who doesn’t love a good mystery, but does it really matter….

“History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy”
―Zbigniew Brzeziński

Whenever you’re faced with an explanation of what’s going on in Washington,
the choice between incompetence and conspiracy,
always choose incompetence.

Charles Krauthammer


(vintage wartime child’s lead figure of General Montgomery with a leash around the
Führer’s neck/Julie Cook 2017)

Ever so many years, those various agencies and governmental offices in charge of all
things covert and of all things hidden begin to release aged documents…
declassifying that which was once considered “top secret.”
As somehow time works her magic and renders that which was held sacred
as to now being considered ‘non est dignum’, or no longer of worth.

The most recent and tantalizing declassification has been the Kennedy files.

Ever since that fateful November Dallas day when a young president was gunned down,
mystery and intrigue swirled in the wake of a Nation’s grief.

Did Oswald or didn’t Oswald act alone?
Was it the Soviets?
Khrushchev?
The KGB?
Cheka?
Cuba?
Castro?
The Mob?
Hoover?
The CIA?
Jimmy Hoffa?
The Republicans
The Protestants….

On and on goes the swirling madness of whodunit, what ifs and conspiracy…
all of which plays out in the vivid human imagination.

And just this very day, I caught an interesting little questionable news worthy
tidbit…of another story of declassification and some old CIA dossiers…

It seems that as late as 1955, ten years following the fall of the German Reich,
the CIA was chasing credible leads that Hitler was actually alive and maybe
not so well, living first in Colombia, then moving on the Argentina.

Our history tells us that as the Russians stormed into Berlin, Hitler,
along with his long time companion and most recent bride of one day Eva Braun,
hunkered down in an underground Berlin bunker digesting cyanid capsules with Hitler
then making certain things would end by shooting himself in the head.

According to Wikipedia…
In accordance with Hitler’s prior instructions, that afternoon their remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker’s emergency exit, doused in petrol, and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker. Records in the Soviet archives show that their burnt remains were recovered and interred in successive locations until 1970, when they were again exhumed, cremated, and the ashes scattered.

Accounts differ as to the cause of death; one version stated that he died by poison only and another view claimed he died by a self-inflicted gunshot while biting down on a cyanide capsule. Contemporary historians have rejected these accounts as being either Soviet propaganda or an attempted compromise in order to reconcile the different conclusions.
One eyewitness stated that Hitler’s corpse showed signs of having been shot through the mouth, but this has been proven unlikely. There is also controversy regarding the authenticity of skull and jaw fragments that were recovered.
In 2009, American researchers performed DNA tests on a skull that Soviet officials had long believed to be that of Hitler. The tests and examination revealed that the skull was actually that of a woman less than 40 years old. The recovered jaw fragments were not tested

When the Soviet soldiers advanced on Berlin, they were like a pack of wild
hungry and exhausted dogs—their enthusiasm for having crushed their mortal enemy would border on delirium.

Sections of their soot scrawled graffiti, along with holes made by grenades,
still remain on display in the rebuilt German Reichstag.

I find it hard to imagine that as triumphant as those Soviet soldiers were feeling
as they marched upon that city and finding the remains of Hitler, they would
somehow temper their enthusiasm for a hasty and impromptu burial as if some sort
of common sense suddenly prevailed and they found it important to hide the remains of madness lest any sort of shrine would eventually emerge.

I would think rather that there would be pictures taken, as soldiers would in macabre fashion, parade the now deceased and desecrated remains as some sort of trophy
and confirmation of victory….rather than the tale that the Soviets ferried off the remains, sealing them away.
This as we recall how the Italians who, finally rid of Mussolini, strung his body up
in the Piazzale Loreto for public display and desecration…
why would we expect the Soviet soldiers to show any more restraint?

So without a body, our imaginations have been left to wander and wonder all
these many years…

But what of it?

What does it matter all these many years later knowing that Hitler, who would now
be long dead, had run away?
Should we be surprised that a maniacal lunatic who was already cowering in a fortified bunker, wouldn’t consider escape? Would he be so daring enough of a coward to
have actually committed suicide or would he have run and hid if given the opportunity?

What of a president who was shot to death as our democracy played on…

Does some sort of new hidden truth change our lives or change our fate or the fate
of those gone before us?

The German Reich was over, the war soon ending with two bombs being dropped on Japan…
A president was dead as a vice president was sworn in as an assassin was soon
gunned down himself.

Our lives went forward as history turned another page.

And so man, with his most vivid imagination, races forward….
or races backward depending on who you ask.

Was the landing on the moon real?
What happens when you play a Beatles album in reverse?
Did the Holocaust really happen?
Was Jack the Ripper the Queen’s own physician?
Was it a Hillary body double?

On and on goes the often ludicrous speculations of what was, what could be
and what might have been…

But one thing remains certain…
That there is only one Truth that matters.
One Truth that stands the test of time.
One Truth that speaks to each of us consistently.

As C.S. Lewis again reminds us about the greatest
‘what if’ posed by man when he ponders the actuality that Jesus was who He claimed
to be…that of the Son of God as well as our risen Savior…..

“…He would either be a lunatic —
on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg —
or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God,
or else a madman or something worse.
You can shut him up for a fool,
you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or
you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God…”

I myself choose to fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God…
as His word is truly the only Word I believe as fact…
man may speculate on everything else in his world, but the one Truth remains…
Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior….

“You are from below; I am from above.
You are of this world; I am not of this world.
I told you that you would die in your sins;
if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”

John 8:23-24

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/11/02/hitler-wwii-escape-investigated-by-cia-bombshell-document-reveals.html

Thoughts no longer your own….

Denouncing your neighbour for a ‘thought-crime’ was a favourite past time
in the old Soviet Union.
The problem for anyone accused of having the ‘wrong thoughts’ is that it’s
impossible to defend yourself.

Bishop Gavin Ashenden


(stock image CNN Soviet Army Parade)

“Well the practice is back.
‘Hate crime’ is the new thought crime.
If someone else’s views makes you feel uncomfortable,
all you need to do is to accuse them of either ‘hate’ or, if you prefer, ‘extremism’,
or best of all, both.”

Bishop Gavin Ashenden

I read the latest posting by Bishop Ashenden this morning as he continues to address the maddening debacle of a Church of England church school kicking out a Christian
organization because parents complained that the group was too Christian for their children.

Remember we’re talking about a Christian church school and a Christian organization…
You may read the post here as I’m still in disbelief:

Hatred, like beauty maybe in the eye of the beholder; cowardice, complicity and the Church of England

And I have found myself ruminating over this whole incident on and off since first
reading about it over on the Wee Flee blog of the Scottish Pastor David Robertson.

https://theweeflea.com

However it was more than what the good Bishop added today to the story that reignited
my ire over all of this, it was what he said about our very thoughts that disturbed
me more than anything else.

You may recall my having mentioned reading the book The Book Thieves
by Anders Rydell
The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return A Literary Inheritance

I’ve yet to finish the book.
It is a very difficult read…for all sorts of reasons.
It is a story that I have had to put down for extended periods as it is not easy
processing the sheer overwhelming information—
the tragedies, the unbelievable acts and the mercurial madness of humans
against other humans

Mr Rydell has done an exceptional job with the devastating facts and figures…
that of the cities, the towns, the libraries, both public and private,
that were decimated.
He has traveled extensively all over Europe, as well as into Russia,
in search of recovery efforts.
He has followed the often frustrating breadcrumbs left by owners…trails that
eventually lead to various death camps or simply stopped as abruptly as they
had begun.

Millions of priceless, and the not so priceless, manuscripts, books, torahs, diaries, incurables that were stolen, plundered, confiscated, hidden, burned or reduced to pulp
the for Nazi’s own paper needs…
With many important collections simply being scattered to the four corners
of the globe…
As there is now a race against time underway to reunite families with the
recovered “treasures” of lost, and sometimes forgotten, loved ones.

But the one thing that Mr Rydell has actually unearthed is the reasoning as to why
the Nazis would go to such extensive and meticulous extremes to confiscate books
along with entire libraries across all of Europe and Russia—
a reason which was more than merely amassing of war booty—
it was something so much darker.

It was to be the complete eradication of the spirit and soul of the
People of the Book.

“The Nazis knew how important books were to the Jews. Reading makes you into
a human being. When someone takes it away from you they also steal your thoughts.
They wanted to destroy the Jews by robbing them of what was most important to them”

Michal Bušek

And so today with Bishop Ashenden’s words of recounting the notion of
“thought crimes”–something the Nazi’s and later the Soviets would each attempt
to master, we are reminded that such practice is now alive and well with a key focus
on the Christian thought….

“If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people’s bitter experience
through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many
calamities and mistakes it could avoid.
But it is very difficult.
There always is this fallacious belief:
‘It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.’

Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:2