CHAPTER 18Goebbels’s Bed
Over the phone, Rev. Dr. David Woehr briefed me for my visit. I
would address six hundred Army chaplains gathered for a clinical
pastoral retreat at an Armed Forces Recreation Center in the General
Walker Hotel, high in the mountains of Bavaria, which had served as a
guesthouse and meeting place for Hitler’s SS officers. Béla and I would
be provided accommodations at the nearby Hotel zum Türken, which
had once been reserved for Hitler’s cabinet and diplomatic visitors.
is was where British prime minister Neville Chamberlain stayed in
1938 when he met with Hitler and returned home with the
triumphant and tragically misguided news that he had secured “peace
for our time,” and where Adolf Eichmann himself had likely briefed
Hitler on the Final Solution. e Berghof, or the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s
former residence, was a short walk away.
My audience would be made up of healing arts professionals. Army
chaplains serve as behavioral health providers in addition to spiritual
counselors, and for the ĕrst time, Dave told me, chaplains were
required to receive a year of clinical pastoral education to complement
their seminary studies. e chaplains needed training in psychology as
well as in religious doctrine, and Dave was leading weeklong retreats
on clinical psychology to the chaplains stationed in Europe. I would
give the keynote address.
Dave told me more about the chaplains and the soldiers they
served. ese weren’t the soldiers of my youth, or the soldiers I was