Merriment and Mass Murder in Berlin,

and an afterthought I found poignant

by

Eric Paul Nolte

This last week before Christmas, yet another faithful follower of the Religion That Must Not Be Named has righteously taken to the streets to murder and maim more random innocents—dozens of them this time, little children and their mothers and fathers.  This time the atrocity was in Berlin.  

The horrible creature who did this murdered first the Polish driver of an 18 wheeler across town and then drove the truck six miles to find the music and merriment of a colorful Christmas fair around the grounds of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Why this place?  Do you know the significance of this church?

This church was bombed out during World War Two.  After the war, the Germans decided to leave the shattered and gaping shell of its steeple as an ugly wound, looming hundreds of feet above the bustle of a renewed and beautiful Berlin.  This shattered sarcophagus of the Kaiser Wilhelm church steeple was to stand forever as a cautionary symbol of the fever that gripped Germany and swept her into a bloody, evil whirlpool that sucked down the crown jewel of civilization, the celebrated land of poets and philosophers, and left a stricken land of grief and desolation in its wake.  Never again!—says the shattered shell of the Kaiser Wilhelm steeple.  Every German knows it!  The broken steeple is a monument to German guilt over the Nazi era and is the symbol of the German resolve always to embody the spirit of the liberalism that champions freedom, democracy, and tolerance.

I can’t help thinking that the choice of this Christmas fair beside the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial could not have been random.  In the same way that the World Trade Center was not only an iconic symbol of the free market, recognized as such everywhere in the world, the WTC was also something like a throbbing engine above one of the most important control rooms of global capitalism.  The hijackers of 9/11 did not choose this target by accident.

The terrorist who perpetrated this most recent atrocity in Berlin may not have had the wits personally to choose this target, but maybe he did.  We learned today that ISIS has claimed credit for this savage attack, and among them are those who would know the significance of this church.

Shortly after these murders at the stalls of this Christmas fair, Chancellor Angela Merkel affirmed that Germans must not abandon the deep values that guide their way in the world today.  Germans must not, in other words, lash out irrationally at the refugees.  

To the vocal critics of her open-door refugee policy, I was very surprised to hear Chancellor Merkel insist that most of the refugees from Syria and Iraq would have to go home, once the war ends, like 70 percent of the refugees from the former Yugoslavia did when peace came to their country.

By contrast, the Interior Minister of the German state of Saarland, Klaus Bouillon, told Saarland Radio that Germany is, “… in a state of war, although some people who always only see good, do not want to see this.”  

Among those who apparently do not want to see that a state of war exists in Germany today is Angela Merkel.  Chancellor Merkel defended the policy she and her party created that has allowed into Germany over a million unvetted  refugee immigrants from war-torn regions which are known to have large populations of people who hate us and all those who do not share their faith.

I do not believe that Germany, Europe, and America are doomed, but we do all need to come around to sniff the smelling salts and take a good hard look at the world.  

We also need to embrace a philosophy of rationality and a politics of individual rights that will uphold every peaceful person’s right to life, liberty, and property.  Without affirming and institutionalizing these ideas, we are indeed doomed.

*   *   *

Here is a little afterthought that I found poignant:

Once again I feel that this war has taken me close enough to its wake that I can smell the stench of its vile breath.  My duties have not sent me personally into combat, but once again I find myself wandering around at the border of a war zone.

The Christmas fair beside the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church is a couple minutes walk from the hotel where my airline puts us up.  It’s on Budapester Strasse, near the zoo and just south of the Tiergarten, the glorious park at the city center.  I’ve been in Berlin on 12 days of the last couple months.  Just last month I had dinner right across the street from this Christmas fair, which was already humming with beer, the laughter of children, and the ringing of bells and Christmas carols.  The crew bus takes us right past this church every time we drive to or from the Tegel airport.  I know the area well.

Moreover, I lived in Germany for four years, the first two while stationed there when I was in the American Army, and then for two years as a civilian flight instructor with American Army flying clubs in Mainz and Hanau.  I was also an adjunct professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's European residency program that largely served American GIs.  I speak German well enough to make my cabin announcements auf Deutsch.  Germany feels like home to me.

Now, I can’t say that I have actually flitted into the gun sights of the jihadists, but I was at Newark airport on the morning of September 11, 2001, picking up my flight papers next to gate 80, where the airplane I was shortly scheduled to fly to Manchester, New Hampshire was parked.

I witnessed the whole damned spectacle from a ringside seat—my airplane in the foreground and the World Trade Center in the middle distance across the river, morphing into a miles-high, slaughterhouse cloud of cement dust and death, staining what had been the most crystal clear blue sky I had ever seen in the world.

All of the hijacked airplanes that day were taken from gates at Boston, Newark, and Washington National, adjacent to where I had often parked the airplanes I flew.

Among the thousands murdered by the hijackers were 33 airline crew members.  There were eight pilots, half of whom were my murdered colleagues at my airline today.  I fly the very same airplanes these poor souls flew, not just the same type of airplanes, Boeing 757 and 767, but the actual aircraft.  These are the very same flight controls those pilots often put their hands on.  While I didn’t know them personally, many of my colleagues did.  A pilot I have often flown with had a check ride in Denver with the captain of Flight 93 a few days before he was murdered. The captain’s last words to my first officer were, “Well, if you don’t have any more questions, I have a date with my 12 year old for a Nuggets game….”

I’m writing this from Limerick, Ireland, where my company puts us up when we fly to Shannon.  A moment ago my attention was arrested by the sound of big rotors beating the air outside my fifth floor window, here beside the River Shannon.  I’m afraid I’m still a bit of a kid, even now at 64-going-on 65.  Ever since I can remember, I have always looked up every time I heard an airplane and wished I could be up there, doing that.  I couldn’t see the helicopter from my room, so this time I walked down the hall to the public area of the fifth floor with a better view.  I saw a big white Sikorsky CH-53 with orange stripes, hovering over the river.  A hotel staff member joined me and we fell into conversation.  He told me, “Yeah, it’s the Coast Guard.  It’s a violent river here, with a five meter rise and fall of the tide that takes just a few hours to go in or out.  And this time of year… you know, Christmas… I’m afraid a lot of people take their own lives.  I’m sure the Coast Guard are lookin’ for a body in the river…”

Ah, yes, Christmas.  Should be joyful.  Let it never be forgotten that pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Optimism alone is not enough, but it is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for success.  In the end, how you think is everything.

Merry Christmas!

E   P   N

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