Were all the German people Guilty of war crimes under the NAZI regime?
Therefore to him that knows to do Good, and does it not, to him it is Sin. - Jam 4:17
So, Ignorance excuses a person from Guilt.
To answer the question above we need only consider whether the German people knew what the NAZIs were doing?
What was NAZI policy?
- Fascism
- Closing down or taking over anti-Nazi newspapers;
- Controlling what news appeared in newspapers, on the radio, and in newsreels;
- Banning and burning books that the Nazis categorized as un-German;
- Controlling what soldiers wrote home during World War II.
- Gun Control:
In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.
In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not “politically reliable.”
- WWII
1 The Nazi belief that the Germans must control Lebensraum (living space) in the “East” drove Nazi Germany’s foreign policy. Hitler recognized that acquiring Lebensraum would require war, and he began preparing for it as soon as he came to power.
2 To prepare for the war, German foreign policy sought to undo the Treaty of Versailles, build alliances, and incorporate territories with German populations into the Reich.
- Holocaust
The Wannsee Conference (German: Wannseekonferenz) was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final solution to the Jewish question (German: Endlösung der Judenfrage), whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered. Conference participants included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the SS. In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the General Government (the occupied part of Poland), where they would be killed.
During the war, German foreign policy sought the cooperation of European states in achieving the Nazi goal of murdering the Jews in Europe.
So,to answer the question of assigning Guilt to the German people the issue of ignorance is paramount.
1. The German people voted Hitler into office.
2. The German people allowed Hitler to get control of the press.
3. The German people allowed Hitler to break the treaty of Versaille.
4. The German people knew how the Jews were being stripped of their rights (which include owning firearms) were being robbed of their possession and were being relocated.
The German people enabled Hitler to gain strong-arm control of Germany. Once that happened they went along for the ride.
Yes, the German people were guilty of war crimes and they were guilty of genocide. Would things have been different had Hitler not been elected? No doubt. But they elected him and even when they saw the direction he was taking Germany they did nothing.
Unlike Germany the U.S. does not have a single manaical leader to precipitously head us over the cliff to our destruction. Rather, we have allowed Socialists to creep into every area of our lives to the point where there is now a juggernaut of Fascist leadership in Education, Government, Media, Business, Entertainment, Families and even Religion.
Are the American people responsible for our current state of affairs? The answer is a resounding yes! We are guilty of Abortion. We are guilty of Homosexuality. We are guilty of Robbery (Taxation and Inflation). We are guilty of enslaving millions to Welfare. We are guilty of turning our people against God. We are guilty of supporting the Immoral.
Yes, we are Guilty!
Will we Repent or will Judgment come upon us?
I would like to think we will Repent. But I do not believe this will happen. The German people realized they made a mistake but they did not Repent. They allowed Hitler and his regime to run its course leading to the destruction and defeat of Germany. I suspect America will do the same. We will let the Socialist regime run its course which will end one of two ways: poverty or enslavement.
Will we become just a 3rd world country or will we become the slaves of China?
In either case, we are Guilty of our own destruction.