Standing Alone Against The Forces of Darkness

Recently, Sylvia and I had dinner with a number of old friends. One of them, Dennis, pointed me to a new book he had begun to read: Bonhoeffer—Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich by Eric Metaxas. Since I have read Bonhoeffer's writings plus several books about him, and since I have an abiding interest in the era in which he lived and died, I decided to download the book to my Kindle.

I commend the book to you with a few quotes, first from the opening chapter:

"At the beginning of the war, it was possible to separate the Nazis from the Germans and recognize that not all Germans were Nazis. . . Realizing that he needed to fuel the British war effort, Prime Minister Winston Churchill fused the Germans and the Nazis into a single hated enemy, the better to defeat it swiftly and end the unrelenting nightmare.

"When Germans working to defeat Hitler and the Nazis contacted Churchill and the British government, hoping for assistance to defeat their common enemy from the inside—hoping to tell the world that some Germans trapped inside the Reich felt much as they did—they were rebuffed. No one was interested in their overtures. It was too late. . ."

Again in Chapter 11, Nazi Theology:

"Hitler's attitude toward Christianity was that it was a great heap of mystical out-of-date nonsense. But what annoyed Hitler was not that it was nonsense, but that it was nonsense that did not help him get ahead. According to Hitler, Christianity preached "meekness and flabbiness," and this was simply not useful to the National Socialist ideology, which preached "ruthlessness and strength." In time, he felt that the churches would change their ideology. He would see to it."

And then back to Chapter 10, The Church and the Jewish Question:

"The German church was in turmoil. Some church leaders felt the church should make peace with the Nazis, who were strongly opposed to communism and "godlessness." They believed the church should conform to the Nazi racial laws and the Fuehrer Principle. They thought that by wedding the church to the state, they would restore the church and Germany to her former glory, before the Treaty of Versailles and the chaos and humiliation of the last twenty years. The moral degeneration of Weimar Germany was self-evident. Hadn't Hitler spoken of restoring moral order to the nation? They didn't agree with him on everything, but they believed that if the church's prestige were restored, they might be able to influence him in the right direction.

"There was at this time a group that stood solidly behind Hitler's rise to power and blithely tossed two millennia of Christian orthodoxy overboard. They wanted a strong, unified Reich church and a "Christianity" that was strong and masculine, that would stand up to and defeat the godless and degenerate forces of Bolshevism. They called themselves the Deutsche Christen (German Christians) and referred to their brand of Christianity as "positive Christianity." . . "

We Christians of the 21st century must learn from that sad time. The Lutherans of Nazi Germany sold their souls and their birthright for a mess of stew (Genesis 24:29-34). Bonhoeffer and a relatively small number of Confessing Church pastors stood alone against the Nazi forces of evil.

History And The Search For Peace For Our Time

In our day there is such a blur of information coming from all directions. How does one make sense of it all? And yet, for those elected officials entrusted with the welfare and safety of millions in our nation, making sense and making decisions based upon that information is absolutely essential.

Lest this statement be seen as abstract, a vital lesson can be drawn from the history leading up to World War II. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" speech and the pact he signed with Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany is the prime example.

Neville Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" speech@Everything2.com

On September 30, 1938 (71 years ago now), Chamberlain returned from Munich after having agreed to the Munich Pact the day before. Standing before the Prime Minister's house at 10 Downing Street in London, he said,

"We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for our two countries and for Europe.

"We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.

"We are resolved the the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.

"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time . . . Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

A year later Germany invaded Poland, a clear violation of the Pact. Britain was forced to declare war on Germany. The German army had been building up for this since the time Hitler had signed the Pact a year before. The rest is history.

My forthcoming novel is set in the United States in the fall of 1939, during that very time when the British Empire has declared war on Nazi Germany. There is strong sentiment that the United States stay out of yet another European war. A little more than two years after that, on Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was forced to declare war both on Japan and upon Nazi Germany, Japan's ally.

The lessons from this recent history for us all are many. Many of us have heard Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana's quote, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." We've also encountered Henry Ford's comment, "History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."

By the way, Henry Ford was awarded Germany's highest decoration for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, in July, 1938, on his seventy-fifth birthday.