Does it bend your head a little when you think about how?

Question

World War 2 pitted mostly-Christian German soldiers against mostly-Christian opposing forces given the religious trends of the time? Or do you just dismiss one entire side as "not real Christians" (say, the German side, close to 16 million soldiers)

How do you fit your moral absolutes here?

JayDee: You're like that little kid who stamps his foot and goes "it is NOT true. It is NOT!". Which part of my reasoning do you dismiss?

Steve B: I think you grasp the issue but tiptoe around it. And "Ours is not the reason why, ours is but to do or die." didn't work on the Nuremberg trials.

Emptywun & mrglass08: My point is not why they were fighting, but what they were. You seem unable to grasp this. I thought Christianity changed man to the core?

Answer 1

perhaps, given the history of violence, one could say that war is the moral absolute.

Answer 2

So what if it did? That has no bearing on what happened because it was not a religious war. How about the mostly Christian English fighting the mostly Christian French in the 100 years war, or the English fighting the Dutch in the three Anglo-Dutch wars or the Americans fighting the Mexicans in the Mexican American War or the Americans fighting themselves in the Civil War. Religion is not the major conflict in wars aside from Christian-Muslim conflicts such as the repeated Muslim invasions of Europe, the Crusades, The Byzantine Muslim conflicts or the Reconquista in Spain or in the brief time period between Martin Luther nailing his protest to a door of a church in Wittenburg in 1517 and the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Aside from that it is wars of the state or ruler and religion has very little to do with it.

At no point does Christ tell us it is wrong to fight. He himself says that he comes not to bring peace but a sword. Peace is found in him with God not with the world. The concept of turn the other cheek is so the person will have to take back the insult and show that you are not cowed but still defiant, it is not to be meek and weak and not fight.

Answer 3

Well, who is killing the most Muslims right now? Other Muslims. WW II as most wars had nothing to do with religion.
Christians have fought against Christians in other wars.

Some of my best friends are Christians, while some people that I dislike very much are also Christians. So.................

There are moral absolutes but that doesn't mean that other Christians can not be immoral. Still as all wars are, WW II was about power and control, not religion. People, that is, any people can be heavily influenced to believe that their cause is right and righteous. I am sure there were some atheists on both sides to, and Muslims.

So, moral absolutes do not mean that Christians or anyone else will not go against them. Btw, most of the German Army were simply soldiers fighting for their country, amid a flood of false statements and stories of Poland attacking Germany, France's policies against Germany, that England wanted to take over Germany, etc. Besides if you were forced into the Germany Army as most of them were, you had to fight or suffer stiff penalties or even death.

Answer 4

Actually, religion played a fairly small role in WW2. The Germans did not fight because they were Christian, nor did they fight for a religious cause. Germans were convinced that military force was required to restore the glory of their nation, as well as it's economy.

And before you go there, the Jews were chosen by Hitler as a scapegoat for Germany's woes, but their religion had nothing to do with it. They had no government, no military strength, no home...they were the logical choice simply because they could not fight back.

I have heard over and over how religion is the driving force behind over 90% of mankind's wars, but a fair and unbiased assessment of the wars fought throughout history clearly shows that simple greed and desire for power was the real impetus driving people to kill each other.

As for moral absolutes, which ones are you referring to? The ones I am familiar with are expressions of how God is right and humanity is wrong (at least whenever our opinions differ). The laws set down by God are right and fair, and our own limitations in understanding them or applying them does not negate them. If God says that something is wrong, you can rest assured that it is.

Answer 5

Hm mm

Yes initially it was Christian Germans against Christian central and Western Europeans but then it turned into Christian Germans and Shinto Japs against Christian Europeans and Americans and Atheistic Russians.

Also the country that suffered the second highest casualties in WW2 was Taoist, Buddhist China so I'm not sure where your going with this one HypnoHolyness!

Answer 6

Well, Christians and Muslims blame Darwin for Nazism because Hitler bastardised Darwin's research for his own twisted purposes.

True, Hitler was certainly raised Christian and used Christianity for his own purposes to manipulate the Germans, but this shouldn't reflect badly on Jesus because it's a twisted interpretation of Jesus's teachings.

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice....
And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited. "
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 12 April 1922

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of humankind has preserved-- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
--John Adams

Answer 7

Taunt all you want, Hey i made a rhyme, anyway, as we have disc used many times before, to be a Muslim you follow the teaching of Mohammad, to be a Buddhist you follow the teaching of Buddha, to be a Christan, you follow the teachings of Christ. I would ask, can you show anywhere where Christ taught to hate the Jewish people, to kill Innocent women and children, to kill millions for no reason other than you want their land? I don't think so, so you see, you question is as hollow as your future.

Answer 8

All europeans were "christian" back then by default. They certainly weren't all "practising christians". It was just the social norm to give lipservice to christianity. Much like modernday american politicians all say they're christian, even Hillary Clinton said she is.

Answer 9

You have to realize, that Nazism is an ideology, and not Christian. Study Hitlers rise and regime and how it influenced a whole generation, and you will fully realize this. That the Nazis have more in line with Charles Darwin and evolution (in eugenics) that anything Christian.
Hitlers sign was a swastika, which he stole from hinduism, not a cross.
Research Alfred Rosenberg and Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin) to see where Hitler got his ideology from.
Take nationalism, add a shake of antisemitism, and there you go.
BTW I have seen a thousand photos of Hitler, why are there NONE of him praying???

Answer 10

My moral absolutes? no problems. Other I can't say.
Is there a definitive term for moral absolute?