Hitler on Christianity, Catholicism and Religion

[Dardedar]

I had a fellow on Facebook the other day make this comment: "[Hitler] neither practiced nor acknowledged either Catholic religion nor Christianity."

So I thought it would be a good time count the ways in which that astonishingly misinformed comment is wrong.

The following are 169 passages in which Hitler acted the part of Catholic or Christian instrument of "the Savior"/God or "Providence." Grouped by the categories "Pre-dictatorship," Third Reich prior to World War II... and World War & Holocaust:


Hitler exiting Whilemshaven church in 1931. (Notice the cross like doppelganger floating above his head that followed him wherever he went).

"Pre-dictatorship" ( 1922-1932):

1) "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator." Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 46

2) "What we have to fight for . . . is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator." Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 125

3) "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 . . . 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." Hitler The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922–1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pp. 871–872.

4) "This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief." Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152

5) "Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook." Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, p. 171

6) "And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God." Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174

7) "Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another . . . while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve." Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.309

8) "I had an 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." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 1

9) "I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 2

10) " . . . the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party . . . was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3

11) "What was the true role of the German hatred of the Jews? Did Hitler need to persuade the Germans to go along with his anti-semitic rage? Or was Hitler able to get into power by recognizing that if he could harness the German anti-semitism, it was his ticket to power? "The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement) was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3

12) "As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3

13) "Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3

14) "For the political leader, the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes! Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3

15) "In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3

16) "It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3

17) "If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3, about the leader of the Christian Social movement

18) "Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5

19) "I had so often sung 'Deutschland uber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5

20) "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." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5

21) "I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian- Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 6

22) "Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 7, reflecting on World War I

23) "The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings . . . If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth . . . In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 8

24) "To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 8

25) "The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles. The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10

26) "Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth . . . Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10, (echoing the Cultural Warfare rhetoric of the Religious Right in America today)

27) "But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10

28) "While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine – an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular – right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10

29) "The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10

30) "Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11

31) "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." Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11

32) "The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12

33) "Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1

34) "Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1

35) "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." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1

36) "A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2

37) "It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2

38) "That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to 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?" Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2

39) "It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture- race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

40) "It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

41) "For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? . . . Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas . . . it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 5]

42) "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." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

43) "In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another." Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

44) "For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!' Hitler's prayer, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 2 Chapter 13]

45) "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." Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

46) "I say: 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 only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as sufferer but as 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 of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world 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 as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago—a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people." Hitler, Munich speech of April 12, 1922

47) "Just as the Jew could once incite the mob of Jerusalem against Christ, so today he must succeed in inciting folk who have been duped into madness to attack those who, God's truth! seek to deal with this people in utter honesty and sincerity." Hitler speech in Munich, 28 July 1922

48) "In the Bible we find the text, "That which is neither hot nor cold will I spew out of my mouth." This utterance of the great Nazarene has kept its profound validity until the present day." Hitler The Christianity of Hitler revealed in his speeches and proclamations. Speech in Munich, 10 April 1923

49) "in reference to the Jews - "The task which Christ began but did not finish, I will complete. " - Hitler 1926

50) "We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls. . . We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity . . . in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people." Hitler speech in Passau, 27 October 1928, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]

51) A few days after the signing of the Lateran Treaty, Hitler wrote an article for the official Nazi publication Volkischer Reobachter, on Feb. 22, 1929, warmly welcoming the agreement. "The fact that the Curia is now making its peace with Fascism," he wrote, "shows that the Vatican trusts the new political realities far more than did the former liberal democracy with which it could not come to terms." Turning to the German situation, he rebuked the Center Party leadership for its recalcitrant attachment to democratic politics. "By trying to preach that democracy is still in the best interests of German Catholics, the Center Party . . . is placing itself in stark contradiction to the spirit of the treaty signed today by the Holy See." The conclusion of his rant contained a gross distortion as well as a remarkable intuition of future opportunities: "The fact that the Catholic Church has come to an agreement with Fascist Italy." he went on, ". . . Proves beyond doubt that the Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity than those of Jewish liberalism or even atheistic Marxism, to which the so-called Catholic Center Party sees itself so closely bound, to the detriment of Christianity today and our German people."

52) "Let us pray in this hour that nothing can divide us, and that God will help us against the Devil! Almighty Lord, bless our fight! Hitler address to the SA in 1930

Third Reich prior to World War II (1933-1939):

53) "The National (Nazi) Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life." Hitler proclamation to the German nation at Berlin, 1 February 1933

54) "We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk. . . This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection. . . May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk."

55) Hitler addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the first time, 1 February 1933
"May Almighty God take our work to his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the confidence of our Volk." - upon assuming power in 1933 - -

56) "And now Staatspräsident Bolz says that Christianity and the Catholic faith are threatened by us. And to that charge I can answer: In the first place it is Christians and not international atheists who now stand at the head of Germany. I do not merely talk of Christianity, no, I also profess that I will never ally myself with the parties which destroy Christianity. If many wish today to take threatened Christianity under their protection, where, I would ask, was Christianity for them in these fourteen years when they went arm in arm with atheism? No, never and at no time was greater internal damage done to Christianity than in these 14 years when a party, theoretically Christian, sat with those who denied God in one and the same Government." Hitler speech delivered at Stuttgart, February 15, 1933

57) "Except the Lord build the house they labour in vain. . . The truth of that text was proved if one looks at the house of which the foundations were laid in 1918 and which since then has been in building. . . The world will not help, the people must help itself. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it we may wage the battle of our life. . . The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty—of Him Who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us. . . We are all proud that through God's powerful aid we have become once more true Germans." Hitler speech, March 1933. [Note, "Except the Lord built the house, they labour in vain" comes from Psalms 127:1 ]

58) "The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life."
"The National Government regards the two Christian confessions as factors essential to the soul of the German people. It will respect the contracts they have made with the various regions. It declares its determination to leave their rights intact. In the schools, the government will protect the rightful influence of the Christian bodies. We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people. We hope to develop friendly relations with the Holy See" . . . "The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life." Hitler addressed the Reichstag on March 23, 1933)

59) "The Government of the Reich, which regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attaches the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See, and is endeavouring to develop them. . . The rights of the churches will not be diminished." Hitler speech to the Reichstag, 23 March 1933 (from The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1, pg. 369-372 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942 - edition of 1969.)

60) "As we see in Christianity the unshakable foundation of moral life, so it is our duty to continue to cultivate friendly relations with the Holy See and to develop them." Hitler's speech to the Reichstag on March 23rd, 1933, in which he indicated the programme of his Government. See Universe, March 31st, 1933.

61) "Woman's world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men." Adolph Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New Feminism

62) "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933

63) "We want honestly to earn the resurrection of our people through our industry, our perseverance, our will. We ask not of the Almighty "Lord, make us free"!—we want to be active, to work, to agree together as brothers, to strive in rivalry with one another to bring about the hour when we can come before Him and when we may ask of Him: "Lord, Thou seest that we have transformed ourselves, the German people is not longer the people of dishonour, of shame, of war within itself, of faintheartedness and little faith: no, Lord, the German people has become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices." "Lord, we will not let Thee go: bless now our fight for our freedom; the fight we wage for our German people and Fatherland." Hitler speech, May Day, May 1, 1933

64) "This is for us a ground for satisfaction, since we desire that the fight in the religious camps should come to an end . . . all political action in the parties will be forbidden to priests for all time, happy because we know what is wanted by millions who long to see in the priest only the comforter of their souls and not the representative of their political convictions." Hitler speech to the men of the SA. at Dormund, 9 July 1933, on the day after the signing of the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933

65) "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. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. 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 theatre, 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 recent years." Hitler ( a Radio Broadcast July 22, 1933; from My New Order. ) (The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1. pp. 871-872, Oxford University Press,London, 1942)

From one of Hitler's Tischgespräche... In a speech given on April 26, 1933, Adolf said, "The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc. . . . I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions." Hitler 26 April 1933, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]

************
Atheist Hall Converted (into religious hall)
Berlin Churches Establish Bureau to Win Back Worshippers
Wireless to the New York Times.

BERLIN, May 13. - "In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership. The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members . . . " [New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 2, on Hitler's outlawing of atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in the Spring of 1933, after the Enabling Act authorizing Hitler to rule by decree."

DAR
This is only the first half, more to come...

The above is pinched nearly wholesale from here, for reasons I'll get to later.

[Dardedar]

More on Hitler, Christianity, Catholicism and Religion.

66) "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." Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted in John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope")

67) "National Socialism, he proclaimed, has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State. For their part the churches cannot for a second doubt that they need the protection of the State, and that only through the State can they be enabled to fulfill their religious mission. Indeed, the churches demand this protection from the State. . . . The decisive factor which can justify the existence alike of Church and State is the maintenance of men's spiritual and bodily health, for it that health were destroyed it would mean the end of the State and also the end of the Church. . . It is my sincere hope that thereby for Germany, too, through free agreement there has been produced a final clarification of spheres in the functions of the State and of one Church." Hitler [in his first radio address to the German people after coming to power July 1933, the evening before the Evangelical Church Election.]

68) "Among the congregations of the Protestant confessions there has arisen in the "German Christians" a movement that is filled with the determination to do justice to the great tasks of the day and has aimed at a union of the Protestant state churches and confessions. If this question is not really on the way towards a solution, in the judgement of history no false or stupid objections will be able to dispute the fact that this service was rendered by the volkisch movement at a time when, unfortunately, just as in the Roman Church, many pastors and superintendents without reason have opposed the national uprising in the most violent, indeed, often fanatical, way." Hitler radio address, 22 July 1933 [from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]

69) "I too declare that I will never join forces with the parties that destroy Christianity. If there are those who now protect a threatened Christianity, where was their Christianity in those fourteen years when they went arm and arm with atheism? (i.e. in the liberal, secular, Weimar Republic) " Hitler 1933

70) "National Socialism neither opposes the church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity." -Hitler, 1934 speech

71) "While we destroyed the (Catholic) Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co-operation between the Reich and the two Confessions." Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934

72) "Imbued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions."
Hitler speech in the Reichstag, 30 January 1934

73) "(regarding his campaign to purify the Aryan race by sterilizing members viewed as defective,) "Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere (i.e. allowing the severely handicapped to live) is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole. . . If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them." Hitler speech, 30 January 1934

74) "We have experienced a miracle, something unique, something the like of which there has hardly been in the history of the world. 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." Hitler speech to the "Old Guard" of the Party at Munich, 19 March 1934

75) "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. " Speech in Berlin, 24 October "The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavour 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 to-day." Hitler speech, 26 June 1934, to assure Catholic bishops that he would take action against the new pagan propaganda.

76) "I know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity. No, it is not that we have deserted Christianity; it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have only carried through a clear division between politics, which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine of the Confessions or with their religious freedom, nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends.". . .

77) "There may have been a time when even parties founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity. (Between World War I & II, the Catholic "Center Party" had been one of the most powerful political parties in Germany.) At that time Liberalism was opposed to the Church, while Marxism was anti-religious. But that time is past. National Socialism neither opposes the church, nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity.". . .

78) "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, in a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934.

79) "So we have come together on this day to prove symbolically that we are more than a collection of individuals striving one against another, that none of us is too proud, none of us too high, none is too rich, and none too poor, to stand together before the face of the Lord and of the world in this indissoluble, sworn community. And this united nation, we have need of it." Hitler speech in Berlin, 1 May 1935

80) "What we are we have become not against, but with, the will of Providence. And so long as we are true and honourable and of good courage in fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall continue to enjoy in the future the blessing of Providence." Hitler speech at Rosenheim in Bavaria, 11 August 1935

81) "I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker." Hitler speech in Munich, 15 March 1936

82) "Only so you can appeal to your God and pray Him to support and bless your courage, your work, your perseverance, your strength, your resolution, and with all these your claim on life." Hitler speech at Frankfurt, 16 March 1936

83) "In this world him who does not abandon himself, the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself ,will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future." Hitler speech at Hamburg, 20 March 1936

84) "I say that they can be solved; there is no problem that cannot be, but faith is necessary. Think of the faith I had to have eighteen years ago, a single man on a lonely path. Yet I have come to leadership of the German people. . . Life is hard for many, but it is hardest if you are unhappy and have no faith. Have faith. Nothing can make me change my own belief." Hitler speech in Nuremberg, 12 September 1936

85) "When Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in Munich in November, 1939, he gave the credit to providence. 'Now I am completely content,' he exclaimed. 'The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to let me reach my goal.' Catholic newspapers throughout the Reich echoed this, declaring that it was a miraculous working of providence that had protected their Fuëhrer. One cardinal, Michael Faulhaber, sent a telegram instructing that a Te Deum be sung in the cathedral of Munich, 'to thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuëhrer's fortunate escape. ' The Pope also sent his special personal congratulations." (from http://skeptically.org/againstreligion/id13.html )

86) "I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work." Hitler, Reichstag Speech, 1936

87) In 1936, Hitler said "Providence has caused me to be Catholic."
"Hitler's biographer John Toland explains Catholicism's influence on the Holocaust. He says of Hitler: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god. . ." [from http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/hitler.htm ]

88) "Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church."
Hitler, reported to have said in Berlin in 1936, on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism."

89) "I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright."
Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at the Nuremberg Parteitag of [11 Sept. 1936]

90) "We National Socialists, too, have deep in our hearts our own faith. We cannot do otherwise. No man can mould the history of peoples or of the world unless he has upon his will and his capacities the blessing of Providence."
Hitler, to Nazi leaders on 2 June 1937, as reported by a correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph":

91) "In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger . . . I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty. . . If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths . . . Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence." Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937

92) "This is probably the first time and this is the first country in which people are being taught to realize that, of all the tasks which we have to face, the noblest and most sacred for mankind is that each racial species must preserve the purity of the blood which God has given it. . . The greatest revolution which National Socialism has brought about is that it has rent asunder the veil which hid from us the knowledge that all human failures and mistakes are due to the conditions of the time and therefore can be remedied, but that there is one error which cannot be remedied once men have made it, namely the failure to recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture and thereby the racial aspect and character which are God's gift and God's handiwork. It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation. . . As I look back on the great work that has been done during the past four years you will understand quite well that my first feeling is simply one of thankfulness to our Almighty God for having allowed me to bring this work to success. He has blessed our labors and has enabled our people to come through all the obstacles which encompassed them on their way. . . Today I must humbly thank Providence, whose grace has enabled me, who was once an unknown soldier in the War, to bring to a successful issue the struggle for the restoration of our honor and rights as a nation." Hitler speech before the Reichstag, 30 January 1937

93) "So long as they concern themselves with their religious problems the State does not concern itself with them. But so soon as they attempt by any means whatsoever—by letters, Encyclica, or otherwise—to arrogate to themselves rights which belong to the State alone we shall force them back into their proper spiritual, pastoral activity." Hitler speech in Berlin on the May Day festival, 1937

94) "I will never allow anyone to divide this people once more into religious camps, each fighting the other. . . You, my Brown Guard, will regard it as a matter of course that this German people should go only by the way which Providence ordained for it when it gave to Germans the common language. So we go forward with the profoundest faith in God into the future. Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us?" Hitler speech at Regensburg on 6 June 1937

95) "If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing." Hitler speech at Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg, 3 October 1937

96) "This Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When I see, as I so often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a Christianity—and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession, for behind it stand not words but deeds." Hitler speaking of the Winter Help Campaign, 5 October 1937

97) "Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it." Hitler speech at Coburg, 15 October 1937

98) "I believe that it was God's will to send a youth from here into the Reich, to let him grow up, to raise him to be the leader of the nation so as to enable him to lead back his homeland into the Reich….In three days the Lord has smitten them… And to me the grace was given on the day of the betrayal to be able to unite my homeland [Austria] with the Reich….I would now give thanks to Him who let me return to my homeland in order than I might now lead it into my German Reich. Tomorrow, may every German recognize the hour, and measure its import and bow in humility before the Almighty who in a few weeks has wrought a miracle upon us." [Closing speech of the campaign at Vienna, 9 April 1938]"

99) "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." Hitler speech in Nuremberg on 6 September 1938

100) "God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves." Hitler speech in Weimar, 6 November 1938.

"World War & Holocaust" (1939-1945)

101) "Impressed with the organization of the Papacy, Hitler is quoted as saying the following: "I learned much from the Order of the Jesuits…until now there has never been anything more grandiose on the earth than the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. I transferred much of this organization into my own party." Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Said To Me (1939), 266-267.

102) "Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration:
1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted . . .
2. The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State . . . Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.
It is therefore, to put mildly – effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich. . .
I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds?
3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion .
There are . . . ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State.
But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy."
Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan., 1939 [Rather than standing for atheism, as some Christians today claim, Hitler attacked the priesthood only to the extent that they got in his way.]

103) "The National Socialist Movement has wrought this miracle. If Almighty God granted success to this work, then the Party was His instrument." Hitler proclamation to the German People, 1 January 1939

104) "In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" Hitler speech to the Reichstag, 30 January 1939, as quoted at The History Place

105) "If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbour, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work." Hitler speech to the "Old Guard" at Munich, 24 February 1939

106) "Help yourself, then God will also help you! The German people was created by Providence, not in order to obey a law which suits Englishmen or Frenchmen, but to stand up for its vital right. That is what we are there for!
Hitler speech at Wilhemshaven, 1 April 1939

107) "The judgment whether a people is virtuous or not virtuous can hardly be passed by a human being. That should be left to God." Hitler speech at Wilhelmshaven, 1 April 1939

108) "I can give vent to my inmost feelings only in the form of humble thanks to Providence which called upon me and vouchsafed it to me, once an unknown soldier of the Great War, to rise to be the Leader of my people, so dear to me. Providence showed me the way to free our people from the depths of its misery without bloodshed and to lead it upward once again. Providence granted that I might fulfill my life's task-to raise my German people out of the depths of defeat and to liberate it from the bonds of the most outrageous dictate of all times. . . I have regarded myself as called upon by Providence to serve my own people alone and to deliver them from their frightful misery." Hitler speech before the Reichstag, 28 April 1939

109) On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday. The celebrations, initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest congratulations to the Fuëhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany" and added with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." (from Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell)


110) "During Hitler's fiftieth birthday celebration (1939), special votive masses were held in every German church "to implore God's blessing upon Fuhrer and people," and the Bishop of Mainz called upon Catholics in his diocese to pray specifically for "the Fuhrer and Chancellor, the inspirer, enlarger and protector of the Reich." The Pope did not fail to send his congratulations, calling upon Catholics in his diocese to pray specifically for "the Fuhrer and Chancellor, the inspirer, enlarger and protector of the Reich."

111) "As Fuehrer of the German people and Chancellor of the Reich, I can thank God at this moment that he has so wonderfully blessed us in our hard struggle for what is our right, and beg Him that we and all other nations may find the right way, so that not only the German people but all Europe may once more be granted the blessing of peace." Hitler speech before the Reichstag, 6 October 1939

112) " never lost my belief, in the midst of setbacks which were not spared me during my period of struggle. Providence has had the last word and brought me success." Hitler speech, 23 November 1939

113) "It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the ideas which are accepted facts to us today." Hitler speech in Berlin, 10 December 1940

114) "The conception of the new Movement, whose fundamentals can be expressed in a single sentence: "The Lord helps those who help themselves," opposed this. That is not only a very pious phrase, but a very just one. For one cannot assume that God exists to help people who are too cowardly and too lazy to help themselves and think that God exists only to make up for the weakness of mankind. He does not exist for that purpose. He has always, at all times, blessed only those who were prepared to fight their own battles. . . Providence has not led us along these amazing paths in vain. On the day that the party was founded I recalled that our nation once gained immense victories. Then it became ungrateful, disunited, sinned against itself. Thereupon it was punished by Providence. We deserved our defeat. If a nation forgets itself as completely as the German nation did at that time, if it thinks that it can shake off all honor and all good faith, Providence can do nothing but teach it a hard and bitter lesson. But even at that time we were convinced that once our nation found itself again, once it again became industrious and honorable, once each individual German stood up for his nation first and not for himself, once he placed the interests of the community above his own personal interests, once the whole nation again pursued a great ideal, once it was prepared to stake everything for this ideal, the hour would come when the Lord would declare our trials at an end."

115) "If fate should once more call us to the battlefield, the blessing of Providence will be with those who have merited it by years of hard work. When I compare myself and my opponents in other countries in the light of history, I do not fear the verdict on our respective mentalities. Who are these egoists? Each one of them merely defends the interests of his class. Behind them all stands either the Jew or their own moneybags. They are all nothing but money-grubbers, living on the profits of this war. No blessing can come of that. I oppose these people merely as the 0 champion of my country. I am convinced that our struggle will in the future be blessed by Providence, as it has been blessed up to now." Hitler speech in Munich, 24 February 1941

116) "But he who dares to use the word "God" for such devilish activity blasphemes against Providence and, according to our belief, he cannot end except in destruction." Hitler speech before the Reichstag about Jews and international "warmongers," 4 May 1941

117) "I did not want this struggle. Since January, 1933, when Providence entrusted me with the leadership of the German Reich, I had an aim before my eyes which was essentially incorporated in the program of our National Socialist party. I have never been disloyal to this aim and have never abandoned my program. . . Only when the entire German people become a single community of sacrifice can we expect and hope that Almighty God will help us. The Almighty has never helped a lazy man. He does not help the coward. He does not help a people that cannot help itself. . . The principle applies here, help yourselves and Almighty God will not deny you his assistance." Hitler radio broadcast from Berlin, 3 October 1941

118) "If the Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world. The German people and their soldiers are working and fighting today, not only for the present, but for the coming, nay the most distant, generations. A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator. . . The next incursion against this homestead of European culture was carried out from the distant East. A terrible stream of barbarous, uncultured hordes sallied forth from the interior of Asia deep into the hearts of the European Continent, burning, looting, murdering—a true scourge of the Lord. . . From the time when the Movement I consisted of seven men, until we took over power in January 1933, the path was so miraculous that only Providence itself with its blessing could have made this possible. . . Our enemies must not deceive themselves—in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today. The Lord of the Universe has treated us so well in the past years that we bow in gratitude to a providence which has allowed us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that we also can be entered with honor into the ever-lasting book of German history!" Hitler speech before the Reichstag, 11 December 1941

119) "My fame, if Providence preserves my life, will consist in . . . works of peace, which I still intend to create. But I think that if Providence has already disposed that I can do what must be done according to the inscrutable will of the Providence, then I can at least just ask Providence to entrust to me the burden of this war, to load it on me. I will beat it! I will shrink from no responsibility; in every hour which . . . I will take this burden upon me. I will bear every responsibility, just as I have always borne them. . . Thus the home-front need not be warned, and the prayer of this priest of the devil, the wish that Europe may be punished with Bolshevism, will not be fulfilled, but rather that the prayer may be fulfilled: "Lord God, give us the strength that we may retain our liberty for our children and our children's children, not only for ourselves but also for the other peoples of Europe, for this is a war which we all wage, this time, not for our German people alone, it is a war for all of Europe and with it, in the long run, for all of mankind." Hitler speech in Berlin, 30 January 1942

120) "May therefore God give us the strength to continue to do our duty and with this prayer we bow in homage before our dead heroes, before those whom they have left behind in bereavement, and before all the other victims of this war." Hitler radio address, 15 March 1942

121) "I, for my part, acknowledge another precept which says that man must deal the final blow to those whose downfall is destined by God." Hitler address to the Reichstag, 6 April 1942

122) "One of our most important tasks will be to save future generations from a similar political fate and to maintain for ever watchful in them a knowledge of the menace of Jewry. For this reason alone it is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry." Hitler on the Passion Play at Oberammergau, 5 July 1942

123) "In my eyes, the year 1942 already has behind it the most fateful trial of our people. That was the winter of '41 to '42. I may be permitted to say that in that winter the German people, and in particular its Wehrmacht, were weighed in the balance by Providence. Nothing worse can or will happen. That we conquered that winter, that "General Winter," that at last the German fronts stood, and that this spring, that is, early this summer, we were able to proceed again, that, I believe, is the proof that Providence was content with the German people. . . You do not realize what is hidden beneath these words in the way of human heroism, and also of human pain, and suffering, and we may say, often anxiety too, naturally, deathly anxiety on the part of all those who, especially for the first time, are placed before the trial of God in this highest court." Hitler speech in Berlin, 30 September 1942

124) "And today I stand by this same view. Fate, or Providence, will give the victory to those who most deserve it. . . And when now, after 10 years, I again survey this period, I can say that upon no people has Providence ever bestowed more successes than upon us. The miracles we have achieved in the last three years in the face of a whole world of enemies are unique in history, especially the crises we very naturally often had in these years." Hitler speech in Munich, 8 November 1942.

125) "If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness. If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good faith."I may not be a light of the church, a pulpiteer, but deep down I am a pious man, and believe that whoever fights bravely in defense of a natural law framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by the lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of Providence." [Hitler, July 5, 1944 speech].

126) "(re: one of several failed assassination attempts) "The bomb which was planted by Colonel von Stauffenberg exploded two meters to my right. It seriously injured a number of my colleagues who are very dear to me; one has died. I myself am completely unhurt apart from a few minor skin abrasions, bruises and burns. I interpret this as confirmation that Providence wishes me to continue my life's mission as I have in the past."

127) "Few people can begin to imagine the fate which would have overtaken Germany had the assassination attempt succeeded. I myself thank Providence and my Creator not for preserving me—my life consists only of worry and work for my People—I thank him only for allowing me to continue to bear this burden of worry, and to carry on my work to the best of my ability.

128) "Once again I take this opportunity, my old comrades in arms, to greet you, joyful that I have once again been spared a fate which, while it held no terror for me personally, would have had terrible consequences for the German People. I interpret this as a sign from Providence that I must continue my work, and therefore I shall continue it." Hitler from a radio broadcast, 20 July 1944

129) "God the Almighty has made our nation. By defending its existence we are defending His work. . . Only He can relieve me of this duty Who called me to it. It was in the hand of Providence to snuff me out by the bomb that exploded only one and a half meters from me on July 20, and thus to terminate my life's work. That the Almighty protected me on that day I consider a renewed affirmation of the task entrusted to me. . . Therefore, it is all the more necessary on this twelfth anniversary of the rise to power to strengthen the heart more than ever before and to steel ourselves in the holy determination to wield the sword, no-matter where and under what circumstances, until final victory crowns our efforts. . . In the years to come I shall continue on this road, uncompromisingly safeguarding my people's interests, oblivious to all misery and danger, and filled with the holy conviction that God the Almighty will not abandon him who, during all his life, had no desire but to save his people from a fate it had never deserved, neither by virtue of its number nor by way of its importance. . . In vowing ourselves to one another, we are entitled to stand before the Almighty and ask Him for His grace and His blessing. No people can do more than that everybody who can fight, fights, and that everybody who can work, works, and that they all sacrifice in common, filled with but one thought: to safeguard freedom and national honor and thus the future of life." Hitler radio address, 30 January 1945

130) "Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations. . . This Jewish bolshevist annihilation of nations and its western European and American procurers can be met only in one way: by using every ounce of strength with the extreme fanaticism and stubborn steadfastness that merciful God gives to men in hard times for the defense of their own lives. . . We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate Our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this bate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end. During its 2,000-year history our people has survived so many terrible times that we have no doubt that we will also master our present plight." Hitler recorded radio address, 24 February 1945

131) "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.

132) "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."

133) "'In early Feb. of 1933, he declared in the Reichstag (parliament) that the churches were to be an integral part of German national life.' " . . .

134) "I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it." (date unknown) Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40

Pinched almost entirely from here

[Dardedar]

Hitler was a True Christian™

Pharyngula article

I have to give an early plug for my colleague, Michael Lackey (also on the CFI speakers' bureau, by the way), who will be coming out with a book this Spring on exactly this topic.

His new book project (Modernist God States: A Literary Study of the Theological Origins of Nazi Totalitarianism) is on Hitler and the Nazis. In this book, he opposes one of the dominant interpretations of intellectual and political history, which holds that the West, since the Enlightenment, has been becoming increasingly more secular. Scholars who have adopted this approach claim that Hitler and the Nazis are the logical product of secularization, atheism, and humanism. By stark contrast, Lackey has been trying to demonstrate that secularization has only taken hold in very elite circles, mainly among academics, scholars, and intellectuals. As for the general population, it has actually become increasingly more religious, but in ways that are significantly different from pre-Enlightenment versions of religion. Based on his findings, Lackey argues that the only way to understand Hitler and the Nazis is to take into account the new conceptions of religious subjectivity that started to flourish and dominate among the general population in the early part of the twentieth century. Understanding these new conceptions sheds new and considerable light on Hitler's and the Nazis' religious conception of the political.

The Modernist God State: A Literary Study of the Nazis' Christian Reich. New York and London: Continuum, (in press: forthcoming, Spring 2012).

Among the things he has done is to examine thoroughly the popular literature of Germany in the 1930s and 40s. Surprise, surprise, it isn't singing paeans to Darwin and Science — these are eminently Christian Nazis.

The cover of his book says it all. I think it's going to be a significant source for squelching these bizarre, ahistorical notions coming out of the Discovery Institute that somehow Nazi Germany was the apotheosis of the godless Darwinian state.

[Dardedar]

[Dardedar]

"We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people." --Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928