Contempt for Human Life Was Nazi Philosophy

by Hilmar von Campe

During a discussion in Washington about abortion, a conservative senator told me that "abortion is the most divisive issue in America since the civil war." In my opinion, "divisive" is not the correct word. The issue of abortion is, in fact, a watershed for America. And it cannot be resolved within the narrow scope of a typical pro-life v. pro-choice debate.

I grew up under the Nazis and lived through World War II as a soldier and citizen of Germany. Their philosophy and political system was built on a series of lies:

Lie #1: There is no God.

Lie #2: There is no absolute morality. Accordingly, the Nazis established a legal system resting on relative morality, a system that served not justice but their own power.

Lie #3: Human beings have different value according to their usefulness to society. The Nazis defined the Aryan (German) race as superior to all others and declared Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and Germans who opposed them to be without any value whatsoever.

Those Nazi concepts were translated into laws that legalized discrimination against Jews.

The end product of the Nazis' arrogance and contempt for human life (not their own lives, of course, but others') was the Holocaust -- the mass murder of millions of innocent people. In effect, German society had committed suicide long before Allied tanks rolled into Germany, because no society that violates the fundamental right to life can survive.

During the 1930s and 1940s, this American philosophy of the right to life clashed with the National Socialist as well as with the international socialist (Communist) philosophy of relative morality and contempt for human life. America became the leader of the free world not just because it was powerful but also because its principles of individual liberty and morality were directly opposed to totalitarian immorality, ruthless persecution, and elimination of millions of human beings whom the Nazis and Communists declared to be useless.

Many say that such a system could never happen here. Sixty years ago, the Nazis declared that "inferior" races needed to be eliminated. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 ruled that the unborn human being could be exterminated legally. Declaring a human being to be a non-person is on the same level as the Nazi Nuremberg laws that made discrimination against Jews legal and set the stage for mass murder.

The Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion is actually a Nazi-type law. It is completely in the spirit of the Nazis; that is, it contains the elements of moral relativity and contempt for human life that characterized the Hitler regime.

Having lived through the nightmare of Germany under the Third Reich, I find the parallel between Roe v. Wade and the Holocaust horrific and appalling. I never thought I'd see the day when the Nazi mentality would make its way into the U.S. legal system and indeed into the very social fabric of this nation.

That is why I say that the scope of the typical pro-life or pro-choice debate is too narrow. The killing of innocents, whether in Germany or in America, is only a symptom of the underlying evil philosophy, which attempts to destroy the moral order of God and establish a system of lies for the power of self. It elevates the power of almighty man over the power of God. What is at stake, therefore, is the direction and purpose of American society.

The United States was built on the belief that God created all men equal with unalienable rights. The U.S. Constitution, with its division of powers, was meant to guarantee that no government could infringe on the right to life, property, and happiness of Americans.

The United States has long been considered the leader of the free world. But that role needs to be reexamined. What values does America espouse today? If the United States has lowered its moral standards to the level of a totalitarian society, then on what grounds can it claim to be the leader of the free world?

Politicians of all stripes would do well to seriously consider this issue. It is apparent that the United States needs to reestablish its moral compass at home so that it can once again be a beacon for freedom and morality abroad. 

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