Review

The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence from Hitler’s Spymasters to Today’s Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists, by Martin A. Lee. Available from Amazon, $9.00 used, $13.99 new.

      Martin Lee describes, in The Beast Reawakens, the post-WWII survival of Nazism and fascism and explores some of its consequences. At the war’s end, major figures in the Nazi government were either executed at Nuremberg (e.g., Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner) or received prison sentences (e.g., Speer and Dönitz). Some lesser Nazis, particularly those associated with concentration camp atrocities, like Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, or Sievers of the Ahnenerbe, were also punished. Many others either escaped to safe havens, were released after minimal detention, or were actively recruited by U.S. intelligence on the theory that their knowledge of the Soviet Union and their contacts behind the Iron Curtain would be valuable in the Cold War. This recruitment was predicated upon the assumption that Nazism was a right-wing movement and that unregenerate Nazis would automatically be fervent anti-Communists. As events proved, this was not always a sound assumption, for many old Nazis played an independent game, and the Soviets were also active in recruiting such people.

      One of the most interesting chapters in this book is Chapter 4, “The Swastika and the Crescent,” revealing the safe haven given by several Arab countries to old Nazis, whom they employed either as anti-Israeli propagandists or as military or police advisors and trainers. Islam has had a long history of hostile relations with Judaism, but these new alliances injected additional venom into the already tense situation prevailing after the creation of the state of Israel. Fervent ideologues like Johannes (alias “Omar Amin”) von Leers disseminated virulent anti-Jewish propaganda to a new audience in the Arabic-speaking world—somewhat an irony, since Arabs, like Jews, are Semites, and were equally considered racial inferiors under the Third Reich. This hateful pot-stirring was backed by Arab governments and remains, to this day, a significant influence on opinion in the Islamic world.

      Less successful than Lee’s account of Nazi influence in the Middle East is his attempt to tie Nazi/fascist extremism to American conservative politicians like Patrick Buchanan or Pat Robertson. America’s two-party, winner-take-all system inevitably assures that many people on the political extremes will throw their support to a candidate in one of the two major parties, whether or not he wants or solicits it. That should not be taken as a sign of influence. If the tiny neo-fascist contingent in the American body politic should support a conservative politician, that should not give his opponents any more license to tar him with the brush of Nazism than the support of Communists and socialists for a liberal candidate should give that candidate’s opponents the right to call him a Bolshevik. It is ironic that for all the whining of the left about McCarthyism and guilt by association, leftist partisans like Martin Lee show little compunction about engaging in essentially similar tactics.

      The Beast Reawakens is marred by a rigidly ideological outlook in which Nazism and fascism are identified as right-wing phenomena. Lee quotes with approval a definition stating that “to be right-wing means to support the state in its capacity as an enforcer of order and to oppose the state as distributor of wealth and power more equitably in society.” No pretense of objectivity here! What, after all, is “more equitable” about the distribution of wealth and power favored by socialists? And where, in this definition, is there a place for the viewpoint of, say, Jefferson or Madison, in which liberty is assured by the strict limitation of governmental power so that even if the democratic will of the majority is to oppress the minority, it is prevented from so doing by constitutional restraints?

      In fact, Nazism—Nationalsozialismus—and fascism are kissing cousins to Bolshevism—“international socialism.” Lee, by failing to recognize this, makes the same mistake that U.S. intelligence agencies did in relying on the questionable loyalties of ex-Nazis to the anti-Communist cause during the Cold War. Prior to U.S. entrance into WWII, the Nazis made common cause with Stalin through the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, after which much of the American left—that part under Communist domination—fell shamefully silent about Hitler, resuming active anti-Nazism only after the pact was broken. The same willingness of neo-Nazis to collaborate with Communists surfaced after the war in various “Red-Brown” collaborations. Stripped of the peculiar anti-Semitism of its German manifestation, fascism has much more in common with Communism authoritarian political and social control, economic dirigisme, and imperial ambition—than it does not. The guillotine of the Jacobins was the philosophical antecedent both of the gas chambers of the Nazis and the gulag of the Soviets.

      Lee’s doctrinaire leftism leads him into contorted interpretations on this point, and also, I suspect, into selective reportage on other topics. For example, the white supremacist/neo-Nazi element in this country is a minuscule collection of losers, crackpots, and cranks, yet receives many pages of coverage. Louis Farrakhan, perhaps the most influential anti-Semite in the United States, is mentioned on only two pages of this 525-page book, and only in passing. The substantial Muslim Community in the United States, made up mostly of African-Americans and of Middle Eastern immigrants, is given little notice as a source of anti-Semitic and fascist sentiment. No doubt to acknowledge such points would upset Lee’s ideological preconceptions.

      Editorial sloppiness is also evident in places. For example, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia and elector of Brandenburg, is twice identified as “Emperor” when in fact the Hohenzollern claim to that title dates only from 1871, long after Frederick’s death. Error on such an elementary point of history, in an historical work, calls into question the reliability of Lee’s claims about other more recondite historical points.

      Nonetheless, there is much fascinating material in this book, and when its ideological bias is discounted there is much in it that can be read with interest and benefit.

—Michael S. Swisher

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      We would like to thank the following people for their generous contributions (from Oct. 1 to Nov. 7) to the publication of this journal: Leroy Anderson, George E. Andrews, William D. Andrews, Jack Angell, Lee R. Ashmun, Dirk A. Ballendorf, Nancy M. Bannick, Frank J. Bartz, Betty Beatty, Arnold Beichman, Bud & Carol Belz, Ronald Benson, Mrs. Aleatha W. Berry, Robert Bierbaum, Loren Bishop, James L. Blilie, Walter I. C. Brent, Thomas Brown, James M. Broz, John P. & Alva Butler, D. J. Cahill, Terry Cahill, N. J. Christianson, Mrs. J. Cipolla, Mrs. Irma I. Clark, John Alden Clark, Daniel G. Crozier, John D’Aloia, Jim Dea, Joseph R. Devitto, Jeanne L. Dipaola, Hans Dolezalek, Robert M. Dunn, Reuben M. Freitas, James R. Gaines, Donald G. Galow, John Gardner, Robert Gates, William B. Glew, Peg & Art Goewey, Thad A. Goodwyn, Kelly Grant, Fran Griffin, Daniel J. Haley, Weston N. Hammel, Ted L. Harkins, Anthony Harrigan, Mr. & Mrs. David Hauser, John H. Hearding, Thomas E. Heatley, Culver A. Heffernon, Dick Herreid, Jaren E. Hiller, Arthur Hills, John A. Howard, Mr. & Mrs. Patrick R. Huntley, Donald C. Ingram, Jocobs Burleigh, Stephen W. Jenks, Don Johnson, Ken Kampfe, Martin Kellogg, Robert E. Kelly, William H. Kelly, Walter J. Kenworthy, Norman D. Koch, Gerald W. La Marsh, Mark S. Laboe, Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Lane, Joseph J. Laughlin, Allyn M. Lay, Donald G. Lee, Theodore H. Lichtenfels, Herbert London, Calvin T. Lucy, John L. Marocchi, Stanley C. McDonald, W. K. McLain, Delbert H. Meyer, James D. Moenssen,  Michael E. Moore, Tom S. Murphree, Eleanor Nolin, R. L. Ochsenhirt, King Odell, Ruth Orland, Daniel D. Payne, Arthur J. Perry, James R. Peterson, Bernard L. Poppert,  Donald J. Povejsil, Walter B. Prentice, Garland L. and Betty Pugh, Steven N. Reed, Patrick L. Risch, Willard E. Rogerson, Frances Rutherford, Michael J. Ryan, Irene Schultz, H. Richard Schumacher, William Schummrick, L. Sideris, Joseph M. Simonet, Mr. & Mrs. G. R. Slade, Douglas W. Smith, Paul Sopko, John D. Sours, Carl G. Stevenson, Norman Stewart, Daniel J. Torrance, Miller Upton, Willard J. Van Singel, George M. Wheatley, Robert C. Whitten, Herbert A. Widell, Donald Wilson, Eric Wilson, Robert W. Wilson, Piers Woodriff.