The Holocaust
Next Part Newer Threat
Back to 1The Bible’s Greatest Prophecies Unlocked!
No discussion of horror related to WWII would be complete without mention of the Holocaust. This was Adolf Hitler’s “final solution” to the “Jewish question”—and, for those with eyes to see, a foretaste of what will happen again.
The Wannsee Conference of January 1942 was convened for the purpose of formalizing a plan to exterminate all Jews within the confines of nations to the east, which were later occupied by Germany. For the next three and a half years, until the defeat of Germany in mid-1945, this “final solution” was implemented: “There were more than nine thousand camps scattered throughout German-occupied Europe. They included transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, private industrial camps, work-education camps, foreign labour camps, police detention camps, even camps for children whose parents had been sent to slave-labour camps. More than three hundred camps were for women only.
“By mid-1942, within a few months of the Wannsee Conference, six camps served as killing centres where the victims were gassed: Treblinka, Sobibór, Belzec, Chelmno, Auschwitz / Birkenau, and Majdanek. The last two also doubled as slave-labour and penal camps” (The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Berenbaum, p. 116).
These six killing centres were located in Poland. Multiple railroad lines facilitated a constant flow of trainloads of victims. At Treblinka, some 750,000 or more Jews were murdered by a staff of approximately 150. Fewer than 100 known survivors of Treblinka were found.
At Sobibór, up to 250,000 Jews were murdered in carbon monoxide gas chambers. A revolt was staged there by 300 prisoners in the camp. While attempting to escape, many were killed. By the end of the war, there were only 50 known survivors of Sobibór.
At Belzec, up to 600,000 Jews and a few thousand Gypsies were murdered, and at Chelmno, up to 360,000 Jews were killed. Here, thousands of Gypsies, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war were also exterminated.
Birkenau (Auschwitz II) was the largest and deadliest of all the Nazi death camps. Here were the biggest, newest and most efficient gas chambers, which used the vapours from “Zyklon B” pellets to kill Jews, Poles, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war. Many more Jews (1.1 million) were killed here than the other groups represented.
At Majdanek, nearly 500,000, from 28 different countries, were murdered. According to Polish sources, about 360,000—more than 70 percent, many of which were Poles—died there from starvation, exhaustion, disease and beatings. Seven gas chambers were employed (using “Zyklon B” pellets), as were the camp’s two wooden gallows (ibid., pp. 123-124).
Many contemporary historians and scholars view the Holocaust as an anomaly—a freak occurrence, impossible to happen again. They believe that man has now developed to a higher order, more “considerate” and “tolerant” than the ancients.
The memory of the Holocaust should obliterate modern man’s idealistic reasoning. All “baser instincts” are still with us. This action by the Germans was in the tradition of their forefathers, the ancient Assyrians. These also believed themselves a master race, and carried out organized deportation and genocide whenever they saw fit.
In a 1995 television interview, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated of Germany, “I, to this day, cannot understand why so many Germans, who are so highly intellectual…let Hitler do the things he did…There is something in the character of the German people which led to things which should never have happened…Some people say, ‘You have got to anchor Germany into Europe, to stop these features ever coming out again.’ You have not anchored Germany to Europe. You have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, large Germany…In the end, my friends, it will not work” (Houston PBS).
New Destructive Capability
Beginning with the conclusion of World War I—originally called the Great War or “The War to End All Wars”—the world slowly began to ratchet up toward the next great world conflict, only 20 years later. Near the end of World War II, the world entered a new and yet more frightening era.
On August 6, 1945, man’s destructive capabilities greatly intensified, and the scope of warfare would never be the same. Mankind had come to a turning point—when ALL LIFE on Earth could now be erased in a single brief orgy of war!
Fast-forward to the present: weapon proliferation is today escalating at an alarming rate, with a number of volatile, aggressive nations seeking to join the nuclear club. The power that once destroyed a city—the atomic bomb—now serves as a mere “trigger” for the hydrogen bomb!
Weapons of mass destruction, so incomprehensibly destructive that they boggle the mind, now threaten humanity as never before. Notice Christ’s words: “Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matt. 24:22). At the end of 6,000 years of man going his own way, he is approaching the brink of extinction on a number of fronts.
The awesome evil of nuclear weapons, unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, sobered prominent leaders and thinkers. They realized that survival of the human race was now at stake. Consider their words:
• “…no physical peril greater than atomic war has confronted mortal man since the Flood.” – Adlai Stevenson
• “Never since human beings first existed have they been faced with so great a danger as that which they have brought upon themselves by a combination of unrivalled skill and unrivalled folly.” – Bertrand Russell
• “Rifle bullets kill men, but atomic bombs kill cities. A tank is a defence against a bullet, but there is no defence in science against a weapon which can destroy civilization.” – Albert Einstein
• “To destroy these weapons by common consent, to enter the commitment not to manufacture any others, to open up all territories to reciprocal supervision, there is no other hope for the future of our species.” – French President Charles de Gaulle • With the dropping of the first atomic bomb, war forever changed. No longer were large standing armies the sign of a nation’s strength. According to an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the advent of the nuclear age, “These revolutionary characteristics of nuclear weapons have given rise to a phenomenon that is entirely new: there is no longer any relation between power and numbers.”
Suddenly, political influence and the balance of world power could shift instantly.
The Bible summarizes the decadent condition of human character in the last days. Let’s read: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof…” (II Tim. 3:1-5).
Brutal dictators and despots, who would do anything to stay in power, have always existed. Now, in this age, we are witnessing individuals of the worst CHARACTER ever having access to the worst WEAPONS ever! In our time exists the ultimate nightmare!
The world entered what authorities called the Age of Conflict, and set the stage for what the Bible terms the red horse and rider—wars and rumors of wars, nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom—in the years following World War II. But were governments sufficiently horrified by the mushroom clouds over Japan to say, “This must never happen again”?
The thundering answer is NO, they were not!
In fact, the occurrence of war has increased nearly four times since 1946, unleashing an incredible arms race. Dr. Herbert F. York, an American nuclear physicist who helped unleash the devastating power of nuclear weapons as a member of the Manhattan Project, and Jerome B. Weisner, a science advisor to President John F. Kennedy, warned, “…the arms race is a steady downward spiral to oblivion.”
Little Time Remains!
Consider: From 1900 to 1946 the world experienced more than 120 armed conflicts—over two per year. Between 1946 and 2001 there were 225 wars—over four per year.
In his book Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski estimated that 87.5 million people lost their lives from war between 1900 and 1999. (This included about 33.5 million military deaths and 54 million civilian deaths.) But there are higher estimates.
Above those directly killed in warfare, Brzezinski estimates no fewer than 167 million more people died as a result of war-related oppression in just the twentieth century. Together, these numbers are “the approximate equivalent of the total population of France, Italy, and Great Britain; or over two-thirds of the total current population of the United States…This is more than the total killed in all previous wars, civil conflicts, and religious persecutions throughout human history.”
Consider a few of the many wars, conflicts, revolutions, civil wars and coups that occurred just between 1967 and 1987: The Six-Day War (Israel vs. Egypt, Syria, Jordan); India vs. Pakistan; the Vietnam War; Iran vs. Iraq; Afghanistan vs. USSR; civil wars in Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua and South Africa; the Falkland Islands (Great Britain vs. Argentina); Grenada; France vs. Libya and Chad—the list goes on.
Dozens of countries today, such as Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan, have armed guerrilla groups seeking the overthrow of their governments. What is taking place in the world today far outpaces anything seen by Alexander the Great or even George Patton, the renowned WWII general.
Also, considered only a footnote by most, there is the problem of landmines. Around the world, huge numbers of unexploded mines—in 1996 the UN estimated 110 million—have never been retrieved. These cause adults, and often little children, to lose limbs and sometimes their lives. Easy to lay down, they are difficult to recover.
Deadly Technology
Incredible new weapons technology has permanently altered the face of war. “Smart” bombs, which are laser-guided to bring precision and efficiency to the art of killing, have replaced many types of “dumb” bombs. Military scientists have now developed cluster bombs, called “daisy cutters.” Named after the pattern of explosion, these cut down large numbers of human beings like a lawnmower cuts grass. Also, there are “bunker-buster” bombs that before detonating can penetrate deep into the earth in pursuit of enemies hiding in caves.
More and better precision-guided missiles are also continually appearing. But these are nothing compared to the defensive missiles, called “kill vehicles,” that are now reported to be “loitering” in outer space awaiting a signal to seek and destroy, regarding any nuclear launch that needs to be quickly knocked out after offensive missiles containing warheads have become airborne.
Various highly sophisticated and incredibly lethal attack aircraft now exist—helicopters, jets, bombers, gunships and drones—that have brought conventional warfare to a pinnacle of destructive capability never before known. Large, precision, satellite-guided bombs have gigantic “kill zones” of more than a thousand yards. Then there is the so-called “MOAB,” or Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (also known in the military as the “Mother of All Bombs”), which is a conventional bomb that creates almost the same blast effect as a small nuclear weapon.
Of course, all of these kill and maim indiscriminately. So this can sometimes involve “friendly fire” casualties, in which one’s own troops or civilians are hit. This is generally considered to be “acceptable and necessary collateral damage.”
Modern military thinkers and strategists now speak in terms of protection from, or delivery of, “weapons of mass destruction.” The killing capability of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and, now, radiological or “dirty bombs,” is indescribably horrible. Yet these weapons are now apparently in the hands of unstable countries and regimes, which may not be capable of controlling their use or safeguarding their inventory.
This is why the famous American General Douglas MacArthur, while attending the signing of Imperial Japan’s surrender on September 2, 1945, said, “Men since the beginning of time have sought peace…Military Alliances, Balances of Power, Leagues of Nations, all in turn failed leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blots out this alternative. We have had our last chance.
“If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature, and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh…” (The Reports of General MacArthur).
Bear in mind that MacArthur spoke 60 years ago! Since then, it seems the whole world has become a “killing field.”
Next Part Newer Threat