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So long
as Adolf Hitler was in power,
his Roman Catholic Church
never questioned his Catholicism
- at least not in public - which is
where it mattered politically.
(this page was viewed
10,730 times in 2008)
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A posed picture which Hitler himself used
often
to show what a good "practicing Catholic" he
was. |
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Catholics today all try to repudiate Adolf
Hitler and deny that he was a fellow Roman Catholic. But
this was definitely not the case so long as he was in
power, after he had given Germans jobs and reasons to be
proud of their powerful country, following the period of
great economic depression and great shame which were the
results of the country's disastrous defeat in World War
One. Hitler understood how much it would hurt his cause if
the 66% of the German population who were Protestants and
the 33% who were fellow Catholics were to learn how
anti-Christian he and his Nazi ring leaders actually were in
their hearts. Although we now know that Adolf Hitler
expressed his true thoughts and feelings for his
Catholic Church in his private writings and in his candid
communications with his inner circle, we also know that
he was a shrewd politician who knew how to manipulate the
churchmen of both of the major German faiths to his
advantage, by convincing them at the time that he was a
champion, not an opponent, of Christianity.
Catholics today imagine that their church
must have repudiated Hitler at that time, because
they want so much to be disassociated from him in our
time. But try as they may to rewrite history, the fact
is that once Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, neither the
pope in Rome as leader of the church worldwide, nor the
bishops as leaders of the church in Germany, ever denied
Hitler himself (nor any of
the many, many, other Roman Catholic leaders of the Third
Reich)membership in the R.C. church, or even public
access to the sacraments.
Nor was "the Nazi Bible", Hitler's Mein Kampf,
ever placed on the "Index" of books which Catholics
were forbidden to read. Nor were Catholics
discouraged publicly or privately from serving in Hitler's
administration. The sad truth is that German Catholic
bishops actually did forbid the faithful from joining
the Nazi party. But that was before Hitler came to power.
Once the Nazis came into power and Hitler was in a position
to actually enact his diabolical schemes, the Catholic
hierarchy reversed itself and lifted that ban.
In early 1933, Hitler vowed secretly to
completely eradicate Christianity from Germany. 'You are
either a Christian or a German, you cannot be both.' But
Hitler was smart enough to know that in a nation as
Christian as Germany, the public and the churches must never
know his true feelings and beliefs.
Throughout his career however, Adolf Hitler never
ceased trying to project to his Christian countrymen and
their clergy the image of a "man of God", chosen to lead a
Christian nation into a more perfect state, purified of the
demonic influence of Jews and "Bolsheviks". And history
proves that he succeeded in persuading the vast majority of
his countrymen not just to let him proceed, but to do his
dirty work for him. In a speech that Adolf Hitler gave in
April, 1922, and then published in "My New Order", he
proclaimed:
"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."
Hitler rallying his Nazi
supporters in front of
Church of our Lady, in Nuremberg, circa 1928,
by Heinrich Hoffmann - US Holocaust Museum.
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"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."
Hitler, or others in his sphere of influence, may
well have been aware of what Aristotle said on this subject,
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to
religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal
treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and
pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against
him, believing that he has the gods on his side." -
Aristotle
One thing that is certain is that Christian
churchmen used what IMHO is one of the most horrible
passages in the New Testament in support of Hitler and his
regime, namely
ch. 13 of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Projecting an image of religiosity was so important to
Hitler that he reinforced that image, over and over and over
again, as in :
- "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance
with the will of the Almighty Creator." Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf, p. 46
- "What we have to fight for. . . is the freedom and
independence of the fatherland, so that our people may
be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the
Creator." [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125]
- "This human world of ours would be inconceivable
without the practical existence of a religious belief."
[Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152]
- "Adolf Hitler recognized at an early stage the
potential for Catholic resistance to National
Socialism. In Mein Kampf (meaning "My Struggle"), he
wrote that a confrontation (i.e. in the open) with the
Catholic Church in Germany would prove disastrous." (to
his NAZI cause).
- 'In early Feb. of 1933, he declared in the Reichstag
(parliament) that the churches were to be an integral
part of German national life.' " . . .
-
| The important
thing about Hitler's faith isn't his
relationship with God (which is between
him and God) but his relationship to the
98% of Germans who considered themselves
"Christian". Shrewd politician that he
was, Hitler knew it was best that he
appear to be a "Christian" like
them, and it was crucial that his
church not deny him that political
asset - which is exactly what the church
should have done had it been
faithful instead of cowardly
and complicit in this deceit.
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"The National Government will preserve and defend those
basic principles on which our nation has been built up.
It regards Christianity as the foundation of our
national morality and the family as the basis of
national life."
- "The National Government regards the two Christian
confessions as factors essential to the soul of the
German people. It will respect the contracts they have
made with the various regions. It declares its
determination to leave their rights intact. In the
schools, the government will protect the rightful
influence of the Christian bodies. We hold the spiritual
forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in
the moral uplift of most of the German people. We hope
to develop friendly relations with the Holy See" (
addressed the Reichstag on March 23, 1933)
- "The Government of the Reich regards Christianity as
the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code
of the nation." "The rights of the churches will not be
diminished." ( from The Speeches of Adolph Hitler,
1922-1939, Vol. 1, pg. 369-372 (London, Oxford
University Press, 1942 - edition of 1969.)
- "National Socialism, he proclaimed, has always
affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian
Churches under the protection of the State. For their
part the churches cannot for a second doubt that they
need the protection of the State, and that only through
the State can they be enabled to fulfill their religious
mission. Indeed, the churches demand this protection
from the State." [Hitler - in his first radio address
to the German people after coming to power (1933).]
- "The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty
with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the
National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This
treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally
that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is
hostile to religion is a lie." Adolf Hitler, 22 July
1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted in John
Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" )
- A few days after the signing of the Lateran Treaty,
Hitler wrote an article for the Volkischer Reobachter,
published on February 22, 1929, warmly welcoming the
agreement. "The fact that the Curia is now making its
peace with Fascism," he wrote, "shows that the Vatican
trusts the new political realities far more than did the
former liberal democracy with which it could not come to
terms." Turning to the German situation, he rebuked the
Center Party leadership for its recalcitrant attachment
to democratic politics. "By trying to preach that
democracy is still in the best interests of German
Catholics, the Center Party ... is placing itself in
stark contradiction to the spirit of the treaty signed
today by the Holy See." The conclusion of his rant
contained a gross distortion as well as a remarkable
intuition of future opportunities: "The fact that the
Catholic Church has come to an agreement with Fascist
Italy." he went on, "... Proves beyond doubt that the
Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity y than
those of Jewish liberalism or even atheistic Marxism, to
which the so-called Catholic Center Party sees itself so
closely bound, to the detriment of Christianity today
and our German people."
- "While we destroyed the (Catholic) Centre 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. The union of the Evangelical Church in a
single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with
the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the
road which leads to the establishment of a useful
relation and a useful co-operation between the Reich and
the two Confessions." Adolf Hitler, in his New Year
Message on 1 Jan. 1934
- "I know that here and there the objection has been
raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity. No, it
is not that we 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 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.
- "There may have been a time when even parties
founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity.
(Between World War I & II, the Catholic "Center Party"
had been one of the most powerful political parties in
Germany.) At that time Liberalism was opposed to the
Church, while Marxism was anti-religious. But that time
is past. National Socialism neither opposes the church,
nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands
on the ground of a real Christianity."
- "The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with
ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of
degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against
the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement,
against criminality, and in our struggle for the
consciousness of a community in our national life, for
the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes,
for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and
discord. These are not anti-Christian, these are
Christian principles."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Koblenz, August
26, 1934.
- " I believe today that I am acting in the sense of
the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am
fighting for the Lord's work."
Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, 1936
- "And the founder of Christianity made no secret
indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He
found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human
race out of the Temple of God."
Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174
- "Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know
therefore how to handle this Church."
Adolf Hitler, reported to have said in Berlin in 1936,
on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National
Socialism."
- Impressed with the organization of the Papacy,
Hitler is quoted as saying the following: "I learned
much from the Order of the Jesuits…until now there has
never been anything more grandiose on the earth than the
hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. I
transferred much of this organization into my own
party."
Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Said To Me (1939), 266-267.
- "I believe that it was God’s will to send a youth
from here into the Reich, to let him grow up, to raise
him to be the leader of the nation so as to enable him
to lead back his homeland into the Reich….In three days
the Lord has smitten them… And to me the grace was given
on the day of the betrayal to be able to unite my
homeland [Austria] with the Reich….I would now give
thanks to Him who let me return to my homeland in order
than I might now lead it into my German Reich. Tomorrow,
may every German recognize the hour, and measure its
import and bow in humility before the Almighty who in a
few weeks has wrought a miracle upon us. [Closing speech
of the campaign at Vienna, 9 April 1938]"
- "I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to
be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always
rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at
the Nuremberg Parteitag of [11 Sept. 1936]
- "We National Socialists, too, have deep in our
hearts our own faith. We cannot do otherwise. No man
can mould the history of peoples or of the world unless
he has upon his will and his capacities the blessing of
Providence."
Adolf Hitler, to Nazi leaders on 2 June 1937, as
reported by a correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph":
- "In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this:
that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would
give His blessing to our work and our action, to our
judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us
from all false pride and from all cowardly servility,
that He may grant us to find the straight path which His
Providence has ordained for the German people, and that
He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never
to falter, never to yield before any violence, before
any danger . . . I am convinced that men who are
created by God should live in accordance with the will
of the Almighty. . . If Providence had not guided us I
could often never have found these dizzy paths . . .
Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the
depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise:
no man can fashion world-history or the history of
peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there
rests the blessings of this Providence."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937
- "Amongst the accusations which are directed against
Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that
the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In
answer to that charge I should like to make before the
German people the following solemn declaration:
1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted
because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor
will anyone in the future be so persecuted . . .
2. The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors
after the State . . . Further, the Church in the
National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in
regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it
enjoys immunity from taxation.
It is therefore, to put mildly-- effrontery
when especially foreign politicians make bold to
speak of hostility to religion in the Third
Reich. . .
I would allow myself only one question: what
contributions during the same period have France,
England, or the United States made through the State
from the public funds?
3. The National Socialist State has not closed a
church, nor has it prevented the holding of a
religious service, nor has it ever exercised any
influence upon the form of a religious service. It
has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor
on the profession of faith of any of the
Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone
is free to seek his blessedness after his own
fashion .
There are ... ten thousands of priests of
all the Christian Confessions who perform their
ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably
better than the political agitators without ever
coming into conflict with the laws of the State.
But on one point it is well that there
should be no uncertainty: the German priest as
servant of God we shall protect, the priest as
political enemy of the German State we shall
destroy."
Adolf Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan.,
1939
[ That last sentence sums up Hitler's stand on
the priesthood. Rather than standing for atheism, as
today's Christians would like, Hitler attacked the
priesthood only to the extent that they got in his way.]
"When Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in
Munich in November, 1939, he gave the credit to
providence. 'Now I am completely content,' he exclaimed.
'The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than
usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to
let me reach my goal.' Catholic newspapers throughout
the Reich echoed this, declaring that it was a
miraculous working of providence that had protected
their Fuëhrer. One cardinal, Michael Faulhaber, sent a
telegram instructing that a Te Deum be sung in the
cathedral of Munich, 'to thank Divine Providence in the
name of the archdiocese for the Fuëhrer's fortunate
escape. ' The Pope also sent his special personal
congratulations."
( from http://skeptically.org/againstreligion/id13.html
)
"The national government will maintain and defend
the foundations on which the power of our nation rests.
It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the
very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians
stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our
culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to
burn out all the recent immoral developments in
literature, in the theatre, and in the press-in short,
we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has
entered into our whole life and culture as a result of
liberal excess during recent years."
( a Radio Broadcast July 22, 1933; from My New Order. )
(The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1. pp.
871-872, Oxford University Press,London, 1942)
One of the most frightening quotes (from one of
Hitler's Tischgespräche: )
"If there is a God, then he gives us not only life
but also consciousness and awareness. If I live my life
according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go
wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good
faith." "I may not be a light of the church, a pulpiteer,
but deep down I am a pious man, and believe that whoever
fights bravely in defense of a natural law framed by God
and never capitulates will never be deserted by the
lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of
Providence."
[ Hitler, in a 1944 speech ].
"Woman's world is her husband, her family, her
children and her home. We do not find it right when she
presses into the world of men."
Adolph Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New
Feminism
"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."
Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during
negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of
1933
On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated
Hitler's birthday. The celebrations, initiated by
Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April
20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest
congratulations to the Fuëhrer in the name of the
bishops and the dioceses in Germany" and added with
"fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are
sending to heaven on their altars."
(from Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,
by John Cornwell )
"I have followed [the Church] in giving our party
program the character of unalterable finality, like the
Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be
interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it
was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment,
every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been
rejected. The Church has realized that anything and
everything can be built up on a document of that sort,
no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it.
The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical
reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."
Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of
Destruction_, pp. 239-40
"There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are
Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness,
Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the
Fatherland."
[Message painted on walls of concentration camps and
signed , signed "Hitler"; Life, August 21, 1939]
"Never forget that everything Hitler did in
Germany was legal."
+ The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. +
"Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he
recognized the enormous psychological value of having
the law (as well as the church) on his side. Instead,
he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."
- Historian Alan Bullock
Hitler was a great fan of "Passion Plays." No
doubt he would have loved Mel Gibson's movie, which
might well be the most viewed "Passion Play" of all
time:
- "It is vital that the Passion Play be continued
at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry
been so convincingly portrayed as in this
presentation of what happened in the times of the
Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman
racially and intellectually so superior, that he
stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of
the whole muck and mire of Jewry."
Still another example of Catholic worship
promoting hatred of the Jews at the time was the annual
commemoration in Deggendorf in Catholic Bavaria of the
professed miraculous appearance of "a lovely little
child" from a communion wafer, which had allegedly been
stolen and desecrated by the Jews of the town on
9/30/1337. On the same day, the pious Catholics of the
town, acting "out of legitimate zeal pleasing to God,"
killed off all of the town's Jews. Many of the 10,000
pilgrims who came to celebrate these events each year in
Hitler's day could read the inscription under a picture
depicting the massacre in the Catholic Church, "God
grant that our fatherland be forever free from this
hellish scum." (Lewy, p. 272-72)
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"Hitler did well in monastery school. He sang
in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies
intoxicating, and idolized priests. Impressed by their
power, he at one time considered entering the
priesthood."
[ from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html
]
According to http://www.reformation.org/inquisit.html,
the picture on the right is of young Eva Braun, as a nun
at Simbach Convent.
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Even the
members of Hitler's nefarious Nazi S. S., swore
a loyalty oath that appealed to God: "I pledge to you, Adolf
Hitler,
my obedience unto death, so help me God."
Members of the Wehrmacht (regular army) swore this loyalty
oath:
"I swear by God this holy oath to the Fuëhrer of
the German Reich and the German people, Adolf Hitler."
And
every time regular army NAZI soldiers put on their uniforms,
their belt buckle proclaimed "God is with us". |
Hitler Was Not An
Atheist
by John Patrick Michael Murphy
In George Orwell's 1984, it was stated, "Who controls the
past controls the future. Who controls the present controls
the past." Who is going to control the
present-fundamentalism or freedom? History is being
distorted by many preachers and politicians. They are heard
on the airwaves condemning atheists and routinely claim
Adolf Hitler was one.
Hitler was a Roman Catholic, baptized into that
religio-political institution as an infant in Austria. He
became a communicant and an altar boy in his youth and was
confirmed as a "soldier of Christ" in at his mother’s wish
on Whit Sunday 1904 at the Cathedral at Linz. Hitler still
went to confession and communion in 1918. (from http://yearegods.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/was-hitler-a-christian/
) He himself wrote of that period of his life : "I had
excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn
splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only
natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had
once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable
ideal". [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 1]
[ The most extensive article I have seen on Hitler's youth
is http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/boyhood.htm.]
Its worst doctrines never left him. He was steeped
in its liturgy, which contained the words "perfidious Jew."
This hateful statement was not removed until 1961.
"Perfidy" means treachery. In his day, hatred of Jews was
the norm. In great measure it was sponsored by two major
religions of Germany, Catholicism and Lutheranism.
He greatly admired Martin Luther, who openly hated
the Jews. Luther condemned the Catholic Church for its
pretensions and corruption, but he supported the centuries
of papal pogroms against the Jews. Luther said, "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." "Ungodly wretches" he called the Jews
in his book, Table Talk.
Hitler seeking power, 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." Years later, when in power, he quoted those same
words in a Reichstag speech in 1938. Three years later he
informed General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a
Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the
church, and the church never left him. Great literature was
banned by his church, but his miserable Mein Kampf never
appeared on the index of Forbidden Books. He was not
excommunicated or even condemned by his church. Popes, in
fact, contracted with Hitler and his fascist friends Franco
and Mussolini, giving them veto power over whom the pope
could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain, and Italy. The
three thugs agreed to surtax the Catholics of these
countries and send the money to Rome in exchange for making
sure the state could control the church.
Those who would make Hitler an atheist should turn
their eyes to history books before they address their pews
and microphones. Acclaimed Hitler biographer John Toland
explains his heartlessness as follows: "Still a member in
good standing of the Church of Rome despite the detestation
of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that
the Jews 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 . . .
"
Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church.
Soldiers of the Vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with
the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). His troops
were often sprinkled with holy water by the priests. It was
a real (99%) Christian country whose citizens were
indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed
all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical.
Hitler, like some of the today's politicians and
preachers, politicized "family values." He liked corporal
punishment in home and school. Jesus prayers became
mandatory in all schools under his administration. While
abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to
new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report
to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages. He
openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it."
The author is a retired attorney in Colorado Springs
who writes a weekly column for an alternative newspaper.
{ from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume
19, Number 2 } |
| The "spiritual" godfather of Nazism
"Hitler's concern not to alienate traditionalist opinion
was eminently political and made sense in a rural Catholic
region like Bavaria, which had been the cradle of the Nazi
movement between 1919 and 1925. Moreover, Hitler recognized
the affinity between local anti Jewish religious traditions
typified by such popular festivals as the Oberammergau
Passion Play (which highlighted the Jews' primary role in
Christ's crucifixion) and his own violent anti-Semitism. The
potency of this inflammatory strand of folk prejudice,
accentuated by the linkage in the popular mind between Jews
and Communism in post-1919 Munich, explains why Hitler
sought to appropriate the Christian anti-Jewish tradition
for his own demagogic ends. It is succinctly summed up in
that notorious passage in Mein Kampf where he rails, "In
defending myself against the Jews I am acting for the Lord."
The continuity is equally evident whenever Hitler's speeches
passionately evoked_ Jesus as "the scourge of the Jews" or
praised the "utterance(s) of the great Nazarene, who had
always despised the golden mean, whether in politics or in
life. Small wonder, then, that the Nazis were eager in the
early years to tap into the centuries-old tradition of
Christian anti-Semitism for electoral purposes and present
their doctrines as heir compatible with "positive"
Christianity. To understand what Hitler meant by this
propagandist phrase, it is important to remember that his
ideas in the 1920s were strongly influenced by the
"spiritual" godfather of Nazism, the Bavarian Catholic
Journalist Dietrich Eckart, whom he admired as "an
outstanding writer and thinker" and to whom ( the 2nd volume
of) Mein Kampf' was dedicated. Twenty years older than
Hitler, Eckart had introduced his raw, energetic protege to
Munich society, improved his social graces and his German,
reshaping his racist anti-Semitism and grooming, him for the
role of messianic savior of Germany. Eckart had invented the
Nazi battle cry "Deutschland Erwache!" (Germans awake!), the
title of one of his poems. In 1919, he began publication of
the ultranationalist weekly Auf Gut Deutsch, which attacked
the Treaty of Versailles, Jewish scar profiteers,
Bolshevism, and social democracy. Eckart's eclectic
combination of volkisch racism with Catholic mysticism and
his Manichaean view of the world as a battle between the
forces of light and darkness (embodied by Aryan and Jew)
appealed strongly to the early Hitler. He looked up to
Eckart as a prophet, teacher, and father figure whose
services to National Socialism were "inestimable," and he
shared his view that "the Jewish Question is the chief
problem of humanity, in which, indeed, every one of its
other problems is contained." Equally, he shared Eckart's
conviction that Christ's revelation had been radically
distorted by the apostle Paul and overlaid with a cold
"Jewish" materialism from which all social evils had
subsequently proceeded. In post-1918 Germany, the decadent
condition of which Eckart compared to that of the late Roman
Empire (where "Judaism" under the "cover" of Christianity
had first engineered a moral collapse), the situation was
perilous in the extreme. The prince causes of
"decomposition" were capitalism, Bolshevism, and
Freemasonry--three deadly modern agents of (judaization).
The only salvation for the German Volk lay in a fusion of
nationalism, socialism, and positive Christianit,y," though
this trinity would have to be stripped of any Jewish
component and reinterpreted in a fundamentally "anti
materialist" spirit. Echart died in 1924, but his ambitious
pupil later implemented his millenarian program of
redemptive anti-Semitism to devastating effect.-'' By
brandishing the slogan of "positive Christianity" and
projecting their leader as a deeply religious figure
(Hitler's frequent references to "Divine Providence" made
this easier), Nazi Party image makers could suggest that
their movement defended traditionalist values, especially
against "godless Marxism." (pp. 124-129m Hitler and the
Holocaust, by Robert S. Wistrich
|
"Just 1.5 percent of Germans
identified themselves as unbelievers in a 1939 census, which
means either that very few Nazis and National Socialist
German Worker's Party supporters were atheists, or that
atheists feared to identify themselves to the pro-theistic
regime." [ from
an internet article. ]
In http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NifZmfhCO8, a Catholic
pro-life Youtube video purports to make the case that
"Mother Teresa is Anti-abortion and Hitler is Pro-abortion",
by using the following quote, leaving out the context which
I have provided below in [brackets] :
'[The Fuehrer's Guidelines for the Government of the
Eastern Territories: ' the Slavs are to work for us. Insofar
as we don't need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory
vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The
fertility of the Slavs is undesirable.] They may use
contraceptives And practice abortion, the more the better. .
.Active trade in contraceptives ought to be actually
encouraged in the Eastern territories, as we could not
possibly have the slightest interest in increasing the
non-Germanic population."
( Harvest of Hate, 1954, pp. 273-4)
How dishonest it is to use such a quote to associate
"pro-choice" people with the Nazis when - as the following
clearly shows - Hitler and the Nazis were ardently
"pro-life", so long as it wasn't Jewish life.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler wrote to Field-Marshal
Willhilm Keitel the following in 1939:
"According to statistics there are 600,000 abortions a year
in Germany. The fact that these happen among the best German
racial types has been worrying me for years. The way I see
it we cannot afford to lose these young people, hundreds and
thousands of them. The aim of protecting this German blood
is of the highest priority. If we manage to stop these
abortions we will be able to have 200 more German regiments
every year on the march. Another 500,000 or 600,000 people
could produce millions of marks for the economy. The
strength of these soldiers and workers will build the
greater Germany. This is why I founded Lebensborn in 1936.
It fights abortions in a positive way. Every woman can have
her child in peace and quiet and devote her life to the
betterment of the race."
(Master Race: The Lebensborn Experiment in Nazi Germany,
1995, pp.66-7)
|
When Hitler wanted to
promote the production of human replacement parts for his
Nazi machine, was it an accident that he came up with an
annual award for women producing many children consisting of
a cross enshrining another cross (the swastika is just one
of many variations of a cross) in the shape of what was one
of the most visible articles of Roman Catholic worship at
the time, the "monstrance", used to display and worship the
Eucharistic host?
See
Wikipedia's article on the Nazi Mother's cross
|

|
After claiming
throughout the period of the Third Reich that the Vatican
"neutrality" prevented it from speaking out against the
Nazis, "The Catholic Church, which claimed the
religious allegiance of 98 per cent of the Italian people,
was forbidden by Italian electoral law from engaging in
politics. Nevertheless, the Church threw its entire
weight behind the Christian Democrats, led by a former
Librarian of the Vatican. The Pope himself stated that
Catholics who voted Communist would be denied absolution.
The implications of this were made clear in one highly
publicized incident. When the Communist mayor of the
village of Giuliano, Francesco Frezza, who was also a devout
Catholic that never missed a Sunday Mass in all his life,
died, he was denied a Catholic burial by the local Bishop.
Peasants who attempted to bring his body into the church
found their way blocked by a cordon of police. In addition
to invoking what for Catholics are the most serious
religious sanctions, the Church also supplied an "infantry"
for the Christian Democrat's campaign. The Catholic Action
organization set up "civic committees" in 18,000 parishes to
get out the vote for the Christian Democrats. After the
election, the leaders of Catholic Action claimed to be
directly responsible for 40 per cent of the Christian
Democrat vote."
[ from California State U. - www.csulb.edu/~eruyle/humanweb/07tridec2003.htm
]
"The Nazis championed traditional family values: their
ideology was conservative, bourgeois, patriarchal, and
strongly anti-feminist. Discipline and conformity were
emphasized, marriage promoted, abortion and homosexuality
despised. . .Most religious Germans detested the impiety,
secularism, and hedonistic decadence that they associated
with such modernist ideas as democracy and free speech. If
they feared democracy, they were terrified by Communism, to
the point of being willing to accept extreme
counter-methods."
[ from
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html ]
The extent to which Adolf Hitler was a champion of
"traditional values", is illustrated in his own words :
"Parallel to the training of the body a struggle
against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole
public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and
simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our
movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able
to deny that this is not the right kind of food,
particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature,
cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed
of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the
service of a moral, political, and cultural idea." [Mein
Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
An online reviewer of the book, "The Holy Reich:
Nazi Conceptions of Christianity", by Richard
Steigmann-Gall (1919-1945 ) makes the following points about
Hitler's supposed anti-Christian sentiments:
"Steigmann-Gall makes some important points about
Hitler's rage against Christainity. First off, Hitler was
not an atheist, despised atheism and of course despised the
Enlightenment,Liberalism, and Marxist Socialism that are the
main sources for modern atheism. Secondly, one should be
cautious about Hitler's "Table Talk." Richard Carrier has
argued that it has been unscrupulously translated: while in
English Hitler denounces Christianity as the greatest
idiocy, in the actual German it is clear that Hitler's
target is transubstantiation. Steigmann-Gall points out that
Hitler had the habit of telling people what they wanted to
hear, and his most venomous comments were made in front of
Bormann and Himmler. Third, Steigmann-Gall also makes the
suggestion that instead of seeing Hitler's anger at
Christianity as a revelation of Nazism's basic antipathy, it
should be seen as the bitter rage of a defeated
megalomaniac, a rage Hitler also directed at the army, some
of his closest associates, and indeed the German people
themselves."
"When
lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will
happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those
people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of
them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together."
- the Rev. Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 01-21-93
Au contraire, Mr. Robertson, most of the Nazi
leaders were Conservative Christian heterosexuals like
yourself! |
The answers apologists for the Catholic Church
come up with to defend their church can be hilarious. Take
the following for example (with mistakes uncorrected), by
somebody called "Catholic I am"
at http://unbelief.org/forum/index.php?action=printpage;topic=2.0
:
"You say that Hitler lived and died as a Catholic
and was never excommunicated.
Well I think that its true that Hitler was
baptised a Catholic as an infant, but you'll have to
give some detail as to why you think he lived as a
Catholic. Given that Hitler was a neo pagan I don't see
how you can say that he lived as a Catholic. You do know
that the swastika is a pagan symbol don't you???. You do
know that the nazi's wanted to eventually rid europe of
all Jewish influences including Christianity so as to
reestablish some dopey pagan religion don't you???
As far as Hitler dying a Catholic, well sort of.
As all Catholics who abandon the Church should know,
once you are baptised a Catholic you are a Catholic for
eternity. Even if you hate the Church and don't believe
in anything that it teaches you will still die a
Catholic. What I'm saying is that once a Catholic always
a Catholic. Nobody's Catholic baptism can be undone, not
even Hitler's.
As far as Hitler never being excommunicated from
the Church, well the reality is that he was
excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Anybody who
holds beliefs and acts in a manner that is in opposition
to the Catholic Church is excommunicated from the Church
by their very action. Hitler would not have received a
formal letter stating his excommunication from the
Church because the Church almost never writes such
letters. And yes a baptised Catholic who is
excommunicated from the Catholic Church, whether by his
actions or by written letter from the Church is still a
Catholic, but such a person is not in communion with the
Church."
|
Who actually wrote what ?
The Holocaust museum attributes the following famous words
to the German Protestant pastor Martin Niemoller:
- "First they came for the Jews and I did not speak
out
because I was not a Jew.
- Then they came for the communists and I did not
speak out
because I was not a communist.
- Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not
speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
- Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."
There is no exact evidence as far as I could find
that Martin Niemoller actually authored these words. But one
thing is sure, and that is the inauthenticity of the version
recorded in the Congressional Record, for October 14, 1968,
on page 31,636, where "they" (meaning the Nazis) is replaced
with "Hitler" and "communists" is replaced with "Catholics"
and "me" is replaced with "me and the Protestant church".
- “When Hitler attacked the Jews, I was not a Jew,
therefore I was not concerned.
- And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a
Catholic,
and therefore, I was not concerned.
- And when Hitler attacked the unions and the
industrialists,
I was not a member of the unions and I was not
concerned.
- Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church
and there was nobody left to be concerned.”
How dishonest this version is, when the truth of the
matter is that the "communists" were clearly one of the
principal targets of the Nazis, while the Catholics and
Protestants were not so much victims of the Holocaust as
perpetrators of it. |
...Hitler spoke of both Protestants and
Catholics with contempt, convinced that all Christians would
betray their God when they were forced to choose between the
swastika and the Cross: "Do you really believe the masses
will be Christian again? Nonsense! Never again. That tale is
finished. No one will listen to it again. But we can hasten
matters. The parsons will dig their own graves. They will
betray anything for the sake of their miserable jobs and
income."
In a speech
given on April 26, 1933, Adolf said, "The Catholic Church
considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put
them in ghettos, etc. ... I am thereby doing Christianity a
great service by pushing them out of schools and public
functions."
Then in a letter to the party faithful of July
22, 1933, Hitler wrote, "The fact that the Vatican is
concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the
acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the
Catholic Church ... the assertion that National Socialism is
hostile to religion is a lie."
"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 their
priests," Hitler's New Year Message of January 1, 1934.
In 1936, Hitler said "Providence has caused me to be
Catholic."
"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. . ."
[ http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/hitler.htm ]
"In his
autobiography Hitler says that he was deeply impressed with
the religious ceremonies of the Catholic Church and was a
member of the choir in his parish church. In his free time
he took singing lessons at the nearby monastery. "This," he
says, "supplied me with the best opportunity to steep myself
in the solemn magnificence of the brilliant feasts of the
Church."1 These early emotions never completely
disappeared, and he has always remained conscious of the
extremely suggestive value of ecclesiastical surroundings.
Toward the end of his book he describes "the psychological
conditions which tend to create that artificial and
mysterious half-light in Catholic churches, the wax tapers,
the incense . . . "In fact, in his Mein Kampf Hitler
approves of everything particularly relating to Jesuit
Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism. He approves of the
indisputability of Catholic dogmas,2 of the
intolerant attitude of Catholic education,3 of
the necessity of blind faith,4 of the personal
infallibility of the pope, imposed upon the Church by the
Jesuits in 1870,5 and of the compulsory celibacy
of the Catholic clergy. These are all matters that make
Catholicism radically different from the other churches of
Christendom. In an open and prophetic expression of his
admiration for the Catholic Church, he says: "Thus the
Catholic Church is more secure than ever. It can be
predicted that, as passing phenomena vanish away, she will
remain as a beacon light amid these vanishing elements,
attracting blind adherents in ever-increasing numbers."6
1 Cf. Mein Kampf, p. 4. 2 P. 293. 3
P. 385. 4 P. 417. 5 P. 507.
6 P. 513. See The Catholic Church in Hitler's 'Mein
Kampf'; 15c Agora Publishing Co. It was a Jesuit priest,
Father Staempfle, not Hitler, who really wrote "Mein Kampf."
( Behind the Dictators, by L. H. Lehmann, p 26)
"by ruthless persecution and armed might, in
collaboration with the other Catholic dictators, he has
forwarded (i.e. Hitler promoted) the ultimate objectives of
the Catholic Church. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar
(the Catholic dictator of Portugal) ousted Jewish, Masonic
and Protestant influence from all of Europe from the Arctic
to the Mediterranean." (p 27)
"Nazi opposition to the Catholic Church in Germany
has been confined to its "liberal" elements, and Catholic
leadership has always opposed these more than any others.
The Jesuit party has long feared the infiltration of
Protestant and liberal ideas into the German Catholic mind.
During the post-war years, when Germany was a democratic
republic, many of the ordinary secular clergy and some of
the religious orders became enamored of the liberal,
secularizing spirit. They formed the backbone of the
Catholic Centre Party—which was the last bulwark against
Hitler's rise to power. But this last element of liberalism
in Germany was dissolved by order of Pope Pius XI, as a
stipulated condition of the Vatican's concordat with Nazism.
. . The last liberal party in Italy also, headed by the
exiled priest Don Sturzo, shared the same fate at the hands
of the same Pope Pius XI." (p.28) |
| Hitler offered his countrymen the family of his
good friend Joseph Goebbels as the model for all good
Germans to follow:
Joseph Goebbels (seated) with his
wife Magda and the six innocent children whom they killed
before killing themselves, in Hitler's bunker. The eldest
son in uniform, by Magda's previous marriage, was in the
Luftwaffe and survived the war. Goebbels was so close to
his Catholic boss that he asked and received the honor to
have the Fuëhrer serve as first witness at his Catholic
wedding. |
"Fuëhrer, my Fuëhrer, bequeathed to me by the
Lord."
Prelunch invocation of the German School Children.
Here is a whole site dedicated to
actual Hitler
quotes on his religious beliefs.
and several other
sites devoted to the question of Hitler's faith :
Hitler's Christianity: by James Walker = Very Good -
Lenghty!
The Great Scandal: Christianity's Role in the Rise of the
Nazis an excellent article by Gregory S. Paul
Hitler Was Not An Atheist : by John
P. Murphy = Very Good - brief!
Religion and the Holocaust : by Richard E. Smith
Hitler: Christian, Atheist, or Neither? : by Dean
Mischewski
Was Hitler an Atheist or a Theist? More Importantly, Who
Cares? : by Mark Vuletic
Freethought Today, March 1997
Aug 1, 1936
- Olympic games begin in Berlin. Hitler and top Nazis seek
to gain legitimacy through favorable public opinion from
foreign visitors and thus temporarily refrain from actions
against Jews.
"conservative media are developing a sub-myth that the
Hitler movement itself was "homosexual." They point to the
fact that stormtrooper chief Ernst Rohm 's homosexuality and
that of a few of Rohm's buddies was evidently known to
Hitler during the early years. However, Hitler's willingness
to use people and institutions -- including the Catholic and
Lutheran Churches -- explains his temporary forbearance in
Rohm's case. During the social violence attending the Nazi
Party's rise, Hitler needed Rohm's muscle to establish and
protect himself. Eventually, however, Hitler felt secure
enough to get rid of Rohm. During the famous "Night of the
Long Knives," the Fuhrer had Rohm and his gay associates
massacred. This event -- and the fact that homosexuality was
a capital crime under the Nazis, who sent an estimated
100,000 homosexuals, mostly gay men, to the death camps --
sends its own clear message. The Nazis' real views on sexual
orientation were the same as those of ultra-traditional
Christians in the U.S. who want to have all homosexuals put
to death."
[ from
huffingtonpost.com/patricia-nell-warren/newt-gingrich-and-gay-fas_b_146498.html
]
|
| For a catalogue of photographic evidence of the
relationship between the Christian Churches and the Nazi
state,
see
NaziCrosses.html
|
|
|