The Peripatetic Preacher Goes to Germany (circa 1933)

Since I was not born until 1946, and in Indiana rather than Germany, my trip today is of course primarily one of the imagination. I have long been a serious student of Germany in the years leading up to, and during, the horrors of Adolf Hitler. I have read nearly every biography of that monstrous fanatic, seen countless movies and documentaries about him and his time, and thought long and hard about the mysterious “why” of his rise and collapse. Why in Germany, of all European places, did a Hitler gain power? It was by any measure among the most cultured and sophisticated countries in the world, making the appearance and wild success of an uneducated, failed painter and architect, strident corporal from WWI, monumentally unlikely. Yet, in only 11 years, from that badly organized and thoroughly amateurish putsch launched from a Munich beer hall in 1922 to his appointment as chancellor of the Reich in 1933, Adolf Hitler, an Austrian citizen, hastily made a German, born to a lower-class government official, assumed absolute and soon dictatorial power over what was soon to be the world’s most potent military. And in only 12 years after that ascension, led his country to disastrous and ignominious defeat and destruction in 1945. The “thousand-year Reich” he promised his fellow Germans lasted barely 12 years and brought with it the death of nearly 5,000,000 German soldiers, perhaps 500,000 civilians, and the murder of 6,000,000 Jews in camps that could only be conjured in the fevered brains of detestable brutes.

Another “why” of all these execrable events is just why I remain so fixed on them? I am currently reading still another book about the time, and have just finished rereading the book that started my on my near-constant quest some 50 years ago, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. For me, I suppose it could be said that evil is simply more interesting than good! It has long been noted that in that John Milton magnum opus, “Paradise Lost,” Satan is far more interesting a character than God. He surely does get most of the best lines. Likewise, I harbor a similar fascination with Richard Nixon, that disgraced president, who resigned under the pall of the Watergate scandal over 40 years ago. And I have, I fear, begun to experience a similar attraction to Donald Trump, whose chaotic administration over his first 15 months as president presents a daily portrait of confusion, lies, and egregious assaults on our democracy. I eagerly await the end of his time as president, whenever that may be, and just as eagerly am anxious to read the stream of books that will doubtless appear in his wake. Alas, I may be too old to pursue my mania, but I hope that I will live long enough to put at least a toe in the Trumpian commentary ocean that is sure to ensue.

No, despite what you may be thinking, and despite my last year’s series of anti- Trump screeds, using the Bible’s characters as mirrors of his character, I do not now intend to find in Hitler an image of Donald Trump. On Facebook, more than a few have made that connection, far too frivolously in my judgment, and I will not add to their games. Trump is no Hitler, though their obvious narcissism and blatant disregard for the opinions of others is striking. Yet, Hitler’s odious anti-Semitism, his certain conviction that Germans were a master race, far superior to all others, and his fanatical militarism that led to Germany’s near annihilation, finds no ready counterpart in Donald Trump. Yes, Trump appears to imagine that certain groups are superior to others, and he does enjoy a full measure of sword-rattling. Yet, all of that hardly rises to the level of Adolf Hitler, who by any measure is one of history’s most horrifying men, matched only perhaps by Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and other assorted miscreants.

But, back to my personal question: why do I find Hitler so fascinating, and worthy of countless hours of reading and thought? Beyond the fact that evil is always interesting, there is my inner conviction that my own life is in constant need of examination. As a preacher, I have been confronted with more than a few preachers who have abused and destroyed their vocations through acts that can only be termed evil. In two cases, I have first hand evidence of such acts. I have been the interim minister of two large United Methodist churches, both of whose very popular ministers were removed from their pulpits for appalling actions. In the first case, the minister was accused by some 30 women of various actions of sexual abuse, and in the second, the minister was accused of attempting to murder his wife, while he was conducting at least one known extra-marital affair. Both of these men had served very effective ministries, and their falls were the stuff of front-page headlines. I entered those pulpits and tried to preach the gospel to shell-shocked parishioners who were bearing the brunt of the daily publicity of their former preachers’ depredations. I ached for those people, and still do after these 25 years.

What these two assignments brought home to me was the reality of my own power and my almost complete lack of awareness of that power. Adolf Hitler knew power, seized it, and abused it in unimaginable ways. Richard Nixon knew power, seized it, and abused it in countless secret and public ways. I first needed to learn that I too had power, and that without continual self care, I too could abuse my power for my own benefit at the expense of others. There was no check on dictator Adolf Hitler and too few checks on Richard Nixon, despite our vaunted checks and balances system of representative government. What scares many of us about Donald Trump is that he seems singularly intent on circumventing and/or completely avoiding or neutering those checks and balances. Only time will tell whether or not he is in fact doing that or whether those checks and balances will keep his great power controlled.

I suppose I am wallowing in Hitler and Watergate, because I am attempting to understand my own deep needs for power and success and at the same time trying to assess my own propensity for evil, perhaps not the vast evil of a Hitler or Stalin, but evil nonetheless. Though I am now nearly 72 years old, those needs and that assessment remain paramount for me. I think it no bad thing that I continue my self-monitoring. After all, I could simply float through the final years of my life in blithe ignorance of who I really am and who I am finally all-too-capable of becoming. “The unexamined life is not worth living” is an aphorism that is quite true, however painful that examination may be. Thus, I will again and again return to the Germany of the 20th century to aid my quest for my true self. I plan to continue that quest to the very end of my days.