On Campus with Mary MacKillop,
tonight's guest is Godfried Rachael,
a radio evangelist living in West
Germany.
Here's Gary McCaleb.
On campus today, we're pleased to welcome
a very special guest as we look back into
into history and into another part of the
world. Mr. Godfried Rachel
is with us today from Munich, Germany.
Thank you very much for being with us.
I'm happy to be here.
I think it would be interesting because
you've really spent practically your
entire life in Germany
to tell us
a little bit about the
the times of your youth
and what was going on there
as a young boy.
I'll be glad to.
Of course, as you all know,
during the 30s, Adolph Hitler
took power in Germany
and naturally, everyone living in Germany
was involved in
his movements some way or other.
In fact, with 10 years, I was
asked or forced to
join the Hitler Youth.
And from that time on until the
end of the war in forty five, which, by
the way, is 40 years ago,
I was a Hitler Youth and of course,
believed in what
this big brother
had to tell us.
And what as what does it mean?
What was involved in being a Hitler Youth
or a part of the Hitler Youth Movement?
I would say that to some extent
it had factors which you also
have in the Pathfinder movement, you
know, but then ideology
and military training played an important
role. So it was indoctrination
in the Nazi spirit.
And at the same time, it also
was trying to get
you ready for the war game.
How did they
how did they accumulate your time
and bring you together?
Were you required to spend a certain
amount of time doing projects
and working in that?
That's right.
There were two afternoons
which fully belong to the Hitler Youth,
usually in the middle of the week,
Wednesday and then Saturday,
and then many times over the weekends
when we would go camping.
And that's when they had you for the
whole weekend.
I do recall that the Hitler Youth
was also used in order to prepare
other groups and segment of society,
especially towards the end of the war,
to prepare them for paratroopers
who landed. You know, and one time we
had to play British paratroopers
who came down on the Black
Forest.
And the people who were alarmed did
not know that we weren't paratroopers,
English paratroopers.
So we really some
of us really got in trouble when they
found out we were just Hitler Youth.
And so we had to really play a war
game. And I will never forget that that
was already towards the end
of the war.
Nineteen forty four in the winter
and possibly January 45.
Now, who were the people that were in
charge of of you and of the youth?
These were usually
people who were somewhat older than we
were, maybe two or
three classes above our own age.
And they were the leaders.
In other words, it was a system or
the most capable was in charge.
And also those who succeeded in
sport events that is running, jumping,
throwing.
These were the three.
Did you receive awards or recognitions
or citations or anything
as a as being in this?
I remember that I like to cross country
ski, and even though I
was of very small size in
those days, that can be
said no.
But anyway, in spite
of that weakness, physically,
I made forth at the
standard competition.
And even though
it usually takes the first, second, third
place, you know, to get some prize,
one of our leaders asked me to also step
in front.
And then the whole gang, you know,
they would say, hip, hip, who are
you people?
And praise me for that.
And I still remember that when
when you look back upon those experiences
now as a man
much older and with a much different
perspective on life, what things
do you most remember and what do you
realize was really occurring
through your participation in that youth
movement?
Well, I think especially of
one area where with 14
years, one day we were
told to put on our uniform
and march at night
to a railroad station and then we
were shipped.
We didn't know where to and it
happened to be in France, occupied
France.
And then we had to dig these tank
ditches and we were
told that we were more or less
the fevers last try
to cause the armies which are.
You were fleeing, you know, all the way
from Marseilles,
France, they came some of the officers,
and then they saw us kids and they said,
what are you doing here, you know, with
shovels?
And by the way, the train in which we
were transported a few minutes
after we left about 20 minutes,
American warplanes came and
just shot that train to bits.
And we were laying on our bellies
in a potato field
watching how this all happened.
And you saw the train being destroyed.
Yes, just 20 minutes after you had gotten
that's 20 minutes afterwards.
And then we had to live, you know, in
some French requisitioned
places.
I know on straw, on top of a
barn.
And then we watched and most of
us were students.
You know, we we weren't used to
shovels and we had blisters.
But nevertheless, we sang our songs,
you know, and we were considered
soldiers of the Führer.
And we still believe that we were going
to win the war.
What so I would say
I later realized that we
were being manipulated.
And one means of that manipulation
was the use of radio.
And I guess you all know that Hitler,
when he came to power, started
a ministry of propaganda.
And in charge of it was Dr. Joseph
Goebbels, a specialist in that field,
and he had small radio receivers
designed, subsidize
their production, sold it under cost,
and so that in every German home
there was a propaganda outlet and he
called that receiver folks.
And that's the same word as folks,
Varg, because you kind of murder
it in America, say Volkswagen.
Well, it's people's car, people's
receiver.
And these millions of people receivers
were one of the reasons that Hitler was
able to brainwash a nation
into that frenzy and causing our
nation to commit crimes
which still have marred
and are, well,
destroying our name, our good reputation.
When when you realize
the effect that it was having on on the
youth of the country, where they
overall as you being
a part of it at that time, pretty
responsive and and believing
in what was going on and totally
in support, there wasn't much resistance
that you could detect.
Not among the young generation.
The older generation.
Yes. But they didn't dare
to say much.
They would just would be quiet.
I still remember one day my dad
opened his desk,
took out a postcard, and
he just handed it to me and
it said Del Fuego had demolished,
which means the Fuhrer,
Adolf Hitler is always
right.
He didn't ask a question.
It just and you know,
that was one of the first times when I
said, no, only God.
See, I was going up in the Lutheran home.
We prayed before we ate.
We went to church.
Anyway, that's the first time,
you know, I realized here someone tried
to be the big brother
who in reality
was misusing his
influence and authority for his
own selfish, selfish purposes.
And you were talking about the radio and
the way Hitler used the radio.
What do you remember about that?
Can you and in your family, were there
regular periods of listening to the radio
and hearing Hitler or Goebbels or the
other voices coming
over the radio?
Well, there was one instance
where I was only eight years old in 1938
when I remembered my dad came home.
He didn't kiss my mother.
He didn't say hello to his kids.
He just went straight in the corner and
almost crawled into our old radio
trying to get a station when he had it.
I still remember the slogan being shouted
and it sounded like this.
I folk folk, I,
I feel, I feel folk
I, I feel which meant one
people, one empire
and one leader.
And then the commentator came on and
said, these are the people of Vienna,
Austria, hailing the arrival of
Adolf Hitler who had just incorporated
their small country into the German
empire. And you know, I knew then
there was power coming out of that box,
causing my father to act completely
different, differently.
Well, correct English, but anyway,
I would like to say that personally,
towards the end of the war, I still
remember one speech of Joseph
Goebbels which caused me to
believe even in January of 2005,
when the German cause was really lost,
parts of East Prussia had gone
to the Russians in the West.
You know, the allies had come to the
right or in fact, in our boarding school
at night, we sometimes could hear the
artillery from the other side
shelling ours.
And still we were convinced
that we were going to win the
war. And I still remember how
Joseph Goebbels would always end his big
speeches. You know, it's all about
like that, your goose and on the Galip
to Deutche and fool Adolf Hitler.
I mean, I'm glorifying kaiseki, kaiseki.
And when he said Zik, which means
victory, we got up and raised all right
hand and salute it, you know, and
shouted Heil, which means salvation.
All Hail to Hitler.
He didn't bring us victory and he didn't
bring us salvation.
In fact, much heartache, I'm sure,
to some of our listening audience.
And as a German, I'm very
sorry that this ever happened.
But let's realize one thing here.
Mass communication wasn't misused.
So the big brother of George Orwell,
you know, as a reality, wasn't
a reality and can be a reality in
every country.
That's why we need to be watchful and
protect the religious and also
the personal liberties we enjoy
in our democracy.
And I would like to underline that the
German people have learned a
lesson. And I don't think you have a
better ally in Western
Europe than the Federal
Republic of Germany, where
people do not just talk about friendship,
but put their money where their mouth is,
keep their commitments.
And I think it's time that the new
generation, like our chancellor, he's my
age.
He was 15 years old.
It's time to remember
they are not just Nazis.
But mainly, there are Germans,
a nation which has made
a tremendous contribution to society.
Think of Martin Luther, you know,
overcoming the medieval ages
by the Protestant Reformation and
other great achievements.
Vernon from Brown.
And I think we need to remember
that this period is gone.
There's a strong democracy
and some of those things
we need to
not replay continuously
because wrong nationalism
then might possibly grow up
and that would be hideous.
Oh, I agree with you so much.
I think it's it's obviously time to
leave all of that behind and
and in one way, forget it.
But in another way, some of the lessons
that can be leveraged from that time
should never forget.
Yeah, but I don't act that every
German who now appears on
the scene is part of Adolf
Hitler.
When then you were talking about
remembering this time when you believed
it was all still intact
and OK, even though things were really
crumbling and falling apart behind the
scenes. What do you remember about
moving out of that period when things
did, in fact begin to fall apart?
You know, one of the laws Hitler passed
when the war had started.
Don't listen to an enemy station.
That means don't listen to BBC London.
And I knew a man in our neighborhood
whom the Gestapo got out of bed.
And a few weeks later, his wife got a
letter that he died of
pneumonia in Daraa.
That's a concentration camp.
And his only crime was he listened to BBC
now towards
April of nineteen forty
five. That was shortly before the
capitulations when the Americans were
moving our way and where I was in Saxony,
not any more in the Black Forest.
I took the nerve after my
mother had gone to bed, my three sisters,
I took a blanket over the radio,
put it over my head and tuned
in and tried to search
an enemy station.
I wanted to know what is true
and you know what station I got?
What signal? Radio Luxembourg.
That's the station.
The six hundred thousand one station I've
been preaching on now for twenty years.
But anyway. So I heard.
That's right.
You see, the Americans already had
recaptured that little country
and freed it.
They were utilizing it.
And at first, even though I
knew better, I said these lies,
you know, how can they say such terrible
things, you know?
And then suddenly it sank in.
I have been deceived.
My leader was a scoundrel
and everything caved in.
And this is, by the way, one reason
why I said the next leader I'm going to
choose is not going
to be someone who will disappoint me.
And that leader has become Christ.
I'm happy to say we need
to take a break for just a minute here
and we'll come back and continue talking
about that.
We're visiting with Godfried Rachel.
Abilene Christian University began
with a handful of students in 1996
as an ungraded school
today, ACU is one of the largest
privately supported universities in the
Southwest, with more than 4500
students from nearly every state in the
nation and several foreign countries
here. The spiritual dimension as a way of
life in the classroom
and in the chapel.
This helps to make ACU a unique
place, a place where people
really matter.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Godfrey Trishul.
You were talking about remembering.
I have been deceived
when that happened in your life, was
that same kind of thing happening
with other people about that same time or
was there beginning to dawn on
a whole a
whole group of people, the feeling
that they had been deceived naturally
and of course, some of the older people
had seen that a long time ago.
But the system was such, you know, that
you could not escaped.
And of course, they tried to cause
you to think if you leave
the Nazi thought the ideology,
you are also leaving Germany.
And just think what, for instance, some
of the advisers of President Roosevelt,
Morgenthal suggested to
turn Germany into
a pastoral
agricultural country.
You know, and things like this were
used to say, now this is what's going to
happen if you don't fight, if you don't
identify.
And by the way, the bombing
of our cities, you know, like
I noticed this time on
February 13, 14, when I was here,
they talked about Dresden being destroyed
were one hundred and fifty people were
killed one day more than
in Hiroshima, you know,
by incendiary bombs, a place
where refugees had escaped from.
The Russians were just filling the
city. And all this happened.
You know, now things
like this, it caused
you to identify with
the German cause.
Even you you knew that they
were scum's.
I mean, many of them knew, for instance,
my wife,
her family had a general friend
who in nineteen forty
one said this war is lost.
But he would have been in the
concentration. And he was one of the war
criminals, by the way, who was tried
in Nuremberg and
acquitted.
You call that acquitted.
In other words, he was not
receiving any sentence and his brother
later became the highest
general in the of the new German army.
I would like to say the disillusionment
was especially vivid
among the young people who didn't know
anything else and who realized
that this was the end of Germany.
And if you would have seen our cities
in forty five,
if you would have seen how desolate
it is and how hopeless.
And, you know, our major territories
in the east, like East Prussia, my wife
was born and couldn't expect that city is
now called Kaliningrad and it's the
most westerly port on the Baltic
Sea of the Soviet Union.
You see, all this is,
of course, a painful remembrance.
So we cannot celebrate
May six or eight, you
know, the capitulation, but
we can remember what we were freed of
and we can remember that we need to learn
that lesson again and again
and continue to be a democratic
society.
You have spent a good deal of your
life living in what might be called
a divided country, a country
that's what now is called East Germany
and West Germany rather than just
Germany.
That's right. What what are the
experiences that
that that you have seen occur
and that you have observed
and other people as well as your own life
because of of that
kind of thing happening?
Of course, all this, you know, was
decided forty years ago in Yalta
in February. That's right.
And it's obvious that
we didn't know about those decisions.
But the effects of it, we felt like
the Americans took our city,
our state, Saxony, and then turned
it over to the Russians.
And we couldn't really understand that.
And, you know,
there was one dictatorship which
left us and then seemingly
they came another big brother under a
different color, not brown, but red.
And life
was just as regimented as before.
And religious freedoms
very vividly controlled,
and I would say that,
you know, it was not the liberation,
some of the Western zones,
the American, the French and the British
experience.
And I personally, of course, came from
the Soviet zone into the American zone in
48.
And I must say that I am glad
that I became part of the Western
Hemisphere, the Western
democracies.
And I'm happy to say
that only on that basis my
radio evangelism has been
possible.
I would like to say that sometimes
Americans need to visualize
that if in Washington, D.C., down
Pennsylvania Avenue,
there is a big wall,
and if someone wants to try to go
from the eastern sector to the west,
he's going to be shot.
And fifty six people have been
shot at the wall,
you know, since 61, since it was built.
And just imagine what that does to
your capital, divided into
other parts, divided sections
given to Poland, sections given to
Russia.
Fifteen million refugees,
three million die in the
process of relocating and
then to integrate that into a new
society, having no
injustices have a strong democracy
being the second largest export
nation behind the United States
after losing in World War I
think that is an achievement.
And I think it's great to know
that we are now friends and allies.
See, I think the point you're making is
so important because I don't think it's
easy for us in America to visualize
all of that that you're describing,
because it's because and
as a result, I don't think we can
appreciate some of the freedoms
that you have talked about.
And that's why the freedom of religion
and the freedom to be able to think and
to talk and to listen to your own radio
or to watch a television station of
your choice. That's right.
Or something rather than than being
told you cannot listen to any
other radio stations and things like
that. It's truly a very incredibly
distant thing, I think, for Americans
to try to relate to
and really say, I understand
what that was, what that was like.
Well, I sense that very often.
And so I don't
want to mean to be a teacher in
that realm, but to show how much
you really have to appreciate
your present society and that
your country so far after
the civil war was
spared of a modern war,
because the next time that will
be not true.
And I don't wouldn't want any city in the
United States to have the fate
of my home state capital.
Greyston
So let's work towards that.
And let's talk for a minute about your
your radio broadcast
radio. Luxembourg, I think you
indicated earlier, is an extremely
powerful station, was
the station you listen to as a young boy
and that still people
all over
Germany and throughout the country
surrounding Germany lost?
Well, Radio Luxembourg is one
of the few
commercial stations we have in Europe
in general. They are operated by the
government, like all German stations
are operated by the state governments.
But Radio Luxembourg is one of
the few commercial stations.
Small country doesn't have a network of
its own. So they offer
time for religious broadcasting
and have been doing that for
30 years. So our 15 minutes
per week does mean
that we have a great listening audience.
And Radio Luxembourg as such is like
a network. It has a network
effect like ABC, NBC
or CBS, you see, because
your strongest station is permitted to
have fifty thousand watts.
This is 600000 watts.
So we've been receiving letters
from thirty six nations
on four continents, Europe.
America, Asia and
Africa, and, you know,
if you have received letters from
these many nations and the number
is forty three thousand
one hundred and twelve, my wife
keeps a book.
So, you know, the number of letters, the
number of letters, forty three thousand
one hundred twelve.
And the amazing thing is
that many of the people in the East,
because it's a German language program,
don't have trouble of receiving
it. And it's not being jammed
missing. And because
German is
the most widely
spoken language in Central Europe,
112 million
German speaking people and the first
foreign language most people
learn is also German
in those countries, meaning forty
five million in addition.
So it's a great potential.
So it's not just a little station, you
know, in Munich, but it's
a network covering and
approaching and reaching
all Germans.
Is there a radio station stronger or more
powerful than this station than this
radio station?
Is there one that's.
No. No,
this is what they advertise.
The world's most powerful commercial
radio station.
Of course, they are other radio stations
for military purposes who far surpassed
that and some political stations,
you know, but I'm talking about a
commercial commercial radio station.
Six hundred thousand.
And you see they have German programing
and then they have English programing in
the evening, Dutch programing.
So it's a widely heard network.
And then they have another so-called long
wave is in the French language.
What about Germany today?
How do you see the country
40 years after the Yalta
conference? And.
Well, I do feel that
we have a very
good democratic society
with great achievements in the past.
We do have all problems with some
industries.
Of course, we are hopeful of developing
new ones and especially the area
where I live in the Munich area,
our news space
industry is growing also
computer industry.
And I feel that in general,
it's not known over here that
Germany is one of the few countries
which has paid back the Marshall
Plan aid we received.
And the last payment was made in 1971.
And this is still working.
And as I said before,
the second highest export
country in the world right next to the
United States, and especially now with
the dollar rate being in
our favor. As far as sales, you
see the dollar so much higher than
it used to be.
Our imports to the United States have
been the highest last year than ever.
And there are several cars like the
Mercedes.
I noticed that people in Texas really
seem to like there must have
been a period of time that, uh,
that the people of Germany felt
just very disillusioned
and very defeated after
going through all of the Hitler years.
The generation that generation has moved
on and another generation has moved in.
Do you see very much of that cloud,
shall we call it still hanging over the
people? Or is it is it moved
on a way?
I feel there is a strong sense
of wanting to overcome
that past and not have to relive
it. And it seems that there is a
tendency, especially in
the English, the Anglo-Saxon
countries, to always, you know,
fight the war over, especially in the
movies.
Now, that has some merit.
But if it's, you know, overdone,
then many Germans
feel it's about time after 40 years
of Democratic time appraisal
and Democratic behavior
to not fight that over.
And we appreciate that
in May, your president is
going to come to the federal republic
and there's not going to be a victory
party, but there's going to be a
partnership atmosphere.
And I think that's the way it ought to
be.
That's great.
I'm sorry we're out of time because this
has been a most enlightening visit.
And thank you so much for being with us
and sharing some of your experiences
and your past and best wishes
in the work that you continue to do with
your radio.
Thank you. And I wish you well.
I remembered when it was
I'm I wish you well.
That's right. Well, thank you very much.
And thank you for being with us on campus
of Godfried Rashawn.