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Reprinted from raymcgovern.com Albrecht Muller
The good news from Germany is very limited and parochial; the bad news downright alarming. Alarm rises from increasing evidence that - how to say this - Germany has "kicked its World War II syndrome once and for all", to borrow from the exultant words of Gulf War-1-victorious President George H. W. Bush 40 years ago.
After destroying a second-rate Iraqi army Bush bragged, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." He was referring to the perception in some quarters that, after the disaster of Vietnam, the U.S. was being too shy about using military force.
Have we come to the point where the Germans have shaken off their earlier "shyness" after the disaster of WWII? This gives me goose pimples. Yes, I'm old enough to have lived through the entire war, but - unlike Russia - my country had two great oceans to help defend it. I can only imagine the size of today's goose pimples on Russians - not only those who lived through the war, but also those who have been given personal accounts of it from fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers.
The small piece of recent good news involves a thoughtful article by a serious German journalist. The day after VIPS published its (May 1) Memorandum for The President, warning him not to ignore Russian warnings about the possible use of nuclear weapons, Germany's most respected progressive website, NachDenkSeiten, published a full translation, giving it front-page prominence. ( See: https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=83432 )
Of more importance, NDS's editor-in chief, Albrecht Mueller, saw fit to attach (1) a preface; (2) a detailed comparison of what VIPS wrote with what German media are saying; and (3) his conclusions (Fazit), based largely on Germany's increasingly hawkish Ukraine-related actions - some of them unprecedented since WWII - which are stoked and widely applauded by the mainstream media there. I found Mueller's presentation, especially his description of front-page coverage in his newspaper, "Die Rheinpfalz am Sonntag", somewhat shocking.
Albrecht Mueller was chief of planning for Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt and also a member of the Bundestag from 1987 to 1994 (and the author of bestsellers). Not surprisingly, he is distraught at what has happened to the SPD (Social Democratic Party) and to the media - and the dangers posed to peace in Europe. This is the bad news, just as the 77th anniversary of VE Day is about to be celebrated in Moscow and elsewhere.
Has it taken Germany only two generations to forget the horrors of the war inflicted by the Nazis under Hitler? The Russians, having lost 26 million during that war, have not forgotten. This is a combustible mixture.
Dissecting One Front Page
I found Albrecht Mueller's observations about the captive, one-sided press so much on point that I translated them into English, including the detailed critique he gives to his regional newspaper on May 1. It follows, together with his preface and conclusions, below:
____________________________
NachDenkSeiten - Die kritsche Website
Putins Nuklearwarnung ist KEINE Leere Drohung
(Putin's Nuclear Warning is NO Empty Threat)
2 Mai 2022
[With preface and conclusion by editor-in-Chief Albrecht Mueller in English translation]
Preface
Veteran U.S. intelligence officers, in a Memo to President Biden, warn him not to dismiss as an empty threat Russian President Putin's references to nuclear weapons. The recent Memo from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) [ See: Click Here ] was translated by Thilo Haase. Ray McGovern notes that this is probably the most important VIPS Memo since the one sent to President Bush on Feb. 5, 2003 exposing Colin Powell's lies earlier that day at the UN.
Bearing in mind the warning published by VIPS on May 1 about the abominable risks of the ongoing war [in Ukraine], I call your attention to the front page my regional newspaper [Die RheinPfalz am Sonntag] on May 1. That page is peppered with attempts to play down the dangers of war and to offer encouraging reassurances for providing weapons for the war. That is typical for many products of our major media. And so I make concrete reference to that and compare it with the warning from the veteran intelligence officers.
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