Op-ed:

Religion in War...A Factor Overlooked

By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots / Right Side Patriots Radio

The article posted here is the authors opinion alone, and does not necessarily represent the views of blogspot.com or Google  

Religion...“organized religion” to be more precise...has a long and somewhat sorted history...man-made to those who are non-believers...the “One Most Holy” who has dominion over us all to those who do believe. And yet neither side, to date, has been able to offer tangible here and now proof positive of either the existence of God or the lack thereof.

And while to the Christian faithful the Holy Bible is all the proof they need of God's existence, yet that proof is actually not tangible proof for the Bible in reality is but the words of mortal men...men “inspired” by the words of God yet not written by the hand of God. That deed alone belongs to the Jewish faith...which preceded Christianity by thousands of years...for it was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who, with his own hand, set the words of the Ten Commandments upon rock tablets giving them to Moses after he led the Jews out of bondage in Egypt. And while both “Abrahamic” religions...Judaism and Christianity...do believe in but one God who rules over all...monotheism it's called...the belief in one God alone does not make it fact nor does it negate what many believe to be fact, thus continuing the ongoing centuries old argument between believers v. nonbelievers.

But this article is not about ones personal religious beliefs nor is it about any of the religious collectives to which one might or might not belong, yet religion itself is this article's core topic as it relates to the realities of war...including Iran's ongoing war chant “death to Israel, death to America,” and how it's the calling card for Iran's what they believe to be a “Holy War.” And this key factor is being overlooked by far too many folks as this is the most dangerous type of war for when ones enemy believes that God is on their side alone, they think they can do no wrong.

In fact, history itself has shown that religious “tensions,” if you will, is what contributed to the rise of extremist ideologies as witnessed by the Crusades, what was the Papal initiated religious wars of “reclamation” fought during the Middle Ages; the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) between Catholics and Protestants; and islam's numerous still ongoing wars of hoped for“islamic conquest.” But the most vile of all wars having religion as one of its driving forces was, in my opinion, World War II, for not only did one evil man promote anti-Semitism to justify what was to become the “Holocaust,” but he, Adolf Hitler, deemed an entire group of people...the Jewish people...to be “sub-human” and in need of “extermination,” thus claiming that in doing so it would help to “purify” the so-called “Aryan race.” Remember, Hitler was obsessed with “racial purity” and used the word “Aryan” to describe his idea of a “pure German race.”

And Hitler's personal hatred for the Jewish people...the people he identified as “enemies of the state”...became the very people he foolishly held responsible for both Germany's economic and cultural decline. And when it was coupled with Hitler's all but consuming jealousy of the Jews economic and personal successes...the Jews fate was sealed. And when Hitler's hate fueled rhetoric morphed into his selling the justification for murdering six million+ Jews, even the most devote and faithful of religious believers legitimized and gave credence to what was truly the saddest chapter in this, the most unholy of wars.

Simply, Hitler was able to unify the vast majority of the German people together in an act of cleverly crafted preordained hate, thus laying the groundwork for the creating of selectively targeted victims hidden within a most vile of masqueraded causes, while at the same time negating...or at the very least masking...for way too many of the faithful the guilt factor that some must have carried...guilt for their having remained silent about the unspeakable acts knowingly being committed while they willingly and shamefully looked away.

And Hitler did relish in using the influence of Christian religious leaders...religious leaders too afraid to stand up against the man who literally threw aside the Biblical concepts of knowing right from wrong, good from evil... and did so to garner their help in keeping the faithful in line...as in loyal to Hitler's party line that is. And so the clergy became but one of the propaganda arms of the “Third Reich.”

So here the question then becomes, why did the majority of Germany's religious leaders...why did the majority of Europe's religious leaders...not stand up against the evil that walked amongst them? The answer is really not at all that surprising in that once Nazi Germany was able to manipulate both religious rhetoric and its clerical deliverers, churches became gathering places by which Hitler successfully spread Nazi propaganda while instilling in the faithful what he believed to be the “legitimization of his actions.” And he did so while at the same time fostering a sense of what some call “divine support” for the eliminating of those deemed “unholy”...as in the Jews...the now easily and frequently blamed “Christ killers.”

And so for too many countries of Europe “Jew hatred” became a then quite acceptable norm for way too many folks, while the systemic murdering of six millions Jews...babies and children amongst them... morphed into a complex play between Biblical teachings of religious doctrine, and the fact that on some level both the German people and the people of Europe had to know what was really going on. Why so...because Nazi Germany became experts in manipulating religious rhetoric to help propagate its hate filled ideology and propaganda.

Simply, Hitler was successful in using religious musings to turn neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, all in an effort to not only place blame on those who were actually blameless, but to use the religious faithful as one of the means by which to help spread the doctrine that became known as the “Final Solution.” Churches across Germany and Europe were forced to align their teachings with Nazi state rhetoric and propaganda, and unfortunately too many of the faithful did fall sheepishly in line no matter that the smell of death reeked even inside houses of worship, And while some stood strong against this most perverse style of indoctrination, those who did so were also deemed “enemies of the state,” and like the Jews they tried to protect their bodies joined that of Jews piled high inside the anything but “work camps.”

And Germany of the 1930s and 1940s clearly shows that when religious idealism and fervor is entwined within the reasons for war, a most dangerous of combinations is created for it causes divisions and hatreds amongst people that might not have existed before. And this in turn gives birth to radical extremism which can easily morph into immeasurable suffering and loss of life with God's holy name becoming anything but holy. And when a U.S. president is faced with such a quandary their actions, or lack thereof, becomes part of history itself with both religious and secular history melding into one and the same.

Such is the case with then war time President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) who simply ignored what was deemed to be the “industrial scale killing” of Jews taking place in Europe. Believed by some to be an anti-Semite, FDR's actions...or lack thereof...did speak for themselves then as they do now that history has been written.

FDR was a practicing Episcopalian who not only embraced a “Jesus based theology,” but one who mentioned God and religion in his war time speeches,  yet he literally turned his back on Hitler's systemic annihilation of Europe's Jewish population. And in Roosevelt's taking no actions to help save the Jews, his disdain for the Jewish people and their faith was on full display for all to see if only their eyes had been open.

And so, the claimed to be “man of faith”...never once publicly spoke out against Hitler's systemic murdering of Europe's Jews not even after “The Auschwitz Protocal”* was released to the American press in the fall of 1944. Briefly, this document described, in detail, the atrocities committed at Auschwitz and Birkenau by three camp escapees, and how Auschwitz and others like it needed to be bombed. In fact, in the summer and early fall of 1944, the “World Jewish Congress” along with the “War Refugee Board” (WRB) forwarded requests to bomb Auschwitz to the US War Department. These requests were denied by both the department and by FDR himself. And this was no matter that the US Army Air Force had recently carried out a heavy bombing raid of the I.G. Farben synthetic oil and rubber (Buna) factory which was less than five miles away from the “Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.”

A truly sad commentary indeed, and no excuses made can mask the fact that the plight of European Jews was of little to no concern to Roosevelt or to those in his eyes closed administration. 

Simply, religion...the Jewish religion...did indeed color the landscape of WWII and in the way we fought. And while our military shoulders no blame, the fact remains that World War II...especially in the European Theater... was indeed a religious colored war, making this war even uglier than it already was. In fact, if it was not for the “extermination camps” still operating unimpeded, and Roosevelt not allowing the bombing of said camps or the rail lines continuing to bring Jews to what he well knew were the gas chambers...the war might have been over sooner and countless Jewish lives would have been saved, and the children murdered would have been able to grow up.

In fact, in a February 2013 edition of the Jerusalem Post, former South Dakota Senator and 1972 Democrat presidential nominee, George McGovern spoke about his having piloted a B-24 “Liberator” in December 1944, and how his squadron bombed Nazi oil facilities less than five miles from Auschwitz. And in an earlier interview in 2005, McGovern stated that, “There is no question we should have attacked Auschwitz,” adding that, “ There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the Earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens.”

Could have, should have, would have...no tangible reason not to have bombed both Auschwitz and the rail lies except for the “no-go” from Roosevelt himself with his flimsy excuses being that our priority was to defeat the Axis powers before anything else. Sure some “collateral damage” would have happened, but that would have been a small price to pay for the “ovens” and “crematories” to be permanently rendered out of commission.

So when some say there was no basis in religion for WWII...when some evil sorts still say the Jews got what they deserved and that the job Hitler started needs to be finished; when supposed men of God throw their faith aside in order to focus on the perpetrators instead of the victims; remember that religion is indeed a first, last, or somewhere in the middle...and probably forever...factor regarding all aspects of war.

And really why shouldn't it be for God seems to have done nothing to help stop hate, war, or injustice. God basically walked away from us after (what some believe) to be creation for it seems, at least to me, that “He” never intended to be “hands on” if you will, as “free will” was given to us for a reason. Case closed.

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Footnote 

* “The Auschwitz Protocol” was originally published as “The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau,” and is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was taking place inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War. The eyewitness accounts are individually known as the Vrba–Wetzler report, Polish Major's report, and Rosin-Mordowicz report. Read the actual “The Auschwitz Protocal” here.

Copyright © 2025 Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / All rights reserved. 

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For more political commentary please visit my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Craig Andresen's blog The National Patriot to read his latest article Liberalism...Stupid on Steroids. 

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