I am a Nazi Stooge.

(sigh) OK…OK…It started out like as many things do, innocently enough. I was searching Amazon. com for items relating to my new found interest in The French Foreign Legion when I came across "Songs and Marches of The French Foreign Legion". Wow! What a great CD to workout to. Legion songs are in a distinctive 88 beats per minute to match the slow march of the Legion. I enthusiastically ordered the CD along with a book about 2eme REP the Legion Para regiment and waited.

Not long after a small package arrived. “Look,” I said to my lovely wife,” my 'Songs and Marches of The French Foreign Legion are here'.” I tore it open and slid the CD out. I laughed with excitement as I looked at the cover image of a Legionnaire in his kepi blanc. Sticking out of the package was the companies catalogue. Eager to see what other Legion related items I could get from…wait… THIRD REICH BOOKS! I turned all the pages and every item was related to the Nazi’s and not in an “educational” way either, these folks were serious. Let’s face it anyone with, “Anti-Jewish Poems of The Third Reich,” for sale aint fooling around. A wave came over me as I handed the catalogue to my wife. My Jewish wife. I felt guilty. Third Reich Books now had $20 of my money and my address. I pictured the men in the store in a brown SA uniform dropping the CD along with the catalogue in the envelope. “Ah, bruzza Gruning. Vee hope you vill enjoy this moosic, ja?” Persephone looked it over and let out a laugh, “Don’t worry about it.” “But…I feel like a stooge. Should Amazon be selling books and stuff from a Nazi bookstore?” Quickly I logged on and looked up my order and its vender. There it was plain as day in a hyperlink, thirdreichbooks.com. I suppose the lesson here is always read your fine print.

The funny thing is that this Third Reich Books is in Lincoln Nebraska. I say funny because you don’t see pro-Nazi bookstores in Queens or other urban areas. It’s only where people claim that they are “true Americans,” does this type of think become visible. Not to say that there aren’t Nazi lovers here in Brooklyn but Brooklyn spent enough time following the Dodgers to have any more patients for losers.

As too the CD, the first 18min is excruciating, cymbal crashing, goose stepping, irritation. The second 19min actually has Legionnaires singing. The problem is, and I should have realized, that the Legion used to take everyone who showed up at their door no matter who they were. Many Waffen SS, Gestapo, and elite Wehrmacht units, fearing Allied retribution, took refuge in the Legion and many of their songs became part of the Legion tradition.

The final straw is that the CD is a copy of a record and has no tracks so I can’t even skip through zee tracks, ja.