Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Was Hitler a Christian?

Couldn't let this one go (from comments.) Being a "student" of history, I am always learning, but I was pretty sure that Hitler wasn't a Christian (I vaguely remembered something about Pagan symbolism.) In order to back up my "half-learned" knowledge, I found the following quotes of his- all from around 1941 or later. Well after Mein Kampf.

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


There are more anti-Christian quotes from Hilter in the above link. It was not Christianity, but Paganism that Hitler and other Facists were drawn to :

The Nazis defended paganism, both during the early stages, and also when they came to power in 1933. They tore German society away from Christianity, and tried to turn it to pagan beliefs.
A short while after Hitler came to power, Christian holidays and festivals were replaced by pagan ones. 'Mother Earth' or 'Father Sky' were called on at wedding ceremonies. In 1935, Christian prayers in schools were stopped, and then all lessons concerning Christianity were banned.
Schoolchildren were taught the so-called 'Glorious pre-Christian German history,' and various rites and ceremonies, legacies of pagan culture, were held all over Germany. All Nazi meetings were in the form of traditional pagan ceremonies. There was almost no difference between Nazi rallies, held under the shadow of flaming torches, where slogans full of hate and violence were shouted and Wagner's pagan music played, and the perverted ceremonies carried out thousands of years ago at pagan temples and altars.
The Nazis also used the arts to re-awaken paganism. Ancient Greek concepts and symbols began to predominate under Nazi rule, and many statues similar to Greek statues were made, showing strong men and women of the Aryan race.


This is not to say that bad things haven't happened under the (false) name of Christianity. But, the monkey ain't on our back for Nazism.