That Time When Business Greed Nearly Lost the Allies WWII and How It Relates to the Covid Crisis

We are plunging toward a dark and dangerous winter. A third wave of Covid-19 infections is surging around the world. At this writing, U.S. Covid cases are increasing at a rate of more than 100,000 new infections per day. One thousand Americans are dying from the virus each day. The health care facilities of nearly every state are being overwhelmed by Covid caseloads.

It is a sad fact that all this could have been avoided.

If more state governments had been responsible and closed the bars, restaurants, gyms, and political rallies that act like petri dishes for the virus’s growth, Covid’s impact could have been mitigated. But too many politicians bent to the pressure placed on them by both small businesses and corporations to avoid such lockdowns. Even in states like California, where a lockdown did start to contain the virus, politicians eventually caved and lifted restrictions too early and too quickly.

We’ve seen this same profit-at-any-price mentality in this country before when another scourge threatened American lives, and businesses refused to adapt to the situation to save lives. The last time we saw this kind of thinking, we nearly lost WWII.

Operation Drumbeat

Within weeks of declaring war on the United States, Adolf Hitler launched a U-boat offensive against the American East Coast called Operation Paukenschlag (Operation Drumbeat). On January 14, 1942, the first German sub arrived off the coast of Rhode Island, soon followed by four more. The German sailors were delighted to find tankers and freighters sailing alone without escort. Even more surprising, they found the coast brightly lit by shore lights that provided U-boats with perfectly silhouetted targets.

Blackouts are a necessity of war. Across the Atlantic, blackouts were imposed on every English, French, and German shoreline. Even before entering the war, American military officials realized the potential need for blacking out the Eastern seaboard at night. But local chambers of commerce, fearing a loss of profits, fought every attempt to impose a coastal blackout.

The result was devastating.

In just weeks, those first five U-boats sank 16 ships totaling 104,761 tons. Allied logistics experts estimated the loss in ships, cannon, vehicles, and fuel was equivalent to the damage caused by 30,000 German aerial bombing sorties. And it was just the beginning.

Like the coronavirus, the U-boat onslaught came in waves. The first wave may have come as a surprise—though it shouldn’t have—but there was no excuse to not be prepared for the following waves. But, just as with the Covid crisis today, America remained unresponsive to the threat

The blame can’t be laid entirely at the feet of East Coast business interests—though they fought tooth-and-against blacking out shoreline enterprises. Just as with the Covid crisis, there was ineptitude at high levels of government where bureaucrats would not accept the reality of a U-boat threat in American waters.

The Anglophobe Admiral

Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations, was an Anglophobe. A British official described King as “intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy.” Before America entered the war, King rejected all calls for preparing for a U-boat attack on the United States, refusing to believe Germany had such a capability despite the fact U-boats had operated in American waters in WWI.

Merchant ship Dixie Arrow torpedoed off Cape Hatteras by U-71, 26 March 1942.

Like Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the reality of the Covid crisis, King refused to acknowledge the threat facing merchant ships sailing in American waters or his own failure to protect them. Even after the first German submarine onslaught, King’s Anglophobia made him resist implementing any of the hard-won lessons the English learned about fighting U-boats in three years of war. He adamantly refused to adopt a convoy system to protect Allied shipping as the British had despite the fact that convoys—groups of merchant ships protected by sub-hunting ships and patrol boats—was used by the American Navy in WWI. King’s attitude, and that of many of his subordinates, was summed up by U.S. Rear Adm. R. S. Edwards. “Americans must learn by their own mistakes,” he told a British colleague, “and we have plenty of ships.”

In fact, we did not have plenty of ships.

By mid-March, the loss of oil tankers was so great that the Petroleum Industry War Council warned the U.S. would run out of oil in six months. By June 1942, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall worried “that another month or two of this . . . [and] . . . we will be unable to bring sufficient men and planes to bear against the enemy . . .”

The danger to the war effort posed by King's ethnocentrism prompted General Dwight D. Eisenhower to write, “One thing that might help win this war is to shoot King.”

To the British, the Battle of the Western Atlantic was a “holocaust.”

A convoy system wouldn’t be organized until mid-1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered King to implement one.

And still the lights shone

In February 1942, FDR issued an executive order giving the military authority to order coastal blackouts. Once again, seashore businesses pushed back, and the military hesitated to implement the order. Admiral King sent the coastal defense commander a “request” to implement a “dimout” of shore lights, but he still refused to call for a full blackout.

U-boats victories mounted as did merchant ship losses. For the tourists and party clubbers enjoying the well-lit coastal nightlife, the war came home the hard way. At night, they could see torpedoed ships burning offshore. In the mornings, those same fun lovers found the scorched bodies of merchant sailors that had washed ashore. Eventually, coastline businesses began to lose money simply because people did not want to be that close to the reality of war. And still, they refused to execute blackouts until much later in the year.

By then the damage was done. In the first six months of 1942, nearly 400 Allied merchantmen were sunk in American waters at a cost to Germany of only six U-boats. Unlike Pearl Harbor, none of the ships were salvageable. No one was ever held responsible for these terrible losses. It would still take until the first half of 1943 before American anti-submarine warfare capabilities caught up with those of Britain and Canada.

(New York Times)

Today Americans face a similar deadly threat, one that threatens the well-being of us all, not just a relative few merchant sailors. Yet we’re are seeing the same inaction and ineptitude that nearly lost us the war against the Axis Powers. While European countries are seeing positive results by reimposing restrictions on restaurants, bars, and other gathering places, too many Americans still resist taking basic precautions that can slow the spread of the virus and save hundreds of lives (see graph). At this writing, just shy of a quarter million Americans have died from the disease, and the number keeps climbing every day.

In his book Operation Drumbeat, author Michael Gannon concludes, “Civilian avarice and carelessness must take their places on the list of agents accountable for the U-boat triumphs.”  When the history of America’s war against Covid-19 is written, what will the historians say of us?

Militia Plots: A Rare but Serious Threat

The news shocked many Americans. The FBI announced they had thwarted an armed rightwing extremist militia plot to capture local government officials and hold them hostage.

You may think I’m talking about the October arrests of more than a dozen Michigan militia henchmen who were planning to abduct Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and put her on trial for the heinous crime of trying to save Michiganders from the coronavirus.

You’d be wrong if you did.

What I described above was a 1934 plot to seize control of the San Diego, CA city hall by a rightwing militia of quasi-Christian zealots called the Silver Shirts. Founded in 1933 by William Dudley Pelley (right), a one-time presidential candidate, the Silver Legion of America was patterned after the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts with the intention of establishing a “Christian Commonwealth” in America that would exclude all Jews and nonwhites.

The Silver Legion was a pro-fascist/Nazi group, one of several that existed in the U.S. in the 1930s. (See: American Fascists: A Forgotten History.) The local contingent of Silver Shirts concocted a plan to overthrow San Diego’s city government when they heard rumors that a group of communists was making similar plans (they weren’t). Two Marines from Camp Pendleton uncovered the plot when they infiltrated the Legion while investigating a series of weapons thefts from local military units.

Militia coup attempts like those thwarted in San Diego and Michigan might seem rare, but they aren’t unknown, and they are no laughing matter. They pose a very real threat to American citizens and to our democracy.

 The first antigovernment militia coup was the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion. Contrary to the belief of many radical gunowners that the Second Amendment was intended by our Founding Fathers to provide for the overthrow the government, the Whiskey Rebellion was quickly put down by a federal force led by then-President George Washington. (See: The Myths that Drive America’s Love of Guns.)

Anti-government militia plots have been the bane of American life, particularly since the 1990s. Several militia plots were uncovered during that decade. Members of a group called the North American Militia planned to bomb several targets in Michigan, including a federal building and an IRS building, and even discussed assassinating various government officials.

In 1997, members of a Missouri militia group planned a July 4 attack on Fort Hood, Texas, as the military base hosted an annual “Freedom Festival” attended by 50,000 men, women, and children. Fortunately, the FBI and the Missouri State Highway Patrol thwarted the plot. (See: The Militia Movement.) And in March 2011, the FBI charged nine members of an extremist militia group in Michigan with seditious conspiracy for plotting to attack law enforcement and spark an uprising against the government. (See: Domestic Terrorism: Focus on Militia Extremism.)

These rebellions were stopped or quickly suppressed before they started. But that doesn’t mean militia coups are not dangerous. In 1898, a white supremacist militia successfully overthrew the biracial city government of Wilmington, NC. There was no response to the deadly coup from local police, the state government, or Washington, DC. Its success is having unfortunate repercussions in today’s presidential politics, as Donald Trump keeps holding up that event as a model for future coups. (See:  The White Supremacist Coup that Trump Uses as a Template.)

Many Americans like to believe Timothy McVeigh’s April 19, 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 men, women, and children was the act of a “lone wolf” terrorist, Timothy McVeigh. In fact, in addition to McVeigh, three accomplices were also charged and tried for the crime. They had hoped the bombing would initiate an uprising that would take down the U.S. government. McVeigh was also a member of Christian Identity, a rightwing, white supremacist militia, which the FBI believed may have also been involved with the plot. (See: Were There More OKC Conspirators?: The Elohim City Connection.)

The last four years saw a rise in militia activity, thanks to the hateful and extremist rhetoric of Donald Trump. Armed militia members confronted peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors and marched to protest social distancing practices implemented by local governments in the wake of the coronavirus. Even before planning to abduct Gov. Whitmer, Michigan militia gunmen marched on the state capitol in an obvious threat to state lawmakers.

Not all rightwing coup plots were the work of militia movements. In 1933, a group of wealthy conservative bankers and financiers plotted to raise a private army and use it to overthrow the American government and establish a fascist dictatorship. Called The American Putsch and The Bankers Revolt, the plot was thwarted by the man they approached to lead their army. Smedley Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, played along with the conspirators and collected evidence for the FBI. One of the alleged conspirators was a wealthy, pro-Nazi financier named Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of two U.S. presidents. (See: American Fascists: A Forgotten History.)

Unlike George Washington riding forth to preserve the country and democracy during the Whiskey Rebellion, Donald Trump has done nothing to mitigate the threat from these rightwing extremist groups. On the contrary, Trump appointed self-avowed pro-fascist, white nationalists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller to his staff. He’s referred to white nationalist groups as “some good people” and told the Proud Boys to “stand by.” Trump has also called for armed militia members to act as “poll watchers” during the balloting. His failure to condemn these hate groups or their malicious plots only encourages them to continue their terrorist plots. More conspiracies will be on the horizon as long as this irresponsible president remains in power.

And despite the best efforts of law enforcement, the next plot may not be stopped in time.

Hitler and Trump: Two Men With a Single Mind?

 There is a new meme making the rounds on Twitter. It is a quote from a WWII psychological profile of Adolf Hitler commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA. The quote says, “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

Obviously, the quote has gone viral because many people believe it applies as easily to Donald Trump as it does to Der Fuhrer. But a close reading of the full OSS report, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend,” reveals many more similarities between the Nazi dictator and America’s wannabe fuhrer—so many that one could believe they were one and the same man.

Family: Both Hitler and Trump had authoritarian fathers. Alois Hitler was described by Hitler’s British-born nephew, William Patrick Hitler, as a drunk and tyrant who regularly beat his children. Trump’s father, Fred, was also an authoritarian parent, demanding daily reports from his wife on the children’s conduct and dictating disciplinary actions. According to Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, Fred pushed his eldest son, Fred Jr., to become as ruthless as he was so he could take over the family business. Fred Jr., however, wanted to be an airline pilot. After that, Fred Sr. “dismantled [Fred Jr.] by devaluing and degrading every aspect of his personality." Mary Trump blames her grandfather’s treatment of her father for the alcoholism that eventually killed him.

In Awe of Authority: Despite his media persona as a man of strength and resolute courage, Hitler was humbled by persons of authority. “From the weight of evidence, it seems certain that Hitler does lose his self-confidence badly when he is brought face-to-face with an accepted authority of high standing…” Yet, he was in constant search for a male figure he could use as a guide. “[T]hroughout his later life we find him searching for a strong masculine figure whom he can respect and emulate.” Hitler was drawn to strong, authoritarian historical figures such as Caesar, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great. According to the OSS report, Hitler was confused by leaders such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt who could lead a country and “still act like a gentleman” without “a great deal of name-calling, shouting, abusing, and threatening.”

It’s well known Trump has never met a dictator he didn’t submit to. Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Kim Jong Un of North Korea are all authoritarian leaders Trump has praised and, in most cases, provided with preferential treatment over his own country. (See: Nine Notorious Dictators, Nine Shout-Outs From Donald Trump). At home, Trump openly suggests he wants to wield such power and attempts to do so by threatening and abusing anyone who stands up to him.

Young—Very Young—Women: Throughout his political career, Hitler portrayed himself as a man alone whose only mistress was Germany. Trump, on the other hand, has extravagantly exaggerated his prowess as a playboy. Neither depiction is true. Hitler, like Trump, had a penchant for very young, even underage girls.

Hitler’s first tryst was with Henny Hoffman, the daughter of his official photographer. Hitler first met Henny when she was nine. Henny was about 17 when her mother died and she began dating Hitler. He was in his thirties. “The relationship continued for some time until Henny … got drunk one night and began to talk about her relationship with Hitler,” according to the OSS report.

Henny was followed by a mysterious relationship with Geli Raubal, the daughter of Hitler’s half-sister, Angela. Geli lived with Hitler, 19 years her senior, in his Munich apartment. According to the OSS profile, Hitler spent lavishly on Geli and was extremely jealous of any men who paid attention to his niece. The affair did not end well. In September 1931, Hitler traveled to Nuremburg for a party meeting. The next day, Geli was found dead in his apartment of a gunshot wound to the lung. Hitler’s personal pistol laid next to her. Despite suspicions otherwise, her death was ruled a suicide.

Eva Braun was only 17 when she first caught Hitler’s eye, 23 years younger than Der Fuhrer. Theirs was Hitler’s longest relationship with a woman though he tried to hide it from the German people. It, too, was tumultuous, with Braun twice unsuccessfully attempting suicide. They finally married days before the German surrender, then committed suicide inside the Fuhrer Bunker.

Two of Trump’s wives were much younger than he when they married. Marla Trump was 17 years younger than Trump, and Melania 24 years younger. Trump frequently partied with Jeffrey Epstein, a financier and convicted child molester who was charged with sex trafficking minors in 2019 shortly before he allegedly committed suicide in a jail cell. In 2016, a woman accused Trump in a Manhattan federal court of raping her at one of Epstein’s parties when she was only 14 years old. The alleged victim dropped her suit after receiving multiple death threats from Trump supporters.

Trump has repeatedly made lascivious comments about his own daughter, Ivanka. During a 2003 Howard Stern Show interview, he said Ivanka had “the best body.” On the television show The View, Trump said, “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her." He also once allegedly asked a friend, “Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?” Ivanka was 13 at the time.

Hitler and Trump may have shared another sexual aberration—golden showers. It has long been suspected that Russia’s Putin has video of Trump engaging in sexual urination with two prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. According to the OSS report, Hitler engaged in the same sex games. “His sexual pervasion has quite a different nature that few would have guessed,” it says. “… [A]n extreme form of masochism in which the individual derives sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him.”

Draining the Swamp and Other Christ-like Things: Donald Trump ran for office claiming only he could “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC. Hitler, too, came to power claiming he would drain the Berlin swamp. “When I came to Berlin … and looked at the traffic… the luxury, the perversion, the wanton display… disgusted me so thoroughly, that I was almost beside myself,” Hitler said in a speech. He saw himself as a new Messiah who would clean up Berlin the way Christ cleared the moneychangers from the temple.

A Messiah complex is something else both men share. “As time went on,” the OSS report says, “it became clearer (Hitler) was thinking of himself as the Messiah and that it was he who was destined to lead Germany to glory. … Comparisons between Christ and himself became more frequent.” Trump, too, frequently refers to himself with Biblical references, claiming he is “the Chosen One,” “the King of Israel,” and “the second coming of God.”

Unfortunately, both men’s e most loyal followers only encouraged such thinking. It was not unusual for Hitler’s most zealous followers—good Christians all—to hail him with “Heil Hitler, our Savior,” according to the OSS profile. Trump’s biggest group of supporters, white Christian evangelicals, have been all too willing to buy into his egomaniacal self-aggrandizement. A 2019 article in Psychology Today, reported, “a significant portion of his supporters literally believe the president was an answer to their prayers. He is regarded as something of a messiah, sent by God to protect a Christian nation.” (See: The Belief That Trump Is a Messiah Is Rampant and Dangerous.)

Know-It-Alls: Both Hitler’s and Trump’s fragile egos compelled them to act as know-it-alls when, in fact, a better description would be “know-nothings.” In 2018, Trump infamously referred to himself as “a very stable genius” and he repeatedly insists he knows more than his advisors and generals. (See: Everything Donald Trump is an Expert In, According to Him.) Even after contracting Covid-19 and receiving millions of dollars in specialized treatment, Trump still maintained he knew more about the virus than the health experts.

According to the OSS report, Ernst Rohm, head of the Nazi Brown Shirts, said of Hitler, “You try to tell him anything, he knows everything already.” Another of Hitler’s associates is quoted saying, “He has always been a poseur. He remembers things that he has heard and has a faculty for repeating them in such a way that a listener is lead to believe they are his own.”

Normal conversation never takes place around either man. “It is well-known he (Hitler) cannot carry on a normal conversation or discussion with people,” says the OSS profile. “Even if only one person is present, he must do all the talking.” Trump too must dominate every conversation, as seen in the first presidential debate. When he can’t, he sits with tightly cross arms and a scowl on his face.

For both men, this overconfidence in their own “genius” falls apart when confronted by an honest news media asking the kind of hardball questions reporters should ask of a country’s leadership. “Hitler becomes nervous and tends to lose his composure when he has to meet newspapermen,” says the OSS profile. Hitler was unable to answer questions for which he was not prepared and insisted any interviews questions be submitted in advance. “Even then he gives no opportunity to ask for further clarification … he immediately launches into a lengthy dissertation, which sometimes turns into a tirade. When this is finished, the interview is over.”

Trump has never been at ease with the media, criticizing their work as “liberal,” “left wing,” and “fake news.” He does not do well in press conferences when reporters are allowed to ask questions and so rarely holds them. When asked for clarification, he becomes surly and insults the person asking the question, and frequently simply ends the conference. In an August face-to-face broadcast interview Trump tried to convince Australian journalist Jonathan Swan with statistics that under his leadership the U.S. was controlling the coronavirus better than any other country. Swan then proved to Trump that he didn’t understand his own statistics. Trump was left befuddled and speechless. (See: Trump’s attacks on media are influencing Republicans’ attitudes toward press.)

Bring In the Clowns: Neither Hitler nor Trump were taken seriously at first. According to his OSS profile, “Earlier in his career the world watched him with amusement. Many people refused to take him seriously on ground that ‘he could not possibly last.'”

Despite the faux persona of a successful businessman that he built with the help of his pseudo-reality series “The Apprentice,” Trump was never taken seriously as an entrepreneur or a politician. Nowhere was this more evident than his hometown of New York where he was largely considered a clown. On Election Day in 2016, Trump was greeted with laughter and jeers as he arrived at his polling place.

Unfortunately, in both cases Hitler and Trump should have been taken seriously. Hitler’s reign of terror left Germany a country of smoking rubble, devastated by Allied bombings and artillery. In less than four years, Trump’s reign of error has cost the United States its world standing, its economy, and the lives of more than 200,000 American lives.