A German's View

I'm not too keen on forwarding, or posting emails. Most of the FWDs I get I can really live without. But, this email is really telling a story that we don't get on commercially driven venues like CNN or FOX or Yahoo. Human nature is clearly displayed in this man's viewpoint. He is German and he gives a not so usual perspective on the Nazi movement that Americans don't see. I had to place it here because of its value to understanding humanity.

Datum: Sonntag, 8. November 2009, 12:00

A German's View on Islam

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II,
owned a number of large industries and estates.
When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave
can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

"Very few people were true Nazis," he said, "but many enjoyed the
return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care.
I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools.
So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen.

Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and
the end of the world had come. My family lost everything.
I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my
factories."

Now we are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that
Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims
just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be
true, it is entirely irrelevant.

It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to
somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in
the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of
50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically
slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are
gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.
It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder or honor-kill. It is the
fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who
zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and
homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and
to become suicide bombers.

The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the "silent
majority," is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in
peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of
about 20 million people. The peaceful majority was irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists
managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a war
mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across
South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic
murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel
and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not
be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our
powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of
points:
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up,
because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find
that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have
begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs,
Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians and many
others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until
it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only
group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes
this email without sending it on is contributing to the passiveness
that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send
this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide,
read this and think about it, and send it on before it's too late.

And remember, the first thing the fanatics will do to the silent
majority is to disarm them.


Gerhard Grünewald
Franzensbader Str.19
14193 Berlin


This was the reply to the email:

What this email forgets is that the US has a larger military than half of the world's countries combined. More of our taxes pay for the military than any other item (over 50% -more if you count the line item budgets for individual wars). We dropped 2 atomic bombs, we had concentration camps, lynchings, we had (some would say still have) institutionalized racism, homophobia. We have wars every 5-10 years killing thousands of people at a time including our own people. We are probably the most violent nation to ever exist and yet I do not see that in the list because we are on top (the pride that this man speaks of).

Our country was formed with violence. Our tribute to the birth of this nation is a recreation of bombs (fireworks), our national anthem sings of "the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air". Our movies and entertainment are filled with violence and gore (destruction), but yet we worry that our children's minds will be corrupted by sex (pro-creation), so sex becomes a violent act as well.

Overall, I agree with the message in this email in that the majority sits silently while fanatics go on killing sprees. But I also think we need to look at ourselves. Maybe we are the violent fanatics. It makes it much more difficult to speak up when it is you. The people who win wars write the history books, no matter how many people die and that seems to justify the majority of Americans looking the other way.