“For it is the doom of men that they forget.”
—Merlin, “Excalibur”

It’s April 16, 1945, and more than 1,000 residents of the town of Weimar, Germany, are being forced to view horrors they have never before seen and perhaps never imagined could exist.     

Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer of the Third Reich since 1933, won’t commit suicide until April 30, but Germany’s fate is already sealed. The war it had so arrogantly started is ending in humiliating defeat for its “master race.”

American army units have been appalled at what they found in Buchenwald concentration camp, which lies only about four miles northwest of Weimar. They are determined to make Weimar’s citizens see, up-close, the true legacy of the Hitler regime.

Among the nightmarish scenes the citizens view:

• Corpses piled on carts.
• Recently dug up mass graves, revealing countless bodies.
• Crematorium ovens filled with human bones and ashes of prisoners who had been murdered.
• An all-pervading stench of death, stemming from the tens of thousands of men and women who had been murdered there.
• A gallows where inmates had been executed.
• A wooden block over which they had been bent to be flogged.
• A table displaying samples of human skin that had been collected by the former camp commandant and his wife.

Corpses found in Buchenwald after its liberation

The United States Army films the Weimar residents as they are confronted with the horrors of Buchenwald. Out of this comes a documentary: “Death Mills,” which puts the blame for Nazi atrocities on the shoulders of ordinary Germans.

“These Germans, the ones who said they didn’t know,” intones a narrator, “were responsible, too. They had put themselves gladly into the hands of criminals and lunatics.

“They tell you now they meant no evil, that they knew nothing of what was going on or could do nothing even if they knew….

“Today, these Germans who cheered the destruction of humanity in their own land, who cheered the attack on helpless neighbors, who cheered the enslavement of Europe, plead for your sympathy.”

If similar justice comes to the United States, those citizens who have lustily supported Donald Trump’s crimes at all levels will be forced to answer for the atrocities their support made possible.

Among these:

• Pardoning about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. More than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
• Banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW correspondents from the White House because he didn’t like their “unfair” reporting about him.
• Signing 26 executive orders reversing climate change initiatives, eliminating DEI programs, and initiating a federal hiring freeze.
• Firing the inspectors general—who are charged with protecting the government from waste and corruption—from more than a dozen federal agencies.
• Firing Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from unfair, deceptive and fraudulent business practices.
• Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). 
• Withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
• Firing the non-partisan board members at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His toadies illegally renamed it the Trump-Kennedy Center and appointed him as its chairman—just as Joseph Stalin made himself arbiter of what was permissible for artists in the Soviet Union.

Donald Trump

• When artists and audiences—outraged by the takeover—boycott the Center, an embarrassed Trump orders its closure, claiming a two-year repair renovation is necessary
• Purging about a half-dozen executive assistant directors at the FBI. These were some of the bureau’s top managers overseeing criminal, national security and cyber investigations. Their “crime”: Investigating Trump’s inciting the January 6, 2021 coup attempt and illegally holding highly sensitive national security documents after leaving office.
• Ordering the Justice Department to indict his critics such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. 
• Declaring “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
• Trying to cancel birthright citizenship—enshrined within the United States Constitution—for U.S.-born children. 
• Demanding a military parade for his 79th birthday, poorly disguised as a salute to the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
• Pardoning favored political allies and loyalists. Among these: Seventy-seven people associated with the Trump fake electors plot to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, including Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief of staff Mark Meadows. 
• Demanding that the media refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and banning the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to do so.

Gulf of Mexico

• Demanding that Canada become the 51st state and aggressively raising tariffs on Canadian goods.
• Shutting down the Federal Government on October 1, 2025, when Democrats refuse to agree to his gutting Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), causing 10-15 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage.
• Among those not getting paid: Air traffic controllers for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Owing to many controllers’ refusing to work, the FAA reduces air traffic by 10% at many airports.
• Shutting off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the poor to pressure Democrats to support his gutting of healthcare programs.