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Color and life, sudden and everywhere, lift the pall of silence from the train car. Conversation picks up—tentative, low. Who does not speak quietly in public these days?
In this country, dissenters emerge like ants from every
dark crevice. They are small and scuttling, but before they are crushed, they will bite the descending heel and leave a painful sting. The White Rose is not the only party of resistance.
Lord, grant me the strength to use what poor talents You have given me, wisely and well. And whatever I do, let me do it for Your
true purpose and not the whim of any man.
But this is not the sort of life anyone dreams of. Even Hitler, he thinks, must be surprised that he ever
got so far—that it has all been so simple to take, to destroy. In his moments of despair—and there are many—Anton wonders whether God Himself ever dreamed it could come to this.
Elisabeth needs a protector and partner, not a lover. Anton needs redemption for his sins.
When he
can hear the music in a person’s soul, he can understand them.
God opens every way for an earnest heart.
We trade our humble excesses to one another. That way, no one suffers.”
The Reich lies outright, and what are we to do about it? The papers, like whipped dogs, piss themselves and cringe. Reporters sit up and beg. When the Master snaps his fingers, he wants a
show of loyalty.
Truth cannot feed your children. Integrity doesn’t keep a man warm.
There was a time when Germans could be proud of who and what we were.
He is growing up too fast for a boy his age, but that is the way
of children raised among suffering. Like seedlings sprouted in a dark corner, they shoot up thin and spindly, grasping and pale. Who can grow strong roots when the very earth is unsafe,
when we are starved f...
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“The Lord does not make men do evil things to one
another. But the Lord gave us the right to choose. Whether we do good or evil, it is our own decision and our own responsibility.”
Unterboihingen, of all places, has a gauleiter? They are the Reich’s eyes and ears, governors of districts
on behalf of the National Socialists—and to a man, every gauleiter is tucked deep in the pockets of Hitler and his highest men.
Dusk has settled in, a restless purple half-light below a shy white sickle of moon.
Pain like a hard hand grips his throat. The loss of the little ones is still too fresh, too near.
All those sweet
faces stilled forever; the mouths that once opened in ready laughter now hang wide in death, death’s ever-triumphant grin. In a gray camp somewhere, behind a ...
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piled sixtee...
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You must be guided by integrity, mercy, and justice. You must let love carry all your decisions, all your words. That is what the Lord asks of us in every role: father, mother, brother, child.
Why can’t we learn this lesson of history?
What has brought us here, if not heedlessness or willful neglect?
Germany’s question then. Today’s lesson now.
How did we err, and how did we sin, to allow the Reich so much power? How far back must we go—we, as a people—to undo each small step toward infamy? The first thin roots of this evil twine through
Each small step...
history’s soil. But where do they start? We cannot look to 1934, when the chancellor Adolf Hitler declared himself Führer. That was only the culmination of a long black line of discord.
We have nursed this cancer from our earliest days.
Desperate hearts are easy to secure.
When her
children are starving, a woman will believe any vile promise you whisper in her ear. When a man is cornered, he will trust...
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In this world, evil heaps itself on evil, and the spire of unchecked power climbs higher by the day. This is a tower of man’s own building.
Unchecked power and unchecked lies.
Around its
base the wolves circle, greedy and grinning—white, cold eyeteeth bared...
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The wolves have always been there.
All is in your own hands, just as much as God’s. And whatever your hands may do, do it with all your strength and will.
Weeping may endure for a night—joy
joy comes with the morning.
I cannot help but know it. Against all sense, I believe. Somewhere, beyond the ragged edge of night, ...
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Music eases
every pain we don’t know we carry. It banishes the fear that is so commonplace now, we have grown inured to its shadow and chill.
Music is a way of transporting emotion from one breast to another. It is a way of knowing the unknowable, of feeling what we can never allow ourselves to confront in any other way.
These agonies and ecstasies—they can break us, use us up, burn us away unless we shield our hearts with music.
We have known, and we have heard—but somehow, we thought it could never happen to us. Or perhaps we willfully blinded
ourselves, preferring ignorance and fantasy to the terror of reality.
In the name of making Germany great, we have forced our men to choose between the lives of innocents and their own wives and children.
Making Germany Great—the echoes of history in today’s world. Purposely done.
