The mystery of Hitler

[2shelbys]

If I came into your house in the middle of the night and, in front of you, put a bullet in the heads of your parents and siblings. And then I arranged for all your friends to be taken in the middle of the night, escorted to the woods, and murdered, would you hold me in the same light as someone who had an abortion? I don’t know how you’ll answer this but I know what the reality is.

Relax. We are comparing the loss of life, not the methods of killing.

 

[vern_humphrey]

If I came into your house in the middle of the night and, in front of you, put a bullet in the heads of your parents and siblings. And then I arranged for all your friends to be taken in the middle of the night, escorted to the woods, and murdered, would you hold me in the same light as someone who had an abortion? I don’t know how you’ll answer this but I know what the reality is.

If you did that, I might have a chance. I might detect your approach, and fight or flee.

But the unborn child has no such chance – it is totally helpless and totally innocent.

So, yes – I would consider one who kills the unborn more evil (if that were possible) than the Nazis. And the numbers bear me out – we’ve killed four times as many innocent people in this country than the Nazis did. And there is no end in sight.

 

[wabrams]

Fr Gabriele Amorth, a Vatican exorcist is convinced that Stalin as well as Hitler and other Nazis "were all possessed by the devil."I agree with Fr Amorth and I can think of a few others who would qualify.

Or it could be all the narcotics he was injected with several times a day for years on end.

 

[Cam-masta]

God is just and merciful. So I know that Hitler (may his name be erased forever), has forfeited his soul to whatever hell there is.

The Jewish Shoah is a very sensitive topic for Jews and understandably so. We should be very careful. If we lost 6 million of our own people in horrific ways (babies being put into ovens etc), we might be more thoughtful in our responses, or at least more sensitive in how we present them. With anti-semitism so rampant today in the world, I believe this point is critical and cannot be emphasised enough. After all, our salvation came into the world, through Our Blessed Lady who was a devout Jew.
+ Brother Cameron

 

[vern_humphrey]

The Jewish Shoah is a very sensitive topic for Jews and understandably so. We should be very careful. If we lost 6 million of our own people in horrific ways

We did lose 6 million of our own people – for as John Donne said, “No man is an island. Every man’s death diminishes me.” Every person who died in the Holocaust is one of ours, regardless of their faith or ethnicity.

In fact, the death toll was about 12,000,000 – half Jews, the other half others, including according to some estimates, at least 3,000,000 Catholics.

(babies being put into ovens etc),

The Holocaust was indeed horrific beyond imagination, and people were killed in many ways. But the “ovens” were crematoria, not killing chambers.

we might be more thoughtful in our responses, or at least more sensitive in how we present them. With anti-semitism so rampant today in the world, I believe this point is critical and cannot be emphasised enough. After all, our salvation came into the world, through Our Blessed Lady who was a devout Jew.

                                          + Brother Cameron

And so was Jesus, Peter, Paul and all the Apostles.

 

[Valke2]

Magicsilence:

Well put. As horrible as what Adolf Hitler did was, and as great as the temptation is, we as laity can’t anathematize him to hell. We have to judge his evil actions, but God judges the heart and the soul, and I thank God for that, because I am completely unsuited to judge the heart and the soul.

May his name be erased from memory and may his soul never know a moment’s peace.

The victims may fogive their murders. That is their right. It isn’t mine or (IMO) ours.

 

[Valke2]

We did lose 6 million of our own people – for as John Donne said, “No man is an island. Every man’s death diminishes me.” Every person who died in the Holocaust is one of ours, regardless of their faith or ethnicity.

well said.

The Holocaust was indeed horrific beyond imagination, and people were killed in many ways. But the “ovens” were crematoria, not killing chambers./QUOTE}

true.

 

[Valke2]

The Jewish Shoah is a very sensitive topic for Jews and understandably so. We should be very careful. If we lost 6 million of our own people in horrific ways (babies being put into ovens etc), we might be more thoughtful in our responses, or at least more sensitive in how we present them. With anti-semitism so rampant today in the world, I believe this point is critical and cannot be emphasised enough. After all, our salvation came into the world, through Our Blessed Lady who was a devout Jew.

                                          + Brother Cameron

Thank you. I do understand however that there is a basic difference here between how christians view evil acts and how Jews view them. THere is nothing in our theology that would require us to pray for the soul of Hitler. Quite the opposite.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

hello mdgspencer,

I think that one has to understand the phenomenom of mental denial. When I first witnessed a situation of a person using mental denial I was stunned. How could a person’s mind avoid an obvious truth to such an amaizing level of denial?

I have heard that Al Capone, during his final days in prison, kept mumbling about all the good he had done in his life. He continually went on convincing himslef that all the people he had killed needed to be killed.

When one continually tells themselves that what they are doing is right, no matter how obviously evil it may be, they eventually come to believe themselves. This mental denial can be very powerful. Denial can also be used as a group.

Had Hitler confessed to himself that what he was doing was evil, he would have had to repent and turn from what he was doing. Instead Hitler, and others like him, continually must reconfirm to themselves in their mind that what they are doing is right. This is denial. They convince themselves that the Jews are inferior and need to die. They convince themselves thay they the “Arians” are superior and need to rule the world and so on. In this way they can justify their actions to themselves and continue on in their evil.

Look at how the Muslim world has responded with imense irrational denial to any thought or mention that violence in Islam may not truly be the will of their Quran. I see a great deal of mental irrational denial in their desire and actions to convince themselves and convince the world that all this Muslim killing going on is what their god desires of them. I see this imensly overboard Muslim reaction to the Pope’s speech as a use of human mental denial to reconfirm in their own minds and the minds of their comrads, that what they are doing is the will of thier god and not an evil.

People use irrational denial when they experience any sence that what they are doing is wrong but they have no desire or intention of repenting to do what is right.

I think you should look into the basic phenomenom of human mental denial to understand “the mystery of Hitler”.

Actually, Hitlerian racial policy was perfectly rational. That may be the problem.​

ISTM that he wasn’t a monster - & that this too is a problem. Those who regarded him as a great statesman, as the saviour of his country, as a great man, were not monsters either. He is actually very easy to defend - another problem. It is worthwhile trying to do so: seeing how far we can do so, may teach us something about ourselves.

It is rational, & prudent, & moral, to exterminate sub-human vermin. Rats are sub-human vermin - so they are routinely exterminated. So too - within Hitler’s POV - were certain groups more commonly reckoned as being fully human: Jews, Slavs, & presumably Communists, homosexuals, gypsies, & other such “unGerman” groups. So: who is human ? Hitler gave one answer - most of us would give another; that is one of the differences between him, & most other people. It’s a very small difference - but if one has the means to act upon it, as he did, it can have, & did have, enormous consequences.

No “denial” is necessary - because he was not doing anything unreasonable, foolish or immoral. Not in principle. What was there for him to deny ? That what he did was evil ? But why should he think it was evil ?

Perhaps the question that should be asked is “Why do people think he was spectacularly evil ?”

• Because he killed Jews ? That’s not new.
• Because he used torture ? Nor is that
• Because he victimised certain groups ? Likewise.
• Because he made war, used deceit, laid countries waste, built concentration camps ? None of this was new.
  What moral difference is there between killing 6 million Jews, & killing six or 600 or some other number ? How is killing one, any less atrocious than killing millions ? The size of the numbers of those killed seems to be what causes trouble, quite illogically; because numbers are irrelevant to moral judgements. ##

 

[Victorious]

Hitler wasn’t as blatantly evil as he’s made out to be. It’s not like he sat down at a table with his head generals and said “I’d like to order the execution of all Jews today. Make it gruesome!” and then laughed proudly.

** True evil is much more subtle and real than that.** To understand Hitler’s world view, familiarize yourself with pre-War Germany and modern White Nationalist revisionist literature. Imagine having no belief in an objective measure of good and evil, look at the gradual racial sanctions imposed in Germany over the course of a decade or so, and then you will begin to see.

It’s what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. Evil becomes normal.

 

[Dranu]

Actually, Hitlerian racial policy was perfectly rational. That may be the problem.​

ISTM that he wasn’t a monster - & that this too is a problem. Those who regarded him as a great statesman, as the saviour of his country, as a great man, were not monsters either. He is actually very easy to defend - another problem. It is worthwhile trying to do so: seeing how far we can do so, may teach us something about ourselves.

It is rational, & prudent, & moral, to exterminate sub-human vermin. Rats are sub-human vermin - so they are routinely exterminated. So too - within Hitler’s POV - were certain groups more commonly reckoned as being fully human: Jews, Slavs, & presumably Communists, homosexuals, gypsies, & other such “unGerman” groups. So: who is human ? Hitler gave one answer - most of us would give another; that is one of the differences between him, & most other people. It’s a very small difference - but if one has the means to act upon it, as he did, it can have, & did have, enormous consequences.

No “denial” is necessary - because he was not doing anything unreasonable, foolish or immoral. Not in principle. What was there for him to deny ? That what he did was evil ? But why should he think it was evil ?

Perhaps the question that should be asked is “Why do people think he was spectacularly evil ?”

• Because he killed Jews ? That’s not new.
• Because he used torture ? Nor is that
• Because he victimised certain groups ? Likewise.
• Because he made war, used deceit, laid countries waste, built concentration camps ? None of this was new.
  What moral difference is there between killing 6 million Jews, & killing six or 600 or some other number ? How is killing one, any less atrocious than killing millions ? The size of the numbers of those killed seems to be what causes trouble, quite illogically; because numbers are irrelevant to moral judgements. ##

I think I see where your going with this. That by sacrificing the title human, people can do great evil while ridding their own mind of guilt. However if you are saying that numbers do not matter in the amount of atrocity I feel that is not neccesarily true in our faith. Yes one act can damn a man, and one choice to yield to God can lead to eternal life, but God is all just, and although you cannot add to infinity (one act can make you eternaly damned), Jesus said, “I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” Luke 12:59. Though I suppose this applies only to those who have recieved eternal life, but numbers seem to deffinately apply here.

Forgive me if I interpreted your post wrong.

Ben

God Bless

 

[maria29]

**I think Hitler was evil but i think in many ways Goebbels was even worse. His evil was a more subtle sort by using films and newspapers etc, to convince people think the way Nazi’s did. I’ve seen several propaganda films that came out during the 1930’s about how good it is to kill the criminals and the mentally challenged.

The films were so masterfully done you barely even notice how its reeling you in…**

 

[vern_humphrey]

The platform of the Nazi Party is available on-line. Many of its points look like “social justice” to those who don’t know what they are reading.

When you add all the attractive propaganda – chaste young madens in drinl dresses and boys hiking through the woods and so on – you have to ask if anyone here would see the evil side before being sucked in too far to get out.

 

[M-Dent]

There is a tendency to make Hitler into the devil. He may have done evil deeds, but he was like the rest of us. A human with free will and the ability to choose good or evil.

I think it is a terrible mistake to separate folks like him into a category that is almost aloof and seemingly so different . We should realize we each could go down the same road.

I agree.

For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens

Ephesians 6:12

 

[ribozyme]

The platform of the Nazi Party is available on-line. Many of its points look like “social justice” to those who don’t know what they are reading.

When you add all the attractive propaganda – chaste young madens in drinl dresses and boys hiking through the woods and so on – you have to ask if anyone here would see the evil side before being sucked in too far to get out.

I personally find this scary, and I fear that I might be susceptable into falling into a propaganda trap if someone who is masterful as Joseph Goebbels.

 

[ronald44481]

Read The International Red Cross Statistics
It States 159,000 So Called Jews Died From Any
And All Causes Like Disease And Most Of
All, Starvation Since All Shipments Of Food
To These Camps Were Bombed By Allied
Forses.

You Should Study The Word Holocaust,
Its Only To Be Found In The English Douay
And It Means Burnt Offering. If What You
Say Is True We Have 6,000,000 Burnt Offerings
To God. Did God Go Back To The Old Covenant
If So I Missed It.

Joesph Goebbels Said If A Lie Is Repeated
Enough It Will Become Truth. You Now Should
Look At The Media, Who Runs It?

Ronald44481

 

[Karin]

Read The International Red Cross Statistics
It States 159,000 So Called Jews Died From Any
And All Causes Like Disease And Most Of
All, Starvation Since All Shipments Of Food
To These Camps Were Bombed By Allied
Forses.

You Should Study The Word Holocaust,
Its Only To Be Found In The English Douay
And It Means Burnt Offering. If What You
Say Is True We Have 6,000,000 Burnt Offerings
To God. Did God Go Back To The Old Covenant
If So I Missed It.

Joesph Goebbels Said If A Lie Is Repeated
Enough It Will Become Truth. You Now Should
Look At The Media, Who Runs It?

Ronald44481

are you saying that the HOlocaust did not occur or are you questioning the means by which people where killed?

 

[morningmare]

Fun subject, so I decided to jump in

HItler may have given the orders to take away those rich Jews’ belongings give it to Germany’s profit, orders to send them to the camp, orders to have massive killing divices and burial areas to save money to take care of all these Jews, maybe also ordered to kill bunch of “useless” people too. He might has been told the soldiers to kill the most cruel ways, but that part… not exactly sure…

Say, if Bush said that now, in America, would the soldiers actually do this… hmm… oh wait… it was not exactly massive killings… but they did get sent to Iraq and killed some of those civilians, and did some little tortures on those Iraqis… Did Bush tell them to do that? no. maybe… hmm… no.

Did they get influenced by devil… yes, no, maybe. The order was terrible, but…they thought they were achieving something. I don’t know German history that well, so I have no clue what Hitler was wanting out of it, (nah, no one knows what Bush really wanted either) but no one just suddenly say kill all jews. ya ya, Hitler might have wanted to kill all Jews because he hated his Jewish mother or something… no… he can’t possibly have told the officials, soldiers, etc, “I hate my mother, She’s a Jew. Let’s kill all the Jews” riiight? Remember… Jews are not the only one who were killed then. They also killed bunch of Homosexuals. But not many people really care about that one do they…

I mean Devil just doesn’t jump right in and act unreasonable (well, he does some occasions, but the last time I heard, that has effect of walking down the stair with hands… and I never heard of any sort of that happening for Hitler, yes, I’m joking ) - He convinces, and is very very convincing in my opinion . He promises pleasures/ fulfillment of our short term desperacy etc, which is why that’s a sin for us to follow him. And I think same thing happened in Hitler, just like what happened to Juda. He did the evil deeds, with devil’s reasons, to fulfill what he wanted -whatever he wanted. In fact, if I think a little more cafeully , we do that all the time in our lives, and we pray all the time to not to fall for it. But difference is that, Hitler had really big power to abuse that we don’t have.

However, the individual cruelties did not have to get ordered. It comes automatically, through the soldiers. People’s behaviours when they were in the influence of power, it gets pretty amazing. Some psychological experiement has some indication about it… Two I like are the obedience study by Milgram (Yale University), and that Mock-Prison experiment by Zimbardo (Stanford University) . Milgram’s study basically talks about how cruel a person can become when they are told to be so from someone who seems to have the power. (even when they did have choice to not to do so). And of course, majority of people became really cruel even if they were having nervous break down by the guilt. Specific details can be found in Google. Zimbardo’s one is famous, and it showed what people do when they lose identity and given a lot of power over other group of people who also lost identity. Powered people got really really cruel against the people without power. By just looking at their resulting actions it almost seems like devil possessing their heads too… hmm…

Dunno, I seem to have this idea that Hitler and Nazis soldiers were just being human - vulnerable to Devil’s words, greedy and had power to abuse. ::

 

[Valke2]

Actully the currently accepted total number of Jews that died in the camp system is 3,500,000. It is not any less of a crime but I am a stickler for accuracy in history.

No. You are not correct. The currently accepted view is between 5.5 and 7 million. In fact, the release of recent records indicate the numbers were greater, not less. Yad Vashem still places the number at about 6 million. The United States HOlocaust Memorial Museum says about the same. It places it between 5.1 and 6 million. It points out that not all victims were registered. Many records that did exist were destroyed by the Nazis.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I personally find this scary, and I fear that I might be susceptable into falling into a propaganda trap if someone who is masterful as Joseph Goebbels.

Sometimes people ask why I care so much about the Constitution, and I point to Nazism.

“Well, that couldn’t happen in this day and age!!”

It happened in my lifetime.

“Well, it couildn’t happend in an advanced, educated country like this!”

It happened in the most advanced and best educated country in Europe.

It can happen here – and seeing how insidious it was, how people were taken in, we must remember, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”