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Nazis gave full authority to the Arrow Cross,
This generosity of spirit—this caring about others and about the proposition that we are all created equal—is the single most effective antidote to the self-centered moral numbness that allows Fascism to thrive.
The descent began when, in July, Winston Churchill brusquely rejected the Führer’s offer of a peace settlement.
What he failed to grasp was the need to adjust his strategy to accommodate unwelcome facts.
underestimated Russian resilience and the Red Army’s capacity to find replacements for the men who were killed or taken prisoner.
end of 1942, when Allied forces knocked the Axis out of North Africa, creating a platform to liberate Europe from the south, through Italy.
twenty-minute vote brought down the curtain on twenty years of Fascism.
On April 30, 1945, two days after the demise of Mussolini, Hitler and his wife of thirty-six hours, Eva Braun, committed suicide, she by cyanide, he by pistol shot.
but to a Communist, “Fascist” was the most versatile of insults.
acknowledged its overlap with Communism in its disdain for democracy and all its trappings.
Both Fascism and Communism had utopian aspirations
to Communists, the key determinant was class.
in the Soviet Union, the principal targets were landowners, the bourgeoisie, and only later the Jews.
the Communists shunned religion while treating certain secul...
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Hitler was a teetotaler and vegetarian; Stalin drank plenty and ate omnivorously—his
the two men spoke a common language: violence.
Both despised the Jeffersonian ideals of popular governance, reasoned debate, freedom of expression, an independent judiciary, and fair electoral competition.
the Communists sought to shape the minds of citizens by overwhelming their senses with propagandistic spam.
The Bolsheviks—which translates as “the Majority”—won millions of converts,
the best farmers don’t like collective agriculture, because there’s nothing in it for them except more labor and less profit.
June 1947 when U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall put forward a generous loan program for the reconstruction of Europe.
the Marshall Plan offered a way to refloat its economy until farm conditions improved and factories resumed normal operations.
Not only my country, but the entire constellation of Soviet satellites—Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Yugoslavia—had to reject the Marshall Plan because the Red Army was close and the Western allies had put down their guns.
Russian insecurity—a trait that would resurface in the twenty-first century—caused barbed wire to be strung across Europe’s heart.
Under strongman Josip Broz (better known by his pen name: Tito), Yugoslavia had emerged from the war with a fully committed Communist government.
he shared with them an inability to marshal democratic forces at a critical time.
The resulting chaos created an opening that Gottwald, the Communist leader, did not hesitate to seize.
The desire for liberty may be ingrained in every human breast, but so is the potential for complacency, confusion, and cowardice.
