Was December 1940 a Harbinger of What Awaits Us in the 2020's?

photo: gardeningknowhow.com

Was December 1940 a Harbinger of What Awaits Us in the 2020’s?

Britain was not succumbing to the pressure of Hitler’s insistence that she surrender. As a result, Germany’s Minister of Propaganda and Popular Culture, Joseph Goebbels decided to take whatever action necessary to fight anything that threatened to undermine Germany’s public morality. How the two were related is not certain.

Nevertheless, he gave strict orders. No strippers were to perform in rural areas, small towns, or in front of soldiers. Masters of ceremonies at cabarets and night clubs were forbidden to introduce any acts which made political wisecracks or used lewd erotic jokes in their performances.

But his biggest target was the celebration of Weihnachten, or as we know it, Christmas. Erik Larson in his book The Splendid and the Vile (2020) writes this:

Goebbels also brooded about Christmas. Germans loved Christmas – Weihnachten – more than any other holiday. They sold Christmas trees on every corner, sang carols, danced, and drank to excess. He warned his lieutenants against the creation of “a sentimental Christmas atmosphere” and condemned the “blubbing and mourning” that Christian holidays induced. It was “unsoldierly and un-German,” he said, and must not be allowed to extend through the whole period of Advent. “This must be confined exclusively to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” he told the group. And even then, he said, Christmas was to be framed in the context of the war.  “A sloppy Christmas tree atmosphere lasting several weeks is out of tune with the militant mood of the German people.”

Those sentiments and orders could certainly come from extreme leftist and atheist groups, and the politicians who support them in the United States today, if they had the power to do so… Or if they had the guts. My fear is they have the guts without the authority but haven’t found it prudent to do so just yet.  As far as Canada goes, our man in Ottawa could easily already be thinking like this. He would present it as “an action we must take for the good of the majority of intelligent Canadians”.  In other words: these Christians, who are a drag on progressive society, need to be controlled.

Our governments started whittling away at our freedom a few years back when they invented the Covid-19 Pandemic. They liked the psychedelic effect of the power that doing so gave them. They’re now addicted, and like all druggies, they want to increase the doses of what they’re taking. No matter how you cut the cake, we’re not far from orders akin to Goebbels’ coming our way.

But wait, there are still more similarities between Goebbels and our leaders in Washington and Ottawa. Right after writing the paragraph above, Larson writes the following:

At his own home, however, Goebbels found himself increasingly mired, not unhappily, in preparations for the holiday. He and his wife, Magda, had six children . . .. The children were excited, as was Magda, “who thinks about nothing but Christmas,” Goebbels wrote [in his personal diary].

Diary, December 11: “A lot of work with the Christmas parcels and gifts. I have to distribute them to the 120,000 soldiers and flak gunners in Berlin alone. But I enjoy it. And then the host of personal commitments. These are increasing from year to year.”

December 13: “Choose Christmas gifts! Make Christmas arrangements along with Magda. The children are sweet.”

. . . [Larson continues] He [Goebbels] authorized Christmas bonuses for his colleagues. “They must have some sort of compensation for all their work and their ceaseless dedication.”

Many of us who follow what our politicians say and compare it to what they actually do or what they want of us versus what they impose on themselves, will recognize Goebbels as a master hypocrite not unlike the leaders of many of our western countries today.  Just look at their cries for climate change policies while they run up thousands and thousands of miles in private jet flying.  Or look at the calls for tightening our belts and accepting some suffering while they give themselves and their colleagues annual increases, and in the case of Canada, large performance bonuses when hardly any of their target goals were met.

Hypocrisy in leadership was alive and well and living in Berlin and elsewhere during WW2.  Today, some eight plus decades later, we see it has spread and grown like the Kudzu Vine that ate the U.S. south.

As conservatives and Christians resist the wishes of the left and the woke, we will see an increase of attempts to tighten the screws of human freedom and at the same time grow the gap between the privilege of the few elites and the rest of the world. This happened in the 1940’s and it is happening now. But we first must recognize it and admit it is indeed happening to us right here and now.

And then, we must not give up.  We must fight to the bitter end in whatever way we can, as difficult as that may be. We can each do it alone, even if it kills us.  But banded together, they cannot ignore us all, or kill us all. After all, who will polish their boots?

n  Ken B. Godevenos, August 15, 2022, Murrells Inlet, S.C.

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