On The Nazi Roots Of Modern Radical Islam

Submitted by Seamus MacNemi (United States), May 2, 2007 at 16:24

Given the amount of information available on the internet and elsewhere in the archives of history, I find it truly amazing that the American educational establishment makes such little effort to bring any of this to light. I learned nothing of any of this in school and, to my knowledge, nothing has ever been mentioned in the media.

Neither the more prominent news papers nor the History Chanel nor National Geographic television series or the National Public Television stations have ever, to my own knowledge, made any mention, even in the most peripheral manner, of any connection between the present day problems in the Middle East and the aftermath of World War Two when so many Nazis escaped the International War Crimes Tribunal. It is obvious to me that the job was not finished with the collapse of the Third Reich. It seems that the cancer escaped detection and metasticized and transported itself elsewhere to again infect our world. Mein Kampf became Mein Jihad.

With the resurgence of Naziism in the form of the skinhead phenomenon and extremist quasi Christian groups here in the United States and elsewhere it could only be a matter of time before the common theme of anti Semitism would naturaly unite these two, Naziism and Radical Islam. Contrary to the belief of many, we don't have to go far back in history to find the source of todays problems. It all can be traced to the time between the two world wars with the rize of Nazism in Germany. The British and the French played a fair hand in bringing this business into being with their colonialist ambitions in the Middle East after WW1. Unfortunately, after the end of WW2, with the cold war, the Americans took up the British model of foreign relations in the region and so repeated and exacerbated an already untenable situation.

Of course, we can't forget the Russians. If it hadn't been for Stalin and the Communist undermining of the Weimar Republic in Germany none of this would have ever come into being. Hitlers rise to power was predicated on the restoration of order in a nation wracked with an economy in ruins, high rates of unemployment and social unrest promulgated by the Communists.

Today, we are faced with the task of unraveling a Gordian Knot of enormous proportion simply because previous generations were not up to the task. It does little good to blame past generations for their failings. They had all they could do to simply live. The ball is in our court now and it remains to be seen how well we play the Great Game.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".