HISTORY MAY BE REPEATING ITSELF:
PROPAGANDA THEN AND NOW
By PraetorOne and BibleBelted
Throughout the summer of 1938 the Nazi propaganda machine cranked out a steady stream of outright prevarications about Czech persecutions in the Sudetenland. “The German newspapers were filled with accounts of mass arrests of innocent men and women in the Sudetenland and there were the inevitable circumstantial stories ‘by our correspondent.’ Nonexistent people in nonexistent villages were being slaughtered. The Czechoslovak Government attempted to refute some of these stories and gave up in despair. Hitler ordered a massive propaganda barrage against Czechoslovakia to prepare the German people for the October invasion.” [1]
As we all know, however, the Sudetenland proved to be another one of Hitler’s bloodless conquests, and when the German warlord absorbed the rest of Czechoslovakia in yet another bloodless conquest, that conquest was preceded by yet another wave of outright prevarications from Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine. “early in March, 1939, the banner headlines directed against the diminished Czechoslovakia increased in frenzy and virulence. ‘German Blood Flows,’ ‘Unheard of Provocations,’ ‘German Honor Defamed,’ ‘Czechs on the Rampage!’–such were the headlines followed by long circumstantial reports of rapes, shootings, and arrests of innocent Germans on the orders of a depraved Czech government. The French Ambassador to Berlin, Francois-Poncet, noted with dismay that Goebbels had been less imaginative that usually: he had simply dusted off early accounts of Austrian and Czech provocations and changed place names and the names of victims.” [2]
How bad was it? At various times Doctor Goebbels had whipped up fictitious news stories about a “pregnant German woman struck down by Czech beasts and the general ‘Blutbad’ (‘blood bath’) to which defenseless Germans were being subjected by the Czech barbarians. Hitler could assure the proud German people that these kinsman would not remain unprotected for long.” [3] In other words, the Nazi Warlord was psychologically preparing the German people for a war with Czechoslovakia.
So what does that have to do with anything? Well, dear readers, it appears to us as if the Bush Propaganda machine has adopted the same strategies in so far as it is attempting to psychologically prepare the American people for an invasion–or at least a bombing–of Iran. But just as Doctor Goebbels couldn’t find new and creative ways to prepare the German people for a war with Czechoslovakia, so it appears as if the Bush Administration can’t find new rhetoric to support a war with yet another Mid Eastern country. Indeed, the Bush administration, in its clumsy, amateurish effort to prepare us for yet another protracted conflict has merely dusted off rhetoric that was used during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and substituted different personal names and names of places.
Beyond that we are being treated to old wine in new bottles: Iran is ruled by a madman (actually the Iranian President is little more than an elected figurehead, and an increasingly unpopular one at that, while the real power rests in the hands of the ruling clerics); Iran is seeking weapons of mass destruction; Iran supports international terrorism; we can’t depend on moderate reformers in Iran, ad nauseum.
And to complete the scenario, we have another group of dissidents, exiles, who are advocating the invasion of Iran to further their own political and financial gains while claiming that they want to bring democracy to their former homeland. Although we really have to wonder if the son of the late Iranian despot, the democracy-hating Shah, is truly dedicated to a representative form of government in the country where his father ruled with an iron fist.
You’d think that with our military in a shambles, with a majority of Americans opposed to a U.S./Iranian conflict, and a dubious group of Iranian dissidents leading us down the same path that we traveled with Iraqi dissidents, that even an administration as obtuse and imbecilic as the Bush regime would recognize the obvious dangers associated with with waging three wars at the same time,
But then again, it may well be that the Bush regime not only believes in its own greatness–it may also be true that the Bush regime has begun to believe its own deceitful propaganda.
Kind of Like Adolf Hitler in that regard….
[1[ The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
By Robert Payne
Page 315
Praeger Publishers, New york, NY
Copyright, 1973 by Robert Payne
[2] Ibid
Page 334
[3] The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
By William Shirer
Page 444
Published by Simon and Schuster 1959, 1960
Copyright 1990 by William Shirer
SS Propaganda image from a slide lecture produced by “Der Reichsfuehrer SS, der Chef des Rasse-und Siedlungshauptamtes” [the Leader of the SS, the Chief of the Race and Settlement Main Office]. The slide lecture, entitled “Das Judentum, seine blutsgebundene Wesensart in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart” [Jewry, Its Blood-based Essence in Past and Future], is Part I of the thematic series, “Judentum, Freimaurerei, Bolschewismus” [Jewry, Freemasonry, Bolshevism]. The text of the slide lecture is available at the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, record group number NS31/163.
Date: Circa 1936
Locale: Germany
Credit: USHMM, courtesy of Library of Congress
Copyright: Public Domain
The Sirens Chronicles 
It’s sickening, shades of Der Furhor Bush. I am so sick of Bush and his lying underhanded crap I better shut up!
Here’s why the Democrats won’t impeach Bush.
No Impeachment.
We truly don’t have an opposition party.
God Bless.
The whole thing about propaganda is that it can be slap-you-upside-the-head or very subtle..but its still lies any way you look at it as a means to control people.
To my children (and anyone else who will listen), I like to laud the age of the internet as a boon, for those of us who are willing, to fight the forces who try to repeat history, in hopes that nobody is really paying attention.
And, I guess, that is why I am feeling so insecure these days.
Despite all this information at our fingertips, the forces of evil still yell “bold-faced lies” at the top of their lungs and gullible citizens (most who don’t have access to the internet or are afraid of it) are eating it up, hook, line, and sinker. Because they believe “their government” before they trust their own lyin’ eyes, the rest of us are fighting what feels like an uphill battle to educate them to the fact that “governments do lie” and that “history is repeating itself”.
Maybe I’m just uber-sensitive right now because I am preparing to send my husband back to Iraq for a third time. It’s about this time that I wish I didn’t know anything and could live blissfully unaware that our country’s leaders have no problem sending my husband and friends into harm’s way (despite the fact that even their own ranks are not at full strength–they are only at about 65% strength, with less than 6 weeks to go until deployment) for a lie, no less.
Every time I hear anyone in my vicinity chirp about how noble the cause in Iraq is, I get so filled with rage that I have to leave the area, even if we are in mid-conversation.
I have a lot of sleepless nights ahead of me (these next 6 weeks, plus the 15 months after that) . If we end up attacking Iran, I may lose my sanity.