What if during Hitler's reign of terror

Had an interesting couple of thoughts come up during a lunch conversation today. I suppose it does have implications for some of our current events.

The question/thought was this-

During the rise of Hitler he continually passed stiffer and stiffer restrictions upon the Jews until they had no gun ownership, or ownership of anything they could use to defend themselves. They were then unable to fight back at all as the death camps were put into place.

as one example

“Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority. Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew’s possession will be forfeited to the government without compensation. Whoever willfully or negligently violates the provisions will be punished with imprisonment and a fine.” - Nazi Law (Regulations Against Jews’ Possession of Weapons), 1938

The question then was should the Jewish people perhaps have drawn a line in the sand and not relinquished their arms?

If the Jewish folks had remained armed could they have perhaps saved millions of innocent lives?

In essence, if the Jewish folks, and other Europeans, and refused to give up their arms could they possibly have prevented the Holocaust?

I found the discussion quiet thought provoking over lunch today.

Anyone have any thoughts on the topic?

Having listened to Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (about 40 CDs!) a couple of years ago(which I highly recommend), I doubt that retaining their guns would have made a huge difference.

The Nazis were too organized and too brutal. I doubt that the Jewish people could have organized themselves fast enough to withstand the Gestapo, etc. Sure, they may have killed some Nazis but the end result likely would have been the same, if not much worse.

That being said, I certainly do not think any type of gun control legislation will make a hill of beans difference in the type of thing that happened in Newtown. If all existing guns could be made to magically disappear, it might work. But there are too many guns out there already and nobody will give them up voluntarily (I won't) and especially the crooks won't.

It would be insightful to get a Jew's take on this question - we have a couple posting here, do we not? But my initial reaction to this question is the same as TMK - "Sure, they may have killed some Nazis but the end result likely would have been the same, if not much worse."

There is such a thing as hindsight that teaches us if all would have progressed normally one could predict its outcome. But there are unknowns that would have given you a totally different result.

Then there is the sovereignty of God that provokes us to ask some pointed questions and the answers may not be comfortable.

Did the holocaust take God by surprise? If it did then perhaps retaining ownership of guns could have averted the slaughter of Jews, and the others. But we know this is not true. So, why did God allow it to proceed unchecked? We know there were Gentiles that risked their lives in rescuing Jews and God was with them. Is it possible that with the slaughter, evil that was being perpetrated by the Nazis that God's mercy and love was being seen to the point where others came to know the LORD?

Scripture tells us that God is not willing that any should perish...but he also knows who will come to him and what would bring this about. Since this is the case he will use others, even their brutality, if it would result in the repentance of some.

This is the way I understand how the holocaust happened. And...not just the holocaust, persecution or any other tragedy. I am trying to understand life with all its tragedies, evil from God's perspective. In His economy nothing, no events will go to waste - he is very creative in using the ugly, the tragic to bring about beautiful results - about like piecing a quilt!

Hey TMK-

You may well be right.

However, the thought of having the 6-7 million Jews who were murdered instead armed to defend themselves may have been a great deterrent to Hitler.

If the additional millions of disarmed Europeans would have had the ability to defend themselves perhaps it could have been stopped.

For example, 26.5 million Russians were killed by the Germans (of which 14 million WERE CIVILIAN!), 2 million Poles killed as well. In retrospect if the Russians, Jews, Poles, and other Europeans were armed you have a potential number of armed people approaching 30 million that only includes the civilian deaths! That doesn't even include the other disarmed nations people. The ENTIRE population of Germany was only 69.5 million then.

Again, you may be right but I truly wonder how it might have gone differently. I certainly concur that the Nazi's were a brutal lot and had no limits to the cruelty some were willing to inflict. Many German soldiers have said they felt they were, "Only protecting their homeland". Since all the media information they received was hand picked that is the message they were given... and thus received. Good lesson for us to learn from I suppose.

As it applies to us.... it would be very difficult for a government (foreign or our own) to currently inflict the things on the people that the Nazi's did. The people are armed and many will resist. If however American's are disarmed then it is an easy thing to control and abuse them like cows... like the Nazi's did.

Interesting thoughts! Thanks TMK! Appreciate the referral for Shirer's works as well.

Be blessed!

The reason that I found Shirer's book so fascinating is that while it was written from a purely historical perspective, from a "bird's eye view" I could clearly see God's hand moving to orchestrate things.

Hitler had the war won, or very close to it, when he began making absolutely ridiculous decisions, ignoring all his generals' advice, and diverted resources and soldiers elsewhere (mostly to deal with the "Jewish" problem). It really is unexplainable some of the things he did. Of course he was madman, but I believe God was influencing his madness.

From an "armed civilian" standpoint, i think the issue again is one of organization. 10,000 armed civilians will get whooped by a 2000 or even a 1000 strong organized military regiment with tanks, cannons, etc. I don't know any civilians living around me who have anything more than guns. Times have changed since 1776.