Sixty years ago, a brilliant war reporter, William Shirer, wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which should be must reading for every human being on the face of the earth. It chronicles the life of Adolf Hitler and what can happen when free people take their freedom for granted and let despots flourish. It should be specially important today, with several Hitler-like dictators ruling subservient nations.
Hitler carried his hate and bigotry up the political ladder one rung at a time. At each crucial point, he could have been stopped easily if those opposing him had acted. But each time he moved up, he grew stronger. Neither freedom-loving Germans nor the Western nations he would soon attack were willing to take a firm stand against him….until it was too late.
It’s been said that it can’t happen here in America. But it almost did at one time. Not long ago at Hayden Lake, Idaho, the apostles of hate who called themselves the Aryan Nations, did their thing. They burned crosses in Ku Klux Klan fashion. And, like Hitler, their idol, they preached the elimination of blacks and Jews.
They insisted that God was on their side and that they were the protectors of truth and the Christian white race. Many of them boldly called themselves Nazis. They carried guns and said they would use violence if necessary to build a whites-only, Christian nation in the great Northwest.
Thanks to the resistance of real Christians and dedicated Americans, the Aryan Nations fanatics had to fold up their tents and leave Idaho, and the threat they posed was dissipated. However, it remains an alarming thought that such a foul movement could have lasted as long as it did and posed the serious threat it once did.
If you weren’t disturbed by any of it, read Shirer’s history of Hitler. It happened over there, and, if we don’t care enough, it may visit our doorstep again. Is this a pipe dream? If you see no threat, you are not aware of what has been happening in the world the past 30 years or so. For example, like the Aryan Nations of Idaho, the radical Muslims of Islam are posing a much greater threat to the free nations of the Western World today. In fact, they are a far more dangerous element than the Idaho marauders, because their movement has worldwide ramifications — and is powered by their distortion of a historic Islamic religion.
Once again, the rancor, hate, cruelty, and viciousness of a movement of haters is threatening peace-loving people everywhere. Their acts of terror and murder and the subjugation of women make the racists of Idaho look mild and harmless. However, the lessons highlighted by Shirer in his historic book remain valid today in the face of the terrorist machinations of the Muslim radicals.
It’s all the more reason why everyone in the world should read Shirer’s book and memorize his primary lesson, which is this: “Those who refuse to face evil and eliminate it will have to live with its tragic consequences some day.”
The ugly fact of the matter is that Hitler-like demons have arisen in many countries of the world. One, Saddam Hussein, was captured and de-fanged in Iraq by bold action on the part of the U.S. and its coalition. But others, like Iran’s Jew-hating president, is flexing his muscles and nurturing a taste for atomic bombs. Will we stop him before it is too late?