Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam says Hitler is his hero (1970)

Illustration by Walter Steinhilber
1970 -- Vice President Ky of South Vietnam says that Hitler is his only hero

From the Weekly People,
September 26, 1970 - Volume LXXX, No. 26

website editor's comment: OCR from a newspaper clipping. I don't have the original title of the article. If it had a title, I lost it in the process of clipping. - M.L.

Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam, a member of the military dictatorship in power, was scheduled to be the major speaker at a pro-war rally in Washington, D.C., planned by the Rev. Dr. Carl McIntire, a fundamentalist preacher, expelled from the Presbyterian Church, who equates God and capitalism.

For the record, the July 13, 1965, New York Post printed part of an interview that Mr. Ky had given the London Sunday Mirror. The paper quoted him:

"People ask me who my heroes are. have only one -- Hitler. I admire Hitler because he has pulled his country together when it was in a terrible state in the early thirties. But the situation here is so desperate now that one man would not be enough. We need four or five Hitlers in Vietnam."

The statement embarrassed U.S. capitalism in its endeavors to palm off the South Vietnamese government as a defender of freedom. Ky's acceptance of Dr. McIntire's war-mongering invitation, coupled with the minister's reactionary political and political-religious reputation, embarrassed U.S. capitalism again. As of Sept. 8, Vice President Ky was "reconsidering" his plan to speak for Dr. McIntire.