The head of the National Socialist Workers’ Party, Adolph Hitler, became Chancellor of Germany, January 30, 1933, and began implementing a plan of universal healthcare, with no regard for conscience.
The New York Times reported October 10, 1933:
“Nazi Plan to Kill Incurables to End Pain; German Religious Groups Oppose Move…
The Ministry of Justice…explaining the Nazi aims regarding the German penal code, today announced its intentions to authorize physicians to end the sufferings of the incurable patient…in the interest of true humanity…”
The New York Times continued:
“The Catholic newspaper Germania hastened to observe: ‘The Catholic faith binds the conscience of its followers not to accept this method.’…In Lutheran circles, too, life is regarded as something that God alone can take…
Euthanasia…has become a widely discussed word in the Reich…No life still valuable to the State will be wantonly destroyed.”
When Germany’s economy suffered, expenses had to be cut from the national healthcare plan, such as keeping alive handicapped, insane, chronically ill, elderly and those with dementia.
They were considered “lebensunwertes leben”-life unworthy of life.
Then criminals, convicts, street bums, beggars and gypsies, considered “leeches” on society, met a similar fate.
Eventually, to rid the human gene pool of what Nazi’s considered “untermensch” -under mankind, Hitler’s immoral plan sent 6 million Jews, along with millions of others, to the holocaust gas chambers and ovens.
U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated in 1977:
“When the first 273,000 German aged, infirm and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from that medical profession…and it was not far from there to Auschwitz.”
British Journalist Malcolm Muggeridge explained:
“We have…for those that have eyes to see, an object lesson in what the quest for ‘quality of life’ without reference to ‘sanctity of life’ can involve…
The origins of the Holocaust lay, not in Nazi terrorism…but in…Germany’s acceptance of euthanasia and mercy-killing as humane and estimable.”
The German Reichstag (Capitol building) was set on fire under suspicious conditions, after which Hitler forced old military leaders to retire.
He accused political opponents, then had them arrested and shot.
An SA Oberführer warned of an ordinance by the provisional Bavarian Minister of the Interior:
“The deadline set…for the Surrender of Weapons will expire on March 31, 1933. I therefore request the immediate surrender of all arms…
Whoever does not belong to one of these named units (SA, SS, and Stahlhelm) and…keeps his weapon without authorization or even hides it, must be viewed as an enemy of the national government and will be held responsible without hesitation and with the utmost severity.”
Heinrich Himmler, head of Nazi S.S. (“Schutzstaffel”-Protection Squadron), stated:
“Germans who wish to use firearms should join the S.S. or the S.A. Ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State.”
When a suspected homosexual youth shot a Nazi diplomat in Paris, it was used as an excuse to confiscate all firearms from Jews.
German newspapers printed, November 10, 1938:
“Jews Forbidden to Possess Weapons By Order of SS Reichsführer Himmler, Munich…
‘Persons who, according to the Nürnberg law, are regarded as Jews, are forbidden to possess any weapon. Violators will be condemned to a concentration camp and imprisoned for a period of up to 20 years.'”
The New York Times, November 9, 1938, reported:
“The Berlin Police…announced that…the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been ‘disarmed’ with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.”
In his early political career, Hitler said he was Christian, but once in power he began to reveal his nazified social Darwinism beliefs and became openly hostile toward Christianity.
Of the Waffengesetz (Nazi Weapons Law), March 18, 1938, Hitler stated at a dinner talk, April 11, 1942 (Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, 2nd Edition, 1973, p. 425-6, translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens):
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing…
So let’s not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt stated of Hitler, December 15, 1941:
“Government to him is not the servant…of the people but their absolute master and the dictator of their every act…
The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which seemed to the Founders of the Republic inalienable, were, to Hitler and his fellows, empty words…
Hitler advanced: That the individual human being has no rights whatsoever in himself…no right to a soul of his own, or a mind of his own, or a tongue of his own, or a trade of his own; or even to live where he pleases or to marry the woman he loves;
That his only duty is the duty of obedience, not to his God, not to his conscience, but to Adolf Hitler…
His only value is his value, not as a man, but as a unit of the Nazi state…To Hitler, the church…is a monstrosity to be destroyed by every means.”
Some Church leaders resisted Hitler, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer, born FEBRUARY 4, 1906, studied in New York in 1930, where he met Frank Fisher, an African-American seminarian who introduced him to Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church.
He was inspired by African-American spirituals and the preaching of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., who helped Bonhoeffer turn “from phraseology to reality,” motivating him to stand up to injustice.
Bonhoeffer helped found the Confessing Church in Germany, which refused to be intimidated by Hitler into silence.
In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer rebuked nominal Christians:
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
Bonhoeffer stated in a 1932 sermon:
“The blood of martyrs might once again be demanded, but this blood, if we really have the courage and loyalty to shed it, will not be innocent, shining like that of the first witnesses for the faith. On our blood lies heavy guilt, the guilt of the unprofitable servant.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned Germans not to slip into the cult of Führer (leader) worship, as he could turn out to be a Verführer (mis-leader, seducer).
Jimmy Carter wrote in his book Sources of Strength, 1997:
“Rev. Niebuhr urged Dietrich Bonhoeffer to remain in America for his own safety. Bonhoeffer refused. He felt he had to be among the other Christians persecuted in Germany.
So he returned home, and…in resistance to Hitler…preached publicly against Nazism, racism, and anti-semitism…
Bonhoeffer was finally arrested and imprisoned.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer died April 9, 1945, just a few days before the allied armies liberated Germany. He was executed on orders of Heinrich Himmler. He died a disciple and a martyr.”
Jimmy Carter concluded:
“The same Holy Spirit…that gave Bonhoeffer the strength to stand up against Nazi tyranny is available to us today.”
Bonhoeffer challenged:
“To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ”
On February 16, 2002, Dr. James Dobson told the National Religious Broadcasters:
“Those of you who feel that the church has no responsibility in the cultural area…
What if it were 1943 and you were in Nazi Germany and you knew what Hitler was doing to the Jews…Would you say, ‘We’re not political-that’s somebody else’s problem’?”
Dobson concluded:
“I thank God Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not give that answer, and he was arrested by the Nazis and hanged in 1945, naked and alone because he said, ‘This is not right.'”
William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker, best-selling author, and president of Amerisearch, Inc., a publishing company dedicated to researching America’s noble heritage.
To learn more about the author please visit William Federer
Featured image: Courtesy of the German Federal Archive
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