(I posted this article four years ago.  I post it again today because I believe that it posits a fundamental truth that we must never forget.  That truth is “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”  There are many political leaders today who seem to believe they can build a great society based on reason and science alone.  They leave Biblical truth entirely out of the equation.  As Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy, “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Man is spirit as well as flesh, and a society built entirely on material values is bound for destruction.  The experience of twentieth century Germany provides an excellent example.)

Evil exists.  Sometimes people say that all men are basically good, and that we do evil things only when there has been a bad environment, poverty, lack of education or some other unfortunate cause.  That is not true.  I tend to believe what Johannes Gossner, 19^th century Lutheran pastor and philanthropist, once wrote, “The heart of man is either a temple of God or a habitation of Satan.” I know apparently good persons who are professed agnostics or atheists, but they have no belief in absolute truth or a final judgement.  Having no place for God in the human heart opens it up to the Enemy. During the past century, the bloody 20^th, the evil that lurks in the heart of man was on full display.

Germany in the early years of the 20^th century was possibly the most advanced nation on Earth.  It had an excellent educational system, almost universal employment, excellent health care and social services.  Most of its citizens were professing Christians, either Catholic or Protestant.  Yet, out of this vibrant culture came those men who propelled us into the horrors of World Wars One and Two.  They forgot God and embraced materialism and the pursuit of power. Kaiser Wilhelm II was bad enough, but he was probably not much worse than the leaders that opposed him.  In contrast, the leaders of the Third Reich were a consummate study in evil.  Adolf Hitler, in his lust for power and his insensate hatred of the Jews, was guilty of hideous offenses.  Of his close associates, Reinhard Heydrich was perhaps the most evil of them all. Many historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite, and Hitler himself described him as “the man with the iron heart”.

Heydrich managed to climb to the very heights of power within the Nazi Party. He was General of Police as well as chief of the Reich Main Security Office, which included the Gestapo, the Criminal Police Headquarters, and the SD (an intelligence organization).  From his position of supreme control, he coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Germany and the occupied territories.  In January 1942 he chaired the Wannsee Conference, which formulated plans for the “Final Solution”, calling for genocide against all European Jews.

Heydrich was later appointed virtual dictator of Bohemia and Moravia (the Czech portion of the former Czechoslovakia), and in that role he attempted to suppress Czech culture and tighten Nazi control over those rich territories.  The country was terrorized, and many Czechs were executed.  Heydrich also was directly responsible for the special task forces that travelled in the wake of German armies advancing into Poland and Russia.  In 1941-42 those special groups of killers murdered over 2 million people, including 1.3 million Jews, by mass shooting and gassing.

In private conversations Heydrich revealed his future plans for the Czech people.  After Germany won the war, up to two-thirds of the inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia were either to be removed to regions of Russia or exterminated.  The land itself would be annexed directly into the German Reich.

Heydrich did not live to see his evil plans materialize. On May 27, 1942, Heydrich was ambushed and critically wounded by a team of Czech and Slovak agents that had been trained by the British Special Operations Directive.  The team was working for the Czechoslovak government in exile.  Heydrich died of his wounds a week later.

The attack took place in Prague, but the Nazis chose the village of Lidice for reprisals because its residents were suspected of harboring local resistance partisans and were falsely assused of aiding the assassins. All 173 males over 15 years of age from Lidice were executed on June 10, 1942. Another 11 men who were not in the village were arrested and executed soon afterwards, along with several Lidice men discovered in other jails. The 184 women and 88 children in the village were deported to concentration camps.  Most of the women died in in the camps.  A few of the children were adopted by SS families because of their Aryan appearance, the others were gassed.

After the removal of its people, Lidice was set on fire and the remains of the houses and buildings destroyed with explosives. All the animals in the village—pets and beasts of burden —were slaughtered. Even those former Lidice residents buried in the town cemetery were not spared; their remains were dug up, looted for gold fillings and jewelry, and destroyed. A German work party was then sent in to remove all visible remains of the village and re-route the stream running through it and the roads in and out. They then covered the entire area the village had occupied with topsoil and planted crops.  Not a trace of the village remained.

German reprisals in an attempt to avenge the death of Heydrich were not confined to the village of Lidice.  All over Bohemia and Moravia the Nazis rounded up relatives of partisans, Czech elites such as teachers and civil servants, and other random victims.  The total death toll from these reprisals is estimated at over 1,300 people.

Yes, there is such a thing as evil.  It consumed the hearts and minds of men like Hitler, Heydrich, and Himmler.  Unfortunately, it still exists in the world today.

Nazi Germany eventually paid a fearful price for its sins.  In 1945 vengeful Soviet hordes wreaked  a terrible retribution on the German populace, and Hitler and his top lieutenants perished in the rubble of the “Thousand Year Reich.”

As for Lidice, we must always remember.