A novel that had profound impact was by Rudy Weibe - about mennonites and the war and much like the excellent video mentioned the choice of two - different - and the impact - the full title is gone but it had mountain in it.  Read as a searching teen.  I can still see images from the novel, that is how powerful it is.

I know some Canadian pacifists who fought in WW II because they believed it to be a "just war."

Well, their convictions seem as valid as those of the two conscientious objectors I know (one JW, one Lutheran) who spent the war building roads and bridges in northern Sasketchewan as an "alternative service."

I don't know what I would do if it came to participating in a "just war." I probably would not take part, but one can't really say until one is confronted with the situation. My personal aversion to war comes from the fact that I, as a five-year-old refugee in Germany, was a sitting duck getting bombed and shot at by Allied fighter bombers and severely traumatized. There was no trauma counselling for German children traumatized by WWII. We were the inevitable innocent casualties of a "just war."

Thanks LB, very interesting documentary indeed.

Two brothers torn between the "morality" of two communities. One they participated in and one that they were affected by. Either choice (of choosing to kill or not kill), leading to a disconnect from the other.

Particularly the judge that eventually eliminated the "questioning" for the rights to declare oneself a "concientious objector" to war based on their faith, to one question," if someone attacked your family would you defend them" You're damned no matter how you answer that one. It reminds me how tests for IQ are set up to favour one society over the other as to the right answer.

Also very interesting that "pacifism" being one of the "tenets" of their faith has not been "preached" or talked about in their churches since WW2. Wow, talk about a festering wound.

On further thinking it makes me wonder, what is this need for a common enemy to unite people into action?

Hitler seemed to already have the admiration and loyalty of the Germans with his economic turnaround, yet he brought a "hate" for the jews into the picture. In turn we "hated" what he was doing and it becomes a war to remove the hate, which becomes hate filled in itself.

These pacifists would have gone about their business and lived quietly amongst themselves without this. Germany would have gradually recovered economically without it. And all other countries would have had to address their own economic turnaround during this period without the war as a catalyst for unification.

Even now, some Arab countries see the "west" as a threat to their "freedom" to live as they wish, while the "west" insists that the way they do "community" is preferred.  Rather than negotiate "trade" for essential commodities they are "taken" to remove the fear of the shift of power that the holding of essential products, such as oil, suggests. Our default position is always war, rather than innovation inspired by compassion.

It brings to light that hitler wasn't the only madman(or judge) in our "communities".

I too know people who chose the pacifist path during WW2.  It seems to me that then (and now) we each have to carefully consider the options and choose that which best reflects our real self.  I know a pacifist who served in the medical side of the war - without a gun.  I know others who served, again unarmed, on the home front.  There were valuable activities for these people - growing food, fighting fires, keeping the world running for the civilians, all honorable and worthwhile.  I have plenty of respect for pacifists - our world needs them.

Through the Amnesty group I belong to and Mennonite friends I have met some "war resistors".  These were young men who had either undergone military training or served a term in Iraq.  They don't call themselves pacificists, but do object to taking up arms and killing innocent civilians and children.   Also, they didn't believe the war in Iraq was a "just war".  Of the half- dozen or so young men I met, I didn't have a sense that their unwillingness to fight was cowardice, but rather a total disillusioment because  of what they had been taught and then witnessed in a war zone.

These young men were seeking asylum in Canada, because once back in the USA they would face a court martial.

I think it is very sad that in some countries people don't get to choose a path of peace.   The US military is very unforgiving.

I find it interesting that the people I know who took the pacifist road during WW2 were not religious people.  None of them belonged to a particular faith group and none of them had attended any type of religious activity since early childhood.  Maybe people like them would be called Humanist?

LB

This is a very interesting informative thought provoking  video. I hope lots of people will take the time to watch it.  Thanks.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with one of our residents.  This lovely lady grew up in the south end of London, England during WWII.  She has told me many stories about how things changed, about being bombed, living through black outs and rationing.

Yesterday the conversation wound from churches to talking about this particular tv show and she told me the experience she had with her neighbours who belonged to what appeared to be a Mennonite like faith in the heart of London and who were conscientious objectors.  However, like many of life's stories there was much more involved....

The daughter of this family somehow contracted small pox - apparently from visiting a relative in a port city where many soldiers were stationed.  She returned home and died.    My resident - I'll call her M - remembered on the evening of this young woman's death peaking out the black out curtains and seeing a large van pull up to the house next door.  From the back of the van figures emerged dressed all in white suits including hooded face masks.  To this young woman, in the blacked out city in the middle of a war, she thought they were aliens and ran terrified to her mother.  Her mother was a practical woman and told her not to be so silly.  However the next morning they did discover that their neighbours had also been infected and been removed,  their entire neighbourhood was in quarantine.  Fortunately, or as M says, miraculously no one else in their neighbourhood contracted the Pox.

The story doesn't end there.  Months later the mother of this family returned.  She was the sole survivor.  Her husband and sons were dead - causalities of a war they did not fight in nor believe.  M recalled how every day she would come home from work and see this woman standing at her gate watching M.  M was frightened of the woman's pocked marked face and would do anything to avoid coming in contact with her.  She told her mother and her mother, again that practical English woman, told M that the next day she was to stop and speak with their neighbour, that it was "the neighbourly thing to do".  Despite her fears, or perhaps the fear of her mother was greater, M did so the next day.  She stopped and said hello and gave the woman her condolences for the loss of her family.  The woman broke into tears, sobbed, held out her hand and took M's.  She held it for a brief moment and returned to her house.  She never watched for M at the gate again.  When M told her mother this, her mother said, all the neighbour needed was the opportunity to cry, to express her grief at the loss.

For me this is an example of neighbourly love.   It is the sacredness of love thy neighbour that the Mennonites and other objectors wrestle with in times of war.  If one holds that commandment, as the second greatest, the act of killing becomes a true test of faith.

M recalled another story yesterday while we stood together, she told me she never really understood the bible even though growing up it was their duty to go to church every Sunday and to this day she has deep spiritual connection to God.  She has faith but not from the bible.  She told me how, again in her youth, her priest asked her what she did get from the bible and she replied "love your neighbour"; that it made sense and she believed if she loved her neighbour, and her neighbour loved their neighbour and it just kept going down the street there would be peace in the world.

She had believed this as the bombs rained down on her London suburb.  She believes it still today.  The Mennonites, both who went to war and those who stayed home, believe the power of the 2nd commandment.  I believe in this.

Yet, the faith in the belief of love thy neighbour never seems to be put to the test....

LB

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

     Carl Sandburg 

This reminds me of a song I heard at the height of the Cold War:

What if the Russians don't come,

What if they like where they're from,

What if, after all, there will be no war,

What if the Russians don't come?

Well, they didn't come to fight—they came to play!

LB,

Thanks for "M's" story.

It will stay with me as a constant reminder of why loving one's neighbour is the heart of Jesus's message.

We owe it to our young to keep this message of love in their hearts and minds.

LB

Wonderful story  .......

I couldn't agree more!  I'm working at getting M and several others to write their stories.  They keep telling me "oh its too ordinary".  I keep telling them the experiences are extraordinary and they need to be told.

LB

I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives.

     Tracy Chapman

Hi LB:

I too met some of these angels. But, unlike vain and conceited writers like me, they are too self-effacing, humble or modest to write down their experiences.