I’ve long pointed out that attempts to make Hitler and the Nazis into atheists is counterfactual propaganda. They were stalwartly and predominately Christian, and largely driven by Christian motives. I’ve covered this several times (in Hitler Homer Bible Christ as well as in my articles No, Hitler Wasn’t a Pantheist and Hitler’s Table Talk: The Definitive Account). And I have often cited studies supporting this by Heschel and Steigmann-Gall. But now there is a definitive study! So today I will discuss these three books, which are required reading for anyone who wants to “have opinions” about how Christian Hitler and the Nazis were.
This means I’ll be doing two recommendations articles this month, one in my ongoing series on skilling yourself up in philosophy (coming next), and today’s, which doesn’t fit into any of my recommendations lists. So it’s here as a standalone reference article on the inspiration and relationship Hitler and the Nazis really had with Christianity. So you can refer people here whenever it comes up.
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The books I’ll be discussing today are: Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge University Press 2004); Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press 2010) and now: Mikael Nilsson, Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology (Cambridge University Press 2024).
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Steigmann-Gall and Susannah Heschel’s books are self-explanatory by their titles and I’ve cited them for years. They thoroughly document how Nazis embraced and transformed Christianity to suit their desires and aims, and how these transformations were natural evolutions of the course of Christianity across the Middle Ages and not really all that radical. As Hector Avalos proves in The Christian Delusion (in “Atheism Was Not the Cause of the Holocaust”) the core of Nazism was Lutheran antisemitism, and any deviations that Positive Christianity made from Lutheran Christianity were, really, logical extensions of it, the inevitable landing point of any apologetic effort to Biblically defend Martin Luther’s program against the Jews. This included the need to rewrite Jesus as a secret Aryan merely posing as a Jew to “pwn the Jews,” and abandoning the Epistles of Paul as “too Jewish” for that program, while integrating science into the Christian worldview to steal its glory and evade its refutations (e.g. Nazis thus became Old Earth Creationists), and denouncing both Communism and Christian “sectarianism” as Jewish conspiracies. All views still held by many card-carrying Nazis today.
Nazism is Christian Nationalism. And any Christian Nationalism today is just a new iteration of Nazism. Yes, even the varieties that eschew going “all in” on the Aryan Jesus and “Paul is a sniveling Jewish conspirator” platform. In my recent debate with Andrew Wilson (How Pseudo-Rationality Grounds Conservative Worldviews) there were plenty of “blood and soil” dogwhistles, and a relentless defense of the state enjoying unchecked force against its people to advance any desired agenda, most particularly compulsory obedience to conservative (or “biblical”) Christian ethics, the demotion or expulsion of immigrants in favor of the advancement of the white race (as well as men over women), and an “our nation first” policy at all costs. The only thing lacking was expansionism (ruling the world), though I suspect that posture is disingenuous (as the Trump administration keeps illustrating), because concepts of global power have shifted toward world dominance and suppression rather than foreign rule. The new fascism bombs and bullies people rather than runs their countries. So that’s just how Nazis roll now.
Nilsson’s Contribution
Steigmann-Gall and Heschel explain how this all ties back to Christianity and was defended under the mantle of Christianity—certainly back then; while others document, still. That leaves the story of Nilsson’s new study, Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology, which extends their broad and sweeping work directly to Hitler and his close circle of confidantes, using past work on Nazi Christianity to explain how we must contextualize all the evidence for Hitler in particular.
For those who don’t know the backstory, this all started years ago when the Freedom from Religion Foundation paid me $50 to research and report on the underlying German (language, context, background) of three “quotes” oft circulated presenting Hitler as an atheist. That led down a rabbit hole of corruption and fraud, resulting in my publishing the first peer-reviewed study exposing that in German Studies Review (reproduced now in Hitler Homer Bible Christ). The upshot: the English translation being used for those quotes was fraudulent; the original German did not say that (especially in context), but even worse, that original German source was itself in many ways suspect. My article then inspired Mikael Nilsson, Swedish professor of modern European history, to fully dive that subject and produce a definitive study of the Table Talk itself, Hitler Redux: The Incredible History of Hitler’s So-Called Table Talks, which I discussed in Hitler’s Table Talk: The Definitive Account.
It was that project that led Nilsson to realize an additional study was needed correcting a lot of propaganda and misinformation about Hitler’s relationship with Christianity. And that’s Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology. As well as documenting how Christian Hitler and the Nazis were, Nilsson further shows with extensive documentation, and (very importantly) its crucial context, that every time Nazis lambasted “Christianity” they were not attacking the religion but its institutions, and in fact were promoting a “pure” Christianity free of “Jewish” influence. This is often literally the case in the original German of any early Nazi text, because the German word Christentum then, in their idiom, meant not what we mean in English by “Christianity” but “Christendom,” a very different thing: it meant the global Christian institutional presence (and most often, but not always only, Catholicism); it did not mean the core religious beliefs of Christianity (Christ as savior, God as creator, and providence and eternal life).
Nazi attacks on Christendom were much like any other Protestant attacks on Christian “institutions,” from a rabid “the Pope is the Antichrist (and the Vatican, Babylon)” anti-Catholicism—a far more openly normed attitude in the early twentieth century when these texts were produced—to the now very common “love Jesus but not the church” Christians today, which is largely a liberal movement but has its conservative factions (as I’ve discussed before in Behold Babylon USA! and Debunking John Davidson’s “Pagan” America). And it is their rhetoric and ideology that more resembles Hitler and the Nazis. As I document in Hitler Homer, Christentum most usually meant specifically Catholicism, and so wherever you see that word you have to determine from the context if, actually, that is referring to Catholics and Catholic ideology and not even institutional Protestantism (like Lutheranism, the original Protestant Christianity from which the Nazis took their entire scheme against the Jews).
For example, sometimes when Hitler attacks or is reported to have attacked Christentum, he specifies that he means the laughably weird rituals and metaphysics of the Catholic Church (like “transubstantiation” and other hocus pocus), and thus he is not including even Protestantism in his remarks, much less Lutheranism or Positive Christianity. So to translate Christentum as Christianity is simply a false translation that misses the entire context and meaning of early 20th century German, and especially Nazi idiom.
Even so, occasionally Christentum was used in a broader sense to include any institutionalized sect of Christianity, and as such meant something closer to what we mean by “the Church,” as in, organized churches, not the faith or belief system of “Christianity.” Because in their understanding the Christian religion is not the same thing as Christianity. So attacking “Christianity” inclusive of even most Protestantism was actually an attack on the intrusion of ecclesial on worldly power. For example, Nilsson thoroughly documents the Nazi plan (with which Hitler was fully on board) was that there should not be a separate “Church” competing with state influence and power in the new Third Reich. That was always suspect, being subject to Zionist (and thus “Jewish”) influence. So even Lutheranism was a threat—not because it was Christian, but because it was an influence-machine running in parallel to the state and not subject to state control. Indeed, sectarianism itself was the threat, as it entailed competing influence-machines, and a divided nation, which was contrary to state interest in unity, hierarchy, and centralized control.
So the Nazi “plan” was to eliminate Christian sectarianism—not Christianity itself—and “restore” Christianity to its “original” structure and intention, as a single unified faith entirely subsumed under state control and serving the interests of the state and nothing else. In philosophical effect this was just another sectarianism, as they mostly believed only one sect was the true Christian faith—theirs. But this was no different from any early twentieth-century Christian sect: they all believed they were the only true Christianity, and that all other Christians were not real Christians but in fact serving the antichrist; and they differed only on whether they concluded this meant those other faiths had to be destroyed or merely “persuaded” out of existence—both the same desire, just disagreeing on whether to achieve it by gun or pen. Nazis liked guns. Indeed, that’s practically the definition of a Nazi in any colloquial sense (like Mirriam-Webster 2b—cf, “fascism”).
As Nilsson observes (p. 69), the overwhelming Nazi view (and Hitler’s private personal view) was that “it would be a mistake, as some völkisch groups had done, to reject the original Christianity of Jesus just because church Christianity had been corrupted by Jewish influences and teachings,” and accordingly:
What the National Socialists were striving for could be summarized in the term “people’s church” (Volkskirche) … [Which] however, did not imply an actual centralized church organization, nor did it mean that Christianity should be replaced by a revived “Wotan faith.” Here, [for example Rudolph] Jung made an argument that Hitler would make later on, and he did so again when he stated that Luther’s reformation of the church was only half successful since he did not free the church from its “centralist” (i.e., Jewish) trait. The National Socialist “people’s church” would be a nonconfessional amalgamation of the Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany. This would free them from international “centralism” and make them truly nationalistic and German.
Jung (Rudolf, not Carl) argued for the separation of church and state so that the state could not “interfere” with his vision of restoring this true faith to Christianity. But subsequent Nazi leaders, like Hitler, knew that Jung “did not yet envision the National Socialist takeover of power in Germany” which allowed the likes of Hitler to envision creating “a state church as in England” that would not interfere with Jung’s vision but ensure it. This vision is what we call Positive Christianity, and what Nazis Orwellianly called the Volkskirche, the true or “people’s” church.
Their vision was of a church not independent from the state, but preaching a Christianity freed from all Jewish corruption. This imagined Christ as an Aryan savior and divine lawgiver speaking truth against the Jews, serving the providence of God the Father, the Creator of the Universe, who had abandoned the Jews for their corruption and folly. Jesus’s resurrection represented God’s defiance of the Jews and seal of approval to Christ’s anti-Jewish “gospel.” This “true” Christian religion held that Paul was a Jewish corrupter and thus the Epistles were abandoned as heretical. But true believers would still live forever in heaven. And indeed (as I document in Hitler Homer, and now Nilsson documents in Hitler’s Ideology), Hitler appears to have genuinely believed he was doing God’s will and would go to heaven—while he despised and vilified atheists for not believing in a Creator, or his message or salvation.
We can tell the general trend was to adopt Old Earth Creationism and abandon ritualism (which was deemed too suspiciously “Jewish”), but to retain Christ as Savior, eternal life, a Nazi-spun exegesis of the Gospels as Scripture, and God as a providential mover of history. There were a few atheists among the Nazi ranks (like Martin Bormann) but they nevertheless approved Hitler’s plan to “reestablish” this “true” Christianity—for them, in a Neoconservative sense: as an opiate for the masses, to be understood by the elite as all just metaphor. But for most Nazis, Hitler included, it was no metaphor. They were true believers. It is to no avail to say, “But they are interpreting the Bible weirdly,” because all Christians do. Nazi Christianity is Christianity. Just as any other sect of Christianity is. “It’s the wrong Christianity” is a mere theological dispute, built out of bullshit on either side (pp. 152–57). Which means the Nazis have as good an argument as any for their side (see Gilliard, Lange, and Marendy). Both sides get to ignore whatever evidence in the Bible they want, and interpret the rest any way they want. So neither can claim the other’s wrong (this is the problem with all Biblical religion, tout court).
Even Nazis (and Hitler) Spoke of Faith, Hope, and Love
You won’t find “every” quote everyone pulls from any Nazi in Nilsson’s book. His study is not that onerous. What Nilsson provides is a framework for understanding any such quote. So, for example, he extensively discusses the evidence of the religious beliefs and ideas of Goebbels and Hitler, including their take on Christian values like “faith, hope, and love.” But he doesn’t specifically address every single sentence Goebbels ever wrote about Hitler’s religious beliefs, because that isn’t necessary once you understand the rest—because then every sentence you might choose acquires a different meaning when placed in that context, and thus can’t be quoted out of context to any useful effect anymore.
But an example is Goebbels’ diary annotation (a diary historians no longer trust Goebbels to have been wholly honest in anyway) that Hitler was “religious” but against “Christianity.” Nilsson’s study makes clear why that is not what he meant—and you can verify that in the original German, and in its original historical and literary context. Nilsson’s study provides you with all the evidence to understand this yourself, so you don’t need a tedious list of sentences to debunk. But I covered this one in Hitler Homer Bible Christ:
Other quotes adduced to “prove” Hitler’s atheism [are] misreported or taken out of context. [For example,] Joseph Goebbels supposedly said in his diaries (which, incidentally, were also owned and published by François Genoud [the driver of the Table Talk fraud]) that Hitler was an atheist. In fact, what Goebbels wrote (in 1939) was that Hitler was “deeply religious” but “anti-Christian” because of its “elaborate Jewish rites,” a remark that can only refer to Catholicism. Protestant Christianity generally does not have “elaborate rites,” much less any that could be accused of being crypto-Jewish. Goebbels’ remark was thus not about Christianity as a religion, but Catholicism as a sect.
I discuss several other examples there, making that section important reading for anyone confronting Hitler apologists attempting to make him into an atheist or pantheist or anti-Christian pagan or something, with similar out-of-context quotes (see also my discussion of why that’s impossible in No, Hitler Wasn’t a Pantheist). But Nilsson’s study provides you with a detailed study backing my every point about how to read these texts in their original language and context. Which includes several examples of people simply being wrong about what Hitler said or thought, another thing crucial to consider. For example, some said Hitler did not refer to Jesus as divine or think of him as the Son of God; but Nilsson adduces ample evidence he did, indeed of Hitler outright saying so (pp. 142–48). In his previous study Nilsson presented a ton of evidence that Nazis lied a lot. It’s therefore not possible to “simply believe” what some contemporary said, even if they knew the man. You need to triangulate all the evidence to get there.
So I highly recommend you consult, or refer people to, all three of these books anytime the subject of “was Hitler a Christian” or “was Nazism a version of Christian Nationalism” comes up. Mikael Nilsson’s Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology is the most direct and recent (and it cites the others). Richard Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich and Susannah Heschel’s The Aryan Jesus simply expand his results to the entirety of Nazi Germany and its rise and dominance in WW2, and deep-dive specific questions like how the Aryan Jesus concept arose or how Paul became the bad guy. But all three provide ample evidence that this was all inevitable (its antisemitism and authoritarianism and love of violence had been core aspects of Christianity since at least Constantine) and not typically disingenuous.
Positive Christians were predominately true believers, just like Christian Nationalists today. They really did think God created the world and rejected and hated the Jews, and Jesus was the true savior who taught us all this, speaking in the voice of God the Father, and they genuinely believed they were doing the Lord’s will, and would be rewarded with eternal life for it. Some promoted this view insincerely (like Bormann). But ample evidence establishes that most (like Hitler himself) really did believe it, and all this really did arise from the pre-modern Christian zeitgeist—without which it would never have formed.
Excellent article!! Thanks so much Richard!!
I wrote a paper on this my first year of college at Hampshire College – when I had just graduated from 7 years in a Christian private school. I argued that the church overall promoted Nazism – but I didn’t save my paper. That was in 1990. Glad there is a new book on this – I just read Kittleson’s biography of Luther. He basically equivocates – arguing that since Luther was against the Turks as much as the Jews then it was ok to be pro-war. It kind of makes sense in the context of the times but that argument can be made for any time. A good book on the Nazi ties to U.S. policy is “The Splendid Blonde Beast” by Prof. Christopher Simpson. I have another book on the CIA utilizing Christian organizations – in their collaboration with Nazis. I just read a new book on Vietnam that is really profound – “Precious Freedom” that goes into the Catholic ties to neocolonialism. It’s pretty wild how the same ideology gets repeated but just updated with new technology using AI, etc.
As an aside, the Jetpack login with WordPress.com thing doesn’t seem to work for me. It gives me a link not found error afterwards. (Also, typo in Goebbels as Goebels. 🙂
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At the risk of asking a question already answered in the many sources above, is the pro-atheist argument that Mein Kampf should be ignored as lies to appeal to the crowd? Because to my recollection the majority of what’s written above is straightforwardly spelled out in the book, and I didn’t even read anywhere close to the whole thing because I found it too tedious and repetitive.
Or does the English translation suffer from similar translation issues as Goebbels’ diary? I believe I read it in German, although I don’t quite see how a slightly misleading word or two could lead to a different interpretation of entire pages belaboring and explicating the point, unless those passages were excised altogether.
Spelling: Thanks. Fixed.
WordPress: You’ll need to explain more what you mean. Are you referring to the comments login feature? Because that works for me. No such error. So maybe something is wrong on your end? Clear cookies and caches and try again; then try a different browser; etc., all the usual “turn it off and back on again” things to try. And if none of that works, start checking help knowledgebases (either Jetpack or WordPress or wpDiscuz or whatever might be failing). That’s the extent of my tech knowledge. But if you are referring to something else, please give more details (and step by step details, i.e. what page are you starting on, what happens after you click what, then what happens when you do what, etc.).
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Question: Do you mean you found Mein Kampf too tedious and repetitive? And what are you asking about it? Do you mean you see passages in it where Hitler declares himself an atheist and anti-Christian? (If so, please send those quotes here, because I’ve never heard of that.) Or do you mean you see passages there where Hitler declares himself a faithful Christian follower of Jesus Christ the Son of God who hates atheists etc.? Or something else?
Generally, the consensus is that Mein Kampf is super Christian (indeed it is even modeled on biblical story structures and language) and Hitler totally sells his mission as a Christian mission from God there. But the “mythological” line is that that was all lies to manipulate the public and “really” he was a Christian-hating atheist (hence obscure quotes are dragged up out of context to sell that narrative—and those are the quotes that are typically mistranslated, misunderstood, or taken out of context—again, I survey examples in Hitler Homer, and Nilsson discusses several more).
As it turns out it doesn’t work in Firefox for me, also after deleting cache and cookies. It works in e.g. Vivaldi.
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> Or something else?
I mean that pretty much the entirety of what’s described in the article above is — to my recollection — all spelled out repeatedly in Mein Kampf, in excruciating detail no less. It contains rants about a wide variety of subjects like how intelligent design is true, about how Jesuits are evil supporters of the French or some such, about how the Vatican is doing I don’t even recall what but it ain’t good, etc. In my recollection it’s profoundly religious and anti-Catholic.
I’m merely offering the caveat that it was well over twenty years ago that I read probably at most about two thirds of it — in large part because he kept repeating those same things over and over again. (To be fair I’m not so much referring to the religious or anti-Catholic rants but more to the constant refrain of blah blah blah democracy is bad because of THE JEW, blah blah blah even the slightest tolerance of difference is a weakling Jewish mentality, we good Christians are intolerant, blah blah blah people only dislike England because of the fake news Jewish press.)
1. Since you’ve isolated the problem to Firefox, the next step would be looking through Firefox knowledgebases for why it fails to complete third party logins (and maybe if there is a particular cross-problem with wpDiscuz, then maybe searching this Firefox issue in wpDiscuz knowledgebases). At a glance looks like it might be a settings issue.
2. I am not aware of anything very critical of the Catholic Church in Mein Kampf. See The Catholic Church in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He criticizes organized churches (Catholic as well as Protestant) for being “too soft” on the Jews and argues for churches staying out of politics and things like that, but this reads entirely as insider critique, not hostility. Mein Kampf was famously neutral on this question, so as to appeal to Catholic and Protestant readers (and thus voters), by keeping its only critique to what they already agreed with (antisemitic Catholics thought the same things about their Church, for example).
1. Good to know. Thank you for reporting on all this.
2. True. There are plenty of Jesuit haters in the Catholic church. But you might be thinking of passages like this, where Hitler mocks Christian in-fighting as stoked by “clever Jews.” The issue he mentions there is ironic, because Hitler was absolutely an anti-ultramontanist, but he “poses” there as dismissing the dispute as trivial. This is what people mean by “in Mein Kampf Hitler is playing a part to get Christians on his side” (here by siding with Christians who scoff at even the existence of the ultramontanist debate), thus opening to door to “Well, what then did he really believe?”
And that is what leads people to hunt down “secret” quotes “proving” he was “really” an anti-Christian atheist. He wasn’t. And their methods of quoting-to-prove-it are bogus. But that’s what necessitates studies like I review here: to put an end to this mythmaking. When you do a proper inquiry, you find that Hitler was (as in Mein Kampf) publicly a devout Catholic and ecumenical Christian blaming the Jews for Christian infighting, but privately he was a rabid Christian anti-Catholic accusing Catholicism itself of being a Jewish corruption of the true Christian faith. So it is “true” that Mein Kampf is “lying” (it does put on a pose for votes), but the “lie” is not that Hitler was a Christian, but that Hitler thought at all well of Catholicism and didn’t take sides in sectarian debates.
Thanks, that’s all helpful context.
Great! Your humor in your posts is really good. Most articles from academics feel so robotic, but yours feels like talking to a friend.
Thia is such a loaded subject…where even to begin I bought Steigmann-Gall’s book years ago, it is certainly not without critcism. There is also this work https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Monsters-Supernatural-History-Third/dp/0300189451 to show with how much mumbo-jumbo the National-Socialist played – and severly questions how much real ‘Christianity’ there was ungoing. (Pointing to Steigmann-Gall’s book as a bit ‘odd’ work.)
One thing that seems certain is that Hitler was no atheist – too much did he invoke ‘The Almighty Creator’ ‘God’ even, less definitively ‘Providence’. But for example he is also said to have praised Islam, however contexted. Also his alledged ‘Lutheran’ preferences – he was born a Roman-Catholic and died one (however deadly sinful…).
That’s a new one to me: Eric Kurlander, Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. Brief checking suggests that’s a good one. It focuses on the nontraditional “weird” beliefs among Nazis which is indeed evidence they really believed this stuff. Although it’s not a paradigmatic result (scattered Nazis believed different weird things, so it’s not possible to credit “most” Nazis as believing in any single weird thing). And Hitler himself was privately rather mocking of occult stuff.
But that’s ironically how we know Hitler’s true beliefs—publicly super-Catholic, privately a rabid anti-Catholic (he mocked it as crypto-Jewish poppycock), but his anti-Catholic screeds did not come from an atheist stance but a Positive Christian one, thus when we get any glimpse of his real views, it’s passionate belief in Aryan Jesus and Prophecy and Divine Providence (cleansed of Jewish ritualism and “communism”) and the like.
We have Hitler privately, and seriously, voicing happiness that he would get to meet brilliant people in heaven, and reassured he was acting in accord with divine providence, and angry that “Jews” misinterpreted the Gospel of God, and so on. We even have hints that he bought into the Nazi view that Galileans were Arameans and thus Aryans, and the Jewish Temple was actually an Aryan god’s temple (the true God) taken over and defiled by Jews, and thus Jesus was attacking its staff for that reason. So his “weird” beliefs tended to hold closer to “standard” Positive Christianity rather than the wild occult stuff.
Well, references of to ‘paganising’ anti-christian trends within the Nazi-movement certainly are found from the Ninteen-thirties onwards, such as in this New York Times article dated August 12 1935 regarding ‘paganizing’ activities in the Hitler Youth https://www.nytimes.com/1935/08/12/archives/paganism-pushed-by-hitler-youth-group-in-one-town-burns-cross-in.html
It is also said there were explicitly anti-Christian songs going arround in the Hitler Youth. (Also literally anti Christ himself, with formulations as ‘Hitler is our Intercessor, not Christ.’ ‘Not Christ; but Horst Wessel’ (the Nazi ‘martyr’ from the song with same title.)).
National-Socialism was such a bizarre phenomenon, that there are always examples one way or the other perhaps?
That’s usually an outsider polemic, to characterize anything occult as “pagan,” when the people involved saw it as properly Christian. An example is the KKK, which did all the same things (like burn crosses and carry out bizarre rituals). Hitler even joked about this (mocking people calling his Christianity pagan; this is in Nilsson). There were actual Nazi pagans (like the New Wotan movement) but Hitler was not a fan, and most Nazis actually side-eyed that.
The article you cite is a classic example of American propaganda, more like Fox News style “terrorist fist bump” reporting, and not an accurate account of what Nazi youth actually thought or were doing.
To disingenuously slander anything considered “heritage” or “sectarian” as “pagan” just because it was weird or old was a stock trope of polemics then. It’s exactly how American anti-Catholics attacked even Catholicism. There are literally still anti-Catholics arguing this.
So listening to these polemics is not a reliable way to understand anything (except the polemicists themselves). Remember, that NYT article was written under the editorial tenure of Adolph Ochs, a Reform Jew keen on drumming up opposition to Nazi antisemitism; and not by someone like renowned antisemite Gerald Ford who would have ensured that story was written entirely differently.
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Likewise, always check your facts. I am not sure those songs are real. They derive third hand from polemical sources, not from any actual records or recollections of Hitler Youth themselves. The Horst Wessel Song does not include that line, for example. Nor any Hitlerleute I know. There’s discussion of this on Reddit. It appears to be an anti-Nazi urban legend that got repeated as fact in later histories.
If we unwind the “telephone game” behind this I suspect it derives from some kernel of truth (e.g., equating Hitler with Christ, anti-Catholicism, Positive Christian critique of “churches,” etc.) but got “gamed” into a tall tale about Hitler Youth singing “not Christ but Hitler/Wessel.” But in the Nuremberg trials no corroboration for that hearsay was found.
Note that the first extant record of that hearsay does not contain “Hitler is our Intercessor, not Christ” but simply “Hitler is our Intercessor,” so we are seeing in real time here the telephone game at work: someone in the transmission of this legend decided to represent their polemical interpretation of the song by adding a lyric to the song, but “Hitler is our Intercessor” did not mean rejecting Christ but that Hitler held the role of a Saint and thus, like all Saints, could interceded with God for them (they did not sing that Christ could not or would not).
Even though that song, too, is likely misremembered by anti-Nazi activists, even that early mis-memory lacks the “not Christ.” And the rest as recollected there is clearly anti-Catholic, not anti-Christian, and thus reflects another conflation of the two. That this comes from Catholic anti-Nazis (third and fourth hand) thus explains why an anti-Catholic sentiment got “misremembered” as an anti-Christian one. Actual Hitler Youth songs did not venture into religious critique.
So someone must have conflated what was actually sung with what was being taught, and then conflated what was being taught (the Vatican is controlled by Jews, Catholicism is a Jewish conspiracy, “pure” Christianity is among the People not the corrupted Churches, and so on) with being “anti-Christian,” through the lens that any attack on churches or the Vatican is “anti-Christian,” which is not a correct read on any of this, but it’s how Catholic priests would “hear” it.
It is remotely possible some small gathering of Hitler Youth one time tried spreading a song that was anti-Catholic or more pagan and failed but “someone overheard it” and reported it as what “the Hitler Youth were doing,” but I doubt even that, or if anything like that happened, I suspect they still didn’t remember the lyrics right.
I never intended to state that ‘not Christ, but Horst Wessel’ is in the actual Horst Wessel Song, that is a misunderstanding that must be clarified.
Thank you for giving a link to actual Hitler Youth songs, I wasn’t able to find it personally yet. Could have spared some confusion.
The source for Hitler still calling himself a Catholic in 1941 seems to be the diary of his Adjudant Gerhard Engel https://www.amazon.com/At-Heart-Reich-Hitlers-Adjutant/dp/1853676551 which will doubtless have it own problems, but that seems to be where impressions of Hitler never ceasing to be a Catholic find their origin.
Note that that is indeed the case: we have no “public” statement of Hitler ever renouncing Catholicism and by all accounts publicly he remained a good Catholic unto his death. The evidence that he loathed Catholicism and mocked it as insane Jewish bullshit all comes from private conversations that only leaked after the fact. Which is how we know what his real views were. That he hid his anti-Catholic Positive Christian beliefs is evidence of their being his real thinking in the matter.
If he was actually an atheist, then it would be his atheism we hear about in these private sources. Which is why apologists who want him to be an atheist try so hard to distort private quotes into sounding like that. But that they have to distort the information disproves that thesis. A clean and complete signal leads to the opposite conclusion: he hated atheists and was so enamored of Positive Christianity that he was glowingly all-in on even its weirdest components.
On a personal note: my once Dutch Reformed (Nederlands Hervormd) Minister told us during a catechism session (this is the late Eighties) confidently that once Hitler/The Nazi’s would be finished with the Jews, he/they would have gone after ‘The Church’ next, if things would have gone on uniterrupted, which it didn’t of course. The Idea is deeply embedded among christians.
He was right. Their plan was to dissolve independent churches and fold Christianity into the state, and enforce only one sect of it (Positive Christianity) under the Orwellian guise of ensuring Christian “freedom” (“from dogmatist corruption and…” yadayada). They already were going after uncooperative churches. They’d have nailed the coffin of major independent denominations eventually.
He (the Minister) strongly suggested it would have been very bloody.
Did the minister connect that to atheism? My Huguenot ancestors fled to the Netherlands due to religious persecution. That something similar would’ve happened and was already happening is hardly an extraordinary claim, but if you said that the Huguenots fled from atheists — that would be.
Atheïsm…there was/is a consensus that Adolf Hitler was a very evil man (most likely ‘The Worst Most Evil Man To Have Ever Lived on this Earth’) so he would have done evil things all around, particulary when he went after something or groups – Left, Jews, ‘Untermenschen’, the Churches – even his ‘own’ German people in the final months.
So in that context you have to see the thoughts surrounding him.
The Minister would have certainly seen Hitler as man consumed in sin.
Not sure who the “Minister” is, but concepts like “evil” and “sin” are scientifically problematic. It’s certainly true that Hitler’s mind and actions were very evil and some cultures describe that in terms of sin, but sin isn’t really what it’s about. It’s more about malice, bigotry, cognitive error, delusional belief systems, and sociopathy.
The ‘Minister’ is called E.P. Bouman. I haven’t seen the man in decades. Dutch Reformed (Nederlands Hervomd – a denomination that no longer exists, went up in a Protestant Church of the Netherlands (PKN).) Very conservative minister – against evolution and homosexualify and the like.
Of course sin isn’t scientific, but that is how Mininster Bouman would approache Hitler, not primarily on supposed ‘atheism’, which I wanted to explain in my reply to commentator Frans.
Since this last post Google has informed me that the Reverend Bouman has died in 2020.
I have read your work ‘Hitler, Homer, Bible, Christ” and even before doing so had come to the same conclusions. I got to those conclusions by simply reading ‘Mein Kampf.’ Hitler was a true believer and even alludes to his actions as avenging Jesus by killing the Jews. It is an interesting subject and as always Dr. Carrier you provide an excellent article with well informed and researched sources.
Note that the usual line is that Mein Kampf is lying for votes (the same way Trump pretends to be a Christian for the same reason) and so “secret quotes” are rolled out to expose what Hitler “really thought,” and that is how the myth that he was an anti-Christian atheist gets pushed. This is why it’s important to realize that (and how) those quotes are cherry-picked, mistranslated, or out of historical or literary context. And what Nilsson does is build that framework on a basis of evidence, while documenting what Hitler did say about his positive beliefs in many venues, including ones less prone to the “faking it” accusation, to triangulate a complete and accurate picture rather than “cherry pick” a predetermined narrative. This is the merit of his book.
This article is interesting.
Was it not strange that the friend of the poor, the excluded, the weak, the widows, the prostitutes, and the oppressed became, over the centuries, the catalyst for systems and ideologies of oppression, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and, what is more, even hatred of the ethnic origin of their own savior?
Why is the God of Abraham, who appears to be a bringer of injustice, according to the few pieces of evidence available, a refuge for those seeking shelter? This is contradictory.
The world will only change through our own efforts to understand it as it is. But the problem is that humans are strongly attracted to the idea of a so-called omnipotent, omniscient, and all-knowing deity, which has allowed us to rely on the fact that human intelligence comes from somewhere. Even in France, where the Enlightenment took root (and of course in Germany too), where there was a separation of church and state and where great philosophers emerged, there is still room for the propagation of the Gospel and the training of disciples through Bible classes, seminars, and other means (not illegal in the eyes of the law), and it works. The Church has become anti-fragile; all the evidence brought against it only strengthens it. Is it pessimistic to think that human beings will never get rid of the religion of the book? I quote a pastor from a local evangelical Protestant church who liked to laugh about all this, saying, “God has such a sense of humor, he even created atheists.”
It’s more to do with Constantine’s corruption of an already anti-intellectual cult into an imperialist religion of oppression and control. It then became the tailored ideology of global colonialism. Christianity hasn’t been the original faith it was for nearly two thousand years.
Which is a decisive disproof of the existence of God, who would never have allowed any of this to happen. Only if gods don’t exist do we get outcomes like that.
Indeed, I forget that Christianity has evolved over time both as an ideology and as an institution. Not for the better. Objectively speaking, we see it primarily as a system of domination, added to politics. This information is very valuable, thank you, Doctor. Have a good day.
A documentary was made on this subject called “Christianity in the Third Reich.”
You can watch it here
https://odysee.com/@TRUTH_NUKE:0/Christianity-In-The-Third-Reich—Final-Cut-%28Compressed%29:9
Thank you. I can’t vouch for that video’s veracity though. I haven’t seen it and I don’t know who made it.
I’ve read Nilsson and the other books you mention and I don’t find the claim he was a Christian convincing.
Before getting started, here are some relevant links for more info:
https://notourguy.substack.com/p/hitler-hated-christ-superthread
https://t.me/NSHeathenry
https://x.com/Ehrenkrieg2/status/2019532857048543551
The asscrank himself:
https://historyforatheists.com/2021/07/hitler-atheist-pagan-or-christian/
Yes, I know you have problems with the last author. I have problems with him and other claims he’s made as well. However, I read through and fact checked that particular article myself and it seems to be mostly accurate to me.
Now I will respond to the various arguments.
You claim that Hitler wanted to restore an “original Christianity” and that his anti-Christian statements were not directed at Protestantism.
From the table talk (all quotes from the table talks will be from the original German):
“Minister Kerrl wanted to create a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity in the NOBLEST sense. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THIS IS POSSIBLE; the reason lies in Christianity itself. The one thing I could still accept is the Christianity of papal decay; factually speaking it is dangerous, propagandistically it is a lie. But a pope who, even if he was a criminal, employed great masters and created many beauties, is more sympathetic to me than a Protestant pastor who goes back to the original state of Christianity. Pure Christianity, so-called ORIGINAL CHRISTIANITY, aims to make Christian theory true: It leads to the annihilation of humanity, is naked Bolshevism in metaphysical disguise”
Rosenberg’s diary:
“The Führer said that Kerrl’s motives were certainly only NOBLE, but that it was a hopeless attempt to unite National Socialism and Christianity. Me: There have been so many attempts to save the “pure doctrine”, but these experiments have all failed. The Führer: This restoration of ORIGINAL CHRISTIANITY would be the worst thing, as Julius II etc. who promoted great artists, were still less dangerous than primitive Christianity, despite all their crookedness.”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1020
So as can be seen, he thinks Christianity and National Socialism can’t be synthesized.
This goes against your position that he did believe in a Nazified form of Christianity or “Positive Christianity”. And he also states that he didn’t have faith in an “original” Christianity, as well as condemning Protestantism. Kerrl himself was a Protestant, so his Protestantism would also be included. To be honest, this seems to me like a direct refutation of your theory. If he actually did reject a National Socialist version of Christianity, what more could he say than that? How much more clearer could he be? In my opinion, I think I could stop here and that would be enough of a refutation, but I’ll continue.
Even if we ignore what he said here (we shouldn’t) and assume Hitler did believe an original good “Aryan Christianity” existed (which I don’t believe he did) what he said about Wotan puts doubt on whether he would have believed it.
“It would seem to me to be incredibly foolish to allow a Wotan cult to arise again. Our old mythology of gods was outdated, no longer viable, when Christianity came along. Only that which is ripe for destruction disappears! The entire ancient world at that time lived only in philosophical systems and, on the other hand, in an idol cult. But it is also not desirable that the whole of humanity should become stupid. There is therefore no better way to break away from Christianity than to let it fade away.”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1088
He opposes resurrecting Wotan worship because it only disappeared due to being ripe for destruction. The same would apply to this “Aryan Christianity” that ceased to exist after Paul.
Claiming Hitler believed some things “Positive Christians” believed doesn’t make him a “Positive Christian”. Modern Christians believe Jesus was Jewish, crucified, knew John the Baptist, ect. There are also non-Christians, including non-Christian scholars, who believe all those things. That doesn’t make them Christian. If he really was a Positive Christian, you would think he would say that somewhere in his table talks. While making his rants against “Christentum” he would somewhere say that he believed in the true “Christentum”, but he doesn’t, he says the opposite.
Likewise, Bormann in a circular to the Gauleiters wrote:
“National Socialist and Christian conceptions are incompatible.
…
When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their clerical exploiters, a being who resembles man and roams somewhere in the heavens.
We mean, rather, the law-governed order of the universe: that in the great cosmos, beside our tiny and utterly insignificant earth, there exist an unimaginable number of other celestial bodies; that bodies such as our sun are surrounded by planets, and these again by smaller bodies, the moons.”
Rosenberg writes a few months later in his diary:
“Under Bormann’s direction [I am] very often in meetings on monastery confiscations, [and in the] sub-department for church matters; about new regulations, etc. Recently he (Bormann) had a circular issued to the Gauleiters on Christianity and National Socialism, which completely compiles various statements of the Führer made during table talks.”
https://notourguy.substack.com/p/yet-another-source-corroboration
Hans Frank’s memoir:
“Himmler and Bormann, for example, often turned the Führer’s table remarks [i.e. Table Talks], which he occasionally dropped, into ‘big concrete orders’ or used them to obtain authority for their actions. […] A very impressive example was the ‘Bormann decree’, which contained the sentence: ‘Christianity is not compatible with National Socialism’”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/836
So this confirms that Bormann and Hitler basically had the same views on Christianity, as these statements originated with Hitler. Bormann was also not an atheist based on his reference to God. However, if you want to claim he was an atheist because his conception of God is pantheist, then Hitler was also an atheist by the same reasoning. This one document represents both Bormann and Hitler’s views after all.
One response I’ve seen you make in response to his pantheism in another article you wrote is that he believed in an afterlife. Yes, but not a personal one.
From a December 13, 1941 table talk:
“The Japanese have it easy: they possess a religion that leads them back to nature; even Japanese Christianity is a matter adapted to their world.
I cannot replace the concept of the afterlife in the Christian religion because it is not tenable. The idea of eternity is fundamentally flawed. Spirit and soul certainly return to the overall reservoir—like the body. We thus fertilize, as a basic element, the fund from which new life arises. I don’t need to rack my brain about the why and wherefore. We will never fathom the essence of the soul.”
He clearly accepts this version of the afterlife contrary to what you’ve claimed, just that he’s not sure about how the mechanism of it plays out.
Goebbels diary from December 14, 1941:
“However, I am of the opinion—and in this, in a certain sense, contrary to that of the Führer—that the common man must also possess an individual conception of the afterlife. It is not enough to simply say to him that he returns to his people or to his native soil. One must convey to him a conception of the afterlife that relates to him personally, to which he can cling.”
Again, this Goebbels entry says the same thing.
You cite a table talk where Hitler says:
“I feel comfortable in the historical society I find myself in if there is an Olympus. In the one I enter, the most illustrious minds of all time will be found.”
However, he is clearly saying IF, not that he believes it actually does exist. So this is no contradiction to his other statements lacking belief in a personal afterlife.
He also makes statements of agnosticism of an afterlife.
“I know nothing about the next world and I am honest enough to confess that.”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/840
“They look down upon us – if there is an afterlife at all – and expect us to fulfil our duty just as bravely and honourably as they once fulfilled theirs, and did so under far more difficult circumstances.”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1357
On Protestantism, Bormann wrote:
“Before the meeting, which, if I remember correctly, was convened by Reich Minister Kerrl in Berlin on the 10th of May, it was said that Reich Minister Kerrl convened this meeting based on a consultation with the Führer. In the meeting itself, as I was told by you and Herr Hess, Reich Minister Kerrl stated that the Führer was a convinced Protestant and Christian. A few days ago, during a conversation between the Führer and me that touched on church matters, I informed the Führer of this, and he told me that this was nonsense. What his stance on Christianity was, he said he had made very clear during the discussions at the Obersalzberg and in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, in which I had been present. He had not had any further meetings with Reich Minister Kerrl. I share this with you only for your information regarding the alleged Protestantism of the Führer.”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1126
Koeppen:
“The Führer then spoke about the hypocrisy of the Protestant Church and the greater freedoms that the Roman Catholic Church grants the Catholic population in matters of enjoyment, since, possessing the monopoly on the means of grace, it holds the people all the more firmly in its grip”
Heim:
“There is a certain Protestant fussiness that is unbearable; Catholicism has the advantage of not having the strict moral standards of the Protestants. Life is better in Catholic areas insofar as the clergyman himself is more easily susceptible to human weaknesses and allows his flock to take sins less seriously. On what else is the Church to live if not on the sins of men?”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1381
So along with the previous criticism of Protestantism I cited, he denied being a Protestant and was critical of Protestantism in other places. Also, even if Hitler did use the term “Christian” when addressing a specific sect like Catholicism, this still indicates a general anti-Christian animus. For example, if someone says “Christianity teaches transubstantiation, how silly!” is that more likely to come from a Christian or non-Christian? A non-Christian, of course. A Christian is going to be more concerned about making a distinction between a sect and specify that they are talking about Catholicism so as to not sully Christianity with their criticism, whereas a non-Christian is more likely to just not care about making the distinctions and the effect it will have on the religion.
It is true he expressed belief in an Aryan Jesus as well as admired Jesus. However, he did not believe Jesus was divine, contra Nilsson. Nilsson just cites public speeches for his belief in a divine Jesus. But while he referred to Jesus as his “Lord and Savior” in one speech, in Goebbels diary he writes:
“The idiocy of the Christian doctrine of salvation is for our time completely unusable. Nonetheless there are scholars, educated people, and men in high positions in public life, who hang on to it as on to a childhood faith. That even today one views the Christian doctrine of salvation as giving direction through a difficult life is completely incomprehensible.”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1037
So despite what Hitler said in public, he clearly did not think Jesus was his savior in private. There is hence no reason to accept that he thought he was his Lord, or the Son of God, or any other divine titles he may have said in public either. No other indications of Jesus being divine are found in any other private collections.
Also, this passage by Goebbels is good evidence against Hitler being any kind of Christian. In my view, a bare minimum of being some kind of Christian is belief in salvation. Even Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Marcionites believed in salvation, but not Hitler. Given this context, “Christentum” just means Christianity, not Christendom. That’s on top of the fact that the burden of proof is on anyone claiming that “Christentum” doesn’t mean Christianity, since that’s how it’s usually used.
Hitler also says this in the Table Talk:
“It is possible that his [Jesus] mother was Jewish.”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1170
This doesn’t say that he definitely believed it to be the case, but it shows he was willing to entertain other possibilities. Unlikely he would worship him in that case. And although he believed Jesus to be an Aryan, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t willing to tolerate other viewpoints.
Goering to Chaplin Gereck (from “Mission at Nuremberg” by Tim Townsend):
“This Jesus you speak of – to me he’s just another smart Jew.”
Hans Frank:
“What use is the sacrifice of a crucified Jew 2,000 years ago as an example in a time when we know that hundreds of thousands of the best Germans have sacrificed for Germany!”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1040
Influential Third Reich writer Kurt Eggers wrote:
“In order to assume his role as Messiah, the historical Jesus must have the credentials of the “Scripture,” the promise. He must be the King of the Jews, the Son of Yahweh.”
https://archive.org/details/eggerskurtdieheimatderstarken1938215s.scanfraktur_201911 pp. 85-86
Martin Bormann himself distributed Eggers work according to Koeppen’s notes.
https://archive.org/details/koeppen-notes_202408/page/n59/mode/1up?q=Eggers
All this on top of the fact that much ideological training material was against an Aryan Jesus as shown in the X article I posted. This indicates at least an open mindedness on the subject of Jesus’s ancestry by Hitler, not dogma.
I’d like to address this part here:
“Paul – initially one of the fiercest opponents of the Christians”
Given what he said about “original Christianity” earlier, I would say Hitler is most likely just referring to them in an anachronistic way on purpose because it’s useful, not what he believes was the case. Kind of like how modern NT scholars may refer to the original Jesus movement as “Christians” but if you press them, they’ll admit that Christianity didn’t actually exist then and they were just Jews, and they are just using “Christian” as a useful anachronistic label.
Hitler was also willing to be critical of Jesus.
Goebbels diary:
“The Führer forbids a bombardment of Athens. This is right and noble of him. Rome and Athens are Mecca for him. He very much regrets having to fight the Greeks. […] The Führer is a man completely oriented towards antiquity. He hates Christianity because it has crippled all noble humanity. According to Schopenhauer, Christianity and syphilis have made mankind unhappy and unfree. What a difference between a benevolent and wise smiling Zeus and a pain-distorted crucified Christ. Even the view of God itself is much more noble and human among the ancient peoples than in Christianity. What a difference between a gloomy cathedral and a bright, free ancient temple. He describes life in ancient Rome: clarity, grandeur, monumentality. The greatest republic in history. We would probably not experience any disappointment, he thinks, if we were now suddenly transported to this ancient eternal city. The Führer has no relationship at all with the Gothic. He hates the gloom and the blurred mysticism. He wants clarity, brightness, beauty. This is also the life ideal of our time. There the leader is a completely modern man.”
Rosenberg’s diary:
“The Führer says he is sorry to have to fight against the Greeks, for there is still a memory of the old Hellenic civilization hovering in his mind. Never will a bomb be dropped on Athens! In the context of assessing the superb Augustan exhibition in Rome, the Führer spoke admiringly of this ancient Rome. Apart from a few things related to steel and iron, we have not progressed much further, he said. In terms of sanitation, Rome was far ahead of us. Even in decline it was still magnificent, and one can understand that the young Teutons were overwhelmed by the sight of it. And in the end, each era shapes its God in accordance with its nature. If one looks at the majestic head of Zeus-Jupiter and then at the agonized Christ, only then does one appreciate the complete difference. How free and lighthearted the ancient world seems in contrast to the Inquisition, the burnings of witches and heretics. Only since 200 years ago did people begin to breathe somewhat easily again. It is certainly (following Schopenhauer?) correct that the ancient world was unacquainted with two evils: Christianity and syphilis”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1117
So despite having admiration for him, Hitler was still critical and saw Jesus as a failure. This also shows that his sympathies lied with pagan traditions more than Christian ones. I doubt Hitler believed in a literal Zeus, but it does nevertheless show which side he took in Christianity vs paganism. Also, given that he dismisses Wotanism because it died out, the fact that he still prefers Zeus over Jesus means he definitely doesn’t worship Jesus. If he were to pick one religion that died out and choose who to worship, it would be Zeus and Wotan. The fact that he doesn’t yet prefers them to Jesus is strong evidence he wasn’t a Christian.
You say that there were many Christians in the Nazi party. This may be true if you look throughout the Nazi command structure (although the SS had a large number of non-Christian gottgläubig, see “New Religions” by Karla Poewe https://t.me/NSHeathenry/246). However, if we are just talking about Hitler’s close inner circle, I can’t think of a single one who was Christian. It makes sense that there were Christians throughout the command structure, he had no choice but to make use of Christians. But why would he not have a single Christian in his inner circle?
The only memoir from someone who was rather close to him for a short while (so hardly “inner circle” material on the level of Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler, ect.) that records positive statements on Christianity (while also denying core doctrines like the resurrection, and he never actually claims to be a Christian himself if you read carefully unlike his speeches) is Otto Wagener’s “Memoirs of a Confidant”. But on page 164 he says:
“I was a socialist, an advocate of cooperation, a Christian”
The memoirs go up to 1932, before Hitler is even in power. So manipulating a Christian subordinate like that while he’s not in power yet is not unexpected at all. It’s no different than his other public speeches. Plus, Wagener was a middleman with important contacts to industrialists, antagonizing him over Christianity would be pointless. Nilsson also makes much ado of this memoir, but it’s not nearly strong enough to counter the other evidence.
From this quote of yours:
“In fact, what Goebels wrote (in 1939) was that Hitler was “deeply religious” but “anti-Christian” because of its “elaborate Jewish rites,” a remark that can only refer to Catholicism. Protestant Christianity generally does not have “elaborate rites,” much less any that could be accused of being crypto-Jewish. Goebels’ remark was thus not about Christianity as a religion, but Catholicism as a sect.”
This is based on incorrect quotations. The actual Goebbels passage:
“The Führer is deeply religious but utterly anti-Christian. He sees in Christianity a symptom of deterioration. With justification. It is an offshoot of the Jewish race. One sees that also in the similarity of religious rites. Both have absolutely no relationship to animals and will ultimately die out because of that”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/235
The phrase “elaborate Jewish rites” is not in there. There is a comparison made that such rites are similar to Jewish ones, but nothing about it being “elaborate”. And the claim there are no ritual similarities between Protestant and Jewish rites is false. The banning of icons is an easy one I can think of right off the top of my head. Preaching the Hebrew bible in a religious service is another one. We don’t know exactly what Goebbels meant by which rites, but there is nothing to rule out Protestantism.
On top of that, here is what Goebbels says elsewhere:
Goebbels diary December 14, 1941:
“How a modern-minded person can recognize any teaching for the present era in Christianity at all is completely beyond me. In this context, even our party minister Kerrl appears, who, through his involvement with the church question, probably due to his half-education, adopts an entirely confused and ill-considered standpoint.”
So Goebbels, like Hitler in his Table Talks, condemns Kerrl’s “Positive Christianity” and his Protestantism.
You make a comment about Bormann distorting what Hitler said about transubstantiation.
In the Bormann/Jochmann version of the statement, Hitler says:
“Christianity is the most insane thing that a human brain has ever produced in its delusion, a mockery of everything divine.” He then makes a comment about transubstantiation right after that.
In the Picker/Heim version, Hitler says:
“Christianity teaches “transubstantiation,” which is the most preposterous thing a human brain has ever conceived in its delusion, a mockery of everything divine.”
First of all, even if we accept the Picker/Heim version over the Bormann/Jochmann version, what I said earlier about it showing a general anti-Christian animus holds regardless. However, I don’t see any reason to assume Bormann is purposely changing the text. He could just be making corrections, which is what he says he does in a note printed at the front of the Jochmann version. It could be Heim or Picker who made the mistake. Since Bormann knew Hitler better and was around him more, I personally consider the Bormann version more reliable. For example, if he was unsure about something or remembers something Hitler said differently than how it was recorded by Heim and Picker, he could ask Hitler about it and would have much more ample opportunity given that he was closer to Hitler than Heim or Picker. In fact, that’s exactly what Bormann did when he heard from Kerrl that Hitler was a Protestant and Christian. He asked Hitler and Hitler denied it. We have no reason to believe the same correction process didn’t occur at other times. It seems what most likely happened here was that Heim accidentally mixed up what he said about transubstantiation right after this, and then Bormann corrected him, perhaps after discussing it with Hitler.
More reasons given here on why Bormann wasn’t dishonest:
https://keithwoods.pub/p/table-talks
Several witnesses also say that Bormann wrote down things Hitler said on blank cards as Hitler was speaking. So there’s no reason to take Heim’s notes on everything as “more contemporary”.
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/1024
Let’s not forget Bormann was considered extremely loyal to Hitler.
“The fact remains, one after the other, everybody has failed in their implicit obedience to my commands – but Bormann, never!
…
“His [Hitler’s] voice rose to a scream; he looked searchingly into my face, as if his words held some special application to me personally. ‘Everyone, I don’t care who he may be, must understand clearly this one fact: whoever is against Bormann is also against the State! I’ll shoot the lot of them, even if they number tens of thousands, just as I will shoot those who babble of peace!”
Hitler Was My Friend, The Memoirs Of Hitler’s Photographer Heinrich Hoffmann pp. 226-227
“Where others need all day, Bormann does it for me in two hours, and he never forgets anything! . . . Bormann’s reports are so precisely formulated that I only need to say Yes or No . With him I get through a pile of files in ten minutes for which other men would need hours. If I tell him, remind me of this or that in six months, I can rest assured that he will do so. He is the exact opposite of his brother who forgets every task I give him.”
He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler’s Secretary by Christa Schroeder p.32
Bormann biographer Volker Koop claims that Bormann was the second most powerful person in the Reich aside from Hitler, corroborating these quotes.
https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Bormann-Executioner-Volker-Koop-ebook/dp/B08SC56G8L/
Onto some more criticisms of Nilsson’s book. One of the claims he makes is that his comment to Rosenberg about being a heathen was a joke. He apparently concludes this from Rosenberg saying he laughed. This by itself is of course inconclusive. Laughing doesn’t in and of itself prove you’re joking. He could be laughing because he was excited. But if we turn to other sources, which Nilsson doesn’t address, this interpretation seems unlikely. As it turns out, this isn’t the only person he claimed he was a heathen to.
Hans Severus Ziegler:
“You must know, I AM A HEATHEN. I understand that to mean: a non-Christian. Of course I have an inward relationship to a cosmic Almighty, to a Godhead.”
Kurt Lüdecke:
“I myself am a HEATHEN to the core!”
https://t.me/NSHeathenry/690
I don’t see any indication that Hitler was joking in any of these.
Nilsson also claims that when Hitler said “go to Valhalla” at a funeral, that this was a sarcastic comment, relying on Julius Schaub’s memoir. Firstly, this argument doesn’t make any sense. Sarcastic in what way? He doesn’t explain. And then when you go to Schaub’s memoir on the relevant pages 129-132, he doesn’t say that anywhere or back up what Nilsson says at all. I have no idea what he’s talking about. It looks like something he made up out of thin air to me.
https://archive.org/details/julius-schaub-in-hitlers-schatten-2005
Another thing that makes this interpretation unlikely is that Hitler refers to Valhalla in Mein Kampf as well.
“While, for four-and-a-half years, our extreme best were being horrendously thinned on the battlefields, our extreme worst succeeded wonderfully in saving themselves. For each hero who made the supreme sacrifice and ascended the steps of Valhalla, there was a slacker who cunningly dodged death in order to engage in business that was more or less useful at home.” – Mein Kampf
Was Hitler being “sarcastic” here too? I doubt it. I also doubt he believed in a literal Valhalla, but it again shows where his sympathies lied, paganism over Christianity.
I believe all the arguments I have made here is consistent with all the evidence and background knowledge we have and doesn’t make any improbable excuses that make anything more significantly unlikely given all that evidence and background knowledge. However, I don’t see how you will be able to get out of the fact that Hitler said Christianity/Christentum can’t be synthesized with National Socialism and is incompatible with it without making very improbable excuses. Don’t forget to be consistent with the principles you laid out at the beginning of this article:
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11868
You’re making all the mistakes I and these authors are warning against.
I’ll blog a demonstration of that soon, when I find time, though, since it appears you aren’t learning the lesson and still falling into the trap of arguing out of context, mixing source quality, and neglecting the German (as well as repeated recourse to equivocation fallacies and non sequiturs).
Hey Dr. Carrier, I was wondering if you had ever thought about Glycon as a possible parallel/proof of concept for the mythical Jesus, specifically in how Glycon was invented as a deity and placed directly on Earth in the time period that his worshippers were alive, with even a public fake “birth”. Similar to the John Frum example, but from the same time period, and with even less of a time gap between invention and euhemerism.
That’s a good question. I didn’t for two reasons.
First, as we have it, Glycon really did exist: as a puppet.
He’s not a celestial or myth-realm being known only by revelation and converted into an earthly person decades later. So he isn’t analogous to Jesus or John Frum.
Second, the Glycon story can be of use in proof-of-concept arguments about how easily and quickly people believed obviously false things, and how easy it was to fake things (hence Christian miracle “tent shows” that Paul alludes to were no doubt fabricating authority through similar parlor trickery). But when arguing specifically in the case of Jesus we need to avoid distant analogs as much as possible, because critics will ignore all the good examples, attack the bad example, and declare your thesis refuted. So to prevent this propaganda move, you can’t give them ammunition you don’t need to. The Gycon case is too distant and thus rife for exploitation by modern dogmatists to malign and misrepresent the mythicist thesis and the arguments and evidence for it.
Ehrenkrieg2 has responded to the above article on Twitter.
https://x.com/Ehrenkrieg2/status/2019532857048543551
That’s disingenuous propaganda. But I may blog on that for that very reason.
Wow thanks for reading it, the article impressed me a lot here in the cold Ukrainian power outages. Yes, the propaganda shown there seems to me quite a divisive argument against your thesis, curious how you’d respond. Maybe by saying that SS wasn’t wholly endorsed by Hitler? Or that Christianity can be made Darwinian?
Those questions betray the equivocation fallacy I mentioned. Christianity was already Darwinian. Most social darwinism and eugenics in the West was Christian. That incorporation happened decades before the Nazis. The merging of Christian Nationalism with Social Darwinism dominated British Imperialism and infested the American industrial elite (Ford, Rockefeller) well before 1900.
The entire idea of racial superiority held by Christian nationalists in the British and American Empires already before WWI was reconstructed on bastardized Darwinian sentiment. The same is true in Europe. So there isn’t any way to argue from “they liked Social Darwinism” to “they weren’t devout Christians.” Their entire reconstruction of Christianity justified their combination, and had done so even before the Nazis. So there was no incompatibility. Positive Christianity was simply the most sincere and coherent distillation of that fusion into Christian Nationalism since the American Civil War. The Germans were nothing if not efficient.
Thanks for responding again! I’m quite a dilettante, but iirc British colonialism was all about uplifting the natives (“white man’s burden” – with no consideration for the White race itself). Whereas German imperialism was clearly different. My favourite case in point is comparing their results – the populations of British/American colonies grew (India, Philippines), whereas the Germans were exterminationist in character – Generalplan Ost and the tens of millions of dead Slavs in Poland and Russia. So while Western imperialism does seem to be Christian, German doesn’t seem to be by this metric?
Either way, I’d love to see continued debate with worthy counterpoints if you feel like it. With atheists and racists both playing their two versions of hot potato with Christianity (atheists: Nazis=evil=Christian, racists: Nazis=good=anti-Christian, the biases make my head spin).
I don’t see any evidence in what you describe of Germany’s imperialism or racism or antisemitism being any less integrated with and driven by Christianity, same as everyone else. Remember, the Nazi platform against the Jews is line-by-line identical to Martin Luther’s. That can’t be explained away as some sort of coincidence. Likewise the fact that Hitler had to pretend to be publicly and devotedly Catholic.
There is no bias here. I am describing objective reality. Hitler and the Nazis objectively were not “anti-Chrtistian atheists.” Exactly as my article explains and all the evidence proves, that’s a modern Christian myth. Their primary and pervasive driver was Christianity, controlling Christianity, reforming Christianity, centering the Third Reich on Christianity. Their antisemitic policy, central to their very existence, was 100% Christian-derived and Christian-developed and Christian-defended. They even integrated Germanic ethnocentrism into Christianity, which conclusively proves this point. Hitler was never secretly saying “I will end Christianity and institute paganism/atheism when we are victorious.” No Nazi said that. They were almost all saying exactly the opposite (Hitler included): we’re right because Jesus was an Aryan and Christianity is anti-Jewish and pro-Aryan, which thus explains and justifies why “we” should be.
To the contrary, Hitler despised atheists (even in private) and had no sympathy for neopagans.
The fact that Positive Christianity was created and existed at all, and had so many adherents pervasively across the party, including (secretly, we now know) Hitler himself proves conclusively that they were committed Christians who needed to believe Christianity justified everything they said and did. If that hadn’t been true, they’d never have wasted any time or energy on this Aryan Jesus nonsense. They’d have just cut bait and been all about something else (whatever Christian propagandists today want them to have been, whether atheism or paganism or whatever nonsense they are currently making up). That Hitler and the Nazis needed to justify everything buy coopting Christianity as its justification refutes this mythology.
Nazis simply were a Christian movement, and Hitler simply was a devout Christian.
Everything else is nonsense, fallacies, and handwaving to try and disguise rather than confront reality.
I’m sorry but claiming Luther to be equal to Hitlerian Germany’s treatment of the Jews is bizarre and obviously factually incorrect? Even in his final years, Luther was explicitly calling for converting the Jews to Christianity, whereas Nazis always treated the Jews as a race, not a religion (see the Nuremberg blood laws).
“However, if they are converted, abandon their usury, and receive Christ, then we will willingly regard them our brothers. Otherwise, nothing will come out of it, for they do it to excess.”
If you are claiming such a falsehood, your entire edifice must be highly suspect. No, the Nazis did NOT endorse a massive campaign of sprinkling holy water on Jews to spare them from gas chambers, you’re effectively denying the Holocaust in the most ridiculous way I could never imagine.
See the study by Hector Avalos. It corrects your misunderstanding in detail.
But for your specific claim, late in life Martin Luther declared “We are at fault for not slaying them.”
So, you’re the one who’s wrong here.
The fact that you think that Luther wanted to forcibly convert a group he clearly thought of as ethnic and religious outsiders to Christianity somehow indicates that the Nazis did not inherit his platform is so morally odious as to be below comment. Do better.
I’ve checked the Christian Delusion essay, and there are a few poibts.
> “Luther’s seventh point had a correspondence in Nazi labor camps, with their infamous Arbeit macht frei (“work liberates”) slogan.”
This is borderline Holocaust denial. There were death camps for the physical extermination of the Jewish kind, not simply to turn them into wholesome chungus hard-working Christians.
> “Catholic Christians have an even longer history of anti Judaism. Canon Sixteen of the Council of Elvira (ca. 306), for instance, prohibited marriage between Christians and Jews. Thus the Nazi Nuremberg laws, which prohibited marriages between Germans and Jews, are simply an extension of a Christian tradition, not a radical departure as D’Souza would have us believe.”
This is completely ridiculous as a Jew could not convert to Hitlerism and thus acquire the rights either to marry Aryans or avoid being gassed, whereas the whole point of the Christian laws was to foster conversions.
> “Since anti Judaism was not associated with Darwin’s own writings, then it is a history of Christian anti Judaism that would be much more effective in convincing the Christian masses.”
Darwin prophecised the extinction of the lower races of man, Jews are a different race to the Germans, ergo Darwin can be used to inspire a race war in Germany… That’s quite obvious, no?
Overall, this feels like an outrageous and indefensible position. Nazis were not universalist, were not proselytising the gospels, were not promoting individual salvation outside biological race, and were definitely not submerging racial aliens in holy water to make them part of the People’s Community.
You should treat any Christian pronouncements by the Nazis as a necessary atavism, as part of the language, the same way as how Juche Koreans “liberated the women”… for them to have the happiness to worship the bronze idols of Kim Il Sung, not to make the proverbial OnlyFans accounts. The language might be similar, but as a historian you should focus on the context and the particular to the times and places meanings of the words.
Nothing you are saying here makes any logical sense.
I am forced to conclude from this that I no longer have any confidence in your ability to understand essays and chapters you read, or what a sound or even relevant argument looks like.
Anyone reading this, be advised: read Avalos’s actual chapter in Christian Delusion. It does not resemble any of the weird ideas being depicted by our North Korean friend, and already refutes or moots every point here (insofar as any of these points are even intelligible).
Holy shit.
Do I really have to explain why the mythology that these people were dangerous and could become parasites would inspire the idea that “Work makes you free” and justify that they should be slaves, in addition to the general idea that Jews collectively owed Germany reparations?
You’re looking at anti-Semitic rhetoric and then saying that it couldn’t inspire anti-Semitic rhetoric. It’s utterly contemptible. Do better.
In case you need a pat on the head to think correctly: No one is saying all Lutherans are Nazis. A particular offshoot of an idea inspiring something awful doesn’t mean the idea has no other better incarnations. This is pretty obvious. Rather, the point is that Nazi ideology was a metastasizing, a development, of already existing anti-Semitism that was rooted in Lutheran and broad Christian ideas. Like the explicit position the Catholic Church held until very recently that the Jews were collectively guilty of the death of the Messiah.
So much of this discussion betrays not only dishonesty but a failure of social reasoning, as you get into in the comments.
The rank and file of Nazis and Germans who accepted Nazi rule were Christian. Period. This isn’t in dispute. So it’s already a shell game and a goalpost move to talk about the Nazi leadership. The best case scenario for Christians is that a lot of Christians were suckers who got manipulated (in part using their Christianity) to do evil, hateful shit and support an authoritarian regime, apparently by people who were non-Christian. Which does not inspire confidence that Christianity actually stops atrocities, or empowers people to be skeptical of authorities.
But once that fact is in evidence, it then actually requires a sociological explanation: How did so many people get manipulated? And the most obvious answer is that the people who manipulated them had enough cultural cache, enough credibility, could speak the language well enough, to be treated as insiders. At some point, one gets to the point of just having to assert that people with that much understanding of Christianity who claimed to be Christians weren’t Christians “in their heart” or “in their minds”, based on no evidence.
So the argument that the Nazi movement was fundamentally Christian isn’t just informed by the fact that the rank and file were, and so by definition the vast majority of people who ever called themselves Nazis were Christians of some variety, but also by the prior probability that a movement that engages with people that way is just simply part of their group. It’s not impossible or even vastly unlikely that the alternative is true, but naively, you would go into an ultranationalist movement and assume that it’s being led by people within ultranationalist communities.
(Of course we can always ask how sincere elites ever are about any belief system they profess compared to cold self-serving pragmatism and the need to manipulate others, but this is of no help to the apologist trying to divorce Nazism from Christianity, because, well, that suspicion applies to them too).
And, not to put too blunt of a point on it, but today’s fascist and Nazi-like rhetoric among Christian nationalists is just yet further proof that even fervently believed Christianity is not inconsistent with racism, ultranationalism, violence, authoritarianism, etc. Any Christian nationalist who sincerely wonders how Christians could be Nazis (and isn’t lying in order to avoid being associated with the group they know in fact they are like)
In comments you address the neo-Wodenist and “pagan” parts of the party, which were indeed minorities. But they were able to do things like get those volk ideas into the Hitler Youth to some extent. So the atheist and folk wings of the party still had some power, just like the working class ones had some power even post-Long Knives. How would you conceptualize that?
My immediate thought is that even that doesn’t actually distance Nazism from Christian nationalism. As you’ve documented, we have countless open secular or non-Christian fascists saying very openly and/or in their safe spaces when they think they won’t be detected that they support Christianity despite thinking it’s false because they know it creates power and because of Western chauvinism. (Ignoring that it’s not a Western religion at its base, but that’s not new for Nazis). And, of course, countless Christians who are devout nonetheless believe in fairies, or ghosts, or UFOs, or practice meditation, or practice magic, or use Tarot or astrology.
Religion is far more porous at the boundaries even for the supposed fundamentalists, and folk beliefs stick around. So identifying a folk belief or a heterodox opinion of any kind that is common among a community is not sufficient to diagnostically eliminate them as Christian, or else no Christian community would be Christian. My perception of the Nazi religious melange is that they were syncretists, as fascists very often especially have to be because fascists want to use every ideology and asset they can as a proxy for power, and so they will engage in crank sleight of hand and rhetorical bullshit in order to pretend that their non-Christian beliefs really are totally super Christian and how dare you suggest otherwise. The neo-pagan Nazis probably did the same thing, or at least those who wanted to bridge with them and maintain alliances did.
And, of course, you’ve identified the dishonest trick that people like Craig pull where to maintain a big tent they’ll say “Well, I believe in hell, but you can’t condemn Christianity for it because it’s not essential to the belief system”. As the Red Pen Logic fraud put it, “Christian brothers and sisters” can disagree about what eternal consequences are present. Nazis could do the same thing if pressed: “Well, yes, those guys over there sure are worshiping Woden and using rune magic, but that’s not all of us, and who are you to say they’re not Christian?”
That’s all well said, Fred. I concur.