Behind The Veil of War 5 / 5
- 00:09:10
- YouTube
Behind The Veil of War 5 / 5
The Nazi's cruelty was on full show in their concentration camps. Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of war and Catholic clergymen were made to toil like slaves. These camps were turned into slaughterhouses for human beings. Millions of innocent men, women and children were cruelly murdered in systems designed to kill people en masse. When the camps were liberated, the Allies were greeted by tens of thousands of dead bodies side-by-side with prisoners waiting at death's door. In the Nazi concentration camps, a total of 11 million innocent people lost their lives. By 1943, it had become clear that the Nazis were going to lose the war. In Stalingrad, Hitler's armies suffered a huge defeat at the hands of Soviet forces. After this disaster, Germans also lost another battle in the Kursk region, an event known as the greatest tank battle in history. Defeat was now inevitable. But the Nazis, even as they withdrew, continued their slaughter. Acting under Hitler's orders, they laid waste to all the areas they passed through and killed civilians. German armies left behind millions of dead bodies and survivors grieving for their relatives. When the Allied armies reached Berlin, the downfall of Nazism was inevitable. However, the Red Army troops which entered Berlin were representatives of another ideology of violence. In the years of come, it became all-too-clear that Stalin's armies were no less cruel and violent than Hitler's. About the same number of people came to perish in Stalin's camps. In the areas they occupied, Stalin's soldiers committed massacres similar to the atrocities of Nazi soldiers. The insanity known as World War II claimed the lives of 55 million people. The world had borne witness to another Satanic rite of bloodshed. However, God told the people to follow the way of peace and security, not evil: O You who believe! Enter absolutely into peace. Do not follow in the footsteps of Satan. He is an outright enemy to you. (Qur'an, 2: 208) The two world wars of the last century that we somehow lived through offer important lessons for humanity. Both of these tragedies showed that wars aren't merely a natural result of conflicts of interest between countries, because such conflicts can be resolved through diplomatic means. The real cause of war is the ideology of the people who make the decision to pursue it. This is the ideology that regards fighting, bloodshed and inflicting suffering as elements of human nature, and this is the real cause of violence. This ideology is called Social Darwinism. It is the belief that humans are a mere kind of animal that came into existence as a result of a string of coincidences. World War I was the product of European leaders who openly expressed their Darwinist views. Those responsible for World War II also had strong faith in Social Darwinism. Hitler borrowed this racist ideology and his faith in wars from Darwinism. His biography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) represents an adaptation of Darwin's "struggle to survive." In his early years when he was working as a journalist, Italian fascist leader Mussolini was such a committed evolutionist that he even considered Darwin "the greatest thinker of the 19th century." During his dictatorship, he maintained the same ideology and claimed that the existence of war was a "law of evolution." Although trained as a priest during his youth, Stalin became an atheist after reading Darwin's Origin of the Species. During his violent rule, he imposed the theories of Darwin and Lamarck - an even more primitive evolutionist - on the Russian people. For these dictators who saw humans as herds of animals, shedding blood was a mere biological process. Behind the murders, we find the dictators' faith in Social Darwinism. There will be no peace on earth as long as Social Darwinism continues to exist. This ideology invites nations and even whole civilizations to continuous conflict. According to Social Darwinism, this is humanity's reason for existence.
YouTube | September 6, 2008
