Ed,
Man of the year doesn’t mean good man of the year, but one that impacted the world with his presence.
I honestly don’t understand your point. If the priests and bishops went to concentration camps for standing up to hitler, then why didn’t the priests in the mitlitary follow suit?
Haven’t we had christians stand up before? They died, but they stood up and said no.
I have a difficult time understanding this forever and I’m glad this topic came up.
I’m not against the german people at the time this went on, I just don’t understand them.
I believe the argument I’ve heard the most is that if they didn’t fight, then off to the concentration camps they would go. But, haven’t people stood up before in history and lost their lives for it? What makes this so different?
And then I think about all those german boys who died in that war, and the condition of their conscience. They died anyway, wouldn’t it have been better if they had stood up?
I ask the questions not in criticism, but in great quandary.
Just some thoughts.
Read some history from credible sources. You don’t understand the mind of the German people at the time. They were horrified by the Godless Bolsheviks. Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, was widely circulated and translated. Henry Ford, in the United States, published a book titled “The International Jew - The World’s Foremost Problem.” Hitler said that he wished he could send some of his Brownshirts, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, to America to help Mr. Ford.
The Nazis created groups like the Jungvolk for those too young to join the Hitler Youth. The German people were horrified when the Nazi’s signed a non-aggression pact with the Russians (temporary, but the Russians didn’t know that until later), but were partly relieved to know their Eastern border was secured.
It seems a few people here believe that young German men were simply put in uniform, pointed in some particular direction and simply told to attack. The French deserved what they got (according to prevailing thought in the Party) and to this day, there is some debate as to why they surrendered so quickly. The Communists were defeated in Spain, with Hitler’s help, during the period 1936 to April 1939. Access to the Polish port at Danzig (Polish name: Gdańsk) was a necessity. The British Empire, on which the sun never set, was the preeminent naval power and the Germans and Japanese would deprive the British of their holdings in the East, including access to certain raw materials. North Africa had to be secured to deny the Allies a base of operations and to gain access to Arab oil. Anyone who believed that Germany was not rearming to the teeth, long before 1939, was either an idiot or a backer of the regime (who might claim it was only defensive). For example, the Russians murdered just over 20,000 Polish military personnel in 1940 and the mass burial site was discovered by the Germans in 1943. The Russians blamed the Germans. They lied. Other mass murder burial sites of Polish personnel were also discovered.
The Germans were fighting, they believed, Communist aggression, for living space, and for honor. They were destined to rule, not the Communist Barbarians from the East, and the British Empire had their chance to join the Nazis in their fight against Bolshevism. When they refused, and had the audacity to join the Americans on D-Day, they got V-1 cruise missiles exactly one week later. After combined Allied arms had captured the V-1 launch sites in France, the British breathed a brief sigh of relief, but that was followed by the V-2 ballistic rocket which was impossible to shoot down. The British could have saved their citizens from all that if they quit the war or joined with the Germans, but they didn’t.
Those Germans in uniform were fighting for territory and the belief that the Russians would just take Eastern and Western Europe if they didn’t. The French couldn’t do it and the British couldn’t do it. The Americans wanted to stay out, at first. This was a “European problem.” Bad enough they had to pull the British fat our of the fire in the First World War.
As my father, who joined the Polish Army, since the Polish government knew the Germans were about to invade, said about being drafted. “Son, when they (the recruiters) come to your home, you go. You’ve got nothing to say.” Just or unjust. When your country calls - you report for training and duty.
As to why this was different, and it wasn’t, get a book or two about German chaplains during World War II.
Peace,
Ed
