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Why did the United States permit slavery for so long? Weren't we a Christian nation too? Why did the Chinese conquer and destroy the Tibetan way of life? Why did the Spaniards eradicate the Inca, Aztec, and Mayan cultures? What about Stalin's purges that killed tens of millions of Russians? Was what the Germans did any different other than scale and technology? The patterns of force and brutality exhibited by the human race is a constant theme throughout history. It will not change, but only become more brutally efficient as technology allows man to sanitize his ability to kill, persecute, and oppress.
and don't we villainize immigrants and want to "send them all home" many of whom are Catholic?
I think that issue is more like apples and oranges with the other issue (or at least it can be like apples and oranges). I don't think it is "un-Christian" to want to protect one's borders or to want to regulate immigration in a sensible way so that it doesn't become a "free-for-all". With that said, I will agree that vilifying immigrants and trampling upon their dignity is un-Christian. Even still, name calling hardly rises to the level of genocide.
Why did the United States permit slavery for so long? Weren't we a Christian nation too? Why did the Chinese conquer and destroy the Tibetan way of life? Why did the Spaniards eradicate the Inca, Aztec, and Mayan cultures? What about Stalin's purges that killed tens of millions of Russians? Was what the Germans did any different other than scale and technology? The patterns of force and brutality exhibited by the human race is a constant theme throughout history. It will not change, but only become more brutally efficient as technology allows man to sanitize his ability to kill, persecute, and oppress.
Ok, that is a good argument. However, in at least some of those instances involving the Spaniards, both sides were armed, even if unevenly, and there was no deliberate attempt at genocide of the Indians, as far as I know. Stalin's USSR was atheistic in nature, which makes the morality behind killing an enigmatic issue. I am not sure about the Chinese suppression of the Tibetans, although this kind of thing does seem to be at odds with traditional Buddhist and/or Daoist teaching. The closest parallel to what the Germans did, IMO, is slavery in America. Why did Christians participate in it? I cannot say, but at the very least we can say that Christian Abolitionists were at the forefront of those who opposed it. In Germany, was there widespread opposition to the Nazis? I do realize there was some opposition, which was suppressed, but still... Far too many people, including the soldiers who participated in violence and killing, should have been trained in Christian morality. Were they simply afraid?
The reason I said what I did was to show how easy it is to villainize a certan group of people. In the case of Germany, their economy was so bad that they used the Jews as a scapegoat. Kristalnacht was pretty much cheered on by the citizens. Hate drives people to do irrational things and support irrational causes. Hitler just knew how to tap into that already existing hatred of Jews.
I am deploying my ten foot pole. Some things things are just too complex to ever fully understand. The Hitler phenomenon is not unique to Germany, just the most often cited. The actual big difference between Hitler and most dictators is that he actually tried to exterminate an “other” while most dictators settle on killing their own in job-lots in the process of consolidating and maintaining their own power. Think Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao for other contemporary examples.
A confluence of reasons:For young males, easily brainwashed otherwise, and females as well, he lathered his speeches with "blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh" and became their surrogate father. Many had lost theirs in WWI. As Eric Hoffer wrote in his once acclaimed The True Believer, the mediocre and failures find strength by identifying with a group ( or team as it may be here in the USA).An oath sworn by a German culturally is never to be broken. Hitler had the military swear a personal oath to him not to Germany.Greed -- confiscation of property.Social Darwinism and latent antisemitism.Cowardice. You see a half dozen brownshirts beating a single person, what can one do. I remember as a 9 year old boy no one protested in liberal San Francisco the internment of the Japanese.Put thugs in charge of prisoners.
