The above-named piece was in good part about the silence of “leaders” in Donald Trump’s America. Specifically, that of chief executive officers of major corporations who in their behavior toward Trump are not leaders but followers. Alarmingly like Republican members of Congress, the captains of American business and industry are so subservient they are servile.
Two days later after I posted my piece the New York Times published a review of a book written by Peter Hayes. It was titled, Profits and Persecution: German Big Business in the Nazi Economy and the Holocaust.
Here is an excerpt from the review, written by Max Chafkin.
Hayes convincingly shows that German businessmen were skeptical of the Nazis, but tended to approach Hitler’s rise with an eye to the bottom line, seeking to preserve their financial advantages within the regime and, in doing so, slowly acquiescing to its most insidious demands. His book is both horrifying and riveting, in part because the rationalizations offered by business leaders will sound eerily familiar.
I rest my case.