What About the Nazis?

It never takes long for any discussion about morality, evil, or the nature of man to turn into a discussion of Nazism. In fact, in today’s world, Nazism—from political rhetoric to dystopian imagery—is the favorite example of evil incarnate. Any person reflecting on these themes must explain, justify, or distinguish, the Nazis. It is a serious academic question, but for us it is only academic.

However, at the end of World War II, it was no abstract question for Henry Gerecke and Sixtus O’Connor. These two men, the former a Lutheran pastor and the latter a Catholic priest, had served as army chaplains during the war. But their most challenging assignment was after the fighting stopped. That was when they were asked to serve as personal chaplains to the highest ranking Nazi prisoners, who were awaiting trial at Nuremburg. Their story, and particularly Gerecke’s, is told in the recent book by Tim Townsend, Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplin and the Trial of the Nazis.

Under the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war must be provided with spiritual guidance from their own theological traditions. During the war, this had been provided by captured German chaplains. But for security reasons, such an arrangement was not appropriate for such high-ranking prisoners. It needed to be Americans. And since the Nazis who still claimed any religion were either Lutheran or Catholic, a representative of each was sent.

Both men had visited the concentration camps—O’Connor was with the soldiers who liberated one—and both were aware of the horrors the committed under these men’s orders. Both had to wrestle with the question of how to counsel, minister to, share the gospel with, and, ultimately, walk to the gallows beside and pray over, some of the most despised men in the world.

Some of the Nazi leaders were sincerely repentant. Others rejected the chaplains outright. Still others—such as top leader Hermann Goering—wanted the benefits of spiritual forgiveness without belief in Christ. Through the course of the trials and convictions, Gerecke and O’Connor had to constantly distinguish between sin and sinner in their pursuit of these very lost souls.

Townsend thoroughly researches and poignantly tells this previously little known story. He is at his strongest when describing the interactions between Gerecke and the prisoners. Yet for all the strength of the story, the book itself strays at times. Its narrative is choppy. Its weakest points are when Townsend attempts to explain some of the orthodox Christian theological ideas of sin, evil and forgiveness. He gives the impression of explaining it in a detached way, but doesn’t fully realize the depth of his own content. While he thinks he is writing deeply and criticizing profoundly, he is only wading in very shallow water.

Yet even through these weaknesses, the message of the gospel shines through in the lives of Gerecke and O’Connor. They believed that Christ came to seek and save the lost. They taught that there was forgiveness of even the darkest sins. And when placed in a situation that challenged those beliefs, they stood firm in their faith and cared for the outcast, the despised, the prisoner … the Nazi leader.

And some of those souls may very well be in heaven today because of it.

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

Quiz: Who Said It?

Since the Mao Tse-Tung question was so popular, I thought I'd do another.

I came across these following passages in a book by someone you all should recognize.

In that original state of things which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer. [….] As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.

* * *

What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour. It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.

* * *

Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency, to the society? The answer seems at first abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part, can never be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

* * *

It deserves to be remarked, perhaps, that it is in the progressive state, while the society is advancing to the further acquisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of the great body of the people, seems to be the happiest and the most comfortable. It is hard in the stationary, and miserable in the declining state. The progressive state is, in reality, the cheerful and the hearty state to all the different orders of the society; the stationary is dull; the declining melancholy.

* * *

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

* * *

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.

I'll update this page tomorrow with the author. In the meantime, leave your best guess either in the comments below or on our Facebook page.







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Answer: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations