Tom Araya skrev 2021-08-18 15:21:21 följande:
Som jag förstår blev GSV pronazist senare. Artikeln publicerades dock flera år efter intervjun...
Så jag kan inte låta bli att fundera över om GSV's uttryck har färgats av hans egna åsikter. Jag kan inte heller låta bli att fundera över hur historiker värderar hans artikel av det möjliga skälet.
Ja, det är ju bra att fundera på saker.. men dina funderingar säger väl egentligen inte så mycket om vad som egenetligen hände inom GSV - Germanofil från 10-talet och och nazivurmare från tidigt 20-tal..
Finns det egentligen någonting som du kan stödja dina funderingar på som visar att GSV skulle haft skäl att missrepresentera Hitlers ord i sin egen publikation (eftersom ingen annan ville trycka intervjun)
Nä, jag säger att du är ute på tunn is i fråga om att så tvivel om GVSs intervju av Hitler - endera är det en tankevurpa utan dess like eller så är det ett medvetet försök att vilseleda .. dvs det som kallas desinformation eller propaganda..
s-lib012.lib.uiowa.edu/bai/johnson2.htm
"While riding the crest of his poetic fame, Viereck also was becoming increasingly involved in German-American social and political movements. Prodded by his father, encouraged by prestigious friends like Muensterberg, and probably subconsciously goaded by his kinship to the ruling family of Germany, he gradually turned into a Germanophile between 1907 and 1912.
11 He helped his father edit a German-language journal,
Deutsche Vorkämpfer, between 1907 and 1911, and in the latter year he took charge of his own German language version of
Current Literature which be called
Rundschau zweier Welten (Review of Two Worlds). In 1908 be wrote a best-selling book,
Confessions of a Barbarian, on his impressions of Germany and the United States after his first trip to Europe. Three years later he lectured before student groups at the University of Berlin as a self-appointed "exchange poet."
12 He joined his father and other German-Americans before World War I in promoting opposition to the prohibition movement and in favoring a relaxation of Puritan moral codes as in the Sabbath laws, and a continuation of unrestricted immigration.
13In promoting a plan to stimulate cultural exchange between Germany and the United States, Viereck obtained the support of Theodore Roosevelt. The ex-President spoke before a gathering of wealthy German-Americans in the fall of 1910 to help Viereck obtain backing for the proposed Rundschau zweier Welten.14 Returning the favor, Viereck came out in 1912 for Roosevelt's candidacy. He even wrote a poem, "Song of Armageddon," to promote the cause and recited it before New York audiences.15 After Roosevelt's failure in the election, Viereck turned his attention to the International, a literary monthly that he acquired to replace the faltering Rundschau. Like many of the other "little magazines" burgeoning in the prewar renaissance, the International offered public exposure to avant garde as well as to conventional poets and writers. Unlike most other literary journals, it gave considerable attention to literary developments in Germany. Viereck's attempts to stimulate cultural interchange with Germany were largely a failure, however, in that neither of the two countries showed much inclination to learn from the other. Although German-Americans were proud of their own ethnic heritage, few of them showed much interest in sponsoring or promoting the exchange of poets, writers, or other cultural interests. National pride and parochial self-interest on both sides worked against any appreciable cultural interchange.16
At the outset of World War I Viereck agreed, after consulting with Muensterberg, to do his part in publicizing the German point of view so as to counteract the expected onslaught of propaganda from England and France.17 Most foreign news to America did come from English sources.18 Viereck promptly launched The Fatherland weekly magazine to present the German side and to promote strict American neutrality. Beyond that, he agreed in the fall of 1914 to assist German propagandists sent to the United States to promote sympathy for the German cause. Serving in what he later admitted to be a "propaganda cabinet," he accepted German money in printing hundreds of thousands of pamphlets and booklets as well as his journal.19 He was with Heinrich Albert, the propaganda chief, shortly before the latter's briefcase was stolen from a New York City elevated car by an American secret service agent in 1915. The public exposure of its contents, which followed by a few weeks the sinking of the Lusitania, went far toward discrediting and debilitating German propaganda efforts in this country. After America entered the war, Viereck changed the title of The Fatherland to Viereck's and then later to American Monthly and altered its tone to show loyalty to the American cause. Nevertheless, on more than one occasion he barely escaped being abducted by patriot-vigilantes who aimed to escort him out of town. He was also interrogated by the Justice Department. Although he carefully avoided violating either the Espionage or Sedition Acts, the Poetry Society of America and the American Authors League found fit to expel him from membership because of his past affiliations with German propagandists and his unwillingness to condemn unequivocally German war policies after America entered the war.20 Viereck also incurred the enmity of Theodore Roosevelt, and after the war was over he published a book that attempted to prove Roosevelt's psychological ambivalence and inconsistency.21
Disillusioned and even enraged by the Versailles Treaty, Viereck turned against Wilson with a vengeance. By 1920 he had converted his American Monthly into a vehicle for discrediting the treaty and the League of Nations, for vindicating Germany of the war-guilt clause, and for encouraging an isolationist stance in foreign affairs. Although he had little respect for Harding, he worked in 1920 to get German-Americans to vote against Cox and Roosevelt, and in 1924 he used his journal to campaign for Robert LaFollette. Despite his political involvements, he was basically apolitical or nonideological in that, as he admitted, he was more interested in the dynamics of the personality and style of the leader than he was in the policies or ideology he represented.22
In short, there was an amoral and ambivalent bent in Viereck's character which made him appear, for a time, as a liberal and very tolerant individual. Thus, in the 1920's he wrote articles reflecting sympathy for Hitler and Ludendorff on the one hand and displaying deep respect for Shaw, Freud, and Einstein on the other. He became in this period the chief American spokesman for the ex-Kaiser in Holland. He also interviewed Hitler in early 1923 and published the interview in his own journal after several newspaper editors turned it down as not newsworthy. At that time he concluded, "If he lives, Hitler for better or for worse, is sure to make history."23
...
In view of these affiliations, it comes as something of a shock to find Viereck serving as a publicist or propagandist for Nazi Germany after Hitler's rise to power. Except for Nazi anti-Semitism, which he mildly criticized and rationalized as peripheral to the movement, he sympathized with what he believed was the Nazi Party's rightful objective of restoring Germany to a place of honor and equality of power among the great nations of the world.29 He considered Hitler to be a genius, if somewhat neurotic in regard to the Jews.30 In 1933 he helped edit a pro-Nazi publication of the German tourist bureau in this country. "