Hitler: Atheist, Pagan or Christian?

Hitler: Atheist, Pagan or Christian?

Many ideologues want the world’s most reviled man to belong to “the other side”. There are some Christians who claim Hitler was a pagan who led an “atheistic regime” or even that he was an atheist himself. On the other hand, many atheists claim he was a devout Catholic or at least some kind of Christian who was cosy with the churches. So what is true? Was Adolf Hitler an atheist, a neo-pagan occultist or a devout Christian? Or was he none of these things?

Hitler poster

In September 2010 the then pope, Benedict XVI, made a speech during his visit to Britain attacking “atheist extremism” and “aggressive secularism”. In it he noted that “in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society”. His direct association of Hitler with atheism triggered outrage from secularists and atheists, who objected to this on historical grounds. Richard Dawkins was livid, and responded in characteristic style with an counterblast titled “Ratzinger is an Enemy of Humanity” (The Guardian, Sept 22). He begins by calling the Pope a “leering old fixer” and notes:

The unfortunate little fact that Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth has been the subject of a widely observed moratorium. I’ve respected it myself, hitherto. But after the pope’s outrageous speech in Edinburgh, blaming atheism for Adolf Hitler, one can’t help feeling the gloves are off.

This is pretty churlish, even for Dawkins, given that the young Ratzinger came from a known anti-Nazi family and avoided joining the Hitlerjugend for as long as he could, only doing so when it became compulsory to prevent retaliation against his parents. But Dawkins has never let facts and fairness get in the way of a bit of vicious spite. Warming to his theme, Dawkins declared:

Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Or at least he was as much a Roman Catholic as the 5 million so-called Roman Catholics in this country today. For Hitler never renounced his baptismal Catholicism.

Of course, Dawkins then has to acknowledge that this was a pretty nominal sort of Catholicism at best, but stresses that “Hitler certainly was not an atheist”, notes Hitler’s many references to divine “Providence”, cites the (pre-Nazi) motto “Gott mit uns” (God with Us) on the Wehrmacht’s belt buckles and observes “no wonder Hitler received such warm support from within the Catholic hierarchy of Germany”. On this latter point he cites John Cornwell’s largely debunked book Hitler’s Pope (1999) to declare that “Benedict’s predecessor, Pius XII, is not guiltless” (on the reality of Pius XII’s opposition to Hitler and Nazism see The Great Myths 7: “Hitler’s Pope”?).

This exchange about Hitler’s religious views is fairly typical. Both parties want Hitler to belong to the opposition. And both have to resort to some fancy footwork to do so. This is because the question of what Hitler believed is, in fact, far from straightforward and so any sufficiently motivated ideologue can find what appears to be support for their view that Hitler is “one of theirs, not one of ours”. In fact, many of Hitler’s statements about his beliefs are unreliable, ambiguous, contradictory and often incoherent. So what can we make of the competing claims about them?

Hitler the Occultist

Hitler the Occultist?

The idea that Hitler was some kind of occultist or neo-pagan is common in popular culture and so often stated as though it is a well-known fact. Raiders of the Lost Ark has a character assure Indiana Jones that “Hitler’s a nut on the subject. He’s crazy. He’s obsessed with the occult” and the entire plot revolves around Hitler’s supposed fixation on ancient religious artefacts. The comic book series Hell-Boy and some of the recent super hero movies about Captain America are based on the same assumed idea. It is certainly a powerful image and one that seems to make sense – surely someone so evil must have been obsessed with strange powers and dark forces and could not possibly have had “normal” religious beliefs and ideas.

So the idea of Hitler as an occultist who dabbled with dark supernatural powers also exercises those who write at the kooky and esoteric end of the “non-fiction” spectrum. In 1973 British esoteric writer Trevor Ravenscroft had a minor bestseller with his book Spear of Destiny: The Occult Power Behind the Spear Which Pierced the Side of Christ. Ravenscroft claims Hitler was a crazed occultist who was obsessed with the “Holy Lance” found in the treasury of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna; one of four such relics claimed to be the spear that pierced Jesus on the cross. According to Ravenscroft, Hitler wanted to use the power of this holy relic for his own dark military ends. As it turns out, most of what Ravenscroft claims is total nonsense, derived mainly from the strange author’s “psychic visions”.

The truth is, however, that Hitler had no such “obsession” and generally regarded most occultism as ridiculous or irrational. Esoteric and occultist ideas were very much in the air in Germany in the early twentieth century and there is good evidence from his reading that Hitler had some interest in them. And there certainly were high ranking members of the Nazi regime who had more than an interest – Rudolph Hess, Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg in particular clearly were believers in many of these ideas. This means that there was an strong influence from some of these concepts and systems on Nazi ideology. The parallels between aspects of Ariosophy – the esoteric systems of Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels – and Nazi ideas is very clear. The idea of a prehistoric Aryan civilisation in ancient Germania that had core cultural elements preserved in modern German society that needed to be nurtured and revived was central to Nazi ideals, as was the idea these Germanic Aryans were superior to other “races”. Hitler certainly did have contact with those who accepted the more esoteric forms of these ideas, as it was a discussion circle of the Listian Thule Society that led to the establishment of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP – German Workers’ Party), which Hitler joined in 1919 and transformed into the Nazi Party (NSDAP – National Socialist German Workers’ Party) once he became its leader. Hess and Rosenberg were both members of the Thule Society, as were other leading early Nazis, such as Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer.

While there was some influence of these occult ideas on Nazism, their influence on Hitler personally is far less clear. There are certainly some parallels between Hitler’s ideas and those of List and Lanz, but these are mostly ideas that were widely discussed and written about at the time. The elements that were unique to the esoterics and occultists, on the other hand, are generally not found in Hitler’s speeches, writings or reported discussions. Whereas they took pseudo scientific and pseudo historical claims about Aryans and ancient Germanics and added an occult or religious layer to them, Hitler generally stuck to the crackpot science and history and gave it a more political edge. Nicholas Goodridge-Clarke’s excellent study of the connections between the esoteric and occult fringe and the Nazis, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (Aquarian Press, 1985), actually concludes, despite its title, that Nazism did not really have occult roots. Goodridge-Clarke notes that “Ariosophy is a symptom rather than an influence in the way that it anticipated Nazism.” (p. 202) Hitler did have an enthusiasm for some of the strange ideas that overlapped with those of the Ariosophists, such as Viennese engineer Hanns Hörbiger’s kooky “World Ice Theory“, but these were more pseudo scientific theses rather than occult systems.

Similarly, while other leading Nazis did indulge in neo-pagan Germanicism and the revival of some kind of supposed ancient Germanic pagan religion, Hitler regarded this side of the Volkisch movements to be rather absurd. Himmler dabbled with a odd mix of medieval Christian-inspired esotericism, occult ideas and neo-paganism, while Alfred Rosenberg, Robert Ley and Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach embraced the defiantly pagan and anti-Christian German Faith Movement. Hitler, on the other hand, found all of this to be little more than play acting and was fairly scornful of some of its practicioners:

The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about the old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull’s horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack.

(Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ch. 12)

Abert Speer recalls Hitler laughing at Himmler’s neo-pagan revivalism behind the SS leader’s back saying:

What nonsense! Here we have at last reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now he wants to start that all over again. We might just as well have stayed with the church. At least it had tradition. To think that I may some day be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it?

(Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 143)

In public Hitler constantly emphasised the political and scientific basis for the Nazi ideology. In a speech at the Nuremberg Rally on September 6, 1938, he insisted that “the National Socialist Movement will not tolerate subversion by occult mystics in search of an afterlife”.

When Hess made his flight to Britain in May 1941, the enraged Hitler blamed his deputy’s belief in the occult and what he called “the astrological clique”. According to Hans Frank, Hitler declared “it is thus time radically to clear away this astrological nonsense.” A campaign against occult, esoteric and astrological groups and figures was ordered by the similarly vehemently anti-occult Martin Bormann and enthusiastically carried out by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. As another Nazi anti-occultist, Goebbels was delighted with the result, gloating that:

All astrologers, hypnotists, Anthroposophists, etc., arrested and their entire activity crippled. Thus finally this swindle has ended. Peculiarly not a single clairvoyant foresaw that he would be arrested. A bad professional sign!

(Goebbels, diary entry, June 13, 1941)

Despite the imaginings of both pop culture and crackpot theorists, Hitler was not “obsessed with the occult” and was not a neo-pagan. He held a number of crackpot ideas, but he sincerely believed them to be scientific and, at the time, a few of them did have a degree of respectability. But none of them were religious in nature and any overlap between occult or esoteric ideas of the time and his thinking was due to a common environment rather than any spiritual or transcendental beliefs on his part. Hitler actually regarded himself as something of a rationalist.

Nazi Bible

Hitler the Atheist?

Pope Benedict XVI is far from the only person to casually associate Hitler with atheism. Lumping Hitler in with actual atheist despots like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and then blaming their mass murders on atheism is a lazy trope among a certain variety of Christian apologist. But even in his own time there were people who declared him to actually be an atheist. Ernst Hanfstaengl was an American-German businessman who became a personal friend of Hitler and even took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. He fell from favour in 1937 and eventually fled to the west. In his 1957 memoir Unheard Witness, Hanfstaengl said Hitler “was to all intents and purposes an atheist by the time I got to know him, although he still paid lip-service to religious beliefs and certainly acknowledged them as the basis for the thinking of others.” (p. 72) The high ranking SS officer and SD leader Walter Schellenberg had a similar recollection, stating in his memoir:

Hitler did not believe in a personal god. He believed only in the bond of blood between succeeding generations and in a vague conception of fate or providence. Nor did he believe in a life after death. In this connection he often quoted a sentence from the Edda, that remarkable collection of ancient Icelandic literature, which to him represented the profoundest Nordic wisdom: “All things will pass away, nothing will remain but death and the glory of deeds.”

Schellenberg, The Schellenberg Memoirs, ed. Louis Hagen, p. 112

Early Nazi and later opponent to Hitler, Otto Strasser, was even more blunt, stating categorically that he opposed him because “we are Christians [and] without Christianity Europe is lost. Hitler is an atheist.” (Strasser, Hitler and I, trans. Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher, p. 93)

However, against these observations we have quite a body of evidence to the contrary, indicating that Hitler did indeed believe in a God in some sense and even in a personal God, and so was definitely not an atheist at all. Throughout his life, in his writings, in speeches and in private conversation Hitler made repeated references to God, “the Creator”, the Almighty” and “Providence” that, taken together, indicate at least a form of theism. In Mein Kampf he repeatedly invokes God as his inspiration for his racist ideology, writing for example of how Germans must “put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created” (p. 405). Similarly he wrote that”

The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God’s will, and actually fulfil God’s will, and not let God’s word be desecrated. For God’s will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord’s creation, the divine will.

(Mein Kempf, p. 562)

He also makes references to “God”, “the Almighty”, “the Creator” and “Providence” in speeches throughout his career. For example, soon after being named Chancellor he addressed a crowd in Berlin on February 1, 1933, stating:

May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany.

On March 19, 1934, he addressed original Nazi Party members in Munich, declaring:

 God first allowed our people to be victorious for four and a half years, then He abased us, laid upon us a period of shamelessness, but now after a struggle of fourteen years he has permitted us to bring that period to a close. It is a miracle which has been wrought upon the German people…. It shows us that the Almighty has not deserted our people, that He received it into favour at the moment when it rediscovered itself. And that our people shall never again lose itself, that must be our vow so long as we shall live and so long as the Lord gives us the strength to carry on the fight.

Several times after the failed assassination attempt of July 20 1944 Hitler thanked God for saving his life. For example, in a radio broadcast later that day he stated:

I thank Providence and my Creator, not for saving my life, but for making it possible for me to endure my cares and pursue the task which my conscience commands me.

Of course, Hitler was a politician and a master manipulator and so his writings, speeches and public statements could be regarded with some scepticism as a result, with good reason. But his confidantes such as Speer and Goebbels are all in agreement that, at least in some sense, Hitler’s belief in God was sincere.

He certainly had little time for open atheism, which he associated with Communism, Socialism and nihilistic philosophies. As Richard Weikart observes:

Every time he discussed atheism overtly, both publicly and privately, he rejected it, associating it with the Marxist Social Democrats, the Communist Party, or the Bolsheviks. In the electioneering phase of his career, he regularly slammed the Catholic Center Party for cooperating with the Social Democrats, who—he often asserted —were atheists.

Weikart, Hitler’s Religion, Regnery, 2016, p. 63)

Again, there was a clear political edge to this animus, but all other evidence indicates Hitler’s distaste for atheism was genuine. On coming to power the Nazis closed down atheist and freethinker organisations and several recollections of conversations with Hitler have him talking about how atheism reduces humans to an animal state. In one reported monologue in February 1942 he said:

“What gives humans an advantage over animals, perhaps the most wonderful proof for the superiority of humans, is that he has comprehended that there must be a creative power!”

(Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Werner Jochmann, pp. 301–2, quoted in Weikart,)

Of course, exactly what kind of God Hitler believed in is far from clear and extremely difficult to discern. As with Hitler’s ideas about most things, his statements are oblique, often confusing and his thinking on the matter probably fairly incoherent. In Hitler’s Religion (2016) Weikart makes a lengthy case that it was less a traditional Christian-style personal deity and more of a pantheistic conception of a universal divine. On the other hand, Richard Steigmann-Gall insists in The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (2003) that “Hitler gave no indication … of believing in only a remote, rationalist divinity” and notes that in Mein Kampf “Hitler intones more than a naturalist pantheism devoid of Christian content” (p. 26). Weikart presents a far more extensive and well-developed case than Steigmann-Gall on this point but, again, the complications of Hitler’s public and private statements, his political motivations in his writings and some contradictory reported statements make it hard to discern any clear theology behind his utterances on the matter. This is very likely because there really was no coherent conception of God in Hitler’s mind.

What is often overlooked in all this often contradictory evidence is the fact that, while he was not an atheist, he was heavily influenced by rationalist ideas and considered his beliefs entirely rational and scientific. Atheists who try to claim Hitler was a Christian or even a devout Catholic regularly talk about his Catholic upbringing, his devout mother and the fact he was baptised and confirmed into the Catholic faith. This ignores the fact that the young Hitler rejected Catholicism in his teens, had to be forced to agree to his confirmation and stopped attending Mass even before he left home. But less often mentioned is the fact that while his mother was devout, his father was something of an anti-religious sceptic who read freethought literature and often poured scorn on all forms of faith. Judging by his later writings and conversations, his father seems to have had more of a lasting influence on the young Hitler.

By all accounts, Hitler’s father Alois was a domineering bully and Hitler was far closer to his rather more indulgent mother Klara. In many respects Hitler rebelled against what he considered to be his father’s petty bourgeois civil servant’s ambitions, but on matters of religion he seems to have been closer to his father’s scepticism than his mother’s faith. In adult life Hitler presented himself as something of a questioning doubter in religion classes as a youth and this is supported to a large extent by the recollections of his childhood friend August Kubizek, who said that by Hitler’s teens “his father’s freethinking attitude won the upper hand”. (Kubizek, Adolf Hitler: Mein Jugendfreund,1953, p. 114).

This early influence and some of Hitler’s later reading would explain why elements of his world view and some of his arguments, while not actually atheistic, may have seemed so to others. Hitler often used arguments used by anti-theists to this day, condemning Christianity, for example, for the excesses of the Inquisition and the witch hunts. Kubizek recalls the teenaged Hitler making these arguments and in a 1927 correspondence with a Catholic priest who had formerly been a Nazi supporter, Hitler vehemently disputed the claim Christianity had ended “Roman barbarism”, citing the burning of heretics, the destruction of the Aztecs and Incas and the African slave trade as examples of Christian barbarity. Hitler held ancient Greek and Roman civilisation in high regard and considered it to be “Aryan” and so worthy of admiration. So he decried the Christian destruction of ancient temples and railed against what he understood as the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria as a “Jewish-Christian deed”. Given that these examples are mainstays of atheist polemic to this day, it is perhaps not too surprising some of his contemporaries mistook him for an atheist himself.

But he clearly was not. Whatever his conception of God, Hitler was definitely a theist. His beliefs about Jesus and therefore Christianity, on the other hand, were complex and typically difficult to untangle. They actually form the real crux of the debate over his beliefs and what they may mean.

Hitler Knight

Hitler the Christian?

When Richard Dawkins turned to the issue of Hitler’s beliefs in the contretemps with Benedict XVI noted above, he found things fairly cut and dried. After all, Hitler openly and proudly declared himself a Christian. Dawkins quotes a speech made in Munich (“the heart of Catholic Bavaria” Dawkins adds helpfully) in 1922:

My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognised 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 2,000 years, with deepest emotion I recognise more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.

(Hitler, speech made April 12, 1922)

What could be clearer than this? Dawkins goes on to note that this was “just one of numerous speeches, and passages in Mein Kampf, where Hitler invoked his Christianity”. For Dawkins and other atheists who are lazy when it comes to anything like historical analysis, this settles the matter – Hitler said he was a Christian and so he was one. The 1922 quote is now regularly seen online, presented as definitive proof that Hitler was a Christian.

But, as is the case so often with Hitler, things are not that simple.

In 1922 Hitler was the leader of a small right wing party with a membership of just 3,300 and little recognition outside Bavaria. And Bavaria was, as Dawkins notes, overwhelmingly Catholic. As a result, the opponents of the fledgling Nazi Party attacked them as being anti-Catholic and anti-religious. Few of those who cite the 1922 speech bother to put it into this context and see what Hitler was saying and what he was responding to and almost none quote what Hitler said just prior to his statement “as a Christian”:

I would like to appeal here to a greater man than I: [Bavarian Prime Minister] Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last Landtag that his feeling ‘as a man and Christian’ prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I say: my feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter …

So Hitler is not offering some unprompted avowal of his devout faith, but is trying to counter and undermine a rejection of anti-Semitism that was based on Christianity. In a country where 62.7% of people were Protestants, 32.5% were Catholics and only 4.8% were Jewish, non-Christians or otherwise unbelievers, Hitler could not possibly have won support if he had presented himself and his party as non-Christian. He was a consummate politician, a careful manipulator and a skilled liar and he did all he could to drive home his ideological objectives while not alienating the public. Hitler was careful to cultivate an image of himself and of his Party which allowed the Christian majority of Germany to embrace his ideology.

Weikart gives a vivid example of this (literal) image management in Hitler’s Religion. In 1932, while Hitler was still striving to win power at the ballot box, photographer Heinrich Hoffmann released a collation of carefully curated photos of Hitler titled Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt (“Hitler as no-one knows him”). This included a shot of Hitler leaving the Marienkirche, a Catholic church in Bremerhaven, on April 23, 1932. In the 1932 edition of the book the photo, supposedly by chance, included a cross in the background directly over Hitler’s head and Hoffmann’s caption reads “A photographic chance event becomes a symbol: Adolf Hitler, the supposed ‘heretic,’ leaving the Marinekirche [sic] in Wilhelmshaven.”

Hoffmann’s photo, 1935 edition (after Weikart)

Whether this was actually a “chance event” is questionable – as Weikart notes, “the photo looks too good to be true”. But as carefully-placed propaganda it served to counter the charge that Hitler was a “heretic” and presented him in a quite literal holy light.

What is interesting is later editions of Hoffmann’s book, which had become very popular, have both a different photo and a different caption. By 1938 the book no longer depicted Hitler with the cross above his head and the new caption reads: “Adolf Hitler after sightseeing at the historic Marinekirche [sic] in Wilhelmshaven.”

Hoffmann’s photo, 1938 edition (after Weikart)

So, now safely in power, Hitler is no longer associated with a conveniently appearing cross image and the original caption’s implication that the “supposed ‘heretic'” was worshipping in the church also vanishes, replaced by the note that he was simply “sightseeing”. The changes are telling. It is also interesting that Richard Steigmann-Gall’s book The Holy Reich, which argues that Hitler and the Nazis were more Christian than is often supposed, uses the 1932 version of the photo as its cover image.

On the whole, however, Steigmann-Gall makes a solid case. With 95% of Germans and, therefore, the majority of Nazi Party members Christians, the Party clearly did find a way to accommodate Christianity – it could hardly do otherwise in that context. Steigmann-Gall shows how this accommodation of Christianity by the Nazis and of Nazism by most German Christians has been downplayed by a lot of historical analysis and details the complex interplay by which two seemingly incompatible ideologies found quite a bit of comfortable common ground; something many later Christian commentators have found quite uncomfortable. This process of accommodation began early. Point 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Program (25-Punkte-Programm) reads:

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: common utility precedes individual utility.

(NSDAP 25-Punkte-Programm, 1920, attributed to Gottfried Feder)

The wording here is deliberately careful. There is a deliberate stress on support for Christianity without the Party “binding itself confessionally to any one denomination”. The Nazis wanted to ensure believing Christians could embrace their ideology, but without placing their Party on one side or the other of Germany’s Catholic/Protestant sectarian divide. The caveat on “freedom of religion” on the condition that it does not “endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race” is most clearly aimed at the Jewish faith and Jewish people, who the Nazis would obviously exclude from any assurance of freedom. But it also serves to exclude any expression of Christian faith that runs counter to the Nazis’ racist ideology. This is why this item in the Party’s platform stresses it “advocates …. a positive Christianity”. That refers to a highly strange approach to Christianity that made it compatible with Nazi beliefs.

“Positive Christianity” was a label used for a set of ideas that was peculiarly German and actually pre-dated the Nazis. German Christianity, and particularly German Protestantism, had always had something of a highly nationalist strain. After all, Protestantism itself began in Germany with a German objecting to the ultramontane power of a distant pope and initially flourished thanks to the support and protection of German princes. Under the Second Reich, a form of ultranationalist Christian theological tendency arose – again, mainly Protestant – which saw Germany as a nation favoured by God and an instrument of divine will in the world. With the outbreak of the First World War this became a stridently bellicose “war theology”, with many pastors preaching the need for ultimate victory and, as the War dragged on, decrying calls for an an armistice by the Vatican, socialists and many liberal Protestants. With Germany’s defeat in 1918, this theological view did not fully die out and festered into a theological justification for a resurgent Germany accompanied by anti-Semitic resentment about the nation being “stabbed in the back”.

Strangely, alongside this conservative and nationalist German Protestant theological strain was a liberal Protestant school of thought which also later fed into the Nazis’ “Positive Christianity”. Uriel Tal’s Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914 (Cornell, 1975) details how, while usually decrying actual racial anti-Semitism, many prominent German liberal theologians’ attitude to Judaism was deeply intolerant, casting it as “the withered branch of the Old Testament” and “petrified pharisaism”. Tal argues that these theologians supported the political and social emancipation of German Jews in 1871 in the belief that this would lead to a greater integration of Jews into German life and, therefore, to mass conversion to Christianity. When this did not occur, many liberal Protestants reacted by arguing for a total doctrinal separation of Christianity and Judaism, with some even contemplating if the Old Testament still had any place in modern Christian theology.

Both these theological traditions influenced the thinking of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British philosopher and Germanophile who settled in Germany and married composer Richard Wagner’s daughter, Eva von Bülow. Chamberlain’s book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1899) was a key text for the Pan-Germanic Völkisch movement and so highly influential on Nazi ideology. Foundations argued that the “Teutonic” peoples were the pinnacle of the “Aryan” race (along with Celts, Slavs Greeks and Latins) and were the successors of Greek and Roman civilisation, saving Europe from domination by the Jews and other Semitics. Chamberlain argued that Jesus had not been a Jew but, as a Galilean and (according to Chamberlain) a descendant of the Amorites, he was actually an “Aryan”. Chamberlain was influenced by his friend, the liberal Protestant theologian Adolf von Harnack, who rejected anti-Semitism per se, but sincerely believed and fervently hoped Judaism would “disappear completely”.

These were the origins of the “Positive Christianity” espoused by the early Nazi movement. It depicted German Christianity as part of the Germanic leadership of the “Aryan” peoples in a centuries-long fight against Jewish domination. Jesus was therefore an “Aryan” fighter against “the Jews”, with his teachings later hijacked by the Apostle Paul. “Positive Christianity” was therefore a way Nazis who were Christians could reconcile their nationalist and virulently anti-Semitic ideology with their faith. It was also a way the Nazis could keep Germany’s sectarian divide from causing division in the Party, since it was (theoretically) denominationally neutral and stressed that it was above sectarian divisions.

This context makes many of Hitler’s statements about Christianity and Jesus more explicable. The 1922 speech quoted by Dawkins, for example, is clearly an expression of a conception of Jesus as an “Aryan” who was “a fighter” and who “seized the scourge to drive out of the temple the brood of vipers and adders” in “his fight against the Jewish poison”. It is significant that the main episode in the gospels that Hitler referred to was this incident where Jesus drives the money-changers from the Temple (see Matthew 21:12–17, Mark 11:15–19, Luke 19:45–48 and John 2:13–16), arguably the only act of violence by Jesus in any of the gospel accounts. Later in 1922 Hitler made reference to this episode again, once more justifying Nazi violence in the face of criticism by a rival party:

In any case I am of the conviction that no big difference exists between the whip of Jesus and a rubber truncheon, and the example of Jesus is more valuable to me than the sweet platitudes of [the Bavarian People’s Party].

(Hitler, speech made November 2, 1922)

Again, on April 13 1929, he assured his listeners that if Jesus were in Bavaria he would crack his whip and drive out the (Catholic) Bavarian People’s Party. Like Chamberlain and others before him, Hitler believed that Jesus had not been a Jew and claimed he was most likely the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier and so an “Aryan”. In Mein Kampf he repeatedly made it clear he believed Jesus had been crucified because he opposed Jewish materialism.

So Hitler did share some of the odd ideas of some nationalist German Christians which had influenced the so-called “Positive Christianity” embraced by most Nazis who were Christians. But does this mean Hitler was, in any sense, a Christian himself?

If we examine his statements about Christianity and compare them to the central and fundamental doctrines that define Christianity, even in its broadest sense, the answer is clearly “no”.

Of course, the difficulty here is that “Christianity” has taken many forms and it is difficult, or even impossible, to formulate a definition of it that encompasses absolutely all of its variants down the centuries. In Hitler’s Religion (2016) Weikart works with the deliberately broad and ecumenical definition adopted by the World Council of Churches, which says its membership encompasses all churches that :

… confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the scriptures, and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

(World Council of Churches, “The Basis of the WCC”)

This definition encompasses almost all forms of Christianity today and has the claim that Jesus is in some sense our “saviour” and is also “God”, along with a reference to the three persons of the Trinity as the core of Christian belief. To this we could probably add some kind of belief in the Resurrection and an afterlife as key elements common to almost all forms of Christianity. Of course, Christian beliefs about these things vary and there are some (very few) forms that do not have perhaps one of these elements. But these things can be said to form the basis of a difference between someone who simply has some ideas about who or what Jesus was and someone whose religious beliefs about those things constitute a form of Christianity.

The idea of “Jesus Christ as God” is primary and central in the definition above. But when we look at what Hitler said about Jesus, in his writings, his speeches and reported conversations, we see no sign that he believed Jesus was in any sense divine or was anything other than a human being, albeit a remarkable and admirable one. In The Holy Reich Richard Steigmann-Gall gives the impression that, on at least one occasion, Hitler did indeed refer to Jesus as God. In his rendering of the April 12, 1922, speech he renders one sentence as:

They point me toward the man who, once lonely and surrounded by only a few followers, recognized these Jews and called for battle against them, and who, as the true God, was not only the greatest as a sufferer but also the greatest as a warrior.

(Steigmann-Gall, p. 37, my emphasis)

But Weikert points out that this is a mistranslation. The phrase in the original is “wahrhaftiger Gott” – a common German emphatic interjection meaning something like “by God’s truth!” or perhaps “good God!” So the sentence is translated as ” … and summoned men to fight against them and who – God’s truth! – was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.” To render it as a claim that Jesus was God is deeply misleading. There is simply no evidence that Hitler regarded Jesus as divine.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that there is also no evidence that he regarded him as, in any sense, the Second Person of the Trinity or had any belief in the Trinity at all. The April 12, 1922, speech does have Hitler calling Jesus “my Lord and Saviour”, but this is the only place he ever does so and it is not clear in what sense he regarded Jesus as a “Saviour”, if he really did at all. It certainly does not seem to be in the sense that his death and resurrection saved humanity from sin, since several references indicate he did not believe Jesus rose from the dead at all.

In a revealing Christmas speech in 1926 Hitler talked about how Jesus had been killed by the Jews and how Hitler himself was going to complete Jesus’ work. A Nazi report on the speech summarised him as saying that “[t]he work, which Christ had begun, but could not finish, he – Hitler – would complete” (Hitler, speech on December 18, 1926, in Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Augenzeugenberichten, p. 266 – quoted in Weikart, p. 86). This reflects Hitler’s consistent conception of Jesus as an anti-Semite and “fighter”, but it also shows he considered Jesus’ death left his mission “unfinished” – an idea completely incompatible with any belief that Jesus rose from the dead and totally at odds with the idea he was the “Saviour” by merit of that death and resurrection. This fits with the recollection of Otto Wagener, another confidante of Hitler’s. In his memoir Wagener recalls Hitler telling him:

“Immediately after the death of Christ, whom the reactionaries crucified, they set about exterminating, at least imprisoning and depriving of their rights, all those who had accepted Christ before his death. Christ’s body was removed from the tomb, to keep it from becoming an object of veneration and a tangible relic of the great new founder of a religion!”

(Wagener, Hitler – Memoirs of a Confidant, ed. and trans. Henry Ashby Turner, Yale, 1978, p. 316)

The idea that belief in the Resurrection began because the body of Jesus was stolen from his tomb by the Jewish authorities was a common one at the time, so it makes sense that Hitler accepted this naturalistic explanation. This means he saw Jesus’ death as the end of Jesus’ career and had no belief he rose from the dead in any sense. Hitler’s references to Jesus as “Aryan” because he was actually the son of a Roman soldier also means he did not accept another key Christian belief – the Virgin Birth.

On the subject of an afterlife, his associates recall that Hitler was consistently derisive about any traditional conception of life after death, particularly any ideas about purgatory, heaven and hell, which he associated with the rejected Catholic teachings of his youth. Wagener recalls Hitler saying that Catholics may have a problem with his views on God as a divine force permeating the universe, and declared:

“Perhaps the adherents of the Roman Church 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 and purgatory and heaven, and their worship of saints.”

(Wagener, p. 224)

Here Hitler not only rejects the standard Christian view of an afterlife but also, again, associates his doctrinally unorthodox views with those of Jesus. But while he did not have anything like a Christian conception of an afterlife, he does appear to have some broad conception of individuals returning to a collective divine cosmic consciousness after death. In Mein Kampf he talks about nature’s capacity to impose population control when required, whereby “all those who are less strong and less healthy are forced back into the womb of the eternal unknown”. An entry by Goebbels in his diary also indicates some idea of Hitler’s that the dead are spiritually subsumed into “the Volk” in some sense. Goebbels notes his disagreement with Hitler on this, noting that a belief in an individual survival in the afterlife is essential and saying – contra Hitler – “One cannot make do by saying, he goes again into his Volk (people) or into his native soil” (Goebbels, diary entry for December 14, 1941, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil II: Diktate 1941–1945, Band 2: Oktober–Dezember 1941, Munich, 1996, p.507).

If there is a point in anyone’s life where they usually contemplate the possibility of a personal afterlife, it is when they themselves are facing imminent death. Leading Nazi and close friend to Hitler, Albert Speer, records that he met Hitler not long before his suicide in the Berlin bunker in April, 1945. He recalls Hitler saying “Believe me, Speer, it is easy for me to end my life. A brief moment and I’m free of everything, liberated from this painful existence.” (Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, Avon Books, 1970, p. 605). Once again, this strongly implies he had no belief in any kind of individual afterlife or existence after death.

What emerges from all these references is that while Hitler, like most people, had views on who Jesus had been, nothing about them indicates any of them could be called religious, let alone Christian in any coherent sense. He did not believe Jesus was divine, did not see him as part of the Trinity, did not think his death saved humanity, did not believe he rose from the dead, did not believe he was born of a virgin and did not believe in any individual afterlife. His ideas about the central figure of Christianity tended more toward sceptical and secular ones, where Jesus was a man and a great teacher, not the Messiah or God incarnate. He also absorbed the peculiarly German nationalist ideas that Jesus was an “Aryan” and an anti-Semite who was a “fighter” against the Jewish “brood of vipers and adders”. But he saw this through the lens of his racist political ideology, rather than anything essentially religious. He was, quite clearly, not a Christian.

This means that Dawkins’ conveniently naïve interpretation of Hitler’s 1922 claim he was, in some sense, “a Christian” is typically lazy and facile, as are almost all similar atheist claims he was a Christian. That he was not a Christian was quite clear to those who knew him, from his childhood friend August Kubizek, who recalled his teenaged rejection of Christianity, to his confidantes like Goebbels and Speer, to his general circle. When the vehemently anti-Christian Nazi leader, Martin Bormann, ordered that all religious music be banned from German radio and performances, Reich Chancellery propagandist Walter Tiessler argued against the move, noting that Hitler himself enjoyed Wagner’s Christian-themed opera Parsifal, and saying “if the Führer as a non-Christian” can enjoy this kind of music, “we as National Socialists need be no more negative [about it] than the Führer” (quoted in Steigmann-Gall, p. 250). As already noted, Hitler’s non-Christian status was so well-known that some who knew him even characterised him, wrongly, as “an atheist”.

So it would take a special kind of anti-Christian ideological zeal to go beyond the naive assessment of Dawkins and, in the face of the evidence that Hitler was in no way a Christian, argue that in fact he … was one. But there is someone who has that both that bias and that zeal. Enter, yet again, Dr Richard Carrier (PhD.)

Carrier

Anyone unaware of Carrier who checks his credentials may wonder why someone with a doctorate specialising in the perceptions of proto-scientists in the Early Roman Empire would be buying into the issue of Hitler’s religious beliefs. But those who know him will understand that Carrier is an anti-Christian activist first and foremost, so he feels happy to enter any historical debate that allows him to pursue that ideological agenda. Carrier also considers himself an all-knowing polymath and an authority on everything; from philosophy and psychology to New Testament Studies and probability theory, and even charges people for online courses of lectures on several of these subjects in which he is totally untrained and unqualified. “There’s a sucker born every minute”, as P.T. Barnum probably did not actually say.

The subject of things people did not actually say is pertinent here though, since the only piece of published historical research by Carrier that other historians actually take seriously involves alleged quotes by Hitler. In 2003 Carrier published “‘Hitler’s Table Talk’: Troubling Finds.” (German Studies Review, vol. 26, no. 3, 2003, pp. 561–576) in which he argued that the standard French and English translations of the “Table Talk” transcriptions are “entirely untrustworthy”. Unsurprisingly, Carrier focuses on several statements by Hitler in which he is vehemently anti-Christian and which are often used as evidence of his animus against Christianity. He takes twelve of these statements and argues that the 1952 translation of the “Table Talk” documents into French by François Genoud distorts their meaning and make them seem more overtly anti-Christian than they are. Further, he argues that the standard English translation of these statements derives from Genoud’s French translation rather than the German original and so is similarly distorted.

Several other scholars have endorsed these findings to a certain extent. In a foreward to a new edition the standard English edition of the transcriptions, Gerhard Weinberg acknowledges Carrier’s findings (Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed. 2003. Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944, Engima Books, p. xi) and more recent historians have been careful to refer to the original German as a result of them. In Hitler’s Religion, Weikart also acknowledges Carrier’s findings saying:

In an interesting piece of detective work, Richard Carrier demonstrates convincingly that the English version of Hitler’s Table Talk is based on the translation of a problematic and possibly inauthentic text. Thus, I do not use nor cite the English translation of Hitler’s Table Talk.

But he goes on:

However, even Carrier admits that the two German editions edited by Henry Picker and Werner Jochmann are generally reliable. Carrier was hoping that debunking Hitler’s Table Talk would demolish the image of Hitler as an anti-Christian that many scholars have built on this flawed document. Unfortunately for Carrier, Hitler is every bit as anti-Christian in the Jochmann and Picker editions.

(Weikart, “Note on Sources”, p. 238)

Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich was published before Carrier’s paper, but since then he has responded to critics of his book by insisting that “I refer to the controversies surrounding this source” and noting he also referred to the German originals rather than just the English translation (see “Christianity and the Nazi Movement”, Journal of Contemporary History, 42 (2), pp. 185-211, p. 208). Ultimately, Steigmann-Gall believes that the “Table Talk” documents support the idea that Hitler was anti-Christian, though he believes this was a later development and represented a change in Hitler’s ideas and attitudes (see the “Conclusion” in The Holy Reich, particularly the discussion on p. 265).

All of which means that while the various issues with the “Table Talk” material, including some with the the German text also, makes it problematic, the idea that Hitler was not a Christian is still clear from all remaining relevant material anyway. So how exactly does Carrier maintain, as he definitely does, that Hitler was, in fact, “a believing Christian”? As is usual with Carrier, he does so via some shifty footwork, applied sophistry and a remarkable capacity to convince himself of absurd lines of reasoning.

Carrier states categorically that “Hitler was a believing Christian” though he qualifies this with the slight caveat “albeit having adopted the stance of the peculiar Nazi sect called Positive Christianity.” (Carrier, “Hitler’s Table Talk: The Definitive Account”, April 26, 2021). In December 2016, Carrier debated Richard Weikart on this point on the “Unbelievable” podcast, hosted by Christian broadcaster Justin Brierley.

In this discussion and on his blog, Carrier argues that Hitler’s supposedly “anti-Christian” statements were actually more anti-Catholic, anti-clerical or anti-church statements and that he was a Christian, because “his positions were very much in line with this bizarre sect of Christianity called ‘Positive Christianity’ developed by Nazis and Nazi sympathisers in the early twentieth century” (“Debate: Adolf Hitler – Christian, Atheist, or Neither? Richard Carrier vs Richard Weikart” – 13.45 mins ff).

So Carrier argues that Hitler held many of the same ideas about Jesus that were embodied in the “Positive Christianity” endorsed by the Nazis and so was a member of this “sect”. Carrier admits that it was not a very orthodox form of Christianity and refers to it as “peculiar” and “bizarre”, but insists that it was a sect of Christianity nonetheless. The problem with this is that “Positive Christianity” was not a sect of Christianity at all. On the contrary, its whole aim was to not be a sect of Christianity and to be wholly above sectarian divisions. It was an approach to Christian ideas that allowed members of the various sects and denominations of Germany to maintain their beliefs and practices while still accepting Nazi ideology. Its whole intention was to be “above the confessions” – not to be an alternative to the denominational options for believing Nazi Christians, but to allow Nazism to bridge the sectarian divisions in German society.

Steigmann-Gall makes this absolutely clear in his detailed discussion in The Holy Reich, particularly in his second chapter “Above the Confessions: Bridging the Religious Divide” (pp. 51-85). He states categorically “positive Christianity was never an attempt to create a practicable ‘third confession'” (p. 11), but was a strategy to allow believers in the two established denominations, Catholic or Protestant, to embrace Nazism’s political ideology without hesitation. He notes the emphasis placed on “bridging the confessional divide” in expressions of the Party’s ideology, such as those by Reich Education Minister Bernhardt Rust, who lamented “the German Volk, split into two religions” (p. 45), but argued they could find common ground in the shared ethical teachings of Christianity, which he said were upheld by Nazi social programs. Other proponents of the compatibility Nazism and “positive Christianity” pushed the idea of Jesus as an “Aryan” and an anti-Semite that Hitler also accepted and so framed “true” Christianity as fully in line with the Nazi agenda.

Steigmann-Gall argues against the idea that this was part of a cynical attempt to co-opt the churches and argues that it represented a genuine belief in this compatibility. But he emphasises that this approach was not based on doctrine:

The Nazi approach to confessionalism displayed a general disregard for doctrine. Positive Christianity was not an attempt to make a complete religious system with dogma and ritual of its own: it was never formalised into a faith to which anyone could convert. Rather, this was primarily a social and political worldview meant to emphazise those qualities in Christianity that could end sectarianism.

(Steigmann-Gall, p.84)

So “Positive Christianity was not a “sect” – quite the opposite. It was a way Nazi believers could stay within their sects and continue to accept those sects’ dogmas without this dividing Nazism along sectarian lines or making Nazism exclusive to one sect or another. Catholics could be ideological Nazis while maintaining distinctly Catholic doctrines and Protestants could do the same. And both could accept Jesus as God, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity and the Resurrection, while also thinking Jesus had been an “Aryan” and reading gospel references to the Pharisees, Saducees and “the Jews” generally through a Nazi and racist lens.

So Carrier’s attempt to claim Hitler was part of some kind of “bizarre sect” because he shared some of the “Positive Christianity” ideas about Jesus is simply wrong. To be a Christian he would have to have held those ideas while also accepting the key doctrines of Christianity. And he did not.

Carrier tries to get around this by arguing that Christianity takes and has always taken many forms and so Hitler’s ideas about Jesus can still be encompassed by Christianity in some sense. In his commentary on his debate with Weikart (“No, Hitler Wasn’t a Pantheist”, Dec 18, 2016) he says Weikart uses “a biased definition of Christianity as only trinitarian Christianity” which “excludes many famous Christian sects of the past and today (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Unitarians, Arians, Cathars, Branch Davidians, People’s Temple of the Disciples of Christ, some Quakers”. This is true, but Weikart only uses the World Council of Churches statement because it is widely accepted and, as he notes, it encompasses “most” forms of Christianity, not all. We can accept that trinitarianism does not, on its own, define what is or is not a form of Christianity, but that leaves several other key doctrines which are generally accepted in some form by Christians but were not accepted by Hitler.

As already noted, various statements by Hitler show he did not accept the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation or any form of divinity for Jesus and did not believe Jesus rose from the dead in any sense. Carrier tries to quibble that “millions of liberal Christians the world over regard his miracles, and his resurrection, non-literally”, but even the ones who do so still believe in these things in some sense – particularly the Resurrection. Highly liberal Christians like John Shelby-Spong do not believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead, but consider “the Resurrection Event” as a mystical reality and central to their faith. There is no sign that Hitler had anything like even that belief.

So Carrier has to somehow maintain that, despite holding none of the central doctrines of Christianity and despite merely having some “peculiar” ideas about him as a man who taught some things and then died and stayed dead, somehow Hitler was “a Christian”. This is absurd. By this bizarre definition, basically anyone who has any ideas about Jesus as a person at all is, apparently, “a Christian”. That clearly makes no sense, though it shows the depths of sophistry that obsessed anti-Christian ideologues will go to so they can avoid conceding a point.

Conclusion

Hitler was not an atheist. Exactly how he conceived of the God he believed in is unclear thanks to his often incoherent and contradictory statements on the subject, but he did believe in a God and rejected atheism. Hitler was not a pagan or an occultist. He held some strange ideas, but they tended to be more pseudo scientific than mystical and he was something of sceptic about such things and prided himself on his rationalism. Hitler was not a Christian. He clearly had a conception of Jesus that he admired, but it was based on dubious and often crackpot ideas of Jesus as a man and it was not based on any of the key doctrines of Christianity. Despite Richard Carrier’s tangled attempts, there is no coherent and reasonable way to define Hitler as a Christian in any sense.

The Nazi attitude to Christianity was complex and evolved over time. In the Party’s early years it could not afford to alienate the majority Christian population and so worked hard to make Nazism as compatible with Christianity as possible and to present Hitler as, if not a believer, then not an enemy of Christianity. Once in power this general approach was maintained, though some elements in the Nazi leadership became far more overtly anti-Christian. Himmler, Goebbels and, especially, Bormann were clearly anti-Christian but were restrained for the sake of morale during the War. Most historians agree that Hitler too was largely anti-church, though Steigmann-Gall believes this was a later development. A great deal of evidence indicates that the Nazi elite intended to suppress Christianity as a major threat to Nazi ideology and objectives in the long term

No-one wants Hitler on their team and many want him to belong to “the other side”. As it happens, Hitler’s beliefs on religion as on many things are not neatly categorised. But on the question of “atheist, pagan or Christian?” the only accurate answer is “none of the above.”

Further Reading

Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (University of North Carolina Press, 1997)

Nicholas Goodridge-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (Aquarian Press, 1985)

Nathan Johnstone, The New Atheism, Myth, and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

Richard Steigmann-Gall The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Religion, (Regnery, 2016)

153 thoughts on “Hitler: Atheist, Pagan or Christian?

  1. “Of course, exactly what kind of God Hitler believed in is far from clear and extremely difficult to discern.” Well, I guess you could say the same about some of my fellow Anglicans.

    Thank you very much for this. There’s just one area I’d like to ask questions about, concerning the relationship between Christian anti-Judaism and NSDAP anti-Semitism. You point to the strongly anti-Judaic position of liberal Protestantism, which leads to the common acceptation of words like “Pharisee”. That was indeed dominant, and it’s only in the last 50 years, more or less, that theologians have been recovering the Jewishness of Jesus and his early followers (and rethinking the Pharisees). But, in so far as this might be regarded as a taint, it would be removed by conversion to Christianity–as with the first Christians. The particular horror of NSDAP anti-Semitism was that there was no escape, baptism did not protect (of course, Jews shouldn’t have had to convert to take a full part in society, that goes without saying, but it was an option). So I’m wondering how far Christian anti-Judaism enabled or normalised “scientific” anti-Semitism? Or did they stay separate?

    Would it be fair to think of Hitler as anti-clerical, rather than anti-religious? Or was he just confused as to what he believed, but opportunistic in his appropriation of rhetoric?

    1. “So I’m wondering how far Christian anti-Judaism enabled or normalised “scientific” anti-Semitism? Or did they stay separate?”

      As I argue, the Christian anti-Judaism helped the Nazis normalise their racism.

      “Would it be fair to think of Hitler as anti-clerical, rather than anti-religious?”

      I think he was both. He probably would have been closer to what a lot of people call being “spiritual” today.

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    2. “it’s only in the last 50 years, more or less, that theologians have been recovering the Jewishness of Jesus”
      I don’t know if you would call Albert Schweizer a theologian, but he was one of the first to do so – well before WW-1.

      “The particular horror of NSDAP anti-Semitism was that there was no escape.”
      This was not typical for nazis. Before they took power “scientific” racism had been quite popular in Europe for decades. I think the answer to both your questions is negative. In the 19th Century science definitely replaced theology as the main source of knowledge. Hence antisemitism got justified by “science” iso “theology”.

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    3. As I understand it, when Edward I expelled Jews from Britain in 1290, it was with a similar idea in mind: that a Jew could become a Christian by converting. As you say, the Nazis did not seem to agree.

  2. Holy shit Tim, this is by far one of the best articles on the site. The literal disintegration of carrier was as always extremely fun to read as well .

    Anyways, i’ve noted a disturbing trend where self-proclaimed christian (and especially catholic) “traditionalists”, fascists and just plain nazis have referred to liberal anti-christian carrier to boost their argument that “18” was “really a christian” to defend nazi germany when other christians call out the horrible ideology that they spend their time on the internet defending.

    This article goes a long way towards refuting their mental gymnastics. Thanks.

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    1. “…they rave about the old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined.”

      I thought the phenomenon of emaciated reactionary nerds cosplaying as tough crusaders and neopagans was a recent thing. Never imagined it predated the nazi party or that Hitler called it out. Historical ignorance, baby!

      Great piece as always, Tim. Thanks for sparing anyone interested about this topic from having to stare into the abyss that is Hitler’s belief system.

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      1. If you look closer at the statement, as presented here, note that 1) Hitler in one possible reading, is not condemning paganism as such. But 2) is only reviling those Germans who only pretend to follow it, but do not do it fully/violently enough.

        1. Yes, but it’s in line with other reported statements where he mocks neo-paganism and declares it to be moribund and useless. The most overt of these is from the Table Talk transcripts:

          “It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund.”

          I didn’t use that quote because I tried to avoid the Table Talk material due to the way it’s been questioned by certain parties. But it seems to reflect Hitler’s views pretty well.

          1. I also suspect that Hitler was not as fond of paganism as say, Wagner or, arguably, Nietsche/Zarathustra. And some classicists.

            Thank you though for also being so good as to, however, in passing, acknowledge at least a possible alternate reading of the above.

            I like your supporting quote. Though could you also be so good as to specify why it was itself, in its own turn, also contested?

            Here in Trumpist America, we have many writers who somehow support both religion and Nazism simultaneously, on ideological grounds. So I’d like to look at some examples here, in rather close detail, if possible.

          2. Though could you also be so good as to specify why it was itself, in its own turn, also contested?

            That particular quote isn’t “contested”. I said I tried to avoid using the “Table Talk” material because some of the English translations of some of it have been questioned. And I don’t read German, so I can’t check the translations against the original. Most scholar regard this material to be reliable though and this particular quote fits with other reported statements by Hitler rejecting any revival of paganism, including his mockery of Himmler’s neo-pagan indulgences. We also have no statements by Hitler in support of paganism as a current belief. And, no, his liking Wagner does not count.

          3. Well, if Hitler was 1) not fully a pagan, at least consciously . And 2) not really a good Christian? He however, 3) outside of then-partly-private remarks, did not very prominently attack Christian Germany.

            Leaving him partly acqiescing to Christians? In spite of semi-private table talks, published later?

            Even as Catholic Germans partly accept Ratzinger’s semi public, pro forma Nazi status?

            Everything here seems compromised; as you might expect in politics.

            Making very firm overall characterizations, mostly inaccurate.

            But leaving a faint, if very, very highly problematic, middle pathway between Christianity and Nazism?
            At least as far as WW II Germans, and contemporary Catholicism and Trumpism, are concerned.

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          4. I can’t make out what you’re trying to say here. The topic is what Hitler believed personally. He was not a pagan. He was not a Christian. But he believed in some form of God, so was not an atheist. he didn’t “acquiesce” to Christians – he manipulated them into thinking he was far more favourable to them than he was. And have no idea what that stuff about “Catholic Germans partly accept Ratzinger’s semi public, pro forma Nazi status” even means.

          5. I guess I’m saying that Hitler was, as you note, not too firmly in any camp, regarding religion, say. Beyond a vague deism; and a very firm rejection of paganism, or certainly judaism.

            Which to this day, leaves at least a vague pathway for some modern Christians, scholars, to co-opt Nazism.

  3. Weikart’s previous books attempting to link evolution and Darwin with Hitler or Nazism have been harshly criticized by historians. Do you know how this one has been received? The impression I got is he’s somewhat like Carrier on the opposite side.

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    1. He is on much firmer ground with this topic, obviously. But yes, even before I worked out he was that Weikart (a member of the Discovery Institute and peddler of “Intelligent Design”) I detected a degree of bias. That’s why I depended more on the evidence he collects rather than his conclusions. On Hitler not being a Christian, I agree. But his “pantheist” argument I find less compelling. It feels too much like he’s trying to put distance between Hitler’s beliefs and his own. Carrier, of course, is doing the same thing from the opposite direction.

    2. Here’s what I’ve been able to find on Weikart’s previous works and the criticism it has received. His previous two books before “Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich” were “From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany” and “Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress”.

      The only critique I’ve been able to find is “Was Hitler a Darwinian?” by Robert J. Richards. He also wrote a book including the essay.

      http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Was%20Hitler%20a%20Darwinian.pdf

      https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G9V8OKC/

      Weikart responded to Richards in several articles.

      https://evolutionnews.org/2014/01/was_hitler_a_da/

      https://evolutionnews.org/2014/01/ignoring_eviden/

      https://evolutionnews.org/2014/01/is_robert_richa/

      There is also another article he wrote responding to the claim that Darwinism was banned in Nazi Germany, with Richards being responded to in it.

      https://evolutionnews.org/2016/11/was_darwinism_b/

      If you have anything to add, please do so. This is all I was able to find.

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      1. After some more digging, I found these 2 other articles:

        https://evolutionnews.org/2011/11/rallying_to_dar/

        https://evolutionnews.org/2011/11/rallying_to_dar/

        In the second one, Weikart says: “Hardly anyone, however, bothered to engage the arguments, except for Robert Richards at the University of Chicago, whose critique of my position is riddled with errors, not only of interpretation, but also of basic facts.”

        So is he wrong that no one else engaged his arguments? If so, you should do some more digging of your own.

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        1. The topic of the discussion on my article is Hitler and his beliefs. Weikart is only relevant here in relation to that topic. If anyone wants to discuss his other book, they can do it elsewhere. Further comments on off-topic subjects will go in the trash.

  4. I simply tell people Hitler believed in Hitler’s religion which seemed to be a horrid combination of Deism, German Nationalist, Social Darwinism and Antisemitism. Hitler had an unfortunate talent for embracing and blending every crappy idea of Western Society available to him. He was an eclectic reader and a Jack of many subjects, but master of none.

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  5. Re the quote: “Believe me, Speer, it is easy for me to end my life. A brief moment and I’m free of everything, liberated from this painful existence.”

    That is actually ambiguous. It can be read as liberated from *this* existence, and looking forward to an afterlife. The phrase “a brief moment” is usually used with an expectation of continuation. Of course one would need to ask a German speaker about the phrasing of the German original.

    1. Agreed. This is why I say the evidence is often ambiguous and no single piece can be taken in isolation to uphold any given position on this topic. I still think it implies individual extinction, especially when taken with the other evidence indicating this is what he believed. But the evidence on his ideas about the afterlife is the most ambiguous of all relevant issues in this topic and Hitler himself may not have held a coherent idea about it or may have changed his mind about it, as people sometimes do. What is clear is that he did not hold any Christian conception of the afterlife or of any divine judgement, which is the key point I’m making.

    2. German speaker here. The original German phrase in the book is correctly translated, but the meaning is more in the sense that “death will be quick”, especially if you consider what he said before that: He didn’t want to risk to fall into the hands of the Russians.

    3. I take it that you infer from this quote that Hitler believed in an afterlife. I don’t think this can be deduced (i); but that’s not the point at all (ii).

      (i) What he means here is what literally stands there: it will only take him “einen kurzen Augenblick” to end his life. That’s what stands there. There’s simply no implication, either way, whether what follows for him is an afterlife or just something which he doesn’t care about because he thinks he won’t be there to care (the “non sum/non curo” some pre-Christian Roman wrote on his grave).

      (ii) The *point* about this quote, and this may not be obvious to non-Christians but is obvious to Christians, is that *Christians do not talk like that*.

      They fear suicide as a great sin (a kind of “desertion”, as it were), and one that is committed at a particularly bad moment in life to yet develop repentance. Hence they try not to commit it, and not to be overly modest mostly succeed. Some (rather fewer) might still resort to suicide in spite, but then it is in weakness, not without shame, and somehow hoping for God to still pardon them somehow. But they do *not* (it really is a case here that not only “true Christians don’t”, but all those who have at least some belief don’t) brag about the easiness of suicide because of their hope in an afterlife. They just don’t.

      (And yes, this is a Christian speaking here, to make the allegiance clear.)

  6. Ethos of the Modern world: “You want to enslave and torture? What’s wrong with you?!”

    Ethos of the Ancient world: “You want to stop the strong from enslaving and torturing the weak? What’s wrong with you?!”

    I believe the aim of Fascism (and Nazism) was to restore an “ancient world” ethos. What would, by “modern” standards of human decency, be deemed “cruel”, I think Hitler regarded as a “natural harmony”, and he saw something “spiritual” in that.

    Hitler, and others in the upper echelon of the Nazi hierarchy, likely saw Christianity as something ultimately getting in the way of this restoration project. Fortunately, the Nazis lost, but probably had they continued to remain in power, plans to “move away” from Christianity would’ve crystalized.

    1. This idea that the pre-Christian civilizations were psychotic sadists, unable to conceive empathy and utterly devoted to cruelty is just fantasy. It’s just not true, and it shows that you haven’t read enough.

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      1. It isn’t “fantasy” – it’s very accurate. Most modern people would find normal attitudes in the ancient world to slavery, cruelty and torture utterly incomprehensible to the point of it being psychotic. They thought very differently to us. I think it’s you who need to read more and to stop romanticising the ancient past.

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        1. To single out the ancients serves the purpose of a pro-christian narrative, as if medievals wouldn’t appear absurdly cruel and deranged to us as well in a myriad of ways, including cruelty and torture.

          1. Medievals would indeed appear very cruel to us, no doubt. But the difference is that they at least began to see and apply ideas of the universal value of all people, based on their Christian doctrines. Their cruelties were applied in cases they felt allowed exceptions to those principles. We find their claims to those justified exceptions unconvincing, but we share their values. The Ancients didn’t. And that’s the point. This isn’t some “pro-Christian narrative” – it’s simply historical fact.

          2. You know, it might be worth remembering that we might not look all that good to our ancestors either, as I believe C.S. Lewis (never mind his Christianity – he had his pagan sympathies too) pointed out. We are fat, we are soft, we are worldly in the sense of always calculating personal advantage – not even the familial kind; we think ourselves ‘good’ but are seldom tested in any serious way and when we are so tested we often ‘cave’; we give up love and/or children only to get a slightly better job. But yes, we don’t torture anyone – most of us. We don’t start wars – most of us. We must be vastly superior to those Awful Medievals.

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  7. This is an excellent article. One might argue that an all-consuming dedication to a particular ideology can be called a religion in itself, but that is a semantic point. The main issue is whether the ideology is conceived to eventually supersede and displace existing religious affiliations, and it is fairly clear that this was the ultimate goal of Nazism.

  8. Another great article!

    Without doing any real research, it’s been clear to me that both people who claim Hitler is an atheist and those who claim he was a Christian were wrong…but I was never sure exactly what he believed. Or *why* they were wrong.

    I think Weikert is *probably* right about the translation issue (with “by God!” being maybe the English term I would use). But the issue is kind of complicated because not only does “wahrhaftiger Gott” literally mean “true God”, it’s also a specific term used in Christian doctrine…the claim that Jesus is “true God and true man” is in German a claim that he is “wahrhaftiger Gott und wahrhaftiger Mensch”.

    However, it is also an interjection meaning something like “by God!”, and – maybe more tellingly – there are other recorded instances of Hitler clearly using it in that sense (in Mein Kampf, for example). And set off by commas, just like in this instance.

    1. The only person who translates the ““wahrhaftiger Gott” element in that speech as anything other than an interjection is Steigmann-Gall. Given that Hitler never refers to Jesus as divine anywhere else, I find his translation totally implausible.

      1. Do you have the reference in German? The whole sentence would be great. Native German speaker here.

  9. I suspect if you asked Hitler he would tell you yes God exists and he created humanity ( or in some sense ensouled animals to rise above nature) but he would then say God made different races ( what we call Ethnic groups) and put them in competition with each other.  He considered Aryan’s to be the best, other ethnic groups such as the French and English were kinda respectable, Slavs and Russians were meant to be slaves ( at best). He would have considered Jews to be some sort of anti Aryan and felt they were such a menace that they had to be destroyed. Strangely enough considering them to be so dangerous and devious he would have  had some sort of grudging respect toward them, which is why he planned to build some sort of Jewish Museum after the war. He saw Christianity as something to be tolerated for necessity because it was the religion of Germany, but seeing Christianity had its origins in Judaism in the long run it had to go. But that was a long time goal.

    Hitler seemed to be skeptical of personal survival of consciousness,but he seemed to think a person’s deeds especially for his “race” could give them immortality of their name ( and well Hitler did to a degree achieve this form of immortality,just not the way he intended).When it came to science he wanted to apply it to Germany, especially Eugenics.  Basically he wanted to selectively breed a ” better Aryan” in his opinion.  

    He gravitated toward scientific and historical views that confirmed his prejudices. He was a skeptic of everything but his own views.

    If Hitler was alive today I suspect he would be spending a lot of his time online on various ultra right wing forums ( you know ones that make storm front look reasonable and tolerant ), ranting on the JREF about parapsychology, reading  some antisemitic racist rubbish such as the Turner Diaries ( and strongly identifying with it) and lastly his shelf would have all of Richard Carrier’s “classics”  on display as it would rather confirm to him just how deluded Christians are, just how much they messed up everything and just how great the Classical World was. He would be giving speeches and uploading them to Youtube and really getting mad at the Jews he knows runs YT for taking them down. Don’t even get him started on that Jew Zuckerberg who got rid of his group on FB. 

    Our charming modern Hitler would also be something of a health nut ( as he was against smoking and promoted healthy eating way before it was fashionable). He seems to have become a vegetarian later in life, and really disliked cruelty to animals ( humans not so much) so he might have jumped on over to PETAs forum every now and then just to dabble in their brand of craziness too.

    Basically your run of the mill crazy but incredibly intelligent  extremist who has way too much time on his hands to form an  utterly awful worldview that he truly believes will save humanity.  Our lovely extremist also served in the military and saw combat, so he doesn’t really fear death all that much. He is sure God agrees with him anyways so he knows he will be successful when he goes to save humanity.

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    1. Well, as Tim says, “many ideologues want the world’s most reviled man to belong to the other side.” Your Godwins illustrate that point.

      1. Um what is the problem here? All the actions I mentioned are simply the closest behaviors we have now days to Hitler. The fact Hitler managed to merge many views together to create a truly horrific view does not in of themselves invalidate any of the views. Nor are all of the views bad ones; for example eat healthy , don’t smoke and be kind to animals.

        Again Hitler was an extremist who merged many views together. That he picked some views does not invalidate those views in of itself.

  10. “….. said he was a Christian and so he was one.”
    The problem is that this likely is the only workable definition of what is a christian. Several of your arguments equally apply to several RC popes.
    As I wrote before: the entire “discussion” is stupid exactly because “both parties want Hitler to belong to the opposition.” There are much better candidates. Martin Bormann was an atheist. Miroslav Filipovic was commandant of extermination camp Jasenovac and a Franciscan friar. At the other hand it’s easy to find atheist and christian resistance heroes.
    The “discussion” hence is totally useless. Hitler being whatever demonstrates exactly zilch.
    Btw Richard Weikart wrote From Darwin to Hitler (see Wikipedia), so I care about his analysis as little as about RIchard Carrier’s.

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    1. Is this strange comment a response to my article or to something else?

      “The problem is that this likely is the only workable definition of what is a christian.”

      It isn’t if the person in question is a known liar whose only claims to be “a Christian” were in the context of a political environment where lying about this was advantageous. Nothing Hitler said in private supports the idea he was a Christian or even considered himself one. So no, that is not a “workable definition of what is a christian” in this case. Don’t be absurd.

      “Several of your arguments equally apply to several RC popes.”

      Again, this makes so little sense I have no idea who it’s meant to be addressing. If it’s me, it’s another absurd claim. No “RC popes” have ever denied Jesus’ divinity, his Virgin Birth, his place as part of the Trinity, his resurrection or the afterlife. So which of my arguments “equally apply to several RC popes”? What the hell are you talking about?

      “There are much better candidates. “

      Of course there are. But Hitler is always the focus of the debate, for completely obvious reasons.

      “Btw Richard Weikart wrote From Darwin to Hitler (see Wikipedia), so I care about his analysis as little as about RIchard Carrier’s.”

      His analysis is actually quite thorough. Even Carrier grudgingly admits this. So I’ve used the evidence he presents while noting his bias and not depending on his conclusions.

  11. The other day I was reading the dictionary and I saw your picture under the word “rationalist”. I must say that all jokes aside, despite not being a professional historian, your writings, works and articles are brilliant and even though I am not an atheist myself, I enjoy reading your articles. You objectively analyze the subjects, respect expert consensus and draw conclusions based on genuine evidence.

    My favourite part about this article is how you absolutely destroyed Carrier. I personally got into drama with him rather recently a few weeks ago. In the comment section to his article ‘NO, Hitler wasn’t a Pantheist’ I broke down all of his ridiculous arguments that he used prove that Hitler was a ‘Positive Christian’, such as his very wide definition of Christianity, his claims that Bormann and Genoud heavily edited his Table Talks’ to make him look like an atheist and his argument that when Hitler said ‘Christentum’ he meant ‘Catholic’ because there are no similar beliefs in the Protestant Church. After I categorically refuted everyone of his ridiculous arguments he called me a “specious apologist” which seems to be his only counter-attack to anyone whom he disagrees with or disproves him.

    As for Hitler himself, I think that ‘Panentheism’ best describes his later beliefs. He seemed to believe that a genuine and transcendent God created the world, and that God is also found in everything which he created. Therefore, just like what Weikart suggests, Hitler DID believe that Nature was Divine, but he also believed in a transdecent God who created Nature. Hitler’s God was personal & impersonal, immanent & transdecent, which rules out Pantheism, which is impersonal and immanent only. There is lots of evidence that Hitler embraced this view:

    In the beginning there was an urge!’ This urge has existed from eternity! This urge was the creation of God, and God himself was in this urge. And the urge was the spark of life, which resides in us as well.

    —Otto Wagner: The Memoirs of the Confident

    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.

    —Otto Wagner: The Memoirs of the Confident

    The German is serious in everything that he undertakes. He wants to be either a Christian or a Heathen. He cannot be both. For our people it is decisive whether they acknowledge Christianity with its effeminate pity-ethics, or acknowledges the strong, heroic belief in God in Nature.

    —Hitler’s Table Talk.

    When dogmatic atheists claim that Hitler “never renounced his Catholicism” they mean that he continued to pay tithe to the Catholic Church till the day he died. This is true, and thus in a sense he (at least officially) did remain a Catholic, but this is not a good way to determine his beliefs. He played a good game because of his religious background. Regarding Hitler’s practice of the Catholic faith the general consensus is that after he left home he never again went to church, and that was when he was 17 or 18. I’ve found some pieces of evidence to counter this though not a lot. A comrade of Hitler during WW1 (although I can’t remember his name) said that Hitler went to mass in 1917, and the Catholic chaplain at Pasewalk recalled in July 1932 that Hitler went to a church service. So while I don’t want to argue against the consensus, I do believe that it was possible that Hitler was a genuine Catholic until 1918, but after that point, he was no longer Christian.

    However I don’t think that Hitler intended to abolish Christianity after the war. Hitler himself admitted in a 1941 that although he detested the teachings of Christianity, he said that it can’t be replaced by an alternative religion because it was a deeply metaphysical philosophy that satisfied German minds. He then said that the best thing to do is to “let Christianity die a natural death” i.e let Christianity die on its own. His ambassador to the Vatican and Albert Speer confirm this impression, but added that he still spoke of some post-war reckoning with the churches. I think that it would be safe to say that he would have fully separated church and state and reduced the churches to religious functions only in all conquered territories. He also stated in an October 1940 meeting with Bormann and Hans Frank that he favoured allowing the Polish people (whom he planned to enslave) to keep their Catholicism, and if the Polish people (whom Hitler despised) could keep their religion, I seriously doubt that he wouldn’t do the same to the German people (whom he loved). Thats just my take on it.

    Thanks for reading! Cheers!

    1. Good comment,

      I have to disagree with your conclusion.

      >”Hans Frank that he favoured allowing the Polish people (whom he planned to enslave) to keep their Catholicism”

      The reason why Poles(who are also Slavs) were allowed to keep their religion is this: ” Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to 100. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible. Every educated person is a future enemy. RELIGION WE LEAVE TO THEM AS A MEANS OF DIVERSION. As for food, they will not get any more than is necessary. We are the masters; we come first.” (Source: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/04-17-46.asp)

      And in the book, ‘Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab’ the author Wilfried Daim, produces a scan of Hitler’s minutes of meeting dated 14 August 1943, the same is Cited in Richard Booney’s ‘Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936-1939’ and Thomas Schirrmacher’s ‘National Socialism as Religion’ (https://www.academia.edu/36826868/National_Socialism_as_Religion)

      According to the minutes of the meeting, Hitler was planning to destroy all the confessions after the war.

      Now there are many corroborating pieces of evidence to support this. One is Goebbel’s Diaries where he says: “Kerrl wants to preserve the Church while we want to liquidate it.”(Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, Volker Ullrich)

      And a quote from Alfred Rosenberg’s speech: “..the Catholic Church and also confessional Church in their present form must disappear from the life our people is my full conviction, and I believe I am entitled to say to say that this our Fuhrer’s viewpoint.”(National socialism and the Roman Catholic Church by Nathaniel Micklem, pp. 223-225.

      The author Nathaniel Micklem writes in the footnote: “the authenticity of this speech has been questioned. I have before me a German text of the part here quoted – received, of course, from private sources: v. the Manchester Guardian, December 7th, 1938; Kulturkampf, September 3rd 1938.”)

      And in the minutes of the meeting, you will find Hitler was planning to introduce polygamy after the war, now we know that the Churches were already were hindering Hitler’s Ethunisia’s programme, so he knew well that Churches would also hinder his polygamy programme in the future.

      And corroborating to this polygamy theme in that meeting, Bormann writes a memorandum to other Nazis after discussing with Hitler about, Polygamym, which he intended to introduce after the war, this document can be found in the appendix of Bormann’s biography by Jochen von Lang(The Secretary: Martin Bormann – The Man Who Manipulated Hitler)

      So I am quite confident there would no future of confessions in Germany in Hitler’s vision.

  12. This was really interesting. Several years ago, somebody emailed me telling me Hitler was a Christian, which I was skeptical of. But after looking into it for a while, I couldn’t get to the bottom of it except to think that whatever he happened to believed, he certainly didn’t ACT like a Christian. Eventually, I decided that since he was a politician, his real beliefs would forever be hidden behind a cloud of mystery. You never know what a politician’s convictions REALLY are since they are selling themselves to the public. Your post/article sheds a lot of light on the situation.

    One thing you didn’t address, though, is the influence, if any, that Nietzsche had on the Nazi Party and Hitler in particular. Nietzsche was an anti-Christian, strongly rejecting Christian morality, calling it a “slave morality” that was only holding humanity back. I remember from my history classes in college hearing that Nietzsche’s ideas of the “over man” or “uber man” or whatever it was called had a lot to do with German anti-semitism and the desire to create a “master race.” Since Nietzsche believed that it was Christian morality that was preventing the rise of the “over man,” I wondered if Nietzsche’s anti-Christianity had any influence on the Nazi Party, especially Hitler. Do you know anything about that or have an opinion?

  13. “Hitler vehemently disputed the claim Christianity had ended “Roman barbarism”, citing the burning of heretics, the destruction of the Aztecs and Incas and the African slave trade as examples of Christian barbarity.”

    It’s strange that Hitler would think these were bad (atleast the last two).

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    1. I have seen things like this before, from racist “intellectuals”, where they will go on about the superiority of their race. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, throw out a sop to people outside their own identified “race”, praising their culture or expressing sympathy with whatever plight they may be facing or haved faced.

      It’s definitely inconsistent with the racism espoused. My best guess is that it’s a way to try to convince others (and maybe themselves) that there’s something more “intellectual” or “high-minded” about a worldview based on crude bigotries and prejudice.

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  14. Hitler’s Jesus is about as authentically Christian as Disney’s Hercules is authentically Greek/Roman Pagan.

  15. Hitler’s belief that Jesus is the son of a Roman soldier may be based on the possible Talmudic reference to Jesus as “Yeshu ben Pantera”. Obviously this is still far fetched and highly unlikely.

    1. Yes, that’s what that idea was based on. It’s slightly ironic that Hitler relied on a later Jewish myth (slur, actually) for this key belief of his about Jesus as some kind of “Aryan”.

        1. True, though since we don’t have what Celsus wrote we have to work from Origen’s response. And that begins “let us return, however, to the words put into the mouth of the Jew”. This indicates a Jewish origin for Celsus’ argument. Then a version of the same story appears in the Talmud (b. Shabbat 104b) and then in the medieval Jewish alterantive biography of Jesus, the Toledot Yeshu.

  16. I would defend the thesis of the pagan Hitler. He wasn’t as mystical or overtly pagan as Rosenberg and Himmler, but he did join the openly neopagan Thule Society and made the latter his second in command and chief of the SS which had all sorts of neopagan rituals. As much as Hitler was annoyed by Himmler’s search for things like Thor’s hammer, he still kept funding for them.

    What I would argue is that Hitler was more broadly speaking Aryan rather than Himmler’s more narrow Germanic religion. Hitler believed in the original Aryan sky-sun god and saw an original Aryan religion based on said sky/solar deity, hence adopting the Swastika which is a recurring symbol among Indo-European peoples and his interest in Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism in particular.

    He was also inspired by Nietzche’s views and while Nietzsche was more overtly atheist, he still held pagan views in the sense that he praised the Germanic pagan past and used Norse mythology to further his ideas, corresponding with Richard Wagner, praising the hero Siegfried and saying such things like “the brave has Odin in his heart” . Nietzsche also praised and used Greek mythology and Hinduism, especially the latter’s concept of chandalas and sudras found in the Manusmrti to further his idea of Aryan supermen controlling armies of slaves of inferior races (attempts at whitewashing Nietzsche’s proto-fascist views fail when even Nietzsche openly described his philosophy as “aristocratic radicalism” and wanted a Napoleon or Caesar figure to take over Germany if not Europe and establish a military dictatorship ran by the nobility).

    1. ” … he did join the openly neopagan Thule Society …”

      Hilter was never a member of the Thule Society and it’s doubtful he ever even attended any of their meetings – see the analysis by Detlef Rose, Die Thule Gesellschaft ( Grabert-Verlag, 1994),
      p. 150. Other early Nazis were members and more definitely attended meetings, but not Hitler.

      ” … and made [Himmler] his second in command and chief of the SS which had all sorts of neopagan rituals.”

      Yes, which HItler mocked behind Himmler’s back, as I note in my article. Are you sure you’ve read my article?

      “As much as Hitler was annoyed by Himmler’s search for things like Thor’s hammer, he still kept funding for them.”

      I’m not aware of any search for Thor’s hammer. Or of any funding of anything like that by Hitler himself. So, evidence please.

      ” Hitler believed in the original Aryan sky-sun god and saw an original Aryan religion based on said sky/solar deity”

      Hitler’s rather vague and contradictory comments about his theistic beliefs could, I suppose, encompass that idea. But I can’t think of anywhere where he says this explicitly. Evidence please.

      ” … hence adopting the Swastika which is a recurring symbol among Indo-European peoples”

      Sorry, but you don’t get to insert the word “hence” to connect that claim to your claim about Hitler believing in “the original Aryan sky-sun god” as though your second claim follows from the first. The first claim is dubious to begin with. As is the second. The swastika had been adopted as a symbol of “Aryan” racial identity since Heinrich Schliemann had found a version of it on artefects in his excavation of Troy. It had thus become a nationalist symbol in the Pan-Germanic Volkisch movement and then, as such, was adopted by the Nazi Party. This is not proof of any pagan religious belief by Hitler.

      “… and his interest in Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism in particular.”

      Please show evidence that Hitler had an interest in Buddhsim. Nazi interest in Tibet was, again, based on their kooky racial theories about “Aryan” and not on anything to do with religion.

      “Nietzsche …. held pagan views in the sense that he praised the Germanic pagan past and used Norse mythology to further his ideas”

      Praising Norse mythology is not the same thing as having “pagan views”. Hitler, like Nietzsche, admired some of the “northern spirit” embodies in Old Nore poems like Havamal etc. That doesn’t make him a pagan. I like some of the stuff in that literature, but I’m not a pagan either. Also Hitler’s attitude to Nietzsche was not as wholly admiring as you’re making out.

      Your arguments are weak, are based on errors of fact and are completely unconvincing.

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      1. There’s another bit of evidence that kind of proves Hitler’s overall disinterest in any kind of Germanic paganism and that’s when he praises Charlemagne’s slaughter of the pagan Saxons and says Charlemagne did nothing wrong in that regard.

        Whereas Himmler attacked Charlemagne as an agent of Christianity against the pagan-Germanic tribes of ancient Saxony, Hitler declared: “Killing all those Saxons was not a historical crime, as Himmler thinks. Charlemagne did a good thing in subjugating Widukind and killing the Saxons out of hand. He thereby made possible the empire of the Franks and the entry of Western culture into what is now Germany.”

  17. I was introduced to the idea of Hitler being enamoured by all things pagan via DC comics’ use of the Spear if Destiny in the 80’s.

    In the stories Hitler used the Spear to keep super heroes out of Europe during the was, which explained why the golden age heroes didn’t go and just stop the war haha.

    If they did venture into the area of the weapon’s influence, they were corrupted and became evil. I have a comic where Superman and Capt. Marvel (Shazam) fight for this reason.

    Anyway just a side note to say that comics have used the idea for a long time: https://screenrant.com/dc-spear-destiny-god-killing-weapon-power-explained/

  18. > But Weikert points out that this is a mistranslation. The phrase in the original is “wahrhaftiger Gott” – a common German emphatic interjection meaning something like “by God’s truth!” or perhaps “good God!” So the sentence is translated as ” … and summoned men to fight against them and who – God’s truth! – was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.” To render it as a claim that Jesus was God is deeply misleading. There is simply no evidence that Hitler regarded Jesus as divine.

    I am a native German speaker and was raised Catholic. The phrase “wahrhaftiger Gott” appears in a couple of prayers/hymns and does mean “true God”. I have never ever heard it used as an interjection (in stark contrast to a phrase like “(ach) du lieber Gott” which does mean “good god/heavens”). Google Books points me to a dictionary of German idioms, but if that’s the one Weikert used he probably misunderstood it: https://www.google.de/books/edition/English_German_Dictionary_of_Idioms/ETAx2Refl28C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=wahrhaftiger+gott!&pg=PA197&printsec=frontcover

    In Christian texts, “wahrhaftiger Gott” is less common than “wahrer Gott”, which is often followed by “und wahrer Mensch” (and true (hu)man). These two phrases, however, mean exactly the same thing.

    Contrary to Weikert’s claim, the fact that the phrase “wahrhaftiger Gott” is surrounded by commas in the German edition of Hitler’s Table Talks does not indicate that it is an “emphatic interjection”. It is not wholly impossible to interpret it that way if you believe that there is such an phrase. But it makes little sense in the context of Hitler’s speech to use an informal (perhaps even somewhat blasphemous) interjection instead of a descriptive attribute (he, who is the true God).

    1. I’ll have to ask any other German speakers to comment on whether it is or could be an interjection. I can only note that this is the one and only place where Hitler refers to Jesus as God if it is not an interjection, so you will have to explain that anomaly. You’ll also need to explain why every single English translation of this speech renders it as an interjection – something like “God’s truth”, as we find in Norman Baynes’ translation – see The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939, ed. Norman H. Baynes (Oxford: 1942) 1:19. So both Weikart and Baynes are wrong?

      And in just a quick search I’ve also found three English-German dictionaries that translate the phrase as an exclamation with phrases like “Good Lord!”, “Good God!” or “Strewth!” (= God’s truth). So sorry if I’m rather sceptical about your assurance that it is not a German expression used that way. You can find these examples here, here, and here. This indicates that you are wrong and Weikart is correct.

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      1. I’ve changed my opinion after finding a few examples of Hitler saying “wahrhaftiger Gott!” in non-religious contexts.

          1. You already resolved this argument, but just to give one example in case this comes up again (German speaker here as well):

            https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=817&language=german

            This is a quote from the original Mein Kampf (which I do not possess) in which Hitler is talking about the responsibility for the war. The first paragraph reads:

            “Der Kampf des Jahres 1914 wurde den Massen, wahrhaftiger Gott, nicht aufgezwungen, sondern von dem gesamten Volke selbst begehrt. ”

            I do not have an English translation, but basically it says: “The fighting of 1914 was not forced upon the masses, by God, but desired by all of the people.”

            Now, pedant is essentially correct that the phrase “wahrhaftiger Gott” is often used in religious texts to describe Jesus. It is an expression that goes somewhat beyond “wahrer Gott” (true God), but the difference is hard to pin down. I would say that it has an element of “prophecy come true” or “god has become flesh/real” to it in contrast to “the one true god”.

            It seems that Hitler regularly used the phrase as an exclamation to underline his arguments, as pedant stated. A quick web search yields multiple instances from multiple speeches.

            Thanks for your great article on this topic, by the way! Occult Hitler is a cool concept for pulp fiction, of course, but historians (and certain unemployed bloggers) should know the difference between Indiana Jones and reality…

  19. Thanks for your excellent article Tim. I agree Hitler wasn’t a Christian but I think a case can be made that he wasn’t religious at all but believed in no higher power than himself in that he was predestined by fate to lead the German people.

    Certainly Hitler rejected orthodox Christian beliefs namely Jesus’ deity, death and resurrection as propitiation for human sin, His miracles and the Christian concept of a personal after life and viewed Christianity through the prism of Nazi ideology as exampled by his belief that Jesus was an Aryan warrior against the enemies of National Socialism who was martyred for opposing the Jewish establishment. Positive Christianity which fused Nazi racial policy with Christian principles was a distortion of Christianity with a political agenda promulgated by such publications as Der Stürmer and Völkischer Beobachter. A flaxen haired, blue eyed warrior Jesus fighting the enemies of Nazism was more a kin to the Nordic ideal than a Semitic peasant Jesus in first century Judea preaching peace and love thy neighbour as thyself. Whatever the Führer and his fellow ideologues in the party believed and/or promoted wasn’t Christianity but an ideology so ingrained with Nazism that it was destined to fail and like the regime it did. So it’s beyond me how the likes of Richard Carrier can regard Hitler as a Christian.

    We know the Nazis were habitual liars and used propaganda to promote their objectives and while Hitler made some seemingly positive statements about Christianity we have good reason to believe that it was pure cynicism to avoid alienating the German Christian community. As Richard Dawkins puts it in The God Delusion:

    “It could be argued that, despite his own words and those of his associates, Hitler was not really religious but just cynically exploiting the religiosity of his audience. He may have agreed with Napoleon, who said, ‘Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet,’ and with Seneca the Younger: ‘Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.’ Nobody could deny that Hitler was capable of such insincerity”.

    Furthermore, Christa Schroeder, one of Hitler’s closest secretaries from 1933 to 1945, in her book Er war mein Chef (He Was My Chief):

    “Hitler rejected every philosophical concept that did not put emphasis on integral materialism. He proclaimed that a role of a human ends with his death and while referring to life in the other world, he often used the most vulgar word plays. I frequently asked myself the question, by whom therefore, he felt called to fulfil his mission on earth. Similarly I have never understood why he regularly ended his great speeches with a reference to the Almighty. I am convinced that if he did so, it was only to get sympathy from the Christian community of the Reich. And besides, he played a hideous comedy. Whenever the conversation turned to spiritual topics he opposed with the strong vulgarity. Hitler remained a member of the Church till the end. He regularly paid the church tax. However, he promised himself that he would leave it after the victory. This action would be symbolic in the eyes of the world. It would also signify the closure of a certain page of the history of Germany. And for the Third Reich, in turn, it will open a new era.”

    After the death of Paul von Hindenburg Hitler became absolute ruler of Germany – head of state and head of the armed services – and therefore above reproach or legal challenge. We see this early in the Third Reich when on 13 July 1934 in a nationally broadcast speech from the Reichstag he justified the purge of the SA:

    “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this. In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone. And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his.”

    So at this perilous hour, when the fate of the German people hung in the balance, Hitler makes it abundantly clear that he alone was “responsible for the fate of the German people” and he alone “became the supreme judge of the German people.” This was an unadulterated expression of self-entitlement which underpinned the modus operandi as to how the Third Reich was to be governed with Hitler making all key decisions especially concerning the conduct of the war. It’s therefore worth considering where this “self-entitlement” of Hitler’s came from and certainly Christa Schroeder posed a similar question. The answer could well be found in the word “providence” which Hitler used on occasions, for example, in surviving the July 1944 assassination attempt which he saw as a sign that he was spared to continue his work for the German people. Providence in German translates to Vorsehung which incorporates the word Schicksal which means fate or destiny. Colonel General Alfred Jodl stated at the Nuremberg trials that Hitler had “an almost mystical conviction of his infallibility as leader of the nation and of the war”. While I wouldn’t dismiss that the possibility that in referencing providence Hitler may have meant divine providence as he perceived it to be although as time went on his perception of providence became more intertwined with a belief in his own infallibility and that he was chosen and driven by fate to lead the German people.

    1. I think a case can be made that he wasn’t religious at all but believed in no higher power than himself in that he was predestined by fate to lead the German people.

      I disagree that this case can be made and I don’t think you make it with sufficient strength in your comment. Like several others I note in my article, Schroeder may have mistakenly decided that Hitler did not believe in any kind of God, but there is far too much counter evidence that shows he did. And of course he had an elevated view of himself. But he still saw himself as the fulfilling a destiny given to him by “the Almighty”.

  20. Another excellent article and thank you for the hard work on this.

    Somewhat off-topic, but linked, question. I believe you’d mentioned in your “Hitler’s Pope” post from a few years ago that you had intended to do a follow-up posting in the future specifically relating to Pius XII and the Holocaust. I was curious whether that was still your plan? Obviously it is your blog and you can provide whatever content you’d like, and at your own schedule, but was just wondering since I’d very much be looking forward to that one.

    Thanks again!

    1. I may sometime in the future, though that is not usually the angle New Atheists take on Pius XII. It sometimes comes up as an adjunct to the “Hitler’s Pope” claim, along with the myth that “the Vatican helped Nazis escape after the War” nonsense. If I see a prominent atheist arguing either of those things I’ll address them, but until then I have other topics which are more prominent.

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      1. I thought it was true Vatican “ratlines” which helped Nazis escape existed (this is not to say the Pope ordered them).

        1. No, the Pope didn’t order them, which is why it’s wrong to call them “Vatican ratlines”. The Vatican was one of many organisations in Rome that worked with the Red Cross and other groups to help resettle or repatriate millions of displaced persons and refugees after the War. A few clergy used those channels to help some Germans get out of Europe, including some Nazi war criminals. The main offender here was Bishop Alois Hudal, whose career in the Vatican had been stymied by Pius XII, with Hudal sidelined because of his sympathies for the Nazis. Hudal hated Pius as a result and was one source of some of the later claims about him that have dogged the Pope’s reputation ever since.

          To call them “Vatican ratlines” implies they were supported or at least known about by the Pope. In fact, Hudal was very much an enemy of Pius XII and kept what he was doing secret.

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  21. Great article.
    You would be surprised that Hitler’s religious beliefs are a common topic among schoolchildren. I remember in gym class two guys getting into a discussion in which one maintained he was a Christian and the other that he was an occultist (and “going to occult meetings in the woods”). And on Facebook students would post the Hitler quotes saying he was a Christian without attribution to see if they could “gotcha” their Christian friends into concurring with it. The Christian Hitler factoid/myth/whatever was like an atheist redpill for many.

  22. Tim

    Excellent piece! Definitely intriguing. Maurice Casey discussed what he called the no quest period which actually contained efforts to make Jesus more German and later Nazi. The interesting thing apart from the Nazi Jesus is that some of their work underlies the scholarship of scholars who belonged to the confessing church.

  23. Carrier’s attempt to make out Hitler to be some kind of Christian seems like pointless desperation. If, per arguendo, we accept that Positive Christianity was a highly unorthodox sect, then more orthodox Christians can legitimately dismiss Hitler as a heretic, and therefore Not One Of Us. For this to work, we don’t have to decide which is the real and genuine Christianity, only to note that PC deviates significantly from the historical mainstream.

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  24. hi tim , great work . can you say that the Nazi ideology was influenced by Hinduism , which became very popular in germany at the time . many philosopher and many nazi party members ( himmler) in the upper echelon were big fans of the bhagvad gita , vedas , laws of manu , etc .
    https://www.ibtimes.com/heinrich-himmler-nazi-hindu-214444
    Can we say that the nazi were heavily influenced by Hinduism instead of saying that they were in favour of the religion that was was the widespread religion in the place they wish to gain power ?

    1. We can say that various prominent Nazis held various ideas and had various interests. But my article is specifically about Hitler and his beliefs, not influences on Nazism generally.

  25. Was Hitler, ironically, more moderate than many of his Nazi followers? If some of the older data, or some scholarship, suggests that? It seems a bit suspicious. As if there was some kind of “carve out”.

    It may be that either 1) Hitler himself, and/or 2) some of his still pious Christian followers, commentators, scholars, had carefully insulted his image and memory, from at least a few of the most extreme elements, that could eventually “taint” his memory. Especially any violent religious aberrations. Anything beyond an unfortunately “acceptible” anti-semitism.

    1. I have no idea what this strange comment has to do with anything I’ve said in my article. What are you talking about?

  26. From your article, summarizing some research, it often seems in many accounts, that Hitler’s religious beliefs were often not as extreme as many of his Nazi followers. It is argued that he was not a strong pagan for instance. Nor was he a firm, absolute atheist; he allowed some kind of vaguely Deist belief.

    But note that those more moderate beliefs, had the effect of making him less offensive to many; more acceptible.

    And therefore, the accounts may be suspiciously smoothed over. As if Hitler was being politic; and/ or as some followers and sympathetic historians, Germans, are whitewashing him just a bit; twisting their translations of him, say, to make him seem more acceptible; less extremely Nazi.

    If even a Hitler appears moderate in some histories? We might suspect the motivations, objectivity, of those who are writing about him.

    In particular, German Christians who were at least nominal Nazis, like Ratzinger, might prefer – and help produce, even in their historic reviews – at least a Deist, not atheist, Hitler. So that themselves do not appear to be so extreme, in having followed him, even if only nominally.

    Particularly German scholars and French collaborators, might do this.

    1. Okay, that is a bit more clear. But the “more moderate beliefs” presented to “make him less offensive” are Christian ones. He was presented as some sort of Christian to “smooth over” the fact that he … wasn’t a Christian. So I still have no idea what this stuff about “Hitler appears moderate in some histories” is supposed to mean. In what histories is Hitler presented as “moderate”?

      1. Most of the quotes offered above? Those concerning Hitler’s religion. Which suggest he was not extreme, not entirely an atheist, but had a bit of religion in him.

        Nearly all the direct quotes you inset, are taken to suggest Hitler himself was more moderate in that way. Though you do mention some scholars objecting to the sources, or the quotes.

        So the revision many have sought, in the traditional view of Hitler, occurs in religion; precisely the very element of life that demands of us that we abandon critical thinking, and just have “faith”. The very part of life that infuses, dominates, billions of lives
        Including 1) some scholars, 2) and certainly their main sources for religious data. Like say, Ratzinger; and 3) the archives of the Church. And so forth.

          1. I think James is missing the point. Hitler was “more moderate” in terms of his religious views. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want Hitler described as moderate.
            Who cares what revision ppl have sought.
            I don’t see the relevance of the whole bit on critical thinking or what religion demands. It doesn’t appear that Hitler was affected by this
            demand to “just have faith”. People of all kinds religious or not abandon critical thinking for all sorts of reasons. Favorite myth, you name it.

          2. It 1) is indeed possible that Hitler simply, actually was more moderate in his views than earlier historians suggested. And so?

            2) We should, all of us, be careful to look, test, for biases in ALL of us; to see if any of us have had notable biases, past or present, that could’ve warped early characterizations of Hitler.

            But then, if we do that?
            If we go looking for biases in all of us? There is a) one aspect of life and cultures, where in general, bias seems very, very strikingly prevalent. And where b) bias and partiality, in fact, are even explicitly called for, and demanded. And that part of culture, is called “religion”.

            So what happens if we next, look at stories about Hitler, looking for biases? We should look very, very carefully, for the very, very common and even explicit religious bias.

            And then? When Tim is presenting the apparent facts, above? Though at first most historians’ quotes here, seem to support Hitler; as being more Christian, or at least neutral? On the other hand, I’ve noted that at least one statement, on his paganism, can actually be read as supporting it, and its violence, very strongly.

            And then, next? Tim himself has been so good and fair, as to note that some even newer historians do partly object to many of the positive quotes on Hitler’s religion, above. On two grounds at least. One being 1) possible inaccuracy in translation. And another being 2) problems with, known dishonesty, unreliability in, the Nazi or 3) other sources.

            To which I now add, 4) a known, extreme, and 5) even explicit partiality, in Christian sources too.

            Could it be that there is also a bias in atheists too? Yes there is. But? Usually atheists at least, do not take formal and open and explicit vows of obedience and loyalty to bias; to “faith.” And to say, ignoring objective evidence presented to their “eyes”.

            So I currently advocate taking another, more critical look, at those contemporary, revisionist historians, who present Hitler as, in some ways, a religious moderate.

            Could we also look for bias in atheists? I suppose so . But let’s also never forget the known, extreme, explicit biases and partiality, in Christians, and their Christian sources. As we then go on to re-examine the evidence presented partially, above.

          3. It’s hard to work out exactly what you’re trying to argue here. Yes, we need to watch for bias. I make it clear that I suspect Weikart has some that makes him distance Hitler even more from Christianity than the evidence allows, because Weikart himself is a Christian. But Steigmann-Gall is clearly guilty of some bias the other way. His mistranslation of the phrase “wahrhaftiger Gott” to make it into an assertion of Jesus as divine and other dubious arguments make that clear. The most obvious bias in the arguments discussed above are the ones by Carrier, which go to absurd lengths to try to shoehorn Hitler into a bizarre definition of Christianity. So yes, atheists like Carrier certainly can be biased. And he clearly is.

            And no, I don’t need to take “another, more critical look”. I’ve assessed the evidence and it is quite clear that Hitler was not an atheist, was not a pagan and was not a Christian.

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  27. What do you make of this supposed quote by Hitler on the afterlife? I didn’t see it addressed in the article.

    “I feel good in the historical society I am in if there is an Olympus. In the place I’m entering will be the most illuminated spirits of all times.”

    1. His reported comments about any afterlife are the most ambiguous and inconsistent of any of the indications about his beliefs. On one hand, he pretty unambiguously scorned the Christian conception of heaven and hell etc., which makes the claim he was some kind of Christian hard to sustain on this point. But otherwise he says things that may indicate a kind of collective spiritual realm that we go to/return to after death. But this is not clear or consistent. This comment may reflect something like this belief – the reference to “Olympus” certainly doesn’t indicate any Christian conception of heaven – or it could just be figurative or conceptual. I’ve often said that all the cool people would be in Hell so it wouldn’t be so bad, but this doesn’t mean I actually believe in Hell (I don’t).

  28. Carrier seems to think Pantheism is just atheism, which seems to drive some of his opposition to Weikart’s thesis that Hitler was a Pantheist. So if Weikart’s thesis is correct, then Hitler was an atheist according to Carrier.

    “Weikart wants to insist Hitler was a pantheist. Pantheism means the belief that the universe is God. Weikart identifies it as a strain of secularism (Hitler’s Religion, loc. 270), “the worship of nature or the cosmos as God” (loc. 321), and as even less theistic than Deism (loc. 332), in fact practically identical with atheism (loc. 3516-17). Pantheists can’t be creationists in any literal sense (not even of the Old Earth variety: loc. 4166). Nor believe in a personal afterlife of any kind (loc. 1163, 1190). And they only believe in “Providence” as the inevitable outcome of the laws of nature; not as the personal, instantiated plan of a sentient being (loc. 3690). In other words, “pantheism” really just sounds like a code word for atheism; indeed it’s really “only a polite atheism,” as Weikart quotes Shopenhauer saying.”

    https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11792

  29. I’m not sure that Adolf’s deepest personal beliefs are as important to whether Christianity is in any way responsible for the Third Reich as is the fact that so many Protestant and Catholic Christians were able to suppress their Christian moral upbringing, don their new armbands, and set off Sieg-Heiling their merry way to mass murder and the destruction of their nation.

    You touch on this briefly when discussing “positive Christianity” which I suppose easily morphed into Bishop Mueller’s German Christian movement, but I think it deserves a more in-depth look.

    1. With the war and the rumours of mass-murder, the Sieg Heils became at least less loud; and while they did defend their country at a time it committed mass murder, such as on the Jews, and had unleashed aggressive wars, that was at least not a “merry way”. Hitler had to keep the German people in a permanent state of “I’ve got other things on my mind”, “these are difficult times for all of us, let’s just survive them in some manner”, “and after all, it’s still my country, and I do oppose Communism myself”, “why should I listen to the rumours inimical to my country”, etc. And from those who did commit the murders, e. g. Himmler’s Catholic upbringing went at least so far that he considered the genocide on the Jews “the most terrible order possible”, which he then executed “with soldierly obedience”, taking especial pride in *overcoming* his conscience (which implies that he had *had* a conscience).

      That may not sound much better, and perhaps, at least in part, actually is worse; but still for correction.

  30. I think people just oversee the fact that in Mein Kampf Hitler revealed his real feelings for Christianity. Where he calls Christianity as first Spiritual Terror, He says Christianity in destroying the pagan altars exhibited especially a Jewish way of thinking and outright Jewish Nature, he goes on to call this as FACT to be regretted.
    Here is the relevant passage from Mein Kampf.
    //”Even Christianity could not be satisfied with building its own altar, but inevitably had to go to the destruction of the pagan altars. […] One can very well raise the objection that such phenomena in world history are mostly of a SPECIFICALLY JEWISH WAY OF THINKING; yes, that this kind of intolerance and fanaticism EMBODIED A DOWNRIGHT JEWISH NATURE. This may be correct a thousand times, and one can deeply regret this FACT and, with all too justified discomfort, see its appearance in the history of mankind as something that had hitherto been ALIEN to it […] Today the individual may painfully discover that the FIRST SPIRITUAL TERROR came into the much freer ancient world with the APPEARANCE OF CHRISTIANITY, but he will not be able to deny the FACT that the world has since been OPPRESSED and ruled by this COMPULSION, and that compulsion is only possible again through compulsion breaks and terror only with terror. Only then can a new condition be created.”//

    Also on more than one occasion in Mein Kampf, speeches, and private conversation Hitler shows his hatred and negative opinion about Old Testament, the movement he hates Old Testament he sets himself against the New Testament, because in NT Jesus speaks extremely positively about Old Testament and the characters in Old Testament, so to speak ill of Old Testament is to be against Jesus words.

  31. (Christian speaking here)

    This is a rather interesting, and very informative article. Thank you!

    A couple of observations:
    1. It may be defensible to saythat Pope Benedict should not have left the *impression of* subscribing to the “Hitler was an atheist” thesis (because it is false), but he did not *actually* subscribe to it: when he actually spoke of them “eradicating God from society” (and not meaning “the very idea of God”, but “all belief in God and practice of belief in God as we know it or Him”), what he said was not untrue. (It might have been; he was not defining dogma 🙂 ; but it wasn’t…)

    2. The official stand of the Nazi Party was “positive Christianity”, as you rightly noted. When we once get over the first-hand impression of (pardon me!) some more easily impressible part of the population who somehow think that “positive” sounds positive… what this term actually means is at *best* a pick-and-choose-some-tenets from Christianity, and it hints rather forcefully that those who profess might well look down on *actual* Christianity (as we know it, etc.) as “negative”. Actually, far from being appeasing to Christians, the very words “positive Christianity” was quite officially the main reason why before the seizure of power, the Nazis had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

    3. On the quote “My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter.”

    I’m rather surprised that atheists actually use that to prove his Christianity. But then perhaps they don’t know better; to a Christian (who stands after all some chance of being better acquainted with Christian thought, etc.) it immediately suggests, even proves, the contrary.

    All Christians are agreed that the greatest thing He did was precisely not the fighting but the suffering, redeeming sins and all. Possibly to be rivalled by the Resurrection, and the Incarnation per se, let’s not get too much into detail, but certainly not by some specific fight, admirable though it be. What Hitler is actually doing here is, explicitly, contradicting the Christians on the point. (I have a feeling that he is sincere about that.)

    (Yes, Christians would describe the suffering amongst other qualifiers as a fight, against the Devil and sin as it were, but this is not what Hitler means here.)

    4. I have a suspicion that Hitler was, on this issue, much more mainstream-German than mainstream-Germans like to acknowledge. “There must be something out there”, and anyway being an atheist – no, no, no, that’s what the awful commies are… but “I don’t belong to the Church-going sort of people” (an actual quote from Göring at Nuremberg); no belief in any specific dogma (and, if we’re harsh, not even actual *disbelief* in any specific dogma, but just all-fuzziness). But still enough of Christianity as to think that Christ (usually called, by such people, with his holy Name) was a great, visionary fellow, and so obviously thought and taught all the things one personally happens to prefer. Plus an instinct that the schism the Reformation brought was a bad thing (with the subconscious or perhaps not so subconscious chief reason that it stands in the way of German unity [note that ecumenism, in Germany, generally means something that happens between the Catholic Church and mainstream Protestantism; no Eastern Orthodox, no independent Protestant Churches, because they just aren’t notable in being a part of the German people]).

    Sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it. (I myself am not peculiar whether people like to call this Christian or don’t like to call it Christian. But if anyone were to say it meant being a “believing Christian” or a “faithful Christian” or a “practicing Christian” or even a “Christian in good standing”, that would be a falsehood.)

    What is *not* mainstream is being a murderous antisemite; but *if* somebody is (and Hitler was) it is also rather logical to imagine Christ chiefly, and almost only, as a fighter against the Jews.

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    1. You formulate a circular argument.

      1. “All Christians are agreed that the greatest thing He did was precisely not the fighting but the suffering”
      Hence

      2. “My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter.”
      ‘proves’ that Hitler was not a christian. That again confirms point 1.
      Your problem is the same as ToN’s: you haven’t formulated a definition of christian(ity), not even a provisional one.
      Btw “all christians agree” is also an ad populum. In this comment I don’t argue that Hitler was a christian indeed. It’s just that your argument is invalid. It confirms that the dispute is uninteresting and prospectless.

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      1. Your problem is the same as ToN’s: you haven’t formulated a definition of christian(ity), not even a provisional one.

        Pardon? Read my article again.

      2. Dear FrankB,

        I am aware that the phrase “all Christians agree” is to be used with caution. However, there is such a thing as common-sense meaning, and on this matter, the statement still happens to be true, however cautious we have had to be at first.

        (But if you insist on a syllogism:
        1. It is convenient and defensible to call a tenet that Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, even Monophysites and Nestorians and even Calvinists agree on just “Christian” without further ado, considering also that for any exception you can find an oddball to impersonate it anyway.
        2. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, … (you get the idea) agree on …
        3. Hence, all Christians agree on…)

      3. >iven what happened later we know that Hitler was honest when he wrote

        “…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

        and

        “We terminate the endless German drive to the south and west of Europe, and direct our gaze towards the lands in the east ….”

        in Mein Kampf.
        So why the diaries of another notorious liar, Joseph Goebbels, should be more reliable regarding Hitler’s views on christianity than his own book keeps on escaping me.
        ——-

        In the same Mein Kampf(where Hitler tries to hide his Anti-Christian ideas and opinion) he lets the cat out of the bag by revealing his anti-Christian sentiment.
        Watch this video where Richard Weikart points that passage: https://www.kapwing.com/videos/622d8ba223ba58006f6723e9

        And the below passage is from Richard Weikart’s book where he talks about that Anti-Christian passage:
        “Worse yet, he actually threatened to obliterate Christianity later in the second volume(of Mein Kampf). After calling Christianity fanatically intolerant for destroying other religions, Hitler explained that Nazism would have to be just as intolerant to supplant Christianity:

        A philosophy filled with infernal intolerance will only be broken by a new idea, driven forward by the same spirit, championed by the same mighty will, and at the same time pure and absolutely genuine in itself. The individual may establish with pain today that with the appearance of Christianity the first spiritual terror entered in to the far freer ancient world, but he will not be able to contest the fact that since then the world has been afflicted and dominated by this coercion, and that coercion is broken only by coercion, and terror only by terror. Only then can a new state of affairs be constructively created.

        Hitler’s anti-Christian sentiment shines through clearly here, as he called Christianity a “spiritual terror” that has “afflicted” the world. Earlier in the passage, he also argued Christian intolerance was a manifestation of a Jewish mentality, once again connecting Christianity with the people he most hated. Even more ominously, he called his fellow Nazis to embrace an intolerant worldview so they could throw off the shackles of Christianity. He literally promised to visit terror on Christianity. Even though several times later in life, especially before 1934, Hitler would try to portray himself as a pious Christian, he had already blown his cover.

        Hitler’s tirade against Christianity in Mein Kampf, including the threat to demolish it, diverged remarkably from his normal public persona. He was usually more circumspect, refraining from open criticism of Christianity. However, many of his colleagues testified that Hitler’s personal opinion about Christianity did not match his hypocritical public stance; Hitler, for his part, thought religion itself was hypocritical. According to Wagener, who accompanied Hitler from 1929 to 1933, Hitler honored Jesus as a great socialist but believed the Christian churches had completely perverted His teachings and were, in fact, teaching the exact opposite.”

        And here is another video where Richar Weikart mentions the same and some extra points. https://www.kapwing.com/videos/622d97ae491f2e00928516a6

        And here is the same passage from Mein Kampf translated from the original German text using online DeepL translator:
        “Christianity, too, could not be content with building up its own altar, but had inevitably to proceed to the destruction of the pagan altars. Only out of this fanatical intolerance the apodictic faith could form; this intolerance is even the unconditional prerequisite for it.
        One can very well raise the objection that such phenomena in world history are mostly those of a specifically Jewish way of thinking; indeed, that this kind of intolerance and fanaticism embodies the very Jewish nature. This may be true a thousand times over, and one may well deeply regret this fact and note with all too justified uneasiness its appearance in the history of mankind as something which had hitherto been alien to it – but this does not alter the fact that this state of affairs is just there today. The men who want to redeem our German people from its present condition have not to rack their brains about how beautiful it would be if this and that were not the case, but must try to determine how to eliminate the given. One of infernal intolerance
        A worldview filled with infernal intolerance can only be broken by a new idea that is driven forward by the same spirit, that is championed by the same strongest will, but that is pure in itself and absolutely true.
        The individual may today painfully realize that the first spiritual terror came into the much freer ancient world with the appearance of Christianity, but he will not be able to deny the fact that since then the world has been oppressed and dominated by this compulsion, and that compulsion can only be broken again by compulsion and terror only with terror. Only then can a new condition be created.
        Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)”

        And regarding Goebbels Diaries, the thoughts of Hitler which Goebbels records in his diaries are corraborating with MULTIPLE sources such as Alfred Rosenberg Diaries, Table talks, memoirs of people who were with Hitler, Walther Hewel Diaries.
        And will you also cast doubt on the passage from Goebbels Diaries where Goebbels describes extermination of Jews (40% put to work and 60% liquidated) under you lame reason Goebbels was a liar, I suggest you to not doubt do it since you will become a holocaust denier if you did.

      4. >“…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”
        ————

        //One other symbol Hitler used occasionally was of the Jew as the devil. In May 1923, he told a crowd in Munich, “The Jew is certainly a race, but not human. He cannot be human in the sense of the image of God, of the Eternal. The Jew is the image of the devil. Jewry means racial tuberculosis of the peoples.”59 By using the symbol of the devil to convey his point that the Jews are evil, Hitler may have appealed to the sensibilities of some religious Germans. However, there is also no reason to suppose that Hitler actually believed in a devil just because he used this symbol, so it fails to prove anything about Hitler’s own religious perspective or about the influence of religion on his anti-Semitism (just as calling the Aryans “the Prometheus of mankind” in Mein Kampf does not mean his Aryan racism was shaped by Greek mythology).It was likely only a figure of speech, not an indication that he thought the Jews were literally in league with some supernatural beings.//
        – Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Religion.

  32. I applaud you on your marshalling of the evidence but I’m not so convinced by your conclusion.

    If someone identifies as a Christian as Hitler did, even participating in endorsing a form of it “Positive Christianity@, then shouldn’t we be inclined to agree he was a Christian, albeit an unusual and heretical one?

    I am troubled that your conclusion relies too heavily on assuming Hitler’s motives in accommodating Christianity. You overrule Hitler’s own statements “I am a Christian”, because he does not hold to the traditional tenets of Christianity and or because you assume he is lying for political purposes.

    Based on the sheer weight of the evidence, I think it’s more likely Hitler regarded himself as a Christian. If you agree he is a theist then you must look for which God he believed in. His statements exclusively refer to the Christian God.

    We cannot affirm an opposite conclusion based on the assumption he is lying. We cannot know for sure either way, and the consistency of his advocacy for Christianity is clear.

    1. We cannot affirm an opposite conclusion based on the assumption he is lying.

      I come to the opposite interpretation based on the conclusion his lying fits the evidence best. So I don’t “assume” that conclusion, It arrive it at rationally. Your counterarguments above are weak, not take all the evidence into account and are not a rational conclusion.

    2. “Positive Christianity” was not “a form of Christianity”. There was not ever a denomination around who said “we’re positive Christians”; not, at least, until the nazi party appeared and wrote into its program “the party as such confesses to a positive Christianity, but”. (And even later, those who came nearest to “we’re the positive Christians” did not have that as a name. They called themselves “German Christians”.)

      So, put those words out of context for a change and imagine a school who writes in its curriculum “the school confesses to positive mathematics, but”. Or imagine a journalist who says he “confesses to positive factchecking, but”.

      Then you have how “positive Christianity” sounded to those who (to put it bluntly) use their brain for thinking. (I don’t deny that there were many around who chose not to, and to them “positive” may have sounded positive, which was an additional benefit for Hitler.)

      As for his selfidentifying “as a Christian”, that basically rests on one speech. Other than the host of this site I do not conclude he was lying in the strict sense. But he was, even in his own mind, using the world in the heat of an argument rather loosely, with the meaning “someone who considers Christ a great guy”, as in “look here, premier, not only you as an orthodox Christian but I too consider Christ a great guy”. The whole passage where the words “my feelings as a Christian” appear is actually perhaps the easiest proof that he was *not* a Christian. Christians, all of them (in a meaningful sense of the term), hold that the Passion was no failure but Christ achieving what He set out to do, and certainly is of greater importance than the cleansing of the temple.

      (note: I used “confesses to” as translation for “steht auf dem Standpunkt von”. I think that is accurate.)

      1. There is no agreed authority to determine what sects or movements were the REAL Christians. Were the German Christians and the various other Protestant antisemitic Christians all non-Christians? Which Scotsman is the true Scotsman?

        With little doubt however we can identify the deep influence of Christianity on Hitler and Nazism. His use of providence, antisemitism, and mythmaking as the German Messiah, all derive from Christianity.

        “As for his selfidentifying “as a Christian”, that basically rests on one speech”

        There are numerous quotes where Hitler identifies as a Christian or expresses solidarity with Christianity.

        Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country]… I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … ”
        – Adolf Hitler: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872

        There are numerous other quotes in Mein Kampf.

        1. There is no agreed authority to determine what sects or movements were the REAL Christians.

          That doesn’t mean the word “Christian” has no meaning and we can apply it to anyone we like. This is why I go into some detail on key Christian beliefs that, as a minimum, form the parameters for who can or can’t be said to be one. Hitler held none of these beliefs. So he wasn’t a Christian.

          Were the German Christians and the various other Protestant antisemitic Christians all non-Christians?

          No. Because, unlike Hitler, they held all of those key, core Christian beliefs.

          There are numerous quotes where Hitler identifies as a Christian or expresses solidarity with Christianity.

          Yes. All from that period where he was pretending to be a Christian in an attempt at winning votes. Once he no longer needed to do this, his pretence was dropped. He wasn’t a Christian. Give up.

          1. As you say elsewhere, these things are not so simple – its impossible to provide a definition that captures all Christians. Then you provide a definition of Christian, and say Hitler did not conform to it.

            You claim Hitler did not say Jesus was divine. Alas, he did and you quoted him in your article!

            I say: my feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter …”

            He spoke of Jesus as Lord on more than one occasion.

            Whats important? Whether Hitler accepted the Trinity, or the extent to which 2000 years of Christianity influenced Nazism. That’s the key point that seems to have been lost in the semantics.

          2. You claim Hitler did not say Jesus was divine. Alas, he did and you quoted him in your article!

            He didn’t, you idiot. Read the article.

            He spoke of Jesus as Lord on more than one occasion.

            Which meant what, exactly? Theologically.

            Whats important? Whether Hitler accepted the Trinity, or the extent to which 2000 years of Christianity influenced Nazism. That’s the key point that seems to have been lost in the semantics.

            Precision and accuracy in interpretation of historical evidence isn’t “semantics”. And that some elements of Nazism had some influence from Christianity is true, but not very relevant to this article. And that also ignores the fact that most elements of Nazism were totally opposed to key tenets of Christianity, which is why the anti-Christian faction in the Party was always strong and became dominant. But I’m going to guess you don’t want to admit that bit.

            You seem irrational. And a bore. Go away.

        2. Christianity has had an influence on just about everything. That Christianity, it’s history and doctrines, has had an influence on something does not make that something Christian, though.

          I don’t know how anyone could argue that anti-Semitism from Christians didn’t help establish some backdrop for Nazi persecution of the Jews. However, although anti-Semitism was a central component to Nazi ideology, Nazism did have other aspects to it’s ideology, that cannot as easily be linked to Christianity. (prime example, “lebensraum” in Eastern Europe, deeming Slavic peoples as “sub-human”, to be conquered or removed)

          “Social Darwinism” & an “ancient Roman ethos” — which the term “fascism” openly identifies with — are distinct from Christianity and celebrated conquest as an ideal to revel in. Those currents shaped Nazi views, & definitely Hitler’s, more than anything “Christian”.

          Yes, Hitler had public pronouncements about being a “Christian”, but, as the article notes, those pronouncements were made when rising to power, still having to work within a coalition framework. Even then, Hitler would make public statements that contradicted Christian profession, strongly indicating he didn’t actually view himself as Christian.

          As another message in this comments section mentions, in Mein Kampf, Hitler expressly said he felt Christianity visited “terror” upon the “much freer ancient world” — doesn’t sound to me like someone who really saw himself as “Christian”. Also, this article notes all the “chatter” from confidants, and those who interacted with the “Fuhrer” personally, that Hitler was not Christian and felt contempt for the faith.

          The only logical conclusion, when looking more generally at the intellectual underpinning of fascism, and more specifically at all the accounts of Hitler, is that Hitler was not a Christian. I think Hitler’s beliefs vacillated between Deism and pantheism, but he was definitely not an atheist, a pagan, or a Christian.

        3. In the quote which you posted you ommited some words (I assume you did it intentionally given the history of your comments here) here is the full quote: “Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity. Fourteen years they have gone arm in arm with atheism. At no time was greater damage ever done to Christianity than in those years when the Christian parties ruled side by side with those who denied the very existence of God. Germany’s entire cultural life was shattered and contaminated in this period.”

          Who do you think is the ‘they’ which Hitler is addressing here???
          The ‘they’ whom Hitler is addressing are his opponents who rightly accuse of being anti-Christians and he addresses them, so that is the context, and almost ALL THE PRO-CHRISTIANS quotes from his speeches comes this way, where some of his opponents accuse of him being Anti-Christian and he then addresses them saying he is Christian, and this drama was going on when Hitler was not elected, and the date of the speech which you quoted is February 15, 1933, when Hitler had not yet consildated his power, he still had palacting(lying) to do, the center party was still not disbanded, but all these stops after 1934, Hitler rarely mentions about Christianity post 1934, because he had no need to palacate anyone anymore, and if I recall correctly he mentions about Christianity in his 1939 speech where he says the winter relief program is a true form of Christianity before you jump on it as being a great proof, the reason why Hitler said that was because the Catholic Church requested to take part in the winter relief programme Hitler did not allow, he wanted the programme to be solely a Nazi party activity, and he justified not allowing the Churches to take part by saying that in his speech.
          —–

          >”There are numerous other quotes in Mein Kampf.”

          Are you sure about that Hitler gives a complete death blow of him being anything remotely to Christian, and it is none other than the passag which Atheist take out of context to prove Hitler was Christian, without revealing what the preceding passage tells.

          “Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands. Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: hy defending myself against the Jew, I amfightingfor the work of the Lord.” – Mein Kampf

          The God which Hitler is referring here is Nature defied not the biblical or Christian god, and by calling nature as being eternal(existed forever not created in the past at a finite time) Hitler gives a compelete death blow for him being Christian, since according to Christian theology nature and everything was createad by god as per the bible, and this creation story comes from Old Testament which Hitler despised from the core of heart.

          ————

          And most of all you are weighing too much on a known liar, a liar who tore up the Munich Agreement and invaded the rest of the Czechosolvoika after EXPLICITY claiming(after the Munich Agreement) in his speech to the public: “the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe”.

          Knowingly allowed his minions to violate almost everysingle article of the Riechconcordat.

          Appointing rabid Anti-Christian(Bormann was hell bent on destroying Christinaity, according to the memoirs of the people who knew HItler like Otto Dietrich, Ernst Weizsäcker and numerous other sources Hitler was backing Bormann) like Martin Bormann giving enormous power to him, this is important because Hitler explicity said(lied) in his speech before coming to power: “we tolerate no one on in our ranks who attack the idea of Christianity”

          So Hitler was notorious liar, so to know what HItler thought about Christianity, the speeches are the last place you should refer, the private conversation is the real authentic Hitler.

          1. Fallacious argument.

            Hitler is indeed a notorious liar.

            Thus it’s fraught to try to determine exactly when he was lying and telling the truth.

            To insist that Hitler was never a Christian you have to accept some of his statements as true and others as false.

            We cannot know with certainty.

          2. And that argument is absurd. Even a habitual liar doesn’t lie every time they open their mouth. So of course we always have to ” accept some of his statements as true and others as false”. And the evidence indicates he was lying about being a Christian early in his career. Get a grip.

            6
            1
          3. @Hugh Harris: given what happened later we know that Hitler was honest when he wrote

            “…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

            and

            “We terminate the endless German drive to the south and west of Europe, and direct our gaze towards the lands in the east ….”

            in Mein Kampf.
            So why the diaries of another notorious liar, Joseph Goebbels, should be more reliable regarding Hitler’s views on christianity than his own book keeps on escaping me. That said the relevance still escapes me. Martin Bormann was an atheist and that same liar Goebbels very possibly too.

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            1
  33. The problem is that you offer no real evidence he is lying. We are not mind readers. Claiming to know the inner thoughts of someone else is fraught with danger. Given you are claiming his actual beliefs go against his repeated claims to be a Christian, then you need substantial evidence to the contrary.

    You agree he is a theist, so the only question is which god does he believe in. Which one? Clearly his theism must be grounded in the theism of his culture.

    Given that he explicitly claims to be Christian then there’s no real doubt that he self identified as a Christian. This is a fact.

    If there was a Census he would have recorded himself as a Christian.

    If, as we all suspect, he was at most a nominal Christian who disbelieved in most of its tenets, he is really equivalent to a significant proportion of Christians. Ie. Most don’t go to church, many disbelieve in supernatural entities, doubt the virgin birth, doubt the trinity et cetera. Does this mean they are not Christians?

    You omit to examine any link between Christianity and anti semitism. Luther and ‘The Jews and their lies’. Many historians point to an underlying anti semitism exploited by Nazism. There is some chance Hitler’s own anti semitism had its roots in the cultural Christian attitude towards Jews which he grew up with.

    The evidence you offer points to Hitler:

    – not being an atheist
    – self identifying as a Christian
    – displaying little belief in Christian tenets
    – have a higher belief in Nazism of which his metaphysical beliefs seemed subordinate.

    Thus it’s possible that Hitler was a genuine Christian and it’s also possible he was deliberately deceiving everyone. The former seems more likely.

    1. I offer plenty of evidence and it all points in one direction” that he was a theist but not a Christian and his (few and early) statements otherwise were political window dressing. His theism was firmly based in a long Deist tradition in Germany, one that his father taught him. All of his recorded statements on religion fit squarely within that tradition, along with its anti-clerical rhetoric and anti-Catholic biases. You don’t seem to understand the context here at all. “We” do not “all suspect” what you claim here, so spare us that weak debater’s trick. Your conclusion doesn’t fit the evidence.

      1. Wth respect, I disagree. Your evidence can easily be interpreted another way.

        For example:

        Hitler’s speech
        “I would like to appeal here to a greater man than I: [Bavarian Prime Minister] Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last Landtag that his feeling ‘as a man and Christian’ prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I say: my feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter …”

        Your reasoning:

        “So Hitler is not offering some unprompted avowal of his devout faith, but is trying to counter and undermine a rejection of anti-Semitism that was based on Christianity. In a country where 62.7% of people were Protestants, 32.5% were Catholics and only 4.8% were Jewish, non-Christians or otherwise unbelievers, Hitler could not possibly have won support if he had presented himself and his party as non-Christian.”

        That’s a non sequitur.

        Just because Hitler clearly uses Christianity for political purposes, does not mean that he must not believe it.

        It only means that it is possible that he is not a Christian.

        The other possible conclusion is that with a strong Christian heritage in a 95% Christian country, Hitler is a Christian justifying his political ideals using Christian belief as a Self professed Christian.

        Either conclusion is possible.

        Further, your conclusion that Hitler is a theist is based on quotations where Hitler claims to be a Christian, or expresses theism in characteristically Christian terms.

        It seems clear to me that Hitler’s anti semitism is at least partially derived from the Jewish blood libel.

        I think the Hitler kind reading society needs to take a break. We only know that he professed Christianity. Much more than that is speculation.

        1. Just because Hitler clearly uses Christianity for political purposes, does not mean that he must not believe it.

          Luckily for me, I didn’t say that. If you read what I actually said, I’m noting that the “As a Christian” speech is often presented out of context as though it’s a simple avowal of belief. In context, it is a political counter argument to a political opponent. That in itself doesn’t mean it is therefore insincere (and I don’t claim otherwise), but taken with all the other evidence it appears that’s what it is. You don’t bother to deal with most of that other evidence, including the consistent opinion of his closest confidantes that he was NOT a Christian. And Hitler’s anti-Semitism is founded mostly on his pseudo scientific reading. The background culture of Germany was, of course, shaped by the blood libel idea, but nothing in Hitler’s writings or speeches references that. Your conclusions don’t fit the evidence and it seems you have an emotional need to hold them. They aren’t rationally based.

        2. So, you base your thesis that Hitler was a Christian on one speech from the early 1920s which was held in the heat of an argument and actually proves that he was not a Christian (that is, in any meaningful sense of the term)?

  34. It seems strange to me that anyone would ask for evidence that Hitler was lying about any particular fact of his life, his career, his plans, or his activities. He lied all the time, sometimes inventing facts, sometimes covering them, and always in order to give himself room to manipulate and deceive his multiple audiences. He frequently changed his lies, too, such as his lies about whether he intended to invade Britain, or the Soviet Union, or Czechoslovakia, or Poland. Sometimes he said he would, and sometimes he said he would not. Sometimes he called himself a peacemaker and insisted that it was Britain, as led by Winston Churchill, that insisted on war. Well, you could call Hitler a peacemaker, if you were willing to accept that this included allowing him to overrun the whole of Europe, and possibly the USSR. It depended on one’s interpretation of peace.

    So too does one’s ability to consider Hitler a Christian. Given his capacity for lies, his general tendency to say whatever he thought would put him in the most advantageous position with his audience, his constant changes of mind when it suited him – and some of these were probably also sincere because he was a volatile, mercurial man, I am exactly as willing to consider him a Christian as I am willing to consider him a peacemaker.

  35. It’s interesting that you quote extensively from Steigmann-Gall who’s book was notable for drawing the positive connection between Nazism and Christian thought.

    His conclusion was that Hitler’s religious beliefs changed over time. Originally an advocate of Christian faith he eventually abandoned it.

    “ The contradictions and inconsistencies found in Table talk on many issues make it impossible to claim to know Hitler’s mind. Nonetheless, certain tendencies in his thought are discemable. Hitler’s change from positive Christian to anti-Christian is arguably the most important example of religious transformation considered in this study. Even though he never converted to paganism, Hitler nonetheless became increasingly opposed to Christian institutions and, … to the Christian religion as well…

    In fact, Hitler’s professed hatred of Christianity was shot through
    with ambiguity and contradiction. Even as he accused Christianity of being Jewish and Bolshevik, at all times he carefully protected the Jew Jesus from his attacks. According to Hitler, Christ’s “original message” could still be detached from what was iater called Christianity. In other words, Hitler continued his long-held belief that the unfettered ideas of Christ were different fiom the ideas of the churches. Elsewhere, Hitler went even further indicating an appreciation for certain aspects of Christian teaching, and even a remorse that the churches had failed to back him and his movement as he had hoped.”

    “In October 1937, Hitler commented privately: “1 have been fieed, after an intense inner stniggle, fiom the still living and childish imaginings of religion…. I now feel as free as a colt in the pasture.”

    In July 1941, he hailed Luther and his translation of the Bible as revolutionary:

    “Luther had the merit of rising against the Pope and the organisation of the Church. It was the £ïrst of the great revolutions. And thanks to his translation of the Bible, Luther replaced our dialects by the great German lang~age!”

    Aside from the “Table Talk,” other sources point to residues of a Christian attitude in Hitler.

    As Albert Speer recalled:

    “Even after 1942…regarded the church as indispensable in political life. He would be happy, he said in one of those teatime talks at Obersalzberg, if someday a prominent churchman tumed up wno was suited to lead one of the churches…”

    Hitler’s capacity for self-contradiction was enormous. Nonetheless, on some subjects Hitler remained consistent. As we have seen, he never demoted Jesus, regardless of his audience…

    At Obersalzburg as well as “in secret,” Hitler indicated that he still approved the idea of a Christian state church, even though he clearly given up on its practicability in the German case.“

    In summary, I don’t think a semantic label of “Christian” is that important. But what’s notable is the extent to which Nazism was influenced by Christian thought overall, as demonstrated by Steigmann-Gall.

    If Hitler was a Christian he was a perverse and heretical one. His ideas about Jesus expressed in “positive Christianity” are clearly derivative of Christian thought. His hatred of Jews is consistent with Luther’s thought. Whatever religious beliefs he held were subordinate to his political views and lust for power.

    It’s certain that Hitler’s views were directly influenced by Christianity. Whether one can label him a Christian, a heretical Christian, or a non Christian is largely a matter of definitions, and not really very important at the end of the day.

    1. It’s interesting that you quote extensively from Steigmann-Gall who’s book was notable for drawing the positive connection between Nazism and Christian thought.

      I think his book is useful in many respects. But I think he’s wrong about Hitler changing from Christian (in some sense) to anti-Christian. That he simply dropped all outward pretence of any kind of Christian belief fits the evidence far better.

    2. >”In July 1941, he hailed Luther and his translation of the Bible as revolutionary”

      In the same table talks Hitler says this about Bible:
      “In a monologue in June 1942, Hitler again expressed disdain for the Bible, especially the Old Testament. He regretted that the Finnish people’s religiosity was based on the Bible because it was permeated with Jewishness. According to Hitler, religious people like the Finns, who during long winters seek their religion in the Bible, “must become mentally crippled” and fall into “religious delusion.” Moreover, Hitler lamented that the Bible had been translated into German because this made Jewish doctrines readily available to the German people. It would have been better, he stated, if the Bible had remained only in Latin, rather than causing mental disorders and delusions.” ~ Richard Weikart, Hitler’s religion.

      >”As Albert Speer”

      The same Speer also records in his memoirs that there are NO PLACE for Churches in Hitler’s Germania, also he records how Hitler thought it would much better if Germans had been Muslims or some Japanese religion, than Christianity.

      “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”
      ~ Hitler, Albert Speer, Memoirs

      >”If Hitler was a Christian he was a perverse and heretical one.”

      If you are applying such a LOOSE definition to be Christian, then even Nietzsche qualifies as Christian, because Nietzsche respected Jesus in his Anti-Christ, where he calls Jesus as ‘good tidings’ and Paul(who Nietzsche like Hitler believes subverted Jesus’s teaching) as ‘bad tiding’.
      Also, all the Muslims around the world would be qualified as Christians, since according to their doctrine they must respect Jesus as a prophet.
      See how weak your argument is??

      1. Rubbish. Muslims dont claim to be Christian nor does Nietzsche.

        Hitler made contradictory statements about Christianity throughout his life.

        What is indisputable is the influence of Christian ideas within Nazism.

        1. “Muslims don’t claim to be Christian”

          Funnily enough they sometimes do. Sometimes Muslim Daii (evangelists) will claim that Muslims are the true Christians because they follow the “true” teachings of Jesus, and us Christians distort it. Which actually goes towards Tim O’Neill’s point. That people will claim to be something for a political or religious reason. Which is precisely what Hitler did.

  36. Perhaps do that rare thing and agree to disagree politely.

    I think the influence of Christianity on Nazism is important to acknowledge.

    As to whether Hitler was ever actually a Christian. To be honest I think both views are reasonable and the evidence is not conclusive either way.

    1. Perhaps do that rare thing and agree to disagree politely.

      That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

      I think the influence of Christianity on Nazism is important to acknowledge.

      Good thing I’ve done so at some length then.

      As to whether Hitler was ever actually a Christian. To be honest I think both views are reasonable and the evidence is not conclusive either way.

      I and almost all historians disagree with you on that.

      1. Well that’s an oddly disagreeable response.

        It’s also odd that you spend much of your article quoting a historian (Richard Steigman-Gall) who disagrees with you, without acknowledging as much in your piece. And then see fit to lecture me for holding the same view.

        And your other historian is a strange choice. Are you at all familiar with his earlier work?

        “Weikart is best known for his 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany. The Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, funded the book’s research. The academic community has been widely critical of the book. Regarding the thesis of Weikart’s book, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards wrote that Hitler was not a Darwinian and criticized Weikart for trying to undermine evolution. Richards said that there was no evidence that Hitler read Darwin, and that some influencers of Nazism such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain were opposed to evolution.”

        As you note, there are good reasons to understand why many historians have been reluctant to acknowledge the Christian influence on Nazism.

        “Steigmann-Gall shows how this accommodation of Christianity by the Nazis and of Nazism by most German Christians has been downplayed by a lot of historical analysis and details the complex interplay by which two seemingly incompatible ideologies found quite a bit of comfortable common ground; something many later Christian commentators have found quite uncomfortable.”

        1. Well that’s an oddly disagreeable response.

          No, it isn’t. I’ve been perfectly civil with you, so stop being weirdly defensive.

          It’s also odd that you spend much of your article quoting a historian (Richard Steigman-Gall) who disagrees with you, without acknowledging as much in your piece.

          Wrong. I’m quite clear on that point: ” Ultimately, Steigmann-Gall believes that the “Table Talk” documents support the idea that Hitler was anti-Christian, though he believes this was a later development and represented a change in Hitler’s ideas and attitudes (see the “Conclusion” in The Holy Reich, particularly the discussion on p. 265).”

          Are you at all familiar with his earlier work?

          Yes. As I’ve said to another commenter here, noting Weikart’s biases, “that’s why I depended more on the evidence he collects rather than his conclusions.”

          I think you’ve made clear your position and why you hold it. I find your arguments completely unpersuasive.

        2. >”As you note, there are good reasons to understand why many historians have been reluctant to acknowledge the Christian influence on Nazism.”

          That’s because,
          “The contention that National Socialism was profoundly anti-Christian movement endured for so long not because it was convenient for researches not to prove otherwise but because it is a FACT.”
          ~ Ernst Piper, Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, (Critique of Richard Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich)

          Also, I think you are not aware of the fact that Steigman-Gall’s thesis was soundly refuted by many other scholars, one such which I quote above, and Steigman-Gall to prove his false thesis he involved in various I dare to say intentional mistranslation, one such example is given in this very article about “God’s truth”.

          And the other one was Steigman-Gall falsely asserts Rosenberg as “administrative clerk” when the original German source which he cites, Bracher’s book, whereas Bracher’s German text describes Rosenberg as ‘der Weltanschauungsprokurist des Nationalsozialisum’, which is translated as “worldview authority”, This was demonstrated by Irving Hexham in his critique against Steigman-Gall book, So Steigman-Gall is so honest that he intentional mistranslates such things.

  37. Tim, excellent article.
    I request you to read: ‘Christ on the Crooked Cross: The Divinity of Jesus in Hitler’s Weltanschauung by
    Mikael Nilsson” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9809.12737?af=R

    Where Mikael Nilsson tries to portray Hitler as believing in the divinity of Jesus, I am not convinced, since all these examples he cites are in the period of 1920s(the period where Hitler HAD TO LIE to gain votes), If I recall correctly(I may be wrong, I read that a few months ago) he doesn’t give on single proof from 30s and 40s.
    Also, he doesn’t address the very fact Hitler did not believe(on the contrary he hated) in the Old Testament which is the foundation of the New Testament, and this in itself completely refutes if Hitler never saw Jesus as divine.
    Mikael Nilsson tries to amass one, two examples from obscure sources to show that Hitler believed in the divinity of Jesus on the contrary Richard Weikar in his book, shows plenty of evidence from Mein Kampf, Speech and private conversation that Hitler saw Nature as divine. So in my opinion there is abundant proof of Hitler seeing Nature as divine, where there is NO PROOF(in my opinion) that Hitler ever saw Jesus as divine.

    Overall Mikael Nilsson tried but failed.

      1. I assume you are referring to his ‘Hitler Redux’
        Actually after all his analysis of the Table Talks, in the final conclusion, he says this: “However, and this is very important, the results presented in this book should absolutely not be interpreted as meaning that the table talks are not authentic. THEY REALLY ARE, at least, for the most part, memoranda of statements that Hitler made at some point or another in his wartime HQs”

        In other words, Hitler’s Table Talks(German) underwent scrutinizing test and came out to be as reliable and authentic.
        This is important because other than Goebbels Diaries, Rosenberg Diaries, and other memoirs(which all corroborate with Table Talks in regards to Hitler’s view on Christianity) it is from Table Talks where can find the greatest insight into what Hitler really thought about Christianity.

  38. Well that was one of the most comprehensive articles on the was he or wasn’t he topic of religiosity. Given Hitler’s upbringing and the society of the time it is unlikely that he did not start off religious and as the Catholics tend to be keen on early indoctrination of their flock those psychological hooks go pretty deep. Surprisingly popping up in adults whom one might otherwise consider to be non religious on the most unexpected of occasions. So why not in Hitler. I suppose it comes down to the concept attributed to Seneca that Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

    1. So why not in Hitler.

      Because while some people are indoctrinated early and so remain or become somewhat semi-religious later in life, many others are and yet became firm or even fanatical unbelievers. So it doesn’t follow that Hitler falls into the first category – he could just as easily fall into the second. Most of the atheists I know were raised in a religion. Many of them were heavily indoctrinated and actually believed in their teens or even in their twenties or later. And they are now definitely unbelievers, some of them vehemently so. I was raised in a religious family. Like Hitler, I began to sincerely doubt in my teens and abandoned all belief before I turned 20. I can assure you that I’m an atheist.

      So “may have” does not mean “necessarily did”. Which means we look at the evidence, which shows – as I argue above – that Hitler abandoned his Christian beliefs in his mid teens and was vehemently anti-Christian after that,. But remained a theist.

      1. My understanding is that Hitler’s father, unlike his mother, was not a believer and encouraged an attitude of skepticism in his son.

          1. Sorry for the redundancy. I read your article some time ago but have since forgotten some of it. I’ll check next time!

  39. mien kampf was written by hitler him self the gott mitt uns belt buckles mean god with us in german. you’re a special kind of stupid for refuting hitler’s own biography and the belt buckles

    1. I talk about what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. What we can’t do is take a source at face value – Hitler wrote that book when his attempt at a coup had failed and he was trying to win power via a legitimate electoral route. So in his book and in the speeches of the period from 1920 to 1933 he did his best to appeal to a largely Christian German voting population. His pretence at any kind of Christianity fell away once he secured power. Did you actually read the article you’re commenting on?

      The “Gott Mitt Uns” motto was on the belt buckles of the Wehrmacht and it predated the Nazis by 60 years. It was an old Prussian motto, not a Nazi slogan. Nazi belt buckles, on the other hand, had no religious slogans. Those of the Waffen SS carried their motto “Meine Ehre heißt Treue” (My Honour is Loyalty) while those of the Hitler Youth read “Blut und Ehre” (Blood and Honour). No mention of God there.

      If you’re going to try to criticise my work, you need to get the basic facts right first. Not doing so is “a special kind of stupid”.

      1. I don’t get why anyone would mention German soldiers with that motto to say Hitler is Christian. With such a largely Christian population, removing or banning it would be a pointless middle finger to a large chunk of your soldiers. All it means is that Hitler wasn’t so batshit insane anti-Christian that he’d go out of his way to do the stupidest things to get rid of Christianity while wars still happen.

      2. >I talk about what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. What we can’t do is take a source at face value – Hitler wrote that book when his attempt at a coup had failed and he was trying to win power via a legitimate electoral route. So in his book and in the speeches of the period from 1920 to 1933 he did his best to appeal to a largely Christian German voting population.

        Even in that book Hitler clearly shows his anti-Christian opinion in one specific passage, I have posted the passages and video clips of Richard Weikart explaining that.

  40. Good, balanced discussion. You should add this to your list of “Great Myths”, as it is one of the more annoying tropes to keep surfacing in these debates. There are even websites devoted to providing quotes proving Hitler’s Christianity (just like those providing quotes to prove that Einstein was an atheist).

    Basically, then, Hitler fell somewhere between Gnosticism and Life Force worship. In later “Esoteric Hitlerism” (Miguel Serrano etc.) this becomes explicit.

  41. Would you recommend reading Weikart’s and Steigmann-Gall’s books to a lay reader? Both sound pretty biased, though not nearly as bad as that Carrier guy.

    About “wahrhaftiger Gott”, Duden has it as an example and it looks like an interjection. Guess Hitler used it there to evoke the language from creeds, but it’s a weird way to formulate a divine claim. Steigmann-Gall’s mistake seems understandable though.

    1. I would say both are very much worth reading, so long as you are aware that both writers (like all historians) have their biases.

  42. What seems to me to have escaped the consideration of collectively the Christian apologists, the late Pope, and Dawkins & the antitheism mob: Is the consideration that perhaps Adolf Hitler just wasn’t anyone who ever really gave much thought to the existence of god let alone was a very religiously aware person. I know it might seem a bit ironic given his hatred for the Jewish, but that hatred stemmed more from basic racism than from their culture, values & religion.

    Most people in this world aren’t really religious nor religiously aware (even if they declare themselves to adhere to a particular religion) nor really ever ponder what they think deities are and if they really believe in them, or if they make any sense to them. So why would’ve Hitler been among the exceptions, just because he was so politically aware and talked so much pseudo-philosophy?

    It seems to me that Hitler simply looked at the Church & Christianity and decided it was all a swindle, looked at atheists and decided he didn’t like these intellectual socialist smart-arses, and looked at astrology/the occult/paganism/mythology and thought it was all a load of rubbish also. He seems to me to be a cynical reactionary that saw things and formed negative opinions.
    Not everyone in history who did significantly terrible things had religious matters relevant to them personally.

  43. Though could Hitler be called a Christian Deist in the same way Thomas Jefferson was?

    Though even then it hardly makes Hitler a Christian, as in this vision Jesus is completely unrelated to the God of said deist and he’s just a remarkable person and if an admiration for Jesus was enough to label somebody a Christian then even important atheists such as Friedrich Nietzsche could be included in this definition.

    1. I think it’s wrong to say Jefferson was “a Christian” for the same reasons it’s wrong re Hitler. I haven’t looked closely at Jefferson’s beliefs about Jesus, but I gather they were non-religious and not supernatural.

      1. You can find plenty on Adolf Hitler’s religious views here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

        And these have come straight from his books and his speeches, and are thus verified. Here are some gems:

        “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord
        This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.

        Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties — and this against their own nation.

        Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.

        The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God’s will, and actually fulfill God’s will, and not let God’s word be desecrated. For God’s will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord’s creation, the divine will.

        We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.

        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. ”

        Hitler was very much against atheism. There are more passages in there where he describes being against atheism, while supporting Christianity.

        1. Hitler was very much against atheism. There are more passages in there where he describes being against atheism, while supporting Christianity.

          You don’t seem to have bothered to read the article you’re commenting on. Yes, he was against atheism. I said this in the article above, and make it perfectly clear he was not an atheist and was very much a believer in a God. So why are you quoting stuff from him about God at me? No he did not “support Christianity”, other than for his political ends early in his career. Look at the dates of any quotes that seem to support Christianity – they tend to be pre-1933. Once he came to power and he no longer needed to win votes from believers, these quotes disappear. Read the article above.

        2. That Wikipedia page is not very good it claims Hitler is a Catholic that uses one quote from 1940 but there’s several other quotes private of him where he completely contradicts that sitting the church is let it fade and also another quote where he says let the Catholic party in the area be driven out with whips

        3. (*sighs*)
          Just because someone isn’t atheist and is against atheism doesn’t mean that they’re also Christian nor pro Christianity by default.

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