Read the words of a Death Camp Nazi.

Two of my favorite topics and areas of study collided this week.

1) The insanity of, insights from, and wisdom to be mined from, World War II.
And 2) the increasingly rare activity of critical thinking.

Outsourced Thinking & Death Camp Boss

Or Evil vs "Can't Happen To Me."

The other day I was deep into a rabbit hole I'd jumped in when watching a documentary on the Holocaust. I travel those holes often. :) 

You can (and should) do your own watching and reading of the Holocaust and all the other fascinating and important details of that time. But ... 

A few quick notes about Rudolf Höss:

• He was the longest serving commandant of the Auschwitz Death Camp.
• He introduced the infamous Zyklon B into the system that would kill over 1 million at that camp alone.
• He was also a father, husband, and born and raised Catholic (theoretically Christian).
• He was tried and hanged (actually at Auschwitz) in 1947. 

Here are a two of his own writings to his family that I find worth of the goosebumps I have as I write this and worth of your time.
Don't get stuck thinking "I'm not like that guy" regarding what made him infamous. Listen to how he explains the cost of being thinkless - my word for abdicating and outsourcing thinking, a common trend.

In a farewell letter to his wife, Höss wrote on 11 April:

Based on my present knowledge I can see today clearly, severely and bitterly for me, that the entire ideology about the world in which I believed so firmly and unswervingly was based on completely wrong premises and had to absolutely collapse one day. And so my actions in the service of this ideology were completely wrong, even though I faithfully believed the idea was correct. Now it was very logical that strong doubts grew within me, and whether my turning away from my belief in God was based on completely wrong premises. It was a hard struggle. But I have again found my faith in my God.

The same day in a farewell letter to his children, Höss told his eldest son:

Keep your good heart. Become a person who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and humanity. Learn to think and judge for yourself, responsibly. Don't accept everything without criticism and as absolutely true... The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me. ... In all your undertakings, don't just let your mind speak, but listen above all to the voice in your heart.

WOW! Do with that as you will.

But for me it gives me goosebumps. It's makes me mad. It fires me up. It fuels my continued angst and frustration from how so many people don't think, most detrimental when it's Church leaders who don't think.

It triggers a "what if" domino chain my head. What if he spoke up? What if he just quit and walked away? What if someone called him out as a teenager? 

Or would he be better or worse today if he got his politics from the media (which is exactly what happened then too)? Is this sort of cascading terror-from-indoctrination possible today? What husbands, fathers, and Christians aren't thinking for themselves and what might it lead to?

And most triggering of all... I know at least one person will read this and think "yeah, but that's then... can't happen now... it's not that bad now... we're smarter."