Hilmar von Campe, the former Hitler Youth who came to understand that totalitarian systems are based on lies, and they can be defeated only with the truth, has died.
In an announcement from his family, his children said, “It is with great sadness that we have to inform you of the passing of our father, Hilmar von Campe, on June 18th at 11:11 p.m. He suffered a heart attacak on the night of Saturday June 10th and while his spirit likely went to stand before the Father on that moment, his body held on in a coma until the 18th.
“We miss him very much but find comfort in knowing that he is in the presence of the Lord enjoying heavenly bliss.”
A memorial service was scheduled at Grace Fellowship Church in Fairhope, Ala.
Von Campe, who was listed in the 1992 “International Who’s Who of Intellectuals,” authored four books, including “Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A former Hitler Youth Warns America.”
In it, he recounts the life of a German family before, during and after the 12-year Nazi rule. At 10 years of age, like every other child, he had to enter the Hitler Youth and at 18, he was conscripted into the German army.
He was a gunner in a tank in the Yugoslavian theater fighting the Soviet army and in 1945 became a prisoner of war of the Communist Tito government. That same year his sensational escape involved crossing seven borders.
His first-hand experience led him to the conclusion linked key facets of Islamic terrorism to both Hitler and socialism.
He found that the Nazi system, like any other totalitarian system, was based on lies, lies are at the root of the problem in the world, and you cannot defeat them with money or armies but only with the truth.
This book asks the crucial question, “What is the role of God in society?” Von Campe’s discourse returns the reader to this question.
It is his stunning personal testimony that reveals what happens when God is thrown out of government and society and when Christians sit back as “religious bystanders.”
Von Campe compares developments in American society and in the world today with what happened in pre-Nazi Germany and warned America to turn away now from the destructive ideological path we are on.
Specifically, he warned against the encroachments of Marxism in America, as opposed to the American way of freedom and liberty.
“These two philosophies are incompatible. Every day brings this nation closer to a Nazi-style totalitarian abyss,” he said.
A graduate of the University of Hamburg, once was kidnapped by the Communist leaders of the Bolivian Mineworkers Union, worked as an investment banker in Peru and managed a consulting firm on foreign investment, and was a managing director of an automotive parts factory in Mexico.
On his own website, he wrote of the Holocaust that it was the “extreme consequence of the arrogance of man, of human beings who set themselves up above all others despising the value of human life.
He was born April 11, 1925, and married Dina Gamio of Peru.
James Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family ministry, said Americans would do well to heed the von Campe’s insights into totalitarianism, because of “similar dangers facing today’s world.”
