I recently read the book Hitler's Cross, by Erwin W. Lutzer. The information contained in that book puts Hitler's "Christianity" in a very revealing light. I haven't double-checked Lutzer's sources, though the book seems quite trustworthy to me. But just to assure the reliability of my case I'll also quote from William Shirer's classic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which the New York Times called "one of the most important works of history of our time" and "a splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions."
First of all, in order to determine whether Hitler was a Christian, we need to define "Christian." If by Christian we mean someone who believes the words of Jesus and tries to follow them, then Hitler was absolutely, unquestionably not a Christian. But if by "Christian" we mean "a person who claimed to be a Christian but whose real goal was to do away with Christianity and instead have himself revered as the most exalted being ever to walk the earth," then, well, Hitler was a Christian. But to define such a person as a Christian would be absurd. We might as well say that because Hitler wanted to conquer and devour Poland and France that he was a Pole or a Frenchman.
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What did he believe in?
Yes, he spoke of God. But he spoke similarly about "the gods," goddesses, and Fate. He also used evolutionist concepts to support his ideas. Can we know what he really believed?
Here's an article with some good quotes showing Hitler was anti-Christianity:
And for another interesting perspective on the question at another website
Check out this article debunking the claims that Pope Pius XII was pro-Hitler. |
Now it's true that in his youth Hitler must have had, at least for a time, some kind of Christian belief, since he tells us that as a boy he had a passing interest in becoming a clergyman. But that ended. At some time in his life Hitler apparently turned completely against Christianity.
Yes, he did make public claims to Christianity even while he was in power and persecuting Christians. But those public professions were simply lies. He made them in order to win the support of the German people, but in reality he wanted to do away with Christianity as it had hitherto been known and pervert it into a mere facade for Nazism and worship of himself as the ultimate leader. In Hitler's own words:
"[Making peace with the church] won't stop me from stamping out Christianity in Germany, root and branch. One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both." (J. S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, quoted in Lutzer, pp. 113-114.)This is what Hitler was saying in private once he became Chancellor of Germany. So we know that at least by that time he was definitely not a believer in Christ. And yet at the same time Hitler was advocating what he called "Positive Christianity." But what exactly did this "Christianity" consist of? Alfred Rosenberg, the man Hitler appointed as the philosophical guiding light in the Nazi party, drew up some plans for the "National Reich Church." Here are some excerpts, from Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:"One cannot break the Church over one's knee. It has to be left to rot like a gangrenous limb...but the healthy youth belong to us." (Quote of Hitler in Lutzer, p. 130.)
The National Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably...the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year of 800.Anyone who thinks this is Christianity has probably lived in a bunker all his life.The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany.
The National Church declares that to it, and therefore to the German nation, it has been decided that the Fuehrer's Mein Kampf is the greatest of all documents. It...not only contains the greatest but it embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation.
The National Church will clear away from its altars all crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of saints.
On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.
On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels...and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika. (Shirer, pp. 332-333.)
Hitler did succeed in getting a great deal of control over the German Protestant church. The Protestants who embraced Hitler called themselves the "German Christians." At one huge rally of these "Christians" a Dr. Krause spoke the following:
...the liberation from all that is un-German...from the Old Testament with its Jewish recompense ethic, from all these stories about cattle-dealers and pimps...Our provincial church will also have to see to it that all obviously distorted and superstitious reports should be expunged from the New Testament, and that the whole scapegoat and inferiority-type theology of the Rabbi Paul should be renounced in principle, for it has perpetuated a falsification of the gospel.Interesting understand of Christianity those Nazis had. A "Christianity" that rejects the Bible is a travesty, a fake Christianity.
Dr. Hans Kerrl, Hitler's Minister for Church Affairs said this after meeting with a couple of church leaders:
The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive Christianity is National Socialism [Nazism]...God's will reveals itself in German blood...Dr. Zoellner and Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh...No, True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity...The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation.Shove Christ aside and exalt the Fuehrer as the herald of a "new revelation." Just another example of a cult using the name of Christianity as a front for their own self-invented belief system.
But although the Nazi leaders talked about Christianity, did they really believe in even their own brand of Christianity without Christ? Well, here's what Shirer has to say:
It would be misleading to give the impression that the persecution of Protestants and Catholics by the Nazi State tore the German people asunder or even greatly aroused the vast majority of them. It did not...Not many Germans lost much sleep over the arrests of a few thousand pastors and priests or over the quarreling of the various Protestant sects. And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the Nazi extremists. As Bormann, one of the men closest to Hitler, said publicly in 1941, "National Socialism [Nazism] and Christianity and irreconcilable."Hitler a Christian? Oh the lies that people will believe.