Printing money, violating the Constitution, abandoning morality, legalizing drugs - these were all steps on the path of Germany's transformation from Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. We are seeing the same disturbing parallels play out in Greece - and America doesn't seem far behind either. We're on a dangerous road, but it's not too late to speak up. Glenn said there is a key moment in German history we haven't seen play out yet. Will the world wake up before it's too late?
Below is a transcript of this segment:
I’ve been warning about a financial collapse in Greece for years, and here it is. I said probably six years ago that in Spain or Greece we would see the rise of the Nazi party—it happened in Greece—and Spain or Greece would be the first that would actually be the domino that would begin to make the EU crumble. We have talked about this for a long time. I was mocked about it, and here it is.
This is a precursor for us. Stocks around the globe have tanked in the wake of the news that Greece’s demise is now imminent. Banks in Greece have closed. Their stock exchange is shut down all week. People rushed at two o’clock in the morning to go to an ATM machine to find out that they had been limited no matter how much they had in the bank to 68 bucks. Visitors to Greece should be aware of the possibility that banking services including credit card processing and servicing of ATMs throughout Greece could potentially become limited at short notice, so bring large sums of cash. What could possibly happen by encouraging people to carry large sums of cash when banking services are down? That seems like it’s going to be great.
A few years ago, I went to Greece, and this is when the austerity protests were taking over. I want to remind you of some of it.
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Glenn: Across the street, what makes a significant is what’s across the street. This is the National Bank of Greece right here, and you can see that it has been spray-painted. They’ve been throwing paint bombs up against the wall. There’s anarchy symbols all on the street all leading up to it, but still that’s not the significant piece. What is significant is that building. That is the Central Bank of Greece. The central banks, like our Fed, are a real problem all around the world.
You see this on the wall back there? If my memory serves me right, what that says on that wall is if the revolution doesn’t come by peace, it will come through violence, anarchy. We’re about to see the violence.
Remember, we have Nazis on the ground, and the leader is a communist. Russia is butting in now, so you’re going to have the fascists and the communists, the Nazis and the communists, going at it once again. We’re going to re-air part of this documentary at 8:00 p.m. on, is it Wednesday? Wednesday, at 8:00 p.m. They’re bracing for social unrest as the ATMs run out of cash. Self-preservation is kicking in. People are hoarding gasoline and groceries.
I’m mocked all the time for saying to prepare. I was mocked for saying this about Greece. I was mocked to say that the caliphate, but look how quickly things go down the moment you lose access to all the conveniences that we assume you’re just always going to have access to. Let me ask you a question, do you think we’ll be any different when our economic day of reckoning comes? #LoveWins, because it’s coming.
Everything Greece has done, everything we’re doing, we have seen it play out before. The parallels are striking. In the 1920s, Germany’s Weimar Republic, it rose in the aftermath of World War I and suffered from a horrible economy. Most of it stemmed from the government’s decision to attempt to pay its deep foreign debts inflicted by progressive Woodrow Wilson on Germany. They decided they were going to print the money and just give the rest of the world inflated money because they didn’t have any money so they just printed it. Sound familiar?
This caused hyperinflation which crippled the economy, put it out. Unemployment, food and energy shortages were everywhere, and the people were desperate. It opened the door for extremist views to take root. This is how the Nazi party became popular. Golden Dawn in Greece is doing the same thing all over again, and the same thing will happen here if we don’t wake up. We’re making the same mistakes.
In the Weimar Republic, the government decided to enact gun registration and then allowed for governments to confiscate the firearms if needed for public safety. When Hitler eventually seized power, he used all of the registration of the firearms to disarm the political opponents and the Jews. The Jews weren’t allowed to own guns. They got 20 years in labor camps if they were caught with one.
Weimar tried to print their way out of debt. So did Greece. So are we. Weimar restricted guns. So have we. Nazis used suffering to gain power. Extremists did the same in Greece, and we’re beginning to do it here as well. We’ll dismiss them—oh, it’ll never happen here. In Weimar, they legalized drugs and abandoned morals to become hypersexualized, depicted in movies like Cabaret. So, what have we done? We legalize drugs, and I don’t think I have to spend any time convincing anyone that the ship has sailed on valuing morality. Then they had an assassination attempt on their leader, the president of Germany. The then chancellor, like our speaker of the house kind of, broke the constitution, broke all the laws, and went out and hunted down the supposed killers. It was called the Night of Long Knives.
This leader of their country broke every single law, broke the constitution blatantly, and killed all of his enemies. The next morning he got on radio, and he admitted it. He came clean. He said with hat in hand in a long speech to the Nazi controlled Reichstag in Parliament that 74 people had been shot, and I did this because I was trying to save the republic.
He said, “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it, we called it the ‘Night of Long Knives.’ Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
Guess what happened. This was the turning point. When Hitler broke the constitution and broke the law, if the German people would have stood up, the legitimate German president would’ve kicked him out, but the German people stood up and applauded. The government forgave him, and when they did, the president wanted to elevate him to a new office because he was going to retire. Hitler again with hat in hand said oh my, I could never replace him as president. That’s too much power for me. That’s too lofty of a title. I’ll take a new lowly office. Let’s just call me the Fuhrer.
He changed history. He changed the course of that country and the world. He based everything in his country on a new pseudoscience. Sound familiar? He nationalized and socialized their new economy. He imaged himself as a Christian. Indeed, he was not a Christian. Even though he claimed to be one, when he was running, boy, oh boy, did he talk about Christian values, but in the end he became an antichrist himself.
It was just a few years in to him being the Fuhrer that he told churches what they could and couldn’t do. Sound familiar? He replaced all the crucifixes in the churches with a picture of himself that was placed on the altar, and he said “the only religion in Germany is that of the Fuhrer.”
A good friend of mine, Eric Metaxas, wrote a fantastic book that’s soon going to be a movie. He wrote a friend of mine this weekend, and he said this is the time of Bonhoeffer. We are living this history again. Bonhoeffer couldn’t save the German people from themselves, but there weren’t a lot of people on board with him. We cannot make the mistakes of the past. Our government is already making them. We as a people must begin to gather together and stand for eternal principles in our own lives. No matter what our faith or our doctrines, we must come together.
Even though the world has been turned upside down, the phrase that did it is actually true, and if it is properly interpreted, it is the secret. It’s love wins, and it has nothing to do with who you sleep with.
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