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Of Pardoning War Criminals: Trump and the Consequences Of Ignoring Justice

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

There are reports that this Memorial Day weekend that President Trump will Pardon convicted or accused War Criminals, men whose conduct dishonored the military and the country, men whose fellow soldiers, Marines, or Sailors have voluntarily testified against. These men murdered prisoners and committed other crimes forbidden by the law of war. If he does so this weekend it will be the ultimate betrayal of the military by the Commander in Chief.

When Richard Nixon Pardoned Lieutenant William Calley, convicted of leading his platoon in the deadliest atrocity committed by American Troops in the Vietnam War at a village called My Lai. His men’s butchery had to be stopped by an American helicopter and its crew who interposed their bird between Carley’s men and other potential victims, and threatened to shoot at Calley’s men. The crime was initially covered up by Calley’s chain-of-command. Eventually it became public and the Army was forced to deal with it. Of all the officers charged and soldiers charged, only Calley was convicted. It took thirty years for the military to award the heroes who stopped the massacre.

In the six degrees of separation I am just twice removed from My Lai, two times. In my MSIII, junior year of Army ROTC in the Fall of 1981. My instructor was Major Barry Towne, during the investigation he was Commanding part of the security force. He told us what kind of criminal element that Calley and his platoon was. Calley’s defense at Court Martial was that “he was just following orders.”

Major Towne told us of its effect on the troops, the public, and the war. He told us that we would be war criminals if we ever allowed that to happen under my command. So I knew one of the Officers with first hand knowledge of the crime and the crime scene. Then, in June of 1998 while serving as the Garrison Chaplain at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania I did the funeral of Calley’s Brigade Commander, Colonel Oran Henderson. He was acquitted of all charges including the cover-up which he began the day of the massacre. At the time I didn’t know his fully complicity in the massacre. Telford Taylor, one of the Senior American prosecutors at Nuremberg “wrote that legal principles established at the war crimes trials could have been used to prosecute senior American military commanders for failing to prevent atrocities such as the one at My Lai.” Those included Generals, and many other senior officers.

President Nixon commuted Calley’s prison time to House Arrest, and in September 1974 Calley was pardoned by the Secretary of the Army. That man said he did it because Calley really did believe that he was following orders.

So if the President begins pardoning War criminals it will be a watershed from which there will be no going back, unless the Generals and Admirals protest. If course if they do, Trump will replace them with men who will go all the way, and his base, especially his allegedly pro-life Christians, who believe that he has been ordained by God to Make America Great Again.

Just before the invasion of Poland Hitler told his military commanders:

“I shall give a propagandist cause for starting war -never mind whether it be plausible or not. The victor shall not be asked later on whether we told the truth or not. In starting and making a war, it is not the right that matters, but victory.”

In May 1941, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel disseminated the Barbarossa Decree in the name of Adolf Hitler which absolved German Soldiers from war crimes, even those against German law. Army Group and Army Commanders had the authority to be more severe than Keitel’s order. The Severity Order issued by Field Marshal Walter Reichenau of Army Group, Commander of 6th Army. That order stated:



Other Wehrmacht Commanders wrote similar orders, unleashing the beast in their soldiers and classifying their enemies as less than human, a typical charge leveled at racial and religious minorities, as well as immigrants, and potential enemies by the President.

General Erich Hoepner issued this order to his soldiers of Panzer Group Four, Later known as the 4th Panzer Army:


Unopposed Pardons will release unprecedented evil by otherwise honorable men who either believer that they are just following orders or approved by God through the words of their leader.

I take this very seriously. War Crimes are war crime whether committed by Nazis, Communists, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, or American soldiers. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who organized the Nuremberg Trials and prosecuted the leading Nazis noted before the trials began:


If Trump Pardons these men he will be spitting in the face of American and International Justice. He will be blessing war crimes and if there is no push back from the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Regional Combatant Command Commanders we are doomed to repeat what criminal regimes have done. We will be a rogue and outcast nation whose word will not be believed, and whose military members will be considered criminals, even if they serve honorably and have never committed any crimes. Ask any Vietnam Veteran if you don’t believe me. I wasn’t a Vietnam veteran, but my dad was. When I enlisted and joined the ROTC program at UCLA I had a man come out from nowhere and start screaming at me “off campus ROTC Nazi!”

I haven’t forgotten that. I was a kid when Calley committed his crimes. I had never fired a shot in anger, and my primary focus of study over the previous year had been the guilt of the Nazis and their genocidal policies. What leaders do matters, and there is no escaping that, especially if you volunteer to serve in the military.

These are big issues and cannot be allowed to go unnoticed. The rot begins in the head of the fish. We are well on our way to to becoming a criminal and outlaw nation, something our Founders thought they had prevented by devising our system of government, a system intentionally designed to limit the powers of the Executive.

This does matter. If Trump Pardons these men and there is no push back from the Senior Commanders I would advise no one to enlist or take a commission in the United States military, and I have almost 38 years of service in the Army and Navy to prove my devotion to the Constitution and Country, including combat tours in which I was shot at and was in danger on a daily basis. As a historian, priest, and officer I cannot be silent if the President Pardons War criminals. The very thought is abhorrent to my nature.

Until tomorrow,


Padre Steve+



Filed under ethics, History, holocaust, iraq,afghanistan, laws and legislation, leadership, Military, national security, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

The Führerprinzip: Trump, the GOP, and 2019

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,









So until tomorrow,


Padre Steve+

1 Comment


What Do We Stand For? Hard Questions in the Trump Era from Judgement at Nuremberg


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have written about the classic film Judgment at Nuremberg many times. I am doing it again because I have been doing a lot of reading about some of the other war crimes trials conducted in post-World War II Germany, today I began reading Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States by Bradley Hart.

Today I am following those earlier writings up with another, albeit, short post regarding one of the most riveting monologues in film history, from Judgement at Nuremberg. Since Holocaust Remembrance Day was just a couple of weeks back it is appropriate to take the time, and never forget, for while we may not want to admit it, as human beings we are capable of the same inhumanity.

In this segment of the film, which is a fictionalized version of the Judges Trial, Spencer Tracy plays the role of Chief Judge Dan Heywood who gives his verdict is one of the most telling sequences in cinema regarding what it means to be an American. I used to show it in the first session of my military ethics class at the Staff College and since the majority of my students had never seen the film, it usually left them in silence. So tonight I am just going to leave it with you to watch, read, and contemplate. Ask yourself, who are we, and what do we stand for?

This is especially true when the President, politicians of the majority party in the legislature, pundits, and politically minded preachers make no bones that they have every intent of persecuting those who are of certain races, religions, or political beliefs that they abhor, often using the most scurrilous charges, and outright lies in order to demonize them, dehumanize them, and  open the door for normal, decent, and even brilliant people to justify government sponsored cruelty and injustice that defies the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the Constitution itself.

Please, watch the video and read the text. Ponder it in your heart, because it speaks to something that is not a historical aberration, not just a dramatic film, but something that affects the human condition and is present right here and right now in our own country.








Think about it…

Have a nice night.


Padre Steve+


Filed under History, holocaust, movies, nazi germany, News and current events

They Thought They Were Free: Some Things Never Change, Totalitarianism and Support for Evil

they thought they were free

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

One of the most powerful books I have ever read was Milton Mayer’s “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945.” Mayer was a visiting professor at the University of Frankfurt in the 1950s and lived in a small Hessian town near the city. The book is about the relationships that he built with ten ordinary citizens in the town and how they lived under Nazism and how most saw little wrong with it in the end.

The book is well worth the read and very timely when one compares the attitudes of the men who became Mayer’s friends and many people in the United States today. The last few chapters of the book are a reflection of the author’s opinions of the future of Germany at the time of his writing and he was mistaken on how the Germans would eventually become a society that embraced democracy and rejected authoritarianism (at the time he felt that it was very possible that democracy would fail in Germany,) they do not take away anything from the heart of the book and its message about how people adjust to authoritarian rule.

One chapter in particular struck me, it was a conversion that Mayer had with a colleague at the University who also reflected what it was like to live in the Third Reich and how in doing so he compromised himself and lost the opportunity to resist when resistance might have changed the course of events as Germany proceeded down the road to dictatorship and destruction. The chapter is particularly painful to read as the man understood that he should have known better but didn’t recognize the warning signs of the gradual nature of how life was changing with each new law or dictate from the Fuhrer.

In reading the chapter I see parallels in American society today. There are the Trump loyalists, many of who openly call for restrictions of liberty and crushing opposition to the President’s policies using extra-constitutional means including violence. Many are quite extreme while others, persuaded by years of right-wing talk radio, politically charged sermons by their pastors, and the daily dose of Fox News believe everything said by the President even when confronted by facts. Then there are Trump’s opponents, but many of the opponents are divided and cannot get along with each other. Some of these opponents actually helped Trump into office by circulating the Russian anti-Clinton conspiracy theories and falsehoods throughout the campaign. Each of these groups probably composes about 25-30% of the electorate each. The remaining segment are the people who simply go with the flow because life is too busy and crisis laden to get too deeply enmeshed in the political debate, and many have become so cynical that they see no difference in either side and are much more concerned about making it in a still uncertain economy.

So I invite you to read this and draw your own conclusions. Have a great day.


Padre Steve+

Chapter 13: But Then It Was Too Late




“You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.”

“Those,” I said, “are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’”





“Yes,” I said.










I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

“I can tell you,” my colleague went on, “of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.”

“And the judge?”

“Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don’t know.”

I said nothing.

“Once the war began,” my colleague continued, “resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’ You assumed that there were lists of those who would be ‘dealt with’ later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a ‘victory orgy’ to ‘take care of’ those who thought that their ‘treasonable attitude’ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

“Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany’s losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it.”

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 166-73 of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. (Footnotes and other references included in the book may have been removed from this online version of the text.)


Filed under ethics, History, holocaust, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Re-Thinking the Unthinkable: When Trump and His Followers Refuse to Give up Power


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This is the first article I have written in the wake of the release of the Mueller Report, the actions of Attorney General Barr, and the defiant words of the President and his loyal supporters.

For those that rejoiced in the continued revelations of President Trump’s malfeasance and incompetence hoping that this will soon trigger his removal either by impeachment or the use of the 25th Amendment, including me were wrong.

Back on May 18th Of 2017 I wrote these words on this blog:

“be assured that unless something totally unexpected occurs that this will not end soon, nor well.

Donald Trump is a unique creature in American politics, he has succeeded in establishing himself as the center of a political cult that has taken over the Republican Party. Despite his overall approval ratings consistently being below 40% with terrible numbers pertaining to his basic character and trustworthiness, well over 80% of Republicans in every poll continue to support him. They reject any fact that is contrary to what they believe about their leader, and they tend to support the most unconstitutional aspects of his ill-defined political ideology, which more resembles the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip than anything from the American political tradition. They abhor those who raise objections of any kind based on fact so much that they have gone resorted to repeating what they sometimes refer to as alternative facts or alternative truths.

Guided by an uncompromising propaganda network of talk radio and television hosts as well as internet based organizations they have little loyalty to anyone but the President. This mass movement supported by such propaganda is well described by the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer who wrote:


This is the world of alternative facts, and the prelude to dictatorship if the trend is allowed to continue. Likewise the true believers, those who follow the President as if he were some sort of Messiah intent on destroying the old order and establishing a new will not stand easily aside. Their support for the President is much deeper than normal political attachment, he is an extension of them who gives voice to their innermost fears, passions, and insecurity. They are defiant in their stand against those that he is against. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote of how the language of their leader and his propaganda works in the minds of the followers:

“Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler’s language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles (the president says winning), and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel).”  


Thus they cannot be convinced by normal argument or fact. Hoffer noted:


Even when everything comes apart around them and their leader collapses they cannot admit that he was deceiving them. At the end of the war a German soldier told Victor Klemperer that “Hitler has never lied, I believe the Fuhrer.” Snyder writes: “The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your voice.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.”

The man is not normal, he is not stable, and he knows nothing but conflict. His followers believe in him almost as a Messiah figure who cannot be wrong and must be defended to the last and experience has shown us that some of would resort to violence to silence his critics.

Like Hitler and other despots, he and his most loyal followers see this as a fight to the finish which Trump which he must win or be defeated. It is a zero sum conflict, and I do not expect it to end well, even if Trump is eventually removed by impeachment or the 25th Amendment.”

Let us also add losing the 2020 election to that list. With Trump and his followers relentless attacks on Congress, individual political opponents in Congress, presidential candidates, State officials, judges, the FBI and members of the Justice Department, distinguished journalists, entertainers and sports figures, for that matter anyone who speaks the truth or attempts to uphold the law and Constitution; the likelihood that he will not leave office, or will attempt to find a way to secure a permanent way to stay in office. Mind you, there are many ways he could do this, and possibly secure the approval of a majority of Americans.

Many, if not most of his supporters believe that his Presidency is divinely ordained. When people believe that their leaders are backed by God they are capable of great evil. One only has to look to history and the link between religion and political repression to see this.

Timothy Snyder wrote in his book On Tyranny:

“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.”

So until tomorrow,


Padre Steve+


Filed under Loose thoughts and musings, nazi germany, Political Commentary

“To Be Ignorant of What Occurred Before…” The Willful Ignorance Of History


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have been writing a lot about the Holocaust of late and as I was working on my latest book I came across a quote by British Historian Laurence Rees from his book “Auschwitz, a New History:

“Soon the last survivor and the last perpetrator from Auschwitz will have joined those murdered at the camp. There will be no one on this earth left alive who has a personal experience of the place. When that happens, there is a terrible danger that this history will merge into the distant past and just become one terrible event among many…. But that should not be allowed to happen.

We must judge behavior by the context of the times, and judged by the context of mid-twentieth century, sophisticated European culture, Auschwitz and the Nazis’ “Final Solution” represent the lowest act in all history. Through their crime, the Nazis brought into the world an awareness of what educated, technologically advanced human beings can do – as long as they possess a cold heart. Once allowed into the world, knowledge of what they did must not be unlearned. It lies there – ugly, inert, waiting to be discovered by each new generation. A warning for us, and for those who will come after. (Rees, Auschwitz p.299)

I have been reading about the declining number of students studying history, and the relative ignorance of Americans as a whole as to history, including the gross and willful ignorance of it by the President. As a historian that frightens me.

The great Roman philosopher and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote, “History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquities.”

Those who follow my writings here on this site know that I am a historian and that much of what I write, even regarding current events, is framed by history and the stories of those who came before us. That is one of my driving passions, a passion for historical truth, and a passion to ensure that the past is not forgotten.

Cicero is an important figure in history. He resisted the moves toward the dictatorship of the Caesars and would die for his belief in the Republic. As such he inspired the founders of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Adams wrote of the Roman:


Sadly, it seems that our society, and even our education system is disconnecting itself from history. We have pretty much stopped teaching history in schools, and often what is taught is myth. As such we have become a society that through its ignorance of the past is ever repeating the worst aspects of our history. As a whole we are ignorant of our past, and that ignorance is demonstrated by many of our political, business, journalism, educational, and military leaders on a daily basis.


Our lives must be woven together with those who came before us, without that sacred connection to the past, we endanger the future, and doom those who follow us. Cicero wrote, “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” Thus, it is for us the living to remember and never forget those who have gone before. That is why I write.

At some point I will write more on things that Cicero wrote and said, including political and social lessons that are as relevant today as when he wrote them, but as historian George Santayana noted: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I fear that the President and his sycophants in the GOP and his Cult like followers in their ignorance of history and willful disregard for the Constitution and our institutions will end in the kind of political disaster that brought an end to the Roman Republic.

These are perilous times and I am afraid that the lessons of Cicero, Santayana, and Rees have not been learned.

Until tomorrow,


Padre Steve+


Filed under History, holocaust, News and current events, philosophy, Political Commentary

Ordinary Men and Genocide: Massacre at Babi Yar

babi yar

Massacre at Babi Yar

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Anyone who follows my writing know I write a lot about the Holocaust and the war crimes perpetuated by the Nazi State. I began studying this as an undergraduate and graduate level history student at California State University at Northridge under Dr. Helmut Heussler, who served as a wartime interrogator for the 82nd Airborne Division during the Second World War and then as an interpreter at the Major War Crime trials at Nuremberg.  I studied under him for three years dealing with the end of Imperial Germany, the German Civil War, the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. He gave me a lot of freedom to explore and research the subject and allowed me to do that research in undergraduate and graduate level independent study projects. I continued that study personally as well as during seminary and my second Master’s Degree in Military History.

Since I read, speak and write German well and can often pass myself off as German in Germany because of my lack of an American accent when speaking the language. I speak German with a blend of a Bavarian and Hessen dialect and that helps when I visit various Holocaust sites, museums, and research centers in Germany. I will be doing some of that again this fall when I make another trip to Munich, Hessen, and Baden-Wurttemberg. About a year ago I spent five hours at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. contemplating things that I mostly already knew while exploring details of the Holocaust that made it more real and personal.

As part of my academic work at the Joint Forces Staff College I taught military ethics as related to the Just War Theory. In the class on jus post bellum or justice after war I dealt with the implication of participating in war crimes. It is a serious subject and in the class I attempted to make my students, all relatively senior officers from the United States and allied nations as uncomfortable as possible. I used a number of examples from the major war crimes trials at Nuremberg as well as the Generals Trial and I used the film Conspiracy, which is about the Wannsee Conference where mostly mid-level officers and bureaucrats hashed out the coordination of the Endlosung or Final Solution to what Nazis euphemistically called “the Jewish Question.” 

When I was teaching there I would go through previous notes and research to teach my students. Whenever I did this I felt a tenseness and revulsion for the actions of those that ordered, committed or condoned these crimes; many of whom were like me, professional military officers, historians, and theologians. So I realize how easily it is for normal, rational, and even basically decent people to succumb to either participating in or turning a blind eye to crimes against others, even on a massive scale.  In fact the bigger those crimes are they seem easier for some people to dismiss, because the victims cease be human, and simply a statistic. Sadly, Josef Stalin probably got human nature right when he said “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” That comment causes great revulsion in my soul, but I have to admit it seems to be the way that many people deal with such great crimes.

September 29th 2018 was the 77th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre. It was committed by members of the SS Einsatzgruppen C near Kiev shortly after the German Army captured that city. 33,771 Jews were exterminated by the members of Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppen C as well as members of a number of Ordungspolizei, police battalions supported by the logistics and protection of the German Army. About 10,000 others, mainly Communist Officials and Gypsies were rounded up and killed in the same operation. The victims were stripped of all of their belongings taken to a ravine and shot. It was the second largest killing action by the various Einsatzgruppen in the war. The killings were done up close and personal. The men who conducted the operation either believed that the people that they were killing were sub-human, or did not have the courage to stand up and say no.

These issues are still with us and as I watch the rise of Right Wing and other Fascist movements in Russia, Europe, and the United States I get very concerned. But even more concerning are the large number of people who are content to dismiss their threats and violence, often because while too respectable to utter their words themselves they secretly condone their race hatred. Hannah Arendt made the comment that “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Of course these are uncomfortable subjects. When I tell friends of the places that I have visited and studies I have done quite a few openly tell me that they find the subject so uncomfortable hat they could not visit those places. These friends span the political spectrum, just as did the people who said nothing or willingly followed orders to commit genocide in Nazi Germany.

We like to say that the Nazis were different than us or others. To some extent this is true, but the real truth is that most of the Christian Western European countries, and I include the United States have also committed gross crimes against humanity against peoples that we believed were less than human and not afforded human rights or protections. In the movie Judgement at Nuremberg Spencer Tracy makes a comment that should send chills through any of us. He spoke concerning one of the judges on trial, “Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe.But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination….”

What happened at Babi Yar is just one example of how civilized people can get can commit great atrocities in the name of ideology and race, and it does not stand alone. The tragic fact is that it really doesn’t take much to condition people to go commit such crimes; just teach people from childhood that people of certain races or religions are less than human. Then subjugate them to incessant propaganda and then turn them loose using the pretext that they are killing terrorists, insurgents, or other enemies of the state. Dr Timothy Snyder wrote:


The coming series of articles deal with the ideological as well as military reasons that brought about Babi Yar and so many other atrocities committed by the Nazis during the campaigns in Poland and the Soviet Union. I will probably intersperse other articles as the need arises but there will be five more sections to this series.

By the way, if you haven’t noticed over the past two years anti-Semitic incidents have skyrocketed in the United States. The attacks on two synagogues in the United States have been attacked by neo-Nazis in the past six months is just the beginning. Thousands of other incidents have taken place, physical attacks, harassment, and vandalism of synagogues, Jewish schools, and cemeteries.

So until tomorrow,


Padre Steve+

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Filed under History, holocaust, nazi germany, Political Commentary, White nationalism, world war two in europe