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 5 of 39)
61. i you think Hitler was a Christian you have no judgement of right or wrong...or a very warped one!
coop at 1:21PM on Nov 2nd 2007
62. I have tried three times to add my comments, and they don't appear. I am feeling discriminated against. Reading these comments, there are people who have so much to say that is so well documented.
I have mu gut reactions and my feelings.
Who knows what stories in the Bible are true?
Who knows if it is the word of God? The despots mentioned have all used religion to manipulate people. As for Hitler being a Christian, how could someone so evil be a follower of the premises set forth in the Judeo-Christian religious tenets?
Lastly, where did they think they were going when they died? All dressed up in there uniforms and no where to go.
bobbiann garrett at 1:25PM on Nov 2nd 2007
63. Besides, christians CLAIM that their religion is moral and upright, and so it then becomes appropriate to point it out WHEN IT ISN'T, since it's so hypocritical to claim the moral high ground and then go on to do bad things.
Atheism makes NO MORAL claims of it's own, therefore one cannot say that an evil atheist is also a hypocrite, since they are not followers of a path that makes specific claims to high morality. They are just evil men. But a christian that does evil is also a hypocrite, since their religion is supposed to give them moral fiber and lead them to the path of good, and THEY SAY THIS ALL THE TIME. They are the ones that (pridefully) claim to BE GOOD, and so when they demonstrate that they are NOT GOOD, it's laughable hypocrisy. It's also their religion FAILING THEM somehow, since they thought that they were good when they weren't.
Brian at 1:30PM on Nov 2nd 2007
64. I was baptized a Catholic and am now a Methodist. But I have seen more abuse of the words Christian and Christianity, especia.lly in regard to those who advertise as Christian Business run on Christian Principles. In fact, if someone introduces themselves to me and indicates immediately that they are Christians, I can't get across the room fast enough
bobbiann garrett at 1:38PM on Nov 2nd 2007
65. Brian,
Again a speech made by a madman who I believe was diagnosed with a venereal disease in his lifetime and to put it mildly, he was all gone in his head and his body. Nothing to do with Christ like their.
Again, a mad man who got control over a starving nation, who took what he wanted you know kind of like the Anti-Christ who someday will be on the scene. rita
rita at 1:33PM on Nov 2nd 2007
66. mincpa:"GOD HAS SPECIFICALLY TOLD US NOT TO DO THESE TERRIBLE ACTIONS."
??????????????????????????????????????
Uh, you hearing voices?
Linda at 1:29PM on Nov 2nd 2007
67. Before I begin, I want to state that I am a practising Roman Catholic.
Having said that - I think this post misses a critical issue --- as does much of the atheistic rhetoric--
The issue is not God, however you define God -- but what people do in the name of that God
Hitler's rhetoric worked because many believers listened to and took the propaganda at face value.
I agree that Hitler was not religious in any meaningful use of the world -- but the millions who did his bidding and without whom the evil could not have been perpetrated were.
sally at 1:41PM on Nov 2nd 2007
68. Besides, christians CLAIM that their religion is moral and upright, and so it then becomes appropriate to point it out WHEN IT ISN'T, since it's so hypocritical to claim the moral high ground and then go on to do bad things.
Atheism makes NO MORAL claims of it's own, therefore one cannot say that an evil atheist is also a hypocrite, since they are not followers of a path that makes specific claims to high morality. They are just evil men. But a christian that does evil is also a hypocrite, since their religion is supposed to give them moral fiber and lead them to the path of good, and THEY SAY THIS ALL THE TIME. They are the ones that (pridefully) claim to BE GOOD, and so when they demonstrate that they are NOT GOOD, it's laughable hypocrisy. It's also their religion FAILING THEM somehow, since they thought that they were good when they weren't.
Brian at 1:31PM on Nov 2nd 2007
69. Zelda wrote: "Hitler was obviously an atheist..."
Why do you say that? For the sake of argument, let's say Hitler was an atheist. Are you suggesting that, for MOST people, being an atheist makes it harder to be ethical? Or, are you saying that, for SOME people, being an atheist makes it harder to be ethical? I'm an atheist, and I'm ethical. My atheism doesn't make it harder for me to be ethical. I don't think being an atheist makes it harder for anyone to be ethical. Atheists are, in general, no less ethical than theists. And if atheism tended to make it harder for some people to be ethical, perhaps one would see atheists doing unethical acts at a higher rate than theists. I don't see that.
However, for the sake of argument, let’s say that, for some people, being atheist does make -- or would make it -- harder for them to be ethical. That is completely irrelevant to whether I know that there is no God. Similarly, suppose Louis the 14th did some things he shouldn’t have partly because he believed in heliocentrism. I’m still quite sure that the earth revolves around the sun.
Wes at 1:31PM on Nov 2nd 2007
70. mincpa: you said that we (atheists) blame god for the woes of the world. Certainly not true. It's what people do in the name of their mythological baliefs that we blame. That is what creates the self-rightousness of harming others in the name of your "religion". Just imagine that this reality is all there is: we must do the best we can for this earth, not a pretend one.
Sorry, I'm rambling.
Linda at 1:33PM on Nov 2nd 2007
71. When regular people are upset at christians for being hypocrites, they're not upset at the ones that actually follow the words of christ, they are upset at those that THINK that they follow christ and do the opposite of what Christ would ever do in the world. Hence the "hypocrite" part.
So they're as much a christian as Hitler was.
Let's make it easy. Anybody that specifically CLAIMS to be a christian, for whatever reason, is technically a christian, since there's no way to tell if they're sincere, so we have to go by HOW THEY IDENTIFY THEMSELVES.
So Hitler was, for all practical purposes, a christian. Either that, or George W. Bush isn't one. You pick.
Brian at 1:37PM on Nov 2nd 2007
72. Nothing to do with Christ like their.
Again, a mad man who got control over a starving nation, who took what he wanted you know kind of like the Anti-Christ who someday will be on the scene. rita
-----------------------------------------------
Oh, you mean like Bush. Yeah, I know.
You just don't even SEE it, do you? Are you simple or something, Rita?
Brian at 1:40PM on Nov 2nd 2007
73. Rita
I agree with what you say one hundred percent. I also agree with the purpose of what you say.
I only wish to recommend (as you continue to speak in your life in testimony) that you allow for understanding of those who are faithful but do not know the complete truth as of yet. By making overtly strong emphasis on Christ's salvation is well received by Christians (like myself), but alienates those who could benefit from also knowing the Truth. People of other creeds will stake difference with you because of this emphasis, wherein the emphasis is actually not needed. The Truth needs no defensive rhetoric because it is evident and obvious to the wise. Let us know that many Muslims and Jews are faithful too. There are also hundreds of millions of non-religious people who are ready to embrace Faith and be part of the kingdom.
You have responsibility (and obvious ability) to be a great teacher. A teacher does not cut away the stalks that have great potential, a wise person only cuts away what will never have potential (ie. someone who has been taught God's will but hates that Will and works against it).
Islam, Jews, Hindu's, and all people who search for Truth and desire Love are worthy of heartfelt teachings.
Please don't be offended, I'm just trying to help you understand how to reach people beyond the four walls of our churches.
FYI, this concept of embracing includes those who are stray lambs and possibly lost in the world's grip (criminals, tax collectors, prostitutes, politicians, "gays", "straights", you and me). We need to uplift each other in Truth and the condition of our Home will improve accordingly.
mincpa at 1:43PM on Nov 2nd 2007
74. If anybody is having trouble posting comments, like they post the comment and never get the confirmation email, try clearing out your temporary internet files and then re-starting AOL. It works for me.
Also, ALWAYS copy your post before you hit "send" so that you can re-post it if it fails to get posted.
Brian at 1:47PM on Nov 2nd 2007
75. Linda
Excellent clarification. I am in complete agreement with you to say that Humans perpetrate all of our wrongs.
I also condemn (yes I condemn) those who have used God's name to commit these crimes against all. Which I think you can support.
My next question this: read the next post, I want to respond to you in time.
mincpa at 1:50PM on Nov 2nd 2007