Religious views of Adolf Hitler
In early 1937, he was declaring that "Christianity was ripe for destruction" (Untergang), and that the churches must therefore yield to the "primacy of the state", railing against "the most horrible institution imaginable"[34]British historian Richard J. Evans, who writes primarily on Nazi Germany and World War II, noted Hitler claiming that Nazism is founded on science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition' Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and 'Priests', he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks'.
"[36] Overy writes of Hitler as skeptical of all religious belief, but politically prudent enough not to "trumpet his scientific views publicly", partly in order to maintain the distinction between his own movement and the godlessness of Soviet Communism.
[40] Considering the religious allusions found in Mein Kampf, Rees writes that "the most coherent reading" of the book is that Hitler was prepared to believe in an initial creator God, but did "not accept the conventional Christian vision of heaven and hell, nor the survival of an individual 'soul'.
Thus Hitler told the British journalist Ward Price in 1937: "I believe in God, and I am convinced that He will not desert 67 million Germans who have worked so hard to regain their rightful position in the world.
Only the spreading poison 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'".
"[63] The widespread consensus among historians is that the views expressed in Hugh Trevor-Roper's translation of Table Talk, are credible and reliable, although as with all historical sources, a high level of critical awareness about its origins and purpose are advisable.
"[68] 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;".
F. literally: ‘The war, here as in many other areas, presents a favourable opportunity to dispose of it (the church question) root and branch.’”[98] Adolf Hitler was raised in a Roman Catholic family in Habsburg Austria.
[111] In Percy Ernst Schramm's "The Anatomy of a Dictator", which was based on an analysis of the transcripts of the "Table Talk" recordings, Hitler is quoted as saying that "after a hard inner struggle" he had freed himself from the religious beliefs of his youth, so that he felt "as fresh as a foal in the pasture".
"[112] He typically tailored his message to his audience's perceived sensibilities[113] and Kershaw considers that few people could really claim to "know" Hitler, who was "a very private, even secretive individual", able to deceive "even hardened critics" as to his true beliefs.
[15] In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote 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.
The attitude of the Pan-German movement toward the Catholic Church was determined far less by its position on science, etc., than by its inadequacy in the championing of German rights and, conversely, its continued aid and comfort to Slavic arrogance and greed.
[135] Article 24 of Hitler's National Socialist Programme of 1920 had endorsed what it termed "positive Christianity", but placed religion below party ideology by adding the caveat that it must not offend "the moral sense of the German race".
[136] Nondenominational, the term[clarification needed] 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.
It will be its honest endeavour to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of today.
For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious workAccording to Bullock, as an adolescent in Vienna, Hitler read widely, including books on occultism, hypnotism, and astrology.
In this period of the most inward orientation, Christian mysticism demanded an approach to the solution of structural problems and hence to an architecture whose design not only ran contrary to the spirit, of the time, but which also helped produce these mysterious dark forces which made the people increasingly willing to submit themselves to cosmopolitism ...
For the same people who brandish scholarly 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.
[188] In his seminal 1930 work The Myth of the Twentieth Century, Rosenberg wrote: "We now realize that the central supreme values of the Roman and the Protestant Churches ... hinder the organic powers of the peoples determined by their Nordic race, ... they will have to be remodeled".
This task does not consist solely in overcoming an ideological opponent but must be accompanied at every step by a positive impetus: in this case that means the reconstruction of the German heritage in the widest and most comprehensive sense.
[203] The theory was inspired by the German archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna,[204] who argued that the ancient Aryans were a superior Nordic race from northern Germany who expanded into the steppes of Eurasia, and from there into India, where they established the Vedic religion.
[208] In this context, Hitler's connection to Amin al-Husseini, who served as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem until 1937– which included his asylum in 1941 – has been interpreted by some as a sign of respect, while others characterize it as a relationship born out of political expediency.
[220][221][222] The Nazis targeted individuals of mixed Arab/North African heritage, sterilizing hundreds and imprisoning 450 Arab inmates in concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where they were subjected to forced labor, particularly Algerians residing in France.
[223][224] In spite of Hitler's conflicting opinions on Islam and Arabs, in a letter to President Roosevelt during the war, Winston Churchill pointed out that Muslim soldiers were providing "the main army elements on which we [the British] must rely for the immediate fighting.
"[225] Many Muslims have sacrificed themselves to save Jews and fight the Nazis the like of Noor Inayat Khan, Behic Erkin, Abdol-Hossein Sardari, and Si Kaddour Benghabrit the founder of the Great Mosque of Paris.
[228] Writing for the public in Mein Kampf, Hitler described the Jews as enemies of all civilization and as materialistic, unspiritual beings: "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.
The notion of life as struggle Hitler drew from social Darwinism, the notion of the superiority of the "Aryan race" he drew from Arthur de Gobineau'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 Judaism and Bolshevism, writes Rees.
[262] Resistance quickly arose in the form of the Pastors' Emergency League, led by Martin Niemöller, which had 40% of clergy by 1934 and founded the Confessing Church, from which some clergymen opposed the Nazi regime.
This radically anti-Christian position is most significantly presented in Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century...generally regarded after Mein Kampf as the most authoritative statement of National Socialist ideology.
[287] 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 Protestant Christians, "despite all Rosenberg's efforts.
