I used to know a Nazi.

I used to know a Nazi. Now, I mean the real deal. His name was Michael S--- and he was a German national who had been raised in Asia as an infant and then the USA. So he spoke flawless American-accented English. I was into several conversations with him before I knew he was a German and not an American.

Mike’s (he wanted me to call him Mike) family had been Nazi Party types, big time (as Dick Cheney would say). When the war was winding down, and the American troops were coming (they were lucky enough to have lived in what would be the American zone), his grandparents had to assemble family members and scramble to knock down the brick façade on their rather large house because they’d redesigned it to include colored bricks forming an enormous swastika on one side of the ancestral home. They knew that the American troops would use it for target practice if they didn’t act quickly and get rid of it. They succeeded and the only thing the troops saw was a house with a pile of bricks on one side of it.

Mike thought that the Nazis were okay. They went “a little too far”, he would say. (I never told him that my mom was half-Jewish and this fact would have made me oven-fodder during the Reich.) Mike would bring in large maps that his uncles had given him, military maps that were handed out to soldiers before various campaigns. My favorite was “The Push to Norway”, which was given to all soldiers at the start of some Nordic campaign (which, I assume, ended with the installation of Mr. Quisling). I would look at Mike’s face as he gazed longingly at these maps. His favorite document, which I never saw, was his mother’s birth certificate, which was emblazoned with a “beautiful” Nazi swastika.

Mike would talk about his Uncle Otto who had fought in both World Wars, only to see his nation lose each time. “Talk about a bitter man,” Mike would tell me. You don’t say.

At any rate, the point of all of this is something Mike said to me that pissed me off at the time, but which fills me with dread now, and not for the reason most might think.

During one of our conversations that had degenerated into an argument, Mike told me, “Germany is going to get the eastern territories back”. I didn’t say anything to this, but merely gawked. “Next time, we’re going to get it right.” I gawked some more before reacting, angrily.

Now, I don’t for one second believe that Germany is going to try to retake any “eastern territories”. I don’t. Germans won’t go down that road again. (At least that’s what I believe.) What chills me now is the part about “getting it right”.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that some maniacs with lots of military, political, and economic power might try to take over the world, as many have tried (something only rarely, and anciently, having worked)? Doesn’t it stand to reason that there might arise some persons or group who would, at last, “get it right”?

America is currently in a totalitarian state that is doing just that. This time, these guys, this team, is going to “get it right”. They will allow limited so-called free speech (if, like The Clash said, you’re not actually dumb enough to use that right). No overt racist propaganda. There will be scapegoat-ing, yes, but no mention of vast concentration camps and extermination depots. They may scapegoat, and they may exterminate, but it will be done without overt racist propaganda.

Has it begun? Yep. Will they succeed? I don’t know. But I do know they think, with all of their dark, filthy hearts and poisoned, devious, scheming minds, that they have, at last, gotten it right.

Thanks for the tip, Mr. S---. Oh, and by the way, I’m glad your Uncle Otto died a bitter man.