Reply #67: Europe had a long history of persecution of Jews

[RainDog]

that went back to the middle ages at least. This persecution was based upon their religion. The reason there were so many Jews in Poland by the time of Hitler was because Poland provided sanctuary for Jews who were persecuted in Spain and other parts of western Europe during the Inquisition. Poland allowed Jews to immigrate because of the ruler's Jewish mistress, or so the story goes.

Hitler's troops had the phrase "Got mit uns" on their belt buckles. Hitler claimed he was saving Germany from the godless Bolsheviks and socialists. Jews were identified with socialism and Bolshevism. So Hitler's call to remove Jews from Europe was a conflation of Jewishness and socialism - but Jewishness was also identified as "not Christian."

Of course there were many, many reasons for WWII but it is not credible to say that religion, as in Jewishness defined as Judaism, had no bearing on the holocaust. of course it did. Even tho secular Jews were just as persecuted - their Jewishness and non-Christian identity made them "the other."

You would have to ignore centuries of the divine right of Kings, etc. in Europe to claim that religion had no bearing on wars there -- or on the American Revolution, for that matter. The small percentage of American who favored revolution, initially, were the well educated and well off - and didn't buy the b.s. that the king could rule as he chose simply because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. - just like the initial phases of the French Revolution. The French Revolution went beyond the middle class elite, tho, and that is where the Terror came from. The French Revolution during the terror was as much of a reaction against the merger of church and state as it was any call to liberty, equality and fraternity. During the French Revolution, one chief target of the Jacobins was the church because they held so much wealth, refused to help the poor, and aligned themselves with the aristocrats and royalty.

Of course, causes of any major era are more complex than one thing. However, religion is one of the best ways to get people to do stupid things, things that are against their self-interest, and things that hurt others because the fear of god is a powerful motivator for inhumanity.