THE RISE OF THE FOURTH REICH

Nazis killed Kennedy! Nazis control Wall Street! Nazis are fluoridating the water supply! Nazis are overhead, zooming across the sky in UFOs!

One used to read such things in a couple of sources back in the day: John Birch Society pamphlets and the Illuminatus! trilogy fringe of the sci-fi set. We suppose those authors were serious, if perhaps out of their minds. Certainly Marrs—whose 1989 book Crossfire was the basis of the Oliver Stone conspiracy-fest movie JFK—seems to be serious, even though he eases off on the pedal, as if a touch embarrassed, when his charges get too weird. Thus, after excitedly postulating that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945, Marrs (Rule By Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids, 2000, etc.) clears his throat to say that Hitler’s fate “is immaterial, a moot point. What is certain is that Hitler’s legacy—National Socialism—lives on.” True, in little backwater towns in Pomerania and Alabama where subpar proletarians fear not being part of the master race. But at Yale? According to the author, yes. Skull and Bones, proud fraternity of Bush and Kerry, is “merely the Illuminati in disguise,” and one of its songs is to the tune of Deutschland Über Alles (“The Germany Song”). Given that Skull and Bones and the Mormons populate the ranks of the CIA, well, small wonder that JFK got popped. He knew too much, you see, about time-traveling Nazis—oh, yes, the German scientists whom we brought over after World War II had some very sophisticated physics at their service, and they all went to work for Lockheed, Martin Marietta and other defense contractors “when many American engineers in the aircraft industry were being laid off.” (Duh! The Americans didn’t know how to time travel.) And as for the Cold War space race? The Nazis were in charge on both sides of the Iron Curtain. But wouldn’t that imply that the Soviet and American governments were one and the same?

Considering that there’s no lack of homegrown fascists to worry about, this wacky book is the equivalent of a Chicken Little story. Caveat lector.