why should we assume they would be willing to take the side of the public against the Feds when the Regime decides to come for our guns? By Way of Illustration... ... we see the following act of felonious assault and kidnapping by Citrus County, Florida Deputy Sheriff Andy Cox, who threatens to murder innocent, law-abiding gun owner. It took less than two seconds for this this cretinous, foul-mouthed tax-feeder to drop the pose of superficial geniality. His first instinct, on learning that this harmless man was armed, was to threaten to murder him, because he had been indoctrinated in the belief that Mundanes simply cannot be permitted to bear arms. When assessing the credibility of "constitutional sheriffs" as protectors of the right to bear arms, bear in mind that sheriffs are politicians and administrators; the patrol officers in their departments are people like Andy Cox.

OATHKEEPER 151 TELLS IT LIKE IT IS - NO NUREMBERG DEFENSE ALLOWED

http://patricksperry.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/oathkeeper-151-tells-it-like-it-is-no-nuremberg-defense-allowed/

BUT HE WAS GOOD TO HIS MOTHER - HAVE A PLETZEL AND READ THIS...

But He Was Good To His Mother was written by Robert Rockaway and is available on Amazon in case you are interested in more details. (I love the title). I just Googled Robert Rockaway and found a short and very interesting little article about why Jewish gangsters fascinate him and how Jewish gangsters differed from their Italian counterparts. In a nutshell, Jewish mobsters were a product of their times (1920s and 1930s) and did not continue their legacy after that one period, while Italian gangsters handed their "profession" to each succeeding generation.  What follows is a side of Jewish history you may have missed.  There are few excuses for the behavior of Jewish gangsters in the 1920s and 1930s. The best known Jewish gangsters -- Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, David Berman were involved in the numbers rackets, illegal drugdealing, prostitution, gambling and loan sharking. They were not nice men. During the rise of American Nazism in the 1930s and when Israel was being founded between 1945 and 1948, however, they proved staunch defenders of the Jewish people. The roots of Jewish gangsterism lay in the ethnic neighborhoods of the Lower East Side; Brownsville, Brooklyn; Maxwell Street in Chicago; and Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. Like other newly arrived groups in American history, a few Jews who considered themselves blocked from respectable professions used crime as a means to "make good" economically. The market for vice flourished during Prohibition and Jews joined with others to exploit the artificial market created by the legal bans on alcohol, gambling, paid sex and narcotics. Few of these men were religiously observant. They rarely attended services, although they did support congregations financially. They did not keep kosher or send their children to day schools. However, at crucial moments they protected other Jews, in America and around the world. The 1930s were a period of rampant anti-Semitism in America , particularly in the Midwest . Father Charles Coughlin, the Radio Priest in Detroit , and William Pelley of Minneapolis , among others, openly called for Jews to be driven from positions of responsibility, if not from the country itself. Organized Brown Shirts in New York and Silver Shirts in Minneapolis outraged and terrorized American Jewry. While the older and more respectable Jewish organizations pondered a response that would not alienate non-Jewish supporters, others--including a few rabbis--asked the gangsters to break up American Nazi rallies. Historian Robert Rockaway writing in the journal of the American Jewish Historical Society, notes that German-American Bund rallies in the New York City area posed a dilemma for mainstream Jewish leaders. They wanted the rallies stopped, but had no legal grounds on which to do so. New York State Judge Nathan Perlman personally contacted Meyer Lansky to ask him to disrupt the Bund rallies, with the proviso that Lansky's henchmen stop short of killing any Bundists. Enthusiastic for the assignment, if disappointed by the restraints, Lansky accepted all of Perlman's terms except one: he would take no money for the work. Lansky later observed, "I was a Jew and felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering. They were my brothers." For months, Lansky's workmen effectively broke up one Nazi rally after another. As Rockaway notes, "Nazi arms, legs and ribs were broken and skulls were cracked, but no one died." Lansky recalled breaking up a Brown Shirt rally in the Yorkville section of Manhattan : "The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Hitler. The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action. We threw some of them out the windows.... Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up.... We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults." In Minneapolis , William Dudley Pelley organized a Silver Shirt Legion to "rescue" America from an imaginary Jewish-Communist conspiracy. In Pelle's own words, just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany ," he would save America from Jewish communists. Minneapolis gambling czar David Berman confronted Pelley's Silver Shirts on behalf of the Minneapolis Jewish community. Berman learned that Silver Shirts were mounting a rally at Lodge. When the Nazi leader called for all the "Jew bastards" in the city to be expelled, or worse, Berman and his associates burst into the room and started cracking heads. After ten minutes, they had emptied the hall. His suit covered in blood, Berman took the microphone and announced, "This is a warning. Anybody who says anything against Jews gets the same treatment. Only next time it will be worse." After Berman broke up two more rallies, there were no more public Silver Shirt meetings in Minneapolis . Jewish gangsters also helped establish Israel after the war. One famous example is a meeting between Bugsy Siegel and Reuven Dafne, a Haganah emissary, in 1945. Dafne was seeking funds and guns to help liberate Palestine from British rule. A mutual friend arranged for the two men to meet. "You mean to tell me Jews are fighting?" Siegel asked, "You mean fighting as in killing?" Dafne answered in the affirmative. Siegel replied, "I'm with you." For weeks, Dafne received suitcases filled with $5 and $10 bills -- $50,000 in all -- from Siegel. No one should paint gangsters as heroes. They committed acts of great evil. But historian Rockaway has presented a textured version of Jewish gangster history in a book ironically titled But He Was Good to His Mother. Some have observed that, despite their disreputable behavior, they could be good to their people, too. A little interesting bit of Jewish history....

TSA'S NEWEST TRICK: ITS HIGHWAY BASE SYSTEM - THE NEXT STEP OF THE POLICE STATE UNFOLDING - TIME TO CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS...

http://beforeitsnews.com/tsa-controversy/2012/12/tsas-highway-base-system-the-next-step-of-the-police-state-unfolding-2430092.html

CHARRED BODIES IN THE BARN

http://www.ammoland.com/2012/11/06/charred-bodies-in-the-barn/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#axzz2BU2VrSwc

TSA SCREENERS BEHAVE LIKE SS NAZIS AT BOSTON'S LOGAN

http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-screeners-behave-like-ss-nazis.html

ALEX JONES "FALL OF THE REPUBLIC" FULL HD VERSION

EX-GOV OF MINNESOTA URGES BOYCOTT OF FLYING BECAUSE OF THE TSA GESTAPO

BRAVO, GOVERNOR! MY SENTIMENTS EXACTLY!

US NATIONAL GUARD AD REVIVES NAZI OATH TO HITLER - ALWAYS PLACE MISSION FIRST, NOT US CONSTITUTION!

http://www.infowars.com/national-guard-ad-revives-nazi-oath-to-hitler-always-place-mission-first-not-us-constitution-2/

RUSSIA REVIVES S-M DEATH SQUAD UNIFORMS

http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/russia-revives-s-m-death-squad-uniforms/

Death squads come in black; black to signify evil; the unknown; to intimidate, to control and to KILL.

All you have to do is look at your local SWAT teams; the storm troopers of your town, state or country. Wear the black, wear the helmets, wear the glasses and the hoods that do not allow their victims to see their faces or the blood in their eyes. This is their protection. With their uniforms, they have no conscience and will do the will of the state, against you, innocent or not.

They will come and storm your homes, your offices, public streets and take you down with an assortment of high tech tasers, lasers, sound cannons, water cannons, tear gas, batons, heavy armament, tanks, drones and armored battering rams. They are encased in body armor, and you are not.

With their automatic weapons, they will take you down. They will kill you in front of your children. They will round you up like the Jews by the Nazis and send you off to the prison camps that are already waiting and staffed. They are jacked up with adrenaline or steroids.

Never give away your rights. Never be powerless.

I hope the Russian people understand how much power they really do have and draw from past history, the courage and will to do what is necessary if the time comes when the knock on the door is the call of darkness and terror.

Do NOT let the Second Amendment be taken from you! This is precisely why Americans were given this guarantee under the Constitution, and ordered by the Declaration of Independence to defend our freedoms. RESPECT YOUR BIRTHRIGHT; HONOR YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

GLENN BECK, GEORGE SOROS (THE UNREPENTANT NAZI) AND THE RABBIS - WHO CAN'T SEE TO THE END OF THEIR PEAHS~

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/glenn-beck-holocaust-imagery/2011/01/26/id/384049?s=al&promo_code=B8E2-1

There is plenty of documentation that states that Soros did indeed, pick and choose his people for the pleasure of the Nazis - wherever, whoever, and whatever - they were sent to their suffering and doom because George Soros said "That one." There is an interview that may even be on this blog, where he states he felt nothing. NOTHING!

I truly don't understand the attitude of the Jewish people. I am ashamed of their cultish non-violent, passive, victim playing, dangerous attitude. When the chips are down, they will again go willingly into the white trains to the camps to their end and they should be just the opposite. They should, most of all, be clinging to their Torahs and their weapons.

On this blog also is a fantastic video narrated by an Orthodox rabbi and made by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership - the JPFO. I love this organization, and feel very bad that Aaron Zelman, the head of it, just passed away recently. This video explains why the majority of Jews have favored being the victim. Just what the Nazis wanted; just what the progressive/socialist/Marxist/communists want them to be.

For God forbid they should see the light; that they are willingly being again, led to the slaughter; that they refuse to hear or embrace the truth, that the left is wrong. Even in the ancient Latin, "sinister" is left.

I have seen this video twice. I have sent it to my vacant-eyed Jewish friends, the socialists who believe in the OBAMESSIAH. Oh, how you have failed yourselves and your families and your religion, because you ignore the truth.

INTERESTING VIDEOS FROM THE MONTANA SHRUGGED ORGANIZATION - YOU NEED TO WATCH THEM

Greetings!

This past weekend was the Liberty Convention in Missoula, Montana.

A couple of members of Montana Shrugged along with other fine patriots attended the convention where Kitty Wethmann (among others) was able to speak. Below please watch video footage of her speech.

If you are not familiar with who Kitty Werthmann is let me give you a brief bio:

Kitty Werthmann is no ordinary person. At 13 she witnessed Austria change from a Catholic country to a barbaric nation almost overnight. The public schools all hung crucifixes on their walls. The next day after changing to the Nazi regime, the crosses went down and Hitler's photo went up. The students went from reciting Catholic prayers to singing "Deutschland Uber Alles." Kitty witnessed so much that it would have stunned you, but her works here in the United States would have completely blown you away. Ronald Reagan used her clever abilities to go undercover in the peace movement in Geneva, Switzerland. Posing as a peacenik, Kitty infiltrated top communists in the movement. They told her plenty. She personally reported back to Reagan and he was able to use her information when he met with and stood up to Gorbachev.

Kitty Werthmann

Life Under Hitler - History Repeats Itself

Liberty Convention 2010, Missoula, Montana

"Nazi" stood for "National Socialist Party"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoAg6h4KQnM

Draft for girls, compulsory work, state-run childcare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XITsKScYMvI

Forced abortion, youth indoctrination

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqXH6fndCB0

Socialized medicine, forced euthanasia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfiU489ZcU8

State-controlled churches, gun registration and confiscation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cvhtTJcRFE

Communist "reconquista" plot, censorship, struggle against tyranny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed57LukiqOg

God Bless America, and God Save this Great County!

Jennifer Olsen

Founder, Montana Shrugged

Watch Free Speech in San Antonio, TX trashed by nazi cop

There are four videos in this series. You need to watch the nazi copy, Maines, destroy the rights of the citizen for redressing government in a public place.

Next time it could be YOU.

So what do you want to do about this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC6O8QIcvbo
This is part 1 of 4, which you can view from this link.

You might want to call the Mayor. Or go to his office and have a little talk. Bring a copy of the Constitution with you. Then go visit the police department.

San Antonio Mayor's Office www.sanantonio.gov 100 Military Plaza San Antonio, TX 78205-2425 (210) 207-7060

From JPFO: Funny, he doesn't look like a Nazi!

http://www.jpfo.org/alerts03/alert20091111.htm

The rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1695.html

Does any of this sound familiar?

Nazis,Bilderbergers,EU,and Fourth style Reich

http://www.prisonplanet.com/top-nazis-planned-eu-style-fourth-reich.html

Glenn Beck - Irena's (Sandler) Story

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans from ICH

They Thought They Were Free

The Germans, 1933-45

Excerpt from pages 166-73 of "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955

By Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."

"And the judge?"

"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don’t know."

I said nothing.

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’ You assumed that there were lists of those who would be ‘dealt with’ later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a ‘victory orgy’ to ‘take care of’ those who thought that their ‘treasonable attitude’ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

"Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany’s losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 166-73 of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. (Footnotes and other references included in the book may have been removed from this online version of the text.)

Milton Mayer
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
©1955, 1966, 368 pages
Paper $19.00 ISBN: 0-226-51192-8

Posted on site 02/09/06

Translate this page

Long article on the Red Cross and its origins

http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/apocalypse/red_double_cross.html


I know a lot of this is true. History says so. I found this fascinating and frightening. IF it is all true, it's difficult to wrap your brain around.

It's up to you to digest the material here and accept or reject it. I'm just the messenger.

This article has a huge amount of information in it. Take your time.