The end-product of the Holocaust lay in the gas chambers and ashes of the crematoria within the German death camps spread across Europe in 1945. But the beginning of the Holocaust was much more subtle and seemingly innocuous except to the Jew and others on the wrong side of the German cultural and political wars of the 1930s. In his biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and spy, Eric Metaxas described the events that led to the Holocaust.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became the democratically elected chancellor of Germany. On February 27, the Nazis set afire the building that housed the democratically elected Reichstag and blamed it on the Communists. That same day Hitler pressured the highly respected Field Marshall Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Edict which suspended certain sections of the German constitution and allowed restrictions on personal liberty, free expressions of opinion, rights of assembly and association; violations of privacy of communications (postal, telegraphic, and telephonic); warrants for searches of homes; and confiscations of and restrictions on private property. [1]
Following the Reichstag Fire Edict, Nazi storm troopers began immediately to arrest, imprison, torture, and kill their opponents. On March 23rd the Reichstag bowed to Nazi pressure and approved the Enabling Act which placed the whole power of the government under Hitler’s control.
With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made “legal.” Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself…
In the First months of Nazi rule, the speed and scope of what the Nazis intended and had begun executing throughout German society were staggering. Under what was called the Gleichschaltung (synchronization), the country would be thoroughly reordered along National Socialist lines. (emphasis added) No one dreamed how quickly and dramatically things would change. [2]
Hermann Goring described this reordering of society as mainly an “administrative” change. An understanding of what this “reordering” meant for the Jews would come swiftly.
• April 1 – Boycott of Jewish stores across Germany. The reason given was to stop the international press supposedly controlled by the Jews from printing lies about the Nazis.
• April 7 – Removal and prohibition of anyone of Jewish descent from holding civil service jobs. Government employees must be of Aryan stock. (Enabling Act – Aryan Paragraph.)
• April 22 – Jews were not allowed to serve as patent lawyers. Jewish doctors were prohibited from working in hospitals with state-run insurance.
• April 25 – Strict limits on the number of Jewish children that could attend public schools.
• May 6 – Laws expanded to include all honorary university professors, lecturers, and notaries.
• June – Jewish dentists and dental technicians were prohibited from working with state-run insurance institutions.
• Fall – Laws restricting non-Aryans expanded to include spouses of non-Aryans.
• September 29 – Jews banned from all entertainment and cultural activities including literature, the arts, theater, and film.
• October – Jews expelled from journalism when all newspapers were placed under Nazi control. [3]
It was another spring twelve years later that World War II ended in Europe and the gates of the death camps would swing open to reveal to the world the real meaning of Goring’s “administrative” change. The pogroms of medieval Europe and Tsarist Russia had been reincarnated and perfected in one of the most advanced societies of the early twentieth century. Germany’s organized destruction of helpless people has few equals in the history of mankind. With scientific precision coupled with administrative order, the Nazis murdered eleven million people including between five and six million Jews in the gas-chambers and crematoria of the death camps, through shootings in other parts of Europe, and by overwork and starvation. In 1901, 75% of the world’s Jews lived in Eastern Europe. A century later one-half of all Jews live in English speaking countries and 30% live in Israel. Germany’s “final solution” to the Jewish problem changed forever the map of Jewish life in Europe. [4]
The momentary euphoria, goodwill, and hopes for a more cooperative order at the end of World War II quickly melted away as the realities of the war exposed the heart of mankind and his capacity for evil. J. N. Roberts summarized the post-war search for answers as to the “why” of Nazi Germany.
In many ways, Germany had been one of the most progressive countries in Europe; the embodiment of much that was best in its civilization. That Germany should fall prey to collective derangement on this scale suggested that something had been wrong at the root of that civilization itself. The crimes of the Nazis had been carried out not in a fit of barbaric intoxication with conquest, but in a systematic, scientific controlled, bureaucratic (though often inefficient) way, about which there was little that was irrational except the appalling end which it sought. [5] (emphasis added)
The post-war world remained puzzled at Germany’s “collective derangement” given its veneer of rationality and scientific and cultural progress. But along with Germany, much of the world also worshiped the same gods of rationalism, science, materialism, secularism, and progress. Man was assumed to be basically good, but the realities of the war removed humanism’s mask of goodness to reveal the face of evil. The answer to the “why” of Nazi Germany was evil, that something that had been wrong at the root of civilization itself and which Roberts sought to identify. Evil was the source of the collective derangement, and it also resides in the heart of every man.
With few exceptions, the Nazis and their collaborators were not mere madmen as one would suppose. Rather, the whole story of the Holocaust can be summed up in one sentence. “This was done by ordinary people.” [6] Those words by Ravi Zacharias cut to the heart of the source of evil for it reveals the inescapable conclusion that there is an indelible stain upon the soul of man. In his Gospel account, Mark described the diseased heart of man.
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man. [Mark 7:21-23. RSV]
Christians call the root of this evil original sin. It is the evil that is found within the soul of every human being that ever lived. But in the great meta-narrative of the Bible, we learn of the way for fallen man to be cleansed of that evil and mend his broken relationship with God. We find the answer in John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16. RSV]
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 145, 148-149.
[2] Ibid., pp. 149-150
[3] Ibid., pp. 150-151, 156-157, 160.
[4] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 954, 1150.
[5] Ibid., p. 964.
[6] Ravi Zacharias, “God, Evil, and Suffering,” Foundations of Apologetics, Vol. 10, DVD Video, (Norcross, Georgia: Ravi Zacharias Ministries International, 2007).
