An important point missead by most.
Gary Toolan
The Holocaust was caused by Christian fundamentalism:
From the earliest formation of the Nazi party and throughout the
period of conquest and NS growth, Hitler expressed his Christian
support to the German citizenry and soldiers. Those who would make
Hitler an atheist should turn their eyes to history books before they
address their pews and chat rooms.
In presenting this information I must break it into four parts:
1) Facts about Hitler and his involvement with the Church.
2) How the Church was the catalyst for anti- Semitism.
3) Facts concerning how the Nazi regime drilled these beliefs into
Germanic society.
4) Quotes Hitler made which prove he had a disdain for
atheism/occultism, upheld his Christian faith, and hated Jews due to
his Christianity.
1) Hitler’s involvement with the Church:
a) Hitler was baptized as Roman Catholic during infancy in Austria.
b) As Hitler approached boyhood he attended a monastery school. (On
his way to school young Adolf daily observed a stone arch which was
carved with the monastery’s coat of arms bearing a swastika.)
c) Hitler was a communicant and an altar boy in the Catholic Church.
d) As a young man he was confirmed as a "soldier of Christ." His most
ardent goal at the time was to become a priest. Hitler writes of his
love for the church and clergy: "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)
e) Hitler was NEVER excommunicated nor condemned by his church.
Matter of fact the Church felt he was JUST and "avenging for God" in
attacking the Jews for they deemed the Semites the killers of Jesus.
f) Hitler, Franco and Mussolini were given VETO power over whom the
pope could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain and Italy. In turn
they surtaxed the Catholics and gave the money to the Vatican. Hitler
wrote a speech in which he talks about this alliance, this is an
excerpt: "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
g) Hitler worked CLOSELY with Pope Pius in converting Germanic society
and supporting the church. The Church absorbed Nazi ideals and
preached them as part of their sermons in turn Hitler placed Catholic
teachings in public education. This photo depicts Hitler with
Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin. It was taken
On April 20, 1939, when Orsenigo celebrated Hitler’s birthday. The
celebrations were initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) and became a
tradition.
h) Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest
congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the
dioceses in Germany with fervent prayers which the Catholics of
Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." (If you would like to
know more about the secret dealings of Hitler and the Pope I recommend
you get a book titled: Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,
by John Cornwell)
Due to Hitler’s involvement with the Church he began enacting
doctrines of the Church as law. He outlawed all abortion, raged a
death war on all homosexuals, and demanded corporal punishment in
schools and home. Many times Hitler addressed the church and promised
that Germany would impliment its teachings: "The National Socialist
State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be
its honest endeavor 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." Adolf Hitler, on 26 June
1934, to Catholic bishops to assure them that he would take action
against the new pagan propaganda.
" Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to
handle this Church." -Adolf Hitler, reportedly to have said in Berlin
in 1936 on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism
2) How Christianity was the catalyst of the Holocaust:
Hitler’s anti-Semitism grew out of his Christian education. Austria
and Germany were majorly Christian during his time and they held the
belief that Jews were an inferior status to Aryan Christians. The
Christians blamed the Jews for the killing of Jesus. Jewish hatred
did not actually spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of
Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for
hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself,
held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book,
"On the Jews and their Lies," Luther set the standard for Jewish
hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War 2. Hitler expressed a
great admiration for Martin Luther constantly quoting his works and
beliefs.
Now, you must remember before Hitler rose to Chancellor of Germany the
country was in a deep economic depression due to the Versailles
treaty. The Versailles treaty demanded that Germans made financial
reparations for the previous war and Germany simply was not self
sufficient enough in order to pay the debt. Hitler was the leader that
raised Germany out of the depression and brought them back to a world
recognized power. Due to his annulment of the financial woes of the
Germanic people he became their redeemer and they anointed him as the
leader of the German Reich Christian Church in 1933. This placed him
in power of the German Christian Socialist movement which legislates
their political and religious agendas. It united all denominations,
mainly the Protestant/Catholic and Lutheran people to instill faith in
a national Christianity.
3) How the Nazi Regime converted the people:
a) In the 1920s, Hitler’s German Workers’ Party (pre Nazi term)
adopted a "Programme" with twenty-five points (the Nazi version of a
constitution). In point twenty- four, their intent clearly
demonstrates, from the very beginning, their stand in favor of a
"positive" Christianity: "We demand liberty for all religious
denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and
do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German
race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does
not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession.."
b) The Nazi regime started a youth movement which preached its agenda
to impressionable children. Hitler backed up the notion that all
people need faith and religious education: "By helping to raise man
above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to
the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from
present-day mankind its education-based, religious- dogmatic
principles-- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles-- by
abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an
equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of
their existence." Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
c) The Nazi regime began to control schools insisting that
Christianity was taught.
d) The Nazi regime included anti-Semitic Christian writings in
textbooks and they were not removed from Christian doctrines until
1961.
e) The Nazi regime having full blown power over the people began to
forcibly convert all its military.
f) The Nazi regime forced the German soldiers to wear religious
symbols such as the swastika and they placed religious sayings on
military gear. An example here is this German army belt buckle (I
believe my Opa had one) which reads "Gott Mit Uns". For those of you
who do not speak German it is translated as "God With Us".
g) The German troops were often forced to get sprinkled with holy
water and listen to a sermon by a Catholic priest before going out on
a maneuver.
h) The Nazis created a secret service called the "SS Reich" that would
act as spies on the dealings of other citizens. If anyone was
suspected of heresy (Going not only against the Socialist party but
CHURCH DOCTRINE) they would be prosecuted.
4) Quotes from Hitler:
Hitler’s speeches and proclamations, even more clearly, reveal his
faith and feelings toward a Christianized Germany. Nazism presents an
embarrassment to Christianity and demonstrates the danger of their
faith So they try to pin him on other theistic views. The following
words from Hitler show his disdain for atheism, and pagan cults, and
reveal the strength of his Christian feelings:
"National Socialism is not a cult-movement-- a movement for
worship; it is exclusively a ‘volkic’ political doctrine based upon
racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the
care and leadership of a people defined by a common
blood-relationship... We will not allow mystically- minded occult folk
with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal
into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but
something else-- in any case something which has nothing to do with
us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but
clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But
since we set as the central point of this perception and of this
profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the
future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a
divine work and fulfill a divine will-- not in the secret twilight of
a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord. Our
worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that
reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the
unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as
they are known to us men." -Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept.1938.
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. -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 [
statement clearly refutes modern Christians who claim Hitler as
favoring atheism. Hitler wanted to form a society in which ALL people
worshipped Jesus and considered any questioning of such to be heresy.
The Holocaust was like a modern inquisition, killing all who did not
accept Jesus. Though more Jews were killed then any other it should be
noted that MANY ARYAN pagans and atheists were murdered for their
non-belief in Christ.]
Here Hitler uses the Bible and his Christianity in order to attack
the Jews and uphold his anti-Semitism:
"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
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 for
the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, 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 my self 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." -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)
"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own
altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the
heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its
apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute
presupposition." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is quite obvious here
that Hitler is referring to destructing the Judaism alters on which
Christianity was founded.)
"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes
the living shape of the Jew. "-Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (The idea of
the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based
on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after
him, continued this "tradition" up until the 20th century.)
"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks
in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus
stealing her from her people." - Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is common
in war for one race to rape another so that they can "defile" the race
and assimilate their own. Hitler speaks about this very tactic here.)
"The best characterization is provided by the product of this
religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world,
and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature
two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new
doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward
the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive
from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then
as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business
existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our
present- day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish
votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with
atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation. -Adolf
Hitler (Mein Kampf)
"the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his
expulsion. -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (See Genesis Chapter 3 where
humankind is cast from Eden for their sins. Hitler compares this to
the need to exterminate the Jews for their sin against Christ.)
"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." -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
"The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Social movement] was based
on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge." -Adolf Hitler Mein
Kampf (This quote is very interesting for it disperses the idea that
Hitler raged war due to being an Aryan supremacist. He states quite
clearly that he has a problem with Jews for their belief not race.
That is why many German Jews died in WW2 regardless of their Aryan
nationality.)
"Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very
first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always
and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence
which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering
and uncertain." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (Here Hitler is admitting
that his war against the Jews were so successful because of his strong
Christian Spirituality.)