Entries on the Ideologies of War Website
(Kubrick – Stalbank) |
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POLITICAL PSYCHOSIS In Dr. Strangelove (see video to the right), General Jack Ripper explains the actions he has taken against the communist conspiracy, stating that a “foreign substance” is “introduced into our precious bodily fluids” without knowledge of the individual. War is too important, Ripper says, to be left to the politicians. He would no longer allow the international communist conspiracy to “sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids.” In October, 1943, Heinrich Himmler delivered a speech at Posen to SS officers and Nazi officials—discussing the extermination of the Jewish People. He stated that Germany had the moral right to “kill these people who wanted to kill us.” But SS men did not have the right to enrich themselves by taking personal property from Jews: “Just because we eradicated a bacillus doesn’t mean we want to be infected by the bacillus ourselves.” Himmler concludes: “We have carried out this most difficult task out of love for our own people.” Listening to General Ripper, most people conclude he was psychotic. What is the appropriate characterization of Heinrich Himmler?
— Richard A. Koenigsberg, PhD. (718) 393-1081 — Orion Anderson (718) 393-1104
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