I've been waiting for at least a month for the Chicago Public Library to receive its order for Moroni and the Swastika, by David Conley Nelson.

It's all about the Mormons Nazi sympathies, and how they survived persecution during the Holocaust while so many religious "others" did not.

I put a hold on it as soon as they placed the order, and I just got it today.

This is the first time that I have ever been the first person to check out a book that was hot off the CPL press.

Has anybody read it yet? What do you think?

I read it when it was first released and I thought I posted a book report here, but I can't find it.

I thought it well written.

There was no "smoking gun" to my thinking, but there were some insightful sections about how in its own self interests the LDS church very much appeased the Natzis. There are anecdotes describing some church branches banning Jews, removing all references to Israel from the hymn books, and even practicing the "Heil Hitler" salute in MIA meetings.

There is also a pretty good section on more recent events taken by senior LDS leadership to protect the names of Natzi sympathizers.

I am glad a read it.

Isn't it a bit of a smoking gun that there was no proclamation from the church about nazism?

A very pasty white church would have survived a German victory.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Isn't it a bit of a smoking gun that there was no
> proclamation from the church about nazism?

I guess it depends on how you define the term, but to me, no. The absence of such a declaration is just another of an infinite list of examples of proof the LDS church has no prophet at its head.

That's what I meant.

Unless ghawd intended WWII to take place? He, ghawd, has left some clues regarding what a fuckhead he can be...

Everyone is all happy with ghawd when he conveniently puts your car keys in the last place you look, but he gets a complete pass when you lose your big toes in a lawn mower accident, but then it's all okay when a donor match shows up, because there's a good DNA match with a father of three who fell into a wood chipper, but his big toes survived because of his steel toed boots. Yay ghawd, he's the greatest!

Didn't you know the old wood chipper is one of Ghawds favorite

instruments? It slices, it dices, it chops em up like

hamburger meat.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2015 03:02PM by saucie.

Like hamburger meant to be what?

(okay, you fixed your typo, so now this responsive post just sits here, making me look like some kind of idiot. But YOU know, and that's what counts, Typo Girl...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2015 05:29PM by elderolddog.

Oh like steak tartar or whatever.

to the German saints to do whatever was necessary to keep the church and missionary program running under Nazism.

The JWs were pretty racist and anti-Semitic themselves.


Also, in 1933, Rutherford of the JWs wrote a letter to Hitler,expressing strong Nazi sympathies.

JWs believed that black skin was Noah's curse on the descendants of Canaan.

None of that stopped the SS from throwing white and delightsome JWs in their prison camps.

Wow…that is crazy considering that at least 75% of the JWs I knew growing up were black.

I'm on page 70 and so far it's saturated with TBM thinking as it details the history of the missionary program in Germany.

I assume it will eventually talk about the Nazi connection. I think the point of talking about the mishie angle is to show that Mormon leaders held them to a high standard to impress the Germans and stamp down fear of Mormons stealing their women and taking them to Utah as polygamous wives.

The photos are interesting. I wish there were more of them.

You will find the Nazi chapters, starting with Chapter 4, The Mormon Battle Plan in Nazi Germany, much more to your liking. Don't stop now.

On the recent 70 Anniversary of VE Day, I took time to read the Improvement Eras of 1943 and 1944. These were the years of the most intense combat by Allied powers. What I found was a church leadership oddly detached from the war and the 80,000 LDS servicemen fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

There were virtually no articles about the sacrifices of LDS fighting men. There was no comfort for families on the home-front. There was no condemnation of the acts of Axis powers. There were no inspiring stories on the home-front. Absent the advertisements it was difficult to believe a world war was being fought.

What I did find was a leadership that preached about the moral delinquency of this immoral generation - a generation historians now call the the "Greatest Generation." One could sense the trepidation of the leaders that the returning troops might return with different values and ideas. They often talked about how mentally damaged the GIs would be when they returned.

The issues are absent emotion and empathy. They issued a statement in the fall of 1944 on how to celebrate VE Day. They discouraged the membership from celebrating as not to offend the feelings of those who lived in the Axis nations.

The LDS leaders behaved like they were aloof to the war. More stories about missionaries than LDS servicemen. While they would print the names of those Excommunicated, they did not print the names of those who had given their lives in seeking to preserve liberty and freedom.

I glanced briefly at post-war issues and they attempted a bit of correction, but they simply tried to skip over the war years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2015 05:08PM by unabashed.

Maybe ghawd wouldn't let the church take sides?

Was there ever an Improvement Era article condemning Manifest Destiny, or lamenting that American citizens had to suffer at the hands of the KKK?

Can we guess that VJ was ok to celebrate because it was no biggie to offend the Japanese?

After VJ Day they realized that maybe they had issues and coverage about the war picked up. However, the first General Conference after VJ Day was focused largely on the Word of Wisdom. They had lots of GI Joes returning who might have enjoyed a smoke and coffee.

They never addressed issues of widows or orphans. I suspect as horror stories started to come out of the now-occupied Germany they realized they had miscalled. J Reuben Clark wrote a piece on the post-war world that was utterly clueless.

Mormon leaders seem to have a chronic challenge with simple questions (answers) to basic Right / Wrong questions/situations.


Divorce is the most common, relevant example: For all their rhetoric concerning Importance/Sanctity of Marriage, Honesty, Kindness, Repentance & Forgiving, they're curiously AWOL, as if divorce is a moral-ethical King's X.

I enjoyed this book and believe people on the board would too.