Hertling on Trust: ‘If I Don’t Return’

Review by Bill Doughty––

Hertling

Hertling’s book “If I Don’t Return” is much more than its meaningful subtitle: “A Father’s Wartime Journal.” The war journal is a vital part, but this book is also about history, philosophy,  self-reflection, self-help, and –– most especially –– leadership. It’s also about building character based on trust.

His book for everyone, because nearly everyone understands and values the importance of trust. Hertling shares many personal lessons and beliefs, including this gem:

“…Over the years, I've come to believe one thing. That life and leadership are forged by one's character. And character is molded by experiences but defined by integrity, shared trust, enumerated values, honest humility, and different kinds of love.” Shared trust!

“Trust,” along with the other qualities he lists, is a foundation of core values and good leadership. Hertling saw the value of trust in 1990/1991 during the First Gulf War, when he helped kick Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

Trust in Unity

George H. W. Bush

“Looking back now at Desert Storm, I see how trust was the thread running through it all. At the unit level, trust was instinctive and immediate. We built it in our squadron, and President George H.W. Bush [Navy World War II Veteran, left*] generated it in our citizens. Chairman Powell and Secretary of Defense Cheney reinforced it in their conversations with politicians and the American people. We often didn't have the same in our later conflicts.

In combat, you cannot hedge or calculate trust—it must be whole. 

On a Bradley or Abrams tank crew, drivers trust commanders to navigate through the night; gunners trust leaders to identify targets; wingmen trust each other to cover their flanks. Once proven, that trust became indestructible. That was what carried us through exhaustion, confusion, and chaos. Desert Storm also enjoyed broad trust at home: 

Its objectives were clear, the coalition strong, the war short. That was due, at least in part, to the fact that Desert Storm was a quick war, and Americans like quick wars, with a lot of explosions shown on TV. 

By contrast, trust would not be as stable during our later counterinsurgency and counterterrorism wars. Soldiers in combat zones continued to trust what they could see: their buddies beside them, their leaders in the field, their sense of mission, and their practiced competency. But they couldn’t personally affect the shifting political calculations in Washington, the support of the citizenry of the country, or the intelligence that shaped actions. The disadvantages of long wars — counterinsurgencies and counterterrorism fights that took much longer to generate success-and the fleeting attention span of our citizenry caused a loss of interest in what the professional military force (less than 1 percent of our nation) was accomplishing. And the results of Operation Iraqi Freedom (and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan) stretched that trust thin, often to the breaking point. The false intelligence about chemical weapons, the changing conditions and mission creep, and the president's advice to citizens to keep going to the malls contributed to that deterioration of interest and trust.”

Trust in Your Eyes and Ears

When a reporter told President Trump (left) the other day that Navy families are concerned about their Sailors because of deteriorating conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), he replied, “No they’re not.” When the reporter asked if the carrier was deployed too long, he replied, “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed gratitude to the Sailors aboard the carrier, but claimed news reports detailing poor living conditions and mental health struggles on the carrier were false or distorted and “completely misrepresented.”

But after a visit to USS Abraham Lincoln, Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander, U.S. Central Command, who is the top U.S. commander in the war with Iran, said, “I applaud Lincoln’s leadership –– the senior enlisted leaders in the Chief Petty Officers Mess in particular –– for stepping up and making mental health and crew resilience a leadership priority.”

In the face of rising prices and Americans’ concerns about the economy, Trump –– who along with his family is making billions of dollars while in office –– said several weeks ago, “I don't think about Americans' financial situation, I don't think about anybody.”

Opinion polls show most Americans hear that lack of care and so have a lack of trust.

Trust in ‘Johari’

In “If I Don’t Return,” Hertling refers to more than a dozen other thinkers and authors. One of those authors is emergency medicine physician Dr. Omayra Mansfield, who wrote "The Trust Transformation."

"In her book, Dr. Mansfield relayed a core message that is simple but profound: Before you can build trust in others  –– your patients, their families, your colleagues and leaders — you must first trust yourself. Leadership requires clarity of individual values, consistency of action, and authenticity of presence. She knows this is true in an emergency room, and I know it is true in a combat zone. It is something that must also remain true for citizens and policymakers. When trust is absent –– when leaders are inconsistent, opaque, or self-deceiving, and when employees or citizens don't feel a part of the team — trust quickly collapses. 

Many of those who study trust often revert to a model called the ‘Johari Window.’ It's a rhetorical tool used to explain self-awareness and trust between individuals. In combat, soldiers operate almost entirely in the ‘open quadrant’ of that theoretical window — we depend on what we know about each other, gained from close connection, shared hardship, and repetitive experiences that all lead toward trust. There are no illusions about fear, courage, or capabilities. But in other groups— larger teams in different situations — the Johari Window posits that participants often exist in the ‘hidden’ or ‘blind’ quadrants. Some individuals often withhold their full motives (hidden), fail to see their own limitations (blind), or are misled by information that is just not true. 

The result is a breakdown in trust … I’m convinced that trust is the building block of relationships, leadership ... and life. Trust is gained in myriad ways, and, as I once heard someone say, trust is earned in drops but lost in buckets. Trust is relatively easy to build in small teams, if one knows what it takes to build it. But it is much harder to sustain when hidden motives, blind spots, egos, and personal agendas that are often present in larger teams enter the equation. 

Interestingly, military theoretician Carl Von Clausewitz described something similar in broader terms for warfare. He wrote of war as a paradoxical ‘trinity’ — a  balance of passion, chance, and reason — that found its practical expression in the relationship between the government, its army, and its people. Each had to trust the other. Citizens had to believe their government's cause was just. Armies had to believe their political leaders would use their sacrifices wisely. And governments had to trust their soldiers to execute with discipline and competence. If one leg of that triangle fails or is even oft kilter, if confidence collapses, the nation that goes to war will suffer significant consequences. Ukraine's resistance to Russias invasion in 2022 illustrated this perfectly: Ukraine's people trusted their government, its army trusted both the people and their leaders, and the government trusted the army enough to unleash it with broad support. That synergy sustained Ukraine when the odds seemed impossible. Trust, in that sense, is not just personal — it is strategic. 

As a nation — as a government, as citizens, and as an army — we were successful in building the trust needed to execute Desert Storm inside our units, between the government and the people, and between the people and the army. But during later wars, we found ourselves in a place where no military leader, and certainly no government, wants to be. Despite tough fighting by courageous soldiers, competent diplomacy of the State Department, and the desire of governmental officials to achieve stated goals, three of the other wars — Vietnam, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom — were failures. In my view, a big part of the reason boiled down to an unbalanced Clausewitzian triangle. A lack of trust. 

To me, the lesson is simple. Trust is critical between people, between the citizenry of a nation and its government, and between governmental officials and their army. Find ways to build trust — improve communication, eliminate misinformation, define the mission, maintain humility, ensure competency and integrity, create understanding — and it will bring you closer to success. All seemingly easy, but to paraphrase Clausewitz, the simplest things are often the most difficult.”

Trust in Truth

Hertling writes, “What I learned from both Iraq and Ukraine is that opportunism thrives in the vacuum left by failed institutions. People who have no faith that their government will provide food, water, fuel, or security will take matters into their own hands.”

In the United States, great social change has been brought about both violently (the Civil War) and nonviolently (FDR’s New Deal after the Great Depression). MLK’s Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s achieved integration and LBJ’s Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act through a non-violent strategy but with violent repercussions

Hertling warns:

“In America, we've seen moments when institutions faltered and riots turned cities into places of fear and lawlessness. In those moments, ordinary people are swept up in mob behavior that tears at the fabric of community and civility.

The lesson is stark: Without trusted institutions, the human condition bends toward chaos. Leaders — whether military or civilian — must not only prepare to confront that chaos but also work tirelessly to prevent it by ensuring their people are cared for, protected, and respected. A government that cares for its people will always be more resilient than one that leaves them desperate.”

On a hopeful note, he writes, “… Chaos, if left unchecked, will consume everything. But with strong leadership, institutions built on trust, and the kind of professionalism modeled by leaders like Henadii Vorobiov in Ukraine, and later Barham Salih in Iraq, societies can resist the pull of opportunism and corruption and instead move toward stability and hope for the future.”

Trust in Communication

Hertling’s life’s path has led him into public affairs and journalism as a national security analyst. Again, “trust” is at the ore of communication with the public.

While serving in Iraq again in 2003 as an assistant division commander in the 1st Armored Division, his commanding general, Marty Dempsey, directed him to communicate with three distinct audiences in three very different ways. Above all, to do so with honesty and integrity, especially when communicating with the American people. Hertling received this directive: “Expand information operations, public affairs, and command information.”

“At the time, those three terms had distinct doctrinal meanings. Information operations referred to the full spectrum of activities designed to influence our enemies and protect our own decision-making. IO consisted of psychological operations, electronic warfare, deception, and information security. Public affairs was the communication of facts to the public, usually through the media, and it focused on telling the army's story truthfully and effectively. We were not allowed to use information operations against journalists. Finally, command information referred to internal communication within the force: that is, messaging that kept soldiers, families, and the army community informed so rumors didn't fill gaps.

Dempsey understood something few others did: In modern conflict, these three were interconnected. If we wanted to stabilize Iraq, we couldn't just fight insurgents; we had to protect information from the enemy, but we also had to win narratives, build trust, and tell the truth.”

Telling the truth is the foundation of building trust. And trust is, again, “earned in drops but lost in buckets.” The three pillars of communication may be interconnected, but they must be distinct to their audience. That’s why public affairs interaction to the public or internal communication with troops must never include lies or disinformation of “information operations,” strictly used against bonafide enemies. And the media are not "enemies of the people."

In 2026, we are right to demand leaders of good character who tell the truth and build trust.

[This is the second in a three-part series of reviews of this important book.]

*Former President George H.W. Bush departs the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Jan. 8, 2009.  (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Joel S. Kolodziejczak)

Tank photo: BAGHDAD, Iraq An M1 Abrams Tank from B Company 1st Battalion 37th Infantry, attached to 1st Battalion,, 36th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division as part of Task Force 1/36 maintains perimeter security inside a traffic circle in the Rusafa district of Baghdad, April 2004. (Cpl. Benjamin Cossel)

An Imperial Presidency’s ‘Prerogative’

Review by Bill Doughty

Some of America’s greatest presidents have assumed emergency powers during crises. Jefferson took the law into his own hands when he ordered the arrest of Aaron Burr for treason. Lincoln blockaded ships of the Confederacy and employed exceptional powers in the Civil War. FDR assumed extraordinary powers as Commander in Chief Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt

They acted on “presidential prerogative,” a right to act temporarily outside of the Constitution as justified in times of emergency or extraordinary imminent threat to the nation.

But, like George Washington before them, they worked with Congress and followed constraints of the courts. In his farewell address, Washington rejected “change by usurpation; for through this, in one instance, may the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Washington famously turned down calls to serve as president beyond his two terms.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. examines the history of the tension between the executive and the other co-equal branches of government in “The Imperial Presidency” (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). Despite being written more than half a century ago, this remarkable book is relevant in 2026 in the era of “No Kings” protests. In fact, as we show, Schlesinger predicted what the United States is now experiencing –– 50 years after his book was published.

President John F. Kennedy and historian/advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Schlesinger, an advisor to JFK, was an advocate for a strong forward-thinking executive as essential to a healthy democracy. But in The Imperial Presidency –– published near the end of the Vietnam War, the Nixon presidency, and Watergate scandal –– he warns of the expansion of presidential power leading to dangerous abuse of the office.

His book and conclusions especially resonate in a topsy-turvy week –– as the current president and his administration go after a former FBI director for posting a picture of seashells, attack a comedian for telling a joke, justify tearing down part of the White House to build a ballroom, and try to manage a war of choice that is causing massive damage to the world's economy..

Years later Schlesinger also criticized George Bush’s ill-conceived “needless war” in Iraq, calling Bush an “imperial president.”

Marines marching prisoners in Iraq in 2003.

Commitment to the Constitution

Key to the success of American democracy, Schlesinger contends, is respect for and commitment to separation of powers as outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

“The American Constitution was established, for better or worse, on an idea new to the world in the eighteenth century and still uncommon in the twentieth century –– the idea of the separation of powers. This forbidding phrase represented a distinctive American contribution to the art of government. There had been no such doctrine in medieval times. Before the eighteenth century, everyone assumed that government required the unification of authority. But the Founding Fathers, who saw conflict as the guarantee of freedom, grandly defied the inherited wisdom. Instead of concentrating authority in a single institution, they chose to disperse authority among three independent branches of government, equipping the leaders of each, in the words of the 51st Federalist Paper, with the ‘necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.’ These branches, as every schoolchild used to know, were the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The Constitution thus institutionalized conflict in the very heart of the American polity.

The question has always remained –– and has provided a central theme of American political history –– how a government based on the separation of powers could be made to work.”

Using events in American history, Schlesinger examines how a balance of power without checks on that power can create “inertia” that allows a president to become a corrupt autocrat. He shows how the executive branch can then manipulate fear, hate, religion, and emergencies such as war to breach the Constitution.

Schlesinger writes this:

“This book consequently devotes special attention to the history of the war-making power. The assumption of that power by the Presidency was gradual and usually under the demand or pretext of emergency. It was as much a matter of congressional abdication as of presidential usurpation. As it took place, there dwindled away checks, both written and unwritten, that had long held the Presidency under control. The written checks were in the Constitution. The unwritten checks were in the forces and institutions a President once had to take into practical account before he made decisions of war and peace –– the cabinet and the executive branch itself, the Congress, the judiciary, the press, public opinion at home and the opinion of the world. By the early 1970s the American President had become on issues of war and peace the most absolute monarch (with the possible exception of Mao Tse-tung of China) among the great powers of the world.

The Indochina War placed this problem high on the national consciousness. But the end of American military involvement in Southeast Asia would not extinguish the problem. The assertions of sweeping and unilateral presidential authority remained official doctrine in foreign affairs. And, if the President were conceded these life-and-death decisions abroad, how could he be restrained from gathering unto himself the less fateful powers of the national polity? For the claims of unilateral authority in foreign policy soon began to pervade and embolden the domestic Presidency. ‘Perhaps it is a universal truth,’ Madison had written Jefferson, ‘that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.’ The all-purpose invocation of 'national security,' the insistence on executive secrecy, the withholding of information from Congress, the refusal to spend funds appropriated by congress, the attempted intimidation of the press, the use of the White House itself as a base for espionage and sabotage directed against the political opposition –– all signified the extension of the imperial Presidency from foreign to domestic affairs. Underneath such developments there could be discerned a revolutionary challenge to the separation of powers itself.”

Schlesinger continues:

“This book is written out of a double concern. The first concern is that the pivotal institution of the American government, the Presidency, has got out of control and badly needs new definition and restraint. The second concern is that revulsion against inordinate theories of presidential power may produce an inordinate swing against the Presidency and thereby do essential damage to our national capacity to handle the problems of the future. The answer to the runaway Presidency is not the messenger-boy Presidency. The American democracy must discover a middle ground between making the President a czar and making him a puppet. The problem is to devise means of reconciling a strong and purposeful Presidency with equally strong and purposeful forms of democratic control. Or, to put it succinctly, we need a strong Presidency — but a strong Presidency within the Constitution.”

The solution is to find a balance between a strong executive and strong guardrails of, by, and for the people. Schlesinger examines the yin-yang relationship between the executive and legislative branches within the context of the War Powers Act and how the military is used or abused.

[Of note, England’s King Charles spoke to a joint session of Congress yesterday in this “No Kings” era and 250th commemoration of the birth of the United States. Charles praised the prowess of the American military. And he gently rebuked those who are against NATO, who oppose support for Ukraine, who only look "inward," who refuse to recognize climate change, and who want an imbalance of power without checks and balances. He did not mention directly the hundreds of women who were victims of Epstein, Maxwell and friends (including Charles’s brother Andrew).]

Corruption and Tyranny

Near the end of The Imperial Presidency, Schlesinger makes the provocative statement that “Watergate was potentially the best thing to have happened to the Presidency in a long time.”

Facing certain impeachment, Nixon was forced to resign the presidency. His associates were jailed and humiliated. But accountability and lessons-learned sometimes do not last forever.

Here’s Schlesinger's astounding prediction from 50 years ago:

“We have noted that corruption appears to visit the White House in fifty-year cycles. This suggests that exposure and retribution inoculate the Presidency against its latent criminal impulses for about half a century. Around the year 2023 the American people would be well advised to go on the alert and start nailing down everything in sight.

A constitutional Presidency, as the great Presidents had shown, could be a very strong Presidency indeed. But what kept a strong President constitutional, in addition to checks and balances incorporated within his own breast, was the vigilance of the nation. Neither impeachment nor repentance would make much difference if the people themselves had come to an unconscious acceptance of the imperial Presidency. The Constitution could not hold the nation to ideals it was determined to betray. The reinvigoration of the written checks in the American Constitution depended on the reinvigoration of the unwritten checks in American society. The great institutions — Congress, the courts, the executive establishment, the press, the universities, public opinion — had to reclaim their own dignity and meet their own responsibilities. As Madison said long ago, the country could not trust to "parchment barriers" to halt the encroaching spirit of power. In the end, the Constitution would live only if it embodied the spirit of the American people.”

The presidency has some prerogatives in times of crisis. But in the American democracy, Congress has the prerogative to impeach the president, fund the government, and declare war. Under the Constitution, the media (and comedians) have the prerogative and right to free expression. And the people have the ultimate prerogative through their voice and vote –– as long as voting is not corrupted by an imperial presidency.

“Unless the American democracy figures out how to control the Presidency in war and peace without enfeebling the Presidency across the board, then our system of government will face grave troubles,” Schlesinger warns.

The Imperial Presidency concludes with a quote from Walt Whitman:

“"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, –– and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance –– Tyranny may always enter –– there is no charm, no bar against it –– the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men [and women].”

Military Role in Fascism ‘Prequel’

Review by Bill Doughty––

It wasn’t until Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the United States in December 1945, that the burning embers of fascism dimmed and hot coals of active antisemitism, Christian nationalism, and Nazi support –– even in the U.S. Congress –– lost their glow.

But the fire never completely went cold.

Prior to World War II and even after, brave Americans sought to root out the supporters of fascism who went so far as to try to recruit members of the military as well as military veterans to their cause. One fighter of domestic fascism was a WWI veteran named Leon Lewis. 

Lewis sought to uncover a conspiracy of violent extremism targeting Jewish Americans and institutions. It’s one of the stories recounted in “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” by Rachel Maddow (Crow, Penguin Random House, 2023).

“What Leon Lewis decided to do was something incredible. And incredibly dangerous. He went out and recruited a small group of men, picked from the exact same pool the Nazis were after –– disgruntled non-Jewish American veterans of the recent war [World War I],” Maddow writes.

“But the Lewis operation did more than simply investigate and report. Before long, Lewis and his team scuttled a plot by U.S. Marines to sell guns and ammunition to the American fascists. Lewis and his underground team could not be credited in public for their part in this operation, but it did earn them the enduring and crucial admiration of high-ranking naval intelligence officers. They also exposed an elaborate inside-job scheme to take control of U.S. military armories on the West Coast. That plan was run by Dietrich Gefken, a German national who had been one of the early organizers of Hitler’s Brownshirts in Munich. After joining the California National Guard and inventorying the cache of rifles, machine guns, and coastal artillery pieces on hand at the San Francisco armory, Gefken had drawn up ‘the Armory plans, floor plans, location of ammunition and lockers and rifles, the list of addresses of the officers and all that was needed to take over the Armory on a given notice.’ Lewis’s spies handed over their evidence of Gefken’s plot to military intelligence officials, who shut it down.”

How Naval intelligence officers at the Navy base in San Diego helped bring the wider plot to light is almost an aside, but the story should be of great interest to military readers.

On the East Coast, more than 20,000 people attended an antisemitic pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. One of the banners visible in the above photo reads, "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America." The rally was dubbed a patriotic pro-American event tied, without irony, to George Washington’s birthday. [General/President Washington rejected calls from supporters to become dictator of the young United States.]

How could the rising flames of fascism in the United States in the 1930s be forgotten in time? In interviews promoting “Prequel,” Maddow notes how the bigger story of the war in Europe (and the Pacific) eclipsed the story of homegrown fascism and Nazism and the quiet patriots who battled the threat to democracy here.

Brave and truly patriotic men such as Lewis, O. John Rogge, Dillard Stokes, Henry Hoke, Eric Sevareid, Drew Pearson, and William Power Maloney stood up and spoke out against antisemitism and against indifference and obstruction by the Truman Administration, as demonstrated by Attorney General Francis Biddle and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Federal prosecutor Rogge

“The plain truth is that the FBI was missing in action as fascism and Nazism took root and grew  in the United States in the mid-1930s,” Maddow notes.

Despite having the rug pulled out from under them in their prosecution of the fascists, both Maloney and Rogge continued with honor, courage, and commitment to uncover and report domestic enemies and violent extremists.

“Maloney and his investigators had discovered the double helix of the violent, Nazi-supporting, and Nazi-supported threat in the United States; it was part foreign and part domestic, part propaganda and part armed paramilitary movement.” He had led the investigation into Nazi propagandists using frank privileges at taxpayers’ expense. After federal service, he continued a career as a colorful and successful prosecutor.

“Rogge’s new charging document, like Maloney’s, alleged violations of the Smith Act –– an effort to demoralize America’s armed forces. But Rogge had sharpened the case, alleging targeted effort by the defendants to recruit National Guardsmen, reservists, and even active-duty U.S. troops into these ultra-right groups, where they could use their military skills, connections, and access to weapons to help arm and train paramilitary fascists for the overthrow of the U.S. government.”

Rogge uncovered evidence against American fascists and Nazi-supporters when he provided support to the Nuremberg trials after the war.

Men of character like Lewis, Rogge, Stokes, Hoke and others were seemingly outnumbered by questionable characters –– men (and some women) who placed greed, power, and religion above the Constitution, people like:

• George Deatherage: “He saw himself a red-blooded, real-American patriot, a dedicated Christian, a fierce protector of (white) Western civilization.”
• Huey Long: This Louisiana politician was an early version of the charismatic narcissistic populist and would-be dictator who formed his own militia and embraced violence against his detractors.
• Father Charles Coughlin: The Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones of his generation, he was a Catholic priest with a wildly popular radio show who called for violence against “tyrants” after naming FDR and jews as tyrants.
• John Cassidy: He was a self-described "Christian martyr" who wanted to become the "American Fuhrer."
• Senator Ernest Lundeen (R) of Minnesota: Was as corrupt as they come, even taking payroll kickbacks from his own staff, instrumental in promoting support for Hitler in America. Maddow’s description of his death in a suspicious plane crash is as graphic and horrible as can be imagined. Readers may want to look away.
• George Sylvester Viereck: The Nazi agent. He was convicted in June 1943 for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. While he was in jail, Viereck's eldest son and namesake, a corporal in the U.S. Army, fought and died for the Allies in Italy.
• Major General George Van Horn Moseley: He was pro-gun but against FDR and anti-redistribution of wealth; he called for the sterilization of any jews who immigrated to the United States.
• Senator Robert Rice Reynolds (D) of North Carolina: He wanted to build a wall around the entire United States, in part to keep out Jews.
• Representative Hamilton Fish (R) of New York: He supported Hitler’s Germany and “was hopeful that tensions over Germany’s designs on Poland could be resolved peacefully, and that Germany’s claims were ‘just.’” His calls: “AWAKE CHRISTIAN AMERICA” and “LET’S SAVE U.S. FOR US.”
• Senator William “Wild Bill” Langer (R) of North Dakota: As governor he was charged, convicted, and sentenced to 18 months in prison, but who declared martial law and tried to declare North Dakota’s independence from the United States. As senator, he sabotaged the investigation of rising fascism.
• Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D) of Montana: an isolationist and propagandist for Germany who was eventually accused of treason. He attempted to use his position in Congress to influence the military, especially the Lend-Lease Act, and prevent America’s support to Britain in WWII.
• Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh: Both were champions of Adolf Hitler and vice versa. Lindbergh zeig heiled at an America First rally with Wheeler. Ford was lauded by Adolf Hitler, who kept a photo of the white Christian nationalist CEO in his office.

America Firsters Wheeler and Lindbergh

There were many more who sought to weaken the Constitution and democracy in favor of autocracy and theocracy.

Expressions of outright antisemitism and fascism by elected officials led to plots of violence on the home front.

Groups such as the “Christian Front” and “Country Gentlemen” planned an armed insurrection, including bombings of Jewish and Leftist establishments as well as newspaper offices. Their hope was similar to Timothy McVeigh’s goal –– to start a race war that would bring down the federal government.

“It was what we’d call today an ‘accelerationist’ strategy,” Maddow explains.

“Much as white supremacists hope terroristic, spectacular, cruel acts toward racial minorities will provoke retaliation and reprisal to touch off a wholesale race war that they are sure they will win, the Christian Fronters believed American could easily be tipped into a war against Jews and communists in which they themselves not only would end up on the winning side, but would be hailed as a heroic vanguard.

“George Van Horn Moseley’s name kept coming up in planning meetings for the attack, because they were still counting on the general to take the reins as America’s new military dictator after the coup was complete.”

There are numerous parallels from the 1930s and ‘40s that continue to smolder: the coup attempt of January 6, other acts of violent extremism in the name of the former President (who calls opponents “vermin” that poison the “blood” of America), and Trump’s desire to call for the Insurrection Act in order to use the military against U.S. citizens in violation of posse comitatus.

Germany justified war in Europe based on grievances and a Big Lie about Jews. Putin did the same thing. And Trump builds his power and funding on perceived grievances and the Big Lie of a stolen election. It is no accident that Trump launched his current presidential campaign at Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian tragedy, which was the basis for Timothy McVeigh's grievances.

There are other parallels and similarities linking past and present. Accusers and their two dozen or more sympathizers in Congress chose to investigate the investigators. They called for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s impeachment based on conspiracies and conjecture without evidence. They used various tactics to disrupt and delay justice in the courts. And they attacked the free press.

The propagandists supported Germany’s efforts to divide American citizens: “A partisan, bickering, demoralized America, the Nazis believed, would be incapable of mounting a successful war effort in Europe.”

Fascists and fundamentalists –– past and present –– tried to recruit military service members and veterans. Eighty and ninety years ago a disproportionate number of law enforcement (“law and ORDER”) personnel supported fascists. Meanwhile, Hollywood –– led by MGM –– and the mainstream media –– led by the Washington Post –– shined a light on the lawbreakers and seditionists. When caught up in the scandal, perpetrators tried to burn evidence, (albeit not in a White House fireplace).

In 1942, federal prosecutors indicted 28 people and charged them (almost RICO-style) with sedition with “intent to interfere with, impair, and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States.” Prosecutors received hate mail and death threats.

Greedy and self-serving politicians stoked conspiracies and fears to hold on to power, especially fear of immigrants, communists, socialists, and Jewish people. Father Coughlin and others attempted to form a third party of Christian nationalists to compete against President Roosevelt, claiming FDR was a Jew.

But there could be signs of hope: The election of Nov. 7, 1944 proved the strength of democracy over the glowing coals of fascism, when FDR won a landslide victory. “The president who had been leading the country in the war against the Nazis, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won an unprecedented fourth term, with 432 electoral votes to Thomas E. Dewey’s 99,” Maddow writes. “Roosevelt’s Democrats gained twenty-two seats in the House and protected their whopping nineteen-vote cushion in the Senate.”

Rachel Maddow speaks with Lt. Col. Andy Gerlach of the South Dakota Army National Guard in Afghanistan in July 2010. (Sgt. Rebecca Linder)

Maddow is also author of “Bagman” and “Drift.” She is a big supporter of military service members, veterans, and the Constitution. She bemoans the gap between civilians and their military, and she calls for accountability, transparency, and maximal diplomacy before American men and women are sent into war.

Both the Prequel book and preceding Ultra podcast feature Maddow’s storytelling at its best, but the book may better. While the serialized Prequel podcast broke ground on the compelling story of the threat to democracy from within, the book really fleshes out the story as only a book can, complete with extensive notes, a helpful index, compelling photos, and detail we can read and will want to re-read. This is a book that can help every American understand the threat of the fires of antisemitism, fascism, and authoritarianism.

In 2023 and 2024 the embers are glowing brighter.