On March 19, 1945, facing certain defeat, Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany:       

“Destroy all German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants!”

If implemented, it would deprive surviving Germans of even the barest necessities after the war.  

Opposing him was Albert Speer, his favorite architect and Minister of Armaments. 

Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler pouring over architectural plans

But Hitler refused to back down. He gave Speer 24 hours to reconsider his opposition to the order.

The next day, Speer told Hitler: “My Fuhrer, I stand unconditionally behind you!” 

“Then all is well,” said Hitler, suddenly with tears in his eyes.

“If I stand unreservedly behind you,” said Speer, “then you must entrust me rather than the Gauleiters [district Party leaders serving as provincial governors] with the implementation of your decree.”

Filled with gratitude, Hitler signed the decree Speer had thoughtfully prepared before their fateful meeting.

By doing so, Hitler unintentionally gave Speer the power to thwart his “scorched earth” order.

Trained as an architect, Speer had joined the Nazi Party in 1931. He met Hitler in 1933, when he presented the Fuhrer with architectural designs for the Nuremberg Rally scheduled for that year. 

From then on, Speer became Hitler’s “genius architect” assigned to create buildings meant to last for a thousand years. “If Hitler had been capable of friendship,” Speer said after the war, “I would have been that friend.”

In 1943, Hitler appointed him Minister of Armaments, charged with revitalizing the German war effort.

Nevertheless, Speer now crisscrossed Germany, persuading military leaders and district governors to not destroy the vital facilities that would be needed after the war.

“No other senior National Socialist could have done the job,” writes Randall Hanson, author of Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance After Valkyrie.

“Speer was one of the very few people in the Reich—-perhaps even the only one—with such power to influence actors’ willingness/unwillingness to destroy.”

Despite his later conviction for war crimes at Nuremberg, Speer never regretted his efforts to save Germany from total destruction at the hands of Adolf Hitler. 

* * * * *

As the Third Reich came to its fiery end, Adolf Hitler blamed the German people for being “unworthy” of his “genius” and losing the war he had started.

His attitude was: “If I can’t rule Germany, then there won’t be a Germany.”

Fortunately for Germany, one man—Albert Speer—finally broke ranks with his Fuhrer.

Albert Speer

Risking death, he refused to carry out Hitler’s “scorched earth” order. Even more important, he successfully blocked such destruction and persuaded influential military and civilian leaders to disobey the order as well.

As a result, those targets slated for destruction were spared.

* * * * *

Fast forward 75 years: Facing the end of his Presidency, Donald Trump desperately sought to remain in power. Having “joked” about being “President-for-Life,” he now fought to make that a reality. 

Unlike his 44 predecessors, he rejected the will of the voters and for almost three weeks denied his successor access to the resources he needed to launch a smooth transition.

Donald Trump

Even worse: Instead of showing concern for the country he claimed to love, Trump sought to relentlessly destroy those institutions that guarantee American freedom and safety:

• The Pentagon
• The CIA
• The FBI
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

His attitude clearly was: “If I can’t rule America, there won’t be an America.” 

Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans embraced his most outrageous lies—or refused to openly refute them—as the COVID-19 pandemic slaughtered about 1,000 Americans a day.

Even Republicans who privately admitted the Trump era was ending realized that 70 million hate-filled Americans voted for him in 2020. And eagerly awaited the coming of the next would-be Fuhrer.

They would also eagerly vote out of office any Republican who dared break with the man they worshiped like a cult leader. 

For Congressional Republicans, staying in office—and keeping their power and perks—was their top priority.

On November 25, 2019, CNN political correspondent Jake Tapper interviewed Representative Adam Schiff on Donald Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

What would it mean if Republicans uniformly oppose any articles of impeachment against Trump? asked Tapper.

“It will have very long-term consequences, if that’s where we end up,” replied Schiff.

“And if not today, I think Republican members in the future, to their children and their grandchildren, will have to explain why they did nothing in the face of this deeply unethical man who did such damage to the country.” 

In the end, only one of 53 Republican Senators—Mitt Romney—dared to vote for impeachment. And he became an instant pariah for it. 

On March 18, 1945, Albert Speer, opposing Hitler’s plans to destroy Germany’s infrastructure, addressed a memo to his Fuhrer, in which he wrote: “No one has the right to take the viewpoint that the fate of the German people is tied to his personal fate.”

The country is still waiting for a Republican Albert Speer to step forward and save America from the self-destructive intentions of its own would-be Fuhrer.

President Donald Trump seemed poised to fire his handpicked CIA director.       

He believed that Gina Haspel had stonewalled the release of documents supposedly exposing “deep state” plots against his 2016 campaign during the Obama administration.

[In fact, the Obama administration had acted entirely within the law during the 2016 Presidential campaign. The FBI has a legal mandate to keep track of subversive activities—especially when they involve members of a Presidential candidate’s campaign.

[On July 9, 2016, high-ranking representatives of the Trump campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists with ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Gina Haspel

[The participants included:   

• Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.;
• His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
• His then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort;
• Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin; and
• Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of “having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.”

[The reason for the meeting: To dig up “dirt” the Russians might have on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent for the White House.] 

Trump was also angry at FBI Director Christopher Wray—who replaced James B. Comey in May, 2017. Trump had fired Comey for daring to investigate ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian Intelligence agents. 

Christopher Wray

The reason for his anger at Wray: Wray had dared to contradict Trump’s false claims that

• “Rampant voter fraud” was a widespread problem; and
• Antifa posed a greater terrorism danger than white supremacist groups. 

During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, had quickly assessed Trump as an egotistical narcissist. By appealing to Trump’s vanity, Putin expected to sharply reduce the military and political threat the United States represented to a resurgent Russia. 

So notorious was the role played by Russian Intelligence in misleading American voters in 2016 that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.

The man ultimately tasked with this mission was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency run by DHS.

Chris Krebs

Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. Among his duties:

• Sharing Intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
• Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
• Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.

As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments. 

By all accounts—except Trump’s—the 2020 election went very smoothly.

On November 17, 2020, Trump fired Chris Krebs. 

The reason: Krebs had not only countered Russian propaganda lies—he had dared to counter Trump’s as well. For example: He rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud: There “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

Trump fired Krebs by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet another lie:

“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”

In a November 17 story on the CNN website, CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc bluntly concluded:

“[Krebs’] dismissal underscores the lengths Trump is willing to go to punish those who don’t adopt his conspiratorial view of the election.

“Since CNN and other outlets called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has refused to accept the results, instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen.

“This includes falsely claiming during an election night address that he had already won reelection, that he had won states that were actually still up in the air at the time and that his opponents were perpetrating a fraud.” 

 * * * * *

Seventy-five years earlier, on March 19, 1945, facing certain defeat, Adolf Hitler ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany.

All German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants were to be destroyed.

If implemented, it would deprive the entire German population of even the barest necessities after the war.  

Opposing him—at first openly, and later secretly—was Albert Speer, his former architect and now Minister of Armaments. 

Speer argued that there must be a future for the German people: “If our enemies wish to destroy us, why help them?  We must leave the people something.”

But Hitler refused to back down: “I don’t want to hear any more.”

He gave Speer 24 hours to reconsider his opposition to the order.

Speer could not directly promise to carry out Hitler’s “scorched earth” order. So he gave Hitler a vague answer that essentially committed him to nothing: “My Fuhrer, I stand unconditionally behind you!”