In Germany, you were required to affiliate with a religion, whether you were religious or not. Although there a few religious leaders who openly supported the Nazis, the vast majority did not and most of them were interned for a period of time or murdered. Once you are operating under a dictator, and life became hard during war, as you said, people tried to lay low, not be conspicuous. Where is the proof that leading up to the war, ministers were calling for the death of Jews? I am no expert here, but I imagine hundreds if not thousands of Christians tried to help hide jewish citizens.

So now "God be with you" means one is a Nazi?

Believe whatever you like, but your reasoning is convoluted to say the least.

You can have the last word.

Fine, but do the math. If most Germans were Christians, and most Nazis were German, there is a considerable overlap of Nazis who were Christian, as there were Christians who joined the Nazi party. They were not two hermetically sealed-off entities. A is A. Nowadays when people meet, even total strangers, they extend the greeting, "Gruess Gott."

Thank you, KH. I'm glad to be here. I appreciate interacting with stimulating minds. You have gathered an awesome group of people here. I couldn't ask for a better peer review group for my theories, and to find people I can admire.

wow puzzlelady. what an amazing and heartbreaking story. I'm glad you're here and we know you

And I stand by my statement that the Christians did not perpetrate the Holocaust; the Nazis did.

I am not defending them. I am merely reporting how religious people can be drawn into massive evil through motivation by their leaders. And I want to mitigate the currently propagated view that all Muslims are evil, by recalling that history's greatest evil, the Holocaust, was the work of Christians, not to mention the Spanish Inquisition.

I stand by my original statement that the Holocaust was perpetrated by Christians; by whatever division into Protestant and Catholic is immaterial. Most people had religious affiliations. They "went along" with obedience to the Fuhrer. The common greeting people used with each other was "Heil Hitler". That expression disappeared overnight when Germany surrendered and Hitler died, to the relief of many. Saying "Heil Hitler" was a duty, not a desire. Germans were ruled by their religion and indoctrinated sense of duty to obey. Duty uber alles.

All right, since you asked, here are the bare bones.

We were Hungarian refugees from the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1944. My parents and I fled to Germany on a moment's notice and got out on the last train before they closed the borders, abandoning everything in our home except for what we could carry. We went to Fuerth (Kissinger's birthplace), where my aunt lived. Her husband was a German soldier recently killed in action. She was made to do hard physical work in a factory, although her profession was prima ballerina and ballet teacher. People do whatever it takes to survive. The strong message for survival was to obey, to say little, to blend in, to obey. We never heard about death camps, only that Jews were to be deported out of the country. No one said why.

I have very clear memories of what we experienced, although as a 5-year-old I had no detailed understanding of the politics. I knew we had documentation to prove we had no Jewish ancestry for at least two generations. Part of our family were Catholic and part Protestant. My mother's family were landed gentry. My father's family were teachers; he was an engineer.

My aunt's apartment was next to the railroad tracks, which were heavily bombed. After each bombing raid, the people would go out with washtubs to see what they could salvage in the debris while the night sky was aglow with the sparks of cinders. The building in which we lived, and in whose basement we spent many nights when air raid sirens blared, was the only one left standing, its several neighbors on both sides collapsed.

My father managed to get us out of the city and into the Bavarian countryside. It was supposed to be far away from the action but ended up as the final front. We were hiding out in a bunker dug into a hill with about 100 other people and could not come out for 5 days and nights, until the day Germany surrendered. Wounded soldiers were brought in daily. My mother would try to shield my eyes from the sight of their blood. We slept on our suitcases. Slop buckets substituted for toilets and were carried in and out periodically. The stench was unbearable. I contracted TB but was not diagnosed until the following year.

After the bunker episode we lived in the attic room of a farm house, sleeping on burlap bags of straw. Americans came in convoys. We children ran alongside them to pick up cigarette butts. They befriended us children and gave us candy and sometimes a whole cigarette. Each kid and soldier just picked each other out as special buddies, even though none spoke the other's language. I learned German from the other kids. There was a great shortage of food, and my father would stand in line from 3AM on just to get a head of cabbage brought in from the farms. People were quietly cooperative and disciplined, no stealing or looting. Black marketeering, most likely, if one had anything to trade. Refugees had nothing.

My father offered his services to the Americans as an interpreter (he spoke 7 languages), and that saved us. We went back to Fuerth, where he continued to work for the Americans until our emigration to the U.S. in 1951. My first grade of school was set up in a former tavern because the military occupied all the school buildings. I then spent 7 months in a sanatorium in the Alps to be cured of TB. To cure all those childhood traumas took reading Rand.

agree

If you read carefully, you would have noticed that I was not referring to German Catholics.

Yes, Mr. Fawstin is an Objectivist. Check out his comics. Table For One is interesting.

I found it interesting that if you go to Mr. Fawstin's FB page, this comment is appended by him to the offending winning cartoon:

"A friend reminded me of this fitting Ayn Rand quote:

'Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority.'"

I know I've seen that quote elsewhere, and definitely here in The Gulch...another +10 for Mr. Fawstin.

Was this "personal experience" based on family stories of conflict between Nazi-backed Croatian Catholics against Communist-backed Serbian Orthodox? That I can believe, as those Balkan religious/ethnicities have been slaughtering each other for a thousand years or so, but don't distort the picture to include German or other Catholics.

Source? Actually, the biggest sin of the minority of Catholic German clergy was to do little to stand in the way of Hitler's onslaught against Jews. Pope Pious XII was trying to prevent the slaughter of Catholics by the Nazis, and advised to keep anti-Nazi activities out of public attention.

I'm aware of that, K. Lutherans, to be specific. I'm merely following Puzzlelady's reasoning.

Those were AWESOME! +1000

They will succeed so long as people continue to allow their responses to be determined by the terrorists' prompting, you are correct. As soon as we decide to determine our own destinies regardless of their antics, we win and they lose. Terrorists' power lies in invoking fear. When we cease to fear them, we gain tremendous power over them.

A famous man once said “He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.” I like that one because it emphasizes our own power over our reactions.

See my reply to drz. The vast majority of germans were protestant.

You have left us hanging. What are you willing to share about your experience?

I am having trouble finding sources which are consistent. I found this reference. Pay attention to the Nazi platform of 1920. It seems fairly clear it was used as a draw for voters. I 'm having difficulty with evidence that the catholic church persecuted protestants. Not saying this did not happen in Germany, just that according to this source the vast majority of Germans were protestant. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?...

So to follow your logic, Christians caused the Holocaust because most Germans were Catholic, Catholics are Christians, and since the Nazis were German we can deduce that Christians were the instigators.

With all due respect Puzzlelady, I'm not the one re-writing history, and I think that you should review your premise.

What would you like to know?

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