“Yes Men” and “No Men”: the Coming Choice for Military and Federal Law Enforcement Personnel in the Trump Era

Lessons from Hermann Goering and Johannes Steinhoff

Hermann Göring, the Ultimate Yes Man

In about 35 days Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. Within a few days of it the men and women of the United States military and Federal Law Enforcement will have a choice to make. The reason Trump was unable to fulfill his plan to be a dictator in his first term was largely because the senior military leadership, and many in Federal Law Enforcement did not obey Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional orders. Some resigned, others were fired, but they succeeded in holding the line.

That line will be harder to hold during his second term. The Supreme Court ruled that Trump is immune from prosecution for any acts that he commits in his official capacity as president. He will most likely fire the Joint Chiefs and the commanders of key commands, such as NORTHCOM, the National Guard Bureau, and probably the commanders of key Army Corps and Divisions based in the Continental United States, unless they are viewed as sufficiently loyal to Trump to remain. The same is true with high ranking officials in Federal Law Enforcement, Homeland Security, and the Justice Department.

Unlike his first cabinet, Trump’s new cabinet selections are completely loyal to him. Those who replace the leaders Trump fires will have a choice. Will they be “Yes Men” or “No Men”?

A few years back I did some research on the anti-Nazi resistors, which caused me to go back are re-read a book by World War II German Luftwaffe ace Johannes Steinhoff, which I believe should be required reading for any military officer or public servant in the second Trump era.

Johannes Steinhoff in his Me-109 and below as a Bundeswehr General

Steinhoff was unlike many of the German officers who wrote memoirs following the war, memoirs that historian Williamson Murray wrote “fell generally into two categories; generals writing in the genre of “if the fuhrer had only listened to me!” and fighter pilots or tank busters writing about their heroics against the productive flood from America or the primitively masses of the Soviet Union.”

Steinhoff’s book, The Final Hours: The Luftwaffe Plot Against Goering should be essential reading for any currently serving officer, diplomat, Federal law enforcement, intelligence, or Department of Justice official as the Trump administration becomes more established and capricious. These men and women will be ordered to sacrifice their oath to the Constitution and their honor to obey what Trump requires of them.

In his books, Steinhoff does something that you do not see authors do in most military or political memoirs, he actually does serious self reflection on his role in supporting an evil regime. In his introduction to The Final Hours the legendary fighter ace who was horribly disfigured when his Me-262 jet fighter crashed and burned two weeks prior to the end of the war wrote:

“In recalling these events, which had been long buried in my memory, it has not been my intention to make excuses. Our unconditional self-sacrifice in the service of the Third Reich is too well documented for that….

So it is because of what is happening today—with freedom threatened in virtually every respect by its own abuse—that I offer this contribution, in the form of an episode in which I was myself involved, to the history of the soldier in the twentieth century. Soldiers have always, in every century of their existence, been victims of the ruthless misuse of power; indeed, given the opportunity, they have joined in the power game themselves. But it fell to our own century to accomplish, with the aid of a whole technology of mass extermination, the most atrocious massacres in the history of mankind. This fact alone makes pacifism a philosophy worthy of respect, and I have a great deal of sympathy with those who profess it.

The figure of the soldier in all his manifestations is thus symptomatic of the century now nearing its close, and it is to the history of that figure that I wish to contribute by describing what happened to me. I have tried to show what it is possible to do to men, how insidiously they can be manipulated by education, how they can be hoisted onto a pedestal as “heroes,” how they can be so corrupted as even to enjoy the experience—and how they can be dropped and denounced as mutineers when they discover that they have scruples. The complete lack of scruples that such treatment implies is peculiar to rulers who believe that the problems of their own and other peoples can be solved by imposing, through the use of military force, peace on their, the rulers’, terms—in our case a pax germanica, but the second Latin word is readily interchangeable.” from “The Final Hours: The Luftwaffe Plot Against Goring (Aviation Classics)” by Johannes Steinhoff

Since I am a historian and and a now retired career military officer with service in the Iraq War, a war that was illegal and unjust by all measure I can understand Steinhof’s words. Because much of my undergraduate and graduate work focused on German history, particularly that of Imperial Germany after the unification, the Weimar Republic, and the Nazi Reich, I draw a lot of lessons from the period. I also understand how people in this country can fall for the same kind of vitriolic propaganda that the Germans of that era did. I can understand because for years I fell for the lies and propaganda being put out by the politicians, radio and television pundits, and the political preachers of the American right wing. They have been selling their propaganda and lies for over 40 years, and unfortunately, many people in the military and law enforcement at all levels have absorbed their lies and propaganda, as well as support Trump. They probably are not a majority, but they are a significant minority.

One of those lessons is that in times of crisis, that people, no matter what their race, culture, religious belief system, educational, or economic background are still human. Humanity is the one constant in all of history, our prejudices are often ingrained in us during childhood and reinforced by the words of politicians, pundits, and preachers. In times of stress, crisis, and societal change or upheaval even good people, moral people, people of great intellectual, scientific abilities can fall prey to demagogues who preach hate and blame others, usually racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, as well as civil libertarians who champion the rights of those minorities for the problems of the nation.

Shrewd politicians, preachers, and pundits do this well. They demonize target groups in the population and then let the hatred of their disaffected followers flow. The leaders need that disaffected and angry base in order to rise to power; such was how Hitler, Stalin, and so many other despots gained power. They took advantage of a climate of fear, and found others to blame. For Hitler it was the Jews, Slavs, Socialists and Communists; while for Stalin it was various groups like the Ukrainians, or the Poles who were the devil to be feared and destroyed. Timothy Snyder in his book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin wrote:

“Dead human beings provided retrospective arguments for the rectitude of policy. Hitler and Stalin thus shared a certain politics of tyranny: they brought about catastrophes, blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable. Each of them had a transformative utopia, a group to be blamed when its realization proved impossible, and then a policy of mass murder that could be proclaimed as a kind of ersatz victory.”

But that being said, there are a lot of people who from childhood believe the lies about others without question. In good times such people continue on with life as normal, but in crisis those hatreds and prejudices come to the fore. Rudolf Höss, the notorious sociopath who commanded Auschwitz told American Army psychologist Gustave Gilbert about his reaction when ordered to turn the camp into an extermination center. He said that the order “fitted in with all that had been preached to me for years,” and “at the same time I didn’t think of it as propaganda, but as something one just had to believe.”

Eugene Davidson in his book on the Nuremberg Trials wrote:

“Every society has in it at all times negative, criminal, sadistic, asocial forces. What holds them in check more than law and police is the consensus of the society – a general belief that despite everything wrong and stupid and muddleheaded in politics, the state is a going concern that will somehow make its way into the future.” (Davidson, The Trial of the Germans p.581)

But when things do not go well, when people do not feel that things will be okay, that the future will be better, or that they don’t have a purpose they look for answers. Quite often they find their answers in the rantings of demagogues, race baiters, conspiracy theorists, and others who they would tend to dismiss out of hand in good times. In Germany it was the loss of the First World War, the humiliation of Versailles and the economic chaos and social change of the Weimar period. The conditions allowed Hitler to gain an audience, then a following, then political power. The demagogues played to what was already in the hearts and minds of the disaffected masses, without that fertile soil, the rantings of Hitler and his propagandists would have never succeeded. Albert Speer wrote:

“As I see it today, Hitler and Goebbels were in fact molded by the mob itself, guided by its yearnings and its daydreams. Of course, Goebbels and Hitler knew how to penetrate through to the instincts of their audiences; but in the deeper sense they derived their whole existence from these audiences. Certainly the masses roared to the beat set by Hitler’s and Goebbels’ baton; yet they were not the true conductors. The mob determined the theme. To compensate for misery, insecurity, unemployment, and hopelessness, this anonymous assemblage wallowed for hours at a time in obsessions, savagery and license. The personal unhappiness caused by the breakdown of the economy was replaced by a frenzy that demanded victims. By lashing out at their opponents and vilifying the Jews, they gave expression and direction to fierce primal passions.”

Trump has done that with immigrants, racial and religious minorities, and political opponents since he became a candidate. For the last nine years he has continued and increased the levels of his hatred towards them. His followers, who might not have been radicalized in 2017, are now fully committed to his goals.

In a sense a similar thing has happened in the United States which has experienced a series of lost wars beginning with Vietnam, experienced the shock of the 9-11-2001 attacks, the economic crash of 2007 and 2008 which devastated the savings, home ownership, and investments of many Americans while at the same time benefiting the banking and brokerage houses whose government assisted policies brought about the crash. Of course there are other issues, many religious conservatives hate the progress made by the Women’s and Gay Rights movements, and their leaders play to their fears in apocalyptic terms. I could go on, but I am sure that my readers can identify other issues which Trump and others use to spread fear and hate to further their goals. The fact is that they need the fertile soil that lays in the hearts of their most fervent followers.

For decades the way has been prepared for true extremists to take advantage of the fears and doubts of people as modern American versions of Streicher and Goebbels have been at work for years. Rush Limbaugh was a modern pioneer of this in the United States, and he has been joined by many who are even more extreme in their rantings. Likewise, media corporations especially Fox News, their websites, and political networks spread such fear every minute of the day, claiming that they, and they alone are real Americans. They actively support politicians who condemn, and sometimes even threaten people who oppose them, and all the while claim that Trump will “make America great again.”

Me and my assistant on a mission to the Iraq-Syria border after visiting a Bedouin family with American Advisors on Christmas Eve, 2007

When I was younger I devoured that propaganda, despite all of my learning I followed the rantings of men who I realize today are propagandists who promote the basest of lies, and hatred, often in the name of God. I was changed when I was at war, and when I returned home from Iraq in 2008 I realized through hard experience that I had been lied to, and that as a result that thousands of my brothers and sisters were dead, and tens of thousands shattered in body, mind, and spirit. Likewise I saw the massive destruction levied on Iraq and realized how terrible war really is. That was my epiphany, that is what it took to see how much I had been lied to, and it called me to question everything else that I had so willingly believed, things which had been fed to me by years of indoctrination in church, through the media, and by politicians who I believed were truly Christian.

There was a time that I hated people who espouse the views that I hold today, the views that I now express. I can remember how angry I would get as I listened to the propaganda being put out by Limbaugh, Hannity, the Fox News Channel and all of the others that I listened to all the time.

But when I changed after Iraq, that changed. I saw the lies and betrayal. I remember one day while listening to Limbaugh’s racist attacks on then candidate Barack Obama, I pulled to the side of the road at Fort Story and began to cry. While I was in the beginning of therapy for severe PTSD I realized that I needed to speak out. As I began to speak out I felt the sting of the right wing Christian hatred in very real ways. I remember the day when my bishop in my former church called to tell me that I had to leave because my views on women, gays, and Moslems. He told me that I was now “too liberal.” After that, many men who I considered to be the best of friends in that church and the Chaplain Corps, turned their backs on me, some in the most bitter and vindictive of ways.

But now I realize now that it wasn’t personal, I had in a sense left the cult, and had to be ostracized. I can understand that now. When I was under the spell, I too turned my back on people who had fallen out of favor and people who had rejected the tenants of the church or the political movement. I can never undo what I did. But at the time it made sense, it fitted in with all I had been taught for decades. Albert Speer wrote of Hitler, “One seldom recognizes the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder.”

What happened to Steinhoff’s generation is threatening to happen again during Trump’s next term. Like in the Third Reich soldiers are esteemed, until they realize what is going on and speak out, but by then it is usually too late. I am understanding that fact more and more every day. I understand just a bit of what happened to Steinhoff and his fellow officers when they protested to the highest levels what was happening to Germany in early 1945.

In 1944 he and other fighter pilots were subjected to a political indoctrination session and realized that in the Nazi state loyalty and doctrinal purity to Naziism was more important than either combat service or competence. He wrote:

“Now, however, we realized to our horror that a group of officers had decided, after five years of war, to conduct a purge among the troops with the object of eliminating all those “whose past life and present conduct were not consonant with the National-Socialist type” and who did not “stand firm on National-Socialist principles.” We sat there petrified, but some of those present appeared hugely to enjoy the ensuing discussion of what they called “National-Socialist guidelines.” Perhaps, though, for many it was simply an attempt to escape into a less concrete area of discussion than the desperate military situation—and then there was the added satisfaction of being able to censure others. Fanaticism took the place of hopelessness, and phrases like “faith in the Führer,” “rootedness in National-Socialist ideology,” and “irreproachability of character” fell without hesitation from people’s lips. The Luftwaffe leadership, it was said, must be “combed” from top to bottom, and then someone even came out with the “National-Socialist soul…”

We will soon know how military professionals react to being labeled as traitors by President Trump and his followers when they refuse to obey his demands, as he has been demonizing the personnel of the nation’s military, intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomatic communities for years. His contempt and disrespect for the military knows no bounds.

In 2017 I wanted to give Trump benefit of the doubt and prayed that he world do the right thing for the country. But I was wrong. I am now convinced that his only loyalty is to himself. General Ludwig Beck, who resigned rather than obey Hitler’s order to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938 and died in the anti-Hitler coup attempt in 1944 said:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.”

I have many doubts most political, business, or religious leaders, as well as doubts about lower ranking military leaders. There are many people who will sell their souls for their personal advancement, the advancement of their agenda, or an increase in their bottom line. It is human nature.

However, British Historian Laurence Rees wrote:

“human behavior is fragile and unpredictable and often at the mercy of the situation. Every individual still, of course, has a choice as to how to behave, it’s just that for many people the situation is the key determinate in that choice.”

But the question is: Will we see true men and women of courage who will stand when it appears there is no chance of success? As Atticus Finch said in To Kill a Mockingbird: “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Real courage will be demanded in the coming months and years. Who will have it? Certainly not those who have already surrendered and obeyed in advance. German General and resistance leader Henning von Tresckow wrote:

“We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.”

We all must in our words and actions show that we are not like Trump, our this will always be Trump’s America.