You're right, Bill, it was just the Marx company, not the Marx Brothers who made those toy soldiers. (grin)

My analogy to Hitler was pretty directly intended. Hitler created burning domestic issues over supposed dire "threats" to German society by various token groups...primarily Jews and Communists. He used the torching of a major public building by someone (one wonders who) as a pretext for assuming vastly extended legal powers, which enabled him to set up a dictatorship in what had been a democracy. He gave enormous funding to the military, which allowed Germany to build the world's most powerful, modern, and effective fighting forces by 1939. He greatly increased the surveillance of his own citizenry and the powers of the police. He invaded a small power (Poland) under the ridiculous pretext that Poland was threatening to attack Germany! He even arranged a setup phony "attack" by prisoners dressed in Polish Army uniforms on a German radio station just before the German attack...the prisoners were shot dead, of course, so they told no tales). He engaged in pre-emptive, unprovoked attacks on Poland, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, and Russia, and even the USA, in fact (in Dec '41)...and I may still have left somebody out. (I don't count England or France in that list, though, because they declared war on him first...) He managed to convince his own people that all this was legitimate defence of Germany, and that Germany had, in fact, been forced to defend itself against attacks and betrayals by its "corrupt and evil" opponents. He believed he was confronting absolute evil and bringing in a New World Order which would save western civilization.

Does any of that sound a bit like the Bush administration to you? And like a whole series of things done by various American administrations in the last few decades? It sure does to me. It's been happening by degrees...just like Naziism happened by degrees. It did not all happen in one day. Things slowly got worse, and it crept up on people, and that is what has been happening in the USA for several decades...in fact since the late 40's, I'd say.

The USA and Russia took up where Germany left off, building world empires for themselves. Russia went bankrupt. Now the USA figures it has the whole playing field wrapped up, and it can invade anyone it wants to, bomb anyone it wants to, and assasinate anyone it wants to.

There is a price to pay for that kind of megalomania. I don't know when it will be paid, but the time will come. Maybe it will be long after all of us are dead and gone, I don't know.

Regarding the hate propaganda dispensed by both the Axis and the Allies in WWII...and the hate propaganda continued by the Allies after it was all over (which I witnessed firsthand as a young boy)...you say, "Let's face it---we had to win or you would not be able to write the things you have written."

That's right, Bill, we had to win. But one does not NEED hate propaganda to win a war! A war can be won very effectively with nothing but honest patriotism, courage, and love of one's own people, it does not require any concocting of ridiculous propaganda movies and magazines to engender hatred of another people. It does not require the stereotyping of a whole other nation as vicious subhumans, nor does it require a belief in your citizenry that the people you are fighting are inherently "evil" (which they must certainly are NOT, in almost every case). It just requires faith and devotion in the values of one's own system and a deep desire to defend it effectively.

Anyone who panders to the sort of zenophobic garbage that was reflected everywhere in the grotesque propaganda I saw in North America in the 50's and 60's against Germans and Japanese (or Communists, for that matter) can hardly claim to be any saner or more decent than the supposedly "evil" people and systems he is whipping up hate against, can he?

Demagogues are demagogues, and lies are lies. Doesn't matter what side of the conflict they are on.