The Fuhrer believed religious
views should be protected no matter how superstitious which would presumably
include beliefs inimical to the maintenance of life such as those generated
by Mark 16 of Scripture:
I
envisage the future, therefore, as follows: First of all, to each man his
private creed. Superstition shall not lose its rights.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 62
He not only promoted
the dissemination of religion and denounced opposition to its extension
but was incensed when religious figures did not realize they needed Nazism
for protection, especially against the advance of Soviet Marxism or Bolshevism.
On 22 July 1933 he said
on the wireless:
Only
a fool can imagine that, for example, the victory of Bolshevism could be
irrelevant for the Catholic or the Evangelical Church [Protestant churches]
and that therefore it would not disturb or even prevent the former activities
of bishops or superintendents. The assertion that such dangers could
be overcome through the action of the Churches alone is untenable; it is
contradicted by the facts. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Evangelical,
nor the Russian-Uniate church has been able or would be able to stay the
advance of Bolshevism. Wherever there has not been created a concrete
'volkic'-political defense [such as Nazism] to counter that advance there
the victory of Communism is already won, or at least the battle is still
undecided.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 375
And because Nazism
served and protected the confessions vigorously Hitler expected the latter
to support Nazism fully.
In a speech to the Reichstag
on 30 January 1934 he stated:
This
year the National Socialist State has clearly demonstrated its high regard
for the strength of the Christian faiths, and hence it expects the same
high regard on the part of the confessions for the strength of the National
Socialist State.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 419
In light of all the
above, the anti-religious, anti-god, anti-Christian portrayal many have
been led to believe applies to Hitler can clearly be seen as a delusion,
a fantasy fostered primarily by those seeking to put distance, especially
in the realm of politics, between their views and those of the Fuhrer.
The issue now becomes
one of accounting for the religious persecution that did occur in Nazi
Germany for most assuredly some religious figures paid dearly. How
can one account for what appears to be an inconsistency. The answer
lies in the nature of those persecuted, for most assuredly there were vast
differences in the philosophies of various religious figures and movements.
It was not fundamentalists and other right-wing religious figures analogous
to America’s Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker,
Oral Roberts, Cardinal Spellman, and Billy Graham who were persecuted in
Germany. By no means. It was those ideologically aligned to
such individuals as Father Groppi, Martin Luther King Jr., William Sloan
Coffin Jr., the Berrigan Brothers, Jessie Jackson, Archbishop Oscar Romero,
Latin American Catholic priests expounding Liberation Theology, and others
on the liberal or left wing of the political/religious spectrum.
For them Nazism was the nearest equivalent to perdition.
As far as Hitler and other Nazis were concerned the only place
in which the clergy should operate was the church and the pulpit.
They ordered the clergy to stay out of politics entirely and both warned
and threatened all those who failed to pay heed. In words of the
vernacular, as long as religious figures kept their noses out of politics
they had nothing to fear. The following comments by Hitler illuminate
this attitude all too clearly.
Near Augsburg on 23
November 1937 Hitler addressed the Churches formally and stated:
We
are giving you [the Churches] unconditional freedom in your teachings and
in your views on what God is. For we are well aware that we ourselves
know nothing of these things.
Yet let one thing be quite clear: the Churches may determine the fate of
the German being in the next world, but in this world the German nation,
by way of its leaders, is determining the fate of the German being.
Only if there is such a clear and clean-cut division can life he made bearable
in a time of transition.
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 980
In a speech to the
Party officials of Saxony at Leipzig on 16 July 1933:
Through
the Concordat with the Catholic Church the participation of clergy in the
political life of the parties has been brought to an end. We will
strengthen religion, the churches shall have their freedom: the politics
are our task.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 637
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 347
In Berlin on 1 May
1937:
This
also applies to all the Churches. As long as they concern themselves
with their religious problems, the State will not concern itself with them.
If they attempt, however, to presume by virtue of any actions, letters,
encyclicals, etc. to claim rights which accrue solely to the State, we
will force them back into their right and proper spiritual-pastoral activities.
Nor is it acceptable to criticize the morality of a state from that quarter
when they have more than enough reason to call their own morality into
question.
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 892
The last sentence is
rather illuminating in that it suggests the Germany of that era had a significant
amount of clerical immorality not unlike that recently demonstrated in
the US by Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and many Catholic priests.
An interesting sideline
comment that has implications for today with reference to Catholic priests
is:
The idea of nakedness torments only the priests, for the education they
undergo makes them perverts.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 320
Hitler appears to be
saying the clergy has no right to criticize the political leaders in light
of its own behavior. As far as he is concerned, the reprehensibility
of the latter’s behavior provides even greater reason they need to confine
their activities to the church and pastoral concerns.
Hitler had no patience
whatever with clergymen who sought to participate in politics and was even
more opposed to any political parties they sought to create or actually
led.
In a 24 October 1933 speech
in Berlin he stated:
And
above all we have pulled the priests out of the marsh of political party
fighting and put them back into the church again. It is our desire
that they never again return to an area which they were not created for,
which debases them and which must inevitably bring them into opposition
to millions of people who really want to be faithful inside, but who want
to see priests serve God and not a political party!
ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS,
by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 59
At the annual Party
Congress on 11 September 1935:
We
have already fought a battle against the political clergy and ousted it
from the parliaments, and that after a long struggle in which we had no
state authority and the other side had it all. Today we have this
authority and we will more easily be able to win the struggle for these
principles. But we will never wage this battle as a battle against
Christianity or even against one of the two confessions. But we will wage
it in order to keep our public life pure and free of those priests who
have mistaken their calling, those who should have become politicians and
not clergymen.
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 692
And in Mein Kampf:
...
the movement [Nazism] fought most bitterly against the Center [the Catholic
party], not, of course, on religious, but exclusively on questions of national,
racial, and economic policy.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolph
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 829
From Hitler’s perspective
the Weimar government that ruled Germany for 14 years after WWI was peopled
by a gang of traitorous puppets doing the bidding of the allied powers
while working in close collaboration with Marxists who held offices at
every level of German leadership, an allegation not significantly different
from that propounded by Joe McCarthy in the United States 2 decades later.
As far as Hitler was concerned every political party except the NSDAP was
guilty of subversion to one degree or another and that was certainly true
in his eyes of the Centrist Party which was overwhelmingly dominated by
Catholic leaders. Collaboration between religious parties and godless
atheists, the Marxists, was constantly denounced by Hitler in no uncertain
terms and he repeatedly said he could never understand how religious figures
could work with the godless.
For the first number
of the Volkischer Beobachter on 26 February 1925 Hitler wrote an article
in which he said:
...
a party which allies itself with atheistic Marxism for the oppression of
its own people is neither Christian nor Catholic.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 368
In a 31 July 1932 election
proclamation:
I
don't understand... how one can talk against the Godless like the Center
(party), but at the same time come to terms with them.
ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS,
by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 31
In a speech delivered
at Cologne on 19 February 1933 Hitler continued his attack upon Centrum--the
Catholic Centre Party--by saying:
How
can a party talk of the fight for Christianity which for 14 years has sat
together with atheists and those who deny the existence of God?
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 249
In an address to the
Party Congress on 12 September 1938:
...
The Center Party [the Catholic Party] claimed to be fighting us because
we were hostile to the Church, and yet to this end it entered into a holy
alliance with atheist Social Democrats and did not shrink from uniting
with the Communists....
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 1151
While speaking to some
religious figures and others:
Good,
I take note of that. But how can you then advocate a coalition with
the Marxists, with our deadly enemies, the Social Democrats?
SECRET CONVERSATIONS
WITH HITLER, Edited by Edouard Calic, 1971. Page 34
In the New Year's Proclamation
for 1 January 1932:
Today
Bolshevism and its Marxist-Centrist-Democratic helpers are faced with a
gigantic front of awakening Germany! Were it not for the pact which
the Center and the middle classes have entered into with Marxism as a result
of their inner relatedness of character, there would be no red, anti-Christian
Germany today. Therefore they are the accursed accomplices of Bolshevism.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 79
In his New Year’s Message
on 1 January 1934 Hitler claimed that by destroying the Catholic Center
Party he was serving both religion and morality:
Not
only in the economic sphere but also in the other spheres of the nation's
life we have, during the past year, fought an unceasing battle against
the symptoms of degeneracy in our people. The religious, moral, and
ethical signs of the time spoke a language that compelled us so to act.
While we destroyed the Center Party, we have not only brought thousands
of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people
we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 382
In a statement on the
Enabling Act on 23 March 1933:
In
being determined to undertake the political and moral purification of our
public life, the government is creating and securing the requirements for
a genuinely profound return to religious life.
The advantages in personnel policy which might result from compromises
with atheist organizations do not come close to offsetting the results
which would become apparent in the general destruction of basic moral values.
The National Government perceives
in the two Christian confessions [Protestantism and Catholicism] the most
important factors for the preservation of our Volkstum. It will respect
any contracts concluded between these churches and the Lander.
... The Government's concern lies in an honest coexistence between Church
and State; the fight against the materialist Weltanschauung and for a genuine
Volksgemeinschaft equally serves both the interests of the German nation
and the welfare of our Christian faith.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 279
MY NEW ORDER by Hitler,
Edited by Raoul de Roussy de Sales, 1941, Page 153
THE HITLER DECREES,
by James Pollock and Harlow Heneman, 1934, Page 66
In a Stuttgart speech
on 15 February 1933:
And
now Staatsprasident Bolz says that Christianity and the Catholic faith
are threatened by us. And to that charge I can answer: In the first
place it is Christians [Nazis] and not international atheists who now stand
at the head of Germany. I do not merely talk of Christianity, no,
I also profess that I will never ally myself with the parties which destroy
Christianity. If many wish today to take threatened Christianity
under their protection, where, I would ask, was Christianity for them in
these 14 years when they went arm in arm with atheism? No, never
and at no time was greater internal damage done to Christianity than in
these 14 years when a party, theoretically Christian, sat with those who
denied God in one and the same Government.
But no, they could not, they did not wish to separate themselves from the
party-world of atheism. We wish to fill our culture once more with
the spirit of Christianity--and not only in theory. No, we want to
burn out the symptoms of decomposition in literature, in the theater, in
the Press--in a word in our whole culture; we want to burn out this whole
poison which during these 14 years has flowed into our life.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 240
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 253
The philosophy of George
Bush is thoroughly embodied in words such as “We wish to fill our culture
once more with the spirit of Christianity--and not only in theory.”
Realizing that fact the problem then becomes one of deciding to what extent
“we want to burn out the symptoms of decomposition in literature, in the
theater, in the Press--in a word in our whole culture; we want to burn
out this whole poison...” is representative of Bushism as well.
When attacked for using a Swastika as his emblem, Hitler retaliated
by denouncing his detractors for placing the Christian Cross at the head
of parties allied with atheistic Marxism. For him the Swastika was
the political symbol of complete detachment from atheism.
In Munich on 25 October
1930 he stated:
And
when it is said to me as many have: How can you carry your heathenish symbol
[Swastika] in the van of this struggle when the Christian Cross alone is
called to lead it? To that I say: This symbol is not directed against
the Christian Cross. On the contrary, it is the political manifestation
of what the Christian cross intends or must intend.... I believe that if
now suddenly Christ, our Lord, should appear among this unfortunate German
people and one were to induce him to take a stand in this political struggle--I
do not believe that Christ, our Lord, would go and seek out a place within
the ranks of the [Catholic] Center Party in the German Reichstag!
To be sure, our Christian Cross should be the most exalted symbol of the
struggle against the Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevik spirit. But then the parties,
however, which come to terms with Marxism, with Atheism, indeed with the
refined form of the same which Bolshevism represents, should not advertise
the Cross of Christ as their party symbol. One should from the very
beginning, however, preserve this Cross from any political contact until
the structure of these political parties again becomes worthy of association
with this symbol, until these parties again pursue policies which are in
keeping with the inner significance of this symbol.
HITLER'S WORDS, by
Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 87
And in Mein Kampf:
In
the two religious denominations [Protestantism and Catholicism] it [the
Nazi party] sees two equally valuable pillars for the existence of our
people, and for this reason it fights those parties which wish to degrade
this foundation of an ethical, religious, and moral prop [the Cross] of
our national body to the instrument of their party interests.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolph
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 479
Hitler was not only
vigorously opposed to religious figures or religious parties participating
in politics but felt that by aligning with the material world of Bolshevism
the religious leaders were preparing the masses for a fall into materialism.
This was the evident when he said:
The
most pressing danger, as I see it, is that Christianity, by adhering to
a conception of the Beyond which is constantly exposed to the attacks of
unceasing progress, and by binding it so closely to many of the trivialities
of life which may at any moment collapse, is ripening mankind for conversion
to materialistic Bolshevism. And that is a terrible tragedy.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 606
In fact, for Catholic
Hitler some religious teachings were wrong in their own right, regardless
of to whom they may or may not be allied. Although deeply religious,
the Fuhrer was not a sycophantic adherent to every tenet of Catholicism
and proved as much by expressing disdain for some teachings and dogma often
decried by atheists and others as well. This became obvious when
he said:
For me, God is the Logos of St. John, which has become flesh and lives
in the world, interwoven with it and pervading it, conferring on it drives
and driving force, and constituting the actual meaning and content of the
world.
Perhaps the adherents of the
Roman Church would call this "paganism." That may well be so.
In that case, Christ was a pagan. I call pagan their distortions
of Christ's ideas and teachings, their cults, their conception of hell,
purgatory, and heaven, and their worship of saints.
HITLER--MEMOIRS OF
A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 224
It
is no less difficult to eradicate these childish inhibitions than it is
to free the human soul of that haunting terror of Hell which the Catholic
Church impresses on it with such vigor during its most tender years.
A man possessed of a minimum of intelligence who takes the trouble to ponder
over these questions has no difficulty in realizing how nonsensical these
doctrines of the Church are. For how, he must ask himself, can a
man possibly be put on a spit, be roasted and tortured in a hundred other
ways when, in the nature of things, his body has no part in the resurrection?
And what nonsense it is to aspire to a Heaven to which, according to the
Church's own teaching, only those have entry who have made a complete failure
of life on earth! It won't be much fun, surely, to have to meet again
there all those whose stupidity, in spite of the biblical tag "blessed
are the humble of heart," has already infuriated one beyond endurance on
this earth! Imagine, too, how tremendously attractive a Heaven will
be to a man, which contains only women of indifferent appearance and faded
intellect! Only those, we are told, with the minimum of sin shall
enter through the gates of Heaven; now, in spite of the fact that the burden
of sin must inevitably grow heavier with each successive year, I have yet
to meet a priest anxious to leave this life as quickly, and therefore with
as light a burden, as possible! But I could name many a Cardinal
of 60 and over who clings most tenaciously to life on this sinful earth.
When one examines the Catholic religion closely, one cannot fail to realize
that it is an almost incredibly cunning mixture of hypocrisy and business
acumen, which trades with consummate skill on the deeply ingrained affection
of mankind for the beliefs and superstitions he holds. It is inconceivable
that an educated priest should really believe all the nonsense that the
Church pours out; a proof there, to my mind, is the fact that the priest
themselves always try to confuse the issue on the subject of the swindle
of dispensations, and avoid whenever possible any discussion of the subject.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 419
He went so far as to
unconditionally denounce some acts of the Catholic Church:
When one recollects further
that the Catholic Church has elevated to the status of Saints a whole number
of madmen,....
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 513
And his censure of
the Church’s oppressive history was exceptionally vehement:
The
pity is that people who reason in this matter appear to forget that the
Church does not strive to propagate its teaching by reason and gentle persuasion,
but by force and threat. This is certainly not my idea of education.
It is moreover obvious that, had the Church followed solely the laws of
Love, and had she preached Love alone as the means of instilling her moral
precepts, she would not have survived for very long. She has therefore
always remained faithful to the ancient maxim that the right hand must
not know what the left hand does, and has bowed to the necessity of imposing
her moral principles by means of the utmost brutality, not hesitating even
to burn in their thousands men and women of merit and virtue. We
ourselves are today much more humane than the Church. We obey the
Commandment: "Thou shall not kill," by catching and executing a murderer;
but the Church, when the executive power lay in her hands, crucified, quartered
and did him to death with indescribable torture.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 420
Yet, Hitler, like so
many Christian apologists throughout history, was quick to discount heinous
acts perpetrated in the name of Christianity by blaming odious transgressions
on individuals rather than Christianity in general. That approach
surfaced early on at a conference of all district organizers held at Bamberg
on 14 February 1923 in which Hitler formally appointed Gottfried Feder
to be the final judge and spokesman on all questions regarding the Programme.
In his commentary Feder wrote:
". . . The same may be said of all the course, stupid attacks on
Christianity. Expressions such as 'Christianity has only done harm'
merely show that the man who utters them has neither human nor political
intelligence. One may indeed blame the Church for meddling in politics,
and all good Christians still disapprove of the cruelties practiced in
the name of the Cross by the Inquisition and of the trials for witchcraft,
but it is wrong to abuse in general terms the greatest phenomenon in human
history because of the perversities and erroneous ideas and defaults of
individuals. The Christian religion has uplifted and strengthened
millions upon millions, and brought them to God by the way of suffering."
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 366
The foregoing helps
explains why Hitler said of the previous government in a Stuttgart speech
on Feb. 15, 1933:
I
would ask whether the economic policy of this now superseded system was
a Christian policy. Was the inflation an undertaking for which Christians
could answer, or has the destruction of German life, of the German peasant
as well as of the middle classes, been Christian?
MY NEW ORDER
by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 149
All of the above vividly
discloses why Hitler, like so many followers of Bush and his ideological
predecessors, considered himself and his party to be the only bona fide
carries of the Christian Cross, the true Christians. From the Fuhrer’s
vantage point all others were phonies and dupes or allies of either atheists
or the non-religious and he alleged as much on several occasions.
In a speech at Koblenz to the Germans of the Saar on 26 August 1934 he
said:
I
know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have
deserted Christianity. No, it is not we who have deserted Christianity,
it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have
only carried through a clear division between politics, which have to do
with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the
celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine
of the Confessions [Protestantism and Catholicism] or with their religious
freedom, nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary
the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion
will not be used as a cover for political ends.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 386
In a 27 August 1934
speech in Ehrenbreitstein:
Not
we, rather those before us, distanced themselves from it (from Christianity).
We have simply introduced a pure separation between politics, which is
supposed to occupy itself with earthly things, and religion, which must
occupy itself with the divine.
ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS,
by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 58
In a speech at Koblenz
on 26 August 1934:
National
Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the
contrary it stands on the ground of real Christianity. And we have
no other desire than to be true to that position.... These are not anti-Christian,
these are Christian principles.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 386
And he also claimed
to be the genuine representative of Christianity by virtue of the fact
that Nazis aided the poor and downtrodden.
In his Munich speech to
the "Old Guard" on 24 February 1939 he stated:
If
positive Christianity means love of one's neighbor, i.e., the tending of
the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving
of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive
Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National
Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 402
While talking at the
Winter Help Campaign in October 1937:
This
Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When
I see, as I often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience
in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves
are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles
of a Christianity--and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater
right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession,
for behind it stand not words but deeds.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 393
In summary, and in light of all the foregoing, one of the greatest misconceptions of the Nazi era can be laid to rest. Hitler was in no sense an atheist or anti-religious but was very much in the Bush tradition of religious zealotry.