✌🏼Hitler Wasn't The Problem

His followers were...

Disclaimer. I’m not saying Hitler wasn’t the embodiment of evil. He was. Yet Hitler didn’t kill millions of Jews and non-Arians. His followers did—millions of them.

Hitler wasn’t the problem. His followers were.

Sure that’s overly simplistic, but the truth is there are evil people everywhere - both sane and insane. How did Hitler, a failed artist and drifter, get so many people to do such horrendous things?

My fascination with Hitler began in about the fourth grade. I read everything I could find in the library about him. Not realizing the implications, I got into trouble for drawing swastikas at my desk. His ability to manipulate people absolutely intrigued me, almost as much as his actual rhetoric disgusted me.

History has had its share of genocidal maniac leaders. Yet none rose so quickly and destroyed so many innocent lives. It was the perfect storm of new technologies and media empowering hatred.

When the wicked gain control, people hide themselves, but when they perish, the righteous increase.

- Proverbs 28:28 (NET)

Here we are nearly 100 years later. Surely nothing like that could ever happen again. Or could it?

Hitler’s diabolical racial hatred isn’t unique. How can we prevent such vitriol from spreading? People are basically good and won’t fall for that, right?

Wrong.

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?

- Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT)

It’s naive to think that humanity is inherently good. History proves how wretched we can be. Yet few want to take responsibility for much of anything. There’s always someone or something to blame.

The devil made me do it!

This inherent need to blame someone else for our troubles goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. “It was that woman you gave me. No, not me! It was the snake!”

When you perceive the blame for your situation as the fault of those not like you, then you make yourself a victim that needs to be redeemed. That creates an empty void of bitterness. It’s almost like a magnet that attracts us against them superhero ideology, like Hitler’s.

Hitler knew how to pull those strings. People believed it when he told them the courts and governments were corrupt and elections couldn’t be trusted. He discredited newspapers and reporters repeating the slogan “Lügenpresse” over and over and over. In English, that slogan translates simply as, Fake News.

Hitler’s charisma and propaganda-filled rhetoric were designed to make him appear to be the only real source of truth and hope. Once that transition succeeded, it was easy to create the ultimate arch-enemy and cause of all trouble and hardships.

It was the Jews, of course.

If it doesn’t alarm you that we see those same things happening in political realms around the world. It should. It should actually terrify us all.

As an American, I’m not trying to say Trump or Biden might be a Hitler in the making. Hitler wasn’t the problem. Neither are our politicians.

It’s the blind followers who are the most dangerous.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

- Romans 12:21 (NET)

When you are the victim and everyone else is to blame, it’s one small step for man to justify evil means if you believe in a good endgame. But good for who?

The real problem is compromise. Whenever you dehumanize the opposition, annihilation isn’t all that bad. They are just Indians. Just slaves. Just Japanese. Just illegal immigrants. Just Evangelicals. Just Muslims. Just liberals. Just homosexuals. Just BLM activists. Just MAGA crazies. Just Republicans. Just Democrats.

Maybe it’s because of the social media roar, but it seems our society is more divided and polarized than ever. In the USA, this election year has the potential to be devastating on all sides.

What’s the cure? What’s the antidote? It’s pretty obvious that yelling and name-calling isn’t working.

That’s why I follow Jesus. Though His name has been used to justify horrible things in history, you cannot obey His commands, teaching, and example and still follow a Hitler - or anything close.

But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…

- Luke 6:27 (NET)

Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. To do good things for our haters. To not take revenge. To see worth in the hungry and thirsty, the poor, the sick, the foreigner, and the prisoner. And to love one another.

If the millions who said they were Christian had not compromised on those principles for the lie of a better good - we probably would never know who Hitler was.

Compare that list above to the political platforms and the rhetoric of the leaders you support. How much do you have to compromise following Jesus to follow them? Any compromise on the way and truth He revealed, and you are no longer following Jesus.

Who are you following?