There is no uncertainty, and obviously not strange that a combat Nkrumahist like Mr Kwarteng will warm up to a book like Mein Kampf. Of course, Hitler made it clear that there will not be any democratic nonsense in his Reich, and that it will be a dictatorship. No economic policy had succeeded without the sword is what Hitler declared in his book, and I will spare you my interpretation and give way to what he wrote. He said, ‘When the territory of the Reich embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral right arise, from the need of the people to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.’ Nkrumah did away with all opposition and declared himself life president, virtually killing all civil liberties. Yes, it makes a lot of sense when Mr Kwarteng wants to me to read such trash so that I can reason like him – no chance in hell. I have read it several times over, and my conclusion is simple. It is an evil book that should not be read by intellectual quacks lacking the ability to differentiate between good and evil. Children should be kept away from its lethal text until they have a good knowledge of good and evil.
Anybody who is able to argue on the basis that Hitler ended unemployment in the Third Reich due to his statist policies is as ignorant of history as a new born baby. Of course, he did lick unemployment, but under what basis did he achieve that? The ‘war economy’, that is what the Nazi’s used to describe the German economy under their direction. Mr Kwarteng referred to one Professor Dan Silverman to make his point. He said, ‘What is more, Prof. Dan Silverman has shown how Hitler’s policies industrialized Germany and how he also solved Germany’s unemployment problem, with Prof. Silverman concluding that Hitler’s notable achievements include, but not limited to, bringing Germany out of the Great Depression, building massive road networks and houses across the country. He even provides data to prove how Hitler’s economic program achieved successes far beating most in the industrialized world (See Professor’s “Hitler’s Economy: Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933-1936).’ In the first place how can this so called ingenious professor compare the achievement of a totalitarian regime to that of a free society like Britain and United States, unless he supports autocracy? And he should have made it clear. It is insane and outright madness; it is simply comparing apples and oranges. I am tempted to end with the latter question, but I will not.
In 1934, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, the Reich Minister of Economics, cleverly introduced the Mefo bills, which literally allowed Germany to rearm without spending Reichmarks. Rearmament on the scale embarked by Hitler would have instantly ruined the Reichmark as a result of the inflation it would have created. So Hitler’s requisition for arms were covered up with payments made to industries with Reichmarks and Mefo bills. In effect, the Mefo bills, which were basically Government IOU’s, were used as currency by industry to trade with each other. I have looked at so many data regarding the German economy during the period between 1933 and 1939 and they are not very consistent. Of course, I was kidding myself; what could I possible get from a gangster regime like that of Hitler, who was so silly to even seriously talk about dumb stuff like German Physics, German Mathematics, German Chemistry. Does it sound real to your ears, because I am not making this up? Get a good history book of Nazi Germany and read. Anyway, the total revenue for the period was around 62 billion marks, while expenditure for rearmament alone hovered around 60%. And these are those that were made in Marks; the Mefo bills concealed a lot of what was going on at the time. By 1939, the German national debt had climbed up to 38 billion Marks. It is not very difficult to understand now why the persecution of the Jews intensified around this time culminating in the Kristallnacht.
Besides, the black market economy pursued by Schacht at the behest of Hitler, the Reich’s Fuhrer increased the German military from seven divisions to fifty one. And I believe 51 divisions are made of up of monkeys. It was a move, which literally mopped out all the unemployed. According to the naval experts the demands, which was accepted by the British for the Germans to increase naval tonnage would occupy German dockyards for 10 years. I don’t have to be so explicit; all these absorbed the unemployed. So if a professor reads something like this and is unable to interpret it correctly am I wrong in calling him an idiot? This military preparedness, which were disguised and sometimes in open contravention of the Locarno agreement led to the greatest misery in human history, and defined human barbarity of the worse kind. I can’t believe that any serious economic historian will praise the ‘jackboot’ economics of the Third Reich. The path that Hitler chose to solve unemployment in Germany was unsustainable. It was just the Keynesian inflationary prescription to solve unemployment, which solves the problem for a while and add another lethal problem of inflation. I will say categorically that the professor is an apologist for the Nazis. How can anyone judge that as success when after 12 year in office there was not a single brick standing on each other? Mind you the man who helped Hitler to achieve these successes – Schacht – later found himself in a concentration camp. Ask the simplest of all questions – why? Do you remember what Nkrumah did to his own lieutenants? There is no space here for that.
Some of the issues that Mr Kwarteng raised regarding Hitler’s Germany are so silly they are beneath contempt to worth any serious refutation. However, some of them cannot go without perforating the aura of moral righteousness that they erroneously assume. This whole discussion is becoming increasingly boring, and I don’t want to further worsen it. The books he keeps throwing around to shed light on the evil nature of capitalism goes beyond stupidity and borders on psychosis. The fact that IBM helped Hitler with his census doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have found an alternative. The mass extermination of the Jews began on experimental basis. They did not have a laid down plan to follow. It was through try and error that they finally arrived at the Zyklon B and the incineration of the corpses in industrial ovens. It is good to know that it happened. If IBM had acted differently it wouldn’t have changed anything. For any professor to come up with this straw man’s evidence is simply a sign of desperation to salvage a thesis. And let me say this, if America had not traded with Nazi Germany Mr Kwarteng would have made a different argument that it was because of the strangulation that led Hitler to wage his wars. You can’t win with these idiots, can you?
Let’s talk about morality here. Now, if someone tells you to kill your own mother and you are that silly and brainless to break your dear mother on a wheel who is the evil one, you or the one that floated the idea? It is the same argument that a lot of diehard CPP devotees still use to calm their nerves, that it was the CIA, which overthrew Nkrumah. I am sure it was a CIA funded American mercenaries that booted their god from office. Hitler’s salvage of the German economy was a magician’s stage trick backed with violence, intimidation and abuse of human rights. After all, there were still rationing in key resources like poultry, fruits, and clothing for many Germans, which these idiotic professors do not add to their thesis. Anybody at all can use the magician’s stage trick to manage the economy. The question is how long will that last?
Freedom and liberty is paramount in every human relationship, and immediately you trample on a section of the population for the good of the rest you have lost the plot. There will always be instability, and the population will always live in fear. In one of my earlier articles one of the unvarnished Nkrumahist took a swipe at me that I enjoy a National Health Services created by a statist government while I make a lot of noise. First of all, it is not free for me I pay through my national insurance contribution and of course when I need drugs I pay for it; I don’t get it for free. I made mention of this, because of the values of the man who created the system. Aneurin Bevan, speaking to some American correspondents affirmed that he believed it was possible to have public ownership and liberty. However, he went further to explain that, ‘I don’t believe the two things are inconsistent . . . If I believed the development of socialism meant the absolute crushing of liberty, then I should plump for liberty because the advance of human development depends entirely on the right to think, to speak, and to use reason, and allow what I call the upsurge to come from the bottom to reach the top.’[History of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr] This is a man who believes in liberty and freedom, and I wouldn’t mind to have him organising my kind of socialist society. The question is how many of the people who will come after him will think like that, which makes me feel queasy, because you cannot guarantee it. What is the guarantee that you will not be bundled up in the middle of the night and murdered like what happened to the three judges in the early eighties?
Is anyone surprise that Mr Kwarteng will warm up to Hitler’s Mein Kampf? The fact is the character of Hitler reflects his almighty Nkrumah’s scheming and the backstabbing he exhibited during his stint at UGCC. It shocks me that a person who espouses socialism recommends such a book for reading. Is socialism not meant to care for the weakling? It is only a deranged mind that will recommend such a text for reading. Is there any such thing as a master race; if he believes that I will take everything I have written back and apologise and bow to his feet?
I will end with the only good thing that he said according to my judgement. This is the view of the man that Mr Kwarteng went at all length to defend his butchery and sadism. At the trial of his putschist conspiracy, during his defence, he declared that his aim was to destroy Marxism. Even with his monumental dense ignorance of economics he was aware of the silliness of the Marxist ideology. Thank you very much.
Philip Kobina Baidoo Jnr
London
baidoo_philip@yahoo.co.uk
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