Embarrassed at the murderous legacy of atheist Communist regimes in the twentieth century, leading atheists seek to even the score with believers by portraying Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime as theist and specifically Christian. Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great depicts Hitler as a pagan polytheist-not exactly a conventional theist but still a theist. Atheist websites routinely claim that Hitler was a Christian because he was born Catholic, he never publicly renounced his Catholicism, and he wrote in Mein Kampf, "By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." Atheist writer Sam Harris writes that "the Holocaust marked the culmination of...two hundred years of Christian fulminating against the Jews" and therefore "knowingly or not, the Nazis were agents of religion."
How persuasive are these claims? My New York Times bestseller What's So Great About Christianity has the full story and the requisite citations but here's the condensed version. Hitler was born Catholic just as Stalin was born into the Russian Orthodox Church and Mao was raised as a Buddhist. These facts prove nothing as many people reject their religious upbringing, as these three men did. From an early age, historian Allan Bullock writes, Hitler "had no time at all for Catholic teaching, regarding it as a religion fit only for slaves and detesting its ethics."
How then do we account for Hitler's claim that in carrying out his anti-Semitic program he was an instrument of divine providence? During his ascent to power, Hitler needed the support of the German people-both the Bavarian Catholics and the Prussian Lutherans-and to secure this he occasionally used rhetoric such as "I am doing the Lord's work." To claim that this rhetoric makes Hitler a Christian is to confuse political opportunism with personal conviction. Hitler himself says in Mein Kampf that his public statements should be understood as propaganda that bears no relation to the truth but is designed to sway the masses.
The Nazi idea of an Aryan Christ who uses the sword to cleanse the earth of the Jews-what historians call "Aryan Christianity"-was obviously a radical departure from the traditional Christian understanding and was condemned as such by Pope Pius XI at the time. Moreover, Hitler's anti-Semitism was not religious, it was racial. Jews were targeted not because of their religion-indeed many German Jews were completely secular in their way of life-but because of their racial identity. This was an ethnic and not a religious designation. Hitler's anti-Semitism was secular.
Hitler's Table Talk, a revealing collection of the Fuhrer's private opinions, assembled by a close aide during the war years, shows Hitler to be rabidly anti-religious. He called Christianity one of the great "scourges" of history, and said of the Germans, "Let's be the only people who are immunized against this disease." He promised that "through the peasantry we shall be able to destroy Christianity." In fact, he blamed the Jews for inventing Christianity. He also condemned Christianity for its opposition to evolution.
Hitler reserved special scorn for the Christian values of equality and compassion, which he identified with weakness. Hitler's leading advisers like Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich and Bormann were atheists who hated religion and sought to eradicate its influence in Germany.
Recognizing the absurdity of equating Nazism with Christianity, Christopher Hitchens seeks to push Hitler into the religious camp by portraying his ideology as a "quasi-pagan phenomenon." Hitler may have been a polytheist who worshipped the pagan gods, Hitchens suggests, but polytheism is still theism. This argument fails to distinguish between ancient paganism and modern paganism. It's true that Hitler and the Nazis drew heavily on ancient archetypes-mainly Nordic and Teutonic legends-to give their vision a mystical aura. But this was secular mysticism, not religious mysticism.
The ancient Germanic peoples truly believed in the pagan gods. Hitler and the Nazis, however, relied on ancient myths in the modern form given to them by Nietzsche and Wagner. For Nietzsche and Wagner, there was no question of the ancient myths being true. Wagner no more believed in the Norse god Wotan than Nietzsche believed in Apollo. For Hitler and the Nazis, the ancient myths were valuable because they could give depth and significance to a secular racial conception of the world.
In his multi-volume history of the Third Reich, historian Richard Evans writes that "the Nazis regarded the churches as the strongest and toughest reservoirs of ideological opposition to the principles they believed in." Once Hitler and the Nazis came to power, they launched a ruthless drive to subdue and weaken the Christian churches in Germany . Evans points out that after 1937 the policies of Hitler's government became increasingly anti-religious.
The Nazis stopped celebrating Christmas, and the Hitler Youth recited a prayer thanking the Fuhrer rather than God for their blessings. Clergy regarded as "troublemakers" were ordered not to preach, hundreds of them were imprisoned, and many were simply murdered. Churches were under constant Gestapo surveillance. The Nazis closed religious schools, forced Christian organizations to disband, dismissed civil servants who were practicing Christians, confiscated church property, and censored religious newspapers. Poor Sam Harris cannot explain how an ideology that Hitler and his associates perceived as a repudiation of Christianity can be portrayed as a "culmination" of Christianity.
If Nazism represented the culmination of anything, it was that of the nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century ideology of social Darwinism. Read historian Richard Weikart's revealing study, From Darwin to Hitler. As Weikart documents, both Hitler and Himmler were admirers of
The Nazis also drew on the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, adapting his atheist philosophy to their crude purposes. Nietzsche's vision of the ubermensch and his elevation of a new ethic "beyond good and evil" were avidly embraced by Nazi propagandists. Nietzsche's "will to power" almost became a Nazi recruitment slogan. I am not for a moment suggesting that Darwin or Nietzsche would have approved of Hitler's ideas. But Hitler and his henchmen approved of Darwin's and Nietzsche's ideas. Harris simply ignores the evidence of the Nazis' sympathies for
So in addition to the mountain of corpses that the God-hating regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pot Pot and others have produced, we must add the body count of the God-hating Nazi regime. The Nazis, like the Communists, deliberately targeted the churches and the believers because they wanted to create a new man and a new utopia freed from the shackles of traditional religion and traditional morality. In an earlier blog, I asked what is atheism's contribution to civilization? One answer to that question: Genocide.
Reader Comments ( Page 3 of 39)
31. You claim that Hitler was not a Christian but you claim that Bush is? Bush has condoned the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan but as in Germany's war days the bulk of the population thought of Hitler as a great leader. Hitler controlled the media, major corporate conglomerates control our media. Other countries can see Bush for what he really is as did other countries during Hitlers reign. Hitler had many major religious leaders in his country backing him just as you and the fundamental christian right are doing with Bush.
Rick at 9:42AM on Nov 2nd 2007
32. Does anyone believe anything that Dinesh writes? Does anyone not think that all he does is use the same, tired, refuted-to-death nonsense that all the other apologists use?
Knight_of_BAAWA at 9:49AM on Nov 2nd 2007
33. Was Hitler a "sincere" Christian? Obviously not. But in a country that was 65% Protestant and 33% Catholic, what would ANY cynical politician do? It was important for Hitler NOT to alienate his followers for many of whom their Christian identity was important, even though in his heart of hearts he was no Christian. See http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/HitlersFaith.html .
If you can't imagine how Hitler could have gotten away with this deception, just look at the way a cynical politician in our own time has lied, stolen and cheated his way to the highest office of the land, doing the very opposite of what Jesus Christ taught all the way, and yet has managed to convince the most pious of Christian clergy that George W. Bush is a model Christian!
Ray Dubuque at 1:23PM on Nov 2nd 2007
34. Anyone who uses AH as an argument against atheism should be prepared for the argument that he was a theist, and I really don't think this discussion has any merit either way. And no, I'd say you could say he was christian, but not Christian. A christian is someone who thinks he's a Christian, a Christian is someone who actually lives by Christ's example, which he obviously did not.
Mokele Mbembe at 10:36AM on Nov 2nd 2007
35. Was Hitler a "sincere" Christian? Obviously not. But in a country that was 65% Protestant and 33% Catholic, what would ANY cynical politician do? It was important for Hitler NOT to alienate his followers for many of whom their Christian identity was important, even though in his heart of hearts he was no Christian. See http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/HitlersFaith.html .
If you can't imagine how Hitler could have gotten away with this deception, just look at the way a cynical politician in our own time has lied, stolen and cheated his way to the highest office of the land, doing the very opposite of what Jesus Christ taught all the way, and yet has managed to convince the most pious of Christian clergy that George W. Bush is a model Christian!
Ray Dubuque at 1:20PM on Nov 2nd 2007
36. I'm against religion because it certainly is scary to be so sure of the written word in this thing called the bible. Let's remember the Church was going to burn Galileo because he had scientific fact and they had the word of some god. They'd burn anyone else with like mind. Poor Joan of Arc, that they burned and they made a saint. The Church went about burning and torturing folks until about the 19th Century. Yes, the inquisition was still going in the 18th Century, though the methods changed.
Hitler was appealing to the god-believing masses and using Jewish hatred and christian values to ascend to the position he had. Of course, he believed in some deity, occult or otherwise, so perhaps he had a melange of Christianity and other ideas, but he was certainly using god for his means.
As for morality, give me those who don't quote chapter and verse of a book that seems to exemplify evil, seems to condone a sense of superiority, and definity exalts a miserable, lonely, selfish, ego-centric creation of Man.
ethical at 10:41AM on Nov 2nd 2007
37. I can't say certain whether he was a christian, but he sure had a talent for pandering to and using christians, and those christians sure had a talent for being used.
Mokele Mbembe at 11:02AM on Nov 2nd 2007
38. Hitler was not an atheist. It is clear that he believed in God. Whether it was paganism or Christianity, it certainly wasn't atheism.
The Germans who murdered 13 million innocent people were definitely not atheist. Quite the contrary, they had a firm belief in God and were also Christian.
Hitler did not use atheist beliefs to manipulate the German people to support his regime. He used Christian beliefs to brainwash the German people to his cause. Regardless of their Christian morality, these people became murderers and commited shocking atrocities against mankind, and quite frankly, their religious beliefs was in large part responsible.
If Hitler was an atheist, there would have been no Holocaust.
If the German people were atheists, there would have been no genocide.
Regardless of Dinesh's inflammatory rant, theism remains the largest contributor to genocide.
Eric at 11:03AM on Nov 2nd 2007
39. Interesting that I don’t see any references of reformer Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic writings—which for years fueled the inner sentiment of the Christians toward the Jewish people. Nor any reference of Hitler’s appreciation of the German passion plays. So is it safe to say that all the fascist leaders were non-theist? How many people voted for the Nazi party and what was their religious affiliation? As for the rational thinkers and artist, mostly atheist, they were driving out of the country.
Another consideration is Christian leaders like Jim Jones, David Koresh and others, where do they fit in? Were they true followers or no?
Helio at 11:10AM on Nov 2nd 2007
40. It's ridiculous to say that Hitler was a Christian when he clearly subscribed to a virulent form of Darwinism. Nothing in Christianity or Christian history (bad as it is) comes close to exterminating the physically undesirable. Jesus said, "Whatsoever you do to these, the least of my bretheren, you do unto me."
That certainly isn't something to which Hitler subscribed.
Religion is ultimately a personal matter. When religion is comingled with politics, it becomes corrupted, and it's followers manipulated.
Hitler was obviously an atheist, but he used and manipulated Christians for his murderous political purposes. However he also manipulated the scientists and progressive thinkers of his time, and convinced them that it was in the best interest of the Aryan race to exterminate "inferiors."
It's almost completely worthless to discuss religion with regards to dictators, but rather look at the personality traits that might bear watching.
Zelda at 11:52AM on Nov 2nd 2007
41. Dinesh, have you read Martin Luther's treatise On the Jews and Their Lies? You should. Maybe it would reveal to you something new about the origins of anti-semitism in the Nazi Germany.
Konstantin at 12:00PM on Nov 2nd 2007
42. Thank God there is someone out there to point out the fallacy of such arguments. It is true that with religion, as with any type of organization in which there is a power heirarchy, those at the top often use their power for selfish and destructive purposes. With religion this power is weilded often in opposition to the teachings on which the power is supposedly derived.
When it comes to hilter it is clear that he himself was attempting to bring about a new religion. Although this religion of his had aspects of norse mysticism in it, the religion itself was most directly impacted by the evolution and darwinism. Hitler beleived the "aryan" people were genetically superior to all other races. Which is why all competition and inferior races had to be eliminated so that the "aryan" breed could flourish. This survival of the fittest mentallity also led to his execution of the handicapped, both mentally and physically, because the were not worthy of survival. Clearly Hilter motivations can not be labeled as christian. If anything he should be labeled as a madman who took Darwinian principles to the extreme.
matthew at 12:15PM on Nov 2nd 2007
43. Dinesh, after watching you debate, reading some of your book, and reading many of your articles, I realize that you seem desperate to defend your Christian belief system.
The simple fact of the matter is that religion (or lack thereof) is a personal experience that has little or nothing to do with one's confession or circumstance of birth. You and your atheist adversaries see the world in black & white. It isn't. I know priests personally who don't believe in God. I know people who would never go to a church who live by Jesus' example.
Arguing about whether the Nazi's were Christian is ridiculous. Ostensibly they were. They put Iron Crosses on their warplanes and tanks. They fought the "godless" communists. Whether Hitler or Mussolini or Franco were "true" Christians is rather doubtful. No military leader could be said to be following Jesus' example. Very few people in any society can say that they live by that benchmark. Despite your obvious sincerity, I would guess that you are not wandering homeless in poverty, casting out money-changers, or attempting to heal the sick.
People associated with every movement on this earth have done horrible things. People associated with every movement on this earth have done glorious things as well. The problem is trying to lump everyone into vague conceptions of various abstract words.
jahsundreamking at 12:41PM on Nov 2nd 2007
44. Let me tell you exactly how Hitler operated.
He was a secular earth leader. He used all that he could to control the people.
This control ranged from death to ideological tools of mental subversion and control.
Religion has long been misused as a tool AGAINST GOD's will. Truly abhorrent behavior.
Hitler's personal beliefs laid nowhere within the faithful boundaries. He simply USED the appearance of moral purpose to commit atrocity against GOD and man. This moral purpose showed through atheist self-righteous action and "holy" moral cause.
He pushed his whole agenda as a type of "holy" expedition against the "wrong". He eventually destroyed his country and himself - evidence of his inner turmoil and unbridled insanity.
He tried to be clever, by man's terms, to push this "holy" movement through a completely secular light and spin this secular movement as "holy". Did you grasp that?
This is not a discourse on "atheist vs. christian". This is a statement of Truly Faithful versus Ignorance.
Have a blessed day.
P.S. Love all those who are faithful, for not all that are faithful just instantly know the path to God - but are nevertheless worthy of the knowledge to be taught by the men of God. You must teach those who do not know. The truth will be embraced by all who are truly faithful and does not distinguish between Islam, Jew, Hindu, Christian. All who see will become a light unto the world and a truth upon themselves.
mincpa at 12:40PM on Nov 2nd 2007
45. Social Darwinism has NOTHING to do with science, Darwin, or evolution. zero. zilch. what the little boy shot at.
It's at best a corrupt utopian social model based on complete ignorance of evolution.
Or another christian straw man, like saying 'atheist' when they mean 'science', their REAL enemy.
Trying to equate them is like what the nazis did to earn their infamy. Close, but no lampshade.
You can certainly add 'social darwinism to ANY regime, just like you can religion.
Religion fits right into naziism and fascism. Mussolini inherited the catholic church, Hitler established a Natonal Bishop and National Church.
Yeah, their christianity was twisted, but so is evangelical christianity. To me both are cults.
Look at Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, Dobson, Haggert, d'nesh, sun myung moon, the whole sorry lot of dominionists.
How are they different from nazis? They haven't gone as far yet, but give them the power and not much time and they certainly will! Since god's with them, they don't need to take any personal inventory, let god sort it out!
Both feet are on the slippery slope to despotism right now, and about half the christians that post here love it!
Do you neo-calvinists think the lady from bavaria was lying?
Because it encourages human oppression 'social darwinism' (why not social lysenkoism or social lamarkism?)is a failed right wing quasi-political philosophy, an excuse for totalitarianism.
Mussolini's writings hint at some of the same mentation. It's not really any different from libertarianism if you think about it. They all wind up in the same snakepit with their roods, iron crosses and fasci.
Dinesh may not like Hitler but he has no problem using the same tactics. Reading that tripe at the top of the page made me want to vomit.
In fact, I see a lot of hitleresque 'gott mit uns' christians posting here, a substantial percentage of the holy posts.
Thankfully, people like that are a much smaller minority in the US, or we'd already be wearing our black and brown shirts and gay and liberal armbands.
The cross was a german symbol in both wars. Hitler was just another heinous christian, but here comes reformation!
kristallnacht for jesus, anyone?
Everything 'jesus' said, he also unsaid, which is why both nazis and dominionist can find support for any bigotry they want to practice.
Clif Kuplen at 12:40PM on Nov 2nd 2007