 Following the Revolutionary Herd George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, now seems ominously prophetic. First published in 1949, Orwell’s 1984 envisaged a future with omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation through media propaganda, school indoctrination, the cult of worshipping political and media personalities, historic revisionism, intimidation and social engineering. All this no longer looks like a joke. Subverting Freedom of Thought Orwell predicted the manipulation of language into Newspeak, with Thought Crimes punished by Thought Police. The Ministry of Truth use lies and propaganda to distort all information in news, entertainment, education and the arts. The Ministry of Plenty controls rationing and ensures starvation. The Ministry of Peace ensures perpetual war. The Ministry of Love tortures, terrifies and crushes all dissent and resistance. Mobilising Hate in the Name of Love
The Ministry of Love also orchestrates two minutes hate and hate week campaigns to distract and channel the anger and frustration of the masses towards a real, or imagined, enemy. Memory Holes The Ministry of Truth would also vaporise, or expunge, from the public record, opponents of the state which could not be debated with, or argued, against. These would become un-persons who would disappear down the Memory Hole. Rewriting History Every monument needs to be replaced; every street name changed. History itself needs to be re-written in order to accord with the current policy of the ruling political party (As Karl Marx declared: “The first battlefield is the rewriting of History”). Supressing Freedom of Expression Today, the sinister suppression of free speech, manipulation of language and intimidation of the general population is becoming an all too real factor in everyday life. In the past, to suppress dissent the accusation of “heresy!” or “treason!” was sufficient. Today: “Hate Speech!” is the modern equivalent to silencing free speech. Merely accusing someone of: “racism!”, “homophobia!”, “Islamophobia!”, or “bigotry!” is sufficient to silence opposition and prevent free and open discussion. A Most Relevant Warning At the end of the 19th century, General William Booth of the Salvation Army predicted: “The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without Repentance, Salvation without Regeneration, politics without God and Heaven without hell.” Wide Gates to Hell German Reformer Dr. Martin Luther warned, almost five centuries ago: “I am much afraid that schools will prove to be wide gates to hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not constantly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.” School Campuses are a Battleground Education today most certainly is a battleground. Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience is under fire on school and university campuses which are meant to be free market places of ideas where “iron sharpens iron”. Fight for Faith and Freedom Dr. Martin Luther declared: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God, except precisely that point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, then I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefront besides, is mere flight and disgrace, if he flinches at that point.” “…Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Therefore the wrath of the Lord is upon you.” 2 Chronicles 19:2 Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 Email: mission@frontline.org.za Website: www.FrontlineMissionSA.org See also: Do Not Be Deceived “Hate Speech” Bill Threat to Free Speech The French Revolution The Greatest Killer Reformation or Revolution Is South Africa Entering the Second Phase of the Revolution? How Propaganda Changes Perceptions and People The Battle for the Mind in the News Media
0 Comments
Unraveling One of the Many Secrets of the Second World War
To view the video of this presentation on our Vimeo Gallery, click here. To listen to the audio lecture on Sermon Audio, click here. To see this article as a PowerPoint presentation on Slideshare, click here. One of the most extraordinary mysteries and disinformation campaigns has finally been exposed, implicating numerous prominent heads of state in the atrocities and subsequent cover up scandals. A complex edifice of deception has been thoroughly dismantled by patient and persistent perseverance and pressure.
Mission to Poland When I visited Poland in 1990, and saw a monument for the victims of the Katyn Forest Massacre in 1940, I questioned whether they did not mean 1941? "Surely you don't believe the Russian propaganda?" they challenged me. I did not know what they were talking about. The Polish Christians were most agitated over my ignorance on this matter. A Lesson in History They explained that although Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany, 3 September 1939, ostensibly because Germany had invaded Poland, so Russia also invaded Poland in 1939. "Of course most history books omit that fact." The Katyn Forest was in Soviet territory, they pointed out. Over 22,000 Polish prisoners, including over 8,000 officers, were murdered in cold blood by the Soviet NKVD in the Spring of 1940. When this crime was discovered, Stalin's Soviet Russia was an ally of Great Britain and the United States of America. Therefore they found it more convenient to attribute this Russian atrocity to their German enemies. 
Judicial Fraud
The Polish Christians informed me that the British, Americans, and French chose to participate in judicial fraud at the Nuremberg Trials by indicting the German Army with what were plainly Communist atrocities committed by Soviet Russia. Missing Polish Prisoners of War In December 1941, the head of the London based Polish government-in-exile, General Wladyslaw Sikorski enquired of Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, what had become of Polish prisoners of war captured by the Soviets during their invasion of Poland in September 1939. Stalin assured Sikorski that all Polish POWs had been released. He opinioned that some might have moved to Manchuria. Mass Graves Exhumed In 1943, a German intelligence officer, Rudolph von Gersdorff, serving with the Abwehr, received reports about mass graves of Polish military officers near Katyn. A ditch 28 m long and 16 m wide was found which contained the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers piled up in 12 layers. This was only the first of many such graves to be unearthed. German soldiers unearthed numerous mass graves of many thousands of Polish officers who had been massacred in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. German news reports claimed that this was yet another evidence of the war crimes and atrocities committed by the Communist commissars of the Soviet Union. W hen the German government announced the discovery of the mass graves in the Katyn Forest, the London based Polish government-in-exile requested an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Stalin immediately severed diplomatic relations with it and claimed that the victims had been murdered by the Nazis. Investigation The German government brought in a European Commission of 12 forensic experts and their staff from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia and Hungary. Even Polish, American and British Prisoners of War were included in the investigation. The reports of these neutral investigators confirmed that the victims were indeed Polish officers, NCOs and intellectuals who were victims of Russian forces in the Summer of 1940. When the Polish government-in-exile insisted on bringing the matter before the International Red Cross, General Sikorski died in an aircraft crash in July 1943, an event that was described as "convenient to the allied leaders." Numerous books and documentary films have been made of "The Assassination of General Sikorski." 
The Burdenko Commission
The Soviets hastened to orchestrate an alternative Soviet version of the now disclosed massacre, to claim that the Polish POWs had been massacred, not by the Soviets, but by the Nazis. Nikolai Burdenko, the President of the Soviet Academy of Medicine, presided over a commission appointed by Stalin to investigate the incident. Burdenko claimed to have interviewed more than a hundred eyewitnesses who swore that the Nazis had massacred the Polish POWs in Autumn, 1941. The Nuremberg Trials At the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-1946, the German military were proclaimed guilty of shooting Polish Prisoners of War in the Katyn Forest. So the Soviet version of the Katyn Massacre moved from war-time propaganda into school history books: The Germans shot Polish Prisoners of War in Katyn Forest in 1941. Duplicity The Polish-Soviet crisis threatened Western-Soviet relations and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt were torn between their commitment to their Polish ally and the demands of Stalin. In private, Churchill agreed that the atrocity was most likely carried out by the Soviets. According to Edward Raczynski, Churchill admitted on 15 April 1943, during a conversation with General Sikorski: "Alas, the German revelations are probably true. The Bolsheviks can be very cruel." However, on 24 April 1943, Churchill assured the Soviets: "We shall certainly oppose vigorously any investigation by the International Red Cross or any other body…" Classified UK documents concluded that Soviet guilt was "a near certainty", but the alliance with the Soviets was deemed to be more important than the moral issue. The official version parroted the Soviet propaganda and the censors suppressed all contradictory accounts. Cover-up The British Foreign Secretary pointed out several inconsistencies, and near impossibilities, in the Soviet version. Churchill's post-war account of Katyn skirts over the Katyn Massacre by referring to the 1944 Soviet Enquiry which attributed guilt to the Germans adding cryptically: "belief seems an act of faith." Suppressed When US Navy Lieutenant Commander George Earle produced a report concluding that the massacres were committed by the Soviet Union, President Roosevelt ordered Earle's report to be suppressed. When Earle formally requested permission to publish his findings, the President issued a written order forbidding it. Earle was reassigned and spent the rest of the War in the remote island of American Samoa. Reports Destroyed Two senior American Prisoners of War, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Stewart and Colonel John van Vliet, taken by the Germans to Katyn for investigation, submitted a report, after their release in 1945, that the Soviets were definitely responsible for the Massacre. George Marshall's Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Major General Clayton Bissell, destroyed the report. During the 1951-1952 Congressional Investigations, General Bissell defended his action before Congress arguing that it was not in the US interest to antagonise the Soviet Union which was America's ally . 
Embarrassed
The Americans and British were embarrassed by the Soviet inclusion of the Katyn Forest Massacre in the indictments against the German military at Nuremberg. Soviet General Roman Redenko, at the Nuremberg Tribunal stated that "One of the most important criminal acts for which the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish Prisoners of War shot in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk by the German Fascist invaders." Katyn was: "The worst massacre of Prisoners of War in history." Hypocrisy For sheer bare-faced hypocrisy this accusation was classic. All present at the trial, including the one making the accusation, knew that this was judicial fraud and farce. Censorship The Black Book of Censorship in the People's Republic of Poland expressly stated: "Any attempt to burden the Soviet Union with the responsibility for the deaths of Polish officers in Katyn Forest is forbidden." Further evidence that everyone knew who was really responsible, was that even the most simple memorial erected in Poland such as Katyn 1940, was confiscated by police and destroyed. The Polish practice was to erect memorial crosses on All Saints' Day. These were always dismantled by the police. If Katyn had really been a Nazi atrocity, it would not have been a taboo subject in Communist controlled countries. Not only did the Soviet Union forbid any monuments to be erected to victims of the Katyn Massacre, but the British government also objected to plans to build a Katyn monument in the UK. 
Disinformation Campaign
In the 1960s, the Soviets launched a Disinformation Offensive to sidetrack the persistent accusations of Soviet atrocities and massacres throughout Eastern Europe. A village in Belarus, Khatyn, whose name is very similar to Katyn, was chosen as a site for a memorial to commemorate the victims of Nazi atrocities. Apparently 149 Khatyn villagers had been massacred by Ukrainian and Belarus soldiers fighting for the Nazis in March 1943. This Khatyn Memorial became an obligatory stop for all foreign visitors. This Disinformation Campaign scored its major success in 1974 when US President Richard Nixon was brought to Khatyn to remember the Polish victims of the Nazis! From this time all Soviet publications displaced Katyn with Khatyn, including in Polish encyclopaedias and historical dictionaries. Facts are Stubborn Things Every Soviet leader had to deal with the persistent Polish charges of the Katyn Forest Massacre. The Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s used underground printing presses to expose the Soviet duplicity and print the facts about the Katyn Forest Massacre. 
Gorbachev's Glasnost
Mikhail Gorbachev launched an historical commission in 1987 to create a new Soviet version of what had actually happened at Katyn. Gorbachev's Politburo proposed in 1988 to build a memorial to the victims of the massacre "executed by Hitlerites in Katyn" alongside a memorial to 500 Soviet POWs supposedly also killed at Katyn by the Germans - a myth created by the Burdenko Commission with absolutely no evidence that it ever happened at all. Gorbachev also offered the Poles "a simplified procedure" for relatives wishing to visit the sites where their loved ones lay buried. One of the Worst Crimes Ever However the Polish historians tenaciously exposed the Russian responsibility, and the Catholic church in Poland labelled the Katyn Massacre "one of the worst crimes in the history of mankind." Exposure Gorbachev's trusted advisor, Valentin Falin, reported that Polish historians subverted the Soviet Commission by producing their own evidence exposing the 1944 Burdenko Report as spurious. Without waiting for the Soviet Commission's response, the Poles began publishing the facts. The problem stubbornly refused to go away. Even the communist puppet government of Jaruzelski was forced to admit that "the liquidation of the Polish officers was the responsibility of the USSR." 
Admission
On the symbolic date of 13 April 1990, 47 years after Berlin radio had announced the discovery of the massacre site, Gorbachev handed over two boxes of evidence to the Poles. The documents made clear that the Katyn Massacre was the work of the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria. Gorbachev attempted to convince the Poles that more than 20,000 Polish nationals had been executed by the secret police chief without any authority from the Soviet Politburo! 
Deception Rejected
This limited confession and further attempts at deception only enraged the Polish people further. An investigation conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Soviet Union in 1991, and later by the Russian Federation, confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres. However the Russian Federation later tried to diminish the number of the deaths to 1,803 Polish citizens. They also refused to classify the action as a war crime, or as an act of genocide. They declared the investigation closed on the grounds that the perpetrators of the massacre were already dead.
Finally the Truth Comes Out In October 1992, Boris Yeltsin, who had replaced Gorbachev, lowered the Soviet flag, abolished the Soviet Union and handed over "newly found" secret documents from the Soviet Politburo to Polish president Lech Walensa. The Politburo order dated 5 March 1940, was entitled, Question of the NKVD. In it Beria informed Stalin that 14,736 Polish officers, officials, police officials, gendarmes and other intellectuals were being held in prison camps in occupied Polish territory and that 18,632 similar people were being held in camps in the Western Provinces of Ukraine and Belarus. Beria requested permission to shoot them all. Stalin's Order Stalin's "in favour" and bold signature are scrawled at the top of Beria's question. Five other Politburo members also signed and approved the execution order. The document was labelled Top Secret. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were Polish military officers taken prisoner during the September 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland. Another 6,000 were police officers, with the rest being Polish Intelligentsia arrested for being " bourgeois". The Katyn Forest Massacre was justified by Stalin's Politburo as necessary to deprive a potential future Polish military of its leadership. Since Russia intended to keep the Eastern portion of Poland, he was determined to deprive it of a large proportion of its military and intellectual elite. 
Cold Blooded Mass Murder
Those who were murdered, in the first batch alone, included: an Admiral, 2 Generals, 24 Colonels, 79 Lieutenant Colonels, 258 Majors, 654 Captains, 17 Naval Captains, 3,420 NCOs, 7 Chaplains, 20 University Professors, 300 Physicians, hundreds of lawyers, engineers and teachers, more than one hundred writers and journalists and over 200 pilots. Altogether during the massacres, the NKVD murdered 14 Polish Generals. Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin, the Chief Executioner for the NKVD, is reported to have personally shot and killed 7,000 of the condemned, from the Ostashkov Camp, over a period of 28 days in April 1940. A Legacy of Deception Further documents revealed that every Soviet chairman since Joseph Stalin had signed out the Politburo's Katyn file and were well aware of the Russian complicity in this crime. In a Memo dated 20 March 1959, to Chairman Khrushchev, Interior Minister Alexander Shelepin reported: "The Committee of State Security… has held, since 1940, case files and other materials regarding prisoners and interned officers, policemen, gendarmes, military settlers, landowners, etc., persons from former bourgeois Poland who were shot in the same year. In all, on the basis of the decision of a special Troica of the NKVD, USSR, 21,857 people were shot… the entire operation was carried out on the basis of the decision of the Central Committee of 5 March 1940. Since 1940, no information from these files was released to anyone. All of the files, numbering 21,857, have been stored in a sealed location. To Soviet organs, all of these files represent neither operational interest, nor historical value. It is also doubtful that they could be of any real value to our Polish friends. Quite the contrary, any unforeseen incident may lead to revealing the operation with all the undesirable consequences for our state. This is especially so because regarding those shot in the Katyn Forest, there is an official version supported by an Investigation carried out on the initiative of the Soviet state in 1944, by the Burdenko Commission… which concluded that all of the Poles liquidated there are considered to have been killed by the German invaders. The conclusions of the commission became firmly established in international public opinion. It seems appropriate to destroy all of the records regarding the persons shot in 1940, in the above mentioned operation." Evidence Destroyed Shelepin's recommendation to purge the records was carried out with these over 21,000 case files destroyed. However, the Politburo Execution Order and Memo from Beria remained in the official record. Files later released from Gorbachev's time included advice from advisors, that should the truth of the Katyn Forest Massacre come out, people could be convinced that the Soviet Union was no better than, and may have been worse than, Nazi Germany during the war, and that the Soviet Union bears no less responsibility for the war. 
Polish Deportations
Polish historians point out that during the 1930s, hundreds-of-thousands of Poles living in the Western areas of the Soviet Union were marked out for persecution by Stalin - either execution, or deportation to Central Asia. The Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, was followed by more waves of arrests and mass deportations to the East. When the Katyn Forest Massacre took place, hundreds-of-thousands of Poles, mostly the better-educated and economically active citizens, were already in exile in Siberia, or in labour camps in Central Asia. They were herded there in horribly overcrowded freight trains and at least one out of every five of them died during transportation to the Soviet concentration camps. Oppression Between 320,000, to possibly up to 1 million, Polish citizens were deported to the Soviet Union. Of one group of 12,000 Poles incarcerated in Delstroy, near Kolyma, in 1940, only 583 survived by 1942. Over 570,000 Polish citizens were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps by the Soviets during the war. Polish prisoners were subjected to lengthy interrogations between October 1939 and February 1940. These interviews were a selection process to determine who would live and who would die. According to NKVD reports, if the prisoners could not be persuaded to adopt a pro-communist attitude, they were declared "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority" and condemned to death. Further Massacres When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in the Summer of 1941, the NKVD concentration camp guards massacred thousands of Polish prisoners before fleeing eastwards to avoid the German advance. The Betrayal of Warsaw When the war was reaching its end and the Red Army was at the very gates of Warsaw, radio broadcasts from Russia urged the Polish citizens to rise up in revolt! The Soviet Army was then ordered to stand by and render no assistance as the Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising. Stalin said that it was better that all resistance in Poland be crushed before a Soviet occupation. 
South Africa's Support Remembered
The Polish Christians in 1990 reminded me that only the South African Air Force had flown in weapons and aid to the Polish underground during the Warsaw Uprising. I was surprised. I had read that the RAF had done so - but that was another lie. It was actually the SAAF, but because of apartheid, historians had expunged South Africa's role and replaced it with the RAF. The fact that history books could be re-written to conform to politically correct dictates is disturbing. Never Liberated Polish citizens strenuously objected to any suggestion that they had been "liberated" by the Soviets. "The Soviets never liberated anyone!" they insisted. The first act of the Soviets on occupying Poland was arresting all leaders of the underground army and government. Polish Christians pointed out that most of the atrocities attributed to the Germans were actually communist atrocities committed by the Soviets and conveniently blamed on their enemies. Polish relatives of the victims continued to urge the European Court of Human Rights to rule on the crimes of the Stalin regime. 
Putin's Perspective
To Vladimir Putin's Russia, the Katyn Forest Massacre is an inconvenient truth which taints Russian war-time heroism. Putin's chief military prosecutor, Alexander Savenkov, issued a ruling on Katyn on 11 March 2005, in which they acknowledged that the NKVD Troika found 14,542 Polish citizens, held in NKVD camps, guilty of committing state crimes and made a decision to shoot them in the Spring of 1940. Putin's representative claims that these Soviet officials "abused their authority," but that no criminal cases could be opened against them because the guilty parties had since died. The Polish claim of genocide was rejected and although they agreed to hand over 67 of the 183 volumes of evidence, two thirds of the remaining evidence was to remain classified. Outrage The Polish parliament was outraged and demanded that Russia's Katyn archives all be declassified and that Russian courts rule that the Katyn Forest Massacre was an act of genocide. Communists throughout the world would prefer the truth about Katyn to be buried, but Christians in Poland, and throughout Eastern Europe, determined to exhume the secrets and expose the true nature of Soviet Communism. Pressure Human Rights societies continued to pressure the Russian government, until in November 2010, the Russian Duma, approved the declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for having personally ordered the Massacre of Polish Prisoners of War. This was only after the disastrous plane crash of Polish leaders enroute to Katyn for the 70 th Anniversary Commemoration. 
Death Flight
On 10 April 2010, an aircraft carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 87 other politicians and high-ranking army officers, crashed near Smolensk, killing all 96 on board the aircraft. The passengers were to attend a ceremony marking the 70 th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre. The Polish people were convinced that they were the victims of a communist terror campaign which assassinated their president and senior leaders on the eve of the most important and solemn anniversary of this massacre. Many observed that it was like the assassination of General Sikorski in 1943. In the furore following the death flight of the Polish government, the Russian Duma finally acknowledged Russia's guilt for the Katyn Forest Massacre. 
War Crime
In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights declared admissible two complaints of relatives of the massacre victims against Russia concerning the inadequacy of their investigations. In a ruling on 16 April 2012, the court found that Russia had violated the rights of victims' relatives and described the Massacre as a war-crime. It has taken 75 years, but facts are stubborn things. "They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity…" 2 Peter 2:19 Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa mission@frontline.org.za www.FrontlineMissionSA.org www.hmsschoolofchristianjournalism.org Sources: Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin's Polish Massacre, by Allen Paul, Scribner, 1991 Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory, by George Sanford, 2005 Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment, by Anna Cienciala, Jael University Press, 2007 Class Cleansing: The Katyn Massacre, by Victor Zaslavski, Telos Press, 2008 World War II Behind Closed Doors, by Laurence Rees, Random House, 2010 Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth, by Allen Paul, Northern Illinois University Press, 2010 An audio CD of this message, as presented to The Reformation Society, is available from: Christian Liberty Books PO Box 358 Howard Place 7450 Cape Town, South Africa, Fax: 086-551-7490, Email: admin@christianlibertybooks.co.za, Website: www.christianlibertybooks.co.za See also: Do Not Be Deceived (to see the video, click here; to listen to the audio, click here. How Propaganda Changes Perceptions and People; to see the PowerPoint, click here. Dealing with Deceit The Greatest Killer; to see the video, click here; to see the PowerPoint, click here; to listen to the audio, click here. Death By Government Communist Liberation – Myth and Reality; to view the tract, click here. The Heart of Communism; to see the PowerPoint, click here; to view the tract, click here. The Heart and Soul of Karl Marx; to see the PowerPoint, click here; to view the tract, click here; to listen to the audio, click here. Farms and Freedom Under Fire in South Africa; to listen to the audio, click here. Lessons from the Rwandan Holocaust; to listen to an audio, click here. Security and Survival Handbook (include a pic of the book)  Click here to view a video presentation on the Holocaust in Rwanda. 26 Years ago, 6 April 1994, one of the most dreadful campaigns of mass murder was unleashed upon the Tutsi people of Rwanda. In just 100 days, more people had been slaughtered with machetes and clubs than have died from atomic weapons in all of history. Convenient Timing At the time, world media attention was focused on South Africa's first "One Man, One Vote" elections. When the genocide was launched on 6 April 1994, most African correspondents were in South Africa covering the elections. The MRND government in Rwanda meticulously organised the genocide. The French trained Presidential Guard, the army, the gendarmes and civil administrators were mobilised to slaughter the Tutsi minority.  Sowing Confusion Central to the MRND strategy was to sow confusion so that no one would know what was happening. They isolated their victims by imposing a news blackout, cutting telephone links, establishing a dense network of roadblocks and imposing a nationwide curfew. These measures kept people in their homes and prevented most people from fleeing. By cutting communications and restricting travel, they isolated their victims and sought to stifle the flow of news. State Sponsored Genocide Following the assassination of the president, by surface to air missile, the MRND government (Mouvement Revolutionnaire National pour le Development) launched a campaign of disinformation. It portrayed the killings as a spontaneous outbreak of tribal violence. It sought to confuse the mass killing of defenceless people with "the war", and it played the humanitarian card by pleading for emergency aid. All this was a smoke screen to conceal the state sponsored genocide. Amidst this calculated confusion, many foreign aid workers assisted in the disinformation campaign by contributing ill-informed comments such as: "Everyone is killing everyone!"; "It's uncontrollable violence"; "The Hutus and Tutsis are killing one another again!"  Spread of Disinformation Having killed opposition politicians, Rwandese journalists, human rights activists and others who might present an accurate report on the cold-blooded campaign of mass murder, the MRND campaign continued their strategy of disinformation by portraying the violence as spontaneous rage in response to the assassination of the president. Evacuation of Foreigners Initially, international attention generally focused on the plight of foreigners. Camera crews were, understandably, only prepared to travel with international troops - whose mission was to evacuate foreigners. This naturally led to a slanted and incomplete picture being portrayed to the world. The murder of ten Belgian soldiers on 7 April only heightened this pre-occupation with the evacuation of foreigners. It is very probable that the killers were instructed to murder the Belgians precisely in order to make the evacuation of foreigners the international priority. It also further encouraged the withdraw of UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda).  Massacres Exposed This strategy of disinformation and terror was spectacularly successful. To this day, most people worldwide do not understand what happened in Rwanda, or why it happened. That is why after my mission to Rwanda I was compelled to produce a compact book that would not only expose what had happened in the horrific massacres in homes, hospitals, churches and on the streets, but the reasons why this systematic slaughter was unleashed. Holocaust in Rwanda reveals the events leading up to the intense and widespread violence, and more importantly the lessons we need to learn from the genocide in Rwanda. International Community Condemned President Paul Kagame at the formal ten years commemoration of the Rwandan genocide condemned "the international community's failure… a convenient failure to take responsibility." President Kagame led conference participants on a tour of massacre sites including the churches in Nyamata and Ntarama where 15,000 people were slaughtered in the sanctuaries where they had sought refuge. Remembered Victims The cemetery at Nynaza was another place visited. The cemetery contains the graves of 3,500 people who were massacred after being abandoned in a schoolyard by UN peacekeepers. Liberal Church Participation The Holocaust In Rwanda book is unique in that it examines the disgraceful involvement of liberal church leaders, gun control and media manipulation. Rwanda was a gun free zone. The mass murderers successfully manipulated and abused the media to vilify the targeted Tutsis, and to mobilise masses of Hutus to kill their neighbours. The scandalous role of the French government in providing assistance, training and weapons to the mass murderers, and even the French military expedition to create a safe zone for the fleeing Hutu mass murderers, providing sanctuary even for many of the architects of the genocide, is also revealed in this book.  Challenge to the Christian Church In addition Holocaust In Rwanda looks at the challenge the Rwandan holocaust presents to the Christian church. The killers did not merely kill people in churches, they killed church workers - pastors, ministers, priests and nuns. However, the most shocking aspect of the anti-Christian mass murders was how many people responsible for the slaughter were trusted members of the congregations. On many occasions even priests, nuns and ministers were directly involved in the genocide! Several heads of denominations co-operated with the Interahamwe, by betraying their Tutsi congregations and co-workers into the hands of mass murderers. Compromise and Cowardice The role of these Christian traitors, blood-stained bishops and murderous ministers of Rwanda are an indictment upon our theological seminaries and church councils. Those who do not wholeheartedly love the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word are not qualified to be spiritual leaders. The Rwandan Holocaust exposes the emptiness of the superficial and self-centred easy believism, which all too often masquerades as the Gospel. Compromise and cowardice helped cause the catastrophe. Most importantly, Holocaust In Rwanda looks at some of the lessons, which need to be learned in order to ensure that such atrocities do not reoccur. Far more important than the concerns for retribution is the urge and need to lay foundations for the future that will prevent such nationwide oppression from ever occurring again. These are Biblical principles which are not only important for Rwanda but for every society which values life and liberty. Holocaust In Rwanda concludes with the Biblical principles which had they been adhered to, there would have been no holocaust in Rwanda.  Holocaust In Rwanda is available in both English and French (70 pages with 20 photographs, maps, or charts) from: Christian Liberty Books P O Box 358 Howard Place 7450 Cape Town South Africa, Tel: 021-689-7478, Fax: 086-551-7490, E-Mail: admin@christianlibertybooks.co.za, Website: www.christianlibertybooks.co.za.
Holocaust in Rwanda is now available as an E-Book. Click here to listen to From the Frontline podcast on this topic. Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Email: mission@frontline.org.za Website: www.FrontlineMissionSA.org See also: Lessons From the Rwandan Holocaust Kofi Anan, the UN, the Rwandan Holocaust and Oil-for-Food Scandal Click here to listen to the audio of the Kofi Anan article
April marks the anniversary of the launch of the systematic extermination of the Christian Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. The Jihad began with the arrest of 250 Christian leaders in Constantinople (what is today called Istanbul) and over 800 other Christian leaders throughout the empire, on 24 April 1915. Over 1.5 million Christians were slaughtered by Muslims in Turkey during 1915. Additionally, 750,000 Assyrian Christians and 950,000 Greek Orthodox Christians were murdered in the Ottoman Turkish Empire between 1915 and 1922. That amounts to over 3.5 million Christian victims of the Turkish Empire over just 7 years. 
Corruption and Cruelty
The Ottoman Empire declined into corruption and degeneracy from the beginning. When Sultan Murad III died in AD 1595, his son Muhammad had his 19 brothers murdered to prevent them from claiming "his throne". He also had seven of his father's pregnant concubines sown into sacks and thrown into the river. Many of his nephews were incarcerated in "the cage". Sultan Ibrahim threw his grand Vizier into a cistern. One morning, after an orgy, Ibrahim had all 300 women of his harem put into sacks and thrown into the Bosporus. Only one survived by being picked up by a ship bound for France. When Ibrahim was finally assassinated, the Ottoman Empire was torn apart by more corruption, nepotism, inefficiency, misrule and power struggles. To view this presentation as a video, click here. To listen to the audio of this message, click here. To read this article with pictures, click here.  The Battle of Taranto On the night of 11 to 12 November 1940, British Naval forces under Admiral Andrew Cunningham, including Aircraft Carrier HMS Illustrious, launched Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers in the Mediterranean Sea to attack the Regia Marina Battle Fleet at anchor in the harbour of Taranto. Despite the shallow depth of the water, the aerial torpedoes proved devastatingly effective, crippling the Italian Navy, which lost half of its capital ships in one night. Naval Air Power The Royal Navy raid on Taranto Bay marked the ascendency of air power over sea power. The Fleet Air Arm proved to be the Navy's most devastating weapon.  Trained By the Royal Navy As the Imperial Japanese Navy had initially been trained by the Royal Navy and studied the Royal Navy's tactics and strategies most carefully, it should have been obvious that the Imperial Japanese Navy, the third most powerful Navy in the world in 1941, with 10 Fleet carriers, would begin practicing with torpedo bombers and carefully evaluate the possibility of them being used against the American Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbour. Japan had the largest and most modern carrier Fleet in the world in 1941. By comparison the USA had 7 aircraft carriers (only 3 of which operated in the Pacific) and Britain had 8 aircraft carriers (of which only one operated in the Indian and Pacific Oceans).  The Danger of Torpedo Attack The claim that no one could have anticipated torpedo attacks in the shallow waters of a harbour before 7 December 1941, is false. The British had proved that torpedoes could be effective in their attack on the Italian Navy at Taranto, 11 November 1940. The Royal Navy used Swordfish Bi-planes to deliver the torpedoes. The US Navy had discussed this new threat in a June 1941 Memorandum. Torpedo nets were considered to be installed in Pearl Harbour as a precautionary measure. Overruled by Politicians in Washington D.C. Admiral Kimmel and his staff testified that the decision not to install torpedo nets and booms had been made by the Navy Department in Washington DC, not in Hawaii.  Classified Documents Denied to the Public There are many documents relating to Pearl Harbour which are still classified by the United States government and have not yet been made public. Many of the documents were destroyed during the war. Some of the public records of the United Kingdom containing Churchill's "Most Secret" war time intelligence briefs, were marked as "closed for 75 years", including the sections dealing with events from November 1941 through March 1942. Was the Japanese Raid on Pearl Harbour Unprecedented?  Mers-El-Kébir Seventeen months before Pearl Harbour, the British Royal Navy attacked the French Fleet at anchor on the coast of French Algeria. The Battle of Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July 1940, resulted in the deaths of 1,297 French servicemen, the sinking of a French battleship and the damaging of 5 other ships. The combined air and sea attack was carried out against Britain's official ally - France. Attacking an Ally The attack remains controversial and created much hostility between France and Britain. Britain argued that "the times were desperate; invasion seemed imminent; and the British government simply could not afford to risk Germany seizing control of the French Fleet… the prominent British motive was thus dire necessity and self-preservation." However the French insisted that, as their terms of surrender with Germany did not require them handing over their Fleet, which was still in French controlled territory, the British action was treacherous. Swift and Surprising Action French ships that were in Alexandria and believed that they were allies of Britain were shocked to be blockaded, boarded and seized by the Royal Navy at the same time. Also on 3 July, French ships in Plymouth and Portsmouth, England, were boarded and captured. This included the French submarine, Surcouf (the largest submarine in the world at that time), four other submarines, the battleships Paris and Courbet, destroyers Triomphant and Leopard. Some officers and sailors were killed in the struggles. These attacks were justified by the British strategy of Copenhagening the Fleet.  Copenhagening the Fleet Admiral Horatio Nelson's famous battle of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801 was a clear inspiration for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, 1941. Although Denmark was officially neutral during the Napoleonic Wars, Britain feared that her Navy may be seized by the French, if Denmark fell to the French. Targeting Neutrals The Battle of Copenhagen was a result of multiple failures of diplomacy. With Britain enforcing a strict blockade of France and any country trading with France, even neutral nations, such as Denmark, Sweden and Prussia, were regarded as legitimate targets.  The Battle of Copenhagen Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson led the attack on the Danish capital, Copenhagen. The British attack, during which Admiral Nelson famously placed his telescope to his blind eye ignoring a command to withdraw, was, from the British perspective, spectacularly successful. 1,600 Danish soldiers and sailors were killed, or wounded and most of the Danish Navy either sunk, severely damaged, or captured. The Second Battle of Copenhagen Although ostensibly neutral, Denmark was again attacked by the Royal Navy 16 August - 5 September 1807, when the Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen, seized the Danish Fleet "as a precaution" in case Denmark did choose to join the French. 3,000 soldiers and civilians, including 195 children, in Copenhagen died as a result of the bombardment. As the majority of the Danish Army was at the Southern border to protect against a possible attack from the French, this second assault on a neutral country was a scandal at the time. Ignoring Historic Precedents Knowing that the Imperial Japanese Navy was modelled on the Royal Navy, these famous battles, strategies and tactics of Copenhagening the Fleets of even neutral countries where a potential threat was perceived, including against Britain's French allies and most tellingly at the Battle of Taranto where aircraft launched from aircraft carriers using torpedoes had crippled a battle Fleet, should have been taken into consideration.  Deception by Entertainment As modern American films such as Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbour tend to ignore these historic precedents and pretend that the attack on Pearl Harbour was both "unprecedented" and "unexpected" and "the first surprise attack by aircraft on ships," generations have been deceived into thinking that Pearl Harbour was a treacherous, unexpected and unprecedented attack "A day that will live in infamy!" "Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted… Now all these things happened to them as examples and they were written for our admonition…" 1 Corinthians 10:6-11 Desperately Seeking War William Henry Chamberlin in America's Second Crusade (1950) wrote: "It is scarcely possible, in the light of this and many other known facts, to avoid the conclusion that the Roosevelt Administration sought the war which began at Pearl Harbour. The steps which made armed conflict inevitable would take months before the conflict broke out." (Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoovers Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath).  Failing to Give US Servicemen a Fighting Chance General Albert C. Wedemeyer is quoted by Herbert Hoover in Freedom Betrayed as stating: "When on, December 6, our intercepts told us that the Japanese were going to attack somewhere the very next day, whether in the Central Pacific, or to the South in the Philippines and Dutch East Indies, the president of the United States, as Commander in Chief of our Military Forces… could have gone on the radio and broadcast to the wide world that he had irrefutable evidence of an immediate Japanese intention to strike. This would have alerted everybody from Singapore to Pearl Harbour. Even though inadequate in some cases to defend effectively, nevertheless, our forces would have been able to take a toll, which would have blunted the Japanese attack. In Hawaii, the capital ships might have been moved out of the congested harbour to sea, where Admiral Kimmel at least had the foresight to keep the far more vital aircraft carriers. Furthermore, our Carrier taskforce in the mid-Pacific might have attacked the Japanese taskforce when its planes were aloft. There are many possibilities which could have given our men a fighting chance." Blind Service to Stalin and the Soviet Union "Roosevelt ignored the whole communist infiltration into his administration. Much of it was to be exposed before his death. But of more importance, he ignored the whole international purpose of communism and its morals in International relations. Its purposes and methods had been blatantly stated to the world ever since 1917 and its statements in books were widely distributed in the United States. Roosevelt was not a communist. His leanings towards Stalin and blindness to communistic activities arose partly from his own Leftist-leaning and partly from the usefulness of the communists in support of his administration politically throughout his 13 years in office." Co-operating with Communism "His leanings towards Stalin and the communist began with the recognition of the Soviet Union immediately upon taking his office in 1933... During 15 years prior to the recognition, Democratic and Republican administrations alike had barred any relations with a country which had returned huge numbers of mankind to slavery and was constantly conspiring against the welfare of other peoples. By recognition, Roosevelt gave the Soviet Union certain respectability in the family of nations, but also of importance. By that act, he had opened the door to communist penetration and conspiracies in the United States."  A Madman's Desire to Get US into War In Herbert Hoover's Freedom Betrayed, General Douglas McArthur's views are reported that: "the whole Japanese war was a madman's desire to get us into war." McArthur was convinced that the "Financial sanctions in July 1941 were not only provocative but that Japan was bound to fight even if it were suicide, unless they could be removed, as the sanctions carried every penalty of war except killing and destruction and no nation of dignity would take them for long." An Unnecessary War McArthur said that: "Roosevelt could have made peace with Konoye in September 1941 and could have obtained all of the American objectives in the Pacific and the freedom of China and probably Manchuria. Konoye was authorized by the Emperor to agree to complete withdrawal." Callous Indifference to the American Army Beleaguered in the Philippines McArthur was bitter about: "Roosevelt's starvation of supplies to him at a time when the whole fate of the South Pacific and their allies in Asia was at stake." "Roosevelt had shown his vindictiveness in many ways." The Truth about Pearl Harbour In September 1944, John Flynn, a member of the America First Committee, published The Truth about Pearl Harbour:  Provoking Japan to Get America into the War Rear Admiral Frank Beatty, who at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack was an aide to the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, testified: "Prior to 7 December, it was evident even to me… that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believe that it was the desire of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill that we get into the war, as they felt their allies could not win without us and all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us had failed. The conditions we imposed upon Japan were so severe that we knew the nation could not accept them. We were forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react towards the United States. All her preparations in a military way - and we knew their overall import - pointed that way." "Worth the Price" Jonathan Daniels, Roosevelt's administrative assistant at that time of Pearl Harbour, presented an eye-witness viewpoint: "The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be… But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price..." ("1941: Pearl Harbour Sunday: The End of an Era").  To Save the Soviet Union from Collapse in Europe In Day of Deceit, by Robert Stinnett, a memorandum prepared by Commander McCollun stated that a memorandum issued in the immediate pre-war period declared that only a direct attack on US interests would sway the American public, or Congress, to favour direct involvement in the European war. Anderson and Secretary Knox, offered eight specific plans to aggrieve the Japanese Empire "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt active war, so much the better." The McCollun memo of 7 October 1940, remained classified until 1994. Reckless and Irresponsible Admiral James Richardson was fired by President Roosevelt for complaining about the president's order to station the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbour. Admiral Richardson blamed the president for the "initial defeats in the Pacific" as "direct, real and personal." Richardson believed that stationing the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbour made the ships "extremely vulnerable to attack" and provided "a poor and nonstrategic defence."  A Travesty of History "No reasonably informed person can now believe that Japan made a villainous unexpected attack on the United States. An attack was not only fully expected, but was actually desired. It is beyond doubt that President Roosevelt wanted to get his country into the war, but for political reasons, was most anxious to ensure that the first act of hostility came from the other side; for which reason he caused increasing pressure to be put on the Japanese, to a point that no self-respecting nation could endure without resort to arms. Japan was meant, by the American President, to attack the United States. As Mr Oliver Lyttelton, then British Minister of Production, said in 1944: 'Japan was provoked into attacking America's Pearl Harbour. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war'." - British Historian Captain Russell Grenfell Main Fleet to Singapore as quoted by President Herbert Hoover in Freedom Betrayed.  Dereliction of Duty Captain L.F. Safford, US Navy, in charge of the Communications Security Section of Naval Communications in Washington, testified before the Admiral Hart Board that: "On 4 December 1941, we received definite information from two independent sources that Japan would attack the United States and Britain… at 9pm Washington time, 6 December 1941, we received positive information that Japan would declare war against the United States at a time to be specified thereafter. This information was positive and unmistakable and was made available to Military Intelligence virtually at the moment of its decoding. Finally at 10:15am Washington time, 7 December 1941, we received positive information from Signal Intelligence Service, War Department, that the Japanese Declaration of War would be presented to the Secretary of State at 1pm, Washington time that date; when it was 1pm in Washington, it would be day break in Hawaii and approximately midnight in the Philippines, which indicated a surprise air raid in Pearl Harbour in about three hours. President Roosevelt had ample time to broadcast a warning." Criminal Negligence An Army Enquiry conducted July to October 1944, condemned negligence by General Marshall and other senior officers for having prior knowledge of the attacks from the intercepts and for not having alerted the Military Commander at Pearl Harbour. Congress was not satisfied with the Military investigations and reports and from November 1945 to May 1946, the Congressional Pearl Harbour Investigation, a Minority Report by Senate Members of the Committee condemned the endeavour to "throw as soft a light as possible on Washington." Attempted Cover Ups "The Roberts Commission Report was so hasty, inconclusive and incomplete. Some witnesses were examined under oath, others were not. Much testimony was not even recorded… several records were missing and most inadequate explanations were supplied… Army and Navy information indicated growing imminence of war was delivered to the highest authorities… including the President. The fatal error of Washington was to undertake a world campaign and world responsibilities without first making provision for the security of the United States, which was their prime constitutional obligation. High Washington authorities did not communicate to Admiral Kimmel and General Short adequate information of diplomatic negotiations and of intercepted diplomatic intelligence, which, if communicated with them, would have informed them of the imminent menace of a Japanese attack in time for them to fully alert and prepare the defence of Pearl Harbour… the failure to perform the responsibilities indispensably essential to the defence of Pearl Harbour rest upon Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry L. Stimson, Frank Knox and George C. Marshall…" (Freedom Betrayed)  Dragging a Reluctant America into War George Morgenstern in his book, Pearl Harbour: The Story of the Secret War, published in 1947, wrote: "With absolute knowledge of war, they refused to communicate that knowledge clearly, unequivocally and in time, to the people in the field, upon whom the blow would fall… Pearl Harbour provided the American War party with the means of escaping dependence on a hesitant Congress in taking a reluctant people into war… Pearl Harbour was the first action of the Acknowledged War and the last battle of a Secret War, upon which the administration had long since embarked.  The Secret War of Deception and Propaganda "The Secret War was waged against nations which the leadership of this country had chosen as enemies’ months before they became formal enemies, by declaration of war. It was waged also by psychological means by propaganda and deception against the American people… the people were told that acts which were equivalent to war were intended to keep the nation out of war. Constitutional processes existed only to be circumvented. Until finally the war making power of Congress was reduced to the act of ratifying an accomplished fact."  Rejecting Every Overture for Peace Herbert Hoover declares in his book Freedom Betrayed: "It can never be forgotten that three times during 1941 Japan made overtures for peace negotiation. America never made one unless a futile proposal to the Emperor the day before Pearl Harbour could be called peace. A peace could have been made in the Pacific that would have saved China from ravishment and would have protected the American Pacific flank. If Roosevelt was still determined to carry on his undeclared war with Germany, until it provoked reprisals, that Pacific protection was the only sane course. It would have limited our engagement in any case to the European theatre. As a result of this policy - an undeclared war upon Japan - we suffered the greatest military defeat in our history - with immeasurable consequences. Fanning the Flames of Hate by a Mass of Lies "Public opinion was overwhelmingly against our being involved in the war up to the day of Pearl Harbour… America came into World War One 33 months after its outbreak. She came into World War Two 27 months after it started. The processes and the months of lag were the same: the appeal to crusade for freedom, for independence of nations, for lasting peace; the same pictures of atrocities; the fanning of hate and above all, the mass of lies and stimulation of fear of invasion - they were identical. But in World War Two the people believed much less of it and they believed much more that they were being deliberately pushed into the war. They dimly recognised that they were being ground in the mills of power politics and the personal ambitions of men." Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt's War "The First World War had been conducted in the Allied side in the name of 'the peoples'. This war was in the name of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. At times the whole political and military scene seemed their personal property - as it was." (Herbert Hoover, Freedom Betrayed). Many Recognised they Were Being Forced and Deceived into War "In the first World War, our sons marched to war with flowers in their rifles. Bands and cheering people were on every platform. There were no bands, no flowers and no cheers on the railway platforms to World War Two. There was little singing of war ballades by soldiers or civilians, except at the urging of paid conductors of propaganda. The station platforms were stages for grieving and tears. The promises, the speeches, the propaganda filled the air as in World War One, but this time the people received it grimly and with little believing." - Herbert Hoover.  Double Standards President Herbert Hoover in Freedom Betrayed documents: "Roosevelt's contemptuous refusal of Prime Minister Konoe's proposals for peace in the Pacific of September, 1941 was a lost opportunity. The acceptance of these proposals was prayerfully urged by both the American and British Ambassadors in Japan. The terms Konoye proposed would have accomplished every American purpose except possibly the return of Manchuria - and even this was thrown open to discussion. The cynic will recall that Roosevelt was willing to provoke a great war on his flank over this remote question and then gave Manchuria to Communist Russia." The Threat of Communism Herbert Hoover documents in Freedom Betrayed that American Military officials strongly urged FDR to accept the Three Months' Stand-Still Agreement offered by the Emperor of Japan in November 1941. Japan was alarmed at the threat of the Soviet Union and a 90-days delay could have kept war out of the Pacific. Secretary of War, Stimson, in his Diary, disclosed that Roosevelt and his officials were seeking for a method to stimulate an overt act of aggression from the Japanese. The Betrayal of China "Then Secretary of State, Hull, issued his foolish ultimatum and we were defeated at Pearl Harbour. By Roosevelt insisting that Chinese Premiere Chiang Kai-shek include Mao Tse-Tung's communists in a Coalition government and Roosevelt's Secret Agreement at Yalta to betray Mongolia and Manchuria to Russia, future generations were betrayed. All of China was sacrificed to the communists in the years of President Truman - at the insistence of his Left-wing advisors and General Marshall. The Second World War ended with 450 Million Asiatic peoples betrayed under communist dictatorship." (Freedom Betrayed)  The Only Beneficiary was Communism
Herbert Hoover in Freedom Betrayed declared: "I had warned the American people time and again against becoming involved. I stated repeatedly its only end would be to promote Communism over the earth; that we would impoverish the United States and the whole world. The situation of the world today is my vindication." Christian Resistance "Despite these physical losses and these moral political disasters and these international follies… Despite the drift to collectivism, despite degeneration in government, despite the demagogic intellectuals, despite the corruption in our government and the moral corruptions of our people, we still hold to Christianity, we still have the old ingenuity in our scientific and industrial progress." The Public School Front "We have 35 million children marching through our schools and 2.5 million in our institutions of higher learning… Hope in the Homes "The promise of a greater America abides in the millions of cottages throughout the land, where men and women are still resolute in freedom. In their hearts the spirit of America still lives. The boys and girls from those homes will someday throw off these disasters and frustrations and will re-create their America again." Dr. Peter Hammond Reformation Society P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 Email: mission@frontline.org.za www.ReformationSA.org www.FrontlineMissionSA.org www.HMSschoolofchristianjournalism.org To view this article as a PowerPoint presentation on Slideshare, with pictures, click here. To view the video of the presentation on our Video Gallery, click here. To listen to the audio of this message on Sermon.Audio.com, click here. See also: Mitsuo Fuchida - From Pearl Harbour to Calvary Were Atomic Bombs Necessary to End World War Two? The Assassination of General George S. Patton Freedom Betrayed – Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of America’s Involvement in the Second World War and its Aftermath  To read this article with pictures, click here. To view this as a video presentation, click here. To listen to the audio of this presentation, click here. Unprecedented Jubilation In Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, 21 November 2017, parliament was the scene of unprecedented jubilation as the Speaker of the House read Robert Mugabe’s resignation letter. The House erupted in cheers, singing, dancing, clapping and celebrations – with Members of the Parliament leaping up, jumping on their chairs and tables, flinging their arms high above their heads, shouting with joy and exuberance. Euphoria Throughout Zimbabwe The atmosphere was electric throughout the country as people by the hundreds-of-thousands poured into the streets to cheer, shout, dance and sing at the news.  Dancing in the Streets There were extraordinary scenes of people dancing, car horns blaring and flags waving with jubilation and singing in the streets. Tuesday, 21 November, will be remembered and celebrated for a very long time in Zimbabwe as the day in which Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, finally gave in to decades of protests and pressure to force him to give up his despotic misrule. Record Breaking Catastrophe At 93 years old, Robert Mugabe was the oldest and longest-running dictator still in power in the world. For 37 years, the people of Zimbabwe have been brutalised, terrorised and oppressed by his Marxist ZANU-PF reign of terror.  Insulting the Matabele Earlier this month at a ZANU-PF party rally in Bulawayo, the capital of Matabeleland, Mugabe aggravated the Matabele people by speaking in Shona. As his wife, Grace Mugabe (often called Gucci Grace because of her exorbitant lavish lifestyle) was heckled with the people chanting at her: “You know nothing!” and singing the Matabele song “Oyenzayo Siyaizonda” which translates to: “We hate what you do!” Grace responded to the crowd: “I don’t care, I am powerful!”; “Even if I become vice president, is there anything wrong with that?” The people continued to sing: “We hate what you do!” Arrogance and Threats The visibly incensed Robert Mugabe poured out his wrath on his Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa (nicknamed the crocodile), publically threatening to fire him. “If I made a mistake by appointing Mnangagwa… tell me. I will drop him as early as tomorrow. We are not afraid of anyone. We can decide even here!” Mugabe roared. Mugabe was openly booed by many in the crowd of Matabele in Bulawayo. When Mugabe followed this up by actually sacking his Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, this provoked the Zimbabwe Defence Force (ZDF) to swing into action.  Military Action to Restore the Vice President On 14 November, armoured personnel carriers rumbled into Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The president was taken into what the military described as “protective custody”. The ZDF secured the public broadcaster and other strategic points. The commander of the armed forces declared that they were “targeting criminals around Mugabe who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country, in order to bring them to justice.” Power Struggle It was clear that the crisis was caused by the power struggle over who would succeed the 93-year-old dictator. It marked the end of the political ambitions of Mugabe’s 52-year-old wife, Grace Mugabe. It was the high profile firing of Vice President Mnangagwa and the purging of party loyalists who did not support Grace Mugabe’s aspirations to become the next President that was the final straw.  Assault and Intrigue Grace Mugabe has been involved in a number of assaults, including in August this year, when she lashed a model with a plug in a hotel in South Africa. The South African ANC government allowed her to claim diplomatic immunity and escape prosecution. She has been behind the dismissal of many party favourites of ZANU-PF, including former Vice President, Joice Mujuru. A Trail of Treachery Robert Mugabe will be remembered as the Marxist who was propelled into power by Jimmy Carter’s State Department and the British Foreign Office, in violation of the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. British Betrayal Lord Arthur Christopher Soames, a son-in-law of Winston Churchill and the British-appointed Governor of Rhodesia during the transition period, was responsible to ensure free and fair elections in accordance with the Lancaster House Agreement. However, while Soames acknowledged that Mugabe’s ZANU-PF was engaged in widespread, systematic violations and terrorism, intimidating the voters, he refused to dismiss the obviously fraudulent votes in favour of Mugabe. In blatant violation of the Lancaster House Agreement, Soames handed over the government of Rhodesia to Mugabe and his disqualified terrorist movement, with disastrous consequences to all.  Massacres in Matabeleland Mugabe mobilised his North Korean Fifth Brigade to conduct wholesale massacres in Matabeleland from 1983 to 1984. Termed Gukurahundi (loosely translated from the Shona it refers to “the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains”). Mugabe is from the majority Shona tribe and the Matabele are the minority tribe. The Matabele are descendants of the Zulu. Tens-of-thousands of Matabele civilians were brutally massacred by Mugabe’s ZANU 5th Brigade. The Long Fields Disused mineshafts such as Antelope and Attica Mine were used for dumping many of the bodies of murdered Matabele. Researchers such as Dr. Stuart Doran documented that Robert Mugabe ordered the Gukurahundi killings to remove and suppress political opposition within Matabeleland. This was in order to make possible Mugabe’s plans to impose a one-party state in 1985.  The Fifth Brigade Terror The members for the 5th Brigade were all ZANU-PF party members drawn from 3,500 ZANLA troops at the Tongogara Assembly point, named after Josiah Tongogara, the ZANLA Commander. Under the command of Colonel Perence Shiri, the North Korean trained 5th Brigade were distinguished by their red berets. All young men in Matabeleland were considered potential dissidents and were summarily detained or executed. Wholesale Slaughter Most were shot in front of family and fellow villagers in public executions, after being forced to dig their own graves. Sometimes groups of all ages, including women and children, were shot, such as at Lupane, on the banks of the Cewale River, when 62 were massacred. We know of this massacre because seven victims survived despite severe gunshot wounds. Targeting the Matabele On numerous occasions, large numbers of people were herded into huts and burned alive. This was done in Tsholotsho. The 5th Brigade would routinely round up hundreds of civilians, march them to a central place, such as a school, where they would be forced to sing Shona songs praising ZANU, while they were beaten with sticks and whips. These gatherings usually ended up with public executions. This could be the local chief, or anyone chosen at random. Breaking the Silence The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe produced a document Breaking the Silence with 2,000 names of known Matabele victims of the Gukurahundi. In February 1983, the International Red Cross produced documentation of 1,200 Matabele murdered in just that month alone. In 2005, the International Association of Genocide Scholars estimated the death toll in Matabeleland as at least 20,000.  Official Admissions Moven Mahachi, Defence Minister in 1992, became the first ZANU official who acknowledged the execution and torture of civilians by the 5th Brigade. In 1997, former Defence Minister, Enos Enkala, described his involvement with Gukurahundi as “eternal hell” and blamed president Mugabe for orchestrating it. Even Robert Mugabe speaking at Joshua Nkomo’s Memorial service, 2 July 2000, admitted that thousands had been killed during the Gukurahundi campaign. “Hate evil, love good; establish justice in the gate…” Amos 5:15 Economic Suicide Mugabe will most be remembered for having implemented the disastrous Socialist policies and land invasions, as well as Zimbabwe’s military adventurism in the Congo, which led to the worst hyperinflation ever seen in history. A Hundred Trillion Dollar note could not even buy a quarter of a loaf of bread in 2008 and that was after having dropped sixteen zeroes from the currency! It became difficult to measure Zimbabwe hyperinflation because the government of Zimbabwe stopped filing official inflation statistics. However, by November 2008, inflation was estimated at 79.6 billion %! By 2009, Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency and began using the United States Dollar, South African Rand and Botswanan Pula. Looting the Whole Country The destruction of savings, earnings and pensions was absolutely catastrophic, destroying lifetimes of savings and earnings. Yet, while it destroyed the livelihood of most Zimbabweans, it made many of the ZANU-PF elite spectacularly wealthy. “For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery…” Isaiah 61:8  From Bread Basket to Basket Case Mugabe also managed to take a country, which had been a breadbasket of Africa to the basket case of Africa. He turned the paradise of Rhodesia into the hell of Zimbabwe. He took a country, which had flourished even under International sanctions and in the midst of a vicious war against Soviet and Red Chinese backed terrorists, into a failed state and that even with massive International Foreign Aid! Under Mugabe, Zimbabwe collapsed into economic chaos with over 85% unemployment. More than half of the total population voted with their feet by fleeing the country. Obscene Opulence and Extravagant Excesses Despite Zimbabwe becoming one of the poorest countries in the world, Robert Mugabe became one of the wealthiest people in the world with a personal net worth of well over US $1 Billion. Mugabe owns the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company, which has allowed Red China to strip the country of its natural assets. In 2001, Wikileaks estimated Robert Mugabe’s net worth as US $1.75 Billion invested as far afield as Switzerland, the Channel Islands and the Bahamas to castles in Scotland. At his 90th birthday celebrations, Mugabe boasted of dining on elephant and lion meat! The obscene extravagance of Mugabe, his wives and sons, is in stark contrast with the destitution of most of the people suffering under his maladministration. Converted to Communism Mugabe has described his political ideology as Marxist Leninism. He was educated at Kutama College and University of Fort Hare. Then he worked as a schoolteacher in Rhodesia and Ghana. Mugabe testified that it was the scholarship he received in 1949 to study at the University at Fort Hare in South Africa that led to his involvement in politics. He joined the African National Congress and was introduced to Marxist ideas by Jewish South African communists. He described his time at Fort Hare as the “turning point” in his life. Mugabe was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974 during which time he studied further. Released in the 1974 Amnesty, he moved to Mozambique to oversee ZANU’s Revolutionary terrorism campaign.  How Liberators Become Oppressors Elections in Zimbabwe have been dominated by state violence and blatant electoral fraud. Even when defeated, such as in the 2002, 2008 and 2013 presidential elections, Mugabe stayed in power and continued to brutalise and terrorise the population that he claimed to serve. “How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished...” Jeremiah 12:4 How to Destroy Any Economy As Robert Guest, the African Editor of The Economist, observed in his book, The Shackled Continent: “For half a century now, the continent has been deluged with Foreign Aid, but this aid has failed to make Africa any less poor… it has bankrolled tyrants… or idealists with hopeless economic policies… both types of aid have been wasted… doing business in Africa can be tricky. Bad roads, punctured by road blocks, manned by bribe-hungry policemen, make it slow and costly to move goods, even short distances… local firms, meanwhile, have been held back by arbitrary government regulations, dysfunctional legal systems and the difficulty, without political connections, of raising capital… if Africa was better governed it would be richer… Africans are poor, largely because they are not yet free. They live under predatory, incompetent governments which… impoverish them in many ways: through corruption, through bad economic policies and sometimes, as in Zimbabwe, by creating an atmosphere of terror…” “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity…” 2 Peter 2:19  The Fall of Mugabe is Not Necessarily the End of the Oppression in Zimbabwe We cannot anticipate too much change in policy as Mnangagwa was a loyal Mugabe henchman until very recently. He has been complicit in all the crimes of the Mugabe ZANU-PF gangsters over the last 37 years. Those that think only Mugabe has been the problem, do not understand the insidious role of communism. After Vladimir Lenin, there was Stalin, then Khrushchev, then Brezhnev and so on. Mugabe is just one of many Marxist mass-murdering thugs available to ZANU-PF. “Deliver me, O my God, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man.” Psalm 71:4 Freedom Requires the Eradication of Communism and Corruption Although the regime governing Zimbabwe will try to make it appear that freedom has come, to entice investment, which they can overtax and later confiscate, things are bound to continue to deteriorate until the people of Zimbabwe rise up to overthrow the whole communist structure and uproot its destructive ideology which has permeated and poisoned the country. “Destructive forces are at work in the city; threats and lies never leave its streets.” Psalm 55:11  Desperate for Hope and Real Change
However, the masses of people who have turned out in the hundreds-of-thousands to celebrate the downfall of Robert Mugabe are desperate for hope and real change. We need to continue to pray and to work for Biblical Reformation and spiritual Revival. “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” Proverbs 21:15 Serving the Suffering Frontline Fellowship has been dedicated to missionary work in Zimbabwe since 1982. For over 35 years, we have been distributing Bibles and Bible teaching materials, conducting Leadership Training Seminars, Evangelism Workshops, ministering in schools, prisons, hospitals, in the streets and market places, seeking to lay solid Biblical foundations for long-term Biblical Reformation. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments, His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear and are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.” Deuteronomy 30:15-19 Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 Email: mission@frontline.org.za Website: www.FrontlineMissionSA.org See also: Evaluating Mugabe’s Legacy in the Light of Eternity What is Happening in Zimbabwe? Zimbabwe and Zambia - A Tale of Two Countries and Three Religions Hope for Zimbabwe Fraud, Failure and Farce in Zimbabwe Zimbabwe at the Crossroads Zimbabwe - A Lesson in How to Destroy Christian Civilisation Mugabe's Tsunami in Zimbabwe Crimes Against Humanity in Zimbabwe Evicted Farmers Continue to Feed Zimbabwe Power Failures in Zimbabwe Chinese Colonialism in Zimbabwe Who Won the War and Who Initiated the Peace? How the Greatest Century of Missions Was Derailed Into the Worst Century of Persecution  16 November 1855 – Scottish Missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, sighted, explored, measured and named Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River in Central Africa. “The Smoke that Thunders” Seeing enormous columns of spray and hearing a thunderous roar miles away, Missionary David Livingstone asked local people what was there? In response, he was told: “Mosi-oa-Tunya,” (“the smoke that thunders”). Some villagers described it as “Seongo” or “Chongwe,” which means, “the place of the rainbow.” Fear and Superstition When asked what caused the smoke and the thunder, he was told that this was the work of the spirits. Apparently, nobody had dared venture close enough to actually see what made the smoke thunder. Most were too afraid to go with Dr. Livingstone to explore it, so great was the hold of superstition and fear.  “A Scene so Lovely Angels Must have Gazed Upon It” Borrowing a canoe, Dr. Livingstone travelled downstream and could clearly see: “the high columns of vapour which were called by the villagers, smoke. From a distance, it looked as though large tracts of grass were being burned.” As he drew closer, he could see “five distinct columns, bending in the direction of the wind. They seemed placed against a lower ridge covered with trees. The tops of the columns at this distance appeared to mingle with the clouds. They were white below and higher up became dark, so as to simulate smoke very closely. The whole scene was extremely beautiful; the banks and islands dotted over the river are adorned with sylvan vegetation of great variety of colour and thorn… no one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but a scene so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” Lush Rain Forest “The Falls are bounded by three sides by ridges 300, or 400, feet in height, which are covered with forest, with the red soil appearing amongst the trees.”  The View from Livingstone Island Dr. Livingstone beached his canoe on an island situated in the middle of the river, (today this is called Livingstone Island) and crawled to the edge to gaze at a most wondrous sight, as “on both sides, the water rolled off into deep gorges. In coming hither there was danger of being swept down by the streams which rushed along on each side of the river; but the river was now low… the vast body of water seemed to lose itself in the earth, the opposite lip of the fissure, into which it disappeared, was only 80 feet distant. Creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent, which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambezi River and saw a stream of over 1,000 yards broad leap down hundreds of feet and then became suddenly compressed in a space of 15, or 20, yards wide.”  “The Most Wonderful Sight in Africa” “The entire Falls are simply a crack made in hard basaltic rock from the right to the left bank of the Zambezi and then prolonged from the left bank by way through 30, or 40, miles of hills. If one imagines the Thames filled with low, tree covered hills, immediately beyond the tunnel, extending as far as Graves End, the bed of black basaltic rock instead of London mud and a fissure made therein from one end of the tunnel, to the other, down through the keystones of the arch and prolonged from the left end of the tunnel through 30 miles of hills, the pathway being over 100 feet down from the bed of the river, instead of what it is, with the lips of the fissure from 80 to 100 feet apart, then fancy the Thames leaping bodily in the gulf and forced there to change its direction and flow from the right to the left bank and then rush boiling and roaring through the hills, you may have some idea of what takes place at this, the most wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa.”  The Rainbow in the Cloud “In looking down into the fissure, on the right of the island, one sees nothing but a dense white cloud, with two bright rainbows in it. From this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapour, exactly like steam and it mounted 200, or 300, feet high; there condensing it changed its hue to that of dark smoke and came back in a constant shower,” which saturated Livingstone to the skin. Shimmering Sights of Steam, Steel and Snow On the left of the island he saw: “water at the bottom, a white rolling mass, moving away to the prolongation of the fissure, which branches off near the left bank of the river…. The walls of this giant crack are perpendicular and composed of one homogenous mass of rock. The edge of that side over which the water falls is worn off 2, or 3, feet and pieces have fallen away, so as to give it somewhat of a serrated appearance. That over which the water does not fall is quite straight, except at the left corner, where a rent appears and a piece seems inclined to fall off upon the whole; it is nearly in the state in which it was left at the period of its formation… on the left side of the island we had a good view of the massive water which causes one of the columns of vapour to ascend and it leaps quite clear of the rock and forms a thick unbroken fleece all the way to the bottom. Its whiteness gave the idea of snow, a sight I had not seen for many a day. As it broke into pieces of water, all rushing on in the same direction, each gave off several rays of foam, exactly like bits of steel being burned in oxygen gas gives off rays of sparks. A snow white sheet which seemed like myriads of small comets rushing on in one direction, each of which left behind its nucleus rays of foam.”  Measuring Victoria Falls Ever the Scientist and Geographer, Livingstone now began to measure the Falls and to draw sketches of it. He let down a weighted string and measured the distance from the lip of Livingstone Island down to the bottom of the gorge at 310 feet deep. He then calculated that the width of Victoria Falls was 1,860 yards. He paced the distance between the first and the second gorge at 400 paces on the left side at 150 paces on the right. The accuracy of these initial measurements have been confirmed by later scientific measurements. The Largest Waterfall in the World Victoria Falls is classified as the largest waterfall in the world, with a combined width of 1,708 metres (5,604 feet) and a height of 108 meters (354 feet) on average. It results in the world’s largest sheet of falling water. Victoria Falls is roughly twice the height of North America’s Niagara Falls and over twice the width of Horse Shoe Falls. It is bigger than Argentina and Brazil’s Iguazu Falls. Victoria Falls has recorded up to 12,800 tonnes of water per second passing over the edge. Victoria Falls has been identified as one of the seven natural wonders of the world.  A Major Tourist Destination Dr. Livingstone named it after Queen Victoria and it has been a major tourist destination ever since. By the end of the 1990s, almost 400,000 people were visiting Victoria Falls each year. Most of the tourists go to the Zambian side, because of the political instability in Zimbabwe. There are two national Game Reserves at Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park in Zambia and Victoria Falls National Park in Zimbabwe. Wildlife Sanctuary Painted by Thomas Baines On his Zambezi expedition, Dr. Livingstone was accompanied by Victorian artist, Thomas Baines, whose colour paintings of Victoria Falls are famous. They also documented the tremendous concentration of wildlife in the area around Victoria Falls. Evidently, it was, for generations, a major wildlife sanctuary, as none of the local people dared venture near a place which the superstitious viewed with fear.  Victoria Falls Will Always Be Associated with David Livingstone
Some may question if David Livingstone was the first to see Victoria Falls. However, there is absolutely no question that he was the first to name it, measure it, sketch it and make it known to the world. There are major monuments to Dr. David Livingstone on both the Zambezi and Zimbabwean sides of Victoria Falls. On the Zambian side is situated the city of Livingstone, which has the Livingstone Museum and the David Livingstone Teacher Training College. Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 mission@frontline.org.za www.FrontlineMissionSA.org www.Livingstone200.org www.ReformationSA.org See also: The Challenge of Livingstone Today – also, audio link The Life and Legacy of David Livingstone – also audio & video link See The Greatest Century of Missions and Victorious Christians Who Changed the World, by Dr. Peter Hammond. These books are available from Christian Liberty Books, PO Box 358, Howard Place 7450, Cape Town, South Africa, Tel: 021-689-7478, Fax: 086-551-7490, Email: admin@christianlibertybooks.co.za and Website: www.christianlibertybooks.co.za.  To view The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall on Vimeo, click here. To listen to the audio lecture of The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall, click here. 9 November, marks the 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. A speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946, declared, “An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent”. From Stettin in the North to Trieste in the South barbed wire and barricades, walls and machine gun towers were going up, sealing off the captive nations occupied by the Soviet Union from their neighbours in the West. The Iron Curtain divided a continent and trapped hundreds of millions of people under communism. Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, declared that the Second World War was not a disaster but “a great opportunity” to extend communism into the very heart of Europe. Poland Betrayed Even Poland, for whose freedom Great Britain had ostensibly entered the war, was now little more than a satellite of the Soviet Empire ruled by men chosen by Moscow. Its population was now imprisoned behind a line of barbed wire, watchtowers and minefields - a physical iron curtain. Secret Police To spy on its captive populations the Soviet empire set up secret police. In the Soviet Union it was the KGB, in Bulgaria it was the DS, in Czechoslovakia the StB, in Hungary the AVB, in Poland the SB, in Romania the Securitatae and in East Germany it was the STASI (the Ministry of State Security). The STASI maintained a huge network of 90,000 secret police and 175,000 paid informants. They kept files on 4,000,000 East Germans - a quarter of the population.  Berlin Blockade The Berlin Wall was manned by 15,000 guards - the so-called Volkspolizei (VOPOS). When Joseph Stalin attempted to starve West Berlin into submission by cutting off all electricity and supplies on 23 June 1948 the Western powers responded with the Berlin Airlift. The Berlin blockade was the first serious global crisis of the Cold War. West Berlin was kept alive by an airlift of over 150 aircraft supplying an average of 5,000 tons per day. By the time the Soviets ended the blockade on 12 May 1949 over 2.5 million tons had been delivered at the cost of 60 aircrew who had died in aircraft crashes. Korean War There were numerous hot fronts in the Cold War. The Cold War included a full-scale military war in Korea where 2 million died in the three-year conflict. Evidence has since surfaced that Stalin was planning to follow up the Korean attack with a military offensive in Europe. He was deterred by the quick international response in Korea. Protests in Berlin After the death of Joseph Stalin (5/3/53), over 100,000 East Berlin workers protested against the Soviet occupation. Two Soviet armoured divisions were sent into East Berlin to crush the protest in June 1953. Over 100 civilians were killed and 25,000 protesters arrested. Uprising in Hungary In July 1956, a full scale uprising in Hungary shook the Soviet Empire. Mass demonstrations demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops and in Budapest, a massive statue of Stalin was toppled. Soviet troops poured into Hungary and over 20,000 Hungarians were killed in the repression. Tens-of-thousands more were arrested and imprisoned. 250,000 Hungarians fled to the West. The Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall was concrete proof of the failure of “scientific socialism”. To prevent Germans in the Soviet zone from fleeing to the Western zone in Berlin, a 165 km wall was constructed to seal off West Berlin's island of freedom from Soviet occupied communist East Germany. The Berlin Wall included 302 concrete observation posts/machine gun towers and 123 km of electric fencing. Death Strip A further death strip stretching 1,393 km along the border between communist East Germany and free West Germany was constructed with: 724 observation posts/machine gun towers, 1,161 km of electric fencing, 54, 000 self-firing devices and 190 km of mine fields.  Kill Zone Just between 13 August 1961 and 30 July 1983, 73 people were killed by the communists while attempting to escape over the Berlin Wall, 182 more people were killed attempting to escape from East Germany across the border into West Germany, 60,000 people were imprisoned for “preparation, assistance or complicity”, in attempting to escape from East to West Germany (with sentences ranging from 16 months to life imprisonment). By 1989, at least 239 escapees from East Berlin were known to have been killed just at the Berlin Wall alone. More than a thousand died, trying to flee across the Iron Curtain. Voting With their Feet Yet from the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949, more than 4,500,000 (over one quarter of the population) voted with their feet by fleeing to West Germany. 38,515 escaped from East to West Berlin by tunnels, by improvised air machines or hot air balloons, hidden inside vehicles travelling from East to West Berlin. 2,768 East German soldiers and officers on duty (including a Colonel) escaped to the West. Cuban Missile Crisis The Cold War almost went nuclear during the Cuban missile crisis, October 1962. The vicious conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1963 - 1975) were hot parts of the Cold War. Invasion of Czechoslovakia Anyone who believed that communism could be reformed from within was shaken by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 when Czech communist party chief, Alexander Dubcek, attempted to create “socialism with a human face.” As a result of economic reforms in Czechoslovakia, the other East European satellite states complained that their positions were being undermined by the reforms in Czechoslovakia. The Soviet response was: Leonid Brezhnev ordered a full-scale Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to restore orthodox communism. The Prague Spring ended in August 1968 as half-a-million Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia and overwhelmed the courageous resistance of Czech patriots Détente Deception The Soviet Empire reached its peak during the period of Détente, as they sponsored, trained and armed revolutionaries to seize power in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in 1975, Ethiopia in 1974, Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique in 1975, Grenada and Nicaragua in 1979 and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1980. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was a major wake up call to those in the West who still believed in Détente.  Freedom on the Offensive As a result of this unprecedented Soviet advance, there was a backlash throughout the West, epitomised by staunch anti-communist US President, Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl and South Africa’s P.W. Botha. South Africa confronted and defeated the Soviets and their Cuban surrogates in Angola. The West went on the offensive, directly supporting the anti-communist Solidarity trade union movement in Poland, which soon organised nationwide strikes and protests against the Soviet occupation. The USA began to arm and support anti-communist resistance movements as far afield as in Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Angola. Bankrupting the Soviets Ronald Reagan's policies forced the Soviets back onto the defensive and strategically undermined their economy. Spectacular re-armament programmes and the space based Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) quickly left the Soviets far behind in the arms race and totally bankrupted the Soviet Union in their futile attempt to keep up with America. The Iron Lady British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher's determination to fight to reclaim the Falkland Islands, after the Argentinean invasion, helped convince the Soviets that the West was not nearly so decadent and weak as they had imagined. Thatcher's success in reviving the British economy also helped demonstrate that capitalism had a future even while communism was bankrupting the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. The Iron Lady had this to say about the Berlin Wall: “The Berlin Wall stands as concrete proof that when people have a choice, they choose to be free Freedom has its problems but we've never needed to build walls to keep our people in.” Defeating the Communists Brave anti-communist resistance fighters in Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan severely bled the Soviet forces, inflicting serious defeats upon them. The Rhodesian resistance throughout the 60s and 70s had set back the advance of communism in Southern Africa and the destruction of entire Cuban mechanised divisions in Angola by South African conventional forces in the battles on the Lomba River in 1987 and 1988 convinced the Soviet Union that they would not even be able to win a conventional war against the West. Recognising Reality Russian soldiers began to refer to Afghanistan as their 'Vietnam'. As Russian casualties mounted in that conflict, the ongoing political crisis in Poland and widespread resistance to communism throughout the Soviet empire helped convince the Soviet leaders that their bankrupt system was doomed. The Glasnost Gulag Even under Gorbachev's much-acclaimed Glasnost, the Soviet Gulag imprisoned millions. When US President, Ronald Reagan, stood at the Berlin Wall and challenged: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” the Soviet Union operated 1,976 concentration camps, 273 prisons, 85 psychiatric prisons and 41 death camps. In this Soviet Gulag, over 5,000,000 political and religious prisoners were incarcerated. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, documented that between 1918 and 1953 (under Lenin and Stalin's rule) over 50,000,000 Russians served long sentences in the Soviet concentration camps - with millions perishing The Hypocrisy of Communism It was pointed out that while the communists claimed to have liberated Russia from the oppression of the Czars, there were 5000 times more official executions under communist rule in Russia as occurred under Czarist rule in the same time period. By comparison with Russia under Czarist rule where the highest figure of political prisoners was 183,949, the communists imprisoned seventy times as many people at any one time. Callous Disregard for Life Vladimir Lenin famously declared that it did not matter if three quarters of the population of Russia perished, as long as the remaining quarter were communist. Joseph Stalin observed: “The death of one person is a tragedy; whereas the death of a million is just a statistic!”  Prayer and Protests As candlelit prayer vigils and protests spread from Leipzig, through Dresden, to all of East Germany, the East German government was bankrupt and tottering. Gorbachev's Soviet Union was also bankrupt and could no longer bail them out. So, Erich Honecker, the dictator of East Germany, turned to the West Germans (who in the past had always been willing to provide enough to keep East Germany going). This time, however, the West German Federal Government was not willing to bail them out. They demanded reforms. The Fall of the Wall While governments negotiated, the people in both East and West Berlin rose up to breach the wall and began to dismantle it physically. The leaders were overwhelmed by events. Days after the Berlin Wall collapsed, mass demonstrations broke out in Czechoslovakia. Vaclav Havel, long-time leader of the Resistance movement and prisoner of the communists, rose to power and dismantled communism in Czechoslovakia. The Christmas Revolution Street fighting erupted in Romania to overthrow the brutal communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Soon resistance spread to Bulgaria where the communists were overthrown in December 1989. In Hungary, the communist government was overthrown in October 1990. In Albania, the first free elections were held in March 1991. Yugoslavia split into different republics as each broke away from the communist control in Belgrade. Soon the Baltic Republics - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - were demanding and achieving their independence from the Soviet Union. The End of the Soviet Union In August 1991, a coup in the Soviet Union was frustrated in its attempt to return the country to hard line communism. Boldly waving the white, blue and red Russian flag, Boris Yeltsin abolished the Soviet Union and pulled down the Soviet Flag. The Cold War had formally ended. Terrorist Threat from the Middle East Even as the Cold War with Soviet Union communism ended, a new war was starting with radical Islamic terrorists declaring war on the West. Victory Over Communism “There is nothing they despise more than weakness. There is nothing they respect more than strength.” The Cold War was won by a combination of Christian courage by persecuted Christians who endured decades of brutality, steadfast resistance by brave anti-communist soldiers who fought the Soviets to a standstill, persistent prayer and pressure from Christians in the West and the bold strategy of Ronald Reagan, which dismantled the Evil Empire. “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption…” 2 Peter 2:19 Dr. Peter Hammond Reformation Society P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 Email: mission@frontline.org.za www.FrontlineMissionSA.org www.idop-africa.org www.ReformationSA.org www.LivingstonFellowship.co.za Obtain Going Through – Even if the Door is Closed book, by Bill Bathman, for the incredible story of ministry behind the Iron Curtain and how the Wall was breached. See also: The Greatest Killer To listen to an audio of the Greatest Killer, click here To see a Video of The Greatest Killer, click here The Heart and Soul of Karl Marx The Failure of Atheism and the Triumph of Faith in the Soviet Union The Fall of the Berlin Wall  
The 20th Century proved to be the bloodiest century in all of history. Humanism has proven to be the most destructive religion of all time. Far more people have been killed in the name of Atheism than by all other religions combined.
The Worst Century Historian Paul Johnson has observed that “the 20th Century state has proved itself the greatest killer of all time.” The 20th Century has seen the worst atrocities ever committed. The word “genocide”, a new term coined in the 20th Century, describes what has occurred repeatedly in secular humanist states, which had first disarmed their populations. Devaluing Life Darwinian evolutionism, with its “survival of the fittest” ideology, has devalued human life. If man is not created in the image of God and if there is no God in heaven who will judge the living and the dead, if there are no objective standards of right and wrong, then life becomes cheap. When you devalue God, you devalue life. “You came from nothing! You are going nowhere! Life is meaningless!”  You can listen to the latest From the Frontline podcast on 70 Years of Communism in China. What is there to Celebrate? October 2019 marks 70 years since the Communist Party seized power in China. What is the true legacy of Communism in the world’s most populous nation? What we can learn from the Persecuted Church? How we can best serve the Persecuted? There are some dramatic developments and encouraging reports of spectacular growth of the Church in China. “…on this rock I will build My Church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18 The Catastrophic Consequences of Communism As some celebrate 70 years of Communism in China and incredible numbers of Christians in the West identify them as “Christian Socialists”, or even as Communists, it is necessary that we take an objective look at the catastrophic consequences of Communism. We need to be aware of the human cost of Communist economic and social theories and their application in Communist states which espouse the “goodness of man.” “Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Romans 3:13  Revolution in China The Communist Revolution in Red China, in 1949, was followed by the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and by the Second Phase of the Revolution from 1966 to 1976. This Second Phase of the Revolution, or the Cultural Revolution in China, included massive seizures of property, widespread “Land Reform”, confiscation without compensation, public humiliation ceremonies of religious and cultural leaders, arbitrary imprisonments, torture, hard labour and vast numbers of mass executions. It is calculated that over 69 million people died in this Second Phase of the Revolution in China alone.  The Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution in China also included purging “The Party” of any deemed “disloyal” - which even included the president, Liu Shaoqi and Commander of the Red Army, General Lou Ruiqing. Mao Tse Tung mobilised his Red Guards to sweep into every farm and village of the vast country to purge “reactionaries”, “counter revolutionaries” and all others not deemed sufficiently enthusiastic for the Revolution. The result was the destruction of thousands of years of culture and crippling the country economically. It impoverished China intellectually and culturally. Mao was able to mobilise the young Red Guards for this destructive campaign because they had never known life in nationalist China and had been effectively indoctrinated in the state schools with Marxist propaganda and Mao’s Little Red Book.  The Black Book of Communism The Black Book of Communism, published by Harvard University Press, is a scholarly, detailed account of the crimes of Communism starting with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and continuing through Eastern Europe, Red China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola and Afghanistan. The Black Book’s exhaustive indictment of Communism is all the more compelling because all 6 of its authors were once communists, or "fellow travellers" with communism, researchers, professors and journalists associated with the Paris based Centre for the Study of History and Sociology of Communism. The editor of The Black Book, Stephane Courtois was also the editor of the "Communisme" magazine.  Facing the Facts "Communism has committed a multitude of crimes not only against individual human beings but also against world civilization and national cultures… during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, priceless treasures were smashed, or burned by the Red Guards… firing squads, hanging, drowning, battering… destruction of the population by starvation, through man-made famine, the withholding of food, or both; deportation, through which death can occur in transit (either through physical exhaustion, or through confinement in an enclosed space)… or through forced labour (exhaustion, illness, hunger, cold)…"  A Harvest of Horror The Black Book presents a very conservative estimate of the number of civilians murdered by Red China as at least 65 million. “…Communism is… a tragedy of planetary dimensions… the Communist record offers the most colossal case of political carnage in history… Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution…” Communist regimes did not just commit criminal acts; "they were criminal enterprises in their very essence, on principle, so to speak, they all ruled lawlessly, by violence and without regard for human life." The Black Book concludes that our current history books and social and political judgements are scandalously out of line with the 20th Century’s real balance sheet of political crime. "They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity…" 2 Peter 2:19  Death by Government “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton Although governments are meant to protect their citizens, secular socialist states in the 20th Century murdered over 169 million of their own citizens! This astonishing statistic is the result of decades of research by political science Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii. Prof. Rummel’s shocking research is presented in the 500-page book: Death By Government (2006, Transaction Publishers, New Branswick, NJ). The charts and statistics measuring the life taking propensities of state governments were developed from the Professor’s analysis of 8,200 sources, involved over 4,200 consolidations and calculations, which were organised into appendix tables totalling more than 18,100 rows.  Recognise Political Realities Prof. Rummel notes that textbooks on Political Science need to be modernised to recognise political realities. While most textbooks refer to the functions of government as: “Law and Order”, “Safety and Security”, “Cultural Maintenance” and “Social Welfare”, the fact is that “We have numerous examples of governments that killed hundreds of thousands and even millions of their own citizens, enslaved the rest and abolished traditional culture… Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely… The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the powers of governments, the more power is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others… totalitarian Communist governments have slaughtered their people by the tens of millions…”  The Greatest Killers in History The Soviet Union and Red China accounted for most of the deaths by government in the 20th Century. “Death by Government” calculates that up to 105 million people were murdered by the Communist Party of China, from 1949 to 1987. Rummel’s exhaustive documentation in “Death By Government” exhibits the sheer lethality of power. “Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue” Edmund Burke  Tyrants Prefer Disarmed Victims Prof. Rummel’s colossal masterpiece “Death By Government” conclusively proves that far from governments being the solution to crime and violence, historically governments have been the prime culprits for crime and violence. Far from governments being the solution, they are more often than not the problem. Most government policies to deal with crime and poverty are counterproductive, creating more crime and more poverty. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the state attempts to disarm civilians. Every genocide of the 20th Century was preceded by gun control and disarmament of civilians. Just as criminals prefer unarmed victims, tyrants prefer disarmed citizens. A government that does not trust its citizens with weapons cannot be trusted with power. Freedom is when the government fears the people. Tyranny is when the people fear the government. No government can be trusted with a monopoly of force. Decentralisation of power, the rule of law and armed citizens are essential foundation for freedom.  Atrocities and Persecution
Red China may now be practising a version of capitalism, but there are still over a million Christians in concentration camps for their Faith, many are slaves and organ harvesting for transplants are often done using prisoners, many of whom are Christians. The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail Notice how people in Hong Kong are protesting against the communist threats to their freedoms there. The survival and growth of the Christian Church in China is an incredible answer to prayer. Despite vicious persecution and oppression by a brutal atheistic regime, the Church in Red China is now over 100 million strong. Operation World reports that there are over 1,119,000 congregations, 75 million Church members and over 105 million adherents, or affiliates, in China. Mobilise Prayer and Support for the Persecuted Mobilise your family and friends and congregations to pray for these persecuted. “Remember the prisoners as if chained with them…” Hebrews 13:3 10 November is International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted. For resources to mobilise your congregation to serve the suffering, visit www.IDOP-Africa.org. Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 Email: mission@frontline.org.za Website: www.FrontlineMissionSA.org See also: The Heart and Soul of Karl Marx. Going Through and Going On by Rev. Bill Bathman The Greatest Killer, available on Sermon Audio as an audio. Cuba, Castro and Communism, available as an audio. KGB, Active Measures, Disinformation and Subversion, available as an audio. How Marxists Subvert Churches and Society, available as an audio, as well as an Interview on Marxism. The Failure of Atheism and the Triumph of Faith in Russia, available as a video and audio. |
RSS Feed