Nazi Movement Had International Support

Re “Nationalism’s Psychotic Side,” Commentary, May 10: Once again the intellectually (and journalistically) lazy Robert Scheer fails to do basic research.

Scheer writes, “The patriotism of relatively few German or Italian Americans was questioned” during World War II. Over 10,000 Germans and Italians who resided in the U.S. when Nazi Germany and Italy declared war were placed in internment camps similar to those used for Japanese Americans on the West Coast.

Also contrary to conventional wisdom, during World War II, there were hundreds of espionage and sabotage conspiracies by U.S. residents of Japanese and German extraction. All of this is carefully documented by Michelle Malkin in her recent, much-discussed book, “Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror.”

Peter Rich

Los Angeles

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Scheer describes the Nazi depredations in Europe as “nationalism gone mad.” He is ignoring that the Nazi/Fascist movement was not nationalist but internationalist.

It was well known in the years leading to World War II that this movement had large numbers of supporters and sympathizers in various European countries such as Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria and others, as well as some supporters in Britain and the U.S. Scheer also cites Hannah Arendt without mentioning the pro-Hitler philosophical support that her lover, Martin Heidegger, provided this movement.

Recent books by various scholars have again recounted the international nature of this movement. I am sure that Scheer is well aware of this, but for some reason he fails to more accurately describe this movement as a form of “internationalism” gone mad.

Judah Anschauer

Los Angeles