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Religious views of Adolf Hitler

Hitler in 1933

The  religious views of Adolf Hitler   are a matter of

interest and debate. Hitler was raised by an increas-

ingly anti-clerical father and devout Catholic mother.[1]

Baptized   as an infant and  confirmed   at the age of fif-

teen, he ceased attending Mass and participating in the

sacraments in later life.[2][3] In adulthood Hitler became

disdainful of Christianity, but in the pursuit and mainte-

nance of power was prepared to delay   clashes with the

churches out of political considerations.[4] Hitler’s archi-

tect  Albert Speer  believed he had “no real attachment”

to Catholicism, but that he had never formally left the

Church. Unlike his comrade Joseph Goebbels, Hitler was

not  excommunicated[5] prior to his suicide. The biogra-

pher John Toland noted Hitler’s anticlericalism but con-

sidered him still in “good standing” with the Church by

1941, while historians such as Ian Kershaw, Joachim Fest

and  Alan Bullock agree that Hitler was anti-Christian -

a view evidenced by sources such as the  Goebbels Di-aries , the memoirs of Speer, and the transcripts edited by

Martin Bormann contained within Hitler’s Table Talk .[6]

Goebbels wrote in 1941 that Hitler “hates Christianity,

because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity.”[7]

Many historians have come to the conclusion that Hitler’s

long-term aim was the eradication of Christianity in

Germany,[8] while others maintain that there is insuffi-

cient evidence for such a plan.[9]

Hitler’s public relationship to religion has been character-

ized as one of opportunistic pragmatism.[10] His regime

did not publicly advocate for   state atheism, but it did

seek to reduce the influence of Christianity on soci-

ety. Hitler himself was reluctant to make public attacks

on the Church for political reasons, despite the urgings

of Nazis like Bormann. Although he was skeptical ofreligion,[11][12] he did not present himself to the pub-

lic as an atheist, and spoke of belief in an “almighty

creator”.[13][14] In private, he could be ambiguous.[15][16]

Evans   wrote that Hitler repeatedly stated that Nazism

was a secular ideology founded on science, which in

the long run could not “co-exist with religion”.[17] In his

semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf  (1925/6) Hitler de-

clared himself neutral in  sectarian matters and support-

ive of separation between church and state, and he crit-

icized political Catholicism.[18] The book presents a ni-

hilistic, Social Darwinist vision, in which the universe is

ordered around principles of struggle between weak andstrong, rather than on conventional Christian notions.[19]

In  Mein Kampf , Hitler makes a number of religious al-

lusions, claiming to be “acting in accordance with the

will of the Almighty Creator” and to have been cho-

sen by providence.[14][20] In a 1922 speech he said,"My

feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Sav-

ior as a fighter [...] who [...] recognized these Jews

for what they were and summoned men to fight against

them...”[21] In a 1928 speech, he said: “We tolerate no

one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity ...

in fact our movement is Christian.”[22] Given his hostil-

ity to Christianity, Laurence Rees wrote that “The most

persuasive explanation of these statements is that Hitler,

as a politician, simply recognised the practical reality

of the world he inhabited... Had Hitler distanced him-

self or his movement too much from Christianity, it is

all but impossible to see how he could ever have been

successful in a free election”.[23]Alan Bullock wrote that

even though Hitler frequently employed the language of

"divine providence" in defence of his own myth, he ul-

timately shared with the Soviet dictator  Joseph Stalin

a materialistic outlook “based on the nineteenth cen-

tury rationalists’ certainty that the progress of science

would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian

doctrine to be an absurdity”.[24]

According to GeoffreyBlainey, when the Nazis became the main opponent of

Communism in Germany, Hitler saw Christianity as a

1

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2   1 YOUTH 

temporary ally.[25] He made various public comments

against   “bolshevistic”   atheist movements, and in favor

of so-called "positive Christianity" (a movement which

sought to nazify Christianity by purging it of its Jewish

elements, the Old Testament and key doctrines like the

Apostles’ Creed).[18] While campaigning for office in the

early 1930s, Hitler offered moderate public statements onChristianity, promising not to interfere with the churches

if given power, and calling Christianity the foundation of

German morality. Kershaw considers that use of such

rhetoric served to placate potential criticism from the

Church. According to Max Domarus, Hitler had fully

discarded belief in the Judeo-Christian conception of

God by 1937, but continued to use the word “God” in

speeches.

In office, the Hitler regime connived at a  Kirchenkampf (lit. church struggle). While wary of open conflict

with the churches, Hitler generally permitted or encour-

aged anti-church radicals such as   Himmler, Goebbelsand Bormann to perpetrate their persecutions of the

churches.[26] According to Evans, by 1939, 95% of Ger-

mans still called themselves Protestant or Catholic, with

3.5% 'Deist' ( gottgläubig) and 1.5% atheist - most in

these latter categories being “convinced Nazis who had

left their Church at the behest of the Party, which had

been trying since the mid-1930s to reduce the influence

of Christianity in society”.[27] Gottgläubig" (lit. “believ-

ers in God”, had a non-denominational, nazified out-

look on divine beliefs, often described as predominantly

based on creationist and deistic views[28] Despite all the

promotion for  positive Christianity   and the   gottgläubigmovement, the majority of the three million Nazi Party

members continued to pay their church taxes and reg-

ister as either   Roman Catholic   or   mainline Protestant

Christians.[29] Hitler angered the churches by appointing

the neo-pagan Alfred Rosenberg as official Nazi ideolo-

gist. He launched an effort toward  coordination of Ger-

man Protestants under a unified Protestant Reich Church

under the Deutsche Christen   movement, but the attempt

failed - resisted by the Confessing Church. The DeutscheChristens   differed from traditional Christians by reject-

ing the Hebrew origins of Christianity, preaching of an

Aryan Jesus and saying that Saint Paul, as a Jew, had fal-

sified Jesus’ message - a theme Hitler repeated in private

conversations, including, according to Susannah Heschel,

in October 1941, when he made the decision to mur-

der the Jews.[30] From around 1934, Hitler had lost in-

terest in supporting the Deutsche Christen.[31] He moved

early to eliminate political Catholicism, while agreeing

to a Reich concordat with Rome which promised auton-

omy for the  Catholic Church in Germany. His regime

routinely violated the treaty, closed all Catholic organi-

sations that weren't strictly religious, and perpetrated a

persecution of the Catholic Church. Smaller religious

minorities faced far harsher repression, with the Jews of

Germany expelled for extermination   on the grounds ofracist ideology and Jehovah’s Witnesses ruthlessly perse-

cuted for refusing both military service and any allegiance

to Hitlerism.

Kershaw wrote that few people could really claim to

“know” Hitler, who was “a very private, even secre-

tive individual”.[32] Hitler’s Table Talk   has him often

voicing stridently negative views of Christianity. Bul-

lock wrote that Hitler was a rationalist and materialistwho saw Christianity as a religion “fit for slaves” and

against the natural law of selection and survival of the

fittest.[33] Toland, while noting Hitler’s antagonism to the

Pope and Church hierarchy, drew links between Hitler’s

Catholic background and his anti-Semitism.[34] Follow-

ing meetings with Hitler, General   Gerhard Engel   and

Cardinal  Michael von Faulhaber   wrote that Hitler was

a believer. Kershaw cites Faulhaber’s case as an ex-

ample of Hitler’s ability to deceive “even hardened crit-

ics”. Steigmann-Gall saw a “Christian element” in Hitler’s

early writings and evidence that he continued to hold Je-

sus in high esteem as an “Aryan fighter” who struggled

against Jewry.[35][36] Use of the term "positive Christian-ity" in the   Nazi Party Program  of the 1920s is com-

monly regarded as a tactical measure, but Steigmann-

Gall believes it may have had an “inner logic” and

been “more than a political ploy”, though he notes that

over time the Nazi movement became “increasingly hos-

tile to the churches”.[37] John S. Conway   considered

that Steigmann-Gall’s analysis differed from earlier in-

terpretations only by “degree and timing”, but that if

Hitler’s early speeches evidenced a sincere apprecia-

tion of Christianity, “this Nazi Christianity was eviscer-

ated of all the most essential orthodox dogmas” leav-

ing only “the vaguest impression combined with anti-Jewish prejudice...” which few would recognize as “true

Christianity”.[38] Laurence Rees concludes that “Hitler’s

relationship in public to Christianity - indeed his relation-

ship to religion in general - was opportunistic. There is

no evidence that Hitler himself, in his personal life, ever

expressed any individual belief in the basic tenets of the

Christian church”.[23]

1 Youth

Reliable historical details on the childhood of Adolf

Hitler are scarce.

Hitler was born in 1889, in  Braunau am Inn,  Austria[39]

and was baptised Catholic in the same year. Hitler’s fa-

ther Alois, though nominally a   Catholic, was somewhat

religiously skeptical and anticlerical,[40] while his mother

Klara was a devout practicing Catholic.[41]

Hitler attended several primary schools. For six months,

the family lived opposite a Benedictine Monastery at

Lambach, and on some afternoons, Hitler attended the

choir school there.[42] Around this time, Hitler is said to

have dreamed of taking holy orders.[43][44][45] Hitler wasconfirmed  on 22 May 1904. Rissmann relates a story

where a boyhood friend claimed that after Hitler had

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3

left home, he never again attended  Mass or received the

sacraments.[2]

In 1909, Hitler moved to Vienna. According to  Bullock,

his intellectual interests vacillated and his reading in-

cluded “Ancient Rome, the Eastern religions, Yoga, Oc-

cultism, Hypnotism, Astrology, Protestantism, each inturn excited his interest for a moment... He struck people

as unbalanced. He gave rein to his hatreds - against the

Jews, the priests, the Social Democrats, the Habsburgs -

without restraint”.[46]

Analysis

According to historian Michael Rissmann, young Hitler

was influenced by   Pan-Germanism   and began to re-

ject the  Catholic Church, receiving  confirmation   only

unwillingly.[2] Toland wrote of the 1904 ceremony at

Linz Cathedral that Hitler’s confirmation sponsor said he

nearly had to “drag the words out of him... almost as

though the whole confirmation was repugnant to him”.[47]

2 Adulthood and political career

Hitler’s public and private statements on religion were of-

ten in conflict. The biographer Kershaw wrote that few

people could really claim to “know” Hitler - “he was by

temperament a very private, even secretive individual”,

unwilling to confide in others.[32] In private Hitler scorned

Christianity to his friends, but when out campaigning for

power in Germany, he publicly made statements in favour

of the religion.[48] “The most persuasive explanation of

these statements”, wrote Laurence Rees, “is that Hitler,

as a politician, simply recognised the practical reality of

the world he inhabited... Had Hitler distanced himself or

his movement too much from Christianity it is all but im-

possible to see how he could ever have been successful in

a free election. Thus his relationship in public to Chris-

tianity - indeed his relationship to religion in general - was

opportunistic. There is no evidence that Hitler himself,

in his personal life, ever expressed any individual belief

in the basic tenets of the Christian church”. [23]

Though Hitler retained some regard for the organiza-

tional power of Catholicism, he had utter contempt for

its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their con-

clusion, “would mean the systematic cultivation of the

human failure”.[49] In  Hitler: A Study in Tyranny,   Alan

Bullock, wrote that Hitler was a rationalist and a ma-

terialist with no feeling for the spiritual or emotional

side of human existence: a “man who believed neither

in God nor in conscience ('a Jewish invention, a blem-

ish like circumcision')".[50] In  Hitler and Stalin: Paral-lel Lives , Bullock added that Hitler, like Napoleon before

him, frequently employed the language of "divine provi-

dence" in defence of his own myth, but ultimately sharedwith the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin “the same material-

ist outlook, based on the nineteenth century rationalists’

certainty that the progress of science would destroy all

myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an

absurdity”.[24]

For political reasons, Hitler restrained his anti-clericalism

and refused “to let himself be drawn into attacking the

Church publicly, as Bormann and other Nazis would haveliked him to do. But he promised himself that, when the

time came, he would settle his account with the priests of

both creeds. When he did, he would not be restrained by

any judicial scruples”.[51] German conservative elements,

such as the officer corps, opposed Nazi efforts against the

churches.[49][52] In the long run, Hitler intended to destroy

the influence of the Christian churches:[33]

Hitler had been brought up a Catholic and

was impressed by the organization and power

of the Church. For Protestant clergy he felt

only contempt: 'They are insignificant little

people, submissive as dogs...[-] They have nei-

ther a religion you can take seriously nor a great

position to defend like Rome'. It was the 'great

position' of the Church that he respected; to-

wards its teaching he showed only the sharpest

hostility. In Hitler’s eyes, Christianity was a re-

ligion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics

in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a

rebellion against the natural law of selection by

struggle and the survival of the fittest.

— Excerpt from Hitler a Study in Tyrannyby Alan Bullock

According to   Max Domarus, although Hitler did not

“abide by its commandments”, he retained elements of

the Catholic thinking of his upbringing even into the ini-

tial years of his rule: “As late as 1933, he still described

himself publicly as a Catholic. Only the spreading poi-

son of his lust for power and self idolatry finally crowded

out the memories of childhood beliefs and in 1937 he

jettisoned the last of his personal religious convictions,

declaring to comrades, 'Now I feel as fresh as a colt in

the pasture'", wrote Domarus.[53] Ultimately, Domarus

believed, Hitler replaced belief in the Judeo-Christian

God with belief in a peculiarly German “god”.[53] He pro-moted the idea of God as the creator of Germany, but

Hitler “was not a Christian in any accepted meaning of

that word.”[54] Domarus also points out that Hitler did not

believe in organized religion and did not see himself as a

religious reformer.[54]

According to historian Laurence Rees, “Hitler did not be-

lieve in the afterlife, but he did believe he would have

a life after death because of what he had achieved.”[55]

Historian Richard Overy maintains that Hitler was not a

“practising Christian,” nor was he a “thorough atheist.”[56]

According to Robert S. Wistrich Hitler thought Christian-

ity was finished but wanted no direct confrontation forstrategic reasons.[57] Samuel Koehne, a Research Fellow

at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute, working on the

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4   2 ADULTHOOD AND POLITICAL CAREER

official Nazi views on religion, answers the question  Was Hitler a Christian?   thus: “Emphatically not, if we con-

sider Christianity in its traditional or orthodox form: Je-

sus as the son of God, dying for the redemption of the sins

of all humankind. It is nonsense to state that Hitler (or

any of the Nazis) adhered to Christianity of this form.”[58]

Koehne says Hitler was probably not an atheist and refersto the fact that recent works have asserted that he was

a   deist.[58] Richard Evans concluded his statements on

Hitler’s religious views by suggesting that the gap between

Hitler’s public and private pronouncements was due to a

desire not to cause a quarrel with the churches that might

undermine national unity.[59]

In The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Biblein Nazi Germany, it is noted that Hitler supported the

Deutsche Christen church which rejected the Hebrew ori-

gins of the Gospel, and stated that Jesus was an Aryan and

that Paul as a Jew had falsified Jesus’s message, a theme

Hitler repeatedly mentioned in private conversations. InOctober 1941, when Hitler made the decision to murder

the Jews, he repeated that very proclamation.[30]

Richard Steigmann-Gall   saw evidence of a “Christian

element” in Hitler’s early writings.[35] Steigmann-Gall

wrote that while use of the term “positive Christianity”

in the   Nazi Party Program   of 1920 is commonly re-

garded as a tactical measure”, he himself believes that

it was “more than a political ploy for winning votes”

and instead adhered to an “inner logic”.[60] Though anti-

Christians later fought to “expunge Christian influence

from Nazism” and the movement became “increasingly

hostile to the churches”, Steigmann-Gall wrote that evenin the end, it was not “uniformly anti-Christian”.[37] Even

after a rupture with institutional Christianity (which he

dated to around 1937), Steigmann-Gall saw evidence that

Hitler continued to hold Jesus in high esteem, consid-

ering him to have been an Aryan fighter who struggled

against Jewry.[36] In Hitler’s view, Jesus’ true Christian

teachings had been corrupted by the   apostle Paul, who

had transformed them into a kind of Jewish Bolshevism,

which Hitler believed preached “the equality of all men

amongst themselves, and their obedience to an only god.

This is what caused the death of the Roman Empire.” [61]

Steigmann-Gall concluded that Hitler was religious atleast in the 1920s and early 1930s, citing him as express-

ing a belief in  God, divine providence, and Jesus as an

Aryan opponent of the Jews.[62] However, he admits that

by holding this position he “argues against the consensus

that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christian-

ity or actively opposed to it.”[63]

Historian   John S. Conway   wrote that Steigmann-Gall

made an “almost convincing case” and was “right to point

out that there never was a consensus among the leading

Nazis about the relationship between the Party and Chris-

tianity,” but that “The differences between this interpre-

tation and those put forward earlier are really only onesof degree and timing. Steigmann-Gall agrees that from

1937 onwards, Nazi policy toward the churches became

much more hostile... [he] argues persuasively that the

Nazi Party’s 1924 program and Hitler’s policy-making

speeches of the early years were not just politically mo-

tivated or deceptive in intent... Steigmann-Gall considers

these speeches to be a sincere appreciation of Christian-

ity... Yet he is not ready to admit that this Nazi Christian-

ity was eviscerated of all the most essential orthodox dog-mas. What remained was the vaguest impression com-

bined with anti-Jewish prejudice. Only a few radicals on

the extreme wing of liberal Protestantism would recog-

nize such a mish-mash as true Christianity.[38]

The  Anschluss   saw the annexation of Austria by Nazi

Germany in early 1938. The Austrian chancellor, Kurt

von Schuschnigg, had traveled to Germany to meet Hitler,

who, according to Schuschnigg’s later testimony, went

into a threatening rage against the role of Austria in Ger-

man history, saying, “Every national idea was sabotaged

by Austria throughout history; and indeed all this sab-

otage was the chief activity of the Habsburgs and theCatholic Church.” This ended in Hitler’s ultimatum to

end Austrian independence and hand the nation to the

Nazis.[64]

The biographer John Toland, noted that, in the aftermath

of an attempted assassination in 1939, Hitler told dinner

guests that Pope Pius XII would rather have seen the “plot

succeed” and “was no friend of mine”.[65] Later in his bi-

ographical study, Toland wrote that in 1941 Hitler was

still “a member in good standing of the Church of Rome

despite his detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within

himself its teaching that the  Jew was the killer of God.

The extermination, therefore, could be done without atwinge of  conscience since he was merely acting as the

avenging hand of God — so long as it was done imper-

sonally, without cruelty.”[66] (for the official Catholic po-

sition against Nazi racism in the 1930s see  Mit brennen-

der Sorge). Derek Hastings sees Hitler’s commitment to

Christianity as more tenuous. He considers it “eminently

plausible” that Hitler was a believing Catholic as late as

his trial in 1924, but writes that “there is little doubt that

Hitler was a staunch opponent of Christianity throughout

the duration of the Third Reich.”[67]

Following the 1944 assassination attempt in the "20 July

plot", Hitler reportedly credited his survival to divine in-tervention. German deputy press chief Helmut Suender-

mann declared, “The German people must consider the

failure of the attempt on Hitler’s life as a sign that Hitler

will complete his tasks under the protection of a divine

power”.[68]

In his writings on Hitler’s recurrent religious images and

symbols, Kenneth Burke concluded that “Hitler’s modes

of thought are nothing more than perverted or caricatured

forms of religious thought”[69]

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2.1   Mein Kampf 5

2.1   Mein Kampf 

Hitler combined elements of autobiography with an ex-

position of his racist political ideology in  Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), published between 1925 and 1927.[70]

According to the biographer   Ian Kershaw, the reflec-

tions Hitler himself provided in Mein Kampf  are “inac-curate in detail and coloured in interpretation”, infor-

mation that was given during the Nazi period is “dubi-

ous”, as can be the postwar recollections of family and

acquaintances.[71] The book contains various religious

pronouncements.[14] Laurence Rees described the thrust

of the work as “bleak nihilism” revealing a cold universe

with no moral structure other than the fight between dif-

ferent people for supremacy: “What’s missing from MeinKampf ", wrote Rees—"and this is a fact that has not re-

ceived the acknowledgement it should—is any empha-

sis on Christianity”—though Germany, Rees noted, had

been Christian for a thousand years. So, concluded Rees,“the most coherent reading of  Mein Kampf  is that whilst

Hitler was prepared to believe in an initial creator God, he

did not accept the conventional Christian vision of heaven

and hell, nor the survival of an individual “soul”... we are

animals and just like animals we face the choice of de-

stroying or being destroyed.”[23] Mein Kampf  makes var-

ious statements on Christianity.[14]

Paul Berben wrote that insofar as the Christian denomina-

tions were concerned, Hitler declared himself to be neu-

tral in Mein Kampf - but argued for clear separation be-

tween church and state, and for the church not to concern

itself with the earthly life of the people, which must bethe domain of the state.[48] According to William Shirer,

Hitler “inveighed against political Catholicism in  MeinKampf  and attacked the two main Christian churches for

their failure to recognise the racial problem...”, while also

warning that no political party could succeed in “produc-

ing a religious reformation”.[18]

Hitler wrote of the importance of a definite and uni-

formly accepted Weltanschauung (world view), and noted

that the diminished position of religion in Europe had

led to a decline in necessary certainties - “yet this human

world of ours would be inconceivable without the practi-

cal existence of religious belief.” The various substituteshitherto offered could not “usefully replace the existing

denominations.” [72]

The political leader should not estimate the

worth of a religion by taking some of its short-

comings into account, but he should ask him-

self whether there be any practical substitute in

a view which is demonstrably better. Until such

a substitute be available, only fools and crimi-

nals would think of abolishing existing religion.

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf 

Examining how to establish a new order, Hitler argued

that the greatness of powerful organizations was reliant

on intolerance of all others, so that the greatness of Chris-

tianity arose from the “unrelenting and fanatical procla-

mation and defence of its own teaching.” Hitler rejected

a view that Christianity brought civilization to the Ger-

manic peoples, however: “It is therefore outrageously un-

just to speak of the pre-Christian Germans as barbarians

who had no civilization. They never have been such.”Foreshadowing his conflict with the Catholic Church

over  euthanasia in Nazi Germany, Hitler wrote that the

churches should give up missionary work in Africa, and

concentrate on convincing Europeans that is more pleas-

ing to God if they adopt orphans rather than “give life

to a sickly child that will be a cause of suffering and un-

happiness to all.”[72] The Christian churches should for-

get about their own differences and focus on the issue of

“racial contamination,” he declared.[72]

The two Christian denominations look on

with indifference at the profanation and de-struction of a noble and unique creature who

was given to the world as a gift of God’s grace.

For the future of the world, however, it does

not matter which of the two triumphs over the

other, the Catholic or the Protestant. But it

does matter whether Aryan humanity survives

or perishes.

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf 

When he arrived in  Vienna  as a young man, Hitler re-

called, he was not yet anti-Semitic: “In the Jew I still saw

only a man who was of a different religion, and therefore,on grounds of human tolerance, I was against the idea that

he should be attacked because he had a different faith.”[73]

He thought that anti-Semitism based on religious, rather

than racial grounds, was a mistake: “The anti-Semitism

of the Christian-Socialists was based on religious instead

of racial principles. The reason for this mistake gave rise

to the second error also... this shilly-shally way of deal-

ing with the problem the anti-Semitism of the Christian-

Socialists turned out to be quite ineffective.[74]

In Mein Kampf , Richard Steigmann-Gall saw “no indica-

tion of [Hitler] being an atheist or agnostic or of believing

in only a remote, rationalist divinity, writing that Hitlerreferred continually to a providential, active deity.”[75]

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in

accordance with the will of the Almighty Cre-

ator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am

fighting for the work of the Lord.”[76]

“His [the Jewish person’s] 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 secretof his attitude toward the Jewish people, and

when necessary he even took to the whip to

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6   2 ADULTHOOD AND POLITICAL CAREER

drive from the temple of the Lord this adver-

sary of all humanity, who then as always saw in

religion nothing but an instrument for his busi-

ness existence. In return, Christ was nailed to

the cross, while our present-day party Chris-

tians debase themselves to begging for Jewish

votes at elections and later try to arrange politi-cal swindles with atheistic Jewish parties—and

this against their own nation.”  [77]

In an attempt to justify Nazi aggression, Hitler drew

a parallel between  militantism  and Christianity’s rise to

power as the Roman Empire's official state religion:

“The individual may establish with pain

today that with the appearance of Christian-

ity the first spiritual terror entered into the far

freer ancient world, but he will not be able

to contest the fact that since then the worldhas been afflicted and dominated by this coer-

cion, and that coercion is broken only by co-

ercion, and terror only by terror. Only then

can a new state of affairs be constructively cre-

ated. Political parties are inclined to com-

promises; philosophies never. Political parties

even reckon with opponents; philosophies pro-

claim their infallibility.”[78]

Elsewhere in Mein Kampf, Hitler speaks of the “creator of

the universe” and “eternal Providence.” He also states his

belief that the Aryan race was created by God, and that itwould be a sin to dilute it through racial intermixing:

“The völkisch-minded man, in particular,

has the sacred duty, each in his own denomina-

tion, of making people stop just talking super-

ficially 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.”[79]

In Mein Kampf, Hitler saw Jesus as against the Jews

rather than one of them: “And the founder of Christian-

ity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish

people. When He found it necessary, He drove those en-

emies of the human race out of the Temple of God.” [80]

2.2 Hitler to confidants

Hitler’s intimates, such as Joseph Goebbels, Albert Speer

and  Martin Bormann, recorded that Hitler was deeply

hostile to Christianity. Ian Kershaw wrote that, while

Hitler would occasionally tell his inner circle that hewanted to delay the "church struggle" out of political con-

siderations, his inflammatory remarks gave his underlings

license to intensify it.[31] In 1945, his sister   Paula   was

recorded as having stated "...I don't believe he ever left

the [Catholic] church. I don't know for sure.” [81]

Speer on Hitler and religion

In his memoirs, Hitler’s chief architect,   Albert Speer,

wrote “Amid his political associates in Berlin, Hitler

made harsh pronouncements against the church...”, yet

“he conceived of the church as an instrument that could

be useful to him":[82]

Around 1937, when Hitler heard that at the

instigation of the party and the SS vast numbers

of his followers had left the church because it

was obstinately opposing his plans, he never-

theless ordered his chief associates, above all

Goering and Goebbels, to remain members of

the church. He too would remain a member of

the Catholic Church he said, although he had

no real attachment to it. And in fact he re-

mained in the church until his suicide.

— Extract from Inside the Third Reich, the

memoir of Albert Speer

The   Goebbels Diaries   also remark on this policy.

Goebbels wrote on 29 April 1941 that though Hitler was

“a fierce opponent” of the Vatican and Christianity, “he

forbids me to leave the church. For tactical reasons.”[83]

According to Speer, Hitler’s private secretary,   Martin

Bormann, relished recording any harsh pronouncements

against the church: “there was hardly anything he wrote

down more eagerly than deprecating comments on the

church”.[84] Speer wrote that Bormann was the driving

force behind the regime’s campaign against the churches.

Hitler approved of Bormann’s aims, but was more prag-

matic and wanted to “postpone this problem to a more

favourable time":[85]

“Once I have settled my other problem,”

[Hitler] occasionally declared, “I'll have my

reckoning with the church. I'll have it reeling

on the ropes.” But Bormann did not want thisreckoning postponed [...] he would take out

a document from his pocket and begin read-

ing passages from a defiant sermon or pas-

toral letter. Frequently Hitler would become

so worked up... and vowed to punish the of-

fending clergyman eventually... That he could

not immediately retaliate raised him to a white

heat...

— Extract from Inside the Third Reich, the

memoir of Albert Speer

Hitler, wrote Speer, viewed Christianity as the wrong re-ligion for the “Germanic temperament":[82] Speer wrote

that Hitler would say: “You see, it’s been our misfortune

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2.2 Hitler to confidants    7

to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the re-

ligion  of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the fa-

therland as the highest good? The  Mohammedan reli-

gion too would have been much more compatible to us

than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with

its meekness and flabbiness?"[86] Speer also wrote of ob-

serving in Hitler “quite a few examples”, and that he helda negative view toward Himmler and Rosenberg’s mysti-

cal notions.[87][88]

Bormann and Hitler’s Table Talk

Extensive transcripts on Hitler’s thoughts on religion

are contained within   Hitler’s Table Talk . Between

1941 and 1944, Hitler’s words were recorded in these

transcripts.[89] The transcripts concern not only Hitler’s

views on war and foreign affairs, but also his character-

istic attitudes on religion, culture, philosophy, personal

aspirations, and his feelings towards his enemies and

friends.[90] Within the transcripts, Hitler speaks of Chris-

tianity as “absurdity” and “humbug” founded on “lies”

with which he could “never come personally to terms.”[91]

Michael Burleigh contrasted Hitler’s public pronounce-

ments on Christianity with those in Table Talk , suggesting

that Hitler’s real religious views were “a mixture of ma-

terialist biology, a faux-Nietzschean contempt for core,

as distinct from secondary, Christian values, and a vis-

ceral anti-clericalism.”[92] Richard Evans also reiterated

the view that Nazism was secular, scientific and anti-

religious in outlook in the last volume of his trilogy on

Nazi Germany: “Hitler’s hostility to Christianity reached

new heights, or depths, during the war;" his source for

this was the 1953 English translation of  Table Talk .[59]

The widespread consensus among historians is that the

views expressed in   Trevor-Roper's translation of  TableTalk , are credible and reliable, although as with all his-

torical sources, a high level of critical awareness about its

origins and purpose are advisable in using it. [93] The re-

marks from Table Talk  accepted as genuine include such

quotes as “Christianity is the prototype of Bolshevism:

the mobillization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with

the object of undermining society.”[94] Alan Bullock’s

seminal biography   Hitler: A Study in Tyranny   quotes

Hitler as saying, “Taken to its logical extreme, Christian-

ity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human

failure"; found also in  Table Talk ,[95] and repeats other

views appearing in Table Talk such as: the teachings of

Christianity are a rebellion against the natural law of se-

lection by struggle and survival of the fittest.[96]

In the transcripts, Hitler spoke of the myths of religion

crumbling before scientific advances:[97]

The dogma of Christianity gets worn away

before the advances of science. Religion willhave to make more and more concessions.

Gradually the myths crumble. All that’s left

is to prove that in nature there is no fron-

tier between the organic and the inorganic.

When understanding of the universe has be-

come widespread, when the majority of men

know that the stars are not sources of light

but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours,

then the Christian doctrine will be convicted ofabsurdity.

— Adolf Hitler, from  Hitler’s Table Talk

(1941–1944)

In Table Talk , Hitler praised Julian the Apostate's ThreeBooks Against the Galilaeans , an anti-Christian tract from

AD 362, in the entry dated 21 October 1941, stating:[98]

When one thinks of the opinions held con-

cerning Christianity by our best minds a hun-

dred, two hundred years ago, one is ashamed torealise how little we have since evolved. I didn't

know that Julian the Apostate had passed judg-

ment with such clear-sightedness on Christian-

ity and Christians. ... Originally, Christian-

ity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism

the destroyer. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who

later was called the Christ, intended some-

thing quite different. He must be regarded

as a popular leader who took up His posi-

tion against Jewry.... and it’s certain that Je-

sus was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, re-

garded Him as the son of a whore—of a whoreand a Roman soldier. The decisive falsifica-

tion of Jesus’s doctrine was the work of St.

Paul. He gave himself to this work with sub-

tlety and for purposes of personal exploitation.

For the Galilean’s object was to liberate His

country from Jewish oppression. He set Him-

self against Jewish capitalism, and that’s why

the Jews liquidated Him. Paul of Tarsus (his

name was Saul, before the road to Damascus)

was one of those who persecuted Jesus most

savagely.

— Adolf Hitler, per transcript appearing in

Hitler’s Table Talk 

Goebbels on Hitler and religion

According to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Chris-

tianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote

“He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that

is noble in humanity.” Hitler, wrote Goebbels, saw

the pre-Christian Augustinian Age as the high point of

history, and could not relate to the Gothic mind nor

to “brooding mysticism”.[7] In another entry, Goebbels

wrote that Hitler was “deeply religious but entirelyanti-Christian.”[99][100] Goebbels wrote on 29 December

1939:[101]

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8   2 ADULTHOOD AND POLITICAL CAREER

The Fuhrer is deeply religious, though

completely anti-Christian. He views Christian-

ity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a

branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in

the similarity of their religious rites. Both (Ju-

daism and Christianity) have no point of con-

tact to the animal element, and thus, in the endthey will be destroyed. The Fuhrer is a con-

vinced vegetarian on principle.

— Goebbels Diaries, 29 December 1939

In his diary Goebbels reported that Hitler believed Jesus

“also wanted to act against the Jewish world domination.

Jewry had him crucified. But Paul falsified his doctrine

and undermined ancient Rome.”[102] Goebbels notes in a

diary entry in 1939 a conversation in which Hitler had

“expressed his revulsion against Christianity. He wished

that the time were ripe for him to be able to openly ex-

press that. Christianity had corrupted and infected theentire world of antiquity.”[103]

In 1937, Goebbels noted Hitler’s approval of anti-

Christian propaganda and the show trials of clergy.

Hitler’s impatience with the churches, wrote Kershaw,

“prompted frequent outbursts of hostility. In early 1937

he was declaring that 'Christianity was ripe for destruc-

tion', and that the Churches must yield to the “primacy

of the state”, railing against any compromise with “the

most horrible institution imaginable”.[31] In his entry for

29 April 1941, Goebbels noted long discussions about the

Vatican and Christianity, and wrote: “The Fuhrer is a

fierce opponent of all that humbug”.[83]

2.3 Religion in Hitler’s rhetoric

Hitler typically tailored his message to his audience’s per-

ceived sensibilities.[32][104] In the early 1930s, Hitler’s

public comments on Christianity were moderate.[105] In

public speeches, he often made statements that affirmed

a belief in Christianity.[106] According to Max Domarus,

Hitler had fully discarded belief in the Judeo-Christian

conception of God by 1937, but continued to use the

word “God” in speeches - but it was not the God “whohas been worshiped for millennia”, but a new and pecu-

liarly German “god” who “let iron grow”. Thus Hitler told

the British journalist Ward Price in 1937: “I believe in

God, and I am convinced that He will not desert 67 mil-

lion Germans who have worked so hard to regain their

rightful position in the world.”[107]

According to Bullock, Hitler had a materialist outlook,

that believed science had already discredited Christianity

and would ultimately destroy all myths - but he continued

to speak of “Providence” to support his own myth:

Hitler’s own myth had to be protected, andthis led him, like Napoleon, to speak frequently

of Providence, as a necessary if unconscious

projection of his sense of destiny which pro-

vided him with both justification and absolu-

tion. 'The Russians’, he remarked on one oc-

casion 'were entitled to attack their priests, but

they had no right to assail the idea of a supreme

force. It’s a fact that we're feeble creatures and

that a creative force exists’".— Excerpt from Hitler and Stalin: Parallel 

Lives  by Alan Bullock

Historian Joachim Fest wrote, “Hitler knew, through the

constant invocation of the God the Lord  (German:  Herr- gott ) or of providence (German: Vorsehung), to make the

impression of a godly way of thought.”[108] He had an

“ability to simulate, even to potentially critical Church

leaders, an image of a leader keen to uphold and protect

Christianity [from Bolshevism]" wrote Kershaw, which

served to deflect direct criticism of him from Church

leaders, who instead focused their condemnations on theknown “anti-Christian party radicals”.[109]

In public statements, especially at the beginning of his

rule, Hitler frequently spoke positively about a Nazi vi-

sion of Christian German culture,[106] and his belief in an

Aryan Christ.[110] In 1922, a decade before his ascension

to power, Hitler stated before a crowd in Munich:

My feeling as a Christian points me to my

Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to

the man who once in loneliness, surrounded

only by a few followers, recognized these Jews

for what they were and summoned men to

fight against them and who, God’s truth! was

greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In

boundless love as a Christian and as a man I

read through the passage which tells us how the

Lord at last rose in His might and seized the

scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood

of vipers and adders. How terrific was his

fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after

two thousand years, with deepest emotion I

recognize more profoundly than ever before

the fact that it was for this that He had to shed

his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian, Ihave no duty to allow myself to be cheated,

but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and

justice.”[111]

Key voting blocs which Hitler needed to persuade to drop

their opposition to a Nazi Government were the  Catholic

Centre Party   and German conservatives. He pursued

their votes with a mix of intimidation, negotiation and

conciliation.[112] In a proclamation to the German Nation

February 1, 1933, Hitler stated, “The National Govern-

ment will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revivein the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will

preserve and defend those basic principles on which our

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2.3 Religion in Hitler’s rhetoric    9

nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foun-

dation of our national morality, and the family as the basis

of national life.”[113]

On 23 March 1933, just prior to the crucial Reichstag

vote for the Enabling Act which effectively dissolved Par-

liamentary government in Germany, Hitler described theChristian faiths as “essential elements for safeguarding

the soul of the German people” and “We hold the spir-

itual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements

in the moral uplift of most of the German people.”[18][114]

“With an eye to the votes of the Catholic Center Party”,

wrote Shirer, he added that he hoped to improve relations

with the Holy See.[18] He promised that the passing of the

Enabling Act would not threaten the Reichstag, the Pres-

ident, the States or the Churches. Hitler secured passage

of the Act, but did not honour these promises.[115]

According to Steigmann-Gall, Hitler’s references to Je-

sus, God as the “Lord of Creation” and the necessity of

obeying “His will” reveals that Christianity was fused into

his thinking. “What Christianity achieves is not dogma, it

does not seek the outward ecclesiastical form, but rather

ethical principles.... There is no religion and no philos-

ophy that equals it in its moral content; no philosophical

ethics is better able to defuse the tension between this life

and the hereafter, from which Christianity and its ethic

were born,” Hitler stated.[116]

The propaganda machinery of the Nazi party actively pro-

moted Hitler as a saviour of Christianity,[117] and Nazi

propaganda supported the German Christians  in their for-

mation of a single national church that could be controlled

and manipulated.[118]

During negotiations relating to the   Concordat   with the

Catholic Church andthe Nazis state in 1933, Hitler said to

Bishop Wilhelm Berning: “I have been attacked because

of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic

Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred

years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognised the

Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the

danger was no longer recognised. I am moving back to-

ward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tra-

dition was implemented. I do not set race over religion,

but I recognise the representatives of this race as pestilant

for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby

doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of

schools and public functions”.[119]

John Cornwell quotes Hitler as saying in 1933: “The fact

that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Ger-

many means the acknowledgement of the National So-

cialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the

whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion

that National Socialism is hostile to religion is a lie.” Let-

ter to the Nazi Party, 22 July1933; John Cornwell (2008).

Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII . New York:

Penguin,  p. 118.

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 hun-

gry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty,

then it is we who are the more positive Chris-

tians. For in these spheres the community of

the people of National Socialist Germany has

accomplished a prodigious work— Speech to the Old Guard at Munich 24

February 1939[120]

Author Konrad Heiden has quoted Hitler as stating, “We

do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is es-

sential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for

Germany.”[121]

According to Steigmann-Gall, Hitler never directed his

attacks on Jesus himself,[122] whom Hitler regarded as an

Aryan opponent of the Jews.[123] Hitler viewed traditional

Christianity as a corruption of the original ideas of Jesus

by the Apostle Paul.[124] In Mein Kampf  Hitler had writ-

ten that Jesus “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.”[125] In a speech 26 June 1934,

Hitler stated:

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 har-

mony with the views and the exigencies of the

State of today.[126]

Former   Prime Minister   of   Bavaria, Count   von

Lerchenfeld-Köfering   stated in a speech before the

Landtag of Bavaria, that his beliefs “as a man and a

Christian” prevented him from being an anti-Semite or

from pursuing anti-Semitic public policies. Hitler while

speaking the   Bürgerbräukeller   turned Lerchenfeld’s

perspective of Jesus on its head:

I would like here to appeal to a greater than

I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last ses-

sion of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man

and a Christian' prevented him from being an

anti-Semite. I say: My feelings as a Christian

points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter.

It points me to the man who once in loneliness,

surrounded only by a few followers, recognized

these Jews for what they were and summoned

men to fight against them and who, God’s truth!

was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. ..How terrific was His fight for the world against

the Jewish poison.[127]

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10   2 ADULTHOOD AND POLITICAL CAREER

2.4 Hitler and atheism

Adolf Hitler was skeptical of all religious belief.[11] Alan

Bullock   saw Hitler as a “materialist”, not only in his

“dismissal of religion” but also in his “insensitivity to

humanity”.[12] Hitler’s materialist outlook, wrote Bul-lock, was “based on the nineteenth century rationalists’

certainty that the progress of science would destroy all

myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be

an absurdity”.[24] Richard J. Evans wrote that “Hitler em-

phasised again and again his belief that Nazism was a sec-

ular ideology founded on modern science. Science, he

declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges

of superstition [-] 'In the long run', [Hitler] concluded,

'National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to

exist together'".[17]

Samuel Koehne of   Deakin University   wrote in 2010:

“Was Hitler an atheist? Probably not. But it remains verydifficult to ascertain his personal religious beliefs, and

the debate rages on.” While Hitler was emphatically not

“Christian” by the traditional or orthodox notion of the

term, wrote Koehne, he did speak of a deity whose work

was nature and natural laws, “conflating God and nature

to the extent that they became one and the same thing...”

and that “For this reason, some recent works have argued

Hitler was a Deist”.[128]

During his career, and for a variety of reasons, Hitler

made various comments against “atheistic” movements.

He associated atheism with   Bolshevism,   Communism,

and Jewish materialism.[129] In 1933, the regime bannedmost atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany - other

than those that supported the Nazis.[130][131]

In A Short History of Christianity, the historian Geoffrey

Blainey  wrote that Hitler and his Fascist ally Mussolini

were atheists, but that Hitler courted and benefited from

fear among German Christians of militant Communist

atheism.[25] “The aggressive spread of atheism in the

Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians”, wrote

Blainey, and with the National Socialists becoming the

main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler]

himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his

opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To beboth was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pa-

gan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar

[was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil

and forests and language and traditions”.[25]

Through 1933 and into 1934, Hitler required a level

of support from groups like the German conservatives

and the  Catholic Centre Party  in the Reichstag, and of

the conservative President von Hindenberg, in order to

achieve his takeover of power with the “appearance of

legality”.[132] During this period, he gave a number of

undertakings not to threaten the German churches. On

21 March 1933, the Reichstag assembled in the Pots-dam Garrison Church, to show the “unity” of National

Socialism with the old conservative Germany of Presi-

dent von Hindenburg. Two days later, the Nazis secured

passage of the  Enabling Act, granting Hitler dictatorial

powers. Less than three months later all non-Nazi parties

and organizations, including the Catholic Centre Party

had ceased to exist.[133]

In early 1933, Hitler publicly defended National Social-ism against charges that it was anti-Christian. He stated in

a speech to the people of Stuttgart on February 15, 1933:

“Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the

Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the

time being, Christians and not international atheists are

now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking

about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself

with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity. Four-

teen years they have gone arm in arm with atheism. At no

time was greater damage ever done to Christianity than in

those years when the Christian parties ruled side by side

with those who denied the very existence of God. Ger-

many’s entire cultural life was shattered and contaminatedin this period. It shall be our task to burn out these man-

ifestations of degeneracy in literature, theater, schools,

and the press—that is, in our entire culture—and to elim-

inate the poison which has been permeating every facet of

our lives for these past fourteen years.”[134] Responding

to accusations by Eugen Bolz, the Catholic Centre Party

Staatspräsident of Württemberg, that the National Social-

ist movement threatened the Christian faith, he said:

And now Staatspräsident   Bolz   says that

Christianity and the Catholic faith are threat-

ened by us. And to that charge I can answer:In the first place it is Christians and not inter-

national atheists who now stand at the head of

Germany. I do not merely talk of Christian-

ity, no, I also profess that I will never ally my-

self with the parties which destroy Christianity.

If many wish today to take threatened Chris-

tianity under their protection, where, I would

ask, was Christianity for them in these fourteen

years when theywent arm in arm with atheism?

No, never and at no time was greater internal

damage done to Christianity than in these four-

teen years when a   party, theoretically Chris-tian, sat with those who denied God in one and

the same Government.

—   Adolf Hitler,Speech delivered at Stuttgart 15 February 1933”  [135]

Hitler’s speech referred to the political alliances of the

Catholic aligned Centre Party with parties of the Left,

which he associated with Bolshevism, and thus, atheism.

Eugen Bolz was forced from office soon after the Nazis

took power, and imprisoned for a time. Later he was ex-

ecuted by the Nazi regime.

During negotiations leading to the Reichskonkordat withthe Vatican, Hitler said that “Secular schools can never

be tolerated because such schools have no religious in-

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2.4 Hitler and atheism   11

struction, and a general moral instruction without a reli-

gious foundation is built on air; consequently, all charac-

ter training and religion must be derived from faith.” [136]

However, as Hitler consolidated his power, schools be-

came a major battleground in the Nazi  campaign against

the churches. In 1937, the Nazis banned any member of

the Hitler Youth from simultaneously belonging to a reli-gious youth movement. Religious education was not per-

mitted in the Hitler Youth and by 1939, clergymen teach-

ers had been removed from virtually all state schools.[137]

Hitler sometimes allowed pressure to be placed on Ger-

man parents to remove children from religious classes to

be given ideological instruction in its place, while in elite

Nazi schools, Christian prayers were replaced with Teu-

tonic rituals and sun-worship.[138] By 1939 all Catholic

denominational schools had been disbanded or converted

to public facilities.[139]

In a radio address October 14, 1933 Hitler stated, “For

eight months we have been waging a heroic battle againstthe Communist threat to our Volk, the decomposition of

our culture, the subversion of our art, and the poisoning

of our public morality. We have put an end to denial of

God and abuse of religion. We owe Providence humble

gratitude for not allowing us to lose our battle against the

misery of unemployment and for the salvation of the Ger-

man peasant.”[140]

In a speech delivered in Berlin, October 24, 1933, Hitler

stated: “We were convinced that the people needs and re-

quires 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.”[141]

In a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934 Hitler

said: “There may have been a time when even parties

founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity. At

that time Liberalism was opposed to the Church, while

Marxism was anti-religious. But that time is past. Na-

tional Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-

religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a

real Christianity. The Church’s interests cannot fail to co-

incide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of

degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against the

Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against

criminality, and in our struggle for the consciousness ofa community in our national life, for the conquest of ha-

tred 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.”[142]

According to Kershaw, Hitler could “pull the wool over

the eyes of even hardened critics”, thus, following a meet-

ing with Hitler, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, a man

who had “courageously criticized the Nazi attacks on

the Catholic Church - went away convinced that Hitler

was deeply religious”.[32] In November 1936 the Roman

Catholic prelate met Hitler at Berghof for a three-hour

meeting. He left the meeting convinced of Hitler’s re-ligiosity and wrote “The Reich Chancellor undoubtedly

lives in belief in God. He recognises Christianity as

the builder of Western culture”.[143] Kershaw wrote this

demonstrated Hitler’s “evident ability to simulate, even

to potentially critical church leaders, an image of a leader

keen to uphold and protect Christianity”.[144] Nazi Gen-

eral Gerhard Engel also wrote that Hitler was a believer,

having written in his diary that in 1941 that Hitler had

stated: “I am now as before a Catholic and will alwaysremain so.”[34][145]

In  Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives , Bullock wrote that

Hitler, like Napoleon   before him, frequently employed

the language of “Providence” in order to defend his own

myth and sense of destiny.[24] In   Hitler: A Study inTyranny, Bullock wrote that Hitler’s belief in himself had

an echo of Hegel's thoughts on heroes standing above con-

ventional morality and the role of “world-historical indi-

viduals” as the agents by which the “Will of the World

Spirit”, the plan of Providence is carried out. Hitler,

wrote Bullock, came to see himself as “a man with a mis-

sion, marked out by Providence, and therefore exemptfrom the ordinary canons of human conduct”. Bullock

concluded: “It is in this sense of mission that Hitler, a man

who believed neither in God nor in conscience ('a Jewish

invention, a blemish like circumcision') found both jus-

tification and absolution”. Following his early military

successes, Hitler “abandoned himself entirely to megalo-

mania” and the “sin of hybris ", an exaggerated self-pride,

believing himself to be more than a man.[146]

Transcripts contained in Hitler’s Table Talk have Hitler

expressing faith that science would wear away religion.

On 14 October 1941, in an entry concerning the fate of

Christianity, Hitler is reported to have said: “Science can-not lie, for it’s always striving, according to the momen-

tary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it

makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It’s Christianity

that’s the liar. It’s in perpetual conflict with itself.” The

transcript continues: “The best thing is to let Christian-

ity die a natural death... The dogma of Christianity gets

worn away before the advances of science. Religion will

have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the

myths crumble.”[147]

Nevertheless, wrote Evans, by 1939, 95% of Germans

still called themselves Protestant or Catholic, while 3.5%

'Deist' ( gottglaubig) and 1.5% atheist. Most in theselatter categories were “convinced Nazis who had left

their Church at the behest of the Party, which had

been trying since the mid 1930s to reduce the influ-

ence of Christianity in society”.[148] Another alterna-

tive was the  Gottgläubig" (lit. “believers in god”) posi-

tion. This was non-denominational and nazified, often

described as predominately based on creationist and deis-

tic views[28])Heinrich Himmler, who himself was fasci-

nated with  Germanic paganism, was a strong promoter

of the gottgläubig movement and didn't allow atheists into

the SS, arguing that their “refusal to acknowledge higher

powers” would be a “potential source of indiscipline”.[149]

This was coupled with a strong antipathy to Christian-

ity among SS officers 'that far exceeded traditional anti-

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12   3 RELIGION UNDER HITLER

clericalism,' with priests portrayed as 'befrocked homo-

sexuals’, and deliberate elision between Christianity, Ju-

daism and Communism.[150] Instead, they were encour-

aged to see Hitler as a Messianic figure and to adopt

the religious aura that surrounded him for themselves as

well.[150]

However, John Conway notes that the majority of the

three million Nazi Party members continued to pay their

church taxes and register as either   Roman Catholic   or

Evangelical Protestant   Christians, “despite all Rosen-

berg’s efforts.”[29]

3 Religion under Hitler

See also:   Kirchenkampf,   The Holocaust,   Catholic

Church and Nazi Germany and Confessing Church

Hitler chose Ludwig Muller  (pictured) to be Reich Bishop of theGerman Evangelical Church , which sought to subordinate Ger-man Protestantism to the Nazi Government.[151]

3.1 Role of religion in the Nazi state

Main article: Religion in Nazi Germany

Hitler emphasised that Nazism was a secular ideology

founded on modern science.[17] In a diary entry of 28

December 1939, Joseph Goebbels wrote that “the Fuhrer

passionately rejects any thought of founding a religion.

He has no intention of becoming a priest. His sole exclu-

sive role is that of a politician.”[152] In Hitler’s political

relations dealing with religion he readily adopted a strat-

egy “that suited his immediate political purposes.”[153]

According to Marshall Dill, one of the greatest challenges

the Nazi state faced in its effort to “eradicate Christian-

ity in Germany or at least subjugate it to their general

world outlook” was that the Nazis could not justifiably

connect German faith communities to the corruption of

the old regime,   Weimar  having no close connection to

the churches.[154] Because of the long history of Chris-

tianity in Germany, Hitler could not attack Christianity

as openly as he did Judaism, Communism or other politi-

cal opponents.[154] The list of Nazi affronts to and attacks

on the Catholic Church is long.[155] The attacks tended

not to be overt, but were still dangerous; believers were

made to feel that they were not good Germans and theirleaders were painted as treasonous and contemptible.[155]

The state removed crucifixes from the walls of Catholic

classrooms and replaced it with a photo of the Führer.[156]

Hitler issued a statement saying that he wished to avoid

factional disputes in Germany’s churches.[157] He feared

the political power that the churches had, and did not

want to openly antagonize that political base until he

had securely gained control of the country. Once in

power Hitler showed his contempt for “non-Aryan” re-

ligion and sought to eliminate it from areas under his

rule.[158][159] Within Hitler’s   Nazi Party, some   atheists

were quite vocal, especially  Martin Bormann.[160] Ac-cording to Goebbels Hitler hated Christianity.[161] In

1939, Goebbels wrote that the Fuhrer knew that he would

“have to get aroundto a conflict between church and state”

but that in the meantime “The best way to deal with the

churches is to claim to be a 'positive Christian'".” [152]

Hitler often used religious speech and symbolism to pro-

mote Nazism to those that he feared would be disposed

to act against him.[162][163] He also called upon religion

as a pretext in diplomacies. The Soviet Union feared that

if they commenced a programme of persecution against

religion in the western regions, Hitler would use that as a

pretext for war.[164]

In his childhood, Hitler had admired the pomp of

Catholic ritual and the hierarchical organisation of the

clergy. Later he drew on these elements, organizing

his party along hierarchical lines and including liturgical

forms into events or using phraseology taken from

hymns.[165] Because of these liturgical elements, Daim’s

claim of Hitler’s Messiah-like status and the ideology’s

totalitarian nature, the Nazi movement, like other  fascist

movements and   Communism, is sometimes termed a

"political religion" that is anti-ecclesiastical and anti-

religious.[166][167] However,  Robert Paxton cautions that

the circumstances of past fascism does not mean that fu-ture fascisms can not “build upon a religion in place of a

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3.2 Persecution of the Churches    13

nation, or as the expression of national identity. Even in

Europe, religion-based fascisms were not unknown: the

Falange Española, Belgian   Rexism, the Finnish   Lapua

Movement, and the Romanian  Legion of the Archangel

Michael are all good examples”.[168]

In 1920, the aspiring revolutionary, Adolf Hitler, in-cluded use of the term "Positive Christianity" in the 1920

Nazi Party Platform. Non-denominational, the term

could be variously interpreted, but allayed fears among

Germany’s Christian majority as to the oft expressed

anti-Christian convictions of large sections of the Nazi

movement.[10] The Platform promised to support free-

dom of religions with the caveat: “insofar as they do not

jeopardize the state’s existence or conflict with the moral

sentiments of the Germanic race”. It further proposed a

definition of a "positive Christianity" which could combat

the “Jewish-materialistic spirit”.[169] In 1937, Hans Kerrl,

Hitler’s Minister for Church Affairs, explained “Posi-

tive Christianity” as not “dependent upon the  Apostle’sCreed", nor in “faith in Christ as the son of God”, upon

which Christianity relied, but rather, as being represented

by the Nazi Party: “The Fuehrer is the herald of a new

revelation”, he said.[170]

Given Hitler’s personal hostility to Christianity, histori-

ans, including  Ian Kershaw   and   Laurence Rees, char-

acterise his acceptance of the term “Positive Christian-

ity” and involvement in religious policy as driven by op-

portunism, and a pragmatic recognition of the political

importance of the Christian Churches in Germany.[10]

Nevertheless, efforts by the regime to impose a “posi-

tive Christianity” on a state controlled Protestant ReichChurch essentially failed, and resulted in the formation

of the dissident Confessing Church which saw great dan-

ger to Germany from the “new religion”.[171] The Catholic

Church too denounced the creed’s pagan myth of “blood

and soil"" in the 1937 papal encyclical  Mit brennender Sorge and elsewhere.

Prior to the Reichstag vote for the  Enabling Act  un-

der which Hitler gained the “temporary” dictatorial pow-

ers with which he went on to permanently dismantle

the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the German Par-

liament that he would not interfere with the rights of

the churches. However, with power secured in Ger-many, Hitler quickly broke this promise.[172][173] He

divided the Protestant Church and instigated a bru-

tal   persecution of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.[174] He dis-

honoured a   Concordat   signed with the Vatican and

permitted a persecution of the Catholic Church in

Germany.[174][175] William Shirer wrote that, under the

leadership of   Alfred Rosenberg,   Martin Bormann   and

Heinrich Himmler, backed by Hitler, the Nazis intended

to destroy Christianity in Germany, if they could.”[176]

In office, the Nazi leadership co-opted the term

Gleichschaltung   to mean conformity and subservience

to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party line:“there was to be no law but Hitler, and ultimately no

god but Hitler”.[177] Nazi ideology conflicted with tradi-

tional Christianity in various respects. Nazis criticized

Christian ideals of “meekness and guilt” on the basis that

they “repressed the violent instincts necessary to prevent

inferior races from dominating Aryans”.[178] The Nazi-

backed “positivist” or “German Christian” church sought

to make the evangelical churches of Germany an instru-ment of Nazi policy.[179]

3.2 Persecution of the Churches

See also:   Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in

Germany

In effort to counter the strength and influence of spiritual

resistance, Nazi security services monitored clergy very

closely.[180] Priests were frequently denounced, arrested

and sent to concentration camps.[181]

At Dachau Concen-tration Camp, the regime established a dedicated Clergy

Barracks for church dissidents.[182][183]

Hitler appointed  Hanns Kerrl  as Minister for Church Affairs in1935. Kerrl called Hitler the “herald of a new revelation” and said that the Nazi conception of “Positive Christianity” did not depend on the Apostle’s Creed  or on belief in “Christ as the sonof God”.[170]

Hitler possessed radical instincts in relation to the Nazi

conflict with the Catholic andProtestant Churchesin Ger-

many, and though he occasionally spoke of wanting to de-lay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his

anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his “own

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14   3 RELIGION UNDER HITLER

inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings

all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the

'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working to-

wards the Führer'".[184] As with the “Jewish question”, the

radicals pushed the Church struggle forward, especially

in Catholic areas, so that by the winter of 1935–1936

there was growing dissatisfaction with the Nazis in thoseareas.[185] Kershaw wrote that in early 1937, Hitler again

told his inner circle that though he “did not want a 'Church

struggle” at this juncture”, he expected “the great world

struggle in a few years’ time”. Nevertheless, wrote Ker-

shaw, Hitler’s impatience with the churches “prompted

frequent outbursts of hostility. In early 1937 he was

declaring that 'Christianity was ripe for destruction', and

that the Churches must yield to the “primacyof the state”,

railing against any compromise with “the most horrible

institution imaginable”.[31]

Catholicism

Polish prisoners in Dachau toast their liberation from the camp.Dachau had its own Priests’ barracks  for clerical enemies of theHitler regime.

Hitler moved quickly to eliminate  Political Catholicism

in Germany. Amid intimidation, the Bavarian People’s

Party and   Catholic Centre Party  had ceased to exist by

early July. Vice Chancellor Papen meanwhile negoti-

ated a Reich Concordat with the Vatican, which pro-

hibited clergy from participating in politics.[186] “The

agreement”, wrote Shirer, “was hardly put to paper be-

fore it was being broken by the Nazi Government”. Al-

most immediately Hitler promulgated the   sterilisation

law, and began work to dissolve the Catholic Youth

League. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders began to be tar-

geted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing

years, often on trumped up charges of currency smug-

gling or “immorality”.[187] In Hitler’s bloody night of the

long knives  purge of 1934, leading Catholic dissidents

Erich Klausener and Edgar Jung of Catholic Action were

murdered, as was  Adalbert Probst, the national direc-

tor of the Catholic Youth Sports Association, and anti-Nazi Catholic journalist Fritz Gerlich.[188] Catholic pub-

lications were shut down. The Gestapo began to vio-

late the sanctity of the confessional.[187] By early 1937,

the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially at-

tempted to co-operate with Hitler, had become highly

disillusioned and Pope Pius XI   issued the  Mit brennen-der Sorge encyclical - accusing the Hitler regime of vio-

lations of the Concordat and of sowing the tares of “open

fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church”.[187]

Goebbels noted heightened verbal attacks on the clergy

from Hitler in his diary and wrote that Hitler had ap-

proved the start of trumped up “immorality trials” against

clergy and anti-Church propaganda campaign. Goebbels’

orchestrated attack included a staged “morality trial” of

37 Franciscans.[189]

Hitler’s invasion of predominantly Catholic Poland in

1939 ignited the  Second World War. Kerhsaw wrote

that, in Hitler’s scheme for the Germanization of the East,

“There would, he made clear, be no place in this utopia

for the Christian Churches”.[190] Hitler instigated a pol-

icy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites:including religious leaders. He proclaimed: “Poles may

have only one master – a German. Two masters cannot

exist side by side, and this is why all members of the Pol-

ish intelligentsia must be killed.”[191] Between 1939 and

1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish

clergy, were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concen-

tration camps.[192][192]

Protestantism

Martin Niemoller  , “Hitler’s Personal Prisoner”, was a leadingProtestant voice against Nazism. He was incarcerated at Dachau

 from 1941 until liberation in 1945.

According to  Bullock, Hitler considered the Protestant

clergy to be “insignificant” and “submissive” and lack-

ing in a religion to be taken seriously. [193] The Nazi-

backed “positivist” or “German Christian” church sought

to make the evangelical churches of Germany an instru-

ment of Nazi policy.[179] Although ideas about racial su-

periority and the destiny of their race which animated the

German Christian movement had been present in Ger-man religious circles as early as 1930,[194] the movement

was not formally established until 1932 when it officially

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3.3 Plans to destroy Christianity   15

became known as the "German Christians" with back-

ing from Hitler himself.[195] It was nationalistic and anti-

Semitic and some of its radicals called for repudiation

of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Scriptures) and the

Pauline epistles of the New Testament - because of their

Jewish authorship.[151]

Kershaw wrote that the subjugation of the Protestant

churches proved more difficult than Hitler had envisaged

however. With 28 separate regional churches, his bid to

create a unified Reich Church through Gleichschaltungul-

timately failed, and Hitler became disinterested in seek-

ing supporting the so-called “German Christians” Nazi

aligned movement. The Church Federation proposed

the well qualified Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh

to be the new Reich Bishop, but Hitler endorsed his

friend Ludwig Muller and the Nazis terrorized supporters

of Bodelschwingh.[196] Muller’s heretical views against

St Paul and the Semitic origins of Christ and the Bible

quickly alienated sections of the Protestant church. Notall the Protestant churches submitted to the state, which

Hitler said in  Mein Kampf  was important in forming a

political movement. Pastor Martin Niemöller responded

with the Pastors’ Emergency League, which resisted

Muller’s efforts in making the Protestant churches an in-

strument of Nazi policy.[151][197] The movement grew into

the Confessing Church, from which some clergymen op-

posed the Nazi regime.[31] By 1940 it was public knowl-

edge that Hitler had abandoned advocating for Germans

even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianity.[198]

By 1934, the Confessional Church had declared itself the

legitimate Protestant Church of Germany, but Muller hadfailed to form a united Protestant movement behind the

National Socialist Party. To instigate a new effort at co-

ordinating the Protestant churches, Hitler appointed an-

other friend,  Hans Kerrl  to the position of Minister for

Church Affairs. A relative moderate, Kerrl initially had

some success in this regard, but amid continuing protests

by the Confessing Church against Nazi policies, he ac-

cused dissident churchmen of failing to appreciate the

Nazi doctrine of “Race, blood and soil”. He rejected

the Apostle’s Creed and called Hitler the herald of a new

revelation.[199]

The pretension of the Hitler regime that all Protestantchurches in Germany should be subsumed under the lead-

ership of the German Christians served as an impulse

to action for other Christian leaders who saw the racist,

ultra-nationalistic, and totalitarian emphases of the Ger-

man Christian church as incompatible with the Gospel of

Jesus Christ.[200] When those not in agreement organised

their opposition and, calling themselves the Confessing

Church, publicly proclaimed articles of faith that denied

the position of the German Christians, they eventually

came under severe persecution by the State. About the

end of March 1935 six hundred of the principal leaders

of the Confessing Church were arrested and many othersreceived visits from the Gestapo to emphasize the govern-

ment’s point of view concerning these matters.[201] Later,

there were new arrests, and it began to be known that

those who had been taken away were ending up in concen-

tration camps.[202] Given the totalitarian atmosphere of

Nazi Germany at that time, it would be ingenuous to be-

lieve that these measures against the Confessing Church

and in support of the policies of the German Christians

might have been taken without Adolf Hitler’s consent.[118]

The Confessing Church seminary was banned. Its lead-

ers, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer  were arrested. Implicated

in the 1944 July Plot  to assassinate Hitler, he was later

executed.[203]

Memorial to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of  Sachsenhausen concen-tration camp.

Jehovah’s Witnesses  were numbering around 30,000 at

the start of Hitler’s rule in Germany. For refusing to de-

clare loyalty to the Reich, and refusing conscription into

the army, they were declared to be enemies of Germanyand persecuted. About 6000 were sent to the concentra-

tion camps.[204]

Steigmann-Gall argues that Hitler demonstrated a pref-

erence for  Protestantism   over Catholicism, as Protes-

tantism was more liable to reinterpretation and a non-

traditional readings, more receptive to positive Christian-

ity, and because some of its liberal branches had held sim-

ilar views.[205][206] According to Steigmann-Gall, Hitler

regretted that “the churches had failed to back him andhis

movement as he had hoped.”[207] Hitler stated to Albert

Speer, “Through me the Protestant Church could become

the established church, as in England.”

[208]

3.3 Plans to destroy Christianity

Bullock wrote that, “once the war was over, [Hitler]

promised himself, he would root out and destroy the in-

fluence of the Christian Churches”.[209] Phayer wrote that

“By the latter part of the decade of the thirties church of-

ficials were well aware that the ultimate aim of Hitler and

other Nazis was the total elimination of Catholicism and

of the Christian religion. Since the overwhelming ma-

jority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant this

goal had to be a long-term rather than a short-term Naziobjective.”[210] According to Shirer, “under the leader-

ship of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by

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16   4 EASTERN RELIGIONS 

Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christian-

ity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old pagan-

ism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new pa-

ganism of the Nazi extremists”.[211] Gill wrote that the

Nazi plan was to “de-Christianise Germany after the fi-

nal victory”.[212] Dill states, “It seems no exaggeration to

insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to facewas their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at

least to subjugate it to their general world outlook.”   [213]

According to Bendersky, it was Hitler’s long range goal to

eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control

over his European empire”[214]

In 1999 Julie Seltzer Mandel, while researching doc-

uments for the "Nuremberg   Project”, discovered 150

bound volumes collected by Gen.   William Donovan as

part of his work on documenting Nazi war crimes. Dono-

van was a senior member of the U.S. prosecution team

and had compiled large amounts of evidence that Nazis

persecuted Christian churches.[215] In a 108-page outlinetitled “The Nazi Master Plan”   Office of Strategic Ser-

vices investigators argued that the Nazi regime had a plan

to reduce the influence of Christian churches through a

campaign of systematic persecutions.[216][217] “Important

leaders of the National Socialist party would have liked

to meet this situation [of church influence] by complete

extirpation of Christianity and the substitution of a purely

racial religion,” said the report. The most persuasive ev-

idence came from “the systematic nature of the persecu-

tion itself.”[218]

In Hitler’s scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Eu-

rope, there was to be no place for Christian churches. Forthe time being, he ordered slow progress on the 'Church

Question'. 'But is clear', noted Goebells, himself among

the most aggressive anti-church radicals, 'that after the

war it has to be solved... There is, namely, an insoluble

opposition between the Christian and a Germanic-heroic

world-view”.[219] Bullock wrote that “once the war was

over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out and

destroy the influence of the Christian churches, but un-

til then he would be circumspect":[33] Writing for   Yad

Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the

latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long term aim

of Hitler was the “total elimination of Catholicism and ofthe Christian religion”.[220]

In his memoirs, Hitler’s chief architect   Albert Speer

recalled that when drafting his plans for Hitler’s “new

Berlin”, when he told Hitler’s private secretary   Martin

Bormann   that he had consulted with Protestant and

Catholic authorities over the locations for churches: “Bor-

mann curtly informed me that churches were not to re-

ceive building sites.[221]

4 Eastern religions

See also: Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab

world

4.1 Hitler’s views on Islam

Hitler meeting Haj Amin al-Husseini  , the former  Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. December 1941

Among eastern religions, Hitler described religious lead-

ers such as "Confucius,   Buddha, and  Mohammed" as

providers of “spiritual sustenance”.[222] In this context,

Hitler’s connection to   Mohammad Amin al-Husseini,

who served the Mufti of  Jerusalem until 1937 — which

included asylum in 1941, the honorary rank of an   SS

Major-General, and a “respected racial genealogy"—h a s

been interpretedby some as more of a sign of respect than

political expedience.[223] Starting in 1933, al-Husseini,

who had launched a campaign to free various parts of

the Arab region from British control and expel Jews from

both Egypt and Palestine, became impressed by the Jew-

ish boycott policies which the Nazis were enforcing in

Germany, and hoped that he could use the anti-semitic

views which many in the Arab region shared with Hitler’s

regime in order to forge a strategic military alliance that

would help him get rid of the Jewish Zionist colonists inPalestine.[224] Despite al-Husseini’s attempts to reach out

to the Third Reich, Hitler refused to form such an al-

liance with al-Husseini, fearing that it would weaken re-

lations with Britain,[225] and early relations between the

two would be solely based on antisemitic ideology.[224]

During the unsuccessful  1936–39 Arab revolt in Pales-

tine, which was instigated by mass Jewish migration

to Palestine, Husseini and his allies took the opportu-

nity to strengthen relations with the Third Reich and

enforced the spread of Nazi customs and propaganda

throughout their strongholds in Palestine as a gesture of

respect.[226] In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would fol-low al-Husseini’s lead.[227] Hitler’s influence soon spread

throughout the region, but it was not until 1937 that

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17

the Nazi government agreed to grant al-Husseini and the

Muslim Brotherhood's request for financial and military

assistance.[224]

Nazi-era Minister of Armaments and War Production

Albert Speer   acknowledged that in private, Hitler re-

garded Arabs as an inferior race

[228]

and that the relation-ship he had with various Muslim figures was more politi-

cal than personal.[228] During a meeting with a delegation

of distinguished Arab figures, Hitler learned of how Islam

motivated the Umayyad Caliphate during the Islamic in-

vasion of Gaul  and was now convinced that “the world

would be Mohammedan today” if the Arab regime had

successfully taken France during the Battle of Tours,[228]

while also suggesting to Speer that “ultimately not Arabs,

but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of

this Mohammedan Empire.”[228]

In speeches, Hitler made apparently warm references to-

wards Muslim culture such as: “The peoples of Islam will

always be closer to us than, for example, France”.[229]

According to Speer, Hitler stated in private, “The Mo-

hammedan religion too would have been much more

compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be

Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"[228] Speer

also stated that when he was discussing with Hitler events

which might have occurred had Islam absorbed Europe:

Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, be-

cause of their racial inferiority, would in the

long run have been unable to contend with the

harsher climate and conditions of the country.They could not have kept down the more vigor-

ous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Is-

lamized Germans could have stood at the head

of this Mohammedan Empire.”

— Albert Speer[228]

Similarly, Hitler was transcribed as saying:

'Had Charles Martel not been victorious at

Poitiers [...] then we should in all probability

have been converted to Mohammedanism,

that cult which glorifies the heroism and whichopens up the seventh Heaven to the bold

warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would

have conquered the world.[230]

4.2 Influence of Ancient Indian religions

Hitler’s choice of the Swastika as the Nazis’ main and of-

ficial symbol was linked to the belief in the Aryan cultural

descent of the German people. They considered the early

Aryans of India to be the prototypical white invaders and

the sign as a symbol of the Aryan  master race.[231] Thetheory was inspired by the German archaeologist Gustaf

Kossinna,[232] who argued that the ancient Aryans were

a superior Nordic race from northern Germany who ex-

panded into the steppes of Eurasia, and from there into

India, where they established the Vedic religion.[232]

5 Mysticism and occultism

See also:  Nazism and occultism

Bullock found “no evidence to support the once popu-

lar belief that Hitler resorted to astrology” and wrote that

Hitler ridiculed those like Himmler in his own party who

wanted to re-establish pagan mythology, and Hess who

believed in Astrology.[24][233] Albert Speer wrote that

Hitler had a negative view toward Himmler and Rosen-

berg’s mystical notions. Speer quotes Hitler as having said

of Himmler’s attempt to mythologize the SS:[87]

What nonsense! Here we have at last

reached an age that has left all mysticism be-

hind it, and now [Himmler] wants to start that

all over again. We might just as well have

stayed with the church. At least it had tradi-

tion. To think that I may, some day, be turned

into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would

turn over in my grave...

— Adolf Hitler quoted in  Albert Speer's

Inside the Third Reich

In a 1939 speech in Nuremberg, Hitler stated: “We willnot 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 noth-

ing to do with us.”[234]

According to Ron Rosenbaum, some scholars believe

the young Hitler was strongly influenced, particularly in

his racial views, by an abundance of occult works on

the mystical superiority of the Germans, like the oc-

cult and anti-Semitic magazine Ostara, and give credence

to the claim of its publisher   Lanz von Liebenfels   that

Hitler visited him in 1909 and praised his work.[235] JohnToland wrote that evidence indicates Hitler was a regular

reader of  Ostara.[236] Toland also included a poem that

Hitler allegedly wrote while serving in the German Army

on the Western Front  in 1915.[237] This poem includes

references to   magical runes  and the pre-Christian Ger-

manic deity Wotan (Odin), but it is mentioned neither by

Goodrick-Clarke nor by Fest.

Hitler’s contact to Lanz von Liebenfels makes it neces-

sary to examine how far his religious views were influ-

enced by  Ariosophy, an esoteric movement in Germany

and Austria that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s.

(Whether Ariosophy is to be classified as  Germanic pa-ganism or  Occultism is a different question.) The semi-

nal work on Ariosophy,  The Occult Roots of Nazism  by

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18   6 RELIGION, SOCIAL DARWINISM AND HITLER’S RACISM 

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, devotes its last chapter the

topic of  Ariosophy and Adolf Hitler . Not at least due

to the difficulty of sources, historians disagree about the

importance of Ariosophy for Hitler’s religious views. As

noted in the foreword of The Occult Roots of Nazism  by

Rohan Butler, Goodrick-Clarke is more cautious in as-

sessing the influence of Lanz von Liebenfels on Hitlerthan Joachim Fest in his biography of Hitler.[238]

While he was in power, Hitler was definitely less inter-

ested in the occult or the esoteric than other Nazi leaders.

Unlike Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess, nevertheless

Hitler had interest in  astrology.[239] Nevertheless, Hitler

is the most important figure in the Modern Mythology

of   Nazi occultism. There are teledocumentaries about

this topic, with the titles Hitler and the Occult  and Hitler’s Search for the Holy Grail .[240]

Comparing him to Erich Ludendorff, Fest writes: “Hitler

had detached himself from such affections, in which he

encountered the obscurantism of his early years, Lanz v.

Liebenfels and the Thule Society, again, long ago and had,

in Mein Kampf , formulated his scathing contempt for that

völkish romanticism, which however his own cosmos of

imagination preserved rudimentarily.”[241] Fest refers to

the following passage from Mein Kampf :

“The characteristic thing about these peo-

ple [modern-day followers of the early Ger-

manic religion] is that they rave about the

old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory,

stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality

are the greatest cowards that can be imag-ined. For the same people who brandish schol-

arly imitations of old German tin swords, and

wear a dressed bearskin with bull’s horns over

their heads, preach for the present nothing but

struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away

as fast as they can from every   Communist

blackjack.[242]

It is not clear if this statement is an attack at anyone

specific. It could have been aimed at  Karl Harrer or at

the Strasser group. According to Goodrick-Clarke, “In

any case, the outburst clearly implies Hitler’s contemptfor conspiratorial circles and occult-racist studies and his

preference for direct activism.”[243] Hitler also said some-

thing similar in public speeches.[244] Although, the quote

is really just criticizing German romanticists for lack of

action, not necessarily their spiritual or cultural beliefs.

Hitler, himself, was very much into the culture he refers

to here, especially in the case of Wagner operas.

Older literature states that Hitler had no intention of insti-

tuting worship of the ancient Germanic gods in contrast

to the beliefs of some other Nazi officials.[245] In Hitler’s Table Talk  one can find this quote:

“It seems to me that nothing would be

more foolish than to re-establish the worship

of Wotan. Our old mythology ceased to be vi-

able when Christianity implanted itself. Noth-

ing dies unless it is moribund.

Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles in an article pub-

lished by the   Simon Wiesenthal Center   assert alleged

influences of various portions of the teachings of   H.P.

Blavatsky, the founder of The Theosophical Society with

doctrines as expounded by her book “The Secret Doc-

trine”, and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers,

through Ariosophy, the  Germanenorden   and the Thule

Society, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but de-

cisive influence over the developing mind of Hitler.[246]

The scholars state that Hitler himself may be responsi-

ble for turning historians from investigating his occult

influences.[246] While he publicly condemned and even

persecuted occultists, Freemasons, and astrologers, his

nightly private talks disclosed his belief in the ideas of

these competing occult groups - demonstrated by his dis-cussion of  reincarnation, Atlantis, world ice theory, and

his belief that esoteric myths and legends of cataclysm

and battles between gods and titans were a vague collec-

tive memory of monumental early events.[246]

6 Religion, social Darwinism and

Hitler’s racism

Scholarly interest continues on the extent to which in-

herited, long-standing, cultural-religious notions of anti-Judaism in Christian Europe contributed to Hitler’s per-

sonal racial anti-Semitism, and what influence a pseudo-

scientific “primitive version of social-Darwinism”, mixed

with 19th century imperialist notions, brought to bear

on his psychology. Laurence Rees noted that “empha-

sis on Christianity” was absent from the vision expressed

by Hitler in Mein Kampf and his “bleak and violent vi-

sion” and visceral hatred of the Jews had been influenced

by quite different sources: the notion of life as struggle

he drew from Social Darwinism, the notion of the supe-

riority of the “Aryan race” he drew from Arthur de Gob-

ineau's The Inequality of the Human Races ; from events

following Russia’s surrender in World War One when

Germany seized agricultural lands in the East he formed

the idea of colonising the Soviet Union; and from Alfred

Rosenberg he took the idea of a link between Judaismand

Bolshevism.[247] Hitler espoused a ruthless policy of “neg-

ative eugenic selection”, believing that world history con-

sisted of a struggle for survival between races, in which

the Jews plotted to undermine the Germans, and inferior

groups like Slavs and defective individuals in the German

gene pool, threatened the Aryan “master race”.   Richard

J. Evans wrote that his views on these subjects have of-

ten been called "social Darwinist", but that there is lit-

tle agreement among historians as to what the term maymean, or how it transformed from its 19th century scien-

tific origins, to become a central component of a genoci-

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19

dal political ideology in the 20th century.[248]

Derek Hastings   writes that, according to Hitler’s per-

sonal photographer   Heinrich Hoffmann, the strongly

anti-Semitic   Hieronymite[249] Catholic priest   Bernhard

Stempfle was a member of Hitler’s inner circle in the early

1920s and frequently advised him on religious issues.

[250]

He helped Hitler in the writing of  Mein Kampf .[251] He

was killed by the SS in the 1934 purge.[252] Hitler viewed

the Jews as enemies of all civilization and as material-

istic, unspiritual beings, writing in   Mein Kampf : “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.”

Hitler described his supposedly divine mandate for his

anti-Semitism: “Hence today I believe that I am acting in

accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by de-

fending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work

of the Lord.”[253] In his rhetoric, Hitler also fed on the

old accusation of Jewish  deicide. Because of this it hasbeen speculated that Christian anti-Semitism influenced

Hitler’s ideas, especially such works as   Martin Luther's

essay On the Jews and Their Lies  and the writings of Paul

de Lagarde. Others disagree with this view.[254] In sup-

port of this view, Hitler biographer John Toland offers the

opinion that Hitler “carried within him its teaching that

the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, there-

fore, could be done without a twinge of  conscience since

he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God...”.[255]

Nevertheless, in Mein Kampf  Hitler writes of an upbring-

ing in which no particular anti-Semitic prejudice pre-

vailed.According to historian Lucy Dawidowicz, anti-Semitism

has a long history within Christianity, and that the line

of “anti-Semitic descent” from Luther to Hitler is “easy

to draw.” In her The War Against the Jews  , 1933–1945,

she writes that Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the

"demonologized  universe” inhabited by Jews. Dawid-

owicz states that the similarities between Luther’s anti-

Jewish writings and modern anti-Semitism are no coin-

cidence, because they derived from a common history

of  Judenhass  which can be traced to Haman’s advice to

Ahasuerus, although modern German anti-Semitism also

has its roots in German   nationalism.[256]

Catholic histo-rian  José M. Sánchez argues that Hitler’s anti-Semitism

was explicitly rooted in Christianity.[257]

Richard J. Evans Evans noted that Hitler saw Christianity

as “indelibly Jewish in origin and character” and a “pro-

totype of Bolshevism”, which “violated the law of natu-

ral selection”.[17] In the decades between Charles Darwin

and the mid-twentieth century, various historians have

noted that the concept of “Social Darwinism” had been

vaunted by both “proponents of altruistic ethics”, and by

“spokesmen of a brutally elitist morality”, but in many of

its exponents, it took a rightward shift at the close of the

19th Century, when racist and imperialist notions joinedthe mix.[248] According to Evans, Hitler “used his own

version of the language of social Darwinism as a central

element in the discursive practice of extermination...”,

and the language of Social Darwinism, in its Nazi vari-

ant, helped to remove all restraint from the directors of

the “terroristic and exterminatory” policies of the regime,

by “persuading them that what they were doing was jus-

tified by history, science and nature”.[258]

According to Fest, the Nazi dictator simplified Arthur

de Gobineau’s elaborate ideas of   struggle for survival

among the different races, from which the Aryan race,

guided by providence, was supposed to be the torch-

bearers of civilization.[259] In Hitler’s conception, Jews

were enemies of all civilization, especially the   Volk.

Sherree Owens Zalampas wrote that, although Hitler has

been called a "Social Darwinist, he was not such in

the usual sense of the word, for, whereas Social Dar-

winism stressed struggle, change, the survival of the

strongest, and a ceaseless battle of competition, Hitler,

through the use of modern industrial technology and im-

personal bureaucratic methods ended all competition bythe ruthless suppression of all opponents.”[260] Henri El-

lenberger considered his understanding of Darwinism in-

complete, and based loosely on the theory of "survival of

the fittest" in a social context, as popularly misunderstood

at the time.[261][262] Similarly the historian Karl Dietrich

Bracher has argued that it would be wrong to believe that

Hitler’s views were formed through the discipline of close

study and that rather Hitler had drawn on, 'a chance read-

ing of books, occasional pamphlets, and generalisations

based on subjective impressions to form the distorted po-

litical picture which became the   Weltanschauung   ' that

dominated his future life and work. An example fromHitler’s formative Vienna years was the influence of Lanz

von Liebenfels, whose programme spread 'the crass ex-

aggerations of the social Darwinist theory of survival,

the superman and super-race theory, the dogma of race

conflict, and the breeding and extermination theories of

the future SS state', and whose   Ostara  publication was

widely available in the tobacco kiosks of Vienna. In MeinKampf , p. 59, Hitler recounts the genesis of his anti-

Semitism and says his 'books’ are polemical pamphlets

bought 'for a few pennies’.[263]

Hitler biographer Alan Bullock wrote that Hitler did not

believe in God, and that one of his central objections toChristianity, was that its teaching was “a rebellion against

the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival

of the fittest”.[96] Steigmann Gall concludes that, to the

extent he believed in a divinity, Hitler did not believe in a

“remote, rationalist divinity” but in an “active deity,” [264]

which he frequently referred to as “Creator” or “Provi-

dence”. In Hitler’s belief God created a world in which

different races fought each other for survival as depicted

by  Arthur de Gobineau. The “Aryan race,” supposedly

the bearer of civilization, is allocated a special place:

“What we must fight for is to safeguard theexistence and the reproduction of our race ...

so that our people may mature for the fulfil-

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20   8 REFERENCES 

ment of the mission allotted it by the creator

of the universe. ... Peoples that bastardize

themselves, or let themselves be bastardized,

sin against the will of eternal Providence.”[264]

7 See also

•  Benito Mussolini’s religious beliefs

•  German Christians

•  Guilt by association

•   Kirchenkampf

•  Nazi occultism

•   Odinism

•  Race of Jesus

•  Religion in Nazi Germany

•  Religious aspects of Nazism

•   The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

8 References

[1] Smith, Bradley (1967).  Adolf Hitler: His Family, Child-hood and Youth. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,  p.

27.  “Closely related to his support of education was histolerant skepticism concerning religion. He looked upon

religion as a series of conventions and as a crutch for hu-

man weakness, but, like most of his neighbors, he insisted

that the women of his household fulfill all religious obli-

gations. He restricted his own participation to donning

his uniform to take his proper place in festivals and pro-

cessions. As he grew older, Alois shifted from relative

passivity in his attitude toward the power and influence

of the institutional Church to a firm opposition to “cleri-

calism,” especially when the position of the Church came

into conflict with his views on education.”

[2] Rissmann, Michael (2001).   Hitlers Gott: Vorsehungs-

 glaube und Sendungsbewußtsein des deutschen Diktators .Zürich, München: Pendo, pp. 94–96;   ISBN 978-3-

85842-421-1.

[3] Smith, Bradley (1967).  Adolf Hitler: His Family, Child-hood and Youth. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,  p.

42. “Alois insisted she attend regularly as an expression of

his belief that the woman’s place was in the kitchen and in

church... Happily, Klara really enjoyed attending services

and was completely devoted to the faith and teachings of

Catholicism, so her husband’s requirements worked to her

advantage.”

[4]   •   Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; Norton; 2008 ed;

pp. 295–297•   Alan Bullock; Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives;

Fontana Press; 1993; pp. 412–413

•   Paul Berben; Dachau: The Official History 1933–

1945; Norfolk Press; London; 1975;   ISBN 0-

85211-009-X; p. 138

•   Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf

Hitler; Ebury Press; 2012; p135

•  Alan Bullock; Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; Harper-

Perennial Edition 1991; p218

[5]   Guenter Lewy; The Catholic Church And Nazi Germany;

1964; p. 303

[6] Albert Speer. (1997).   Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs .New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 96.

[7] Fred Taylor Translation; The Goebbels Diaries 1939–

41; Hamish Hamilton Ltd; London; 1982;  ISBN 0-241-

10893-4; pp. 304 305

[8]   •   Sharkey,   Word for Word/The Case Against the

Nazis; How Hitler’s Forces Planned To Destroy

German Christianity, New York Times, 13 January2002

•   Alan Bullock; Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; Harper-

Perennial Edition 1991; p 219: “Once the war was

over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out

and destroy the influence of the Christian churches,

but until then he would be circumspect.”

•   Michael Phayer;   The Response of the GermanCatholic Church to National Socialism, published by

Yad Vashem: “By the latter part of the decade of

the Thirties, church officials were well aware that

the ultimate aim of Hitler and other Nazis was the

total elimination of Catholicism and of the Chris-

tian religion. Since the overwhelming majority ofGermans were either Catholic or Protestant. this

goal had to be a long-term rather than a short-term

Nazi objective.”

•  Shirer, William L., Rise and Fall of the Third Re-

ich: A History of Nazi Germany, p. p 240, Si-

mon and Schuster, 1990: " ... under the lead-

ership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—

backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to de-

stroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and sub-

stitutethe old paganism of the early tribal Germanic

gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.”

•   Fischel, Jack R., Historical Dictionary of the Holo-

caust , p. 123, Scarecrow Press, 2010: “The objec-tive was to either destroy Christianity and restore

the German gods of antiquity, or to turn Jesus into

an Aryan.”

•  Gill, Anton (1994).  An Honourable Defeat; A His-tory of the German Resistance to Hitler . Heine-

mann Mandarin. 1995 paperback  ISBN 978-0-

434-29276-9, pp. 14–15: "[the Nazis planned to]

de-Christianise Germany after the final victory”.

•  Mosse, George Lachmann,  Nazi culture: intellec-

tual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich, p.

240, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003: “Had

the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical poli-

cies would have gone beyond those of the Ger-man Christians, to the utter destruction of both the

Protestant and the Catholic Church.

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21

•   Dill, Marshall, Germany: amodern history , p. 365,

University of Michigan Press, 1970: “It seems no

exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the

Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Chris-

tianity in Germany, or at least to subjugate it to their

general world outlook.”

•   Wheaton, Eliot Barculo The Nazi revolution, 1933–1935: prelude to calamity:with a background sur-

vey of the Weimar era, p. 290, 363, Doubleday

1968: The Nazis sought “to eradicate Christianity

in Germany root and branch.”

•   Bendersky, Joseph W.,  A concise history of Nazi

Germany, p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007:

“Consequently, it was Hitler’s long range goal to

eliminate the churches once he had consolidated

control over his European empire.”

[9]   •   Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003)  The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 260.•   Snyder, Louis L. (1981)   Hitler’s Third Reich: A

Documentary History. New York: Nelson-Hall, p.

249.

•   Dutton, Donald G. (2007).   The Psychologyof Genocide, Massacres, and Extreme Violence.

Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 41.

•   Heschel, Susannah (2008).   The Aryan Jesus .Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 23.

[10] Laurence Rees;   The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler ;Ebury Press; 2012; p135.

[11]   Richard Overy;  The Third Reich, A Chronicle; Quercus;2010; p.99

[12]   Alan Bullock;  Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives ; Fontana

Press; 1993; pp.413

[13] Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler,

April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19–20, Oxford

University Press, 1942

[14] Hitler, Adolf (1999). Mein Kampf . Ralph Mannheim, ed.,

New York: Mariner Books, pp. 65, 119, 152, 161, 214,

375, 383, 403, 436, 562, 565, 622, 632–633.

[15]   Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War ; Penguin Press;

New York 2009, p. 547: According to Evans “Science,[Hitler] declared, would easily destroy the last remaining

vestiges of superstition [-] 'In the long run', he concluded,

'National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to

exist together'.”

[16] Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944, Cameron & Stevens,

Enigma Books pp. 59–61: Hitler is quoted as saying:

“The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the

advances of science. Religion will have to make more

and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All

that’s left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier be-

tween the organic and the inorganic. When understanding

of the universe has become widespread, when the major-

ity of men know that the stars are not sources of light butworlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Chris-

tian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.”

[17]   Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War ; Penguin Press;

New York 2009, p. 547

[18] William L. Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich;

Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; p234

[19] Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler;

Ebury Press; 2012; p135

[20] Ralph Manheim, ed.; Adolf Hitler (1998).  Mein Kampf.

New York: Houghton Mifflin. p. 65.  ISBN 0395951054.

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with

the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself

against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

[21] Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H.

Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-

August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19–20, Oxford University

Press, 1942)

[22] Speech in Passau 27 October 1928 Bundesarchiv Berlin-

Zehlendorf; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy

Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 60–61

[23] Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler;

Ebury Press; 2012; p135.

[24]   Alan Bullock;   Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives ; Fontana

Press; 1993; pp.412

[25]  Geoffrey Blainey; A Short History of Christianity; Viking;

2011; pp. 495–6

[26] Ian Kershaw; Hitler: a Biography; Norton; 2008 Edn; pp.

295–297

[27]   Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War ; Penguin Press;

New York 2009, p. 546

[28]   Valdis O. Lumans; Himmler’s Auxiliaries; 1993; p. 48

[29] The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945, by

John S. Conway p. 232; Regent College Publishing

[30] Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theolo- gians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton University

Press, 2008. pp 1–10

[31] Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 ed; Norton; Lon-

don; pp. 295–297

[32] Ian Kershaw;  Hitler: a Biography; Norton; 2008 ed; p.

373

[33]  Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny; Harper Peren-

nial Edition, 1991; p219”

[34]   John Toland, Adolf Hitler . New York: Anchor Publishing,

1992, p. 507.

[35] Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, p.27.

[36] Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003).   The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press. pp. 118–20, 155–6.  ISBN 0-521-82371-4.

[37] Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 13–50, p. 252.

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22   8 REFERENCES 

[38] John S. Conway. Review of Steigmann-Gall, Richard,

The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–

1945. H-German, H-Net Reviews. June, 2003.

[39]   Encyclopedia Online - Adolf Hitler 

[40] Smith, Bradley (1967).  Adolf Hitler: His Family, Child-

hood and Youth. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,  p.27.  “Closely related to his support of education was his

tolerant skepticism concerning religion. He looked upon

religion as a series of conventions and as a crutch for hu-

man weakness, but, like most of his neighbors, he insisted

that the women of his household fulfil all religious obliga-

tions. He restricted his own participation to donning his

uniform to take his proper place in festivals and proces-

sions. As he grew older, Alois shifted from relative pas-

sivity in his attitude toward the power and influence of the

institutional Church to a firm opposition to “clericalism,”

especially when the position of the Church came into con-

flict with his views on education.”

[41] Smith, Bradley (1967).  Adolf Hitler: His Family, Child-hood and Youth. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,  p.

42. “Alois insisted she attend regularly as an expression of

his belief that the woman’s place was in the kitchen and in

church... Happily, Klara really enjoyed attending services

and was completely devoted to the faith and teachings of

Catholicism, so her husband’s requirements worked to her

advantage.”

[42] John Toland; Hitler ; Wordsworth Editions; 1997 Edn; p 9

[43] William L. Shirer (1990).  Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster.

pp. 11–.  ISBN 978-0-671-72868-7. Retrieved 2013-04-

22.

[44] Adolf Hitler (1940).   Mein Kampf . ZHINGOORA

BOOKS. pp. 10–.  ISBN 978-1-105-25334-8. Retrieved

2013-04-22.

[45]   Toland   chapter 1;   Kershaw   chapter 1. By his account

in Mein Kampf  (which is often an unreliable source), he

loved the “solemn splendor of the brilliant Church festi-

vals.” He held the abbot in very high regard, and later told

Helene Hanfstaengl that one time as a small boy he had

once ardently wished to become a priest. His flirtation

with the idea apparently ended as suddenly as it began,

however. (Ibid.)

[46] Alan Bullock; Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; Harper Peren-

nial Edition 1991; p11

[47] John Toland; Hitler ; Wordsworth Editions; 1997 Edn; pp.

18

[48] Paul Berben; Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945;

Norfolk Press; London; 1975;  ISBN 0-85211-009-X; p.

138

[49]  Alan Bullock; Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; Harper Peren-

nial Edition 1991; p218”

[50]  Alan Bullock; Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; Harper Peren-

nial Edition 1991; p216

[51]   Alan Bullock;  Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives ; Fontana

Press; 1993; pp. 412–413

[52]  Alan Bullock; Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; Harper Peren-

nial Edition 1991; p236

[53] Max Domarus (2007). The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary. Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci, p. 21.

[54] Adolf Hitler; Max Domarus (1 April 2007). The Essential 

Hitler: Speeches and Commentary. Bolchazy-Carducci.

pp. 137–.   ISBN 978-0-86516-627-1. Retrieved 2012-

08-06.

[55] Kelly, Jon (2001) “Osama Bin Laden: The power of

shrines” BBC News Magazine (4 May).

[56] Overy, R. J. (2004). The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. New York: Norton, pp. 280–282.

[57] Robert S. Wistrich (1 May 2007). Laboratory for World Destruction: Germans and Jews in Central Europe. U of

Nebraska Press. pp. 375–.   ISBN 978-0-8032-1134-6.

Retrieved 2012-08-25.

[58] Koehne, Samuel, Hitler’s faith: The debate over Nazism

and religion, ABC Religion and Ethics, 18 Apr. 2012

[59] Evans, Richard J. (2008).  The Third Reich at War: Howthe Nazis led Germany from conquest to disaster . London:

Penguin. pp. 547–8. ISBN 978-0-14-101548-4.

[60] Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 14–15

[61] Trevor-Roper, H.R. (2000).   Hitler’s Table Talk 1941– 1944. New York: Enigma Books, pp. 721–722; Night

of 29–30 November 1944.

[62] Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003).   The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press. pp. 26–7.  ISBN 0-521-82371-4.

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[91]   Hitler’s Table Talk   1941–1944, Cameron & Stevens,

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[93] Kershaw, Ian (2001). Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris . London:

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[94] Evans, Richard J. (2008).  The Third Reich at War: Howthe Nazis led Germany from conquest to disaster . London:

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[96] See Alan Bullock;  Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; Harper-

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[97] Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944, Cameron & Stevens,

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[99] Bonney, Richard (2009).   Confronting the Nazi war on Christianity: the Kulturkampf newsletters, 1936–1939Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang Pub., p. 20.

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[234] Speech in Nuremberg on 6 September 1938.   TheSpeeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol-ume 1 Edited by Norman Hepburn Baynes. University of

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[238]   Goodrick-Clarke 1985, p. x

[239]   Telegram from Hitler to Dr. Korsch, President of the In-

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[240]   Entry for “Hitler’s Search for the Holy Grail”   at the

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[241]  Fest 1973, p. 320

[242]  Hitler 1926, ch. 12

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[244] “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 So-

cialists, but something else—in any case something which

has nothing to do with us.” (Speech in Nuremberg on 6

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[245]  Gunther 1938, p. 10

[246] Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles: Hitler’s Racial Ide-

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[248]   Richard J. Evans;  In Search of German Social Darwin-ism: The History and Historiography of a Concept ; a chap-

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[249] Derek Hastings, Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism, p.

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[250] Hastings, Derek (2010).   Catholicism and the roots of Nazism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 119.

[251] Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, p.111

[252]   http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/

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[253] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New

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[254]   Shirer 1960, pp. 91–236argues that Luther’sessay was in-

fluential. This view was expounded by Lucy Dawidowicz.

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[255] John Toland. (1976). Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biog-

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[256]   The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945. First published

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34532-2

[257] José M. Sánchez, Pius XII and the Holocaust; Understand-ing the Controversy  (Washington, D.C: Catholic Univer-

sity of American Press, 2002), p. 70.

[258]   Richard J. Evans;  In Search of German Social Darwin-ism: The History and Historiography of a Concept , 1997

- (quoted by Richard Weikart in  From Darwin to Hitler ;Palgrave MacMillan; USA 2004;  ISBN 1-4039-7201-X;

p.233)

[259] Fest, Joachim (1974). Hitler . New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, pp. 56, 210.

[260] Zalampas, Sherree Owens. (1990).  Adolf Hitler: A psy-chological interpretation of his views on architecture, art,and music . Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Univer-

sity Popular Press, p. 139..

[261]   Ellenberger, Henri (1970).  The Discovery of the Uncon-scious: The history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry.

New York: Basic Books. p. 235.

[262] Sklair, Leslie (2003).   The Sociology of Progress . New

York: Routledge, p. 71. ISBN 978-0-415-17545-6

[263] Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, pp. 86–

87

[264]   Steigmann-Gall 2003, p. 26

9 Bibliography

•   Angebert, Jean-Michel (1974),  The Occult and theThird Reich, Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-02-502150-1.

•   Baynes, Norman (1942),   The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939  1, New York: Ox-

ford University Press, ISBN 978-0-598-75893-4.

•   Bullock, Alan  (1991),  Hitler: A Study in Tyranny,

Abridged Edition, New York: Harper Perennial,

ISBN 0-06-092020-3.

•   Carrier, Richard   (2003), ""Hitler’s Table Talk":

Troubling Finds”,   German Studies Review   26   (3):561–576, doi:10.2307/1432747.

•   Davies, Norman (1996), Europe: A History, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-820171-7.

•   Dawidowicz, Lucy   (1986),   The War Against theJews: 1933-1945, Bantam,   ISBN 978-0-553-

34532-2.

•  De George, Richard; Scanlan, James (1975), Marx-ism and religion in Eastern Europe: papers presented at the Banff International Slavic Conference, Septem-ber 4–7, 1974, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

•   Fest, Joachim   (1973),   Hitler: Eine Biographie,

Propyläen,  ISBN 978-3-549-07301-8.

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28   10 EXTERNAL LINKS 

•   Fest, Joachim (2002), Hitler , Harcourt, ISBN 978-

0-15-602754-0.

•   Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas   (1985),   The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935, Wellingborough, England:

The Aquarian Press, ISBN 978-0-85030-402-2.

•   Gunther, John   (1938),   Inside Europe, New York:

Harper & brothers.

•   Hart, Stephen; Hart, Russell; Hughes, Matthew

(2000), The German soldier in World War II , Osce-

ola, Wisconsin: MBI.

•  Hitler, Adolf (1926), Mein Kampf  2.

•   Irving, David (1978),  The War Path: Hitler’s Ger-many, 1933–1939, New York: Viking Press, ISBN

978-0-670-74971-3.

•  Kershaw, Ian (1987), The 'Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford University Press.

•   Kershaw, Ian   (2000),   Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris ,London: W. W. Norton & Company (published

1999), ISBN 978-0-393-32035-0.

•   Kershaw, Ian   (2008),   Hitler a Biography, W.W.

Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.

•   Miner, Steven (2003),   Stalin’s Holy War , Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 978-

0-8078-2736-9.

•   Rissmann, Michael (2001),   Hitlers Gott. Vorse-hungsglaube und Sendungsbewußtsein des deutschenDiktators , Zürich München: Pendo, pp. 94–96,

ISBN 978-3-85842-421-1.

•   Sage, Steven (2006),   Ibsen and Hitler: the play-wright, the plagiarist, and the plot for the Third Re-ich, New York: Carroll & Graf, ISBN 978-0-7867-

1713-2.

•   Shirer, William   (1960),  The Rise and Fall of theThird Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York:

Simon & Schuster, retrieved 2008-04-28.

•  Siemon-Netto, Uwe (1995), The Fabricated Luther: The Rise and Fall of the Shirer Myth, St. Louis: Con-

cordia Publishing House,  ISBN 978-0-570-04800-

8.

•   Speer, Albert (1997), Inside the Third Reich, Orion,

ISBN 978-1-85799-218-2.

•   Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003),   The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945, Cam-

bridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-82371-5.

•   Thomsett, Michael (1997), The German opposition

to Hitler: the resistance, the underground, and assas-sination plots, 1938–1945, Jefferson, N.C.: McFar-

land, ISBN 978-0-7864-0372-1.

•   Toland, John   (1976),   Adolf Hitler , Doubleday,

ISBN 978-0-385-03724-2.

•   Toland, John   (1992),   Adolf Hitler: The DefinitiveBiography, New York: Anchor,  ISBN 978-0-385-

42053-2.

•  Westerlund, David; Ingvar, Svanberg (1999),  Islamoutside the Arab world , New York: St. Martin’s

Press.

•  Zipfel, Friedrich (1965),  Kirchenkampf in Deutsch-land 1933–1945, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co..

10 External links

•  Mein Kampf  - by Adolf Hitler

•  Mein Kampf   - by Adolf Hitler (published by Hurstand Blackett, 1939)

•   Introduction to   The Holy Reich   - by   Richard

Steigmann-Gall

•   Review of Richard Steigmann-Gall’s Holy Reich - by

John S. Conway

•  Full Text of Hitler’s Table Talk.

•  Was Hitler a Christian? ; by Dinesh D'Souza.

•  Was Hitler a Catholic? ; by John Muscat; Quadrant

Online

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29

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11.2 Images

•   File:Adolf_Hitler-1933.jpg  Source:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Adolf_Hitler-1933.jpg  License:   CC BY-

SA 3.0 de  Contributors:   This image was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the  German Federal Archive  (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

as part of a   cooperation project. The German Federal Archive guarantees an authentic representation only using the originals (negative

and/or positive), resp. the digitalization of the originals as provided by the Digital Image Archive.  Original artist:  Heinrich Hoffman?

•   File:Adolf_Hitler_cropped_restored.jpg   Source:    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Adolf_Hitler_cropped_

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30   11 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES 

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The people from the Tango! project. And according to the meta-data in the file, specifically: “Andreas Nilsson, and Jakub Steiner (although

minimally).”

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