OPINION: History retracing steps, running wild

Last Updated on Saturday, 28 February 2026, 10:27 by Writer

By GHK Lall

A German glanced at Czechoslovakia and got ideas. He was Austrian, really. Austrian or artificial German, he moved on the Sudetenland. Interests and in the interests of the people. C’mon, manage expectations, folks. No one in the proper frame of mind is so sloppy as to use that dirty word. It’s business. Try another. Visions. Here’s a third: mastery. After that came Poland, and before long a whole continent was in flames. It didn’t take long before the whole world was dragged into conflagration and destruction of life and structures, and ways of life, on a scale never seen before. Or since. I would advise erring on the side of caution with the latter. Czechs were bounced hither and thither. Poles got to know what it is be poleaxed and runover (again). The Low Countries caved. The French fell in disarray. England braced itself, and so did all of Europe, in readiness to learn a new language, that of the all-conquering master race. Meanwhile the US weighed its options. Guyana did offer some bodies, some of which never came back. They didn’t have body bags back then.

The men and women who compile these developments to write history said that the German corporal whose roots were Austrian was mad. A stark, staring, foaming madman. And, Nuremberg with America’s Robert Jackson in the chief prosecutor’s seat rendered the same harsh, politically incorrect, judgment on the circle of stone-faced, cement-hearted men who were the Austrian-German’s henchmen. All of them, the most recognizable expressions of madness run amok. Men grown crazy from, driven mad by, ambition and the killings that are part of the inevitable collateral damage. After all, it’s only bodies. Tens of millions of dead bodies, and nobody was seriously counting. If nature can conduct self-cleaning and self-correcting exercises, then man would be most irresponsible not to learn, not to imitate by initiating his own 39-step pogroms. Apologies, I mistyped: make that programs. Ask any serial killer that’s depravedly indifferent to life, limb, and losses, and it is the same story that will be heard. After the initial successes, selecting targets and stalking becomes sweeter, so sweet as to be irresistible.

I leave the East and that Old Germany of Knights and Valkyries, of Wagner and Nietzsche, and head West. It is timely, and the winds are favorable. There’s a tinge of the inviting, even the commanding, in its strength.

First, it was Venezuela. Things ruff with the people, so intervention became necessary. Recall the Sudetenland, which was first in the long line of dominoes. There were those dominoes, before domino theory became fashionable among the Mensa Club set. Next, there is Cuba, and before there, Mexico, Canada, and Greenland had their share of attention, but held in reserve. I don’t know where anyone else stands, but all of this have too much of the ominous and spine-chilling about them, to be taken for granted, to be waved away casually. Or what is healthy and invigorating for the world. Recall the German had his Master Plan to be implemented and delivered on his visions for sweeping dominance. Recall also in the years after his rampages, and after he was appeased (by silence and giving ground), how everybody came out of the woodwork and piled on. A mad son of a (make a selection) he was. In the post mortems, everyone became an expert pathologist. And neurologist and psychiatrist peeping into the head of the man downed by his own hand. Mad as a hatter, was the verdict.

Today, the word is of Iran coming under a barrage of hammer blows. Seems to me, even from this distance, that a blitzkrieg is underway. Jeez, the progression has gone from Operation Vulcan to get Iran and put it out of business, once and for all. Under the heel, and freeing up all that oil. Or placing it in trusted hands. Like arranged in Venezuela. As now in full swing in the Dubai on the Demerara. The right people in the right places, with the right games played for the right results.

After Iran, and it’s anyone’s guess if it melts like a candle, whereto and who else are the next anxious questions. In the flush of early inroads, I don’t hear a single soul saying a word about madness or craziness. Maybe, I am the only one that is mad today. Another thought: stand aside and get picked off one by one. Just like that German did. To one and all, a nice day.