35965Y299 In his bestseller Black Hawk Down ------

Q
THE JOURNALIST MARK BOWDEN RELATES IN SIMILAR TERMS THE COMBAT EXPERIENCE OF SHAWN NELSON,
an American soldier, in Mogadishu in 1995: "It was hard to describe how he felt ... it was like an epiphany.

Close to death, he had never felt so completely alive. There had been split seconds in his life when he'd felt death brush past,
like when another fast-moving car veered from around a sharp curve and just missed hitting him head on.

On this day he had lived with that feeling with death breathing right in his face ... for moment after moment,
for three hours or more ... Combat was ... a state of complete mental & physical awareness.

In those hours on the street he had not been Shawn Nelson, he had no connection to the larger world, no bills to pay,
no emotional ties, nothing. He had just been a human being staying alive from one nanosecond to the next,
drawing one breath after another, fully aware that each one might be his last. He felt he would never be the same!"

Adolf Schicklgruber Hitler too was changed and enlightened by his war experiences. In Mein Kampf he relates
how shortly after his unit reached the front line, the soldiers' initial enthusiasm turned into fear, against which
each soldier had to wage relentless war, straining every nerve to avoid being overwhelmed by it. AH says that he
had won his inner war by the winter of 1915/'16.

'At last,' he writes, 'my wìll was undisputed master... I was now calm & determined. And this was enduring.
Now Fate could bring on the ultimate tests without my nerves shattering or my reason failing.'

The experience of war revealed to AH the truth about the world: it's a jungle run by the remorseless laws of natural selection.

Those who refuse to recognise this truth cannot survive. If you wish to succeed, you must not only understand
the laws of the jungle, but embrace them joyfully.

It should be stressed that just like anti-war liberal artists, AH too sanctified the experience of ordinary soldiers.

Indeed, AH's political career is one of the best examples we have for the immense authority
accorded to the personal experience of common people in 20th-century politics.

AH wasn't a senior officer - in 4 years of war, he rose no higher then the rank of corporal. He had no formal education,
no professional skills & no political background. He wasn't a successful businessman or a union activist,
he didn't have friends or relatives in high places, nor any money to speak of.

At first, he didn't even have German citizenship.

He was a penniless immigrant.
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