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The article discusses the author's recent interest in the history of the Third Reich and draws parallels between that time period and the present. The author emphasizes that while there are similarities in terms of geopolitical events and the rise of extremist ideologies, the conditions in America today are vastly different from those in Germany in the 1930s. The author also highlights the dangers of manipulating language and distorting scientific truth for ideological purposes. The article concludes by cautioning against the potential for ordinary people to be driven into dark places by manipulative leaders and exigent circumstances. [Extracted from the article]

The US is going through a bout of depression, revolving out of its habitual sunny optimism into a periodic penumbra of self-doubt. Thanks to the illustrated recent history of Abu [...]

Moral equivalence has long been the most insidious intellectual enemy of American power. The confidence that Americans have in their country as something objectively benign for all humanity has distinguished [...]

John Kerry, the often nuanced Democratic candidate for president, was unusually transparent in an appearance last Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, America's televisual Star Chamber of political inquisition. Asked [...]

Passive contemplation of the lessons of history is often eclipsed by the active intervention of events. Just as the world's media were lined up to offer their takes on the [...]

In Washington's fashionably international neighbourhoods, there is a palpable sense this US presidential election year that John Kerry, now confirmed as the Democratic candidate, is carrying the hopes not only [...]

Americans are often accused of having a simplistic view of the world. Countries are either free or unfree; their leaders are good or bad; wars are just or unjust; policies [...]

As alert readers may know, Americans are not wildly popular in Europe at present. John Kerry, Madonna and Michael Moore might get a hearing at the average European dinner party, [...]

On the face of it, the oblique interventions this week by David Kay and Lord Hutton on the causes, justification and aftermath of the Iraq war would seem to point [...]

This week, in accordance with modern political ritual, voters in the midwestern state of Iowa fired the starting gun for the 2004 US presidential election campaign. Between now and November [...]

Gerard Baker There is a wizard of OZ quality to ex-dictators, stripped of their apparatus of fear, the fawning underlings, the presidential palaces, the torture chambers, they often end up [...]

The forecaster's equivalent of Donald Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns' are the events no one could have predicted, writes John Willman. There were plenty of these in 2003, including the failure to [...]

President George W. Bush could hardly have imagined a better end to the year for his administration's foreign policy goals than the events that have unfolded in the last three [...]

Among my favourite pleasures of the Christmas season are the cards from friends who kindly attach one of those one-page summaries of their family's news this year. Each Christmas I [...]

Gerard Baker There is a wizard of OZ quality to ex-dictators, stripped of their apparatus of fear, the fawning underlings, the presidential palaces, the torture chambers, they often end up [...]

Thanksgiving is the perfect model of American exceptionalism. Americans, wherever they are, will today observe the sacred rituals handed down from generation to generation since the Pilgrim Fathers plucked their [...]

From the public reaction, it will be hard to tell whether it is President Kim Jong-il or President George W. Bush who flies into London next week. A clear majority [...]

Last weekend, a couple of dozen miles and a large mood swing away from the stein-wielding, lederhosen-clad revellers of the Oktoberfest, a group of American and German scholars, policymakers and [...]

It was an event at the mysterious intersection of Hate and Love. Hate had been planning for years, concealing itself in the routines of ordinary life. Hate had learnt to [...]

George W. Bush has had a problem keeping campaign promises. When he sought the presidency in 2000 he was a free-trader who railed against fiscal deficits, nation-building and pointless efforts [...]

As temperatures in Baghdad began to soar this spring, many of the Americans and Iraqis drafted to help rebuild the country suffered from the heat. The reason: air-conditioning was not [...]

In politics as in the theatre, timing is everything. If Tony Blair had come to Washington a couple of months ago, he would have basked in the rousing 'encores' of [...]

The Fourth of July never fails to evince in me divided loyalties. With a family that is precisely half-American I can wave the flag and admire the fireworks with the [...]

In just three months the world has witnessed a dizzying blur of events that neatly captures the paradox of US power at the start of the 21st century. America's far [...]

Only a really cynical curmudgeon could challenge the proposition that relations between Europe and America are well on the way to recovery. So allow me to try. Certainly the transatlantic [...]

Not since Joe McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee has a group of Americans earned a place in the demonology of Europeans quite like the one occupied by today's neo-conservatives. European politicians [...]

For years I have braved four-star hotels in exotic locations, lavish buffets and late-night tipples to bring the reader essential information on the proceedings of world economic summits. With a [...]

President George W. Bush yesterday completed his first trip to Europe since the Iraq war, giving signals of an evolving US approach to the transatlantic relationship. After six months that [...]

In the pre-dawn hours of March 20, US warplanes and sea-launched missiles struck buildings in Baghdad in an abortive attempt to kill Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president. There was something [...]

Tony Blair had good reason to like Camp David, the US president's mountain retreat in the Catoctin Mountains outside Washington. On his first trip there to meet George W. Bush [...]

Vaclav Havel's evening atthe theatre in Bratislava was about to be interrupted. It was one of the final official appearances for the Czech Republic's playwright president. He was attending a [...]

Europe Day - May 9 - never did really catch on in the American imagination. Almost every day of the year one group or another of hyphenated-Americans takes time out [...]

President Jacques Chirac called President George W. Bush this week for the first time since diplomatic negotiations to avoid war in Iraq collapsed two months ago. By chance, the transcript [...]

The mission begins in Baghdad but it does not end there. Were the US to retreat after victory into complacency, new dangers would soon arise. War in Iraq represents but [...]

WASHINGTON and LONDON -- The front lines of the US force approaching Baghdad have slowed their advance to regroup and re-supply as their military commanders weigh when to begin an [...]

Having absorbed everything the news brigades could throw at me over the last week, I can say with some confidence that for the coalition forces the war in Iraq has [...]

Through the hail of diplomatic recriminations and name-calling, one striking fact stands out at this grave historical moment. Once again, as so often in the past century, gallant men and [...]

The patron saint of politicians is Thomas More. The 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England earned his status the hardest way. He declined to endorse King Henry VIII's decision to defy [...]