Seventy-one years ago this month, WWII began when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. A friend of mine was a child in Germany at that time. His father was a member of the elite SS, and Hitler's mistress Eva Braun was living next door to them. To him as a child, they were simply Auntie Eva and Uncle Adolf.
Another friend of mine was in the US 8th Air Force which dropped 640,000 tons of bombs on Auntie and Uncle by war's end in May 1945. The issue then was whether the world could stop the Teutonic Nazi God. The issue today seems to be whether the world should stop believing in any God. Uber-physicist Stephen Hawking now says in his new book that it shouldn't...!
Hawking is not using bombs, simply laws. He argues in part: "Because there is a law such as gravity, then the universe can and will create itself from nothing." A bold assertion (different than his earlier views) which slams in the face of the Medieval premise: "Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit (from nothing comes nothing)."
I haven't yet asked my German friend, but I did my Air Force friend how he reacts to the idea of a post-war world without a God. Trained in physics himself, he said: "What's funny is that people say that asserting a God takes a leap-of-faith; yet asserting the universe just popped into being is considered to be rationally compelling. I don't get it!"
Apparently neither did a cross-section of seniors in a recent AARP poll. The question was: If a genetic test showed that you could live to be 100, what would you do?
* 8% said start another romance
* 15% said live a wilder life
* 38% said they wouldn't change a thing
* 45% said take better care of myself
No one mentioned God. Either way. Was this because they agree with what Hawking says? Was it because they don't care what Hawking says? Assuming most of us AARP-ers won't make it to 100, it's too bad Hawking's assertion wasn't on the survey. After all, God's season is coming up soon for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike....
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Hawking has disappointed me. He had a very different take only last year.
ReplyDeleteAnother intersting subject, Jack.
ReplyDeleteHitlers Mother,Klara Poelzl Hitler, wanted her son, Adolf Hitler, to be a Monk, and sent him to a Monastery when he was aged six.
It was his drunken bully Father, Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, that turned him into what he was many years later.
Hitler was not anti-church, but could not see what use it was thinking about God, not after his treatment by his Father, who was a very religious man, so Hitler gave the German people an other 'God'....himself!
Never think that nobody followed God in Nazi Germany, for you would be wrong.
The majority of people kept their faith, but could not show it in public, but in private they prayed to God.
I know the true story of an SS Officer who was a very nice man, a true Gentleman, who loved his Family, and his pets, and went to Church every Sunday, when not on Duty.
He was in the SS, because they were the best troops, and it was an Honour to be a member.
One day, he returned from the eastern front, a changed man.
After speaking to my Mother, he went home, and poisoned his wife, his children, and his pets, and then shot himself, because he 'could no longer go against Gods Teaching', and he had seen, and done to much to be able to continue living.
He was regarded as a Traitor, and all his surviving family, his mother, father, everybody, were arrested, and sent to Dachau, and later to Auschwitz, as an example, to stop others refusing to follow orders.
The SS Uniform may nowadays regarded as Evil, but thats just the cover, many of the Men inside it, were not evil, but just ordinary men, and women, who found themselves doing things that they hated, but wanted to survive themselves. Some, it is true, were sadists, but they did not start that way, but became that.
Imagine, for a second, if Hitlers father had been a nice person, instead of a drunken bully, then Hitler could have been a Monk....so keep that in mind, and treat everybody with kindness, more so your children, because if you don't, you could turn out a 'monster' in the future....
Alfie ~ You are a wealth of stories. And fresh viewpoints. I trust your new readers will be in touch with you soon. As for me, I remain fascinated with everything you have to say, because this is living, first-hand history.
ReplyDeleteBTW, here in the US, Hitler and Nazism continue to be a CONSTANT subject for nighttime cable programming. I can't tell you how many many different versions of the Hitler story they tell. And then tell again. I assume it is because (1) WWII was a splashy big victory that Americans can dream about as their world changes before their eyes (2) Hitler -- unlike another dictator Stalin -- is just so damn mesmerizing. A close friend of mine -- a Jew who lost family in the Holocaust -- erupts whenever I discuss this subject. Especially when I refer to the appeal that the Nazis were able to conjure up. But -- as you know far better than I -- that's the way it was!!
I fully understand your Jewish friends reaction, Jack. You know, and this is something to think about, if Hitler, and the Nazi's had not gone against the very loyal German Jews, and treated them exactly as the German people, he would have Won WW2. The majority of scientists were Jewish, or had Jewish Blood in their Family lines, and he would have had the Atomic Bomb, Radar, Jet Engines, long range U-Boats, and many other weapons, including Albert Einstein, and not forgetting Rockets, a long time, before he had them. America would have been under Rocket attack, instead of just Britain, because his Jewish Scientists were talking and thinking about these things, before he threw them out, or worse.
ReplyDeleteThey would have had longer to sort out the problems of the Rockets, and Atom Bomb, and so by, say 1944, the whole World would have been in his power.
Scary thought. But it was not to be, and there is a little paradox, no camps, and no millions of Jewish deaths in them..[and the millions of others]..and World domination for the Nazi's ??
Many of these things were on the drawing board, or being talked about before he started to
Alfie ~ I have read some of the very same awesome projections about weaponry. As for the Holocaust, yes, one could reasonably say that THIS was Hitler's biggest single military mistake. As you say -- how ironic.
ReplyDeleteWas God looking out for the world? If so, which God??
You know Jack, I have always believed that everything happens for a reason. No matter how bad something is...there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.
ReplyDeleteThe Death Camps were beyond understanding, and the numbers of deaths in them, are just numbers. We, in our safe World, [more or less], cannot understand or imagine, 20 million plus people standing on a field [not counting the deaths in Stalins own death Camps] all waiting to die...it all turns into just numbers.
And yet every single person, was just like you, and me. They had their hopes, and their plans to live their lives in their own way.
Their lives were halted before their true time. But, it is not 'just' the lives lost at that time, but the billions of future lives that will now, not happen.
Each of these past lives, or future lives, could have contained another Albert Einstein, somebody who could have given the world the answer to the cure for cancer, or how to journey to the stars.
But, maybe, amongst all these lost people, lost souls, there was also another Hitler/Stalin, somebody more powerfull, somebody that the World would not have been able to stop ?
As I said earlier,there is a reason for everything. One Death is too many, but we are just like insects, specks of dust, we are not important with regards the Universe...if the Earth had no life on it, it would still be the Earth, one little spot, in a Universe that we cannot understand.
Am I suggesting some higher form of intelligence that controls our life ? Maybe, or Maybe not..the answer, if there is one, is that I don't know, and neither does anyone else, though many think they do.
But, having admited that I don't know, I also have to admit, that there seems to be something, call it nature, call it fate, or call it God, but 'something' that seems to give 'order' or some kind of 'sense' to a very [to us] complicated World.
The History of the World, shows that every billion years, or so, life is destroyed, and a new form takes over the empty planet. We, are just the latest form, and no doubt there will be many others in time.
For now, we live on this planet, and we simple life forms can only do the best we can.
We, are unable to see into the future, only into the past, so cannot 'see' the 'big' picture, so we cannot see why things happen, only how they happen, we are just walking through shadows and mists, and we don't know as much, as we think we do.
I have to ask again, 'Is there a God ?', something that controls how live and what we do ?
Did 'this' God allow Hitler or Stalin to be born, do their worst, and then destroy them ? If so, Why ?
Why allow so much suffering, so many deaths, so much pain, if this 'God' was a kind, loving God ?
We, cannot understand this, but then why should we ? After all, what are we ? Just atoms, dust, star dust, that itself is not alive, but is the stuff of the stars itself, so why should 'dust' know, or understand anything....But one thing we do know, in a way, is that everything seems to work out right at the end, so maybe, there is a reason for all this after all....
Alfie ~ You're now touching upon the great imponderables. The great mysteries. I too have many doubts about a divine creator. But then I have even greater doubts that all this just happened by some Darwinian accident (as Hawking and Dawkins would have us believe)
ReplyDeleteSo I choose the least of these absurdities and accept some kind of "intelligent design" to the cosmos and to our lives. s Job learns that "God is God and owes us no explanation."
One of my favorite plays is "By the Skin of Our Teeth" by Thornton Wilder. In it he captures the dynamics of the human race throughout history somehow just barely surviving from age to age by the skin of our teeth. You'd like it if you haven't already seen it