(continued from THE POPE thread :-)

Helmuth Huebner had a choice; Look where THAT got him...

(dead AND excommunicated!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2012 07:45PM by guynoirprivateeye.

It was pretty much required.

Too bad Uchtodorf wasn't a couple years older. He would have been a Hitler's Youth. Imagine the embarassment for the church there!

Being in the Hitler Youth was not the same thing as being in the SS. Remember, there were two parts of the Nazi party, the rank and file and the SS, who were considered party loyalist. Further complicating stuff was that there were then a couple more divisions of the SS for the actual military units that formed Hitlers private Army, then again within those units for the Death's Head SS which were the units entrusted with the Holocaust, and whom transferred at regular intervals from the front lines to their jobs at the camps, though I believe by the end of the war all regular SS military units were performing Holocaust assignments.

So, being Hitler Youth, did not mean you were a Nazi, while being a Nazi did not mean you were involved with the death camps, unless you were also a member of the SS.

However the hitler youth did idolize hitler. My college roommate's mother was a child in paris when the jackboots marched in. She saw only the propaganda and never wanted to believe that Hitler was a very bad man. She saw the man that children adored and who smiled when he got bouquets of flowers. Sick.

Remember, most of us only know Hitler from history. There is a reason why the philosophically opposing FDR, Churchill, and even Stalin were all idolized by their leaders, and it applies to Hitler too. This was the first time in history that mass media could bring a leader into your home, and all of these men excelled in using that phenomenon to make themselves an every day part of the national life. No one had ever seen anything like it before, and society as a whole had not developed the healthy skepticism that it not enjoys. In the case of the western leaders this was probably a good thing. However, in the hands of Stalin and Hitler, it allowed them to murder tens of millions of people.

for those who speak german or french
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hitlers+kinder&oq=hitlers+kinder&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=5915l7288l0l7399l8l8l0l7l0l0l93l93l1l1l0

I don't think you can make a blanket statement about the Hitler Youth. They pretty much had to join and I am sure there were varying opinions about a lot of things including Hitler.It is also a fact that many Germans had no idea of the atrocities Hiter was comitting. That was especially true of children.These were kids who were often parroting what they heard the adults say.

It was mandatory for every German to be a member of the Nazi party.

If you refused to become a member, you could not hold any job whatsoever during the 12 years that the Nazis were in power.

They fell into a trap of feeling special and wanting a savior. This led to giving him the powers he used against the Jews, other groups, and as much of the world as he could hold in his grasp.

The mormon church from SLC honored and supported Hitler. Church President Grant traveled to Germany and told the local branch to support him which they did. They hung a Nazi flag on their door and banned anyone with Jewish blood from participating in mormon services throughout the Nazi rein.

They elected Field Marshall Paul Von Hindenberg. Twice. During the initial election, then again during a run off election between the top 3 vote getters. Hitler came in a distant second in both elections.

The Nazi Party won a large number of seats in the Reichstag, which gave the party standing to demand Hitler be appointed to a high level cabinet position within the larger coalition government. In subsequent elections, though, the Nazis lost seats.

First, Von Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as Chancellor of Germany. Then Kurt von Schleicher. They were never able to rally a majority coalition and Von Schleicher resigned.

Meanwhile, the brown shirts were running loose in the streets. To stop the violence, Von Hindenberg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.

The National Socialist Party never received a majority of the popular vote, nor did they ever hold the majority of seats in the Reichstag.

See William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Or, for a nutshell sketch, go here:

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0403a.asp

Unfortunately, they were naive and fell for Hitler's lies and charisma when they could have stopped him.

As to whether the German people could have stopped Hitler or not. We'll never know, of course, but it's good to keep in mind that Hitler was a ruthless dictator who ruled through fear and violence.

Those who stood up to him were the first to be murdered.

After Hitler was appointed Chancellor, his first order of business was to burn down the Reichstag and seize power.

After burning down the Reichstag, Hitler unleashed The Night of the Long Knives, where he murdered the leaders of various rival factions within his own party. He disbanded and murdered most of the people in the SA (the brown shirts) who had put him into power in the first place.


He murdered or imprisoned political rivals and then began the wider purging of imperfect German citizens. He began with disabled German citizens, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Catholics, Socialists, Bolsheviks, etc....


Whatever questions we can ask about Hitler and the Third Reich, there are never easy answers.

He had a large percentage of support. Thirty percent is large if the rest of the country is tepid a or mildly agreeable.

And add the devaluation of the Deutsch Mark and the punitive requirements of the Treaty of Versaille, and yeah, it is a recipe for disaster.

There's a reason the Marshall Plan was structured in such a way as to rebuild Germany after WWII: to avoid the chaos unleashed at the close of WWI.

It's impossible to parse Hitler out of the rest of the age of total war. I.e., from Bismarck through the Real Politik of the 1960s. It can't be done.

Were the Russian people responsible for all of the evil acts committed by Lenin and Stalin? Or the Tzars before them? To suggest a dictator cannnot control a country without a measure of popular support is not born out by dictators the world over.

First issue: It's fact that dictators can't take over a country without substantial grassroots support. It would take many individuals with insight and determination to stop them at some stage in their rise to power. No lowly private citizen could do much on their own.

Second issue: Once the dictator has the power and machinery in place, there is even less one citizen can do to topple system. This makes it impossible for one person to make much of a difference unless they have their own power and following.

The mormon church's support of Naziism and Hitler wasn't enough to keep him in power longer but it did add something to his power base. The SLC guys wouldn't have been in dangered by not taking the aggressive steps of support they offered to Hitler. They could have easily brought their missionaries home and when worse came to worse, they could have advised the local branches to disband. Instead, they actively mustered positive support for Hitler.

where can one find information about SLC actively supporting Hitler? Again, the church shows itself as uninspired. Still, I'd like documentation to show others, please.

My eyesight is poor for now. Sorry I can't provide the links or send it to you by email now.

Perhaps someone else will help?