This grandiose conspiracy theory about secret Nazi influence in America starts with breathtaking literal-mindedness. The Nazis, contends Marrs (Crossfire
), obtained advanced technologies—flying saucers, time travel, antigravity—through psychic communion with “non-human intelligences”; then, after the Third Reich's fall, Nazi fugitives may even have used King Solomon's treasure to set up an international business empire and got in on the JFK assassination. Gradually, though, the Nazi threat subsides to a bar-stool libertarian's rant against psychiatric drugs, the Homeland Security apparatus, gun control, Social Security, income taxes and fluoridated water; they all portend to Marrs a creeping American fascism. Nazis are but bit players in this New World Order, run by shadowy “globalists” who “control” everything and created not just Nazism but communism and America's military-industrial complex. (Usual suspects include the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group and Arnold Schwarzenegger.) Marrs's dubiously sourced argument spins eye-glazing webs of circumstantial connections between Germans, American businessmen and U.S. government officials, in a kind of six degrees of Adolf Hitler parlor game. The result is vintage Marrs—a turgid stew of nonsense. (July)
