“Because it means we’re not the only ones to ever face hard times.”
“Yeah,” he said eagerly. “Exactly. And it was about then when I found two things I hadn’t really noticed before.” He reached down and retrieved his Book of Mormon. “But they hit me with great power. The first is from Alma 50.”
He opened the book, found his place, and looked at her. “After talking about the terrible times they had faced and how many people had turned away from God, even as some stayed faithful, Mormon says this: ‘But behold there never was a happier time among the people of Nephi, since the days of Nephi, than in the days of Moroni.’” He looked up. “Remember, these are the days of Zerahemnah and Amalickiah and of war where thousands were killed.”
Lisa leaned over and peered at the place where his finger was. She was almost stunned. “I don’t ever remember seeing that before.”
He flipped through more pages and found a new place. “In Alma 62, Mormon again pauses in his narrative of history to teach us a lesson. Listen to this: ‘And there had been murders, and contentions, and dissensions, and all manner of iniquity among the people of Nephi; nevertheless for the righteous’ sake, yea, because of the prayers of the righteous, they were spared. But behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war’”—he glanced at her, then continued—“‘and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility.’”
Quite astonished with what she had just heard, Lisa took the book from him and read it for herself. When she handed it back to him, he reached out and took her hand again. “So what does this all have to do with the Lord’s plans for us? Here is my very tentative conclusion, although I think I’m right. I have no question that the Lord brought me to Germany in time for what was about to hit your family. Remember, I had planned to wait until you and your family came to Utah to see you again. So it was crazy of me to come. But I couldn’t get it out of my head.
“And so, what do I find when I arrive? Your father had just been killed only a few yards from where you were standing. Later that day, you saw his body lying alongside that of your family’s closest friend. You also had to watch Richelle and Erika—your dearest friend in life—trucked away to a concentration camp. And finally, today, we put your siblings on a train and sent them away so they can escape the clutches of evil, terrible men. That is more trauma and tragedy than most people see in a lifetime.”
“Yes,” Lisa whispered. “But you were here. You were here to be with me. You were here to help my family.”
“I think in these scriptures, and in our lives, Heavenly Father is telling both of us something like this: ‘My plan of happiness for my children requires that adversity, tribulation, and suffering be part of your mortal experience. But my love for you is eternal and everlasting. And if you will let me, through the atoning grace and power of my Beloved Son, I can show you how to find happiness and joy and fulfillment even in the darkest of times. So be faithful. Be strong. As my Son said to His disciples the night before He was killed, “Be filled with hope and I will be with you always.”’”
By the time he finished, Lisa was weeping unashamedly. He turned as best he could in his seat and took her in his arms. “So, my beloved Alisa Maria Westland, we shall go to Harwich tomorrow. I shall brave driving on the wrong side of the road. We shall meet your siblings and do what we can to help them get settled. We shall meet with Nigel and Cassie and see what they have to say and what they have to offer us. And when the time comes, if it comes, then we will take your siblings back to their mother and grandmother, even if war is raging all around them, for we will trust in God’s love and in His power to save.
“And we—you and I—will trust in the Lord. And we will bring children into the world, the Lord willing.”
Lisa reached up quickly and covered his mouth. “And I will fervently pray that the Lord will send sons into our home who are just like their father.”
Benji had to swallow hard, then he leaned down and kissed her cheeks, tasting the saltiness of her tears. “And I will pray with all my heart that we shall have daughters that are as strong and as faithful and as beautiful as their mother.”
He bent down further and kissed her gently on the lips. Before he could pull away, she reached up and put her hand behind his head, and kept it there while she kissed him back.
Chapter Notes
The two scriptural passages Benji read are Alma 50:23 and Alma 62:40–41.
As thousands of Jewish children were whisked out of the clutches of the Nazi Party and tens of thousands of others desperately tried to find some country who would take them in, the nations of Europe continued to appease the ever-growing demands of Hitler. They truly believed that was the only way to avoid war. And if it took selling out their weaker allies, then so be it.
After Hitler gave his word that the acquisition of the Sudetenland would end his hunger for Lebensraum, just six months later, on March 15, 1939, the German military marched into a greatly weakened Czechoslovakia and “annexed” the whole of the country as well.
In response to that openly belligerent act, a month later, the U.S. Congress made their position known. They passed a Neutrality Act, stating that they were going to stay completely out of the growing European mess. They wanted no part of that.
Sensing the danger to its missionaries, in July of that year, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent Elder Joseph Fielding Smith on a tour of the European missions, including the three German missions. His purpose was to assess the political situation. Feeling that crisis was imminent, he stayed on in England to monitor the situation.
Sensing what was coming, the German people made it clear that they had no stomach for war, in spite of their love for their Führer. When strict food rationing was imposed all across the Fatherland late in August of 1939, they realized that they were about to enter their second devastating war in just over two decades.
About that same time, in a super-secret agreement, Germany signed a non-aggression pact with Russia, their most feared and bitter enemy in the previous war. Hitler and Stalin, like a couple of drug lords, agreed to divide up Europe into “spheres of influence,” a euphemism for, “You take that side of the street, and I’ll take this.” When this eventually was made public, it stunned the world and especially disillusioned the Germans who had been hammered with propaganda about the dangers and evils of Mother Russia. What wasn’t made public was that from the beginning, both Stalin and Hitler planned to double-cross each other when the time was right. In June of 1941, Hitler, ever the cunning one, beat Stalin to the punch and launched a massive invasion of Russia, opening up a second front in a major war.
As the political situation continued to deteriorate, in August of 1939 the First Presidency directed all missionaries in Germany to move to neutral countries. A few days later, Joseph Fielding Smith wired that all missionaries were out of Germany safely. Numerous little miracles were seen as missionaries escaped just hours ahead of the final closing of the borders.
Even as the Third Reich made full preparations for war, their obsession with the Jews continued. When food rationing was instituted, rationing cards issued to Jews were stamped with a big J, for Juden. This made it extremely difficult for them. Jews were allowed to purchase things only during a certain block of time, usually two hours, but sometimes only one. Many merchants refused to serve them at all. This was still only a harbinger of things to come. Such phrases as “the final solution,” “the Jewish Problem,” and “extermination” would join such infamous names as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau.
Finally, on the first day of September, 1939, German nationals slipped across the Polish border and staged a phony “Polish” attack on a German radio station. With that
as his excuse, Hitler did exactly what Winston Churchill had predicted that he would do. Germany attacked Poland with over 2,000 tanks and 1,000 aircraft. There was no longer any pretense of Lebensraum. This was pure, unvarnished thuggery, with an entire country as the prize. Three days later, a devastated Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had worked so hard to bring peace and who had been so proud to bring home the Munich Pact to England and tell his people that war had been averted, now joined France, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in signing a declaration of war against Nazi Germany. Canada followed a week later. World War II had begun.
Because of the Neutrality Act, the United States stayed clear of it all.
Or so they thought.
Seven days after the invasion of Poland had begun, the last of a total of 697 missionaries, including 63 sister missionaries and dependents of mission presidents, arrived at mission homes outside of the growing net of Nazi Germany’s domination. All had arrived safely.
Seventeen days later, Russia, eager to get its share of the spoils, invaded Poland from the east. A short time later, Warsaw officially surrendered and the nation of Czechoslovakia ceased to exist as the two warlords divided up the spoils of an entire country.
Within a week, Hitler spoke to the Reichstag and solemnly insisted that he had no further territorial claims against Britain or France, and therefore he was willing to make peace with both of them. A deeply chastened Chamberlain openly rejected the offer. Enraged at their childish intransigence, Hitler immediately began plans to invade the British Isles.
With millions of their young men now in uniform, many of them in actual battle zones, and with increasingly strict food rationing, the morale of the German people plummeted. Emboldened by that change of heart, several high-ranking military officers decided that it was time to solve Germany’s existential crisis by cutting off its head. On November 9, the Führer was in Munich, celebrating with his cronies the sixteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Unbeknownst to him, a powerful bomb had been secretly planted in the beer hall. But with his usual uncanny partnership with the Fates, Hitler left to catch a train ten minutes before the bomb went off. Eight were killed and sixty-four wounded, but Hitler came out unscathed.
The short-lived rebellion failed in another way as well. When the people learned of this brazen attempt on their leader’s life, it actually united much of the disenchanted populace behind the supreme leader.
By this time, the winds of war were blowing far beyond European shores. Starting in July of 1937, the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China went to war. Japan was a water-locked nation and sought additional land and resources. Within months, war was sweeping across Asia with a brutality that would shock history for decades after.
In late 1939, Russia invaded Finland, who quickly sued for an armistice. To the south, Mussolini invaded and annexed Albania. In the spring of 1940, Germany invaded both Denmark and Norway. Denmark, who shared a border with Germany, surrendered immediately. Norway held out for a couple of months. Holland, threatened with invading troops, surrendered on June 14. About this same time, finally accepting his dismal failures, Chamberlain resigned as prime minister. His feisty opponent Winston Churchill took his place and set to work preparing the British people to brace for another war.
Then, in his boldest move of all, Hitler invaded Germany’s inveterate, longtime nemesis, with whom it shared about 300 miles of common border, the French Republic. With his swift attack, Hitler introduced a new word into the vocabulary of war: Blitzkrieg, the “lightning war.”
Neutral Belgium was rolled over in a few days. French resistance collapsed on virtually every side.
Knowing that no invasion of the British Isles was likely to succeed with the air power of the Royal Air Force protecting England’s shores, in July of 1940, Hitler ordered massive day and night bombing raids from conquered airfields in Norway, France, and the Netherlands. What came to be known as the Battle of Britain began. On September 7, the Luftwaffe, the German air force, sent over 600 bombers against London, beginning the “London blitz.” In the next months they would drop over a million bombs. By November, they were dropping between 150 and 200 tons of bombs every day. The eventual death toll of British civilians would reach about 43,000 in the year the blitz lasted. Many of those were children.
With fire raining down from the sky unceasingly, in an effort dubbed “Operation Pied Piper,” the British government moved thousands of London’s children into the countryside to live with families beyond the range of the bombers. When the Royal Air Force retaliated by bombing civilian targets in major German cities like Berlin and Hamburg, Germany initiated its own children’s rescue program, calling it Verschickung der Kinder auf das Land, “Sending Children to the Countryside.” Considering that the country was at war, the scale of this effort was astonishing. Around 320,000 children had been placed by the end of 1940. Three months later, that had risen to 413,000, and three months after that, the total was 619,000.
About this same time, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was not only sympathetic to England’s growing crisis but realized that if the British Isles went down, all of Europe might soon be flying the swastika, decided to help. But his hands were tied by a congress strongly committed to political neutrality. He signed the Lend Lease Act, a law allowing the U.S. to sell airplanes and other war materials to the United Kingdom and to send them across the Atlantic in U.S. ships. Calling this an act of war, Hitler ordered his U-boats to go after U.S. ships thought to be ferrying military supplies. When several were sunk, with loss of American lives, sentiment in the U.S. began to turn.
Another factor came when Japan officially declared war on England. It was a paper threat, because they were still heavily enmeshed in their own war with China. Nevertheless, in July 1941, Roosevelt used his presidential powers to freeze all Japanese assets in the United States—a major economic blow—and declared an embargo against oil going to Japan, to be backed up by the U.S. Navy if necessary. Growing increasingly desperate, in November, Japanese envoys asked America to lift the trade embargo on oil, offering new concessions to bring about a favorable decision. The Roosevelt administration refused. The Imperial Japanese High Command then convinced Emperor Hirohito that without oil they were a paper tiger and that they had no choice but to launch a surprise attack on U.S. Naval forces stationed in Hawaii.
On December 7, at 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, Japanese naval and air forces launched 40 torpedo bombers, 103 level bombers, 131 dive bombers, and 79 fighter planes from four heavy aircraft carriers. In addition to the carriers, the naval armada consisted of 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, 35 submarines, 2 battleships, 11 destroyers, and 9 oilers.
In the 110-minute attack, which came in two separate waves, 2,403 military and civilian personnel, including 1,177 sailors on the battleship USS Arizona, were killed. About 1,200 others were wounded. In a stroke of what some saw as Divine Providence, all three of the U.S. aircraft carriers were out to sea on maneuvers and missed the attack completely, thus salvaging a critical part of America’s naval power.
On December 8, 1941, calling it a “date which will live in infamy,” President Roosevelt called on Congress for a declaration of war. The Senate voted 82 to 0 for the motion. The House of Representatives voted 388 to 1. The single dissenting voice, which brought much booing and hissing from her colleagues, was from the Republican congresswoman from Montana. When asked why she voted that way, she said, “As a woman, I cannot go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else to do it for me.” On December 11, 1941, just four days following the Pearl Harbor attack, America officially declared war on Germany.
And thus, just twenty-one years following the Great War, ironically called “the war to end all wars,” the world was plunged into a global crisis once again. This was the first truly global war in the history of mankind. Though many nations had been aligned with the Allies or the Central powers, basically only fifteen nations actuall
y participated in World War I. In World War II, eighty-one nations were direct combatants.
Estimates of total civilian and military deaths in the first war ranged between 16.6 million and 19.1 million. In the Second World War, those numbers almost quadrupled to somewhere between 69 and 84 million total deaths.
And all of this from a man born on the border of Austria and Germany, son of an illegitimate father and doting mother. He had little formal education but an incredible instinct for history and politics. In his army service, he reached no higher than the rather common rank of corporal. But in a meteoric rise to power, he seized control of one of the largest countries in Europe, pulled it back from the brink of inner collapse, and created a Reich to last a thousand years. In his twelve short years as supreme ruler and absolute dictator, he brought Germany back to greatness, greatly expanded its territory, plunged all of Europe into war, conceptualized and carried out one of the most extensive and systematic plans for mass murder in the history of the world, and finally brought about Götterdämmerung.
In Norse mythology, which is deeply embedded in the Germanic spirit, Götterdämmerung means “the twilight of the gods.” It is that moment when the gods of heaven destroy themselves and all things with them in a final battle with evil.
A Generation Rising, the first volume of Fire and Steel, was published in 2014. When I began, I estimated the series would be four or five volumes. As the project progressed, it proved to be a much bigger story than I had envisioned. Into the Flames is the sixth volume in the series. Two related volumes (Only the Brave and To Soar with Eagles) relate to the early beginnings of the Westland family, who play a prominent part in this story.
From the very beginning, I planned to take our characters through the end of World War II and its aftermath in the year or two following. That is still my plan, but that will now happen in a stand-alone volume separate from the series. But it will be a continuation of the story.
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