An old soc.history.what-if post of mine:
***
[someone else wrote:]
> Although the American National
>Socialist Party was still technically legal, membership could get you
>blacklisted from employment in the years Anne Morrow Lindbergh movingly
>described as 'Scoundrel Time'.
>
Oh please, spare me the whining of Lindbergh and the other self-justifying
ex-Hitlerites. I agree with *Partisan Review*'s comment on Lindbergh's
book (which almost led to a libel suit): "Every word she writes is a lie,
including 'of' and 'the.'"
Of course, I am not condoning everything that was done during the so-called
McCarthy era. "Tail Gunner Gene" McCarthy, as Congressman and later Senator
could be a demagogue, I'll admit. And the House Committee on Un-Democratic
Activities *did* sometimes abuse witnesses. Nevertheless, the fundamental
premises of the "cold warriors" and "McCarthyites" were correct. There
*was* a German "Evil Empire"--yes, it became a little less violent after
Hitler's death in 1953, but its essentially totalitarian character did not
change--there *was* a necessary struggle against it by the US and its
allies, and there *were* a lot of Nazis in the US, most of whom wouldn't
even grudgingly admit Hitler's crimes until Doenitz's sensational "secret
speech" to the 1956 NSDAP Congress. As for their so-called "premature
anti-communism"--where was it between September 1939 and the surprise
Soviet attack on Germany in June 1941?
I know some people will call me a left-winger for saying such things. I
would remind them that the first people in the US to tell the ugly truth
about Hitler were themselves National Socialists, to be more specific,
Strasserites. *Partisan Review*, originally a Strasserite publication, was
especially good at exposing the lies of American Hitlerites and their
fellow travelers during the "Folkish Front" era of the 1930's. Hitler's
rigged purge trials, Franco's Gestapo-aided atrocities against the Spanish
Strasserites--it denounced them all.
Unfortunately, the largest faction of the Strasserites, led by Strasser
himself until his murder in Mexico by Gestapo agents in 1940, took the line
that although Hitlerism was "a petty-bourgeois deviation from true National
Socialism" nevertheless it deserved "unconditional support" against
"Bolshevism and plutocratic Jewish capitalism." Fortunately, there were
courageous Strasserites in the US, like Hjalmar Schachtman, who recognized
that Hitler was no longer a true National Socialist at all, and that his
regime did not deserve any support, "critical" or otherwise, from those who
believed in the things National Socialism and Fascism were once supposed to
have stood for. It is amazing how much of the left in America today
consists of ex-Schachtmanites. Their much-criticized drift to the left--
which led some of them even to take positions in the Reagan administration
of the 1980's--has IMO been amply justified by events since 1989,
especially the collapse of Greater Germany, the resumed independence of
Austria, Poland and Bohemia-Moravia, and the reunification of Russia. I
simply cannot forget the sight of President Reagan before the Moscow Wall,
saying "Chancellor Schmidt--if you are really serious about peace, TEAR
DOWN THIS WALL!" The amazing thing is that within a few years, it
happened--though of course the right-wing Republicans in this newsgroup and
elsewhere will never give Reagan any credit for it.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/LCJwqNT3WzY/ppknHuUQGkUJ