From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: soc.women,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Instant Yuppies (was: Concordia University openly practices sex discrimination
Date: 10 Apr 92 21:21:44 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1992Apr7.150659.5461@Princeton.EDU>, roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
> In article <10305@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> >In article <1992Mar31.084144.9525@midway.uchicago.edu>, gross@befvax.uchicago.edu writes:
> >
> >> >Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
> >> >"National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." -- Martin Bormann, 
> >> >1941.
> >> 
> >> P.S.  Why are you quoting a Nazi war criminal in your .sig file?
> >> 
> >> Leon Gross
> >
> >Because there's a widespread belief that the National Socialist
> >movement was Christian.  I can think of no better quotation to
> >demonstrate the falsity of the claim.
> 
> 
> How's that again?  Quote the words of a lying, murderous criminal?
> 
> How about these then?
> 
> "We have no further territorial demands." -- Hitler, Munich, 1938.
> "We don't want to kill any Jews, just relocate them." -- ibid., a few
> years later.
> 
> Seriously, have you no better authority for your case than a heinous
> Nazi criminal?  

In a country that was nominally Christian, such a statement is a
profound statement of how totally opposed National Socialism and
Christianity were.  Can you imagine the same statement being made
in America today?  Making such a statement as a lie would be 
counterproductive -- hence the reason to believe it to be true.
Bormann gained nothing from such a statement, and the potential
was strong to damage the National Socialist position.

> Or do you not wish to confront the behavior of Germany's Christians and
> Christian churches, most of which embraced the new order with little
> problem?  

A largely false statement -- but I've learned to expect those from
you.  See end of posting.

> Or do you not wish to confront the reinvention of Christianity (something
> that happens all the time, btw) as something "German"?  

Reinvention?  Hardly.  It was repudiated.

> Now, tell me what special authority Martin Bormann had within Nazi
> ideological circles to make that blanket statement, and tell me what
> *contect* he was saying it in, and you may begin to have a flicker of an
> inkling of a case.
> 
> Oh, and tell me what words he actually used.  I doubt he spoke them in
> English, and the word that translates to "Christianity" also translates
> to "The Christian World" or "Christendom."  

Translation always involves context.  Tell me, does the statement,
"National Socialism and the Christian World is irreconcilable," 
sound a little bizarre, coming from a leading Nazi in 1941?

> So, unless you really CAN'T think of a better refutation than a vague,
> out-of-context quote from someone whose authority in these matters was
> less than complete, and whose credibility is zero to begin with, how
> about ponying up?
> 
> Roger

        The Religion of Adolf Hitler & Nazi Germany
                              
There  is   a  widely   held  belief  that,  "Hitler  was  a
Christian."   This  false  idea  is  widely  promulgated  by
atheists as  part  of  their  propaganda  efforts,  but  the
evidence is  entirely on  the other  side.  While it is true
that Hitler  had been  raised as  a Catholic,  and gave  lip
service to  the place  of Christianity  in  Germany  in  his
speech of  March 23, 1933, when the Reichstag "abandoned its
functions  to   the  dictator,"  the  sham  nature  of  such
statements became apparent almost immediately.

Hitler's government  signed an  agreement with  the  Vatican
"which guaranteed  the freedom of the Catholic religion" and
the right  of  the  Church  to  regulate  its  own  internal
affairs.   Almost immediately,  the German  government  took
steps that  showed the essential conflict between the values
of the Roman Catholic Church, and the National Socialists:
  
  On July  25, five  days after  the ratification  of the
  concordat,  the   German   government   promulgated   a
  sterilization  law,  which  particularly  offended  the
  Catholic Church.   Five days later the first steps were
  taken to  dissolve the  Catholic Youth League.   During
  the next  years thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and
  lay leaders  were arrested,  many of them on trumped-up
  charges  of   "immorality"  or  of  "smuggling  foreign
  currency."  Erich Klausener, leader of Catholic Action,
  was, as  we have  seen, murdered  in the June 30, 1934,
  purge.     Scores   of   Catholic   publications   were
  suppressed, and  even the  sanctity of the confessional
  was violated by Gestapo agents.[1]
  
By 1937,  Pope Pius  XI had  accused National  Socialism  of
"secret and  open fundamental  hostility to  Christ and  His
Church."[2]

The situation  for Protestant  churches in  Germany was even
worse.  A National Socialist organization called "The German
Christians' Faith  Movement" had  been organized  by an army
chaplain, with  the goal  of using the government to form "a
Reich Church which would bring all Protestants into one all-
embracing body."   This  faction had  the support of about a
sixth of the 17,000 pastors in Germany.  In opposition was a
group of pastors called the "Confessional Church":
  
  It opposed the Nazification of the Protestant churches,
  rejected the  Nazi racial  theories and  denounced  the
  anti-Christian objectives  of Rosenberg  and other Nazi
  leaders.[3]
  
Like most other Germans, the majority of German Protestants,
including such  eventual opposition leaders as Pastor Martin
Niemoller, initially  supported  Hitler  as  a  solution  to
Germany's economic  and social  chaos.  As the nature of the
National Socialists  became apparent,  many became opponents
of the  government.   A newly formed official "Reich Church"
that forced  all Protestant  denominations together  quickly
demonstrated its position concerning the Bible:
  
  A Dr.  Reinhardt Krause,  the Berlin district leader of
  the  sect,   proposed  the   abandonment  of   the  Old
  Testament, "with  its tales  of  cattle  merchants  and
  pimps" and  the revision  of the New Testament with the
  teaching  of  Jesus  "corresponding  entirely  with the
  demands of National Socialism."  Resolutions were drawn
  up  demanding  "One  People,  One  Reich,  One  Faith,"
  requiring all  pastors to take an oath of allegiance to
  Hitler and  insisting that  all churches  institute the
  Aryan paragraph  and exclude  converted Jews.  This was
  too  much  even  for  the  timid  Protestants  who  had
  declined to take any part in the church war, and Bishop
  Mueller was  forced to  suspend Dr.  Krause and disavow
  him.
  
Hitler had  always had  a strong  contempt for  Protestants,
considering them,  "insignificant little  people, submissive
as dogs..."   When the Confessional Church claimed to be the
legitimate Protestant church in Germany in 1935, the Gestapo
arrested 700 of the Confessional Church's pastors.  Hundreds
more arrests  followed the  Confessional Church's  May, 1936
memorandum to  Hitler protesting against the "anti-Christian
tendencies of  the regime, denouncing the government's anti-
Semitism and  demanding an  end to State interference in the
churches..."   Many of  the pastors  went  to  concentration
camps; one  of the signers of the memorandum was murdered at
the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.[4]

What was  the position  of the official "Reich Church" about
Christianity?     It  taught   a  distinctly   non-Christian
doctrine.   One of  the  Reich  Church  bureaucrats  clearly
defined his  position  relative  to  Jesus  Christ  and  the
teachings of Christianity:
  
  Dr. Zoellner  and Count  Galen [the  Catholic bishop in
  Muenster]  have   tried  to   make  clear  to  me  that
  Christianity consists  in faith in Christ as the Son of
  God.   That makes  me laugh...  No, Christianity is not
  dependent   upon   the   Apostle's   Creed...      True
  Christianity is  represented  by  the  party,  and  the
  German  people   are  now   called  by  the  party  and
  especially by  the Fuehrer  to a  real  Christianity...
  The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation.[5]
  
Pastor Niemoller's  last sermon,  before his arrest in July,
1937, made  it clear that he and other Christians in Germany
placed obedience  to God  above obedience to the government,
and that the two were clearly in conflict:
  
  No more  are we  ready to  keep silent  at man's behest
  when God  commands us  to speak.   For  it is, and must
  remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man.
  
Niemoller was  tried and  convicted of "abuse of the pulpit"
and sent  to prison  for seven months.  Upon his release, he
was arrested  by the  Gestapo and  sent to Sachsenhausen and
Dachau.   Niemoller was  not alone.   A  total of  807 other
pastors and  leading laymen  of the Confessional Church were
also arrested in 1937, and "hundreds more in the next couple
of years."

What about  the other  pastors in  Germany?    "As  for  the
majority of  Protestant pastors,  they, like almost everyone
else in Germany, submited in the face of Nazi terror."  Less
resilent men  than Niemoller,  such as  Bishop Marahrens  of
Hanover  were  forced  to  make  public  statements  putting
Christianity at  a lower  level of  obligation than National
Socialism.[6]

The National  Socialists were not content to create a "Reich
Church" that repudiated all of Christian teaching; they went
further.   Rosenberg, Bormann,  and Himmler, developed plans
for the  restoration of  paganism.   Bormann recognized that
even  in  the  emasculated  form  that  the  "Reich  Church"
represented,  Christianity   and  National   Socialism  were
fundamentally  at   odds.     In  1941,  Bormann  proclaimed
publicly:   "National   Socialism   and   Christianity   are
irreconcilable."   Rosenberg's  program  for  the  neo-pagan
"National Reich  Church" included  the extermination of "the
strange and  foreign Christian  faiths imported into Germany
in the ill-omened year 800," and the "immediate cessation of
the publishing  and dissemination  of the Bible in Germany."
Other goals  included the removal of "all crucifixes, Bibles
and pictures  of saints," and the replacement of all crosses
with "the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika."[7]

Hitler,  however,   didn't  have  the  same  enthusiasm  for
religion that his lieutenants had:
  
  What nonsense!   Here  we have  at last  reached an age
  that has left all mysticism behind it, and now he wants
  to start  that all  over again.   We might just as well
  have  stayed   with  the  church.    At  least  it  had
  tradition.  To think that I may some day be turned into
  an SS saint!  Can you imagine it?  I would turn over in
  my grave...[8]
  
Speer reports  that Hitler  would make "harsh pronouncements
against the  church" among  his  political  associates,  but
would soften  his tone  around women.    Hitler  would  also
complain that it had been the "misfortune" of the Germans:
  
  to have  the wrong  religion.   Why didn't  we have the
  religion of  the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the
  Fatherland  as   the  highest  good?    The  Mohammedan
  religion too would have been much more compatible to us
  than Christianity.   Why did it have to be Christianity
  with its meekness and flabbiness?[9]
  
The  evidence   is  clear  -  Hitler  held  Christianity  in
contempt, made  substantial efforts  to co-opt both Catholic
and  Protestant   churches  in  the  interests  of  National
Socialism, and  when it became clear that Christianity would
never be  the willing  lap-dog he  sought,  he  allowed  his
lieutenants to  engage in  a campaign  to replace  even  the
corrupted form  of the  "Reich Church"  with an openly pagan
religion,  even   though  he   regarded  all   religion   as
"nonsense."


Sources

1 William  L. Shirer,  _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_,
(New York, Simon & Schuster: 1960), 234-235.
2 Shirer, 235.
3 Shirer, 235-236.
4 Shirer, 237-238.
5 Shirer, 238-239.
6 Shirer, 239.
7 Shirer, 240.
8 Albert  Speer, transl.  by Richard & Clara Winston, _Inside
The Third Reich_, (New York, Macmillan Co.: 1970), 94.
9 Speer, 95-96.
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
"The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a
favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace
of God." -- Thomas Jefferson