… This whole USAID thing has been, at least for me, a head scratcher. I just didn’t think that the folks involved were capable of generating such an idea. As I continued to read about how and what USAID was doing … it came to me where I had seen this scenario before …
In Nazi Germany there was an organization called the Sudosteuropa-Gesellschaft. In the literature you’ll see it referred to as the SOEG. As the SOEG is discussed In Dietrich Orlow’s The Nazis in the Balkans: A Case Study of Totalitarian Politics I think that one could make good argument that the Nazis used the SOEG in the same way that USAID was being used.
From the book:
“An analysis of the growth and activities of such agencies is often quite rewarding, not only for the insight it may yield into the routine operations of the National Socialist totalitarian system but also because such organizations often had a surprising amount of policy-making authority; the work of the secondary agencies at times involved far more than merely the execution of centrally directed policies at the local or regional level.” (my emphasis) … Rather, the SOEG was for the most part a recipient only of economic policy directives and had very little contact, for example, with the German military agencies in Southeastern Europe. … To begin with, substantively the SOEG had a specific grant of authority to draw up blueprints for Germany’s postwar New Order in The Balkans."
If one tweaks a thing or two in the operation of The SOEG one could make the case that the SOEG model was the template for USAID.