Nuremberg at Seventy-Seven Years: History Doesn’t Repeat, but it Often Rhymes - The Nazis and the Trump Republicans

Mark Twain reportedly quipped, “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”. I think that we are approaching one of those times, and it is troubling. To understand we need to look at the judgment of history at the perpetrators of the greatest crimes committed by a nation and people in history.

November 20th was the 77th anniversary of the beginning of the trials of the major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Since the current Republican Party has foresworn democracy and openly proclaims its embrace of anti-democratic and even Fascist principles in its surrender to Donald Trump, it is important to revisit the trial. But, first a little more about the GOP’s embrace of their Führer.

Before, during, and after President Donald Trump’s during term in office me made repeated policy statements similar to Hitler and the Nazis. They included: limiting civil rights and freedom of speech, the role of the courts, curtailing freedom of the press, favoring one religion above others, curtailing the legal and civil rights of whole groups of people, expelling millions of people, banning whole groups of other people entry into the country, promising to rid the government of his opponents, to fire military leaders who disagreed with him in mass, and to commit the military to use methods that are condemned as war crimes, war crimes such as were prosecuted by the United States and her Allies at Nuremberg. Many of his radical supporters, and rivals in the Republican Party are legislating such policies at state level, while members of the House of Representatives are using the same tactics as Nazi members of the Reichstag before and during the Nazi seizure of power.

To make matters more frightening, many of Trump’s supporters see no problem with this and are often shown on video threatening opponents, advocating even more extreme and violent measures than Trump himself. They justify their proposed polices by saying that these measures are to “protect the country,” and to Make America Great Again.” 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is the latest. Johnson travelled to Mar El Lago to kiss the ring of Donald Trump today, openly declaring his undying loyalty to him. Of course we knew that had to be coming since he was quite instrumental in trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. Johnson has some pretty convoluted ideas of the Constitution and freedom that sound very much like the words of Southern Slavery apologist and secessionist leader George Fitzhugh who wrote, “liberty for the few - slavery in every form for the mass”.

In the past few weeks Trump and people associated with his administration including those tagged for roles in a future Trump administration have been flooding the airwaves with their plans to destroy democracy, imprison millions of Americans in massive concentration camps, abolish the free press, use the military to quash opposition, fire opponents in the Justice Department and place Trump loyalists in every department of the Federal government. These are prefatory moves to establishing a one party Fascist state.

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In his opening address at Nuremberg, the Chief American Prosecutor, Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson noted:

“The Nazi Party declaration also committed its members to an anti-Semitic program. It declared that no Jew or any person of non-German blood could be a member of the nation. Such persons were to be disfranchised, disqualified for office, subject to the alien laws, and entitled to nourishment only after the German population had first been provided for. All who had entered Germany after 2nd August, 1914, were to be required forthwith to depart, and all non-German immigration was to be prohibited.” 

The Party also avowed, even in those early days, an authoritarian and totalitarian program for Germany. It demanded creation of a strong central power with unconditional authority, nationalisation of all businesses which had been “amalgamated,” and a “reconstruction” of the national system of education, which “must aim at teaching the pupil to understand the idea of the State (state sociology).” Its hostility to civil liberties and freedom of the Press was distinctly announced in these words: “It must be forbidden to publish newspapers which do not conduce to the national welfare. We demand the legal prosecution of all tendencies in art or literature of a kind likely to disintegrate our life as a nation, and the suppression of institutions which might militate against the above requirements.”

The forecast of religious persecution was clothed in the language of religious liberty, for the Nazi program stated “We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State.” But it continued with the limitation, “so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race.” 

The Party program foreshadowed the campaign of terrorism. It announced, “we demand ruthless war upon those whose activities are injurious to the common interests,” and it demanded that such offenses be punished with death.

It is significant that the leaders of this Party interpreted this programme as a belligerent one, certain to precipitate conflict. The Party platform concluded: 

“The leaders of the Party swear to proceed regardless of consequences - if necessary, at the sacrifice of their lives - toward the fulfillment of the foregoing points.”

Let us now see how the leaders of the Party fulfilled their pledge to proceed regardless of consequences. Obviously, their foreign objectives, which were nothing less than to undo international treaties and to wrest territory from foreign control, as well as most of their internal programme, could be accomplished only by possession of the machinery of the German State. The first effort, accordingly, was to subvert the Weimar Republic by violent revolution. An abortive “putsch” at Munich in 1921 landed many of them in jail. A period of meditation which followed produced “Mein Kampf,” henceforth the source of law for the Party workers and a source of considerable revenue to its supreme leader. The Nazi plans for the violent overthrow of the feeble Republic then turned to plans for its capture.

No greater mistake could be made than to think of the Nazi Party in terms of the loose organisations which we of the Western world call “political parties.” In discipline, structure, and method the Nazi Party was not adapted to the democratic process of persuasion. It was an instrument of conspiracy and of coercion. The Party was not organised to take over power in the German State by winning the support of a majority of the German people; it was organised to seize power in defiance of the will of the people.

The Nazi Party, under the “Fuehrerprinzip,” was bound by an iron discipline into a pyramid, with the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, at the top and broadening into a numerous Leadership Corps, composed of overlords of a very extensive Party membership at the base. By no means all of those who may have supported the movement in one way or another were actual Party members. The membership took the Party oath which in effect amounted to an abdication of personal intelligence and moral responsibility. This was the oath: “I vow inviolable fidelity to Adolf Hitler; I vow absolute obedience to him and to the leaders he designates for me.” The membership in daily practise followed its leaders with an idolatry and self-surrender more Oriental than Western. We will not be obliged to guess as to the motives or goal of the Nazi Party. The immediate aim was to undermine the Weimar Republic. The order to all Party members to work to that end was given in a letter from Hitler of 24th August, 1931,…

The Nazi conspiracy, as we shall show, always contemplated not merely overcoming current opposition, but exterminating elements which could not be reconciled with its philosophy of the State. It not only sought to establish the Nazi “new order” but to secure its way, as Hitler predicted, “for a thousand years.” Nazis were never in doubt or disagreement as to what those dissident elements were. They were concisely described by one of them, Col. General von Fritzsche, on 11th December, 1938, in these words:

“Shortly after the first war I came to the conclusion that we should have to be victorious in three battles if Germany were to become powerful again: (1) The battle against the working class -Hitler has won this; (2) Against the Catholic Church, perhaps better expressed against Ultramontanism (3) Against the Jews.” (1947-PS)

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The section is only a small part of Jackson’s masterful opening statement. The similarities between the Nazi program for Germany with the rhetoric of Trump and his inner circle are often quite similar, and that includes those of Speaker Johnson.

We are in a struggle for freedom and democracy in an increasingly undemocratic country and world. We cannot close our eyes to the danger and allow him to regain office. I will not go through the number of ways that Trump could regain power as that is not the purpose of this article.

I travelled to Nuremberg in 2016 to visit the Palace of Justice where the trials were held and while standing at the dock beside where Herman Goering sat throughout the trial, I was humbled by the fact that I was where such history had been made. At the same time I was frightened for my country and the world. This is important because the United States is not immune from going down the path of the Third Reich. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

The Nuremberg trials help us to understand why. We cannot forget them.

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