anti-fascist film produced by US Military in the wake of WWII

Don't Be a Sucker - 1947

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23X14HS4gLk&feature=player_embedded

Please watch before you Godwin it :)

Sadly, that movie was how Americans thought back when I was growing up and the scorn they held of what are Tea Party values today.

They stand for the very same things I was taught as a child that Communists in the USSR stood for.

All the things I was told that made the Soviets became policy under Bush. And most have not been rescinded.

what every dictatorship that has ever existed believed.

The US Army, along with the rest of the US government was already deep into recruiting Nazis for their own use, not to mention many civic and corporate leaders were already steeped in fascism.

Another pure propaganda film for public consumption while the elite went their own way.

...and is...

Before and during the war, IBM was the providing the key technology for not just making the Nazi trains run on time, but also the key technology in carrying out the Holocaust. If it weren't for IBM tabulators, Nazi Germany would have been defeated much quicker and there would have been an order of magnitude fewer victims of the Holocaust.

After the war, if we hadn't recruited Gen. Reinhardt Gehlen, who had headed up Hitlers Eastern European Intelligence division, we probably wouldn't have gotten in such an arms race as we did during the Cold War. We took Gehlen and his organization and made them our intelligence experts on the Soviet Union. Being the true fascist that he was, Gehlen hated the Soviets, and to extract vengeance from them, he overstated and misreported their military actions. For instance, when the USSR was pulling up railroad tracks leading out of East Germany as part of their demilitarization program following WWII, Gehlen reported that the Soviets were laying down even more track in preparation for invading Europe. Similarly, after the Soviets got the atomic bomb, Gehlen went on to report that during the fifties the Soviets had hundreds of nuclear missiles, when in reality(as later revealed by U2 overflights) they had dozens at most. Gehlen continued to work closely with the US until 1967 as head of West German intelligence.

Hell, even George Kennan, the man who wrote the US game plan when it came to the Soviet Union, the Containment Strategy, was an avid fan of fascism. As was Averell Harriman, head of Brown Brothers Harriman Banking Co., the place where Preston Bush worked, the bank that helped fund Hitler during the Twenties and Thirties, the same Averell Harriman whose shipping company was charged and found guilty of Trading With the Enemy during WWII, yet the same Harriman who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in '52 and '56, and was Secretary of Commerce under Truman.

And again, this is still the tip of the iceberg.

that the US put the mafia back in charge in Sicily?

American hegemony in the world has been as every bit as bad as the British or French empires ever were.

"the US government was already deep into recruiting Nazis for their own use". This is not exactly news.

I posted this as a reflection of our times: The Overton window has shifted, big time.

I'm a realist. I've spent years researching the relationship between the United States and Fascist/Nazi political thought, and written papers on the topic as well. I know all too well where this country is headed, the steady course it has taken for almost a century now.

Yes, the Overton Window has shifted, but it hasn't shifted to a new possibility, but to an old one. During the interwar period Fascism made a big push in this country, a push so big that it influenced Hitler, among others. Hell, even at the height of FDR's power in the Thirties, the German American Bund was able to fill Madison Square Garden, and Father Coughlin was heard, and adored, by millions coast to coast, an early version of Limbaugh. Yes, fascism went underground after WWII, but it never went out of fashion and it never left the corridors of power.

None of this is new. For the past century in our United States, there has run a broad streak of fascism throughout both our civic and corporate halls of power and influence. Look at some of our political figures, Preston Bush, and his son, George HW. One a Senator, one a president. Preston aided Nazi Germany, George had former Nazis advising him. Or the political figures I mentioned above, Kennan and Harriman, both strongly attracted to fascism, both high in the halls of power.

Look at Ford, GM, IBM and many more, major corporations who deliberately helped the Third Reich, yet never suffered a penalty. Free, as with the case of Henry Ford, to spread their filth here at home.

You think that this flirtation the right is having with fascism is new, it isn't. It's just been that enough time has passed since WWII that it has been freed to come out into the open. But sadly, it isn't new, it is part of the political life's blood that runs through our country.

"We were just Good Germans"


Now you know why the "Greatest Generation" is so Indoctrinated.

I'm a little surprised that YouTube let that clip stay up over there, but they take down other clips.

book "It Can't Happen Here". It brought many questions to mind. First how far into this are we already? How does the present day world fit into this story today - our corporations have basically taken much of the world over already using disaster capitalism - so who is going to come and end our little 3rd Reich? Is this also happening in Europe or are they on to us?

Then on another level who are the enemy in this country that are pushing this? Koch brothers? Bush crime family? Cheney & Halliburton? I want to include the rethugs but I think they are the fools who are being taken in just like the Tbaggers.

Finally - this old film made when I was 5 years old scares me more than anything I have seen or read about the mess we are in today.

Thank you for downloading this - from one of those Germans like Hans who will forever be ashamed of who they are. Fortunately for me my family came to the USA in the 1850s and we had the privilege of fight Hitler and his hateful party.