Was Hitler a Christian?
BartSimpson @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:09 pm
Excerpts from http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhi ... stian.html
$1:
You are right that Hitler did mention Christianity many times in his writings. He paid Christianity a lot of lip service in Mein Kampf, and he claimed to be a Christian. But Hitler's secretary, Martin Bormann, also declared that "National Socialism [Nazism] and Christianity are irreconcilable" and Hitler didn't squawk too much about it. Similarly, Hermann Rauschning, a Hitler associate, said, "One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both." In addition, Hitler declared Nazism the state religion and the Bible was replaced by Mein Kampf in the schools. You really want confusion? Randy Alley, one of my best WWII history sources, noted that the SS were supposedly forbidden to believe in God--yet the military's belt buckles said "Gott mit uns" ("God is with us")! See photo, below.
In 1933, Hitler said, 'It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood.'" The Catholic League also quoted Hitler, in a 4/23/99 Op-Ed ad in the New York Times, as saying, "Antiquity was better than modern times, because it didn't know Christianity and syphilis."
Historian Paul Johnson wrote that Hitler hated Christianity with a passion, adding that shortly after assuming power in 1933, Hitler told Hermann Rauschnig that he intended "to stamp out Christianity root and branch."
As Hitler grew in power, he made other anti-Christian statements. For example, he was quoted in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Allan Bullock, as saying: "I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews."
In 1933, Hitler said, 'It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood.'" The Catholic League also quoted Hitler, in a 4/23/99 Op-Ed ad in the New York Times, as saying, "Antiquity was better than modern times, because it didn't know Christianity and syphilis."
Historian Paul Johnson wrote that Hitler hated Christianity with a passion, adding that shortly after assuming power in 1933, Hitler told Hermann Rauschnig that he intended "to stamp out Christianity root and branch."
As Hitler grew in power, he made other anti-Christian statements. For example, he was quoted in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Allan Bullock, as saying: "I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews."
But before Derby posts it let me also post this:
$1:
But in contrast to these quotes, some of Hitler's speeches definitely seem to put him in the Christian camp as a fighter against atheism. For example, he said, on signing the Nazi-Vatican Concordat, April 26, 1933: "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . ."
An Associated Press article from the Lansing State Journal, February 23, 1933, is headlined, "Hitler Aims Blow at 'Godless' Move," and talks about how Hitler was campaigning against atheist communists and wanted support from Catholic Nazis. One line in the article specifically says, "Hitler, himself, is a Catholic." (You can see the entire article at http://www.infidels.org/library/his torical/unknown/hitler.html .) In addition, in 1941, Hitler told General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church. He was baptized a Roman Catholic as an infant and was a communicant and altar boy in his youth.
In a speech at Koblenz, August 26, 1934, Hitler said: "National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity . . . For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life . . . These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles!"
Related to the above, the "Religion" article in The Oxford Companion to World War II notes that early on in his career, Hitler sponsored something called "practical Christianity," and that "German Christians emerged who claimed to be able to synthesize the best of National Socialism [Nazism] and the best of Christianity. Many Christians seemed to be able to reconcile themselves to at least certain aspects of anti-Semitic legislation. Those who could not . . . often ended up in concentration camps . . . Many anguished Christians serving in the Wehrmacht began to feel a little more comfortable about supporting a war that now included the overthrow of godless communism."
Getting back to quotes, on October 24, 1933, in a speech in Berlin, Hitler said: "We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."
Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." In 1938, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech.
In a speech delivered April 12, 1922, published in "My New Order," and quoted in Freethought Today (April 1990), Hitler said:
My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.
Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.
As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice . . .
And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.
When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.""
I could probably find more speeches in which Hitler claims himself to be a Christian, but I think the point has been made. He said it. Now, what did it mean?
It seems Hitler, like many modern-day politicians, spoke out of both sides of his mouth. And when he didn't, his lackeys did. It may have been political pandering, just like many of our current politicians who invoke God's name to gain support.
Also, it seems probable that Hitler, being the great manipulator, knew that he couldn't fight the Christian churches and their members right off the bat. So he made statements to put the church at ease and may have patronized religion as a way to prevent having to fight the Christian-based church.
An Associated Press article from the Lansing State Journal, February 23, 1933, is headlined, "Hitler Aims Blow at 'Godless' Move," and talks about how Hitler was campaigning against atheist communists and wanted support from Catholic Nazis. One line in the article specifically says, "Hitler, himself, is a Catholic." (You can see the entire article at http://www.infidels.org/library/his torical/unknown/hitler.html .) In addition, in 1941, Hitler told General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church. He was baptized a Roman Catholic as an infant and was a communicant and altar boy in his youth.
In a speech at Koblenz, August 26, 1934, Hitler said: "National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity . . . For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life . . . These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles!"
Related to the above, the "Religion" article in The Oxford Companion to World War II notes that early on in his career, Hitler sponsored something called "practical Christianity," and that "German Christians emerged who claimed to be able to synthesize the best of National Socialism [Nazism] and the best of Christianity. Many Christians seemed to be able to reconcile themselves to at least certain aspects of anti-Semitic legislation. Those who could not . . . often ended up in concentration camps . . . Many anguished Christians serving in the Wehrmacht began to feel a little more comfortable about supporting a war that now included the overthrow of godless communism."
Getting back to quotes, on October 24, 1933, in a speech in Berlin, Hitler said: "We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."
Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." In 1938, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech.
In a speech delivered April 12, 1922, published in "My New Order," and quoted in Freethought Today (April 1990), Hitler said:
My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.
Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.
As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice . . .
And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.
When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.""
I could probably find more speeches in which Hitler claims himself to be a Christian, but I think the point has been made. He said it. Now, what did it mean?
It seems Hitler, like many modern-day politicians, spoke out of both sides of his mouth. And when he didn't, his lackeys did. It may have been political pandering, just like many of our current politicians who invoke God's name to gain support.
Also, it seems probable that Hitler, being the great manipulator, knew that he couldn't fight the Christian churches and their members right off the bat. So he made statements to put the church at ease and may have patronized religion as a way to prevent having to fight the Christian-based church.
But then a very wise comment follows along....
$1:
Think about it--how many other times did Hitler break his word or ignore a treaty? He said whatever would make things easiest, and then ignored it later.
$1:
An interesting side note: Two of my sources, both of whom are well-versed in WWII history, said something to the effect that Hitler acted as if he had a messianic complex and perhaps believed himself to essentially be a god or the messiah. As one put it, you could certainly make the argument that he was a firm believer in God, if by "God" you mean "Adolf Hitler."
Only to finally summarize with this little gem:
$1:
As for your chat-room experiences, well, my friend and source David Gehrig noted that Hitler still sets the gold standard for "easiest rhetorical cheap shot." He related a comment from Usenet that there is an empirical law: As a Usenet discussion gets longer, the probability that someone in it will compare someone else in it to Hitler asymptotically approaches 1. In other words, atheists looking for a quick cheap-shot may claim Hitler was a Christian; similarly, Christians looking for a quick shot may claim he was an atheist. Know what? Hitler was a vegetarian! Oooh, those evil vegetarians! He also recommended that parents give their children milk to drink instead of beer and started the first anti-smoking campaign. (So by the "reasoning" used in these types of arguments, if you are truly anti-Hitler, you should smoke heavily and only give your baby beer!) Better watch out, though he was an oxygen-breather, too! In other words, does it really matter whether Hitler was an atheist or a Christian or whatever? Just because somebody may hold a particular worldview (along with other views) doesn't make him a spokesman for that view, or even remotely representative of others who hold that view. No matter how his madness is painted, he was still evil incarnate.
Was Hitler a Christian?
Let's rephrase this; was Hitler a Christian like an average Christian in the world at his time or any other time?
No. He was not.
Was he really a Christian?
Not in my book. I'm not a very good Christian, but having seen friends die and having been murderously enraged about it, I still could not bring myself to do anything other than protect innocent people wherever possible.
Hitler, for reasons borne of pure prejudice, sought out innocent people to harm them.
That is not a Christian.
Arctic_Menace @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:12 pm
I think Hitler was an atheist, but used Religion when it suited his purpose.
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:16 pm
The Christianity of Hitler revealed in his speeches and proclamations
Compiled by Jim Walker
Originated: 27 Feb. 1997
Additions: 03 Jun. 2006
Through subterfuge and concealment, many of today's Church leaders and faithful Christians have camouflaged the Christianity of Adolf Hitler and have attempted to mark him an atheist, a pagan cult worshipper, or a false Christian. However, from the earliest formation of the Nazi party and throughout the period of conquest and growth, Hitler expressed his Christian support to the German citizenry and soldiers. In the 1920s, Hitler's German Workers' Party (pre Nazi term) adopted a "Programme" with twenty-five points (the Nazi version of a constitution). In point twenty-four, their intent clearly demonstrates, from the very beginning, their stand in favor of a "positive" Christianity:
24. We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health from within only on the principle: the common interest before self-interest.
Hitler's speeches and proclamations, even more clearly, reveal his faith and feelings toward a Christianized Germany. Nazism presents an embarrassment to Christianity and demonstrates the danger of faith. The following words from Hitler show his disdain for atheism, and pagan cults, and reveals the strength of his Christian feelings:
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922
[Note, "brood of vipers" appears in Matt. 3:7 & 12:34. John 2:15 depicts Jesus driving out the money changers (adders) from the temple. The word "adders" also appears in Psalms 140:3]
Just as the Jew could once incite the mob of Jerusalem against Christ, so today he must succeed in inciting folk who have been duped into madness to attack those who, God's truth! seek to deal with this people in utter honesty and sincerity.
-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 28 July 1922
In the Bible we find the text, 'That which is neither hot nor cold will I spew out of my mouth.' This utterance of the great Nazarene has kept its profound validity until the present day.
-Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich, 10 April 1923
[The Bible quote comes Jesus speaking in Revelation 3:16]
In the life of nations, what in the last resort decides questions is a kind of Judgment Court of God.... Always before god and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills.
-Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich, 13 April 1923
There are three words which many use without a thought which for us are no catch-phrases: Love, Faith, and Hope.... We are fanatical in our love for our people....
We have faith in the rights of our people, the rights which have existed time out of mind. We protest against the view that every other nation should have rights - and we have none. We must learn to make our own this blind faith in the rights of our people, in the necessity of devoting ourselves to the service of these rights; we must make our own the faith that gradually victory must be granted us if only we are fanatical enough. And from this love and from this faith there emerges for us the idea of hope. When others doubt and hesitate for the future of Germany - we have no doubts. We have both the hope and the faith that Germany will and must once more become great and mighty.
We have faith that one day Heaven will bring the Germans back into a Reich over which there shall be no Soviet star, no Jewish star of David, but above that Reich there shall be the symbol of German labor - the Swastika. And that will mean that the first of May has truly come.
-Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich, 01 May 1923
[Love, Faith, and Hope comes from I Corinthians 13:13 NIV]
People ask: is there someone fit to be our leader? Our task is not to search for that person. Either God will give him to us or he will not come. Our task is to shape the sword that he will need when he comes. Our task it to provide the leader with a nation which is ready for him when he comes! My fellow Germans, awaken! The new day is dawning!
-Adolf Hitler, 04 May 1923
It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God.
-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 01 Aug. 1923
It will at any rate be my supreme task to see to it that in the newly awakened NSDAP, the adherents of both Confessions can live peacefully together side by side in order that they may take their stand in the common fight against the power which is the mortal foe of any true Christianity.
-Adolf Hitler, in an article headed "A New Beginning," 26 Feb. 1925
A few days ago I was in Eisenach and stood on top of the Wartburg, where a great German once translated the Bible.
-Adolf Hitler, in Schleiz, Thuringia, 18 Jan. 1927
[The great German Hitler speaks about, of course, describes Martin Luther]
We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls.... We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]
We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk.... This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection....May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk.
-Adolf Hitler, on 1 Feb. 1933, addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the first time, Volkischer Beobachter, 5 Aug. 1935, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]
Except the Lord built the house they labour in vain.... The truth of that text was proved if one looks at the house of which the foundations were laid in 1918 and which since then has been in building.... The world will not help, the people must help itself. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it we may wage the battle of our life.... The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty-- of Him Who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us.... We are all proud that through God's powerful aid we have become once more true Germans.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in March 1933
[Note, "Except the Lord built the house, they labour in vain" comes from Psalms 127:1 ]
The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life.... The National Government regard the two Christian Confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality. They will respect the agreements concluded between them and the federal States. Their rights are not to be infringed.... It will be the Government's care to maintain honest co-operation between Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith. The Government of the Reich, who regard Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attach the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See and are endeavouring to develop them.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech to the Reichstag on 23 March 1933
The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were".... I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.
-Adolf Hitler, 26 April 1933, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]
We want honestly to earn the resurrection of our people through our industry, our perseverance, our will. We ask not of the Almighty 'Lord, make us free'!-- we want to be active, to work, to agree together as brothers, to strive in rivalry with one another to bring about the hour when we can come before Him and when we may ask of Him: 'Lord, Thou seest that we have transformed ourselves, the German people is not longer the people of dishonour, of shame, of war within itself, of faintheartedness and little faith: no, Lord, the German people has become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices.' 'Lord, we will not let Thee go: bless now our fight for our freedom; the fight we wage for our German people and Fatherland.'
-Adolf Hitler, giving prayer in a speech on May Day 1933
This is for us a ground for satisfaction, since we desire that the fight in the religious camps should come to an end... all political action in the parties will be forbidden to priests for all time, happy because we know what is wanted by millions who long to see in the priest only the comforter of their souls and not the representative of their political convictions.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to the men of the SA. at Dormund, 9 July 1933 on the day after the signing of the Concordat.
National Socialism has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State.... The decisive factor which can justify the existence alike of Church and State is the maintenance of men's spiritual and bodily health, for it that health were destroyed it would mean the end of the State and also the end of the Church.... It is my sincere hope that thereby for Germany, too, through free agreement there has been produced a final clarification of spheres in the functions of the State and of one Church.
-Adolf Hitler, on a wireless on 22 July, the evening before the Evangelical Church Election
The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie.
-Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted from John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope"
Among the congregations of the Protestant confessions there has arisen in the "German Christians' a movement that is filled with the determination to do justice to the great tasks of the day and has aimed at a union of the Protestant state churches and confessions. If this question is not really on the way towards a solution, in the judgement of history no false or stupid objections will be able to dispute the fact that this service was rendered by the volkisch movement at a time when, unfortunately, just as in the Roman Church, many pastors and superintendents without reason have opposed the national uprising in the most violent, indeed, often fanatical, way.
-Adolf Hitler, in a radio address on 22 July 1933 to the German people after a performance of Wagner's Christian allegory Parsifal in Bayreuth. [from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
[This statement clearly refutes modern Christians who claim Hitler as favoring atheism.]
I believe that Providence would never have allowed us to see the victory of the Movement if it had the intention after all to destroy us at the end.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to old members of the Party at Munich on 8 Nov. 1933
The German Church and the People are practically the same body. Therefore there could be no issue between Church and State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church. The election of November 12th would be an expression of church constituency, but not as a Church.
-Adolf Hitler, answering C. F. Macfarland about Church & State (in his book, The New Church and the New Germany)
While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions.
-Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934
Imbued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions.
-Adolf Hitler, speaking in the Reichstag on 30 Jan. 1934
It would have been more to the point, more honest and more Christian, in past decades not to support those who intentionally destroyed healthy life than to rebel against those who have no other wish than to avoid disease. Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole.... If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 30 Jan. 1934
We have experienced a miracle, something unique, something the like of which there has hardly been in the history of the world. God first allowed our people to be victorious for four and a half years, then He abased us, laid upon us a period of shamelessness, but now after a struggle of fourteen years he has permitted us to bring that period to a close. It is a miracle which has been wrought upon the German people.... It shows us that the Almighty has not deserted our people, that He received it into favour at the moment when it rediscovered itself. And that our people shall never again lose itself, that must be our vow so long as we shall live and so long as the Lord gives us the strength to carry on the fight.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to the "Old Guard" of the Party at Munich on 19 March, 1934
The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavour to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren ), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of to-day.
-Adolf Hitler, on 26 June 1934, to Catholic bishops to assure them that he would take action against the new pagan propaganda
No, it is not we that have deserted Christianity, it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have only carried through a clear division between politics which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine (Lehre ) of the Confessions or with their religious freedom (Bekenntnisfreiheit ), nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends....
National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity.... For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life... These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles! And I believe that if we should fail to follow these principles then we should to be able to point to our successes, for the result of our political battle is surely not unblest by God.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech at Koblenz, to the Germans of the Saar, 26 Aug. 1934
So far as the Evangelical Confessions are concerned we are determined to put an end to existing divisions, which are concerned only with the forms of organization, and to create a single Evangelical Church for the whole Reich....
And we know that were the great German reformer [Martin Luther] with us to-day he would rejoice to be freed from the necessity of his own time and, like Ulrich von Hutten, his last prayer would be not for the Churches of the separate States: it would be of Germany that he would think and of the Evangelical Church of Germany.
-Adolf Hitler, in his Proclamation at the Parteitag at Nuremberg on 5 Sept. 1934
[Note, Martin Luther provided Germany with the seeds of violent antisemitism. Learn about Martin Luther's dirty little book.
So we have come together on this day to prove symbolically that we are more than a collection of individuals striving one against another, that none of us is too proud, none of us too high, none is too rich, and none too poor, to stand together before the face of the Lord and of the world in this indissoluble, sworn community. And this united nation, we have need of it.
-Adolf Hitler, in Berlin, 01 May 1935
What we are we have become not against, but with, the will of Providence. And so long as we are true and honourable and of good courage in fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall continue to enjoy in the future the blessing of Providence.
-Adolf Hitler, at Rosenheim in Bavaria, 11 Aug. 1935
Only so you can appeal to your God and pray Him to support and bless your courage, your work, your perseverance, your strength, your resolution, and with all these your claim on life.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Frankfurt on 16 March 1936
In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Hamburg on 20 March 1936
Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church.
-Adolf Hitler, reportedly to have said in Berlin in 1936 on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism
I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at the Nuremberg Parteitag of 1936 [11 Sept. 1936]
I say that they can be solved; there is no problem that cannot be, but faith is necessary. Think of the faith I had to have eighteen years ago, a single man on a lonely path. Yet I have come to leadership of the German people....
Life is hard for many, but it is hardest if you are unhappy and have no faith. Have faith.
Nothing can make me change my own belief.
-Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg, 12 Sept. 1936
This is probably the first time and this is the first country in which people are being taught to realize that, of all the tasks which we have to face, the noblest and most sacred for mankind is that each racial species must preserve the purity of the blood which God has given it....
The greatest revolution which National Socialism has brought about is that it has rent asunder the veil which hid from us the knowledge that all human failures and mistakes are due to the conditions of the time and therefore can be remedied, but that there is one error which cannot be remedied once men have made it, namely the failure to recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture and thereby the racial aspect and character which are God's gift and God's handiwork. It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation....
As I look back on the great work that has been done during the past four years you will understand quite well that my first feeling is simply one of thankfulness to our Almighty God for having allowed me to bring this work to success. He has blessed our labors and has enabled our people to come through all the obstacles which encompassed them on their way....
Today I must humbly thank Providence, whose grace has enabled me, who was once an unknown soldier in the War, to bring to a successful issue the struggle for the restoration of our honor and rights as a nation.
-Adolf Hitler, before the Reichstag, 30 Jan. 1937
So long as they concern themselves with their religious problems the State does not concern itself with them. But so soon as they attempt by any means whatsoever-- by letters, Encyclica, or otherwise-- to arrogate to themselves rights which belong to the State alone we shall force them back into their proper spiritual, pastoral activity.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered in Berlin on the May Day festival, 1937
We National Socialists, too, have deep in our hearts our own faith. We cannot do otherwise. No man can mould the history of peoples or of the world unless he has upon his will and his capacities the blessing of Providence.
-Adolf Hitler, to Nazi leaders on 2 June 1937, as reported by a correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph"
I will never allow anyone to divide this people once more into religious camps, each fighting the other....
You, my Brown Guard, will regard it as a matter of course that this German people should go only by the way which Providence ordained for it when it gave to Germans the common language. So we go forward with the profoundest faith in God into the future. Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us?
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Regensburg on 6 June 1937
If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing.
-Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937
This Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When I see, as I so often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a Christianity-- and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession, for behind it stand not words but deeds.
-Adolf Hitler, speaking of the Winter Help Campaign on 5 Oct. 1937
Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Coburg on 15 Oct. 1937
In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.... I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty.... If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths.... Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937
National Socialism is not a cult-movement-- a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship.... We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else-- in any case something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will-- not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord.... Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men.
-Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept. 1938.
[Christians have always accused Hitler of believing in pagan cult mythology. Here he clearly expresses his stand against cults and reinforces his Christian views.]
Thus one of Europe's most serious crises will be ended, and all of us, not only in Germany but those far beyond our frontiers, will then in this year for the first time really rejoice at the Christmas festival. It should for us all be a true Festival of Peace....
-Adolf Hitler, in Berlin, 05 Oct. 1938
[This statement disputes some who claim that Hitler outlawed Christmas.]
God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves.
-Adolf Hitler, 06 Nov. 1938, Weimar
The National Socialist Movement has wrought this miracle. If Almighty God granted success to this work, then the Party was His instrument.
-Adolf Hitler, in his proclamation to the German People on 01 Jan. 1939
We are indeed perhaps better able than other generations to realize the full meaning of those pious words "What a change by the grace of God".
Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration:
1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted.... The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State... Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.
It is therefore, to put mildly-- effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich.... I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds?
3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion.... There are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State.... This State has only once intervened in the internal regulation of the Churches, that is when I myself in 1933 endeavoured to unite the weak and divided Protestant Churches of the different States into one great and powerful Evangelical Church of the Reich. That attempt failed through the opposition of the bishops of some States; it was therefore abandoned. For it is in the last resort not our task to defend or even to strengthen the Evangelical Church through violence against its own representatives.... But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy.
-Adolf Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan. 1939
[That last sentence sums up Hitler's stand on the priesthood. Rather than standing for atheism, as today's Christians would like, Hitler attacked the priesthood only if they stood in Hitler's political path.]
If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbour, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech to the "Old Guard" at Munich on 24 Feb. 1939
Help yourself, then God will also help you!
The German people was created by Providence, not in order to obey a law which suits Englishmen or Frenchmen, but to stand up for its vital right. That is what we are there for!
-Adolf Hitler, at Wilhemshaven, 01 April 1939
I can give vent to my inmost feelings only in the form of humble thanks to Providence which called upon me and vouchsafed it to me, once an unknown soldier of the Great War, to rise to be the Leader of my people, so dear to me.
Providence showed me the way to free our people from the depths of its misery without bloodshed and to lead it upward once again. Providence granted that I might fulfill my life's task-to raise my German people out of the depths of defeat and to liberate it from the bonds of the most outrageous dictate of all times....
I have regarded myself as called upon by Providence to serve my own people alone and to deliver them from their frightful misery.
-Adolf Hitler, before the Reichstag, 28 April 1939
As Fuehrer of the German people and Chancellor of the Reich, I can thank God at this moment that he has so wonderfully blessed us in our hard struggle for what is our right, and beg Him that we and all other nations may find the right way, so that not only the German people but all Europe may once more be granted the blessing of peace.
-Adolf Hitler, before the Reichstag, 06 Oct. 1939
[I] never lost my belief, in the midst of setbacks which were not spared me during my period of struggle. Providence has had the last word and brought me success.
-Adolf Hitler, speech of 23 Nov. 1939
It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the ideas which are accepted facts to us today.
-Adolf Hitler, 10 Dec. 1940, in Berlin
The conception of the new Movement, whose fundamentals can be expressed in a single sentence: "The Lord helps those who help themselves," opposed this. That is not only a very pious phrase, but a very just one. For one cannot assume that God exists to help people who are too cowardly and too lazy to help themselves and think that God exists only to make up for the weakness of mankind. He does not exist for that purpose. He has always, at all times, blessed only those who were prepared to fight their own battles....
Providence has not led us along these amazing paths in vain. On the day that the party was founded I recalled that our nation once gained immense victories. Then it became ungrateful, disunited, sinned against itself. Thereupon it was punished by Providence. We deserved our defeat. If a nation forgets itself as completely as the German nation did at that time, if it thinks that it can shake off all honor and all good faith, Providence can do nothing but teach it a hard and bitter lesson. But even at that time we were convinced that once our nation found itself again, once it again became industrious and honorable, once each individual German stood up for his nation first and not for himself, once he placed the interests of the community above his own personal interests, once the whole nation again pursued a great ideal, once it was prepared to stake everything for this ideal, the hour would come when the Lord would declare our trials at an end.
If fate should once more call us to the battlefield, the blessing of Providence will be with those who have merited it by years of hard work. When I compare myself and my opponents in other countries in the light of history, I do not fear the verdict on our respective mentalities. Who are these egoists? Each one of them merely defends the interests of his class. Behind them all stands either the Jew or their own moneybags. They are all nothing but money-grubbers, living on the profits of this war. No blessing can come of that. I oppose these people merely as the 0 champion of my country. I am convinced that our struggle will in the future be blessed by Providence, as it has been blessed up to now.
-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 24 Feb. 1941
But he who dares to use the word "God" for such devilish activity blasphemes against Providence and, according to our belief, he cannot end except in destruction.
-Adolf Hitler, speaking about Jews and international "warmongers," on 04 May 1941, before the Reichstag
I did not want this struggle. Since January, 1933, when Providence entrusted me with the leadership of the German Reich, I had an aim before my eyes which was essentially incorporated in the program of our National Socialist party. I have never been disloyal to this aim and have never abandoned my program....
Only when the entire German people become a single community of sacrifice can we expect and hope that Almighty God will help us. The Almighty has never helped a lazy man. He does not help the coward. He does not help a people that cannot help itself.
The principle applies here, help yourselves and Almighty God will not deny you his assistance.
-Adolf Hitler, in a broadcast from Berlin, 03 Oct.1941
If the Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world. The German people and their soldiers are working and fighting today, not only for the present, but for the coming, nay the most distant, generations. A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator....
The next incursion against this homestead of European culture was carried out from the distant East. A terrible stream of barbarous, uncultured hordes sallied forth from the interior of Asia deep into the hearts of the European Continent, burning, looting, murdering-a true scourge of the Lord....
From the time when the Movement I consisted of seven men, until we took over power in January 1933, the path was so miraculous that only Providence itself with its blessing could have made this possible....
Our enemies must not deceive themselves-in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today. The Lord of the Universe has treated us so well in the past years that we bow in gratitude to a providence which has allowed us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that we also can be entered with honor into the ever-lasting book of German history!
-Adolf Hitler, on 11 Dec.1941 before the Reichstag
My fame, if Providence preserves my life, will consist in ... works of peace, which I still intend to create. But I think that if Providence has already disposed that I can do what must be done according to the inscrutable will of the Providence, then I can at least just ask Providence to entrust to me the burden of this war, to load it on me. I will beat it! I will shrink from no responsibility; in every hour which ... I will take this burden upon me. I will bear every responsibility, just as I have always borne them."....
Thus the home-front need not be warned, and the prayer of this priest of the devil, the wish that Europe may be punished with Bolshevism, will not be fulfilled, but rather that the prayer may be fulfilled: "Lord God, give us the strength that we may retain our liberty for our children and our children's children, not only for ourselves but also for the other peoples of Europe, for this is a war which we all wage, this time, not for our German people alone, it is a war for all of Europe and with it, in the long run, for all of mankind."
-Adolf Hitler, 30 Jan. 1942, in Berlin (note the prayer at the end of the speech.)
May therefore God give us the strength to continue to do our duty and with this prayer we bow in homage before our dead heroes, before those whom they have left behind in bereavement, and before all the other victims of this war.
-Adolf Hitler, in prayer at the end of a radio address on 15 March 1942.
I, for my part, acknowledge another precept which says that man must deal the final blow to those whose downfall is destined by God.
-Adolf Hitler, in an address to the Reichstag, 06 April 1942
In my eyes, the year 1942 already has behind it the most fateful trial of our people. That was the winter of '41 to '42. I may be permitted to say that in that winter the German people, and in particular its Wehrmacht, were weighed in the balance by Providence. Nothing worse can or will happen. That we conquered that winter, that "General Winter," that at last the German fronts stood, and that this spring, that is, early this summer, we were able to proceed again, that, I believe, is the proof that Providence was content with the German people....
You do not realize what is hidden beneath these words in the way of human heroism, and also of human pain, and suffering, and we may say, often anxiety too, naturally, deathly anxiety on the part of all those who, especially for the first time, are placed before the trial of God in this highest court.
-Adolf Hitler, 30 Sept. 1942, in Berlin
And today I stand by this same view. Fate, or Providence, will give the victory to those who most deserve it....
And when now, after 10 years, I again survey this period, I can say that upon no people has Providence ever bestowed more successes than upon us. The miracles we have achieved in the last three years in the face of a whole world of enemies are unique in history, especially the crises we very naturally often had in these years.
-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 08 Nov. 1942
The bomb which was planted by Colonel von Stauffenberg exploded two meters to my right. It seriously injured a number of my colleagues who are very dear to me; one has died. I myself am completely unhurt apart from a few minor skin abrasions, bruises and burns. I interpret this as confirmation that Providence wishes me to continue my life's mission as I have in the past.
Few people can begin to imagine the fate which would have overtaken Germany had the assassination attempt succeeded. I myself thank Providence and my Creator not for preserving me - my life consists only of worry and work for my People - I thank him only for allowing me to continue to bear this burden of worry, and to carry on my work to the best of my ability.
Once again I take this opportunity, my old comrades in arms, to greet you, joyful that I have once again been spared a fate which, while it held no terror for me personally, would have had terrible consequences for the German People. I interpret this as a sign from Providence that I must continue my work, and therefore I shall continue it.
-Adolf Hitler, speaking about the attempt to kill him, in a radio broadcast on 20 July 1944
God the Almighty has made our nation. By defending its existence we are defending His work....
Only He can relieve me of this duty Who called me to it. It was in the hand of Providence to snuff me out by the bomb that exploded only one and a half meters from me on July 20, and thus to terminate my life's work. That the Almighty protected me on that day I consider a renewed affirmation of the task entrusted to me....
Therefore, it is all the more necessary on this twelfth anniversary of the rise to power to strengthen the heart more than ever before and to steel ourselves in the holy determination to wield the sword, no-matter where and under what circumstances, until final victory crowns our efforts....
In the years to come I shall continue on this road, uncompromisingly safeguarding my people's interests, oblivious to all misery and danger, and filled with the holy conviction that God the Almighty will not abandon him who, during all his life, had no desire but to save his people from a fate it had never deserved, neither by virtue of its number nor by way of its importance....
In vowing ourselves to one another, we are entitled to stand before the Almighty and ask Him for His grace and His blessing. No people can do more than that everybody who can fight, fights, and that everybody who can work, works, and that they all sacrifice in common, filled with but one thought: to safeguard freedom and national honor and thus the future of life.
-Adolf Hitler, in a radio address, 30 Jan. 1945
Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations....
This Jewish bolshevist annihilation of nations and its western European and American procurers can be met only in one way: by using every ounce of strength with the extreme fanaticism and stubborn steadfastness that merciful God gives to men in hard times for the defense of their own lives....
We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate Our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this bate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end. During its 2,000-year history our people has survived so many terrible times that we have no doubt that we will also master our present plight.
-Adolf Hitler, in a recorded radio address, 24 Feb. 1945
SOURCES:
Baynes, Norman H. Ed. "The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939," Vol. 1 of 2, Oxford University Press, 1942
Cornwell, John, "Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII," Viking, 1999
Steigmann-Gall, Richard "The Holy Reich: Nazi conception of Christianity, 1919-1945," Cambridge University Press, 2003
Online:
Adolf Hitler Speeches from www.adolfhitler.ws/
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:17 pm
Hitler's religious beliefs and fanaticism
(Selected quotes from Mein Kampf)
compiled by Jim Walker
Originated: 28 Nov. 1996
Additions made: 07 July 2001
People often make the claim that Adolph Hitler adhered to Atheism, Humanism or some ancient Nordic pagan mythology. None of these fanciful and wrong ideas hold. Although one of Hitler's henchmen, Alfred Rosenberg, did undertake a campaign of Nordic mythological propaganda, Hitler and most of his henchmen did not believe in it .
Many American books, television documentaries, and Sunday sermons that preach of Hitler's "evil" have eliminated Hitler's god for their Christian audiences, but one only has to read from his own writings to appreciate that Hitler's God equals the same God of the Christian Bible. Hitler held many hysterical beliefs which not only include, God and Providence but also Fate, Social Darwinism, and ideological politics. He spoke, unashamedly, about God, fanaticism, idealism, dogma, and the power of propaganda. Hitler held strong faith in all his convictions. He justified his fight for the German people and against Jews by using Godly and Biblical reasoning. Indeed, one of his most revealing statements makes this quite clear:
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
Although Hitler did not practice religion in a churchly sense, he certainly believed in the Bible's God. Raised as Catholic he went to a monastery school and, interestingly, walked everyday past a stone arch which was carved the monastery's coat of arms which included a swastika. As a young boy, Hitler's most ardent goal was to become a priest. Much of his philosophy came from the Bible, and more influentially, from the Christian Social movement. (The German Christian Social movement, remarkably, resembles the Christian Right movement in America today.) Many have questioned Hitler's stand on Christianity. Although he fought against certain Catholic priests who opposed him for political reasons, his belief in God and country never left him. Many Christians throughout history have opposed Christian priests for various reasons; this does not necessarily make one against one's own Christian beliefs. Nor did the Vatican's Pope & bishops ever disown him; in fact they blessed him! As evidence to his claimed Christianity, he said:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
Hitler's anti-Semitism grew out of his Christian education. Christian Austria and Germany in his time took for granted the belief that Jews held an inferior status to Aryan Christians. Jewish hatred did not spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book, "On the Jews and their Lies," Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War II. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther.
Hitler did not have to parade his belief in God, as so many American Christians do now. Nor did he have to justify his Godly belief against an Atheist movement. He took his beliefs for granted just as most Germans did at that time. His thrust aimed at politics, not religion. But through his political and religious reasoning he established in 1933, a German Reich Christian Church, uniting the Protestant churches to instill faith in a national German Christianity.
Future generations should remember that Adolph Hitler could not have come into power without the support of the Protestant and Catholic churches and the German Christian populace.
The following quotes provides some of Hitler's expressions of his belief in religion, faith, fanaticism, Providence, and even a few of his paraphrasing of the Bible. It by no means represents the totality of Hitler's concerns. To realize the full context of these quotes, I implore the reader to study Mein Kampf.
The purpose of this text intends to dispute the claims made by Christians that Hitler "was an atheist," or "anti-religious," and to reveal the dangers of belief-systems. This text in no way attempts to give endorsement to anti-Semitism.
Quotations from Mein Kampf
Volume 1, Chapter 1, In the House of My Parents
Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Note: "Their sword will become our plow" appears to paraphrase Micah 4:3 about beating swords into ploughshares, but his tears of war more resembles Joel 3:9-10 "Beat your plowshares into swords."
I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I thank Heaven that a portion of the memories of those days still remains with me. Woods and meadows were the battlefields on which the 'conflicts' which exist everywhere in life were decided.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Only a handful of Germans in the Reich had the slightest conception of the eternal and merciless struggle for the German language, German schools, and a German way of life. Only today, when the same deplorable misery is forced on many millions of Germans from the Reich, who under foreign rule dream of their common fatherland and strive, amid their longing, at least to preserve their holy right to their mother tongue, do wider circles understand what it means to be forced to fight for one's nationality.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 2, Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna
Fate must bring retribution, unless men conciliate Fate while there is still time. How thankful I am today to the Providence which sent me to that school!
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Thus my faith grew that my beautiful dream for the future would become reality after all, even though this might require long years.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The more the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my German-Austrian people.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come across the word 'Jew,' with any frequency, partly in connection with political discussions.... For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought.
At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Note: Karl Lueger (1844-1910) belonged as a member of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Party, he became mayor of Vienna and kept his post until his death.)
The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times.
-Adolf Hitler speaking about Dr. Karl Lueger of the Christian Social Party (Mein Kampf)
How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my attitude toward the Christian Social movement!
My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 3 General Political Considerations Based on My Vienna Period
A man does not die for something which he himself does not believe in.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Just as a man's denominational orientation is the result of upbringing, and only the religious need as such slumbers in his soul, the political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the final result of an incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation of their mind and soul.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be 'discovered' by an election.
-Adolf Hitler with his twist on Mark 10:25 (Mein Kampf)
Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened of.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For by employing religious force in the service of its political considerations, the crown aroused a spirit which at that outset it had not considered possible.
-Adolf Hitler on the state of Rome (Mein Kampf)
For when a people is not willing or able to fight for its existence-- Providence in its eternal justice has decreed that people's end.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached the apogee of its glory.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
But the power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time to immemorial been the magic of power of the spoken word, and that alone.
Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The hard struggle which the Pan-Germans fought with the Catholic Church can be accounted for only by their insufficient understanding of the spiritual nature of the people.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The root of the whole evil lay, particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the directing body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our nationality.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Protestantism as such is a better defender of the interests of Germanism, in so far as this is grounded in its genesis and later tradition; it fails, however, in the moment when this defense of national interests must take place in a province which is either absent from the general line of its ideological world and traditional development, or is for some reason rejected.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the advancement of all Germans as such, as long as matters of inner purity or national deepening as well as German freedom are involved, since all these things have a firm foundation in its own being; but it combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmatically established.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Verily a man cannot serve two masters. And I consider the foundation or destruction of a religion far greater than the foundation or destruction of a state, let alone a party.
-Adolf Hitler speaking like Jesus in Matthew 6:24 (Mein Kampf)
Heaven will smile on us again.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes!
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people.
-Adolf Hitler speaking about the leader of the Christian Social movement (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 4, Munich
But the people on top made a cult of the 'ally,' as if it were the Golden Calf.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The Golden calf occurs in Exodus 32:1-4)
Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle, and only in eternal peace does it perish.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
We must, therefore, coolly and objectively adopt the standpoint that it can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to give one people fifty times as much land and soil in this world as another.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
...a man does not die for business, but for ideals.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 5, The World War
Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Indeed, nearly all attempts to exterminate a doctrine and its organizational expression, by force without spiritual foundation, are doomed to failure, and not seldom end with the exact opposite of the desired result...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 6, War Propaganda
I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian-Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Certainly we don't have to discuss these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the Lord's image.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 7, The Revolution
More than once I was tormented by the thought that if Providence had put me in the place of the incapable of criminal incompetents or scoundrels in our propaganda service, our battle with Destiny would have taken a different turn.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children.
-Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I (Mein Kampf)
...we must pray to the Almighty not to refuse His blessing to this change and not to abandon our people in the times to come.
-Hitler recalling a priest's speech after the defeat of WWI (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 8, The Beginning of My Political Activity
As soon as the theoretician attempts to take account of so-called 'utility' and 'reality' instead of absolute truth, his work will cease to be a polar star of seeking humanity and instead will become a prescription for everyday life.
-Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I (Mein Kampf)
The thinking of the one, therefore, will be determined by eternal truth, the actions of the other more by the practical reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the absolute abstract soundness of his idea...
-Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I (Mein Kampf)
The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings...
If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For the greater a man's works for the future, the less the present can comprehend them; the harder his fight, and the rarer success. If, however, once in centuries success does come to a man, perhaps in his latter days a faint beam of his coming glory may shine upon him. To be sure, these great men are only the Marathon runners of history; the laurel wreath of the present touches only the brow of the dying hero.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The metaphors of marathon runners, and the wreath (crown) of the present to achieve works for the future parallels the thought in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27: "Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that you may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.")
To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 10, Causes of the Collapse
Consequently, the value and importance of the monarchic idea cannot reside in the person of the monarch himself except if Heaven decides to lay the crown on the brow of the heroic genius like Frederick the Great or a wise character like William I.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hastily and indifferently, people tried to pass by the unpleasant truths, as though by such an attitude events could be undone. No, the fact that our big city population is growing more and more prostituted in its love life cannot just be denied out of existence; it simply is so.
...it is said with such terrible justice that the sins of the fathers are avenged down to the tenth generation. But this applies only to profanation of the blood and the race.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Avenged to the tenth generation appears in Deuteronomy 23:2-3)
Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
How truly wretched was the attitude of pre-War Germany on this one very question! What was done to check the contamination of our youth in big cities? What was done to attack the infection and mammonization of our love life? What was done to combat the resulting syphilization of our people?
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Mammonization refers to the New Testament word "mammon" [Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:9,11,13] which alludes to riches, avarice, and worldly gain personified as a false god)
The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles.
The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(See Genesis 1:27 for man created in God's image.)
Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...
Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
-Adolf Hitler sounding like the Moral Majority (Mein Kampf)
But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The works of Mortiz von Schwind, or of a Bo:cklin, were also an inner experience, but of artists graced by God and not of clowns.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
How widespread the general disunity was growing is shown by an examination of religious conditions before the War. Here, too, a unified and effective philosophical conviction had long since been lost in large sections of the nation. In this the members officially breaking away from the churches play a less important role than those who are completely indifferent.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply so their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Also noteworthy is the increasingly violent struggle against the dogmatic foundations of the various churches without which in this human world the practical existence of a religious faith is not conceivable.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and , as the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious nihilism.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services for them.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 11, Nation and Race
The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following:
(a) Lowering of the level of the higher race;
(b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness.
To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator. And as a sin this act is rewarded.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Here, of course, we encounter the objection of the modern pacifist, as truly Jewish in its effrontery as it is stupid! 'Man's role is to overcome Nature!'
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Man's dominion over earth appears in Genesis 1:26)
...the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(See Genesis Chapter 3)
...that is why the prophet seldom has any honor in his own country.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
("For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country." John 4:44)
The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The Jew has always been a people with definite racial characteristics and never a religion.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Great founder here, of course, refers to Jesus. The "whip to drive from the temple" comes from John 2:15, "And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple..." Interestingly, Hitler often carried a whip with him. There's at least one photograph with him posing with a whip in hand in Werner Maser's "Hitler's Letters and Notes.")
At times of the bitterest distress, fury against him finally breaks out, and the plundered and ruined masses begin to defend themselves against the scourge of God.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(For one example of God's fury and anger, see Isaiah 63)
This game is repeated again and again, and in it the role of the so-called 'German princes' is just as miserable as that of the Jews themselves. These lords were really God's punishment for their beloved peoples and find their parallels only in the various ministers of the present time.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
They [German princes] made a pact with the devil and landed in hell.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
If we consider how greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how he has squeezed and sucked the blood again and again; if furthermore, we consider how the people gradually learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his existence as nothing but punishment of Heaven for the other peoples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
First, therefore, he goes about making up to the people for his previous sins against them. He begins his career as the 'benefactor' of mankind. Since his new benevolence has a practical foundation, that the left hand should not know what the right hand giveth; no, whether he likes it or not, he must reconcile himself to letting as many people as possible know how deeply he feels the sufferings of the masses and all the sacrifices that he himself is making to combat them.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The left/right hand paraphrase derives from Matthew 6:3)
But even more: all at once the Jew also becomes liberal and begins to rave about the necessary progress of mankind.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The Jew almost never marries a Christian woman; it is the Christian who marries a Jewess.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this "tradition" up until the 20th century.)
With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Peoples which bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Providence did not bestow her reward on the victorious sword, but followed the law of eternal retribution.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Eternal retribution comes from Christian doctrinal thought as referring to eternal hell when one who physically dies in his sins without Christ. Christians to this day take Hell or the "Lake of Fire" (Rev. 19:20) as real and literal.)
Volume 1, Chapter 12 The First Period of Development of the Nationalist Social German Worker's Party
Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The future of a movement is conditioned by the fanaticism, yes, the intolerance, with which its adherents uphold it as the sole correct movement, and push it past other formations of a similar sort.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
...absolute intolerance also provides long growth.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Faith can remove mountains appears in 1 Corinth. 13:2)
The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The above statement refutes the common impression that Hitler admired ancient Nordic customs.)
A man who knows a thing, who is aware of a given danger, and sees the possibility of a remedy with his own eyes, has the duty and obligation, by God, not to work 'silently,' but to stand up before the whole public against the evil and for its cure.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 1, Philosophy and Party
Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic principles-- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles-- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 2, The State
We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which not only assures the preservation of its nationality, but by the development of its spiritual and ideal abilities leads it to the highest freedom.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
the task of preserving and advancing the highest humanity, given to this earth by the benevolence of the Almighty, seems a truly high mission.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
World history is made by minorities when this minority of number embodies the majority of will and determination.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
There is only one holiest human right, and this right is at the same time the holiest obligation, to wit: to see to it that the blood is preserved pure and, by preserving the best humanity, to create the possibility of a nobler development of these beings.
A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Hitler's concept of holy blood comes right out of the Bible. The Bronze-Age Bible authors thought that the spirit of life consisted of blood. (See Leviticus 17:11, 14). In the New Testament, God made of one blood all nations of men..." (See Acts 17:24-26). The Biblical Paul saw himself as "pure from the blood of all men." (Acts 20:26). Hitler here sees blood (life) preservation as a holy right to produce images of the Lord. This clearly forms a religious justification for racial purity and contradicts any notion of Darwinism.)
It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church.
Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
("Beings such as He Himself created," shows that Hitler believed in creationism.)
A sharp difference should exist between general education and specialized knowledge. As particularly today the latter threatens more and more to sink into the service of pure Mammon, general education, at least in its more ideal attitude, must be retained as a counterweight.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Mammon, a New Testament word [Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:9,11,13] refers to riches, avarice, and worldly gain personified as a false god. Hitler uses "mammon" or "mammonization" four times in Mein Kampf.)
For the greatest revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 5, Philosophy and Organization
Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure?
...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 7, The Struggle with the Red Front
I must frankly admit that... I should probably lose all interest in life and would rather not be a German at all. But since, thank the Lord, this cannot be done, we have no need to be surprised that the health, unspoiled people avoid 'bourgeois mass meetings' as the devil holy water.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
This, it may be that centuries, dissatisfied with the form of their religious life, yearn for a renewal, and that from this psychic urge dozens and more men arise who on the basis of their insight and their knowledge believe themselves as prophets of a new doctrine, or at least as warriors against an existing one.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The main fighter for the DSP [Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei or German Socialist Party], as I have said, was Julius Streicher, then a teacher in Nuremberg. At first he, too, had a holy conviction of the mission and the future of his movement.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 10, Federalism as a Mask
The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated.
For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Here again Hitler shows his belief in a creationist model of human's origin.)
In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 13, German Alliance Policy After the War
... the world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recognize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concentrated power. And if this victory is obtained through sacrifices elsewhere, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!'
-Adolf Hitler's prayer (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 14, Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy
...we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitles on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and or German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
And so he [the Jew] advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer.
Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear attitude toward Soviet Russia. You cannot drive out the Devil with Beelzebub.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(devils through Beelzebub comes from Luke 11:15-19)
Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is a man's right to have earth to till with his own hands, and the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(till the ground: see Genesis 3:23)
Volume 2, Chapter 15, The Right of Emergency Defense
Viewing all this from a higher vantage-point, we can speak of one single piece of good fortune in all this misery, which is that, though men can be befuddled, the heavens cannot be bribed.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
But in the great hour Heaven sent the German people a great man, Herr von Cuno.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
References (click on a blue highlighted book title if you want it):
Helmreich, Ernst Christian, "The German Churches Under Hitler," Wayne State University Press, 1979
Hitler, Adolf, "Mein Kampf," translated by Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971
Scholder, Klaus, "The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol 1" Fortress Press, 1977
Scholder, Klaus, "The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol 2" Fortress Press, 1977
Toland, John, "Adolf Hitler," Anchor Books Doubleday, 1976
Macfarland, Charles S., "The New Church and the New Germany," Macmillan Co.
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:18 pm
Hitler compared to God/Jesus/Christians
by Jim Walker
Originated: 20 May 1998
Additions made: 29 Nov. 2005
Indented quotes in green
Introduction
The history of Adolf Hitler reported by Christian authors usually attempt to show him as un-Christian or avoid discussions of his religion altogether. This should not surprise anyone considering that publishing in a Christianized country tends to protect itself from any stigma of wrongdoing and could very well hurt book sales, not to mention damage the reputation of its authors. Even many Jewish authors must take care not to offend the religious sensibilities of their audiences.
Unfortunately most books about Hitler, from a religious viewpoint, come as bowdlerized accounts containing flagrant inaccuracies. There occur many versions, some of which view Hitler with combinations of occultism, atheism, anti-religion, anti-Christian, etc. Some authors blend the anti-clerical views of Martin Bormann or the mystical beliefs of Rosenberg with Hitler in an attempt to rewrite history. Almost all the sources for Hitler's alleged apostasy come from Bormann's edited version of Hitler's Table Talk (for a closer examination, see "Hitler's table talk and other extraneous sources"). But Hitler was not Bormann or Rosenberg and they were not him. Hitler abscised himself from the views of Bormann and Rosenberg and demanded support for his view of "positive" Christianity as was written into the Nazi party program. If you examine the historical record with raw honesty, you will find that these counter-Christian claims about Hitler simply do not hold up.
Fortunately, I am neither a Christian, Jew, or of any religious persuasion. Neither do I have a reputation or sales to protect. Although I am certainly not the first to point out Hitler's Christianity, from my non-religious point of view, I can present a look at Hitler's belief-system without a religious bias to get in the way. If the following offends anyone, then I can, on reasoned grounds, declare that it can only come from the facts themselves and not from any feeling I may have against Christianity. In fact, although I see great dangers of beliefs, especially those of violent belief-systems such as Christianity, I have no ill feelings toward Christians themselves, anymore than I do drug addicts, even though I may abash the dangers of drugs. So from this viewpoint, I aim to expose Hitler's Christianity in the expectation to open the door somewhat to the light of examination, not only for Christians to see (if they can) but to anyone who has a concern for the mechanism of belief and the dangers it can produce.
My main aim intends to educate without resorting to ad homenims or dishonesty. Indeed, it will take certain courage and honesty for any Christian to read this without feeling offended. However, I admire anyone who attempts to read this, and hope that they will do further research, check the sources, and reserve judgment.
My information comes not from my beliefs or my interpretation of his beliefs. The information comes directly from the very words of Hitler himself, from his private notes, conversations, writings, speeches and the people who knew him. I will show that he clearly reveals his Christianity, not only from his paraphrasing of the Bible, but from his confession as a Christian, his triune god-like actions and how his faith parallels the belief of many Christians today.
I have clippped some of the Hitler quotes for brevity. For a fuller quote, go to the page on Mein Kampf quotes (click here) or to Hitler's speeches (click here).
Hitler, the Christian
Hitler not only got brought up as a Roman Catholic Christian, but he expressed his Christian views into adulthood, including his period as Chancellor of the German Third Reich. One only need read Mein Kampf to see the extent of his Biblical beliefs. The German populace knew well about Hitler's book and it became a best-seller second only to the Bible. Furthermore, Hitler expressed his Christian feelings even more intensely in his speeches and proclamations throughout his power reign.
Although some might counter that Hitler's admission to Christianity, by itself, does not make one a Christian, how else can an individual convey to another his religion except from their own confession? One of the tenants of Christian belief, indeed the definition of a Christian, comes from the Pauline epistiles in regards to faith in Jesus:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
-Galatians 2:16
To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
-Romans 3:26-28
Paul, by declaring faith in Jesus over law, effectively separated Christianity from Judaism. It came from these Pauline declarations that first defined Christianity. Belief in Jesus serves as the only requirement for membership into the Christian community. Christianity does not require adhering to Old Testament laws or membership to any Church or abstaining from evil deeds. One need only have faith in Jesus for its justification, period.
Although Hitler did not attend church regularly and later criticized the Church for their rejection of his reformation of a unified German Church, at no time did Hitler criticize God or Jesus. He always maintained an honor and belief in Jesus. This alone put him as a Christian believer. But Hitler went beyond just belief in Jesus; he devoted his entire political life to deeds aimed at creating a race of people in the pure image of God.
Some claim that Hitler lied when promoting religion, for political reasons (without citing a shred of evidence), but nothing in the historical record indicates this, nor would there appear any reason for him to do so. Even if he lied in Mein Kampf, why would he continue to consider himself a Christian after he held absolute German power? Why spend so much valuable resources to rid Germany of Jews if not from some profound justification? Hate of Jews alone cannot explain it. The hate must stem from some source and the historical record shows that anti-Judaism had long lived in the minds of Christians ever since Paul separated his community of believers from the law and people of Judaism.
Just as revealingly, not only did Hitler present his religious beliefs in his speeches, but his own private notes reveal the influence of the Bible, long before he came into power. In one of his notes, he describes the Bible as the monumental history of mankind and used the old testament race laws as the foundation for his views against the Jews, which later turned into the Nazi Nuremberg race laws [Maser, p.282]
Many Christians have attempted to destroy Hitler's claimed Christianity by pointing out that his actions did not appear Christian-like (whatever that means). Therefore, so the hypothesis goes, no "true" Christian would cause "evil" deeds. But again, the Bible does not define Christianity in terms of deeds regardless of how good or evil they seem. Yet it came through his very deeds that Hitler confessed his work for the Lord:
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hitler's work of the Lord only agrees with Biblical scripture:
And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
-Colossians 3:17
Hitler not only believed in Jesus (which alone made him a Christian) but his work against the Jews came straight from Christian theological reasoning just as had many Christian saints of the past. His Christian expressions of "Lord God," "Living Christ," and "Lord and Savior" indicates his acknowledgement of Jesus as God and his acceptance of a resurrected Christ (for what else can "Living" and "Savior" mean except from a resurrected state?). Hitler also believed in the supernatural concept of life after death. In Mein Kampf he wrote, "a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form."
Another indication of Hitler's beliefs about religion comes from his private library of numerous books. Although most of Hitler's books came as gifts from writers and publishers, those where he penciled and underlined sections reveal, not only the books that he read, but also those that he commented on and had an interest in. Timothy W. Ryback, who examined Hitler's books, found more than 130 books devoted to spirituality and religion including the teachings of Jesus Christ. Some of the titles included, Sunday Meditations; On Prayer; A Primer for Religious Questions, Large and Small; Large Truths About Mankind, the World and God; a German translation of E. Stanley Jones's 1931 best seller, The Christ of the Mount; and a 500-page work on the life and teachings of Jesus, published in 1935 under the title The Son: The Evangelical Sources and Pronouncements of Jesus of Nazareth in Their Original Form and With the Jewish Influences. Ryback also found a leather-bound tome -- with WORTE CHRISTI, or "Words of Christ," embossed in gold on the cover -- According to Ryback, it "was well worn, the silky, supple leather peeling upward in gentle curls along the edges. Human hands had obviously spent a lot of time with this book.... I scanned the book for marginalia that might suggest a close study of the text. A white-silk bookmark, preserved in its original perfection between pages 22 and 23 (only the portion exposed to the air had deteriorated), lay across a description of the Last Supper as related by Saint John. A series of pages that followed contained only a single aphorism each: 'Believe in God' (page 31), 'Have no fear, just believe' (page 52), 'If you believe, anything is possible' (page 53), and so on, all the way to page 95, which offers the solemn wisdom 'Many are called but few are chosen.'" [Ryback]
After reading Hitler's book and his speeches, one cannot help but realize that Hitler believed in fate and the guiding hand of Providence. Like many powerful religious people, he thought of himself as a sort of messiah, chosen by God. In 1943, while the war still raged on, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) commissioned the psychoanalyst, Walter Langer, to develop a "psychological profile" of Adolf Hitler. Langer looked at all the, then, available material about Hitler, including Mein Kampf, his speeches, and interviews with former Hitler associates. Langer concluded:
A survey of all the evidence forces us to conclude that Hitler believes himself destined to become an Immortal Hitler, chosen by God to be the New Deliverer of Germany and the Founder of a new social order for the world. He firmly believes this and is certain that in spite of all the trials and tribulations through which he must pass he will finally attain that goal. The one condition is that he follow the dictates of the inner voice that have guided and protected him in the past.
Langer hypothesized the most likely scenario if Hitler faced defeat where, in a "prescient moment," Hitler's belief in divine protection would compel him to fight to the bitter end, "drag[ging] a world with us -- a world in flames," and ultimately, he would take his own life. [Ryback]
Fortunately Hitler did not drag us with him in a world of flames but Langer pegged Hitler's profile.
Puzzling as it may seem, some Christians want to see a suicidal Hitler as "evidence" for his alleged apostasy because, according to Catholic doctrine, the act of suicide results in "mortal sin." But these same accusers don't seem to realize that Hitler's suicide occurred well after his preemptive war and the Jewish holocaust. Ironically by using the mortal-sin argument, they have placed Hitler into Christianity as a pre-Christian, the very Christianized Hitler that did the damage in the first place! Of course none of this matters because, according to Christian beliefs (Protestant or Catholic), regardless of how sinful one lives, sin alone cannot excuse a person from Christianity, even though it may keep you from Heaven (whatever that means).
Unfortunately, either through ignorance, subterfuge or sheer self-deceit, modern Christians will adhere to anything to escape a religious Hitler. Christians love to point out that Hitler imprisoned priests and nuns, some of them dying in concentration camps; therefore he must have had anti-Christian feelings, so the reasoning goes. But the Nazis imprisoned people of many faiths, including a few Nazis who stood in Hitler's way. But the Nazis condemned these people for their political views against the NSDAP government, never for their Christian religious beliefs.
Although Hitler may have deluded and blinded himself by belief, he appeared brutally honest in his fanaticism and beliefs. Nowhere do we find him denouncing Jesus; nothing in the record shows him expressing hatred toward Christians for their beliefs; not at anytime does he destroy Christian churches or attempt to eliminate the Christian religion. Even though Hitler had political problems with the hierarchy of the churches, he spent inordinate amount of time attempting to unite the Churches into one German Reich Church and spoke for establishing what he called real Christianity. His reach for uniting Christianity brought conflict within the denominations and created political divisions. It came from this that Hitler sometimes spoke against Christianity as a power structure, but never against Christianity as a belief system. (Note that many prominent Christians, throughout history, had spoken against their own religions, or other competing Christian religions). Although the historical record does show that, along with Jews and gypsies, a number of Christians did die in extermination camps, these death sentences resulted from their political views against Nazism, not because of their religion, faith in God, or because Hitler hated Christians. His religious reasoning for killing people aimed at Jews, not Christians and this included Jews who converted to Christianity.
If imprisoning or killing Christians constituted a condition for determining anti-Christianity, then we would have to consider virtually all governments or leaders of society who called for death sentences against Christians, as anti-Christian as well. Note that the majority of criminals in U.S. prisons, as well as those we execute, live and die as Christians. Does that make our prosecutors anti Christian? Should we consider George W. Bush anti-Christian just because his Texas agenda for the death penalty put many Christian criminals to death? Of course not, and neither can one use this reasoning as an argument against Hitler's Christianity. If, indeed, Hitler imprisoned priests or Christians for religious reasons, then where does this evidence exist? What proclamation or religious belief does Hitler cite to justify this hearsay belief?
Hitler makes his position clearly known about priests violating state concerns when he said:
So long as they concern themselves with their religious problems the State does not concern itself with them. But so soon as they attempt by any means whatsoever-- by letters, Encyclica, or otherwise-- to arrogate to themselves rights which belong to the State alone we shall force them back into their proper spiritual, pastoral activity.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered in Berlin on the May Day festival, 1937 [Baynes]
Hitler fully realized that his political enemies were making accusations against him and although he didn't have to, he explicitly makes his position known about his feelings for religion:
Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration:
1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted....
The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State... Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.
It is therefore, to put mildly-- effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich....
I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds?
3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion....
There are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State....
This State has only once intervened in the internal regulation of the Churches, that is when I myself in 1933 endeavoured to unite the weak and divided Protestant Churches of the different States into one great and powerful Evangelical Church of the Reich. That attempt failed through the opposition of the bishops of some States; it was therefore abandoned. For it is in the last resort not our task to defend or even to strengthen the Evangelical Church through violence against its own representatives....
But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy.
-Adolf Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan. 1939 [Baynes]
Hitler emphasized that he attached the greatest importance to cooperation with the Catholic church and spoke of himself as a Catholic:
I am absolutely convinced of the great power and the deep significance of the Christian religion, and consequently will not permit any other founders of religion (Religionsstifter). Therefore I have turned against Ludendoriff and separated myself from him; therefore I reject Rosenberg's book. That book is written by a Protestant. It is not a party book. It is not written by him as a member of the party. The Protestants can settle matters with him.
My desire is that no confessional conflict arise. I must act correctly to both confessions. I will not tolerate a Kulturkampf.... I stand by my word. I will protect the rights and freedom of the church and will not permit them to be touched. You need have no apprehensions concerning the freedom of the church.
-Hitler [quoted from Helmreich, p.241]
As for schools, it was a matter of utmost importance to the Catholic hierarchy, and agreed to by the Reich Concordat between the Nazis and the Vatican. Hitler went on in this chilling observation:
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith. from our point of view as representatives of the state, we need believing people. A dark cloud threatens from Poland. We have need of soldiers, believing solders. Believing solders are the most valuable ones. They give their all. Therefore we will maintain the confessional schools in order to train believing people through the schools, but this depends upon having truly believing teachers, not by chance Marxists who do not stand fully by their religious faith, as teachers.
-Hitler, [quoted from Helmreich, p.241]
Notice how Hitler spoke of the schools in the way Right Wing Christians do today in their attempt to take control of public and private schools.
Although there did occur secret anti-Church actions carried out (mostly by Bormann and Roesnburg), such as requiring the resignations of the priests from the party, but when Hitler found out about this, Hitler ruled that forced resignations and expulsions of the clergy from the party should stop. Hitler himself ordered his chief associates, Göring and Goebbels to retain their church membership as did he too remain a member until his death.
Although Hitler officially held Catholic status, his actual religious views resembled that of Protestantism. He rejected many of the political Catholic teachings and moved toward a Protestant view of Christianity. After all, Germany gave birth to Protestantism which reflected a more Aryan view compatible to Hitler's "positive" view of Christianity. Hitler had confessed to Albert Speer, "Through me the Protestant Church could become the established church, as in England." [from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich] This Protestant view, no doubt, gave fuel to the modern (and ignorant) idea that Hitler opposed Christianity. Of course Catholics had, up to that time, always opposed Protestantism as a form of True Christianity, but they never accused Hitler of Christian apostasy. Today, however, the Catholic propaganda uses Hitler's favoritism toward Protestantism as a bases to make him look anti-Christian (while never mentioning his Protestant views) when in reality Hitler opposed political Catholicism when it conflicted with the Nazi state.
If you doubt the sincerity of non-Christians to make claims about Hitler's belief in God, or from Hitler himself, then on whose authority could you possibly derive the evidence? I submit that the majority of believing German Christians believed wholeheartedly in Hitler's sincerity toward God. If one cannot take the word from fellow believers, the what does that say about Christian beliefs? Moreover, Catholic and Protestant leaders felt convinced of Hitler's belief. As an example, the Catholic Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich visited Hitler at his mountain retreat at Obersalzburg in November 1936. Faulhaber observed:
Without doubt the chancellor lives in faith in God. He recognizes Christianity as the foundation of Western culture.
-Cardinal Faulhaber [quoted from Helmreich, p.279]
And if you think that the Church hierarchy did not feel convinced of Hitler's belief in God and Christianity, then why oh why would Pope Pius XII in 1939 instruct Cardinal Bertram to send a birthday message to Hitler: "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany" which was added, "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars."? These greetings became a tradition and were sent every April 20th.
If you cannot take the word of Hitler's own words in his claim of Christianity, or contemporary Christian believers, or bishops, or cardinals or Popes, then what other Christian authority could you possibly turn to?
The rest of the following text aims to show that, not only did Hitler's actions compare with the actions of the alleged Jesus, but that his deeds appeared similar to God-like actions in the Bible. Indeed Hitler's beliefs and deeds resemble the actions of many acknowledged prominent Christians of the past and present. The comparisons to God and Jesus come from the Bible and the comparison to past Christian deeds, comes from the history of Christians themselves.
Comparing Hitler to the Biblical God
Except the Lord build the house, they labour in main that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
-Psalms 127:1
Hitler had familiarity with this verse and saw God as his aid to his German Reich when he said:
Except the Lord built the house they labour in vain.... The truth of that text was proved if one looks at the house of which the foundations were laid in 1918 and which since then has been in building.... The world will not help, the people must help itself. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it we may wage the battle of our life.... The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty-- of Him Who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us.... We are all proud that through God's powerful aid we have become once more true Germans.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in March 1933 [Baynes]
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...
-Genesis 1:26
Hitler took this Biblical belief to heart; he held justification for a superior race on the foundation of his belief that man should fit God's image:
A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Genesis Chapter 3 speaks of the expulsion from paradise and Hitler takes notice of this:
...the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
With a belief in the dilution of the races, Hitler prophesied that if no one did anything about the purification of the races, the image of God would decrease:
But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hitler's Biblical beliefs shows clearly where he got the notion for offensive action:
...the world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Of course we well know that Hitler wanted to get rid of the Jews but how many Christians realize that his main justification aimed to protect the image of the Lord?
Certainly we don't have to discuss these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the Lord's image.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.
And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
-Exodus 12:29-30
Although no archeological evidence exists for the Biblical slaughter of first-borns, Hitler actions compare with the Lord's atrocities reported in the Bible. Through eugenics, Hitler killed tens of thousands of children whom he felt did not deserve to live. Not only did first-borns get exterminated, but mid and later-borns as well.
Note that German eugenics did not originate with Hitler. Rather the idea of eugenics as a moral necessity began in the 1920s by theologians who advocated eugenics legislation. Moreover, many German Protestants felt comfortable with the racialist precepts that underlay Nazi eugenicism. This fit in with their belief of physical abnormality as an index of sin, a sign of moral and social degeneration. The Austrian born Hitler simply incorporated the idea that existed within Austrian-German Christians for years. Fully half of all victims of the Nazi's euthanasia action came from church institutions. [Steigmann-Gall]
The LORD is a man of war. . .
-Exodus 15:3
Hitler, also a man of war, caused World War II by himself.
And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.
-Deuteronomy 2:34
Hitler took cities as well as countries. Although he did not destroy all the people of every city, his actions resulted in death to many men, women and children.
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
-I Samuel 15:3
Hitler attempted to utterly destroy the Jews and all that they had and had millions of men, women, and infants executed. As for animals, Hitler had far more compassion than the Biblical God; he felt kindness for animals.
(Note: In no sense do I mean that Hitler fulfilled any prophesy, mind you, but rather that Hitler's actions remained consistent with the actions of the alleged God described in the Bible.)
Let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again.
-Psalm 140:10
Through Hitler's orders, millions of people (them) got burned in incinerators and cast into pits.
I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
-Isaiah 45:7
Hitler created peace when it suited him and created death and destruction when it fit his needs, which by Christian standards means "evil." Hitler did all these things in similar God-like actions reported in the Bible.
Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.
-Joel 3:9-10
Hitler appealed to the German populace, building up their military might, and prepared them them for war:
Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Nuremberg Race Laws
It should also enlighten one to realize that the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, signed by Hitler, and according to Julius Streicher, got based on the Old Testament laws forbidding marriages between Jews and non-Jews.
These race laws forbade marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of Germany and that Marriages between Jews and Germans became invalid. Even extramarital intercourse between Jews and German citizens, or related blood got deemed illegal. These laws began the elimination of Jews from Germany which later escalated into a holocaust.
During the trials against Nazi war criminals, Julius Streicher admitted that he influenced the racial laws and said the following:
I have written such articles again and again; and in my articles I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the Jews should serve as an example to every race, for they created the racial law for themselves-- the law of Moses, which says, 'If you come into a foreign land you shall not take unto yourself foreign women.' And that, Gentlemen, is of tremendous importance in judging the Nuremberg Laws.. These laws of the Jews were taken as a model for these laws. When after centuries, the Jewish lawgiver Ezra demonstrated that notwithstanding many Jews had married non-Jewish women, these marriages were dissolved. That was the beginning of Jewry which, because it introduced these racial laws, has survived throughout the centuries, while all other races and civilizations have perished.
-Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol. 12)
If anyone doubts the Biblical laws against marriage, one need only read: Genesis 28:1, 6; Deuteronomy 7:1-3; Leviticus 20: 2, 26; Ezra 9:1-2, 12; Nehemiah 13: 23-30.
A few of the Ezra verses that Streicher refers to, read as follows:
Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even the Cannaanites, the Hitites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.
For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass. (Ezra 9:1,:2)
And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? for we have forsaken they commandments. Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness. Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth for ever: that ye may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever. (Ezra 9:10-12)
We know that the Bible influenced Hitler's views on race laws because Hitler says so in his own private notes. In one of these notes, Hitler included his religious views of race laws under the outline of The Bible-- Monumental History of Mankind. (see the transcript by clicking here).
Given this frightening information, it should come to no surprise why Christians and even Jews, for fear of condemning their own religion, had not mentioned this embarrassing revelation in their defense against Nazism.
Comparing Hitler to the Biblical Jesus
Hitler with Whip
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
--Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 12 April 1922
Hitler not only believed he did the Lords work, but he thought of himself as a sort of saviour of Germany, and emulated Jesus of the New Testament. His friend Dietrich Eckart told of overhearing Hitler showing off to a lady by denouncing Berlin in extravagant terms: ". . . the luxury, the perversion, the iniquity, the wanton display and the Jewish materialism disgusted me so thoroughly that I was almost beside myself. I nearly imagined myself to be Jesus Christ when he came to his Father's Temple and found the money changers." Eckart described Hitler as "brandishing his whip and exclaimed that it was his mission to descend upon the capital like a Christ and scourge the corrupt." [Toland p. 143]
(See John 2:14-15 where Jesus drove out the moneychangers with a "scourge of small cords" [a whip]).
The following examples show further how Hitler compared with Jesus of the Bible.
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
-Jesus in Matthew 10:34
Who can deny that Hitler also did not send peace on earth? Through the sword of his speeches and commands, he created the most destructive war in human history to this date.
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:
-Jesus in Luke 12:51
Hitler not only divided countries on earth, but divided Jewish families, many times setting family members against each other.
If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.
-Jesus in John 18:36 [NRSV]
Of course Hitler lived in this world and, indeed, his followers fought for him against the Jews.
On the 4th of June, 1922, as Hitler entered Stadelheim prison for inciting a riot, he compared himself with Jesus when he told his followers:
Two thosand years ago the mob of Jerusalem dragged a man to execution in just this way. [Toland, p.115]
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
-Matthew 23:33
Hitler took Jesus to heart when he said:
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 [Baynes]
And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
-Jesus in Mark 13:7-8
Although Hitler did not take it to such Biblical extremes, He certainly did not appear troubled by war. He considered war a necessity (needs be) to save Germany for his future Reich.
But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
-Jesus in Luke 19:27
Anyone not conforming to political desires of Hitler would either get executed or imprisoned.
And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
-Jesus in Revelation 2:23
Hitler killed the children of other faiths (her children), especially of the Jewish religion during the 20th century holocaust.
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
-Revelation 20:6
Many of Hitler's followers thought that his "Third Reich" would last a thousand years, and in the autumn of 1941, at Wolfsschanze, Hitler said:
I am Fuhrer of a Reich that will last for a thousand years to come. No power can shake the German Reich now. Divine Providence has willed it that I carry the fulfillment of a Germanic task.
In an interview with Richard Breiting, Hitler said:
We judge by the spiritual energy which a people is capable of putting forth, which will enable it in ten years to recapture what it has lost in a thousand years of warfare. I intend to set up a thousand-year Reich and anyone who supports me in this battle is a fellow-fighter for a unique spiritual-- I would almost say divine-- creation.
Adolf Hilter, June 1931, [Calic]
For Jesus himself testified , that a prophet hath no honour in his own country.
-John 4:44
And Hitler wrote:
...that is why the prophet seldom has any honor in his own country.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what they right hand doeth.
-Jesus in Matthew 6:3
And Hitler:
First, therefore, he goes about making up to the people for his previous sins against them. He begins his career as the 'benefactor' of mankind. Since his new benevolence has a practical foundation, that the left hand should not know what the right hand giveth; no, whether he likes it or not, he must reconcile himself to letting as many people as possible know how deeply he feels the sufferings of the masses and all the sacrifices that he himself is making to combat them.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.
-Matthew 26:2
In the last days of the war, Hitler realized that the end would come. Many of his generals betrayed him and he committed suicide.
Comparing Hitler to Christians
Although many Christians may want to deny it, there simply occurs no way to honestly avoid the destructive actions by Christians throughout the history of Christianity. Not only did many prominent Christians perform or condone atrocities, but the established Christian denominations supported wars, inquisitions, and exterminations of other faiths and even heretical sects of their own religion. Adolph Hitler simply acted as one of many along a long line of Christians who used his beliefs as a foundation for his actions.
Hitler grew up in the anti-Semitic Austrian/German Catholic culture of his time. A priest baptized him. He got educated in a Catholic monastery under the schooling of Padre Bernhard Groner. On the way to the monastery, Hitler had to pass by a stone arch which had a carved monastery's coat of arms which included a swastika (which some speculate gave him the inspiration for the Nazi cross). He attended the choir. He attended religious services and festivals. An abbot became his idol and he hoped to join the Church as a priest. As a child he used to wear a kitchen apron pretending himself a priest giving sermons. In 1904 Hitler got confirmed at the Linz Cathedral. [Toland] As he grew older, other Christians influenced him, Catholic and Protestant alike. He always paid his church taxes on time. He remained a member in good standing of the Church of Rome until his death. And in 1941 Hitler said:
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
Although Hitler had a strong Catholic childhood, he slowly became more Protestant-like as he grew older. He read evangelist literature and he greatly admired Martin Luther (a Jew hater). Many of his actions fulfilled what Luther desired in his book "On the Jews and their lies" (1543). It appears clear from Hitler's own writings that his anti-Semitism came directly from the community of Christians:
I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my attitude toward the Christian Social movement! My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
And we know that were the great German reformer [Martin Luther] with us to-day he would rejoice to be freed from the necessity of his own time and, like Ulrich von Hutten, his last prayer would be not for the Churches of the separate States: it would be of Germany that he would think and of the Evangelical Church of Germany.
-Adolf Hitler, in his Proclamation at the Parteitag at Nuremberg on 5 Sept. 1934 [Baynes]
Throughout the history of Christianity, priests and religious leaders have excommunicated those who desecrated the image of the Lord. Hitler appears just like a medieval priest when he wrote:
Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Note how the following reads like many Religious Right sermons of today:
Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth... Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Many Religious Right rail against liberals and far right groups such as the KKK use Jews and liberalism as a sword for their holy cause. Notice how Hitler appears like a Christian extremist here:
But even more: all at once the Jew also becomes liberal and begins to rave about the necessary progress of mankind.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Just as many preachers today speak against the unfaithful, Hitler fought against atheism and felt convinced that people require faith:
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 [Baynes]
Most Christians rail against occultism and mystical thinking. So did Hitler:
We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. . .
-Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept. 1938 [Baynes]
Hitler even defines Christianity in his own terms, just as many Christians do today in opposing communism, atheism, degeneracy and crime in what he calls "real" Christianity:
National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity....
For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life... These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles!
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech at Koblenz, to the Germans of the Saar, 26 Aug. 1934 [Baynes]
Politically, Hitler acted from a dictatorial stance to enforce what he called "positive Christianity." The original twenty-five point party program, a Constitution of the Nazi party, included a demand for liberty "for all religious denominations in the State" and that it stood for "positive Christianity." Hitler insisted and declared the twenty-five points as unalterable [Toland p. 218] (in spite of the anti-Catholic feelings of Martin Bormann). Hitler got his way.
Hitler stressed the importance of a strong, well-organized Evangelical church which would work in close cooperation with the state. He conceived of creating one large united Protestant church to stand parallel to the Catholic Church. And to the Catholics, Hitler wanted their freedom of spiritual and educational power, as long as they did not come in conflict with the political will of the government. Thus, the Nazis and the Vatican worked for an agreement, conducted by Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII). On July 20, 1933, the Nazis and the Vatican singed the Reich Concordat, establishing the freedom and power of the Catholic Church in Germany.
If anyone has doubts as to the support of the German Churches for Hitler, one need only to examine the respects paid to him during his birthday by Church leaders throughout Germany and the Vatican. For example, Pope Pius XII initiated the celebration of Hitler every April 20, whereby Hitler received a message stating: "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars."
Hitler once celebrated Christmas in a speech which asserted his Christian feelings: "Christ," he said, "was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews." Hitler thought of himself prescribed by Providence when he said, "The work of Christ started but could not finish, I-- Adolf Hitler-- will conclude." [Toland p.222]
[Note that the Mischling regulation saved Jesus from being Jewish, who by Hitler's argument, being the son of God, had but two Jewish grandparents; neither did he practice the Jewish religion (as he saw it), nor did he marry a Jew.]
Like military leaders of the past and present, Hitler thought of God as on his side. On January 1, 1932, Hitler told a Munich audience that God was on his side in the battle for a better world. [Toland p.260]
According to Toland, "The born and bred Catholic Hitler rebuilt his SS on Jesuit principles by assiduously copying "the service statutes and spiritual exercises presented by Ignatius Loyola." [Toland p. 760]
When the Law Against Overcrowding of German Schools reduced the number of Jews in higher institutions, Hitler defended his action by reminding the priests that the Church had banished Jews into ghettos and forbidden Christians to work with them. Hitler only did more effectively what the Church of Rome had attempted to do for many centuries. [Toland p. 311] Note the Church of Rome not only condoned Hitler but blessed him as well! Pope Pius XII subscribed to the same principles as Hitler and proved by a concordat signed between the Vatican and Hitler. The Vatican felt so appreciative of the recognition as a full partner that it asked God to bless the Reich. There followed an order for German bishops to swear allegiance to the National Socialist (Nazi) regime. The oath went as follows: "In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interest of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it."
Hitler campaigned to convince the German people to back his withdrawal from the League of Nations. The Church gave enthusiastic support. Every bishop approved as well as did Cardinal Faulhaber. [Toland p. 320]
During Hitler's re-education program, deification of Hitler showed itself though a required invocation recited by the children of Cologne:
Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, bequeathed to me by the Lord,
Protect and preserve me as long as I live!
Thou hast rescued Germany from deepest distress,
I thank thee today for my daily bread.
Abide thou long with me, forsake me not,
Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, my faith and my light!
Heil, my Fuhrer! [Toland p. 404]
When Hitler survived a bomb assassination attempt, instead of feeling depressed, he felt ecstasy, repeating over and over, "Think of it. Nothing happened to me. Just think of it. . ." He thought of himself as fated by Providence. On July 20, 1944, he remarked that it "only confirmed the conviction that Almighty God has called me to lead the German people-- not to final defeat but to victory." [Toland p. 799]
His mistress and later, his wife, Eva Braun, who decided to commit suicide with Hitler came from the product of a convent and had faith in God. In many of her letters she appealed to God and prayed for Hitler. [Toland p. 236, 377]
Note, I could have given examples of Hitler's more conventionally thought of Christian actions which include sacrifice and giving to others, but the intent here aims to show that Christian theology and expression goes far beyond just the kinder and gentler kind. For example, in Hitler's Winter Help program he spoke of the spirit of Christian giving:
If positive Christianity means... the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry... then it is we ware are the more positive Christian. For in these spheres the people's community of National Socialist Germany has accomplished prodigious work.
-Adolf Hitler, speaking to an assembly of Alte Kampfer in Munich, 26 Feb. 1939, [from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]
But as we now know, Hitler expressed the worst elements of Christian expression along with the good but it goes to the worst that needs addressing.
Humanitarian acts alone cannot cannot support Christian identity
If any Christian for one moment attempts to support Christianity through example from humane actions by Christians, then I submit that the same reasoning could apply toward a support of Nazism as well.
Virtually any Christian who argues against Nazism but supports Christianity usually trots out examples of humanitarian acts by unselfish Christians who opposed Hitler and saved Jews from extermination. But, sadly, there exists only meager examples to choose from. The unfortunate truth reveals that most Catholic and Protestant institutions as well as mainstream Christians in Germany, not only supported Hitler but held antisemitic beliefs as well. In fact, of the few who opposed Nazism, the majority of them opposed it not for humanitarian or religious reasons but for political and power control reasons. In any case, I submit that it appears just as dishonest to support Christianity through its few examples of humanitarism than to support Nazism from its few examples.
For example, people well know that Oskar Schindler spent a fortune to save twelve hundred Jews from the Auschwitz gas chambers. John Rabe in the 1930s saved many Chinese from slaughter from Japanese soldiers in the rape of Nanking even though Germany aligned itself with Japan more than it did with China. Schindler held membership in the Nazi party and Rabe acted as the leader of the Nazi Party in Nanking China [Chang].
If we take the very few Christians who saved lives as examples for the support the Christian faith, then should we not also take humanitarian acts by a few Nazis as support for Nazism? Why not? In fact, there live many Neo-Nazis today who wish to bring back the ideas of Hitler's idealism. Many of them declare that the Jewish holocaust either never occurred or that the Jews concocted the math to make it appear more atrocious than it "really" happened.
Of course, appealing to transient acts of kindness by itself cannot support Christianity or Nazism. Most Christians see clearly the problems with Nazism, but unfortunately they use similar mental barriers to shield themselves from the problems of Christian belief.
Moreover, one's humanitarian or inhuman actions have little to do with the historical definition of Christianity. As stated above, Paul established Christianity by faith alone. And from the earliest 1st century priests, faith alone served as the bases for defining one's Christianity. As an example, Clement wrote, "We are justified not by our own works, but by faith."
Through the operation of His will. And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever.
-Clement (The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, Chap. XXXII)
At best, one's works can only show the parallel and consistency to one's faith, and in this, Hitler showed a pattern of actions in agreement with his faith and with the horrific works of past faithful Christians.
Violence does not exclude one from Christianity (doctrine of sin)
Christians who try to deny Hitler's Christianity tend to argue with a fallacious syllogism that goes something like:
Christians don't do bad things
Hitler did bad things,
Therefore he was not a Christian
If Hitler had never condemned the Jews, Christians today would most likely not question Hitler's Christianity. If Hitler had not started World War II, Christians would have no reason not to include him into their faith. And if Hitler had been a successful politician, Christians would loudly proclaim him as an example of a great Christian leader.
Of course virtually all Christians (and everyone else), do some bad things in their life. Although most Christians, indeed, do not adhere to violence and many do not view themsleves as political, non-violence or abstaining from political action by itself does not make one a Christian. One can also argue that most Nazis thought of themselves as peace loving and most did not kill Jews, but non-violence never excluded one from the Nazi party, nor does it supply any fuel for supporting Nazism. Similarly, neither can one defend Christianity on the grounds of non-violence, nor can one deny a person's Christianhood simply because that person did bad things.
Most soldiers never go into battle but that does not make them any less a soldier. And one must apply the same logic to leaders who opt for war, including those who create holocausts. Hitler and the Nazis may have acted uniquely in their destruction, but they acted according to their beliefs, just as the majority of believers do today.
Interestingly, most German Christians supported Hitler before and during the war. They felt empathy for him and loved him, sometimes, in messiah-like fashion. (There even exist news reels showing Hitler giving a laying-on-of-hands, Jesus-like, to his admiring German audience.) Although the German citizens may not have desired to kill their enemies themselves, they felt perfectly willing to support others to do the killing for Germany.
Even in the United States today, most Christians support a strong military and (as has been shown in the Gulf wars) will willingly condone the killing of others through "legal" war. Religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Billy Graham, et al, preach the need to defend the Christian faith through war if necessary, and will even condone the "unfortunate but sometimes necessary" deaths of innocents.
Clearly, violence, nor non-violence cannot determine a Christian from a non-Christian. Many freethinkers and atheists, for example, live peacefully, but that does not make them, in any sense, a Christian or even Christian-like.
Moreover, the Christian use of the doctrine of sin prevents any meaningful argument against ousting one's claimed Christianhood, regardless of how atrocious the crime. According to Christian interpretation, ever since Adam's fall, all humans live in a 'state of corruption.' Thus all people, including all Christians commit sin. No one in Christian theology makes the claim that Christians subsist in levels of degrees of Christianity depending on how sinless or sinful one lives. Any person, regardless of how much misery he or she has caused in the world, can achieve Christianhood along with an alleged redemption right up to the last second of his or her death. Belief alone determines one's Christianity, not how one acts. However odd it may seem, any conscious human who has the neurological makeup that maps into a belief in God & Jesus, determines his ownership into this belief system.
Clearly, the common denominator for any Christian comes from a self identification to Christianity through belief and faith, and this alone can only come from personal confession. Only from the use of religious language, spoken or written with an apparent honesty, can anyone determine the identity of its believers. Hitler stated his position in clear words with an honesty that never contradicted his actions or his faith; his personal beliefs through his own words identified himself as a Christian.
What other group?
How strange that people who believe in a non-Christian Hitler never see the elephant standing in the room. Something must have caused Hitler's antisemitism and I submit an interesting question to ask: From what other group, religion, or ideology could Hitler have inherited his antisemitism? Of course Christianity provides the only answer.
In fact the very survival of Christian theology depended on distancing itself from Judaism. The history of Christian beliefs reveals an abundant practice of Jewish hatred throughout its long history of evolution. The ill feelings toward Jews lives in the very scriptural words that all Christians depend on: the New Testament. One cannot blame atheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Communism, or any other group. Only Islam comes in at a distanced second place, but since Germany and Hitler had little relations with Islam, Islam could hardly have influenced the vicious attacks against the Jews as had Christianity in Germany. And you cannot blame Jewish hatred on social Darwinism or theories of racial discrimination because in the end, they lead right back to its Christian origins which existed long before Darwin or even modern science. Nor can one blame German antisemitism on the Nazis because Jewish hatred, again, existed long before the Nazis came into power.
Christianity stands alone as the only source from which Hitler, the Nazis and, indeed, the general population of Germany could have possibly cultivated a deep seated hatred for Jews. Both Catholicism and Protestantism contributed to the centuries of ill feelings for the Jewish people in general. Christians taught antisemitism in their schools. They taught it in their churches. They preached against the Jews in their sermons. And since Hitler and his Nazis incorporated this ugly silent tenet of Christian faith into their ideology, one cannot deny that this Christian belief lived in the very heart and minds of Hitler and the Nazis. When the Nazis acted against the Jews they acted through Christianity itself. And although the Nazis elevated the horror, it nevertheless stemmed from the very core of Christianity itself . Thus Nazi antisemitism and Christian antisemitism describe the very same thing.
Even if you continue to persuade yourself of the apostasy of Hitler, his words and ill-deeds against the Jews describe one inheritance, its most horrific legacy, which makes him, at the very least, a part of this religion, and that which screams the ownership of his criminal acts: Christianity.
Conclusion
We must not forget that Hitler's own contemporaries, the highest Protestant and Catholic leaders (including Popes and Bishops) thought of Hitler as a Christian. How can one sit here, decades fr
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:19 pm
Hitler Myths
Originated: 29 May 2005
Additions: 26 Feb. 2007
The following provides a brief explanation for some of the most common misconceptions about Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately in today's 'Faith-based' culture, rarely do people look closely at the reasons or evidence of Hitler's belief, many times confusing the beliefs of other prominent Nazis for Hitler's views.
Myth 1: Hitler was not a Christian
Myth 2: Hitler pretended his Christianity only for political purposes
Myth 3: Hitler got his ideas of Aryan superiority and Jewish hatred from Darwinian evolution
Myth 4: Hitler followed Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy
Myth 1: Hitler was not a Christian
The entire section on Hitler's Christianity provides ample evidence for his brand of Christianity. The evidence itself destroys any opinions or beliefs about Hitler's alleged apostasy.
The evidence shows that:
Hitler was born and baptized into Catholicism
His Jewish antisemitism came from his Christian background.
His early personal notes shows his interest in religion and Biblical views.
He believed that the Bible represented the history of mankind.
His Nazi party platform (their version of a constitution) included a section on Positive Christianity, and he never removed it.
He confessed his Christianity.
He tried to establish a united Reich German Church.
Hitler allowed the destruction of Jewish synagogues and temples, but not Christian churches.
He encouraged Nazis to worship in Christian churches.
He spoke of his Christian beliefs in his speeches and proclamations.
His contemporaries, friends, Protestant ministers and Catholics priests, including the Vatican, thought of Hitler as a Christian.
The Catholic Church never excommunicated Hitler. He died a Catholic.
To ignore the evidence of Hitler's Christianity demonstrates how power of belief can obscure the facts.
Myth 2: Hitler pretended his Christianity only for political purposes
This one represents one of the most persistent constructions about Hitler's Christianity. Revealingly, proponents of this myth never provide evidence for this hypothesis. If he, indeed, pretended himself as a Christian, then on what evidential material does it stand on? If Hitler acted as a pretend Christian, then were does he disown his belief in Christ? Does he write in his private notes that he used religion only for political purposes? Did any of his close associates or friends think so? Where?
Of course Hitler did try to use political force to control Christianity and he tried to establish a unified Reich Christian Church, but this only supports his stand on his view of "positive Christianity" as described in the Nazi party platform (their version of a constitution). And yes, he criticized the Catholic and Protestant hierarchy, but so what? So do Popes and Protestant leaders. Martin Luther himself strongly condemned the Catholic religion and thought of it as the work of the Devil.
I suspect that those who propagate this myth rely on mainly one source: the dubious reliability of Hitler's table talk (a second-hand source that allegedly records the words of Hitler). The table-talk got edited by the anti-Catholic Martin Bormann (Hitler's secretary) and describes political views against the hierarchy of orthodox Christianity (just as Bormann would have liked) but even here, Hitler never speaks against Jesus Christ, but rather in favor of him. (See Hitler's table talk and other extraneous sources).
What obliterates this theory comes from the fact that Hitler continued to express his "positive" Christian views, well after his rise to power. If, indeed, he needed Christianity only for political purposes, then why-oh-why does he continue with the charade after he has established himself as absolute dictator?
But just for the sake of argument, lets pretend that Hitler really did pretend his Christianity; that his sole aim went to politically winning over German Christians so that he could gain their confidence. How in the world does that improve your argument in protecting Christianity from Hitler? If that proved the case, then who should get the blame, Hitler or the gullible Christian German citizens who believed him? And what does that say for the integrity of Christianity if the most Christianized country in the world could not distinguish a member of their own belief system? Think about it. If the most pious Christians and clergymen could not tell if Hitler practiced false or "real" Christianity, then how in the world could anyone tell? I submit that the only way to tell comes from the very words from those who make the claim. Indeed, this constitutes the very flaw of any religion because there never has existed a testable way to determine the truthfulness of a belief in the supernatural. And if you cannot tell by the words of your fellow Christians, then anyone with minimal acting talent can deceive anyone, including monks, bishops, or popes. In fact, monks, bishops and popes themselves, could fall prey to falsehood. I submit to you that a false Christian and a real Christian makes absolutely no difference. Why? Because if I have it right (and I think I do) then Christianity never represented reality, thus an honest believing Christian and a dishonest believing Christian fall on equal turf: they both have it wrong, and they both practice falsehoods!
The only evidence we have, or could ever have, about people who call themselves Christian comes from the very confession of those making the claim. And since Hitler makes his claim to Christianity abundantly and clearly, we can only rely on his claim, regardless of whether he actually believed in Christ or not. False Christianity has as just much validity as any claim to Christianity, even if you could prove dishonesty.
But regardless of how you view a person's claim to their religion, to say Hitler used Christianity only for political forces has absolutely no historical basis to back it up. To simply rely on belief or opinion says absolutely nothing about historical fact.
Myth 3: Hitler got his ideas of Aryan superiority and Jewish hatred from Darwinian evolution
Hitler showed no knowledge of Darwinian evolution or natural selection. Nowhere in Mein Kampf does he mention Darwin, natural-selection or even the word "evolution" (in the context of natural selection).
As for Aryan superiority and his Jewish hatred, Hitler clearly describes in Mein Kampf how he slowly began to change his mind about the Jews from the influence of the anti-Semitic movement of the Christian Social Party. His views with regard to anti-Semitism he said, "succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all." (read volume 1, chapter 2). Nowhere does he explain his anti-Jewish beliefs in Darwinian terms.
In his private notes, where he describes the Bible as a "Monumental History of Mankind," Hitler outlines his views of the Aryan and the Jew, all in the context of Bible reasoning, never in the context of Darwinian natural selection.
Moreover, Hitler viewed progeny, not in regards to evolution but in terms of blood lines (a Biblical view). He peppered his writings and speeches with "blood" words. Examples in Mein Kampf include:
"One blood demands one Reich."
"Bavarian by blood, technically Austrian, lived my parents..."
...the German in Austria had really been of the best blood..."
"...the weakness of leadership will not cause a hibernation of the state, but an awakening of all the individual instincts which are present in the blood..."
Clearly, Hitler had no scientific sophistication or an understanding of Darwin's theory of evolution and his "blood-line" explanation of human "progress" reveals a Biblical view, not a Darwinian view. He did, however, at times express ideas, not from Darwin, but rather from Herbert Spencer's concept of Social Darwinism, which has little to do with natural selection and served as an adjunct to his already established religious views. Spencer's Social Darwinism tried to connect Darwin's biological theory with the field of social relations. The result of Social Darwinism resulted in many eugenics programs that began in America and adopted by the Nazis. [Note that Darwin never expressed the idea that natural selection could extend from biological systems to social systems.]
Hitler best sums up his belief of Aryan superiority and his stand against the Jews with his declaration in Mein Kampf:
"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.."
Myth 4: Hitler followed Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy
If Hitler followed Nietzschian philosophy or even admired his work, then where does he describe him or his philosophy?
Nowhere in Mein Kampf does Hitler even mention Nietzsche, or Nietzchian terms such as superman (uberman), or super race. Of course Hitler did think the Aryan's represented a superior race to the Jews, but never in Nietzchian terms.
Note that Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau invented the theory of the superior Aryan race in the 1800s in his book, An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. Gobineau believed that racial mixture would bring about the decline of "superior" peoples. Gobineau influenced Richard Wagner (beloved by Hitler), and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (whom Hitler read and met), both of who influenced early National Socialism (and both mentioned in Mein Kampf). Popular in Germany in the 1900s, many Germans accepted Gobineau's ideas and, no doubt, influenced Hitler either directly or indirectly. Moreover, Hitler's "superior" race ideas sound like a combination of Biblical race laws and Gobineau's Aryan race ideas, but not at all like Nietzsche.
Nor does it make sense that the Christian Hitler would admire an atheistic Nietzsche. Hitler loathed atheism. In his writings and speeches, he admonished atheists. For example:
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith.
We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement,
and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
Perhaps the most notorious misrepresentation of connecting Hitler and Nietzsche came from a photo-op of Hitler visiting the Nietzsche archive. Many have incorrectly believed that Hitler visited the archive on his own volition. Not so. The photo-op idea came from Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster, a wealthy Nazi supporter, who established the Nietzsche Archive in 1933, It was she who invited Hitler (after much persuasion) to visit the archive for publicity purposes. Hitler visited the archive exactly once and only for political purposes to appease Nietzsche's anti-Semite sister. The event appeared in the German newspapers and William Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) briefly mentioned the event as if Hitler often visited the archive because he admired Nietzsche. Shirer probably got his information from the German news article rather than from the facts of the event. (Note, scholars have criticized Shirer for his lack of scholarship and poor source material.) Elisabeth Förster also misrepresented Nietzsche by making her brother look like an anti-Semite and a proto-Nazi (Nietzsche's philosophy had little resemblance to the National Socialist German Workers' Party). Unfortunately many Germans fell for the Nietzsche-Nazi connection including many members of the Thule society.
The pre-Nazi Thule society began in the early 1900s. Rudolf von Serbottendorff became the driving force of this order which practiced occultism and an admiration of Nietzsche. Many members of the Thule society later became Nazis and did influence Nazi literature. However, Hitler never showed any interest in the Thule cult or in its pagan practices.
Anyone who uses such material to justify a Hitler-Nietzsche link simply lacks historical depth (laziness of research) and has no understanding of Hitler.
Let's face it; Hitler showed no philosophical sophistication. If any philosopher had an influence on him, it probably came from Schopenhuer (which he does briefly mention in Mein Kampf). Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer, recalled that Hitler carried a copy of Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation with him throughout World War I, but Hitler never revealed any appreciation of Friedrich Nietzsche or his philosophy.
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:19 pm
Christianity in Europe during WWII
by Jim Walker
originated: 01 June 2000
additions made: 22 Dec. 2005
Introduction
The Catholic Church during WWII
The Reich Concordat between Hitler and the Vatican
Catholic Croatia's Atrocities
The Protestant Churches in Germany
The Confessing Church
Remaining secrets
Bibliography
Introduction
The propaganda by the Christian churches in regard to their role during WWII in Fascist Italy, Yugoslavia, and Nazi Germany has so conditioned their believers that most of them believe that Christianity played an honorable role at best, and only a silent role at worst. Yet there seems little recognition that the very framework of the beliefs owned by the Fascists and Nazis came from their Christian upbringing from church, school, and Christian traditions. The entire anti-Jewish and racial sentiments came not from some new philosophy or unique ideology, but rather from centuries of Christian preaching against the Jews, gypsies, and heretics. This comes especially true for European countries, for the Christian practice of crusades, inquisitions and holy wars occurred in their own backyards. Moreover, the wars conducted by Providence, approved by God, appears so often in the Bible, and practiced by Christians throughout the centuries has disciplined Christians to believe that they could engage in offensive war honorably and even worse-- morally. One must remember that the Catholic raised and Protestant conditioned Hitler took his cause of war for an expanded Germany and his fight against the Jews, for Providence's sake, and a fight for the Lord. He appealed to his fellow German Christians to put him in power and he achieved popular support. I find it unimaginable that Hitler, without this religious foundation, could have churches, politicians and citizens electing him into office, much less have acted against the Jews.
The intolerance against humans and religious wars committed before WWII comes from such abundant sources of Christian history that to deny an influential connection can only come from immeasurable ignorance. Moreover the justification for atrocious acts committed by Christians and priests during WWII could only have come from their own beliefs and faiths.
I do not think I understate the claim that the conditions required for a Nazi or Fascist state cannot occur without a deep religious or superstitious underpinning. I charge that the major accountability for World War II and the Jewish holocaust must go to the ones who created the conditions for it to occur. And the people who created the conditions come in the form of the Christian churches-- the body of believing people who acted according to their Christian beliefs and who taught their children, preached to their congregations, and influenced their society's political leaders.
I aim to provide the reader with a flavor of the forgotten or denied role of Christians during WWII. Nothing here comes from a unique or original understanding. Rather, I have taken parts of what comes almost directly from established and well researched historical works on the Catholic and Protestant involvement in Europe.
The Catholic Church during WWII
Jewish persecutions: banning Jews from working for public office, the enforcement of wearing yellow badges, the Jewish ghettos, burning of synagogues, and the extermination of Jews remind us of the atrocities committed by Nazis in WWII. However the atrocities above do not pertain to Nazi actions but rather the practices of Catholicism, centuries before Hitler came into power.
The seeds of Christian hatred for Jews begins from the readings of the New Testament and the persecutions began when the Church first held power to enforce its dogmas. The Biblical Paul, for example, put the blame of Jesus's death entirely on the Jews. In the first epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians (2:14-15), it says, "the Jews who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets...." Also the gospel of John, makes it clear that the Jews represent an enemy (and John 8:44 puts the devil as the father of the Jews). Many prominent priests used Paul's epistles and the gospels as Biblical justification for Jewish persecution.
Historical Christianity makes it clear that the Jews formed an essential part of early Christian theology. Examples include the letter of Barnabas (circa 130), Justin the Martyr's "Dialogue with the Jew Trypho" (circa 160), Tertullian's treatise against the Jews (circa 200), Orgin's work against Celsus (circa 250). The sermons by John Chrysostom in 387, especially, show an indigence against the Jews. Origen had written, "The blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world." John Chrysostom wrote, "The Synagogue is a brothel, a hiding place for unclean beasts.... Never has any prayed to God.... They are possessed by demons." [Cornwell, pp. 24-25]
When Christianity became officially accepted for the state in the 4th century, the Christians began to act against the Jews. Constantine imposed heavy penalties on anyone who visited a pagan temple or converted to Judaism. Mixed marriages between Jews and Christians were punished by death. In the Codex Theodosianus of Theodosis II (408-450), it forbade Jews to hold any public office. It first came from Justinian who legalized the burning and pillaging of Jewish synagogues by Christian bishops and monks (often canonized later). Thomas Aquinas, in the treatise De regimine Judaeorum ad Ducissam Brabantae, made it acceptable for popes and kings to dispose of property belonging to the Jews.
Compelling Jews to wear yellow badges came from an invention of the Catholic Church. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 set up the Inquisition along with enforcement of Jews wearing a yellow spot on their clothes and a horned cap (pileum cornutum) to mark them as the murderers of Christ and to remind them of their descent from the devil. During the Black Death plague which ravaged Europe in the 14th century, the Catholic clergy aimed its blame at the Jews claiming they worked for the Devil and had poisoned the wells and springs. Their extermination compares with the pogroms that took place in the 20th century under Hitler. During the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church directed its actions against the baptized Jews, the marranos. They forbade them to hold any office in the Church or the state; many suffered torture or death.
Popes have traditionally supported anti-Jewish acts and beliefs. Pope Paul IV in the sixteenth century established the Roman ghetto (another Catholic invention). For more than two centuries afterward, Catholics humiliated the Roman Jews and degraded them at the annual carnival. In the same century, Pope Gregory XIII instituted enforced Christian sermons insulting Judaism. [Cornwell, p. 299]. In a Papal custom Popes performed an anti-Jewish ceremony on their way to the basilica of St. John Lateran. Here the Pontiff would receive a copy of the Pentateuch from the hand of Rome's rabbi. The Pope then returned the text upside down with twenty pieces of gold, proclaiming that, while he respected the Law of Moses, he disapproved of the hard hearts of the Jewish race. [Cornwell, p. 27]
Forcing Jews, and heretics into the Catholic faith, of course has always served as a hallmark of Catholicism. When they could not legally use strong-arm tactics they used propaganda. Although most people associate the term with Hitler, propaganda actually came as an invention by the Catholics long before the Nazis, from the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, an organization established by Pope Gregory XV in 1622.
In the 1930s, as the Catholic leaders listened to Hitler's rhetoric against the Jews during his appeal for power, his speeches condemning Jews only correlated with the Church's own long history of Jewish hatred. Indeed, in Hitler's meeting with Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann on April 26, 1933, Hilter reminded his Catholic guests that the Church, for 1,500 years had regarded the Jews as parasites, had banished them into ghettos, and had forbidden Christians to work for them. Hitler said he merely intended to do more effectively what the Church had attempted to accomplish for so long. [Lewy]
It should come to no surprise that at no time before or during Hitler's rise did the Catholic Church speak up against such talk. Sadly the Church remained mostly silent, with its main objections concerned with its own power structure in Germany. Thus it aimed to prevent loss of control and, indeed, to gain Church control through an expansion of papal power, control of appointment of bishops, and the control of Catholic schools. This self-serving interest gave the Vatican an impetus to form an agreement with Germany. In this sense, Hitler actually saved Catholicism in Germany, especially considering that Bismark before him had begun a Kulturkampf ("culture struggle"), a policy of persecution against Catholicism. [Cornwell, p.14]
The Reich Concordat between Hitler and the Vatican:
In 1917, Eugenio Pacelli, later to become Pope Pius XII, resided in a nunciature in Munich, directly opposite to what was later to become the Brown House, the cradle of Nazism. There he showed his first inkling of his unsympathetic feelings toward the Jews when he refused to come to the assistance of Jews and calling them a "Jewish cult." [Cornwell, p.70]. In a typewritten letter, he described "a gang of young women, of dubious appearance, Jews as like all the rest of them, hanging around in the offices with lecherous demeanor and suggestive smiles." [Cornwell, p.75] In the 1920s Pacelli presented his credentials to the Weimer government where he stated, "For my part, I will devote my entire strength to cultivating and strengthening the relations between the Holy See and Germany." Pacelli's stay in Germany with his familiarity with their political, religious, and racist views must have influenced his later work to unify Catholicism with Germany.
In Italy, the Holy See signed a pact (drafted by Pacelli's brother and Pietro Gasparri) with Mussolini in February 1929, known as the Lateran Treaty. Hitler had taken note of the Lateran Treaty and hoped for an identical agreement for his future regime. [Cornwell, pp.114-115] The Vatican encouraged priests to support the Fascists and the Pope spoke of Mussolini as "a man sent by Providence." The Church has a history of pacts with criminal states as the Holy See signed treaties with monarchs and governments regardless of slavery, inhumanity, or torture they may have induced upon fellow human beings. Even Mussolini's attack on Ethiopia on October 3, 1935 was not condemned by the Holy See. Nor did Pius XI restrain the Italian hierarchy from war enthusiasm. "O Duce!, declared the bishop of Terracina, "today Italy is Fascist and the hearts of all Italians beat together with yours." [Cornwell, p.175]
In the 1930s, Pacelli and his associates negotiated with the Nazis to form a contract which got signed in 1933 as the Reich Concordat with the approval of the Pope. Note that the Catholic hierarchy believes in the infallibility of Popes in matters of faith and morals (ever since the First Vatican Council of 1870). This Concordat with its Papal infallible authority had arguably neutralized the potential of 23 million Catholics to protest and resist and which helped Hitler into legal dictatorship. [Cornwell, p. 4] After the agreement, Hitler, mimicking Pacelli fourteen years earlier stated, "I will devote my entire strength to cultivating and strengthening the relations between the Holy See and Germany." [Cornwell, p. 136] (Hitler, spent more time and effort on the concordat with Pacelli than on any other treaty in the entire era of the Third Reich [Cornwell, p. 150]). This Concordat gave Germany an opportunity to create an area of trust with the Church and gave significance to the developing struggle against international Jewry. According to John Cornwell, this papal endorsement of Nazism helped seal the fate of Europe which makes it plausible that these Catholic prejudices bolstered aspects of Nazi anti-Semitism. [Cornwell, p. 28]
The Concordat and the following Jewish persecutions resulted in the silence of the Pope and the bishops. Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich, referring to the Nazi attacks on the Jews, wrote to Pacelli, confirming that protest proved pointless since it could only extend the struggle to Catholics. He told Pacelli, "Jews can help themselves." [Cornwell, p. 140] Most bishops and Cardinals were Nazi sympathizers as were bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabruck and Archbishop Grober of Freiburg (Pacelli's choice for emissaries).
On April 25, thousands of Catholic priests across Germany became part of an anti-Semitic attestation bureaucracy, supplying details of blood purity through marriage and baptism registries in accordance with the Nazi Nuremberg laws which distinguished Jews from non-Jews. Catholic clerical compliance in the process would continue throughout the period of the Nazi regime. [Cornwell, pp.154] Any claimed saving of all-too-few Jewish lives by a few brave Catholics must stand against the millions who died in the death camps as an indirect result of the official workings of the Catholic body.
After Kristallnacht (where Nazis broke Jewish store windows and had synagogues burned) there issued not a single word of condemnation from the Vatican, the German Church hierarchy, or from Pacelli. Yet in an encyclical on anti-Semitism, titled Humani generis unitas (The Unity of the Human Race) by Pope Pius XI, a section claims that the Jews were responsible for their own fate. God had chosen them to make way for Christ's redemption but they denied him and killed him. And now, "Blinded by their dream of worldly gain and material success," they had deserved the "worldly and spiritual ruin" that they had brought down upon themselves. [Cornwell, p. 191] Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, archbishop of Vienna warmly received Hitler in Vienna after his triumphal march through the capital where he expressed public satisfaction with Hitler's regime. [Cornwell, p. 201] Meanwhile, Cardinal Bertram sent Hitler an effusive telegram, published on October 2 in the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter, "The great deed of safeguarding peace among the nations moves the German episcopate acting in the name of the Catholics of all the German dioceses, respectfully to extend congratulations and thanks and to order a festive ringing of bells on Sunday." [Cornwell, p. 202]
After the death of Pius XI, the electoral procedure to elect another pope had begun. The March 1939 election favored Pacelli and four days later, Pacelli made it clear that he would handle all German affairs personally. He proposed the following affirmation of Hitler:
To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and Chancellor of the German Reich! Here at the beginning of Our Pontificate We wish to assure you that We remain devoted to the spiritual welfare of the German people entrusted to your leadership.... During the many years we spent in Germany, We did all in Our power to establish harmonious relations between Church and State. Now that the responsibilities of Our pastoral function have increased Our opportunities, how much more ardently do We pray to reach that goal. May the prosperity of the German people and their progress in every domain come, with God's help, to fruition!
Pacelli became a crowned Pope on March 12, 1939 (Pius XII). The following month on April 20, 1939, at Pacelli's express wish, Archbishop Orsenigo, the nuncio in Berlin, opened a gala reception for Hitler's fiftieth birthday. The birthday greetings thus initiated by Pacelli immediately became a tradition; each April 20 during the few years left to Hitler and his Reich, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin would send "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany," to which he added "fervent prayers which the Catholics in Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." [Cornwell, p. 209] By this time Pacelli could call on the loyalty and devotion of a half-billion people, of which half the populations of Hitler's new Reich had become Catholics, including a quarter of the SS. At this time bishops, clergy, religious, and faithful had bound themselves to the Pope, and by his own self estimation, served as the supreme arbiter of moral values on earth. [Cornwell, p. 215]
Throughout the war, not only did Catholic priests pay homage to Hitler and contribute to the anti-Semitic feelings, several priests also protected Nazis from criminal charges. For example, Nazi sympathizers such as Bishop Alois Hudal helped Nazi criminals escape to South America by assisting them with false papers and hiding places in Rome. Father Dragonovic worked with the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) to organize the escape of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to South America. Barbie had also lived under Dragonovic's protection in San Girolamo for about a year.
Catholic Croatia's Atrocities:
In 1941 Croat Fascists declared an independent Croatia. Italy and Hungary (also a fascist state) joined forces with Hitler for a share of Yugoslavia. Hitler had issued his plan for a partitioned Yugoslavia, granting "Aryan" status to an independent Croatia under the Catholic Ante Pavelic. This resulted in a campaign of terror and extermination conducted by the Ustashe of Croatia against two million Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Communists between 1941 and 1945 (Note that the Croats were Roman Catholics, the Serbs were Orthodox Christians). According to Cornwell, "Pavelic's onslaught against the Orthodox Serbs remains one of the most appalling civilian massacres known to history."
From the outset, Pope Pius XII and the Vatican knew of the racist and anti-Semitic statements made by the Croats even as the Pope met with Pavelic and bestowed his papal blessing. Not only did the Croatian Catholic clergy know the details of the massacre of the Serbs and the virtual elimination of the Jews and Gypsies but many of the priests took a leading role! Monks and priests worked as executioners in hastily set up concentration camps where they massacred Serbs. These killings had gotten so brutal that even the Nazis protested against them. By the most reliable reckoning, the Catholic fascists massacred 487,000 Orthodox Serbs and 27,000 Gypsies between 1941 and 1945 in the independent State of Croatia. In addition, approximately 30,000 of the 45,000 Jews died in the slaughter.
At no time did the Vatican make an attempt to halt the forced conversions, appropriation of Orthodox property, or the mass killings. Croat priests had not only sympathized with the fascist massacres but took part in them. According to Cornwell, "Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal. A father Bozidar Bralow, known for the machine gun that was his constant companion, was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most." Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe bands. In September of 1941, an Italian reporter wrote of a Franciscan he had witnessed south of Banja Luka urging on a band of Ustashe with his crucifix." In the Foreign Ministry archive in Rome there sits a photographic record of atrocities: of women with breasts cut off, gouged eyes, genitals mutilated; and the instruments of butchery: knives, axes, meat hooks. [Cornwell, pp. 253-254] Not only priests, but nuns also sympathized to the movement. Nuns marched in military parades behind soldiers with their arms raised in the fascist salute.
From the very beginning the Catholic clergy worked in collaboration with the Ustashe. Archbishop Stepinac got appointed spiritual leader of the Ustashe by the Vatican in 1942. Stepinac, with ten of his clergy held a place in the Ustashe parliament. Priests served as police chiefs and officers of in the personal bodyguards of Pavelic. There occurred frequent BBC broadcasts on Croatia of which a February 16, 1942 typical report stated: "The worst atrocities are being committed in the environs of the archbishop of Zagreb [Stepinac]. The blood of brother is flowing in streams. The Orthodox are being forcibly converted to Catholicism and we do not hear the archbishop's voice preaching revolt. Instead it is reported that he is taking part in Nazi and Fascist parades." [Cornwell, p.256] The French cardinal Eugene Tisserant, a Slavonic expert, told a Croat representative on March 6, 1942, "that it is the Franciscans themselves, as for example Father Simic of Knin, who have taken part in attacks against the Orthodox populations so as to destroy the Orthodox Church in banja Luka...." [Cornwell, p. 259]
Even though petitions against the Catholics and their massacres got sent to Pius XII, not once did Pacelli, the "infallible" Pope, ever show anything but benevolence toward the leaders of the Pavelic regime. His silence on the matter matched his silence about his knowledge of Auschwitz.
To this day, there occurs ethnic cleansing, outbreaks of war and intense bitter feelings between Croats and Serbs. The religious organizations in the area must bear the major responsibility for these intolerances, atrocities and wars.
Yes there occurred some brave protests by priests and nuns against Nazism and their Jewish attacks but they came few and far between. For example, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (a Jewish convert also known as Edith Stein) wrote a letter to Pius XI begging him to "deplore the hatred, persecution, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews, at any time and from any source." Her letter drew no response. Faulhaber defended converted Jews, but not all Jews. Catholics point to the canonized friar, Maximilian Kolbe, who voluntarily took the place of another person in a concentration camp, but conceal the point that he took the place of a gentile, not a Jew; nor do we hear that he had served as editor of an antisemitic Catholic journal. We also have bishops such as Jozsef Midszenty of Hungary who openly condemned the Nazis after they invaded his country.
We should, of course, always applaud individuals against oppression, but the few protests cannot, by any standard, serve to absolve Christianity, much less honor it.
The deploring fact remains: the major body of the Catholic Church in Germany, that being popes, priests, nuns, and Catholic lay-people supported Hitler and anti-Semitism. Catholicism had links to government organizations, right-wing nationalism, including Fascism and Nazism. Moreover, most every right-wing dictator of the period had been brought up a Catholic: Hitler, Horthy, Franco, Petain, Mussoline, Pavelic, and Tiso (who has served as a Catholic priest). Catholic bishops and cardinals throughout the war expressed anti-Semitic views even as the actions against the visibly persecuted Jews increased. In 1936, for example, Cardial Hlond, primate of Poland, opined: "There will be the Jewish problem as long as the Jews remain." Cardinal Maglione, even though he recognized the hellishness of Hitler, justified himself with the private view that "Hitler and all his diabolic works may be the process of the casting out of the devil in the subconscious of the German race." [Cornwell, p. 282] Slovak bishops issued a pastoral letter that repeated the traditional accusations that the "Jews were deicides," and evidence exists that anti-Judaism occurred in the heart of the Vatican. [Cornwell, p. 280] Pope Pius XII, his campaign of silence and subterfuge, his fanatical urge to complete a Concordat and to assist Hitler into legal dictatorship, shows his complicity with the Nazi Government. And at no time did the bishop of Rome make a single liturgical act for the deported Jews of Rome. Even after the lost war for Germany and upon hearing of the death of Adolf Hitler, Adolf Bertram, the cardinal archbishop of Berlin ordered all the parish priests of his archdiocese "to hold a solemn Requiem in memory of the Fuhrer and all those embers of the Wehrmacht who have fallen in the struggle for our German Fatherland, along with the sincerest prayers for Volk and Fatherland and for the future of the Catholic Church in Germany." [Cornwell, p. 317]
The followers of the Catholic Church, the common German Catholic citizens also had ingrained into them a loyalty to the Church and to Germany. Most of them held anti-Semitic views. Many of the police battalions that formed execution squads came from religious men. According to Goldhagen, "some of the men who went to church, prayed to God, contemplated the eternal questions and recited prayers which reminded them of their obligations to other humans; the Catholics among them took communion and went to confession. And when they went at night to their wives and girlfriends, how many of the killers discussed their genocidal activities?" [Goldhagen, pp.267-268].
The Protestant Churches in Germany
Protestantism constituted the major religion in Germany during the early 1930s. Until Hitler attempted to establish a German Reich Church, there existed no such thing as an official German Protestant Church. The Nazi party made a call for all German Protestants to unite in the hour of national need [Holt, p.168-9]. The Christian Evangelical Church would receive the dignity due it within a National Socialist State (Nazism) based on positive Christianity ("Positive Christianity" was stated in point twenty-four of the Nazi Programme, their version of a constitution), and whom Martin Luther served as their spiritual patron.
Most German Protestants followed Luther (who they knew hated Jews) and believed in the sanctity of the secular authority and the supremacy of the authority over all religious organizations. To Luther, the head of the temporal state should also be head of "the church visible." [McGovern, p.650] On May 14, 1933, Ludwig Muller, a prominent member in the ranks of the German Christian Movement became the principle Bishop of the Evangelical German Reich Church.
Of course the thought of a state controlled national church could mean loss of control by the pastors of the Church. Naturally many pastors became concerned; some protested quietly to themselves and others, openly, by forming the Confessing Church. Nevertheless, most pastors allied themselves with the Nazi party and their anti-Semitic views got published in the Protestant press even before Hitler's election into power. The Protestant press influenced millions of its readers with the most prominent being the Sonntagsblatter, and the weekly Sunday newspapers. These weekly papers dwelled on religious piety and preached how they thought of Jews as "the natural enemies of the Christian-national tradition." [Goldhagen, 1996] As far as anyone knows, there had never occurred any visible or vocal church protest against the anti-Semitism of the Nazi party before it came into power. Considering that the majority of Germans at that time held anti-Semitic feelings (no doubt due mainly to religious preachings and propaganda), this should not surprise anyone. As many have pointed out, the religious rhetoric influenced Hitler during his youth.
Other pastors openly welcomed the Nazi's believing that the reintroduction of government by Christian authorities, affirmed St. Paul that "the power that be are ordained by God." (Romans 13:1). Under the continuing influence of the Lutheran Court Preacher Adolf Stocker, they believed that the future of German Lutheranism lay in obliterating the Jewish background of Christianity, and creating a national religion based on the traditions of German Christianity. They repeatedly stressed Luther's anti-Semitic statements.
One of the "moral" pastors of the nation, Bishop Otto Dibelius, declared in a letter after April 1933, that he has been "always an antisemite." Dibelius had expressed that he wanted the Jews to die out peaceably, bloodlessly (what a guy!) Wolfgang Gerlach, a German Evangelical pastor and historian of the Christian churches during the Nazi period, observed Bishop Dibelius' anti-Semitic sentiments as "well nigh representative of German Christendom in the beginning of 1933. [Goldhagen, pp.108-9].
Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther's anti-Semitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht (the first openly public attacks against the Jews by the Nazis). He applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany... of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." [Goldhagen p.111] He also edited a brochure for his ministers at the end of November 1938 titled, "Martin Luther and the Jews: do Away with Them!" He quoted extensively from Luther's book "On the Jews and their lies." [Wollenberg, p.73]
After the Nazi party took over, they began to exclude Jews from jobs and schools and later to exclude baptized racial Jews from the Land churches and to force them to live completely by themselves. Notably, the churches deeply involved themselves in furnishing data about racial origins from the very beginning of the Nazi era. Even Bishop Wurm saw no harm in this, and in 1934 informed his clergy: "The use of the 'hereditary passports' (Ahnenpasse) can also be recommended from the standpoint of the church." [Helmreich, p. 328]
On September 1, 1941, a national law made it compulsory for all Jews to display the Star of David when they appeared in public. The ordinance presented a problem to the churches because they did not know that many of the Christians in their congregations had Jewish origins.
How did the Protestant churches respond to this oppression of their fellow Christians? On December 17, 1941, Protestant Evangelical Church leaders of Mecklenburg, Thuringia, Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, and Lubeck collectively issued an official proclamation:
From the crucifixion of Christ to the present day, the Jews have fought Christianity or misused and falsified it in order to reach their own selfish goals. By Christian baptism nothing is altered in regard to a Jew's racial separateness, his national being, and his biological nature. A German Evangelical church has to care for and further the religious life of German fellow countrymen; racial Jewish Christians have no place or rights in it. [Helmreich, p. 329]
One must also remember that most of the German citizens held beliefs as Protestant Christians. Many of the German police battalions who executed Jews with anti-Jewish zeal got recruited straight from the German populace, citizens that grew up in traditional Christian homes. For example, the men of one Police Battalion came predominantly from Hamburg and the surrounding region, an overwhelmingly Evangelical Protestant area. And even those battalion members who renounced the Church, declared themselves "gottglaubig," a Nazi term for having a proper religious attitude without being a member of a traditional church [Goldhagen, p. 209].
In the end neither the official Protestant or Catholic churches tried to stem the tide of anti-Semitic measure taken by the Nazis, The Kirchliches Jahrbuch summarized it after the war:
The anti-Semitism of the NSDAP found the Evagelical church unprepared. Indeed, at least the Confessing church resisted the Aryan paragraph in the church and the separation of Jewish Christians out of the Evangelical church of Germany, but against anti-Semitism they uttered no word, and even at the time of the Jewish persecutions and of their extermination it could not bring itself to stand against the measures of the National Socialist regime both in and without the church. [Helmreich, p. 332]
The Confessing Church
Inevitably, whenever one questions the role of Christianity during WWII, Christians will quickly respond by providing examples of heroic Catholics or Protestants who saved lives, protested against Nazism, or had given their lives by dying in concentration camps. What appears most puzzling by these defenses comes from their complete lack of perspective of the history of their own faith-system. Of course there lived a few brave Christian men and women who opposed Nazism and performed courageous deeds. But the key word here, "few," can hardly absolve the whole. One can say the same of the few heroic Nazis who protested against the atrocities committed by their own government. But can we prop up these few as a banner, while ignoring the majority of those who committed crimes to justify a belief-system regardless if it comes from a political ideology or a religion? If this served the case, then we could mine any intolerant system for its "few" noble members as justification for the system by calling it the True system, as do Christians who love to use the term True Christianity as if this had any definable meaning. Any honest reader should recognize that if this ploy cannot work for support of Nazism, Communism, Islam, (or any religion not your own) or any ideological belief-system, then neither can it work for Christianity.
As for the Church's supposed role against Nazism, when the focus gets narrowed as to just what Church opposed Hitler, sadly, one can only point to a single minor opposing Church body: the Confessing Church. Although one should always fairly honor any heroic struggle against oppression of human freedom, the ethical dilemma faced by the Confessing Church did not exactly meet the demands for opposing anti-Semitism.
Hitler wanted to combine all the regional Protestant churches into a single and united Reich Church. Of course this meant government control of the Church and a minority of Lutheran Pastors foresaw the dangers. In 1933, a few Protestant Pastors, namely Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and others formed the "Pastors Emergency League" which later became known as "The Confessing Church" to oppose the state controlled Nazi Church.
It bears some importance to understand that Germany did not recognize the Confessing Church as an official Church. Not only the Nazis, but all other Protestant Churches condemned the Confessing Church. They thought of it as a minority opposition that held little power. The vast majority of German churches supported Hitler and his policies against the Jews. Moreover, they advocated composing an "Aryan Paragraph" in church synods that would prevent non-aryans from joining the Church, which of course included Jews.
In spite of the myth that has developed that the Confessing Church opposed Hitler for anti-Semitic reasons, the main reason for the opposition actually aimed to protect the power of Pastors to determine who should preach and who they can preach to. The Barmen Declaration of Faith (by Karl Barth, et al) became the principle statement of The Confessing Church. Not a single sentence in it opposes anti-Semitism. According to Professor John S. Conway: "The Confessing Church did not seek to espouse the cause of the Jews as a whole, nor to criticize the secular legislation directed against the German Jews and the Nazi racial philosophy."
Basically, the Confessing Church wanted to save themselves from state control by forming what they considered themselves as the "True Church" (don't all Christians think of themselves as belonging to the True Church?). They did not want government interference with Church self-regulation. This of course deserves plaudits as history has shown that state controlled religions have always ended in oppressing its people. The formation of the United States with its secular government aimed at just this kind of freedom of religion from the state. On this account, the Confessing Church deserves honorable mention. However, just what did they oppose about the Jewish question?
It turns out that the Pastors of the Confessing Church held concerns only for Jews who converted to Christianity. Of course they viewed Jews who converted to Christianity as Christian, not Jewish. This Christian centered view gave them the reason for their objection to the "Aryan Paragraph." For Jews who did not convert, they held strong anti-Semitic feelings. Remember that these pastors lived as well read Lutherans; any reading of Martin Luther will reveal strong anti-Semetic feelings toward Jews who did not convert (see, On the Jews and their lies).
Although Martin Niemöller opposed the Nazi regime, he concurred with the Nazi view in one foundational respect: the Jews as eternally evil. In one of his sermons, he attacked the Nazis (without naming them) by likening them to the Jews! [Niemöller 1937] Pastor Bonhoeffer, according to his beliefs, saw the Nazi treatment against Jews as proof of God's curse on Jews. Shortly after Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer wrote to a theologian friend that regarded the Jews "the most sensible people have lost their heads and their entire Bible." [Goldhagen, 1996, p.109] To Bonhoeffer's credit, he did proclaim a credo of non-violence, but this did not come from Christian theology. Rather he based his non-violent stand from Mahatma Gandhi and the humanistic movement (he claimed to be a disciple of Gandhi). His neo-orthodox view opposed most every cardinal doctrine of Christian faith to a point that some considered him an atheist. Indeed he claimed it impossible to know the objective truth about Christ's real nature and even claimed that "God was dead" (Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, New York: Macmillan Co., 1972, pp. 9-12, 378; Ethics, pp. 38, 186; No Rusty Swords, pp. 44-45). Karl Barth, considered a great theologian, and an opponent of the Nazis, and to his credit, did oppose the persecution of Jews, had nevertheless, made us quite clear of his own anti-Semitism. In his Advent sermon of 1933, he denounced the Jews, Luther style, as "an obstinate and evil people." In a July 1944 Lecture in Zurich, Barth said, "We do not like the Jews as a rule, it is therefore not easy for us to apply to them as well the general love for humankind..."
Richard Steigmann-Gall's research found that, "many confessional Lutherans who would later join the Confessing Church received the Nazi movement warmly." Otto Dibelius, General Superintendent of the Kurmark, and one of the most conservative in the Confessing Church, certified the Nazi movement as Christian: "The National Socialists, as the strongest party of the right, have shown both a firm, positive relationship to Christianity.... We may expect that they will remain true to their principles in the new Reichstag." After the Nazi Seizure of Power, Dibelius continued to view Nazism this way, even to the point of excusing Nazi brutality [Steigmann-Gall]. At a 1933 service in Berlin's Nikolaikirche for the new Reichstag, Dibelius announced: "We have learned from Martin Luther that the church cannot get in the way of state power when it does what it is called to do. Not even when [the state] becomes hard and ruthless.... When the state carries out its office against those who destroy the foundations of state order, above all against those who destroy honor with vituperative and cruel words that scorn faith and vilify death for the Fatherland, then [the state] is ruling in God's name!" [Steigmann-Gall].
Unfortunately, several of the member of the Confessing Church lost their lives in opposing Hitler. Bonhoeffer, for example, joined with several high ranking Nazi officers in a plan to assassinate Hitler. He also contacted foreigners to gain support for a call to resistance. The Nazi's sentenced him for his opposition to Hitler and his policies (not because of his Christianity as some believers want us to believe). He died in the Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945.
Nevertheless, even after the war, members of the Confessing Church admitted their guilt. For example, Gerhard Kittle, a world-renowned scholar of the New Testament confessed his political guilt as he insisted that a "Christian anti-Judaism" which he found in the New Testament and in the tradition of the Christian church determined his attitude toward the Jewish question during the Third Reich.[Wollenberg, p. 76] On March 1946, in a lecture in Zurich, Martin Niemöller declared: "Christianity in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo." [Goldhagen, p.114]
Considering that the Confessing Church with its few members, represents the most active religious protest against Nazism in Germany, it projects a poor commentary on the state of Christiandom as a whole, even if the other churches had remained passive. Unfortunately most Christian churches in Germany took an active role, not only by accepting Nazism, but to support and strengthen it.
Remaining secrets
The repulsive behavior of the Catholic hierarchy and the Protestant leaders in Germany presented here gives only a glimpse of the known atrocities and inhumane acts perpetrated through religious beliefs. Much remains unknown; the uncovering of the terrible history of Catholic and Protestant Germany during WWII continues. The silence of Catholic and Protestants, church members, priests, and nuns continues to this day. However, there occurs a few brave researchers who dig to uncover the facts. As one example, Anja Elizabeth Romus (best known in the U.S. from the fictionalized movie, "The Nasty Girl [1990]") continues to research and write about the priests who suppressed their anti-Semitic role in Germany (Romus' first book: "A Case of Resistance and Persecution, Passau 1933-1939," 1983). In her latest book, "Wintergreen: suppressed Murders," she documents the atrocities in her hometown [Passau] at the end of the war including the slaying of 2,000 Soviet prisoners, the murder of slave laborers' infants and the efforts to change memorials to victims so that Nazi horrors would remain forgotten. Rosmus has endured verbal abuse, death threats and lawsuits in response to her dedication to the memories of those who faced Nazi persecution.
Recent evidence has surfaced that shows that both Germany's Roman Catholic Church and Germany's Protestant Church used forced laborers during the Third Reich. Religious affairs organizations have attempted to get the Churches to pay into a compensation fund for Nazi victims. According to Christa Nickels, religious affairs spokeswoman for junior coalition government partners the Greens, said the Church should immediately pay into the fund; "The correct thing to do is for the Church to pay into the fund. It's not about when, where and how many forced laborers were used, but whether the two main churches were involved in the system." [Reuters news, 20 July 2000]
How can one come to terms with such a powerful and oppressive system that denies its involvements with crime? Priests and ministers get held in high regard as they unconsciously hide their tracks with "moral" platitudes and religious services that seem to have nothing in common with past Church intolerances. In the United States, Father Patrick Peyton in the 50s campaigned at encouraging the recital of the Rosary in the home with the famous slogan, "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace." How in the world can anyone justify such fake sentiments in light of the fact that Christians have prayed for peace ever since Christianity's invention without a single lasting result? The horrors of WWII introduced by religious minds appear so obvious and dominate that only some powerful agency could possibly conceal the obvious facts from so many people for so long a time. That agency, indeed, does exist and it confronts every conscious believing human being at every waking hour: the power of Faith, that hideous instrument of counterfeit reality that can convince even the most educated human.
One should also keep in mind that the sheep of Christ, the blind followers of Christian leaders, no matter how grievous their sins or the sins of their pastors and priests, could rest in assured comfort that they lived as a part of the people of God. This religious system excluded anyone who refused to pay allegiance to Popes and ministers.
The questioned cry of "How could these atrocities have happen?" could only come from a religious mind overwhelmed by falsification or who must live in a state of denial against the abundant facts of history to protect a religious illusion. The Nazi atrocities did not come from a mad leader (a common excuse) or from a superstitious Satan, or from the mysterious workings of God-- they occurred from common people acting from their beliefs. The question has an obvious answer and it sits staring at us in the face for anyone who dares look.
Today the Catholic Church has undertaken a campaign of suppression and propaganda to belittle Cornwell, Goldhagen, Romus or any researcher that dares to uncover the reality of the atrocities committed by Roman Catholic Christians. Today, Protestant leaders rarely mention the influence by Martin Luther and his anti-Jewish sentiments taught throughout Germany. Indeed, most Protestants live completely unaware of the hatred and intolerances spread by their congressional ancestors. Instead of releasing documents and admitting to the crimes of their fellow Christians, they have opted to protect their religious power structures by silence, concealment, suppression, and projecting the story of persecutions committed against their own religion by other ideological systems, a ploy that disguises their own complicity of persecutions heaped upon others.
Catholics and Protestants might protest against revealing the reality of Church involvement by claiming a trampling on the sensibilities of the religious people between Church and the modern effort to form some sort of conciliation between Christians and Jews. However this tactic only distances themselves from the recognition of the very problem that created the problem in the first place. The seeds of intolerance sits firmly in the place where it has always been-- in the "sacred" scriptures and in the minds of believers who read them and act upon its words.
Bibliography
Cornwell, John, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, Viking, 1999
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Alfred A. Knoph, 1996
Helmreich, Ernst Christian, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1979
Hold, John B., Under the Swastika, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1936
Lewy, Guenter, "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany," Da Capo Press, 1964
Macfarland, Charles S., The New Church and the New Germany: A Study of Church and State, N.Y. Macmillan Co, 1934
McGovern, William Montgomery, From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist-Nazi Political Philosophy, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1941
Niemöller, Martin, Here Stand I! Chicago: Willett, Clarke & Co., 1937
Steigmann-Gall, Richard "The Holy Reich: Nazi conception of Christianity, 1919-1945," Cambridge University Press, 2003
Wollenberg, Jorg, Ed., The German Public and the Persecution of the Jews 1933-1945: No One Participated, No One Knew (Chapter: When the Witnesses Were Silent, The Confessing Church and the Jews, by Wolfgang Gerlach), Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1996
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:20 pm
Hitler's Religion
Background
Postwar Christian apologists have put perhaps their greatest efforts into creating the myth that Adolf Hitler was not a Christian. An entire cottage industry seems to have sprung up around the desire to perpetuate this myth, and while its motivations are perfectly understandable (who would want to be associated with Hitler in any way?), its dishonesty is unjustifiable. The truth, however uncomfortable, is still the truth.
In death, Hitler has become larger than life. He has become a weapon of sorts, to be used by propagandists as a way of sanctifying themselves while vilifying others. By painting Hitler as something other than he was, these propagandists try to cast doubt on the morality of their opponents, and shore up their own claims of superior morality (all in service to the stubborn and intolerant belief that morality is ultimately decided by religious affiliation rather than individual attitudes). Entire books have been filled with fictitious Hitler quotes (usually attributed to personal conversations) which are still widely disseminated despite having been thoroughly debunked1 (of course, since many of these quotes support the notion that Hitler was anti-Christian, it's no surprise that they are still in such widespread use).
However, without such questionable sources as uncorroborated hearsay accounts of private conversations, we discover a rather interesting phenomenon: the Hitler's seemingly conflicted statements suddenly become very consistent! He believed in natural evolution, but he also believed in special creation. Does that sound contradictory? It shouldn't, because many people still hold his beliefs today. He believed that Adam and Eve were created by God in his image, but he also believed that not all of us are descended from Adam and Eve (interestingly enough, one of the Christian fundamentalists on my Hate Mail page shares this belief). To be more specific, Hitler believed that the Aryan race was descended from Adam and Eve, but everyone else evolved naturally (I have personally encountered people who still believe this).
He believed that Jesus of Nazareth was an Aryan, not a Jew, and that Jesus fought the Jews and was killed by them. He believed in life after death, the supreme being, and universal creation. He opposed the Catholic church only because its seat of power was in Rome, not Berlin. He was intolerant of competing versions of Christianity (an approach lifted directly from the Catholic playbook), but at no time did he ever commit acts or express beliefs which were not expressed by other Christians before him such as Martin Luther (as well as certain Christians after him, right up to this day. The mere fact that the Lutherans refuse to change their name is very revealing; if there was a Hitlerian church, don't you think it would have changed its name?).
Mein Kampf
It is widely acknowledged that the most authoritative statement on Hitler's beliefs and plans was his infamous book "Mein Kampf". Yet while this book is known worldwide for its hateful nature, few have ever read it and fewer still have identified the voluminous statements within that clearly mark Adolf Hitler as a Christian. There are many such statements, and they reveal a great deal about his motivations:
"I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal."2 (Hitler admired religious figures).
"I thank Heaven that a portion of the memories of those days still remains with me. Woods and meadows were the battlefields on which the 'conflicts' which exist everywhere in life were decided."3 (Hitler believed in Heaven).
"I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party ... The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times ... How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my attitude toward the Christian Social movement! My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all."4 (Hitler was inspired to become a radical anti-Semite by the Viennese Christian Social movement, whose attitudes are almost identical to the far-right American Christian fundamentalist movement today).
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."5 (Hitler obviously believed in a supreme being).
"Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be 'discovered' by an election"6 (Hitler was fond of paraphrasing the Bible (Mark 10:25 in this case), and he does this many, many times elsewhere in the book).
"The root of the whole evil lay, particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the directing body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our nationality."7 (affirming that Hitler's only real problem with his childhood religion was the fact that its power base was not in Germany).
"I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction."8 (the "divine court of the eternal judge" seems a rather strange idea from anyone but a Judeo-Christian, since Pagan and Eastern religions generally lack any such divine judgemental entity, to say nothing of atheism)
"Certainly we don't have to discuss these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the Lord's image."9
"Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children."10 (recalling World War I).
"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe."11 (it would appear that Hitler agreed with modern "intelligent design" creationists on the existence of a Creator).
"Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth ... Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world ..."12 (Jerry Falwell? Is that you?)
"But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God"13 (note that when he says "images of God", he refers to racially pure Aryans; this sentence comes in the context of a diatribe against racial intermixing).
"While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply so their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable."14 (Hitler agrees with George W. Bush that religion and morality are intertwined).
"Also noteworthy is the increasingly violent struggle against the dogmatic foundations of the various churches without which in this human world the practical existence of a religious faith is not conceivable ... The attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and, as the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious nihilism."15 (Hitler, trying to equate criticism of dogma to an assault on civilization)
"The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following: (a) Lowering of the level of the higher race; (b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness. To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator."16 (Hitler tries to define racial intermarriage as defiance of God's will, in exactly the way modern racists do, particularly in the southern American states; indeed, 40% of Alabama voters voted to keep interracial marriage illegal in November 2000)
"And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world."17 (Hitler believes in the afterlife, and he agrees with modern Christian fundamentalists about the importance of religious matters over material matters)
"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."18 (Hitler demonstrates the common anti-Semitic view that Jesus was an Aryan rather than a Jew, and glowingly described him as "the great founder of the new doctrine".
"The Jew almost never marries a Christian woman; it is the Christian who marries a Jewess ... The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew ... With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people."19 (Hitler echoes Martin Luther's thoughts on Satan and Jewry; note that Hitler openly admired Luther, who wrote the virulent anti-Semitic screed "On Jews And Their Lies", and the infamous Kristallnacht was committed on Luther's birthday. Also note that he reiterates his hatred of intermarriage, but this time on religious rather than racial grounds. He tends to use the terms "German" and "Christian" interchangeably, which makes sense since he believed that Jesus was an Aryan and that true Christianity recognized the supremacy of the Aryan race).
"The future of a movement is conditioned by the fanaticism, yes, the intolerance, with which its adherents uphold it as the sole correct movement, and push it past other formations of a similar sort ... absolute intolerance also provides long growth ... The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others."20 (Hitler explains why he thinks religious intolerance is good, agreeing in principle with modern right-wing Christian fundamentalists who bemoan that if they are not intolerant of diversity, their belief system will have no future).
"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine."21
"The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack."22 (Hitler's own words demonstrate clearly that despite the common myth that the religion of Nazism was Nordic paganism, he actually regarded the Nordic pagan revival movement with nothing but contempt and derision, and Rosenberg was obviously charting his own path).
"A man who knows a thing, who is aware of a given danger, and sees the possibility of a remedy with his own eyes, has the duty and obligation, by God, not to work 'silently,' but to stand up before the whole public against the evil and for its cure."23 (isn't it interesting that you could easily imagine many of these quotes coming from the mouth of a modern-day preacher?)
"By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic principles-- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles-- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence."24 (Hitler equates religious dogma to ethics and morality, again just like modern right-wing intolerant Christians)
"Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."25 (Hitler believes in the Genesis story of expulsion from Paradise).
"The task of preserving and advancing the highest humanity, given to this earth by the benevolence of the Almighty, seems a truly high mission."26
"A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape."27 (Hitler believed that Aryans are holy and were created in God's "image", while other races evolved from apes, hence his hatred for racial mixing because it diluted God's image).
"It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world."28 (Hitler outlines some of his eugenics ideas; note that he described black humans as "Negroes" and white humans as "European humanity". Like the medieval European Christian conquerors, he obviously thought of black people as sub-human, and he often described Czechs as "sub-humans" as well)
"That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?"29 (Hitler believes that racial mixing is an extension of "original sin")
"It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions."30 (again, he repeats his belief that Aryans come from God while other races evolved from apes).
"It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god"31 (just for fun, try asking people whether quotes like this came from Jerry Falwell or Adolf Hitler).
"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."32 (again Hitler repeats his belief that the Aryan race was created by God, and that it would be a sin to dilute it through racial intermixing with inferior races which evolved naturally).
"If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recognize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concentrated power. And if this victory is obtained through sacrifices elsewhere, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us."33 (he seems to have learned the lessons of the Biblical Old Testament well: God punishes the people when they disobey him, so they must not make an enemy of God)
"For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!'"34
"we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and or German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread..."35 (again, Hitler tries to justify his actions as the will of God, as countless Christians have done before him).
"And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer. Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent..."36 (Hitler explaining that the German people must send the "heaven-stormer" back to Hell).
Can there be any serious doubt that the person who wrote this document was a Christian, albeit a deranged byproduct of its anti-Semitic and creationist subgroups?
Beliefs Revealed
Hitler's beliefs are expressed quite clearly in Mein Kampf, and they are as follows:
1.
He believed in Heaven, Hell, a supreme being who created the universe, Jesus Christ, life after death, special creation, original sin, expulsion from paradise, and divine judgement.
2.
He drew his inspiration from the Viennese Christian Social movement, and he expressed nothing but admiration for its founder.
3.
He believed that Jesus Christ was an Aryan, not a Jew. In fact, he claimed that Jesus "made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity".
4.
He used the term "human" to describe only Aryans. He described blacks, Jews, and (presumably) other non-Aryan races as a disease, or as lower animals (notice that he described Jews as an "adversary of all humanity", thus clearly describing them as something other than humans).
5.
He thought that interracial marriage would produce "monstrosities halfway between man and ape" and should be fought with religious fervour. This makes his beliefs on evolution and creation very clear; he thought that Aryans were created in God's own image, while all other races evolved from apes. This should come as no surprise; not only was this an overwhelmingly common belief during the age of European imperialism which lasted right up to the end of the 19th century, but it persists to this day (a lot of white supremacists still refer to blacks as "monkeys"). In his view, it was therefore an unnatural and unholy dilution of God's image for Aryans and non-Aryans to mate.
6.
He believed that Germany lost World War I because it turned its back on God, much as Israel was repeatedly humiliated and defeated whenever it turned away from God in the Old Testament.
What more is required to show that he was Christian? Not for nothing do Christian apologists make the absurd claim that hearsay accounts of supposedly private conversations with people outside his inner circle should be considered penultimate forms of evidence while Hitler's seminal writings should be considered irrelevant; they fear the truth, and they want you to disregard his most personal work.
And make no mistake: Mein Kampf is his most personal work. Far from being the carefully crafted political statement that some would make it out to be, it was Hitler pouring out his soul and revealing all of his life's plans to his closest confidante. He dictated and Hess transcribed the text of Mein Kampf while he was in prison in 1923-1924, finishing it after his release and publishing it in 1925. In it, he revealed everything: his plan to expand Aryan "living space" at the expense of the Slavs (ie- the foolish attack on Russia that so few saw coming), his plan to avenge the German defeat of World War I by conquering France, his belief that all of the world's races should be subjugated under the Aryan race, and his plan to exterminate the Jews. By reading this single document, one can predict every major action Hitler would take over the next two decades including the Holocaust and the "surprise" attack on Russia, yet Christian apologists would have you believe it was nothing but a misleading propaganda piece!
How Hitler's Beliefs Guided His Actions
Hitler's writings reveal a religious fanatic: a Christian and a creationist, driven by the belief that racial intermixing was destroying the purity of God's creation (the Aryan race, which he imagined to include Jesus) by mating with naturally evolved "apes". His actions were wholly consistent with this belief. Consider:
1.
While some Christians believe that all acts of war violate God's will, the majority of Christians throughout history have believed in the idea of the "just war"; a war of good against evil, in which the good guys commit no wrong by waging war on the bad guys (for example, World War Two is widely cited as the last "just war", despite the fact that the "good guys" ended it by dropping nuclear weapons on civilian targets without explicit warning). Hitler obviously shared this belief; he thought he was fighting for a just cause.
2.
While some Christians claim that racism is inherently anti-Christian, the sheer numbers of Christian racists throughout history (and indeed, throughout the world today, as demonstrated by the fundamentalists on my Hate Mail page who justified Israelite atrocities by citing their racial status as God's "chosen people") easily put the lie to that claim. In reality, the Old Testament is an extremely racist tome, and Jesus said very little to contradict its message of a "chosen people" in the New Testament. Moreover, the virulent racism of both Catholic and Protestant conquerors in Africa, India, and the Americas during the age of European colonialism makes any claims of Christianity's inherent anti-racism absolutely laughable.
3.
While most Christians believe that the sixth commandment outlaws murder, they believe that it does not extend to the killing of animals. Hitler believed that non-Aryans were animals. Most Christians also believe that murder can be justified (eg- self defense). Hitler believed that the world was arrayed against Germany and that their national actions were taken in self-defense.
The interesting thing about Hitler is that if you accept his bizarre belief system, his actions actually make sense. A common thread among all white supremacists has been (and still is) their hatred for racial intermixing. They see it as a "dilution" of the "purity" of the white race (obviously ignorant of the biological fact, consistent with evolution theory, that strength comes from diversity rather than purity).
Hitler was no exception; he hated racial intermixing with the fervour of racism buttressed by religious conviction, because he felt that non-Aryans were not human, and in his words, marriage should produce children who are "images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape."37 In his mind, his "Final Solution" was no different from the kind of extermination program one might carry out against pest animals, and in a very real sense, his creationism led directly to his racism.
Creationists have long tried to portray Nazism as the end result of Darwin's evolution theory. But his writings make it very clear that while he accepts natural evolution as the origin of other races, he does not accept that he himself was the product of natural evolution. Since Darwin's theory of evolution makes no allowance for such ridiculous exceptions to the rule, it is quite clear that despite creationist claims to the contrary, Hitler did not understand or accept evolution theory. It is clear that he was, in fact, a creationist (albeit what we would ironically refer to as a "moderate" creationist today), who believed that while evolution does take place in the natural world, the Aryan race stood apart from nature, was created by God in his own image, and had been given dominion over the Earth.
Common Objections
The common excuse given by Christian apologists is that he was only pretending to be a Christian in his public speeches and writings, in order to curry the favour of Christians in Germany. However, this excuse has many serious weaknesses:
1.
All of the evidence for this massive contradiction between public and private beliefs is hearsay. Typically, it involves uncorroborated accounts of private conversations. Any sensible observer must question why Hitler suddenly became so open about his secret beliefs that he would spew them even after having been informed that they would be documented.
2.
Most accounts of his private conversations do not contain anti-Christian sentiments. In fact, when you look carefully at all the anti-Christian quotes attributed to Hitler, you will find that virtually all of them come from just two or three people! One must question why they alone were privy to secret thoughts that he carefully hid from everyone else in his life and his government. Why didn't he reveal these secret thoughts to Rudolf Hess38? Heinrich Himmler39? Joseph Goebbels40? Hermann Göring41? Are we supposed to seriously believe that Hitler kept all of these men in the dark for more than a decade while abruptly pouring out his heart to his secretary Martin Bormann42, and an obscure provincial official named Hermann Rauschning43?
3.
In order to generate something more substantive than unreliable hearsay quotes, Hitler's actions or words against political opponents or competing brands of Christianity are almost invariably misrepresented as actions or words against Christianity as a whole. This is simply absurd; if we adopt denominational intolerance or political ruthlessness as the definition of anti-Christian attitudes, then most Christians throughout history have been anti-Christian, including the Roman Catholic church throughout most of its existence!
4.
Hitler never publicly spoke out against Christianity right up until the very end, yet he demonstrated such extreme megalomania, capacity for self-delusion, and overconfidence in his own abilities (particularly as the war dragged on) that it seems absolutely ludicrous to believe that he was still hiding his true beliefs for fear of offending religious groups.
5.
When one pays lip service to a common religious belief which one actually finds repugnant (as many of the American founding fathers did), one normally does not do it as clearly and enthusiastically as Hitler did.
6.
There is no serious historical doubt that the roots of his anti-Semitism came from the Viennese Christian Social movement, or that he was inspired by Martin Luther (on whose birthday the infamous Kristallnacht occurred), who wrote the infamous racist screed "On Jews And Their Lies". Are we to believe that he admired these men and followed in their footsteps while simultaneously despising their beliefs?
7.
Even if we accept the unfounded notion that Hitler pretended to be a Christian in order to curry favour with the public, we would still have to acknowledge that the Christian public was amenable to his message! There would have been no benefit in paying lip service to Christians if Christianity were as inherently unreceptive to his message as modern Christian apologists would have you believe.
The harsh reality is that there is no credible evidence whatsoever for the notion that Hitler was not a Christian. He might not have practiced your next-door neighbour's version of Christianity, but based on all credible sources including his own seminal Mein Kampf, he did believe in Jesus Christ, the supreme being, Heaven and Hell, divine judgement, expulsion from paradise, etc.
Conclusion
The only way to deny Hitler's Christianity is to define "Christian" in a bigoted manner, ie- "to be Christian is to be moral", which is the refrain of those who would believe that you can determine someone's morality (or lack thereof) by simply asking what religious beliefs he holds. Those who would deny Hitler's Christianity on the basis of his immoral actions are guilty of not only religious bigotry but also circular logic: as they see it, Hitler is consistent with their belief that all Christians are moral because he was not a Christian, and they know he was not a Christian because all Christians are moral!
All of the evidence produced to deny Hitler's christianity is shamelessly misleading or fraudulent, with its proponents actually making the ridiculously audacious claim that Hitler's documented, corroborated statements should be ignored in favour of uncorroborated hearsay! His voluminous statements indicating his religious beliefs are summarily ignored in favour of private conversations with questionable sources, some of which may not have even taken place!
The true details of Hitler's story make social right-wingers uncomfortable, and well they should, for they fly in the face of so many of their longstanding claims. They like to equate "liberal" to "immoral", but Hitler was a right-winger, hated liberalism, and was aided in his rise to power by German political and religious right wing leaders. They like to equate city life to immorality, but Hitler grew up in the country. They believe that a religious upbringing produces people of good character, but Hitler was raised strictly Catholic, wrote admiringly of the monks and the abbot (at a monastery in Lambach, Austria near his home which was adorned with numerous swastikas, obviously the inspiration for the Nazi flag), served as an altar boy and a choir boy, and for two years, seriously contemplated becoming a Catholic priest himself. They like to believe that strict disciplinarian parenting is the solution to social problems, but Hitler's father was an extremely strict, disciplinarian parent. They like to believe that spiritual, artistic people tend to be more ethical than "cold, sterile, technical" rationalists, but Hitler was a spiritual, artistic person with little or no technical aptitude (he loved to draw and he actually wanted to study art and architecture, but his father forced him to go to a technical high school where his marks were atrocious, and he dropped out at age 16) .
In conclusion, not only is the falsehood of the "Hitler was not a Christian" myth glaringly obvious to any reasonable observer, but it is quite clear that for very obvious reasons, the proponents of this myth will stoop to any depth in order to perpetuate it. Sadly, its longevity serves as mute testimony to the power of propaganda.
Footnotes
1Virtually all anti-Christian quotes come from Martin Bormann's "Hitler's Table Talk", an exclusively hearsay compilation of "private" conversations in which Hitler was supposedly warned beforehand that everything he said would be recorded for posterity, yet he lowered his guard and supposedly revealed his true feelings anyway. Naturally, these feelings contrast violently with other public or private speeches or conversations, and mysteriously enough, no original documents or recordings can be found (see the excellent discussion of this book at nobeliefs.com). Another over-used source is Hermann Rauschning's "The Voice of Destruction: Hitler Speaks", which was already so heavily quoted by 1945 that it was explicitly mentioned and dismissed in OSS documents because of its unreliable nature. In fact, May 1983, Swiss historian Wolfgang Haenel formally gathered together all of the criticisms of Rauschning's book and resoundingly debunked it at a presentation at the annual conference of the Ingolstadt Contemporary History Research Center, showing (among other things) that Hitler was not physically present at the times and places indicated, and that the financially desperate Rauschning was paid a staggering sum of money to produce the book by French and American sources who wished to use it as propaganda.
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:21 pm
The Nuremberg Deception
Background
Like many organizations with a vested interest in promoting the myth that Hitler was not a Christian, the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion (aka RJLR, an organization wholly dedicated to the relationship between religion and law; a relationship which should not exist and which is explicitly forbidden by the American first amendment) has made numerous attempts to shore up propagandistic Nuremberg-era claims to that effect. Their most recent attempt was an unusally bold appeal to authority: they simply dredged up the original Nuremberg-era documents!
It should hopefully be obvious to all rational observers that one cannot prove the validity of Nuremberg-era propaganda by simply quoting it! Does the term "circular logic" ring a bell? I suppose that for Christians who are accustomed to proving the validity of the Bible by quoting it, this sort of "logic" must be second nature. And the Rutgers legal students and professors merely compound this habit by studying law, because law is based upon authority. Not only is legislation justified only by appeals to the authority of a written constitution or the power of a government, but in law, unlike science and logic, you can base an argument entirely on someone else's opinion (they call it "legal precedent"). However, for those of us who wish to think logically, a more reasonable approach is warranted.
Unfortunately, in a legalistic nation, public opinion is not driven by logic. In a legalistic nation, the "authoritative source" of an argument is often considered just as important as its logical self-consistency (if not more so). Therefore, while it would be nice to refute appeals to authority by simply pointing out that they are fallacious, we must regretfully acknowledge that this is usually not enough to convince John Q. Public, hence the need to criticize the authority iself.
The OSS document
The prize jewel on the RJLR revival of Nuremberg propaganda is an OSS document ("The Nazi Master Plan, Annex 4", hereafter referred to as "the OSS document") which was prepared for use as evidence in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Its accusations were designed to show that the Nazi regime was "persecuting the Christian churches in Germany and occupied Europe"1. Notice the use of language: "persecuting the Christian churches", as if there was some special hatred for Christianity in the Nazi regime. Need it even be said that if any religious or quasi-religious organizations could have been said to suffer special persecution under the Nazi regime, it was obviously the Jewish synagogues, not to mention the Communists? How could the virulently anti-Semitic American Christians of 1945 stand up and declare that the Nazis had a special grudge against Christians, while keeping a perfectly straight face?
Right from the outset, the document reveals the dishonesty of its intent. If its goal is to demonstrate the Nazis' attack on "religious liberties" by using the Christian churches as its prime example, it represents an astoundingly audacious slap in the face to all of the Jews and Communists who survived the horrors of the Holocaust! It can rightly be said that as potentially competitors for the "hearts and mind" of the public, virtually all public organizations suffered a loss of liberties under Nazism, but if we were to list all of those organizations in order, the indignities suffered by Christian churches would come near the end of the list, not the beginning! However, one must remember the context in which it was written: postwar America was strongly Christian and highly intolerant of both Jews and Communists. Its propagandists wished to distance themselves from the Nazis as much as possible, hence their desire to "prove" that the war was a battle of godless Nazis against God-fearing Christians.
The rabid anti-Semitism of the era is no secret, as demonstrated by countless incidents such as the infamous "Voyage of the Damned"2. While they might have recoiled at Hitler's "Final Solution", it seems likely that they did not find particular fault with his persecution of Marxist or Jewish practices, so they may have honestly felt that the Christian churches were the best example of restricting "religious liberties". In reading the document, I find that while Christian apologists would like to use it as proof of the Nazis' anti-Christian policies, it is nothing of the sort.
The OSS Document's Glaring Fallacy
Before we begin, I should note that one can paraphrase the basic logic of the document as follows:
"Hitler tried to take control of the German Christian churches. Their freedoms were restricted, and they were arrested or killed if they spoke out against Nazi policies. Christian churches outside Germany were treated even more harshly. Therefore, the Nazis were actively persecuting Christian churches."
This is a obvious non sequitur. To persecute is to "pursue in a manner to injure, grieve, or afflict; to beset with cruelty or malignity; to harass; especially, to afflict, harass, punish, or put to death, for adherence to a particular religious creed or mode of worship."3 Take particular note of the phrase "for adherence to a particular religious creed". In other words, in order to show that the Nazis were persecuting the Christian churches, they would have had to show that they were mistreated for being Christian, not for resisting Nazi rule, opposing the Nazi party, or being foreigners. Therefore, examples of mistreatment which arose from refusal to accept Nazi hegemony or from vocal opposition to Nazi policies are a red herring.
Moreover, a finding of persecution requires that a particular group is being singled out, ie- they are being treated worse than the rest of the population. And here is where we run into the document's greatest flaw. Every indignity suffered by the Christian churches under Nazism was also suffered by the German population as a whole. Hitler wanted to control the activities of the German people. Their freedoms were restricted, and they were arrested or killed if they spoke out against Nazi policies. Does this mean that the Nazis were persecuting the German people?
The OSS document never even attempts to justify its leap in logic from general mistreatment to active persecution. In essence, it argues that B is true because A is true (punctuating the point with a long list of examples), even though A is not equivalent to B! Keep this in mind as we look through the document in more detail.
The Accusations
The OSS document levels the following accusations against the Nazis:
"Throughout the period of National Socialist rule, religious liberties in Germany and in the occupied areas were seriously impaired. The various Christian churches were systematically cut off from effective communication with the people. They were confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this narrow sphere were subjected to as many hindrances as the Nazis dared to impose."
These accusations are so mild in comparison to the Nazis' treatment of other public organizations that they seem almost sheepish. The Christian churches were not allowed free "communication", they were confined to "religious functions", and they were subject to various "hindrances"? How does this compare to being outlawed and imprisoned (or even killed) across the board (not just for defying the authorities), as was the case with all organizations of Communists, Jews, and free thinkers?
Adolf Hitler
A movement is often defined by its leader, and Christian apologists have tried to perpetuate the "Adolf Hitler hated Christianity" myth for decades. Towards this end, they rely heavily on questionable sources such as "Hitler's Table Talk" or "The Voice of Destruction", even though they rely exclusively on uncorroborated hearsay accounts of private conversations supposedly held with Hitler. There are no audio/video recordings or manuscripts of these conversations (in the former case, the original manuscripts were destroyed after having been "edited" by Bormann), and their nature is highly suspect. Are we to seriously believe accounts so contradictory with all other sources such as Hitler's writings and public speeches, not to mention his conversations with men close to him such as Hess, Himmler, Goebbels, and Goring? Are we to seriously believe that Hitler would spill his secrets even after having been informed that his words were being documented for posterity?
The OSS document could not rely upon such questionable sources, and indeed, they were even forced to warn that such hearsay sources "are to be used with caution", eschewing any such unreliable sources in favour of Hitler's verifiable statements. They had little choice; their document was intended for use in a legal trial, and while law does not remotely approach the standards of science, it still demands a far higher standard of evidence than public rhetoric, which is the forum in which most Christian apologists operate. Without the aforementioned uncorroborated hearsay sourrces, the OSS was severely crippled in its goal to produce direct evidence for Hitler's anti-Christian attitudes; they could not produce a shred of evidence that Hitler bore any animosity towards Christianity, and some of their quotes even indicated the opposite. For example:
"It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God"4- Adolf Hitler.
A rather odd quote for someone who thinks belief in the Christian God is laughable, isnt it? They also acknowledged that Hitler's Mein Kampf was the premiere source of information on the Nazi agenda, yet they did not quote any of it! Small wonder: it contains quotes such as the following:
"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."
"That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?"
"It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions."
"It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god"
"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."
See my discussion of Adolf Hitler's religion for more quotes. It is not difficult to determine what viewpoint Hitler was promoting. He believed that Jesus was an Aryan rather than a Jew and that the Aryan race was created by God in his image, while the other races evolved naturally. Therefore, he believed that it was a sin against God to intermarry, even going so far as to to describe "racial poisoning" as "original sin" and referring to blacks as "apes"! Clearly, the notion that Hitler himself can be used as evidence for the Nazi persecution of Christian churches is specious at best.
Glossing over Obvious Objections
The OSS document is filled with obvious distortions, and it repeatedly glosses over painfully obvious objections. For example, it states that:
"Although the principal Christian churches of Germany had long been associated with conservative ways of thought, which means that they tended to agree with the National Socialists in their authoritarianism, in their attacks on Socialism and Communism, and in their campaign against the Versailles treaty, their doctrinal commitments could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, with a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or with a domestic policy involving the complete subservience of Church to State."5
Notice how they claim that the "doctrinal commitments" of church forbid racism, even though European colonialism was characterized by incredible racism throughout its entire history and anti-Semitism was still such a worldwide problem in 1945 that postwar American Jews often changed their names to conceal their ethnicity and avoid persecution6! They also claim that the "doctrinal commitments" of church forbid "unlimited aggressive warfare", even though Christians have eagerly engaged in warfare for either church or state for nearly two thousand years. Both racism and warfare can be easily reconciled with Christian beliefs, and have been for many centuries. The real problem, which they try to present as one of a list, is the third item: complete subservience to the state. That offends church doctrine, and that was the real sticking point between the Nazis and the churches. But as previously stated, Nazi demands for complete subservience were a problem common to all German citizens regardless of religion, so it cannot be used as a legitimate example of special persecution directed against Christianity.
The OSS document also makes special note of the "radically anti-Christian position"7 of Alfred Rosenberg, but this is a distortion: Alfred Rosenberg believed that Jesus was a Nordic warrior whose legacy was distorted by his followers, and he seized upon Jesus' statement that he came to bring "not peace, but a sword"8 (not to mention his subsequent statement that we should treat followers of other religions as "enemies"). Rosenberg promoted a vision of "positive Christianity" in which he promoted his own view of Jesus' legacy (naturally, a Nordic-tinged version), but this hardly amounts to a "radically anti-Christian" position! Moreover, the document acknowledges that Rosenberg's "Myth of the Twentieth Century" is not as authoritative as Hitler's Mein Kampf (no surprise) as a description of the Nazi agenda, yet it conspicuously fails to note that Mein Kampf is filled with statements which make Hitler's personal Christianity painfully obvious! Were there pagans in the Nazi party? Undoubtedly. There were homosexuals too. But does this somehow change the party's agenda? Not at all.
Another obvious objection (lack of credible evidence) was quietly acknowledged and then glossed over by the document's authors:
"The Problem of Proof. The best evidence now available as to the existence of an anti-Church plan is to be found in the systematic nature of the persecution itself."9
By admitting that they have no evidence apart from their creative interpretations of Nazi actions, they are admitting that despite tens of thousands of secret documents and hundreds of tons of crated papers unearthed from various Nazi sites around Germany, they couldn't find a single official document sanctioning this mythical campaign of persecution against the Christian churches! Instead, they must be content with examining their behaviour, attempting to assign questionable motives to it, and ignoring less problematic explanations.
Another massive problem with the notion of organized anti-Christian persecution is the presence of practicing Christians within the Nazi party, and often in stratospherically high positions of power. Hess, Himler, Goebbels, and Göring were all Christians, and these men represented much of the Nazi party elite! The document acknowledges this, but in a deceptively worded manner:
"Some Nazi leaders or sympathizers, and some later collaborationists who were faithful Catholics or Protestants, such as von Epp, Buttman and von Papen, may have been left in ignorance of the real aim of Nazi church policy."10
Isn't it interesting that they would mention relatively low-ranking Nazis or Nazi sympathizers who were known to be Christian, but they would ignore men like Hess, Himmler, Goebbels, and Göring? Together, these men constituted Hitler's longtime confidante (not to mention his deputy fuehrer until his strange flight across the lines), his SS leader, his propaganda minister, and the leader of his Luftwaffe! This paragraph is technically not a lie, but it carefully glosses over damning portions of the truth. Its authors undoubtedly knew that revelations about the religious faith of the Nazi party elite would not be popular, but they were nevertheless forced to admit that some Nazis were Christian, while doggedly clinging to their belief that the Nazis opposed Christianity! Their only explanation for this glaring inconsistency is the preposterous claim that these men were kept in the dark but not molested in any way.
Perhaps the most glorious example of the OSS document's refusal to accept the truth is the following admission:
"the Nazi government ... abolished the right to pursue anti-religious and anti-Church propaganda. The Prussian government closed the so-called secular (weltliche) schools in which no religious instruction was given and re-established religious instruction in professional and vocational schools. All organizations of free-thinkers were forbidden."11
These actions are clearly anti-secular in nature, not anti-Christian. The Nazis made it illegal to speak out against religion or the Christian churches. They closed all secular schools, and introduced school prayer and religious instruction in all educational institutions. They outlawed all free thought organizations. This is blatant disproof of the document's central claims of anti-Christian persecution, yet its authors happily glossed over this problem without skipping a beat, and dismissed it nothing but a clever deception, designed to fool Christians into believing that the Nazis were with them.
In a similar vein, the OSS document acknowledges that Hitler made numerous pro-Christian statements, such as the following:
"... creating and ensuring the prerequisites for a really deep inner religiosity ... the struggle against a materialistic philosophy and for the creation of a true folk community serves the interests of the German nation as well as our Christian belief."12
It also acknowledges that despite the Nazi party's overt racism and militarism, German Catholics "hastened now to join"13, even though it had previously claimed that there were irreconcilable "doctrinal" incompatibilities between Christianity and Nazism! Yet again, no one points out that the Emperor has no clothes, and the authors of the document stubbornly soldier on toward their pre-ordained conclusion that the Nazis were anti-Christian.
Perhaps an even more fantastic refusal to accept reality comes later, when the document acknowledges that the German churches "derived their main financial support from state collected taxes"14, ie- they were officially funded by the state. But in yet another example of their amazing audacity, the authors actually tried to paint a picture of persecution despite this fact, by pointing out that the Nazis tried to tell them how to use the money, and that they restricted other forms of income!
Leaping in Logic
The OSS document repeatedly attempts to prove that the Nazis were persecuting churches by demonstrating that the churches were subject to the same restrictions that applied to the rest of German society. In effect, through a perverse leap in logic, they conclude that the churches were being persecuted because they did not receive special exemptions from Nazi policies! For example:
"The Nazis believed that the Churches could be starved and strangled of all means of communication with the faithful beyond the Church building themselves, and terrorized in such a manner that no Churchman would dare to speak out openly against Nazi policies."15
Yes, the Nazis did not permit church associations outside the church, and they did not let churchmen speak out against them. But is this evidence of persecution, or is it evidence of special protection? Consider: the Nazis disbanded any and all associations which could act as competitors for the "hearts and minds" of the public, and the churches actually received a partial exemption from this rule: they could associate, but only within the confines of the church. This may have been only a partial exemption, but it was still an exemption! Communists, Jews, and free thought organizations did not receive such special treatment, did they? And was anyone anywhere in German society permitted to speak out against Nazi policies without fear? It is a clear and blatant deception to claim that the inability of churchmen to speak out against the Nazis was evidence of special persecution.
In another example of the OSS document's unapologetic leaps in logic, it boldly produces more "evidence" for its conclusion:
"... purging Reich, state and municipal administrations of officials appointed for their adherence to the Center or Bavarian People's parties. Former leaders of those parties, including priests, joined Communist and Social Democrat leaders in the concentration camps ..."16
They persecuted members of opposing political parties, even if they happened to be priests? Not to put too fine a point on it, but so what? These men were obviously persecuted for their political affiliations, not their religious faith! It is amazing that the authors of the OSS document could somehow maintain a perfectly straight face while pretending that the imprisonment of political opponents who happened to be Christian was an example of anti-Christian persecution. Yet again, its authors pretend that if Christians don't receive special exemptions from Nazi policies, they are being "persecuted".
The assault upon reason continues:
"A meeting of the Bavarian bishops adopted a solemn statement directed against the tendency of attributing to the state alone the right of educating, organizing and leading ideologically the German youth."17
The OSS document goes on to state that the Nazis began breaking up Catholic meetings shortly after this public act of defiance, without acknowledging that the motivation behind this action was obviously the bishops' open defiance of Nazi hegemony, and not the fact that they were Christians. If any organization had spoken out publicly against Nazi hegemony, they would have suffered for it, and probably through much more painful means than the mere breakup of public meetings.
In yet another fanciful leap in logic, the document's authors acknowledge that the Nazis treated the German Protestant churches differently than the foreign-controlled Roman Catholic church, and that they actually tried to assimilate it into their organization, or in their words, "capture and use the church organization for their own purposes."18 Sure enough, there were numerous Nazi-controlled churches, which Hitler tried to weld into the so-called "Faith Movement of German Christians". Reverend Joachim Hossenfelder called it "the Storm Troops of Jesus Christ", and it proclaimed that "In the person of the Fuhrer we behold the One sent from God who places Germany in the presence of the Lord of History." It is apparent that Hitler was no different from hundreds of other Christian cult leaders through history (such as the founder of the Mormons), who thought of themselves as new prophets, or modern Messiahs who would carry on Christ's work. At no point do they acknowledge that the Nazis did not attempt to assimilate Communist or free thought organizations into their fold, and that this is obviously evidence in favour of the Nazis' Christian leanings, not against them.
Indeed, the OSS document is awash with examples of these Nazi attempts to assimilate the German churches. The appointment of a Reich Bishop19 (Ludwig Muller) and a Reich Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs20 (Hanns Kerrl), and the passing of "a law for the safeguarding of the German Evangelical Church" are all explicitly mentioned, yet nowhere does the document acknowledge that this is curiously inconsistent with the notion that they wished to persecute Christianity. Had the authors completely forgotten the definition of persecution? Look to the Jews and the Communists for examples of real persecution; there was certainly no attempt to assimilate them into the Nazi party, was there?
The travesty continues, as the document acknowledges that in occupied territories such as Slovakia,
"where the Churches proved generally cooperative with the occupying authorities, they were officially favored. But in countries where the spirit of national resistance was widely supported by the local churches, the Nazis felt no compunction about persecuting them vigorously. The countries to suffer most in this respect were the General Government of Poland and occupied Norway."21
Need it even be said that this is yet more evidence for the Nazi policy of persecuting real or potential sources of political opposition, rather than a campaign of persecution against Christianity? How much more blatant does it need to be? Christian churches which co-operated were treated well, and Christian churches which supported active resistance were punished. How does this distinguish them from any other group within Nazi-controlled territory? How many times can the document's authors misrepresent a lack of special exemptions as "persecution"?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is: "a lot of times". In fact, after laying out their clearly fallacious leap from point A to point B, the authors begin to exhaustively list examples of point A. The fact that point A does not lead to point B is quietly ignored, if it had ever occurred to them in the first place.
At one point, they try to paint a picture of Nazi suppression of religious education (amazingly enough, despite Nazi enactment of state-sponsored school prayer and religious indoctrination, not to mention forced closure of all secular schools and criminalization of anti-religious and anti-church propaganda), using examples such as the theological faculty of the University of Munich22. In this example, the Reich Minister for Public Instruction (Rust) appointed two professors which Cardinal Faulhaber categorically rejected. When he instructed his students to boycott their classes, Rust closed the faculty. Once again, punishment for acts of defiance is magically transformed into "anti-Christian persecution" in the eyes of the OSS. Other examples betray similar dishonesty; case 6723 describes the last "independent" theological school in Norway being closed, but it quietly acknowledges that it was only closed so that the Department of Church and Education could create an alternate theological program, designed to produce pro-Nazi clergymen.
The document's use of quotes is invariably misleading. It quotes the Nazi Minister for Public Instruction (Rust) declaring that "the exercise of denominational influences in the education of the young is from now on, and for all times, impossible. From that it follows as a consequence that denominational distinctions between German schools should be brought to an end as soon as possible."24 Notice that he speaks only of eliminating "denominational distinctions" in favour of a single unified religion. This is completely consistent with the Nazi "one faith" policy, yet it is misrepresented in the OSS document as an attempt to attack Christianity!
Conclusions
Throughout its tedious bulk, the OSS document consistently glosses over obvious objections, and it consistently misrepresents attacks on other specific denominations as attacks on Christianity as a whole. It claims that Hitler's attempt to create a unified German Christian sect with himself at its head (much like the way the Mormons' "Modern-day Prophets" set themselves at the head of their sect, or the way the Pope sets himself at the head of the Roman Catholic church) was actually an attempt to destroy Christianity (by that token, the Catholic and Mormon churches are both attempts to destroy Christianity). It misrepresents Nazi attempts to replace denominational religious texts with their own German Christian texts as attempts at "elimination of religious instruction" (again, if we employ that logic, the Catholic church is anti-Christian). It makes a point of mentioning that many hundreds of clergymen were imprisoned or killed, while quietly glossing over the fact that tens of thousands were not. In general, it consistently misrepresents Nazi mistreatment of the German people as special persecution of Christianity whenever Christians just happened to be ensnared by policies which applied to the entire population.
Moreover, the document admits that churches which were friendly to the Nazis were treated well in return, despite its claims of an organized program of anti-Christian persecution. It admits that there were Christians within the Nazi party (although it conspicuously fails to mention the presence of high-ranking Christians such as Himmler, Goebbels, and Göring), it admits that the Nazi party undertook numerous harsh and conspicuous anti-secular, pro-religious actions, it admits that it hasn't a shred of hard documentary evidence for the existence of this large-scale plan of persecution, and it admits that Hitler himself made pro-Christian statements! Yet it simply ignores all of these things, because its conclusion is obviously pre-ordained, and it really didn't matter to its authors whether the evidence added up. Perhaps most amazingly of all, almost every one of these inconsistencies is easily visible right in the text of the document itself, without even bothering to consult external sources! In a classic example of the slothful induction fallacy, the authors simply dismiss every one of the Nazis' pro-Christian actions as part of a propaganda campaign to pretend that they were pro-Christian, thus creating a theory which is carefully designed to be completely unfalsifiable no matter how much evidence is dredged up against it.
In conclusion, the OSS document is an excellent example of the sort of deceptive postwar propaganda which led to the creaton of many modern myths surrounding Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Its methods are wholly illogical, its conclusions are unsupportable, and its self-contradictions are seemingly innumerable. And the most amazing thing of all is that in the year 2001, Rutgers law students would dredge this up, dust it off, and present it to the public as proof positive that Hitler wanted to exterminate Christianity! Their appeals to authority are not surprising (the legal profession relies heavily upon appeals to authority and seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that they are inherently illogical), but it is a sad statement nonetheless on the inability of Christian apologists to face the truth. Christianity can only move forward by confronting its past and vowing never to repeat it, and not by glossing over the truth.
ridenrain @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:21 pm
Wow... it's a frick;'n cut & paste extravaganza.
Nice one there, weastle.
ShepherdsDog @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:21 pm
One only hsa to look at the rituals that were being introduced into the SS to see where Christianity was headed had Hitler succeeded. It was a fusion of mysticism, paganism with a smattering of Christianity. This was to have been the building block of a new Aryan society based on Hitler and Himmler's beliefs.
xerxes @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:21 pm
Good article, though the article doesn't leave a lot of room for debate, but that's because it's quite right.
Hitler was raised a Catholic, but as we all know, he most definitely did not follow Christian teachings.
And the article is right in that Hitler did have a bit of a messianic complex. If anyone ever gets around to watching Das Triumph des Willens, pay attention to the opening scenes where Hitler is almost literally descending from the clouds (accompanied to one of Wagner's opera's of course) as a saviour of the German people. And later in the film, he equates the Nazi party to a religious order.
Hitler like a host of other demagogues used religion cynically as a crutch to hide his abhorrent plans.
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:25 pm
xerxes xerxes:
Good article, though the article doesn't leave a lot of room for debate, but that's because it's quite right.
Hitler was raised a Catholic, but as we all know, he most definitely did not follow Christian teachings.
And the article is right in that Hitler did have a bit of a messianic complex. If anyone ever gets around to watching Das Triumph des Willens, pay attention to the opening scenes where Hitler is almost literally descending from the clouds (accompanied to one of Wagner's opera's of course) as a saviour of the German people. And later in the film, he equates the Nazi party to a religious order.
Hitler was raised a Catholic, but as we all know, he most definitely did not follow Christian teachings.
And the article is right in that Hitler did have a bit of a messianic complex. If anyone ever gets around to watching Das Triumph des Willens, pay attention to the opening scenes where Hitler is almost literally descending from the clouds (accompanied to one of Wagner's opera's of course) as a saviour of the German people. And later in the film, he equates the Nazi party to a religious order.
He did follow christian teachings. The fact of anti-semetism in Europe (indeed the America's also) is well established.
ShepherdsDog @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:30 pm
anti semitism wasn't strictly a religious problem. Russia, under the communists, enacted some of the worst Jewish pogroms, prior to Hitler's rise to power. Based on your logic we can say that their anti semitism was based on atheistc beliefs.
DerbyX @ Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:35 pm
ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
anti semitism wasn't strictly a religious problem. Russia, under the communists, enacted some of the worst Jewish pogroms, prior to Hitler's rise to power. Based on your logic we can say that their anti semitism was based on atheistc beliefs.
I didn't say it was, mearly that it was a fact of society at that time. In addition, Stalin didn't single out jews as did Hitler. Stalin purged for political reasons.
Hitler persecuted all kinds of people for political reasons but his treatment of the jews was a direct result of his religous influences and those influences have well established anti-semtic connections.