On the Color of the

Clouds
By JV Deacon
Enigma of Adolf

It was a sunny warm day as we turned onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I had been
looking forward to it for a couple of months. I had always enjoyed art exhibits. I am hardly one
that has the ability to understand art. I look at the piece and just try to discern what it means to
me; what is going on; and marvel at the skill, the patience, the dedication of the artist. I am
almost positive that on most occasions I do miss what was the artist’s intent. That is if they had
intent at all. Once at one expo, the actual artist was there and he was talking to a friend. He said
that he didn’t think his pieces had any meaning at all; that he just went with what he liked. He
also mentioned that he liked to hang back at the showings and listen to what others interpret what
they thought that he was going for. I like to look at the paintings and other works and just lose
myself in their composition.
Anyway, we were looking forward to a day out of the house and seeing the sights. At the
time there had been very few chances for Brenda and me to get out and do something just for
fun. The exhibit was in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I had seen a wonderful display of
Picasso’s still life paintings several years earlier. This time it was one of my all time favorite
artist, Salvador Dali. The trip had been uneventful and we even managed to get a parking space
that was less than twenty paces from an entrance—a miracle in itself. We went in and turned
over our tickets and took our places in the line. Unfortunately, there weren’t as many pieces as
had been in the Picasso exhibit, but the layout had been roughly the same. It started out with his
earliest works followed by pieces in chronological order. They were arranged by specific periods
in his life. We moved from work to work just taking them in and enjoying ourselves. I suddenly
came upon a work titled “The Enigma of Hitler.”
The painting has a branch that is devoid of foliage. On it is a telephone handset; one part
is broken and the other is dripping a clear liquid. In the background are some cliffs and a beach.
An umbrella also hangs from the branch with a woman partially hidden by the umbrella. Beneath
the phone is a plate and on the plate is a small image of Adolf Hitler. There are several other
items in the painting as well but I’ll just stick with this basic description. In actuality, the
painting did not really impress me much, not near as much as his other works. However, the title
did stick with me and made me think for quite a long time after the exhibit.
There is an enigma about Hitler. For me, it isn’t his almost meteoric ride from the gutter
to the German Chancellery, or as what appears to be an almost phenomenal interest in his sex life
with his niece—Geli Raubal, that pops up all over the internet. It is how he is portrayed as an
evil beast, an antichrist. He is the ultimate monster of modern history; a boogie man. There is no
doubt that Schicklgruber was a horrible person, but that is just it; he was a person just like you
and me. When you take in the whole experience of what the world was like before and during his
life, what I am saying comes more into focus.
 Before he was born, even America had committed many atrocities. Primarily in the
South, Africans were enslaved and depending on the owner, treated very nicely to beyond cruel;
unfortunately, most would fall into the latter category. There was even a doctor, J. Marion Sims,
who was performing unnecessary surgery on female slaves without anesthesia, even though
anesthesia was readily available, for experimentation on their reproductive organs. Many died
from repeated operations and infections. He was hailed as the father of modern gynecology. In
fact, you can find a statue of him in Central Park, New York, New York, where he retired.
Around the same time that Sims’ laboratory was filled with the cries and screams of the
women he was butchering in South Carolina, all Native Americans in the southern states were
being forcibly relocated to west of the Mississippi. It wasn’t because of being wild, violent,
savages. It was because of land speculators desiring the land they Natives owned. They were
offered money for their property. The money was supposedly used to defray the cost of the
move. Those who chose not to leave were forcibly moved by the U.S. Army. Thousands died
from disease, exposure, and starvation.
In the west, during the rest of the nineteenth century, Indian treaties were constantly
being broken by the U.S. Government. The Indian Wars were little more than an act of robbery
and extermination. Again the desire of land was the main impetus for attacks that were not
limited to warrior against warrior; women and children were among the body count. As those
moments of horror were coming to an end, the U.S. went to war with Spain and won. We
liberated the Philippines and told them that they could set up a government and be free when we
were ready to let them sparking another war with the people of the Philippines. During the turn
of the century, our youngest president, Theodore Roosevelt, made an offer to the Columbian
Government for the rights to the canal that had been abandoned by the French. A progressively
democratic government thought that the offer was too low. Roosevelt sent in the marines to
overthrow Columbia’s control of the Panama and replaced a democratic government with an
oligarchy that was mainly interested in the rich. This would become a trend with the United
States for decades to come. However, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave did not have a
monopoly on terror.
In Belgium, King Leopold II was bored with just running his small country. He saw that
all the other nations of Europe had colonies and he desired one that was all his own. He decided
to team up with Henry Morton Stanley—in my opinion, a professional assehole—to create a
colony deep in Africa. Until this time colonies were usually along the coastline; his was the first
in the interior of Africa. It was all his and he ran it in ways that would best benefit himself under
the guise of helping the natives. Literally, millions would die, millions would be mutilated, and
millions of others would just suffer hardship and terror under his reign. Villages were destroyed,
people murdered, and others would have their hands cut off when their villages failed to produce
the quotas for gold, ivory, and rubber that Leopold imposed on them. He had never been to the
Congo Free State, but that is the way it works; the person who is demanding the horrors be
carried out is not the one to do it so that they can live with their decisions. The story of his
manmade nightmare began to surface and at first no one believed what was going on and just
ignored them. Then it continued to the point that finally an investigation was launched which
found the allegations against the king to be true; millions were suffering so that someone who
was living in the lap of European Luxury could be richer. The colony was put in the care of the
Belgian Government. While it decided what to do with the huge territory, Leopold increased his
quotas and reign of terror to squeeze out every ounce of profit he could before he lost his colony
for good.
 It would be nice to say that the Congolese benefited and started to heal under the Belgian
rule but the administration of the state was a lot like that under the Nazis decades later. People
were classified according to physical traits. Those who were lighter skin and more European in
other physical traits were given jobs that included keeping people who did not fit this beauty
contest in line for their Belgian Overlords. Some of this created resentment that would spillover
into our time when the Hutus sought revenge on the Tutsi. To make matters worse, European
countries that had condemned Leopold for his actions now took this as a legitimate reason to
start infiltrating the interior of Africa for their own gains.
Horatio Herbert Kitchener cut a dashing figure in his British General’s Uniform. He
helped to wage war on the Boer Kommandos during the 2 nd Boer War in South Africa. His
tactics included a scorched earth policy and use of concentration camps. The idea was to limit
the resources available to the Kommandos by destroying Boer Farms and rounding up the
citizens into camps. The bulk of the internees were women and children. Starvation and disease
quickly consumed the camps’ populations. It had turned into a scene that would engulf most of
Eastern Europe four decades later. It had not been their original intention, but it was allowed to
persist because they weren’t British Citizens. Actually, they weren’t even Europeans; they were
colonists and colonists were looked at as second class, even Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine,
was looked at by the native born nobility of France as a minor noble. It had been a way of
limiting the competition of control and ascension among the noble classes.
Prior to this episode, China had managed to amass a fortune from trade. However, Britain
was not making anything from the deals. It turned out that Britain had very little that China was
interested in, but many Europeans wanted spices, silk, tea, and china. The East India Company
finally found an item that would sell in China and strove to import it from India—opium.
China’s government wanted to stop the import. Opium dens and drug addiction had created
many problems in the Empire. To enforce their right to import the drugs and sell them, Britain
launched invasions that led to what would be called the Opium Wars. In a sense, it would be the
same if the drug lords of South and Central America invaded our country to force our
government to allow the sell of cocaine and marijuana.
In Southeast Asia, France had created a colony during Napoleon III’s rule. It would be
known as Indochina and it was rich in various resources. The French created huge plantations of
rubber trees and lived off the labors of the inhabitants. The return to the indigenous population
for their labors was a life expectancy of twenty-seven. It was a hard life of virtually no rights.
Chances are when they did die; they would be quickly buried right in the plantation where they
fell. If you were actually dumb enough to complain, you had a very good chance of being
imprisoned, beaten, and killed. If you ever wondered why the Vietnamese had fought so hard,
one hundred years of French rule taught them that they had nothing to lose and everything to
gain. This unfortunately, was not so different from the colonial rule of many other nations.
Europeans would live as gods while the natives toiled for their overlords. The only ones who
actually did well were the ones who had no problems selling out their people for their own
luxury.
This had been the world that Adolf had been born into and was raised. European
Countries ruled the world with a brutal fist. Anyone who had not been born as a white, Indo-
European was characterized as inferior. Europeans had the advance technology of the day. Social
Darwinism was believed to be a true science and eugenics had been embraced. Even Alexander
Graham Bell preached of its use to eliminate deaf persons. He is considered to be the boogieman
of the deaf population. There was even archeological proof that Europeans were more superior
when the Piltdown man—which wasn’t disproved until the discovery of carbon 14 dating during
the 1950’s—was discovered and declared the missing link and Europeans had developed from it.
This idea of certain groups being far superior than most was so widely felt that it was one of the
major themes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s book, “Crime and Punishment.” It was cited as one of
the major reasons that Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb killed fourteen year old Bobby
Franks—one of the many crimes that shocked this nation.
When Hitler had gained power, it was through the fervor created through the belief of the
Dolchstosslegende which was perpetuated by the German Government and Military leaders of
the time in an effort to find a scapegoat for their own incompetence (oh, the allies had their own
scapegoat too, in the form of Magaretha Zelle who was also known as Mata Hari.) It was the
belief that the Imperial German Army had not been beaten in the field but was stabbed in the
back by Jews and communist. First of all, Jews have been the favorite target of Christian Europe
for Centuries. They have always felt the brunt of blame for anything bad that happened in
European Communities. They had been the ones who had demanded that Christ be crucified.
They were different and exotic to medieval Europeans. They spoke a different language than that
of locals. Jews viewed money as a tool to be used by man whereas their Christian counterparts
saw it as an evil. Jews had developed an understanding of it whereas Christians shunned it. Jews
had contacts with the Muslim World and were able to set up trade for European Nobles. One
interesting side note: when a lord was short on cash from the numerous raids and battles they
fought with their neighbors during this time, the lord would instigate pogroms in order to rob
their own Jews to regain a cash flow. The word Holocaust actually first appears in the English
language following a major eviction of all Jews from England. One story goes that a ship loaded
with Jews from England had become stranded on a sand bar. The captain of the ship invited his
passengers to stretch their legs until the tide came back in. When the water started to rise, he
refused to let them back on his ship telling them to pray to their God for help. In short, they all
drowned. This started when Richard I was crowned King. The leaders of the Jewish communities
approached him with a gift and for a private audience. Suspicions and accusations flew and the
next thing we know the Jews were being kicked out of England.
Isabella was said to have used her jewelry to help finance Columbus’s voyage. In
actuality, most of the money that she had accumulated came from her conquest of Spain with
Ferdinand to free Spain from Muslim control and unify it as one country. The second targets on
their list were the Jews. Again, there was another round up and deportation with the help of the
Inquisition. When they were deported, they were forced to leave all their property except the
clothes on their backs. One of the major reasons that Columbus had to settle for the Nina, Pinta,
and Santa Maria, was that most of the other ships of decent size were being used to ship Jews to
North Africa. These were pretty much the only ships that he could find.
During the crusades, many of the not as brave as Richard Coeur de Lion or Godfrey of
Bouillon, instead of traveling to the Middle East, attacked local Jewish Communities in central
Europe. They were easy targets that were easy to attack and rob. Robbery seems to be a major
theme in the crusades. I remember seeing a chastity belt in a medieval museum. It was
commonly believed by most people I have talked to, to be used by the knights to make sure that
their woman would wait for them. I learned much later that most of these so called chastity belts
were a product of the age of romanticism. In reality, a crusading knight’s greatest fear was that
his neighbors would attack and steal his lands while he was away. Most of the crusaders were
nobles that were looking for opportunity to create their own kingdom because they weren’t first
in line to inherit anything. Robbery was on the mind of Enrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice,
during the fourth crusade. He used the tab ran up by crusaders during their stay in Venice to call
in a favor. The favor was the sack of Constantinople—at the time, a Christian City; not Muslim.
Hitler used the Dolchstosslegende and the Treaty of Versailles to gain favor for his cause
which led to his rise. Actually, it wasn’t his cause. He had been hired by the local government to
infiltrate the movement and report on their actions. Instead of being such a tool, he became
seduced and swept away by the movement and in turn became the movement’s main speaker and
eventually, their Fuhrer. To him, the Dolchstosslegende made perfect sense. He had been in the
trenches during the Great War. He knew in his heart that the Imperial German Army had not
been beaten in the field; it had to have been back stabbed. In actuality, the war was lost by 1916.
Erich von Falkenhayn, the German Chief of the General Staff during the Great War knew it. The
problem was that no one else knew it or wanted to admit it so, it went on for two more years. To
Adolf, the Treaty of Versailles was ridiculous—in this case he was actually right. Ferdinand
Foch was quoted as saying, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years,” of the
Versailles Treaty. Ferdinand Foch was the Marshal of France during the final year of World War
I; basically the Supreme Allied Commander. He had been correct—he was only off by about
sixty days in his 1919 prediction.
The Treaty of Versailles was a travesty. However, it was very much typical of the
opinions of the age—we won, so we can do whatever we want. World War I had started because
of nothing more than egos. These were very small petty egos that wanted to run the world and
bring in profits from colonies, pretty much like good ole Leopold II of Belgium. These were egos
puffed up with nationalistic fervor—it had been this time that the U.S. had officially adopted the
National Anthem and saying the Pledge of Allegiance (which was not said by putting your hand
over your heart but with the Bellamy Salute which is what the Nazis would adopt for their
salute.) These were egos that all knew that they were so much better than anyone else on the
continent. These were egos that felt that the situations of the time created a great opportunity to
get back at each other or to take what they wanted. It was a family spat gone terribly awry. They
just needed to find the excuse. Gavrilo Princip even knew it. From the prison cell where he
would spend the rest of his life after pulling the trigger in Sarajevo on that early summer day in
1914, he basically said that it was only a matter of time until they would find an excuse even if
he had not shot the archduke. Let’s face it. Everybody had been gearing up for it; it was only a
matter of time. European leaders couldn’t act any better than the spoiled brats they had built
themselves up to be and sit down for a second to try to consider someone else’s view point. In
the BBC’s series “The Blackadder,” Edmund Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson of “Mr.
Bean” fame, sums it up very well as to why the war started when he basically says that peace
was too much of a bother for the leaders. So, they went to war and over eleven million would
die, many more would be wounded and scarred horribly both physically and mentally over egos.
Even though they all started it, Germany would receive the blame and be forced to pay for the
mistakes of all involved.
I basically could go on listing atrocity after atrocity from the same superiority complex
that Hitler and his bunch suffered from such as the Armenian Genocide committed by the
Ottomans during the war. In fact, when I was a child, I learned that Magellan died trying to
circumnavigate the world. I never found out why until I found an excerpt from a book written by
Antonio Pigafetta who had accompanied Magellan and kept a very detailed journal of the
voyage. He wrote that Magellan was demanding supplies from the indigenous population of a
Philippine Island. When they were unable to or refused to give what Magellan had demanded,
Magellan shelled and burned their village. Word of this got around to the other islands and when
Magellan approached the next village, he was brought down in a hail of arrows. Similar story
concerning the Pilgrims—I was taught that one day, shortly after the Pilgrims arrived at
Plymouth in 1620, a scouting party was mysteriously fired on by Native Americans. My teacher
had no idea why; it just didn’t say in her teacher’s edition. Reading a portion of Captain John
Smith’s journal, of Pocahontas fame, I found that he claimed that the party had found several
burial mounds and without a second thought, started to dig into them looking for gold or other
valuables. It was shortly after that that they were fired on by most likely the relatives of those in
the mounds. During the 1890’s, miners and their families were shot and killed in Colorado
because they had the indignity to strike because they wanted to be paid in money instead of
company store credits. In the company store, prices were inflated and the credits didn’t go that
far, so many had to buy on credit. With money, they would be able to shop at other places, but
then the company wouldn’t be able to get back the wages they paid out or maintain a firm grip
on their employees. This method of paying was the basis for the song, “Sixteen Tons” made
famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1960. African Americans were no longer slaves but would
endure hardships and second class citizen status for over one hundred more years. I remember
seeing a photo of a young girl smiling while standing with a bunch of adults—all white. What is
she smiling about? She is having her picture taken with other members of her community that
had just lynched a young black man. There is a lot to be said about the African American
Community. Throughout the world whenever one group has oppressed another, there has always
been a violent backlash of vengeance. When the slaves were freed, they sought to be part of the
country and system that had enslaved them. Despite years of murder, terror, harassment and
many other depraved deprivations, they persisted, endure, and strove to be part of the solution
and not just another problem. Even today, I hear racial slurs. Funny thing, the racial slurs come
from individuals who have adopted the African American culture in dress and actions—as Paul
Mooney says, “The Black American Man is the most imitated individual on the Earth.”
I could go on for years writing about the incidents like these. Hitler wasn’t the first, the
only thing original about him was that technology had greatly improved allowing for more
efficient killing, and he was hardly the worst. Stalin is credited with the deaths of over twenty
million during his purges. This was before and during the war when he was our warm fuzzy
buddy in the east. Leopold II is credited with killing over nine million in his pursuit of far more
riches than he already had—that doesn’t include the millions of more who were maimed and had
their lives destroyed. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killed the highest percentage of a given
population. God only knows for sure how many African died during the voyage to the Americas
and while in America, or how many Indochinese perished while under French rule, or how many
Native Americans died in the dream of Manifest Destiny—code word to justify stealing their
land.
Even after the war, it just still continued. The strongest powers still played god with
former colonies. The Vietnamese wanted all foreigners out and didn’t care how. Ho Chi Minh
offered native rule which appealed to them so much that it did not matter that he was not in
control—actually the ones running the north were nothing more than puppets whose strings were
being pulled by Moscow. An Iranian Prime Minister made the mistake of wanting to use the sell
of his nation’s resources to help the people of his country to build a better life for themselves.
This ruffled the feathers of some very rich individuals in the west and the CIA came to the rescue
overthrowing the Prime Minister and installing a halfwit, playboy as shah who had no problems
selling out his people as long as he was able to live in extreme luxury. He did and in plain view
of his people. These people understood that they were doing without so he could be pampered
and rich westerners could become far richer. Thought I would mention this story incase you ever
wondered why Iran hates us so much. The shah ruled with an iron fist.
Western powers continued to play games with lesser developed countries. After the war,
there was a fear of communism and this was used as an excuse to do what they did. Salvador
Allende had been elected democratically as president of Chile. Because of his socialist leanings,
Nixon thought it was best to do all that he could to cause his overthrow. He was and actually
died in the fighting. The U.S. back the elevation of General Pinochet to Chile’s national leader
not because he was the best thing for the Chileans but because he was viewed as the best thing
for the United States and thousands of Chileans would be tortured or murdered under this
dictator’s rule. East Timor was invaded by Indonesia with the blessings of the U.S. and other
western powers because the newly independent country had leftist leanings. Reportedly, 200,000
died in this struggle fueled with weapons and aide from the U.S. before it was over. In Vietnam,
we backed Diem and his bunch of idiots. We refused to allow the scheduled free elections from
going forward because both the U.S. and Britain feared that Ho Chi Minh would win. Actually, it
seems that the western powers have back far more murderous dictators than the democracies and
freedom of choice that we preach. We only back the foreign democracy if it is what we want not
what the indigenous population desires.
Actually, it is amazing how afraid of communism that western powers are. They weren’t
that afraid of National Socialism until a war started. I guess that the main difference is that with
National Socialism the rich continue to get rich and under communism, they may actually have
to work. It is interesting that female suffrage was granted in most western nations only after the
Soviet Union granted it to its inhabitants or that labor unions were treated with respect and rights
after the 1917 revolution. Prior to the revolution, woman were laughed at, imprisoned, or felt up
by the individuals breaking up their protest to be part of the system. Unions as I mentioned
before were locked out, black balled, shot, or imprisoned. The 1917 revolution occurs and
suddenly, there is an interest in a woman voting and unions being heard.
Since the death of Hitler, American Blacks are still fighting for just equality, woman are
still struggling to be viewed as equals, homosexuals are fighting to just enjoy the same rights and
benefits that all Americans are supposed to be allowed to enjoy. Since a war that claimed the
lives of over sixty million and destroyed the lives of millions more to overthrow three dictatorial
governments, the allies have supported and aided many other dictators. Since a war that had
shocked the world with genocide, one person has died every five seconds from genocide.
After the war, the war criminals were rounded up and put on trial. Goering committed
suicide prior to his scheduled hanging. Himmler committed suicide when the allies figured out
who he was—he had shaven off his mustache and donned the uniform of an average soldier.
Mussolini was killed by partisans; Tojo was tried, found guilty, and hung. Lieutenant General
Shiro Ishii was allowed to live a full, long life. You may find yourself asking who he is. He was
the head of Unit 731. It was a research unit based in China. It was a unit that used Chinese
Prisoners to test grenades on, they performed vivisection on prisoners without anesthesia, tested
chemical and biological agents on them—in short, many died violently and horribly under Ishii’s
care. Ishii was not tried and given complete immunity in exchange for information on the germ
warfare weapons he had helped to develop. I guess if you had something of value for the
governments that were all about freedom and equal rights such as biological weapons they could
fill their arsenal with, you could buy your freedom unlike Tojo, Goering, Keitel, and so many
others. I always wonder what Hess would have told the world if he could have been interviewed.
Why was there such an interest to keep him locked up in Spandau and keep him from revealing
Nazi information? What could the world had learned from him?
I guess what I am trying to say is that Adolf Hitler was in fact a major assehole in the
history of the world. None of what I have written is an attempt to excuse him of being that. What
I am trying to explain is that Adolf was not the Anti-Christ or a monster and I fear that there is
far more damage done when he is labeled as such. He was not very charismatic. People listened
to him because he was very adept at telling them what they wanted to hear. The main message
was that you are a great people (which they already believed—remember the egos?), It wasn’t
your fault, you were victims (which was partially, true but not of an international
Jewish/communist conspiracy. They were victims of their leader’s egos and of the Treaty of
Versailles), and everyone who is German will be farting gold by the time I am done (who doesn’t
want to hear about great days coming especially after the financial oppression of post war
Germany.) However, when we classify Hitler as a monster or Anti-Christ, we are effectively
removing him from being a human being and that is all he ever was. In fact, if you think about it,
who did Hitler actually kill? Outside of Ernst Roehm, Eva Braun, Blondi—his dog, and those
during War World I, I just don’t know of anyone else that he personally killed. He is blamed
with the deaths of over eleven million, but he is only one man. Hell, I don’t even know too many
people who could count to eleven million in their lifetime. During an interview, I saw, with a
Rabbi who had survived Auschwitz, he said something very interesting that has stuck with me
since. He said that Adolf Hitler never did a thing to him. He said that he had never even met the
man. He had suffered greatly and lost loved ones, but he did not know of one thing that Adolf
Hitler did to him. He said that it had been his neighbors and gentiles he had thought were his
friends who had killed his love ones and hurt him. I feel that he needs to be remembered as just a
man. I feel that we will learn more about what happened if we realized that all of these mass
murderers such as Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Vlad III—a.k.a. Dracula, Hitler, and so many others
were just humans who gave the okay and had millions of willing triggermen volunteer. That is
all that Hitler did. He gave the okay and millions volunteered to help. They were from all
economic and ethnic backgrounds. Even Jews popped up to help with the slaughter, such as the
Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst or Jewish Ghetto Police. Companies volunteered to employ Jews so
that they could increase their profit margin with the use of slave labor.
The murders were carried out by ordinary people. Hitler was an ordinary person who just
had the ability to be at the right place, at the right time, and say the right things to motivate the
people to believe what they—at that time—knew was true and to act on what was in their hearts.
The true crime of War World II was that no one seems to have learned anything from it.
I’ll say it again, a person has died every five seconds since the death of Adolf Hitler for the same
reasons that Hitler was depicted as a demon. They have been killed by the same type of persons
who did the killings back then; average people. Think about it. How many times have you done
something to hurt or get back at someone because of something they did or just pure jealousy?
That is all that Hitler and the others used to motivate the triggermen. I guess it is far easier to
destroy than to create and that is why we jump at the chance to hurt someone. I think that when
you look at Hitler, you need to take a long searching look at yourself. Just because you can do
something to someone else doesn’t mean that you should act on it. Take the tougher road,
challenge yourself, I am sure that you will be surprised with the outcome.