I wouldn’t put Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I or even the Mongols in the same category as these degenerates.
How could a society which was once viewed as so culturally advanced, allow such a monster as Hitler to so twist their minds and hearts?
That’s fair, but I do think the general point about how “if women ran the world there would be no war” still holds true and that it becomes much more true as we learn the stories of the female Nazis.
Hoffnung und Anderung.
Simple, really.
Remove God’s grace from the human heart and this is what men and women will do.
The same way that 50 Million abortions have turned the Democrat half of American women into genocidal maniacs.
They turned away from belief in God to secular humanism and many other atheistic philosophies that were born in Germany in the early to mid 19th century. After a few generations of very little true belief, holy fear and awe of God and respect and obedience to His Holy scriptures, their hearts were darkened, consciences seared, and they were easily led by any evil leader.
That’s why America is in such a precarious situation now. We are nearing that same situation if not already there.
Treaty of Versailles?
As for Catherine II, she had to deal with the war-mongering antics of an unpopular King of Sweden that was always wagging the dog to attempt to distract his populace from his himself, as well as the goings on in France.
After seeing Obama, I fully understand what happened in Germany.
Among the degrees I have is one in Germanic Languages, which required that I read German literature and screenplays. A lot. Starting about 1955, when the Germans were finally ready to confront their past, and at least up to 1981 (when I got my degree) West German society wrestled with two questions: 1) How could we have let this happen? and 2) Was all our suffering and sacrifice only in the service of evil?
On the first question, plays such as “Biedermann und die Branstifter” (translated into English as “The Arsonists”) and “Der Besuch der Alte Dame” (translated as “The Visit”) are particularly memorable, and offer a glimpse into a very dark side of human nature.
On the second question, books and plays worked around a recurring theme of “Lost Honor,” which was directed at the surviving veterans and the families who had lost sons in the war. All soldiers want to believe that they are fighting for “something,” and their suffering is not in vain. But they had to confront the fact that they were complicit in the perpetration of unspeakable horrors. It was very hard for them to accept.
After I obtained my undergraduate degrees I went to law school. One day my Civil Procedure professor turned his class over to a Holocaust survivor who told what he had to do to be the only member of his family to walk out of Auschwitz. At the end of the lecture, Professor Harvey took the podium and all he said was “your duty as lawyers is to make sure this never happens again.” Unfortunately, most of my classmates walked out of the lecture with the opinion that “this could never happen here.” Well, that’s what the average German of 1928 would have said.
The very fact that they believed it “could never happen here” means that it can. And we are on our way, in a very soft and gradual manner. But deep down in the human soul, I believe all of us could be conditioned to do exactly as the 23 year old blonde German SS officer’s wife behaved.
We are conditioned to “follow orders.” We are naturally led. Yes, it can happen here.