America First

This blog is Red Baron's introduction to the topic at the February Stammtisch of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft.

The official Inauguration photo

Not an hour goes by without a new message from Washington startling the media. President Trump said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "The US will take over the Gaza Strip, we will do a job with it too, we will own it. We're gonna take over that piece, so we're gonna develop it. We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal, I don’t want be cute, I don’t want to be the wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East. This could be something that could be so magnificent. The Riviera of the Middle East."

Reaction of Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff

When asked how many Palestinians would have to be displaced for his luxury real estate development, Trump said, "All of them, we are talking probably about 1 million 7 people maybe 1 million 8, but I think all of them."

For the operation, Trump did not rule out the use of ground troops. Gaza is only rubble and ashes. The 1.8 million Palestinians could lead a "nice life elsewhere and not have to worry about dying there every day." Their resettlement to other countries in the region is intended to make room for the "people of the world."

Later in a press conference, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, paddled back, saying, "The President has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza" and clearing the territory. The Palestinian population would not be driven out, and any relocation would be temporary.


Even before taking office, Trump was "flooding the zone" with bold and sometimes legally dubious actions that challenged the media to keep up. The oldest president in US history wants to demonstrate determination and ability to act.

Minutes after his inauguration, he began signing almost one hundred executive orders - in the Weimar Republic, these were called Notverordnungen (emergency decrees).

Why this haste?

Let's not forget that Trump has two key opponents. In addition to the "Trifecta," he is running out of time.

Trifecta states are those in which Democrats hold the governorship and have majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The most powerful example is California, with a population of almost 40 million.

Under the new president, the Republican Party holds the majority in both houses of Congress. In the House of Representatives, they have 235 seats, while the Democrats hold 200. In the Senate, the Republicans have a majority of 53 seats compared to 47 for the Democrats, allowing Trump to govern unrestrained for the next two years.

However, in the 2026 midterm elections, the majority in one or both houses could flip, making governing more difficult.

Journalists have identified an even greater Trump opponent: reality.

The new president is barely in touch with reality. One of the main reasons he was elected was his promise to bring down inflation. At the same time, he loves tariffs, which are import duties supposed to secure American jobs and strengthen the domestic market.

In 2015, President Obama officially renamed the nation's highest mountain, the 6,190-metre-high McKinley*, to Denali, as the indigenous people of Alaska have called it for thousands of years.
*Gold miners had christened it in 1896 after the US president

Trump rescinded the renaming with an executive order. It was another Trump attack on former President Barack Obama's legacy.

The president justified his decision by saying that William McKinley had made the country very rich through tariffs and his talent.

Every economics student knows before the first semester that tariffs make imported goods more expensive. A 25% tariff on goods imported from Mexico affects 43% of US agricultural products, and 90% of avocados consumed in the States are grown south of the border.

Back in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt criticized the tariffs introduced by President Herbert Hoover under pressure from Republican hardliners, "They are 'the inevitable result of bringing about retaliations by the other nations of the world' and are leading the USA 'on the road to ruin.'"

Trump wants to spend the next four years destroying FDR's legacy, too.

The US has a voluntary following of partners who rely primarily on the extended defense umbrella. The world powers Russia and China can only dream of this. Russia is blackmailing Belarus militarily and economically, and China has taken over Cambodia and Laos under economic duress. The USA doesn't need that. Harvard historian Charles S. Maier once wrote of an "empire by invitation."

However, Trump's understanding of international politics predates 1945. For all their differences, only big men and strong states that can impose all sorts of things on smaller and weaker states within their zones of influence count for him.

However, the USA's partners are stronger and more self-confident than Cambodia. So, Trump's verbal attacks on Canada, Panama, and Denmark could jeopardize the good relationship with America's allies.

As a Danish MEP said in the EU Parliament concerning Greenland to applause, "Let me put it in words that you might understand,  Mister Trump. Fuck off."

Trump is pursuing an agenda of "maximum disruption," with which he is attempting to largely undermine the basic US democratic principle of checks and balances.

The legislature is in his hands; the Supreme Court, which recently granted the president almost all-encompassing immunity from prosecution, is conservative.

Big tech has been given "co-governing power." Trump's advisor, Elon Musk, now has insight into US finances.

What worries me most is the gesunde Menschenverstand the Nazis governed the 3rd Reich by. Trump says he is gifted with it.

Here is a recent example: When asked why he believed that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) was responsible for the collision of two airplanes over Washington, Trump answered, "I have common sense, and unfortunately, a lot of people don't."

Trump's presidency is a reminder that democracy cannot be taken for granted.

Apparently, only Melania knows how to stop Him.

Democracy is an accomplishment. It is fragile and sometimes uncomfortable, but it is the best thing we have.

Subsequently, the following discussion at the Stammtisch turned around one point: How can we protect our precious democracy.

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Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft Basel

The Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft Basel (General Reading Society) was founded on October 26, 1787. This makes it 20 years older than the Museumsgesellschaft Freiburg, established in 1807 as a reading society.

Lesegesellschaften are children of the Enlightenment. Since their foundation, reading societies have offered emancipated citizens a wide range of reading material, including books, newspapers, and magazines.

The website of the Basel reading society reads as follows:

The goals of the seven-member founding fathers have remained the same throughout the years: to facilitate access to literature and contemporary knowledge for an interested population, to offer them a space for lively conversation and contemplative hours, or simply to enjoy a cup of coffee or tea.

On January 25, members of the Freiburger Museumsgesellschaft visited the premises of the Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft Basel.

©Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft Basel/Lang

The building is located directly next to the Basel Minster church and had been occupied before the Reformation by the Canons. The Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft acquired the house in 1832 and renovated it extensively in the Neogothic style.

President Dr. David Marc Hoffmann welcomed the visitors at the entrance.

In the lobby. Board of supporters and patrons of the Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft.

In the social room, the President gave a witty introduction.

View from the large reading room on the Rhine and the Roche towers in Kleinbasel.

View on the Basel Minster church through the oriel window of the Canons.

Stained glass in the oriel window: Die Lesegesellschaft in Basel 1834

A wide range of daily newspapers in many languages invite visitors to read.

A reading corner with a view on Münsterplatz

Order through historic enamel signs ©2023 Ivana Suppan) and ...

... the catalog on classic index cards

Consulting the catalog

Books

More books

Book treasures at the Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft: Dr. Hoffmann presents Erasmus of Rotterdam's famous collection of proverbs, the Adagia. Erasmus began collecting Latin and Greek proverbs in 1500 - most of them from ancient pagan literature - until 1536, when he died in Basel. The collection contains more than 4000 proverbs; it sold like hotcakes and made Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus a rich man.

  

A 1677 edition of Summa Theologica S. Thomae Aquitanis

Our group had lunch opposite, on Münsterplatz 16 in the Reischacher Hof, the seat of the Lesegesellschaft before 1833. The Restaurant zum Isaak is named after Isaak Iselin, the founder of GGG, the Gesellschaft für das Gute und Gemeinnützige (Society for the Good and the Common Good).

Erasmushausin Basel on Bäumlingasse. The name promises a lot, but the visit is somewhat disappointing. The building is not a museum in memory of the great scholar but an antiquarian bookshop, albeit exclusive. It specializes in purchasing and selling manuscripts, autographs, and specially printed books from the 15th to the 19th century. Erasmus spent the last year of his life in this house.

An engraving photographed at Erasmushaus

A final look at Basel Minster and the Allgemeine Lesegesellschaft building

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Otherwise, it was quiet

was a photo exhibition showing the damage the air raid caused on Freiburg on November 27, 1944. Red Baron reported about the bombing in 2013 and the commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary this year here and here.

The Münsterbauverein showed partly unpublished photos of the bomb damage in Freiburg. Red Baron had planned to visit the exhibition early but never found the time. Fortunately, it was extended until January 31, 2025. 

I finally visited the exhibition on Saturday, February 1. I was lucky it was still open. Here are some photos I took at the exhibition and some earlier ones.

This well-known iconic aerial photo shows the apparently undamaged Minster church amid the ruined historical center in the spring of 1946.

The church had not taken a direct hit, but several high-explosive bombs had struck in the immediate vicinity, just short of the northern transept façade. Due to its sturdy construction, the building withstood the massive blast waves of the bombs, the hurled cobblestones of the Münsterplatz, and the bomb splinters.

Only the roof was uncovered, and more than 80,000 tiles were needed to recover it. The city of Freiburg provided 35,000 intended for a school; another 25,000 came from an anonymous donor. The roof had to be sealed as quickly as possible, i.e., before the attended snow at Christmas.

Freiburg's schoolchildren stepped in, climbed the roof, and covered it.

The young people set up and used the medieval wheel to transport the tiles upwards.

A well-deserved siesta.

The children did their best and proudly stood on a heap of rubble. Although the roof was not fully covered on Christmas Eve, it was tight, as tarpaulins provisionally covered the remaining holes. The roof was finished at the end of 1945 when a generous donation of tiles arrived from the Basel Minster church.

Here, younger children play in the rubble before the Minster church.

Photo with a view of the choir. The Andlau Palais lies in ruins.

Mourning the bomb victims near the Minster church.

The Basler Hof

Siegesdenkmal and Karlskaserne

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Grafeneck

On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, a commemorative event was held in Freiburg at the Kaisersaal of the Historisches Kaufhaus. The event was entitled Shame, Silence, Grief, Trauma. Nazi euthanasia and the consequences for the families of those murdered.

Red Baron arrived early, but Freiburg officials and celebrities had already taken half of the limited number of seats.

After a musical introduction, Lord Mayor Martin Horn welcomed the attendees. With right-wing populists on the rise in many countries, he warned in his speech against a repeat of the political events in 1933. Within just two months, the Nazis had transformed the democracy of the Weimar Republic into an authoritarian regime.

Red Baron is not as pessimistic as his mayor because the political situation 2025 is very different from 1933. Large sections of the population rejected the Weimar Republic. They had become accustomed to an authoritarian state during the Second Reich and were thus alienated from popular rule. Further shaken by economic crises and unemployment, this democracy only lasted fifteen years.

This evening, Red Baron tried to cross Freiburg's Platz der Alten Synagoge
and was caught in a crowd demonstrating against the Right.

This photo (©dpa), taken from the opposite side, is more impressive,
with an estimated 15,000 people demonstrating.

Although Germany's economy is weakening and many people fear for their jobs, a democratic self-image has been established for 75 years, at least in the western states of the Federal Republic. Frequently, people take to the streets and demonstrate against the right-wing AfD and for democracy.

Then Thomas Stöckle, director of the Grafeneck Memorial, gave a lecture on the Nazi euthanasia program.

On the clearance of the destruction of life unworthy to live.
Its measure and its form.

Already in the early 1920s, doctors and lawyers propagated eugenics, racial hygiene, and the extermination of unworthy life.

You contribute here. Up to the age of 60,
a person with a hereditary disease costs, on average, 50,000 Reichsmarks.

Under the Nazis, posters were used to draw attention to the economic burden of preserving people with hereditary diseases.

On September 1. 1939, Hitler himself authorized the destruction of life unworthy of living, euphemistically called Gnadentod (mercy killing).

T4 Vernichtungszentren (extermination centers)

The measures were carried out under Aktion T4, which stands for the systematic mass murder of more than 70,000 people with physical, mental, and psychological disabilities in Germany from 1940 to 1941.

Weltkriegskrüppel (Cripples of the Great War) at Grafeneck in 1922

On October 14, 1939, the Grafeneck "cripple home" was the first to be confiscated by the government. "It is used for the purposes of the Reich and is to be cleared of inmates and nursing staff."

An information sheet defined the criteria according to which people were to be registered for the euthanasia program. They were deported from their previous sanitoriums and nursing homes to the extermination centers by decree of November 23, 1939.

On January 18, 1940, 25 patients from the Bavarian Eglfing-Haar sanatorium and nursing home in Munich were the first to be gassed with carbon monoxide at Grafeneck,

Nazi officials systematically lied about the cause of death to the relatives of those murdered in the extermination centers. In this context, it is shocking to read the complaint of a father on October 14, 1940, who had to learn of the death of his son, a combatant in the Great War:

According to your communication of August 23, 1940, my son Otto Bögel left your institution on August 22 to take his last walk. Despite this long time ago, I have not yet been reimbursed for my son's 39 days' overpayment of 159.51 Reichsmarks food allowance. If this does not happen in the next few days, I will be forced to complain elsewhere.

It is a tremendous impertinence to believe anything about this matter because people talk with shock and horror up and down the country about what is happening at Grafeneck.

In any case, the Fatherland's gratitude for former combatants could not be expressed more blatantly than through such a heroic death. And then it can hardly be surpassed if one still has the audacity to write that all medical efforts have unfortunately been unsuccessful.

In any case, a higher judge will pass judgment on this matter in his own time.

A deeply saddened father

Apparently, Aktion T4 was known to large sections of the population. When the Archbishop of Münster, Count Clemens August von Galen*, spoke of murder in his sermons and hinted at the killing of war invalids, Hitler gave a verbal order on August 24, 1941, to temporarily halt Aktion T4 to calm unrest in church circles. However, the killing of unworthy lives continued in secret.
*called the Lion of Münster for his harsh critics of the Nazi regime in his sermons

In a balance sheet as of December 1, 1941, statistician Edmund Brandt calculated the cost savings for the German Reich, "70,273 people were disinfected. This results in an annual cost saving for the German Reich of 88 million Reichsmarks."

Stolperstein (stumbling block) in Freiburg for Flora Baer (©Marlies Meckel)

Michelle Kaye then reported on her great-grandmother Flora Baer, who died at the age of 48. She was deported to Grafeneck together with around 70 other people on August 18, 1940, and murdered in the gas chamber on the same day.

Let such inhumanities never happen again.

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