History helps us avoid repeating past mistakes, we are assured. What has gone before can inform us as we head into the uncharted waters of the future. The information remains rooted in our past. The contexts have changed. But people continue to be humans - susceptible to sins inherited and new, in control of new means and media that can be employed for good and evil. We are all graced by a heritage of faith, goodwill, compassion, justice and peace-making to nurture within us hope and promise, if we can open ourselves to those gifts.

Jesus was no naif. He understood the ways of the world. So to his friends and companions he offered the following words of wisdom: "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. So you must be clever as snakes, but as innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16) Being a friend and companion of Jesus is an art form that requires careful discernment, healthy suspicion, generosity of spirit, humility, and commitment to Shalom!

The current rise of extreme right wing groups and political leaders who flirt coyly with these groups to gain momentum toward governing is a worrisome growth in the wolf population. To be sure, totalitarianism of the right or left are evils that destroy the human spirit and breed fear and violence in society. Today's threat comes from the right - again.

History helps us assess the kind of impact radical right-wing voices have had on their nations and on the world around them. I was born in August days when World War II in Europe was nearing its end and allies were preparing to bomb dykes to flood my natal island Walcheren aiming to impede German forces' movement. German soldiers obeying their Nazi leader (der Fuehrer) Adolf Hitler had occupied The Netherlands since May 1940, when they bombed Rotterdam and Middelburg, my birth city. Most of them, including the two officers quartered in our manse home, were readying themselves by packing suitcases for the return to their homeland - they hoped.

The story of Germany's occupation of The Netherlands is part of my genetic makeup. German history in the European context came to my attention naturally and academically. As supplement, twenty years later I spent a year at the University of Hamburg studying theology and was able to observe the vestiges of war's destruction. I was there as part of the mutual Canadian and German desire through student exchanges to rebuild relationships so badly infected by Nazi politics and aggression.

In subsequent years, I was active in the partnership between The United Church of Canada - Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU). This involved teams of visitors travelling to and from both countries. The goal was to foster understanding and build confidence with Christians in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) quietly but faithfully resisting under communist/Soviet rule - the direct consequence of Germany's failed Nazi leadership from 1933 to 1945.

On one of those exchanges, I visited the Ploetzensee Memorial Site in Berlin. This former prison had held several thousand political prisoners, where many were executed during the Nazi regime. It was since then transformed into a shrine to remember and learn - the Stauffenberg Street Memorial and Formation Centre opened on the 24th anniversary of the 20th of July 1944 attempt to remove Hitler. It features an ongoing exhibition interpreting the active political and religious resistance by Germans against the National Socialism (Nazism) regime. An information booklet provides a short version of the rise of Nazism and its consequences for any and all who opposed the Nazi reign of terror.

What follows in this Post #1 and subsequent posts are contents of the booklet translated/adapted by me from German to English. The story is gruesome, but the information written by thoughtful, truthful Germans is germane to any setting where democracy is under threat by totalitarian impulses, movements, and advocates.

The blood of resisters can become for us the seeds of new life for friends and companions of Jesus committed democratic values and respect for the entire human family in Creation.
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Terror
Immediately after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the German Reich heading a coalition cabinet in which the National Socialists [Nazis] did not have the majority, the terror of the SA brownshirts began.

At the same time on January 30, 1933 as the "Fuehrer" was being celebrated with endless torchlight parades, the attack commandos of the brownshirt Sturm Abteilung (SA) [storm troopers /paramilitaries of the Nazi Party] raged through the streets, forced their way into homes, and beat up their political opponents.

The first "private concentration camps" of the SA were set up. Here in Berlin, Columbia House in Tempelhof and the cellars of the former barracks in the General Pape Street were particularly notorious. Members of the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD), of the Black-Red-Gold Banner, of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), Socialist Workers Party (SAP), and others were dragged here without any legitimate detention orders and treated sadistically.

As early as 22 February 1933, the Prussian Interior Minister German Goering issued an ordinance that appointed the SA-thugs as auxiliary police!

As a result, ostensibly legitimized, the SA-men wearing brown uniforms with the nazi symbol and armbands marked "Auxiliary Police" resumed their terror equipped with pistols and rubber truncheons.

On 28 February 1933, one day after the Reichstag fire, Hitler made the old Reich President Paul von Hindenburg sigh "The Ordinance for the Protection of the People and State." This emergency ordinance lifted "until further notice" (i.e. till the capitulation on 5 August 1945), Article 114 (liberty of the person), 115 (inviolability of one's residence), 116 (mail and telephone confidentiallity), 118 (right of free expression, including press freedom), 124 (coalition freedom), and 153 (protection of private property).

Then the KPD was wiped out, the SPD prohibited, and,following the celebrations of the 1st of May 1933, trade unions were eliminated.

All the other political parties of the Weimar Republic dissolved more or less voluntarily. Barely a half year after Hitler became Chancellor - on 14 July 1933 - the law "against forming new parties" was enacted. Only one party remained - the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). [I.e. the Nazi party].

Other democratic institutions of the German Reich were dissolved or "brought into line". Civil servants who were democratically inclined were fired and replaced by Nazis.

To persecute non-conformers, Goering already in April of 1933 created the Secret State Police (Gestapo), which reported to Himmler and Heydrich for all Germany. They conducted their activities with no controls, totally arbitrarily, with no recourse for protest. Their informers network gave rise to an atmosphere of wide-spread mistrust. Simple suspicion that someone was opposed or might become an opponent of the Nazi state was enough to land a person in a concentration camp for preventive custody, with no recourse to legal due process. During the war that became - as one of Heydrich's decrees called it: "earning for enemies of the state a self-inflicted special treatment" (i.e. execution).

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There are many lessons even in just this partial account of the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany. The first and obvious one is that politicians motivated by and expressing more hatred than good-will are not to be trusted to pursue the well-being and common good of the jurisdiction they wish to lead. Hitler was quite clear in his "Mein Kampf" what his government agenda was to be. People said, Oh well, his harsh ways and violent language pre-election will give way to a more considered way of speaking and acting when in government. Wrong! His words and actions became even more violent and destructive as we saw above.

There was no attempt to honour the intended reality that he was to become the Chancellor of all Germany and all its people. Those who did not fit into his distorted view of what it meant to be German were deemed unacceptable and eventually enemies of the state.

We have heard echoes of this phenomenon in our time!

The second lesson: the law is foundational to the functioning of a society. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects us all and needs to be upheld by all. The "notwithstanding clause" is a chink in the armour of the CRF permitting politicians to infringe on and suspend Charter rights. This is dangerous and all must work to restrict the use of this clause born of compromise. Similarly any signs of political interference in the administration of justice must be challenged. Hitler had his own party judges and he put them into power removing those judges who wouldn't bow to his prejudices and political agenda. The judiciary must be chosen on the basis of merit - not political connections - and must retain its freedom to judge independent of the government of the day.

We have heard echoes of this concern in our time as well.

more to come in subsequent blogs.....