NAZI GERMANY – NAZI AMERICA!

I am always studying history. Especially, history about the last 150 years, and too, history dealing with the last two world wars. Richard Evans, in his book "The Coming of the Third Reich," points out that there is a whole list of things that happened in Germany after World War I that can be applied to America today.    From around 1920 to 1933, the parallels between the two nations are uncanny! With the removal of the Kaiser from Germany, the Germans established what was called the Weimar Republic, which was an attempt to put into place democracy. But because of all of the internal political changes, it failed, and Hitler was able to take over the nation and turn it into a social Dictatorship. Here is a partial list.    (1) Anti-Semitism. America is moving this way, as was Germany and Austria, even before the influence of Hitler. When Hitler gained full power, it became evident that World War II would be about ridding Germany of the Jewish people.    (2) Massive and fast moving financial inflation. In the early 20s, for a brief period of time, it took a tub of money just to buy a loaf of bread!    (3) The printing presses could not keep up with the producing of money to try to outrace the inflation. By 1922 it took 1,000 marks to buy one US dollar!    (4) The government stood by and supported the labor unions in labor disputes. A Grand Coalition was established by the government with full relief promised the unions to help them out of certain crises.    (5) Employees were forced to pay into the government higher taxes in order to support the unions in case of a depression. The tax burden on business was overwhelming!    (6) "Contributions to the unemployment benefit scheme launched in 1927 were seen as crippling. The industrialists' national organization announced its view that the country could no longer afford to pay in to the fund. This was breaking business so that they could no longer function."    (7) German traditional music was replaced with immoral jazz that began to demoralize the young people of the country.    (8) Cocaine and Morphine "was liberally sprinkled with transvestites and homosexuals in the night clubs and cabarets." Shows with naked dancers were common, especially in Berlin. The clubs were famous as "supermarkets of eroticism." One leading music critic, Alfred Einstein, called some of the music "the most disgusting treason against all occidental civilized music ever"!    (9) "Mass production held out the prospect of mass consumption, with the great department stores offering an astonishing variety of goods from other countries."    (10) The nation was split by age, the older against the younger who openly despised Christianity. "Anti-authoritarian political satire was aroused against Christianity and common morals." The average German felt alienated, not least by the new atmosphere of cultural and sexual freedom that followed the end of World War I. One veteran wrote that "promiscuity, shamelessness and corruption ruled supreme, and especially the young forgot the things that had made Germany great. Honor and honesty was gone, 'dragging everything into the dirt.'"    (11) Personal relationships, political commitment and self-sacrifice disappeared. Among the young people there was open hedonism. There followed the commercialization of leisure that was alienating many young people away from traditional Christian values.    (12) The rise of a large and vocal feminist movement had accustomed the public and the press to women speaking out to have their own immoral way in the world. March 8 was calling for an International Women's Day with demands for full sexual freedom, equal rights for unmarried mothers and for the providing of free contraceptives.    (13) The rise of secular psychology became popular, because of the early influence of Freud, with the tendency to ascribe sexual motives to human actions and desires. Secular psychology was the gospel fed to younger people in the high schools and the universities. This grew rapidly and dominated the society. This brought about social, sexual, and cultural subcultures, including a thriving gay and lesbian scene that worshipped freedom above common sense. "Pornographic books, films, and paintings became the norm and brought a moral disease to the German culture!"    (14) Social welfare began in order to help those who were handicapped, but in time, Germany became a welfare state. True welfare turned into entitlement.    (15) "Plans were made to erase the 'Christian' calendar and put into place a national German calendar that would honor past paganism, and German national issues." The purpose was to "restore" the natural development of German history that had been interrupted by the "alien" imposition of democracy. Christianity was tolerated as long as it had no influence on the culture and the people.    (16) Hitler's Third Reich "constituted a powerful symbolic link to the imagined greatness of the German past, embodied in the First Reich of Charlemagne and the Second of Bismarck." This past lifted up paganism in place of Christianity. This touched a meaningful nerve in the thinking of the Germans!    While not all of the above may be applicable to America presently, there are still a lot of parallels. Especially when Christianity is removed from the culture, the door is open for a nation to turn away from God and from what is right.    -- Dr. Mal Couch (Mar., 10)