WWII

The Thirties – Part 9 (Final Thoughts)

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

As the allied leaders appeased Hitler in the later 1930s, ACG noted how this played into his hands. “The peace of Munich is a complete victory for Hitler.  The Munich pact replaces the Versailles Treaty. Germany has won the [First World] war after all. An unforgettable lesson has been taught to the whole world, namely that nothing can be expected from lawful agreement, arbitration and peaceful negotiations. All that matters is power and might. What you can grab by force and threat is yours by right. It is a lesson that will not be forgotten by the Germans within and without the Fatherland. It will continue to plague the world in years to come.” (p350-351)

The Allies simply needed to call Hitler’s bluff.  However, the British and the French gave up on their treaty with Czechoslovakia and tried to pursue peace.  Hitler lacked the strength and public support needed to wage a new war.  But sadly, his lies won him the extra time he needed. “The great Swedish Chancellor Count Axel Oxenstjerna was right when he said to his son: ‘Don’t you know, my boy, with what little intelligence the world is run?’  Oxenstjerna’s words are as true today as they were 300 years ago.” (p354)

As ACG came to the end of his book, preparing for publication in 1939, he wrote, “At the apex of the German pyramid stands a dictator drunk with success and surrounded by a horde of daring adventurers. He and they live in a world of their own. Germany, they believe and make others believe, has become the hub of the universe. . . . It is a sad commentary on our times that the forces of progress, suffering from a strange malady of inertia and moral paralysis, have permitted a dictatorship to bring limitless misery to millions of people who once were happy.” (p356)

It is pretty sobering to read the final pages, knowing all that was to follow in the subsequent six years of Nazi tyranny.  “I have no intention of defending that which can not be defended. I have testified in previous chapters to the all too many sins of omission committed by the democratic state, statesmen and national leaders, and their failure to take timely and energetic action against the enemies of democracy and progress. Yet to arrive at a conclusive answer one must not look around for individual scapegoats. It is necessary to realise the collective responsibility and the collective guilt of the German people; that collective guilt which can perhaps best be explained by the lack of political instinct and political common sense of the Germans.” (p360)  As we look at threats to society today, we could soon be writing the same thing of our nation, or of the west.

“If individual guilt and responsibility have to be apportioned, then certainly all those are guilty who allowed things to come to such a pass.”  (p365)  ACG referred to Reich Chancellor Bruening in 1930 and others who made influential decisions with devastating consequences.  But what about a broader view?  What about the population, the foreign leaders, community influencers like the church leaders, etc.? 

“The longer National Socialism rules in Germany, the greater becomes the danger of a new and all-devastating war.  It is the sacred duty of all those within and without Germany to whom justice and law, humanity, democracy and peace are not matters of mere lip service, to co-operate in the fight for the preservation of mankind.” (p368)  This is still true today . . . totalitarian, globalist takeover agendas are flagrant, and too many heads remain firmly buried in the sand. 

So, to come full circle, common decency dictates that we should not liken anything today to 1930’s Germany.  In light of what has happened in recent years and what may lie ahead of us, maybe it would be wiser if we did.

The Thirties – Part 6 (Contemporary Shifts)

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In the last post, we brought out the question sitting in the shadows throughout this series of posts.  What part did the church play in allowing the Nazi takeover of Germany?  We can never know what would have happened if more stood up and overtly resisted.  But that is one of the critical questions we must wrestle with in our day.  First, when will we stop supporting the general direction of travel?  Second, how will we resist?

Whatever we may feel is the driving force behind the changes, we surely must get our heads out of the sand and recognise the shifts that are taking place.  There are moral shifts regarding gender, sexuality and crime.  There are human rights shifts regarding free speech, free movement, the right to assemble, and bodily autonomy.  There are ideological shifts in respect to traditional religions, cult-like agendas, and globalist unaccountable power grabs.  The world could be a very different place in a very short time.

Morality and change – Even before the full extent of their atrocities were revealed, people knew the Nazi morality. “The Nazis claim that all that is beneficial to the German people is right.” (p192)  This, of course, meant that they could do whatever they liked.  When right and wrong are redefined, a culture is under threat.  We live in a culture where you are judged to be a threat to progress if your actions, words, and even thoughts do not support the approved narrative, the dominant ideology, or the power imposing religion. 

Why do people assume that the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to disagree will persist when those asserting their power are committed to a different morality?  If any try speaking against certain sanctions and medications, kneeling ceremonies, well-known religions, or theories in climate science, then they soon discover that there are consequences in our day.  There has been a major shift in the ethical foundations of our society – we must not pretend otherwise.

Democracy and change – People naively believe that societies change from good to bad in free and fair elections.  Sometimes that has happened.  But revolutionary change tends to require a crisis. “On the day after the Reichstag fire, a new law ‘for the protection of the people and the state against communist acts of violence’ was made public.  It had been obviously prepared beforehand. … This law deprived every citizen of his few remaining civil rights and left him at the mercy of the new masters and their heavily armed sluggers now elevated to the rank of authority. Person and home were no longer inviolate. Privacy of mail, telephone and telegram had ceased to exist. Freedom of speech, press and assembly was a thing of the past.” (p215)  It was not an election that changed everything but a manufactured crisis.  A crisis means that change can be imposed ‘for the good’ of the people. 

Individuals as the threat to change – As with every tyrannical takeover and revolutionary moment, the free-thinking individual is an instant threat to the people in power.  Germany had “confined itself to the deliberate destruction of the rights of all those who think independently and come to conclusions different from those of the masters of the Third Reich.” (p230)  We see the same thing when Communist revolutions grab hold of a country – immediately the useful idiots who helped create the crisis are a threat to be discarded, along with the educated, the religious leaders, the writers, the influencers.

The Nazis considered the “fourth battlefield” to be enemies from within the state.  So, they used the SS troops to bear arms freely as they brought terror and control to the nation.  The SA “brown shirts” were more of an accessory to the Nazis but were used either in uniform or in everyday clothes “to arouse enthusiasm among the masses.” The jubilant masses described by foreign press correspondents were usually “well-rehearsed SA formations.” They would create disturbances outside Jewish-run businesses, where the Gestapo would sweep in to arrest the owners for their own protection and dispatch them off to concentration camps.  Then, the SA performance would quiet down.  (See p250-251)

The recurring theme of thought crime came out strongly in the book: “None of those imprisoned under the pretext of protective confinement had committed crimes. Their only guilt in the eyes of the Nazis was to have opinions contrary to Nazi creed.” (p338)  A society can never be considered free when people are punished for holding specific opinions.

Is change a surprise? It is easy to assume that the German people were unaware of the evils of the Nazi regime until the secrets were revealed after the end of the Third Reich and the humbling death of Hitler in his bunker. “Again it must be emphasised, that everything that has taken place within the last five years has been publicly and repeatedly proclaimed by the Nazi regime long before it came to pass.  Only the degree in which early predictions have been fulfilled is a matter of surprise.” (p267)  I can’t help but wonder if such published predictions were also disparagingly called conspiracy theories a century ago.  There does seem to be a pattern – troubling things are proclaimed and published, the media run a different narrative, people quote those troubling things, the media decry those people as quacks and conspiracy nuts.  And then, sometimes very quickly, those troubling things turn out to be true.

In the next post in this series, we will consider more parallels to our time.

The Thirties – Part 5 (What About The Church?)

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

The question I brought into my reading of ACG’s book was more specific than society.  I wanted to know what was happening in the church during those years of transition to tyranny.  And is there anything we can learn for our tumultuous times?

The Catholic Church agreed a concordat with the Nazi party in 1933.  It gave the church a lot of freedom and protection.  But at a cost. “Catholic clergy were deprived of their civil rights. Political activity was forbidden.” (p205)  Ironically, they kept their position of influence in society, while relinquishing their ability to say anything constructive.  I have watched many wrestle with this tension in recent years.  Should we strive to keep our “voice” in society by following the rules imposed by the media, or do we speak out about concerns and thereby invite society’s opposition? 

“To oppose the encroachments by the Third Reich, the churches should have united and fought jointly the common danger, but here as in the political field, the spirit as well as the prerequisites to such unity were sadly lacking. As to the Protestant Church, the wealthy parishioners and the Protestant middle class were in favor of the Nazi regime. …Neither then nor later did the Protestant clergy show a common will and determination in defense of their rights.” (p206)  It is intriguing that those with some societal standing (in terms of their wealth status) are identified as supporting the regime.  Surely, if the benefits are to be weighed in terms of income and status, that should be a warning flag that the motives may be somewhat corrupted.

Is it possible to imagine a church in our time that goes along with a rogue government or popular narrative in order to keep its voice in society?  But what if it already has little to no voice?  What is it protecting?

“The Nazi aim in the field of religion is the establishment of a co-ordinated German church under party supervision. … Their publicly proclaimed thesis is “The word of Adolf Hitler is the word of God and has the authority of God.” (p206)  It was not just moral madness that should have been opposed, but also the religious heresy of the time.

Even within the 1930’s, there was a growing religious fervor in silent protests against the Nazi regime.  What if they had not capitulated initially to take the easy path and keep their influence?  What if the church had been willing to take a stand from the start?

There was a concerted effort to undermine the church’s influence in society.  The black-shirts, the elite guards, were forbidden to belong to any religion.  The Hitler Youth movement estranged a generation from churches. “Church services are held under observation of the Gestapo, the state secret police. Clergymen who have held services outside the church confines in order to escape police supervision have been arrested and sent to concentration camps.” (p208)

Church leaders and members were subjected to every possible charge and slander. “They are accused of immorality, corruption and violation of government regulations. . . . Occasional cases of law violations are blatantly generalized.” (p208)  It is hard to stand for what is right and true, but is that not what all believers are called to do in this fallen world?  We represent Jesus and the Gospel.  Always with grace and love, but sometimes with courage and a willingness to pay the ultimate price.  And when we capitulate in order to have a voice in society, what happens when society wakes up to the truth and then wonders why the church didn’t say anything? 

Is it better to have a voice, or to use it? 

I don’t want to condemn the church in the 1930s without acknowledging how easily cowed the church in the 2020s might prove to be.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrote, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

The Thirties – Part 1 (A Seismic Shift)

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At the height of restrictions during the times of Covid, I made a comment to a friend.  His response has stayed with me.  My comment made a specific comparison of a contemporary trend with 1930s Germany.  He immediately reacted and told me that we should never make such a comparison because it implied that the motives of certain influential people were as evil as Hitler himself.  I find censorship to be a huge red flag, and I felt like my thought process was being shut down.  A few years later, whether the situation warranted my comment is still up for discussion.  Perhaps, over time, we will know.  But my interest in 1930s Germany has continued.

What did they know?  And significantly, how did they respond during an era of multiplying warning flags?

Recently, I discovered Inside Germany, a book written by Albert C. Grzesinksi [herein ACG] – a member of the Social Democratic Party who helped to found the German Republic after the First World War.  Intriguingly, he published the book in 1939 without the benefit of hindsight.  After six years of the Third Reich, he wrote without knowing what would unfold in the next six years. The horrors of Nazi Germany during the Second World War, especially the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem,” were eventually revealed to the world.  But what about before the war?  How did the German Republic become the Third Reich?  How did so many accept such a rapid transition from liberal democracy to tyrannical evil?  It is a fascinating read.  And maybe, a century later, there could be lessons for us as we pray for our world, influence Christians and lead churches in a time of potentially tectonic political shifts.

The German Republic was quite an achievement after the devastation of the Great War of 1914-18.  On the 31st of July, 1919, the National Assembly in Weimer “gave the German people a constitution that was one of the most liberal, progressive and inspiring documents in the history of the world.  On the 23rd of March, 1933, the parliament of the same republic passed an empowering act which concentrated all powers in the hands of Hitler, and which wrote finis to German democracy and the liberal republic.” (p357)  Strikingly,  ACG wrote, “Those two dates . . . mark Germany’s road to Golgotha, the road to the crucifixion of the German people under the Nazi swastika.” (ibid.)

It would be easy to assume that Germany, after WWI, simply rebuilt itself, leading to WWII.  Not so.  The Germany of 1919 had to be radically changed to become the Third Reich of 1933 and following. “Seemingly by a stroke of the pen, political liberties were achieved which not even the boldest optimists and democratic dreamers of Germany had dared to envision. Germany became a state of, by and for the people; a democratic fatherland dedicated to the needs and aspirations of the working masses.” (p358)  And it is that seismic shift from liberal democracy to totalitarian tyranny that intrigues me.  How can that happen so quickly?  And, if you will indulge a series of posts about Nazi Germany, I’d like to ponder what it might mean for how we preach and influence both church and society in our tumultuous times?