Hitler was in fact not a Christian, he manipulated the masses through a variety of different ways. One of his ways was to self-identify as Christian since Europe was mostly Christian back then, Hitler wrote in a private diary kept away from the masses that he was not a Christian. Common misconception.
Hitler was a lapsed Catholic and most german Catholics didn't vote for him in the 1933 election.
Plus he set a new pagan religion for Nazi Germany. I wonder what sort of Catholic is this.
Especially when Hitler killed a lot of catholic priests and was against religion.
If you want proof just look up how pope John Paul II barely escaped from the nazis.
Hitler didn't rage war because of religion, he never did what he did for religion, Hitler was a political strategist, he used whatever he could to get the results he wanted, he was not trying to conquer everybody he could, for a god.
And that last paragraph and atheist said to me so.
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Re: "Stop saying Hitler was a Christian. At most a lapsed Catholic."
*snirkle*..... *corner of mouth twitching*.... *snicker*......*giggle*..... Bwah-ha! *hand over mouth*... *snort-snort*...... *face turning red*
.........
.........
Bwaaah-haaaaa-haaaaa-haaaaaa!!! Bwah-haa-haa-haaaaaa.....! *cough-cough-cough*.... Bwaaaaah-haaaa-haaaa....!!!
I agree with some of what you say, mainly 2 things
1) He did use religion as a tool in his regime but that does necessarily make him or his regime any less religious. We can discuss this further below. My point is, I think Hitler just wanted political power but intertwined Christianity into it.
2) He did seem to waver in his personal beliefs. I mean there are areas we could discuss further and check out the authenticity of Hitler's personal beliefs. They do tend to be all over the place. To full-blown Christian to Paganism to Aryanism.
What we do know from his quotes and stances, is that he said he was a Christian and he said he did the things he did for a higher purpose, for God.
But does it really matter if his personal beliefs are convoluted? The Nazi regime, which was highly dependent on religion, specifically Christianity and the personal Christian beliefs of his followers.
It becomes interesting that the first treaty signed by Hitler was with the Vatican. More interesting is that Catholics celebrated his birthday every year. Kind of odd if he was killing Catholics don't you think?
This is more accurate for Stalin but with Hitler, it is a bit more complicated.
While this could be the case I nothing more than speculation. He said multiple time he was a Christian, in both his speeches and writings. That seems like all we can go on.
From all the evidence we have, I would be wavering towards that Hitler was a Catholic. Even if he was a fake or lapsing, it speaks to the ignorance and stupidity of the average Christian that such an obvious charlatan was able to whip the faithful masses of Germany into a fervour against Jews and any other group he needed to scapegoat or crush.
Nazism, based upon and supported by Christian morals and tenets, and lead by and staffed by True Christians.
Adolf Hitler labelled himself as a Christian and promoted, and advocated for, Christianity in the Nazi ideology; and used violence and genocide to promote Christianity for the sake of Christianity as part of the Nazi Party regime.
In Hilter's own words....
Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a
political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on
his personal Christian feelings. Published in "My New Order", quoted
in Freethought Today April 1990
Just to make things clear. Hitler, who was, as you say a political strategist, had specifically chosen religious people (and even more specifically Christians) to commit mass murders of Jews.
Besides, tthe official requirement for recruits of SS (aka the guys who committed majority of war crimes in WWII) was "Christian or believer in God".
Implying that Nazi antisemitism had nothing to do with Christianity is completely ignoring the history of antisemitism in Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism
The Nazis were the modern manifestation of centuries of German antisemitism that was 100% fueled by Christianity.
Are you talking about Table Talks? Or are you talking about a private diary separate to Table talks? Hitler never had a private diary. The Hitler diaries were forgeries.
As for (Hitler, Adolf. Hitler's Table Talk: His Private Conversations, 1941-1944. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1953) which depicted Hitler as an anti-Christian atheist, but where the sources usually referenced were actually translated from a French version and not the original German; and that the French translation radically altered the original meaning of the German (Carrier, R.C., 2003. "Hitler's Table Talk": Troubling Finds. German Studies Review, 26(3), pp.561-576). In the 3rd edition of Table Talks, the faulty translations are acknowledged in the Forward (but, oddly, without any correction of the translations in the subsequent text).
Conclusion:
While it can be concluded that Hitler became anti-Catholic (or more specifically, anti-Pope and anti-HolySee/Vatican) and criticized many aspects of Catholic, and other Christian sect, tenets, as well as questioning many of the supernatural Christian claims - this criticism, in and of itself, especially against the very wide variance of Christian tenets and beliefs, as well as the expressed public affirmation of Christian belief, tenets, traditions, and morality, by Hitler, at best, allows one to conclude that Hitler was not a "mainstream" Christian. But to posit that Hitler was atheist/irreligious and a not a Christian requires a better argument to avoid the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Bottom line - Hitler's Table Talk: 1941 - 1944, by H.R. Trevor-Roper, is a questionable source (and shown to be fraudulent at least in part), and the quoted material requires verification from another source.
Or, as OP, would likely express it: #FAKENEWS!
Here OP. Perhaps an analogy will help you.
POTUS Trump is not a Republican. Even though Trump ran and expressly prompted himself as a Republican candidate/President - as a Republican he spews hate and criticisms against the GOP and other Republicans; he endorses and promotes many policies that do not fit the GOP platform; he uses the GOP to further his agenda when ever possible. Trump is No True Republican!
I can see where this atheist was coming from, but does it really show that Hitler was not a believer in a God, Aryan or otherwise? No. He could still be a Christian and still use Christianity to advance his position. Politicians do it all the time in America.
So yes, Hitler used religion as another tool to fool people into believing him and gathering their support.
Although it may seem like a double standard/hypocrasiy on my part, that I may use this same reasoning for Stalin and his regime but trust me it is much clearer in everything Stalin did was for political power.
Yes, Stalin went after religion. By this I mean when people say he despised religion, he didn't despise its content or morality... it was more that he despised anything that was a potential threat to his power. The church had power he wanted it. In fact he quite liked religion, the totalitarian and dictatorial part of it. As He trained as a priest.. meaning he knew how to manipulate the incredulity and servility of the people for power.
Yes, religion was a threat to his power, he undermined it and controlled it.
Stalin allowed religion to continue and even thrive. His oppression of the Orthodox Church was simply to strip it of its power. Once he had neutralised the church, he gave it back its buildings and icons on condition it supported him in the future.
He rehabilitated the Orthodox Church as a national symbol in the middle of the war. The source of Stalin's atrocities is his personal lust for power that makes him an outlier, not an average atheist or anti-theist (or "average" anything.)
Since Stalin restored the Russian Orthodox Church later, with all its supernatural teachings when it was politically advantageous shows it clearly wasn't a vital or primary goal of the party. Stalin regime's about was power. Get in and have power over that led people to follow him to their God Czar. He knows how to manipulate people. He trained as a seminarian after all.
@fruyian
Thank you very much for this well researched, knowledgeable and cogently expressed article. Loved it,
@Towerpiller.....
A question if you would be so kind.........
You said ,"Hitler wrote in a private diary kept away from the masses that he was not a Christian."
Where did you get this information from ....?
"Where did you get this information from ....?"
i bet his pastor include this to lecture them,
do you really have to exclude your religion from hitler??
where in fact your god is more sadist than hitler...and its not written in a diary and not kept secret...
isn't it ironic?
If we stop saying that Hitler was a Christian, does that mean we can start saying Stalin was a Christian? (http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Was_Stalin_an_atheist%3F)
It is perfectly possible for a person to be opposed to organized religion and still consider themselves religious. In Hitler's case, you may have some valid points about him rejected a great deal of Christ's message. However, Hitler killing Catholic priests who acted against him does not prove anything - Christians of various sects have been killing Christians of rival sects for 2000 years or so. Also, it is doubtful that Hitler would have persecuted the Jews as he did if it had not been due to long-term anti-Semitism instilled by Christians throughout the centuries (Hitler himself famously gave that exact reason in Mein Kampf, inspired in great part by Karl Lueger, founder of the Austrian Christian Social Party).
The issue is not whether Hitler or any other genocidal tyrant was Christian. The issue should be about how dogma can be used to attempt to justify abominable deeds, as Hitler did repeatedly. There are good and bad Christians, atheists etc. - rather than argue about whether a genocidal tyrant was Christian or not, we should question the validity of following dogma.
HE was a Christian, get over it. He believed in a deity and said so throughout his life, even right at the end long after any political mileage was left in the claim. It baffles me that theists want ti lie about this as only christians were allowed in the SS, a far more worrying fact I'd have thought.
"Especially when Hitler killed a lot of catholic priests and was against religion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat Try again...where is it you think his virulent hatred of Jews came from if not from centuries of European antisemitism?
"Hitler didn't rage war because of religion, he never did what he did for religion, "
You need to do some research, he cited his persecution of the Jews as "doing God's work" and he made this claim years before he had any political power in Mein Kampf as well.
Couple this with the fact that Germany was overwhelmingly christian a census in 1939 estimates 94% of Germans identified as Christians, and this is in line with previous numbers and censuses conducted since the war.
Hitler and Himmler insisted all members of the SS be Christian and swear an oath to him before God. He was not and never claimed too be an atheist, and Himmler though not a christian was not an atheist either but a pagan. This attempt by christians at revising history to distance their religion form Nazism is absurd.
I am not a lapsed Catholic. That is deceit and religionists deceive only themselves in describing people like that. Like many children, I was raised 'in the faith' and that isn't my fault. I was never a Roman Catholic beyond the extent I was forced to be one. They "confirmed" me when I was about 10 as they knew I'd be old enough to ask questions if they left it any later.
And you should have read the comments here about how people in Spain are kept 'within the fold'.
Religion is parent-given and man-made, not god given or 'revealed' as some religionists claim. Even many Roman Catholics have eventually understood that much.
The OP apparently makes the assumption that Nazism is far worse than Roman Catholicism...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29404-2005Jan22.html
Arguably, condom and abortion bans have cost untold lives and caused great suffering.
Who cares if Hitler was a turnip or a sausage? His followers were Christians and they are the ones who eagerly did the killings. So if anyone deserves to be in hell it's them because they should have known better than to do the things they did. In history it's the average religious nut who does all of the killing and mayhem because he regards his leader as a God. When Moses came down from the mountain and got pissed at the people for exercising freedom of religion it was his henchmen who killed them, not him.
You have to marvel at the stupidity of the idea that the Holocaust was nothing to do with centuries of virulent christian antisemitism.
Sheldon,
"You have to marvel at the stupidity of the idea that the Holocaust was nothing to do with centuries of virulent christian antisemitism."
The Christians probably had legitimate reasons for their antisemitism because the Jews had been collaborating with the muslims against them for centuries. And given the ideas expressed in the Jewish Babylonian Talmud against Christians and Gentiles it was enough to piss off the Pope.
As it says in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 (CEV) = "14 My friends, you did just like God’s churches in Judea and like the other followers of Christ Jesus there. And so, you were mistreated by your own people, in the same way they were mistreated by their people.
15 Those Jews killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and they even chased us away. God doesn’t like what they do and neither does anyone else. 16 They keep us from speaking his message to the Gentiles and from leading them to be saved. The Jews have always gone too far with their sins. Now God has finally become angry and will punish them."
Re: OP
*rolling around on floor*... Bwaaaah-haaaa-haaaa.... help.... *gasp* ...need... *gasp*....oxy...gen.... Bwaaaah-haaaa-haaaa.... medic....Bwaaaah-haaaa-haaaaa....!
towerpiller,
Based on my own reading, which is nicely reflected in the mini-mountain of data collected by fruyian, I can say that:
1) Hitler admired Jesus
2) Hitler never renounced his Catholic religion. His interpretation was unconventional and he often attacked its ruling body, including the pope. He was never excommunicated.
3) On occasion he spoke out vehemently against atheism.
4) Most of those people making up his higher command were Christians.
The best conclusion by far is that he was a Catholic in good standing and, therefore, a Christian.
The popular claim that this was just a facade is without compelling evidence and, therefore, is mere speculation. If someone says he is a Christian then that's the default starting point. It doesn't change unless you have compelling evidence. Once the fraudulent claims have been eliminated, we have no compelling evidence that Hitler was using Christianity as a facade. No doubt he made good use of religion, as do many leaders around the world, but that doesn't count as evidence against him being a Catholic.
Certainly, Hitler was not a committed atheist as some lunatics thoughtlessly claim. An atheist would scarcely fill his leading circle with dedicated Christians, would not attack atheism in public, and would not do the other things to retard atheism such as putting God back into the classrooms.
Good post, very well reasoned.
Incidentally, since the war ended only 1 Nazis has ever been excommunicated by the church. It was Joseph Goebbels, and he was excommunicated not for any of his crimes against humanity but because he married a divorced protestant. That was fact tells me a great deal about moral prevention of the RCC.
"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."
--- Adolph Hitler,
in a speech delivered April 12, 1922
Published in "My New Order"
Outstanding post. You can almost hear his argument disintegrate, and the inevitable use of the No True Scotsman Fallacy being prepared.
*pant-pant-pant*...... *deeeeeep breath*...... *exhale slooooowly*.... bwah-haa-haa.... *snicker*.... *dabbing watery eyes*.... Oh, my!..... Wheeeew!.... *cough-cough*...Aaah.... Okay... *chuckle*... I think I'm okay now... for the moment....*deep breath*..... Pheeeew!...*blowing nose*..... Okay, so.... *snicker*... Anyway....
Well, I suppose the next thing we can expect is for somebody coming in here whining and begging us, "PLEASE, you bunch of meanie ol' atheists! Please stop saying the Christians tortured people during the Inquisition! Torture is a really harsh and negative word. It makes Christians look bad. They were only involved in 'stern negotiations' with the non-believers and heretics."
By the way, Mr. Simon, nice punch with that speech by the illustrious Mr. Hitler. Looking forward to seeing the apologists tap dance around that one.
(Woooooo..... My tummy and chest are aching! Where's my rum?....)
@TM
"Well, I suppose the next thing we can expect is for somebody coming in here whining and begging us, "PLEASE, you bunch of meanie ol' atheists! Please stop saying the Christians tortured people during the Inquisition! Torture is a really harsh and negative word. It makes Christians look bad. They were only involved in 'stern negotiations' with the non-believers and heretics"
JoC already tried that one mate, in my history thread...makes an amusing read. They had trials he said, they could have recanted, he said, LOL, the inquisition was quite clear, even if you recanted, they set a match to ya LOL. The last guy BURNT to death for heresy was in 1829 in Spain....1829 bloody hell....a schoolteacher.
The Catholic Church has had a revisionist history for centuries. They have already started the 'spin' with the peadophile priests.
And @ Simon, *boom* and the argument for Hitler revisionism lies down, out for the count LMFAO. Nice work sir nice work.
OMG: The Nazi movement was a CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT in the same way the Mormons are a Christian movement. Hitler called his movement "PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY." Yes, it does not fit a specific definition of CHRISTIANITY just like Mormonism does not, JW does not, and to many Christians, Catholicism does not.
FACTS: 1. Hitlers elite troops were all made to wear belt buckles with "Us With God" embossed on them.
2. In Mein Kampft, Hitler outlines the Nazi program and flat out states the 25 points of his National Socialist Program.
"POINT 24: We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: "The good of the community before the good of the individual".
Hitler was freely elected to a democratic and religious Germany. What he did, he did in the name of religion.
I think this is revealing about Towerpillar: "And that last paragraph and atheist said to me so." Meaning "And that last paragraph, an atheist said to me [it was] so."
Religionists only listen to bits of what you say and how it might somehow fit in with their superstitious beliefs.
Just because the non-believer acknowledged that Hitler was a "political strategist" driven by ideology and racism, not by religion or belief in a god doesn't mean that Roman Catholicism helped the situation. Hitler was raised Catholic and a fat lot of good that did.
Towerpillar is typical of religionists. "Beliefs" aren't what he challenges with critical thinking and scientific method, they are to be defended or held sacred.
Free your mind, Towerpillar. Think where you got your religious nonsense. If you had been born a Muslim it would be what a wonderful man Mohammad was. If you were born a Jew.... a sikh... and so forth.
Religion leads to belief in afterlives, miracles, The Creed... the RC Church has a "Chief Exorcist" for crying out loud. And what about "transubstantiation" and the "Holy Ghost"? No wonder some people go nuts after imbibing this stuff. People don't "lose their faith", they just relinquish superstition.
@Towerpiller: John Paul II barely escaped from the nazis.
Whereas Pius XII and Benedict XVI.....
And did anybody mention the rat lines?
So whats the implied point of this thread? Every time a genius who enriched the world dies, they get a posthumous conversion by unabashed religious apologists no matter if they how outspoken an atheists they had been.
Yet every time a despot dies religious apologists denounce them as not religious. One can't help but infer a nefarious attempt to dishonestly draw a correlation between evil behaviour and atheism, whilst implying religious people are always good.
Osama bin Laden
Charles Manson
Hitler
Putin
Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu
Saddam Hussein
The prime fact is that being a theist is no guard against wicked immoral or evil behaviour.
Hitler was a psychotic madman. Who claimed to be doing "God's work". He repeatedly claimed to both believe in a deity and to be a Catholic. I'm not sure what denying this achieves as there's simply too much evidence for it to be in any doubt. He was not an atheist and Nazism was an ideology founded as a Christian movement. It stood in direct opposition to the ideology of Bolshevism that was atheistic.
Europe had a long history of virulent Christian antisemitism for centuries before the Nazis, and many Christians in Germany were antisemitic. Again to deny this is rather pointless.
Moral actions clearly are not defined by just religious beliefs, and many religions contain dogma and doctrine that are quite obviously pernicious and immoral.
Whilst paradoxically atheism has no dogma or doctrine and yet many ordinary atheists aspire to live decent moral lives.
@Tower piller
Of all the FACTS that has ever been gathered on Hitler, there is not one shred of evidence that he was not a christian. He proclaimed his christianity openly numerous times. His hatred of the jews was that he believed that they killed jesus. He believed that the Arian race was chosen by god to rule over the other races and the world. He, in fact, believed that HE was chosen by god to shape the world.
Fucking PROVE it Towerpiller. Produce this unknown diary. You can't because it doesn't and never did exists. Hitler did write a diary supposedly that has been thoroughly examined and found to be a giant hoax.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/diary-of-the-hitler-diary-hoax
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2008/apr/24/25yearsagotoday...
http://www.abc.net.au/science/forensic/bigcases/case_sample_03.htm
@Towerpiller: Hitler wrote in a private diary
Are you talking about the one published by the German magazine Stern in the early 1980s?
That was a laughable fake. The paper, ink, binding glue were all tested and found to be postwar. But before the so-called experts did all that, they should have just looked at the gold initials engraved on the cover. The forger couldn't read the ornate Gothic script properly, so the supposed diary of Adolf Hitler was monogrammed "FH" instead of "AH". It's as bogus as the Shroud of Turin.
Algebe,
"It's as bogus as the Shroud of Turin."
The fun in producing fakes is to make them obvious fakes and watch the dummies swear that it's real. People love to believe bull shit. They'll even call the guy who made the fake a liar for saying that it's a fake.
Stop saying Hitler.
Hitler was a christian. He strongly believed god was on his side and that divine intervention protected him from harm on two distinct dates. He frequently refers to god in his book Mein Kampf and was heavily influenced by the Old Testament and the German Christian Social Movement.
In addition, he had two christian ministers in his inner circle - Hans Kerrl and Hermann Muhs - whose instructions were to ensure that Nazi politics aligned with christian ideology. Ludwig Muller was a third minister in the party, enlisted by Hitler as the Reich's Bishop, but he was fired for incompetency and failure to unite the 28 disparate protestant churches into one unified church under Nazi doctrine called Gleichschaltung. This plan was also stated in Hitler's Table Talks of 1941 - a collection of ramblings and speeches that Hitler made every day to his officers - and ruminated on a new christian denomination called a United Christian Church of Germany.
After his departure, Hitler appointed Hans Kerrl as the Reich's Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and oversaw the unification of the protestant churches.
In the Nuremburg Trials after the war, it was revealed that Hitler wanted to base the new Germany on a christian foundation which greatly offended some of his highest ranking officers who detested the idea such as Martin Borman and Heinrich Himmler. Hitler spent an enormous amount of time in discussion with bishops and pastors for ways to get rid of the Old Testament and all Jewish influences in christianity. His attempts towards a Jewish free doctrine for the protestant churches caused a division within his own project that resulted in a newly formed church called the German Confessional Church which frustrated Hitler almost as much as his failing warfront. Hermann Muhs - appointed as the Reich's State Secretary for Church Affairs - spent a considerable amount of time and effort quelling Himmler's outrage against the Fuehrer and the churches he wished to align.
"And so I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord. Therefore, 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. I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf vol.1 chap.2
"We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good."
- Article 24 - Nazi Party Constitution
Photos of Hitler at church and at his annual christmas party for nazi officials:
Attachments
Attach Image/Video?:
At the OP...*BOOM*
Great post Randy.
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