That depends on what one means by “destroy Christianity.” As best we can tell, Hitler wanted to unify all denominations under him as the new messiah. So he wanted to “destroy” specific denominations by forcing them to unite under a common doctrine, just as the Catholic church actively sought to do through much of the Middle Ages. But he wanted Christianity to be the religion of the Third Reich. Likewise, by “Christianity” Hitler almost certainly meant Positive Christianity, and someone who likes saying everyone of a denomination they dislike is not a True ChristianTM might say then that that’s not “really” Christianity, and therefore Hitler wanted to destroy “Christianity.” But one could say the same of the Catholic Church at one point or another in its history.

For sources and quotes on what Hitler actually thought about religion, see my chapter on it in Hitler Homer Bible Christ (which includes material not in my original German Studies Review article). Just FYI, as I show there, Hitler was an old earth creationist who despised atheists and believed he was chosen by God and would go to heaven when he died, and that Christ was an Aryan whose true and admirable teachings were corrupted by the “Jew” Paul whose distortions were an insult to God, and that the one thing that made “man superior to the animals” was that he could recognize the existence of God the Creator.

I was having an argument on facebook about Pope Benedict’s comment about the Nazis and atheist extremism.

The argument turned to how Hitler tried to eradicate Christianity. The following NYTimes article was quoted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/weekinreview/word-for-word-case-against-nazis-hitler-s-forces-planned-destroy-german.html

and it was said: “The historical evidence showing the plan to eradicate Christianity is so conclusive that one risks outright duplicity in rejecting it.”

Would you know if these claims are based on Hitler’s Table Talks?

Here is the facebook thread if you are curious.

https://www.facebook.com/TheActivistAtheist/posts/775738802459943?comment_id=775804649120025&reply_comment_id=776286029071887

Cheers

Sorry, I can’t vouch for any of that.

I just published a work called Destiny’s Spear, about the spear used to crucify Christ, and Hitler’s desperate search for it. It also involves General Patton who believed he was reincarnated and was once Michel Ney under Napoleon. In your studies have you come across any stories involving Hitler, Napoleon, Patton and the Spear of Destiny? Check out my blog: blogdestinysspear.com

Haha. What about “Jesus Potter Harry Christ”, which is a pretty good Jesus mythicist book by Derek Murphy? Might have been a subconscious-level inspiration. Doesn’t seem like a pure coincidence: a sequence of four semi-random words ending with “Christ” as a title for a Christ Mythicist book? How would you calculate the Bayesian odds on that? Richard, have you seen “Jesus Potter Harry Christ”?

Anyway, I bought the book. Looks very nice, though I don’t agree with the remarks about the Testimonium Flavianum. I really liked the chapter on Tacitus. Haven’t read the rest yet.

There is something wrong with your device, then.

My kindle edition has a hyperlinked TOC (using it right now). Indeed even the TOCs in individual chapters are hyperlinked.

(Maybe you are talking about a kindle edition of Not the Impossible Faith, wherein the TOC does fail to work? Otherwise, HHBC has a functioning TOC in kindle.)

Okay, just uploaded a fix. It looks like Kindle takes longer than a day to process an update, however. According to them, they may or may not send all customers an email advising of this (depends on whether they deem the revision major or minor–I should think this was major, but I don’t know how they’ll rule). They say it can take up to four weeks (!) to process a revision request. And if they decide not to notify you, you will have to magically know to go to your Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com to process the update when it’s made available (so, set your calendar to notify you in five weeks to go to Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com and do this, if you didn’t get an email from them sooner telling you to).

Thank you for saying so. I have years of speaking experience to thank for that. But I’ve also been working with a really great engineer (a local affiliated with the studio Pitchstone has been hiring for the task). Together we bang out a pretty good result.

I don’t discuss Dando’s theory, but I cite his work on this there (so interested readers will be lead to it). I don’t find it at all convincing. His theory requires a more extensive interpolation than mine, one that starts to look less like something a Christian would write.