How “liberal” became a Nazi catchword

German National Socialists like simplicity. Their methods were intensely studied by George Orwell, who concluded that, to them, a single, all-encompassing meta-enemy was better than two dissimilar competitors. This realization is key to understanding the persuasive strategy of Nazi ideology, which presented as reasonable, centrist, altruistic and Lutheran. Nazis opposed plutocratic extremism (laissez-faire) and communist Soviet Socialism by redefining these diagonally opposed corners of the Nolan chart as twin dupes of selfish non-christian, repeat, non-christian conspirators.

Mein Kampf was heavily larded with Bible quotes and references to Divine Providence. Young Adolf painted a Madonna with Baby Jesus before going to WWI, and a Jesus shrine afterward. The National Socialist movement was an altruistic amalgam of secular and christian cranks cobbled together out of the disastrous war of 1914-1920.  The war began in the opium-producing Balkans after Revolutionary China made its prohibition law stick. My guess is that the glut led poppy farmers to price-cutting and shopping around for customers other than The Accursed Hun. Cartels don’t like that.

Background to all this were T. Roosevelt’s efforts, on behalf of Chinese prohibition–and perhaps because his brother was an addict and the family enriched by opium–to secure a Hague antiopium agreement. As the number of signataries grew disquietingly large, a communist youth shot a medal-bedecked and befeathered militarist and war saved Germany and Austria-Hungary from antiopium ratification efforts. The war ended badly for Germany, with most of Europe clamoring for reparations payments for the full extent of the war damage.

The new Weimar Republic tried paying debts with worthless paper currency, and soon bread could only be bought for trillions of Deutchmarks. France seized the Ruhr region, and American prohibitionists kept up steady pressure for formal German adoption of the antidrug language in armistice and surrender documents, the League of Nations charter and the Geneva Convention against opiates. But heroin was the big ticket export item for which Germany hoped to obtain cash with which to mollify reparations claimants.

Herbert Hoover had lived in China, understood (but never mentioned) the cause of the war, helped Woodrow Wilson draw up the terms of surrender and wanted to wean Germany of its dependence on heroin exports. Shortly after seizure of several tonnes of heroin at New York, banks were failing in the US, Germany and Austria. As President,  Hoover declared a Moratorium on war reparations payments–the carrot to entice Germany to agree to quit exporting heroin.  This was the June 20, 1931, day of the first Moratorium on Brains.

By then there were swastikas everywhere and belligerent nationalsocialist policies cowed Germany’s creditors. The Reich government used the moratorium’s windfall savings to build up its military machine. Its influence spread and other European drug exporters soon strained to blame every shot fired in WWI on the very non-christians Martin Luther had so eloquently badmouthed in 1543. Such was the situation in Germany in 1933 as another wannabee monk, Adolf Hitler, rose to power in the land of artillery weapons, chemical plants and Big Pharma. Big Pharma was besieged, needed protection, and any belligerent militaristic regime would do–as in 1914–so long as it did not nationalize drug or weapons plants.

The Drugs at War movement was Christian and conservative, but few understood the economics that drove it. Its enemies were competitive laissez-faire liberals–opposed to Big Pharma’s cartel partnerships with government–and godless Bolshevik communists who let their women run wild. Sound familiar?

Continued in… How Liberal became a Conservative catchword, next…

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