Nerobefehl Nation

By the middle of March 1945 even Adolf Hitler knew that the war was lost. Soviet forces were within 45 miles of Berlin. American forces had crossed the Rhine and were well on their way to encircling the remaining German defenders. But Hitler didn’t believe that he had failed. He believed that he had been failed by the German people.

So on March 19 he issued the “Decree concerning demolitions in the Reich territory,” which has come to be known as the Nerobefehl or Nero decree. It ordered the destruction of Germany’s own infrastructure — supposedly to deny that infrastructure to the Allies, but the obvious purpose was to punish his own country.

Fortunately, Albert Speer and other Nazi officials didn’t carry out the order, although they apparently didn’t tell Hitler what was (not) happening.

Why am I recounting this history? Obviously because I’m thinking about what will happen after the midterms.

All indications are that Republicans are headed for massive defeat in elections that Trump has deliberately made a referendum on himself: “MAGA, pretend that I am on the ballot.” So what will he do when Americans show what they really think of him?

He will, of course, claim that the election was rigged and try to overturn the results. Assuming that he fails, however, then what?

Loss of Congress will limit Trump’s power, but by no means eliminate it. Above all, he will retain immense capacity to inflict destruction on America, not to mention America’s allies.

Over the past few days, according to President Zelenskyy, Ukraine has received no warning from the West about impending Russian missile strikes. This could reflect technical problems. But anyone dismissing the possibility that Trump is trying to punish Ukraine for daring to deny victory to his friend Vladimir Putin must have slept through the past two years.

At home, Trump officials suddenly cut down hundreds of trees at a public golf course in Washington. Trump has long wanted to remake that golf course to his own taste, but that’s unlikely to happen given the political winds, and in any case there was no need to rush the destruction. This was almost surely an act of spite, of deliberate act vandalism, undertaken precisely because Trump knows he won’t get his way.

And while a few hundred trees are not in themselves that big a deal, they represent the shape of things to come.

Think of the Kennedy Center, a national icon that Trump is destroying because he can’t put his own name on it, as the model for what is all too likely to happen to America over the next two years.

Can Democrats stop the coming reign of destruction? Unfortunately, a corrupt, partisan majority on the Supreme Court, invoking the “unitary executive” theory, has given Trump a huge amount of untrammeled power, especially because he is surrounded by minions — many approved by supine Republicans in Congress — who are willing, even eager to break the law. And he is also backed by oligarchs with vast resources who will continue to enable his attack on democracy even if their billions in political spending aren’t enough to buy this election.

But one thing Democrats can do is make it clear that everyone who aids and abets Trump in his Neroism can and will be held accountable to the full extent of the law. At this point anyone who says something like “We should look forward, not back” is making it significantly less likely that we will have anything to look forward to.

MUSICAL CODA