It is important for people to remember that at the Nuremberg trials

[PCIntern]

Following World War II, the Nazis attempted to justify all of their horrific actions by saying that they were either following orders, that they were unaware of the consequences, that what they did was perfectly legal within the laws of humanity, and that all the charges leveled against them were lies. This defense proffered by Trump and his allies of the new American Nazi party or neither original nor are they untried.

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Loyalty Oaf

The President Who Wanted Nazi Generals

Don’t forget about Trump’s attempts to corrupt the military.

By Tom Nichols
The Atlantic, Aug. 9, 2022

EXCERPT…

Trump wanted to change that and turn the military into his own praetorian guard. In an except from a forthcoming book, the journalists Susan Glasser and Peter Baker reveal an exchange between Trump and his then-chief of staff, John Kelly:

“You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”

“Which generals?” Kelly asked.

“The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.

“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.

Trump refused to believe Kelly: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” he replied. “In his version of history,” Glasser and Baker write, “the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military.”

Let us leave aside the problem that Donald Trump might be the most intellectually limited and willfully ignorant man ever to sit in the Oval Office. Still, we must ask: Nazis?

Donald Trump’s role models for the men and women of the finest military of the most successful democracy on Earth were … who? Wilhelm Keitel or Alfred Jodl, both of whom were hanged at Nuremberg? Wilhelm Canaris or Friedrich Olbricht, who were also executed—but by the Nazis for plotting to kill Hitler? Trump has a simplistic belief that the Nazis were effective, efficient, and loyal. (This is an old trope about the Nazis that even pops up in the original Star Trek series: Spock, in a 1968 episode, affirms that the Nazis ran the most efficient state in Earth’s history, which is historical nonsense.)

We should not console ourselves that Trump failed in this effort. It’s too easy, now, to say that “the system worked” or the “guardrails held.” Glasser and Baker point out that Trump, almost from his first days in office, started searching for “his generals,” the men—always men—whose loyalty would transcend trifling documents such as the Constitution of the United States. This is how Trump’s administration ended up infested with people such as Michael Flynn, Anthony Tata, and Douglas Macgregor—all retired military officers, political extremists, and crackpots. Fortunately, Trump failed to find senior officers still in uniform who would bend to his wishes—but mostly, it seems, because he ran out of time.

CONTINUES…

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/08/the-president-who-wanted-nazi-generals/671092/

Thank you for another great OP, PCintern. Interesting times, ours.