The Controversial 1935 Nobel Peace Prize For Speaking Truth to Power

"We cannot speak to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep."

Carl von Ossietzky


"Only one who spent the years following the First World War in Germany can fully understand how hard a battle it was that a man like Ossietzky had to fight. He knew that the tradition of his countrymen, bent on violence and war, had not lost its power. He knew how difficult, thankless and dangerous a task it was. to preach sanity and justice to his countrymen who had been hardened by a rough fate and demoralizing influence of a long war.

In their blindness they repaid him in hatred, persecution and slow destruction; to heed him and to act accordingly would have meant their salvation and would have been a true relief for the whole world.

It will be to the eternal fame of the Nobel Foundation that it bestowed its high honor to this humble martyr and that it is resolved to keep alive the memory of his work.

It is also wholesome for mankind today, since the fatal illusion against which he fought has not been removed by the outcome of the last war.

The abstention from the solution of human problems by brute force is the task today as it was then.

Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years, 1956


"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana


"The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their destruction; and of course they do so.  Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?"

Sophie Scholl, The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich 1942

This time, we will not be silent.

Who will be among those who remember the moral imperative to speak truth to power, and nominate Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize?

In memory of Carl von Ossietzky, an investigative journalist and editor of Die Weltbühne who died in hospital in Gestapo custody after being held in various prisons and concentration camps.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. The award was controversial because von Ossietzky had been imprisoned for revealing the illegal steps the German government had been taking to rearm militarily.

There are those who believe that no matter what a country may do, it is the duty of its citizens to obey their laws without objection. And there are those who hold the primacy of natural law and private conscience and moral duty to resist evil even when it has been declared by a temporal authority to be legal.



Carl von Ossietzky was born in Hamburg, the son of Carl Ignatius von Ossietzky (1848–1891), a Protestant from Upper Silesia, and Rosalie (née Pratzka), a devout Catholic and Social Democrat. His father worked as a stenographer in the office of a lawyer and senator, but died when Carl was two years old.

During the years of the Weimar Republic (1919 – 1933), his political commentaries gained him a reputation as a fervent supporter of democracy and a pluralistic society. He was convicted in 1931 of revealing state secrets, the illegal German militarization, and served 18 months in prison. He was released in 1932.

Ossietzky continued to be a constant warning voice against militarism and Nazism when, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor and the Nazi dictatorship began. Even then, Ossietzky was one of a very small group of public figures who continued to speak out against the now ruling Nazi Party.

On 28 February 1933, after the Reichstag fire, he was taken by the police and held without trial in 'protective custody' in Spandau prison. Ossietzky underestimated the speed with which the Nazis would go about ridding the country of unwanted political opponents. He was detained afterwards at the concentration camp KZ Esterwegen near Oldenburg, among other camps.

He was visited while in the camp by Swiss historian Carl Jacob Burkhardt, as a representative of the International Red Cross. Burkhardt described Ossietzky as “a deadly pale broken creature, who seemed numb, with one eye swollen over, and his teeth broken.” Ossietzky said,

“Tell my friends that I have come to the end, soon it will be over and that is good. I hear my wife tried to visit me. I only wanted peace.”

Ossietzky's international rise to fame began in 1936 when, already suffering from serious illness that was not being treated, he was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize after an international campaign of people who hoped to achieve his release through this recognition and honor. Despite intimidation and protests directed against the Norwegian government, the Nazis had been unable to prevent this, but they now refused to release him so that he could travel to Oslo to receive the prize.

In an act of civil disobedience, after Hermann Göring, then Minister of the Interior for Prussia and head of the police, prompted him to decline the prize, Ossietzky issued a note from the hospital saying that he disagreed with the authorities who had stated that by accepting the prize he would cast himself outside the deutsche Volksgemeinschaft (community of German people).

'After much consideration, I have made the decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize which has fallen to me. I cannot share the view put forward to me by the representatives of the Secret State Police that in doing so I exclude myself from German society. The Nobel Peace Prize is not a sign of an internal political struggle, but of understanding between peoples. As a recipient of the prize, I will do my best to encourage this understanding and as a German I will always bear in mind Germany's justifiable interests in Europe.'

The award divided public opinion, and was generally condemned by conservative forces. The leading conservative Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten argued in an editorial that Ossietzky was a criminal who had attacked his country "with the use of methods that violated the law long before Hitler came into power" and that "lasting peace between peoples and nations can only be achieved by respecting the existing laws".

Ossietzky's Nobel Prize was not allowed to be mentioned in the German press, and a government decree forbade German citizens from accepting future Nobel Prizes.

The Nobel Peace Prize money was sent to Germany where it was stolen by Ossietzky's Nazi 'defense attorney.'

In May 1936 he was sent to the Westend hospital in Berlin-Charlottenburg because of his tuberculosis, but under Gestapo surveillance. He was largely forgotten during the period of favorable international regard for the Third Reich, sparked in part by the massive public relations campaign surrounding the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the German 'economic miracle.'

Ossietzky died in the Nordend hospital in Berlin-Pankow, still in police custody, on 4 May 1938, of tuberculosis and from the after-effects of the abuse he suffered in the concentration camps. In 1938 Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler as their "Man of the Year."

In November of that year, the Reich entered a new phase of their oppression of dissent and undesirables and those to be cast outside the community of the German people, such as the mentally ill, the disabled, Gypsies, homosexuals, socialists, and trade unionists, with Kristallnacht.

In 1991, the University of Oldenburg was renamed Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg in his honor. This could be seen as a political statement, as Ossietzky's case was being decided upon by the German courts at the time. In 1992 the Federal Court of Justice shamefully upheld his 1931 conviction. After all, as Marin Luther King once noted, what the Nazis did 'was legal.'

I would like to join those people of conscience from around the world who nominate Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize, for speaking truth to power, and upholding the moral imperative for freedom of the press.

Please make as many copies of this as you can and distribute it.

On the 70th Anniversary of the Execution of Sophie Scholl, 22 February 1943

"Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible.

But isn't that an idea of only minor importance? Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment? Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning?

A bomb could destroy all of us tonight. And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the earth and the stars.”

Sophie Scholl


"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."

Léon Bloy

As you know, I have been commemorating the anniversary of Die Weiße Rose, the Munich Students Movement, and the series of leaflets which they produced and distributed in Nazi Germany as a statement of conscience during the height of the reign of terror.

I do not think it is possible for any one of us to genuinely appreciate the courage it takes to do something like this. And I hope that we never do come to understand such an extraordinary vocation to the same degree.  But each one of us is called to act, in our own way, and in our own time.

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'get by.'   The ordinary men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies.

Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, love small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you.

But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

Sophie Scholl

What is surprising is not that we are called to do so much, but rather, so little.  Love and be grateful to God, treat people as you would like to be treated with respect, kindness, and forgiveness.  Do not lie or steal or cheat,  do not be proud and look down on your fellow creatures, and act with honor and respect for the gifts of His creation. And when we fail through weakness, we are readily forgiven. 'Can you not watch with me, for even one hour?'

But all too often we bargain away our souls, rebelling from even these slight and reasonable requests-- and for so little.

The White Rose
Second Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation.

At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it."

If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body.

The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.

Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when "it is in the air," when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off.

After all, an end in terror is preferable to terror without end.

We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.

We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way.

Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings - no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question - and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.

Someone may say that the Jews deserve their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous impertinence; but let us assume that someone said this - what position has he then taken toward the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated? (May God grant that this program has not yet fully achieved its aim as yet!)

All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS!

Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub- humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought.

Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that.

It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all...

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.

Thankfully few are called to the martyr's crown.  But we are all called to take up our cross and follow, each day, in each of our own small ways. That is all most of us can do-- be still, and faithful, and wait on the Lord in our calling. 

And above all do not add to or assist, in any way, the evil in the world, especially by condemning or harming those who stand up against its onslaught.  That is Pilate's sin, to ask 'What is truth' and turn away and lie, if only to ourselves, while looking truth in the face, for the sake of expediency. It is a sin against the Spirit, and one that will not be easily forgiven.

We may believe what we will.   But we will be held accountable for our beliefs.

"I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent of the crimes. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

Traudl Junge,  Im toten Winkel - Hitler's Sekretärin

The saddest words in any language are those of irreparable regret, that come to haunt us in our last hours, 'If only...'



On 22 February 1943, Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They were all beheaded by executioner Johann Reichhart in Munich's Stadelheim Prison only a few hours later, at 17:00 hrs. The execution was supervised by Walter Roemer, the enforcement chief of the Munich district court.

Prison officials, in later describing the scene, emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution. Her last words were:

"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to offer themselves up individually for a righteous cause?

Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go."

The White Rose
Fourth Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

"...It is the time of the harvest, and the reaper cuts into the ripe grain with wide strokes. Mourning takes up her abode in the country cottages, and there is no one to dry the tears of the mothers. Yet Hitler feeds those people whose most precious belongings he has stolen and whom he has driven to a meaningless death with lies.

Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul maw of Hell, and his power is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the Nazi terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.

Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

Everywhere, and at times of greatest trials, men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil. He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air..."

Please distribute this as widely as possible.

"Isn't it a riddle and awe-inspiring that things can be so beautiful, despite the horror? I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator...Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise.

It often seems they will drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But I have realized they will not succeed. And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.”

Sophie Scholl

Hitlerland: Making a Deadly Peace with the Devil

"We cannot look to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep."

Carl von Ossietzky, German editor of Die Weltbühne, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935


"It would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse."

William Dodd, historian and US Ambassador to Germany, 1933

I am reading a new book titled Hitlerland, by Andrew Nagorski. Thank you to reader Andrew for recommending it. He knows I am very widely read in this period of history and find it fascinating both from an economic, sociological, and political perspective.

I was prepared for a rehashing of things I have already known and read, and I must admit I was initially put off a bit by the title which sounds frivolous. I was pleasantly surprised, even a bit amazed.

The book is highly original, and extraordinarily factual, in that Nagorski spent an extraordinary effort investigating eyewitness accounts, many of them unpublished, by Americans who lived there during the period in Germany from the Weimar Republic to the rise of Hitler and the beginning of the Second War.

He inserts minimal personal opinion and analysis into the writing, being more the journalist than the historian. He does treat the after-the-fact accounts with the proper regard for posturing and self promotion. He does have some very charming vignettes as well that make it a highly readable book.

It is well done, a 'must read' for anyone who wishes to understand that period of time from the perspective of those who lived it.  It adds a new dimension to a much written about period of time.  Remarkably so.

If there is anything that was surprising, it is the abject misery and despair of the German people during the Weimar Republic with the hyperinflation, and how few people actually saw the worst to come politically, after a false economic recovery, with the Crash of 1929. One knows these things, but they do not really understand them, not having lived it.

 Personal accounts help in this. This is why I found the book, When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson so helpful in this regard, as well as Ken Burns masterful documentary, The Civil War.

The fear of the Socialists and the Communists in particular is a key driver for the events of that time, and is not to be discounted.  The cynical dealing and irresoluteness of the Weimar politicians is another factor.  There were open fights in the streets on a regular basis, although they were often surprisingly 'orderly' as this book relates. Some of the passages are quite amusing for those familiar with the German penchant for orderliness, even in the midst of urban warfare.

The capacity for self-delusion and a bad compromise is amazing, especially during periods of confusion, fear, and distraction. And the moral base in Germany at that interwar period was already notoriously relativistic and given to occultism, odd theories, and Nietzchean extremes.  And after war, hyperinflation, and a new Depression, their spirit and will to resist evil was simply exhausted, especially when it was backed by systematic terror and force.

We ought not to be too critical of those people, many of the Americans included, who did not see the worst coming. Did you see the recent financial collapse coming, and what has followed? Do you even understand it yet? History may be amazed at your ignorance. And yet all the signs of trouble were there during the period from 1999 to 2007.

Some people were warning of the credit bubble, the imbalanced financial sector, and widespread fraud.  And the American people were distracted by a 'war on terror,' and not the collapse of their lives and savings after the decimation from a brutal world war that left the flower of their youth dead, crippled, or broken.

And then in Germany there was another Crash, and the onset of Great Depression, and the people thought, no, not again. Anything is better than this. And so the bargain with the devil was made, and after a brief blaze of false glory, hell followed.

This is not to excuse anything that was done, or permitted to happen. Far from it. But it is to place this sort of tragedy within its human context, and to remind us that we are all capable of such confused cowardice and acquiescence in the face of evil.  We must remain steadfast and resolute against it, especially before resistance demands the type of heroism of which few are capable.

The consensus of those who met Hitler was that he was a most ordinary person, with little charisma or appeal.  Dorothy Thompson called him 'the very prototype of the Little Man.'  He seemed nondescript, but inwardly mad, illogical and ineffective, and they were incredulous that he could rise to power.

A key tenet of the Nazis was the rejection of objective fact and reason in favor of the passions of 'the blood' and of instinct.  Truth was not an impartial consideration or serious limitation to conclusion and action.  That is a familiar refrain amongst ideologues and the more extreme elements of both left and right on the political continuum.

There are a few heroic figures in this book, and prominent among them is the Pulitzer prize winning journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer, whom I had never heard about before this, which is a shame. I will let you read about him for yourself.

I had not realized how badly the prospects of the National Socialist party had fallen in the years after Hitler's imprisonment for the abortive putsch and before his sudden rise to power as chancellor.  They were essentially done.  But they served a purpose as a cat's paw for those wealthy bankers and industrialists who feared the Communists and Socialists, and for cynical Weimar pols who were too busy fighting for power amongst themselves to see the rising threat of fascism.

I had not remembered that during the Night of the Long Knives not only the SA leadership was taken on shot, but old political rivals as well, some of whom were retired from political life. Hitler's ruthlessness was exhaustive, and examples were often made. Again, we ought not to discount the regular use of domestic terror as party policy from the very onset of its ascendancy.

That rise to power was supported by the fresh fears and concerns brought on by the Great Depression which knocked Germany back off course, and the craven weakness of spirit of the politicians of his day. In the manner of Mussolini he gained power almost by default, and then secured it with a brutal iron fist. I am now convinced that without that terrible economic collapse after 1929 to provide a ready platform, he would have died a relatively forgotten crank.

One thing that I wonder about often is the attention given to Hitler because of his abominable atrocities, and the relatively little time spent on his role model, Mussolini. I have read a bit more on him, and he was despicable, a ruthless thug. The early Nazis were referred to by the Americans as the fascisti.  

Here is a brief excerpt from the accounts of the American journalist Edgar Mowrer. It is not anything I had not known from other readings but gives one a sense of the style in which Nagorski allows events to unfold through the words of his witnesses to history, and how he weaves their testimony into a rich tapestry.

Andrew Nagorski: Hitlerland - Little Eichmanns

The opposite of love is not hate, but callous apathy and uncaring.  Hate is a passion, a counterpart to lust.

And tragedy occurs when such heartlessness is advantaged by careerism, and an ideology that rationalizes unconscionable expediency, sanctioned privation, organized repression, and eventually murder, on a massive scale. 

This is not how monsters are created, but how their enablers and supporters are formed, so that they too can, over time, become as beasts to escape their unbearable shallowness, and the emptiness of their souls.

These are not the Hitlers, but the little Eichmanns. And they are abroad again, making and influencing policy on an alarming scale, today.

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil...

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together...

He [Eichmann] was in complete command of himself nay he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words.

He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: “After a short while gentlemen we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them.”

In the face of death he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows his memory played him the last trick: he was 'elated' and he forgot that this was his own funeral.

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us: the lesson of the fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”

Hannah Arendt

h/t Andrew

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Remembering

More tiresome histrionics from LavaGirl and the money masters today.

When their positions finally implode, perhaps they will make pretty sparks in the night sky for the children. And then they will be gone, their gifts and talents not only wasted, but their names blackened shamefully, and forgotten as if written in ashes.

Silver is carving out a massive triangle pattern on the weekly chart.

Gold is a little more guarded here, but the next week or so should give it a clearer voice.

Below I remember those who are worth remembering, and forget those who have been weighed, and are found wanting.

On 22 February 1943, Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They were all beheaded by executioner Johann Reichhart in Munich's Stadelheim Prison only a few hours later, at 17:00 hrs. The execution was supervised by Walter Roemer, the enforcement chief of the Munich district court. Prison officials, in later describing the scene, emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution. Her last words were:

"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to offer themselves up individually for a righteous cause?

Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go."

The White Rose
Fourth Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

"...It is the time of the harvest, and the reaper cuts into the ripe grain with wide strokes. Mourning takes up her abode in the country cottages, and there is no one to dry the tears of the mothers. Yet Hitler feeds those people whose most precious belongings he has stolen and whom he has driven to a meaningless death with lies.

Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul maw of Hell, and his power is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the Nazi terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.

Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

Everywhere, and at times of greatest trials, men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil. He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air..."

Please distribute this as widely as possible.

"God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment. And it seems that I can hear God saying to America, 'You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still, and know, that I'm God.'"

Martin Luther King, It's A Dark Day In Our Nation, 30 April 1967