I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Hitler Administration
I work for the Führer but like-minded handschuhschneeballwerfer and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
Sept. 5, 1944
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Hitler administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process. Please mail your letter to ….
Fuhrer Adolf Hitler is facing a test to his Reich unlike any faced by a modern German leader.
It’s not just that the threat of defeat by the allies looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Hitler’s leadership. Or even that Germany might well lose the third reich to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the racially tainted democracy advocates. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made Germany safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the Fuhrer continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Hitler appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our autocratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Hitler’s more misguided impulses until he is out of Berlin.
The root of the problem is the fuhrer’s lack of practicality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any sensible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he is a Nazi, the Fuhrer shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by the Nazi Party: national self-determination, racial purity, guaranteed jobs and security for pure blooded-Germans, At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright — honestly, he looks sort of Jewish himself. Dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes. I could go on.
Sure he’s right that the press is the “enemy of the people,” but his basic impulses are generally destructive and short-sighted.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the Reich by the Western press fails to capture: effective implementation of a final solution to the Jewish problem, historic tax reform, a more robust military, the elimination of perverse sexuality and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — his leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
Senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Invade Mongolia in pursuit of uranium to make some mythical magic weapon composed of atoms? That would have been suicide. Thank God we let the Japanese do it for us. Battle of Khalkhin Gol — ring a bell? It doesn’t because I hid the map of Mongolia from him in 1938. No map, no Mongolia. That’s how it’s done.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants “Stauffenberg! Stauffenberg!” or looks under the table for a briefcase, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next. Every word that comes out of his backpfeifengesicht is exasperating,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by a meeting at which the supreme leader flip-flopped on a major strategic decision he’d made only a week earlier.
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the Reichstag. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the western press. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the Führerhauptquartiere, though they are clearly not always successful. But more successful than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What a putz!
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Germans should know that there are handschuhschneeballwerfer in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Adolf Hitler won’t. Treppenwitz times, my friend.
The result is a two-track reich.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, the Fuhrer shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as Mussolini of Italy and Japanese leader Tojo, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations — like Poland and Austria.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the Fuhrer was reluctant to go to war with the bolsheviks. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on our country for our so-called malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of killing the fuhrer. But no one wanted to end up losing a leg or their life in some botched bombing that will probably be made into a propaganda film by the American swine. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Hitler has done to the Fuhrerhship but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our certain victory to be deterred, to weaken our resolve, and consider brokering peace.
All Germans should break free of the partisan trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation — one mighty white race.
We may no longer have great leaders like Karl Freudenthal in Poland to be our lodestar. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put the Fatherland first. There are people like myself who don’t want to end up like General Olbricht, quietly doing our best to ensure the victory we all are striving for. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels, put the yellow stars and the pink stars where they belong, to purify the land and root out the inferior races in favor of a single one: the good German.
The writer is a senior official in the Hitler administration*.
*This article is satire. After reading the spectacularly courageous op-ed published today in The New York Times, (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html) I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration in which an unnamed “senior official in the Trump adminstration” humble-brags about his or her efforts to thwart the most negative impulses of the leader, while still supporting the leader’s agenda, I didn’t know what to think. Is it an act of bravery or cowardice? And what exactly are they “resisting”? Anti-immigration policy? Racism? It’s hard to tell.
If this parody offends you, it’s meant to be offensive — it has succeeded. Because racism, sexism, misogyny, environmental destruction, anti-LGBT policy, corruption, and white supremacy are offensive. So are Nazis. And any asshole that would say there are good nazis should remember what the nazis advocated: genocide, slaughter of homosexuals and the mentally and physically handicapped , etc — and any asshole that would remain silently working for such an asshole is also an asshole. Not a hero. Suck on that handschuhschneeballwerfer.
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