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Was Hitler a Christian?
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Jehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describes the real "god" of Hitler and the Nazis in his article, "The Trauma of the Holocaust: Some Historical Perspectives," by saying: ""They wanted to go back to a pagan world, beautiful, naturalistic, where natural hierarchies based on the supremacy of the strong would be established, because strong equaled good, powerful equaled civilized. The world did have a kind of God, the merciless God of nature, the brutal God of races, the oppressive God of hierarchies." In other words, definitely non-Christian.
Historian Paul Johnson wrote that Hitler hated Christianity with a passion, adding that shortly after assuming power in 1933, Hitler told Hermann Rauschnig t
hat he intended "to stamp out Christianity root and branch."
nAs 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 J*ws."
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 characte
r 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
www.infidels.org/library/historical/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: &q
uot;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 cann
ot 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 commu
nism."
Anton Gil notes in his book, An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945: "For his part, Hitler naturally wanted to bring the church into line with everything else in his scheme of things. He knew he dare not simply eradicate it: that would not have been possible with such an international organisation, and he would have lost many Christian supporters had he tried to. His principal aim was to unify the German Evangelical Church under a pro-Nazi banner, and to come to an accommodation with the Catholics."
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhitlerchristian.html
Adolf Hitler privately to Heinrich Himmler, October 14, 1941:
"I
t may be asked whether concluding a concordat with the churches wouldn't facilitate our exercise of power.
"First, in this way the authority of the state would be vitiated by the fact of the intervention of a third power concerning which it is impossible to
say how long it would remain reliable. In the case of the Anglican Church, this objection does not arise, for England knows she can depend upon her church. But what about the Catholic Church? Wouldn't we be running the risk of her one day going into reverse after having put herself at the service of the state solely in order to safeguard her power? If one day the state's policy ceased to suit Rome or the clergy, the priests would turn against the state, as they are doing now. History provides examples that should make us careful.
"Secondly there is also a question of principle. Trying to take a long- range view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable based on falsehood? When I think of our
people's future, I must look beyond immediate advantages, even if these advantages were to last 300-500 years or more. I'm convinced that any pact with the church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such
a compromise. Thus the state will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse.
"An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature, and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the state, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science.
"Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can't, or can't yet be explained - that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can
't satisfy them with the party's program. Time will pass until the moment when science can answer all the questions.
"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The d
ogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advance of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there's no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds - perhaps inhabited worlds like ours - then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.
"But one must continue to pay attention to another aspect of the problem. It's possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature., or by k
nowledge of the past. Only a minority, however, at the present stage of the mind's development, can feel the respect inspired by the unknown and thus satisfy the metaphysical needs of the soul. The average human being has the same needs, but can satisfy them only by elementary means. That's particularly true of women, as also of peasants who impot
ently watch the destruction of their crops. The person whose life tends to simplification is thirsty for belief, and he dimly clings to it with all his strength.
"Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they've acquired others that are more reasonable. Indeed it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this. But it would serve no purpose to replace an old belief by a new one that would merely fill the place left vacant by its predecessor.
"It seems to me that nothing would be more foo
lish than to reestablish the worship of Odin. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that point the ancient world was divided between the systems of philosophy and the worship of idols. It's not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified - and the only way of getting rid of Christiani
ty is to allow it to die little by little.
"If in the course of 1-2,000 years science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity which is the liar; it's in perpetual conflict with itself.
"One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of a belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most m
en the opportunity to concretize the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?"
- Adolf Hitler, in _Bormann-Vermerke_ (transcribed by Martin Bormann), reprinted as _Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944_ (H.R. Trevor-Roper, Trans.), New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953, pages #48-
51.
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