" the dangerous principle was promulgated that men are to be looked upon as means and not as ends "

The posts I did recently in response to atheists peddling their popular lie about the Nazis being a Christian phenomenon led to me reading more about the Nazi atheists' revival of Paganism as a more Germanic, more war encouraging religion for the simple Aryan masses than Christianity.  The posting of that fascist gun nut Christmas card with a Nazi Christmas card from 1944 had more guns as opposed to "Peace on Earth goodwill to humanity", neither of them had anything to do with Jesus.   They did have what a lot of folk believe is stolen by Christians from pagans.  As I've noted two Christmas seasons running that the pagans they were supposed to have stolen it from, along with their Yule holiday prominently featured what you do with guns, killing.   Not much like the late 19th-20th century myth about the Yule its religious aspect under paganism was an occasion for massive blood sacrifice, including human sacrifice.   For the class of people from whom those victims would be chosen, it must have been quite a horrific occasion as well as for the many animals so sacrificed.  As I also concluded as I thought about it, for such people a new and rival religion which banned human sacrifice and did not even sacrifice animals just have come as a blessed relief.   As brutal as Christian medieval Europe was, it lacked that feature of virtually all known European paganism.  Any brutality committed in the name of Christianity was at variance with the gospels and the rest of the New Testament, it is what is more likely held over from pagan times, not Christmas.

By the way, RMJ has done considerable research into the neo-pagan and atheist popular myth that the Xians stole the Yule from those poor beleaguered pagans.   Like so much of that neo-urban-webbian myth, that is rubbish.  

It was only reading about that parallel revival of paganism under the Nazis that I fully came to understand why for people like John Paul II and Bernard XVI a revival of paganism, by name or merely by common practice, would have been something to worry about.   They, growing up under the Nazis, learning more about it in the immediate post-war period and after, would have seen a connection between neo-paganism and Nazism.   That so many in the higher reaches of  the Nazi party saw so much in common between paganism and Nazism is certainly worth thinking about. Why shouldn't Pagans today have to answer for that?   I have, as of yet, found no pagan opposition to Nazism to match the Christian and, certainly, Jewish opposition to them at the time.

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I recently mentioned one of the martyrs of the White Rose movement, Sophie Scholl who was beheaded by the Nazis for distributing pamphlets,  I also recently found a site with translations of  the White Rose pamphlets [for some reason the link to the fourth pamphlet didn't work].   Here's the first one.

Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be "governed" without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day?

If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order in history; if they surrender man's highest principle, that which raises him above all other God's creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass - then, yes, they deserve their downfall.

Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would 
appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now - the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability - are waiting to be hounded to their destruction. So it seems - but it is not so. Rather, by means of a gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison. Only now, finding himself lying in fetters, has he become aware of his fate.

Only a few recognized the threat of ruin, and the reward for their heroic warning was death. We will have more to say about the fate of these persons. If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer; then even the last victim will have been cast senselessly into the maw of the insatiable demon.

Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western 
civilization, must defend himself against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism. Offer passive resistance - resistance - wherever you may be, forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation's last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human. Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure.

From Friedrich Schiller's "The Lawgiving of Lycurgus and Solon":

Viewed in relation to its purposes, the law code of Lycurgus is a masterpiece of political science 
and knowledge of human nature. He desired a powerful, unassailable state, firmly established on its own principles. Political effectiveness and permanence were the goal towards which he strove, and he attained this goal to the full extent possible under the circumstances. But if one compares the purpose Lycurgus had in view with the purposes of mankind, then a deep abhorrence takes the 
place of the approbation which we felt at first glance. Anything may be sacrificed to the good of the state except that end for which the State serves as a means. The state is never an end in itself; it is important only as a condition under which the purpose of mankind can be attained, and this purpose is none other than the development of all of man's powers, his progress and improvement. 

If a state prevents the development of the capacities which reside in man, if it interferes with the progress of the human spirit, then it is reprehensible and injurious, no matter how excellently devised, how perfect in its own way. 

Its very permanence in that case amounts more to a reproach than to a basis for fame; it becomes a prolonged evil, and the longer it endures, the more harmful it is...

At the price of all moral feeling a political system was set up, and the resources of the state were 
mobilized to that end. In Sparta there was no conjugal love, no mother love, no filial devotion, no 
friendship; all men were citizens only, and all virtue was civic virtue.

A law of the state made it the duty of Spartans to be inhumane to their slaves; in these unhappy 
victims of war humanity itself was insulted and mistreated. In the Spartan code of law the dangerous principle was promulgated that men are to be looked upon as means and not as ends - and the foundations of natural law and of morality were destroyed by that law...

What an admirable sight is afforded, by contrast, by the rough soldier Gaius Marcius in his camp 
before Rome, when he renounced vengeance and victory because he could not endure to see a 
mother's tears!...

The state [of Lycurgus] could endure only under the one condition: that the spirit of the people 
remained quiescent. Hence it could be maintained only if it failed to achieve the highest, the sole 
purpose of a state.

From Goethe's "The Awakening of Epimenides, Act II, Scene 4:

SPIRITS: Though he who has boldly risen from the abyss Through an iron will and cunning May 
conquer half the world, Yet to the abyss he must return. Already a terrible fear has seized him; In vain he will resist! And all who still stand with him Must perish in his fall

HOPE: Now I find my good men Are gathered in the night, To wait in silence, not to sleep. And the glorious word of liberty They whisper and murmur, Till in unaccustomed strangeness, On the steps of  our temple Once again in delight they cry: Freedom! Freedom!

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.

Update:  Steve Simels believes he knows more about the nature of the Nazi regime than Sophie Scholl, her brother, Hans, and Christoph Probst, who were all murdered by the Nazis for their first hand witness in opposition to their criminal regime.  He's typical of an ignorant American who has a number of self-serving factoids they repeat as a rather stupid routine in place of any facts.  I am done answering anything he or his fellow idiots have to say on the topic.  I think I've spent enough fruitless hours responding to their lies which they will repeat in the face of any amount of evidence disproving their ancient fictions.