Make Germany Great Again: We Have Been Here Before
Author: Bobby Valentine | Filed under: American Empire, Church, Contemporary Ethics, Discipleship, Politics
Around the year 2000, I was on a European history kick. I read a number of books on the period between 1918 and 1940. This period saw the rise of a number of charismatic dictators who were wildly popular with their home crowds. Two were Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. One of the books I read was John Toland’s epic biography, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography. I had read a good bit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by this time (began reading Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison in 1988).
Adolf Hitler lived through the humiliation of Germany. Germany the great imperial power under Kaiser Wilhelm II. The greatest universities in the world were in Germany. The greatest scientists in the world were in Germany. Germany had the greatest army in the world (they thought). Germany was building the (second) greatest navy in the world. Germany’s empire was in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Germany was the greatest. They said so!
Germany defeated Czarist Russia in World War I. She believed she could take France, Britain, and then even the USA when she entered into the war. Germany lost. Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Germany lost her navy. Germany lost her army. Germany lost her empire. Germany was humiliated. The proud empire was in chaos. Social unrest. Inflation. Germany was not great.
Adolf Hitler, a veteran of the war, was enraged. Hitler believed Germany was INHERENTLY the greatest. German blood was the greatest. Why did she suffer? The answer was liberals. The answer was the universities. The answer was Jews. The answer was books. The answer was “Communists.” The list of those who were a blight on Germany was long.
They would pay dearly.
Adolf Hitler, former soldier of the war, began a campaign. The Brown Shirts! His campaign was to MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN. This was Adolf Hitler’s avowed and expressly stated goal.
Hitler tapped into a DEEP seated, just barely under the surface, racism against anyone that was not German blood. Even the wrong “kind of Germans” were suspect (not “German Enough!”). They made “Make Germany Great Again” their mission. They sought to eliminate any influence that slighted their imagined self-importance. They would deal with anyone poisoning the minds of the youth. And Hitler appealed to the masses. They too were looking for scapegoats. Their latent, buried hate, soon became empowered and unleashed through Adolf Hitler.
And Hitler was electrifying. Hitler published an autobiography, of sorts, called Mein Kampf in 1925. In it he details his dream of making Germany great again. He railed at all those who he believed contributed to Germany’s sufferings. There was no secret to Hitler’s plan to make Germany great again. He said exactly what he would do.
– less desirables (vermin), even Germans who had been Germans for ages, could leave Germany or face the consequences
– less desirables like Jews, Gypsies, scientists, scholars, people of a contrary point of view would be dealt with
– educators poisoning the youth would be dealt with
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Elected! The Make Germany Great Again party won many seats in the Bundestag. Germany was on its way to becoming “great” again. They said so!
In March 1933, a month after being elected, the Nazis began rounding up all the non-patriotic, not “German ENOUGH” books pilling them up in town squares and burning them. All summer long university and school libraries were pillaged and in May the biggest of all with 25,000 books piled high and set aflame. Such books by proud Germans like ALBERT EINSTEIN (he was Jewish, not German enough!) was set aflame. This scene most may or may not recognize from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
On March 22, 1933, the Nazis opened their first concentration camp at Dachau for all political undesirables (vermin). Germany would be Great Again! Soon synagogues would be torched. Torah scrolls would be burned. Thousands and thousands of Germans (not German enough) would flee, Albert Einstein among them. You either loved Germany or left it … and by “love” it meant that you supported Adolf Hitler in his unique vision of Making Germany Great Again.
Hitler set on his mission to make Germany Great Again to be the “Third Reich.” People fawned over Hitler. They wore his t-shirts. They gathered in his rallies. They proclaimed him the Savior of Germany. Christianity was co-opted to make Germans the best possible Germans they could be. And if your Christianity did not teach that Germany and pure Germans were the greatest humans and greatest country then that Christianity was punished and false. It was even banned. Only Christianity that supported Germany was pure Christianity.
So German “Christians” hung the German flag inside churches. They drapped it over the emblems on the communion table! German “Christians” founded the Dejudaization Institute (The Institute for the Eradication of Jewish Influence on Christianity). Jesus himself was no longer a Jew rather Jesus became an Aryan supporter of Adolf Hitler and the mission to Make Germany Great Again. True Christianity had to promote the vision that Germany Was Greatest. Jesus was German! (The Aryan Jesus was everywhere in Nazi Germany).
Germany bought this idolatry hook, line and sinker. The world fell into the bloodiest war in world history. Millions of Jews, Gypsies, “free thinkers,” anyone who disagreed with or dared to criticize Germany (and Hitler) were murdered. Millions would die in the glorification of Germany. Both Germans and non-Germans.
And they freely elected him. He played to THEIR prejudice to enhance his own. AND THEY KNEW … and the world bled in an ocean of blood. They knew. See Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, a book I read during that same period has never left me. It is seared into my consciousness.
One wonders if the world has ever learned the lessons of the man who campaigned on the slogan, Make Germany Great Again?
Related Interest
June 13th, 2024 at 4:44 am
And for those who believe God raises up rulers to see that His will is done, that’s true. The two great examples of that are the Pharaoh of the Exodus and Assyria. In both instances, God used evil people to carry out His will, then destroyed them for their evil. And if people who claim to love and follow Jesus are willing to call good evil and evil good for the sake of power, wealth and their position in the world, who’s to say we’re not getting exactly what we deserve?
June 13th, 2024 at 5:13 am
Blows my mind and hurts my heart.