Category Archives: COVID19

December 22, 2021 · 01:36

Christmas Future?

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I will be writing a lot about things that are happening now dealing with our current political, social, religious and pandemic crises’s that are ravaging our country and the world. However, after a massive amount of work leading up to the winter/Christmas break of school that I teach, I had to catch up on some Christmas decorating, some housework, and yes my first attempts at doing cartoon Christmas and holiday cards.

My wife Judy, who is a real artist has always told me that I am a natural cartoonist. I just never decided to push myself until this week. Of course these are Christmas and holiday cards. I might star some kind of comic strip, or may editorial cartoons. I can only say that another part of my creativity has been tapped, and Judy says that the more that I draw, the better I will become. That combined with my natural creative streak and twisted sense of humor, could make this fun and thought provoking.


Of course my writing will take precedence, but this will allow a different kind of work to begin, one where my twisted sense of humor can really come into play.

So, anyway, until I get back to writing on a regular basis I wish you the warmest of holiday greetings for whatever, if any holidays you observe. I really don’t care so long as you and yours are safe and happy, and that we all get through this latest COVID-Omicron surge in good health and that none of us, our family’s, or friends die of this.

So, peace my friends,

Padre Steve+

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February 17, 2021 · 22:32

“Deafness Separates People from People” A Note from my Wife Judy on Being Deaf During COVID-19

 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Helen Keller wrote: “Blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people.” 

My wife Judy has had a moderate to severe hearing loss since birth or shortly thereafter. She asked me if I would post something that she wrote about her experiences being deaf during COVID-19. I will give an introduction and then post her comments. Her comments will be in bold print. I ask you to read them, share them, and if you encounter deaf or other people with significant hearing loss please show them the simple common courtesy of paying attention and treating them as people with intelligence.  If you don’t know sign language don’t be afraid to write notes and take extra time to help them understand you. It will pay great dividends

Judy has been wearing hearing aids since she was about seven years old. In school she was subjected to surviving the best she could in regular classes where she missed a lot of what was taught in class. But she did her best. She became a vociferous reader, learned grammar rules and how to write, and began her steps to become an exceptional artist. Despite that she was often ridiculed and ostracized by other kids, and some teachers because of her deaf speech, inability to understand, and the hearing aids themselves.

She did her first years of college at our local Junior College where I met her. She began to learn sign language and also took German, and she can function decently conversing with Germans when we travel to Germany.

We both went to California State University at Northridge where she became part of a deaf community through the National Center of Deafness. There she continued to learn sign language not just in class but because she was now part of a good sized community of deaf and hard of hearing people. She was able to get specialized counseling for academics and surviving in the hearing world. I became part of that world and became good enough in sign language that many of her deaf friends assumed that I was deaf because they couldn’t hear me talk. My best teachers were her roommate Kendra and friends Vick and Gael.

Judy has a moderate to severe hearing loss.  She has always used her hearing aids to her maximum ability, learned to read lips, and used sign language interpreters or interpreter/note takers in class. She graduated but as we moved into the real world she was subjected to much discrimination and occasional ridicule. If you know deaf or severely hard of hearing people many have speech impediments and voices which are easily identifiable as being deaf. Judy spoke well enough for most people to understand her. Some people thought that her speech was maybe because she was German or from somewhere in else in Europe. Others assumed that she was either stupid or developmentally delayed, because of her speech. It was very difficult for her.

During the course of the 1990s she lost another 30% of her hearing in the low frequencies. Without hearing aids it is almost impossible for her to understand speech. Now with very high tech hearing aids turned to her hearing loss she does much better hearing, but still struggled with speech. After an experience in dealing with a woman at a fabric store who asked about her being deaf because of the way she talked, Judy resolved to improve her speech. She went back and got intensive speech therapy which has made her speech virtually indistinguishable from a hearing person.

She speaks so well now that unless people see her hearing aids they assume she is not deaf. Audiologists and speech pathologists are surprised by her speech comprehension and speech. She far exceeds the expectations professionals have for a person with her hearing loss. In fact there are many people who have similar hearing loss to her who wear cochlear implants.

But COVID-19 has hit her hard. She cannot lip read through masks. Now we both prefer that everyone wear effective masks in order not to spread the virus. Because she speaks so well when she goes to a doctor’s office or somewhere she is not known people assume she is a hearing person and she has to fight to convince them to believe that she is deaf and get them to be as clear with her as they can in their communication with her. That is frustrating for her.

I am now working to get my sign language proficiency back, not just for her but because I now have a neurological condition related to my PTSD. This condition effects my speech discrimination, in other words I have a terrible time understanding speech except in one on one conversations with little or no background noice or cross talk. In many situations I am functionally deaf. Judy has far better speech discrimination than me. There were times before COVID-19 that she would tell me what people said.

So with that in mind please read Judy’s words. I hope they are helpful to you in communicating with deaf people you know or encounter.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

I have a severe hearing loss. Although I fully support the wearing of masks, and I shun those who won’t wear them, people with masks often are near impossible for me to understand.

My therapist recently had to change offices, and the receptionist refused to believe that I couldn’t hear her, despite the fact that I told her four times. By the time my therapist came to get me, I was in tears. He had to tell her twice that I couldn’t hear her, and she was shocked. Yet, she still insisted in talking at me two more times. Apparently she thought I was making it up? The last time she talked at me, I just stared at her. Now I hand her a note with my information and make her write down any conversation.
This week, I saw my primary care doctor. I first saw the nurse. I informed her that I did not hear well, and she snapped at me that she was NOT going to take off her mask. I don’t remember making that request. I did ask her to look toward me when she talked to me, which she ignored. She started yelling at me, thinking this would help, while talking to the wall. Frustrated, I remarked : “ You don’t get many deaf people, do you?” She became angry. She asked the wall another question, and I asked her to turn toward me. She got louder. By the time my primary care doctor came in, I had a headache. My primary care doctor is very soft spoken. She let me move my chair a bit closer. Despite the fact that her voice is so much softer than her nurse, I understood most of what she said very well, and she had no problem repeating herself. I love this woman.
Here are my tips for communicating with people with hearing losses, especially when wearing a mask:
  1. Believe a person when they say that they can not hear you.
  2. Don’t yell. This doesn’t make your voice any clearer.
  3. Do not lose your patience. How do you think I feel?
  4. Write notes if necessary. There is no shame in writing a note.
  5. Look toward the person while talking to them. If you talk to the wall, you will be even less understandable.
  6. Be polite and treat the person with dignity. It’s disheartening when people get exasperated.

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January 27, 2021 · 00:08

“To Forget a Holocaust is to Kill Twice” The Liberation of Auschwitz at 76

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Seventy-six years ago today the Soviet Red Army’s 100th Division liberated the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. There were somewhere between 7000 and 9000 prisoners left in the camp when the Soviet soldiers liberated it. The camp’s crematoria had been destroyed as well as most of the gas chambers. The SS had evacuated most of the surviving inmates and slave laborers by forced march to railhead miles away from the camp, in order to take them to other Concentration Camps deeper in Germany; Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbruck, and others.

Even though Auschwitz was liberated, the Nazis continued to exterminate Jews at other camps. Likewise in vain attempts to cover up their crimes and keep killing Jews through forced labor conducted forced marches in freezing winter weather to keep them from being liberated. These marches were both deadly and inhuman. Even Heinrich Himmler the supreme architect of the policy of annihilation had forbidden them in order to escape justice at the hands of the Allies who he was already attempting clandestine contact. Many of these actions were the work of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann who supervised the Holocaust after the death of his chief, Reinhard Heydrich. Even though the Third Reich was collapsing under the hammer blows of the Western Allies and Soviets, and the defection of critical allies like Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria from the Axis fold.

Even Rudolf Höss the former Commandant of Auschwitz, who admitted to killing over one and a half-million Jews, was appalled by the senseless brutality of what he saw. Höss, the meticulous killer of millions, was shocked by the columns of emaciated and Jews, with no winter clothing or in many cases not even shoes that that he witnessed.  These were the people Eichmann marched from Budapest and other cities and camps to Austria and Czechoslovakia in late 1944 and 1945. to keep the Russians from liberating them, even against the orders of Heinrich Himmler himself.  But Eichmann felt the heartbeat of Adolf Hitler who remained determined to kill every last Jew in German held Europe as he led Germany into its Götterdämmerung.

There have been many episodes of genocide in human history, but none were more pointedly directed at a single group of people based on race hatred than the Holocaust of the Nazis and their allies against the Jews. While it is true that the Nazis exterminated millions of other people than the nearly six million Jews they dispatched during the Holocaust, but they were secondary targets of his race hatred. This is important, as the late Christopher Hitchens noted:

“We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.” 

Hitchens was right, without the primary Nazi hatred and determination to obliterate the Jews from the face of the earth, their other atrocities would never occurred. Today, that rabid anti-semitism is again raising its evil head in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and even in the United States. We have seen it in the resurgence of heavily armed and violent Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups in the United States whose ranks include current and former military personnel and law enforcement officers. The same is true in Europe. In the United States many members of these Anti-Semitic militant groups led the attack on the United States Capitol after being incited to do so by for ex-President Donald Trump.

Red Army officers and soldiers who had seen the worst of Nazi atrocities committed in Russia, the Belarus, the Ukraine and the Baltic states were unprepared for what they witnesses when the liberated Auschwitz:

Battle-hardened soldiers who were used to death were shocked by the Nazis’ treatment of prisoners. Red Army general Vasily Petrenko, commander of the 107th Infantry Division, remarked, “I who saw people dying every day was shocked by the Nazis’ indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons. I read about the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in various leaflets, but there was nothing about the Nazis’ treatment of women, children, and old men. It was in Auschwitz that I found out about the fate of the Jews.” 

Ivan Martynushkin, then a 21-year-old lieutenant recounted his experience at Auschwitz in 2015: 

“We saw emaciated, tortured, impoverished people…. Those were the people I first encountered. … We could tell from their eyes that they were happy to be saved from this hell. Happy that now they weren’t threatened by death in a crematorium. Happy to be freed. And we had the feeling of doing a good deed — liberating these people from this hell.” He told the Daily Mail: “I had seen towns destroyed…. I had seen the destruction of villages. I had seen the suffering of our own people. I had seen small children maimed. There was not one village which had not experienced this horror, this tragedy, these sufferings.”

He was not alone.

Commander Vasily Gromadsky was one of the first to enter the “death camp”:

There was a lock on the gate. I didn’t know if it was the main entrance or what. I ordered men to break the lock. There wasn’t anyone there. We walked another 200 meters and saw prisoners in striped shirts running towards us, about 300 of them.

We became wary, since we had been warned that the Germans could be in disguise. But they were real prisoners. They were crying, embracing us. They told us that millions of people had been killed there. I can still remember them telling us how the Germans had sent 12 wagons of baby carriages from Auschwitz.

Journalists from the 38th army Usher Margulis and Gennady Savin entered the camp after the soldiers. This what they remember:

We entered the brick building and looked inside the rooms. The doors weren’t closed. In the first room there was a huge pile of children’s clothes: little coats, jackets, sweaters, many of them with bloodstains. In the next room there were boxes filled with dental crowns and golden dentures. In the third room there were boxes with woman’s hair. And then a woman [a prisoner – Russia Beyond] brought us to a room filled with boxes with women’s bags, lampshades, wallets, purses and other leather items. She said: “All this is made from human skin.”

After Auschwitz was liberated, the Soviets appointed a new commandant was to administer the town, Grigory Yelisavetinsky. On Feb. 4, 1945 he wrote to his wife:

“There’s a children’s barrack in the camp. Jewish children of all ages (twins) were taken there. The Germans carried out experiments on them as if they were rabbits. I saw a 14-year-old boy whose veins had been injected with kerosene for some “scientific” purpose.

Then a piece of his body was cut off and sent to a laboratory in Berlin, while it was replaced with another piece of the body. Now he lies in a hospital all covered with deep rotting ulcers and nothing can be done to help him. There’s a beautiful girl walking around the camp. She’s mad. I’m surprised that not all the people here have gone mad.”

Eva Mozes Kor was 10 years old when she spotted the soldiers. She was one of a group of hundreds of children who had been left behind, and she had endured medical experiments during her imprisonment. She remembered how the soldiers gave her “hugs, cookies and chocolate….We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness.”

The human kindness of the Soviet Soldiers characterized the liberation. The shocked soldiers helped set up hospitals on site, and townspeople volunteered to help. For months, Polish Red Cross workers labored to save the dying and treat the living, working without adequate food or supplies and helping prisoners get in touch with their loved ones. About 7,500 of those liberated on 27 January 1945 survived.

It is impossible for an objective person to deny these facts. Hate crimes against Jews are blossoming around the world like toxic mushrooms. The new perpetrators are the descendants of the former perpetrators, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and secularists who embrace the same social Darwinism that motivated many of the Nazis and many are central to the ever growing core or Holocaust Deniers.

Or course the non-Muslim opponents of the Jews today also despise dark skinned minorities, non-Christians, not to mention atheists. secularists, and political liberals and progressives, even if they are White and Christian,  thus what Hitchens says is still as accurate as it was when he wrote those words.

So here we are, Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2021. The question is, will we allow it to happen again? The late Iris Chang, who documented the Rape Of Nanking noted: “to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” Sadly, I believe that without a sea change in public opinion and knowledge about the Holocaust, genocide, and anti-semitism we will see it happen again. The attack on the Capitol was just a foretaste of what they would do if they even succeed in taking power.

But will we allow it to happen again? I would hope not, but I have to say that human nature and the course of events is leading me to believe that it will happen again, maybe even in our lifetime.

That may be difficult to accept, but it is reality. What is the alternative to telling the truth? Except to perpetuate a lie, except to take the side of the perpetrators, and those who would do the same today. That includes many of former President Trump’s most loyal supporters, Evangelical Christians who while outwardly allying with Israel, only do so in that their interpretation of Biblical prophecy might be fulfilled. That interpretation is that Christians will be raptured from the earth, and during a seven year Great Tribulation the Anti-Christ will conquer his foes and that in the end over two-thirds of all Jews will be killed, while the surviving Jews convert to follow Christ. Evangelical Christianity’s beliefs about Israel are not out of love or concern for Jews, the nation of Israel, but to use them to promote their own political and theological agendas. If I was a Jew of any kind I would reject any of their offers.

Honestly, I cannot deem such politicized and racist theology to be Christian, or respectful and considerate of the elder brother of the Christian faith, Judaism, without which Christianity wouldn’t exist. Let me repeat that. Without Judaism Christianity would not exist, and the treatment of the Jews by the Christian Church has been shameful for the majority of its existence. I say that as a Christian.

In the 1930s and 1940s the Nazis created the euphemism the Jewish Question in order to remove the aspect of humanity from their policy. It wasn’t about human beings, it was about people that they considered sub-human minority that they were able to demonize to expedite their elimination. Hitchens wrote:

“Die Judenfrage,’ it used to be called, even by Jews. ‘The Jewish Question.’ I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question—as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it—may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish ‘problem.’ Again, the word ‘solution’ can be as neutral as the words ‘question’ or ‘problem,’ but once one has defined a people or a nation as such, the search for a resolution can become a yearning for the conclusive. Endlösung: the final solution.”

Thus, once one labels the Jews, or for that matter any other despised minority a question, or a problem, we place ourselves on the path to to Genocide. But the Trump administration and his followers did that since 2015 regarding Mexicans and other Hispanics, Arabs, Haitians, Sub-Saharan Africans, and too many others. Many died, women were forcibly sterilized by physicians employed or contracted by the our Border and Emigration departments.

That is why I cannot be silent. I have to proclaim the words of Ellie Wiesel:

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Silence it no longer an option, and to again quote Wiesel: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

We must bear witness, for if we do not it will happen again. Humanity is the one constant in history, and there are no exceptions once one begins down the path to labeling the fate of races, nations, and peoples a question or a problem which they can resolve with a solution, the more comprehensive, total, or final, the better. There are certainly plenty of people, including Trump’s closest advisors who would make draconian laws in order to enable the government to commit genocide.

Historian Yehuda Bauer wrote:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”

In the wake of an number of situations that I have seen and have watched in morbid fascination be debated on my Facebook, and Twitter timelines, as well a potential Holocaust Denier who commented on my blog a year ago, I realize that with the prevailing attitudes being stoked by men like former President Trump, his media supporters, and sadly, far too many Conservative Christians, that a Holocaust not unlike Hitler’s will quite probably happen again, and the Jews, followed by the Trump Cult’s  liberal political opponents, American Blacks, Muslims, Mexican and Central American immigrants and refugees and a multitude of others find themselves the targets of first political and economic isolation followed by legal or extralegal means of political persecution, imprisonment, and extermination. Just read and listen to what members of the GOP, political pundits, and yes right wing political preachers say, preach, or write.

I will fight it, butI have no doubt of the power, passion, and petulance of people consumed by race hatred under the guise of patriotism. They are going to undercut any Constitutional liberties of their opponents and will misused the Constitution, our laws, or even Christian theology to bring on another Holocaust.

27 January is important, but the work of preventing even worse still remains. There are no “good Nazis or White Supremacists” today. I will be damned if I do not fight them by any means fair or unfair. I will identify them, show their faces and make them defend themselves and their beliefs in public, because they are indefensible. Such people should be publicly identified and shamed. If they commit crimes as they did on 6 January they should be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law, and I include the former President, the Senators, and Representatives, state office holders, military personnel active, reserve, and retired, and law enforcement officers who aided and abetted that assault on our country, democracy, and Constitution. They are insurrectionists who are guilty of inciting sedition and rebellion against the United States, who are still intent on their revolution to overturn our government, a valid election, and our Constitution. They are worse than the Confederate rebels, they are no different than the Nazis, and any American of any political party, religious affiliation, or race should disavow them and oppose them at every opportunity.

This is a time to stand against these criminals masquerading as Senators and Congressmen, and oppose their attempts to destroy the American experiment for an authoritarian, fascist, racist, and theocratic dictatorship which will certainly bring forth another Holocaust, and yes, Jews will be the primary target before anyone else.

I do battle with Holocaust deniers and Neo-Nazis on an almost daily basis. Some have threatened my life and that of my family for over a decade and most of them also call themselves Christians. That I cannot allow to go unrevealed and I will expose them for who and what they are. I will not resort to violence, but if need be I will defend myself with whatever means necessary as I will my Jewish friends and anyone else’s whose lives are threatened by the current Neo-Nazi and White  Supremacist and others committed to perpetuating the lies and violence of America’s leading Fascist, former President Donald John Trump.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 24, 2021 · 02:24

“They will have no respect for us unless we whip them & and I say it in all earnestness ” Thoughts on the Assault on the Capitol and the Continued Attempts to Destroy Our Republic after the Inauguration of President Biden

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I apologize for the long delay in getting this article online. I began it Wednesday but had a number of interruptions which culminated last night when most of the article was lost when it did not automatically save. I was almost ready to hit the publish button when I noticed so much was missing.

Wednesday I felt a tremendous sense of relief as President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office. It felt like the threat of dictatorship, a violent coup, and the destruction of our Republic by President Trump and his violent supporters led by Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and self-proclaimed anti-government “militias” had receded into the background, at least for the moment. It also felt incredibly hopeful as an incoming administration guided by what is best for the lives, health, and security of all Americans was taking charge. Watching the President and Vice President begin work shortly after the inauguration to begin to tear down the legacy of destructive tyranny and lawlessness built by Trump over the last four years was heartening.

i have to admit that I cried a lot on Wednesday, tears of joy and relief, tears that helped remind me that somehow we as a nation and our Constitution had survived the most malevolent President and his cult followers attempt to destroy it by every means possible including violence and murder.

The setting of the ceremony was almost surreal. Just two weeks before thousands of violent protesters, many armed stormed the Capitol, smashing windows and battering down the very doors that the new President, Vice President and members of Congress were now entering the West side of the building for the inauguration.

There was also the absence of millions of people who would have attended had the Coronavirus disaster been managed effectively by the outgoing Trump Administration. As of today over 25 million infections, many suffering long term dehabilitating medical conditions, and 420,000 deaths, millions of lost jobs, tens of thousands of businesses closed forever, shutdowns of schools, businesses and mass transportation systems that people depend on. I have to also mention how overwhelmed our hospitals, medical system, and the physicians, nurses and technicians who are worn out from trying to save the lives of dying  COVID-19 patients, many becoming sick or dying of COVID as they try to save their patients.

Likewise the threat of violence which had been promised by those who executed an insurrectionist assault on the Capitol building just two weeks before forced the deployment of Secret Service, FBI, Capitol Police, Washington Metro Police and 25,000 National Guard troops backed by specialized active duty troops to deter those threatened attacks. In addition to the unprecedented number of National Guard and police officer, there were the barriers, the blocking of major thoroughfares, and dividing the Capitol into Red and Green Zones.

That was unsettling but necessary. The seditious and treasonous mob which had been incited and encouraged on by President Trump, his son Donald Jr., his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama, and a number of others were ready to strike again, The terrorists who assaulted and breached the Capitol Police security killing and wounding police officers who they called “traitors” as they beat them with baseball bats, flagpoles with American, Trump, MAGA, Christian Flags, and of course the Confederate Battle , but most ironically the “back the blue” versions of the American flag.

I am sure that the massive show of force for the inauguration at the Capitol and in various State Capitols deterred another assault, but I don’t think the threat is over. The many disillusioned followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement are being actively recruited by anti-government, Neo-Nazi, White Supremacy groups for radicalization into violent for soldiers of a revolutionary movement that has much more in common with Hitler’s SA, or Stürmabteilung Brownshirts, than with the American patriots who fought for our independence in 1776. There is no comparison between those Trump’s Cult and their Neo-Nazi thugs and our founders. The ideology of the Nazis and our founders were and are polar opposites, and anyone who believes that the violent overthrow of the ongoing American experiment is a domestic enemy, and a supporter of terrorism. They are no better than Al Qaida, ISIS, MS-13, or any foreign enemy. Despite the return to normalcy their threat remains and decent people must oppose them to identify them for who and what they are.

Likewise the ignorance that helped fan the flames of radicalism that led to Trump’s election still remains. The comments on Facebook by rabid Trump supporters are worryingly absurd. They claim “the left and mainstream media bowing down to Biden” without any self reflection how they formed a personality cult around Trump in which they abandoned all the principles that they had once stood for, except perhaps White Supremacy. While they condemn actual media sources and reporters be they on television or print, they don’t actually read them or watch them. They simple take the carefully edited snippets given to them by the Fox News nightmare, or nighttime lineup, those of Newsmax or OAN, or radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh as gospel. They never do their own research in fact they are actively doing that. Basically they are like the Germans who unquestionably took the words of me like Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher as truth, especially after the Nazis shut down all opposition newspapers.

It was they who wanted to overthrow the Constitution, its protections, and the guardrails which provided the guarantees that regardless of which party won the Presidency or controlled Congress in order to make Trump a President for life and in the process crush any opposition to him or them. They were the ones who used executive orders and passed laws to disenfranchise people of color, to roll back the rights of women, LTBTQ people, immigrants, religious minorities, and political opponents. The aided and abetted antisemitism including attacks on Synagogues and Jewish community centers resulting in mass murder. They gave their blessing to attacks on Black churches, and those who peaceably protested the violence committed against and the murder of black men and women, the Black Lives Matter movement.

After the agonizing eight minute and 46 second long public murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer they cheered on brutal attacks by police, and armed white Supremacists on protestors, including one led by President Trump and a heavily militarized police and National Guard attack on peace protestors in Lafayette Park and St. James Church to the President could get a photo-op outside the Church with a Bible in hand. When Right Wing terrorists murdered police officers they said nothing. They said nothing when immigrant families and refugees were separated from their children at the U.S. Mexican border, when children were locked in cages without beds, toilets, and nothing by aluminum blankets. They said nothing when at least 500 children were separated from their families, sent to countries not their own, and cannot be found. They said nothing when contracted doctors at border detention facilities forcibly sterilized immigrant and refugee women. This makes me doubt the pro-life credentials of Right Wing Christians who voted, supported and marched against the Capitol because Trump was allegedly anti-abortion.

Finally his supporters overlook his incompetent and criminally malicious Non-response to the Coronavirus 19 pandemic which has infected two and a half million Americans and killed over 420,000. Those numbers are probably an undercount because of inconsistent accounting measures and the lack of transparency of the Trump administration and many GOP led state governments in providing the information, counting the numbers, and lack of attention in providing PPE, building up supplies of what medical personnel and first responders needed, and their willingness to let people die certainly qualifies as a Crime Against Humanity, and needs to be prosecuted as such.

Despite all of this and the urgency of the situation with COVID-19, the economy in massive crisis with so many businesses barely hanging on, some in a death circle that will create even more economic disaster, more job losses, more business failures, more Coronavirus infections and deaths, and maybe even the collapse of our medical system. This is a national emergency and National Security Crisis. Yet many in the Republican leadership, including members who actively supported and incited sedition and the overthrow of a valid election by force and violence, are fighting President Biden’s efforts to protect Americans, save the economy and protect our national security. In the process they are seeking to break our democracy, destroy the Constitution and bring about an authoritarian government based on minority rule. Even though Donald Trump is gone there are alt least two score Republican members of the Senate and House trying to be the next Trump. That doesn’t count many in state office who would like to do the same. These are all Mussolini’s in the making or worse embryonic Hitlers. Trump was to incompetent to fulfill their vision and many who still support him are very angry and ready to follow anyone who is more violent, radical and competent than him.

Senator Ted Cruz who Helped Incite the attack on the Capitol wearing a highly disrespectful “Come and take it” mask at the inauguration of Joe Biden. If he had any sense he would know that there was no correlation between the Goliad Flag and his treasonous attempt to overthrow the government and Constitution of the United States. 

Since they are now in the minority they must be defeated and the actions needed to save our country and help all Americans must be passed with or without their help. Senator Schumer the new Senate Majority Leader can end the filibuster, which due to the GOP is a filibuster in name only, a member on has to say he or she is filibustering a measure to stop action. It is not like the old days where Senators had to either make arguments against it or just keep talking, like the late Senator Robert Byrd who could do would simply begin reading a book, or even a phone book to keep the filibuster going. But it was the racist Dixiecrat turned Republican Strom Thurmond who set the record for the longest single speaker filibuster in the history of the United States in opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Trust me there is no one in the Republican Senate capable of speaking that long for anywhere close to that.

If enough Republicans fail to support bills that help their constituents that has been endorsed and is fully supported by the National Chamber of Commerce, perhaps the most conservative business organizations, as well as President Trump’s former top economic advisor, the House and Senate can resort to a process called reconciliation to pass the the Coronavirus and economic relief bills with a simple majority. The Republicans themselves have done this on more than one occasion.

President Biden and Democrats in the House and Senate should not repeat the mistake of President Obama who waited on key legislation, or modified it with conservative Republican ideas, such as the Hermitage Foundation’s health care plan used by Mitt Romney that became the Affordable Health Care Act or as it is better known “Obamacare” hoping for Republican support which never came. If the Republicans attempt to thwart the legislation, shut down the filibuster and move to reconciliation. To paraphrase Mitch McConnell, “elections have consequences, winners rule and losers go home.” 

It is not enough to sit back and feel good. Democrats have to show that they care about all Americans by pushing these laws through against the reticence of Republicans and the histrionic and vitriolic pundits like Sean Hannity and others like him. The GOP is not the party of the little guy, the small business owner, the worker who works for barely enough money to house and feed their families, without affordable health care, or any real pension or savings plans. They are the party of the rich and whenever they do a tax cut the majority always goes to the most wealthy as well as corporations that already use existing tax laws to pay nothing in taxes.

They are not the party of people trying to ensure that their kids have a solid education that provides a way to either get into college and afford it, or rediscover the necessity of public schools teaching vocational education for kids that prepares them for high paying technical jobs. We had those programs when I was in high school in the 1970s. Kids had educations that either prepared them for college or good paying jobs. That can be done again, but it means that local, state, and the federal government must invest in that education. It sure the hell is a lot more affordable than for profit colleges that take students for every dollar they can under federally backed student loans which are nearly impossible to pay back, for students who did not get those skills in high school or in public community colleges.

They are not the party of Public Health and basic preventive care that could prevent the need for expensive health care to treat conditions that could have been treated early. Under Republicans at all levels of government those services have been gutted. There is no safety net for healthcare, just as there is no safety net for the poor, those who lose their employment, those who cannot afford housing, or for that matter anything and mind you most of these people live in the poor rural regions of Republican governed states.

They are not the party that wants to invest in the infrastructure needed to ensure or economic and military security. That includes roads, bridges, power plants, electric and gas distribution networks, dams for hydroelectric power, wind farms, and solar power, and the hardening of the cast computer networks to protect us from hacking or even electromagnetic pulse attacks. They refuse to deal with sea rise which threatens our critical seaports, coastal communities, farmlands which are inundated when levees fail, and even major military installations along the coast and in hurricane zones. This isn’t fantasy, it is a reality that for more than a decade the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and many other Federal agencies have warned us about for years.

I could go on, but unless the GOP and its leadership is willing to divorce itself from the conspiracy theorists, the anti-Constitutional terrorists, the science and climate deniers, the believers in voodoo economics, and be willing to go back to its roots as a party that promoted emancipation, suffrage, and equal rights. At one time they were the party of free labor and free land, the party that established the National Parks and Wildlife refuges, the party that invested in interstate highways and world class international airports. But they are not that anymore. They are a party of ideological nutcases, conspiracy theorists, religious theocrats who want to enforce their minority views of the Christian faith on all Americans using the police power of the state to do it, and a party without a platform which merely believes in the seizure of power and the willingness never to surrender it.

The beliefs of today’s Republicans were clearly enunciated by none other than Hermann Goering, Hitler’s number two man until April of 1945. Goering said:

“It was understood by all of us that as soon as we had once come into power we must keep that power under all circumstances. We did not want power and governmental authority for power’s sake, but we needed power and governmental authority in order to make Germany free and great. We did not want to leave this any longer to chance, elections and Parliamentary majorities, but we wanted to carry out the task to which we considered ourselves called. In order to consolidate this power now, it was necessary to reorganise the political relationships of power. That was carried out in such a manner that, shortly after the seizure of governmental authority in the Reich and in Prussia, the other States followed automatically and more or less strong National Socialist Governments were formed everywhere. Secondly, the so-called political officials, who according to the Reich Constitution could be recalled at any time – that is, could be dismissed – would naturally have to be replaced now according to custom by people from the strongest Party – as is everywhere customary…” 

However, Goering lied about the situation, even in a subsequent election following the Reichstag Fire the Nazi Party never had an absolute majority. It was their outlawing of the German Communist Party and temporary alliances with German conservatives that they later broke that gave them a majority in the Reichstag. A minority succeeded in overthrowing a divided majority. As the various German conservative and nationalist parties folded their tents and allowed themselves to be absorbed by the Nazis, the Catholic Center Party, also threw in the towel. The only party in Germany to go out with its honor intact was the Social Democratic Party which voted against the Enabling Act that gave the Nazis unlimited dictatorial power. Shortly after that final vote of protest the Nazis outlawed them, shut up down their newspapers, their affiliated labor unions, and murdered or placed their leaders in concentration camps. Given the chance and opportunity Trump’s radicalized supporters and those more violent than them would do exactly what the Nazis did, the 6 January assault was their attempt to do exactly what the Nazis did to their opposition.

Let me reassert that this is a time to be joyful that President Biden, Vice President Harris and their incoming team are in office and taking actions to try to save all of us from the steaming pile of rat feces that Trump has left them to deal with, and we cannot rest on the laurels of a hardy inauguration if the task before us it to be fulfilled.

You see to bring this article back to a more American setting let us go back to the inspiration for Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which in the light of the recent assault by seditious, treasonous rebels is more appropriate than his Second Inaugural Address because while one assault was turned back, the battle is not over because those who orchestrated it, including the former President and Republican members of the House and Senate embraced and supported the overthrow of the legally elected government remain at large, as do the leaders of the groups that served as their foot soldiers. So the battle cannot be considered won until these people return to the Constitutional norms and laws of how we govern. If they cannot do that, especially those who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, they have betrayed their oath and are traitors who need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law or if they chose bullets over ballots, cartridges over the Constitution, or lethality over law then they must be fought to the death.

As Senator Stephen A. Douglas said when the new Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter “There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors.” The Senator’s words are as correct now as he when he spoke them. He then pledged his loyalty to the Union and his former opponent President  Abraham Lincoln. He understood that he had policy differences with the new administration but placed his loyalty to the Republic and Constitution above party loyalty or his personal friendships with the men now leading the insurrection against the Union.

All of us have the responsibility, especially anyone who has sworn the oath to the Constitution to oppose such enemies of it, even if they are friends, family, or politicians we support. If we do not we betray our oaths despite the statements of the self proclaimed Oath Keepers terrorist group. Each of us has the choice to uphold the Constitution or to betray it by attempting to toppled our Republic and democracy.

Our Union means more to me than most people can imagine. My ancestors of both sides of my family fought to overthrow it in the War of the Slaveholders Rebellion, which I think is a far more honest name for the American Civil War. In reality that war was an internal rebellion conducted by men who determined to destroy the Union in order to maintain and expand the institution of slavery even into the Free States which had outlawed it, to all United States territories, and even into the Caribbean and Central America. For me those are unfathomable reasons to destroy the Union and fight the bloodiest war in American history. I will be damned if I allow such people to get away with sedition and treason killing police officers and attempting to kill the former Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and many other Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate.

But getting back to the inspiration for Lincoln’s few remarks at Gettysburg we have to remember both the Declaration of Independence and the words of prominent thinkers who influenced his choice of words, for they call come down to the fundamental principle of all of American government, “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson who wrote these words was a flawed man, he own slaves, but on the other hand he saw his words as an ever expanding principle of liberty for all people in all nations and in all times.

The Unitarian pastor, abolitionist, and leading Transcendentalist thinker, Theodore Parker wrote:

“Our national ideal out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began our national career by setting all history at defiance – for that said, “A republic on a large scale cannot exist.” Our progress since that has shown that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The practical ideas of the nation are transcendent, not empirical. Human history could not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of the new idea: the nation went beyond human history and appealed to human nature.”

Parker’s words also prefigured an idea that Lincoln used in his address. Parker, like Lincoln believed that: “the American Revolution, with American history since, is an attempt to prove by experience this transcendental proposition, to organize the transcendental idea of politics. The ideal demands for its organization a democracy- a government of all, for all, and by all…” 

Likewise, George Bancroft the great American historian wrote words that also echoed in Lincoln’s address:

“The bill of rights which it promulgates is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice…. The heart of Jefferson in writing the Declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire world of mankind and all coming generations, without any exceptions whatsoever.” 

Barley five months after the battle, when less than a third of the dead had yet been buried and much of Cemetery Hill was marked with the physical scars of the battle Lincoln spoke these words following the nearly two hour long primary address by the eminent scholar, professor, and orator Edward Everett. Lincoln gave these brief remarks:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.[6]

We must continue the fight and we cannot abandon the principles of the Declaration, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms, and Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” his “I have been to the mountaintop” and “I have a dream” speeches.

President Biden echoed those words in his inaugural speech. It was not the dystopian fear presented by President Trump in his inaugural address, but a message of hope and unity tempered by reality. Since his inaugural address is available in full on the White House and other news sites I will not repeat it here.

Believe  it or not I began this post on Wednesday night but got involved in editing and expanding it to put it in the context of history. I was about ready to post it last night when half of it disappeared as my system updated unexpectedly. So I decided to finish it Saturday, which became early Sunday morning. But before I sign off for the night let me express my opinion about those who attacked the Capitol and those who supported, encouraged, incited, or enabled them. To that end I will quote the words of Colonel Strong Vincent who led his bridge and died in the defense of Little Round Top on the afternoon of 2 July 1863 at Gettysburg. Not long before the battle he wrote his wife words that I think that every man and woman who values our Union, our Declaration, and our Constitution:

“We must fight them more vindictively, or we shall be foiled at every step.  We must desolate the country as we pass through it, and not leave a trace of a doubtful friend or foe behind us; make them believe that we are in earnest, terribly in earnest; that to break this band in twain is monstrous and impossible; that the life of every man, yea, of every weak woman or child in the entire South, is of no value whatever compared with the integrity of the Union.”

Likewise his subordinate, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who repelled the Rebel advance at the end of the Union line, and later rose to great fame wrote:

“We have this war upon is & we want to stop it. It has cost us already too much precious blood. It has carried stagnation, starvation & grief in to too many villages of our fair land – brought death to too many noble hearts that we could ill afford to lose. But the only way to stop this war, is first to show that we are strongest…I feel that we are fighting for our country – for our flag- not as so many Stars and Stripes, but as the emblem of a good & powerful nation – fighting to settle the question whether we are a nation or a basket of chips. Whether we shall leave our children the country we have inherited – or leave them without a country – without a name – without a citizenship among the great nations of the earth – take the chief city of the rebels. They will have no respect for us unless we whip them & and I say it in all earnestness….”

The words of all of these men need to be take to heart today against the men and women who fought then and now for the principle of rending our Union asunder and proclaiming a White Supremacist theocratic autocracy.

So until next time,  ready to fight the good fight against seditious traitors, murderers, and rebels who attempt to hijack the words of the Declaration and the Constitution to justify their crimes against those documents, our Republic and their fellow citizens, for they will not give up until they are completely whipped.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

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January 1, 2021 · 01:21

A New Year’s End of a Career and a Resolve to Speak the Truth and Fight the Enemies of America’s yet Unfulfilled Ideal of a New Birth of Freedom



Friends of Padre Steve’s World

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”

But before I say anything else I just want to thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to read, comment and even share what I write. That matters to me and a good number of you have followed my writings for years. So I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart, and if you like what you see please comment and share with others.

As I get older I realize how valuable time is. There are few commodities that truly cannot be replaced or conserved, time is one that is always fleeting. As Dr. Suess said:

“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

That being said I am not a fan of New Year’s resolutions, in fact I generally don’t make any because frankly I think that most are a waste of time. However, I do not think that the pursuit of truth is a waste, and as Benjamin Disraeli noted so wisely; “Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.”

This New Year has driven that home as I experienced and am still experience various medical and dental situations that disrupted my retirement preparation. At 11:59 and 59 seconds my 39 year, 4 month and 6 day military career comes to a close. Judy and I will toast in the new year with a French Rose sparkling wine rather than a Champagne. Likewise I will follow that up with a dram of 18 year old Glenfiddich Scotch Single Malt. Retirement after a career such as mine should be savored and what better way with a dram of than beautiful nectar of the Scottish Highlands, but I digress…

But before I go on I have to say that I count my blessings even in the midst of one of the most disastrous years in recent world history. While I completely expected soon to be ex-President Trump and his Cult to try to destroy the country and Constitution to attempt to keep him in power. That being said, I think that I might have underestimated their continued attempts to overthrow the humiliating election loss that Trump experienced. However, he and they are pathological in their underhanded, unconstitutional, disingenuous, and treasonous attempts to overthrow our system of government and replace it with an authoritarian and theocratic dictatorship as the country goes through its greatest crisis since the Great Depression and the 1918 Great Influenza Pandemic.

These damned people are sociopaths. During the Coronavirus-19 Pandemic have done all they can to increase the infections and death count, and they don’t care. As of tonight a minimum of over 350,000 Americans have died from this virus. Over TWENTY-MILION Americans have been infected. Many of those no longer infected still are afflicted with the conditions that COVID-19 brought on. Likewise there are nearly Eight Million open cases with a new mutation that spreads significantly faster than the original now spreading in the United States, which ensures that more deaths will occur because even if it is not more deadly, more people get infected and thus more people die.

To that end, being retired from the Navy and military gives one a certain amount of latitude than being on active duty. So this year the batteries are unleashed and I will be able to speak the truth without fear of retribution. I get to be a whistleblower, activist, and spokesperson for those under attack because of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, lack thereof or anything else. I get to be an unabashed defender of civil rights and speaking openly for the truth. Damn, I am happy to have that freedom.

So as I did last year and in previous years I am going to endeavor this year to commit myself to continue to seek truth and to speak truth, wherever that takes me. Truth matters to me. In my life I have seen so many lies, especially by political and religious leaders that I trusted that I now devote myself to the pursuit of truth. As Captain Jean Luc Picard told the young Cadet Wesley Crusher in Star Trek the Next Generation episode The First Duty: “the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, historical truth or personnel truth…” 

So, I will continue to write, especially about historical subjects that have an impact today: civil rights and social justice, faith, military issues, PTSD and military health issues, the Middle East conflicts and a number of other topics. Of course I will write about baseball, which is often my refuge when things are too much for me and music. I will write about Bayern München Fußball. The German Bundesliga, the European Champions League and International Football including the World Cup and Olympics. 

I will continue to be as transparent as I can about my own struggles with PTSD, Moral Injury and faith in the hopes that my journey will help others who struggle like me. In fact this was a major reason that I started this site back in February of 2009.

Expect me to continue writing about the Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War. Likewise expect me to deal with  I have a feeling that that is going to become a life work. The American Civil War is so pertinent to who and what we are as a nation and the more I study it, the people, the issues and the ideologies involved I see many parallels with today; some of which are positively frightening. So expect a lot more about these subjects. In fact the Civil War is one in which debunked myths still hold sway over many, especially among the defenders of the Lost Cause who predominate the Christian Right.

I really do look forward to the publication of my book “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!” Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era and their Continued Importance” by Potomac Books, a division of University of Nebraska Press.

In addition to that I expect to be going back to some of my older research and writing about the social, religious, political, and ideological dynamics of Weimar and Nazi Germany and how similar that are to some things going on now in our own country. I have the outline of a draft book “Walk, Remember, Bear Witness:” Ensuring the Holocaust is Remembered as the Surviving Witnesses Pass Away.”

I will also speak out against racial and religious discrimination, for the rights of African Americans, Hispanics, immigrants, the LGBTQ community and others who have been persecuted and marginalized by White Supremacists and theocratic Christians during the reign of the Donald Trump and his criminal cabal. These sons of itches want to twist the Constitution’s guarantees of religious liberty for all to support their discrimination in civil law against those who do not agree with them. I will fight them with wholehearted vigor without the restraints I had on active duty. Even this week I had one of these theocratic Trump cultists attack me in my comments section. After his second attack I put him on notice because I know who he is, where he lives, what he tweets and much more. These SOBs are so damned arrogant and stupid. Frankly they are lucky that God has much more forgiveness and grace than I do, otherwise I would gather my own band of paramilitary basterds and start taking scalps and carving Swastikas on their foreheads. 

Many of the theocrats and White Nationalists use the mantra of “cancel culture” to define their grievance. But that is a lie. What they want to perpetuate is a While lies are dangerous the myths can be more so, and the proliferation of lies, half-truths and myth have shriveled the brain cells of those who enjoy the comfort of opinion without the benefit of thought. President John F. Kennedy spoke of this in 1962, and his words are timely, especially when hordes of preachers, pundits and politicians, the Trinity of Evil, do this with abandon:

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” 

To do this I have to constantly challenge my own thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. So with that resolution I wish you a good day and a Happy New Year. Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting, and encouraging me.

I wish you all a happy and blessed New Year. I pray that you will remain safe and take all protections against COVID-19 for your sake and that of your families and loved ones.

That being said there can be no time off, there can be no stop to the fight because  our opponents will not stop their attacks on our Republic, Constitution, or the ideals that prompted our founders to write these words in our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In November of 1863 Abraham Lincoln appealed to the Preamble of the United States Constitution in his Gettysburg Address:

“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Can I hear those New Year’s Amens? I hope so.

Until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 30, 2020 · 23:59

The Scourge of Race Hatred, Anti-Semitism, Holocaust Denial, and Violence Will Continue Long After Trump Leaves Office

Babi Yar

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

We Americans like to think that we have come so far and have risen above the monstrous ideologies of race hatred and anti-semitism. Sadly we have not and the evil that most recently raised it’s head during the Presidency of Barack Obama went into overdrive with the election and approval of President Trump. Whether willingly or unwillingly Trump will leave office on January 20th the lingering of his open racism will remain with us in the shattered remains of the Republican Party which because Trump and his sycophants own the Republican National Committee. Any Republican who challenges him will be crushed by his cult, who have no loyalty to the GOP or the country. Their allegiance is to Trump alone regardless of how washed up and irrelevant he will be. This is because he validated what they already believed. But I digress…

I have a policy about Holocaust denial on my site. If someone denies the Holocaust or tries to minimize it I delete their post. Over the fast five years most of these people are Trump Cultists, especially so called “Evangelical Christians.”

That might sound somewhat restrictive, but I will not give them the space on my site to posit their race hatred and justification of genocide in any way shape or form. It used to be that I would spar with them, but I realized that by doing so I gave them a sense of acceptability, and when some proceeded to make physical threats against me for opposing their ideas I realized that I couldn’t go down that road anymore.

That being said, every so often I get comments from Holocaust deniers, as well as Japanese deniers of the Rape of Nanking and other Japanese atrocities in Asia during the 1930s and World War II. The Japanese Nanking deniers are almost always Right Wing revisionists and hyper-nationalists who subscribe to the racial theory that the Chinese and other non-Japanese are less than human. But I’ve never had an American take issue with Nanking. That being said almost all of my holocaust deniers are Americans who not only deny the Holocaust, but who subscribe to the most base and repulsive theories of anti-Semitism, and White Supremacy. I find that fascinating in a very clinical way.

I say that because I am inherently suspicious. If someone tells me a story or posts something attacking me for something I write here, or post on my Facebook or Twitter feeds I do my best to not take the comments personally, while recognizing their seriousness, especially if threats to my life or my family are involved. Thus I tend to ask myself “Why this? Why me? Why now?” My Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor at Parkland Memorial Hospital called this using a hermeneutic of suspicion, because everybody lies, especially to Priests, Ministers, Rabbis, and other clergy. But, when the President and his entourage lie with such ease to change what they did as they did this week at the Trump Party Convention, as it now is the Republican Party in Name Only, one cannot assume anything they say to be the truth. When a President uses the powers of his office for his profit and political gain it is an abuse of power and a violation of the Hatch Act which forbids every Federal employee from the President to the lowliest janitor, clerk, or military recruit to use Federal property, equipment, or resources for financial gain or partisan politics.

Sadly, since the day of his inauguration until this very day President Trump claims that he is not only above the law, but that his word is the law. His enablers, cabinet officials and most of his party’s senators, representatives, as well as sate and officials fall in line with Trump’s, demands, edicts, and policies in a manner completely different than if President Obama and Clinton, or candidates Kerry, Gore, or Clinton had made them. In the former case they jump to attention in defense of a would be dictator and madman, but would have fought to the death if uttered or proposed by a Democrat. But when a Presidential Candidate like Trump says that he would not lose a vote among his supporters even if he shot and killed someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue, one knew at that moment that the GOP was no longer a political party, but a personality cult of  nearly religious dimensions, unless they had subscribed to the ideology of the cult. Just because he will be leaving office doesn’t mean that the cult won’t continue to stand by him, until perhaps someone like him but smarter, less lazy, and more driven captures their imagination.

To be sure, Trump was no Hitler, though his words continue to sound more and more Hitlerian every day. I will not call the President a Nazi, though he has give tacit support to Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups and frequently engages in racist diatribes. That being said I do believe that he has strong Nazi leanings based on his comments about Jews, his disparaging words about racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, as well as those who are physically disabled or chronically ill. These statements of mine are all based on public comments, tweets, or actions he has taken. While he may not be a Nazi, he certainly is acting as any authoritarian leader would, and we have to heed the warning of Russian dissident Gary Kasparov:

“dictators & would be autocrats do not ask “Why?” when it comes to using power for their advantage. They ask “why not?

Today I am writing about the Holocaust Deniers that post on this site or my Twitter or Facebook pages. A few years ago I had one response to this article   The Justification of Genocide: Race Hatred and the Quest for Living Space by shouting “you fear open debate.”  His blog address was listed on the post, so I used some internet tools and went to town. I found plenty of racist, pro-Nazi, and Holocaust denial posts and links made by him as well as an amazingly strong support for President Trump’s racist polices on immigration, and against American Blacks, Jews, and other minorities. So whenever one of these Internet drive by cowards comes to my page I check them out and find that many, if not most of them are incredibly racist, nihilistic and sadistic Narcissistic Sociopaths  emboldened by their Chief, President Trump.

But the reality is that such people fear open debate because when they engage in it they are exposed for the frauds that they are. Some like the English defender of all things Hitler and Holocaust denier, David Irving had the nerve to sue American Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel in a British court where she would have to prove her innocence as opposed to an American court where he would have had to prove that she had libeled him. Even in that setting Irving lost. If you want to see a great film, watch the movie adaptation of the trial entitled “Denial.” It is worth watching.

A while back I had another Holocaust Denier who ripped into me about the Nazi massacre of Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar, in which over 33,771 Jews were marched out of Kiev and shot on the 29th and 30th of September 1941. There were 29 survivors who managed to escape the death pits by feigning death and climbing out after dark. Massacres of more than 100,000 other people, mostly non-Jews continued until November. The number of Jews killed was documented by the Commander of the Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C which conducted the massacre. The Einsatzgruppe men were assisted by troops from two Police Battalions and Waffen SS troops with Logistical and security support from the Wehrmacht.  Both the records of the Einsatzgruppe and the testimony of SS men who took part is damning enough, yet my denier critic had the nerve to say “There was no such massacre – it is just another example of war time atrocity propaganda.”

I since he decided to leave his comment, email address, and website exposed, I decided to do a little investigation and found that he is full of these zingers On other blogs and news sites, as well as an avid supporter of President Trump. He plays fast and loose with the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust and claims that “It is currently illegal in many European nations to question the official or generally accepted account of the holocaust of European Jewry during the Second World War.” Of course that is not true, in fact in most of Europe the archives are open, the documents assessable, and the evidence undeniable.

Riot police rush protestors to clear Lafayette Park and the area around it across from the White House for President Donald Trump to be able to walk through for a photo opportunity in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church (seen at rear), during a rally against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, near the White House in Washington, U.S. June 1, 2020. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

The problem is that the evidence is so great that any to deny it or attempt to revise it deserves both public ridicule and academic scorn. So instead of actually trying to disprove the facts they turn to obvious lies, just as President Trump and his enablers have done with the COVID19 Pandemic and Trump’s both incompetent and evil handling of it, his handling the economic collapse that followed, and absolutely racist and authoritarian response to the protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police, used massive force to clear peaceful protestors from Lafayette Park and the area around St. John’s Church to have a photo-op with a Bible that he could not figure how to hold. He couldn’t tell which way was up with it. It was then, that for the first time in my life, felt that an American President had threatened mine as a Priest and Navy Chaplain. But I digress, as closely as this attack is linked to what I am writing about today.

There are laws against Holocaust denial in many European countries precisely because it was such a horrific chapter in human history that it cannot be minimized or defended, but there are no such laws here, just as there are no laws against those who promote the evil, bloodthirsty, racist, and treason laden lies of the Noble South, the Virtues of Slavery, the less than human status of Blacks, and the villainous myth of the Lost Cause. All of these put newly emancipated slaves back into a condition of slavery by another name for another century and more. The repugnant racism of the rebellion for slavery still runs strong in much of the United States and it is not confined to the eleven states of the Civil War Confederacy, but throughout much of the country.

Not surprisingly most of the Holocaust Deniers, are also the proponents of Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, the Noble South, the Lost Cause, Jim Crow and Segregation, as well those that oppose the Constitutional civil and voting rights of Blacks, Women, and other minorities To include LGBTQ+ people of every race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. This is extraordinarily dangerous, because such people have no scruples against killing those that they hate.

James Morcan in his book Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories wrote something very true that I am all too aware of:

“Unfortunately, the historicity of the Holocaust has been undermined and chipped away at by the exact same sinister forces that created the genocide in the first place: racists, religious bigots and the most paranoid type of conspiracy theorists who, together, are uniting – often unwittingly – to form a new wave of anti-Semitism that will not willingly accept the obvious facts of the past. This chipping away (at the truth) began slowly and insidiously – much like the Holocaust itself – but sadly, and worryingly, it is gathering pace.” 

It is interesting to read through the man who posted that I was afraid of honest debate, to go to his blog and see that his issue is not about anti-Semitism, as he is exceptionally anti-Semitic, nor is it about the killing of the Jews, just the number of Jews killed. It seems that if  he, like the other deniers can somehow lessen the number of Jews killed, that it becomes more acceptable, and over time forgettable. I will not open this site up to Holocaust deniers. One of those deniers is Charles Johnson who was invited to the State of the Union Address in 2018 by Congressman Matt Gaetz. In an interview Johnson responded to the question “what are your thoughts on the Holocaust, WW2, and the JQ in general?” (JQ is short for the Jewish Question) His response was telling.

“I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a war [sic] crime. I agree…about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real.”

Johnson denies being a Holocaust denier and touts his support for Israel, like many others like him do, but his words ring hollow. Moreover his words are all too indicative of what he really believes, and worse of all he is accepted by leading members of the Republican Party. Such associations do nothing but serve to legitimatize Holocaust Deniers and make their arguments more acceptable, after all, if a President and leading Congressmen espouse a position and associate with its proponents, it must have merit. Of course it doesn’t but when there is a dearth of historical knowledge and general indifference it does not take much for such men to motivate others to violence. As Lipstadt noted about David Irving, and I would extend to people like Johnson: “People like David Irving do not throw firebombs. They throw the words that can cause others to throw those firebombs.” 

The sad thing for us as a nation is that quite a few Holocaust deniers, have the ear of the President, people in his administration, and Republican Congressmen. This makes this topic all too relevant. As Marc Bloch wrote “we can truly understand the past only if we read it in light of the present.”

Now, some 40 hours after the end of the Trump Show, otherwise known a

The Constitution that I swore to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic remains under attack by President Trump and his Cult. According to the oath that every Federal, and many state officials swear to defend, President Trump and his supporters are ENEMIES of the Constitution, the Country, and its citizens.

In one of his speeches from March 14th of this year Trump declared:

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,”


It nearly killed me to write this article, but how can one not see what is going on and not speak up about it? I love my country, I have swore a sacred oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and now see for the first time in my life a man committed to destroying the Constitution and ruling as a dictator intent on destroying the American Experiment running for re-election on a personal platform little different than Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini even though he lost his re-election bid. As the great American Naval hero of the Revolutionary War, John Paul Jones replied to his British Opponent: “Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight!”  And fight I will, as General Henning Von Tresckow said in the attempt to kill Hitler: “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.”

But men like Hitler and any other authoritarian leader including President Trump who has used his office for personal gain, the persecution of the most vulnerable in our society, bulldozed the Constitutional and the unwritten norms that serve as the guardrails of our political system. He has allowed 350,000 Americans to die of Coronavirus 19 and almost twenty million more to be infected. Hundreds of thousands will suffer the physical and emotional damage of that terrible virus. Trump and his Cult worked ceaselessly to impair scientists and public health officials attempts to control the virus until vaccinations could be developed and now they hinder their deployment and cast doubt on their efficacy. These actions are nothing less than criminal negligence leading to the mass murder of American citizens of all walks of life including some of his most high level supporters like Herman Cain. 

Though Trump lost the election decisively he and the Cult continue to try to reverse the election doing all they can to overturn the Constitution and law to do it. I fear that if they are given the slightest bit of credibility this will always be Trump’s America, even when Biden takes office. But, there are still three weeks before Biden’s inauguration, and I put nothing past Trump to try to remain in power. That included unleashing social unrest and violence, or entering into a war with Iran. Should he do so expect that he will attempt to implement personal loyalty oaths to him, the mass arrests of political opponents, and the unleashing of his most violent followers backed by the police on political opponents and racial, religious and other “undesirables.” or those they dream to be “Life Unworthy of Life.”

The perpetrators could  possibly include the military unless the Generals and Admirals decide to stop him. I don’t think that will happen and no sane person one wants that, because most of us who value the Constitution believe that the military should be as apolitical as possible and remain out of politics. However, since his election defeat he has placed loyalists in senior positions in the Defense Department means that he is not going to go without a fight. I expect that the Joint Chiefs and the Combatant Commanders would refuse illegal orders, but that is not entirely certain.

Herbert Hoover used active duty Army units under the command of Douglas MacArthur and George Patton to attack veterans of the First World War demanding their war bonuses early because the were jobless and homeless during the Great Depression. It was one of the most egregious, amoral, and unconstitutional  actions of an American President against American citizens, and to make that matters worse attacking war veterans and their families with active duty Army troops, Marines, and police, even using tanks and chemical agents.

But if the President basically overturns the Constitution and attempts to seize power, they are the last bastion to save the republic from destruction and will have to act. Despite his attack on the Bonus Army, Hoover was unwilling to try to overturn the constitutional guardrails between the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches of government. But Hoover, was no Trump. Many other military officers wanted no part of Hoover’s use of the military.

Today’s military leaders have to remember their oaths as all that serve in government must. They must remember the words of General Ludwig Beck who resigned as head of the German Army in 1938 and died in the attempt to kill Hitler on July 20th 1944:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.”

Beck also noted:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.”

I do believe that we are now at the precipice, standing at the edge of the abyss and that unless Trump is thwarted in attempt to overthrow the results of the  2020 election, it might have been the last free election held in this country. One cannot assume otherwise.

We have to remember the warnings of historian Dr. Timothy Snyder who wrote in his book On Tyranny:

“The hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don’t know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Some of the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932 no doubt understood that this might be the last meaningfully free election for some time, but most did not. Some of the Czechs and Slovaks who voted for the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1946 probably realized that they were voting for the end of democracy, but most assumed they would have another chance. No doubt the Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country’s history, which (thus far) it has been. 

But form me there is a certain timeless component of God’s justice on such people. The German Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who ended up dying for his connection to the German  conspirators against Hitler wrote:

“The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, be it of a Leader or of an office, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternal laws and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will eventually crush him. The eternal law that the individual  stands alone before God takes fearful vengeance where it is attacked and distorted. Thus the Leader points to the office, but Leader and office together point to the final authority itself, before which Reich or state are penultimate authorities. Leaders or offices which set themselves up as gods mock God and the individual who stands alone before him, and must perish.”

Bonhoeffer’s words are timeless and should send a chill through anyone who claims the Name of Christ, and supports what Trump is doing, and those who oppose Trump for whatever reason and no-matter what their religion or ideology happens to be. We want our fight to be non-violent and follow the norms of our American Constitutional system as it was intended. We do not want to take violent action or undermine our sacred oaths and values as Americans as eschew violence, and promote intelligent and non-violent speech and protest against the crimes of President Trump and his racist and authoritarian followers, including those in Congress, the Justice Department, and too many Law Enforcement organizations and officers. Sadly, it has been demonstrated time after time that peaceful protests will be met with violence and propaganda justifying it.

Please remember that and vote as if our life depended on it and that this may be your last chance to vote in a meaningful election. If you don’t you may never have a meaningful chance to do so again.

In twenty four hours I will be officially retired from the United States Navy and Army after almost four decades of service. That being said my oath remains forever, and my commitment to the Constitution and our laws leave me no alternative but to resist these damned stupid people and their nefarious attempts to overthrow our Constitution and country, and establish a theocracy based on White Nationalism and racism. I say damn them all.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 22, 2020 · 22:06

Please Christmas Don’t Be Late, But But Wear a Mask: Some Mostly Silly Christmas Songs

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

After a long day of medical appointments including an MRI to ensure my brain isn’t leaking into my nose. No kidding, it’s something they have to rule out before doing a biopsy of a growth there that regardless of what it is, so long as it is not brain needs to come out. Of course it might be the sane part trying to escape, but as usual I digress, but in the midst of all I think I need to spread a bit of cheer on a dark COVID-19 Winter night, unless you are reading this with the sun up.

I get sentimental when I hear Christmas songs of almost any genre. That sentimentality ranges from the hymns of the season such as Silent Night, The First Noel, or Joy to the World. Likewise I find the hymns of Advent like O Come, O Come Immanuel and Es ist Ein Ros Ensprungen (Lo, how a Rose e’re Blooming) to be songs of hope in dark times.

I have shared many of my Christmas favorites each year. This year I haven’t done much of that. But tonight I am going to share some of my favorite non-religious and sometimes funny Christmas songs. I suppose this goes back to my earliest days when as a three to four year old living in the Philippines and my parents bought me David Seville and the Chipmunks Christmas Album, which included the song Christmas Don’t Be Late. 

That came to mind when I had to make sure that our Papillons, especially our puppy Maddy Lyn who is sweet, scary smart and always looking for trouble. She was doing that tonight when I asked what she was doing. She turned around and gave me the “Moi?” look. She is mischievous but so damned funny and sweet. But she is not alone, we have our little boy, Pierre who is sure that he is French royalty. He and Maddy Lyn are about the same size and over the past couple of months they have become buddies once Pierre’s high horse died. Then there is our big girl, Izzy Bella, the sweetest enforcer around. She is bigger than both of the little ones combined, she’s a big Papillon and is drop-dead gorgeous.


Maddie in Time-Out in Judy’s Art Room 

Maddy Lyn and Pierre 


Maddy Lyn and Daddy on the Road

Izzy and his Big Girl Izzy Bella

So anyway, here are my favorite non-religious Christmas songs. Some are sentimental, some irreverent, but I love them all.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

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December 19, 2020 · 19:23

I Hate Being Right: My Words from 13 December 2019 about 2020


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I wrote this on 13 December 2019. It was my prediction for 2020. Damn, I hate being right, except that I did not predict the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic. Apart from that it’s pretty damned accurate. I only wish I was good at picking lottery numbers. So here it is again with no edits.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

It is not even Christmas and I am beginning to write about the coming year. This was provoked in part by a discussion I had with a dear friend, who also happens to be an Evangelical Christian Trump Cultist. I attempted to talk of basic middle of the road stuff and be honest about history, especially because I was a Republican for 32 years, until I returned from Iraq in 2008 and realized that we had been lied into a war that would have fit three of the four charges leveled against the Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg.

But there was no convincing my friend of anything, even when attempting to bridge the divide using facts. To him Trump is the greatest President ever, and Obama, the worst. Of course I live in one of the “reddest” areas of Virginia and while I have quite a few liberal or progressive friends here, quite a few of the people who are also long time friends have transformed themselves from traditional conservatives who could be reasoned with to part of the Trump Cult. Such was the case with this person, every response he gave came straight from a Trump tweet, or something off of Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. But I digress, my friend is not a bad person, he has

Abraham Lincoln noted:

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

It is good to remember Lincoln’s words in times of turmoil. I do, and they bring me great motivation to work, believe, and fight for justice, truth, and the belief in a spark of goodness in humanity which enables me to believe the words of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The fact that those words come from a time of tumult, yet in a time where men were beginning to wrestle with and proclaim principles of the Enlightenment matters much to me, especially in times like we live today, where that principle is being attacked and undermined by the American President.

That being said, I believe that 2019 will be remembered in history as a time great turmoil, upheaval, and probably usher in a new epoch of war, economic, and ecological disaster. We are ending the year with the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, and threats of violence and civil war from his supporters if he is removed from office or loses the 2020 election.

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but as a historian I to look at the world through how human beings, governments, and businesses behave in times of crisis. In fact, human beings are the singular constant in history and in crisis human beings don’t always live up to our ideals.

When major powers and international systems of order break down, or collapse for whatever reason, instability, disorder, and primordial hatreds based on nationalism, religion, and racism rise. A vacuum is created, filled by other powers, but not without some element of travail. Edmond Taylor wrote in his classic “The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Order, 1905-1922:

“The collapse of the great supranational — or at least supraparochial — authorities and the dissolution of long-accepted Imperial bonds released upon Europe a fearsome flood of conflicting national ambitions, of inflamed minority particularisms, of historic (sometimes almost prehistoric) irredentisms, of irreconcilable social aspirations and of rival political fanaticisms.“

The impending collapse of the old order today can be seen in a return to a more isolationist policy by the United States, rising populist, nationalist, and ethnocentric movements in Europe which are threatening the existence of the European Union. Those include Brexit, ethnic nationalism mixed with a bit of Fascism in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and great strains in France and Germany between right and left wing populist movements, but no one has found a way to deal with these Right Wing  populist movements.

The common thread is the center which was the key to so much social progress, democracy, economic growth and stability, scientific advancement, and international security is giving way. In fact it has pretty much disappeared, There are many reasons for this, on the American side going back to the imperialist overreach of the George W. Bush administration, the inconsistent and detached method of the Obama administration towards the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq, following that, the overtly populist, authoritarian, and isolationist policies of the Trump presidency, and his decidedly inconsistent, often irresponsible, and irreconcilable policies of isolationism on one hand, and militarism on the other.

Now a rejuvenated Russia is rushing to fill the void in the Middle East as well as working to destabilize its neighbors, Europe, and even the United States. The Chinese are attempting to make gains in other areas and to drive the United States out of Asia by using every element of national power: diplomacy, information, military might, and economics, while the United States following the Trump Administration’s withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership, and subsequent punishing tariffs that are hurting allies and Americans more than China the United States is now at a decided disadvantage in Asia.

I could go on, and could go into details on the causes of the current situation but they are many. What we are seeing now is the beginning of the collapse of an order that we have known most of our lives. While many people might be uneasy, most don’t view things in terms of history, in many cases because the events that led to the establishment of the current order are too distant and the witnesses to those times are few, and dying off. People today seldom study history, and even worse no longer know people, including family members who remember what happened to remind them of it.

That was quite similar to the situation in 1914. Europe had been at relative peace for a century. With the exception of the French Republic, most of Europe was still ruled by monarchies with rather limited democratic participation, if any. Barbara Tuchman wrote in her book The Proud Tower: A Portrait Of the World Before the War, 1890-1914:

“The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other’s company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, “With emotion, to the man I used to be.”

I believe that 2020 will the a year of multiple crises and the further erosion, if not collapse of the old order, regardless of what happens with impeachment. What will come I do not know, but I expect that at the minimum it will be unsettling and disruptive, if not catastrophic. That doesn’t mean that I am a pessimist, it means that I study history. Provided that humanity does not find a way to destroy itself, we will recover. It may not be pretty and it certainly will not be the same as it was, but we will recover.

Walter Lord wrote about this his book on American in the early Twentieth Century The Good Years: 1900-1914. In the book he wrote about how things changed for Americans as Europe plunged into war. The effects of the war were soon felt in the United States though it would not enter the war until 1917. Lord wrote:

Economics were only part of the story. Almost overnight, Americans lost a happy, easygoing, confident way of looking at things. Gone was the bright lilt of “When You Wore a Tulip”; already it was the sadly nostalgic, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding,” or the grimly suggestive, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.” A mounting crescendo of screaming headlines… atrocity stories… U-boat sinkings… charges and counter-charges shocked the nation, jarred its faith, left a residue of doubt and dismay.

Nothing seemed simple any more. Nothing was black and white. Nothing was “right” or “wrong,” the way Theodore Roosevelt used to describe things. And as the simple problems vanished, so did the simple solutions. Trust-busting, direct primaries, arbitration treaties and all the rest. They somehow lost their glamour as exciting panaceas, and nothing took their place. But the problems grew and grew —preparedness… taxes… war… Bolshevism… disillusionment… depression… Fascism… Moscow… fallout… space… more taxes.

So the old life slipped away, never to return again, and wise men sensed it almost at once. Men like Henry White, the immensely urbane diplomat who had served the country so well. “He instinctively felt,” according to his biographer Allan Nevins, “that his world —the world of constant travel, cosmopolitan intercourse, secure comfort and culture —would never be the same again.” The Philadelphia North American felt the same way, but in blunter words: “What does this mean but that our boasted civilization has broken down?”

Perhaps it was just as well. There was much that was wrong with this old way of living —its injustices, its naivete, its waste, its smug self-assurance. Men would come along to fix all that. New laws, controls, regulations, forms filled out in triplicate would keep anybody from getting too much or too little. And swarms of consultants, researchers, special assistants, and executive committees would make sure that great men always said and did the right thing.

There would be great gains. But after all the gains had been counted, it would turn out that something was also lost —a touch of optimism, confidence, exuberance, and hope. The spirit of an era can’t be blocked out and measured, but it is there nonetheless. And in these brief, buoyant years it was a spark that somehow gave extra promise to life. By the light of this spark, men and women saw themselves as heroes shaping the world, rather than victims struggling through it.

Actually, this was nothing unique. People had seen the spark before, would surely do so again. For it can never die as long as men breathe. But sometimes it burns low, leaving men uncertain in the shadows; other times it glows bright, catching the eye with breath-taking visions of the future.

The truth is, even in the midst of crises that the spark that enables people to believe, to hope, and to labor for a better future where the possibilities of peace, justice, freedom, and progress can be realized.

2019 was a very difficult year, a year of change and turbulence, and truthfully it will probably be just the beginning; but unless we find a way to destroy ourselves before the end of the year, it will not be the end, and 2020 may be one of the most important, yet tumultuous years in human history, and I cannot say if it will end well, for the United States, or the world.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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December 17, 2020 · 02:18

Thoughts After My Retirement Ceremony: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and Thanking all Who Were there for Me

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Sorry not to have written anything the past few days but I was exhausted after dealing with medical and dental issues, getting no sleep and being stressed out getting ready for my retirement ceremony. When it was done I was happy and so tired that I had a hard time doing anything.

Monday I had my COVID-19 Era retirement ceremony. It very special. Unfortunately the live stream video got deleted by the Chapel were it was held, but I heard from a number of people that a lot of it could not be heard on the livestream. Even so the people I wanted there were there and it was an appropriate coda to my career. One of our friends present with his wife is an active Staff Sergeant in the Virginia Army National Guard’s 29th Infantry Division in which I served after I became an Army Chaplain in 1995.

I had my Command Master Chief from Norfolk Naval Shipyard as well the Chief Bos’ns Mate from the Shipyard to sound the bells and pipe me ashore. Having two Chiefs was awesome, as the Command Master Chief read the traditional reading The Watch, something I wanted because my late father was a Chief Petty Officer. For me that was a huge honor. Seldom do Chief’s or Senior Non-Commissioned Officers get leading roles at an officer’s retirement, especially like in reading the The Watch in the Navy. If you have never heard it read this is how it goes, only the number of years of service change.

 Like the Chiefs, few Chaplains have their RPs or Chaplain Assistants speak at their retirement ceremonies. I don’t know why? In the Army we are Unit Ministry Teams, and the Navy Religious Ministry Teams, the key word being teams. I was talking to a friend today, the only other Chaplain that I have seen have one of his enlisted men speak. He noted that during his time in the Navy that most Religious Program Specialists at the Rank of Petty Officer First Class, had worked for at least one Chaplain who treated them in such a way that they lost faith in God, other Chaplains and the church or religious institutions in general. Nelson fricking nailed it. God bless him and his wonderful daughter.

I had two former Commanding Officers who had a huge impact in my Navy speak with prerecorded remarks. Retired Medical Corps Rear Admiral David Lane who was my commanding officer at Naval Hospital Camp LeJeune during one of the darkest points of my life. He was there for they then and in 2015 when due to the maltreatment and abuse I was getting from staff members of the Mental Health Department of the Naval Medical Center, interceded with the Admiral commanding it. That Admiral called me, spoke to me for an hour, got me the appropriate referrals and got some things changed, because I wondered if a senior officer was being treated the way I was, how were junior sailors, marines, soldiers and airmen being treated. I was suicidal, but Admiral Lane helped keep me from it. Monday, he honored me, and my wife Judy with his remarks. He is one of the good guys, he sees people not in light of their rank or job, but as human beings. His words brought tears to my eyes too.

The other was Captain Rick Hoffman, my Skipper aboard USS HUE CITY on her first combat deployment having been a test ship for new combat systems for five years. That was shortly after the attacks of September 11th 2001, and he helped put my service aboard the ship in context. He is an amazing man. He lost his wife to Cancer not long after he retired. He offered to turn down command of the ship   when she was diagnosed, but she wouldn’t let him. She survived the first bout but not the second. The Admiral who presided over the ceremony, Rear Admiral Charles Rock said that when he was a young Lieutenant Commander that Captain Hoffman was a legend. He didn’t know that he had been my Skipper on HUE CITY. Likewise, he had worked with Admiral Lane not long before Admiral Lane retired in Washington DC.

Captain Hoffman’s children are great people, and since retiring he has continued to look after his sailors and our national security. He provided me chances to do things chaplains never get to do. His comments were so good, and brought back many fond memories of my shipmates, including the ones who removed me from breaking up a fight between a disgruntled crewman and Master of a ship impounded under the UN Oil Sanctions on Iraq, for which the crew gave me the nickname “Battle Chaps.” Not only was I unarmed, but because of a shortage of Kevlar armor plates for our combat floatation vests, I was also going into danger without any protection except that of my shipmates. Thankfully, I had great shipmates. That was good living, difficult, arduous, but what you live for if you sign up to serve as a Navy Chaplain. It was such an honor to have Captain Hoffman there, even as like Admiral Lane had to do, he did so virtually.

I also had Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who defended me when I was facing potential Court Martial. Since then he and I have become fast friends and allies in the defense of the civil and religious rights of military personnel and their families. He echoed the words of Nelson, Admiral Lane, and Captain Hoffman said about me, and he never had met them. All understand that a Chaplain’s job is far more than preaching his or her faith, it is about caring for military personnel, their families, and our Department of Defense and Department of the Navy civilian personnel, and protecting their Constitutional rights.

As Admiral Lane noted, to preach at stateside chaplains we could hire contractors, but we needed chaplains who could be there for our military personnel and their families, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. There really are no other places someone in the military can go with complete confidentiality to reveal their hurts, pains, anxiety, worries, and even sins in complete confidence without fear of reprisal, or punishment. In some ways, good military Chaplains are to use the words of James Spader’s character in The Blacklist, are sin eaters. This is not saying that we cover up crimes, but that we are a safe place for people to cast their cares and get sound counsel on how to get whatever help they need and if need be go with them to get that help be it medical, psychological, legal, administrative, or the help best given by their chain of command. One finds as a chaplain that most of our flock’s needs are not necessarily spiritual and that they don’t need to only person with absolute confidentiality they can go to shove religion down their throats.

Mikey understands this much more than his critics give him credit. He understands the needs and religious rights of military personnel as only one who has had his life threatened by Christian theocrats, and Anti-Semites can only understand. He spoke very personal and inspiring words about my service.

My regular readers understand my understanding of religious liberty, government, and citizenship. One of my inspirations is the great Virginia Baptist, John Leland who advised Thomas Jefferson in the Virginia Declaration of Religious Liberties and James Madison on the First Amendment wrote, and which I quoted Monday in my remarks:

“Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear–maintain the principles that he believes–worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions. Instead of discouraging him with proscriptions, fines, confiscation or death, let him be  encouraged, as a free man, to bring forth his arguments and maintain his points with all boldness; then if his doctrine is false it will be confuted, and if it is true (though ever so novel) let others credit it. When every man has this liberty what can he wish for more? A liberal man asks for nothing more of government.”

I also quoted James Madison said, “Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Sadly, in our country today many people, including the church leaders of a majority leader of many military Chaplains hold an opposite doctrine, that of the very doctrines of a supposedly “Christian” Religious theocracy that the Framers of our Constitution so opposed. I opposed those opinions and had someone try to get me tried by Court Martial for preaching a Biblical and Christian sermon on social justice and the the racist policies of the outgoing administration. Some people think that they can use their position to condemn people whose religious and beliefs in our Constitutional rights disagree with theirs. Thank God, whatever God’s there may be or just dumb luck and fate for men like Mikey. I look forward to working with him after my official retirement date.

I also brought up my understanding of leadership which included my devotion to the West Point motto Duty, Honor, Country. I received my commission as an Army ROTC cadet, and I was not an Academy graduate. However those words  have served as a compass to my career. For me the first duty has always been to the truth be it as a Medical Service Corps officer commanding a company and later dealing with the Army’s response to soldiers infected with HIV or dying of AIDS, where I helped write the Army’s personnel policies and because no other personnel officer at the Academy of Health Sciences wanted to be in the same room with an HIV infected soldier, I became CINC AIDS. I got to be the person who dealt with men and women dealing with a disease that at the time was certain to kill them, and how they could still serve. That brought me a whole new perspective on life, and a great deal of compassion for those who received news that they did not have much longer to live.

The same was true when I was an Armor Officer and Battalion S-1 in a Texas Army National Guard Armor battalion and saw how racism still permeated the National Guard in Texas. As a non-Texan and former Active Officer I found that I was a foreigner, something that I experienced transferring from Texas to Virginia. It is funny how the same prejudices that permeated the Armies of the Confederate States were still existent in the 1980s and 1990s.

Likewise, honor, is about my sacred honor to my Oath of Office and my sacred vows as a husband, and Priest, and finally my Country in good times as bad.

Captain Jean Luc Picard, played by Sir Patrick Stewart in Star Trek the Next Generation said: “the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, historical truth or personnel truth…” I am not a Starfleet Officer but as an officer nonetheless I have always believed that the truth matters, but sadly I, like so many of us have turned the other way and not spoken out. But the older I get the more I realize that I cannot be silent about subjects that at one time I turned a blind eye to because they were uncomfortable, unpopular or might hurt my career either in the church or in the military. That really didn’t take that long. It began when I was an Army Second Lieutenant and has continued until today.

Likewise I have been guided by the words of General Ludwig Beck who resigned his office rather than obey Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia, and then gave up his life in the attempt to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. Beck said:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.”

I reminded those present or watching online that those words were especially important in our conflicted and divided country. While I did not say it directly I implied that Officers cannot simply dedicate themselves to purely military matters when their Chief Executive violates the Constitution they swore to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. 

While it was in the script since we were running late and I didn’t want to get any more political than I had I left out. Beck also said:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.” 

That is exactly what I believe. I wish time had allowed me to say it, but I digress…

Then there was my dear friend and colleague, retired Navy Chaplain Vince Miller who served as both the Chaplain and Master of Ceremonies for my retirement due to COVID-19 restrictions on how many people could attend. Vince and I have had so many similar experiences, endured similar treatment in the Chaplain Corps, but hold so many values about the rights of people, their faith, and those who served under our supervision sought to uphold, regardless of their beliefs. Both of us ended up getting off-ramped from promotion because of things that happened to us or family considerations. He is a fast friend, a man of integrity and honor who like William Tecumseh Sherman understood the value of friendship. Sherman was a friend of Ulysses S. Grant. Sherman said of their friendship:

“Grant stood by me when I was crazy, I stood by him when he was drunk. Now we stand together.”

That my friends is friendship.

Finally, the ceremony was maybe more about the selfless love and devotion of my wife Judy. One cannot imagine what it is to spend almost 40 years in the military with someone who remains as faithful and devoted for so long despite the separations, deployments, and everything else associated with military marriage.

My God she has been through so much and not just because of deployments, separations, and the hassles of moves, and not seeing family. But also because Chaplains spouses don’t have much support, especially from other Chaplains or their spouses, especially if they suffer from a physical disability, like being profoundly deaf while having speech as good as any hearing person. But even with the best hearing aids around which have improved her hearing and life tremendously, there are times that our facilities are not built with the disabled, especially the deaf in mind. The acoustics were so poor where we had the retirement ceremony that with the exception of me and Admiral Rock Judy had a difficult time understanding the ceremony. She was hoping to try to watch it Tuesday with her Bluetooth hearing aids synced to her iPad but the livestream had been deleted, again reminding her of how little the military values people with disabilities. At least I have the speeches of the three men who spoke saved and she will be able to listen to them when we get the chance, but it hurt.

Likewise, it used to be that when a Chaplain retired the Chief of Chaplains at least sent a “thank you” note or acknowledged their retirement regardless of their rank. A few months ago I saw an email from our current Navy Chief of Chaplains and his Deputy acknowledging the Chaplains retiring in the rank of Captains and the Religious Program Specialists retiring as Master Chief Petty Officers by name but not acknowledging anyone below those ranks. I wondered to myself what the fuck? Is it all about climbing the highest ranks of the Chaplain Corps, or about caring for those we serve and lead? Of course for me it is about those that we serve, especially those who serve under us.

Then I realized that of all people, Senior Chaplains serving as Admirals or who would crush anyone to bet their Star, don’t give a damn about those who serve and have stomped over to achieve their positions. They don’t give a damn about anyone except themselves and their power.

During my remarks I quoted Joseph Heller in his novel Catch-22 about the Chaplain. There is something about secular power in religious matters that transforms otherwise decent people and ministers into monsters. No wonder my ceremony disappeared off of the Chapel’s Facebook video archive. Heller wrote:

“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

That being said, we were blessed by those who attended, what they did and what they said. It meant the world to us, as do the wonderful words, thoughts, prayers, and actions of people who have been there for us to be there in person or by whatever virtual means available.

I am not bitter because I leave the service knowing that I have given all that I can and that the people that matter the most to me still care, regardless of rank or station. I would rather have the well wishes of a man or women I helped when they were an E-3 or E-4 rather than the platitudes of Clergymen wearing stars or eagles who didn’t care. But what I experienced is not uncommon, but most people will never speak as openly as I do, because from the earliest days of my service I believed in telling the truth whether it pissed people off, or harmed my upward mobility.

So despite being worn out and having to deal with more medical and dental issues than I thought I would ever see in the final days of my career I am still blessed and one of the luckiest men in the world, to paraphrase Lou Gehrig when he had to retire from baseball due to ALS. I am, at least to my knowledge not dying of anything, but it doesn’t take away my sentiments towards those people who have been there for me the past 39 plus years in the military, and even those before I signed my name on the dotted line.

When I am actually completely retired at 2359 hours on 31 December I can truly embrace my inner Smedley Butler, and embrace the fullness of truth and patriotism.

So until tomorrow,

Peace and thank you,

Padtre Steve+

 

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November 20, 2020 · 01:56

Nuremberg at 75 Years and Trump’s GOP “An Instrument of Conspiracy and of Coercion”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As I watch the actions of Donald Trump and his sycophant Administration and Party Loyalist trying to steal an election they lost and to destroy as much trust in the United States possible on their way out I am reminded of the Götterdämmerung of the Nazi regime from beginning to end. As a historian I am obligated to point out facts. Trump has pardoned war criminals, cooperated with enemies of the United States, destroyed the careers of military, intelligence, police, and other civil servants because they upheld their oaths to the Constitution. He has been complicit in the deaths of over a quarter of a million Americans from the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, and the infections of more than 12 million more. Many of his actions in the Middle East and Africa could be considered war crimes, and he and his Party’s abandonment of Americans during the pandemic by all means fit the definition of Crimes Against Humanity. 

Before such actions, even the President Bush’s Criminal war of aggression against Iraq, the My Lai Massacre and other atrocities in Vietnam I couldn’t imagine the United States government going against the legal precedents laid down by American Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the Chief American Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. Justice Jackson organized the trials and served as the chief American Prosecutor at the Major War Crimes Trials. Before those Trials Jackson noted something incredibly profound, which too many Americans, regardless of their political party or ideology fail to comprehend.

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Justice Robert Jackson International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945, Dept. of State Pub.No. 3080 (1949), p.330.

However, Jackson’s words are not our reality, Bush and Trump are not out of the ordinary when it comes to Twentieth Century and even the Obama Administration which with the barest of obfuscation continued without asking for either a declaration of war or update to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Force against Al Qaeda. In fact all of our military actions since 2001 have been based on that that one act by Congress, disregarding any other facts regarding those that we are fighting.

But even more than his criminal actions overseas, President Trump has been acting like a dictator in the United States since he took office. He has bulldozed the Constitutional guardrails that protected our Republic since the beginning. He curtails civil rights, impoverishes Americans while further enriching the richest. But his and their greatest crimes are those in his ham fisted attempt to steal an election that he lost, to undermine trust in our system of government, provoke violence, and endanger national security by failing to facilitate a smooth transition. His actions and those of his followers remind me of Hitler’s actions in his final days to destroy a Germany that did not live up to his expectations.

That brings me to tonight’s article and my articles for much of the next week. I hate to write this but in the face of tyranny I have to tell the truth. In doing so I have to bring up the ghosts of the past which we mistakenly thought were confined to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, but have found a welcoming home in Trump’s America. The fact that 73 million Americans voted for him, though President elect Biden received over 80 million votes and a massive win in electoral votes shows us all that tyrannical regimes like the Nazis are not confined to a single nation, people, place or time, but rather are far more common than we care to admit.

Now on to the story…

On November 20th, 1945 twenty Nazi leaders took their seats in the dock in Saal 6oo (Courtroom 600) at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The men were among the top leaders of the Third Reich, though there were a number of conspicuous absences. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler had committed suicide as the Reich collapsed. Martin Bormann was missing and was believed to have escaped. Reinhard Heydrich died of wounds caused by Czech partisans in 1942.

Now, the men who ruled over most of Europe just three years before presented a sad sight. Deprived of their opulent uniforms and power they looked terrifyingly ordinary.

At 10 A.M., Presiding Judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence banged his gavel on his desk looking across the courtroom at the defendants and made his opening statement, saying:

“Before the defendants in this case are called upon to make their pleas to the indictment which has been lodged against them, and in which they are charged with Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, and with a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit those Crimes… The trial which is now about to begin is unique in the history of the jurisprudence of the World and it is of supreme importance to millions of people all over the globe…”

Two years ago during I stood next to that same defendant’s dock where Hermann Goering and nineteen other men sat. Goering had been Hitler’s number two man and designated successor until the last days of the war. The others in the dock with Goering were Governor General of Poland, Dr. Hans Frank; Minister of the Interior and Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia, Dr.Wilhelm Frick; General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht; Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop; Gauleiter of Thuringia, and head of Slave Labor programs, Fritz Sauckel; Dr. Arthur Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Easter Territories, Dr. Arthur Seyess-Inquart, Reichskommissar of occupied Netherlands; Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Franconia and publisher of the Nazi propaganda paper, Der Sturmer; Commander of the German Navy and Hitler’s successor, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz; Minister of Economics, Dr. Walter Funk; Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess;;Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath; the First Commander of the German Navy under Hitler, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder; Head of the Hitler Youth, and Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach; Armaments Minister, Albert Speer; Hans Fritzsche of the Propaganda Ministry, Dr. Hjalmar Schlacht pre-war head of the Reichsbank, and Economics Minister, Franz von Papen, who also had served as Vice Chancellor, Ambassador to Austria and later Turkey.

Also indicted but not in the dock, were SS Obergrüppenfuhrer and Chief of the Reich Security Main Office, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was recovering from a mild stroke; Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Head of the Armaments and heavy industry conglomerate Friedrich Krupp AG, and Chief of The Nazi Party Chancellery Martin Bormann. Robert Ley, leader of The German Labor Front committed suicide in his cell before the trial began. Krupp was too sick and senile to go to trial.

On the second day of trial Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Robert Jackson who was serving as Chief Prosecutor for the United States gave one of the most powerful opening statements in any trial. He said:

May it please Your Honour, the privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hands of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgement of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid to Reason.

This Tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of seventeen more, to utilise International Law to meet the greatest menace of our times -aggressive war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honour.

In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led, almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these miserable men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals their fate is of little consequence to the world.

What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are symbols of fierce nationalism and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which embroiled Europe, generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life. They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived, and with the forces they have directed, that tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which attached to their names. Civilisation can afford no compromise with the forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.

What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. The catalogue of crimes will omit nothing that could be conceived by a pathological pride, cruelty, and lust for power. These men created in Germany, under the “Fuehrerprinzip,” a National Socialist despotism equalled only by the dynasties of the ancient East. They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being, The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds towards those who were marked as “scapegoats.” Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labour the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality, and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pre-Christian ages. They excited the German ambition to be a “master race,” which of course implies serfdom others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their neighbours. To sustain the “master race” in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as “displaced persons.” At length, bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the sleeping strength of imperilled Civilisation. Its united efforts have ground the German war machine to fragments. But the struggle has left Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a demoralised society struggles to survive. These are the fruits of the sinister forces that sit with these defendants in the prisoners’ dock.

In justice to the nations and the men associated in this prosecution, I must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this case. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade covering a whole continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. In my country, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well-thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of local and limited events, seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation. Yet less than eight months ago to-day the courtroom in which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German S.S. troops. Less than eight months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands. The law had not been codified, no procedures had been established, no tribunal was in existence, no usable courthouse stood here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had been examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all of the present defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had not yet joined in common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches, and quite likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgement we shall ask you to render, and its full development we shall be obliged to leave to historians.

Before I discuss particulars of evidence, some general considerations which may affect the credit of this trial in the eyes of the world should be candidly faced. There is a dramatic disparity between the circumstances of the accusers and of the accused that might discredit our work if we should falter, in even minor matters, in being fair and temperate.

Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and judgement must be by victor nations over vanquished foes. The world-wide scope of the aggressions carried out by these men has left but few real neutrals. Either the victors must judge the vanquished or we must leave the defeated to judge themselves. After the First World War we learned the futility of the latter course. The former high station of these defendants, the notoriety of their acts, and the adaptability of their conduct to provoke retaliation make it hard to distinguish between the demand for a just and measured retribution, and the unthinking cry for vengeance which arises from the anguish of war. It is our task, so far as is humanly possible, to draw the line between the two. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice.

At the very outset, let us dispose of the contention that to put these men to trial is to do them an injustice entitling them to some special consideration. These defendants may be hard pressed but they are not ill used. Let us see what alternative they would have to being tried.

More than a majority of these prisoners surrendered to or were tracked down by the forces of the United States. Could they expect us to make American custody a shelter for our enemies against the just wrath of our Allies? Did we spend American lives to capture them only to save them from punishment? Under the principles of the Moscow Declaration, those suspected war criminals who are not to be tried internationally must be turned over to individual governments for trial at the scene of their outrages. Many less responsible and less culpable American-held prisoners have been and will continue to be turned over to other United Nations for local trial. If these defendants should succeed, for any reason, in escaping the condemnation of this Tribunal, or if they obstruct or abort this trial, those who are American-held prisoners will be delivered up to our continental Allies. For these defendants, however, we have set up an International Tribunal, and have undertaken the burden of participating in a complicated effort to give them fair and dispassionate hearings. That is the best known protection to any man with a defence worthy of being heard. If these men are the first war leaders of a defeated nation to be prosecuted in the name of the law, they are also the first to be given a chance to plead for their lives in the name of the law. Realistically, the Charter of this Tribunal, which gives them a hearing, is also the source of their only hope. It may be that these men of troubled conscience, whose only wish is that the world forget them, do not regard a trial as a favour. But they do have a fair opportunity to defend themselves -a favour which, when in power, they rarely extended even to their fellow countrymen. Despite the fact that public opinion already condemns their acts, we agree that here they must be given a presumption of innocence, and we accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the responsibility of these defendants for their commission.

When I say that we do not ask for convictions unless we prove crime, I do not mean mere technical or incidental transgression of international conventions. We charge guilt on planned and intended conduct that involves moral as well as legal wrong. And we do not mean conduct that is a natural and human, even if illegal, cutting of corners, such as many of us might well have committed had we been in the defendants’ positions. It is not because they yielded to the normal frailties of human beings that we accuse them. It is their abnormal and inhuman conduct which brings them to this bar.

We will not ask you to convict these men on the testimony of their foes. There is no count in the Indictment that cannot be proved by books and records. The Germans were always meticulous record keepers, and these defendants had their share of the Teutonic passion for thoroughness in putting things on paper. Nor were they without vanity. They arranged frequently to be photographed in action. We will show you their own films. You will see their own conduct and hear their own voices as these defendants re-enact for you, from the screen, some of the events in the course of the conspiracy.

We would also make clear that we have no purpose to incriminate the whole German people. We know that the Nazi Party was not put in power by a majority of the German vote. We know it came to power by an evil alliance We would also make clear that we have no purpose to incriminate the whole German people. We know that the Nazi Party was not put in power by a majority of the German vote. We know it came to power by an evil alliance between the most extreme of the Nazi revolutionists, the most unrestrained of the German reactionaries, and the most aggressive of the German militarists. If the German populace had willingly accepted the Nazi programme, no Storm-troopers would have been needed in the early days of the Party, and there would have been no need for concentration camps or the Gestapo, both of which institutions were inaugurated as soon as the Nazis gained control of the German state. Only after these lawless innovations proved successful at home were they taken abroad.

The German people should know by now that the people of the United States hold them in no fear, and in no hate. It is true that the Germans have taught us the horrors of modern warfare, but the ruin that lies from the Rhine to the Danube shows that we, like our Allies, have not been dull pupils. If we are not awed German fortitude and proficiency in war, and if we are not persuaded of their political maturity, we do respect their skill in the arts of peace, their technical competence, and the sober, industrious and self-disciplined character of the masses of the German people. In 1933, we saw the German people recovering prestige in the commercial, industrial and artistic world after the set-back of the last war. We beheld their progress neither with envy nor malice. The Nazi regime interrupted this advance. The recoil of the Nazi aggression has left Germany in ruins. The Nazi readiness to pledge the German word without hesitation and to break it without shame has fastened upon German diplomacy a reputation for duplicity that will handicap it for years. Nazi arrogance has made the boast of the “master race” a taunt that will be thrown at Germans the world over for generations. The Nazi nightmare has given the German name a new and sinister significance throughout the world, which will retard Germany a century. The German, no less than the non-German world, has accounts to settle with these defendants.

The fact of the war and the course of the war, which is the central theme of our case, is history. From September 1st, 1939, when the German armies crossed the Polish frontier, until September, 1942, when they met epic resistance at Stalingrad, German arms seemed invincible. Denmark and Norway, the Netherlands and France, Belgium and Luxembourg, the Balkans and Africa, Poland and the Baltic States, and parts of Russia, all had, been overrun and conquered by swift, powerful, well-aimed blows. That attack on the peace of the world is the crime against international society which brings into international cognizance crimes in its aid and preparation which otherwise might be only internal concerns. It was aggressive war, which the nations of the world had renounced. It was war in violation of treaties, by which the peace of the world was sought to be safeguarded.

This war did not just happen -it was planned and prepared for over a long period of time and with no small skill and cunning. The world has perhaps never seen such a concentration and stimulation of the energies of any people as that which enabled Germany, twenty years after it was defeated, disarmed and dismembered, to come so near carrying out its plan to dominate Europe. Whatever else we may say of those who were the authors of this war, they did achieve a stupendous work in organisation, and our first task is to examine the means by which these defendants and their fellow conspirators prepared and incited Germany to go to war.

In general, our case will disclose these defendants all uniting at some time with the Nazi Party in a plan which they well knew could be accomplished only by an outbreak of war in Europe. Their seizure of the German State, their subjugation of the German people, their terrorism and extermination of dissident elements, their planning and waging of war, their calculated and planned ruthlessness in the conduct of warfare, their deliberate and planned criminality toward conquered peoples -all these are ends for which they acted in concert; and all these are phases of the conspiracy, a conspiracy which reached one goal only to set out for another and more ambitious one. We shall also trace for you the intricate web of organisations which these men formed and utilised to accomplish these ends. We will show how the entire structure of offices and officials was dedicated to the criminal purposes and committed to the use of the criminal methods planned by these defendants and their co-conspirators, many of whom war and suicide have put beyond reach.

It is my purpose to open the case, particularly under Count One of the Indictment, and to deal with the Common plan or Conspiracy to achieve ends possible only by resort to Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity. My emphasis will not be on individual perversions which may have occurred independently of any central plan. One of the dangers ever present in this trial is that it may be protracted by details of particular wrongs and that we will become lost in a “wilderness of single instances.” Nor will I now dwell on the activity of individual defendants except as it may contribute to exposition of the Common Plan.

The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority behind all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture, the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and lawlessness, and racked with the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war.

I shall first take up the lawless road by which these men came to possess the power which they have so used. The chief instrumentality of cohesion in plan and action was the National Socialist German Workers Party, known as the Nazi Party. Some of the defendants were with it from the beginning. Others joined only after success seemed to have validated its lawlessness or power had invested it with immunity from the processes of the law. Adolf Hitler became its supreme leader or “Fuehrer” in 1921.

On the 24th February, 1920, at Munich, it publicly had proclaimed its programme (1708-PS). Some of its purposes would commend themselves to many good citizens, such as the demands for “profit-sharing in the great industries,” “generous development of provision for old age,” “a land reform suitable to our national requirements,” and “raising the standard of health.” It also made a strong appeal to that sort of nationalism which in ourselves we call patriotism and in our rivals chauvinism. It demanded “equality of rights for the German people in its dealing with other nations and the evolution of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.” It demanded the “union of all Germans on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples to form a Great Germany.” It demanded “land and territory (colonies) for the enrichment of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.” All of these, of course, were legitimate objectives if they were to be attained without resort to aggressive warfare.

The Nazi Party from its inception, however, contemplated war. It demanded the “abolition of mercenary troops and the formation of a national army.” It proclaimed that “in view of the enormous sacrifice of life and property demanded of a nation by every war, personal enrichment through war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand, therefore, ruthless confiscation of all war profits.” I do not criticise this policy. Indeed, I wish it were universal. I merely wish to point out that in a time of peace, war was a preoccupation of the Party, and it started the work of making war less offensive to the masses of the people. With this it combined a programme of physical training and sports for youth that became, as we shall see, the cloak for a secret programme of military training.

The Nazi Party declaration also committed its members to an anti-Semitic programme. It declared that no Jew or any person of non-German blood could be a member of the nation. Such persons were to be disfranchised, disqualified for office, subject to the alien laws, and entitled to nourishment only after the German population had first been provided for. All who had entered Germany after 2nd August, 1914, were to be required forthwith to depart, and all non-German immigration was to be prohibited.

The Party also avowed, even in those early days, an authoritarian and totalitarian programme for Germany. It demanded creation of a strong central power with unconditional authority, nationalisation of all businesses which had been “amalgamated,” and a “reconstruction” of the national system of education, which “must aim at teaching the pupil to understand the idea of the State (state sociology).” Its hostility to civil liberties and freedom of the Press was distinctly announced in these words: “It must be forbidden to publish newspapers which do not conduce to the national welfare. We demand the legal prosecution of all tendencies in art or literature of a kind likely to disintegrate our life as a nation, and the suppression of institutions which might militate against the above requirements.”

The forecast of religious persecution was clothed in the language of religious liberty, for the Nazi programme stated “We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State.” But it continued with the limitation, “so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race.”

The Party programme foreshadowed the campaign of terrorism. It announced, “we demand ruthless war upon those whose activities are injurious to the common interests,” and it demanded that such offences be punished with death.

It is significant that the leaders of this Party interpreted this programme as a belligerent one, certain to precipitate conflict. The Party platform concluded:

“The leaders of the Party swear to proceed regardless of consequences -if necessary, at the sacrifice of their lives -toward the fulfilment of the foregoing points.”

It is this Leadership Corps of the Party, not its entire membership, that stands accused before you as a criminal Organisation.

We have not sought to include every person who may, at some time, have supported the Nazi Party, but only the leadership core which pledged itself to achieve its ends at the risk of their lives.

Let us now see how the leaders of the Party fulfilled their pledge to proceed regardless of consequences. Obviously, their foreign objectives, which were nothing less than to undo international treaties and to wrest territory from foreign control, as well as most of their internal programme, could be accomplished only by possession of the machinery of the German State. The first effort, accordingly, was to subvert the Weimar Republic by violent revolution. An abortive “putsch” at Munich in 1921 landed many of them in jail. A period of meditation which followed produced “Mein Kampf,” henceforth the source of law for the Party workers and a source of considerable revenue to its supreme leader. The Nazi plans for the violent overthrow of the feeble Republic then turned to plans for its capture.

No greater mistake could be made than to think of the Nazi Party in terms of the loose organisations which we of the Western world call “political parties.” In discipline, structure, and method the Nazi Party was not adapted to the democratic process of persuasion. It was an instrument of conspiracy and of coercion. The Party was not organised to take over power in the German State by winning the support of a majority of the German people; it was organised to seize power in defiance of the will of the people.

The Nazi Party, under the “Fuehrerprinzip,” was bound by an iron discipline into a pyramid, with the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, at the top and broadening into a numerous Leadership Corps, composed of overlords of a very extensive Party membership at the base. By no means all of those who may have supported the movement in one way or another were actual Party members. The membership took the Party oath which in effect amounted to an abdication of personal intelligence and moral responsibility. This was the oath: “I vow inviolable fidelity to Adolf Hitler; I vow absolute obedience to him and to the leaders he designates for me.” The membership in daily practise followed its leaders with an idolatry and self-surrender more Oriental than Western. We will not be obliged to guess as to the motives or goal of the Nazi Party. The immediate aim was to undermine the Weimar Republic. The order to all Party members to work to that end was given in a letter from Hitler of 24th August, 1931, to Rosenberg, of which we will produce the original.

Hitler wrote:-“I am just reading in the Volkischer Beobachter, edition 235/ 236 page 1, an article entitled ‘Does Wirth intend to come over?’ The tendency of the article is to prevent on our part a crumbling away from the present form of government. I myself am travelling all over Germany to achieve exactly the opposite. May I therefore ask that my own paper will not stab me in the back with tactically unwise articles …” (047-PS)

Captured film enables us to present the defendant, Alfred Rosenberg, who from the screen will himself tell you the story. The S.A. practised violent interference with the elections. We have here the reports of the S.D., describing in detail how its members later violated the secrecy of elections in order to identify those who opposed them. One of the reports makes this explanation:

“The control was effected in the following way: some members of the election-committee marked all the ballot-papers with numbers. During the ballot itself, a voters list was made up. The ballot-papers were handed out in numerical order, therefore it was possible afterwards with the aid of this list to find out the persons who cast no-votes or invalid votes. One sample of these marked ballot-papers is enclosed. The marking was done on the back of the ballot-papers with skimmed-milk.” (R-142)

The Party activity, in addition to all the familiar forms of political contest, took on the aspect of a rehearsal for warfare. It utilised a Party formation, “Die Sturmabteilungen,” commonly known as the S.A. This was a voluntary organisation of youthful and fanatical Nazis trained for the use of violence under semi-military discipline. Its members began by acting as bodyguards for the Nazi leaders and rapidly expanded from defensive to offensive tactics. They became disciplined ruffians for breaking up opposition meetings and the terrorisation of adversaries. They boasted that their task was to make the Nazi Party “master of the streets.” The S.A. was the parent organisation of a number of others. Its offspring included “Die Schutzstaffeln” commonly known as the S.S., formed in 1925, and distinguished for the fanaticism and cruelty of its members; “Der Sicherheitsdienst,” known as the S.D.; and “Die Geheime Staatspolizei,” the Secret State Police, the infamous Gestapo formed in 1934 immediately after Nazi accession to power.

A glance at a chart of the Party Organisation is enough to show how completely it differed from the political parties we know. It had its own source of law in the Fuehrer and it had its own courts and its own police. The conspirators set up a government within the Party to exercise outside the law every sanction that any legitimate State could exercise and many that it could not. Its chain of command was military, and its formations were martial in name as well as in function. They were composed of battalions set up to bear arms under military discipline, motorised corps, flying corps, and the infamous “Death Head Corps,” which was not misnamed. The Party had its own secret police, its security units, its intelligence and espionage division, its raiding forces, and its youth forces. It established elaborate administrative mechanisms to identify and liquidate spies and informers, to manage concentration camps, to operate death vans, and to finance the whole movement. Through concentric circles of authority, the Nazi Party, as its leadership later boasted, eventually organised and dominated every phase of German life -but not until they had waged a bitter internal struggle characterised by brutal criminality. In preparation for this phase of their struggle they created a party police system. This became the pattern and the instrument of the police State, which was the first goal in their plan.

The Party formation, including the Leadership Corps of the Party, the S.D., the S.S. the S.A. and the infamous Secret State Police, or Gestapo -all these stand accused before you as criminal organizations, organizations which, as we will prove from their own documents, were recruited only from the recklessly devoted Nazis, ready in conviction and temperament to do the most violent of deeds to advance the common programme. They terrorised and silenced democratic opposition and were able at length to combine with political opportunists, militarists, industrialists, monarchists and political reactionaries.

A glance at a chart of the Party Organisation is enough to show how completely it differed from the political parties we know. It had its own source of law in the Fuehrer and it had its own courts and its own police. The conspirators set up a government within the Party to exercise outside the law every sanction that any legitimate State could exercise and many that it could not. Its chain of command was military, and its formations were martial in name as well as in function. They were composed of battalions set up to bear arms under military discipline, motorised corps, flying corps, and the infamous “Death Head Corps,” which was not misnamed. The Party had its own secret police, its security units, its intelligence and espionage division, its raiding forces, and its youth forces. It established elaborate administrative mechanisms to identify and liquidate spies and informers, to manage concentration camps, to operate death vans, and to finance the whole movement. Through concentric circles of authority, the Nazi Party, as its leadership later boasted, eventually organised and dominated every phase of German life -but not until they had waged a bitter internal struggle characterised by brutal criminality. In preparation for this phase of their struggle they created a party police system. This became the pattern and the instrument of the police State, which was the first goal in their plan. The Party formation, including the Leadership Corps of the Party, the S.D., the S.S. the S.A. and the infamous Secret State Police, or Gestapo -all these stand accused before you as criminal organisations; organisations which, as we will prove from their own documents, were recruited only from the recklessly devoted Nazis, ready in conviction and temperament to do the most violent of deeds to advance the common programme. They terrorised and silenced democratic opposition and were able at length to combine with political opportunists, militarists, industrialists, monarchists, and political reactionaries.

On January 30,1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the German Republic. An evil combination, represented in the prisoner’s dock by its most eminent survivors, had succeeded in possessing itself of the machinery of the German Government, a facade behind which they thenceforth would operate to make reality of the war of conquest they so long had plotted. The conspiracy had passed into its second phase.

We shall now consider the steps, which embraced the most hideous of crimes against humanity, to which the conspirators resorted In perfecting control of the German State and in preparing Germany for the aggressive war indispensable to their ends.

The Germans of the 1920′ s were a frustrated and baffled people as a result of defeat and the disintegration of their traditional government. The democratic elements, which were trying to govern Germany through the new and feeble machinery of the Weimar Republic, got inadequate support from the democratic forces of the rest of the world. It is not to be denied that Germany, when world-wide depression added to her other problems, was faced with urgent intricate pressures in her economic and political life, which necessitated bold measures.

The internal measures by which a nation attempts to solve its problems are ordinarily of no concern to other nations. But the Nazi programme from the first was recognised as a desperate programme for a people still suffering the effects of an unsuccessful war. The Nazi policy ends recognised as attainable only by a renewal and more successful outcome of war. The conspirators’ answer to Germany’s problems was nothing less than to plot the the regaining of territories in the First World War and the acquisition of other fertile lands of Eastern Europe by dispossessing or exterminating those who inhabited them. They also contemplated destroying or permanently weakening all other neighbouring peoples so as to win virtual domination over Europe and probably over the world. The precise limits of their ambition we need not define, for it was and is as illegal to wage aggressive war for small stakes as for large ones.

We find at this period two governments in Germany-the real and the ostensible. The form of the German Republic was maintained for a time, and it was the outward and visible government. But the real authority in the State was outside of and above the law and rested in the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party.

On February 27, 1933, less than a month after Hitler became Chancellor, the Reichstag building was set on fire. The burning of this symbol of free parliamentary government was so providential for the Nazis that it was believed they staged the fire themselves. Certainly when we contemplate their known crimes, we cannot believe they would shrink from mere arson. It is not necessary, however, to resolve the controversy as to who set the fire. The significant point is in the use that was made of the fire and of the state of public mind it produced. The Nazis immediately accused the Communist Party of instigating and committing the crime, and turned every effort to portray this single act of arson as the beginning of a Communist revolution. Then, taking advantage of the hysteria, the Nazis met this phantom revolution with a real one. In the following December, the German Supreme Court, with commendable courage and independence, acquitted the accused Communists, but it was too late to influence the tragic course of events which the Nazi conspirators had set rushing forward.

Hitler, on the morning after the fire, obtained from the aged and ailing President von Hindenburg a Presidential decree suspending the extensive guarantees of individual liberty contained in the constitution of the Weimar Republic. The decree provided that “Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the Press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” (1390-PS)

The extent of the restriction on personal liberty under the decree of 28th February, 1933, may be understood by reference to the rights under the Weimar Constitution which were suspended:

Article 114. The freedom of the person is inviolable. Curtailment or deprivation of personal freedom by a public authority is only permissible on a legal basis. Persons who have been deprived of their personal freedom must be informed at the latest on the following day by whose authority and for what reasons the deprivation of freedom was ordered. Opportunity shall be afforded them without delay of submitting objection to their deprivation of freedom.

Article 115. Every German’s home is his sanctuary and is inviolable. Exceptions may only be made as provided by law.

Article 117. The secrecy of letters and all postal, telegraphic and telephone communications is inviolable. Exceptions are inadmissible except by Reich law.

Article 118. Every German has the right, within the limits of the general laws, to express his opinions freely in speech, in writing, in print, in picture form or in any other way. No condition of work or employment may detract from this right and no disadvantage may accrue to him from any person making use of this right.

Article 123. All Germans have the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed without giving notice and without special permission. A Reich law may make previous notification obligatory for assemblies in the open air, and may prohibit them in the case of immediate danger to the public safety.

Article 124. All Germans have the right to form associations or societies for purposes not contrary to criminal law. This right may not be curtailed by preventive measures. The same provisions apply to religious associations and societies. Every association may become incorporated (Erwerb der Rechtsfaehigkeit) according to the provisions of the civil law. The right may not be refused to any association on the grounds that its aims are political, social-political or religious.

Article 153. Property is guaranteed by the Constitution. Its content and limits are defined by the laws. Expropriation can only take place for the public benefitand on a legal basis. Adequate compensation shall be granted, unless a Reich law orders otherwise. In the case of dispute concerning the matter to the ordinary civil courts, unless Reich laws determine otherwise. Compensation must be paid if the Reich expropriates property belonging to the Lands, Communes, or public utility associations. Property carries obligations. Its use shall also serve the common good.” (2050-PS)

It must be said, in fairness to von Hindenburg, that the Constitution itself authorised him temporarily to suspend these fundamental rights “if the public safety and order in the German Reich are considerably disturbed or endangered.” It must also be acknowledged that President Ebert previously had invoked this power.

But the National Socialist coup was made possible because the terms of the Hitler-Hindenburg decree departed from all previous ones in which the power of suspension had been invoked. Whenever President Ebert had suspended constitutional guarantees of individual rights, his decree had expressly revived the Protective Custody Act adopted by the Reichstag in 1916 during the previous war. This Act guaranteed a judicial hearing within twenty-four hours of arrest, gave a right to have counsel and to inspect all relevant records, provided for appeal, and authorised compensation from Treasury funds for erroneous arrests.

The Hitler-Hindenburg decree of 28th February, 1933, contained no such safeguards. The omission may not have been noted by von Hindenburg. Certainly he did not appreciate its effect. It left the Nazi police and party formations, already existing and functioning under Hitler, completely unrestrained and irresponsible. Secret arrest and indefinite detention without charges, without evidence, without hearing, without counsel, became the method of inflicting inhuman punishment on any whom the Nazi police suspected or disliked. No court could issue an injunction, or writ of habeas corpus, or certiorari. The German people were in the hands of the police, the police were in the hands of the Nazi Party, and the Party was in the hands of a ring of evil men, of whom the defendants here before you are surviving and representative leaders.

The Nazi conspiracy, as we shall show, always contemplated not merely overcoming current opposition, but exterminating elements which could not be reconciled with its philosophy of the State. It not only sought to establish the Nazi “new order” but to secure its way, as Hitler predicted, “for a thousand years.” Nazis were never in doubt or disagreement as to what those dissident elements were. They were concisely described by one of them, Col. General von Fritzsche, on 11th December, 1938, in these words:

“Shortly after the first war I came to the conclusion that we should have to be victorious in three battles if Germany were to become powerful again: (1) The battle against the working class -Hitler has won this; (2) Against the Catholic Church, perhaps better expressed against Ultramontanism (3) Against the Jews.” (1947-PS)

The warfare against these elements was continuous. The battle in Germany was but a practice skirmish for the world-wide drive against them. We have here in point of geography and of time two groups of crimes against humanity -one within Germany before and during the war, the other in occupied territory during the war. But the two are not separated in Nazi planning. They are a continuous unfolding of the Nazi plan to exterminate peoples and institutions which might serve as a focus or instrument for overturning their “new world order” at any time. We consider these Crimes against Humanity in this address as manifestations of the one Nazi Plan and discuss them according to General von Fritsche’s classification…

Jackson would continue his statement and address the battle against the Working Class, the battle against the churches, the crimes committed against the Jews, crimes in the conduct of war. I will deal with each of these In later articles.

Jackson concluded his opening statement with this words, and they are important, not only to the Nuremberg Process, but in our day today:

While the defendants and the prosecutors stand before you as individuals, it is not the triumph of either group alone that is committed to your judgement. Above all personalities there are anonymous and impersonal forces whose conflict makes up much of human history. It is yours to throw the strength of the law behind either the one or the other of these forces for at least another generation. What are the forces that are contending before you?

No charity can disguise the fact that the forces which these defendants represent, the forces that would advantage and delight in their acquittal, are the darkest and most sinister forces in society-dictatorship and oppression, malevolence and passion, militarism and lawlessness. By their fruits we best know them. Their acts have bathed the world in blood and set civilisation back a century. They have subjected their European neighbours to every outrage and torture, every spoliation and deprivation that insolence, cruelty, and greed could inflict. They have brought the German people to the lowest pitch of wretchedness, from which they can entertain no hope of early deliverance. They have stirred hatreds and incited domestic violence on every continent. There are the things that stand in the dock shoulder to shoulder with these prisoners.

The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization. In all our countries it is still a struggling and imperfect thing. It does not plead that the United States, or any other country, has been blameless of the conditions which made the German people easy victims to the blandishments and intimidations of the Nazi conspirators.

But it points to the dreadful sequence of aggression and crimes I have recited, it points to the weariness of flesh, the exhaustion of resources, and the destruction of all that was beautiful or useful in so much of the world, and to greater potentialities for destruction in the days to come. It is not necessary among the ruins of this ancient and beautiful city with untold members of its civilian inhabitants still buried in its rubble, to argue the proposition that to start or wage an aggressive war has the moral qualities of the worst of crimes. The refuge of the defendants can be only their hope that International Law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law.

Civilisation asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of International Law, its prospects, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries, may have “leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law.”

Following the trials of the major war criminals, eleven more trials were held, including the Doctor’s Trial, a General’s Trial, also known as the Hostage Trial, and the Einsatzgruppen Trial, as well as others.

To stand in the courtroom where such evidence was presented and powerful testimony given was humbling. To see where learned men, powerful, and even respected men, who had so willingly sacrificed any trace of personal honor and morality, men who aided and abetted a regime which committed the most heinous crimes committed by a civilized “Christian” nation in history left me silent. I have studied these trials since I was in college over 35 years ago. My primary professor, Dr. Helmut Haeussler was an interpreter at the trials.

Since that time I have continued to study them and today as I see the rise of Right Wing movements in Europe, as well as the United States, movements which have at their core many of the same beliefs and principles held by Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the men who stood trial at Nuremberg I find myself frightened.

This is especially so in the United States where Donald Trump has made repeated policy statements limiting civil rights and freedom of speech, limiting the role of the courts, curtailing freedom of the press, and favoring one religion above others. He has curtailed the legal and civil rights of whole groups of people, expelled millions of people, and banned whole groups of other people entry into the country. He has openly supported police attacks on peaceful protestors. He promised to rid the government of his opponents. He fires career intelligence officials, diplomats, military officers, and believes that the military should use methods that are condemned as war crimes, war crimes such as were prosecuted by the United States and her Allies at Nuremberg, even pardoning convicted war criminals.

To make matters more frightening, many of Trump’s supporters see no problem with this and are often shown on video threatening opponents, advocating even more extreme and violent measures than Trump himself. They justify their proposed polices by saying that these measures are to “protect the country,” and to Make America Great Again.” 

But at what price?

Even now Trump and his cabal of jackbooted thieves, racists, theocrats, anti-democracy, Constitution and Declaration of Independence hating, traitors who cooperate with enemies of the United States to remain in power. Every fiber of my being as a Christian and career military officer committed to the Constitution and the highest ideals of our country cries out against their actions because they are traitors and accomplices of a yet to be indicted criminal gang occupying the White House and denying every meaningful part of the Christian faith they so loudly profess and try to force in others. Their strategy now is scorched earth, to destroy everything that made this country special and the envy of most of the world.

In Judgement at Nuremberg, the film version of the Judges’ Trial, Spencer Tracy played Judge Dan Heywood. In the scene at which the verdicts were read, he gave this speech, some of which echoed the words of Justice Robert Jackson’s closing argument in the Major War Criminal Trial.

“Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe.

But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen. There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of ‘survival’. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is ‘survival as what’? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

A nation is what it stands for. The ideals that have marked the American experiment have never been perfectly practiced by the United States, but they are still the hallmark of the last and greatest hope of civilization. They are the ideals which lead people around the world to want to become Americans, they are the ideals which sustain us. But what Trump and his followers say is that they are not important, and in fact should be limited or abrogated entirely. But this is the way of expediency, and the end of the American experiment.

Standing beside the dock at Nuremberg I was humbled by the fact that I was where such history had been made, and at the same time I was frightened for my country and the world. This is important because the United States is not immune from going down the path of the Third Reich. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

The Nuremberg trials help us to understand why. We cannot forget them.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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