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rather than a real ruler, r once exerted his authority and orde d e Japanese surrender on the sole condition that he would be allowed to ep his title as emperor. The United States accep d his o er gust 14, and on September 2 the Japanese signed the surrender document in the presence of General Ma rthur on the U.S. battleship ssouri in kyo Bay. World War II was er.
The longest lasting result of World r II was the Co unist take­ er of Eastern Europe. Without the war and Allied agreements with Russia, e Communists almost certainly would not h e been able to bring the people of Eastern Europe under their domination.
The Holocaust
One particularly horri ing aspect of the Nazi tyran was the extermi­ nation camps at Belsen, Dachau, schwitz and elsewhere, where millions of innocent people had been murdered. The primary victims we the Jews, whom Hitler regarded as subhuman and a threat to the purity of the German race. But ma others were mercilessly killed, as well. In every country that Germany conquered, victims were unded up. Some were rced work until they could work no more and en killed, and others were killed upon arrival. The conditions were inhuman-li le od, no medical care, inadequate shelter, torture. When the Allies reached some of the camps, the survivors were little more than living skeletons. But e brutality of the camps also brought out great heroism in ma of e inma s as Christ and Satan warred r souls.
One story will illustrate both the evil and the good in the death camps. A lish Franciscan priest named Maximilian lbe had been captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in Auschwitz, one of the worst of the death camps. Priests were given the ha est work and regularly lashed with horse­ whips. The inmates were constantly hungry, and e winter cold ate into their bones. Father Maximilian was never heard to complain. In spite of threats of punishment, he hea con ssions all night long.
Near the end of July 1941, the Germans und a prisoner missing in Father Maximilian's cellblock. The inmates were ordered stand in the burning sun r hours with nothing to drink. Then the commandant an­ nounced: "The gitive has not been und. n of you will die r him in the starvation bunker." He went down the line, d gging out ten men to die. One of them cried: "Oh, poor wi , poor children, whom I will n er see aga ." Suddenly Fa er M ian rushed e comman t whispering to him, "I would like to die in place of e man who has a wi