So long as Adolf Hitler was in power, his Roman Catholic Church never questioned his Catholicism - at least not in public - which is where it mattered politically. (this page was viewed 19082 times in 2009)

 

Exiting Whilemshaven church in 1931 a posed picture which Hitler himself used often to show what a good "practicing Catholic" he was.         Catholics today all try to repudiate Adolf Hitler and deny that he was a fellow Roman Catholic.  But this was definitely not the case so long as he was in power, after he had given Germans jobs and reasons to be proud of their powerful country, following the period of great economic depression and great shame which were the results of the country's disastrous defeat in World War One.  Hitler understood how much it would hurt his cause if the 66% of the German population who were Protestants and the 33% who were fellow Catholics were to learn how anti-Christian he and his Nazi ring leaders actually were in their hearts.  Although we now know that Adolf Hitler expressed his true thoughts and feelings for his Catholic Church in his private writings and in his candid communications with his inner circle, we also know that he was a shrewd politician who knew how to manipulate the churchmen of both of the major German faiths to his advantage, by convincing them at the time that he was a champion, not an opponent, of Christianity.         Catholics today imagine that their church must have repudiated Hitler at that time, because they want so much to be disassociated from him in our time. But try as they may to rewrite history, the fact is that once Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, neither the pope in Rome as leader of the church worldwide, nor the bishops as leaders of the church in Germany, ever denied Hitler himself (nor any of the many, many, other Roman Catholic leaders of the Third Reich)membership in the R.C. church, or even public access to the sacraments.         Nor was "the Nazi Bible", Hitler's Mein Kampf, ever placed on the "Index" of books which Catholics were forbidden to read.   Nor were Catholics discouraged publicly or privately from serving in Hitler's administration.  The sad truth is that German Catholic bishops actually did forbid the faithful from joining the Nazi party.  But that was before Hitler came to power.  Once the Nazis came into power and Hitler was in a position to actually enact his diabolical schemes, the Catholic hierarchy reversed itself and lifted that ban.         In early 1933, Hitler vowed secretly to completely eradicate Christianity from Germany.  'You are either a Christian or a German, you cannot be both.'  But Hitler was smart enough to know that in a nation as Christian as Germany, the public and the churches must never know his true feelings and beliefs.         Throughout his career however, Adolf Hitler never ceased trying to project to his Christian countrymen and their clergy the image of a "man of God", chosen to lead a Christian nation into a more perfect state, purified of the demonic influence of Jews and "Bolsheviks".  And history proves that he succeeded in persuading the vast majority of his countrymen not just to let him proceed, but to do his dirty work for him. In a speech that Adolf Hitler gave in April, 1922, and then published in "My New Order", he proclaimed:         "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." Nazi rally in front of Church of our Lady, in Nuremberg, c.1928, by Heinrich Hoffmann - US Holocaust Museum         "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 I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice .  And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows.  For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.  And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.         When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited."         Hitler, or others in his sphere of influence, may well have been aware of what this great philosopher said on this subject,         "A tyrant needs to put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."  - Aristotle         One thing that is certain is that Christian churchmen used what IMHO is one of the most horrible passages in the New Testament in support of Hitler and his regime, namely ch. 13 of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.         Projecting an image of religiosity was so important to Hitler that he reinforced that image, over and over and over again, as in : "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."  Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 46 "What we have to fight for. . .  is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."   [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125] "This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."   [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152] "Adolf Hitler recognized at an early stage the potential for Catholic resistance to National Socialism.  In Mein Kampf (meaning "My Struggle"), he wrote that a confrontation (i.e.  in the open) with the Catholic Church in Germany would prove disastrous." (to his NAZI cause). A few days after the signing of the Lateran Treaty, Hitler wrote an article for the Volkischer Reobachter, published on February 22, 1929, warmly welcoming the agreement. "The fact that the Curia is now making its peace with Fascism," he wrote, "shows that the Vatican trusts the new political realities far more than did the former liberal democracy with which it could not come to terms." Turning to the German situation, he rebuked the Center Party leadership for its recalcitrant attachment to democratic politics. "By trying to preach that democracy is still in the best interests of German Catholics, the Center Party ... is placing itself in stark contradiction to the spirit of the treaty signed today by the Holy See." The conclusion of his rant contained a gross distortion as well as a remarkable intuition of future opportunities: "The fact that the Catholic Church has come to an agreement with Fascist Italy." he went on, "... Proves beyond doubt that the Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity than those of Jewish liberalism or even atheistic Marxism, to which the so-called Catholic Center Party sees itself so closely bound, to the detriment of Christianity today and our German people." 'In early Feb. of 1933, he declared in the Reichstag (parliament) that the churches were to be an integral part of German national life.' " . . .     The important thing about Hitler's faith isn't his relationship with God (which is between him and God) but his relationship to the 98% of Germans who considered themselves "Christian".     Shrewd politician that he was, Hitler knew how urgent it was that he appear to be a "Christian" like them, and it was crucial that his church not deny him that political asset - which is exactly what the church should have done, had it been faithful, instead of cowardly and complicit, in this deceit. "The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life." "The National Government regards the two Christian confessions as factors essential to the soul of the German people. It will respect the contracts they have made with the various regions. It declares its determination to leave their rights intact. In the schools, the government will protect the rightful influence of the Christian bodies. We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people. We hope to develop friendly relations with the Holy See" ( addressed the Reichstag on March 23, 1933) "The Government of the Reich regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation." "The rights of the churches will not be diminished."  ( from The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1, pg. 369-372 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942 - edition of 1969.) "As we see in Christianity the unshakable foundation of moral life, so it is our duty to continue to cultivate friendly relations with the Holy See and to develop them." (from Hitler's speech to the Reichstag on March 23rd, 1933, in which he indicated the programme of his Government. See Universe, March 31st, 1933.) "National Socialism, he proclaimed, has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State.  For their part the churches cannot for a second doubt that they need the protection of the State, and that only through the State can they be enabled to fulfill their religious mission.  Indeed, the churches demand this protection from the State."  [Hitler - in his first radio address to the German people after coming to power (1933).] "We don't ask the Almighty, 'Lord, make us free!" We want to be active, to work, to work together, so that when the hour comes that we appear before the Lord we can say to him: 'Lord, you see that we have changed.' The German people is no longer a people of dishonor and shame, of self-destructiveness and cowardice. No, Lord, the German people is once more strong in spirit, strong in determination, strong in the willingness to bear every sacrifice. Lord, now bless our battle and our freedom, and therefore our German people and fatherland.." - Adolf Hitler, Prayer, May 1, 1933 "The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church.  This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie."  Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted in John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" ) "While we destroyed the (Catholic) Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests.  The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co-operation between the Reich and the two Confessions."  Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934 "I know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity.  No, it is not that we have deserted Christianity; it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity.  We have only carried through a clear division between politics, which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere.  There has been no interference with the doctrine of the Confessions or with their religious freedom, nor will there be any such interference.  On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends. "There may have been a time when even parties founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity.  (Between World War I & II, the Catholic "Center Party" had been one of the most powerful political parties in Germany.)  At that time Liberalism was opposed to the Church, while Marxism was anti-religious.  But that time is past.  National Socialism neither opposes the church, nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity." "The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for the consciousness of a community in our national life, for the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes, for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and discord.  These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles." Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934. " I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator.  By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work." Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, 1936 "And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God." Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174 "Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church." Adolf Hitler, reported to have said in Berlin in 1936, on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism." Impressed with the organization of the Papacy, Hitler is quoted as saying the following:  "I learned much from the Order of the Jesuits…until now there has never been anything more grandiose on the earth than the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. I transferred much of this organization into my own party." Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Said To Me (1939), 266-267. "I believe that it was God’s will to send a youth from here into the Reich, to let him grow up, to raise him to be the leader of the nation so as to enable him to lead back his homeland into the Reich….In three days the Lord has smitten them… And to me the grace was given on the day of the betrayal to be able to unite my homeland [Austria] with the Reich….I would now give thanks to Him who let me return to my homeland in order than I might now lead it into my German Reich. Tomorrow, may every German recognize the hour, and measure its import and bow in humility before the Almighty who in a few weeks has wrought a miracle upon us. [Closing speech of the campaign at Vienna, 9 April 1938]" "I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just.  Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright." Adolf Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at the Nuremberg Parteitag of [11 Sept. 1936] "We National Socialists, too, have deep in our hearts our own faith.  We cannot do otherwise.  No man can mould the history of peoples or of the world unless he has upon his will and his capacities the blessing of Providence." Adolf Hitler, to Nazi leaders on 2 June 1937, as reported by a correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph": "In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger . . .  I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty.  . .  If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths . . .  Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith.  We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence." Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937 "Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion.  In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration: 1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted . . . 2. The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State . . .  Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.         It is therefore, to put mildly-- effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich. . .          I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds? 3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service.  It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions.  In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion .         There are ... ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State.         But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy." Adolf Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan., 1939         [ That last sentence sums up Hitler's stand on the priesthood.  Rather than standing for atheism, as today's Christians would like, Hitler attacked the priesthood only to the extent that they got in his way.]         "When Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in Munich in November, 1939, he gave the credit to providence. 'Now I am completely content,' he exclaimed. 'The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to let me reach my goal.' Catholic newspapers throughout the Reich echoed this, declaring that it was a miraculous working of providence that had protected their Fuëhrer. One cardinal, Michael Faulhaber, sent a telegram instructing that a Te Deum be sung in the cathedral of Munich, 'to thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuëhrer's fortunate escape. ' The Pope also sent his special personal congratulations." ( from http://skeptically.org/againstreligion/id13.html ) "The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests.  It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.  Today Christians stand at the head of our country.  We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.  We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press-in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years." ( a Radio Broadcast July 22, 1933; from My New Order. )  (The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1.  pp. 871-872, Oxford University Press,London, 1942)         One of the most frightening quotes (from one of Hitler's Tischgespräche: ) "If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness.  If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good faith." "I may not be a light of the church, a pulpiteer, but deep down I am a pious man, and believe that whoever fights bravely in defense of a natural law framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by the lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of Providence." [ Hitler, in a 1944 speech ]. "Woman's world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men." Adolph Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New Feminism "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933         On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday. The celebrations, initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest congratulations to the Fuëhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany" and added with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." (from Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell )         "During Hitler's fiftieth birthday celebration, special votive masses were held in every German church "to implore God's blessing upon Fuhrer and people," and the Bishop of Mainz called upon Catholics in his diocese to pray specifically for "the Fuhrer and Chancellor, the inspirer, enlarger and protector of the Reich." The Pope did not fail to send his congratulations. on Catholics in his diocese to pray specifically for "the Fuhrer and Chancellor, the inspirer, enlarger and protector of the Reich." Hitler 1933 - "I too declare that I will never join forces with the parties that destroy Christianity. If there are those who now protect a threatened Christianity, where was their Christianity (the secular Weimar Republic) in those fourteen years when they went arm and arm with atheism? " "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out. " Hitler, 1933 speech "National Socialism neither opposes the church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity." -Hitler, 1934 speech in reference to the Jews - "The task which Christ began but did not finish, I will complete. " - Hitler 1926 upon assuming power in 1933 - "May Almighty God take our work to his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the confidence of our Volk." Hitler "I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it." Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40 "There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland." [Message painted on walls of concentration camps and signed , signed "Hitler";  Life, August 21, 1939] "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." + The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. +         "Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law (as well as the church) on his side.  Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal." - Historian Alan Bullock         Hitler was a great fan of "Passion Plays."  No doubt he would have loved Mel Gibson's movie, which might well be the most viewed "Passion Play" of all time: "It is vital that the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans.  There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry."         Still another example of Catholic worship promoting hatred of the Jews at the time was the annual commemoration in Deggendorf in Catholic Bavaria of the professed miraculous appearance of "a lovely little child" from a communion wafer, which had allegedly been stolen and desecrated by the Jews of the town on 9/30/1337. On the same day, the pious Catholics of the town, acting "out of legitimate zeal pleasing to God," killed off all of the town's Jews.  Many of the 10,000 pilgrims who came to celebrate these events each year in Hitler's day could read the inscription under a picture depicting the massacre in the Catholic Church, "God grant that our fatherland be forever free from this hellish scum."   (Lewy, p. 272-72)

"Hitler did well in monastery school.  He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests.  Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood."[ from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html ]         According to http://www.reformation.org/inquisit.html, the picture on the right is of young Eva Braun, as a nun at Simbach Convent.
	Even the members of Hitler's nefarious Nazi S. S., swore a loyalty oath that appealed to God: "I pledge to you, Adolf Hitler, my obedience unto death, so help me God." Members of the Wehrmacht (regular army) swore this loyalty oath: "I swear by God this holy oath to the Fuëhrer of the German Reich and the German people,  Adolf Hitler." And every time regular army NAZI soldiers put on their uniforms, their belt buckle proclaimed "God is with us".
Hitler Was Not An Atheist by John Patrick Michael Murphy         In George Orwell's 1984, it was stated, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."  Who is going to control the present-fundamentalism or freedom?  History is being distorted by many preachers and politicians.  They are heard on the airwaves condemning atheists and routinely claim Adolf Hitler was one.         Hitler was a Roman Catholic, baptized into that religio-political institution as an infant in Austria.  He became a communicant and an altar boy in his youth and was confirmed as a "soldier of Christ" in at his mother’s wish on Whit Sunday 1904 at the Cathedral at Linz.  Hitler still went to confession and communion in 1918. (from http://yearegods.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/was-hitler-a-christian/ ) He himself wrote of that period of his life : "I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal". [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 1] [ The most extensive article I have seen on Hitler's youth is http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/boyhood.htm.]         Its worst doctrines never left him.  He was steeped in its liturgy, which contained the words "perfidious Jew."  This hateful statement was not removed until 1961.  "Perfidy" means treachery.  In his day, hatred of Jews was the norm.  In great measure it was sponsored by two major religions of Germany, Catholicism and Lutheranism.         He greatly admired Martin Luther, who openly hated the Jews.  Luther condemned the Catholic Church for its pretensions and corruption, but he supported the centuries of papal pogroms against the Jews.  Luther said,  "The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves," and  "We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them."  "Ungodly wretches" he called the Jews in his book, Table Talk.         Hitler seeking power, wrote in Mein Kampf, " . . .  I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator.  By fighting off the Jews.  I am doing the Lord's work."  Years later, when in power, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.  Three years later he informed General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."  He never left the church, and the church never left him.  Great literature was banned by his church, but his miserable Mein Kampf never appeared on the index of Forbidden Books.  He was not excommunicated or even condemned by his church.  Popes, in fact, contracted with Hitler and his fascist friends Franco and Mussolini, giving them veto power over whom the pope could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain, and Italy.  The three thugs agreed to surtax the Catholics of these countries and send the money to Rome in exchange for making sure the state could control the church.         Those who would make Hitler an atheist should turn their eyes to history books before they address their pews and microphones.  Acclaimed Hitler biographer John Toland explains his heartlessness as follows: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite the detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jews was the killer of god.  The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god . . . "         Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church.  Soldiers of the Vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us).  His troops were often sprinkled with holy water by the priests.  It was a real (99%) Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical.         Hitler, like some of the today's politicians and preachers, politicized "family values."  He liked corporal punishment in home and school.  Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his administration.  While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages.  He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it."         The author is a retired attorney in Colorado Springs who writes a weekly column for an alternative newspaper. { from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 19, Number 2 }

The "spiritual" godfather of Nazism         "Hitler's concern not to alienate traditionalist opinion was eminently political and made sense in a rural Catholic region like Bavaria, which had been the cradle of the Nazi movement between 1919 and 1925. Moreover, Hitler recognized the affinity between local anti Jewish religious traditions typified by such popular festivals as the Oberammergau Passion Play (which highlighted the Jews' primary role in Christ's crucifixion) and his own violent anti-Semitism. The potency of this inflammatory strand of folk prejudice, accentuated by the linkage in the popular mind between Jews and Communism in post-1919 Munich, explains why Hitler sought to appropriate the Christian anti-Jewish tradition for his own demagogic ends. It is succinctly summed up in that notorious passage in Mein Kampf where he rails, "In defending myself against the Jews I am acting for the Lord." The continuity is equally evident whenever Hitler's speeches passionately evoked_ Jesus as "the scourge of the Jews" or praised the "utterance(s) of the great Nazarene, who had always despised the golden mean, whether in politics or in life. Small wonder, then, that the Nazis were eager in the early years to tap into the centuries-old tradition of Christian anti-Semitism for electoral purposes and present their doctrines as heir compatible with "positive" Christianity. To understand what Hitler meant by this propagandist phrase, it is important to remember that his ideas in the 1920s were strongly influenced by the "spiritual" godfather of Nazism, the Bavarian Catholic Journalist Dietrich Eckart, whom he admired as "an outstanding writer and thinker" and to whom ( the 2nd volume of) Mein Kampf' was dedicated. Twenty years older than Hitler, Eckart had introduced his raw, energetic protege to Munich society, improved his social graces and his German, reshaping his racist anti-Semitism and grooming, him for the role of messianic savior of Germany. Eckart had invented the Nazi battle cry "Deutschland Erwache!" (Germans awake!), the title of one of his poems. In 1919, he began publication of the ultranationalist weekly Auf Gut Deutsch, which attacked the Treaty of Versailles, Jewish scar profiteers, Bolshevism, and social democracy. Eckart's eclectic combination of volkisch racism with Catholic mysticism and his Manichaean view of the world as a battle between the forces of light and darkness (embodied by Aryan and Jew) appealed strongly to the early Hitler. He looked up to Eckart as a prophet, teacher, and father figure whose services to National Socialism were "inestimable," and he shared his view that "the Jewish Question is the chief problem of humanity, in which, indeed, every one of its other problems is contained." Equally, he shared Eckart's conviction that Christ's revelation had been radically distorted by the apostle Paul and overlaid with a cold "Jewish" materialism from which all social evils had subsequently proceeded. In post-1918 Germany, the decadent condition of which Eckart compared to that of the late Roman Empire (where "Judaism" under the "cover" of Christianity had first engineered a moral collapse), the situation was perilous in the extreme. The prince causes of "decomposition" were capitalism, Bolshevism, and Freemasonry--three deadly modern agents of (judaization). The only salvation for the German Volk lay in a fusion of nationalism, socialism, and positive Christianit,y," though this trinity would have to be stripped of any Jewish component and reinterpreted in a fundamentally "anti materialist" spirit. Echart died in 1924, but his ambitious pupil later implemented his millenarian program of redemptive anti-Semitism to devastating effect.-'' By brandishing the slogan of "positive Christianity" and projecting their leader as a deeply religious figure (Hitler's frequent references to "Divine Providence" made this easier), Nazi Party image makers could suggest that their movement defended traditionalist values, especially against "godless Marxism." (pp. 124-129) Hitler and the Holocaust, by Robert S. Wistrich

"Just 1.5 percent of Germans identified themselves as unbelievers in a 1939 census, which means either that very few Nazis and National Socialist German Worker's Party supporters were atheists, or that atheists feared to identify themselves to the pro-theistic regime." [ from an internet article. ]         In http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NifZmfhCO8, a Catholic pro-life Youtube video purports to make the case that "Mother Teresa is Anti-abortion and Hitler is Pro-abortion", by using the following quote, leaving out the context which I have provided below in [brackets] :         '[The Fuehrer's Guidelines for the Government of the Eastern Territories: ' the Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we don't need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable.] They may use contraceptives And practice abortion, the more the better. . .Active trade in contraceptives ought to be actually encouraged in the Eastern territories, as we could not possibly have the slightest interest in increasing the non-Germanic population." ( Harvest of Hate, 1954, pp. 273-4)         How dishonest it is to use such a quote to associate "pro-choice" people with the Nazis when - as the following clearly shows - Hitler and the Nazis were ardently "pro-life", so long as it wasn't Jewish life.         SS chief Heinrich Himmler wrote to Field-Marshal Willhilm Keitel the following in 1939:         "According to statistics there are 600,000 abortions a year in Germany. The fact that these happen among the best German racial types has been worrying me for years. The way I see it we cannot afford to lose these young people, hundreds and thousands of them. The aim of protecting this German blood is of the highest priority. If we manage to stop these abortions we will be able to have 200 more German regiments every year on the march. Another 500,000 or 600,000 people could produce millions of marks for the economy. The strength of these soldiers and workers will build the greater Germany. This is why I founded Lebensborn in 1936. It fights abortions in a positive way. Every woman can have her child in peace and quiet and devote her life to the betterment of the race." (Master Race: The Lebensborn Experiment in Nazi Germany, 1995, pp.66-7)
When Hitler wanted to promote the production of human replacement parts for his Nazi machine, was it an accident that he came up with an annual award for women producing many children consisting of a cross enshrining another cross (the swastika is just one of many variations of a cross) in the shape of what was one of the most visible articles of Roman Catholic worship at the time, the "monstrance", used to display and worship the Eucharistic host?         See Wikipedia's article on the Nazi Mother's cross
After claiming throughout the period of the Third Reich that the Vatican "neutrality" prevented it from speaking out against the Nazis,  "The Catholic Church, which claimed the religious allegiance of 98 per cent of the Italian people, was forbidden by Italian electoral law from engaging in politics.  Nevertheless, the Church threw its entire weight behind the Christian Democrats, led by a former Librarian of the Vatican.  The Pope himself stated that Catholics who voted Communist would be denied absolution.  The implications of this were made clear in one highly publicized incident.  When the Communist mayor of the village of Giuliano, Francesco Frezza, who was also a devout Catholic that never missed a Sunday Mass in all his life, died, he was denied a Catholic burial by the local Bishop.  Peasants who attempted to bring his body into the church found their way blocked by a cordon of police.  In addition to invoking what for Catholics are the most serious religious sanctions, the Church also supplied an "infantry" for the Christian Democrat's campaign.  The Catholic Action organization set up "civic committees" in 18,000 parishes to get out the vote for the Christian Democrats.  After the election, the leaders of Catholic Action claimed to be directly responsible for 40 per cent of the Christian Democrat vote." [ from California State U. - www.csulb.edu/~eruyle/humanweb/07tridec2003.htm ]         "The Nazis championed traditional family values: their ideology was conservative, bourgeois, patriarchal, and strongly anti-feminist.  Discipline and conformity were emphasized, marriage promoted, abortion and homosexuality despised. . .Most religious Germans detested the impiety, secularism, and hedonistic decadence that they associated with such modernist ideas as democracy and free speech.  If they feared democracy, they were terrified by Communism, to the point of being willing to accept extreme counter-methods." [ from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html ]         The extent to which Adolf Hitler was a champion of "traditional values", is illustrated in his own words :         "Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea."   [Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]         An online reviewer of the book, "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity", by Richard Steigmann-Gall (1919-1945 ) makes the following points about Hitler's supposed anti-Christian sentiments:         "Steigmann-Gall makes some important points about Hitler's rage against Christainity. First off, Hitler was not an atheist, despised atheism and of course despised the Enlightenment,Liberalism, and Marxist Socialism that are the main sources for modern atheism. Secondly, one should be cautious about Hitler's "Table Talk." Richard Carrier has argued that it has been unscrupulously translated: while in English Hitler denounces Christianity as the greatest idiocy, in the actual German it is clear that Hitler's target is transubstantiation. Steigmann-Gall points out that Hitler had the habit of telling people what they wanted to hear, and his most venomous comments were made in front of Bormann and Himmler. Third, Steigmann-Gall also makes the suggestion that instead of seeing Hitler's anger at Christianity as a revelation of Nazism's basic antipathy, it should be seen as the bitter rage of a defeated megalomaniac, a rage Hitler also directed at the army, some of his closest associates, and indeed the German people themselves."         "When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together."  - the Rev. Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 01-21-93         Au contraire, Mr. Robertson, most of the Nazi leaders were Conservative Christian heterosexuals like yourself!

The answers apologists for the Catholic Church come up with to defend their church can be hilarious. Take the following for example (with mistakes uncorrected), by somebody called "Catholic I am" at http://unbelief.org/forum/index.php?action=printpage;topic=2.0 :         "You say that Hitler lived and died as a Catholic and was never excommunicated.         Well I think that its true that Hitler was baptised a Catholic as an infant, but you'll have to give some detail as to why you think he lived as a Catholic. Given that Hitler was a neo pagan I don't see how you can say that he lived as a Catholic. You do know that the swastika is a pagan symbol don't you???. You do know that the nazi's wanted to eventually rid europe of all Jewish influences including Christianity so as to reestablish some dopey pagan religion don't you???         As far as Hitler dying a Catholic, well sort of. As all Catholics who abandon the Church should know, once you are baptised a Catholic you are a Catholic for eternity. Even if you hate the Church and don't believe in anything that it teaches you will still die a Catholic. What I'm saying is that once a Catholic always a Catholic. Nobody's Catholic baptism can be undone, not even Hitler's.         As far as Hitler never being excommunicated from the Church, well the reality is that he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Anybody who holds beliefs and acts in a manner that is in opposition to the Catholic Church is excommunicated from the Church by their very action. Hitler would not have received a formal letter stating his excommunication from the Church because the Church almost never writes such letters. And yes a baptised Catholic who is excommunicated from the Catholic Church, whether by his actions or by written letter from the Church is still a Catholic, but such a person is not in communion with the Church."

Who actually wrote what ?         The Holocaust museum attributes the following famous words to the German Protestant pastor Martin Niemoller: "First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."         There is no exact evidence as far as I could find that Martin Niemoller actually authored these words. But one thing is sure, and that is the inauthenticity of the version recorded in the Congressional Record, for October 14, 1968, on page 31,636, where "they" (meaning the Nazis) is replaced with "Hitler" and "communists" is replaced with "Catholics" and "me" is replaced with "me and the Protestant church". “When Hitler attacked the Jews, I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church and there was nobody left to be concerned.”         How dishonest this version is, when the truth of the matter is that the "communists" were clearly one of the principal targets of the Nazis, while the Catholics and Protestants were not so much victims of the Holocaust as perpetrators of it.

...Hitler spoke of both Protestants and Catholics with contempt, convinced that all Christians would betray their God when they were forced to choose between the swastika and the Cross: "Do you really believe the masses will be Christian again? Nonsense! Never again. That tale is finished. No one will listen to it again. But we can hasten matters. The parsons will dig their own graves. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable jobs and income."         In a speech given on April 26, 1933, Adolf said, "The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc. ... I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions."         Then in a letter to the party faithful of July 22, 1933, Hitler wrote, "The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church ... the assertion that National Socialism is hostile to religion is a lie."         "We have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and their priests," Hitler's New Year Message of January 1, 1934.         In 1936, Hitler said "Providence has caused me to be Catholic."         "Hitler's biographer John Toland explains Catholicism's influence on the Holocaust. He says of Hitler: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god. . ." [ http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/hitler.htm ]         "In his autobiography Hitler says that he was deeply impressed with the religious ceremonies of the Catholic Church and was a member of the choir in his parish church. In his free time he took singing lessons at the nearby monastery. "This," he says, "supplied me with the best opportunity to steep myself in the solemn magnificence of the brilliant feasts of the Church."1 These early emotions never completely disappeared, and he has always remained conscious of the extremely suggestive value of ecclesiastical surroundings. Toward the end of his book he describes "the psychological conditions which tend to create that artificial and mysterious half-light in Catholic churches, the wax tapers, the incense . . .  "In fact, in his Mein Kampf Hitler approves of everything particularly relating to Jesuit Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism. He approves of the indisputability of Catholic dogmas,2 of the intolerant attitude of Catholic education,3 of the necessity of blind faith,4 of the personal infallibility of the pope, imposed upon the Church by the Jesuits in 1870,5 and of the compulsory celibacy of the Catholic clergy. These are all matters that make Catholicism radically different from the other churches of Christendom. In an open and prophetic expression of his admiration for the Catholic Church, he says: "Thus the Catholic Church is more secure than ever. It can be predicted that, as passing phenomena vanish away, she will remain as a beacon light amid these vanishing elements, attracting blind adherents in ever-increasing numbers."6 1 Cf. Mein Kampf, p. 4. 2 P. 293. 3 P. 385. 4 P. 417. 5 P. 507. 6 P. 513. See The Catholic Church in Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'; 15c Agora Publishing Co. It was a Jesuit priest, Father Staempfle, not Hitler, who really wrote "Mein Kampf." ( Behind the Dictators, by L. H. Lehmann, p 26)         "by ruthless persecution and armed might, in collaboration with the other Catholic dictators, he has forwarded (i.e. Hitler promoted) the ultimate objectives of the Catholic Church. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar (the Catholic dictator of Portugal) ousted Jewish, Masonic and Protestant influence from all of Europe from the Arctic to the Mediterranean." (p 27)         "Nazi opposition to the Catholic Church in Germany has been confined to its "liberal" elements, and Catholic leadership has always opposed these more than any others. The Jesuit party has long feared the infiltration of Protestant and liberal ideas into the German Catholic mind. During the post-war years, when Germany was a democratic republic, many of the ordinary secular clergy and some of the religious orders became enamored of the liberal, secularizing spirit. They formed the backbone of the Catholic Centre Party—which was the last bulwark against Hitler's rise to power. But this last element of liberalism in Germany was dissolved by order of Pope Pius XI, as a stipulated condition of the Vatican's concordat with Nazism. . . The last liberal party in Italy also, headed by the exiled priest Don Sturzo, shared the same fate at the hands of the same Pope Pius XI." (p.28)

Hitler offered his countrymen the family of his good friend Joseph Goebbels as the model for all good Germans to follow:       Joseph Goebbels (seated) with his wife Magda and the six innocent children whom they killed before killing themselves, in Hitler's bunker.  The eldest son in uniform, by Magda's previous marriage, was in the Luftwaffe and survived the war.  Goebbels was so close to his Catholic boss that he asked and received the honor to have the Fuëhrer serve as first witness at his Catholic wedding.

"Fuëhrer, my Fuëhrer, bequeathed to me by the Lord." Prelunch invocation of the German School Children. Here is a whole site dedicated to actual Hitler quotes on his religious beliefs. and several other sites devoted to the question of Hitler's faith : Hitler's Christianity: by James Walker = Very Good - Lenghty! The Great Scandal: Christianity's Role in the Rise of the Nazis an excellent article by Gregory S. Paul Hitler Was Not An Atheist : by John P. Murphy = Very Good - brief! Religion and the Holocaust : by Richard E. Smith Hitler: Christian, Atheist, or Neither? : by Dean Mischewski Was Hitler an Atheist or a Theist? More Importantly, Who Cares? : by Mark Vuletic Freethought Today, March 1997         Aug 1, 1936 - Olympic games begin in Berlin. Hitler and top Nazis seek to gain legitimacy through favorable public opinion from foreign visitors and thus temporarily refrain from actions against Jews.         "conservative media are developing a sub-myth that the Hitler movement itself was "homosexual." They point to the fact that stormtrooper chief Ernst Rohm 's homosexuality and that of a few of Rohm's buddies was evidently known to Hitler during the early years. However, Hitler's willingness to use people and institutions -- including the Catholic and Lutheran Churches -- explains his temporary forbearance in Rohm's case. During the social violence attending the Nazi Party's rise, Hitler needed Rohm's muscle to establish and protect himself. Eventually, however, Hitler felt secure enough to get rid of Rohm. During the famous "Night of the Long Knives," the Fuhrer had Rohm and his gay associates massacred. This event -- and the fact that homosexuality was a capital crime under the Nazis, who sent an estimated 100,000 homosexuals, mostly gay men, to the death camps -- sends its own clear message. The Nazis' real views on sexual orientation were the same as those of ultra-traditional Christians in the U.S. who want to have all homosexuals put to death." [ from huffingtonpost.com/patricia-nell-warren/newt-gingrich-and-gay-fas_b_146498.html ]

This has nothing to do with religion, but recent studies show that Hitler may well have had African. as well as Jewish ancestors: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/how-the-gop-is-saving-gay-marriage/59770/

For a catalogue of photographic evidence of the relationship between the Christian Churches and the Nazi state, see NaziCrosses.html

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