Analysis 9 / 11, A Documentary By American Journalist...

Eman Eljdid May Day Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler –both the biggest enemies of their century, both announced dead on May 1st. The unsettling parallel continues beyond a shared anniversary. Behind both men lays a deceptively simple, yet endlessly complicated driving force: a poverty of humiliation. In Searching for the Roots of 9/11, a documentary by American journalist Thomas Friedman, the case is made for a poverty of humiliation in the Middle East as being a root cause of 9/11. The utopian reign of the perfect visionary ideology is not unique. Following the First World War, a poverty of humiliation in Germany was a driving force behind the diplomacy of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi Party).†¦show more content†¦These â€Å"November Criminals†, comprised of Jews, accepted the humiliating Treaty of Versailles thrust upon Germany. Similar to the anti-Western sentiment expressed by the leaders of Al-Queada, Hitler’s rage at the injustice of the world meets an ideology. A system of perceived righteousness is formed. The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement that carved up the Ottoman lands amongst Europe marked the beginning of perceived Arab humiliation. In a similar vein, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles marked the intense period of German degradation. The victorious powers imposed stringent obligations. Forced to concede territories, demilitarize, and comply with enormous reparation payments, Germany became a land of humiliated people. The French occupation of the Rhine was seen as a particularly virulent attack, as black â€Å"grade b† colonial soldiers were stationed. The Germans took this as a blatant form of humiliation and named it â€Å"Schwarze Schmach† – The Black Shame. The nearly 20,000 Afro-German children born out of the occupation were named â€Å"Rhinelandbasterd† and sterilized later. The war guilt clause of the Versailles treaty further magnified national shame by forcing them to accept the blame for WWI, stripping