Ned, be more careful with your history

Submitted by Andrew Smith (United States), Dec 11, 2002 at 12:21

Ned, ...Some of your assertions bear correcting.

I'll leave aside your casual gloss on the history of the Crusades except to point out a few key facts:

The Crusades were a *response* to the Muslim invasion and conquest of the traditionally Christian lands of the Middle East. Countless thousands of "Christian and Jewish civilians" were massacred or forcibly converted by the Muslims. I point this out not to justify the excesses of the Crusaders but because it is a point all too often (and altogether too conveniently) omitted in the politically correct (aka American Pulic School) version of Crusader History.

What concerns me more is your implication that the Nazis were somehow "good Christians" and that their actions were the result of a misguided interpretation of Christian faith. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hitler and his close confidants saw Christianity as a Semitic embarrassment, an alien and alienating influence on the pure German spirit. Eradicating Christianity was a longer term goal of the Nazis, and one that Hitler explicitly confessed when he said that he wanted to replace it with a religion rooted in "blood and soil."

Hitler and his circle were, if anything, a cabal of militant atheists (who, after all, have killed more people than all the religious zealots combined) and neo-Pagans.

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