If someone is going to say that the blame for wars and violence should be placed on an "absence of God", it might be a good idea to explore the Christian response to the Nazi threat. Did the majority of Christians oppose the Nazis, or did they cooperate with them? Did the majority of Muslims oppose the Nazis, or did they cooperate with them?

It would also be a good idea to explore European history, and the extensive list of wars that were fought in the name of God. Those wars were, in reality, fought for political goals, but there is no proof that religious organizations have, at any point in history, actively prevented wars.

I blogged about it, too, here:

http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2008/02/little-french-jewish-children-geek.html

France does not have a good recent record of protecting the rights of little Jewish kids.

Mr. Sarkozy is right, and he is wise - it was an absence of God in the affairs of Nazi Germany which led to the Holocaust. It is also paradoxically true that it was the absence of God in enough of the Medieval European Church which led to it's abuses.

Our founding fathers constitutionally separated church from state, but not God from state - see the Declaration of Independece which points America to a law higher than human law.

Interesting perspective, Ronald. For many people God means religion, and the author of the article reads it this way: "Mr. Sarkozy wrapped his plan in the cloak of religion,". But God, for Jews and Christians who first thought of the concept of God, means, essentially, goodness, compassion, disciplined and reciprocal love. God can also be Spinoza's God, who was a philosophical God, the idea of a some higher moral authority. But I think he means to suggest a morality that is authored and transcended by humanity, which is why he wants to entrust the memory of the dead children to the hearts and minds of other children. It's a delicate ambition that comes from the depth of conviction that humanity can be trusted thus.

But I have my doubts about the feasibility of this programme.

I think it's an interesting idea. I don't know about the "G*d" business, I myself go back and forth on that score, between complete unbelief and total adoration (go figure:) but as far as using empathy as a tool to build understanding - I believe it's powerful and potentially of great value.

I don't know how else people can be reached. Intellectual understanding of the Shoah is widespread but isn't touching people's hearts and indeed, has resulted in a backlash - against Jews. The inability to see the people murdered by Hitler (including the others - gypsies, gays, dissidents, even some Muslims, some Catholics, many Poles etc) - as human - and also to draw a line from then to now, is perpetuating both bigotry - especially antisemitism - as well as general ignorance about the modern Middle East and the role of Jews in the world, past and present.

Maybe if kids learn to really feel what it was like, they'll learn something valuable about life and about humanity.

I assumed that when Sarkozy talked about an "absence of God", he was referring to an absence of religion because of his later statement about monotheism. Also, there was his declaration that "the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor" in teaching the difference between good and evil...

Wow, Sarkozy in the man. I'm taken aback by the stark quality, the boldness of his statements, and in France.

The founding fathers, in America, followed in that strain of the Enlightenment represented by people such as Locke (proto-Enlightenment, something of a forerunner) and Montesquieu, not a more radical strain of that historic period. Hence, the contrast represented in the American Revolution as compared to the French Revolution. Other factors are involved and it's not so simple or so stark (America didn't have to deal so directly with authoritarian monarchs, ossified systems of class and privilege, etc. - instead they dealt with it "indirectly" by having left the European continent). Nonetheless, there are distinctions and the two Revolutions reflect a stark contrast.

"Sarkozy is the man" sheesh

And Mary, we know what the vanguard among the ideological internationalists cum secularists did, they signed the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact, dividing Poland in the interim between that signing and Operation Barbarossa, when Hitler invaded Soviet Russia. Therein reflecting active participation, not merely passivity, moral muddledness, human weakness, etc. Too, it was Britain's and America's response which most closely reflected the response of "Christendom," which is a better categorical assignment, if one is to be used.

Your simple categories and assignment of guilt are all well and good, but only to a very limited degree. People and institutions should be held accountable, but not selectively and with rank prejudice; not via memory hole strategies applied to privileged groups while singling out other groups for highly prejudicial and self-blindered assignments of guilt.

Too, Hitler wasn't someone people opposed as if it were one more aesthetic option among several, as if it were something to be taken lightly. When they chose to actively oppose they typically did so with payment of their lives. E.g., the White Rose movement sustained by Sophie and Hans Scholl, in most respects a very unexceptional and even mundane student political organization. But in fact they were highly exceptional and remarkably courageous because it was Hitler's Germany. Hence they paid for their opposition (which involved little more than distributing pamphlets - largely inspired by their religious convictions, btw) with their heads, literally so as they were guillotined at the end of their trial. The Stauffenbergs, the Henning von Tresckows, the Bonhoeffers, et al. represented a different kind of political martyr, those leading and taking part in the July 20 and other plots to assassinate Hitler, but obviously they too paid for it with their lives, some of them guillotined, most of them executed in some other manner.

Your simple categories and assignments of guilt also remind of the occasional comparisons of the Spanish Inquisition (itself more politically than religiously inspired) with historic movements such as the seventy year reign of communism, the latter reflecting a very fashionable and avante garde set of sensibilities in the west over sustained periods at times. The former, over a period of perhaps 250 to 300 years, killed at most 10,000 people and very likely no more than 5,000 - and virtually all of them after an individual trial (which lone fact excuses nothing, but there were no mass murders). By contrast, the latter was responosible for 100 million to 140 million deaths over the course of sixty to seventy years, memory hole deaths that included executions, mass murders, planned starvations (e.g., the Ukrainian genocide) and other genocides such as occurred in S.E. Asia. In each case there were other unsavory and tragic factors as well and obviously enough the numbers killed is one factor and one statistic only, if a particularly grim one and a particularly salient one when contrasts, such as that noted herein, are observed.

Your simple categories and assignment of guilt are all well and good, but only to a very limited degree.

I'm not trying to assign guilt for things that have happened in the past because that's a waste of time. Sarkozy is saying that children should learn from history, presumably to teach them about how an atrocity occurred, and to teach them how to prevent a similar atrocity from happening again. A pragmatic evaluation of history will show us that the program wouldn't work.

History shows that religion is not an effective weapon against a growing, authoritarian, supremacist regime. Christian religious organizations did not fight the Nazis, and they did not even attempt to prevent the holocaust. In fact, the Nazis agenda of racial "purification" would not have worked without the cooperation of many Christian churches. These Christian leaders were often eager to cooperate because they preferred the Nazis to the Communists and the Weimar regime. When some Jews converted to Christianity because they feared for their lives, Christian leaders gave the names of those Jews to the Nazis. Even after the war, Christian leaders were wary of helping the allies, because they feared that eliminating all Nazis would leave Communists and Social Democrats in charge

We criticize the Europeans for their rejection of religion now, but it is entirely likely that they rejected religion because of this legacy of Christian cooperation with the Nazis. Their goal of these religious leaders was not to defend good from evil, it was to maintain respect for authority and the social order. The current French reaction to Sarkozy's belief that "the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor" in teaching the difference between good and evil" is almost reasonable because of this legacy.

It is true that atheism and communism won't prevent genocidal, authoritarian regimes from growing, but since Sarkozy didn't propose Communism or atheism as an antidote, that's not really relevant.

So, what does history teach us about the growth of authoritarian, genocidal fascism? It shows us that Hitler didn't gain power by encouraging racism or violence. He gained it by promising to empower the German people. The majority of Germans, secular and religious, did not approve of the open violence of Kristallnacht. It was unpopular even within Nazi circles. In 1936, the Gestapo criticized "Hitler's toleration of the corruption and luxury life-style of the Party big-wigs at a time when poor living standards still afflicted most ordinary Germans"

Hitler regained popularity by proving that he was the strong horse. One day after the Gestapo report was submitted, German troops marched into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. After that, Hitler's approval rate rose exponentially. He was beloved by the majority of Germans, and they would do anything for him. Until he started losing the war.

If Sarkozy wants children to learn how to defy and weaken authoritarian, genocidal regimes, he could teach them about the Rosenstrasse Protest, where non-Jewish women protested against the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands and children by the Nazis. Even though the Gestapo threatened to shoot them, the women kept up their protest. Goebbels and Hitler eventually ordered the release of the intermarried prisoners in order to dissolve the protest. All the Jews released from Rosenstrasse survived the war.

Sarkozy could also teach them about the effectiveness of the Allies military strategy. The resistance of individual citizens, backed up by a non-authoritarian state with a decent military force is the best way to keep genocidal atrocities from happening again.

I believe Mr. Sarkozy is trying to get at what our founding fathers pulled off in our Declaration of Independence and in our American Revolution, and which subsequently entered into the American character: Our sacred human rights, including our liberty, do not come from government - they come from God, or if you wish, a "higher power." This was first articulated by John Locke, but his ideas were not fully incorporated into British law, as they continued to suffer under the tyranny of a monarchy.

We have in America a 1789 Constitutional separation of church and state, with a pre-existing 1776 Declarational unity of God and state. When I say "Declarational unity of God and state," I'm not referring to theology, where there can never be agreement or consensus, - I'm referring to the idea of a higher law - a higher source of human rights - human rights which can never be justly rescinded by any government, any legislature, any court, any executive power on Earth. Our God-given right to life, liberty and prusuit of happiness can only be trampled by the jackboot of terror or tyranny.

This revolutionary concept is what makes America great and exceptional, and it is what Mr. Sarkozy wishes for France. He has an uphill battle against the Atheists and Secularists, but I wish him well, and if you'll allow me, I'll pray for his success.

Mary,
Here are some interesting articles regarding Nazi Germany and Christianity. One thing you've overlooked in your otherwise insightful analysis, is that European society by the mid twentieth century had already become secularized. The concept of "God is Dead" from European philosophers had already taken root. It was the atrophy of European Christianity which opened the door to Nazism and Communism in the twentieth century. Much of Christianity in Germany was already gutted of its morality and ethics when Hitler came to power - thanks to this new theophobic secular philosophy. That philosophy can be summed up as the separation of God from state.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_nazis_and_christianity.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/nazis_and_christianity.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/further_thoughts_on_nazis_and.html

I believe Mr. Sarkozy is trying to get at what our founding fathers pulled off in our Declaration of Independence and in our American Revolution, and which subsequently entered into the American character: Our sacred human rights, including our liberty, do not come from government - they come from God, or if you wish, a "higher power."

That may be what you believe, and it may be what the founding fathers believed, but that doesn't seem to be what Sarkozy is saying. He's not talking about God, or the "Creator" as mentioned in the constitution. He's talking about religious leaders, as in priests and pastors.

Like these very fallible priests and pastors.

If he was talking about God and not religious leaders, the phrase "placing blame for the wars and violence of the last century on an "absence of God" wouldn't make any sense. God is omnipresent. If He's omnipresent, He can't be absent.

However, religious leaders, being human and, as these pictures show, being infinitely fallible, were obviously absent during the Nazi era, in spirit if not in body.

Of religious leaders and their ilk, the founding fathers said:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

We live in an officially secular nation under God.

Thanks for those pictures and captions. I am disgusted by each of them. It proves that even in Christian churches God may have left the building.

That is exactly why our founding fathers separated church from state, because similar atrocities occurred in Medieval and later times in Europe; and our founders didn't want to repeat the mistake here. But the founders did not separate God from state - there is a big difference, actually the difference is infinite.

Our government is secular, but our laws are based on Judeo-Christian religious values. Secular government plus Judeo-Christian values equals liberty - secular government plus secular values equals Nazi or Communist tyranny.