The Thirties:The looming war

This series of posts is a personal response to one book, Inside Germany. It was written by a German politician in 1939. 

It will not give rise to every helpful Christian reflection, but it certainly has stirred some thoughts for our time.

Once the Nazi party were in control, things progressed rapidly. Germany broke international treaties, such as occupying the Rhineland with military forces in 1936. 

These treaties weren’t just the imposed treaty of Versailles post WWI, but also the Treaty of Locarno, signed voluntarily in 1926.

If Paris and London had taken action at that time, then Hitler would have lost power, and history might have been very different.

“It was their policies and indolence which gave Hitler strength and furnished him with the courage to take action against Austria and Czechoslovakia.” (p303) 

[destacate]If Paris and London had taken action at that time, then Hitler would have lost power, and history might have been very different [/destacate] Today, we live in a world of indolence that strengthens people with sinister agendas, whatever their ideology or religion may be. 

If it comes out that their actions in government, public health science, or religious activism were negligent, harmful or malicious – then there seems to be no consequence, no justice, and thus, no deterrence.

The remilitarisation of Germany needed approval by the masses. 

“The German masses were first hypnotised into believing that other nations were ready and prepared to attack them.  This was followed with propaganda to the effect that other nations refused to grant equality to Germany, and similar lies.” (p304) 

The utopian dream narrative spun for the German people portrayed the ideal German as a heroic soldier ready to live and die for the great nation.  It was nationalistic in nature. 

But what about the utopian dream narrative spun for the Russian people?  The workers would endure their struggle to arrive at a utopian dream, laying down their lives if necessary to bring about the global goal. 

This was more globalistic but utopian and sacrificial, nonetheless.  And what is the utopian dream narrative spun in our day?  You will own nothing and be happy? 

We will save the planet through the heroic environmental sacrifices of the common people.  It seems to be that, or the globally imposed peace that comes from eliminating every Western infidel. 

Pick your agenda, and you can chase the dream.

The older German generation knew the cost of war; they had lived it before.  But they were helpless “in the face of increasing propaganda, the whipping up of a war and national hysteria by speeches, newspapers, film and radio, and the military education of Germany’s youth!” (p305)

“Dire threats of imprisonment, concentration camp and death at the hands of the executioner effectively prevent anyone from voicing his misgivings and warnings even in the most intimate circles.” (p306) 

[destacate]We live in an age where people are contantly being divide...  unaware generations keep joining the dangerous revolutionary quest to serve masters they have not voted into position[/destacate] The people in positions of power were like mad dogs determined to tear all flesh in their quest for power.  Maybe the average person on the street still believed that the government was just trying its best to do what was right. 

By the late 1930s, one would like to think the average person knew better.  But then again, with the power of the media, maybe not.

ACG underlines a core problem when he states: “The Nazi mind is a strange product, hermetically sealed against logic.  It regards, for instance, certain actions as sacred duties to the German people but considers them as gross injustices when used by others and inflicted upon itself.” (p321) 

Replace the words Nazi and German, and you could be reading a description of our own time.

There was a clear strategy at work in Hitler’s plan.

“What are the methods for the propagation of Hitler’s foreign policy and world conquest? They are essentially the same as were used for the conquest of Germany and the German people. Drive a wedge between your enemies, set them against each other! Then pick on them successively and deal with them in the most effective manner, by peaceful means, if possible; if not, by force!” (p322) 

We live in an age where people are contantly being divided.  If the assembly of the oppressed can grow large enough, perhaps that intersectional mob can throw off the oppression of the bourgeoisie – not the workers’ revolution of classical Marxism, but a neo-Marxist revolution of the sexually and racially oppressed. 

As in Communist revolutions, the resulting government is never a democratic representation of the people (despite the false advertising of the People’s Democratic Republic of wherever). 

The strategic path is well-worn, the ideology is tried and tested, and the underlying religious impulses are consistent.  And yet unaware generations keep joining the dangerous revolutionary quest to serve masters they have not voted into position.

“National socialism looks down upon other countries and other peoples as inferiors, objects of exploitation and dust under the wheel of tyranny.” (p355) 

Tyranny does not only come in nationalist garb.  It also comes in globalist dress too.  And either way, people are treated as expendable, mere dust under the wheel of tyranny. 

As Bonhoeffer famously wrote, “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

This series of posts is already very long.  I do not have space to delineate every aspect of the tyrannical threats in Western society today, nor can I offer a full catalogue of resistance that we can offer as church leaders and preachers. 

But let us think through the role we will play before the success of any global coup confronts us.  And in the next post, the penultimate one, I will offer a few brief applicational pointers to consider.

Peter Mead, mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. He blogs at Biblical Preaching.