25-02-2009, 01:41 AM
As some know, this document and Thorstein Veblen figure prominently in Guido Giacomo Preparata’s 2005 book Conjuring Hitler. The second chapter is entitled "The Veblenian Prophecy" and here is an excerpt:
…The only thinker of the age possessing the clairvoyant lucidity to assess and comprehend these transformations was the American Thorstein Veblen: after having examined the late development of the German Reich, he predicted its route and, more importantly, he alone became alive to the reawakening of a peculiar sort of religious furor, which the war seemed to have unleashed all across Germany. Already in 1915, he depicted what was in fact an amazing sketch that foreboded the haranguing Fuhrer; furthermore, in 1920, after the infamous Peace Treaty ratified in Versailles failed to carry out the dispositions which Veblen had thought necessary for disarming Germany and turning her into a peaceable partner of the Anglo-Saxon commonwealths, he prophesied by 20 years the forthcoming armageddon between Bolshevik Russia and Reactionary Germany (1941). This prophesy, uttered in a review of J.M. Keyne’s best-selling book on the Parisian Peace Treaty, stands possibly as Political Economy’s most extraordinary document – a testimony of the highest genius – and as the lasting and screaming accusation of the horrendous plot that was being hatched by the British during the six months of the Peace Conference following World War I. (Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich, Guido Giacomo Preparata, 2005, p 43)
Ron Williams
…The only thinker of the age possessing the clairvoyant lucidity to assess and comprehend these transformations was the American Thorstein Veblen: after having examined the late development of the German Reich, he predicted its route and, more importantly, he alone became alive to the reawakening of a peculiar sort of religious furor, which the war seemed to have unleashed all across Germany. Already in 1915, he depicted what was in fact an amazing sketch that foreboded the haranguing Fuhrer; furthermore, in 1920, after the infamous Peace Treaty ratified in Versailles failed to carry out the dispositions which Veblen had thought necessary for disarming Germany and turning her into a peaceable partner of the Anglo-Saxon commonwealths, he prophesied by 20 years the forthcoming armageddon between Bolshevik Russia and Reactionary Germany (1941). This prophesy, uttered in a review of J.M. Keyne’s best-selling book on the Parisian Peace Treaty, stands possibly as Political Economy’s most extraordinary document – a testimony of the highest genius – and as the lasting and screaming accusation of the horrendous plot that was being hatched by the British during the six months of the Peace Conference following World War I. (Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich, Guido Giacomo Preparata, 2005, p 43)
Ron Williams