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Telegraph
a day ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
We are witnessing the death of American democracy
Contrary to general belief, Weimar democracy did not die when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933. It died the year before under Franz von Papen, a national conservative with social-Darwinist views and a visceral hatred of liberal modernist 'filth' in all its forms. One of his first actions was to end execution by the guillotine – deemed too Jacobin – and return to the ancient Prussian practice of death by the axe. Von Papen exploited a street clash between Communist Red Front dockers and Nazi Brownshirts on Prussian territory to carry out a constitutional coup against the elected Social Democrat government of Prussia, by far the biggest and most important of Germany's self-governing states. He seized control of policing and state security on the pretext that the Social Democrats were failing to uphold law and order. Historian Sir Richard Evans says this Preußenschlag (Prussian coup) of July 1932 was the critical moment in inter-war Germany, opening the door for much that followed. What Donald Trump has done by activating the California National Guard against the protest of the governor, and then bringing in US Marines – both of which his critics argue are unconstitutional – is a very light version of Preußenschlag, but in some ways it is worse. The street protests in Los Angeles were the result of his own theatrical stunt. You could be forgiven for thinking he deliberately provoked the alleged 'rebellion' in order to set this precedent. One can see now why Trump moved so fast to purge the top echelons of the US defence department, including the three judge advocates general. These officials rule on whether military orders are legal, and when they should be disobeyed. They are legally independent by Congressional statute. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, told us why they had been sacked: it was to stop them posing any 'roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief'. Did Trump mean it when he told his generals to 'just shoot' American protesters during the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020? We may find out. He also fired the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and others deemed symbols of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion', although one might suspect another motive. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify the Putsch of Jan 6 2021, and therefore stopped it stone dead. 'We don't take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution,' he said. Trump is attacking California on several fronts at once, shrewdly judging that Governor Gavin Newsom is the perfect foil. He is stripping the state of its powers under the Clean Power Act to impose tougher pollution rules than federal levels. He has signed an order blocking California's plan to phase out petrol cars by 2035, and another stopping it capping nitrogen oxide emissions. He now is threatening to withhold federal disaster aid for wildfires. Trump called him 'Governor Newscum' and added in his inimitable style: 'You know, hatred is never a good thing in politics. When you don't like somebody, you don't respect somebody, it's harder for that person to get money if you're on top.' Forgive me for sounding jaundiced, but decades ago I covered the Republican crusade under Speaker Newt Gingrich to restore states rights and check the usurpations of federal power. Gingrich and his party are now egging on the federal military occupation of states that stand in Trump's way. James Carville, veteran Democratic strategist and Clinton-fixer, says the Democrats should bide their time and 'play possum', betting that Trump will self-destruct under the contradictions of his own policies. The bond markets will do the job for them. Congress will drop back into Democrat hands like a ripe fruit in the 2026 mid-terms. I never expected to find myself impugning the ruthless Mr Carville for credulous naivety. Declaration of interest: he once carried out a black ops campaign against me personally from an office in the White House, which I no doubt deserved, all is forgiven anyway. Playing possum is what the German Social Democrats did in the early 1930s. Reading the first two volumes of Sir Richard Evans's magisterial trilogy, The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power, I am struck again and again by the refusal of the moderate middle to face up to what was happening. They had a touching faith that the courts would save them. But the judges were ideologically captured, or frightened, or did what most human beings do in turbulent times: they pre-emptively adapted to keep their families out of trouble. The Social Democrats made another fatal error. They assumed that Hitler's eccentric mish-mash of economic policies would lead quickly to a crisis, greatly underestimating the lift from neo-Keynesian rearmament, so like Trump's gargantuan deficits. American democracy has much deeper roots but the imminent bombing of Iran by the US air force gives pause for thought. There may be excellent reasons to knock out Iran's nuclear capability, though doing in this way, flippantly, like a power-drunk despot, conflating non-proliferation with regime change, drives the final nail in the coffin of Western moral credibility. That said, polls suggest that almost 80pc of Americans would applaud the destruction of the Fordow nuclear site, and most would support cutting off the head of the serpent in Tehran. Trump might face a Maga revolt on the edges but the larger bounce in popularity would let him steam roll opposition to his tariff war, his climate war, and his 'beautiful big bill' – a giant transfer of income from poor to rich. I don't believe Steven Bannon's warning that intervention will 'tear the country apart', unless the bombing mission goes awry. The strongman glow will open the window further for Trump's takeover of the deep state. He has already fired the heads of the FBI's intelligence, counterterrorism, criminal investigations, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices. He has purged the justice department, now run by a Lord High Executioner from The Mikado, openly touting an enemies list of 'conspirators'. He has forced private law firms to bend the knee. He has put in a loyalist in charge of the CIA, who inconveniently reported in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. But that was then, when Trump stood for America First, and staying out of forever wars was policy. He has fired the head of the eaves-dropping National Security Agency and its top officials. He has purged the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is independent by law, like the chairman of the Federal Reserve. America in 2025 is obviously not Germany in 1932. The Weimar republic was already a cauldron of political violence. That year was the worst of the Great Depression. The country was seething with rage over the cultivated myths of the 1918 'stab in the back' and the Carthaginian peace of Versailles. It is even less like Germany in 1933 when the Nazis used their three cabinet seats to take over the Prussian and federal interior ministries. Within five months the Social Democrats leadership was dead, or in Dachau, or in exile. All rival parties were shut down. No independent newspaper survived. Every organisation from the labour unions, to male choirs, sports teams and beekeeper clubs came under Nazi control. But it is not the same America that was my home for long stretches of the late 20th century. Over the last few days alone: a Democratic US senator was manhandled to the floor, handcuffed and dragged away for asking a question; the Democrat comptroller of New York was seized and handcuffed by masked federal agents after demanding to see a judicial warrant; a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota was murdered with her husband at home, and a state senator was shot and badly wounded, both by an assassin with a hit list of 45 officials. Judges have so far issued more than 60 rulings that curb or restrain Trump's legal overreach. A shocking number have either been threatened, directly or through their families, or face calls for impeachment. 'Our constitutional system depends on judges who can make decisions free from threats and intimidation,' warned judge Robert Conrad, director of the administrative office of the US courts, in testimony to Congress. To no avail: the House judiciary committee shrugged it off, more or less blaming the victims. The drift of events was disturbing even before Iran offered Trump a fresh gift from Mars. I fear that many more lines in the sand will be crossed in the heady aftermath of a surgical video war on the Ayatollah, if that is where we are headed. Play possum if you want. Trump will eat your lunch.
Memri
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Memri
Lebanese Activist Eli Khoury calls for 'De-Resistance-ation' in Lebanon, Like Post WWII Denazification in Germany: Hizbullah's Ideology Needs to Be Removed from People's Minds
In a May 27, 2025 interview on Spot Shot on YouTube, Lebanese activist and social media expert Eli Khoury compared the situation of Hizbullah to that of the Nazi Party in Germany. He said that after Nazism was shown to be deadly and harmful to society, it became necessary to engage in 'denazification' - the removal of the ideology from people's minds. He suggested that a similar process should be undertaken with Hizbullah. Khoury argued that Hizbullah's ideology is not native to Lebanon, but rather imported from a country he does not consider important. He proposed calling the process 'de-resistance-ation.'
Medscape
03-06-2025
- Politics
- Medscape
Behind History's Icons II: Hitler's Jaw and Cold War Secrets
Ancient Egyptians believed that mummifying a king's body was key to his ascent into the realm of the gods. The preserved body, known as the Ach, a luminous spirit, was thought to begin this journey by entering the sarcophagus, seen as the womb of Nut, the mother goddess of the sky. The belief in the enduring power of human remains has been deep in global history. In the West, reverence for the relics of Christian saints took place early in the Church. Some of the most extraordinary examples include what was believed to be the foreskin of Jesus and the severed head of Saint John the Baptist. By the 19th century, European scientists had begun preserving and studying body parts of famous individuals — from Mohammed's beard and Buddha's teeth to Adolf Hitler's jaw. Following the Napoleon relics story, Part II probes Hitler's preserved jaws. Hitler's Final Days It was April 28, 1945. Hitler, 1889-1945, Germany's leader, paced furiously through the corridors of the Wolf's Lair, his secret headquarters near Rastenburg, close to Görlitz. He was furious, as his trusted deputy head of the Nazi Party's paramilitary force, Heinrich Himmler is believed to have been betrayed by Hitler for several months. He reportedly held secret talks with Western Allies to end the war. Shockingly, he is said to have offered to halt the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews if Americans — Germany's main enemy in the West — would ease their attacks. Hitler was reportedly stunned. In an effort to regain his composure, Hitler summons Hermann Fegelein — 1906-1945, his liaison to the Waffen Schutzstaffel, the Nazi Party's armed military unit responsible for combat operations. According to these reports, Hitler ordered their execution. Another report stated that he ordered his arrest and left the execution order to his subordinates. Himmler, in turn, expels Hitler from the Nazi Party and removes him from all party and state positions. However, in reality, Hitler was more composed than he appeared. As often in his life, even moments of lost composure serve a greater purpose. Historian and Himmler biographer Heinz Peter Longerich noted that just one week before his public outburst on April 22, 1945, Hitler privately declared that he would stop issuing orders. This was his way of signaling to his top officials that the war was lost. By this point, Hitler had effectively lost control over his army. Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner, 1896-1966, had earlier refused to carry out a relief attack ordered by Hitler during the Battle of Berlin, calling it impossible. To avoid being linked to inevitable and shameful defeat, Hitler allowed others to handle peace negotiations and then publicly expelled them from the Nazi Party. Historians widely agree that Hitler decided to take his own life on April 27, 1945, one day before his outburst. When news of Himmler's betrayal became known, Hitler acted quickly and decisively. He first expelled Himmler from the party and then, by proxy, took revenge on Fegelein. Just before midnight, Hitler hurriedly married his partner, Eva Braun in 1912-1945. He then dictated his political and personal will to his secretary, Traudl Junge in 1920-2002. On the morning of April 30, Hitler tested poison ampoules on his German shepherd and later gave a similar poison to his colleagues. At approximately 3:30 PM, he had Braun swallow cyanide before shooting. However, myths and uncertainties surround what occurred next. Corpse Odyssey Hitler's death did not end speculation. Conspiracy theories quickly surfaced, claiming that he had faked his death and fled abroad, possibly to Argentina or Japan, with the help of body doubles and plastic surgery. According to conspiracy theories, Hitler fired a double shot and burned his body beyond recognition before escaping the submarine to Argentina or Japan. These theories claim that his outbursts of rage, will, distribution of poison vials, and suicide were staged. Until recently, Hitler was said to have lived a privileged life abroad, even after undergoing surgical alterations. Local historian and biographer Harald Sandner calls this 'humbug.' He pointed out that Hitler's body was examined multiple times by experts and moved at least 10 times. According to the report, Hitler and Braun's bodies were carried into the Reich Chancellery Garden at approximately 3:50 PM on April 30, 1945. The individuals who carried the bodies into the garden included Hitler's valet Heinz Linge, Criminal Director Peter Högl, Hauptsturmführer Ewald Lindloff, and Obersturmführer Heinrich Josef Reiser. The bodies were then doused with gasoline and set on fire. Eyewitness accounts, including that of Rottenführer Hermann Karnau, mentioned that between 4 and 6:20 PM, the remains showed movement described as 'the flesh moved up and down,' which is consistent with the natural effects of burning human bodies and muscle contractions during cremation. On May 4, Soviet soldiers found the remains, initially unaware of their significance. The next day, the bodies were reburied and moved to Helios Hospital Berlin-Buch, where autopsies were performed on May 8. Fritz Echtmann, longtime assistant to Hitler's dentist Hugo Johannes Blaschke, 1881-1959, may be for propaganda reasons, confirmed the identity of Hitler's jaw remains as unclear. However, Soviet authorities promoted the narrative that Hitler had cowardly taken poison, rejecting the evidence that he had also shot himself, and confirmed the authenticity of the jaws. Soviet doctors later claimed Hitler had 'cowardly poisoned himself instead of heroically shooting himself.' On May 4, 1945, Soviet troops from the 3rd Shock Army discovered these bodies. Unaware that they belonged to Adolf and Eva Hitler, they wrapped them in blankets and buried them. On May 5, the next day, other Soviet soldiers found the bodies again and transported them in an ammunition box to the Pathological Institute at Helios Hospital Berlin-Buch. The bodies were autopsied between May 8 and May 10. Echtmann confirmed the authenticity of Hitler's jaw. For propaganda purposes, Soviet doctors later claimed that Hitler had 'cowardly poisoned himself instead of heroically shooting himself.' Even decades later, in 1968, the well-known Russian journalist and military history professor Lev Aleksandrovich Bezymensky in 1920-2007 wrote that Hitler's charred corpse smelled of bitter almonds. In the second half of May 1945, grave robbers opened Hitler's grave, searching for a rumored Nazi treasure said to be buried with him. Soviet soldiers protected the bodies and moved them again, in ammunition crates, to Finow, 38 km away, where they were reburied. On May 22, 1945, the body was exhumed and reburied for unknown reasons. Forensic Investigation On June 9, 1945, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov in 1896-1974 claimed that Hitler's death was uncertain. British historian Sir Richard John Evans suggested that the Soviet Union might have wanted to maintain the threat of Hitler's survival to justify a harsh occupation policy. Consequently, false information about Hitler's death is deliberately disseminated. This theory is supported by the fact that Hitler's suicide was reported in the Soviet newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on May 10, 1945. As late as June 5, Soviet Army officers confirmed this to American officers. Probably on orders from Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in 1878-1953 denials began just 4 days later. On June 7, 1945, the bodies of Adolf and Eva Hitler were reportedly brought to Rathenau in a 'half-rotten state.' Between December 8, 1945, and January 13, 1946, Soviet Colonel General Bogdan Zakharovich Kobulov ordered a new examination of Hitler's body. To prevent this investigation, other Soviet officials arranged for the bodies to move to Magdeburg, Germany. Once again, the bodies were buried in ammunition crates in a 2 m deep pit in the courtyard of Westendstraße 32 (now Klausenerstraße 32). On February 21, 1946, the bodies were autopsied. They were then buried in the courtyard of a Soviet military settlement beneath an 18 cm thick concrete slab. On April 5, 1970, the KGB, a highly centralized and secretive organization Chief Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, 1914-1984, ordered the bodies to be destroyed. The military settlement was to be handed over to the East German authorities, and Andropov did not want to risk the bodies falling into their hands. Among historians, Sandner's accounts are valued but are not fully reliable. Sandner, who had never received formal training in history, did not provide detailed annotations in his books to clarify his reasoning. A publication by the French forensic scientist and pathologist Philippe Charlier in the European Journal of Internal Medicine is considered scientifically credible. Charlier reported that the Russian domestic intelligence service (Federal Security Service) allowed him and his team to examine Hitler's presumed skull and dentures, which had survived the final burning. Their investigation confirmed that the dentures belonged to Hitler. However, they were not 100% certain about the skull, which showed traces of a gunshot wound. These findings align with the report of German forensic biologist Mark Benecke, who was permitted to examine Hitler's alleged remains for a week in November 2001. Benecke wrote at the time: 'There is no doubt about the authenticity of the teeth. Hitler had a unique dental structure. He used a large metal bridge in 1944. Using old x-rays, I was able to clearly identify the teeth as Hitler's.' However, Benecke found no traces of poison or glass fragments in the ampoule. Surprised, he consulted Bezymensky. 'Bezymensky told me that the KGB had only allowed him to publish his book in 1986 on one condition: That he would support the poison theory,' Benecke wrote about his conversation with Bezymensky. Finally, the alleged fragment of Hitler's skull was stored in a plastic box, which was intended for computer disks. According to contemporary historian Joachim Fest in 1926-2006, Hitler's body was found 'slumped over,' with 'his head slightly bent forward…on the flowered sofa,' after he had shot a coin-sized hole in his temple with a pistol. If this description is correct, the skull fragment could not belong to Hitler. The entry and exit wounds suggest the shot came from below, most likely fired 'in the mouth.' To confirm identity, the remaining blood traces must be examined. However, Benecke stated that he would require comparative DNA from Hitler's relatives, such as his sister, who was buried near Munich. Exhumation is the only method to obtain genetic material. Conclusion Few other deaths are surrounded by myths similar to Hitler's death. The search for the truth about Hitler's death is complicated by the competing interests and the interests of those with partial knowledge. Historians now agree that Hitler died by suicide on April 30, 1945, either by shooting himself or by combining gunshots with poison. Scientific evidence confirms that Hitler's dentures are preserved and currently held by Russian domestic intelligence services. Whether the skull in the Russian State Archives belonged to him remains unclear.
Budapest Times
01-06-2025
- Politics
- Budapest Times
Scrabbling for spoils amid a terrible lot of death
Germany's National Socialists, call them Nazis, wanted to expand the country's lebensraum, its living space, by crushing other nations and murdering Jews, Slavs and Bolsheviks supposedly inferior to their "superior' Aryan selves. And, of course, there were lots of nice paintings and other objets d'art to be picked up along the way, so those were fair game too. Biographer Jonathan Petropoulos writes of a prominent offender, Bruno Lohse, and doesn't directly raise the incongruity that while many milllions of soldiers and civilians were being slaughtered in the combat zones, there was a parallel murky world of greed and corruption where the prevailing environment was simply profiteering from persecution and theft. Readers will surely pause to see the parallel themselves. And there was a pecking order for the spoils. Naturally, the Führer, Adolf Hitler, had first choice, for his planned monumental Führermuseum in Linz, his boyhood town in annexed Austria. Second dibs went to Hermann Wilhelm Göring, Hitler's most loyal supporter, then to ideological schools and museums. It was shocking criminality, and Nazi art agents sometimes competed with each other, while some 'filthy' Jewish families were less 'filthy' than others if they had collections and wealth enough to allow them to bargain their way out of the cattle trucks and Zyklon B. And German agents were not above trading 'degenerate' modernist art, for more-prized Old Masters. Göring (1893-1946) was an all-powerful figure in the Nazi Party, having established the Gestapo secret political police and concentration camps for the 'corrective treatment' of undesirables. He headed the Luftwaffe, the air force, and was Reichsmarschall, highest rank in the Wehrmacht armed forces. Göring often dressed in hunting costume, to link himself to landed society in particular and country life in general. And he was especially keen to project himself as a kind of Renaissance man, a collector not only of hunting trophies but also of art. He began collecting in a modest way in the 1920s and more ambitiously in the mid-1930s, but the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 and the conquest of much of Europe and a large swathe of the Soviet Union, offered the possibility of almost limitless acquisition. Insatiable, he used his impregnable position to enrich himself and build what he boasted after his capture in 1945 was the finest private collection in Europe (a disputed claim). He had a vast forest estate in the Schorfheide, north of Berlin, where from 1933 he developed a baronial set-up named Carinhall, and it was here that he kept the bulk of his hoard. Göring could not tell a good painting from a bad one, but he employed professional experts to scour Europe for paintings, sculptures, tapestries, jewellery, carpets, fragments of Roman buidings; all he could lay his hands on. Much enrichment came from Jewish collections in the occupied countries, and many gifts from those who sought his favour. By the end of the war he had, besides some 1700 paintings, 250 sculptures, 108 tapestries, 200 pieces of antique furniture, 75 stained-glass windows, 60 Persian or French rugs and 175 other various pieces. The pictures included many by Brueghel, Cranach, Rembrandt, Rubens, Ruysdael, Tintoretto, Titian and Van Dyck. He went to great lengths to avoid being considered a looter. But behind the scenes he used currency manipulation and pressure of various kinds to effect gifts and purchases at the lowest prices. He carried devalued Reichsmarks. Göring's bloodhound in occupied Paris was Dr. Bruno Lohse (1911-2007), the deputy director of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the ERR, a new and secretive Nazi organ tasked with looting Jewish-owned cultural property. Lohse initially was conscripted into the German Army to fight in Poland, but he had a PhD in art history was approached by the ERR. Its sole purpose was to plunder Europe, though it had tentacles, basically following the German Army. When Lohse arrived at the ERR headquarters in Paris he found art looting on an industrial scale. The organisation stole whatever it could lay its hands on, whether a painting of really no value except to the family, furniture, tables, plates, cutlery, candlesticks. And France was the place for art — or more valuable art – more so than any other part of Europe. One estimate is that the ERR stole one-third of all the art in private collections in the country; the Rothschilds, Alphonse Kann, David-Weills and other great Jewish families. The machinations to grab the Schloss family artworks make particularly eye-opening reading. The Göring connection made Lohse among the most promient individuals in the ERR. He felt he was king of Paris, armed with a pass from the Reischmarschall that allowed him to travel freely and buy what he wanted. Lohse helped his patron commandeer some 700 pictures from ERR in Paris, with Göring never parting with a pfennig. Petropoulos, who is a European history professor at Claremont McKenna College in California, US, ranks Lohse in the top five of history's all-time art looters. The author met him for the first time in Munich in 1998 after writing to seek an interview for a book he was writing about the complicity of art experts in Nazi plundering ('The Faustian Bargain. The Art World in Nazi Germany' published in 2000). By the late 1990s, most of the Nazi art experts who helped loot European Jews were either dead or living quiet lives under the radar, but not so Lohse. Over the next nine years, he and Petropoulos met more than two dozen times, and the author was invited to Lohse's Munich flat, where he saw on the walls Expressionist works and Dutch Old Masters worth millions. Lohse would often pull out a box of old photographs and mementos, allowing Petropoulos to peer over his shoulder and to pepper him with questions. Lohse died in 2007 and bequeathed the box to Petropoulos, who used it as source material for the new 'Göring's Man in Paris: The Story of a Nazi Art Plunderer and His World'. Lohse's large walk-in bank vault in Zurich was found to hold works by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Corot and Wouwerman, confirming suspicions that at the ERR he slyly siphoned off pieces to sell or keep for himself. Petropoloulos tackles the questions of how Lohse amassed such works, what do we learn about the nexus of culture and barbarism, and what of the post-war networks that grew and the fate of much Nazi-stolen art? There were challenges in writing about Lohse, such as separating his stories from the truth, the dearth of archival sources, the culture of silence among the participants and their general desire to conceal this history. The author determines that the physically imposing Lohse was personally involved in emptying Jewish homes and boasted to a German officer that he had beaten Jewish owners to death 'with his own hands'. The biographer learned that the wartime networks of Nazi dealers did indeed persist into peacetime, individuals such as Lohse growing prosperous selling to museums and collectors, often cashing in on goods with complicated wartime pasts. Lohse was jailed at the end of the war and investigated. He was tried and acquitted in France in 1950 then returned to the art trade from his new base in Munich, where other former Nazi art experts had also gone back to work, trading mostly within a 'circle of trust' in Germany and Switzerland. Göring avoided being hanged as a war criminal by taking poison. Lohse was imprisoned in France for about two and a half years and faced charges of pillaging but was unexpectedly acquitted in 1950, perhaps due to poor prosecuiton, good defence and other vague factors. Some 20 percent of items stolen in France remain out there somewhere. It's all quite a story.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Peru arrests extortion gang that used Nazi symbols to sow terror
Police in Peru have captured a group of extortionists that used Nazi insignia to intimidate their victims, authorities said Tuesday. The five suspects from Colombia and Venezuela were arrested in raids on two homes, one in the capital Lima and another in the neighboring city of Huaral. In addition to weapons and explosives, police discovered around 100 stickers depicting an eagle with a swastika, an emblem of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler. Investigators found an oil painting of late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar with a wad of dollars sticking out of his shirt pocket. Police chief Juan Mundaca said the authorities were investigating whether the stickers were the same as those that appeared on the homes and cars of extortion victims. Prosecutor Jose Silva said the gang had threatened business owners in the Huaral area, as well as a judge. Peru is battling a steep surge in gang violence, characterized by a wave of killings linked to extortion rackets. Criminal gangs such as Venezuela's Tren de Aragua, which operates across Latin America, are accused of holding entire communities to ransom and of gunning down people who refuse to pay protection money. This is not the first time that criminal gangs in the Andean nation have been caught using Nazi symbols. In May 2023, police seized 58 kilograms of cocaine bricks destined for Belgium which were wrapped in a Nazi flag and stamped with Hitler's name. cm/ljc/cb
