Was Hitler a Christian?

[Butters]

I see that the old argument of whether Hitler was a Christian or not has again come up. I believe that if anyone was objective and they would have to come to the conclusion that Hitler was not Christian. However this stance alone ignores the larger picture. Namely that Hitler professed to be a Christian. That Hitler used Christianity to consolidate his own power. The lesson that should be learned is to not blindly follow someone that claims to be a Christian. Since it is obvious that in virtually any political or social position can be backed by quoting scripture (even the devil can cite Scripture for his own purpose- William Shakespeare) that religion should be excluded from the political arena. What if and Jim Baker had become president? What give Jimmy Swaggart had become president? What if the David Koresh had become president? The problem is not whether Hitler was a Christian or not, but that you fooled his entire nation into believing he was. He used Christianity as a basis for his political objectives. The rampant anti Semitism that was perpetuated by the Christian church was the key factor in allowing the Holocaust to occur. You will note that all evidence of Hitler not being a Christian comes from his personal journals or other records only revealed at the end of the war. What is funny, is that you asked the average German it they believed it was a Christian, they will all say yes. Now " all " is a large inclusive word, but to after living in Germany for eight years, I can tell you that this belief is overwhelming. Below are some quotes, and a short article that shows how Hitler presented himself to the world.

"The national government ... will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality." - Adolf Hiter, The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872.
"Today Christians ... stand at the head of Germany ... 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 ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... (few) years." - Adolf Hitler. Ibid, pg. 871-872.

An Associated Press article from the Lansing State Journal, February 23, 1933, is headlined, "Hitler Aims Blow at 'Godless' Move," and talks about how Hitler was campaigning against atheist communists and wanted support from Catholic Nazis. One line in the article specifically says, "Hitler, himself, is a Catholic." (You can see the entire article at http://
3) 3)
www.infidels.org/library/his torical/unknown/hitler.html .) In addition, in 1941, Hitler told General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church. He was baptized a Roman Catholic as an infant and was a communicant and altar boy in his youth.
· · ·
In a speech at Koblenz, August 26, 1934, Hitler said: "National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity . . . For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life . . . These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles!"

2) 2) 2)
In a speech delivered April 12, 1922, published in "My New Order," and quoted in Freethought Today (April 1990), Hitler said:

My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.
Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.
As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice . . .
And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.
When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.""

An article from this site.
http://www.evilbible.com/hitler_was_christian.htm


Hitler Was a Christian
The Holocaust was caused by Christian fundamentalism:
History is currently being distorted by the millions of Christians who lie to have us believe that the Holocaust was not a Christian deed. Through subterfuge and concealment, many of today's Church leaders and faithful Christians have camouflaged the Christianity of Adolf Hitler and have attempted to mark him an atheist, a pagan cult worshipper, or a false Christian in order to place his misdeeds on those with out Jesus. However, from the earliest formation of the Nazi party and throughout the period of conquest and S growth, Hitler expressed his Christian support to the German citizenry and soldiers. Those who would make Hitler an atheist should turn their eyes to history books before they address their pews and chat rooms.
Considering that Christianity has thus far been incapable of producing an unbiased, educated follower which speaks the truth, (I haven't encountered any), I have been forced to dispel! the myth by writing this essay. It is not until I bring up his speeches, my personal info on the Nazi regime and their tactics that a Christian will begin to question what their clergy told them. (I am the offspring of a German soldier. My Opa served under Hitler in WW2 and my father was raised during the time of the Nazi regime. This is important information to take into consideration for I am privy to some info that most Americans do not know. It is common for American media and education institutions to lie to their citizens concerning Nazi Germany.) So, in presenting this information I must break it into four parts: 1) Facts about Hitler and his involvement with the Church. 2) How the Church was the catalyst for anti- Semitism. 3) Facts concerning how the Nazi regime drilled these beliefs into Germanic society. 4) Quotes Hitler made which prove he had a disdain for atheism/occultism, upheld his Christian faith, and hated Jews due to his Christianity.
Hitler's involvement with the Church:
a) Hitler was baptized as Roman Catholic during infancy in Austria.
b) As Hitler approached boyhood he attended a monastery school. (On his way to school young Adolf daily observed a stone arch which was carved with the monastery's coat of arms bearing a swastika.)
c) Hitler was a communicant and an altar boy in the Catholic Church.
d) As a young man he was confirmed as a "soldier of Christ." His most ardent goal at the time was to become a priest. Hitler writes of his love for the church and clergy: "I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal." -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
e) Hitler was NEVER excommunicated nor condemned by his church. Matter of fact the Church felt he was JUST and "avenging for God" in attacking the Jews for they deemed the Semites the killers of Jesus.
f) Hitler, Franco and Mussolini were given VETO power over whom the pope could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain and Italy. In turn they surtaxed the Catholics and gave the money to the Vatican. Hitler wrote a speech in which he talks about this alliance, this is an excerpt: "The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie." Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party
"TYPE=PICT;ALT=HitlerandthePope"

g) Hitler worked CLOSELY with Pope Pius in converting Germanic society and supporting the church. The Church absorbed Nazi ideals and preached them as part of their sermons in turn Hitler placed Catholic teachings in public education. This photo depicts Hitler with Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin. It was taken On April 20, 1939, when Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday. The celebrations were initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) and became a tradition.
Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." (If you would like to know more about the secret dealings of Hitler and the Pope I recommend you get a book titled: Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell)
h) Due to Hitler's involvement with the Church he began enacting doctrines of the Church as law. He outlawed all abortion, raged a death war on all homosexuals, and demanded corporal punishment in schools and home. Many times Hitler addressed the church and promised that Germany would implicate its teachings: "The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavor to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren ), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of today." -Adolf Hitler, on 26 June 1934, to Catholic bishops to assure them that he would take action against the new pagan propaganda "Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church." -Adolf Hitler, reportedly to have said in Berlin in 1936 on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism
How Christianity was the catalyst of the Holocaust:
Hitler's anti-Semitism grew out of his Christian education. Austria and Germany were majorly Christian during his time and they held the belief that Jews were an inferior status to Aryan Christians. The Christians blamed the Jews for the killing of Jesus. Jewish hatred did not actually spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book, "On the Jews and their Lies," Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War 2. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther constantly quoting his works and beliefs.
Now, you must remember before Hitler rose to Chancellor of Germany the country was in a deep economic depression due to the Versailles treaty. The Versailles treaty demanded that Germans made financial reparations for the previous war and Germany simply was not self sufficient enough in order to pay the debt. Hitler was the leader that raised Germany out of the depression and brought them back to a world recognized power. Due to his annulment of the financial woes of the Germanic people he became their redeemer and they anointed him as the leader of the German Reich Christian Church in 1933. This placed him in power of the German Christian Socialist movement which legislates their political and religious agendas. It united all denominations, mainly the Protestant/Catholic and Lutheran people to instill faith in a national Christianity.
How the Nazi Regime converted the people:
a) In the 1920s, Hitler's German Workers' Party (pre Nazi term) adopted a "Programme" with twenty-five points (the Nazi version of a constitution). In point twenty-four, their intent clearly demonstrates, from the very beginning, their stand in favor of a "positive" Christianity: "We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession..."
b) The Nazi regime started a youth movement which preached its agenda to impressionable children. Hitler backed up the notion that all people need faith and religious education: "By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious- dogmatic principles-- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles-- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence." - Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
c) The Nazi regime began to control schools insisting that Christianity was taught.
d) The Nazi regime included anti-Semitic Christian writings in textbooks and they were not removed from Christian doctrines until 1961.
e) The Nazi regime having full blown power over the people began to forcibly convert all its military.
"TYPE=PICT;ALT=NaziBeltBuckle"

f) The Nazi regime forced the German soldiers to wear religious symbols such as the swastika and they placed religious sayings on military gear. An example here is this German army belt buckle (I believe my Opa had one) which reads "Gott Mit Uns". For those of you who do not speak German it is translated as "God With Us".
g) The German troops were often forced to get sprinkled with holy water and listen to a sermon by a Catholic priest before going out on a maneuver.
h) The Nazis created a secret service called the "SS Reich" that would act as spies on the dealings of other citizens. If anyone was suspected of heresy (Going not only against the Socialist party but CHURCH DOCTRINE) they would be prosecuted.
Quotes from Hitler:
Hitler's speeches and proclamations, even more clearly, reveal his faith and feelings toward a Christianized Germany. Nazism presents an embarrassment to Christianity and demonstrates the danger of their faith So they try to pin him on other theistic views. The following words from Hitler show his disdain for atheism, and pagan cults, and reveal the strength of his Christian feelings:
"National Socialism is not a cult-movement-- a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship... We will not allow mystically- minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else-- in any case something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will-- not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord… Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men." -Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept.1938. [ have always accused Hitler of believing in pagan cult mythology. What is written in green clearly expresses his stand against cults.]
"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." -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 [ statement clearly refutes modern Christians who claim Hitler as favoring atheism. Hitler wanted to form a society in which ALL people worshipped Jesus and considered any questioning of such to be heresy. The Holocaust was like a modern inquisition, killing all who did not accept Jesus. Though more Jews were killed then any other it should be noted that MANY ARYAN pagans and atheists were murdered for their non-belief in Christ.]
Here Hitler uses the Bible and his Christianity in order to attack the Jews and uphold his anti-Semitism:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." -Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition."-Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is quite obvious here that Hitler is referring to destructing the Judaism alters on which Christianity was founded.)
"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. "-Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this "tradition" up until the 20th century.)
"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people.-Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is common in war for one race to rape another so that they can "defile" the race and assimilate their own. Hitler speaks about this very tactic here.)
"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, 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."-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
"…the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion." -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (See Genesis Chapter 3 where humankind is cast from Eden for their sins. Hitler compares this to the need to exterminate the Jews for their sin against Christ.)
"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." -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
"The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (This quote is very interesting for it disperses the idea that Hitler raged war due to being an Aryan supremacist. He states quite clearly that he has a problem with Jews for their belief not race. That is why many German Jews died in WW2 regardless of their Aryan nationality.)
"Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (Here Hitler is admitting that his war against the Jews were so successful because of his strong Christian Spirituality.)


So while it may be of some comfort to Christians that Hitler was not one it should serve as a warning to be skeptical of all those that claim to be.

[bar Jonah]

Interestingly, Anton LaVey's researched view of Hitler is that he was absolutely not a Christian, but rather a (partly) misguided follower of the neo-pagan religion called Asatru (also known as Odinism), which is a pagan belief system reconstructed from Norse pagan beliefs, and which is inherently a white supremacist religion, viewing all non-white races as "subraces."

[Pilgrim]

Perhaps it would be helpful to also make a distinction between "Christianity" and "Christiandom."

[$cirisme]

Can I ask a question? (Whoops, already did LOL)

Why does it matter?

Just because they say they are a Christian does not mean they are, and if they are, they are not automatically the best candidate. Interestingly enough, Hitler persecuted Christians, as well as any other groups who helped the Jews.

[Jimmy Higgins]

Hitler was a christian, just not a very good one. There have been plenty of evil christians just as there have been plenty of goods ones as well. The irony is they both use the same scriptures to enforce their actions, whether for good or evil.

Oh, and the reason why it is a reason is because some creationists love to say that Hitler's evil plans were bounded in the foundation of Darwin's evolution, such an idea being really arrogent and ignorant. Therefore, us infidels did a little research to counter the idiotic argument with one that shows Hitler was a christian. Obviously being a christian doesn't make you good or evil. Your actions do that.

[spl_cadet]

I suggest you check out the articles at www.catholiceducation.org on the matter of Hitler and the Church. Truth of the matter is that he rather hated the Church.

[Vorkosigan]

Today @ 11:44 PM post located here
spl_cadet:

I suggest you check out the articles at www.catholiceducation.org on the matter of Hitler and the Church. Truth of the matter is that he rather hated the Church.

Quite true. The truth of the matter, though, is that the Church did not hate him.

Hitler was some kind of fruitcake theist, but the total failure of Christianity is not evidenced by Hitler's evil, but by the vast numbers of ordinary Germans and others who supported him, up to and including the highest levels of the Catholic Church. Opposition to Hitler based on religion was individual and fragmented; support of Hitler by the religious was institutional and policy-driven. One nut is not evidence of anything. The millions of Christians who supported Hitler's extermination programs, his aggressive wars, and his authoritarian politics says volumes about Christianity.

[TheFiveSolas]

Jimmy wrote:

Hitler was a christian, just not a very good one.

I'm pretty sure I corrected you on this in another thread.

(Rhetorical Question) IF Hitler was a Christian, as opposed to someone that made the claim so that he could SWAY the people, then why is there ENORMOUS proof to the contrary such as; Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion and Cornell's Law School documenting online "The Nazi Persecution of the Churches" (i.e., the planned, deliberate, systematic, persecution of Christians)?


http://www-camlaw.rutgers.edu/public.../nuremberg.htm

[spl_cadet]

While the Church didn't "hate" him (they don't hate anyone technically), they did consider him a dangerous madman and forbid Catholics from joining the Nazi party.

[Socrates]

Butters and Jimmy Higgins are once again bringing up the "Hitler was a Christian" lie. One must wonder why the leading Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson (portrayed by Alec Baldwin in the recent Nuremberg movie) couldn't see this, for he said at the time (from Nuremberg Trial Proceedings 2, The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School):

The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology [and] carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.’ [Leading Nazi, Martin Bormann said:] ‘More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors.’ [The viciously anti-Jewish propagandist and pornographer Julius Streicher] complained that Christian teachings have stood in the way of “racial solution of the Jewish question in Europe.”

One must wonder how another Nuremberg prosecutor, Gen. Wm. Donovan, could compile such voluminous evidence that Hitler and the other leading Nazis intended to exterminate Christianity. See the Nuremburg Project which can be read online at the Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion archive http://www-camlaw.rutgers.edu/public.../nuremberg.htm

The Five Solas also rightly recommended J.S. Conway's, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945.

And from the article Was Hitler a Christian?:

By John Baskette - but the information came from Marty Helgesen in a soc.religion.christian post.
The claim is sometimes made that Hitler was a Christian - a Roman Catholic until the day he died. In fact, Hitler rejected Christianity.

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc. first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944, which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:

• National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:

• Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday:

• The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night:

• The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

21st October, 1941, midday:

• Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

13th December, 1941, midnight:

• Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:

• Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner:

• There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday:

• It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 yearse will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

And despite Butterball's claim to the contrary, the German Confessing Church that stood for the authority of Scripture strongly opposed Hitler, and were persecuted for it. The "Church" that got behind Hitler was the LIBERAL one, which had already rejected Biblical authority, so it was a small step to accede to Hitler's demands to get rid of anything Jewish from the Bible. It is thus no accident that the Holocaust occurred in the country where liberal theology was invented and white-anted the church from within by undermining belief in Biblical authority.

Jimmy Higgins can squeal all he likes about the alleged unfairness of pointing out the evolutionary motivation of Hitler. But then he should blame the atheistic and anti-Nazi evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote (Evolution and Ethics, Putnam, NY, USA, p. 230, 1947):

The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.

[AtheistArchon]

- Anyone who disagreed with Hitler was persecuted for it.

- I've come to the personal conclusion that it matters very little what Hitler believed.

1. If he was a Christian (i.e. he called himself one), that doesn't automatically make all Christians evil, nor does it automatically make Christianity evil (although I think it can and does cause harm).

2. If he was not a Christian, that doesn't automatically mean that he didn't use Christianity with deft precision in order to sway people towards his cause(s).

- The same goes for atheistic (or not) leaders like Stalin. Anyone, even an atheist, who disagreed with him would be hamstrung.

[The Laughing Man]

Yesterday @ 09:38 PM post located here
AtheistArchon:

1. If he was a Christian (i.e. he called himself one),

I'm sorry, but that is one of the stupidest statements anyone can make about what it means to be a Christian. Anyone can simply call themselves a Christian, but that does not make it so. To be truly called a Christian, one must accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. Again, people can simply say they did that, but people who actually have done it prove it in their words and actions. Truly understanding and accepting Christ's sacrifice on the cross changes a person deeply (e.g. Saul/Paul) and it is evidenced in their lives.

[Woman]

Hell no, Hitler was no Christian. I can't believe anyone would use that as an argument to smear Christians.

Sheesh!

[bar Jonah]

Thank you, Socrates, for the outstanding posts of quotes refuting this very tired, atheist straw man.

But the quotes threw me off a little... are you sure some of those aren't quotes from Jimmy Higgins? It's so hard to tell... :brow:

[Captain Ochre]

Much of this has been covered already.
Why haven't you stopped making a claim for Hitler that you can't back up against the evidence, Jimmy?

Take a good, hard look at the evidence presented in favor of Hitler's supposed Christianity. It doesn't add up. Does he affirm the divinity of Jesus? Does he adhere to the traditional do's and don'ts of the Church. He's quoted as saying that he'll always remain a Catholic. So, what does that mean? He commits suicide and has his body burned, which ran strictly against Roman Catholic teaching of the time? What did Hitler actually do that was distinctly Catholic, aside from serving as a altar boy in a Roman Catholic Church?
Study the vague theological bits in Mein Kampf. They're few and far between (especially in such a long-winded work), and they simply don't amount to much at all.
Public speeches? Is Hitler suddenly exempt from all the canards about politics and lying? When he extols the virtues of lying to the public in Mein Kampf, was he merely lying?
Jimmy, if you wish to keep saying that Hitler was a Christian, then I'd like to see you in the Coaches Quarters, because you need to earn respect for that claim before you make it.