In 1958, I was privileged to be among two dozen students from Kalamazoo College chosen as Light Scholars. I was awarded a scholarship for summer study at the University of Bonn, Germany. Though I was a child during the Second World War, I was among the many people in the world trying to understand how Germany, a decent civilized nation, home to some of the greatest authors, composers and scientists in the history of the world, could have plunged into the unimaginable evil of Hitler and the Nazis. In an even greater irony, many of the greatest Christian theologians and Biblical scholars were German. Remember that Germany was the birthplace of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. How could the Third Reich have happened?

A complete answer to that question will never be possible, but it began with the belief among many Germans that their country had been betrayed into defeat in the First World War. The harsh and vindictive terms of the Versailles Treaty only helped to confirm that belief. Germany plunged into economic ruin in the 1920’s that was further deepened by the Great Depression.

Adolf Hitler emerged from that misery, to be seen as Germany’s savior. His gang of Nazi thugs marched singing their anthem, “Die Fahne hoch!,” better known as the Horst Wessel song. It was the Nazi anthem from 1930 until 1945. Promising an end to “servitude” and “a day of freedom and bread,” it became the stirring battle hymn of a people determined to erase the defeat and shame of the First World War.

But the Third Reich itself was not only a political reality but also a spiritual phenomenon, albeit grotesque in its negativity. The Nazis offered Germany and many other Europeans a spirituality replacing the (supposed) weak and inadequate Christian faith. People lived and died under the swastika flag. It offered a faith that imposed order, created meaning, provided identity, and inspired commitment to its demonic vision of life. It was idolatry grown to horrific proportions.

Like all idolatries, the Third Reich united one people at the expense of others. It demanded the subordination of every person whose lives it touched. It created an evil and destructive community based upon a perverse premise. It offered a new faith based on the swastika, the “hakenkreuz,” the crooked cross, a faith and vision of life as twisted as its symbol.

Through Die Fahne Hock! (“Lift High the Flag”) Germans embraced a new God, calling them to destroy life in the name of life, to deny freedom in the name of freedom, and to turn all that serves humanity against humanity.

Die Fahne Hoch! (“Lift High the Flag”) is a stirring, energetic, and passionate song. It inspired the worst and empowered the evil in those who sang it. The enormous popularity of Die Fahne Hoch! is sobering evidence that nations and peoples can be catastrophically and tragically wrong. Sadly, few nations and few political leaders seem willing to learn the lessons that history teaches. As the American philosopher, Santayana, said: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Despite the terrible example of Nazi Germany, our own nation seems determined to plunge down the precipice that has destroyed all previous empires. Since the Second World War, America has involved itself in so many military conflicts and adventures. Our leaders have told us the pleasant lie that the deaths of thousands of our servicemen and women, not to mention the deaths of millions of other people in the lands we have invaded, have somehow made not only us but other nations safer and better than we found them. That is a lie. All of these tragic conflicts have only served to enrich the wealth of the military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned us and driven America into near bankruptcy. What gave us the right to believe that we could maliciously meddle in the lives of other countries whether they wanted us to or not? This past week marked the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. That country is now worse off than under Saddam Hussein who did not, by the way, have weapons of mass destruction. That was the lie leading us to war.

It may seem a long way from first century Palestine to twentieth century Nazi Germany to twenty-first century America, but hear me out. The words of Jesus on Palm Sunday as he looked over Jerusalem, so soon be destroyed if its people did not turn from the path of the sword to the way of peace, are just as true now as they were then. “If even now you would recognize the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”