You Are Being Counseled On Your Decision To Separate From The Army Reserve Troop Pro: Fill & Download for Free

First, the premise of the question seems to imply that there was a single greatest decade where we reached a peak, from which we have declined. I’m not sure I agree with that.As far as a single decade where we accomplished the most good, I would vote for the 1940s. Here are results for individual decades, as I understand them:1780–1790: We ratified the Constitution and elected Washington President. But it was also the decade of Shay’s Rebellion and opportunists buying up Revolutionary War debts at pennies on the dollar, to wreak financial havoc later. These two developments indicated the constant struggle between financial elites and the common man that would persist through our history.1790–1800: We saw a democratic transition of power, as Washington declined to run for a third term. But it was also the decade of the Whiskey Rebellion and the Alien and Sedition Acts.1800–1810: One of our most intelligent Chief Executives, Thomas Jefferson, was President, completing the Louisiana Purchase and dispatching the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Three of the most important Supreme Court decisions were handed down: Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Dartmouth v. Woodward. But Jefferson also imposed a disastrous embargo and put his own former Vice President on trial for “constructive treason,” a dubious legal doctrine that John Marshall decisively quashed in Richmond.1810–1820: This decade included Victory in the War of 1812, the opening of the Erie Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Era of Good Feeling, but the British marched into Washington DC itself and burned the Capitol and the White House.1820–1830: This decade saw the election of the first true President of the “common man.” But that same figure, Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, brutally mistreated Native Americans.1830–1840: New states were established west of the Mississippi, Jackson faced down Calhoun in the Nullification Crisis, and Webster decisively affirmed the doctrine of “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,” in his debate with Hayne. This was the only time in our history that the budget was completely in balance. William Lloyd Garrison established The Liberator to advocate for abolition. Still, Jackson petulantly refused to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, leading to the Panic of 1837, and ill-advised incursions into Mexican territory led to the massacre at the Alamo. An anti-slavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was killed by a pro-slavery mob.1840–1850: Gold was discovered in California, but we also fought the Mexican War, a blatant move to extend slave territory. Nativist political parties arose, the Know-Nothings and the Anti-Masonic party. Persecution of Mormons resulted in the murder of their founder, Joseph Smith, at the hands of a mob.1850–1860: We sought better relations with Canada and entered on relations with Japan, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, the party of Lincoln was founded in Ripon, and Lincoln and Douglas held their memorable debates, but our last President to hold slaves in office, Zachary Taylor, was followed by two decidedly mediocre Presidents, Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, followed by one of the worst Presidents in history, James Buchanan, whose dithering led to the Civil War. Pro- and anti-slavery settlers took bloody revenge on each other in Kansas, and John Brown was hanged after his raid on Harper’s Ferry.1860–1870: I would vote for this decade second after the 1940s. This was the decade of the Gettsyburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments; Union victory in the Civil War established once and for all that the United States was not a mere conditional federation from which a state could withdraw, and the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. We purchased Alaska from Russia. But one of our greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was struck down, and Lincoln was followed by one of the most inept Presidents in history, Andrew Johnson. We lost 529,000 men in the Civil War.1870–1880: The Freedmen’s Bureau worked to educate freed slaves, and freedmen such as Hiram Rhodes Revels served in state government for the first time. An American invented the telephone, and we celebrated our centennial. But the Administration of Grant was one of the most corrupt in history, involving Grant’s own Vice President, Schuyler Colfax, in the Credit Mobilier scandal, despite Grant’s personal honesty. Irresponsible underwriting of railroad bonds led to the Panic of 1873, and Republican President Rutherford Hayes used federal troops to suppress labor strikes. The Republican victory of 1876 was blatantly stolen from the real winner, Democratic lawyer Samuel Tilden, and the Republicans secured their victory through a corrupt bargain with Southern die-hards, agreeing to withdraw Union troops and cancel Reconstruction in return for Southern Support. The Ku Klux Klan was founded, and we pursued brutal wars against Native Americans.1880–1890: President Chester Arthur began to modernize the Navy to steel-hulled ships and began to reform the Civil Service. Secretary of State James J. Blaine sought to establish good relations with Latin America and helped found the Organization of American States. But Blaine himself was disgraced by corruption, and an unbalanced disappointed office seeker struck down President James A. Garfield in a Washington train station. In Chicago, a political rally that ended with a bomb being thrown resulted in the trial and hanging of seven political agitators who probably had nothing to do with the bomb.1890–1900: We celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyages with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, featuring the largest peacetime gathering in American history, the Sherman Antitrust Act was signed into law, a populist movement led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey mounted a march on Washington, William Jennings Bryan began a populist movement at the Chicago Democratic convention of 1896, and Herman Hollerith invented a tabulating machine, an ancestor of the computer, to count the national census. But the decade also saw another financial panic, an unnecessary war with Spain, and the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, establishing legal segregation. A wave of unspeakably barbaric race-based lynching swept the United States, prompting a bitter Mark Twain to compose his essay “The United States of Lyncherdom.” Americans overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii and deposed its last queen.1900–1910: We built the Panama Canal, the Wright brothers began manned flight, and President Teddy Roosevelt became the first President to win a Nobel Peace Prize, for his role in ending the Russo-Japanese War. But another President was assassinated in 1901, we suppressed an indigenous independence movement in the Philippines, waterboarding insurgents, and when Teddy Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington as his dinner guest at the White House, Southern newspapers said Roosevelt had turned the White House into a “coon café,” and one South Carolina editor said whites would have to “shoot ten thousand of those n___s to teach them their place.” A panic in 1907 was resolved only because J.P. Morgan corralled bankers and forced them to underwrite loans to support the nation’s faltering finances.1910–1920: The Federal Reserve was founded and the 19th Amendment gave women the vote; Woodrow, Wilson, the only President in history to hold a Ph.D., was elected; the United States joined European Allies to win World War I, and Wilson proposed a League of Nations to promote world peace. Wilson also appointed Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court as the first Jewish justice. But Wilson, a Southern racist, endorsed D.W. Griffith’s cartoonishly racist film The Birth of a Nation, ordered civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter out of the Oval Office, and let cabinet members hound blacks out of the Civil Service. A Georgia minister started the Klan once more, which had died out decades before. European crowds shouted their adoration of President Wilson when he went to the Peace Conference of Versailles, but his peace proposals were dead on arrival in the Republican Congress, led by bitter opposition from Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. A 29-year-old Southeast Asian patriot, Ho Chi Minh, came to Paris to hand Wilson a letter asking for liberation of Vietnam from the French, but Wilson probably never saw it. Wilson himself, incapacitated by a stroke, did not even meet with his own Cabinet for 6 months, while his wife and his private secretary ran the government of the United States. Wilson still hoped for a third term and was bitterly disappointed when the Democratic convention of 1920 did not nominate him by acclamation, even though he could no longer even compose a thousand-word article for a law journal. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, concerned about “Red agitators,” directed the FBI to carry out intrusive raids of suspected dissidents, violating civil rights. An influenza epidemic in 1919, with contagion exacerbated by gatherings to celebrate the end of World War I, killed scores of thousands in the United States.1920–1930: An American author, Sinclair Lewis, was the first American to receive a Nobel Prize for literature, and Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. The stock market and general prosperity reached unprecedented heights, and the President addressed the nation by radio for the first time. A young Democratic politician, Franklin D. Roosevelt, came to national attention for the first time. On the other hand, Warren Harding was one of the worst Presidents in history, with his administration plagued by the Teapot Dome scandal concerning oil leases; 53-year-old Harding fathered an illegitimate child by his 23-year-old lover, Nan Britton, and after Harding’s death, photos were discovered of him posing with nude 16-year-old farm girls. The sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited, leading to the rise of criminal syndicates, and the Democratic party in 1924 split over its inability to take a definite position on the role of the Klan in politics. A high school science teacher, John Scopes, was put on trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching evolution to his students. The stock market crashed in 1929 and led to the Great Depression, while our President, Herbert Hoover, insisted that business conditions were just fine and that people simply needed to have confidence.1930–1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for the first two of four Presidential terms and began ambitious federal programs under the heading of “The New Deal” attempt to bring America out of the Great Depression. Prohibition was repealed, and the Tennessee Valley Authority was established, with a chain of hydroelectric dams to relieve flooding and provide power to rural areas. President Roosevelt named the first African-American Army General, Benjamin O. Davis. But the Depression persisted, and at its height, national unemployment probably reached around 25%. The United States turned away a ship full of Jewish refugees from the Third Reich and would not approve visas for the family of Anne Frank. In 1932, an encampment of embittered World War I soldiers in Washington, DC, insisting on being paid bonuses promised by Congress 14 years before, was violently dispersed by troops under Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, acting reluctantly under the orders of General Douglas MacArthur. As the soldiers and their families fled bullets and tear gas, MacArthur commented, “Thank God this country still knows how to handle a mob.”1940–1950: Thomas Dewey of New York successfully prosecuted mobsters, leading to the execution of Louis Lepke Buchalter and the deportation of Lucky Luciano. Entering World War II on the side of the Allies, the United States helped defeat Hitler. The war with Japan was brought to a successful conclusion, and the United Nations was founded. Despite President Roosevelt’s sudden death just before the end of the war, his Vice-President, Harry Truman, the last President who never attended college, took over and retained most of Roosevelt’s capable advisors. General George C. Marshall formulated the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe, saved starving thousands, and probably kept some countries from being drawn into the Communist orbit. Truman integrated the U.S. military. Television became commercially viable, and the Ed Sullivan show began. The government passed the GI bill, financing college educations for veterans. On the other hand, nuclear weapons were used in war for the first time in history, causing unspeakable suffering. Distrust between the U.S. and its former Soviet allies led to the “Iron Curtain” separating Warsaw Pact nations from the West, while Truman felt compelled to enunciate the Truman Doctrine, outlining a plan to contain the Soviets. In formulating the American response to the new state of Israel, Truman declined to push for a two-state solution, even though this approach was favored by George Marshall. A severe housing shortage left returned veterans and their families living in cardboard boxes.1950–1960: Harry Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur of command in Korea, reaffirming the principle of civilian control of the military. A United States delegation met with a Soviet delegation in Geneva. The Supreme Court reversed its earlier Plessy v. Ferguson decision with its 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, striking down the principle of “separate but equal” facilities for the races. President Eisenhower ordered the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas public schools and sent federal troops to enforce it. Congress passed a bill to construct the interstate highway system. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee convened a commission to investigate organized crime. The polio vaccine was introduced. William Faulkner became the third American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Popular TV shows such as Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best portrayed the United States as a land of attractive suburbs, full of polite, well-dressed middle class people. On the other hand, the Korean War entered a stalemate that persists today. The CIA deposed a democratically elected head of state in Iran. Russia detonated a hydrogen bomb and went into space before we did. The death of Emmett Till in Mississippi highlighted continuing mistreatment of blacks by whites. A popular TV show was Amos and Andy, featuring blacks acting like buffoons. The House Un-American Activities Committee forced Hollywood actors, directors, and writers to name associates who might be “communist sympathizers” on pain of being hounded out of the industry if they refused. In the Senate, a red-baiting demagogue, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, held televised hearings purporting to prove that the State Department was “filled with Communist agents.”1960–1970: John F. Kennedy was elected President, inaugurating the “Camelot” era in which the White House seemed to be the headquarters of a new era of hope, energy, optimism, and cultural sophistication. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, marshaled Congressional forces to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; following the example of his idol, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Johnson advocated for a “Great Society” in which poverty would be eliminated. James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy declared that we would go to the Moon, and that happened, in 1969. A youth-oriented movement stressing greater personal freedom culminated in such events as the Woodstock Festival in 1969. The Supreme Court ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright established the principle of a right to legal counsel even if a defendant could not afford it; Griswold v. Connecticut strengthened personal privacy rights; Miranda v. Arizona stipulated that arrestees must be read their rights, and Loving v. Virginia helped to legalize interracial marriage. On television, Bill Cosby, as a United States government agent, and Diahann Carroll, as a nurse, presented blacks as worthy of respect, as opposed to the clownish stereotype of Amos and Andy, which went off the air. The first black Supreme Court justice was appointed.On the other hand, we imposed an embargo on Cuba, nearly went to war with the Soviets over their plan to put missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States, and became involved in the quagmire of Vietnam. Civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi and Alabama, and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers were assassinated. President John F. Kennedy and later, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated. President Kennedy had endless sexual liaisons in the White House on which the press remained silent and pursued an affair with a woman, Judith Campbell Exner, who was simultaneously the mistress of a Chicago mobster, Sam Giancana. Race riots broke out in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Newark. Chicago was rocked by riots in 1968 as students and other protested the Vietnam War during the Democratic convention. The nation was shocked by violent crimes, including a mass shooting from atop a tower on a Texas college campus by Charles Whitman, the slaughter of a group of student nurses in Chicago, by Richard Speck, and the slaughter of a pregnant actress and her friends in a Beverly Hills house by cult leader Charles Manson and his followers.1970–1980: Richard Nixon became the first President to visit China and opened diplomatic relations with a Communist nation we had previously shunned. The United States sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union with Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, exposing the misconduct of the Vietnam War and later broke the story of Watergate, becoming a national paper in the process. The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade established the principle of a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. The first reality documentary, An American Family, was broadcast in 1973. The last execution for some years was carried out in Utah in 1976. The Concorde, a supersonic passenger jet, began operation. Limited cable TV programming began, and ATMs were invented, as were the first home game consoles, precursors of the personal computer. President Gerald Ford, a man of great personal decency, pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in the hope of avoiding years of political and legal wrangling and national bitterness. His wife, Betty, openly acknowledged her previous rehab treatment and, later, her breast cancer. The United States withdrew from Vietnam. The election of Jimmy Carter, former Governor of Georgia, seemed to promise an era of hope and personal decency.On the other hand, Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam in an attempt to win the war. Our retreat from Vietnam, in 1975, was seen by many as ignominious and led to years of acrimony among Americans. The 1979 films Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter symbolized the deep American ambivalence about the war. National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio fired on student demonstrators, killing one. Nixon obstructed justice by covering up the Watergate break-in and then fired the special prosecutor assigned to investigate him. He finally resigned to avoid impeachment. His successor, Ford, let himself be advised by such men as Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and Henry Kissinger in the State Department. The Carter administration could not work well with the Democratic Congress, and the national economy suffered high inflation. The country suffered from what Carter called “the national malaise,” and Carter dismissed most of his Cabinet. Carter served just one term, in part because he was seen as weak in the wake of the storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the 444-day captivity of Americans by Iranian radicals. Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, VA began the “Moral Majority Movement,” the foundation of the religious right.1980–1990: The IBM PC was marketed in 1981, and the first cell phone call was made in 1983. The Apple Macintosh, with its icon-based graphical user interface, also dates from the early 1980s. President Ronald Reagan met with Soviet Premier Gorbachev, urged him to tear down the Berlin Wall, and advocated for peace between the two countries (although Gorbachev appears to have been inclined toward peace in part because he thought the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” was real and operational, which it wasn’t). Reagan bombed Libya, which seems to have made Qadafi decide to give up his own attempt to develop nukes, though he took revenge for the bombing two years later with the Lockerbie bombing. The U.S. economy improved from the doldrums of the 1970s. The Soviet Union basically collapsed around 1989, which some commentators heralded as “the end of history” (since events were no longer determined by a seemingly endless conflict between two lethally armed super powers).On the other hand, violent crime continued to shock us. Reagan was shot in March, 1981, and the Pope two months later, though both recovered. John Lennon had been shot to death in 1980. AIDS entered the national consciousness for the first time, and no one knew what it was or what to do about it. Reagan was seen by many as mismanaging the economy, getting Congress to enact large tax cuts without corresponding reductions in spending. He was criticized for his handling of an air traffic controller’s strike. His administration was nearly brought down when it was discovered that a Marine Lieutenant Colonel, Oliver North, was running an operation out of the White House itself, apparently without Reagan’s knowledge, to illegally sell arms to Iran, our enemies, to raise money to finance Central American paramilitary death squads, called “Contras.” We invaded the Caribbean Island of Grenada. Democratic attempts to win the White House, with Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and Michael Dukakis in 1988, were seen as ignominious failures. In the 1988 GOP primary in New Hampshire, the eventual nominee, George H.W. Bush, was defeated by a TV preacher, Pat Robertson. When Bush eventually got the nomination, he chose for his running mate a shallow young lawyer, Dan Quayle, given to saying things like “A mind is a terrible thing to lose” and “I was not born in this century” (he was about 35). Quayle also “corrected” a student in a spelling bee to the wrong spelling of “potato.” Meanwhile, there were notable scandals of supposed child sex abuse rings in day care centers, which were shown to be non-existent. A New York real estate tycoon, Donald Trump, published The Art of the Deal. The attempts of the American government to aid Afghan muhajideen fighters against the Soviet occupation contributed to the eventual formation of Al Qaeda.1990–2000: Bill Clinton, only the second President born after 1911, who had met President Nixon as a teenager, was elected and sought to move Democratic politics in a more centrist direction. His wife, Hillary, herself a lawyer, sought to enhance the role of First Lady to be more of an integral player on the President’s team, sponsoring healthcare reform.On the other hand, Bill was seen by many on the left as a sort of cynical sellout for political gain, and his welfare reform program as uncaring. He approved the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded man who may not have been capable of understanding the charges against him, as proof of his commitment to law and order. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to erase what many saw as necessary boundaries between consumer banking and investment banking. He supported the “Defense of Marriage” Act, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, for which he later apologized, and also supported “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” a measure to allow gays to serve in the military in secret. The image of the military was tarnished by the Tailhook scandal, an incident of unrestrained groping of female service members at a gathering of officers. Hillary’s attempt at healthcare reform went down to ignominious defeat, and the GOP recaptured Congress in 1994, leading to Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” and, later, a government shutdown. Bill, a notorious womanizer, was later found to have had an affair with a White House intern, and articles of impeachment were filed in the House accusing him of obstruction of justice. He and Hillary were continually hounded by allegations of shady dealings in the Whitewater real estate deal, as well as the supposed murder of a political operative, Vince Foster. Clinton was impeached in the House, though not removed from office by the Senate.2000–2010: George W. Bush, a former Governor of Texas and son of the 41st President, was elected on a program of “compassionate conservatism,” promising to be “a uniter, not a divider.” After the United States was attacked by Muslim fanatics on 9/11, Bush appeared in a Washington, DC mosque and said “The face of terrorism is not the true face of Islam. Islam is peace.” The United States captured Saddam Hussein, a brutal dictator, tried him and hanged him in 2004. Bush was succeeded by our first African-American President, Barack Obama, a Harvard Law graduate who, as an unknown Illinois State Senator, had given the opening address at the 2004 Democratic convention, electrifying the nation with his assertion that we need not be divided as a nation but could simply be “Americans.” Veteran civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who had sought the Democratic nomination in 1984, wept for joy the night Obama was elected. Obama got Congress to pass a bailout program for a disastrously weakened economy, leading to one of the longest peacetime expansions of the economy in history. Later, he got Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, providing health insurance to millions who had previously been without coverage. Obama also persuaded Congress to bail out the distressed American automobile industry, which would have cost the country thousands of jobs had it collapsed altogether. In 2011, Obama authorized a special Navy SEAL mission that killed Osama Bin Laden.On the other hand, Bush’s 2000 election was seen as stolen, since it was clear that his opponent, Al Gore, had won the popular vote. The outcome came down to a recount in Florida, which the Supreme Court stopped. Bush dismissed a Presidential intelligence briefing that warned that Al Quaeda would attack the United States with airplanes and then became obsessed with the idea that Saddam Hussein had conspired with Osama Bin Laden, which was not true, any more than the questionable intelligence asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (it is possible that Saddam may have had programs at one time to develop WMD and that his own scientists were afraid to tell him that the programs had been discontinued, but in any case, the so-called intelligence that there were currently WMD was very questionable). A botched hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan allowed him to escape. Bush’s Administration persuaded itself, groundlessly, that the Iraqis would welcome us and that their oil would pay for the invasion. Later, American soldiers were found to have tortured and abused prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib facility, while others were sent to Guantanamo. Domestically, Bush tried to partially privatize Social Security under the aegis of the “Ownership Society,” while cooperating with credit card companies to limit consumer bankruptcy relief from credit card debt and with drug companies to pass the absurdly expensive Medicare Part D, a misconceived prescription drug benefit for seniors. In foreign policy, Bush persuaded the former Soviet Republic of Georgia that they might be offered NATO membership and then sat on his hands when an aggressive Russia started a war with Georgia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. In his personal style, Bush was a dolt, given to malapropisms such as “The terrorists want to hurt our country, and so do we” and “It’s time for mankind to enter the Solar System.” Bush made a fool of himself by walking onto the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished,” as occupied Iraq was actually descending into chaos. While New Orleans was being flooded by Katrina, Bush endorsed the comically inept head of FEMA, Michael Brown, saying “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.”Obama’s election was seen as a startling sign of racial progress in our country, but Congressional Republican leadership under Mitch McConnell announced at once that they would oppose everything he stood for and pursue the goal of making him a one-term President, after which Obama was blamed by whites for failing to meet Congress halfway. Donald Trump, a failed businessman and reality TV star, became even more prominent by promoting the idea that Obama had not actually been born in the United States and was ineligible for the Presidency. Obama himself is a very intelligent man who seemed to confuse promise with performance and left office faintly puzzled that the world did not share his warm self-regard. Having accepted the Presidency of the Harvard Law Review without authoring a single article, having published two memoirs and accepted a Nobel Peace Prize without ever having actually accomplished anything to that point, Obama outsourced his “signature achievement,” healthcare reform, to Nancy Pelosi and let Congress draft it in a way that when it was later defended before the Supreme Court, the Administration’s argument that it was a tax contradicted the very language of the statute itself; he promised the public that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” and, when the web site to sign up for healthcare turned out to be non-operational, professed himself as surprised as anyone, which turned out to be a customary approach; Paul Krugman eventually dubbed him “President Bystander.” Perpetually keeping his finger up to the breeze of public opinion (a tendency that Harper’s warned about in an article before he was elected), Obama declared that he was “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage and gays in the military. Despite a reputation as a public speaker, Obama clumsily borrowed a trope from Elizabeth Warren (if you built a business enterprise, you still benefited from public infrastructure and other benefits provided by society) and clumsily shortened it to the bald reduction “You didn’t build that.” Though the Republican Congress was outrageously perverse, Obama was not seen as a strong or effective negotiator with them. He discontinued Bush’s reliance on “enhanced interrogation” but carried on an illegal drone war that killed hundreds of civilians, executed a United States citizen without trial, and even killed his son. He consented to TSA officers placing their hands inside traveler’s clothing and touching their private areas over their underclothes, forcing women to remove breast prostheses and underwire bras, and forcing the elderly to remove diapers, and blandly assured the public, in a State of the Union Address, that they could take the train instead. When he appeared at a memorial service for victims of the Boston Marathon Bombings, he began his address by calling out “Helloooo, Boston!” as though he were at a picnic or pep rally. Exiting Marine 1, he returned a soldier’s salute by casually lifting his coffee cup to his temple. Recently, he has agreed to an official portrait that seems to suggest that he might have felt more at home taking a Hepplewhite chair from the Oval Office and squatting in the bushes, a tendency of which no one would have suspected him to this point. Guantanamo remains open, despite Obama’s promise to close it (another point on which Congress fought him tooth and nail).2010–2020: There’s really nothing to say about our present decade except to name Trump, whose election is the worst thing that the United States ever did and an indication that our 400-year experiment in democracy is a failure. No one, including, apparently, Trump himself, expected him to win, so the Democratic leadership blandly sidelined a candidate who actually stood for something and ran one of the most unlikable candidates in history, a monster of vanity and deceit, who published a book after her defeat asking “What Happened” that reminded one commentator on the left of Hillary asking us to walk with her through the five stages of grief. SNL eulogized the failed campaign by having Kate McKinnon perform Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which implied that this word would be Hillary’s answer at the Last Judgment, when a much more characteristic response from her will be “It was someone else’s fault.”As Andrew Sullivan warned before Trump was elected, a Trump Presidency, for our Constitutional republic, would be an extinction-level event. He was right. Trump is mounting a slow-motion coup to destroy the very government that he was elected to preside over, though he is too stupid to understand that he is doing this, and Republicans in Congress are too craven to stop him. Meanwhile, he is itching to use his “nuclear button” and General McMaster talks complacently about a “bloody nose” strike at Kim.A year from now, the question in the OP may be a moot point.

Foreword! This answer-comment is intended to strip away the utter sham, hypocrisy and blatant illegalities of those proceedings at the IMT-International Military Tribunal-at Nuremberg, and it is of utmost importance for this article to quote at its beginning, Professor Ernest Van Den Haag, New York Law School, criminologist and author : “The war crimes trials at Nuremberg are a shameful page in our history . . . there never was a serious basis for the victors finding the defeated guilty of acts which had not been crimes when they were committed. Doenitz at Nuremberg: A Re-Appraisal shows that Doenitz was guilty of nothing more than fighting as was his duty. Americans should be ashamed of having participated in proceedings that unjustly condemned him. This book is an overdue act of repentance.” { Prof. Van Den Haag is referring to the publication of a book which gathered and recorded for posterity previously unpublished views of 400 leading personalities in the military, the law, arts, diplomacy, philosophy, history and religion. Most of the contributors were active in WWII, many serving in commands or occupying positions in the highest echelons.]On the afternoon of April 30, 1945, with Berlin engulfed by flames and besieged by the Russians, the Fuhrer took his own life in his cement bunker beneath the chancellery complex. His Wagnerian death terminated the Third Reich last stand. And, now the victors of WWII were already at each other’s throats, and would enter into a politico-military struggle, beginning in 1945, and continuing unabated in a cold war until 1990. But at that moment in April 1945, the so-called Allies, jubilant in their economic-military victory, were not much concerned with the future and made their first political error in failing to be magnanimous towards the defeated Axis powers. The fruitless and self-defeating spirit of Zionist-Hebraic revenge would motivate their every action in the days and years ahead, a spirit so effectively demonstrated in the doctrine of “unconditional surrender,” which cost the lives of hundred of thousands of citizens and soldier, Axis and Allied as well.For a few brief weeks during late April and May of 1945, another leader of Europe came to power, an honorable man, respected even within the military councils of the Allies. That was Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, commander-in-chief of the German Navy, in overall command of German military forces in the north, and at that tense moment engaged in arranging sea and other transportation for the masses of refugees fleeing from the eastern areas. To his overwhelming astonishment, Doenitz had been designated by the Fuhrer as his successor and head of state. In his last political testament executed at 4:00 a.m. on April 29, 1945, and witnessed by Goebbels, Bormann, and Generals Burgdorf and Krebs, Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Doenitz a “President of the Reich and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces . . . by virtue of my statement in the Reichstag on September 1, 1939 . . . “ To capture the spirit of Hitler’s political testament, I cite the following excerpts: “. . . I die with a happy heart, aware of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our soldiers at the front, our women at home, the achievements of our farmers and workers and the work, unique in history, of our youth who bear my name. . . . I demand of all Germans, all National Socialists men, women and all the men of the Armed Forces, that they be faithful and obedient unto death to the new government and its President . . .”At Ploen on the evening of 30 April 1945, Doenitz received only the following message: “The Fuhrer has appointed you, Herr Admiral, as his successor in place of Reichsmarchall Goering. Confirmation in writing follows. You are hereby authorized to take any measures which the situation demands.__Bormann.” In his Memoirs, Doenitz describes his reactions: “This took me completely by surprise. Since July 20, 1944, I had not spoken to Hitler at all except at some large gathering. . . . I had never received any hint on the subject from anyone else. . . .I assumed that Hitler had nominated me because he wished to clear the way to enable an officer of the Armed Forces to put an end to the war. That this assumption was incorrect I did not find out until the winter of 1945–46 in Nuremberg, when for the first time I heard the provisions of Hitler’s will. . . . When I read the signal I did not for a moment doubt that it was my duty to accept the task . . . it had been my constant fear that the absence of any central authority would lead to chaos and the senseless and purposeless sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives . . . I realized . . . that the darkest moment in any fighting man’s life, the moment when he must surrender unconditionally, was at hand. I realized, too, that my name would remain forever associated with the act and that hatred and distortion of facts would continue to try and besmirch my honor. But duty demanded that I pay no attention to any such considerations. My policy was simple—to try and save as many lives as I could . . .”Doenitz moved forcefully. He met with Himmler at Ploen and politely declined Himmler’s offer to become the “second man” in the Doenitz government. Doenitz ordered Field Marshal Keitel and General Jodl to come to Ploen so that the military situation could be assessed.On the morning of 1 May, Doenitz received the following radio message classified “Secret and Personal,” from Bormann at the chancellery: “Will now in force. Coming to you as quickly as possible. Pending my arrival you should in my opinion refrain from public statement.” Doenitz was left to presume from the text that Hitler was dead but he knew none of the circumstances. Some public position had to be taken and immediately. He relates in his Memoirs that he felt that the announcement of Hitler’s death should be couched in respectful terms: “. . . To denigrate him . . . as, I felt, many around me would have liked me to do, would, in my opinion, have been a mean and cheap thing to do . . . I believed that decency demanded that I should word my annoucement in the manner in which it was, in fact, worded. Nor, I think, would I do otherwise today . . . “ Consequently, on May 1, 1945 Doenitz made the following announcement on North German radio: “ The Fuhrer has nominated me as his successor. In full consciousness of my responsibilities I therefore assume the leadership of theGerman people at this fateful hour. My first task is to save German men and women from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. It is to serve this purpose alone that the military struggle continues. For as long as the British and the Americans continue to impede the accomplishments of this task, we must also continue to fight and defend ourselves against them. The British and the Americans in that case will not be fighting in the interest of their own peoples, but solely for the expansion of Bolshevism in Europe.”Doenitz also issued his Order of the Day to the Armed Forces on May 1, covering the same points in slightly different language. He issued the following declaration to the military services: “I expect discipline and obedience. Chaos and ruin can be prevented only by the swift and unreserved execution of my orders. Anyone who at this juncture fails in his duty and condemns German women and children to slavery and death is a traitor and a coward. The oath of allegiance which you took to the Fuhrer now binds each and every one of you to me, whom he himself appointed as his successor.” It worked. As Doenitz relates: “The next few days showed that the German Armed Forces had accepted my authority; and that was all that mattered.”On May 1, 1945, Doenitz received a third and final radio message from the Berlin chancellery, but signed this time by Goebbels and Bormann: “Fuhrer died yesterday, 1530 hours. In his will April 29 he appoints you as President of the Reich. Goebbels as Reich Chnacellor, Bormann as Party Minister, Seyss-Inquart as Foreign Minister. . The will, by order of the Fuhrer, is being sent to you and to Field Marshal Schoerner and out of Berlin for safe custody. Bormann will try to reach you today to explain the situation. Form and timing of announcement to the Armed Forces and the public is left to your discretion. Acknowledge.”In a melodramatic series of events, Martin Bormann was killed in Berlin en route to Admiral Doenitz, other ranking officials failed to arrive, and no copies of the pertinent documents ever reached Doenitz. Apparently it never occurred to the officials in the beleaguered chancellery that the entire texts of the pertinent documents could have been radioed to Doenitz. At this point, he did not even know of the subsequent suicide of Goebbels on May 1. Doenitz correctly felt that he must make his own government appointments in order to function at all. He could not logically appoint officials whose whereabouts he did not know (he did not in fact know whether they were alive or dead), or whose prominence in the Hitler government might prejudice negotiations with the Allies. Of this fateful date, May 1, 1945, Doenitz summarized the situation in his Memoirs: “. . . while out at sea transports filled with wounded, with refugees and with troops hurried westward, the columns of refugees fleeing overland pressed on towards their salvation and the armies in Pomerania, in Brandenburg and in Silesia continued to retire in the direction of the Anglo-American demarcation line.The commander of Hamburg was ordered to dispatch an officer with flag of truce to the British on May 3, to offer the surrender of Hamburg and to inform them that a general delegation under Admiral von Friedeburg was en route to confer with them. Meanwhile, because of British advances, Doenitz moved his headquarters and seat of government to Muerwik near flensburg, there he conferred with representatives of the German forces still in being and advised them to take such action as would enable them to surrender to American rather Russian forces. He has developed a healthy respect for the American Navy, and it for him. But the American ground forces were something else again, their officer corps consisting in large part of Zionist Jews, white trash …Doenitz had not yet met political generals of the Eisenhower stamp.There were many acts of heroism at this difficult time. I cite but one here. As Doenitz relates in his Memoirs, Dr. Karl Hermann Frank, Protector of Bohemia-Moravia, concerned with Czech worries over the political fate of their nation should it fall into Russian hands, sought the agreement of Doenitz to make an offer to surrender to the Americans. Doenitz thought it unlikely to succeed but worth trying, and he comments: “. . . That Frank, regardless of his own personal safety and with but the slenderest chance of success, should have been willing to return to a country which he knew to be on the brink of revolt in order to secure for it a more humane solution of its problems should be noted to his credit.”On May 4 Doenitz gave to Admiral von Friedeburg the full authorization to accept various terms of surrender offered by Marshal Montgomery, and von Friedeburg was flown to British headquarters with the further instructions to then proceed to General Eisenhower at Rheims, France, to offer a German surrender in the American sector. As Doenitz put it, “The first step towards a separate surrender to the West had been accomplished without our having been forced to abandon German soldiers and civilians to the mercy of the Russians.”Eisenhower proved to be contentious and difficult. On 6 May, Doenitz sent Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl to negotiate with the American martinet, who rejected any separate surrender and informed Jodl that the Americans would be ordered to fire upon any German troops approaching American lines with the intention of surrender, even if unarmed. This arrogance, of course, was a direct breach of the Geneva Convention but that did not concern Eisenhower, who took his political orders from Washington. Eisenhower demanded unconditional surrender on May 7, but Jodl was able to win the concession of May 9 as the date for the termination of hostilities, thus enabling Doenitz to continue moving troops and refugees out of the eastern areas. As it turned out, in the course of the surrender negotiations the German representatives were treated courteously by the British and the Russians, but with hostility and child-like contempt by the Americans. This conduct was exemplified by Eisenhower himself, who later censured and otherwise hounded an American brigadier general, Robert J. Stack, for having treated Goering with courtesy on his arrest, and who rebuked General Patch, commander of the U.S. 7th Army, for treating German prisoners of war decently [See Leonard Mosley’s book, The Reich Marshal, pp 320–322.] The final order of the German Armed Forces, issued on May 9, 1945, stated in part: “… By command of Admiral Doenitz the Armed Forces have given up the hopeless struggle. A heroic fight that has lasted for nearly six years thus comes to an end . . . the German Armed Forces have succumbed to overwhelming superior strength . . . Every German soldier, sailor and airman can therefore lay aside his arms with justifiable pride and turn to the task of ensuring the everlasting life of our nation . . . To show obedience, discipline and absolute loyalty to our Fatherland, bleeding from innumerable wounds, is the sacred duty our dead impose upon us all.”As noted by Doenitz in his Memoirs: “I thought then, and I still think, that those words are both appropriate and just.”The surrender accomplished, and the cessation of hostilities being secured at even the most distant outposts. Doenitz turned his efforts to the processes of the government which he headed, a regime which had obtained de facto status from the Allies by their dealings with it.. The Legal complexities of the succession are dealt with in regiering Doenitz, by W. Luedde-Neurath, a work published in 1950, but even that work must be read in the light of the repressive political conditions in the western zone of Germany in 1950. The author held that Hitler’s nomination of Doenitz as head of State was unquestionably legal, and that its legality was in no way affected by the loss of German sovereignty occasioned by Allied occupation. Under German law, the resignation of a head of state is possible only when a successor is named at the same time. This would, of course, apply to a self-termination by a head of state ( i.e. suicide). When this measure is not taken, the office devolves upon the president of the Reich Supreme Court ( Article 51 of the Weimar Constitution). An extinction of the function of head of state is therefore legally excluded.Part IIGrand Admiral Doenitz: LAST PRESIDENT OF GERMANYThe Law of August 1, 1934 combined the offices of president and chancellor in the person of Adolf Hitler, and the German people gave its electoral approval to this in the plebiscite of 18 August, 1934. Subsequently, Hitler found general recognition as head of state both in his domestic and international dealings. Furthermore, the same law expressly gave to Hitler the right to name his successor. This he did—without any opposition—in his Reichstag declaration of September 1, 1939, naming Goering and Hess in that order.. Subsequent events and instruments eliminated Hess (following his flight to England) and Goering (by Hitler’s interpretation of Goering’s attempt to take over Hitler’s leadership in late April of 1945). Therefore, Hitler’s political testament of April 29, 1945 (naming Doenitz as president and Goebbels as chancellor) took precedence and was the governing authority for Doenitz government [Special Note: On April 26, 1942, the Reichstag voted absolute wartime powers to Hitler, suspending any laws to the contrary, similar to the powers conferred on President Lincoln during the American Civil War.]To his everlasting credit, Eamon De Valera, Prime Minister, later President of Ireland, called personally on the German Ambassador to Ireland to offer his condolences on the death of Hitler and recognition of the new government headed by Doenitz. There is no doubt that had time permitted, the exchange of diplomatic representatives with neutral nations could have been achieved. As Doenitz wrote: “. . . it was essential that we should create the requisite state departments within the framework of a central government.An Allied Control Commission under American Major Lowell Rooks and British Brig. R.L.S. Foord arrived on the scene shortly after the capitulation, and they were later joined by Soviet Gen. Nikolai Trusov. This commission conferred with the Doenitz government but gave little response to its proposals and less cooperation, as Doenitz observed: “The attitude of the Allied representatives at these meetings was reserved, but correct. The courtesies of normal international usage were observed, but that I and the members of my government should have shown a like reserve and reticence was only natural.”Next, a campaign against the Doenitz government was orchestrated in the Allied countries. As Doenitz observed: “The enemy press and particularly the Russian radio began to get busy about ‘the Doenitz Government’ . . . The cooperation between the provisional government and the British and American representatives in Muerwik had aroused their envy . . . Churchill at first opposed my removal. He wanted to use me as a ‘useful tool’ . . . if I proved to be useful, that would have to be reckoned against my ‘war atrocities in command of submarines’ [Churchill, Vol. VI. P 646]. This was exactly the coldly calculating attitude that I expected of British policy . . . Then . . . on May 15 Eisenhower demanded my removal in the interests of friendship with Russia . . . “On May 23, 1945, Doenitz, Jodl, von friedeburg and others were summoned aboard the steamship Patria, whereupon Gen. Rooks, wasting no time on protocol or courtesy, communicated Eisenhower’s decision that, “. . . in concert with Soviet High Command . . . today the acting German government and the German high command, with the several of its members, shall be taken into custody as prisoners of war. Thereby, the acting German government is dissolved . . . Troops of the 21st Army Group are taking the several members, civilian and military, and certain records, into custody . . . “ Asked by Rooks for any comment, Doenitz replied, “Any words would be superfluous.” The members of the Doenitz government and the high command were gathered and marched off, hands behind their heads and at machine-gun point, to a prisoner of war cage. Admiral von Friedeburg chose suicide over Allied detention.I have discussed at some length the brief tenure of the Doenitz government because of its historical significance. The opposition of the Soviet Union was to be expected. Had the western Allies, however, exhibited some foresight, the history of Europe might have followed a quite different course in the aftermath of the war. A legitimate government cannot be “dissolved” by military order of an external enemy, nor by taking its members forcibly under arrest. Having come legally into power, and having been recognized by the very forces which were to order its “dissolution,” the Doenitz government remains in history as the last de jure and de facto government of a United Germany. The establishment by the Allies of their own puppet regimes in West Germany (the so-called Federal Republic) and in Central Germany (the so-called German DemocraticRepublic) merely underscored then the continual zonal occupation of the German nation almost 40 years after the military conclusion of WWII.Grand Admiral Doenitz then, on May 23, 1945, became another prisoner of war, and the staggering burden of responsibilities for the German nation was taken from his shoulders by jail keepers. U.S. Admiral Thomac C. Hart (Commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet , and later a U.S. Senator) wrote: “I rate Admiral Doenitz as the best of them all, land or sea. He was unique in his handling of the German submarines and they were our most dangerous enemy . . . Then he succeeded to command all German Navy Forces. It was too late for real accomplishments.Then he succeeded the Fuhrer himself, and his performance from there on seems to me to have been perfect. So I think Doenitz was the best.”Before touching on the Doenitz case at Nuremberg, some general evaluation of the proceedings is warranted. For this purpose, I quote from an analyses of the trials in general written by a distinguished American jurist, Hon. William Hart, justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio (1939–1957) and lecturer on international law: “. . . The tribunal involved was created . . . by . . . the London Charter entered into on August 8, 1945 by and between . . . The United States, The Soviet Union, Great Britain and France—victor nations of World War II, for the purpose of designating and defining certain acts committed in the course of the war as war crimes and the prosecution of certain officials of conquered Germany charged with the commission of such crimes. The Charter …defined three classes of crimes . . . Under the heading of ‘Aggressor Nations,” the Chicago Tribune . . . carried an editorial which said: ‘The truth of the matter is that no one of the victors was free of the guilt which its judges attributed to the vanquished.’ Measured by the code and standards applied in these trials, it is disturbing to contemplate how the officers of our American forces might have fared had they been tried for their conduct in letting loose the devastation which practically wiped out Hiroshima [100,000 human being were vaporized in a nano second] on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the former two days before and the latter the next day after the adoption of the London Charter to which the United States was a party. In my judgment, the procedure by which the Nuremberg Tribunal was created and the criminal trials …conducted, was completely fraught with illegality . . . American authorities have invariably taken the position that an individual forming a part of a nationally organized army or navy and acting under the authority of his government, cannot be held answerable as a private trespasser or criminal for acts committed under such authority. Such acts are considered acts of the state and not those of the individual . . . “Justice Hart here, discusses the legal precedents, notably Dow v. Johnson, 100 U.S. 158, 163, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that an officer of the U.S. Army serving in an enemy country could not be held liable for injuries resulting from acts ordered by him in his military capacity. Also the famous McLeod Case (1840), in which Daniel Webster (then Secretary of State) held that an individual acting under the authority of his government could not be held answerable as an individual for acts performed in governmental capacity, it being “a principle of public law sanctioned by all civilized nations, and which the Government of the United States has no inclination to dispute.” Justice Hart also deals at length with the attempts, after WWI, to try Kaiser Wilhelm II for alleged “war crimes,” and the opposition thereto by U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing.Justice Hart continues: “. . . The designation and definition by the London Charter of the so-called crimes with which the defendants were charged, after such so-called offenses were committed, clearly violated the well-established rule against ex post facto legislation in criminal matters. The generally accepted doctrine is expressed in the adage: ‘Nullum Crimen Sine Lege’—a person cannot be sentenced to punishment for a crime unless he had infringed a law in force at the time he committed the offense and unless that law prescribed the penalty, Courts in passing on this proposition had declared that ‘It is to be observed that this maxim is not a limitation of sovereignty, but is a general principle of justice adhered to by all civilized nations.’ In my opinion, there was no legal justification for the trial, conviction or sentence of the so-called ‘war criminals’ by the Nuremberg Tribunal. We have set a bad precedent. It should not be followed in the future.Revisionist historians have made some headway in arguments that hopefully lead to a general repudiation of the entire Nuremberg process. But it is at best an upstream fight against an entrenched establishment, manifest most particularly in the occupation of academia by marauding Zionists and pro-Zionists and the mainstream publishing industry operated head-to-toe by the adversaries. It was pleasing to see an establishment historian come to reason on the subject and successfully sneak it into print. The British journalist-historian, Leonard Mosely, no friend of National Socialist Germany, has authored 21 books, largely concerning WWII. Mr. Mosely wrote: The IMT at Nuremberg was not a trial in the sense that it is normally accepted in civilized countries. . . But even though the presiding judge, Lord Justice Lawrence, was a venerable British jurist renowned for the impartiality of his judgments, both he and his American, French, and Russian colleagues knew what was expected of them, and that there could be no question of the principal accused winning acquittal. The defendants were doomed before the trial started . . . It is true that three out of the twenty defendants were . . . acquitted. But most reporters at the trial could have guessed their number and names from the start [writer’s note: they were anti National Socialism] . . . it was just as much a political trial as any which had taken place in Russia . . . “In the name of religious idealism, of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the three-headed beast—the killing continues in that unholiest of lands, crazily called the “Holy” Land. Meanwhile, the Zionist-Hebraic revenge continues in its revengeful psyche in its thirst for blood through the Zionist Simon Wiesenthal hunting band of Nazis.What were the real origins of the Nurmeberg proceedings? How did the U.S. fall into this quagmire of hypocrisy and lend its offices and personnel to a victors’ tribunal falsely represented as some sort of noble experiment in international law? Some of the sinister background is developed in The Road to Nuremberg book by Professor Bradley Smith. Certainly no friend of Germany or of revisionism (which he attacks), Smith reveals the Zionist-Jewish origins of the “trials” and shows that they were essentially an American production. Among the “cast of characters” in Smith’s book are Henry Morgenthau jr., Murray Bernays, Sidney Alderman, Bernard Bernstein, Felix Frankfurter, SheldonGluck, Hersch Lauterpacht, William Malkin, Sam Roseman, Herbert Wechsler, Frederick Bernays Weiner, and Harry Dexter White (Weiss, the Russian agent),as well as the American Zionist-Jewish Conference, to name but a few. The struggle of Henry L. Stimson against the malicious influences of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who advocated that Germany should be confined to become only as an “agricultural country” is interestingly recorded.Apart from the question of the validity or desirability of the Nuremberg trials, the guilt of Admiral Doenitz could not be said to have been established beyond a reasonable doubt on the basis of the material before the tribunal. Admiral Doenitz requested early in the trial that the American Admiral Chester Nimitz be summoned as a witness in his defense to testify ab out how U.S. Subs operated in the Pacific. The Chief American Prosecutor at Nuremberg, Rober Jackson, had to hem and haw and to back water fast when that hot potato was tossed at him. Admiral Nimitz for the honest seafaring man that he was, finally submitted a sworn statement, answering questions put to him by Admiral Doentiz’s counsel and said that U.S. submarines in the Pacific waged unrestricted warfare the same as the Germans did in the Atlantic. Rear Admiral Dan Gallery, U.S. Navy, summed it up: “The outstanding example of barefaced hypocrisy at Nuremberg was the trial of Admiral Doenitz. We tried him on three charges: (1) Conspiring to wage aggressive war; (2) Waging aggressive war; and (3) Violation of the laws of war at sea . . . How in the name of common sense a military officer can wage any kind of war except an aggressive one without being a traitor to his country, I’ll never know . . . Doenitz’s conviction… was an insult to our own submariners . . . The only crime he committed was that of almost beating us in a bloody but “legal” fight . . . .When the armed forces of Britain and France, and their vassal Zionist Israel conspired together and invaded Nasser Egypt in 1956, Rudolf Hess’ lawyer Alfred Seidl inquired, mockingly and contemptibly, of the British Foreign Office and the French Foreign Ministry whether Prime Ministers Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet were to be brought before any tribunal to account for themselves for waging “Aggressive War,”? Even then in 1956, some editorial opinions held Athony Eden and Guy Mollet, and Ben Gurion , to be “war criminals” in the Nuremberg sense, but tragically and shamefully, no international tribunal chose to pry into that can of worms. The tragic truth was that U.S. Justice Robert Jackson’s summary of the London Charter on August 31, 1945 was, as we look upon it with contempt and disdain, was hollow and riddled with utmost hypocrisy: “If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” The fact that the IMT at Nuremberg: had set no real precedent in international law.Following his sentencing on October 1, 1946, Admiral Doenitz served his time, bravely and without complaint, at the Spandau prison in West Berlin. The German leadership was ill-treated, ill-fed, and ill-clothed, under monstrous conditions, with every manner of petty torture and indignity imposed upon the elderly prisoners. Doenitz maintained his dignity through his inner strength, and he never wrote of his prison experiences, unlike the little rodent, Albert Speer, who twisted facts and altered “reminiscences” to obtain fat contracts from the establishment publishers for his confessionals. Speer sought to assume “moral responsibility” for anything which had transpired in Hitler Germany, even what the travelling salesman did to the farmer’s daughter. He maligned all those defendants who stood up to the court, including Doenitz.On October 1, 1956, Doenitz was released, and the event was widely heralded in the world press. The Grand Admiral himself commented sensibly: “ You must remember I have been isolated and cut off from the world for eleven and a half years. Therefore . . . I must feel my way back in the world.”Admiral Doenitz promptly went to work on his memoirs. There is no discussion of the Spandau years. Criticism of the Allies is limited, and any discussion of the Nuremberg proceedings is confined to specific issues. There is some criticism of National Socialism, largely confined to the “leadership principle,” with a bone thrown to “democracy,” and some criticism of the camps, which Doenitz opposed in principle. He knew that the concentration camp concept had first been employed by the British against Boers in South Africa, and was amused to know that the concept of “concentration camps” were originated by the American patriarch, General George Washington, to handle the troublesome Quakers during the American Revolution. Because of their opposition to war, he rounded them up and herded them into camps where he left them to starve unless fed by other Quaker sympathizers.In July 1980 Doenitz wrote to American Navy personnel, who kept in touch with him, a warm letter, signed with an aged shaking hand, expressing the hope that we might meet again. This was not to be. On December 24, 1980, he died peacefully in his 89th year. The jackals went quickly to work. The Bonn regime denied him military honors and ordered no wearing of uniforms at his services, which were crowded with former servicemen of high and low rank, seeking to pay their last respects. The obituaries were varied, generally favorable in Germany (with notable exceptions), respectful in England, and nasty, semi-literate hack jobs in the United States. As one might expect, the wire services went right to the old World War II propaganda files and the Nuremberg garbage, with no attempt whatever to bring matters up to date. The New York Times was among the worst, which did not surprise me. I have always referred to that so-called newspaper as “the Zionist rag.” H.L. Mencken, I believe, called it, “a pompously sterile sheet.” At any rate, the story was over, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz passed into history.