European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 31, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse Thereat Warto the greater War by Don Tate stall Wriler or is not /ji.mce, my in irm Kfir f Tor 20 a och i in tin1 grimly of Versailles i oth the old Allied rom mangler was wrong by a thin year the tar Tinglu in along the from Ihn great in on greater never slopped not in the feverish of n re revering Soldier Adolf Hitler not in i he festering minds fool Hersho fell Germany had been betrayed. Tlu1 treaty ended world i left no one Happy. Signing under pm Lesl ii it file they had been treated Loo roughly stuck Allied i years the loss of colonies payment of reparations virtual disarmament .1 limited defensive army with no tanks or heavy artillery and no air Force or submarine command plus a War guilt clause that blamed the War on Germany. The British and French Felt the germans had gotten off lightly. The French , looking at their ravaged land a loom with in w cemeteries were Tiol Ecta Stic. 1 he . Congress refused to ratify the treaty rejecting a proposed league of nations it fell would forever embroil it in the affairs of Seething Europe. Seething puts it mildly. When news of the armistice real Hod Cpl. Hitler who had been shot in inc leg gassed and decorated or bravery in the War everything went before my eyes As i staggered Back to my Ward and buried my aching head Between the blankets and Pillow he would following Days were terrible to Bear and tin nights still worse. During these nights my haired increased haired for the originators of this dastardly less than a year later. Miller stepped off on his relentless March to world War ii which began 50 years ago sept. 1,1939. He attended his first meeting of a new anti semitic anti democratic group that would become the nazi parly. " started in 1919 with seven members Miller the seventh would become chief and soon take it Over the parly attracted such men As world War i air Ace Herman coring whose aspiration was to seem Germany armed and marching in despite their Rhineland watch the allies were less than informed about what was transpiring in a Germany drowning in inflation plagued with an Uncertain government threatened by dissidents ranging from red revolution Aires to bitter War veterans and under pressure from militarists already dreaming dreams of Power. The German general staff had gone Adolf Hitler addresses the crowd at a nazi parly rally in Berlin in 1933. Underground and it was t Long in fore the army was being set relly rebuilt. Even More ominous nazism was being built Plank by perverse Plank like something left Over from the worst Nightmare of the Scourge of god altil.1 the Hun. I he record of the 1920s and tos shows that for All i Tiller s callous deviousness the line of the. Nazi parly was nut touched in subtleties. Brutish by Clear was the Primme to restore Germany s Prosperity return its stolen lands and position As a world Power. Moreover the Lew i and communist backed world conspiracy Whit it led to the undefeated German army being stabbed in the Back by German jew Sand socialists in i i it would certainly be utterly crushed. So said the so i Weil the Man with the terrible intensity Hose Resolution and laser beam stare were lighting up a a Linn in torchlight parades and flaming bombast a Man who Al the end of his slide into the pit with millions More germans dead their land wrecked and their military crushed again would still be cursing the lews Anil howling at Fate for not letting Germany Rule the win id As Thor or somebody intended. In the Early Days however his words were what the no in the unemployed and other aggrieved germans wanted increasingly to hear. Hitler had a natural Genuis Lor mob oratory goes one account and realized that the Way to get results was to pitch the message on an emotional rather than an intellectual plane and direct it to the most stupid elements of the audience the message was driven Home by endless repetition the vehemence of the language and the violence carried onto the streets by nazi brow shirt militia called storm troopers or a commanded by Ernst by 192 i the party had grown to 70,000 men who marched about armed and in uniform bullying and shouting. In one weird scene in Munich that year Hitler the sex Corporal and old hero Erich Ludendorff second in command of the German army in world War i now flirting with madness and plotting revolution with Hitler produced the Beer Hall Midway through a speech by a bavarian official in a Munich Beer Hall in which the official criticized Germany s government but said it was not yet the time for armed revolt Hitler pushed him from the podium wrote . Marshall then Drew a pistol and fired two shots into the screaming that the revolution was on he ordered his troopers to bar the exits then Drew the bavarian leaders aside and begged them to join him and see the adventure through. While he talked he wept with excitement pistol in one hand Beer Stein in the other. Suddenly Ludendorff appeared in full uniform All Beme daled adding his urging to Hitler after a wild Beer drinking Swastika waving night there followed a March with 3,000 followers from the Beer Hall in which 18 nazis were killed by police and soldiers. I filler and Ludendorff were both jailed. The old Cray general was freed and Hitler served but nine months just enough time for him to scratch out mein become a nationally known figure a Man with something to say he kept saying it hacking away Al the pacifist Weimar Republic Germany s troubled attempt Al a democracy that had been born in defeat and humiliation. Because inc armistice was signed before Germany was invaded the nation did not have a sense of being beaten in Battle wrote historian William Leuchtenburg. Allied leaders who permitted the German military to escape responsibility for defeat prepared the ground for the myth the nazis would exploit thai the fatherland had not been vanquished on the Field of four autocratic empires had been toppled by world War i and in the afterglow it seemed briefly that the sacrifices of so Many who Lay Row on Row beneath crosses in Flanders and other Fields out of All that stupid Slaughter could come a Happy ending that the warm winds of democracy were blowing across the Earth. The winds died. A Large chunk of the Earth that was to have been made Safe for democracy Woodrow Wilson s dream was already slouching toward totalitarianism by the end of the 1920s. Democracy in fragmented Italy scene of food riots and class hatreds could t endure four years of peace and was replaced by an embittered big Mouth named Benito Mussolini whose fascist Blac shirts terrorized opponents with beatings arson and murder. In 1922, Benito s bully boys marched on Rome. The government gave up. Stripes Mcguine August 31, 1989
