On May 8th, 1945, the Third Reich surrendered. Our local paper recalled an amazing event. Parallels?

[DFW]

32. The Republicans will become the new East Germans

When the "socialist" state of East Germany (the DDR) was set up by the Soviets, the official line was that the Soviet occupied Zone had been cleansed of Nazis, and therefore no de-Nazification program was necessary. What the Soviets were doing, of course, was the same thing the west was doing--taking the lowest profile Nazis and using them for their own purposes in their respective new German states. Each had their truly non-Nazi figureheads, of course. Willy Brandt of the future West Germany and Markus Wolf of the future East Germany both fled the Nazis and spent the war outside of their reach. But the ranks of the nuts-and-bolts people were full of former Nazis. They were just too numerous for that not to be the case.

But while the West acknowledged their guilt and complicity and tried to make amends, the East just said "what Nazis? No Nazis here, nosiree!" And so, when the people of East German finally said "enough!" and a degree of free speech returned to the now-former DDR, what area of the new united Germany had the greatest percentage of rightist extremism? Why, the "socialist" east, of course. Instead of confronting them, the socialists preferred to sweep the name under the rug, and imitate them, instead. The Secret State Police became the Ministry for State Security. The Wehrmacht became the Nationale Volksarmee, keeping even the goose step and the uniforms, changing only the helmets and the insignia. All the latent neo-Nazi sentiment that the socialists never bothered to take decades to educate out of their people rose right back to the surface, and is now even legitimized. Before the Wall fell, there was a small movement in the west organized by an ex-SS officer, Franz Schönhuber, called, appropriately enough, "Die Republikaner." That fizzled and went nowhere. Now, there is a new movement called the Alternative for Germany (AfD), who has been much better at hiding behind the rules of Democracy, grating only occasionally against laws forbidding anything resembling Nazism. They have been gathering a frightening number of votes, especially in the former east.

When Trump and Barr are just unpleasant memories, the Republicans in the USA will do just as the East German Nazis did. Trump(Hitler)? Never heard of him. No fans of his in these parts. Just true patriots. No one HERE ever wore one of those stupid red baseball caps, no way, no how. Nope, not us. You must be talking about someone else, someplace else. Mexican strawberry pickers willing to work for $5 an hour? Love 'em! Briing them on!