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June 10, 2020 · 00:40

“But Your Friends are Fewer Now” Milton Meyer’s “They Thought They Were Free” and 2020 America

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This article is basically a rerun because I thought it was pertinent and instead of doing much online I was catching up on correspondence with a number of people including friends in Germany and and trying my best to write in the best German that I could. Today was a remarkable day at our shipyard as our commander dealt directly with the dual disasters, COVID19 and the murder of George Floyd. It was inspiring. I had a part to play, but it was behind the scenes, and that is totally okay with me.

The article tonight is a chapter from Milton Mayer’s “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945.” Mayer was a visiting professor at the University of Frankfurt in the 1950s and lived in a small Hessian town near the city. The book is about the relationships that he built with ten ordinary citizens in the town and how they lived under Nazism and how most saw little wrong with it in the end.

The book is well worth the read, and is very timely when one compares the attitudes of the men who became Mayer’s friends and many people, especially followers of President Trump in the United States today. The last few chapters of the book are a reflection of the author’s opinions of the future of Germany at the time of his writing. That being said he was was mistaken on how the Germans would eventually become a society that embraced democracy and rejected authoritarianism (at the time he felt that it was very possible that democracy would fail in Germany) they do not take away anything from the heart of the book and its message about how people adjust to authoritarian rule. I was talking to a German friend over the weekend who wondered when Germany was going to have to save the United States as the United States helped save Germany after the Second World War.

One chapter in particular struck me, it was a conversion that Mayer had with a colleague at the University. The man reflected what it was like to live in the Third Reich, and how in doing so he compromised himself and thereby lost the opportunity to resist when resistance might have changed the course of events in Germany as it proceeded down the road to dictatorship and destruction. The chapter is particularly painful to read as the man that Meyer was talking to understood that he should have known better. However, he didn’t recognize the warning signs of how gradually the nature of life in Germany was changing with each new law or dictate from the Fuhrer.

In reading the chapter I see parallels in American society today. There are the Trump loyalists, many of who openly call for restrictions of liberty and crushing opposition to the President’s policies using extra-constitutional means including violence. This was seen over the past two weeks, although the impenetrable wall presented by the 35-40% of his supporters appears to be showing cracks.

Many are quite extreme and willing to march or even do violence to his opponents, but they are a minority. But others, persuaded by years of right-wing talk radio, politically charged sermons by their pastors, and the daily dose of Fox News or One America News believe everything said by the President even when confronted by facts, and remain fairly passive yet committed. Then there are Trump’s opponents, but many of his opponents, like Hitler’s opponents were divided in 2016, and have had a hard time gaining unity. However, that appears to be changing as a wave of opposition to Trump and his policies in regard to the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and his reaction to peaceful protests. I just wonder what will Trump’s supporters be saying about themselves and their decisions a decade from now?

So I invite you to read this and draw your own conclusions, as this gives me no joy to share. Have a great day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Chapter 13: But Then It Was Too Late

“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

“You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.”

“Those,” I said, “are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’”

“Your friend the baker was right,” said my colleague. “The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

“Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

“But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

“You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

“What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know.”

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

“I can tell you,” my colleague went on, “of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.”

“And the judge?”

“Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don’t know.”

I said nothing.

“Once the war began,” my colleague continued, “resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’ You assumed that there were lists of those who would be ‘dealt with’ later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a ‘victory orgy’ to ‘take care of’ those who thought that their ‘treasonable attitude’ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

“Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany’s losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it.”

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 166-73 of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. (Footnotes and other references included in the book may have been removed from this online version of the text.)

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Filed under authoritarian government, civil rights, Coronavirus, germany, History, laws and legislation, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, racism

Tagged as adolf hitler, donald trump, Holocaust, milton mayer, nazi germany, Political Commentary, post war Germany, they thought they were free, weimar republic

May 17, 2020 · 02:56

The Danger of an Unrestrained President and a Short History of His Coronavirus Lies, Using His Words

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

i have been working on this article for a couple of days. Sadly, there is so much available on it, especially the words of the President and his closest allies and advisors are so numerous, contradictory, malleable, and misleading that they would fill a book. I have done what I can for a online article.

President James Madison wrote:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Tonight as the novel Coronavirus 19 raged across the country, President Trump blames everyone but himself for his administration’s incompetence and failure to act, most of the reasons for go back to him, he gave yet another pep rally as he announced new members of a vaccine task force; rage tweeted conspiracy theories and false information, and then tonight firing yet another of his administration’s Inspectors General, this time that of the State Department. This is the fourth of these officials, whose job is to provide overwatch of their agencies have been fired by the President during the last few months.

Over the same time the President has all over the map in his response to the pandemic is to but his most frequent to deny the reality, deflect from the issue, make unsubstantiated claims about miraculous drugs, make promises about testing, the amount of testing, and disparage testing, order people around him to wear face masks but refuse to do so himself, contradict his own experts advice about the virus, and encourage protests and uprisings against the very governors that he gave the freedom to deal with the virus in their states, or blame blame political opponents, the media, other countries, and anyone but him for his actions, indecisiveness, and incompetence during the greatest crisis to face the country in over a century.

His words since January have shown that he neither comprehends the danger or really cares about the American people so long as he can keep his hold on power. One January 22nd he told CNBC:

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

On February 10th he told a campaign rally in New Hampshire:

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” He couldn’t have been more wrong. In April the United States lost more people to COVID 19 than it did in the Vietnam War.

On February 24th he tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

February 26th President Trump announced that Vice President Mike Pence would head up a new National Coronavirus Task Force, at the same Press conference the President said:

“We’re testing everybody that we need to test. And we’re finding very little problem.…It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.” He says the number of cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Unfortunately, that is not how vaccines, even for the the flu are developed, and certainly not how they stop a virus.

The next day he doubled down on his claim, he told a news conference on February 27th “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

On March 2nd Trump met with pharmaceutical CEOs and later claimed that the drug companies are “going to have vaccines I think relatively soon. And they’re going to have something that makes you better, and that’s going to actually take place we think even sooner.” Dr. Anthony Fauci said directly contradicted him saying “a year to a year and a half, no matter how fast you go.”

In a Fox News Interview on March 4th he asserted “I think the 3.4 percent [fatality rate] is really a false number.” The same day he told a group of airline CEOs “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.”

He touched on testing on March 6th speaking at the CDC saying “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. … The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?” However, the testing capability was not there, and his words would again be exposed as a fantasy, but people believed it until they didn’t.

On March 8th he tweeted at Trump National Golf Course “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus….The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!” But these was no such plan, everything was being done on the fly, and even Mike Pence noted on March 5th “We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.”

On March 9th he attacked the news media and Democratic Party on Twitter:

“The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power … to inflame the CoronaVirus situation.”

The very next day on March 10th he told Republican Senators: “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” Of course, despite two months of warnings we were not prepared. We lacked testing kits, and health care workers lacked critical PPE in order to protect themselves, and enough ventilators to treat COVID 19 infected patients.

On the 12th the President bragged that everyone coming in to the United States was being tested for the virus, despite numerous accounts to the contrary by travelers entering the United States, including people I actually know. The President claimed with no justification:

“We have a tremendous testing setup where people coming in have to be tested and if they are positive and if they’re able to get through because frankly if they are not, we are not putting them on planes if it shows positive….Frankly, the testing has been going very smooth. If you go to the right agency, if you go to the right area, you get the test.”

On March 13th he declared a national emergency but then said:

“We have 40 people right now. Forty. Compare that with other countries that have many, many times that amount. And one of the reasons we have 40 and others have — and, again, that number is going up, just so you understand. And a number of cases, which are very small, relatively speaking — it’s going up. But we’ve done a great job because we acted quickly. We acted early. And there’s nothing we could have done that was better than closing our borders to highly infected areas.”

But this was a lie, he had dithered, denied and delayed and those numbers would grow exponentially over the coming weeks and months. He also claimed that nothing that had happened under his watch, his actions and inactions, to minimize, deny, deflect, and delay telling the truth regarding the virus, the testing, or the severity of the pandemic. His words From then are still haunting to remember “I don’t take responsibility at all…”

He finally began to acknowledge the severity of the crisis when in a March 16th news conference he acknowledged “We have an invisible enemy.” This was true and it appeared that he and the administration might finally be on the verge of responding to it. He followed that up with “We’re using the full power of the federal government to defeat the virus, and that’s what we’ve been doing.” That was a hopeful sign, but as we have discovered since, there was little truth in it. Experts were not being listened to and little was being done to coordinate a response at the Federal level.

The following day, March 15th at another news conference he acknowledged truth about the virus while spinning a lie in with it. He said, “This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.” His statement was contradictory, one does not have “tremendous control” over a virus that there is no vaccine.

On March 17th, again speaking at a news conference he told a whopper of a lie based on all of his early statements about it “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” Truthfully, when I heard that I had to throw the bullshit flag.

The next day he took to his medium of choice, Twitter, and said whipped out another doozy, “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the ‘borders’ from China – against the wishes of almost all.” Once again there was a bit of truth in this, many in business and Congress opposed it, but that being said, after the so called “travel ban” went into effect, another 40,000 travelers from China entered the United States by commercial air.

On the 19th he claimed, despite indisputable evidence that American intelligence agencies had warned of it going back to December 2019. He claimed at a press conference “It’s something that surprised the whole world. If people could’ve known about it, it could’ve been stopped in place.” In fact for years people have been warning of a new pandemic for decades, including people in the administration. According to Politico, the administration was briefed on the 69-page National Security Council playbook, titled “Playbook for early response to high consequence emerging infectious disease threats and biological incidents,” back in 2017. It was never fully staffed by the National Security Council and never became policy.

But then as states and cities began to enact stay at home orders and shutting down businesses, restaurants, sports, entertainment venues and churches to minimize contact and try to stop the spread of the virus he turned to the only thing that matters to him, the economy. Knowing that only the good economy could get him re-elected he tried to pivot to economic concerns, he began his pivot At a March 19th news conference:

“We took the best economy we’ve ever had and we said ‘Stop. You can’t work. You have to stay home.’ … Here’s a case we’re paying a lot of money to stop things because we don’t want people to be together so that this virus doesn’t continue onward.”

But by the 23rd it was becoming evident that he was beginning to panic about the economy as the stock markets hit their lowest point since the second week of his presidency. At a press conference that day he stated “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” and then went on into his cloud cuckoo land of delusional think that no responsible economist, immunologist, virologist, or public health official could ever back. He claimed “America will again, and soon, be open for business — very soon — a lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. … We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” The next morning on Fox News he engaged in more hopeful fantasy saying “I’d love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”

On March 25th he revealed his true feelings about the factual reporting being done on the virus in a very angry Tweet “The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!”

In the mean time the Congress worked on a stimulus package and the markets began to look up a bit. As this was going on the President adopted wartime language to describe the battle against the virus. At his March 19th news conference he described himself as a wartime President. However, when it came to the weapons need to win this war and save lives he attacked the medical experts and the governors who were critically short of ventilators for the the COVID 19 packed ICUs:

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes they’ll have two ventilators, and now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”

Returning to the language of war on the 28th on Twitter he boasted “WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. When we achieve this victory, we will emerge stronger and more united than ever before!” His language was almost Churchillian, but like everything he says his future actions would undermine his words. At a press conference on the 29th he seemed to continue that “Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won.” And his next news conference on the 30th he ““We’re going to have a great victory.” When Anthony Fauci warned that 100,000 to 200,000 could die the President said that the county would be doing good if it “can hold…the number of deaths below 100,000.

On March 30th he backed off of his Easter restart and extended his social distancing measures until April 1st but predicted that by June things would be roar

“The “The better you do, the faster this whole nightmare will end. Therefore, we will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread. … We can expect that, by June 1st, we will be well on our way to recovery. We think, by June 1st, a lot of great things will be happening.”

April the April 1st news conference the President made another unsubstantiated and unscientific claim “In a month or so, I think once this passes, we’re not going to have to be hopefully worried too much about the virus.”

On April 3rd he went back to his initial claims stating at a White House briefing “I said it was going away – and it is going away.”

On April 9th he went back to testing, trying to blame the failure on the Obama Administration. He claimed that “Initially speaking, the tests were old, obsolete, and not really prepared.” However, the virus was a new virus and since it was unknown during the Obama presidency the statement was yet another attempt to deflect responsibility. Continuing on testing on April 9th Trump claimed in a press conference that the United States had the best testing program in the world. He said “We have the best — right now, the best testing system in the world.” That wasn’t true then or now. When he said it the United States had yet to test 1% of the American population. Over a month later we still have not even gotten to five percent.

Then on April 13th the most troubling statement to date was uttered by the President. It concerned his disputes with the State Governors who have the Constitutional authority to enforce the law in their states and who Trump had abdicated the responsibility for managing the pandemic response in their states. The President said “When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.” However, that is not true according the Article II of the Constitution. However, two days later he began to backtrack a bit saying “We have the right to do whatever we want. But we wouldn’t do that.” On the 16th he announced that the reopening of states could begin as early as May 1st, but was “dependent on what the governor wants to do.”

But the very next day the President tweeted: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” then “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” His Tweets would lead to action by Second Amendment extremists, White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, so-called Militia groups, and other anti-government groups, many fueled by conspiracy theorists. However, the authority he gave to the governors was about stay at home and business closures, not the Second Amendment. His tweet was tantamount to an attack on the State governments.

The next day at a Press Conference he said “You must remember that the governors wanted to have total control over the opening of their states, but now they want to have us, the federal government, do the testing. And again, testing is local. You can’t have it both ways.” But that also was untrue, during a pandemic testing is not local, and the President early on abdicated his responsibility to the governors who he was now attacking.

On April 21st the Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield said “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.” Trump claimed that Redfield was misquoted and Redfield denied that.

But the absurdities that have continued to flow out of the White House and the mouth of the President continue unabated, getting more strident, absurd, accusatory, and irresponsible by the day. On May 9th the President while visiting a plant making N-95 respirators the President was asked about reopening parts of the country. He replied: “I’m not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected, yes, will some people be affected badly—yes, but we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”

The fact that his administration predicted that the numbers of dead could double by June didn’t seem to register to him. Instead of saying that people could become seriously ill, or die, he used the euphemism “be affected.” Honestly that sounds much better than get seriously ill and die, but euphemisms are the way that those responsible for mass murder, or even genocide speak of what they do when committing murder on a mass scale. Truthfully, I find little difference between the words, euphemisms and policies of regimes that have committed mass murder and genocide. This time instead of active measures like mass shootings, gassings, death marches, and working people to death, this administration is simply allowing people to die from a viral pandemic because they don’t care for they die, especially the elderly, the chronically ill, the mentally ill, racial or religious minorities, the poor, needy, the addicted, or those with congenital illnesses and deformities which require substantial amounts of money to give a modicum of decent human care And compassion to keep alive, means that to use the words of the Eugenicists of the 1920s and 1930s Which were put into use by the Nazis beginning in September 1939, such people are considered life unworthy of life.

I could keep going. I have left so much out simply because it was repetitive or because I have been working on this article for over two days and am tired. So I won’t say more about those comments today. That being said I have to mention this, because it matters a lot.

Over the same period of the coronavirus pandemic, the Attorney General of the United States, Bill Barr, has been doing all he can to subvert the Article One authorities of the Congress, aided and abetted by the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell.

For me this was something I could never imagine until Trump announced his candidacy, conducted his campaign, and has dealt with the responsibilities of the office of the President. Instead of upholding his oath of office, he has systematically tried to ensure the loyalty of the most powerful Federal Agencies and Departments protected him and carried out his personal agenda and those of his political allies. Attorney General Bob Barr is little different than Trump, and probably much worse, because he should know better, yet he has only assisted in the President’s dismantling of the Congress, the Courts, and undermining the Federal Agencies entrusted with maintaining the guardrails of the American Experiment, those guardrails which maintained by apolitical career civil servants help maintain the continuity and competence of government.

One of the key components of this are the inspectors general of the various departments of the Federal Government. Most are long time civil servants which legal and ethics training who are apolitical and have served under numerous presidential administrations. They are the ethical and legal watchdogs without which the government could not function without becoming a literal den of thieves. Since the outbreak of COVID 19 the President has fired five of these watchdogs. Intelligence Community IG Michael Atkinson, Acting Department of Defense IG Glen Fine, Acting Department of Health and Human Services IG Christi Grimm, and finally State Department IG Steve Linick. All of these men and women had weighed in about Administration policies and decisions during the crisis or were investigating high ranking members of the administration.

Combined with all the President’s lies and distortions, these actions suggest that he is is moving towards doing all he can to remain in power even by extra constitutional means. With a compliant and activist Attorney General like Bob Barr, and a subservient Senate majority, House minority, and the many allies he has appointed to the Federal judiciary, and the numerous existing Executive Orders, and the certain provisions of the Patriot Act, and the armed thugs who call themselves militia, as well as many Sheriffs, the President is not far from being able to take full authoritarian power, and use the Coronavirus 19 pandemic, that he did so much to make worse, as cover to do it. Snyder wrote:

“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.”

It would not be the first time that a democratically elected ruler would do something like this. On a side note, yesterday the United States topped 90,000 deaths and a million and a half total infections. Within the next week, probably less we will have surpassed 100,000 deaths. And so it goes…

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under authoritarian government, Coronavirus, Diseases Epidemics and Pandemics, ethics, History, laws and legislation, national security, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as adolf hitler, Bob Barr, cdc guidelines, CDC pandemic response team, Checks and balances, Christi Grimm, Coronavirus 19, covid 19 deaths, covid tests, covid vaccinations, donald Trump quotes, Dr Anthony Fauci, Dr Robert Redfield, Eugenicists, Glen fine, GOP Senate, inspectors general, james madison, Life without life, Michael Atkinson, N-95 masks, nazi germany, president donald trump, presidential authority, r, senator mitch mcconnell, steve Linick, timothy snyder, trump judicial appointees, ventilators, vice President Mike Pence

April 23, 2020 · 02:56

It Begins Again: Trump Supporters Embrace Life Unworthy of Life

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The United States is now engaged in a life or death battle on multiple fronts. The first is against the novel Coronavirus 19 pandemic that has killed at least 47,650 Americans and infected at nearly 849,000 more, of which almost 717,000 are still active cases. Of course we now know that the first deaths occurred in California during February weeks before the first officially recorded deaths began to be counted, there is a strong possibility that many more deaths were chalked up to the Flu and Pneumonia. With barely 1% of the population tested the probability is that hundreds of thousands of others who are probably out roaming about and spreading the virus. Of course many people still go without observing social distancing, unless they are forced to at the grocery store, or do not wear any kind of face mask. The May not care about their lives, but they show a sociopathic distance for the lives of others. Some forget, that the face masks are not simply to to protect themselves, but to protect others, in case the sociopaths are carrying the virus. I had to make two stops on the way home from work and more than half of the people I saw were going about their business without any protection, and one man going into a grocery store had two young boys, neither could have been over 5 or 6 years old. Then I remembered, that the lives of your kids don’t matter neither do the lives of strangers.

The second is against the profound ignorance, pathological narcissism, emotional fragility of a President who does not trust experts be they scientists, Physicians, economists, educators, or even military professionals. Instead he relies on his gut instincts, and how the words of experts either support him, or harm his fragile ego.

Because of that he plays to the worst instincts and prejudices of his followers in order to whip them into a frenzy of demonizing, threatening , and if need be, and even harming others. All this to protect his position, power, and fragile, thin skinned ego, he has created a fanatical cult-like following of people who believe that he alone can save them from their misery. It is not that they are inherently bad people, but like their leader they blame others: racial, ethnic, religious, liberals (who they call Communists or Socialists), gays, women, and everyone other than themselves and the political, religious, economic, and ideological propagandists who destroyed their way of life. However, the President’s life hasn’t been destroyed. He is still rich, and is the Chief Executive of the Country, and whether he wins reelection or not, he will be better off than them.

The President’s actions throughout the first outbreaks and reliable intelligence reports of the virulence, spread, and danger presented by COVID-19 ranged from denial, over-optimistic estimates, and deflecting his lack of action in order to blame others. Likewise, he promoted himself as the ultimate victim of anyone who dared tell the truth about what was happening, and repeated conspiracy theories with no scientific, historical, or clinical data to back them up in order to motivate the most violent and conspiracy theory oriented followers to action.

Much of this he did while presiding at daily COVID-19 briefings, often silencing or contradicting well respected scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, and other experts in order to change the narrative from his multiple failures, to how smart he is and how well he has handled it.

President Trump called himself a wartime President but then publicly at one of these briefings, and then denied all personal responsibility for the deaths and the economic costs of the pandemic. In a very real sense he abdicated his office. One cannot claim to be the final authority unless he or she is also willing to take responsibility for their actions. This is a trait that Trump shares with the Hitler of the final days who blamed his people for failing him and not being worthy or remaining a nation or a people.

Instead of taking action and shouldering responsibility as so many other American Presidents have done in the hour of crisis, Trump blamed the Chinese, who are quite obviously not without blame for covering the virus spread in their county for at least a month and a half. Then he blamed the World Health Organization, which made an early mistake about the transmission of the virus, but quickly corrected it. From there he went on to blame his political opponents, and the free press and media, rather than his own inability to take responsibility and take decisive actions to stop the virus before it could devastate so many lives and our very national security. Instead he chose meaningless window dressing designed to make him look good and blame others to escape any personal responsibility for his actions. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said The Buck Stops Here. For Trump, the only bucks that stop with him are the ones that line his financial bottom line.

Sadly, President Trump cannot accept responsibility for his actions, and shamelessly claims credit for the success of others. His life is a testimony to this. He has woven a carefully crafted series of excuses and lies about his failures. In his mind he is the myth that he created: the combat hero who avoided the draft and never saw any military service. He mocks real war heroes, says he is smarter than the generals and admirals, and pardons and praises convicted war criminals. He claims to be the greatest businessman, but has so many corporate bankruptcies and failures that it boggles the mind. He poses as an icon of Christian morality and protector of the Christian Faith, but who lives his life in the most unchristian manner imaginable, to the faithful honest enough to admit it. He has three divorces under his belt, two directly cause by his unfaithfulness where he cheated on his wives, divorced them and married his mistresses. Likewise he admitted to Howard Stern that he has had many mistresses and one night stands. He he cannot dig an abyss deep enough to cover his actions, and words, which are almost always the most base and easily disproven lies. Despite that, he continues to utter the most bold faced lies almost every time he opens his mouth or sends a tweet, and then proclaims that he does not need the forgiveness of God, even as he cannot quote a Bible in its correct context to save his life. Now, in the misst of a raging pandemic which is killing tens of thousands of Americans, he claims to be smarter than highly trained scientists, infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists, virologists, and public health experts.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the President has constantly made many foolish decisions that allowed the virus to spread has taken center stage without taking any personal responsibility, even publicly stating that he didn’t take responsibility for anything, even as the virus claimed an exponential number of victims. Instead he blamed China, which does bear some measure of responsibility, the World Health Organization, which made an initial mistake in the potential for the virus’s spread, but then rapidly on January 5th corrected itself. As it continued to spread he blamed the governors of the states for not being ready, made grandiose promises supplying massive testing programs, ventilators, and PPE for the doctors, nurses, technicians, and EMT and first responders without delivering on them. He could do that as long as the economy appeared strong.

Now his Presidency, which was build around keeping up the economic good times has collapsed around him. He was able to deny, delay, and deflect the blame as long as the economy remained strong. But within weeks the markets had crashed and the unemployment rate jumped from just over 3% to over 10% and continues to rise. These are Great Depression numbers, and real economists and economic historians are predicting a major worldwide recession or depression.

Since March the President has been talking about restarting the economy and reopening business. He wanted that by Easter, but then backed off. He allowed his public health officials to issue guidelines for governors to use in order to begin reopening businesses, and the recommendations were based on good science. But soon protests sponsored by long time right wing and conservative operatives, with links to White Nationalists, extreme Second Amendment Rights groups, and Fundamentalist Christians claiming that their Constitutional rights to Freedom of Religion were being violated by Stay at Home Orders, were being waged on the steps of state capitals, and the President began attacking the governors that were following the guidelines his administration had issued. He tweeted Free Michigan, Free Wisconsin, and “Free” whatever state refused to reopen business. His Attorney General, Bob Barr threatened to “jawbone” states who were in his opinion being too strict in their protective public health and measures with Federal lawsuits and investigations.

Then leading Republican politicians, pundits, and the OAN and Fox News commentators, who almost all happened to be practicing Evangelical Christians or Conservative Roman Catholics, as well as supposedly Christian preachers began to suggest that some lives are not worth saving. So far they have limited themselves to the elderly, or people with chronic pre-existing medical conditions who require expensive medications or treatments to stay healthy or even remain alive, as worth less than opening businesses while a pandemic is still raging with no effective treatments or vaccine to stop it. While the President and his politically motivated minions didn’t say the exact words, they implied the idea propagated first by American Eugenicists in the 1920’s which were taken up by German Eugenicists in the Weimar Republic, and became key part of the Nazi regime, to cleanse the Aryan Race by eliminating the defective. The Nazis never got a pandemic to justify their actions, but Trump and his cult have been provided with one in order to justify allowing the least, the lost, and the lonely; those who are considered to be a drag on government and private economic resources, to condemn people to death because they are Life unworthy of Life. To me it sounds ironic and hypocritical that many of these same people fight against abortion, for the lives of the pre-born but have never given a damn about the lives of people outside of the womb, or the pre-born that die in American drone strikes in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

A Nazi Propaganda Poster Showing the “suffering” of Pure Aryans in supporting Life Unworthy of Life

Yale Historian and Holocaust expert 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 absolutely immoral and anti-life, but pro-Trump, pro-profit, racist, ageists, and anti-semites motives of these people must be exposed. Their motive is not liberty, but it is death.

As pro-Trump governors in Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, and mayors like the Mayor of begin opening their states even as the virus rages, they will unleash an even worse case situation. Since the virus has an incubation period of 4-14 days there will be a lag between the new infections and when the infections occurred. Georgia, Florida, and Texas promise to be the worst hit states in the beginning of this second wave of infection. First, their governors are the most aggressive in determining to reopen their states, as they oppose and ignore Federal guidelines for reopening that the Trump Administration just put out, even as the President encourages revolt against his own policies. They ignore all the history, experience and science of what slows down a pandemic, and put lives at risk.

Sadly, their efforts will not just endanger them but every worker they put back at work who do not have PPE, and cannot afford to lose another paycheck. Most of these people are minorities, or poor whites. They are also advocating to stop treatment of the elderly and disabled. The Nazis did that, and actually practiced euthanasia. These Trump followers don’t just do that but, but consider their political, racial, and religious beliefs opponents, as life unworthy of life.

The really terrible thing is, that besides the victims whose blood will be on their hands, that many of these protesters have the underlying conditions that would disqualify them from the full extent of treatment if their policies were in place when they become infected. They might assist in the killing of others, but they will not be spared, because they have placed their faith in the social Darwinism, economic eminence, and haughtiness of the Eugenicists, the Nazis, and their own cobbled together incomprehensible philosophy of power, greed, and death.

For them it all comes down to economics, racism, and anti-Semitism. The White Race needs to life and profit, while all others must either die or live as slaves. The truth is that Trump and his most loyal followers only want what is best for themselves, not for others. They do not believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Instead they believe that certain lives are worth less than others, and there are no unalienable rights, except for theirs.

Dr. Marc S. Marcozzi wrote:

“Politicized medicine is not a sufficient cause of the mass extermination of human beings, but it seems to be a necessary cause. The Nazi Holocaust did not happen for some inexplicable German reason; it is not an event that we can afford to ignore because we are not Germans or not Nazis. The history of “Germany from 1914 to 1945 is a telescoping of modernity from monarchy, war, and collapse to democracy and the welfare state, and finally to dictatorship, war, and death.”

Sadly, unless something happens that drives Trump and his cult out of political power, even before the November elections, we may very well see his administration resort to similar measures to deny treatment to and then eventually euthanize the victims of COVID-19. I personally believe that his desire to reopen the economy is less because he thinks that it will bull the nation out of its economic abyss and get him re-elected, but rather that it will kill off the people he and his cult consider to be life unworthy of life.

I have been working on this article for nearly a week. As I mentioned over a week ago I would be doing more reading, studying, and observing in order to not to shoot from the hip and to get the facts right.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under Coronavirus, Diseases Epidemics and Pandemics, economics and financial policy, ethics, euthanasia, faith, germany, healthcare, History, holocaust, laws and legislation, leadership, national security, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, pro-life anti-abortion, racism, Religion, war crimes

Tagged as Coronavirus 19, coronavirus deaths, Donald trump followers, hitler, life unworthy of life, nazi germany, president donald trump

February 20, 2020 · 00:14

Authoritarians and How Youth Like Sophie Scholl Will Save Us from Ourselves

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As President Trump continues to take revenge on his opponents and threaten others following his acquittal, making threats toward others, including at the Justice Department, State Department, and the Department of Defense, we cannot dismiss these actions as politics as usual. This has never happened in America, at least not until now.

In fact, no American President, has behaved in such a manner. One, Andrew Jackson successfully defied the Supreme Court, in order to remove the Cherokee Nation and put them on the Trail of Tears, James K. Polk who launched an illegal and immoral war against Mexico, an act that the future President Ulysses Grant, then a young Army Lieutenant decried: “I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”

Then there was James Buchanan who unsuccessfully attempted to overturn the law and Constitution during the Lecompton Constitution crisis, only to be stopped by the actions of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, John Tyler, at that point a former President joined the Confederacy, Andrew Johnson who pardoned hundreds of Confederate traitors, including war criminals, and worked against the the 14th Amendment, defied Congress, was impeached and acquitted by one bought vote. Likewise, Woodrow Wilson who led the great racist purge of the military and civil service in 1915, Richard Nixon whose crimes are too many too mention, and such that even a majority of his party led by Barry Goldwater told him to resign or be convicted in his impeachment trial, approached the authoritarianism, of Trump, and the treats of violence he and his supports make to opponents. I could mention more, but you get the idea. We live in dangerous times and need to heed the words of British Historian and military theorist B. H. Liddell-Hart wrote about in his book Why Don’t we Learn From History:

They soon begin to rid themselves of their chief helpers, “discovering” that those who brought about the new order have suddenly become traitors to it.

They suppress criticism on one pretext or another and punish anyone who mentions facts which, however true, are unfavourable to their policy.

They enlist religion on their side, if possible, or, if its leaders are not compliant, foster a new kind of religion subservient to their ends.

They spend public money lavishly on material works of a striking kind, in compensation for the freedom of spirit and thought of which they have robbed the public.

They manipulate the currency to make the economic position of the state appear better than it is in reality.

They ultimately make war on some other state as a means of diverting attention from internal conditions and allowing discontent to explode outward.

They use the rallying cry of patriotism as a means of riveting the chains of their personal authority more firmly on the people.

They expand the superstructure of the state while undermining its foundations by breeding sycophants at the expense of self-respecting collaborators, by appealing to the popular taste for the grandiose and sensational instead of true values, and by fostering a romantic instead of a realistic view, thus ensuring the ultimate collapse, under their successors if not themselves, of what they have created.

This political confidence trick, itself a familiar string of tricks, has been repeated all down the ages. Yet it rarely fails to take in a fresh generation.

But I digress, that was simply an introduction.

Seventy-seven years ago a young German woman was under the interrogation of the Munich Gestapo, before being tried and convicted of treason for distributing a series of anti-Nazi leaflets by the Nazi Volksgericht or “People’s Court” under the direction of the notorious Judge Roland Freisler who gained further infamy in his show trials of those suspected of participating in or supporting the July 20th Bomb Plot against Hitler.

The woman was Sophie Scholl, a student at the University of Munich she was just 22 years old. Her story and the story of the resistance group that she was at the center of is remarkable for the moral clarity that she and her friends displayed in an era where most people were willing to look the other way, if not unreservedly served Hitler’s Third Reich.

She and those who like her resisited Hitler’s Third Reich at the height of its power are worthwhile examples for those who resisit President Trump here. Russia’s Putin, and so many other authoritarian leaders in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The precious truth is that Freedom must be defended from those who use patriotism as a prop, and racism as the raison d’etre of their political, social, and foreign policy of their regimes.

The story of Sophie and the White Rose is a remarkable story because stories like this are often buried by the propaganda machines of totalitarian regimes; but the shock of what these young people did was so great that the Nazi propaganda machine had to publicly confront it with the goal of instilling such fear that no one else’s would dare repeat it. What politicians, generals, and others could not do to shake the Nazi regime a handful of university students accomplished.

There are a number of monuments scattered around Munich to the White Rose movement, but the most remarkable is the monument in front of the university where they studied and where they distributed their leaflets. Facsimiles of their publications and letters are part of the pavement, looking as if they have been dropped on the ground for someone to pick up.

Scholl, as well as her friends were students, some who in the course of their time of study who had been drafted into the Wehrmacht as medics, serving on the Russian front before returning to the University. There were five of them, Sophie, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorrel, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst, plus one of their professors, Professor Dr. Kurt Huber who began a resistance cell that focused on telling the truth about the crimes of the Nazi regime, and the lies of Hitler.

Telling the truth in a dictatorship is dangerous and although Sophie and her companions could have remained silent they had consciences that were guided by reason and human rights, as well as by their Christian faith, a faith which remained despite their aversion to the institutional church for its complicity with the Nazis. As she stood before Freisler and the Volksgericht she was recorded as saying:

“Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”

Too many people lacked the courage to speak as Sophie did in her day as all too many do today. It is far easier to take the path of least resistance. Laurence Rees in his history of Auschwitz wrote:

“…human behavior is fragile and unpredictable and often at the mercy of the situation. Every individual still, of course, has a choice as to how to behave, it’s just that for many people the situation is the key determinate in that choice.”

Sophie and her circle of friends in the White Rose chose how courageous people behave in such abominable conditions. They published a series of six leaflets which they printed themselves and distributed around the university, the city, and to like minded people in a number of other cities. They asked those who got them to make as many copies as they could and distribute them. They were in the process of drafting a seventh when Scholl was spotted distributing them at the university by a maintenance man who was a member of the Nazi Party. She and her friends were arrested on February 21st 1943 by the notorious Nazi People’s Court under the direction of Roland Freisler on the 22nd, and executed by beheading at Munich’s Stadelheim Prison on the 23rd.

The members of the White Rose were bold and defiant in the face of evil, of course those that have that kind of courage usually have short life expectancies in a totalitarian state, but they did not back down. Their pamphlets and graffiti criticizing Hitler garnered the attention of the Gestapo and when they were caught they were brutally tortured, but none backed down.

Their criticisms of Hitler and his Third Reich were hard hitting. Since all of the students had spent much of their childhood teenage years in Nazi organizations which were designed to make loyal little Nazis, their resistance came as a shock to many. All were children who could have easily due to their family background taken the easy road, but chose the more honorable and dangerous road.

Their pamphlets are striking, and each focused on a different part or aspect of the Nazi regime. In their first leaflet they wrote:

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.” They urged their readers “Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western civilization, must defend himself as best he can at this late hour, he must work against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism.” And to “Offer passive resistance – resistance – wherever you may be, forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation’s last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human. Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure!”

Such was their beginning, but they went on to attack the Nazi, leaders, the Nazi system, and especially the silence of their countrymen over the extermination of the Jews and Polish intellectuals. They asked in the second leaflet:

“Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that. It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so…. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this “government” which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”

In each of the letters they asked their readers to offer some form of resistance to Hitler and the Nazi State but urged passive resistance, but in the third missive they went into more detail, including something that anyone who thinks that they are loyal to their country need to appreciate:

“The meaning and the goal of passive resistance is to topple National Socialism, and in this struggle we must not recoil from any course, any action, whatever its nature. At all points we must oppose National Socialism, wherever it is open to attack. We must soon bring this monster of a state to an end. A victory of fascist Germany in this war would have immeasurable, frightful consequences. The military victory over Bolshevism dare not become the primary concern of the Germans. The defeat of the Nazis must unconditionally be the first order of business… And now every convinced opponent of National Socialism must ask himself how he can fight against the present “state” in the most effective way, how he can strike it the most telling blows. Through passive resistance, without a doubt…”

Eventually their tracts became more biting, and in fourth the metaphysical linking Hitler to Satan and Anti-Christ.

They wrote:

“Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed…. I ask you, you as a Christian wrestling for the preservation of your greatest treasure, whether you hesitate, whether you incline toward intrigue, calculation, or procrastination in the hope that someone else will raise his arm in your defence? Has God not given you the strength, the will to fight? We must attack evil where it is strongest, and it is strongest in the power of Hitler.”

In the fifth leaflet they spoke of where the Nazi war effort would end and the responsibility of not only Hitler but the German people for it:

“It has become a mathematical certainty that Hitler is leading the German people into the abyss. Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it. The guilt of Hitler and his minions goes beyond all measure. Retribution comes closer and closer. But what are the German people doing? They will not see and will not listen. Blindly they follow their seducers into ruin. Victory at any price! is inscribed on their banner. “I will fight to the last man,” says Hitler-but in the meantime the war has already been lost…. Do not believe that Germany’s welfare is linked to the victory of national Socialism for good or ill. A criminal regime cannot achieve a German victory. Separate yourselves in time from everything connected with National Socialism. In the aftermath a terrible but just judgment will be meted out to those who stayed in hiding, who were cowardly and hesitant.”

In the aftermath of the disaster at Stalingrad they published their sixth and last issue before being caught. In it they urged Germans to fight against the Nazi Party and regime, and confronted the way that since its inception Hitler and the Party corrupted the meaning of honor and freedom:

“Freedom and honor! For ten long years Hitler and his coadjutor have manhandled, squeezed, twisted, and debased these two splendid German words to the point of nausea, as only dilettantes can, casting the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated in the ten years of destruction of all material and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance among the German people, what they understand by freedom and honor. The frightful bloodbath has opened the eyes of even the stupidest German – it is a slaughter which they arranged in the name of “freedom and honor of the German nation” throughout Europe, and which they daily start anew.”

Just over two weeks later they were caught and in Freisler’s People’s Court convicted and executed. During their trial, if it can be called that, Freisler and others expressed their shock that young Germans could commit treason. Sophie had no problem confronting her accusers:

Her last words before going to the guillotine were unapologetic: “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?” On the back of the order condemning her to death she wrote the word Freedom.

There are leaders in many nations today intent on destroying freedom and in many places the people and the country’d institutions fall in behind them, usually by painting pictures of threats so imminent that people willingly trade real freedom for a false security. It is a dangerous world and all of us must be alert to changes in society and question what comes out of the mouths of leaders, and even more so their true believer followers.

Sophie Scholl and her companions understood the risk, but they got their message heard at the highest level of government, and most were killed. But their example of courage and belief in freedom and human rights is still stronger that they mightiest despot, and unlike their mighty yet evil rulers, they are the ones that Germany remembers.

Last year I visited her grave in Munich’s Friedhof at Perlacher Forst, it is humble but gravesite, but it is obviously a place of remembrance and pilgrimage. When I go o Munich this year I will again make my pilgrimage to places where she and the White Rose used non-violent protest to speak truth about the Hitler regime when most of the population, knowing the truth did nothing to resist.

I think that there is a lesson for us as well, and I think that it is a lesson that many of our young people will understand that better than their elders, especially in the age of President Trump. That my friends gives me hope for the future, young people like Sophie Scholl might be all that stands in the way of the destruction of our Republic.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as b h liddel hart, cherokee nation, Claus Von Stauffenberg, dietrich bonhoeffer, Hans Scholl, lecompton constitution, nazi germany, president Andrew Jackson, president Andrew Johnson, president donald trump, President James Buchanan, president John Tyler, President Richard Nixon, president Woodrow wilson, Robert Mohr, roland freisler, sophie scholl, sophie scholl the final days, trail of tears, trial of tears, University of Munich, volksgericht, white rose, White Rose 6th pamphlet

February 16, 2020 · 01:48

Look Who’s Back: A Film Far too Pertinent in Europe and the USA “At Their Core they are Just Like Me” The Trump and Hitler Cults

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

A bit earlier we watched, and I re-watched the German film Look Who’s Back (Er ist Wieder Da) which is about Hitler rising from his bunker in 2014. It is a very dark comedy where the actors mingle with regular people, and the actor playing Hitler mingles with them, but no-one really believes that he is really Hitler, but many are willing to make public support of Hitler’s policies. Finally, the amateur filmmaker who discovered Hitler realizes that the man he thought was an actor is really Hitler, and the following conversation ensues:

Hitler: I was wondering when you would show up.

Sawatski: It’s you. You’re him.

Hitler: I never claimed to be anything else. History repeats itself. I guess it’s my fate to have to part with my dearest companions.

Sawatski: That way. Yes, history repeats itself. You’re fooling people with your propaganda.

Hitler: Oh, Sawatski. You don’t understand. In 1933, people were not fooled by propaganda. They elected a leader, one who openly disclosed his plans with great clarity. The Germans elected me.[At gunpoint, Hitler takes the elevator to the top of the building and walks out on the rooftop, standing close to the edge.]

Sawatski: You’re a monster.

Hitler: Am I? Then you have to condemn those who elected this monster. Were they all monsters? No. They were ordinary people, who chose to elect an extraordinary man, and entrust the fate of the country to him. What do you want to do, Sawatski? Ban elections?

Sawatski: No. But I’m going to stop you.

Hitler: Have you never asked yourself… why people follow me? Because at their core, they are just like me. They have the same values. And that’s why you won’t shoot.

[Sawatski shoots, and Hitler falls backward off the rooftop. Sawatski looks over the edge and sees no body.]

Hitler: You can’t get rid of me. I’m a part of you. A part of all of you. And look; it wasn’t all bad.

The film should be required viewing, not just in Germany but in Trump’s America.

Being an ideologue of any kind is easy, you adopt an ideology and then use it to interpret the world. That is why there are so many of them of so many different varieties: right wing, left wing, religious and so many more. In fact if you take a look at the most strident supporters of any ideology, politician, or religious leader you can see that they are little different from one another. But in terms of the ideologies they espouse the most enduring of them, and the only to have ever been the foundation of state power or those dealing with economics such as the Soviet Union; or race such as Nazi Germany or the American Southern Confederacy. Hannah Arendt wrote:

“For an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the “riddles of the universe,” or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man. Few ideologies have won enough prominence to survive the hard competitive struggle of persuasion, and only two have come out on top and essentially defeated all others: the ideology which interprets history as an economic struggle of classes, and the other that interprets history as a natural fight of races. The appeal of both to large masses was so strong that they were able to enlist state support and establish themselves as official national doctrines. But far beyond the boundaries within which race-thinking and class-thinking have developed into obligatory patterns of thought, free public opinion has adopted them to such an extent that not only intellectuals but great masses of people will no longer accept a presentation of past or present facts that is not in agreement with either of these views.”

The fact is that there is a difference between people who lean a certain way politically or religiously, and the people Eric Hoffer called, the “true believers,” the people who chose a side and never wrestle with the hard choices of life. They simply declare all who oppose their ideology or theology to be unworthy of life. If one is honest one has to admit that all kinds of ideologues of various persuasions, right wing, left wing, religious, atheistic, or racist have committed crimes which are incomprehensible and abhorrent. History shows that this is truth, but then when a regime decides to censor the past, as the Trump Administration is currently doing, and many other regimes have done, all bets are off. Likewise, when a government decides to admit to what its predecessors have done, as has Germany has done with World War II and the Holocaust, there will always be people who wish for a fictional better time, and either deny the truth, or seek to bring back the horrors of the past.

I am a liberal and a progressive, but I often find left-wing ideologues to be as off putting as militant right wingers. I guess that is because despite everything I am a realist. I wake up every day to try to do the hard thing of deciding what is right and what to believe.

My favorite television character, Raymond Reddington, played by James Spader in The Blacklist once said “I know so many zealots, men and women, who chose a side, an ideology by which to interpret the world. But, to get up every single day and to do the hard work of deciding what to believe. What’s right, today? When to stand up or stand down. That’s courage.” The fact is, no matter how stridently they espouse their beliefs, ideologues are by definition not courageous, because courage takes critical thinking, something that ideologues of any persuasion are incapable of doing. I see examples of this every day, especially in my Twitter feed and on Facebook.

While I’m sure that many, if not most of these people are good and well meaning people, they seldom display any originality of thought or true character. A while back I had one left wing Twitter follower attack repeatedly me because to her I was supposedly a sellout. I have had right wing religious friends and followers on social media do the same, as well as making actual death threats.

While they attack me and each other from different ends of the political spectrum, the intellectual commonality they share is the fact that they are ideologues and zealots; and while they espouse different beliefs they are almost indistinguishable from each other in their inability to think critically and that wears me out, but I refuse to stand down.

I guess that is one of the things that bothers me the most about so much of what I see going on in the United States today. Too many ideologues, not enough critical thinkers. Too many people who value absolute consistently of thought without asking if what they preach is still true today, or if it might be tomorrow, and far too many more who are unwilling to by more than apathetic bystanders waiting to see which way the wind blows before deciding on a position.

Of course there are also the people who would be the victims of ideologues of any type, and the ideologues will be the perpetrators. At this time, after the Senate voted to acquit Trump, the President has mounted a campaign of revenge against his opponents. My money is on the Trump ideologues to take the first shot.

From the beginning of his campaign he never hid what he believed or who or what he is. In the process he has built a cult following around himself, taken over the Republican Party, used all media, but especially that of the Right Wing media to propagate his hateful ideology. He has bulldozed the Constitution, the law, and the institutional guardrails that protected our Republic for over two centuries; and must of his cult like supporters, just like Hitler’s won’t abandon him, but will become more violent in their actions toward his opponents. Likewise, he will use the organs of the State to implement his policies, as he is doing with the Border Patrol, INS, and every other part of the executive branch that his Cult controls. Against this I don’t think that left wing ideologues, who often are a mirror image of their right wing cousins have a chance; but men and women of conscience must make a stand.

One thing that I have learned over the past decade or so is that I have to ask what is right today, and make a choice of when to stand up, or to stand down. Sometimes, I don’t like those choices, but I make them. As Sophie Scholl said:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

I guess that is why I like reading about the lives of complicated and often conflicted people; men like T.E. Lawrence, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henning Von Tresckow, Ludwig Beck, and the fictional Raymond Reddington so fascinating. I find much to admire and to criticize in all of them even as I empathize and understand each one of them. Interestingly, each of my heroes all have feet of clay. As Reddington said, “We become who we are. We can’t judge a book by its cover… But you can by its first few chapters, and most certainly by its last.”

But in such a perilous time, how can we not see what Trump has openly proclaimed he would do when he became a presidential candidate, and since his election. However, we cannot blame it all on Trump. He was clear in what he would do as President, and as the fictional Hitler asked “Have you never asked yourself… why people follow me? Because at their core, they are just like me. They have the same values.”

Have a great day, until tomorrow.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under ethics, film, germany, History, leadership, movies, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as adolf hitler, confederate states of america, eric hoffer, ethics, feet of clay, hannah arendt, ideologues, Look Who’s Back, nazi germany, president donald trump, raymond reddington, realists, sophie scholl, soviet union, t e lawrence, the blacklist, the true believer, true believers, william tecumseh sherman

February 9, 2020 · 02:26

Somebody Had to Make a Start: Sophie Scholl, the White Rose, and Modern Resistance

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have written about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance against Hitler before, in fact I will continue to do so because the United States is heading down the same personality cult driven authoritarianism as the Third Reich. In 1942 through her execution at the hands of Roland Freisler’s Volksgericht (People’s Court) on February 22nd 1943, the 22 year old German university student dared to speak out, and. tell the truth, despite having no political or military power of her own. All she and her friends had was a belief in freedom, and that in order to have that freedom one had to resist the Hitler regime.

Last night I re-watched the German film Sophie Scholl, the Final Days. The film is important. It details the final days of the White Rose resistance. The film details how Sophie and her brother Hans were caught while attempting to distribute their Sixth Leaflet by a Gestapo informant at the University of Munich in February 1943, the interrogations of Sophie by Gestapo Investigator Robert Mohr and her eventual trial and and execution with her brother Hans and friend Christoph Probst on February 22nd 1943.

Over the past few years I have gone to Munich, and in doing so visited a number of the places where Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, and other members of the resistance worked to write and distribute six pamphlets exposing the crimes of the Nazi regime. Many of which are shown in the film. I also visited her grave on one occasion in September 2018.

On several occasions I visited the Sophie Scholl-White Rose Museum at the University Of Munich, where she and her friends were students. While distributing the sixth pamphlet, Sophie and Hans were caught when a maintenance man at Munich University spotted them and reported them to the Gestapo. To stand in the place where she threw the last copies of that letter into the atrium of the University entrance was humbling. I wonder if I could have done it. Write such materials, certainly, distribute them, for sure, but to take the chance that someone might see me as I did it, I don’t know.

I find that the the German language film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a powerful portrayal of her last days. Whenever I watch the film I find that it is an intensely emotional experience. It was shot on location in places that I have walked, so it resonates in real time as I watch the freedoms that the United States was founded on being attacked in real time right now. I wonder how long it will be until the Constitution is turned upon its head and the law and the courts are turned into accomplices of terror.

Now that the Senate has failed in its constitutional duties in the impeachment trial of President Trump, he and his allies have began their campaign of revenge. The GOP Senate has effectively given Trump a license to do as he pleases regardless of the Constitution or the law, and he and his allies have already began their campaign to silence, intimidate, and punish opponents in ways never seen in the United States. In the Third Riech, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and many other authoritarian states yes, but never here, but I digress…

I think the scenes in the film that were the most powerful to me were those that depicted the interrogation of Sophie by the Gestapo investigator Robert Mohr. He was a Nazi, but he is was also a professional police officer and investigator, devoted to the law, a law which though the words had not been changed since before Hitler’s assumption of power, had been commandeered by the Nazis to prescribe loyalty to the Hitler regime above all. The real Robert Mohr survived the war and lived until 1977. Was Mohr Evil? I doubt it. He was simply doing his job as the law dictated without asking questions. Believe me, there are many Americans in law enforcement and the military who would do no differently. I know, because there was a time that I would have done no differently than Mohr.

By the end of the film, like always, I was in tears, especially in the scene just before her execution her parents are allowed to visit her, and her father tells her that he is proud of her. Try as I might I couldn’t see my mother doing that for me, my late father yes, but my mother no, not at least until recently.

When in 2009 I visited them shortly after my father had been placed in a nursing home and I was in a state of emotional and spiteful collapse after my return from Iraq, I objected to her agreement with the Fox News pundits our their portrayal of the war and she called me a coward. I had spent seven months in Al Anbar Province with American advisors and our Iraqi allies, being exposed to constant danger and being shot at on several occasions. At that time she would have been a perfect and obedient servant of the Third Reich, I cannot say that now.

But if things continue as they are with the Trump Administration, as a career officer returned broken from way, who public ally wrote and spoke his opinions, I would have probably shared the fate of men like Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, Major General Henning von Tresckow, Lieutenant Colonel Mertz Von Quirnheim, and the other anti-Hitler plotters of the July 20th bomb plot. My writings alone will condemn me, even though I cannot imagine being a part of a plot to assassinate anyone.

In their trial Hans Scholl, though berated by the President of the People’s Court, Judge Roland Freisler told him: I have served on the Eastern Front, as have many others here, but you haven’t. That is my feeling toward those who combat veterans who object to nationalist propaganda being disguised and patriotism by people who have never spent a day in uniform much less who have never put on a uniform, or even fewer who have served in harms way.

Honestly, in our current day I fear for freedom in this land, and I must always do my best to speak the truth. That might mean making waves or enemies, Lord knows how many supposed friends have condemned my political and religious beliefs because they do not reflect the the ideology of the supposedly Evangelical Christian America First followers of our current President, not to mention those who decide that they cannot speak up simply because they do not want to make waves in order to survive though they know in their hearts that their actions betray their faith and life.

Sophie wrote:

Though Sophie, Hans, and a number of their friends were executed and others imprisoned, their message got out. Smuggled out of Germany the sixth pamphlet was reprinted in the millions and dropped by the Royal Air Force and American Army Air Force over Germany. That leaflet said:

For us there is but one slogan: fight against the party! Get out of the party organisation, which are used to keep our mouths sealed and hold us in political bondage! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS corporals and sergeants and the party bootlickers! We want genuine learning and real freedom of opinion. No threat can terrorise us, not even the shutting down of the institutions of higher learning. This is the struggle of each and every one of us for our future, our freedom, and our honour under a regime conscious of its moral responsibility…

Fellow Fighters in the Resistance!

Shaken and broken, our people behold the loss of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War I Private First Class. Fuhrer, we thank you!

The German people are in ferment. Will we continue to entrust the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of German youth to the base ambitions of a Party clique? No, never! The day of reckoning has come – the reckoning of German youth with the most abominable tyrant our people have ever been forced to endure. In the name of German youth we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way.

We grew up in a state in which all free expression of opinion is unscrupulously suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS have tried to drug us, to revolutionise us, to regiment us in the most promising young years of our lives. “Philosophical training” is the name given to the despicable method by which our budding intellectual development is muffled in a fog of empty phrases. A system of selection of leaders at once unimaginably devilish and narrow-minded trains up its future party bigwigs in the “Castles of the Knightly Order” to become Godless, impudent, and conscienceless exploiters and executioners – blind, stupid hangers-on of the Fuhrer. We “Intellectual Workers” are the ones who should put obstacles in the path of this caste of overlords. Soldiers at the front are regimented like schoolboys by student leaders and trainees for the post of Gauleiter, and the lewd jokes of the Gauleiters insult the honour of the women students. German women students at the university in Munich have given a dignified reply to the besmirching of their honour, and German students have defended the women in the universities and have stood firm…. That is a beginning of the struggle for our free self-determination – without which intellectual and spiritual values cannot be created. We thank the brave comrades, both men and women, who have set us brilliant examples.

Freedom and honour! For ten long years Hitler and his coadjutor have manhandled, squeezed, twisted, and debased these two splendid German words to the point of nausea, as only dilettantes can, casting the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated in the ten years of destruction of all material and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance among the German people, what they understand by freedom and honour. The frightful bloodbath has opened the eyes of even the stupidest German – it is a slaughter which they arranged in the name of “freedom and honour of the German nation” throughout Europe, and which they daily start anew. The name of Germany is dishonoured for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, and atone, smash its tormentors, and set up a new Europe of the spirit. Students! The German people look to us. As in 1813 the people expected us to shake off the Napoleonic yoke, so in 1943 they look to us to break the National Socialist terror through the power of the spirit. Beresina and Stalingrad are burning in the East. The dead of Stalingrad implore us to take action. “Up, up, my people, let smoke and flame be our sign!”

Our people stand ready to rebel against the Nationals Socialist enslavement of Europe in a fervent new breakthrough of freedom and honour.

Honestly, I do not know how many Americans today regardless of their political party who would if faced with the possibly imprisonment and death of speaking out against the anti-American, illegal, and unconstitutional actions of the Trump Administration, or for that matter any administration. Sophie said “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”

Freedom matters, as does truth. There is no excuse for the Christian to stay silent in the face of evil. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak.”

Never forget that resistance is never futile. If anyone thinks this is simply a political screed against President Trump, it is not. It goes to the heart of my faith as a Christian, something that I believe speaking about is still protected under the First Amendment.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under christian life, civil rights, ethics, faith, film, History, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as America First, american evangelicalism, Claus Von Stauffenberg, Colonel Henning Von Trescow, dietrich bonhoeffer, donald Trump cult, Hans Scholl, mertz von quirnheim, nazi germany, president donald trump, Robert Mohr, roland freisler, sophie scholl, sophie scholl the final days, University of Munich, volksgericht, white rose, White Rose 6th pamphlet

February 8, 2020 · 01:49

Trump’s National Prayer Breakfast: Compromised Church and Echoes of the Third Reich

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

A few months back I began to write about the Nuremberg Trials and the opening statement of the American Chief Prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. The first section was comprised his general remarks. The second dealt with the Nazi war against free organized labor. The third section presented here was the shortest part of his opening statement. It deals with the Nazi battle against the Churches.

I am coming back to that today because of the way President Trump hyper-personalized, politicized, an already often polarizing event to attack his opponents, mock their faith, and let the nation know, that you are not a true believer unless you blindly follow him. It included thinly veiled attacks on the faith of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Mitt Romney, and his Press Secretary alluded that Trump would announce that people would “pay” for their disloyalty to Trump. The The President followed the prayer breakfast with a rambling speech in which he did that, and on Friday he fired men who had testified before the House Impeachment Committee. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and LTC Alexander Vindeman of the National Security Council. Vindman, an active duty Army Officer accused of no crimes or wrongdoing was escorted out of the White House like a criminal. It was a scene designed to humiliate him professionally, and threaten others, military members, or civil servants that anything that smacked of personal disloyalty would be punished. Trump’s Christian Conservative base was overjoyed. That is the price of betraying the leader.

The fascinating thing is that religious people and religious institutions are often the most unwavering in support of authoritarian regimes that often turn on them, because the Authoritarian can only allow one savior or God, and that would be him. Adolf Hitler was such a man; as were Saddam Hussein, Josef Stalin, the Salvadorian dictators, the Caesars, or any number of other men and women who wielded absolute power.

Though Trump has not completely crossed the line into a full blown authoritarian and dictator, he is acting more and more like one on a daily basis, and his strongest supporters are conservative Christians, especially evangelicals, regardless of what he does against the law, Constitution, and simple Christian beliefs. If he does retain power will turn on them the second any offer criticism of him. His acquittal by the Senate has only served to embolden him. Many Christian conservatives who supported Hitler found that they too would be on the receiving end of his revenge the second they stepped out of line. among them was Martin Niemoller who later wrote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

At Nuremberg Justice Robert Jackson laid out his argument to show how Hitler’s initially favorable treatment of the churches was directed with the aim of suppressing or corrupting all competing institutions of power in the state that could potentially become centers of resistance. Likewise, Jackson built up his argument this to show how Hitler’s action were an attempt to remove any moderating influence that could stand against its plans for aggressive warfare and genocide.

The division of the German State Church into the Evangelical Church (Lutheran and Reformed) and Roman Catholicism was a Problem for the Nazis. They desired a coordination of religion under their rule. The Protestant and Catholic state churches of Germany were potential rivals for the soul of the citizenry of the Third Reich. They ran schools, universities, hospitals, benevolent organizations, published influential newspapers, and had their own political parties and labor organizations.

German Protestantism since the day of Martin Luther was linked to German nationalism and seen by the Nazis as the ideal vehicle to build upon. The Catholic Church which was predominant in Bavaria and was strong in the other states of southern and western Germany. It was not very strong in the north, especially Prussia where in the 1800s Otto Von Bismarck persecuted the Catholic Church through the Külturkampf. Like Bismarck, Hitler, though Catholic himself viewed the Church as less than fully committed to the Reich because of its allegiance to Rome, which Hitler and many other Nazis considered to be a foreign power.

Likewise, other Nazi leaders of Catholic background realized the power of the Church and its institutions, and even stood in awe of them. Heinrich Himmler would pattern his SS indoctrination upon the Jesuits. The former Catholics included Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Himmler’s number two man, Reinhard Heydrich. Richard Evans wrote in his book The Third Reich in Power:

Himmler’s deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, reacted against a strict Catholic upbringing with a hatred of the Church that can only be called fanatical. In 1936, Heydrich classified the Jews and the Catholic Church, acting above all through political institutions such the Centre Party, as the two principal enemies of Nazism. As an international body, he argued, the Catholic Church was necessarily subversive of the racial and spiritual integrity of the German people. Moreover, the Catholics, unlike the Protestants, had been largely represented by a single political party, the Centre, whose voters, again unlike those of most other parties, had mostly remained loyal and resisted the appeal of Nazism during the elections of the early 1930s. Much of the blame for this could be laid in the Nazis’ view at the feet of the clergy, who had preached vehemently against the Nazi Party, in many cases ruled that Catholics could not join it, and strongly urged their congregations to continue voting for the Centre or its Bavarian equivalent, the Bavarian People’s Party. For many if not most leading Nazis, therefore, it was vitally important to reduce the Catholic Church in Germany as quickly as possible to total subservience to the regime. (Third Reich In Power pp. 234-235)

The average church member was not the physical target of their attacks, instead the Nazis worked at, and quite often were very successful at weaning away many of the faithful from anything more that perfunctory and traditional displays of religion. Even there the Nazis did their best to supplant holidays such as Christmas and Easter with Nazi themes and ideology.

The battle for the Party was to deprive the Churches of their social and political power, and for the most part they were successful in their campaign. They suppressed church political parties and newspapers, labor unions, youth organizations. The latter were dissolved and replaced by the Reich Labor Front, and the Hitler Youth. Church schools were eventually closed by 1939 and religious education in public vocational schools was reduced to very small amounts of time with the teaching becoming more in line with Nazi racial ideology and anti-semitism.

The Protestant Church mostly fell in line with a minority in opposition known as the Confessing Church. Even so the Protestant opposition for the most part limited its opposition to the Nazis to the infringements against the church, not the nationalism or Nazi war aims. Richard Evans wrote:

The co-ordination of the Protestant Church was driven forward, among other factors, by the appointment of the lawyer August Jäger as State Commissioner for the Evangelical Churches in Prussia. Jäger declared that Hitler was completing what Luther had begun. They were ‘working together for the salvation of the German race’. Jesus represented ‘a flaring-up of the Nordic species in the midst of a world tortured by symptoms of degeneracy’. In conformity with the ‘leadership principle’, Jäger dissolved all elected bodies in the Prussian Church and replaced many existing officials with German Christians. Meanwhile, Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller had taken over the administrative headquarters of the Evangelical Church with the aid of a band of stormtroopers. By September, pressure was growing within the Reich Church to dismiss all Jews from Church employment. Much of the pressure came from ordinary pastors. Prominent here were young pastors from lower-middle-class backgrounds or non-academic families, men for whom war service had often been a life-defining experience, and racially conscious pastors from areas near Germany’s eastern borders for whom Protestantism represented German culture against the Catholicism of the Poles or the Orthodox faith of the Russians. Such men desired a Church militant based on the aggressive propagation of the Gospel, a crusading Church whose members were soldiers for Jesus and the Fatherland, tough, hard and uncompromising. Muscular Christianity of this kind appealed particularly to young men who despised the feminization of religion through its involvement in charity, welfare and acts of compassion. The traditional Pietist emphasis on sin and repentance, which dwelt on images of Christ’s suffering and transfiguration, was anathema to such men. They demanded instead an image of Christ that would set a heroic example for German men in the world of the here and now. For them, Hitler took on the mantle of a national redeemer who would bring about the rechristianization of society along with its national reawakening. (Third Reich in Power pp. 224-225)

The Nazified and nationalistic German Protestants, led by these clergy paint a striking image very similar to conservative American Evangelical Christians who echo many of the same theological themes, and who have in many cases elevated President Donald Trump into a redeemer and nearly messianic figure.

Jackson continued his opening statement at Nuremberg dealing with this toward the middle of the day on November 21st 1945. These are his words:

The Nazi Party was always predominantly anti-Christian by ideology. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. It is not because the Nazis themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they became guilty of crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive warfare that the offence becomes one of international consequence. To remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.

We will ask you to convict the Nazis on their own evidence, Martin Bormann in June 1941 issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and National Socialism. The decree provided:

“For the first time in German history the Fuehrer consciously and completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand. With the Party, its components, and attached units, the Fuehrer has created for himself, and thereby for the German Reich leadership, an instrument which makes him independent of the church. All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer with the help of the N.S.D.A.P. must be eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This influence must be broken completely and finally. Only the Reich government, and by its direction the Party, its components, and attached units, have a right to leadership of the people. Just as the deleterious influence of astrologers, seers, and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed. Not until this has happened does the State leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are the people and Reich secure in their existence for all the future” (D-75).

And how the Party had been securing the Reich from Christian influence will be proved by such items as this teletype from the Gestapo, Berlin, to the Gestapo Nuremburg, on 24th July, 1938. Let us hear from their own account of events in Rottenburg:

“The Party, on 23rd July, 1939, from 2100 carried out the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants, about 2,500-3,000, were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the demonstration. This town took rather a hostile attitude to the demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the Party Member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw files out of the windows, and rummaged through the beds in the rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to the other objects or equipment in the rooms and the palace, the flaming bed was throw from the window and the fire extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg, and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 pressed into this chapel and molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth, Finally the intruders realised that Bishop Groeber was not the one they were seeking. They could then be persuaded to leave the building. After the evacuation of the palace by the demonstrators I had an interview with Archbishop Groeber, who left Rottenburg in the night. Groeber wants to turn to the Fuehrer and Reich Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick anew. On the course of the action, the damage done, as well as the homage of the Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop, I shall immediately hand in a full report, after I begin suppressing counter mass meetings. In case the Fuehrer has instructions to give in this matter, I request that these be transmitted most quickly.” (848-PS).

Alfred Rosenberg Nazi Ideologist and Reich Minister for Occupied Territories

Later, defendant Rosenberg wrote to Bormann reviewing the proposal of Herrl as Church minister to place the Protestant Church under State tutelage and proclaim Hitler its supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed, hinting that Naziism was to suppress the Christian Church completely after the war.

The persecution of all pacifist and dissenting sects, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was peculiarly relentless and cruel. The policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use their influence for the Nazi’s own purposes. In September, 1933, Muller was appointed the Fuehrer’s representative with power to deal with the “affairs of the Evangelical Church” in its relations to the State. Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with power to control this Church. A long conflict followed, Pastor Niemoller was sent to a concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal discipline and administration of the Churches occurred.

A most intense drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church. After a strategic Concordat with the Holy See, signed in July, 1933, in Rome, which never was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent persecution of the Catholic Church, its priesthood and its members, was carried out. Church Schools and educational institutions were suppressed or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching inconsistent with the Christian faith. The property of the Church was confiscated and inspired vandalism directed against the Church property was left unpunished. Religious instruction was impeded and the exercise of religion made difficult. Priests and bishops were laid upon, riots were stimulated to harass them, and many were sent to concentration camps.

After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with greater vigour than ever. We will present to you from the files of the Vatican the earnest protests made by the Vatican to Ribbentrop summarising the persecutions to which the priesthood and the Church had been subjected in this Twentieth Century under the Nazi regime. Ribbentrop never answered them. He could not deny. He dared not justify.

I now come to “Crimes against the Jews.”

THE PRESIDENT: We shall now take our noon recess. (A recess was taken until 1400 hours.)

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn for fifteen minutes at half past three and then continue until half past four.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I was about to take up the “Crimes Committed Against the Jews.”

This is a most dangerous time, after SOTU Vice President Pence said on Fox News that Speaker Pelosi: “ “I just have a strong feeling that she’s going to be the last Speaker of the House to sit in that chair for a long time.”

To me that sounds like the dissolution of the House, and maybe a lot more.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

16 Comments

Filed under civil rights, ethics, faith, History, laws and legislation, leadership, Military, national security, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, Religion

Tagged as adolf hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, ambassador Gordon sondland, Andy pelosi, catholic church, confessing church, german christians, justice robert jackson, LTC Alexander Sondland, martin bormann, nazi germany, nazi party, Nazi racial ideology, nuremberg trials, president donald trump, Richard Evans, Senator Mitt Romney, Third Reich in Power, vice President Mike Pence

February 7, 2020 · 00:01

Franklin Roosevelt’s SOTU of 1941: The Four Freedoms

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On January 6^th 1941 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union Message to Congress and the nation. I spent the time to both both read it and listen to it the other day. It is a profoundly moving speech, not without controversy of course, but one which we need to hear again. It is a speech that like the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I have a Dream speech calls us to higher ideals, ideals that we often come up short in living up to, but ideals worth living for and to endeavor to attain in our lifetime.

The address stands in stark contrast to any SOTU or other majorly speech made by the current President. It called a nation to rise to its highest ideals, something that would be tested in the Second World War, and would begin a transformation that led to the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the noble attempt of the Great Society, advances in Women’s and LGBTQ Rights, all of which are under threat by the Trump Administration.

When Roosevelt spoke the nation was in the midst of crisis. The United States was still recovering from the Great Depression. War threatened as Hitler’s Nazi German legions had overrun all of Western Europe and much much of North Africa. German U-Boats and surface ships were prowling the North Atlantic. Britain stood alone between Germany’s complete domination of Europe. Even the Soviet Union, a mortal enemy of Fascism had concluded a concordat with Hitler to divide Eastern Europe. Though no one yet knew it, Hitler was already planning to break his accord with Stalin and invade the Soviet Union.

In it Roosevelt made a comment that we should remember in light of the knowledge that Russia interfered in our election, and has been working tirelessly to split us from our allies and directly working against our efforts to fight ISIS, and the efforts of our soldiers in Afghanistan. His words are applicable today more than ever. He noted:

“I suppose that every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world — assailed either by arms or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace.”

The Nazis had helped support called America First, which was determined to keep the United States from confronting or going to war with Nazi Germany. It was in part funded and encouraged by the Nazis. Likewise, the American Fascist Silver Shirts, an organization founded on Nazi principles, and the German American Bund were holding rallies supporting the Nazis all over the nation.

Roosevelt’s speech, which largely focused on the threat of Nazi Germany, also supported Britain and the exiled governments of nations conquered by Hitler. As he outlined preparations to defend the United States, Roosevelt also called on Congress to pass Lend Lease to help those fighting the dictators, as well as increased opportunity at home. In response to the emerging threats and the unwillingness of some, including a strong pro-Germany lobby headed by prominent senators, American aviation hero Charles Lindberg, and and big business, Roosevelt challenged Americans to face up to them. He noted:

“As a nation we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed. We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement. We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.”

On the domestic front Roosevelt reiterated the message of the New Deal, for even with war looming he did not want to see Americans lost in the exchange and he linked freedom abroad to the same at home. He noted:

“As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses and those behind them who build our defenses must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all the things worth fighting for.”

He continued:

“Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world. For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy.

The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

Jobs for those who can work.

Security for those who need it.

The ending of special privilege for the few.

The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment — The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.”

But the real heart of the message, applicable to all people everywhere Roosevelt enunciated a number of principles that are a beacon to all people. Firmly grounded in words of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address they are called the Four Freedoms. Those freedoms are an ideal, in fact they certainly were not practiced well then by Americans, nor now, but they are worth working to: Roosevelt said:

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”

The speech was important, and now as it did then it calls Americans to higher purposes, to higher ideals, and it recognizes that we have never fully measured up to our own words. At the time it was spoken, Jim Crow was still the law of the land, Mexican Americans were often treated as poorly as blacks, Native Americans had few rights; and barely a year later Japanese Americans would be taken from the homes, lose their business and be sent to detention camps for the duration of the war after Pearl Harbor, simply because they were of Japanese descent. But those abiding principles are things that we should never lose sight of, and always strive to realize.

The great American artist Norman Rockwell did a series of portraits, the first of which was published 76 years ago today.

Today the four freedoms that Roosevelt enunciated are under threat around the world and in the United States too. We live in an age of uncertainty, turbulence, division, inequity, as well as deeply ingrained cynicism. Unscrupulous authoritarian politicians are using that uncertainty and fear to roll back the very liberties that democratic institutions are founded on.

As a result, as a man who promised during his campaign to roll back the rights of many people it is important not to forget this speech. The same is true as state and local politicians set out to not only roll back the rights of some, but to enable religious people to discriminate against other citizens.

It is also important because the government of Russia led efforts to attack the country by influencing the election, and for years has been committing aggression against American allies and working against American and allied efforts around the world. Yet the the incoming administration is not only welcoming it, but attacking and trying to discredit the American intelligence officials who say that it happened, and condemning senators and congressmen of its own party who want to further investigate those attacks by Russia and impose sanctions.

So I think that it is important to reflect on these events, and then turn to speeches like Roosevelt’s in order for us to strive for a higher purpose, not to lose hope, and give in to fear that would enable our freedoms and the freedoms of any citizen to be curtailed.

The fact is that every bit of this speech is something that President Donald Trump stands against. He stands for the rights of the wealthiest and despises all others; he pretends to be for the rights of Conservative Christians despite mocking their faith and denigrating the faith or lack of faith of all other Americans who haven’t prostrated their religion to him; the freedom of free expression that he attacks every day; and finally fear, which he attempts to instill with every speech, or Tweet that he makes.

The contrast cannot be any greater, especially after the GOP Senate voted to acquit Trump during a a trial where they barred the introduction of documents or the calling of witnesses, and in which a number of the Senators proclaimed that they “would not be impartial jurors.” The outcome was foreordained, only Senator Mitt Romney, the only time a Senator of the President’s Party would vote to convict in an impeachment trial.

Honestly, if any man or woman seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party would fully embrace the truths of this speech, in thought, word, and deed, they would walk into the White House in a landslide, popular vote and even in the electoral college.

If you can please that the time to listen to it or read it at the following link: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrthefourfreedoms.htm

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under civil rights, Foreign Policy, History, laws and legislation, leadership, national security, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as 1965 civil rights act, abraham lincoln, civil rights movement, dr martin luther king jr, four freedoms, franklin d roosevelt, German American Bund, gettysburg address, i have a dream speech, lend lease, lgbtq rights, nazi germany, Nazi Propaganda, norman rockwell, president donald trump, Silver Shirts, the great society, voting rights act of 1964, women’s rights

January 31, 2020 · 00:01

The Legacy and Warning of Field Marschal Von Paulus at Stalingrad: Even Honorable People Can Believe a Lie and Lead Men to Death

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Seventy-seven years ago today the commander of the encircled German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus left his command bunker and surrendered the the Red Army. In the ruins of Stalingrad lay most of the freezing, malnourished, soldiers of his once elite Army. Around 90,000 survivors of his army surrendered in the coming days to the Red Army. Of the Germans taken prisoners, only about 5,000 returned home. The Most were to die of their wounds, or of diseases, maltreatment, and starvation in Soviet Camps between 1943 and 1955 when the bulk of the survivors were released.

Friedrich Paulus was one of them, and his story is interesting, not simply because he was the Commander of the Sixth Army, but because he wasn’t the kind of man one would have expected to command an army of 13 divisions with a strength of nearly 285,000 men spearheading the great German Offensive of 1942.

Paulus was born in 1890, and joined the Imperial Army in 1910. During the First World War he served on the Western Front, finishing the war as a Captain. After the was the collapse of the Army and order during the German civil war he served as Adjutant of a government sponsored Freikorps Brigade. Following the Treaty of Versailles, Paulus was retained as one of the 4,000 officers in the new Reichsheer. He served as a staff officer and company commander, and briefly commanded a battalion. He would also serve on the staff which developed the new Panzer Forces for the Wehrmacht. Paulus was an apolitical professional soldier, he was not a Nazi but he, like many other military men considered Hitler:

“an excellent leader for the German people, a man who had contributed greatly to the development of the state. After watching him evolve the strategies that conquered Poland, France, and most of Europe, Paulus was awed by Hitler’s grasp of the technical aspects of warfare. He considered him a genius.”

Paulus was promoted to Colonel in 1938 and served as Chief of Staff to Heinz Guderian’s XVI Motorized Corps. But Guderian had reservations about Paulus’s lack of command experience, decisiveness, and toughness. Following his assignment with the motorized Corps, Paulus was promoted to the rank of Generalmajor (the equivalent of a U.S. Brigadier General) to serve as Chief of Staff to the 10th Army under the command of General Walter Reichenau during the invasion of Poland. He continued in that position when 10th Army was redesigned 6th Army for the Invasion Of France and the Low Countries.

After the Battle of France he was promoted to Generalleutnant and assigned as deputy Chief Staff, Operations, of the Oberkommando Des Heeres, the German General Staff. In this capacity he served as one of the principle planners of Operation Barbarossa.

His wife, Elena, a descendant of one of Romania’s Royal Houses was opposed to Hitler and the war. She told her husband that “he was far too good for the likes of men such as Keitel and the other “lackeys” who surrounded Hitler.” She protested the injustice of the war against Poland, but he, in the thrall of Hitler’s genius and simply followed orders. When he brought home maps and documents related to Barbarossa she again protested to him. When he ignored her she said:

“What will become of us all? Who will survive to the end?”

Since he believed in Hitler’s invincibility, Paulus ignored her concerns, and told her that the war would be over in six weeks. Elena’s words would prove prophetic.

But Elena’s concerns were well justified. In December 1941 the German Offensive ground to a halt at the gates of Moscow and a devastating Red Army counterattack created a crisis in the Wehrmacht which was completely unprepared for the Russian Winter. Only heroic resistance and improvisation by German units, and the still imperfect application of operational warfare by the Red Army, saved the German front. While battles from Leningrad to Crimea continued throughout the winter, the lines stabilized, and both sides began their plans for the coming year.

During the winter debacle Hitler sacked many commanders, which left many command vacancies. Reichenau, a committed National Socialist and fanatical fighter took over command of Army Group South from Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt, who had been fired by Hitler. Reichenau, who had been Paulus’s patron had Paulus promoted to General der Panzertruppen and named as commander of 6th Army.

The two men were nothing alike and Paulus had never commanded more than a battalion, and that not in peacetime. However, six days later the athletic Reichenau suffered a heart attack, which was was followed by a head injury during a medical evacuation flight back to Germany. Reichenau, the fanatical Nazi died, and Paulus, revoked the infamous Commissar Order, as well as Reichenau’s most notorious orders, the Severity Order in the Sixth Army area of operations. That order stated:

“The most important objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete destruction of its sources of power and the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization.… In this eastern theatre, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war, but also the ruthless standard bearer of a national conception.… For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry.…”

Paulus demonstrated moral courage unusual for senior German officers, but he also forbade cooperation with the Einsatzgruppen death squads, which Reichenau had gone out of his way to support. This was unusual for any commander on the Eastern Front, especially a man like Paulus who believed in Hitler’s invincibility. Paulus did well in his first combat with the Red Army, when it attempted to disrupt the coming German offensive at Kharkov as Sixth Army encircled and captured over 200,000 Soviet troops.

The Sixth Army had a key role in the German summer offensive, Operation Blau. Paulus commanded it well but became involved in the battle for Stalingrad. The battle dragged on in the face of fanatical and skilled Soviet resistance. However, Hitler would not let Paulus break off the Battle, and promoted him to Colonel Genera in order to bolster his confidence. Likewise, in an interesting, but vital footnote to the campaign, which was unknown to Hitler and his commanders, Stalin knew of Operation Blau.

Stalin had learned to preserve his forces after the catastrophes of 1941 withdrew his forces and observing the German movements decided to turn Stalingrad into a fortress. He conducted a strategic withdraw to preserve his forces, allowing the majority of the German Army Group South to advance deep into the Caucasus in order to capture the oilfields of the region.

However, this movement divided the German armies, leaving the flanks of the Sixth Army protected by pathetically equipped Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian armies. None of these units could not match the manpower, mobility, or firepower of the Red Army, and none were prepared for the onslaught that was to be directed against them.

Stalin allowed the German Army Group South to continue to advance, and forced the Sixth Army to battle street by street, building by building, factory by factory to capture Stalingrad. Had the Germans followed their operational doctrine Stalingrad would have been bypassed and surrounded, but they didn’t, Hitler would not allow it. Because of this, Paulus allowed the Soviets to maintain their defense by not cutting the Red Army defenders in the city off from the Volga, even by not taking action to link up with the Fourth Panzer Army which under its commander Hermann Hoth had broken through the Soviet front south of the Stalingrad when the opportunity presented itself.

Even so, the Sixth Army had conquered most of the city when in lateNovember the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, which was designed to destroy the weakly held flanks and surround the Sixth Army by a deep envelopment operation, which had previously been the forte of the German Blitzkrieg. The operation totally surprised the Germans and in four days time the Sixth Army went from the spearhead of the German assault to an army cut off and surrounded by a Soviet Army Group. The Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian armies on its flanks were shattered.

Plans were made to relieve the Sixth Army but they depended on the Sixth Army attacking out to meet the relief forces of the Fourth Panzer Army. Hitler refused permission and Paulus obeyed, believing Hitler’s promise that Goering’s Luftwaffe would be able to keep his troops supplied. On New Year’s Day Hitler promoted Paulus to Colonel General. Paulus was now convinced that his Army was doomed but he grasped the broader strategic situation; as long as he could keep the Red Army invested in Stalingrad, it would keep them from encircling the much bigger portion of Army Group South, now under direction of Erich von Manstein from being cut off. According to one officer Paulus remarked:

“What would become of the war if our army in the Caucasus were also surrounded? That danger is real. But as long as we keep on fighting, the Red Army has to remain here. They need these forces for a big offensive against Army Group ‘A’ in the Caucasus and along the still-unstable front from Voronesh to the Black Sea. We must hold them here to the last so that the eastern front can be stabilized. Only if that happens is there a chance of the war going well for Germany.”

But the handwriting was on the wall. German Forces to the south were having to extricate themselves from an even bigger encirclement. The superb generalship of Field Marshal Erich Von Manstein prevented a complete disaster and inflicted a compelling defeat on the Red Army, but the Sixth Army was doomed. On January January 7th Paulus was offered generous surrender terms by General Konstantin Rokossovsky. Paulus asked permission to surrender which was denied by Hitler.

Again on January 22nd Paulus requested his Fuhrer:

… For submittal to the Führer and to commander in chief, Army Group Don.… The Russians are advancing on a six-kilometer frontage both sides of Voporonovo toward the east, [toward Stalingrad] in part with flying colors. There is no possibility to close the gap … All provisions are used up. Over twelve thousand unattended [wounded] men in the pocket. What orders am I to issue to the troops, who have no ammunition left? … Immediate decision is required, since symptoms of disintegration are noted in some places. However, the troops still have faith in their commanders.” Paulus

On January 25th the Red Army overran the last airfield in the Stalingrad pocket, now there was no escape.

To a Luftwaffe Officer who was sent by Berlin to encourage Paulus about new airlifts, Paulus said:

“Why on earth did the Luftwaffe ever promise to keep us supplied? Who is the man responsible for declaring that it was possible? Had someone told me it was not possible, I should not have held it against the Luftwaffe. I could have broken out. When I was strong enough to do so. Now it is too late.…”

Paulus radioed Hitler for permission to surrender, empathetically stating the conditions in the pocket. No food, no medicine, no ammunition, no fuel; only to be denied again.

On January 30th, the 10th anniversary of Hitler’s seizure of power the Troops in Stalingrad were treated to a radio broadcast from Berlin, not Hitler, but Goering. The words of the Reichsmarschal fell hollow on the ears of the doomed men:

“… What herculean labors our Führer has performed … out of this pulp, this human pulp … to forge a nation as hard as steel. The enemy is tough, but the German soldier has grown tougher.… We have taken away the Russians’ coal and iron, and without that they can no longer make armaments on a large scale.… Rising above all these gigantic battles like a mighty monument is Stalingrad.… One day this will be recognized as the greatest battle in our history, a battle of heroes.… We have a mighty epic of an incomparable struggle, the struggle of the Nibelungs. They, too, stood to the last.… My soldiers, thousands of years have passed, and thousands of years ago in a tiny pass in Greece stood a tremendously brave and bold man with three hundred soldiers, Leonidas with his three hundred Spartans.… Then the last man fell … and now only the inscription stands: ‘Wanderer, if you should come to Sparta, go tell the Spartans you found us lying here as the law bade us.’… Someday men will read: ‘If you come to Germany, go tell the Germans you saw us lying in Stalingrad, as the law bade us.…’”

The soldiers knew that they had been abandoned by Berlin. Yet, Paulus, ever loyal radioed:

January 30th:

On the tenth anniversary of your assumption of power, the Sixth Army hails its “Führer.” The swastika flag is still flying above Stalingrad. May our battle be an example to the present and coming generations, that they must never capitulate even in a hopeless situation, for then Germany will come out victorious.

Hail my Führer Paulus, Generaloberst

But it was a lie. Less than 24 hours later on January 31st with Red Army tanks and troops outside his command bunker, Paulus surrendered, just hours after Hitler promoted him to Field Marshal. The promotion was supposed to encourage Paulus to commit suicide as no German Field Marshal had ever surrendered his army.

Colonel Adam, an aide to Paulus recorded how Paulus received his promotion:

January 31, 1943 – 7.00 a.m. It was still dark but day was dawning almost imperceptibly. Paulus was asleep. It was some time before I could break out of the maze of thoughts and strange dreams that depressed me so greatly. But I don’t think I remained in this state for very long. I was going to get up quietly when someone knocked at the door. Paulus awoke and sat up. It was the HQ commander. He handed the colonel general a piece of paper and said: ‘Congratulations. The rank of field marshal has been conferred upon you. The dispatch came early this morning – it was the last one.’

‘One can’t help feeling it’s an invitation to suicide. However I’m not going to do them such a favour.’ said Paulus after reading the dispatch. Schmidt continued: ‘At the same time I have to inform you that the Russians are at the door.’ with these words he opened the door and a Soviet general and his interpreter entered the room. The general announced that we were his prisoners. I placed my revolver on the table.”

Paulus surrendered, and contrary to Hitler’s wishes did not commit suicide. In the next few days the other isolated pockets of German resistance surrendered as well. Roughly 95,000 Germans, Italians, and Romanians surrendered at Stalingrad. Fewer than 6,000 would return home after nearly a decade of imprisonment and forced labor.

In Hitler’s headquarters the scene was terrifying. Hitler ranted about the treason and cowardice of Paulus, and his lackeys in the military agreed. Paulus should have shot himself and the garrison formed a hedgehog and resisted to the last bullet.

Though he surrendered Paulus did not give support to the Soviets or the German resistance until he learned of the execution of his Friend Field Marshal Erich von Witzleben and others for their participation in the attempt to kill Hitler. When he learned of their deaths he joined the he joined the Communist-inspired Bund Deutsche Offiziere, an “anti-Fascist” group that broadcast appeals to the citizens of the Third Reich against the Hitler regime.

After the war he testified at the Nuremberg Trials admitting German conduct of the war in the east was criminal but refusing to label men like Wilhelm Keitel, and Afred Jodl as war criminals. He took up a position as the civilian chief for military history for the new East German Government. He died on February 1st 1957, of ALS, having never seen his wife since he left to take command of Sixth Army in January 1942, she died in 1949. His son Alexander was killed at Anzio in 1944. His other son, Ernst, survived the war and committed suicide in 1970.

Paulus’s fate is an object lesson for military personnel, civil servants, or police officials who themselves are apolitical, and that honorable can people become seduced and believe in cults of personality. In the end, many sacrifice their lives, reputations, and even their families.

Without mentioning any names, the Americans who worship at the cult of Trump should pay heed. like Paulus, their loyalty will be betrayed, and even as their leader abandons them.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under ethics, faith, germany, History, holocaust, Military, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, world war two in europe

Tagged as alfred jodl, Bund deutsches officiziers, DDR, erich von manstein, Fourth Panzer Army, freikorps, Friedrich Paulus, hermann goering, Hermann Hoth, Joseph Stalin, nazi germany, nuremberg trials, Reichsheer, Sixth Army, soviet union, stalingrad, Walter Reichenau, wehrmacht, weimar republic, wilhelm keitel, xvi motorized Corps

January 13, 2020 · 07:02

The Horror of Evil is that it Does Not Deviate from Human Norms: the Eternal Precedent of the Holocaust

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I read and write a lot about Weimar and Nazi Germany as well as the Holocaust. They were the focus of my undergraduate major working under Dr. Helmut Heussler who served as a translator and interrogator at Nuremberg while I was a student at California State University at Northridge and later in my Masters of Arts in Military History. I read the documents, the histories, the narratives, and the reports both in English and German. I study the perpetrators, the victims, and yes the bystanders as well and there is not enough time in one man’s life to read all of them, but I will try.

Likewise I visit the sites where things happened in Germany, and every time that I make a trip to those places I learn more and believe me it is not comfortable. When I visited the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg a few years ago I saw a picture of Dr. Heussler doing his work. Back then he was very young and it would be a number of years before he finished college and went on to his doctorate. When I saw his picture I remembered just how important he was in opening my eyes to the dark side of humanity; even those people that are not truly evil; those like most of us who exist between the shades of gray between sainthood and the devil.

The histories, the documents, the narratives paint a dark picture of humanity and the fallibility of people. The portrait that they paint a disturbing picture of the true nature of what is in all of us. When I look at the pictures and see the films I can see that the lessons of that time have not been learned. Dr. Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The world is now changing, reviving fears that were familiar in Hitler’s time, and to which Hitler responded. The history of the Holocaust is not over. Its precedent is eternal, and its lessons have not yet been learned.”

In the age where men who admire tyrants and authoritarians like Trump, Putin, Farage, Erdrogan, Assad, and so many others it is important that we try to learn the lessons lest we fall into the same trap as our ancestors and become perpetrators, victims, or bystanders. I often find myself wondering what will be said we Americans of our time in say fifty years or so. I have a feeling that it will not be favorable or sympathetic.

Such a fascination with the thoughts of others years after I am likely to be dead may seem unusually circumspect. But my call as a priest and a historian doesn’t allow me not to care about the future, or ignore present realities. The fact is that totalitarian regimes and events like the Holocaust are all too common in human history, one of those is the connection of humanity with its past and future, and that humanity being the constant in our history. 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.”

The fact is that there are very few true saints and likewise very few truly evil people. Quite obviously Adolf Hitler and many of his associates fell in the latter category. The rest of us, and for that matter most of the people on all sides during from the Nazi seizure of power until the Gotterdammerung of the Third Reich in in the flames of Berlin in 1945 fell somewhere in the gray area between the truly evil and the saints and truthfully all of us given the right conditions are capable of becoming perpetrators, victims, or the worst, bystanders who turn their backs on evil because it doesn’t seem to affect us; but it does.

Admittedly this is a dark subject and as I always reminded my students “the one constant in history are fallible human beings.”

During our recent blizzard and snow event my wife Judy was away, so one of the nights that I was alone I re-watched the film Judgment at Nuremberg. The film is profoundly disturbing not only because of the subjects that it deals with but also when we look at the great uncertainty time that we live and how similar it is to the world of the late 1920s and early 1930s. In one of the more disturbing scenes of the film, Maximillian Schell, who played Hans Rolfe, the defense counsel for Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster gives a summation in the final defense of his client who has already admitted his guilt which is remarkable because he tells the truth about the guilt of everyone.

Rolfe’s summation of his defense following his client’s admission of guilt is damning. It is something that almost all of us do. It is how we look at the atrocities of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, the willful starvation of millions by criminal regimes; and then stand by saying little or nothing and doing nothing, sometimes even supporting the leaders or the regimes that commit these actions.

So please, no matter what your political point of view, take the time to watch clip or the whole film, and read the transcript of Schell’s speech below. It’s far easier than trying to do all the reading, study, and research that I have done.

“Your Honor, it is my duty to defend Ernst Janning, and yet Ernst Janning has said he is guilty. There’s no doubt, he feels his guilt. He made a great error in going along with the Nazi movement, hoping it would be good for his country. But, if he is to be found guilty, there are others who also went along, who also must be found guilty. Ernst Janning said, “We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.” Why did we succeed, Your Honor? What about the rest of the world? Did it not know the intentions of the Third Reich? Did it not hear the words of Hitler’s broadcast all over the world? Did it not read his intentions in Mein Kampf, published in every corner of the world? Where’s the responsibility of the Soviet Union, who signed in 1939 the pact with Hitler, enabled him to make war? Are we not to find Russia guilty? Where’s the responsibility of the Vatican, who signed in 1933 the Concordat with Hitler, giving him his first tremendous prestige? Are we not to find the Vatican guilty? Where’s the responsibility of the world leader, Winston Churchill, who said in an open letter to the London Times in 1938 – 1938! Your Honor – “were England to suffer national disaster should pray to God to send a man of the strength of mind and will of an Adolf Hitler!” Are we not to find Winston Churchill guilty? Where is the responsibility of those American industrialists, who helped Hitler to rebuild his armaments and profited by that rebuilding? Are we not to find the American industrialists guilty? No, Your Honor. No! Germany alone is not guilty: The whole world is as responsible for Hitler’s Germany. It is an easy thing to condemn one man in the dock. It is easy to condemn the German people to speak of the basic flaw in the German character that allowed Hitler to rise to power and at the same time positively ignore the basic flaw of character that made the Russians sign pacts with him, Winston Churchill praise him, American industrialists profit by him! Ernst Janning said he is guilty. If he is, Ernst Janning’s guilt is the world’s guilt – no more and no less.”

Sadly, little has changed in the character of humanity. If we do or say nothing, if we support those who do such things, if we close our eyes and pretend that it is not our problem, then we too are the guilty party. As Hannah Arendt wrote: “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Sophie Scholl, a young university student who died at the hands of the Nazis for daring to distribute leaflets telling the truth about Hitler’s regime wrote:

Whether I live one day, or another fifty years, I do not want to be a person who wants to be remembered as one who “just wants to survive,” or “left in peace,” or as Arendt said one “who never makes up their mind to be good or evil.” Nor can I be one who just goes along with things as Janning did, carrying in Judgment at Nuremberg, or be one for “whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature.”

That is the only way I know how to live. Life has taught me that.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under books, civil rights, ethics, faith, film, History, holocaust, life, nazi germany, philosophy, Political Commentary

Tagged as adolf hitler, burt lancaster, ernst janning, evil, hannah arendt, hans rolfe, History, human nature, judgement at nuremberg, Maximilian Schell, nazi germany, president donald trump, resistance, sophie scholl, white rose, yehuda bauer

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