Chapter Four
History Fulfilled
As we floated—if floating is what it truly was—I could not tell whether we stood upon solid ground or drifted through eternity itself. Before us hung another globe. Once again, it appeared no larger than a child’s snow globe resting upon a shelf. Yet this one was different. A heavy veil covered its surface, concealing whatever lay beneath. Even from where I stood, I could feel a burden unlike anything I had ever experienced. It pressed against my soul before I had seen a single image.
The Minister of Justice stood silently beside me.
“Marine,” he said at last, “what you are about to witness is history fulfilled. You have never known agony such as this. You have never carried a burden like the one that waits beyond this veil. Prepare yourself.”
He paused.
“Are you ready?”
I wanted to answer, but the words would not come. I simply nodded.
In a flash of brilliant light, he reached forward, grasped the veil with both hands, and tore it away.
Everything exploded around me.
The only comparison I can make is to the moment in The Green Mile when John Coffey reaches through the prison bars, seizes Paul Edgecomb, and forces him to experience part of his own soul. Images, emotions, grief, terror, and understanding poured into me all at once. I staggered backward, unable to breathe. It was as though millions of voices cried out together, and every one of them entered my heart in the same instant.
When my vision finally steadied, I found myself standing in the middle of an enormous crowd in Germany.
Banners hung from every building. Portraits of Adolf Hitler overlooked the streets. Before me, upon a high balcony, stood Hitler himself, delivering a speech to the masses. He spoke in German, yet I understood every word as though it were my own language.
His rhetoric was strangely familiar. He spoke of a nation that had fallen into decline, of economic hardship, humiliation, and fear. He warned that Germany stood on the brink of ruin unless decisive action was taken. He blamed political enemies and other groups for the nation’s suffering. Again and again he declared that only he possessed the strength, wisdom, and vision to restore Germany to greatness if the people would simply trust him.
As I looked across the sea of faces, another realization struck me with even greater force. This had once been a nation with elections, political parties, churches, and ordinary citizens who believed they governed themselves. Yet little by little, the people’s confidence had shifted. Their hope no longer rested in the Lord or in the enduring principles that had preserved liberty. It rested in one man. Without fully realizing it, they had exchanged faith for idolatry. Their eyes no longer searched upward. They searched only for him.
We moved on.
The cheering crowds slowly gave way to polling places. I expected to find the quiet dignity of citizens exercising their right to vote. Instead, I found fear. Armed men stood watch over the entrances. Families waited anxiously, many too frightened even to look one another in the eye. Some whispered that failing to appear would bring suspicion upon themselves and those they loved. Others feared that opposing the Party would not remain secret. The ballot had ceased to be an expression of conscience and had become a public test of loyalty. Fear now accomplished what persuasion alone never could.
Another corner.
The applause had disappeared.
Columns of SS troops marched through the streets in black uniforms, their insignia impossible to mistake. Their presence alone silenced conversation. Citizens were seized without warning, their hands bound as they were dragged away. Those who protested were beaten. Some were shot where they stood. Blood flowed into the gutters while mothers screamed and children cried for fathers who would never return.
Around the next corner I watched the SS move from shop to shop, marking businesses owned by Jewish families. They shouted to the crowds that these stores were no longer to be patronized and warned that anyone who offered refuge or assistance to Jewish neighbors would face punishment as well. Fear spread through the streets faster than the soldiers could march. Many Jewish families hurriedly gathered what little they could carry and attempted to flee. Others remained hidden behind locked doors, praying they would not be discovered. Some were overtaken before they escaped, bound, and dragged away. A people who had lived beside their neighbors for generations had become strangers in their own homeland.
We continued.
Men were dragged through the streets toward waiting freight cars, their knees scraping against the stones until they bled. The train doors closed behind them.
When they opened again, I found myself standing beside vast labor camps. Before daylight, prisoners were driven into factories, quarries, and construction sites. Some swung heavy hammers until their hands split open. Others labored beside roaring machinery until exhaustion overcame them. Food was barely enough to delay starvation. Sleep came only in overcrowded wooden barracks where rough bunks and filthy straw offered little rest. Day after day I watched strong men become living skeletons. When one finally collapsed and never rose again, another silently took his place. Human life had become as replaceable as broken tools.
Another transport carried women and children away.
Families were separated forever. Some disappeared into buildings where physicians had abandoned healing and embraced cruelty. Human beings became subjects for experiments rather than patients deserving compassion. Bodies weakened by starvation and abuse were subjected to procedures that defied both conscience and mercy. Their cries echoed through the camp until they blended into one continuous plea that seemed to rise toward heaven itself.
Then we came upon another place.
Barbed wire stretched beyond the horizon. Prisoners clung to the fences because they no longer possessed the strength to stand on their own. Their faces revealed starvation beyond anything I believed possible. Guard towers overlooked every movement. Groups of men, women, and children were marched toward brick buildings from which no one returned. Nearby, bodies were gathered for disposal in crematoria and mass graves. Smoke drifted endlessly into the sky. The air itself carried the weight of death.
We walked farther still.
The camps gave way to battlefields.
Columns of German soldiers marched east toward Poland. Aircraft darkened the skies. Artillery shook the earth beneath my feet. Cities that had once been filled with homes, churches, schools, and marketplaces had become fields of shattered stone and burning steel. Civilization itself appeared to be collapsing beneath the weight of war.
My legs trembled beneath me.
I no longer knew whether the moisture upon my face came from tears or from the smoke that filled the air. My heart felt as though it would burst beneath the burden of what I had witnessed.
The Minister of Justice looked at me.
“Have you seen enough, Marine?”
Unable to speak, I simply nodded.
“Take hold of my garment.”
The instant my hand touched it, the world vanished.
Once again we stood suspended in a vastness beyond description. There was neither darkness nor light as I understood them—only an endless expanse beyond time itself.
After several moments, the Minister of Justice spoke.
“History cannot be changed. What has been done has been done. This was not the first civilization to fall, nor will it be the last. But you needed to witness this one. You studied these events in books. You searched photographs, documents, and the testimony of those who survived. Yet no page can convey what the human soul has endured.”
He stepped closer.
“Four generations have now passed. Those who witnessed these horrors are nearly gone. Fewer voices remain to tell what happened. Some labor to preserve these lessons. Others would diminish them or forget them. Whether future generations remember or ignore these warnings has not yet been decided.”
Though he did not breathe as mortal men breathe, I sensed his presence as though he stood only inches from me.
“The process has begun upon another world.”
He extended his hand.
“Come, Marine.”