Look carefully at this quote taken from William Shirer’s great book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich –
The President, backed by the Army and the conservatives, had made him [ie, Hitler] Chancellor. His political power, though great, was, however, not complete. It was shared with these three sources of authority, which had put him into office and which were outside and, to some extent, distrustful of the National Socialist movement. Hitler’s immediate task, therefore, was to quickly eliminate them from the driver’s seat, make his party the exclusive master of the State and then with the power of an authoritarian government and its police carry out the Nazi revolution.
He had been in office scarcely twenty-four hours when he made his first decisive move, springing a trap on his gullible conservative “captors” and setting in motion a chain of events which he either originated or controlled and which at the end of six months would bring the complete Nazification of Germany and his own elevation to dictator of the Reich, unified and defederalized for the first time in German history.
Shirer, William L.. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 272). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
Evil people crave power and control. They want to be God. And to achieve that power and control they most typically work to remove all competition. When their target is a person, whom they groom and deceive, they eliminate threats to their control by isolating their targeted victim. This can be done in a variety of ways:
- Physically relocate to a place far distant from friends and family
- Limit the victim’s access to resources such as finances
- Sabotage the victim’s career
But a very typical and perhaps even the most common method of removing the competition to control over the victim is to alienate friends, family, employers, church members, children…from the victim. Most people are so gullible to the tactics of evil that this alination really isn’t that difficult for the abuser to pull off. A comment here. A nuance there. This piece of slander. Lies –
Pro 6:12-13 A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, (13) winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger,
That is exactly what Adolph Hitler did and it is precisely what wicked abusers do today. Whenever you see someone who flatters you at the same time working to alienate you from others who have been your friends and support – look out! And you have to really be on guard and think carefully because this kind of thing can sneak up on you so deceptively. You think you have found the best friend ever! But the day will come when the trap will spring, the fangs will come out and you will be all alone under the wicked one’s power. The German people found that out the hard way.
Free….. and re-evaluated their roles in my life
Yes, you called it, these are the same exact tactics… it’s from the same handbook over and over.
After the fact my takeaway remains, as painful as it is to be the abuser’s targeted recipient, you may very well come to realize that those who aligned with the abuser’s manipulations and stories, the very ones that alienated and isolated you – were never truly aligned with you in the first place. If they are that easily swayed perhaps it was due time to re-evaluate their role in your life, abuser’s schemes or not.
Hitler is only one of so many who did and do deploy the same tools of manipulation…..
Stand firm, you are not alone… please try and remember….. “A false witness will perish, and whoever listens to him will be destroyed forever..” Prov. 21:28
Allison
This post resonates with me; it is exactly was happened to me. I remember each time someone was taken out of my life that he didn’t like, I would say to myself “oh well its not that big of a deal”. One by one people were pushed out of my life by him. He tried to control every aspect of my life.
For the longest time I tried to understand all of the nasty control tactics he used and wanted to know why- I know now not to try and analyze any of it – its just one word: evil.
Thank you Pastor Crippen for your writings – they sure helped me in my time of confusion and need.
Noka
I just read this on Facebook and made me think of this post about Hitler:
“Organized religion and organized crime can be frighteningly similar at times. Both tend to rely on unwavering loyalty and on participants passionately defending their own. In ministry and in the Mafia, when things are going well you’re well fed and fiercely loved, but make one bad move, cross one wrong person – and it’s horse heads in the bed and concrete sneakers. In either house there’s often a startlingly narrow line between a holy kiss and the kiss of death, and learning how to stay on the boss’s good side becomes a matter of survival.” – John Pavlovitz, in A Bigger Table