In January 1938,
Herman Goering, the very ambitious heir apparent to
der Fuhrer, schemed to construct dirty tricks on two of his most potent and prestigious rivals in Berlin, Baron Field Marshal
Werner von Blomberg, the ancient (60!) Prussian Defense Minister, and Colonel-General
Werner von Fritsh, the ancient (60!) Prussian chief of staff of the proud, brutal, still-building army. Dirty tricks that involved baiting a honey trap with a prostitute to ensnare the widower Blomberg, and obliging the prissy and censorious Hitler to attend the sudden nuptials; and also involved producing a so-called witness to the homosexual behavior of the bachelor Fristch in Berlin one night near the Wannsee Station. The tricks were arch, elaborate, trite, and unsupported by the facts presented; nevertheless, the tricks worked to undermine Blomberg's and Fritsch's confidence and lead directly to Hitler's forcing both of them out of office. Goering chortled and pranced. Hitler reddened and fumed. The Prussian officer corps darkened in alarm. From this moment we can date the certain Prussian military elite antipathy to Hitler and his gang of mass-murderers that would lead eventually to the July 20th failed plot to assassinate Hitler in his bunker. In January 1938, the result of Goering's dirty tricks was that Hitler assumed the two empty posts for himself and thereby became the absolute leader of the army that he would presently launch on its road to oblivion for the rest of the century and perhaps forever. Hitler's gamble in 1938 was to bluff and bluff with an army that hated and looked down upon him. The miserable fact is that the bluff worked because the other European powers, and America too (
Chamberlain had
FDR to back him), chose concession and appeasement and civilized diplomacy over the only vocabulary that would ever work on Hitler, Goering and the predator punks of the Nazi Party (
Goebbels, Heydrich, Himmler, etc.: bourgeois sadists), which is best described as the business end of a firearm.
Giles McDonough, whose mother's family -
prominent Jews in pre-war Vienna who ran a department store empire (Bergdorf's and Wal-Marts) - was wrecked by the Nazis, has composed a thrilling, even-toned, relentless script for an opera that will never end. The lives of the completely petty Hitlerist predators who wrecked Central Europe and then the globe for at least fifty years, perhaps centuries more.
In January 1938, Herman Goering, the very ambitious heir apparent to der Fuhrer, schemed to construct dirty tricks on two of his most potent and prestigious rivals in Berlin, Baron Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, the ancient (60!) Prussian Defense Minister, and Colonel-General Werner von Fritsh, the ancient (60!) Prussian chief of staff of the proud, brutal, still-building army. Dirty tricks that involved baiting a honey trap with a prostitute to ensnare the widower Blomberg, and obliging the prissy and censorious Hitler to attend the sudden nuptials; and also involved producing a so-called witness to the homosexual behavior of the bachelor Fristch in Berlin one night near the Wannsee Station. The tricks were arch, elaborate, trite, and unsupported by the facts presented; nevertheless, the tricks worked to undermine Blomberg's and Fritsch's confidence and lead directly to Hitler's forcing both of them out of office. Goering chortled and pranced. Hitler reddened and fumed. The Prussian officer corps darkened in alarm. From this moment we can date the certain Prussian military elite antipathy to Hitler and his gang of mass-murderers that would lead eventually to the July 20th failed plot to assassinate Hitler in his bunker. In January 1938, the result of Goering's dirty tricks was that Hitler assumed the two empty posts for himself and thereby became the absolute leader of the army that he would presently launch on its road to oblivion for the rest of the century and perhaps forever. Hitler's gamble in 1938 was to bluff and bluff with an army that hated and looked down upon him. The miserable fact is that the bluff worked because the other European powers, and America too (Chamberlain had FDR to back him), chose concession and appeasement and civilized diplomacy over the only vocabulary that would ever work on Hitler, Goering and the predator punks of the Nazi Party (Goebbels, Heydrich, Himmler, etc.: bourgeois sadists), which is best described as the business end of a firearm. Giles McDonough, whose mother's family - 
prominent Jews in pre-war Vienna who ran a department store empire (Bergdorf's and Wal-Marts) - was wrecked by the Nazis, has composed a thrilling, even-toned, relentless script for an opera that will never end. The lives of the completely petty Hitlerist predators who wrecked Central Europe and then the globe for at least fifty years, perhaps centuries more.
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