Talk:Adolf Hitler/Archive 21

message: 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. 
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have 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. . . we need believing people." (From Hitler's speech, April 26, 1933, during negotiations which led to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933.) 
Hitler was baptized a Catholic, attended a monastery school early in life, and was a communicant and altar boy as a youth. During his years as Chancellor and then dictator of Nazi Germany, he was never excommunicated or condemned, even though the Vatican knew much of his policies and activities. The only major complaints from Rome regarded interference in Church matters. And those were largely silenced by the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican, under Pope Pius XII, which to Hitler meant that the Catholic Church recognized the Nazi state. 
The Nazi military wore belt buckles on which was the legend Gott Mit Uns ("God with us"), and much of his political philosophy was adapted from the Bible. Hitler would not have been successful without the support of German Christians.
The historical record shows that Hitler believed in God and was convinced he was carrying out God's will. Growing up in this environment, he surely learned something of the centuries of discrimination and persecution the Church had supported against Jews in Europe.
Former Jesuit theologian Peter de Rosa describes the groundwork Catholic theology laid for Hitler and the Nazis: "[Catholicism’s] disastrous theology had prepared the way for Hitler and his ‘final solution.’ [The Church published] over a hundred anti-Semitic documents. Not one conciliar decree, not one papal encyclical, bull, or pastoral directive suggest that Jesus’ command, ‘love your neighbor as yourself,' applied to Jews."
Not surprisingly, then, Hitler wrote in his book, 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." He made essentially the same claim in a speech before the Reichstag in 1938.
Hitler considered himself a Catholic until the day he died.  In 1941 he told Gerhard Engel, one of his generals: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." In fact, Hitler was never excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and Mein Kampf was not placed on the Church's Index of Forbidden Books.
Hitler's biographer John Toland explains Catholicism's influence on the Holocaust. He says of Hitler: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god. . .."
The Protestant influence on Nazi Germany was no better, because Hitler is said to have admired the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, more than any other German. Among Luther's many denunciations of the Jews, there are such religious sentiments as: "The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows seven times higher than ordinary thieves," and "We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them."
When Hitler was asked in 1933 what he planned to do about the Jews, he said he would do what Christians had been preaching for centuries. 
Christians constituted a wellspring of support for Hitler. Steve Allen notes that in the 1930s, Nazi Germany "was the most church-affiliated nation in Europe. The German people were almost entirely Catholic and Lutheran. Despite such factors they launched the Holocaust and World War II." Charles Kimball likewise says the Holocaust "would not have happened without the active participation of, sympathetic support of, and relative indifference exhibited by large numbers of Christians."
Also in pre-World War II Germany, corporal punishment was used in the schools and schoolchildren were required to start their days with prayer. Today's advocates of spanking and school prayer should consider that those practices, although supported by religion, proved ineffective in promoting high ethical standards and good behavior among German youth.
Further, Nazi Germany's soldiers wore belt buckles inscribed "Gott mit uns" ("God is with us"). 
Like many tyrants both past and present, Hitler used the mantle of religion to justify and further his selfish, hateful, and destructive philosophy. By conditioning people to blindly accept the pronouncements of authorities, instead of teaching them to think for themselves, religions often make it easy for such evil dictators and demagogues to succeed.
From the Mein Kampf 
Volume 1, Chapter 2, Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna
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 (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
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)
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)
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) 
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 6, War Propaganda
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)
...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
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 11, Nation and Race
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)
Volume 2, Chapter 1, Philosophy and Party
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 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 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) 
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)
God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany.
-Hermann Goering 
-------------- 
I swear before God this holy oath, that I shall give absolute confidence to the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people. 
-Heinrich Himmler (reminding his hearers about the oath taken by all SS men as well as by the military forces) 
(The mass murderer Himmler got brought up as a devout Catholic, like young Hitler, and he was careful to attend mass regularly.) 
You *Einsatztruppen* (task forces) are called upon to fulfill a repulsive duty. But you are soldiers who have to carry out every order unconditionally. You have a responsibility before God and Hitler for everything that is happening. I myself hate this bloody business and I have been moved to the depths of my soul. But I am obeying the highest law by doing my duty. Man must defend himself against bedbugs and rats-- against vermin.
-Heinrich Himmler (in a speech to the SS guards) 
-------------- 
Julius Streicher, the ninth child of a Roman Catholic primary school teacher, also became a school teacher in Nuremberg. When Hitler got released from prison in December 1924, Streicher hailed Hitler's return to politics as a "gift of God," a judgement the Fuehrer never forgot. Streicher held an enthusiam about allegations that the Jews murdered non-Jews in order to obtain blood for the feast of Passover. He charged that Jews hated Christianity and mankind in general. Streicher went to grotesque lengths in his attacks on Jews claiming the discovery that "Christ was not a Jew but an Aryan." 
If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the Jewish blood is finally to come to an end, then there is only one way-- the extermination of that people whose father is the devil...
-Julius Streicher (in an article in the newspaper *Der Stu:mer*) 
Only the Jews, he shouted, had remained victorious after the dreadful days of World War I. These were the people, he charged, of whom Christ said, "Its father is the devil."
-Julius Streicher 
(See John 8:44, for Christ's accusation of father the devil) 
Germans must fight Jews, that organized body of world criminals against whom Christ, the greatest anti-Semite of all time, had fought.
-Julius Streicher 
The pious Catholic parents of Joseph Goebbels raised him and his two brothers in that faith. He spoke of Hitler as "either Christ or St. John." "Hitler, I love you!" he wrote in his diary. 
A Jew is for me an object of disgust. I feel like vomiting when I see one. Christ could not possibly have been a Jew. It is not necessary to prove that scientifically-- it is a fact.
-Joseph Goebbels (in his attempt to win the eternal gratitude of Hitler) 
-------------- 
In his Nuremberg cell, Rudolf Hoess told psychologist G.M. Gilbert how he got brought up in a rigorous Catholic tradition: 
My father was really a bigot. He was very strict and fanatical. I learned that my father took a religious oath at the time of the birth of my younger sister, dedicating me to God and the priesthood, and after that leading a Joseph married life [celibacy]. He directed my entire youthful education toward the goal of making me a priest. I had to pray and go to church endlessly, do penance over the slightest misdeed-- praying as punishment for any little unkindness to my sister, or something like that. 
When asked if his father ever beat him, Hoess replied that he was only punished by prayer. "The thing that made me so stubborn and probably made me later on cut off from people was his way of making me feel that I had wronged him personally, and that, since I was spiritually a minor, he was responsible to God for my sins.
Alfred Rosenberg stands as the major reason why so many American Christians think Nazism represented Nordic pagan beliefs instead of Nazi Christianity. Hitler chose Rosenberg to create a 'religion of the Blood' knowing that any form of propaganda could prove useful. However, Hitler also attempted to establish a Reich Christian Church for the future of Germany. Hitler, himself, did not believe in pagan cults. Rosenberg charged that the true picture of Jesus had been distorted by fanatics like Matthew, by materialistic rabbis like Paul, by African jurists like Tertullian, and the mongrel half-breeds like St. Augustine. The real Christ, wrote Rosenberg, was an Amorite Nordic, aggressive, courageous, "a man of true Nordic character," a revolutionary who opposed the Jewish and Roman systems with sword in hand, bringing not peace but war (see Matthew 10:34-37). Rosenberg later went on to say that he favored a "positive Christianity," which would purify the Nordic race, re-establish the old pagan virtues, and substitute the fiery spirit of the hero for the crucifixion.
Volume 1, Chapter 12 The First Period of Development of the Nationalist Social German Worker's Party
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.)
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/hitler/hitler1.htm
http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm
http://www.remember.org/6/hitler-and-religion.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/religionofhitler.html
http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerSources.htm
http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitlerchristian.htm
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.
Giovanni33 19:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Shall we create two articles Hitler's religious beliefs and Churches in Nazi Germany? Andries 20:24, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I doubt whether Hitler's religious beliefs should be treated here, because I think that his religious beliefs are of minor importance when compared to his political beliefs. And also please read what Sebastian Haffner wrote about Hitler's religious beliefs in his book The Meaning of Hitler (a translation of an excerpt on the subject can be found in this talk page). Andries 20:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly why it should be mentioned, if only breifly---becaues Hitler's religious beliefs are very political. His emphasis for religion was political firt and foremost, and some of it may have been only political, although religious in form like any good polititian. Giovanni33 20:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Evidence for the Record

message: There is no doubt that Hitler was at least some point a self-described "Christian", nor is there any doubt that European anti-Semitism has strong roots in some aspects of Christian theology.
However, I think it is a bit of a vague and unecessary distortion to say that Hitler appealed to "Christian anti-Semitism". Like every other issue in history, anti-Semitism was more complex and varied than merely being a pre-conceived and well-defined prejudice originating in some other pre-conceived and well-defined notion. In many cases it was merely advantageous for some people to exploit anti-Semitic beliefs even if they had no strong opinions of their own. In yet other cases anti-Semitism was just one prejudice among others because the superiority of the Aryan race was considered indisputable; people of "non-Aryan" descent anywhere of any particular faith were considered de facto inferior because they were not "Aryan". And of course, no one can seriously deny that anti-Semitism already had deep roots in European culture whether for religious, political or cultural reasons - it is after all one variation of xenophobia.
I think what's being debated here is not the first two statements above, but the relevance of the roots of anti-Semitism and the exact nature of its appeal in an article on Hitler. It's like calling the current American Republican party "Christian", on the basis of its exploitation of American religious fundamentalism. -- Simonides 21:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't want to deny that Hitler appealed to Christian anti-semitism. Hitler appealed to everyones anti-semitism. DJ Clayworth 14:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what I am saying. -- Simonides 17:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roots of Anti-Semitism