When the Toddler Throws His Food on the Floor — Dealing with North Korea: Could China Help? Would China Help?

For decades, the global community of diplomats have struggled to find ways to have meaningful conversations with the government of North Korea — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK.

Most analyses of the situation see China as a major factor in dealing with the dynasty ruled successively by Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, and Kim Jong-Un. This three-generation dictatorship has good relations with no nation on earth, but its relations with China are its least bad relations. Exasperated diplomats around the world have sometimes turned to China for help in making any progress with North Korea in discussions.

In 1994, when the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) learned that the DPRK was accelerating its program to develop both nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, it produced a report exploring possible scenarios. How would China react if the United Nations enacted trade restrictions on North Korea as a consequence of the DPRK’s stockpiling atomic bombs? Robert Wampler explains the DIA’s assessment of such a scenario:

In the event of efforts to impose economic sanctions, DIA analysts believed that China would protect its economic interests (such as maintaining Most Favored Nation status with the United States) by abstaining from any U.N. vote. Beijing would further likely work to ease the impact of any sanctions by facilitating the supply of needed goods to North Korea with the primary goal of preventing the country’s economic collapse, which would threaten a political crisis on China’s border.

The DIA explored another, even more serious, scenario. What might China do if there were full-scale armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula? Robert Wampler writes:

Military actions raised a whole new set of concerns for Beijing. DIA analysis divided military contingencies into two main categories: war as the result of North Korean attack, and war resulting from a U.S./U.N. attack on the North. If Pyongyang attacked South Korea, China would likely avoid giving military support and would work to end hostilities. But, if U.S. and South Korean forces pushed into North Korea, it would face a dilemma. In a worst-case scenario, the report suggests that Beijing might deploy Chinese forces across the Yalu River to prevent the whole country from being overrun by the Americans and their allies.

In the decade following the writing of this DIA report, diplomatic thinking shifted. Could China function as part of a team — as one of several nations who jointly worked to nudge the DPRK toward a more peaceful path?

North Korea had half-heartedly engaged in some discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and had at one point turned off a nuclear reactor by early 2002 to comply with an IAEA guideline.

Officials in the U.S. government had adopted a metaphor for the behavior of the DPRK’s dictator. They said that Kim Jong-il was prone to throwing his food on the floor, an image comparing the ruler to a badly behaved toddler. Like a three-year-old child, the tyrant would from time to time knock over some international understanding, simply to make a mess.

Maybe China could calm the toddler down?

It was certainly a long shot: China is fiercely independent, and rarely cooperates with any nation or any global effort. But if a mutual interest could be found, i.e., if there were some motive for China to desire what the other nations desire, then perhaps China could be lured into being part of a global effort to persuade North Korea to back away from its buildup of atomic weapons.

Condoleezza Rice, who was National Security Advisor at the time, recalls a conversation in November 2002 among a group of people who were on their way to a meeting. In that group was President George Bush. Rice remembers Bush presenting the idea that China should be a part of a multinational effort to urge the DPRK away from its nuclear weapons program. She writes:

Before we went down to the Situation Room, however, he told me that he had come to the conclusion that nothing would work without getting China on board. That was clearly right, but at the time, we didn’t have a way to enlist the Chinese, and the point just hung in the air. By the end of 2002 the North had blown up any chance for negotiation by announcing in a letter to the IAEA that it was restarting its reactor. The North further declared that its nuclear facilities were not subject to any agreement with the IAEA and were instead a matter between North Korea and the United States. Kim Jong-il had just thrown a big wad of food on the floor. For the time being, we made no effort to pick it up.

Bush’s idea was to make China part of a group process. Up to that point, there had been a series of one-on-one negotiations between the United States and North Korea, with China being considered as a variable in those discussions. Bush proposed to make China a part of the conversation, instead of merely a factor to be considered in the negotiations.

By 2003, the time had come to implement Bush’s strategy. A previously negotiated deal, called the “Agreed Framework,” was clearly ineffective. A new approach was needed. Rather than let the DPRK have one-on-one talks with each of the nations, the new procedure would be to have a group of nations present at the conference table together simultaneously to engage North Korea. Condoleezza Rice explains:

We’d been trying for some time to get the Chinese to play a more active role in reining in the North Korean nuclear program. The President had been right that only Beijing had enough leverage to convince Kim Jong-il to abandon his aggressive stance toward the international community. Much of the problem with the Agreed Framework was that it had left the United States negotiating bilaterally with the North Koreans, allowing Pyongyang to play the South Koreans, the Europeans, and the Chinese off of us by seeking concessions from each party individually.

Now the task was to get the Chinese to buy into Bush’s idea. Secretary of State Colin Powell had presented it already once to the Chinese, who weren’t interested.

President Bush creatively guided a phone conversation with Chinese leader Ziang Jemin (also spelled Jiang Zemin) and got the Chinese willing to participate in the multilateral negotiations, as Condoleezza Rice reports:

Now we had a different idea. Rather than the bilateral negotiations with the North that were being urged on us by our allies, we proposed a six-party framework with China in the chair. Beijing had initially resisted the idea when Colin proposed it in March 2003. President Bush had been so frustrated with the Chinese that he’d raised the ante in a phone call with Chinese President Ziang Jemin. Before getting on the call, he had asked what more he could say to move Beijing. I suggested that he raise the specter, ever so gently, of a military option against North Korea. He liked the idea, and when Ziang began to recite the timeworn mantra about the need for the United States to show more flexibility with the North, the President stopped him. A bit more directly than I’d expected, he told Ziang that he was under a lot of pressure from hard-liners to use military force and added, on his own, that one also couldn’t rule out a nuclear Japan if the North remained unconstrained.

China didn’t especially want North Korea to have nuclear weapons, particularly if it meant that other Pacific-rim nations like Japan would subsequently also obtain nuclear weapons in order to maintain parity. China’s chief goal for the region was stability, as Vice President Richard ‘Dick’ Cheney notes:

It was with the intention of breaking this pattern of deceit and deception that President Bush in 2003 established the six-party talks made up of the United States, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, China, and Russia. The idea was to move away from bilateral, or one-on-one, negotiations that had failed in the past and to bring into the diplomatic process other nations that had an interest in preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. China was particularly important, because as North Korea’s economic lifeline, China had considerable influence over the isolated and insular North Korean government. We knew that the Chinese were concerned about the regional instability that could arise from a nuclear-armed North Korea, particularly given the likelihood that nations like Japan and others would feel the need to follow suit.

Ultimately, China’s desire for stability meant that it also desired to keep North Korea free of nuclear weapons. Therefore, China was willing to participate in Bush’s plan for the “six party talks” and the first round of the talks were held in August 2003. Explaining the dynamic, President Bush writes:

The key to multilateral diplomacy with North Korea was China, which had close ties to its fellow communist nation. The challenge was that China and the United States had different interests on the Korean Peninsula. The Chinese wanted stability; we wanted freedom. They were worried about refugees flowing across the border; we were worried about starvation and human rights. But there was one area where we agreed: It was not in either of our interests to let Kim Jong-il have a nuclear weapon.

By early 2007, the talks had made enough progress that the DPRK was willing to again shut down a nuclear reactor in return for fuel and for better diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan. The talks continued into late 2007 and seemed poised for more beneficial breakthroughs.

Significant shifts in U.S. foreign policy after January 2009 caused the North Koreans to walk away from talks. The DPRK attempted to launch a satellite into earth orbit in April 2009. President Obama threatened increased economic sanctions against North Korea in response, but failed to actually implement those sanctions. Seeing this failure to continue the task to its conclusion, the DPRK judged Obama to be soft and therefore proceeded to conduct another test explosion of a nuclear weapon in May 2009.

The inclusion of China into the six party talks from 2003 onward was made possible by finding common ground which incentivized China to work with other nations as they collectively sought to help North Korea become less bellicose. China was and is a key factor in any interactions with the DPRK. But when the United States revealed that, after January 2009, it was unwilling to consistently follow through on its stated intentions, e.g., the intention to implement economic sanctions, then North Korea simply walked away from the negotiations.

A Persistent Problem: The Global Community Ponders North Korea

The macro patterns of North Korea — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK — are clear: disregard for the physical wellbeing of its citizens; repression of any freedom of speech, thought, or belief; a maniacal militarism; the deification of its absolute dictator; the globe’s most extreme isolationism; an aggressive persecution of religion; and a paranoid belief that the other nations of the world are deadly enemies.

The micro patterns of the DPRK’s internal politics and external foreign policy are less well presented in the news media, and often thoroughly understood and studied only by specialists.

The ruling dynasty in North Korea began with Kim Il-Sung, who was installed as ruler prior to the founding of the DPRK as a state in 1948. He ruled until his death in 1994. During the reign of Kim Il-Sung, North Korea began developing nuclear weapons. The other nations of the world attempted to use diplomacy to persuade the DPRK to stop its efforts to build atomic bombs, but these efforts were unsuccessful.

During these same decades, the DPRK was also developing missiles to deliver these nuclear weapons to targets thousands of miles away.

As countries around the globe became more nervous about the nuclear weapons program, diplomats hoped that China could play a role in a process to dissuade Kim Il-Sung from building atomic bombs. If China weren’t able to use diplomacy to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, perhaps it would use force. Decades later, leaders around the world would still be wondering about the same question: would China help to make the DPRK somewhat humane? In the second decades of the twenty-first century, they would look back to 1994 and see the parallels, as Robert Wampler wrote in 2013:

Then, as now, the role Beijing would play in resolving the crisis was a major unknown. But a partially declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from late January 1994 — published for the first time here and on the National Security Archive’s website — laid out Beijing’s options and possible responses, ranging from economic sanctions to war. The report notes that the Chinese needed to “reconcile their interest in stability on the Korean Peninsula and long-standing ties to Pyongyang with their interests in a denuclearized peninsula, in avoiding isolation among UN Security Council (SC) members, and in maintaining stable relations with the US, Japan and South Korea.”

While North Korea does not have good relations with any other nation, it has its least bad relations with China.

Since 1994 — at the latest — the global diplomatic community has hoped that China could be a factor in persuading North Korea to desist from its endless violations of human rights.

Kim Jong-Il inherited power in 1994 and continued the program to develop nuclear bombs. In 2006, the DPRK exploded its first atomic weapon in test. Between 2006 and 2023, North Korea has conducted a total of six such test explosions. Various intelligence agencies estimate that the country has an arsenal of between 20 and 115 atomic weapons on hand, with more being constructed on a regular basis. Its weapons continue to grow in number and sophistication, as do its missiles.

When Kim Jong-Il inherited the dictatorship in 2011, the family’s pattern of mental illness, narcissism, and brutal oppression remained unchanged. The people of the DPRK remained malnourished, uneducated, intimidated, misinformed, and subject to arrests, beatings, imprisonments, and executions at the whim of the state. The cruelties and oppression are obvious. The North Korean regime is inadvertently transparent, as Edward Luttwak writes:

The transparency is not due to anything revealed by North Korea’s string of rulers, from whom it is pointless to expect any change of policy — just because the previous one liked Japanese food and film stars, or because the current Kim Jong-un spent time in a Swiss boarding school. The regime, past and present, continues to exceed even Stalin’s Soviet Union in its pervasive secrecy, but what remains in full public view is more than enough to explain its frenetically aggressive stance.

Luttwak goes on to explain how economic calculations to divert resources into weapons programs and into the lavish lifestyle of the Kim and his cronies are unmistakable. Nobody — short-term visitor or lifelong citizen — can spend time in North Korea without understanding that this is a deliberate choice to keep the population at the starvation level, and that it is an explicit policy to demand complete unquestioning obedience and enthusiastic support from that population.

No resident of the DPRK is surprised when a neighbor, family member, or friend dies of starvation. That’s a routine occurrence. Neither are they surprised when a coworker disappears to spend decades in a prison camp — or to simply be killed.

In 2013, Frank Jannuzi reported:

Hundreds of thousands of people — including children — are arbitrarily held in political prison camps and other detention facilities, where they are subjected to forced labor, denial of food as punishment, torture and public executions. In 2011, Amnesty used satellites to document the apparent expansion of some of these prison camps. Last month, analysis of newly acquired images showed what appeared to be the blurring of lines between a political prison camp (Kwanliso-14) and the surrounding population, raising fears of new movement controls and other restrictions on people living near prison camps.

Because the DPRK government doesn’t understand Western Civilization’s habit of valuing human life, it is prone to make mistakes when dealing with the few outsiders who visit North Korea. One such incident involved an American college student whose fatal punishment was based on allegations that he might have taken a poster off a wall without permission.

The student, from the University of Virginia, was accused of stealing a poster, and sentenced to fifteen years in a labor camp. He began serving that sentence in early 2016. In June 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson secured the student’s release. The student, named Otto Warmbier, was flown home to the United States. He had been released in such poor physical condition that he died several days after returning home.

The routine attitudes and practices of the DPRK’s authorities — i.e., capital punishment for an insignificant crime, if indeed a crime it was at all — suddenly caught the world’s attention.

The North Korean officials were surprised that anybody took note of Warmbier’s death. Such officials routinely assign individuals to be executed, or to spend life in prison.

Ambassador Nikki Haley recalls explaining the situation at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council:

”To Americans, the death of one innocent person can be as powerful as the death of millions,” I told the Security Council. “Because all men and women are created in God’s image, depravity toward one is a sure sign of willingness to do much more harm.”

At that point in time, three questions coalesced and caused for a renewed global effort to confront North Korea about its crimes: first, the continued production of atomic weapons and missiles to deliver them; second, the brutal disregard for human rights manifested in the prison camps and executions; third, the attempted extermination of people who showed evidence of spiritual or religious interest.

Nikki Haley spoke about actions which could accompany the words of the diplomats. Actions were needed because words along had failed. She said to the U.N. Security Council on that day in July 2017:

In the coming days, we will bring before the Security Council a resolution that raises the international response in a way that is proportionate to North Korea’s new escalation. I will not detail the resolution here today, but the options are all known to us. If we are unified, the international community can cut off the major sources of hard currency to the North Korean regime. We can restrict the flow of oil to their military and their weapons program. We can increase air and maritime restrictions. We can hold senior regime officials accountable.

North Korean citizens were being beaten and tortured by their own government. The DPRK was constructing missiles and nuclear weapons in an ongoing program. Freedom of thought, belief, or speech was almost nonexistent.

The coordinated efforts of Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, and officials from both the United Nations and the United States produced a slight thaw in North Korean behavior. The coordinated diplomatic and economic efforts were called “maximum pressure” tactics, a term borrowed from the global community’s similar approach to Iran at the time. Sadly, the small improvements were short-lived, and the DPRK returned to its oppressive ways.

Merely possessing a copy of the New Testament is a crime in North Korea, punishable by life in a prison camp or by death. In 2019, citing the research of Yeo-sang Yoon and Sun-young Han, Doug Bandow explained:

Kim Il-sung, still considered the DPRK’s “eternal president,” once explained that “we came to understand that religious persons can only be broken of a bad habit if they are killed.” While North Korean policy later relaxed — it could hardly grow stricter — religion remains under siege. Indeed, as border controls have loosened, Yoon and Han note, “the North Korean regime has tightened its watch on the refugees and defectors who are deported from China because of the fear that they have been exposed to religion.”

Bandow notes that children are taught to turn their parents over to the police if the parents possess a copy of the New Testament.

By 2023, the DPRK had resumed a vigorous weapons development campaign, emboldened by America’s embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan, and encouraged by the fact that much of the world’s attention was directed toward the conflict in Ukraine. To fund its weapons program, North Korea engaged in high-tech theft. In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that “North Korea’s hacker army stole $3 billion in crypto, funding” the “nuclear program.” The newspaper went on to report that the North Korean “​​regime has trained cybercriminals to impersonate tech workers or employers, amid other schemes.”

At the same time, the DPRK resumed arresting anyone who demonstrated an interest in religion. Political arrests continued, targeting anyone who failed to show great enthusiasm in supporting the Kim dynasty.

Germans vs. Nazis — Humane vs. Cruel

When examining the history of WW2, it’s worth noting that not all Germans were Nazis, and not all Nazis were Germans. The difference is significant.

Of the population of Germany, not more than 10% were members of the National Socialist Party. “Nazi” is an abbreviation for “National Socialism” and Hitler never won a majority in any true election. He and the National Socialists took power; it was not given to them.

By contrast, the majority of Germans were bullied and oppressed by National Socialism, which took away their rights and liberties, and coerced them into the war effort. The differences between ordinary Germans and Nazi Party members was clear during the war.

In combat, Germans acknowledged both their opponent’s humanity and their own. By contrast, Nazis clung to the idea of “total war” and refused to surrender: Hitler ordered fighting to continue even when he had admitted that defeat was inevitable. The National Socialist perseverance in battle despite certain downfall was a tragic and horrid waste of human life.

On the battlefield, the behavior of the Germans differed from the behavior of the staunch Nazis. In July 1944, as the U.S. soldiers were in a near-stalemate with German forces in western France, an American officer named Major General Robert Chauncey Macon found his units at the end of a long fight to be only a few yards from where they’d started. General Macon lost 1400 men and gained only 200 yards of territory.

The fighting stopped and the sun set. Then, as historian Martin Blumenson writes, a dramatic and humane gesture came from the commander of the German forces whom General Macon had attacked all day:

That night the opposing German commander returned to Macon the medical personnel his troops had captured. He sent a note to explain that he thought Macon might need the medics more than he did. But the German added a cautious postscript. If the situation was ever reversed in the future, he hoped that Macon would return the compliment and the favor.

The thinking of the German commander differed from the thinking of the Nazis. This distinction is clear in the writing of another German officer, two months later.

This officer saw that victory for the Allies was unavoidable, defeat for the Nazis was inescapable, and that any further fighting was a senseless and cruel waste of human life. Generalfeldmarschall Günther Adolf Ferdinand von Kluge boldly addressed these words to Hitler in a letter in September 1944:

Should the new weapons in which you place so much hope, especially those of the air force, not bring success — then, my Führer, make up your mind to end the war. The German people have suffered so unspeakably that it is time to bring the horror to a close.

Hitler’s senseless demand to continue combat despite certain defeat manifested the Nazi disregard for people. General Ferdinand von Kluge’s strong words written directly to Hitler embody the thoughts of the ordinary Germans: it was time to end the war and save lives.

Hitler’s Personal Hatred of Christianity and Naziism’s Persecution of Christians

A central theme in the National Socialist Party was its opposition to the Christian faith and its opposition to Christian churches. At times, this opposition was hidden; at other times it was obvious. Hitler, as the leader of the party, understood that a strongly Christian population would not cooperate with his plans.

But Hitler also had personal reasons for hating Christians.

Writing about Hitler, historian Michael Rosenwald states: “He loathed Christianity.” Young Adolf accepted the ideas of his father, Alois Hitler, who “thought religion was essentially a scam.”

Another historian, Bradley Smith, reports that Alois “looked upon religion as a series of conventions and as a crutch for human weakness” and expressed “a firm opposition to” religion.

Adolf, following his father’s lead, rejected “religion as a teenager,” Rosenwald adds. Adolf “followed his father’s religious path straight into infamy” and “was full of contempt for everything” spiritual, “pious, and divine.”

Because Adolf Hitler had scorn for all religions, his ultimate goal was to eliminate them. He began by infiltrating and weakening the Christian churches. He needed to impair them, because they would be the source of opposition and resistance. Once the churches were enfeebled, Hitler could begin his full assault on Judaism: the Holocaust. He planned to totally eliminate Christianity, as Michael Rosenwald phrases it, “but first, he had to finish off the Jews.”

The word ‘Nazi’ is an abbreviation for ‘National Socialist Party.’

Because Naziism was an irrational and passionate movement, it was filled with ambiguities and internal contradictions. Some of those ambiguities were there by design, like vague phrases in the race laws, to allow Nazi authorities to do as they pleased and not be hampered by the rule of law. Some of the internal contradictions were the result of the inherent irrationality of Naziism: although Naziism opposed all religion, some officers within the National Socialist Party embraced brutal and primitive forms of pagan religion.

For the purposes of propaganda, Hitler was quite willing to say nice things about religion in general and about Christianity in particular. He could drop these deceptions in 1933 once he had taken complete power. For example, in the early years of the National Socialist movement, the Nazis were quite careful to avoid direct verbal attacks on Christianity and churches. Later, however, they decisively ended the public practice of Christianity and replaced it with their own substitute pseudo-religion.

Frederick “Fritz” Redlich wrote a psychiatric study of Hitler, noting that Hitler “adhered to his father’s views that religion was for the stupid and old women.” He took these childhood lessons from his father into adulthood: as the National Socialist dictator, he “was effectively opposed by Catholic and Protestant theologians” who organized underground resistance groups to weaken the Nazi war effort and rescue Jews. The Nazis murdered thousands of Christians. In 1942, during meetings with his officials, he explained, “I will have them shot.”

Hitler hated Christianity for several reasons: it would encourage anti-Nazi activities, and it promoted forgiveness and respect for human life. “Christianity is the craziest thing a human brain in its madness could produce,” he said.

Assuming that he’d win the war, Hitler had plans, as historian Alan Bullock writes: “Once the war was over, he promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany.”

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 4

The reader of the first quarter of the twenty-first century may be forgiven for thinking that the world is a bad place and only getting worse. The news media work ceaselessly to alarm and anger the reader — more likely, the viewer — with tales of injustice, suffering, and misery.

It is true, there is pain and evil in this world.

Yet there is much good to be observed, if one has eyes for it. The contemporary news media apparently has no desire to find the good, and receives no money for reporting about uplifting events.

Yet there is much to celebrate, from both a human and a humane point of view, in the world today. Public health expert Claire Ninde explains:

Vaccines have been so effective at improving health and saving and extending lives that most people in the U.S. have no idea what it’s like to watch a child die a painful death from a tetanus infection or to witness a loved one experience brutal paralysis and death from polio.

Diseases which in the past routinely claimed the lives of millions around the globe are now nearly impossible to find. The pandemic of 1918 claimed many more lives than the pandemic of 2019/2020, whether measured in absolute numbers or in percentages of the global population.

Smallpox, polio, tetanus, measles, and other diseases caused many deaths annually in previous centuries; now, such illnesses are rare, and lives are longer — not only longer, but healthier — as Claire Ninde explains:

Over the last 200 years, U.S. life expectancy has more than doubled to almost 80 years (78.8 in 2015), with vast improvements in health and quality of life.

The reduction of sickness and death is one metric which indicates that the world is not as horrid as the daily newscast would have the reader believe. Another criterion is poverty, and the decreasing rates thereof.

Despite all the images — not thoughts, not data — which the media throws at the viewer, poverty is becoming more and more rare. Lucy Tompkins, writing in the New York Times, reports:

In 1990, about 36 percent of the global population — and nearly half of people in developing countries — lived on less than $1.25 a day, the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty at the time. (It’s now $1.90 a day.) In 2000, United Nations member states pledged to cut extreme poverty worldwide — specifically to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, from 1990 levels, by 2015.

Bottom line: The U.N. goal was met. By 2015, the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell to 12 percent from 36 percent in 1990, a steep decline in just two and a half decades. During a single generation, more than a billion people around the world climbed out of extreme poverty, surpassing the goal.

Tabling for the moment questions about why and how this has happened, the reduction in poverty is something to be celebrated.

Disabling or lethal diseases are declining. Poverty is declining. That means that people are healthier, living longer, and doing so with more money. That is a reason to be cheerful.

Responding to Kristallnacht — An Increased Resolve to Resist the Nazis

As the violence unfolded on the eventing of November 9, 1938, National Socialist mobs vandalized and destroyed the homes and businesses owned by Jewish Germans. Many of those Jewish Germans were injured, murdered, or sent to forced-labor camps on that day or the next. Many historians see Kristallnacht as the start of the Holocaust.

These events did not always have the effect which the Nazis wanted: they had hoped that this would cement an anti-Jewish attitude among the Germans. But, instead, many Germans were appalled by what happened. Those Germans who were not yet part of the resistance were nudged into joining the secret organizations which would undermine Hitler’s war efforts. Those who were already part of the resistance became even more committed to the cause.

One example was the Scholl family. The father, Robert Scholl, the mother, Magdalena Scholl, and their five children lived in the city of Ulm. A sixth child, Thilde, had died in 1926, before the Nazi movement was known or influential.

Robert Scholl had been skeptical of Hitler from the beginning of Hitler’s political career. He clearly explained to his family why Hitler was dangerous. Although initially uncertain, all the members of the Scholl family began to see what Hitler really was, and joined Robert in his opposition to National Socialism.

After the horrors of Kristallnacht, a local Nazi publication described the destruction as deserved, and mocked German families like the Scholls for taking a stand against Hitler. Historians Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis describe the coverage in the community’s news media:

The regional newspaper, the National Socialist Courier, described the violence as “just vengeance” but was shocked and bewildered to report that some in the area were “sentimental” and not all were in favor of the destruction. “I have heard of a few people whimpering and complaining about operations against the Jews in the past few days,” wrote a columnist.

These Germans took a principled stance: the violence of National Socialism was unacceptable. The repulsiveness of Nazi violence and the insults which the Nazis directed at these Germans strengthened the resolve of these German families to oppose Hitler.

Kristallnacht was one of the events which made it clear exactly what the National Socialists were, and why the Germans must resist them.

The Scholls would have been one of those families that the writer in the Courier would have held in contempt. Over the past few years the children had listened to their father’s anger about the treatment of the Jews and the creation of the concentration camps; they had seen their friends and teachers persecuted. “All of us felt that we had to stand together to shield what we believed and cherished,” Inge Scholl wrote later. “What began among us as doubts and misgivings about the Nazis had turned into indignation and outrage.”

But they were at the heart of a state in which they had become the outsiders.

In November 1938, these events pushed Sophie Scholl, one of Robert’s daughters, further into the resistance movement. She’d already been part of anti-Hitler underground, but now she saw herself as fully committed to stopping National Socialism, as historians Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis write:

Kristallnacht persuaded Sophie that to fight on the side of the Nazis would be evil. She told male friends who were in military service that if there was a war, they should not kill anyone.

Sophie and her brothers, Hans and Werner, discussed philosophy and religion. Their serious reflection on those topics helped them to construct justifications and lines of reasoning which reinforced their anti-Nazi network.

They shared conversations on morality, conscience, and belief, all issues that made them think about Naziism.

The spirit of their father was extending through the family, too. Sophie’s younger brother, Werner, had had enough of Nazi indoctrination, and one night he told an openmouthed squad leader that he was resigning from the Hitler Youth. Werner turned on his heel and walked out, his conscience suddenly feeling clearer. For his moment of rebellion he would be denied the chance of going to the university and would instead be drafted straight into the army.

Unperturbed, late one night, he went further, scaling a statue outside the courthouse in Ulm and wrapping a swastika blindfold over the stone lady holding the scales of justice.

Eventually, these Scholl siblings would form one of the most effective branches of the anti-Nazi resistence network. Sophie and Hans formed a secret group, called “The White Rose,” which produced leaflets and fliers encouraging all Germans to resist National Socialism.

Those writings, in turn, inspired underground actions which hobbled the Nazi war effort and which saved the lives of thousands of Jews.

The Scholl parents, and two of their children — Inge and Elisabeth — lived to see the end of National Socialism and to see Germany freed from Nazi oppression.

Sophie and Hans were murdered by the Nazis in 1943, and Werner was missing in action and presumed dead by 1944. Moved to action by their consciences, and galvanized by the events of Kristallnacht, the Scholls made a difference, saving lives and causing the war to end sooner.

Preparing for the Holocaust: How the Nazis Attempted to Preempt the Resistance

In early 1933, the Nazis — more accurately, the National Socialists — seized control of Germany when Adolf Hitler was appointed, not elected, to be chancellor. They quickly went about infiltrating and reshaping every aspect of life in Germany. They subverted social institutions.

To subvert an organization often means to change or reverse the values and principles of that organization, frequently while leaving the outward appearance deceptively unchanged. People may see a subverted organization as continuing its established traditional patterns, while it in reality is now serving a very different function.

Some historians cite the events of Kristallnacht in 1938 as the beginning of the Holocaust. Others see the Holocaust as starting in 1941, with the mass executions of Jews on the eastern Front. In either case, the reader will note that there is a significant timelapse from the National Socialist takeover in 1933 and the beginning of the Holocaust.

Why the delay?

Hitler ordered the expansion of the military, the increased manufacture of weapons, and armed occupation of the Rhineland — a region which had been demilitarized since the 1919 Treaty of Versailles — quickly after becoming chancellor. Why not launch the Holocaust at that time as well?

Part of the answer is this: The National Socialists knew that they needed to neutralize potential sources of resistance. Only when the Gleichschaltung of German society was completed — the synchronization and coordination which would bring aspects of daily life into line with the National Socialist Party — could they begin the brutal excesses of the Holocaust. At that point, so the Nazis thought, resistance would be minimal or nonexistent.

The National Socialists set about remaking Germany. Medical facilities and healthcare professionals, instead of preserving life, became places to kill. The “T4” program carried out medical assistance in dying (MAID or physician-assisted suicide) and euthanasia, killing people who were considered by the Nazis to be “unworthy” of life. Although they were called “suicides,” they were murders. The T4 program also performed forced sterilizations: men and women who did not want to be sterilized were required to be sterilized, so that they could never have children.

Another program called “Lebensborn” conducted involuntary abortions on women who were considered to be genetically inferior.

An increasing number of schools and medical facilities were government owned or government operated.

Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and church youth groups were largely abolished, and young people urged to join National Socialist groups like the Hitlerjugend for boys aged 14 to 18, the Jungvolk for boys aged 10 to 14, the BDM for girls aged 14 to 18, the Jungmädlebund for girls aged 10 to 14, and the Glaube und Schönheit for girls aged 18 to 21. The Nazis could shape a person’s thinking starting at age 10.

The German people were being controlled and managed by the Nazis. It became more and more difficult for the Germans to find a part of life that was not oppressive.

Even ordinary groups like gardening clubs, music clubs, skiing clubs, etc. were bullied into allowing the National Socialists to reorganize them.

One of the clearest examples of this Gleichschaltung occurred among religious institutions. The Nazis shut down most Christian churches, and in their places — usually in the same building — established propaganda centers which they called churches. The Nazis created a confusion of language: The things called churches by the Nazis were, in fact, not churches; they were National Socialist ideology centers. But because they used the church buildings, in which the churches used to meet, and because they met on Sunday mornings with the trappings of a church — candles and music — they seemed like they might be churches.

The differences were apparent to those who looked closer: instead of a cross at the front of the church and Christian banners with slogans about peace, faith, hope, and love, these counterfeit churches had swastikas, images of Hitler, and Nazi banners in red, white, and black. These fake churches took the place of the real churches in towns and cities throughout Germany. Meanwhile, the real churches had to meet in secret, in people’s homes, outdoors in the countryside, or wherever else they could escape being detected by the Nazis. Hitler’s government forbade them to read the Old Testament. The National Socialists despised Jesus because he was a Jew.

Defying the National Socialists, Christians met covertly to read and discuss the Old Testament, which is part of the Christian Bible, and to learn about Jesus. They also began organizing resistance: clandestine groups planning ways to undermine the Nazi war effort and save the lives of Jews.

Meanwhile, in public, the so-called “churches,” which were not churches and which were actually Nazi propaganda centers, continued to meet in those buildings which had traditionally been used as churches.

Another part of Hitler’s Gleichschaltung was the infiltration and takeover of the labor unions. The purpose of a union, as the reader will know, is to negotiate for better pay for the workers. But the National Socialists would not tolerate any type of negotiating or bargaining. The unions, once the Nazis subverted them, no longer strove assertively to maximize wages. Instead, they sought to, and succeeded in, urging the workers to comply with the directives from the National Socialist Party.

In these ways, the Nazis preemptively neutralized potential sources of resistance. They co-opted the groups which would have resisted: Boy Scouts, churches, labor unions, schools, medical facilities. Not only did Hitler’s government prevent resistance from these organizations, but it created fake versions of these same groups to comply with National Socialist ideas.

In each case, however, alert people saw what was happening, and formed their own undercover groups which stuck to the original authentic anti-Nazi ideals of these organizations. They preserved their moral values, and implemented those values as they formed hidden resistance movements.