Colonel Yehuda Wegman is an expert on military doctrines and Israeli military history. He said he started watching the ceremony but immediately felt something was wrong.
"The phenomenon of thousands of people moving together in huge blocks, like a machine operated by one person to serve one purpose, is a phenomenon that history has proven to be associated with regimes we would rather forget ever existed," he said.
Colonel Wegman found similarities between the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and the ceremonies held by the Nazi regime. He quotes from the biography of Hitler's Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer.
"Opposite the giant stages, Speer positioned huge blocks of people dressed in brown and black uniforms who, together, formed an impressive geometric shape…The spirit of the generation, which was disturbed by the anarchy and disorder, couldn't but watch the scene in great awe.”
"The visitors in Nuremberg, including many foreigners, were so impressed they were ready to disregard the repulsive aspects of the regime.”
Colonel Wegman recently published an article on Ynet–a major Israeli newspaper's website. The article calls the public's attention to the dangers the Bejing ceremony represents to the Free World.
"If this was about a small country like Andorra, then that wouldn't have been a reason for concern. But this is China – a country that accounts for a fifth of the world's population and has enormous power and natural resources. It has the ability to bring into action the ideas that lie behind those ceremonies – ideas of imperialism, intervention and oppression."
Colonel Wegman said history is repeating itself.
Colonel (Res.) Yehuda Wegmen served for over a decade as a senior instructor of fighting doctrine at the IDF Command and General Staff College. During the Yom Kippur War he served as an officer in the first reservist battalion to reach the Golan Heights. Today he develops military instructional methods and writes on military and security matters.
