I am not an English professor, but even I understand this is not great poetry. That aside, I decided to include it here because it described the atmosphere in the United States with respect to the NAZI menace as it was understood at the time. I've also added a few references which provide background.
This map offers a visceral look:
Image Source
With that image in mind, my Pal's reflections:
MEIN KAMP
Wrote a book that he might tell
How he would work his hellish hate
Upon the world till he could make
His will the law.
Now truth would never once prevail
Now honor cause his plan to fail
But lies and trickery would be
The means by which the world would see
The death of decency.
“I’ll lie” said he, “until, forsooth
Lies be accepted for the truth”
“I’ll crush the silly tendency
Toward justice, which is prudery
To the super race”.
“I’ll lay each person ‘neath the sod
Who looks not on my as his god
And moans of child, or mother frought
With sorry shall mean but naught
To my tomorrow”.
“Greater than any gone before
I’ll bathe the soil in human gore
I’ll teach the world that might is right
‘Till liberty finds eternal night
And I am lord of all”.
And so this demon stirred a brew
Of beastly hate against the jew
Then turned upon his neighbors near
And sowed distrust and deadly fear
To gain his ends.
Then looked he on this land of ours,
Insanely and for greater powers
And blinded to all sense of right
He failed to gauge our greater might
Until too late.
And now in deadly hate we face
The leader of that “master race”
And never shall the battle cease
Till we have won a righteous peace
And Hitler’s day is done.
--Will Ellis Miller, 1942
Related Reading
- Maps from 1942 of the never-was Nazi invasion of North America
- German-occupied Europe (A timeline)
- German Administration of Europe, 1942 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
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| “A self-made man has to be so devilishly careful not to expose the unfinished parts."--Will Ellis Miller | |