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Basic observations I - VII
What is the purpose of many attempts to link Hitler to Christianity and the bible? Is it to understand Hitler, or is it to attack Christianity? It is significant that in all of the references made by Hitler that have any religious content, assembled by diligent search by those who want to link him to Christianity, the following doctrines are conspicuously absent:
~ That Jesus Christ is God come to earth in the flesh
~ That he was born of a virgin
~ That he died on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. This last part is put in italics because Hitler did mention the crucifixion once or twice, but merely mentioning the crucifixion (once in comparison to himself) does not constitute Christianity.
~ That God is three-in-one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
~ That Jesus Christ rose from the dead
~ That Jesus Christ now sits at the right hand of God, whence he will return to judge the world
~ That we are all guilty of sin, and forgiveness of sins comes through faith in Christ and his sacrifice on the cross
~ That there will be a resurrection from the dead, and a day of judgement, on which the chosen of God will be ushered into paradise, while the lost will be sent to punishment in the lake of fire
~ That the bible is the word of God, directly inspired and infallible and inerrant
Belief in Christianity involves much more than "saying something positive about Jesus" or "never condemning Jesus." The abovementioned doctrines are at the very center of Christianity. The fact that the adult Hitler never as far as is known mentioned any of them is irrelevant to some who for their own personal reasons are determined to connect Christianity to Naziism no matter what.
II. Many (though not all) of Hitler's religious comments were politically motivated, insincere, and often blatantly dishonest.
Some have argued for Hitler's Christianity by asserting that Hitler must have been a Christian because he said so himself, and therefore it must be true (this with reference to an oft quoted remark in a speech of 1922). He also supposedly showed his belief in Christianity by promising to protect and respect the rights of the churches. It is difficult to know how to respond to people who put their faith in Hitler's sincerity. Perhaps the best way is by showing a few other statements of Hitler's, taken from several of his speeches [all quotes taken from www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/speeches/text/speeches.htm]:
It [the German government] is impressed with the importance of its duty to use this nation of equal rights as an instrument for the securing and maintenance of that peace which the world requires today more than ever before.
May the good will of all others assist in the fulfillment of this our earnest wish for the welfare of Europe and of the whole world...
...we should be happy if the world, by reducing its armaments, would see to it that we need never increase our own.
(February 1, 1933)
It is the sincere desire of the National Government to be able to refrain from increasing our army and our weapons, insofar as the rest of the world is now also ready to fulfill its obligations in the matter of radical disarmament. For Germany desires nothing except an equal right to live and equal freedom...
...The German nation wishes to live in peace with the rest of the world...The keeping open of this wound leads to distrust on the one side and hatred on the other, and thus to a general feeling of insecurity. The National Government is ready to extend a hand in sincere understanding to every nation that is ready finally to make an end of the tragic past. The international economic distress can only disappear when the basis has been provided by stable political relations and when the nations have regained confidence in each other...
...we are ready to co-operate with absolute sincerity on the basis it provides, in order to unite the four Great Powers, England, France, Italy, and Germany, in friendly co-operation in attacking with courage and determination the problems upon the solution of which the fate of Europe depends...
...The Government of the Reich is ready to cultivate with the Soviet Union friendly relations profitable to both parties.
(March 23, 1933)
What we want lies clear before us: not war and not strife. Just as we have established peace within our own people, so we want nothing else than peace with the world. For we all know that our great work can succeed only in a time of peace (May 1, 1935).
But, a speech given by Hitler in the Reichstag in January 1939 has been cited to prove Hitler's support for the church. The same speech also contains these equally truthful statements:
...The German nation has no feeling of hatred towards England, America or France; all it wants is peace and quiet.
The nations will in a short time realize that National Socialist Germany wants no enmity with other nations; that all the assertions as to our intended attacks on other nations are lies, lies born of morbid hysteria,or of a mania for self-preservation on the part of certain politicians...
Moreover, speaking in the same impartial forum of truth and detached analysis, the Nazi Reichstag, Hitler made the following comments on September first of the same year, 1939:
As always, I attempted to bring about, by the peaceful method of making proposals for revision, an alteration of this intolerable position. It is a lie when the outside world says that we only tried to carry through our revisions by pressure...
...You know the endless attempts I made for a peaceful clarification and understanding of the problem of Austria, and later of the problem of the Sudetenland, Bohemia, and Moravia...
...In the same way, I have also tried to solve the problem of Danzig, the Corridor, &c., by proposing a peaceful discussion...
...For four months I have calmly watched developments...
...These proposals for mediation have failed because in the meanwhile there, first of all, came as an answer the sudden Polish general mobilization, followed by more Polish atrocities. These were again repeated last night. Recently in one night there were as many as twenty-one frontier incidents; last night there were fourteen, of which three were quite serious...
...Germany has no intention of exporting its doctrine. Given the fact that Soviet Russia has no intention of exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any reason why we should still oppose one another. On both sides we are clear on that...We have, therefore, resolved to conclude a pact which rules out for ever any use of violence between us...
...This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory...
Those who base their understanding of Hitler's dealing with the churches or of the outbreak of WWII on speeches in the Reichstag are deficient in understanding, to put it politely.
"Hitler was a Christian and supported the church - we have it in his own words!" Hitler wanted peace too - he said so himself. Anyone who does not understand that Hitler routinely lied (not pathologically but deliberately and skilfully) really has no business trying to discuss what he believed. We would pay no attention to someone who claimed "We know that Poland started the war by attacking Germany because Hitler said so."
Hitler was at times very honest, at other times very dishonest. In stating his main goals, he was extremely forthright. Tear up the Versailles Treaty; regain lost territory; expand to the east; end the Weimar democracy; get rid of the Jews; make Germany militarily strong - on these points Hitler was honest. As he worked toward the attainment of these goals, however, he was extremely skilfull at telling people what they wanted to hear, and lied as a matter of deliberate policy. It is more than merely ironic that when Hitler told the truth, many people refused to take it seriously, and when he lied, they believed him. People believe what they want to believe.
Moreover, when considering Hitler's earlier statements, it is easy to forget that he was at one time not the Fuhrer, but a politician angling for votes, and trying to broaden his base of support. To antagonize a significant portion of the electorate - whether serious and committed Christians, or those who had some sort of respect for the religion even if they didn't practice it - would not have been to his advantage. This is ordinary politics, observable in America today. Many politicians will make a few religious noises on occasion, or make a point of being photographed in some religious connection, even if in their hearts they have no use for Christian doctrines.
III. Mere references to God, Providence, the Lord, and so on do not constitute Christianity. Hitler also made references to "gods" and "goddesses," proving either that he was a polytheist, or that his religious rhetoric was not always illustrative of his sincere beliefs.
Those who assert Hitler's Christianity based on his religious sounding statements or phrases are entirely ignorant of the whole context and trend of 19th-century German culture. There were many people who explicitly rejected biblical Christianity, and wanted nothing to do with Jesus the Son of God dying on the cross, but who neverthless felt that there was some sort of a higher spiritual realm. Whether Hegel's World Spirit, or a pantheistic cosmic, or a "god" of the material universe that operated through natural laws known to science, various religious concepts were frequently expressed in a non-Christian context. Hitler had deep roots in the 19th century, a century of which many seem to be entirely oblivious in their attempts to understand Hitler.
In addition, the 19th century saw an attempt to invent a new form of Christianity purged of its Jewish elements (meaning all of the Old Testament and most of the New). Invented largely by Paul de Lagarde and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (the Thomas Aquinas of German racism), but elaborated on by Nazi "thinkers" such as Alfred Rosenberg, this "German Christianity" or "Positive Christianity" fantasized about an Aryan Jesus whose father was a Roman soldier, or one of the imaginary Aryans alleged to have been occupying Galilee. This Jesus was a powerful fighting Jesus who died in the fight against Jewish capitalism. His resurrection from the dead and his return as God to judge the world were overlooked. This is the "Positive Christianity" referred to in Point 24 of the Nazi Party Platform. Many comments about Christianity from this period need to be interpreted in this context.
Mein Kampf also contains references to various gods and goddesses - proving, if his religious utterances mean anything, that he was a pagan. "The gods" are referred to in Book I chapters 3, 8, and 10 ("the manifestations of decay showed only that the gods had willed Austria's destruction. [I:3]), and there are references to goddesses as well: to the Goddess of Suffering (I:2) and the Goddess of Destiny (I:5). There is even a "goddess of eternal justice and inexorable retribution" which Hitler believed "caused Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the most mortal enemy of Austrian-Germanism, to fall by the bullets which he himself had helped to mold" (I:1).
People who hunt through Mein Kampf looking for every scrap or hint that might possibly link Hitler to Christianity ignore these references because they are propagandizing, not researching.
IV. Hitler's policy toward the churches after coming to power was not one of respect, sympathy, and mutual belief.
Hitler demanded total obedience, and those who deviated too far from the party line were swiftly punished. That the Nazi policy toward the churches was one of rigorous repression rather than sympathy and support is documented amply by J.S. Conway in his book The Nazi Persecution of the Churches. Here are some of the repressive measures enumerated by Conway:
~ arrests of clergy and incarceration in concentration camps
~ murders of religious opponents of the regime
~ physical assaults on clergymen ignored by the police
~ academic, social, youth, labor, professional, women's and athletic religious organizations and associations banned
~ seizure of church property, including orphanages, hospitals, monasteries and schools (with religious insignias removed and teachers fired)
~ Catholic civil servants dismissed
~ church publications censored or forbidden
~ religious meetings broken up by SA attacks
~ dissolution of religious political parties
~ attacks on church and Christianity in the press
~ attempts to force all German churches into one state controlled church
~ restriction of religious activities to church buildings only
~ surveillance of worship services and church leaders
~ public attacks on the church by Nazi leaders, including Goebbels and Goering
~ criticisms of National Socialism or the government forbidden
~ the establishment of new religious groups forbidden
~ civil servants required to withdraw their children from religious youth organizations with loss of job the penalty for refusing to comply
~ total submission of the church to the state in every respect
~ "separation of church and state" meant the churches were allowed to have no say whatever in political questions
~ high school teachers forbidden to be active in religious youth groups
~ clergymen, including monks and nuns, arrested and tried on trumped up charges
~ prayers forbidden at school assemblies
~ removal of crucifixes and religious paintings from schools
~ numerous independent religious groups banned completely
One individual argued that these repressive measures were inherently Christian, that Christians always did such things. Such monumental ignorance of history defies refutation, if it is in fact ignorance, and not rather wilful deception.
V. Hitler's life and actions were blatantly contrary to the teachings of Christ and apostles.
Not only did Christ say "Blessed are the merciful" and "Blessed are the peacemakers," which clearly have nothing to do with Hitler; the bible also says plainly that liars and murderers will not inherit the kingdom of God. As it is written in Revelation: "...the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." Galatians gives a list of sins, including "Adultery, fornication, uncleanness...hatred...wrath, strife...murders, drunkenness" and concludes "they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."
Moreover, in a striking statement in Mein Kampf (Bk. I chapt. 8) which I have not seen quoted elsewhere, Hitler makes a comment about Christianity that is quite revealing:
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.
Here he says that the significance of Christianity lies in "culture, ethics, and morality." This is the view of Christianity taken by Hegel, Schleiermacher, and the whole school of modern theological liberalism. What is important is not doctrine, which Hitler never mentioned and liberal theologians rejected as obsolete, but "ethics" and "feelings."
Equally significant is the idea that Christianity only reflected the will of its founder, and was only a human invention. That Hitler considered Christ to be merely human is clear from his consistent refusal to mention Christ's deity, resurrection, or return as God to judge the world. That he considered ethics to be a human invention contrary to the laws of nature is evident from Mein Kampf (Bk. I chapt. 11) where he says:
This applies most of all to those ideas whose content originates, not in an exact scientific truth, but in the world of emotion, or, as it is so beautifully and clearly expressed today, reflects an 'inner experience.' All these ideas, which have nothing to do with cold logic as such, but represent only pure expressions of feeling, ethical conceptions, etc., are chained to the existence of men, to whose intellectual imagination and creative power they owe their existence.
Let no one point to the Crusades or the Inquisition, which did not occur until more than a thousand years after Christ, and are in no sense inherent in biblical teaching. Those who have the name of Christian and use this or the church as a cloak for their evildoing and cruelty will receive a heavier condemnation on the day of judgement. Jesus himself referred to those who called him "Lord" but will be turned away on the day of judgement.
VI. Hitler's intellectual antecedents are clearly visible in the writings of 19th-century German thinkers all of whom expressly rejected Christianity. His most immediate intellectual roots are in the volkish movement, a deep cultural trend of modern German thought that glorified war, imperialism, authoritarianism, pre-Christian pagan virtues, and Aryan racial supremacy (including extreme antisemitism).
It is quite remarkable, the way people will jump from Roman Palestine to the Crusades and the Inquisition to Luther and thence to Hitler, omitting the entire 19th century as if it never occurred, or passing over it very lightly and superficially. No one in centuries of Christian cultural domiance before the modern era ever advocated or attempted to carry out the extermination of the Jewish people as a whole. Apart from the aformentioned warnings about murderers not going to heaven - a serious restraint on anyone sincere about Christianity - there are clear teachings in the New Testament that God still, after the death and resurrection of Christ, has a plan for the Jewish people. This is a deep barrier to genocide, one of the many spiritual barriers that was removed by the modern era's rejection of biblical Christianity.
It took the 19th century to introduce the added element of racial "science," and also to embolden man in criminality by dismissing all thoughts of a future judgement. It took modern secularism to unleash the evil in man to an extent never before dreamed of, and it is no secret that the three figures in the preceding century who most fully adocated what Hitler later put into practice were all outspoken opponents of Christianity. I am referring here to Wagner, Haeckel, and Nietzsche.
The last of these three, Nietzsche, not only denied the existence of God altogether - he also claimed (in his book significantly titled The Antichrist: A Curse on Christianity) that Christianity was nothing but a trick invented by the devious and cunning Jews to manipulate stronger people. Moreover, he described the Jews as vermin, bloodsuckers, hostile to life, and enemies of civilization. The venom against the Jews with which Nietzsche's pages drips in this book has nothing to do with Christ and the apostles, but a great deal to do with the Third Reich - and Hitler's admiration for Nietzsche is a documented fact. The following passage from Shirer is significant [http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Nietzsche.html]:
Yet I think no one who lived in the Third Reich could have failed to be impressed by Nietzsche's influence on it....Yet Nazi scribblers never tired of extolling him. Hitler often visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and publicized his veneration for the philosopher by posing for photographs of himself staring in rapture at the bust of the great man.
As to the social Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, Daniel Gasman in his impressive book The Scientific Origins of National Socialism explains how Darwin's survival of the fittest was elevated by Haeckel and others to the racial level. Superior races, racial purity, life as a pitiless struggle without God or ethics in which the strong survive and the weak die, imperialism, German nationalism - all of these and other elements which have everything to do with the Third Reich and nothing to do with the bible are found in Haeckel.
A third source is Wagner. Holding to the increasingly common belief that Christianity was a religion of weakness and passivity that had corrupted the healthy and primitive pre-Christian society of German warriors, Wagner not only openly advocated dictatorship and German supremacy - he also had a deep hostility to Jews, as is documented in detail by Simon Weil in his online essay Wagner and the Jews[http://members.aol.com/wagnerbuch/intro.htm]. A well-known biography of Hitler gave the impression that Hitler liked Wagner's music, nothing more; it neglected to mention that Wagner was a prolific writer whose many writings on race and politics connect him intimately with the Third Reich. This is elaborated on at length by Peter Viereck in his work Meta-politics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind.
This is not to say that these three men "caused" the Third Reich. It is to say that they are representative of deep and powerful trends in society that were at work long before Hitler was even born. The depth and extent of these trends as found not in individuals, but in organizations, clubs, publications, educational and professional associations and so on, have been examined in detail by George Mosse in his book The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. This book examines the volkish movement in detail, shows it to have been widespread through influential levels of German society before WWI, and sees it as the immediate source of National Socialism.
Hitler himself wrote a great deal about volkish values and even has the term in a chapter title in Mein Kampf ("Personality and the Conception of the Folkish State," Book II chapt.4). If he had said so much about Christianity and the state we would never hear the end of it. But, if he refers frequently to an expressly unChristian and even anti-Christian philosophy, that is relevant only to those who really want to understand his motivation.
VII. Christians supported Hitler.
Four points can be made here.
1. Many non-Christians also supported Hitler. Journalists, university professors, liberals, people involved with the occult, people from all walks of life were attracted to Hitler's new gospel. Even many Marxists, who in theory should have been opposed to Hitler, saw the light and embraced the new gospel - especially after 1933. It is a gross oversimplification to say Christians put Hitler into power.
2. Many Christians were attracted to some but not all of Hitler's political program. To end the instability of the Weimar democracy; to regain territory lost in the war; to deal with the threat of Communism (which in Germany at that time was not just a McCarthyist bogeyman); to make Germany strong again and tear up the Versailles Treaty - these goals appealed to many who had reservations about Hitler's personality and about the "excesses" of his ideology and supporters.
3. Many Christians were, like many non-Christians, deceived by Hitler. They thought him to be a reasonable man - an illusion he was careful to foster - and had no idea of what he would really become. The future horrors of the Third Reich were unimaginable. Of course if the Germans could have foreseen what Hitler would really do they would not have supported him. This is not to excuse anyone. There was enough evil and hatred clearly manifest in Hitler's person and program to serve as clear danger signals to anyone with spiritual discernment - and many Germans did not support Hitler. In the last free election in Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, Hitler obtained less than 50% of the vote.
4. Many German Christians were Christians in name only, and did not believe in or follow many of the basic tenets of Christianity. They were cultural Christians, not spiritual ones, baptized as infants and thereafter considered
"Christians" irrespective of their beliefs or actions. This natural human tendency was exacerbated by the theological liberalism that had captured many of Germany's churches and seminaries in the preceding century. It was believed by many "Christians" that the bible was full of mistakes and errors; that Jesus was a wise moral teacher who delivered a "sublime" ethical code, nothing more; that such doctrines as the virgin birth, the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross for the sins of the world, even his resurrection and the day of judgement were myths of a pre-scientific age. They thought the essence of being a Christian was to be a nice person, and hence suffered from a great spiritual emptiness that left them ripe for deception.
The church failed so miserably to confront and expose and resist the evil of Hitler because it was largely a dead church to begin with. Those few who had the spiritual insight to recognize Hitler's evil did not have the power or the influence to accomplish anything.
If a significant number of Christians had been spiritually insightful enough and bold enough in the 1920's and early 30's to declare that the Germans were not the master race; that Hitler was a false messiah; that racial purity was a bogus concept and the Jews were not in any sense a threat to a non-existent racial purity; that revenge for WWI was wrong; that the Versailles Treaty should be accepted as God's judgement and the Weimar government should be supported; that eternal life through faith in Christ was more important than recovering lost territory - but this did not happen.
It was not Christianity that contributed to the rise of Hitler, but the failure of Christianity which left a spiritual vacuum for the Nazis to fill. Many German "Christians" thought human goodness was the essence of being a Christian, and hence suffered from a great spiritual emptiness that left them ripe for deception. The leading "Protestant" "theologian" and "pastor" of 19th-century Germany, Friedrich Schleiermacher, taught that Jesus only fainted on the cross, and revived in the tomb. He emerged broken and bleeding to somehow start a new religion, the essence of which was based on transient human feeling rather than on eternal truths. "You are the master race and it is your destiny to rule the world" was considerably more attractive to lost people looking for meaning after the capitulation of the church to the forces of secularism.
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