I thought that since so many around the world are contemplating this anniversary of Kristallnacht that I would write about the rest of my mother's witness during World War II in Germany.
My grandfather, her father, had served in World War I, yet he was sent to work in a munitions factory in the south, in the Harz Mountains region. That was how it was in Germany, for no one had normal jobs, nor was retired. At any time as they became desperate for men they plucked boys and older men who were not in the military and sent them to work in factories. It was not only the enslaved who had to do this. So my grandfather had to leave his wife, their widowed daughter (my mom) and her infant son behind and go to work in that arms factory.
When Germany fell, the Allies had worked out which country's army would invade and occupy what area, and the right to enter Berlin was given to the Russians. This was understandable as the Russians had lost millions of people most cruelly in this conflict caused by Hitler. However, the civilian population of Berlin knew full well that the Russians would bestow the gift of cruelty on them in return for what the soldiers had done. So many people, especially women and children, who were pretty much all who were left, fled Berlin in advance of the Russians, especially as they heard the news that their worse fears were true. For example, they learned that some Russian soldiers would make civilians kneel in front of a table, extend their tongue, and the Russians would drive a nail through the tongue, nailing them to the table.
My grandmother refused to leave her house, even knowing this. She knew that they were also burning and looting, and just flat out refused to leave. Incredibly she survived by hiding where they did not find her. In those days attics were often reached by huge wood ladders. My grandmother climbed up the ladder to the attic and then somehow found incredible strength to pull the ladder up after her, hiding it in the attic with her, thus making it look like no one could have gone up to the attic (and with no ladder, no one thought to check). She lay silently as the Russians went through the house (they could of course have shot with their guns through the ceiling if they heard her, so she could not move or make any noise). They stripped just about all they could from the house, including the doorknobs off of the doors. But she was alive and that was what counted.
My mother, as a schoolgirl, had done a genealogy of our family as a school project, which was easy to do as all the churches had great church records of events and occupations. She was able to trace our family to the 14th century. Her uncle, who lived next door, panicked when hearing of the Russians coming and burned anything that made the family "look German." I mean, duh, who else would they be but Germans? But he thought the genealogy of simple carpenters, farmers, and small crafts people might look "patriotic" and he burned the entire thing, along with (wisely) the obligatory copy of "Mein Kampf" that just about everyone was expected to have. We really mourn the loss of that school work of my mother's because with the destruction of so many of Germany's churches, even if anyone had the heart to do it, we could not reconstruct even a fraction of it since, like I said, her uncle burned everything and we had really nothing left regarding the family, as modest as it was. He and his family survived too, but relations were never warm, even though they were neighbors.
My mother took her son and fled along with thousands of other women and children, all on foot, all heading south. She figured to walk to where her father was at the munitions factory. They were programmed by Hitler in the schools to think that the British and the American soldiers were "savages" and so they were afraid to encounter them, but had no choice, as the British were advancing from the south. When they met my mother said she and all of the others were astonished at the kindness of the British soldiers. They helped them with food and supplies, and when they could spare vehicles they would pack refugees in them and help them in their journey south. My mother said she would never forget their kindness. Nor will I.
Sometimes the refugees were able to jump onto coal trains, sitting in the coal. Needless to say people were tattered in their clothes, and impossible to keep clean. When I was young my mother never let me wear play clothes; I had to always dress nicely and never make a mess (and thus was incredibly restricted in play). Only once when I was an adult did she tell me that was not her just being obsessive, but it was because she could not bear to see children, as she did during the war, wearing torn and dirty clothes. She swore no child of hers would ever have to wear tattered or dirty clothes again, and boy, she meant it.
She was, as I explained, widowed in 1942, her police man husband who had been drafted into Hitler's Army being killed in Poland one week after his son had been born to my mom. In fact, he got the news in a letter from her, and he and three comrades were ambushed by partisans and killed on their way back from posting mail in reply to their loved ones. My mother got the official news that he had been killed, and then days later, she received his letter. He had been a devout Catholic, a farm boy, an altar boy. At least he died knowing that he had a son.
All that she had of him was his bayonet, and to quote her, "I must have been a little bit crazy during that time, because I took the bayonet with me, not for protection, but because I could not bear to lose the only thing I had left from him. I would have been shot on the spot if I had been found with it, but I kept it wrapped in cloth and it was not found." We still have it in our family and my brother has it.
She made it to the south and was reunited with her father, my grandfather. They stayed there for a while, her and the many other refugees, but all of them were in terror of worry about those who remained behind in Berlin, such as her mother, my grandmother. And so, yes, you guessed it, many refugees just could not stay in the south and wanted to go back to check on their loved ones. Remember, no one but the Allies had any way of having any news, and things were chaotic, so no mail system, certainly no telephones, the infrastructure of Germany was largely destroyed. So all the women worried and imagined about the fate of their loved ones in Berlin and other areas. So many of them turned around and started the trek back north.
Yes, they encountered the British again. To quote my mother, "They said to us, are you crazy? You have just walked hundreds of miles to escape Berlin and now you want to go back?" But yes, the women insisted, and again the British helped them with giving them rides whenever they could spare some capacity. My mother and her son, my brother, made it back and found her mother, my grandmother, alive and well in the house. Eventually my grandfather was able to return too.
When I visited Germany as a child for the first time in 1962, I saw the bomb shelter where my mother and my brother would run during air raids. She also showed me where she had slept in the house and one morning awoke to find shrapnel in her pillow.
During the war they sometimes learned the truth about the progress of the war and Germany's increasing number of defeats because someone had a precious radio, and they could hear the broadcast of the Allies. It was a death penalty to have a radio (for that very reason) in Hitler's Germany, so it was listened to by German civilians at great risk to their lives.
When the Americans arrived and took over the sector of Berlin where my family was, they all just about fainted at how nice the Americans were. Like I said, it sounds stupid now, but when they were youngsters under Hitler he had ordered the schools to teach that American and British soldiers were both savages and also hired savages. Needless to say it was a great relief to the surviving civilians that just like the British, the Americans were fine. The man who would become my father was an American paratrooper and he was stationed near where my grandparents lived, and so that is where he met my mother when she would walk with her son to get rations and milk. Everything was incredibly scarce, as you can imagine. My father was there only for under five months, I think, before being sent back to the USA to demobilize. He actually got a compassion leave because his father was ailing and dying, so my father missed the great victory parade of the paratroopers in New York City, as he was home with his dying father.
As soon as my father's mother and sisters learned that he had a German sweetheart they went to work. My father's youngest sister in particular started her own personal supply lines of packages to my mother with food, powdered milk and other essentials, including things for my brother, like comic books (which were an unimaginable treasure in the ruins of Germany for a child). She also always sent a can of coffee which was more valuable than any gold or money. Rather than drink it my mother sold it on the black market so that they could get money for clothes and other necessities. My mother adored the ground that my aunt walked upon, and she was known to be "an angel" (not in an occult way, but just the expression for one of those extraordinary people who change the world with their day to day kindness). My mother and brother did not leave Germany for another three years after the end of the war, for a number of reasons, to come to America and marry my father. It just about killed her parents, my grandparents, when they left. Remember, travel and communications was not like it was in more modern times, and so they were losing their one and only grandson. They did not see him for many years, until they were able to afford passage on an ocean liner to visit in America, in 1956. I was a toddler but I remember that visit very well, when I met my grandparents for the first (and best) time.
So that is information that I can share with you about "what it really was like" in a time that few can imagine. We used to love the old movie "I was a Male War Bride" (with Cary Grant, my favorite actor) because it contained some humorous look at the many marriages and emigrations that took place after the War.
My brother is one of the most likable guys you can imagine, never looking for trouble, but trouble found him when he was a German kid in American schools after the war. He assimilated quickly and post war anger died down, but for a few years he got called a Nazi and beaten up regularly. He used to come home beaten up and tell our mother that it was the result of football practice injuries. My mother was upset but believed him, not realizing until several years later that football practice did not occur every day year around, and usually did not result in black eyes! When I came along even though I had a slight accent picked up from my mother (which then got speech corrected in school) I had no real trouble at all. Just one day in third grade or so someone left a scrap of paper on my desk with "Nazi" written on it, but that was it. I think it was a kid who was "trying out" prejudice just once, if you know what I mean. But by the late 1950's there were plenty of German families and no one got worked up over it, understanding they were refugees, not perpetrators. But my brother did have a rough couple of years.
Oh, I just remembered another story. Once my mother's German husband took her to the firing range to let her fire his Lugar. She was absolutely knocked on her rear end by the kick back. So a gun totting super hero defending her family she definitely is not.
Ah yes, I just remembered another story to share. Right after the big attempt on Hitler's life my mother was in a Berlin hospital, suffering from either dysentery or cholera. She looked out the window and saw Hitler's people hunting down anyone they thought was part of the coup, shooting them right there in the street. To quote my mother "You see, communications was so bad that when the bomb went off, they thought they had succeeded, and that they had killed Hitler. And so the people in the underground came out of hiding, even telling that they had killed Hitler on the radio. And so they were out in the open, and I saw them being hunted down right from my hospital window."
Speaking of hospital, when her son, my brother, was born in 1942, there was no medicine or pain killers, all had been sent to the soldiers. She was told that old saw, and they actually meant it, to "Bite on a bullet." The birth was such a mess that they told her that she could not have children again, certainly not without an operation. And there was obviously some truth to it because she did not become pregnant again for many years, thinking that she could not. Thus when she became pregnant with me it was a total shock, much more for her than for my father!
Showing posts with label Hitler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hitler. Show all posts
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Correcting people's thinking about "Hitler"
Regarding Hitler and his dispensation to hell. Yes, this is going to be one of my informative but definitely increasingly irate posts.
I cannot believe that I have to explain this to people (how many times have I said and thought that sentiment) but it is obvious that misunderstanding only increases over time rather than clarity and sane reasoning with understanding of God’s will prevail.
Hitler was a bad man. Hitler is dead. Hitler is in hell.
OK? Is that simple enough for you? Actually, I’ve come to observe through my study of the cultists and the secular society that those statements are not enough for modern “magical thinking” pea brains to understand. Part of me is sympathetic in understanding one aspect of the confusion, and that is that I realize that because of the enormity of the Holocaust, it is difficult to grasp on a spiritual level. So I’m not mocking or discouraging talk about how the Holocaust essentially sealed Hitler’s doom and Hitler as an incredible study in evil. But notice what I said: the Holocaust sealed his doom. Yes, you read correctly that he had already merited hell before the Holocaust. Hitler's not still "hanging around." This is what it is important for you all to understand if you have ANY hope of sanity and of saving your own souls not only that Hitler has long ago gotten his final judgment and doom, but also exactly why and when he triggered this doom. In other words, what does God judge in someone like Hitler?
Here it is in summary:
Anyone who knows God exists, and defies him, his commandments and laws, AND leads others away from their belief in God merits and will find themselves in hell. That alone is quite enough.
This, incidentally, is why Henry VIII, jolly old guy as he was, "merits" hell. I’m not saying he is there or not because only God will say that. I do speak on authority from the Holy Spirit about Hitler today, though, because of the gravity of human error and warped discussion that affects salvation of people alive today.
However, I mention Henry VIII to reiterate two points: 1. he meets the "he is dead" judgment decision point and 2. that he "merits" hell (he knew God existed, he defied him and he lead others away from the faith).
Interestingly I do not mean Henry VIII’s defiance of Rome and Papal authority, wrong as that was. I mean, quite simply, the destruction of the monasteries and places of worship, and the outright killing of priests, friars and other of the faithful. THAT is what "merits" Henry VIII hell (and let me repeat, God has rendered judgment on him at his death; there is no stupid or intelligent reincarnation at all, whatsoever).
So this is what you must understand about Hitler. Hitler knew that God exists not only because of his exposure to the faith as a child but because he had the nerve, even after rejecting God and the institutional church, to invoke God’s name and intentions on occasion. What more proof does anyone need of a person who KNOWS God exists because even as he defies him he invokes him claiming, for example, that God has a purpose for him?? This observation ought to make all of YOU think long and hard. Hitler is no different than someone who has been raised or otherwise exposed to the faith and the reality of God (who can miss it in this day and age, unless one is raised in a basement as a prisoner) who then denies God as God has chosen to present himself and yet invoke something about God when it suits him or her to do so. So that is the first of the dooming criteria for hell. He was raised to know and believe in God, he rejected and defied God, yet he also invoked God on occasion for his evil purposes. (Kind of like atheists who make money off of God, but that is another story!)
So knowing that God exists, rejecting him, and yet invoking some of his power and authority as your own are the two things that put a person on a certain track to hell. That is violation of the first Two Commandments, and there is nothing more fundamentally dangerous than that to do. However, when you set a public example for your manipulative disbelief/belief then you compound it enormously because now you lead others to break the first Two Commandments. Hitler closed down religious institutions, persecuted not only priests and other consecrated religious but also the faithful themselves. He imposed a pagan state cult on the people and children were raised in this cult. If Hitler had stopped “there” and had done “nothing else,” including the Holocaust, he would have nonetheless without question been put into hell at his death.
I know how humans think, and that is not a joyful capability, believe me. So I know that some people are feeling actually a disappointment reading this, because they feel like I am implying that committing the Holocaust was somehow “optional” and "additonal" to Hitler’s already being on the evil path to damnation, not the pivotal reason. But yes, that is correct, and as hard to understand as that is, you should upon contemplation have greater faith and understanding of God, not lesser. I know this is confusing so let me be plainer. Hitler already was headed to hell even before he executed the entire Holocaust due to his actions prior.
Suppose we could rewrite history, as I outlined above, where Hitler “only” knew of God, denied him, and then imposed the cult belief, suppressing all religions, and killed the rabbis, burned the synagogues, but let the Jews live under the pagan German government. Aren’t you glad and understanding of God’s justice to know that “that alone” would have merited Hitler’s eternal damnation in hell? To put it more plainly, if Hitler had taken the ability to practice the Jewish faith away from the people under his control, but let the Jews live, he would have already merited hell, for certain.
Millions of people “did not have to die” in order to assure today’s public consciousness that Hitler merited, and got, hell. Jesus and ALL of the prophets, both in the Old Testament and New, plus the Qur’an reiterate that denial of God when one has the opportunity to know of his reality AND leading others from the faith, especially if holy and pious leaders are slain, are anathema, abomination and most certainly the direct route to hell.
This understanding, which is totally accurate and crystal clear, ought to make cult and secular leaders very nervous today. You don’t need “a Holocaust” to virtually guarantee yourself hell if you do the things that I have outlined above, either by the gun and sword OR BY THE PEN OR COMPUTER.
So why did Hitler survive so long, and why were so many people killed?
God in his mercy does not oversee human events that they do to each other with the intention of weeding out bad people by smiting them “early on” in their evil career. Honestly, God might as well get rid of the entire human race, then. Why? Because if you as humans cannot recognize evil in your midst and DEAL with it promptly YOURSELVES then why are you even alive?
Look at how much argument took place among humans, and what subterfuge Roosevelt had to use, to even get people involved in hindering Hitler in the early days! Many people dragged their feet, and all governments were complicit in complacency, if nothing else. The railroad tracks to the concentration camps were not bombed, which would have greatly hindered the Holocaust. Refugees were turned away. Those people, who did help surreptitiously, such as the Pope, are vilified by spineless publicity seekers today who only seek to second hand guess what they themselves would have pissed in their own pants if they had to defy Hitler as real people did everyday.
The Americans eventually had to pull all the weight on a two front war. If humans cannot make intelligent and merciful decisions about how to deal with a God denying mass murderer in their midst, how can you say you are entitled to life or existence at all? So God does not “weed out” the “bad guys” for you, because that is life by definition, learning how to live it and abide in God’s commandments, and dealing with those who don’t and who murder others.
The Holocaust happened simply because it became the measure of how far humanity’s indifference and outright inhumanity will extend. It’s like the levels of the ocean rising when icebergs melt (to use an example not because it is prophecy but because it is a popular topic). The ocean would rise only so far as the volume of melting ice will allow it to, because once the ice is completely melted there is no more frozen water to add to the ocean and thus it stops rising. That is the Holocaust, where it simply was a matter of “how much is too much” for humanity’s own consciousness and ability to act in defense of both the neighbor and the innocent stranger in another country.
So God certainly wasn’t “sitting out there” on a cloud “allowing the Holocaust” to happen. He was watching with dismay and grief, but in his infinite knowledge and wisdom, no surprise, how far humans will let the ocean of an evil rise before they stop it.
Reading some mystical significance into the predominance of Jews in the Holocaust is wrong, at least from God’s point of view. Killing ANYONE is wrong, and certainly for their faith, ANY faith in God that is persecuted is martyrdom, and there are not either bonus points, or demerits, if one is Jewish and a martyr.
It is outrageous how motives have been impugned to God regarding the Jewish component of the Holocaust. That is like saying he “chose” ice to melt in global warming. I mean, duh? What would melt beside ice when the evil of man, to use this natural analogy, caused global warming? So when a pagan state is imposed the pious are killed and melted, regardless of their faith, Jewish or not. Humans use it as an excuse to seize properties, try to find a way to rationalize the killing of Jews and so forth, but that is not it, in the bottom line. The bottom line is that Jews, for the most part, were a community that would have resisted a pagan government that destroyed their ability to practice their faith, destroyed their synagogues and killed their rabbis.
I rest my case and explanation with the obvious example, which is Rwanda. In a matter of DAYS hundreds of thousands were hacked to pieces and no one did anything. The USA could have flown Marines into Rwanda and shot dead the leaders of the mobs and put an end to that massacre in a New York minute.
Why did that “Holocaust” happen if oh so wise humans have “learned their lesson” from the Holocaust itself? Who cared about Rwanda? Apparently years later movie makers did, but not so much when it happened. Humans STILL need to learn how to, um, you know, identify God defying people who slaughter their own people and stop it on the spot, whether “your ox is being gored” or not. (In other words, even if there is not a “national interest.”) Hell, I think the Israeli army should have flown in and shot a few of the leaders of the Rwandan massacre, and said “Never again” on the behalf of a helpless populace humanity who did not share their skin color, their origins or their faith, nor had a national interest.
This, by the way, is one of the things I will always be interested in asking Bill Clinton, former USA President, about. The first DAY it was happening I was raging at the TV in my mind thinking “Do something; send in the marines, you foolish idiots!”
And where do you think the Rwandan who killed “only one” person versus the one who killed hundreds, or thousands at his or her behest will go? It’s hell regardless if it was one person or many.
So yes, keep discussing the moralities of what happened during the reign of Hitler, because obviously it is a deep wound in humanity that is not well understood. But please stop with the stupid “Hitler is reincarnated” or “Hitler had a special purpose from God” crap. Thinking like that keeps blots in human viability and further existence like Cambodia under Pol Pot, Rwanda and other genocidal pits of human’s own making going and going with no increase in comprehension.
The only “special purpose” anyone and everyone, including Hitler, had or has is to repent, return to God and make amends, and that door is open only when one is alive, and before God hardens his heart and removes the opportunities for repentance.
Hitler, like all humans, could have repented and had a SINCERE and TOTAL conversion up until the end of his last hour of life.
In his lifelong evil and madness, he probably confused the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who speaks to all, urging them to repent and convert as proof of “his special purpose.” People like him feel a touch of the numinous from God seeking their return to good ways and instead impugn their own "psychic" powers to that touch.
This is why there is an institutional church, by the way, so people don’t run around “hearing their own personal revelation” and having a terrible distortion as Hitler did, and as SO MANY do today. People have enough trouble with “hearing voices” that come from drug abuse or mental disorder that they don’t need equally psycho people interpreting “purpose from God” on top of their delusion.
It’s sure hot and unpleasant, more than you can imagine, in hell. Pray, repent and convert before you join the many others who have found out with no chance out because they threw away and flaunted God to his face. The reason I am so mad is that I know darn well that some people manipulate Hitler "study" in occult ways to either claim he is reincarnated or to mislead Jews regarding why "God let it happen." I hope that what I wrote above, extremely irate as it is, because I am so sick of the wasted time and souls, is helpful.
I cannot believe that I have to explain this to people (how many times have I said and thought that sentiment) but it is obvious that misunderstanding only increases over time rather than clarity and sane reasoning with understanding of God’s will prevail.
Hitler was a bad man. Hitler is dead. Hitler is in hell.
OK? Is that simple enough for you? Actually, I’ve come to observe through my study of the cultists and the secular society that those statements are not enough for modern “magical thinking” pea brains to understand. Part of me is sympathetic in understanding one aspect of the confusion, and that is that I realize that because of the enormity of the Holocaust, it is difficult to grasp on a spiritual level. So I’m not mocking or discouraging talk about how the Holocaust essentially sealed Hitler’s doom and Hitler as an incredible study in evil. But notice what I said: the Holocaust sealed his doom. Yes, you read correctly that he had already merited hell before the Holocaust. Hitler's not still "hanging around." This is what it is important for you all to understand if you have ANY hope of sanity and of saving your own souls not only that Hitler has long ago gotten his final judgment and doom, but also exactly why and when he triggered this doom. In other words, what does God judge in someone like Hitler?
Here it is in summary:
Anyone who knows God exists, and defies him, his commandments and laws, AND leads others away from their belief in God merits and will find themselves in hell. That alone is quite enough.
This, incidentally, is why Henry VIII, jolly old guy as he was, "merits" hell. I’m not saying he is there or not because only God will say that. I do speak on authority from the Holy Spirit about Hitler today, though, because of the gravity of human error and warped discussion that affects salvation of people alive today.
However, I mention Henry VIII to reiterate two points: 1. he meets the "he is dead" judgment decision point and 2. that he "merits" hell (he knew God existed, he defied him and he lead others away from the faith).
Interestingly I do not mean Henry VIII’s defiance of Rome and Papal authority, wrong as that was. I mean, quite simply, the destruction of the monasteries and places of worship, and the outright killing of priests, friars and other of the faithful. THAT is what "merits" Henry VIII hell (and let me repeat, God has rendered judgment on him at his death; there is no stupid or intelligent reincarnation at all, whatsoever).
So this is what you must understand about Hitler. Hitler knew that God exists not only because of his exposure to the faith as a child but because he had the nerve, even after rejecting God and the institutional church, to invoke God’s name and intentions on occasion. What more proof does anyone need of a person who KNOWS God exists because even as he defies him he invokes him claiming, for example, that God has a purpose for him?? This observation ought to make all of YOU think long and hard. Hitler is no different than someone who has been raised or otherwise exposed to the faith and the reality of God (who can miss it in this day and age, unless one is raised in a basement as a prisoner) who then denies God as God has chosen to present himself and yet invoke something about God when it suits him or her to do so. So that is the first of the dooming criteria for hell. He was raised to know and believe in God, he rejected and defied God, yet he also invoked God on occasion for his evil purposes. (Kind of like atheists who make money off of God, but that is another story!)
So knowing that God exists, rejecting him, and yet invoking some of his power and authority as your own are the two things that put a person on a certain track to hell. That is violation of the first Two Commandments, and there is nothing more fundamentally dangerous than that to do. However, when you set a public example for your manipulative disbelief/belief then you compound it enormously because now you lead others to break the first Two Commandments. Hitler closed down religious institutions, persecuted not only priests and other consecrated religious but also the faithful themselves. He imposed a pagan state cult on the people and children were raised in this cult. If Hitler had stopped “there” and had done “nothing else,” including the Holocaust, he would have nonetheless without question been put into hell at his death.
I know how humans think, and that is not a joyful capability, believe me. So I know that some people are feeling actually a disappointment reading this, because they feel like I am implying that committing the Holocaust was somehow “optional” and "additonal" to Hitler’s already being on the evil path to damnation, not the pivotal reason. But yes, that is correct, and as hard to understand as that is, you should upon contemplation have greater faith and understanding of God, not lesser. I know this is confusing so let me be plainer. Hitler already was headed to hell even before he executed the entire Holocaust due to his actions prior.
Suppose we could rewrite history, as I outlined above, where Hitler “only” knew of God, denied him, and then imposed the cult belief, suppressing all religions, and killed the rabbis, burned the synagogues, but let the Jews live under the pagan German government. Aren’t you glad and understanding of God’s justice to know that “that alone” would have merited Hitler’s eternal damnation in hell? To put it more plainly, if Hitler had taken the ability to practice the Jewish faith away from the people under his control, but let the Jews live, he would have already merited hell, for certain.
Millions of people “did not have to die” in order to assure today’s public consciousness that Hitler merited, and got, hell. Jesus and ALL of the prophets, both in the Old Testament and New, plus the Qur’an reiterate that denial of God when one has the opportunity to know of his reality AND leading others from the faith, especially if holy and pious leaders are slain, are anathema, abomination and most certainly the direct route to hell.
This understanding, which is totally accurate and crystal clear, ought to make cult and secular leaders very nervous today. You don’t need “a Holocaust” to virtually guarantee yourself hell if you do the things that I have outlined above, either by the gun and sword OR BY THE PEN OR COMPUTER.
So why did Hitler survive so long, and why were so many people killed?
God in his mercy does not oversee human events that they do to each other with the intention of weeding out bad people by smiting them “early on” in their evil career. Honestly, God might as well get rid of the entire human race, then. Why? Because if you as humans cannot recognize evil in your midst and DEAL with it promptly YOURSELVES then why are you even alive?
Look at how much argument took place among humans, and what subterfuge Roosevelt had to use, to even get people involved in hindering Hitler in the early days! Many people dragged their feet, and all governments were complicit in complacency, if nothing else. The railroad tracks to the concentration camps were not bombed, which would have greatly hindered the Holocaust. Refugees were turned away. Those people, who did help surreptitiously, such as the Pope, are vilified by spineless publicity seekers today who only seek to second hand guess what they themselves would have pissed in their own pants if they had to defy Hitler as real people did everyday.
The Americans eventually had to pull all the weight on a two front war. If humans cannot make intelligent and merciful decisions about how to deal with a God denying mass murderer in their midst, how can you say you are entitled to life or existence at all? So God does not “weed out” the “bad guys” for you, because that is life by definition, learning how to live it and abide in God’s commandments, and dealing with those who don’t and who murder others.
The Holocaust happened simply because it became the measure of how far humanity’s indifference and outright inhumanity will extend. It’s like the levels of the ocean rising when icebergs melt (to use an example not because it is prophecy but because it is a popular topic). The ocean would rise only so far as the volume of melting ice will allow it to, because once the ice is completely melted there is no more frozen water to add to the ocean and thus it stops rising. That is the Holocaust, where it simply was a matter of “how much is too much” for humanity’s own consciousness and ability to act in defense of both the neighbor and the innocent stranger in another country.
So God certainly wasn’t “sitting out there” on a cloud “allowing the Holocaust” to happen. He was watching with dismay and grief, but in his infinite knowledge and wisdom, no surprise, how far humans will let the ocean of an evil rise before they stop it.
Reading some mystical significance into the predominance of Jews in the Holocaust is wrong, at least from God’s point of view. Killing ANYONE is wrong, and certainly for their faith, ANY faith in God that is persecuted is martyrdom, and there are not either bonus points, or demerits, if one is Jewish and a martyr.
It is outrageous how motives have been impugned to God regarding the Jewish component of the Holocaust. That is like saying he “chose” ice to melt in global warming. I mean, duh? What would melt beside ice when the evil of man, to use this natural analogy, caused global warming? So when a pagan state is imposed the pious are killed and melted, regardless of their faith, Jewish or not. Humans use it as an excuse to seize properties, try to find a way to rationalize the killing of Jews and so forth, but that is not it, in the bottom line. The bottom line is that Jews, for the most part, were a community that would have resisted a pagan government that destroyed their ability to practice their faith, destroyed their synagogues and killed their rabbis.
I rest my case and explanation with the obvious example, which is Rwanda. In a matter of DAYS hundreds of thousands were hacked to pieces and no one did anything. The USA could have flown Marines into Rwanda and shot dead the leaders of the mobs and put an end to that massacre in a New York minute.
Why did that “Holocaust” happen if oh so wise humans have “learned their lesson” from the Holocaust itself? Who cared about Rwanda? Apparently years later movie makers did, but not so much when it happened. Humans STILL need to learn how to, um, you know, identify God defying people who slaughter their own people and stop it on the spot, whether “your ox is being gored” or not. (In other words, even if there is not a “national interest.”) Hell, I think the Israeli army should have flown in and shot a few of the leaders of the Rwandan massacre, and said “Never again” on the behalf of a helpless populace humanity who did not share their skin color, their origins or their faith, nor had a national interest.
This, by the way, is one of the things I will always be interested in asking Bill Clinton, former USA President, about. The first DAY it was happening I was raging at the TV in my mind thinking “Do something; send in the marines, you foolish idiots!”
And where do you think the Rwandan who killed “only one” person versus the one who killed hundreds, or thousands at his or her behest will go? It’s hell regardless if it was one person or many.
So yes, keep discussing the moralities of what happened during the reign of Hitler, because obviously it is a deep wound in humanity that is not well understood. But please stop with the stupid “Hitler is reincarnated” or “Hitler had a special purpose from God” crap. Thinking like that keeps blots in human viability and further existence like Cambodia under Pol Pot, Rwanda and other genocidal pits of human’s own making going and going with no increase in comprehension.
The only “special purpose” anyone and everyone, including Hitler, had or has is to repent, return to God and make amends, and that door is open only when one is alive, and before God hardens his heart and removes the opportunities for repentance.
Hitler, like all humans, could have repented and had a SINCERE and TOTAL conversion up until the end of his last hour of life.
In his lifelong evil and madness, he probably confused the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who speaks to all, urging them to repent and convert as proof of “his special purpose.” People like him feel a touch of the numinous from God seeking their return to good ways and instead impugn their own "psychic" powers to that touch.
This is why there is an institutional church, by the way, so people don’t run around “hearing their own personal revelation” and having a terrible distortion as Hitler did, and as SO MANY do today. People have enough trouble with “hearing voices” that come from drug abuse or mental disorder that they don’t need equally psycho people interpreting “purpose from God” on top of their delusion.
It’s sure hot and unpleasant, more than you can imagine, in hell. Pray, repent and convert before you join the many others who have found out with no chance out because they threw away and flaunted God to his face. The reason I am so mad is that I know darn well that some people manipulate Hitler "study" in occult ways to either claim he is reincarnated or to mislead Jews regarding why "God let it happen." I hope that what I wrote above, extremely irate as it is, because I am so sick of the wasted time and souls, is helpful.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
World War II scholars need to be careful
Actually all historians and scholars need to be careful to be accurate, obviously, and to speculate responsibly. However the fascination and horror regarding Hitler, Pearl Harbor and the entire World War II events, especially the Holocaust, has particular temptations to be less than logical or factual.
This is on my mind because I heard a brief interview with Pat Buchanan on CNN about his controversial new book that speculates about how World War II could have been avoided. I think it is always useful to look at historical events from different perspectives and engage in responsible "what if" thinking. In this case Mr. Buchanan was focused on England's actions in committing to protecting Poland due to a treaty. Now, I've not read the book, obviously, and I'm not likely to since I tend not to read most political or speculative history books; they just aren't my thing. So I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about what Mr. Buchanan says on the whole. But I want to teach, as part of my series on logical thinking and tools for better scholarship, people how to engage in the most productive scholarship, such as book writing, and being a "consumer," such as reading such a book.
One thing you have to remember that most of those who lived during the times that led up to World War II are long dead. But I grew up and was educated in school when many average citizens had first hand knowledge and experience of the times that led up to the war. These insights have been preserved and taught. But there is a temptation to be "revisionist" in history in the course of pursuing valid attempts at "new insights." You need to be careful to build your "new insights" on top of the solid scholarship and first hand testimony of what happened, however, not as a substitute.
It is common knowledge that World War II happened in large part because of the damage and hard feelings that resulted from World War I. Responsible history classes cover this in great detail, but I can't be sure what they are teaching in the schools today though *sigh.* So here is some general but first hand information that everyone needs to understand when either producing or enjoying written or visual works about World War II.
World War I was "the first" in many ways. It wasn't just the first world war, the definition of which is a war that pulls in many countries into active conflict, rather that being between two combatants. It was the first war that used "attrition" as a strategy, which is to kill off as many of each other as possible. Before then battles took place as individual strategies and wars were conducted based on conquering and defeating individual units of military or population centers. People planned to conquer city X or defeat army unit B. In World War I the armies dug into land that had no significance at all and then slaughtered each other for days on end, piling up bodies by the thousands. This had never been seen before in human history. An entire generation of British men died in World War I, as did many Germans and French. So World War I brought the idea of a war of attrition (who kills the others the most) into reality.
The second way that WWI was a "first" is that technology became a tool for conducting this attrition. While guns and artillery existed before then, they became more predominant, the advantage of airplanes started to emerge but most of all, war stopped being between "gentlemen" or "officers" and ethics went out the window with the introduction of poison gas. There used to be an ethics of war. But with the concept of the war of attrition, atrocities such as poison gas became vehicles for conducting slaughter. Men were horribly killed and maimed and feelings were very hard and angry as a result, understandably. Germans thought they were "leveling the field" by using poison gas to make up for having less artillery and other resources. It was a horrible mistake.
The third way that WWI was a "first" was that it was the first war to be fought for no reason. It erupted after an assassination of a minor noble because many countries had a complex set of treaties that forced each other to come to the aid of someone somewhere in the food chain if an event occurred. So this ridiculous and horrible war erupted for no reason whatsoever; not to conduct a national strategy (like go after oil), or because of ethnic/racial tensions, or because of a border conflict, or as a land grab, or to overthrow a dictator... there was no reason whatsoever.
The fourth way that WWI was a "first" was that feelings were so high and the indignation so fierce that when Germany was defeated and surrendered it was punished on a scale that had also never been seen in modern warfare. The terms of surrender were deliberately humiliating and made to crush with financial burden the average citizen of Germany, right down to the peasantry. So not only was the country defeated but the entire populace was punished. This is all documented and factual and has been covered in books, the classroom and even PBS types of programming. I'm not giving a great insight here but teaching those who have never had a chance to learn about this in the classroom. Germans were humiliated and crushed under "war reparations" and punishment so that the average citizen suffered enormously, even though they had nothing to do with this stupid war in the first place. A terrible inflation took place in the 1930's and I have members of my family that told me what it was like. The money was totally worthless. It would take a wheelbarrow of money to buy one loaf of bread (and that's literally, not a figure of speech). No one could afford toilet paper so they used the money bills as sheets of toilet paper. They could not afford wallpaper so they pasted money to the walls when they had to patch an area. I have in storage a few of these like "million marks" bills that my family had kept from those times. The defeated citizens of Germany suffered and seethed.
It is those reasons that led to people listening to the dangerous bum Hitler who never would have listened to him otherwise. Hitler tapped into the suffering of the people and their zero self-esteem in order to build them up in this Teutonic superhero image. It's much like what kids do today when they pretend to be superheroes in video games except Hitler convinced an entire people that they too were meant to be superheroes, and not the humiliated and degraded conquered people that they were as a result of their defeat in World War I. This is a well known fact and was taught in many classrooms, including those I attended as a child and later as a college student, and it was taught as a cautionary tale about what happens if you humiliate a defeated people. You better be careful because they will come back with a vengeance and look for someone to blame and kick back in return for the kicking that they have received.
Carl Jung found a way to describe this in his psychoanalytical and mythological terms. Jung argued that the people self hypnotized themselves into being "possessed" by the Norse god Wotan. This is a perfectly valid, though not terribly useful, way to view how the defeated German brains were receptive to Hitler's mental video game of the Teutonic superhero. I say it is not helpful because it does not inform public policy matters in a practical way. We don't really need to know just what brain circuits and emotional buttons Hitler pressed. Those circuits and buttons would not have been there if the factors I listed above that preceded Hitler in World War I had not happened: a war of attrition of millions of deaths, poison gas and the abandonment of wartime ethics, going to war without a cause due to mindlessly following alliances and treaties, and punishing the populace after the defeat of their government and military.
So any "analysis" of the "cause" of Hitler and World War II would be totally inaccurate if it is not building on top of the facts that I have explained above. It's not like there was a decision or an event that was a sliding door about World War II and the Holocaust, "yes" or "no." World War II was a direct continuation of the breakdown of military ethos that took place in World War I. The concept of being "a gentleman" and "battlefield ethics" and "justifiable war" fell completely apart in World War I. Once there was "no holds barred" warfare, as in World War I, that laid the field for the exponential horrors of World War II with one difference. The battlefield in World War II cleaned up (no poison gas, no slaughters as military strategy) in Europe, but it was Japan's turn to have a breakdown of their military ethos, causing the horrors that they perpetrated in the Pacific theater of World War II. So basically Japan had the mental breakdown of military ethics in World War II that Europe had in World War I. In Europe the breakdown of the military ethos became a breakdown of civilian ethos, where Hitler tapped the humiliated and bankrupt people of German to turn on each other and their neighboring countries. So for Europe World War I broke the military "code of conduct" and World War II was "revenge upon the innocent" and therefore the breakdown of civilization "code of conduct." So you can see Germany obeying Geneva conventions and having military POW camps while at the same time tearing all sense of decency apart through the invasion and oppression of other countries for "elbow room" as they called it and the internal and external Holocaust.
Remember that Hitler killed the weak and disabled (both mentally and physically) first. People who lose their moral balance and are trying to "uplift" themselves tend to do it by feeling "superior" by raising themselves up and pushing "someone else" down. That's human nature, where someone with issues will tend to pull down someone around them in order to feel better than themselves. But this was on a monstrous scale because as I explained World War I broke the military ethos and code of conduct, which then allowed the breakdown of "gentlemanly" or "civilized" behavior. Remember that Hitler sneered at civilization, as he turned the country away from the bastions of civilizations (church and code of conduct) and toward the past, which is paganistic beliefs. Pagans killed the weak in sacrifice too. So Hitler started by killing the weak, the "flawed" (physically disabled, mentally disabled, and 'undesirables' such as homosexuals) and the religious. So he killed Catholics and Jews alike. Hitler leveraged prejudice but in a way that was designed to raise the German psyche up from the mud and become some sort of purified pagan superhero. Jews were persecuted in a large part because they were part of the fabric of civilization. Jews were "cultured" pious and venerated learning, even if they were of the peasantry. Hitler sought to smash all vestiges of "civilization" just as World War I had done so on the battlefield. He felt that he could turn the dial back to a "purer" time, but what he was doing was going to a pre-civilization time of paganistic "values." This is why it is so VERY dangerous to think that because something is "older" or to put it in haughty language "more ancient" that it is better. People who want to do that for "spiritual" reasons are usually doing so so that they can throw off some sort of civilized boundary that is chaffing them. Hitler very successfully promoted and enforced a national delusion as a result that had very real and terrible consequences. Whenever someone asks "Why did this happen to the Jews?" they are asking the wrong question. Remember that he closed down Catholic schools, seminaries and churches too, and killed the priests in their own concentration camp area. If Buddhists were there he would have done it to them too. Hitler was seeking a pre-ethos and pre-civilized time, thinking that the nation could tap into it as a vengeful way to strike back as superheros against those who had defeated them in World War I.
Well, I hope this helps. I really wonder what the schools actually ARE teaching students nowadays, but that's a different subject. This has been a problem for a long time. I remember that my niece who graduated from high school in the 1980's asked me and my ex-husband "what a Jew is." She honestly did not know what they were. She managed to graduate from high school without knowing that a Jew is a follower of the religion of Judaism. Yes, the answer was as simple as that. She did not know that "Jewish" is a "religion." So I guess in some ways what they are teaching today must be better than the 1980's except that where they have the facts and international exposure better nowadays, people are teaching who have no understanding of the development of human civilization and probably view it as a whole politically incorrect topic anyway. What a mess.
This is on my mind because I heard a brief interview with Pat Buchanan on CNN about his controversial new book that speculates about how World War II could have been avoided. I think it is always useful to look at historical events from different perspectives and engage in responsible "what if" thinking. In this case Mr. Buchanan was focused on England's actions in committing to protecting Poland due to a treaty. Now, I've not read the book, obviously, and I'm not likely to since I tend not to read most political or speculative history books; they just aren't my thing. So I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about what Mr. Buchanan says on the whole. But I want to teach, as part of my series on logical thinking and tools for better scholarship, people how to engage in the most productive scholarship, such as book writing, and being a "consumer," such as reading such a book.
One thing you have to remember that most of those who lived during the times that led up to World War II are long dead. But I grew up and was educated in school when many average citizens had first hand knowledge and experience of the times that led up to the war. These insights have been preserved and taught. But there is a temptation to be "revisionist" in history in the course of pursuing valid attempts at "new insights." You need to be careful to build your "new insights" on top of the solid scholarship and first hand testimony of what happened, however, not as a substitute.
It is common knowledge that World War II happened in large part because of the damage and hard feelings that resulted from World War I. Responsible history classes cover this in great detail, but I can't be sure what they are teaching in the schools today though *sigh.* So here is some general but first hand information that everyone needs to understand when either producing or enjoying written or visual works about World War II.
World War I was "the first" in many ways. It wasn't just the first world war, the definition of which is a war that pulls in many countries into active conflict, rather that being between two combatants. It was the first war that used "attrition" as a strategy, which is to kill off as many of each other as possible. Before then battles took place as individual strategies and wars were conducted based on conquering and defeating individual units of military or population centers. People planned to conquer city X or defeat army unit B. In World War I the armies dug into land that had no significance at all and then slaughtered each other for days on end, piling up bodies by the thousands. This had never been seen before in human history. An entire generation of British men died in World War I, as did many Germans and French. So World War I brought the idea of a war of attrition (who kills the others the most) into reality.
The second way that WWI was a "first" is that technology became a tool for conducting this attrition. While guns and artillery existed before then, they became more predominant, the advantage of airplanes started to emerge but most of all, war stopped being between "gentlemen" or "officers" and ethics went out the window with the introduction of poison gas. There used to be an ethics of war. But with the concept of the war of attrition, atrocities such as poison gas became vehicles for conducting slaughter. Men were horribly killed and maimed and feelings were very hard and angry as a result, understandably. Germans thought they were "leveling the field" by using poison gas to make up for having less artillery and other resources. It was a horrible mistake.
The third way that WWI was a "first" was that it was the first war to be fought for no reason. It erupted after an assassination of a minor noble because many countries had a complex set of treaties that forced each other to come to the aid of someone somewhere in the food chain if an event occurred. So this ridiculous and horrible war erupted for no reason whatsoever; not to conduct a national strategy (like go after oil), or because of ethnic/racial tensions, or because of a border conflict, or as a land grab, or to overthrow a dictator... there was no reason whatsoever.
The fourth way that WWI was a "first" was that feelings were so high and the indignation so fierce that when Germany was defeated and surrendered it was punished on a scale that had also never been seen in modern warfare. The terms of surrender were deliberately humiliating and made to crush with financial burden the average citizen of Germany, right down to the peasantry. So not only was the country defeated but the entire populace was punished. This is all documented and factual and has been covered in books, the classroom and even PBS types of programming. I'm not giving a great insight here but teaching those who have never had a chance to learn about this in the classroom. Germans were humiliated and crushed under "war reparations" and punishment so that the average citizen suffered enormously, even though they had nothing to do with this stupid war in the first place. A terrible inflation took place in the 1930's and I have members of my family that told me what it was like. The money was totally worthless. It would take a wheelbarrow of money to buy one loaf of bread (and that's literally, not a figure of speech). No one could afford toilet paper so they used the money bills as sheets of toilet paper. They could not afford wallpaper so they pasted money to the walls when they had to patch an area. I have in storage a few of these like "million marks" bills that my family had kept from those times. The defeated citizens of Germany suffered and seethed.
It is those reasons that led to people listening to the dangerous bum Hitler who never would have listened to him otherwise. Hitler tapped into the suffering of the people and their zero self-esteem in order to build them up in this Teutonic superhero image. It's much like what kids do today when they pretend to be superheroes in video games except Hitler convinced an entire people that they too were meant to be superheroes, and not the humiliated and degraded conquered people that they were as a result of their defeat in World War I. This is a well known fact and was taught in many classrooms, including those I attended as a child and later as a college student, and it was taught as a cautionary tale about what happens if you humiliate a defeated people. You better be careful because they will come back with a vengeance and look for someone to blame and kick back in return for the kicking that they have received.
Carl Jung found a way to describe this in his psychoanalytical and mythological terms. Jung argued that the people self hypnotized themselves into being "possessed" by the Norse god Wotan. This is a perfectly valid, though not terribly useful, way to view how the defeated German brains were receptive to Hitler's mental video game of the Teutonic superhero. I say it is not helpful because it does not inform public policy matters in a practical way. We don't really need to know just what brain circuits and emotional buttons Hitler pressed. Those circuits and buttons would not have been there if the factors I listed above that preceded Hitler in World War I had not happened: a war of attrition of millions of deaths, poison gas and the abandonment of wartime ethics, going to war without a cause due to mindlessly following alliances and treaties, and punishing the populace after the defeat of their government and military.
So any "analysis" of the "cause" of Hitler and World War II would be totally inaccurate if it is not building on top of the facts that I have explained above. It's not like there was a decision or an event that was a sliding door about World War II and the Holocaust, "yes" or "no." World War II was a direct continuation of the breakdown of military ethos that took place in World War I. The concept of being "a gentleman" and "battlefield ethics" and "justifiable war" fell completely apart in World War I. Once there was "no holds barred" warfare, as in World War I, that laid the field for the exponential horrors of World War II with one difference. The battlefield in World War II cleaned up (no poison gas, no slaughters as military strategy) in Europe, but it was Japan's turn to have a breakdown of their military ethos, causing the horrors that they perpetrated in the Pacific theater of World War II. So basically Japan had the mental breakdown of military ethics in World War II that Europe had in World War I. In Europe the breakdown of the military ethos became a breakdown of civilian ethos, where Hitler tapped the humiliated and bankrupt people of German to turn on each other and their neighboring countries. So for Europe World War I broke the military "code of conduct" and World War II was "revenge upon the innocent" and therefore the breakdown of civilization "code of conduct." So you can see Germany obeying Geneva conventions and having military POW camps while at the same time tearing all sense of decency apart through the invasion and oppression of other countries for "elbow room" as they called it and the internal and external Holocaust.
Remember that Hitler killed the weak and disabled (both mentally and physically) first. People who lose their moral balance and are trying to "uplift" themselves tend to do it by feeling "superior" by raising themselves up and pushing "someone else" down. That's human nature, where someone with issues will tend to pull down someone around them in order to feel better than themselves. But this was on a monstrous scale because as I explained World War I broke the military ethos and code of conduct, which then allowed the breakdown of "gentlemanly" or "civilized" behavior. Remember that Hitler sneered at civilization, as he turned the country away from the bastions of civilizations (church and code of conduct) and toward the past, which is paganistic beliefs. Pagans killed the weak in sacrifice too. So Hitler started by killing the weak, the "flawed" (physically disabled, mentally disabled, and 'undesirables' such as homosexuals) and the religious. So he killed Catholics and Jews alike. Hitler leveraged prejudice but in a way that was designed to raise the German psyche up from the mud and become some sort of purified pagan superhero. Jews were persecuted in a large part because they were part of the fabric of civilization. Jews were "cultured" pious and venerated learning, even if they were of the peasantry. Hitler sought to smash all vestiges of "civilization" just as World War I had done so on the battlefield. He felt that he could turn the dial back to a "purer" time, but what he was doing was going to a pre-civilization time of paganistic "values." This is why it is so VERY dangerous to think that because something is "older" or to put it in haughty language "more ancient" that it is better. People who want to do that for "spiritual" reasons are usually doing so so that they can throw off some sort of civilized boundary that is chaffing them. Hitler very successfully promoted and enforced a national delusion as a result that had very real and terrible consequences. Whenever someone asks "Why did this happen to the Jews?" they are asking the wrong question. Remember that he closed down Catholic schools, seminaries and churches too, and killed the priests in their own concentration camp area. If Buddhists were there he would have done it to them too. Hitler was seeking a pre-ethos and pre-civilized time, thinking that the nation could tap into it as a vengeful way to strike back as superheros against those who had defeated them in World War I.
Well, I hope this helps. I really wonder what the schools actually ARE teaching students nowadays, but that's a different subject. This has been a problem for a long time. I remember that my niece who graduated from high school in the 1980's asked me and my ex-husband "what a Jew is." She honestly did not know what they were. She managed to graduate from high school without knowing that a Jew is a follower of the religion of Judaism. Yes, the answer was as simple as that. She did not know that "Jewish" is a "religion." So I guess in some ways what they are teaching today must be better than the 1980's except that where they have the facts and international exposure better nowadays, people are teaching who have no understanding of the development of human civilization and probably view it as a whole politically incorrect topic anyway. What a mess.
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