SemperFiDawg
Political Forum Arbiter of Truth (And Lies Too)
I've often wondered about the psyche of the German people and specifically the Church that allowed the Holocaust to happen so I was happy to stumble upon Erwin Lutzer's book, Hitler's Cross. Reading it has answered a lot of questions I had, and despite being a historical read, much of it is being repeated today.
Two quotes that really stood out could pretty much summarize us today. The first from Bonhoeffer
"“If Evil appears in the form of light, benefit, loyalty and renewal, if it conforms with historical necessity and social justice, then this, if it is understood straightforwardly, is a clear proof of it's abysmal wickedness."
and the second from “William Shirer, in his monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,”
"“It would be misleading to give the impression that the persecution of Protestants and Catholics by the Nazi State tore the German people asunder or even greatly aroused the vast majority of them. “It did not. A people who had so lightly given up their political and cultural and economic freedoms were not, except for a relatively few, going to die or even risk imprisonment to preserve freedom of worship. “What really aroused the Germans in the Thirties were the glittering successes of Hitler in providing jobs, creating prosperity, restoring Germany’s military might, and moving from one triumph to another in his foreign policy. “Not many Germans lost much sleep over the arrests of a few thousand pastors and priests or over the quarreling of the various Protestant sects. “And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann, and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early “tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists. As Bormann, one of the men closest to Hitler, said publicly in 1941, “National socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.”
Excerpt From: Erwin W. Lutzer & Ravi Zacharias. “Hitler's Cross.” Moody Publishers, 2016. iBook
Prescient huh? I encourage anyone with an interest to read it in it's entirety.
Two quotes that really stood out could pretty much summarize us today. The first from Bonhoeffer
"“If Evil appears in the form of light, benefit, loyalty and renewal, if it conforms with historical necessity and social justice, then this, if it is understood straightforwardly, is a clear proof of it's abysmal wickedness."
and the second from “William Shirer, in his monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,”
"“It would be misleading to give the impression that the persecution of Protestants and Catholics by the Nazi State tore the German people asunder or even greatly aroused the vast majority of them. “It did not. A people who had so lightly given up their political and cultural and economic freedoms were not, except for a relatively few, going to die or even risk imprisonment to preserve freedom of worship. “What really aroused the Germans in the Thirties were the glittering successes of Hitler in providing jobs, creating prosperity, restoring Germany’s military might, and moving from one triumph to another in his foreign policy. “Not many Germans lost much sleep over the arrests of a few thousand pastors and priests or over the quarreling of the various Protestant sects. “And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann, and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early “tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists. As Bormann, one of the men closest to Hitler, said publicly in 1941, “National socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.”
Excerpt From: Erwin W. Lutzer & Ravi Zacharias. “Hitler's Cross.” Moody Publishers, 2016. iBook
Prescient huh? I encourage anyone with an interest to read it in it's entirety.