A Clear and Present Danger From the South: Part 1

I want to talk about a mostly forgotten footnote of history for a minute. On the Blog I don't torture my reader(s) with history gratuitously; there is always a point I am trying to make. I don't think I will get to it today hence naming this blog part 1.

In 1916 Mexico was in the midst of a bloody revolution. Pancho Villa led his revolutionary Villista's in the north of Mexico while Emiliano Zapata led in the south. While technically called a revolution, by this point it was more of a civil war between generals without a legitimate government. With this high volatility the US did the only prudent thing and looked to protect its own interests while things sorted out. The US supported different generals at different times as the situation developed. In 1914 the US Navy captured and occupied the port city of Veracruz for six months because US Sailors protecting American citizens and property came under attack from the Government troops there.

In 1916 however, Pancho Villa started targeting Americans. In January his men took 17 American railroad workers and shot them. In March Villa was screwed over by his arms supplier in Columbus, New Mexico. In response Villa attacked the town and the military detachment there. They killed 18 Americans, wounded 8 and burned the town down. In response to the violence Woodrow Wilson ordered John Pershing to lead a military expedition into Mexico to capture Pancho Villa. This expedition saw the first use of the airplane by the US Military, Curtiss JN-4s were used for reconnaissance.

There was not much direct action taken against Villa's forces. Not surprisingly, the one engagement of the Villistas of note involved George Patton, Patton doing all of the killing (a general and two body guards) with his ivory handled revolvers and then Patton carving notches into them. Actually, US forces mostly fought forces loyal to the "government". Apparently Machiavelli's maxim "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is not well known in Mexico.

In 1917 Pershing and his forces were withdrawn due to the entry of the US into World War I. Pershing would lead the American Expiditionary Forces in France. The arrival of American Doughboys at the critical Second Battle of the Marne broke Germany's last offensive and with it, Germany's last hope for victory. George Patton was the first officer assigned to the new US Tank Corps and literally wrote the book on US armored forces. Sporadic fighting would continue on the border between National Guard troops and Villistas for a few more years. Pancho Villa eventually lost but was pardoned by the Government and later (probably) assassinated by it.

Pershing would publicly claim the operation was a success but had more than a few things to say in private. He complained that Wilson put to many restrictions on him, leaving him unable to complete his mission. Pershing admitted to being "Outwitted and out-bluffed at every turn." and wrote "when the true history is written, it will not be a very inspiring chapter for school children, or even grownups to contemplate. Having dashed into Mexico with the intention of eating the Mexicans raw, we turned back at the first repulse and are now sneaking home under cover, like a whipped curr with its tail between its legs."

Clearly, Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War and later commanders in Vietnam could sympathize with being in a situation where political leaders put so many restrictions on the military as to make victory unattainable. The Korean War has never ended and every few years skirmishes break out and a few people die. Only a few days ago in fact, a South Korean Navy ship sank near contested waters due to an explosion. Though officials won't speculate on what caused the explosion the North Koreans have a habit of shooting artillery into that area at random, and had been doing so earlier in the day. 46 S. Korean Sailors are missing and feared dead. MacArthur argued strongly for taking the war into China to secure complete victory and was relieved by Truman because of it. Right or wrong, we didn't win the Korean War and people are still dying.

But that's a side issue. Tomorrow or the next day we get to what I want to discuss.

Adolf Legalité

In 1923 Germany was in the throes of the volatile post-Great War period. In an attempt to keep up with war reparation payments to the victorious allies imposed in 1921 Germany hyper-inflated it’s Mark. Before the reparations it was four Marks to the US Dollar but by 1922 it was 400 Marks to the USD. In the Late summer of 1923 when the Mark was about 1,000,000,000 to the USD a former army corporal and head of the National Socialist Party Adolf Hitler announced he would hold a series of mass meetings in the City of Munich’s large beer halls starting on the 27 of September. Able to call up 15,000 of his loyal SA Stormtroopers Hitler was a force to be reckoned with; as a result Bavarian Prime Minister Eugene Knilling declared a state of emergency.

Following the example of Mussolini’s successful March on Rome, Hitler planned on bring in his SA and taking the leaders of Bavaria at gun point and forcing them to recognize Hitler, with Great War hero General von Ludendorff at his side, as their leader. Once in control of Bavaria the Nazis would move on the rest of the country. On November 8th, 1923 Hitler, Göring with his SA and others burst into a beer hall the local leaders were speaking at with guns drawn and shouts of “The National Revolution has begun!”

Over the next 24 hours the uprising unraveled culminating with Hitler, Ludendorff and Göring at the head of a column of SA numbering 2000 men. They ran right into a roadblock of 100 soldiers and police. In the ensuing skirmish 4 police and 16 Nazis were killed and Göring was severely wounded in the groin. While Ludendorff pressed forward under fire Hitler fled leading the Great War General to brand Hitler a coward.

It was while serving his five year prison sentence that Hitler and Rudolf Hess wrote Mein Kampf. Also during his imprisonment Hitler rethought his ideas on violent revolution. The sehr ordenlech German people were not comfortable with the rules being broken and reacted badly to it. So once Hitler got out of jail his rise to power was characterized by doing everything strictly legal. Hitler was so committed to exact legality that he became known as “Adolf the Legal One” or Adolf Legalité.

In our time we face many threats to our wealth, peace of mind, freedom and our very lives. Marching under foreign flag and wearing stormtroopers’ uniform, goose stepping in jack boots, evil is easy to see and defeat. While we must always watch for Hitler’s SA marching towards us there is another kind of evil we must fear and watch for most: The Fifth Column rallying around our flag!

They say all the right things; all they want is our best interest. They say they love everything we love; they will fight for our children. “Rally with me to our flag that our Nation might persevere!” they cry; but listen to them, look at their words and deeds of old and their private words with friends. All great nations that have fallen have fallen from the rot inside; evil was not at the doorstep but at the hearth!
In 1923 German soldiers saw evil marching on them and opened fire, smashing the evil that threatened their nation. Yet in 1933 Hitler was able to size full control of the government that had gunned down his followers less than ten years before. He used Germany’s own laws to destroy the very laws he was using.

We must always be vigilant that our own system is not used against us to destroy us and enslave us. We must always ask not how we would use a law, but how our worst enemy would use it. Be careful in who we let close to the halls of power, do not make hasty judgment in cave in a moment of passion to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

A Tale of Two Wars

I’d like to take a minute to look at the rise of the Nazis. I am going to try to look at what spawned their breeding ground in 1920s and ‘30s Germany. Please do not mistake that I like Nazism in the slightest. Visiting former concentration camps when I was young are among the more traumatic memories of my childhood.

By the end of World War One, Germany was completely ruined by their huge casualties, by shortages of everything and by the Treaty of Versailles which made Germany take full responsibility for the war and make huge repatriations to the Allies as well as a neutered military. In an attempt to get out of these payments the Germans tried to hyperinflate the Mark, making German money worthless so the victors would not want payments of worthless German Marks. This not only failed when the payments were demanded in other forms such as raw steel and other goods but also crushed what little was left of the German economy. Tales of the inflation are legendary, workers at factories were paid in the middle of the day and used small bags so they could throw it to their families to go buy bread before the money was worthless later in the day. German bills had their values crossed out and new ones written by the mint because buy the time they were done printing it the bill was worth less than toilet paper. Children made kites out of old bills rather than using them to buy paper. By the late 1920s the country was tearing itself apart. There was fighting and revolts in the streets, armed paramilitary gangs of unemployed veterans roamed the countryside and economic disaster.

Into this maelstrom stepped Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Workers Party. He had it all, a plan to rebuild the country by huge government projects such as the autobahn, a plan to rebuild the Army, an explanation for how they fell and it not being the fault of the German people by using the Jews as a scapegoat and most importantly, hope. Out of national crisis Hitler resurrected Germany and because of his message the German people voted to give him full control of the government in 1933. Hitler promised to take them down the path to becoming the greatest country on earth………well, we all know how that worked out.

After World War Two ended the victorious Allies did not make the same mistake twice. Under the Marshall Plan vast economic aid was sent to Europe to restore productive economies to war-torn nations. US troops were stationed in Germany to protect them from the Soviets and there are still US troops there. Because the US was able to win the peace Germany became a peaceful and prosperous country.

In 1990 Iraq invaded its southern neighbor Kuwait prompting international outrage. In February 1991 the US led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm, the ground invasion of Iraq. The ground war lasted 100 hours before the Iraqi Army, at the start of the war the 4th largest in the world, collapsed. After imposing aircraft no fly zones the US pulled out with Saddam still in power. One big reason was Iraqs neighbor Iran, a US hating country and state sponsor of terror. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard created Hezbollah the notorious terror group in Lebanon. Iraq and Iran had just bled each other white during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war. Taking out Saddam would leave a power vacuum and set Iran up to dominate the region. Also, taking out Saddam would force the US to stay in Iraq to form the new democratic government (a feat all its own in an Arab country), build a stable economy, train the new Army and keep an eye on Iran. It made much better sense to leave him there to balance out Iran and not get bogged down in another Vietnam-style quagmire. We also figured Saddam would soon be toppled by his own people as rebels uprose across the country to oust the Bath Party. During the peace treaty negations the terms of the no fly zones was being worked out General Schwarzkopf made the mistake of telling the Iraqis they could still fly armed helicopters. This unfortunate remark spelled doom for the large uprising taking place against Saddam and thousands of anti-Saddam Iraqis. As US forces helplessly watched from bases in Iraq Saddam's helicopter gunships crushed the rebellion. A rebel commander, after his request for support fighting the Republican Guard was turned down by the US 1st Cavalry Division shook hands and departed back to the fighting with “We are all dead men.” When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 all the anti-Saddam/pro-US Iraqis were long dead and buried in mass graves. Any survivors were understandably bitter and cynical, making occupation and reconstruction much more difficult.

Many Americans can’t understand why we are still in Iraq. Encouraged by politicians many think we can simply leave Iraq. After all, would leaving them pose an immediate threat to America? History is clear on the matter, gutting a nation and leaving them in ruin only leads to even worse enemies taking over and more, many more, Americans in black body bags.