It is easier to invade and take over a neighboring country when one has servants in positions of power and influence in the target country. A military commander or politician of high status can sabotage a nation from within. Have you considered the Third Reich’s invasion of France in 1940 was almost too easy? The British beat feet realizing the French were simply giving up.

Winston Churchill could not convince French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud to continue the fight, even though the French forces outnumbered the Germans. The British Expeditionary Force was trapped but for the hero sailors and airman of the Evacuation of Dunkirk.

Guderian’s plan to push an army through the Ardennes should not have succeeded. The entire German army was bottlenecked at their entrance into the forests. A huge traffic jam of tanks, troop carriers and trucks was spotted by French reconnaissance planes but the military leadership refused to bomb it. The German invasion would have been halted if they had. The generals said they didn’t believe the pilots.

Pierre Laval had been accused of appeasing Benito Mussolini during his 2nd tenure as Prime Minister of France. During the German occupation he became a leader of la Milice, a Vichy French militia designed to hunt down Jews and French Resistance fighters and operatives. He served as Prime Minister of the Vichy French government from 1942 to 1944.

Phillipe Petain was a French general who became the leader of the Vichy French government. He dissolved parliament and stated “the new France would be a social hierarchy…rejecting the false idea of the natural equality of men.” He passed anti Semitic laws, imposed censorship and arrested political opponents.

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Hermann von Boyen (20 June 1771 – 15 February 1848) was a Prussian military officer who fought in many wars and battles. He retied for 21 years and studied history. He was called back into active service by King Frederick William IV in 1841 appointing him War Minister. He received the rank of Field Marshall in 1847. A fortress in Lotzen was named after him.

von Boyen wrote several books, among them were;

• Contributions to the knowledge of General von Scharnhorst 1833
• Memories from the life of Lieutenant General v. Günthe 1844
• Forward!: a hussar diary and campaign letters by Gebhardt Leberecht von Blüche; (printed in 1914)

Phillipe Petain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951) was a hero of France for his command of the French 2nd Army during the battle of Verdun. He served as Marshal of the French military during the interwar period. During this time he wrote with General Marie-Eugène Debeney, the new army manual entitled Provisional Instruction on the Tactical Employment of Large Units. This became the standard for French military doctrine. After the French surrender to Germany (the Fall of France) in 1940 he became the head of the new Vichy French government.

Petain dissolved the French Congress and the office of President. He gave himself the right to choose his successor. Pétain transformed French society from a “Republic” to a “State”. He stated the new France would be “a social hierarchy… rejecting the false idea of the natural equality of men.” He promptly passed anti Semitic laws, imposed censorship and arrested political opponents. He supported the formation of The Milice, a French force focused on crushing the French Resistance under Joseph Darnand and Pierre Laval (Case Study 70).

Petain was tried and convicted of treason after WWII. His sentence was commuted in June 1951 due to age and advanced illness. He died about a month later on July 23.

It’s easier to get an opponent nation to surrender when it’s leaders work for you. See Case Study 56

This man was Harold Covington (September 14, 1953 – July 14, 2018), a white supremacist and Neo Nazi writer. Covington is best known for the idea of the Northwest Territorial Imperative (see this post); creating an all white ethno state in the Pacific NW states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and western Montana.

Covington became a member of the now defunct National Socialist White People’s Party (PennStateU.edu) in 1971, the same year he joined the US Army. After his discharge in 1973 he moved to South Africa and then to Rhodesia. There he helped found the Rhodesian White People’s Army. He was expelled from the country for his racist and anti Semitic stance. I guess the great white man god Phil‘s enthusiasm for former white ruled African colonies didn’t help Covington, and of course Jame’s Earl Ray never made it there.

In 1980 he became the leader of the National Socialist Party of America. Covington resigned the following year after losing a bid for the Republican Party nomination for Attorney General of North Carolina. He lived in the United Kingdom for several years, where he made contact with British far-right groups and was involved in setting up the neo-Nazi terrorist organization Combat 18 or C18. C18 openly promotes violence and antisemitism.

In 1994, Covington started an organization called the National Socialist White People’s Party, using the same name of the successor to the American Nazi Party under Matt Koehl, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He launched a website in 1996; using the pseudonym “Winston Smith” (ironically taken from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four), Covington became one of the first neo-Nazi presences on the Internet. Covington used the website and the Winston Smith pseudonym to disseminate Holocaust-denial material.

Harold Covington wrote several novels about an all white Northwest Independence movement called the Northwest Territorial Imperative.

• A Distant Thunder
• A Mighty Fortress
• The Hill of the Ravens
• The Brigade
• Freedom’s Sons

Covington died in Bremerton, Washington, on July 14, 2018