10/27/2024
On March 24, 1945, a teen-aged infantryman stationed in Germany received his copy of the U.S. War Department’s pamphlet “Army Talks.”*
“You are away from home, separated from your families…and risking your very lives because of a thing called fascism…It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand...fascism in order to combat it."
"[Fascism] is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state…The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
The pamphlet went on to list three core tools of fascism:
1) Pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity [including] a “well-planned hate campaign against minority races, religions, and other groups.”
2) Replace international cooperation with a “perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count.”
3) Insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”
That soldier was my father. He suffered PTSD from fighting against fascism, which contributed to his death 20 years later.
This would be a good week to do what you can to strengthen a government run by people.
*Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American”
