Thought provoking. There are many similarities to Nazi Germany in the
1930's to the USA today. A wise person once said that those who fail to
study history are condemned to repeat it. LET'S NOT!!!
DJB
The Big Lie About Kosovo
Richard Poe
April 14, 1999
"Save the Albanian Kosovars!" Clinton cries. "Save the Sudeten Germans!"
Hitler trumpeted in 1938. The names have changed, but the strategy remains
the same.
For more than 50 years, we Americans have looked down our noses at the
Germans, for having followed Hitler so blindly. But now it's our turn. We
are proving no more resistant to propaganda than those cheering crowds in
Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
Back in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler needed an excuse to seize Czechoslovakia.
So he invented one. Three and a quarter million ethnic Germans lived in the
Sudetenland, under Czech rule. As William L. Shirer recounts in The Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich, Hitler secretly funded an extremist group
called the Sudeten German Party and ordered it to provoke an uprising
against the Czechs.
Kosovo, too, appears to have been destabilized by outside forces. For
years, Kosovars protested Milosevic peacefully. But in 1997, a group called
the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) suddenly started shooting. Who were these
people?
The Times of London (March 24, 1999) described the KLA as "a Marxist-led
force funded by dubious sources, including drug money." European police
suspect the KLA of connections to Albanian gangsters. At least two of the
group's backers appear to have been the CIA and the German spy agency BND,
according to intelligence analyst John Whitley, quoted in the Truth in
Media Global Watch Bulletin (April 2, 1999).
The purpose of staging a provocation is to create a backlash. This strategy
certainly worked for Hitler in 1938. As unrest spread in the Sudetenland,
the Czechs cracked down. Czech President Eduard Benes ordered troops into
the region and declared martial law.
Right on cue, the German press went wild. "Women and Children Mowed Down by
Armored Cars," ran a typical Berlin newspaper headline in September 1938.
"Poison Gas Attack on Aussig" cried another.
Hitler accused Benes of waging a "war of extermination" against Sudeten
Germans. "The Germans he now drives out!" cried Hitler, in a September 16,
1938 speech. "We see the appalling figures: on one day 10,000 fugitives, on
the next 20,000... and today 214,000. Whole stretches of country were
depopulated, villages are burned down, attempts are made to smoke out the
Germans with hand-grenades and gas."
Sound familiar? Hitler's rhetoric bears an eerie resemblance to the CNN
news blitz on Kosovo. Of course, Hitler was exaggerating. Many of the
atrocities he alleged later turned out to be fabrications. But the same is
true of our newscasts on Kosovo.
Take the alleged massacre of 45 Albanian civilians at Racak, for instance,
reported in January 1999. Forensic and otherevidence now suggests that the
bodies were those of KLA guerrillas killed in combat.
The hoax has been widely discussed in the European press (including Le
Monde, Die Welt, Le Figaro and the BBC). But U.S. news outlets have been as
silent on the controversy as if they were taking orders from Goebbels
himself.
In the Sudeten crisis, Hitler claimed to be inspired by internationalist
ideals. "Among the fourteen points which President Wilson promised ..." the
Fuhrer proclaimed, "was the fundamental principle of the self-determination
of all peoples ..." By freeing the Sudeten Germans, Hitler argued, he was
fulfilling Wilson's vision.
Clinton too claims he is fighting for human rights. But ethnic cleansing
does not bother Clinton when his friends are the ones doing the cleansing.
He ordered no bombing when the Croatians drove 300,000 Serbs from Krajina,
burning their homes and killing many. Nor did he intervene when our NATO
ally Turkey slaughtered over 35,000 Kurds.
Every schoolchild today knows that Hitler's real goal, in seizing
Czechoslovakia, was to use it as a stepping stone for his planned invasion
of Russia.
But what is Clinton's real interest in Kosovo? Nobody knows.
Many theories have been floated. Some point to the Trepca mines of northern
Kosovo, rich in gold, zinc, silver and lead. The New York Times called them
the "Kosovo war's glittering prize" (July 8, 1998).
Others see a more far-reaching strategy. The Russians claim that NATO, like
Hitler, wants to use the Balkans as a stepping stone for extending its
power eastward -- eventually meddling in the affairs of Russia itself.
But this is all speculation. Only time will reveal Clinton's true
intentions, as it ultimately did Hitler's.
In his memoir Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer recalled the anxious
mood of Berliners, in September 1939, as they digested the news that
England and France had declared war.
"The atmosphere was noticeably depressed," he recalls. "The people were
full of fear about the future. None of the regiments marched off to war
decorated with flowers as they had done at the beginning of the First World
War. The streets remained empty. There was no crowd on Wilhelmsplatz
shouting for Hitler."
A wise man once said that those who fail to study history are condemned to
repeat it. Should Clinton actually succeed in sparking a world war,
Americans will no doubt react with the same shock and fear as Berliners did
in 1939. But we will have only ourselves to blame.
Richard Poe is a freelance journalist and a New York Times-bestselling
author. He writes frequently on historical themes. Poe's latest book,
"Black Spark, White Fire", explores the Afrocentric controversy concerning
ancient Egypt.
