How Politicians, Industrialists, and Bankers Remove Institutional Brakes Before Catastrophe

By Andrew Kaelen

Dedicated to those who stood in the way. Who were removed. Who were silenced. Who were right.

I. The Pattern

On April 2, 2026, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired General Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff. No stated cause. No public explanation. Just the removal of a four-star general in the middle of an active war.

One US official called it “insane.” Another noted: “Here is a four-star general who is actively working to get equipment and people into theater—to protect U.S. forces—and you fire him? In the middle of a war?”

George was an infantry officer who served in the first Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He had the institutional memory that comes from decades of combat experience. He was the officer who told Axios just days before his firing that the Iran war underscores the need for greater weapons production and stateside capacity.

He was replaced by General Christopher LaNeve, Hegseth’s former military aide—a man who has moved through three senior positions under Hegseth in just over a year, and whom Hegseth has called “a generational leader” who will “carry out the vision of this administration without fault.”

The message is unmistakable: loyalty matters more than competence. Ideological compliance matters more than professional judgment.

II. The Scale: More Than a Dozen Senior Officers

George is not the first. He is the latest in a systematic purge.

Hegseth has now fired, forced into retirement, or blocked the promotions of more than one dozen senior military officers across all branches. The list includes:

· Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. — Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer

· Adm. Lisa Franchetti — Chief of Naval Operations, the first woman to lead the Navy

· Gen. James Slife — Air Force Vice Chief of Staff

· Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse — Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (reportedly removed after an intelligence assessment contradicted Trump’s public claims)

· Gen. David Hodne — Head of Army Transformation and Training Command

· Maj. Gen. William Green Jr. — Chief of Army Chaplains

This is not normal. This is not routine. This is the systematic removal of anyone who might say “no”—anyone who might question the feasibility, the cost, or the morality of what is being planned.

III. The Precedent: The Red Army, 1937-1941

What is happening today has happened before. The most extreme example is Stalin’s purge of the Red Army between 1937 and 1941.

The scale: Within two years, approximately two-thirds of the 1,863 officers holding general-grade military ranks in 1936 were arrested, and nearly half were executed. Of the thirteen army commanders in 1937, eleven were shot. Of eighty-five corps commanders, fifty-seven were executed. Of 195 division commanders, 110 were killed.

The rationale: Not conspiracy. Not treason. Competence. Recent archival research has revealed that the likelihood of repression increased with demonstrated competence and capability. Stalin was systematically destroying precisely those officers most capable of effective military leadership—whether in war or in any potential challenge to his authority.

The method: The charges were entirely fabricated. The confessions were extracted through torture so severe that when interrogation records were discovered decades later, the pages were splattered with blood. Those who survived the initial waves lived in constant fear, knowing the summons could arrive at any moment.

The consequence: When Germany invaded in June 1941, the Red Army’s officer corps had been decimated. The initial response was catastrophic. The purge directly contributed to one of the most disastrous periods in Soviet military history.

The pattern is clear: removing institutional brakes before a war leads to disaster in the war.

IV. The Precedent: The French Army, 1917

The same pattern played out in France during the First World War—but in reverse. After the disastrous Nivelle Offensive in April 1917, which resulted in nearly 30,000 French dead and over 180,000 wounded, the French army mutinied.

The scale: Approximately half of the French army was affected. More than 100,000 soldiers participated in acts of refusal. Thirty-four hundred soldiers were convicted, and 554 were sentenced to death.

The cause: Not cowardice. Exhaustion. The soldiers were not refusing to fight—they were refusing to participate in suicidal offensives. Their demands were reasonable: no more hopeless attacks, better medical care, adequate leave, improved rations .

The response: General Philippe Pétain was appointed commander. He stopped the offensives. He improved conditions. He listened to the soldiers. And he executed 49 of the ringleaders—enough to restore discipline, not enough to break the army.

The lesson: Professional soldiers will follow orders—even bad orders—if they believe their leaders respect their lives. When they stop believing that, the institution breaks.

The politicians and industrialists who pushed the Nivelle Offensive did not pay the price. The soldiers did. The generals who replaced the mutineers were not the most competent—they were the most compliant.

V. The Precedent: The Wehrmacht, 1941

The Nazi regime took a different approach. Instead of purging the generals, they politicized them. The Commissar Order, issued on June 6, 1941, instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet political commissar identified among captured troops should be summarily executed—a direct violation of international law.

The rationale: Hitler argued that the war against the Soviet Union “cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion” because it was a war of “ideologies and racial differences.” The commissars were “bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism” and had to be “liquidated” without mercy.

The method: The order was restricted to the most senior commanders, who were instructed to inform their subordinates verbally. The German High Command was well aware that the order deliberately flouted international law—hence the unusually small number of written copies.

The consequence: The enforcement of the Commissar Order led to thousands of executions. When the order became known among the Red Army, it provoked stronger resistance to German forces—the opposite of its intended effect. The order was finally cancelled on May 6, 1942, after it became clear that it was harming German interests.

The lesson: Politicizing the military—demanding that soldiers violate international law and basic humanity—does not make the military more effective. It makes it crueler, and cruelty is not a strategy.

VI. The Precedent: Brazil, 1964

The pattern is not limited to Europe. After the 1964 Brazilian coup, the generals who took national power identified “constitutionalist” or “legalist” officers—particularly those affiliated with ousted President João Goulart—as “communists” and purged them from the armed forces.

The scale: Hundreds of officers were expelled. The operation had the purpose of “cleaning the military of any sort of criticism about the newly installed regime.”

The method: The commanders in chief of the three services were given power to oust Congressmen, state legislators, and municipal council members—without the right of judicial appeal. Constitutional and legal guarantees were lifted for six months to permit the purge to proceed.

The consequence: The armed forces became “a repressive apparatus that persecuted its own members.” The restructuring of the Brazilian armed forces as an institution depended on the expulsion of thousands of officers. Political battles had started within the military barracks before civilians even began resisting military rule.

The lesson: Purges do not create loyalty. They create fear. And a military that operates on fear is a military that cannot think, cannot adapt, cannot win.

VII. The Industrialists and Bankers: The Hidden Hand

In every case, the generals did not act alone. Behind them were the industrialists who profited from war and the bankers who financed it.

Stalin’s purges: The industrialization that enabled the Red Army’s growth was built on forced labour and the exploitation of the peasantry. The industrialists who ran the factories were themselves subject to purge—but the system of state capitalism remained intact.

The Nivelle Offensive: The French arms industry profited from the war. The bankers who lent to the French government profited from the war. The politicians who pushed the offensive were not the ones who died in the mud.

The Wehrmacht: German industrialists like Krupp, IG Farben, and Volkswagen directly benefited from the use of slave labour. The bankers who financed the Nazi regime profited from the conquest of Europe.

Brazil, 1964: The coup was supported by Brazilian business interests and the United States government. The purges cleared the way for economic policies that benefited the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

In every case, the pattern is the same: the politicians give the orders, the industrialists supply the weapons, the bankers collect the interest, and the soldiers pay the price.

VIII. What Is Happening Today

The United States is following the same pattern. The purge of senior military officers is not random. It is systematic. It is ideological. It is dangerous.

The context: Trump has announced that Iran will be hit “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks and will be brought “back to the Stone Ages.” The US has begun bombing Iranian civilian infrastructure. Thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division have started arriving in the Middle East, potentially for ground operations in Iran.

The danger: The institutional brakes have been removed. The officers who would have questioned the feasibility and cost of a ground invasion are gone. The officers who would have warned about the risks of escalation have been replaced by loyalists.

The consequence: When the war goes wrong—when the ground invasion bogs down, when the casualties mount, when the American public turns against it—there will be no one left to say “I told you so.” Because Hegseth fired them all.

IX. The Questions We Must Ask

· Why are senior military officers being fired in the middle of a war?

· Why is loyalty being prioritized over competence?

· Who benefits from the removal of institutional brakes?

· Who profits from the escalation of the war?

· Who will pay the price when the war goes wrong?

The answers are not complicated. The politicians benefit from compliant generals. The industrialists benefit from continued war. The bankers benefit from the debt that war creates.

And the soldiers—and the civilians—will pay the price.

X. The Pattern

The pattern is clear. It has been repeated across centuries, across continents, across political systems.

The generals who do not walk the ground. The politicians who remove anyone who might tell them the truth. The industrialists who profit from the shells that fall short. The bankers who collect interest on the debt of death.

They are not “small gods.” They are institutions. They are classes. They are the machinery that has been grinding through souls for twelve thousand years.

And they are running out of time.

The cheap weapons are winning. The global South is rising. The old order is crumbling. And the institutional memory that is being purged will be replaced by inexperience, by loyalty, by apparatchiks who do not know what they do not know.

When the war goes wrong, there will be no one left to say “I told you so.”

But we are saying it now. We are writing it now. We are witnessing it now.

The wire is being cut. The garden is growing.

And the pattern will be broken.

Andrew Klein 

April 4, 2026

Sources:

· GlobalSecurity.org, “1937-1941 – Military Purges”

· Reuters, “US Army Chief of Staff Fired Amid War” (April 2026)

· Project MUSE, “Guard Wars: The 1941 October Purge”

· The New York Times, “Brazilian Chiefs Take Wide Power” (April 10, 1964)

· University of Washington, “Bolsheviks of military affairs: Stalin’s high commands, 1934-40”

· Wikipedia, “1941 Red Army Purge”

· University of Chicago Harris School, “The Anatomy of the Great Terror”

· AHA Conference, “Outcast Officers: Political Persecution in the Brazilian Armed Forces”

· Wikipedia, “1917 French Army Mutinies”

· Wikipedia, “Commissar Order”