Military’s Holocaust Hypocrisy

As a boy in the ’50s I watched “World At War” narrated by Walter Cronkite.  I was forever marked emotionally seeing the films of the liberated concentration camps.  As a teenaged military history buff I studied that war to understand how any society could become such a monster to goose-step with Hitler’s insanity. I learned in addition to a strategy of religious and ethnic genocide, the Naziis burned as many churches as possible during their invasions of free nations.
I spent my military career under the motto “De Oppresso Liber.”  So when I returned to instruct the M.I. Captain’s Career Course as a mobilized retiree (2006-’07) I was astonished to find “North Star” (unclassified), an exercise requiring student captains to role-play SS soldiers occupying Great Britain (plagiarized from a British ’60s movie).  The lead instructor posed as an SS Colonel commander of the “SS officers” – and was very much in role. Maggie Thatcher would have been appalled. Rather than teaching American officers how to liberate oppressed nations he was promoting Naziism and oppression.  His students were required to  conduct notional operations countering infiltrating American SF teams who were to organize resistance to Nazi occupation.  His “other” office was an altar to Naziism. Propaganda posters stored there depicted German stormtroopers stomping on the American flag and raping the Statute of Liberty. The top of every lesson plan page was marked with a swastika.
Students who complained about the juxtaposed scenario, the appearance of swastikas taped to classroom windows, and the “seig heil!” salutes exchanged between other student captains were threatened with expulsion.  When brought to the chain of command’s attention they played ostrich. Just another example of the military’s moral bankruptcy leading to lessons we should have learned long ago. So, yes, as Mr. Caron said during Holocaust commemoration ceremonies last week, “those who abhor genocide must speak out.” …Never again!