One of the greatest illusions held by those rejecting Hitler is that he was a godless heathen. Few assertions are more at variance with reality and one need only read and quote his writings and speeches to prove as much. Regarding belief in God he said to the English journalist, Ward Price:
I believe in God, and I am convinced that he will not desert 67 million Germans who have worked so hard to regain their rightful position in the world.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 29
In a speech in Munich on 24 February 1940 he stated:But there is something else I believe, and that is that there is a God. This God has given the same right to all nations. And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years. MY NEW ORDER by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 788
At the celebration of the Gau Party Congress of Mainfranken on 27 June 1937:We German National Socialists believe in nothing on this earth--besides our Lord God in heaven--except our German Volk. HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 908
Near Augsburg on 23 November 1937 Hitler addressed the Churches formally:
At the bottom of our hearts, we National Socialists are religious. For the space of many millenniums, a uniform concept of God did not exist. Yet it is the most brilliant and most sublime notion of mankind, that which distinguishes him from most from animals, that he not only views a phenomenon from without, but always poses the question of why and how. HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 980
He also stated:
It is impossible to escape the problem of God. When I have the time, I'll work out the formula to be used on great occasions. We must have something perfect both in thought and in form. HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 164
It's a fact that we're feeble creatures, and that a creative force exists. To seek to deny it is folly. HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 87
In his speech in the Reichstag on 7 March 1936:I believe I can say this openly before my conscience and my God. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1301
Near Augsburg on 23 November 1937 Hitler addressed the Churches:
This entire world, a world so clear-cut in its external manifestation, is just as unclear to us in its purpose. And here mankind has bowed down in humility before the conviction that it is confronted by an incredible power, an Omnipotence, which is so incredible and so deep that we men are unable to fathom it. That is a good thing! For it can serve to comfort people in bad times; it avoids that superficiality and sense of superiority that misleads man to believe that he--but a tiny bacillus on this earth, in this universe--rules the world, and that he lays down the laws of Nature which he can at best but study. It is, therefore, our desire that our Volk remains humble and truly believes in a God. Hence an immeasurably large scope is given for the Churches, and thus they should be tolerant of one another! HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 980
Hitler not only said he believed in a God but specifically rejected atheism.In an article published in the Sunday Express 28 September 1930 he said:It is charged against me that I am against property, that I am an atheist. Both charges are false. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 93
An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An educated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) .... HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 59
Not only did he strongly believe in god and reject atheism but his determination to destroy atheism was unmistakable. In a speech in the Sportpalast in Berlin on 24 October 1933 Hitler said:
Without pledging ourselves to any particular Confession [Protestantism or Catholicism], we have restored to faith its prerequisites because we were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 378
We don’t want to educate anyone in atheism. HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 6
In a speech to the Nation on 14 October 1933:For eight months we have been conducting a fearless campaign against that Communism which is threatening our entire nation, our culture, our art, and our public morals. We have made an end of denials of the Deity and the crying down of religion. We must humbly thank God that he has not permitted our fight against distress and unemployment, and for the saving of the German peasantry, to be in vain.THE HITLER DECREES, by James Pollock and Harlow Heneman, 1934, Page 80
HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 369
HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1095
The allegedly atheist Hitler called upon God for support. In Munich on 1 January 1938 he stated:
No matter how great the accomplishments of mankind may be, man will never be able to boast of having achieved final victory if Providence does not bless his actions. May it be our uttermost request that the mercy of the Lord God accompany our German Volk in the coming year on its fateful path. HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 997
And he prayed on numerous occasions. In Berlin on 20 February 1938 Hitler stated:In this hour I pray that the Almighty will give His blessing in the years to come to our work and action, to our judgment and to our strength of resolution, that He may guard us from false pride as from cowardly submission, that He will let us find the right way, which He in His Providence has allotted to the German people, and that He give us always the courage to do right and never to waiver or weaken in the face of any force or danger. HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 92
In Cologne on 28 March 1936:Once the mercy of God shown upon us, but we were not worthy of His mercy. Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell, fell as scarcely any other people heretofore. In this deep misery we again learned to pray.... This people has become better, more respectable, and nobler. We all perceive it; the mercy of the Lord slowly returns to us again. And in this hour we sink to our knees and beseech our Almighty God that He may bless us, that He may give us the strength to carry on the struggle for the freedom, the future, the honor, and the peace of our people. So help us God.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 91
HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 802
In a speech at the Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration on the Buckeberg on 7 October 1933:And of our God at this hour we would humbly pray that in the future, too, He would give His blessing upon our labor for our daily bread.
HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 874
In his speech to members of the Party at the Nuremberg Parteitag on 13 September 1936:
Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe! We in our generation have lived through so much fighting that it is natural that we should long for peace. We wish to work, we wish to mould our Reich, to organize it after our own fashion, not after that of the Bolshevist Jews!HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 207
In a speech at Konigsberg on 4 March 1933:Our prayer is: Lord God, let us never hesitate, let us never play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 116
In Berlin on 30 January 1942:It is this prayer which will be answered: God give us strength that we may maintain our freedom for our people, for our children and for our children's children, not only for us Germans, but also for the other nations of Europe! HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 97
In his speech on May Day 1933:... no, Lord, the German people have become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices. Lord, we will not let Thee go: bless now our fight for our freedom; the fight we wage for our German people and Fatherland.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 410
In the closure to his speech in the Reichstag on 20 February 1938:In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgment and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant to us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 410
HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 1034
In his speech at the Harvest Thanksgiving on 6 October 1935:
We wish to continue to do our duty, to go straight ahead, not to look to the right and left as we have done in the past. We want to march through the distresses of this time, strong and armed, and never play the weakling. We want to do the right and to dread no one and then we would ask of the Almighty that in the coming year, too, He will bless our work, that He may once more give a rich harvest to our fields and to us all great successes. And in especial may He preserve to our people a right judgment, may He secure for our people domestic peace, and may He fill us one and all with the wisdom and the wit to do the right that our people may live and that Germany and may never perish. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1716
In his speech at the Harvest Thanksgiving on 6 October 1935:
When we go into the last battle we would lift of our gaze to Him who guides all things and, as did a Prussian general before us, we would only say 'Lord God, there is no need for Thee to help us, only do not help our enemies.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1748
HITLER'S REDEN, 1933, page 95.
In a speech at Frankfurt on Main on 16 March 1936:... You must be anchored in yourself and must set yourself with feet firmly planted on this oscillating world. Only so can you appeal to your God and pray Him to support and bless your courage, your work, your perseverance, your strength, your resolution, and with all these your claim on life.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 408
On 3 October 1938 in Eger:
In this hour we wish to render thanks to the Almighty that He has guarded us on our path in the past, and we would implore Him that in the future, too, He would go with us and prosper our way.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1529
Needless to say, those having no belief in a supreme being--atheists--don’t pray or call upon an Almighty Being for sustenance or assistance.
Hitler also contended that prayers are answered for those who fight for them as is shown by his comments in a Munich speech on 27 September 1922:. . . Necessity teaches us to pray, but it also teaches us to fight. God gave man prayer, but He refuses to grant the fulfillment of prayer if man does not fight for it.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 76
Assertions such as those uttered by Hitler during a public speech on 8 November 1943 lend credence to his claim of being religious:I, too, am religious; that is, religious deep inside, and I believe that Providence weighs us human beings, and that he who is unable to pass the test of Providence but is destroyed by it has not been destined for greater things.HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 29
The following exchange occurred in a conversation with one of Hitler’s closest confidants, Martin Bormann:
HITLER: Mark my words, Bormann, I'm going to become very religious. BORMANN: You've always been very religious. HITLER: I'm going to become a religious figure. Soon I'll be the great chief of the Tartars. Already Arabs and Moroccans are mingling my name with their prayers.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 203
In his speech to the Reichstag on 21 May 1935 he said:... We National Socialists may perhaps not have the same views as our church communities in respect to this or that question of organization. But we never want to see a lack of religion and faith and do not want our churches turned into clubrooms and cinemas. Bolshevism teaches godlessness and acts accordingly.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 670
With Hitler, as with George Bush, faith is a key component of his life and the Fuhrer affirmed his reliance upon same by saying in his closing speech at the Parteitag in Nuremberg in September 1936:. . . Woe to him who has not faith: he sins against the meaning of the whole of life.... It was the miracle of faith which saved Germany.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 406
Hitler went even further than Bush dares to venture at this time by openly contending faith should be imposed on others by force if necessary:Those who don't believe should, it seems, have faith imposed on them by force.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 342
What an imposition of this kind would portend for the US is distressful to say the least. As far as Hitler is concerned anything bringing people to god is good and all to the contrary is wrong, and he makes no effort to hide this attitude:Let's not worry about letting young people have these festivals. On the contrary! Everything is good that brings them closer to the godhead, and everything is wrong that comes between them and the godhead, even if it is a Catholic priest. HITLER--MEMOIRS OF A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 278
In Munich on 8 May 1929 Hitler showed he felt people could be saved by virtually any religion when he said: I represent the view that everyone should achieve salvation according to his own religion.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 280
He doesn’t seem to care what religion people adopt as long as they belong to one or the other. To that extent he is more tolerant than Bush and his fundamentalist compatriots who contend there is only one correct path to salvation. Hitler often showed he believed, like Bush, that people were a God’s creation.
In Berlin on 1 May 1935 he stated:As you stand here gathered together before me, may you one and all not forget what life has made out of you as individuals; may you remember that in spite of all these barriers you are members of one people and that you are so not by human will but by God's will. It was He who made us members of this nation, He who gave us our mother tongue, He who implanted in us that being with which we are filled, which we must obey if we are to be more on earth than mere worthless chaff. HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 90
Because God's will once gave men their form, their being, and their faculties. Who destroys His work thereby declares war on the creation of the Lord, the divine will.MEIN KAMPF, Adolph Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 827
In Munich on 25 October 1930: When we come forth today as Germans and try to guard against infection by another people, then we attempt to put back into the hand of the all-powerful Creator that which He has given us. His will and His Providence let us become what we are. He gave us the blood that we possess; He gave us our external, I might almost say purely human appearance; He placed our souls in us and He gave us the value which is ours and also the substance of life. It would be an act of infidelity toward the Creator if we did not endeavor to give the same being back to Him in the same form in which He gave it to us. I consider it a sin to corrupt or to debase this our being, to infect it with foreign characteristics, and thus not to preserve the image of God as He placed it in our inner nature.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 87
If those words do not expose someone ideologically in league with the religious views of Bush what does. Hitler went so far as to equate the people’s voice with God’s voice when he said in Munich on 15 March 1936: Only the Almighty has the right to decide on what is just in what is not, and God's voice is the people's voice, and you, my German compatriots, are therefore the only ones who have the right to judge my actions.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1309
And he reiterated those words the following day in Frankfurt:I will accept your decision as the people's voice which is the voice of God.
HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1311
Like religious fundamentalists in general and Bush in particular Hitler links salvation with understanding God and accepting the laws of nature: The essential thing, really, is that man should know that salvation consists in the effort that each person makes to understand Providence and accept the laws of nature.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 124
When Hitler speaks as follows, it is readily apparent that his anti-evolutionary views coalesce with those of Bush and other fundamentalists:I cannot believe that the various ages in the history of the globe lasted as long as the experts would have us believe. In any case, they have no proofs to offer of the correctness of their hypotheses.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 707
In the following comment Hitler describes the clash in his mind between evolution and creation and judging by the prior comment one can easily see which side he chose to accept: The present system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution. Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall. Often I complained to one or another of my teachers against what I had been taught an hour before--and I remember that I drove them to despair.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 83
Judging from the following comment it would appear Hitler feels the creation account is valid because of its acceptance by all human traditions: In all the human traditions, whether oral or written, one finds mention of a huge cosmic disaster. What the Bible tells on the subject is not peculiar to the Jews, but was certainly borrowed by them from the Babylonians and the Assyrians.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 249
Hitler not only firmly believed in God but according to some of his assertions strongly believed he was chosen by God to rule. He stated in a Munich speech on 4 September 1932: I also have the conviction and the certain feeling that nothing can happen to me, for I know that Providence has chosen me to fulfill my task.HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 165
In Berlin on 24 March 1936: I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany. HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 797
In a speech to some political leaders at the Nuremberg Parteitag on 7 September 1934: And it was no earthly superior who gave us that command; that was given to us by the God Who created our people and Who cannot will that His work should go to ruin only because a single generation had grown feeble.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 662
And in a Reichstag speech on 21 May 1935: But the more difficult the decisions, so much the more I as a German should like to make sure that my actions are completely uninfluenced by instincts of weakness or fear and to bring them into harmony with my conscience towards my God and the nation which He permits me to serve.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 457
Besides contending God chose him to rule, he attributed his accomplishments to God’s help. In effect, mankind is supposed to believe God was on the side of him and Germany. That should sound familiar to millions of present-day Americans listening to Bushites express their views, especially when the latter are speaking in uniform before congregations.
In Regensburg on 6 June 1937 Hitler stated: We, therefore, go our way into the future with the deepest belief in God. Would all we have achieved been possible had Providence not helped us? I know that the fruits of human labor are hard-won and transitory if they are not blessed by the Omnipotent. Work such as ours which has received the blessings of the Omnipotent can never again be undone by mere mortals.HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 903
On 6 April 1938 in Salzburg: We all must be grateful to Providence and to our Lord God. He has granted to us success in that for which formerly generations fought and for which countless numbers of the best Germans had to sacrifice their lives.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1455
Before the Reichstag on 30 January 1937: When I look back upon the great work of the four years lying behind us, you will understand that my initial feeling can be none other than that of gratitude to our Almighty God who allowed us to accomplish this work. He blessed our work and enabled our Volk to stride unscathed and confident through all the perils lining its path.HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 873 HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 92
In Saarbruecken on 1 March 1935: I know, too, that our goal is today far from being attained. But we strive toward it with burning hearts, and Heaven and Providence have blessed our efforts.... Fifteen years of struggle. And when today I here consider the result, then I must thank God above; he has blessed our efforts time and again. Nor was our struggle in vain. Fifteen years of battle for a Reich, and today in the name of this people and in the name of this Reich I can greet you in the German homeland.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 89
In Berlin on May Day, 1934: We would not forget Him Who a whole year through has granted such success to our work, and we would pray Him that in the time to come, too, He would not withhold His blessing from our people. Above all may Providence permit our dearest hope to come to its fulfillment....HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1176
At Rosenheim on 11 August 1935: Fifteen years ago I had nothing save my faith and my will. Today the Movement is Germany, today this Movement has won the German nation and formed the Reich. Would that have been possible without the blessing of the Almighty? Or do they who ruined Germany wish to maintain that they have had God's blessing? What we are we are, not against but with the will of Providence. And so long as we are loyal, honest, and ready to fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall also in the future have the blessing of Providence. . . . HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 404
In his proclamation to the German People on 1 January 1939: The National Socialist Movement has wrought this miracle. If Almighty God granted success to this work, then the Party was His instrument.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 406
In his New Year Proclamation of 1938: Yet however great human achievement may be, it will never be able to pride itself upon final success unless Providence blesses its action. Our deepest prayer is that in the coming year, as in the past, the favor of Almighty God may accompany our German people upon the path of its destiny.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1373
In a speech to the "Old Guard" of the Party in Munich on 19 March 1934: ... We have experienced a miracle, something unique, something the like of which there has hardly been in the history of the world. God first allowed our people to be victorious for 4 and a half years, then He abased us, laid upon us a period of shamelessness, but now after a struggle of 14 years he has permitted us to bring that period to a close. It is a miracle which has been wrought upon the German people, and we would not fall into the fault which possessed the German people at the end of the war-years: we would not be ungrateful. What has come to pass during the last year is so unheard of that it must constrain us to profound humility. It shows that the Almighty has not deserted our people, that He received it into favor at the moment when it rediscovered itself. And that our people shall never again lose itself, that must be our vow so long as we shall live and so long as the Lord gives us the strength to carry on the fight. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 405
And at the annual harvest celebration on the Buckeberg, on 30 September 1934: When folk have set before them a true purpose and then pursue it unmoved with bravery and courage, when they withstand with a strong heart every trial which Heaven sends upon them, then one day at the last almighty Providence will yet grant them the fruits of their struggle and of their sacrifices. For God has never abandoned any man upon this earth unless he has first abandoned himself. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 906
Based upon these comments, it is not hard to discern why Hitler felt the German people were God’s agent and said: Germany, the German Volk! And this Volk will be the Sword of God! HITLER--MEMOIRS OF A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 215
But although he staunchly believed God was in the corner occupied by him and the German people, there was no doubt in his mind that God’s support could not substitute for hard work and extended labor. On many occasions he emphasized the importance of work and sacrifice. The “bring yourself up by your own bootstraps” cry so prominent in Rightist circles clearly emerges in such comments as:
You [blue-collar workers] represent the most noble of slogans known to us: "God helps those who help themselves!"HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 1147
In Munich on 24 February 1941: The Lord helps those who help themselves.... That is not only a very pious phrase, but a very just one.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 96
In Hamburg on 20 March 1936: Hence today, my German volk, I call upon you: stand behind me with your faith! Be the source of my power and my faith. Do not forget: he who does not abandon his principles in this world will not be abandoned by the Almighty either! The Almighty will always help those who help themselves; He will always show them the way to their rights, their freedom and thus to their future. And this is the reason why you, German Volk, are going to the polls on March 29.HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 794
In a speech on 5 July 1944: I may not be a light of the church, a pulpiteer, but deep down I am a pious man, and believe that whoever fights bravely in defense of the natural laws framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by the Lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of Providence.HITLER'S LETTERS AND NOTES, by Werner Maser, (1973), page 208
In a March 1933 speech: The world will not help, the people must help itself. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use: that in it and through it we may wage the battle of our life.... The others in past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty--of Him Who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 409
In Nuremberg on 16 September 1935: God continues to bestow His Grace only on him who continues to merit it. But whoever speaks and acts in the name of a people, which is a part of God's handiwork, will continue to discharge his mandate only so long as he does not sin against the existence or future of the part of God's creation that has been entrusted to his care....HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 90
At the annual harvest celebration on the Buckeberg in October 1936: If at any time in Germany the harvest sinks only by 20 percent, then that is for our people a catastrophe. Twenty percent less grain would for our German food supply have terrible, hardly imaginable, consequences. What men can do to avoid such a catastrophe that we do in Germany. But we feel all the more deeply our duty every year to render thanks to the Power on which depends in the last resort this final 20 percent of our harvest. We know that Eternal Providence must first give its gracious consent to all that human industry and human work can achieve. And it is for this reason that we unite here on this day to render thanks to the Almighty that He has not allowed the work of a whole year to be spent in vain, but that from the work of this year once more our people's daily bread is secured for the coming year.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 932
At the celebration of the Gau Party Congress of Mainfranken on 27 June 1937: ... it is my conviction that the human beings God created also wish to lead their lives modeled after the will of the Almighty. God did not create the peoples so that they might deliver themselves up to foolishness and be pulped soft and ruined by it, but that they might preserve themselves as He created them! Because we support their preservation in their original, God-given form, we believe our actions correspond to the will of the Almighty. As weak as the individual may ultimately be in his character and actions as a whole, when compared to Almighty Providence and its will, he becomes just as infinitely strong the instant he acts in accordance with this Providence.... And when I look back on the five years behind us, I cannot help but say: this has not been the work of man alone. Had Providence not guided us, I surely would often have been unable to follow these dizzying paths. That is something our critics above all should know. At the bottom of our hearts, we National Socialists are devout! We have no choice: no one can make national or world history if his deeds and abilities are not blessed by Providence.HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 908
In Munich on 24 February 1940: I, however, believe that we are here dealing with divine justice.... Providence, our God, as I prefer to say, will not abandon such a nation. This God of whom I speak will not abandon us. He will guide us further along the path we have set our foot upon, and in this feeling of righteousness and justice we shall continue our efforts as we have begun them, certain that victory will be ours, because it is so ordained.MY NEW ORDER by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 788
And feeling himself fulfilling a divine calling Hitler stated on various occasions: I believe that it was also God's will that from here [Austria] a boy was to be sent into the Reich, allowed to mature, and elevated to become the nation's Fuhrer. I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker. When I look back on the five years behind us, I cannot help but say: this has not been the work of man alone. Had province not guided us, I surely would often have been unable to follow these dizzying paths. The Almighty will always help those who help themselves. God formed this Volk, and it has become what it should according to God's will, and according to our will, it shall remain, nevermore to fade! Work such as ours which has received the blessings of the Omnipotent can never again be undone by mere mortals. God helped us. Where will and faith so fervently join forces, Heaven cannot withhold its approval.HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 30
Hitler felt the judging of whether or not a people’s labor and deeds are good or bad is a matter for God to determine and not man and uttered words to this effect on 1 April 1939 in front of the Rathaus in Wilhelmshafen: ... all that we can say is: the judgment whether a people is virtuous or not--that a mere man can hardly pronounce--that must be left to the good God.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1594
He also believed, as do the Bushites, that God punishes, tests, and favors believers according to their beliefs, behavior, and labor and conveyed that message at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeberg on 3 October 1937: ... in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves a decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 407
In his closing speech at the Nuremberg Parteitag of 1937: Often it is through a chastisement that the deepest love of Providence towards its creatures is displayed.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 690
On 27 February 1932 in the Berlin Sportpalast: I believe in Divine Justice. I believe that it has defeated Germany because we had become faithless, and I believe that it will help us because we now once again profess our faith. I believe that the long arm of the Almighty will withdraw from those who are seeking merely alien shelter.HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 120
In Munich on 2 April 1927: We are not a Party of lazy, narrow-minded townsmen; we are not a Movement of worthless brothers, who are content to discuss the topics of the day, who as men say to their wives: My dear wife, the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, praise be the will of the Lord; if it pleases Him, He will make us free again. No! The Lord gave us His blessing because we deserved it; the Lord revoked His blessing because we were not worthy of it; the Lord will give us His blessing again when He sees that He has a rejuvenated people before Him.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 87
And in Karlsruhe on 12 March 1936: And should unnecessary sorrow or suffering ever come to my people because of my actions, then I beseech the Almighty God to punish me. HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 110
Through numerous comments Hitler, like Bush, made no secret of his firm adherence to Christianity. At Hamburg on 17 August 1934 he stated: The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 385
In the Party Program formulated in Munich on 24 February 1920: The party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us,...HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 107 THE HITLER DECREES, by James Pollock and Harlow Heneman, 1934, Page 3
After all, I am a Christian, am I not? I AM ADOLPH HITLER, by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 115
I'm a Catholic. Certainly that was fated from the beginning, for only a Catholic knows the weaknesses of the Church. THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION, by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 52
[Footnote]: On 4 July 1933 the Dean of Chichester had an interview with Hitler in the course of which Hitler said: I am a Catholic, I have no place in the Protestant church.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 400
In a speech to the Germans of the Saar at Koblenz on 26 August 1934: National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity. And we have no other desire than to be true to that position. I know that there are thousands and tens of thousands of priests who are not merely reconciled to the State of today but who gladly give to the State their cooperation, and I am convinced that this cooperation will grow ever closer and more intimate. For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life, for the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes, for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and discord. These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles! But I believe that if we should fail to follow these principles, then we should not be able to point to our successes, for the result of our political battle is surely not unblest by God.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 386
And in the Sportpalast in Berlin on 24 October 1933: He [Bishop Mueller] said he knew that the Chancellor [Hitler] himself was very anxious that the people should not turn National Socialism into a substitute for Christianity, and that he desired especially to have the youth rightly guided in this direction.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 379
Hitler not only firmly believed in Christianity but, like Bush, considered Christian principles to be the basis of morality.
From the Proclamation by the Government to the German Nation on 1 February 1933: The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.... MY NEW ORDER by Hitler, Edited by Raoul de Roussy de Sales, 1941, Page 144
In a statement on the Enabling Act to the Reichstag on 23 March 1933: In the same way, the Government of the Reich, who regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and the moral code of the nation, attach the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See, and are endeavoring to develop them.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1018
ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS, by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 58
HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 283
In his closing speech to the Nuremberg Parteitag of 1935: ... And the two factors which made this development possible were the model set by the States of the ancient world and the Christian religion. Without these, it is impossible to conceive what would have been the fate of Europe and of the rest of the world, so far as the white race is in question;... Christianity provided the religious and Weltanschaulich basis on which a German state could be raised despite the absence of any tribal unity. Only on this platform of religion and State in the course of centuries could the exclusive peculiarities of the tribes be smoothed down and overcome in favor of that common blood-descent and therefore inner community out of which a nation could be born. The men who carried out this historic process acted under a commission given to them by Providence, who wished that we Germans should become a people. In this process Christianity provided the common store of religious and moral ideas which formed the unity in which German tribes could unite. And what Christianity destroyed had to fall if this unity were to be realized.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 439
And finally he stated in his most infamous writing: If one were to take from present mankind its principles based on religion and faith, which in their practical effectiveness are ethical and moral, by eliminating this religious education and without replacing it by an equivalent, one would be confronted with a result amounting to a serious undermining of the foundations of their existence. Therefore one may well determine that man lives not only in order to serve higher ideals, but that these higher ideals, inversely, give also the presumption for his existence as man. Thus the circle was closed.MEIN KAMPF, Adolph Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 574
As with Bush, religious Hitler believed life is a fight between good and evil: Two worlds face one another--the men of God and the men of Satan! THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION, by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 241
And, like a recent Alabama judge determined to oppose the First Amendment to the US Constitution, he was convinced the Ten Commandments lie at the foundation of all morality: The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there's no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they're inspired by the best religious spirit, and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 85
Being a dedicated Christian, it comes as no surprise to anyone that Hitler accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and viewed him as a fighter for the downtrodden.
He made that abundantly clear in a speech in Munich on 12 April 1922: My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who, once lonely with only a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were, and called me to fight them, and who, so help me, was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. With boundless love, as a Christian and as a man, I read the passage which relates how the Lord finally gathered His strength and made use of the whip in order to drive the usurers, the vipers, and cheats from the temple. Today 2,000 years later, I recognize with deep emotion Christ's tremendous fight for this world against the Jewish poison. I recognize it most profoundly by the fact that He had to shed His blood on the cross for his fight. As a Christian it is not my duty to permit myself to be cheated but it is my duty to be a champion of truth and of right. As man it is my duty to see to it that humanity will not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did an old civilization about 2,000 years ago, a civilization which was also driven to destruction by the Jewish people.... As a Christian I owe something to my own people. I see how this people is working and working, laboring and exerting itself, and still at the end of the week it has nothing but misery and poverty to show for it. One perhaps does not realize it in the homes of the nobility. But when I go out in the mornings and see those people in the breadlines and look into their drawn faces, then I become convinced that I am a veritable devil and not a Christian if I do not feel compassion and do not wage war, as our Lord did 2,000 years ago, against those who are pillaging and exploiting this poor people (the German people--Ed.).... Two thousand years ago a man was likewise denounced by this particular race which today is denouncing and blaspheming everywhere.... That man was dragged into court and they said then: He is arousing the people! So he also was "agitating." And against whom? Against "God," they cried. Yes indeed he was agitating against the "god” of the Jews, for that "god" is money.HITLER’S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, 1944, Edited by Gordon Prange, pages 71-72
MY NEW ORDER by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 26
And being consumed by this mentality one can readily understand why Hitler, like Bush, believed the teachings of Jesus should be disseminated to everyone especially the youth: We must turn all the sentiments of the Volk, all its thinking, acting, even its beliefs, away from the anti-Christian, smug individualism of the past, from the egotism and stupid Phariseeism of personal arrogance, and we must educate the youth in particular in the spirit of those of Christ's words that we must interpret anew: love one another; be considerate of your fellow man; remember that each one of you is not alone a creature of God, but that you are all brothers! This youth will, with loathing and contempt, abandon those hypocrites who have Christ on their lips but the devil in their hearts,... HITLER--MEMOIRS OF A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 140
Mary and Mary Magdalene stood at the empty tomb. For they were seeking the dead man! But we intend to raise the treasures of the living Christ! Herein lies the essential element of our mission: we must bring back to the German Volk the recognition of those teachings!HITLER--MEMOIRS OF A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 140
And on 20 April 1923: We want to prevent our Germany from suffering, as Another did, the death upon the Cross. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 60
Hitler even extols the followers of Christ who endured persecution for their beliefs: Immediately after the death of Christ, whom the reactionaries crucified, they set about exterminating, at least imprisoning and depriving of their rights, all those who had accepted Christ before his death. Christ's body was removed from the tomb, to keep it from becoming an object of veneration and a tangible relic of the great new founder of a religion! In all the larger municipalities, commissions were established, special courts, to pass judgment on Christ's followers. The Gospels report in graphic detail the expropriations, forced labor, two years or more of prison, and even death penalties that were inflicted in order to exterminate the plague of true Christianity. The Roman occupation forces aided in this effort. And a major re-education program was initiated to reconvert--or rather, force to reconvert--those who might have gravitated to Christ or were vacillating. HITLER--MEMOIRS OF A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 316
The writings of Hitler are occasionally composed in such a manner as to make it difficult to determine if he is a politician pontificating on religion or a minister preaching on politics. With so much of his ideology resting upon religion and his pronounced proclivity to seek succor from religion, one can easily understand why Hitler, like Bush, spared no effort to involve government with religion and to render assistance to the latter by means of the former. As far as Hitler was concerned, in many ways government was little more than an adjunct to religion.
His desire that government and religion operate in unison was evident in a speech on 23 March 1933 before the Reichstag: It will be the Government's care to maintain honest cooperation between Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith.THE HITLER DECREES, by James Pollock and Harlow Heneman, 1934, Page 66 HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 371
Hitler felt that one of the government’s obligations was to protect religion and stated as much on 22 July 1933 when he said on the wireless: National socialism has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State. For their part the Churches cannot, for a second, doubt that they need the protection of the State, and that only through the State can they be enabled to fill their religious mission. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 375
But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as a servant of God we shall protect,...HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Pages 397-401
From Hitler’s vantage point, government was not only bound to protect religion but help it grow and expand. In a speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1934 he stated: The State has dealt no less radically with the two Christian confessions [Protestantism and Catholicism]. Filled by the desire to secure for the German Volk the great religious, moral, and ethical values anchored in the two Christian confessions, we have eliminated the political organizations while, at the same time, reinforcing the religious institutions. HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 419
And in a speech delivered at Stuttgart on 15 February 1933 he professed the desire of the National Socialist Government to: ...fill our whole culture once more with a Christian spirit, and that not only in politics. We want to burn out the harmful features in our theater and our literature. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 370
In order to achieve these goals Hitler sought to bestow upon Christian denominations that which they needed more than anything else to expand their influence and control, namely, financial support. Hitler’s faith-based initiatives preceded those of Bush by decades and went even further by employing programs Bush would no doubt envy and love to inaugurate.
In a speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939 Hitler said: Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so-called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration: 1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views, nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted. 2. The National Socialist State since 30 January 1933 from public monies derived from taxation through the organs of the State has placed at the disposal of both Churches [Protestant and Catholic] the following sums: Fiscal year 1933--130 million Reichsmark Fiscal year 1934--170 million Reichsmark Fiscal year 1935--250 million Reichsmark Fiscal year 1936--320 million Reichsmark Fiscal year 1937--400 million Reichsmark Fiscal year 1938--500 million Reichsmark In addition to this there has been paid over some 85 million Reichsmark each year from contributions of the separate States, and some 7 million Reichsmark from contributions of the parishes and parish-associations. Apart from this the churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the App. The value of their property in land and forests represents more than some 10 millions of Reichsmark, while the annual income from this landed property is to be estimated as over 300 million Reichsmark. To this must be added countless gifts, testamentary dispositions, above all the sums arising from collections in the churches. Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favored in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, etc., it enjoys immunity from taxation. It is therefore, to put it mildly -- effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich. But if it be true that the German Churches regard this position as intolerable, then the National Socialist State is at anytime ready to undertake a clear separation between Church and State as is already the case in France, America, and other countries. [Notice that there was no separation between church and state in Nazi Germany] I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds? 3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion. 4. The National Socialist State is neither prudish nor mendacious. But there are definite moral principles which must be maintained in the interest of the biological health of the nation; violations of these principles we will not permit. Pederasty or offenses against children will be punished by the law and this State against whoever commits these crimes. Five years ago when leaders of the National Socialist Party were guilty of these crimes, they were shot.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 397-399
With a tenth part of our budget for religion, we would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of unshakable loyalty. We must have done with these out-of-date forms. The little sects, which receive only a few hundred thousand marks, are devoted to us body and soul.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 306
In another revelation of his intentions to support religion financially Hitler stated: On reflection, it seems to be that an annual grant of 50 millions should be enough for the Catholic Church. It would be paid directly to the princes of the Church, who would be responsible for the sharing out. Thus we could have the "official" guarantee (since it would be a Church matter) of a "just" distribution of the money....HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 410
And he also said: You can bet anything, if one relies on historical precedents, that the princes of the church would lick my boots for the value of the money, the more so if they could do what they liked with it. Therefore, if it's possible to buy the high dignitaries of the Church with money, let's do it! And if one of them wanted to enjoy his life, and for this purpose put his hand into the till, for the love of Heaven let him be left in peace!HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 411
Bishop Mueller said of Hitler: “Hitler feels the office of the Chancellor of the Reich has been directed to the conservation of the church life of the people. He has given enough proof of that. His only wish is that a Christian education may be transmitted to the people.” HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 382
The Fuhrer believed religious views should be protected no matter how superstitious which would presumably include beliefs inimical to the maintenance of life such as those generated by Mark 16 of Scripture: I envisage the future, therefore, as follows: First of all, to each man his private creed. Superstition shall not lose its rights.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 62
He not only promoted the dissemination of religion and denounced opposition to its extension but was incensed when religious figures did not realize they needed Nazism for protection, especially against the advance of Soviet Marxism or Bolshevism.
On 22 July 1933 he said on the wireless: Only a fool can imagine that, for example, the victory of Bolshevism could be irrelevant for the Catholic or the Evangelical Church [Protestant churches] and that therefore it would not disturb or even prevent the former activities of bishops or superintendents. The assertion that such dangers could be overcome through the action of the Churches alone is untenable; it is contradicted by the facts. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Evangelical, nor the Russian-Uniate church has been able or would be able to stay the advance of Bolshevism. Wherever there has not been created a concrete 'volkic'-political defense [such as Nazism] to counter that advance there the victory of Communism is already won, or at least the battle is still undecided.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 375
And because Nazism served and protected the confessions vigorously Hitler expected the latter to support Nazism fully.
In a speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1934 he stated: This year the National Socialist State has clearly demonstrated its high regard for the strength of the Christian faiths, and hence it expects the same high regard on the part of the confessions for the strength of the National Socialist State.HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 419
In light of all the above, the anti-religious, anti-god, anti-Christian portrayal many have been led to believe applies to Hitler can clearly be seen as a delusion, a fantasy fostered primarily by those seeking to put distance, especially in the realm of politics, between their views and those of the Fuhrer.
The issue now becomes one of accounting for the religious persecution that did occur in Nazi Germany for most assuredly some religious figures paid dearly. How can one account for what appears to be an inconsistency. The answer lies in the nature of those persecuted, for most assuredly there were vast differences in the philosophies of various religious figures and movements. It was not fundamentalists and other right-wing religious figures analogous to America’s Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts, Cardinal Spellman, and Billy Graham who were persecuted in Germany. By no means. It was those ideologically aligned to such individuals as Father Groppi, Martin Luther King Jr., William Sloan Coffin Jr., the Berrigan Brothers, Jessie Jackson, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Latin American Catholic priests expounding Liberation Theology, and others on the liberal or left wing of the political/religious spectrum. For them Nazism was the nearest equivalent to perdition.
As far as Hitler and other Nazis were concerned the only place in which the clergy should operate was the church and the pulpit. They ordered the clergy to stay out of politics entirely and both warned and threatened all those who failed to pay heed. In words of the vernacular, as long as religious figures kept their noses out of politics they had nothing to fear. The following comments by Hitler illuminate this attitude all too clearly.
Near Augsburg on 23 November 1937 Hitler addressed the Churches formally and stated: We are giving you [the Churches] unconditional freedom in your teachings and in your views on what God is. For we are well aware that we ourselves know nothing of these things.Yet let one thing be quite clear: the Churches may determine the fate of the German being in the next world, but in this world the German nation, by way of its leaders, is determining the fate of the German being. Only if there is such a clear and clean-cut division can life he made bearable in a time of transition.HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 980
In a speech to the Party officials of Saxony at Leipzig on 16 July 1933: Through the Concordat with the Catholic Church the participation of clergy in the political life of the parties has been brought to an end. We will strengthen religion, the churches shall have their freedom: the politics are our task.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 637
HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 347
In Berlin on 1 May 1937: This also applies to all the Churches. As long as they concern themselves with their religious problems, the State will not concern itself with them. If they attempt, however, to presume by virtue of any actions, letters, encyclicals, etc. to claim rights which accrue solely to the State, we will force them back into their right and proper spiritual-pastoral activities. Nor is it acceptable to criticize the morality of a state from that quarter when they have more than enough reason to call their own morality into question. HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 892
The last sentence is rather illuminating in that it suggests the Germany of that era had a significant amount of clerical immorality not unlike that recently demonstrated in the US by Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and many Catholic priests.
An interesting sideline comment that has implications for today with reference to Catholic priests is:
The idea of nakedness torments only the priests, for the education they undergo makes them perverts.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 320
Hitler appears to be saying the clergy has no right to criticize the political leaders in light of its own behavior. As far as he is concerned, the reprehensibility of the latter’s behavior provides even greater reason they need to confine their activities to the church and pastoral concerns.
Hitler had no patience whatever with clergymen who sought to participate in politics and was even more opposed to any political parties they sought to create or actually led.
In a 24 October 1933 speech in Berlin he stated: And above all we have pulled the priests out of the marsh of political party fighting and put them back into the church again. It is our desire that they never again return to an area which they were not created for, which debases them and which must inevitably bring them into opposition to millions of people who really want to be faithful inside, but who want to see priests serve God and not a political party! ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS, by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 59
At the annual Party Congress on 11 September 1935: We have already fought a battle against the political clergy and ousted it from the parliaments, and that after a long struggle in which we had no state authority and the other side had it all. Today we have this authority and we will more easily be able to win the struggle for these principles. But we will never wage this battle as a battle against Christianity or even against one of the two confessions. But we will wage it in order to keep our public life pure and free of those priests who have mistaken their calling, those who should have become politicians and not clergymen.HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 692
And in Mein Kampf: ... the movement [Nazism] fought most bitterly against the Center [the Catholic party], not, of course, on religious, but exclusively on questions of national, racial, and economic policy.MEIN KAMPF, Adolph Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 829
From Hitler’s perspective the Weimar government that ruled Germany for 14 years after WWI was peopled by a gang of traitorous puppets doing the bidding of the allied powers while working in close collaboration with Marxists who held offices at every level of German leadership, an allegation not significantly different from that propounded by Joe McCarthy in the United States 2 decades later. As far as Hitler was concerned every political party except the NSDAP was guilty of subversion to one degree or another and that was certainly true in his eyes of the Centrist Party which was overwhelmingly dominated by Catholic leaders. Collaboration between religious parties and godless atheists, the Marxists, was constantly denounced by Hitler in no uncertain terms and he repeatedly said he could never understand how religious figures could work with the godless.
For the first number of the Volkischer Beobachter on 26 February 1925 Hitler wrote an article in which he said: ... a party which allies itself with atheistic Marxism for the oppression of its own people is neither Christian nor Catholic.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 368
In a 31 July 1932 election proclamation: I don't understand... how one can talk against the Godless like the Center (party), but at the same time come to terms with them.ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS, by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 31
In a speech delivered at Cologne on 19 February 1933 Hitler continued his attack upon Centrum--the Catholic Centre Party--by saying: How can a party talk of the fight for Christianity which for 14 years has sat together with atheists and those who deny the existence of God?HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 249
In an address to the Party Congress on 12 September 1938: ... The Center Party [the Catholic Party] claimed to be fighting us because we were hostile to the Church, and yet to this end it entered into a holy alliance with atheist Social Democrats and did not shrink from uniting with the Communists....HITLER, [Speeches and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 1151
While speaking to some religious figures and others: Good, I take note of that. But how can you then advocate a coalition with the Marxists, with our deadly enemies, the Social Democrats?SECRET CONVERSATIONS WITH HITLER, Edited by Edouard Calic, 1971. Page 34
In the New Year's Proclamation for 1 January 1932: Today Bolshevism and its Marxist-Centrist-Democratic helpers are faced with a gigantic front of awakening Germany! Were it not for the pact which the Center and the middle classes have entered into with Marxism as a result of their inner relatedness of character, there would be no red, anti-Christian Germany today. Therefore they are the accursed accomplices of Bolshevism.HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 79
In his New Year’s Message on 1 January 1934 Hitler claimed that by destroying the Catholic Center Party he was serving both religion and morality: Not only in the economic sphere but also in the other spheres of the nation's life we have, during the past year, fought an unceasing battle against the symptoms of degeneracy in our people. The religious, moral, and ethical signs of the time spoke a language that compelled us so to act. While we destroyed the Center Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 382
In a statement on the Enabling Act on 23 March 1933: In being determined to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, the government is creating and securing the requirements for a genuinely profound return to religious life. The advantages in personnel policy which might result from compromises with atheist organizations do not come close to offsetting the results which would become apparent in the general destruction of basic moral values. The National Government perceives in the two Christian confessions [Protestantism and Catholicism] the most important factors for the preservation of our Volkstum. It will respect any contracts concluded between these churches and the Lander. ... The Government's concern lies in an honest coexistence between Church and State; the fight against the materialist Weltanschauung and for a genuine Volksgemeinschaft equally serves both the interests of the German nation and the welfare of our Christian faith.HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 279
MY NEW ORDER by Hitler, Edited by Raoul de Roussy de Sales, 1941, Page 153
THE HITLER DECREES, by James Pollock and Harlow Heneman, 1934, Page 66
In a Stuttgart speech on 15 February 1933: And now Staatsprasident Bolz says that Christianity and the Catholic faith are threatened by us. And to that charge I can answer: In the first place it is Christians [Nazis] and not international atheists who now stand at the head of Germany. I do not merely talk of Christianity, no, I also profess that I will never ally myself with the parties which destroy Christianity. If many wish today to take threatened Christianity under their protection, where, I would ask, was Christianity for them in these 14 years when they went arm in arm with atheism? No, never and at no time was greater internal damage done to Christianity than in these 14 years when a party, theoretically Christian, sat with those who denied God in one and the same Government. But no, they could not, they did not wish to separate themselves from the party-world of atheism. We wish to fill our culture once more with the spirit of Christianity--and not only in theory. No, we want to burn out the symptoms of decomposition in literature, in the theater, in the Press--in a word in our whole culture; we want to burn out this whole poison which during these 14 years has flowed into our life. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 240
HITLER, SPEECHES AND PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 253
The philosophy of George Bush is thoroughly embodied in words such as “We wish to fill our culture once more with the spirit of Christianity--and not only in theory.” Realizing that fact the problem then becomes one of deciding to what extent “we want to burn out the symptoms of decomposition in literature, in the theater, in the Press--in a word in our whole culture; we want to burn out this whole poison...” is representative of Bushism as well.
When attacked for using a Swastika as his emblem, Hitler retaliated by denouncing his detractors for placing the Christian Cross at the head of parties allied with atheistic Marxism. For him the Swastika was the political symbol of complete detachment from atheism.
In Munich on 25 October 1930 he stated: And when it is said to me as many have: How can you carry your heathenish symbol [Swastika] in the van of this struggle when the Christian Cross alone is called to lead it? To that I say: This symbol is not directed against the Christian Cross. On the contrary, it is the political manifestation of what the Christian cross intends or must intend.... I believe that if now suddenly Christ, our Lord, should appear among this unfortunate German people and one were to induce him to take a stand in this political struggle--I do not believe that Christ, our Lord, would go and seek out a place within the ranks of the [Catholic] Center Party in the German Reichstag! To be sure, our Christian Cross should be the most exalted symbol of the struggle against the Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevik spirit. But then the parties, however, which come to terms with Marxism, with Atheism, indeed with the refined form of the same which Bolshevism represents, should not advertise the Cross of Christ as their party symbol. One should from the very beginning, however, preserve this Cross from any political contact until the structure of these political parties again becomes worthy of association with this symbol, until these parties again pursue policies which are in keeping with the inner significance of this symbol.HITLER'S WORDS, by Adolph Hitler, Edited by Gordon Prange, 1944, page 87
And in Mein Kampf: In the two religious denominations [Protestantism and Catholicism] it [the Nazi party] sees two equally valuable pillars for the existence of our people, and for this reason it fights those parties which wish to degrade this foundation of an ethical, religious, and moral prop [the Cross] of our national body to the instrument of their party interests.MEIN KAMPF, Adolph Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 479
Hitler was not only vigorously opposed to religious figures or religious parties participating in politics but felt that by aligning with the material world of Bolshevism the religious leaders were preparing the masses for a fall into materialism.
This was the evident when he said: The most pressing danger, as I see it, is that Christianity, by adhering to a conception of the Beyond which is constantly exposed to the attacks of unceasing progress, and by binding it so closely to many of the trivialities of life which may at any moment collapse, is ripening mankind for conversion to materialistic Bolshevism. And that is a terrible tragedy.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 606
In fact, for Catholic Hitler some religious teachings were wrong in their own right, regardless of to whom they may or may not be allied. Although deeply religious, the Fuhrer was not a sycophantic adherent to every tenet of Catholicism and proved as much by expressing disdain for some teachings and dogma often decried by atheists and others as well.
This became obvious when he said: For me, God is the Logos of St. John, which has become flesh and lives in the world, interwoven with it and pervading it, conferring on it drives and driving force, and constituting the actual meaning and content of the world. Perhaps the adherents of the Roman Church would call this "paganism." That may well be so. In that case, Christ was a pagan. I call pagan their distortions of Christ's ideas and teachings, their cults, their conception of hell, purgatory, and heaven, and their worship of saints.HITLER--MEMOIRS OF A CONFIDANT, by Otto Wegener, 1985, page 224
It is no less difficult to eradicate these childish inhibitions than it is to free the human soul of that haunting terror of Hell which the Catholic Church impresses on it with such vigor during its most tender years. A man possessed of a minimum of intelligence who takes the trouble to ponder over these questions has no difficulty in realizing how nonsensical these doctrines of the Church are. For how, he must ask himself, can a man possibly be put on a spit, be roasted and tortured in a hundred other ways when, in the nature of things, his body has no part in the resurrection? And what nonsense it is to aspire to a Heaven to which, according to the Church's own teaching, only those have entry who have made a complete failure of life on earth! It won't be much fun, surely, to have to meet again there all those whose stupidity, in spite of the biblical tag "blessed are the humble of heart," has already infuriated one beyond endurance on this earth! Imagine, too, how tremendously attractive a Heaven will be to a man, which contains only women of indifferent appearance and faded intellect! Only those, we are told, with the minimum of sin shall enter through the gates of Heaven; now, in spite of the fact that the burden of sin must inevitably grow heavier with each successive year, I have yet to meet a priest anxious to leave this life as quickly, and therefore with as light a burden, as possible! But I could name many a Cardinal of 60 and over who clings most tenaciously to life on this sinful earth. When one examines the Catholic religion closely, one cannot fail to realize that it is an almost incredibly cunning mixture of hypocrisy and business acumen, which trades with consummate skill on the deeply ingrained affection of mankind for the beliefs and superstitions he holds. It is inconceivable that an educated priest should really believe all the nonsense that the Church pours out; a proof there, to my mind, is the fact that the priest themselves always try to confuse the issue on the subject of the swindle of dispensations, and avoid whenever possible any discussion of the subject.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 419
He went so far as to unconditionally denounce some acts of the Catholic Church: When one recollects further that the Catholic Church has elevated to the status of Saints a whole number of madmen,....
HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 513
And his censure of the Church’s oppressive history was exceptionally vehement: The pity is that people who reason in this matter appear to forget that the Church does not strive to propagate its teaching by reason and gentle persuasion, but by force and threat. This is certainly not my idea of education. It is moreover obvious that, had the Church followed solely the laws of Love, and had she preached Love alone as the means of instilling her moral precepts, she would not have survived for very long. She has therefore always remained faithful to the ancient maxim that the right hand must not know what the left hand does, and has bowed to the necessity of imposing her moral principles by means of the utmost brutality, not hesitating even to burn in their thousands men and women of merit and virtue. We ourselves are today much more humane than the Church. We obey the Commandment: "Thou shall not kill," by catching and executing a murderer; but the Church, when the executive power lay in her hands, crucified, quartered and did him to death with indescribable torture.HITLER'S TABLE TALK, 1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 420
Yet, Hitler, like so many Christian apologists throughout history, was quick to discount heinous acts perpetrated in the name of Christianity by blaming odious transgressions on individuals rather than Christianity in general. That approach surfaced early on at a conference of all district organizers held at Bamberg on 14 February 1923 in which Hitler formally appointed Gottfried Feder to be the final judge and spokesman on all questions regarding the Programme. In his commentary Feder wrote: "
. . . The same may be said of all the course, stupid attacks on Christianity. Expressions such as 'Christianity has only done harm' merely show that the man who utters them has neither human nor political intelligence. One may indeed blame the Church for meddling in politics, and all good Christians still disapprove of the cruelties practiced in the name of the Cross by the Inquisition and of the trials for witchcraft, but it is wrong to abuse in general terms the greatest phenomenon in human history because of the perversities and erroneous ideas and defaults of individuals. The Christian religion has uplifted and strengthened millions upon millions, and brought them to God by the way of suffering."
HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 366
The foregoing helps explains why Hitler said of the previous government in a Stuttgart speech on Feb. 15, 1933: I would ask whether the economic policy of this now superseded system was a Christian policy. Was the inflation an undertaking for which Christians could answer, or has the destruction of German life, of the German peasant as well as of the middle classes, been Christian?MY NEW ORDER by Adolph Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 149
All of the above vividly discloses why Hitler, like so many followers of Bush and his ideological predecessors, considered himself and his party to be the only bona fide carries of the Christian Cross, the true Christians. From the Fuhrer’s vantage point all others were phonies and dupes or allies of either atheists or the non-religious and he alleged as much on several occasions.
In a speech at Koblenz to the Germans of the Saar on 26 August 1934 he said: I know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity. No, it is not we who have deserted Christianity, it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have only carried through a clear division between politics, which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine of the Confessions [Protestantism and Catholicism] or with their religious freedom, nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends.HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 386
In a 27 August 1934 speech in Ehrenbreitstein:Not we, rather those before us, distanced themselves from it (from Christianity). We have simply introduced a pure separation between politics, which is supposed to occupy itself with earthly things, and religion, which must occupy itself with the divine.ADOLPH HITLER QUOTATIONS, by Karl Hammer,1990, Page 58
In a speech at Koblenz on 26 August 1934: National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of real Christianity. And we have no other desire than to be true to that position.... These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles.
HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 386
And he also claimed to be the genuine representative of Christianity by virtue of the fact that Nazis aided the poor and downtrodden.
In his Munich speech to the "Old Guard" on 24 February 1939 he stated: I
f positive Christianity means love of one's neighbor, i.e., the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work.
HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 402
While talking at the Winter Help Campaign in October 1937: This Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When I see, as I often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a Christianity--and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession, for behind it stand not words but deeds. HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 393
In summary, and in light of all the foregoing, one of the greatest misconceptions of the Nazi era can be laid to rest. Hitler was in no sense an atheist or anti-religious but was very much in the Bush tradition of religious zealotry.
More can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/klomckin@ameritech.net/Chaps.1b.html#2nd%20Part%20of%20Chapter%201Catholic Concentration Camps!
Catholic extermination campsSurprisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveliç, a practicing Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian Serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdienst der SS", watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]
[MV] A.Manhattan, The Vatican's Holocaust, Springfield 1986. See also: V.Dedijer, The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, Buffalo NY, 1992.
