President Trump is not the first nor will he be the last American to have, should we say a fascination with fascism. After all he has quoted Mussolini, and he shown shown a fondness for right wing strongmen. After all as Trump said Mussolini had some good things to say. Mussolini did make the trains run on time.

Henry Ford was known to be antisemitic and he was a supplier of arms to Adolph Hitler.

Charles Lindbergh was, to put it kindly a non-interventionist, but as a member of the anti-war group America First, he indicated that he thought it was wrong to attack Germany. He specifically spoke against the British, the Jewish community and the Americans for wanting to fight the Germans during World War II. Instead he wanted our efforts to be against the Soviet Union.

During our history we have been quite willing to work with Nazis as long as they were part of an effort to work against the Soviet Union. The truth be told is that we have had much too much of a cozy relationship to former Nazis after World War II, if we thought that they would be helpful during the Cold War against our rival the Soviet Union.

During the prewar years, a Nazi rally of the American Bund was pretty much the Zenith of Nazi power in the prewar period. Around 20,000 Nazi supporters showed up at the rally at Madison Square Garden. But after the war, the newly formed CIA quickly worked to bring the Nazi scientists to America. This was clearly important as these men of science such as Werner Von Braun helped to develop the American missile system. But what the CIA did in secret with former SS members was very questionable from an ethical standpoint.

It all began when the CIA knowingly brought to their headquarters in Virginia, General Gehlen. Gehlen was a suspected war criminal who was cooling his heels waiting to be tried for war crimes when he was brought to America and asked if he would be willing to head up an effort against the Soviet Union. Of course he jumped at the chance and asked the CIA officers to help bring his cohorts, his fellow SS officers who were waiting to be tried for their suspected crimes against humanity to America as well, because of their knowledge of the workings of the Russians from the East. This was an agreement with the devil, men who we knew to be criminals, were protected, in essence for information and assistance from them against the Soviets with no guarantee but their word that this kind of assistance would be forthcoming.

We, Americans, as well as the Catholic Church knowingly set up ratlines to expedite the escape of many Nazis to South America, Spain and even Syria.

The story of Klaus Barbie exemplifies the sort of secret assistance that occurred to assist these evil men. It is well known that the clergy protected Barbie until 1951 when a monsignor handed over the notorious Barbie to the CIA.

The CIA was willing to work with known war criminals if they thought that they could be of help in our dealings with, Stalin and the Soviet Union. Nazis were okay to work with as long as they were anti-communist.  To my way of thinking this partnership was an agreement with some of the most evil people known in all of history, and it was never proven that these former Nazis from Germany ever gave the Americans any intelligence that was worthwhile. In return for this perhaps empty promise, the Nazis escaped the gallows.

Now here we are some 60 plus years forward and Donald Trump can not seem to find anything wrong with being associated with Nazis. He did not condemn them at Charlottesville when it would have been quite easy to do so. Even Senator Hatch recognized the significance of this when he told the story of how his brother died in action fighting the Nazis.

President Trump is now closely affiliated with Putin of Russia. Now it can be said that Putin is no longer a communist but rather an oligarch who is more interested in money and power than he is interested in being aligned with communism. Trump has no problem condemning Cuba or North Korea but curiously he has never said anything negative about his friend Putin. It gets more and more curious does it not!

Trump finds strongmen a group of men to be admired. He has been known to compliment the criminal leader of the Philippines. He has been quite complimentary of Putin. And most troubling is his affinity with the manner and means that were used by Mussolini and Hitler in the strategies that they used to take power in their respective countries.

Beware America of the possibility that Donald Trump could use the pretext of a new war to gain popularity and to further endanger our freedoms by using a war to take more of our freedoms away. Americans tend to unify when we are at war. Trump could use this strategy or set up a fake attack on our own country by a supposed terrorist to justify a further erosion of our liberty and freedoms in return for the promise of safety and security.