Hitler and Christianity

Actually, Hitler was proclaiming his belief in Christ before the Nazis came about.

@Justice: You've seriously not seen any of the people that go apeshit about that stuff? Trying to say that communism has been nothing but peaches and roses is just as idiotic as trying to say that religion has never done anything wrong.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:14:01 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Well, the whole thing about actively moving to exterminate them as soon as his power solidified and he didn't need to brown-nose anymore might count as a rather certain disqualifier.

Hitler was also an decent artist and gymnast. Clearly art and gymnastics contribute to evil thinking.

"Communist" not communism, and you haven't addressed democracy or science.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:16:31 PM by Justice4243

couple of years ago Mandel read through 148 bound volumes of papers gathered by the American OSS (the World War II-era predecessor of the CIA) to build the case against Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg. Now she and some fellow students are publishing what they found in the journal Law and Religion (www.lawandreligion.com)... The upshot: a ton of evidence that Hitler sought to wipe out Christianity just as surely as he sought to wipe out the Jews.

The first installment (the papers are being published in stages) includes a 108-page OSS outline, "The Persecution of the Christian Churches." ...how the Nazis - faced with a country where the overwhelming majority considered themselves Christians - built their power while plotting to undermine and eradicate the churches, and the people's faith... From the start of the Nazi movement, "the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement," said Baldur von Scvhirach, leader of the group that would come to be known as Hitler youth. But "explicitly" only within party ranks: as the OSS stated, "considerations of expedience made it impossible" for the movement to make this public until it consolidated power... By 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced the Nazis for waging "a war of extermination" against the church... Catholic priests found police snatching sermons out of their hands, often in mid-reading

...the notion that the church either gave birth to Hitler or walked hand-in-hand with him as a partner is, simply, slander. Hitler himself knew better. "One is either a Christian or a German," he said. "You can't be both."

Jul 1941 - Well Khaybar, Hitler also said , in July 1941, that "National Socialism and religion cannot exist together...". However I was wrong in writing the arguable "atheist", while trying to decisively reject the notion of the Third Reich as a theocracy

Dec 1939 - In December 1939, for example, Goebbels noted in his diary that "The Fiihrer is deeply religious, but entirely anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay."175

Basically, the Nazis and Hitler H Ated Religion because they had to demoralize society to expand socialism.

...I now have a horrible mental image of Hitler in spandex. Thank you for that.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:15:11 PM by Pykrete

@Justice:Yes, he was also an artist and a gymnast. I don't think anyone can deny that.

All I'm saying is that trying to say that he wasn't a Christian is just as silly as saying that China is a democracy.

Edit: And people bring up Democrats supporting slavery and scientific racism all the time.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:16:34 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

This seems to support my hypothesis that Hitler was a Deist.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:16:54 PM by silver2195

Considering this thread is providing ample evidence that he was a Christian in as much as he thought he could use it to further his control, I think calling to question the dubiousness of his faith is pretty valid.

It's not that they're not talked about. It's that people never attack modern science because of scientific racism, or democracy because slavery was once allowed in the system.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:20:57 PM by Justice4243

Drunk@It's obvious you do not get it. Hitler was big time liar about being a Christian because he wanted people on his side.Heck,Hitler once said he was great in history. do you know what his real grade in that class was;a D.

Hitler made up a lot of crud espically about being a Christian when he really hated the faith.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:23:47 PM by jazzflower14

Slightly off-topic: Can you please clean up your grammar a bit?

... Yes they do. O_o;

In any case, I don't quite get how someone can broadly proclaim "I am suchandsuch" and have people argue that they weren't.

Hitler was just such a manipulative asshole that it's basically impossible to tell what he really thought other than "gee, that back looks awfully stab-worthy." Any attempt to ascribe something to him as to what he "really believed!" is basically an exercise in sophomoric mudslinging, even ignoring the fact that he — and I cannot stress this enough — actively tried to exterminate the very people you're tyring to ascribe him to.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:43:02 PM by Pykrete

I've never seen it. Never seen a thread on science where someone decides it's time to bring up scientific racism. I've seen the crusades come up quite a few times.

And calling yourself something is not enough to make it true.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:26:19 PM by Justice4243

Yes, and no true scotsman puts cream in his porridge.

Despite trying to depict himself otherwise in Mein Kampf, Hitler's youth was not one of privation, but one of the adequate means afforded to his father, a minor customs official. Hitler (born 1889) was confirmed a Roman Catholic at his mother's wish on Whit Sunday 1904 at the Cathedral at Linz, one year following the death of his father. [Bullock, Alan, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny. Harper & Row, 1962, p. 26] According to Heiden [Der Fuehrer .p 632] Hitler still went to confession and communion in 1918.

Was Hitler's anti-Semitism based on the Christian Bible? "There was nothing new in Hitler's anti-Semitism; it was endemic in Vienna, and everything he ever said or wrote about the Jews is only a reflection of the anti-Semitic periodicals and pamphlets he read in Vienna before 1914".[Bullock p. 39] Indeed, Hitler's hatred of Jews was racial rather than religious in nature. "The Jews were responsible for bring negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate." [Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, p. 273.] Since the 4th century, Christians were anti-Jewish; what is new is the concept of "scientific racism". Anti-Jews want Jews to convert to Christianity; anti-Semites want them dead.

Oh please, there’s been loads of evidence in this thread showing Hitler only claimed to be Christian and didn’t even give a damn about religion or the people in it. That’s pretty serious grounds for considering him not a member. It's not the same as a race.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:57:19 PM by Justice4243

Did you seriously just insinuate that the mass slaughter of clergy and monastic orders is as negligible as a culinary dispute?

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:54:30 PM by Pykrete

@Drunk Girlfriend

People lie, especially people in power. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Hitler was a sociopath, and they are certainly prone to throwing out a lie or two.

Did Hitler believe in eternal salvation through acceptance of "the lord and savior Jesus Christ"? Almost definitely not — in fact, Hitler wrote about the fact that he despised Christians as much as he found them to be useful.

Did he deliver speeches to the German people as a practicing Christian? Absolutely. Did 99% of the people that followed him and perpetrated horrible acts on minorities in Germany identify themselves Christian? Absolutely.

For those concerned with the spirit and afterlife, I have no doubt that the former (whether he was a "genuine Christian" is far more important. On the physical plane that we are presently inhabiting, guess which is most important? I'm not trying to be snarky, btw — I truly believe that for all practical purposes the mantle of religion (or any other ideology) is far more important than the deep-seated faith of its wearer.

edited 2nd Sep '11 11:26:56 PM by ForlornDreamer

I don't know if its 99% I would say about 50-70 % because during that time athiesm,agnocism,and other ism's were getting popular.I am not trying to make a point but I think it was around the highiest 70%.I was thinking the one thing to blame for his racist attitude was being in Vienna and not getting that job as an artist.As he thought it was a Jewish conspiracy to keep him and others down.

edited 2nd Sep '11 11:43:40 PM by jazzflower14

By mantle do you mean identifying yourself as part of a group? Because that’s pretty unfortunate for almost any group that’s been around for a long time and has participated in some of the above mentioned things we consider pretty reprehensible now.

edited 2nd Sep '11 11:35:41 PM by Justice4243

In so far as group identification is a useful measure of a person's character or the motivation of their cause, absolutely. I don't think it's fair to place full blame on Christianity for the acts perpetrated in Nazi Germany, but it is also an error to engage in History revisionism to change Hitler and his followers into whatever group identity is convenient. It's also quite difficult to ignore the relatively cowardly stances taken by Christian religious leaders of the time, particularly those in the Vatican. Is it fair to blame Christians of today for these actions? Absolutely not.

A small tangent: bear in mind that one could argue the Crusaders of the Middle Ages were also not really Christians because they didn't emulate Jesus in the manner in which they conducted themselves — just as I'm certain many moderate Muslims will claim that Al Qaeda isn't Islamic at all, etc. Hell, somebody could probably claim Stalin and his regime didn't really embody the principles espoused by Karl Marx, so wasn't communist.

A useful insight into demographics of the era can be seen through the 1925 religion census taken in Germany. 62 million of the 65 million inhabitants of Germany identified as Catholic or Protestant. There was a rising atheist/communist segment in Germany, but they were essentially pushed underground in 1933 by Hitler when he was a German chancellor, being that he made it illegal for virtually every atheist and left-wing secular organization to meet. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206

edited 3rd Sep '11 12:07:49 AM by ForlornDreamer

This is pretty much the crux of what I've been getting at, and really the most important aspect of the whole ordeal.

Hence, Godwin's Law and all that.

edited 3rd Sep '11 12:10:30 AM by Justice4243

Communist yeah Hitler wasn't of fan of it.I also think that if they were Christian opposition as well it would be silenced and taken in by the special police force.You are right that their should have been a stronger voice however I think the Nazi's to coin a phrase from Gone with the wind"Didn't Give a Damn" and would have had a blood bath killing those oppositions if they proved too troublesome.Again,it is written in the Bible that you should lay your life down for those who are in trouble and frankly alot of lives were at stake.

Nazi Germany was a Dictatship and all other parties needed to be eliminated or silenced.

edited 3rd Sep '11 12:13:33 AM by jazzflower14

Wait, hang on. In the "What purpose does religion serve" thread, Ramus made a post that said that the Vatican was instrumental in saving a lot of lives from the Holocaust and was in other ways a force for good during the war.

Now people in here are saying that the Vatican was cowardly and did nothing.

Which is true?