Straight from the Weimar playbook.

If you haven't seen the fascinating film Max, with John Cusack and Noah Taylor, I recommend it. Set in early '20s Vienna, Taylor plays a young Hitler, and Cusack, an art dealer. All of this "stabbed in the back" talk from Putz recently got me thinking about the movie, because it touches on the origins of this theme.

The phrase originates with an older NCO, who coaches Hitler and his fellow army veterans on speech-making..

Officer

So men, I want you on the street today, and here's the message: "Stabbed in the back."

Enlisted Man

By who, sir?

Officer

Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. What matters is that Germany is absolved from having lost the war and prepared to wage the next one. Fellow loses a game, he doesn't want to play anymore. You tell him he lost because someone else cheated, then you have to hold him back from picking up the cards again.

Later, Hitler, who'd previously been an uninspiring speaker, uses this theme to great effect. It's easier to imagine it another way.

Hitler

We are being stabbed in the back! We won this war! Our boys fought like lions! Like lions! So why in the name of Providence are we giving away square miles of land speaking of surrender and abandoning six million of our fellow Germans the troops?!

Because we have been stabbed in the back! By the profiteers media and the maggots Democrats and the parasites anti-war Left.

And make no mistake, Germany's America's greatest enemy lives within.