Catholics today all try to repudiate Adolf Hitler and deny that he was a fellow Roman Catholic. But this was definitely not the case so long as he was in power, after he had given Germans jobs and reasons to be proud of their powerful country, following the period of great economic depression and great shame which were the results of the country's disastrous defeat in World War One. Hitler understood how much it would hurt his cause if the 66% of the German population who were Protestants and the 33% who were fellow Catholics were to learn how anti-Christian he and his Nazi ring leaders actually were in their hearts. Although we now know that Adolf Hitler expressed his true thoughts and feelings for his Catholic Church in his private writings and in his candid communications with his inner circle, we also know that he was a shrewd politician who knew how to manipulate the churchmen of both of the major German faiths to his advantage, by convincing them at the time that he was a champion, not an opponent, of Christianity.
Catholics today imagine that their church must have repudiated Hitler at that time, because they want so much to be disassocated from him in our time. But try as they may to rewrite history, the fact is that once Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, neither the pope in Rome as leader of the church worldwide, nor the bishops as leaders of the church in Germany, ever denied Hitler himself (nor any of the many, many, other Roman Catholic leaders of the Third Reich)membership in the R.C. church, or even public access to the sacraments.
Nor was "the Nazi Bible", Hitler's Mein Kampf, ever placed on the "Index" of books which Catholics were forbidden to read. Nor were Catholics discouraged publicly or privately from serving in Hitler's administration. The sad truth is that German Catholic bishops actually did forbid the faithful from joining the Nazi party. But that was before Hitler came to power. Once the Nazis came into power and Hitler was in a position to actually enact his diabolical schemes, the Catholic hierarchy reversed itself and lifted that ban.
In early 1933, Hitler vowed secretly to completely eradicate Christianity from Germany. 'You are either a Christian or a German, you cannot be both.' But Hitler was smart enough to know that in a nation as Christian as Germany, the public and the churches must never know his true fellings and beliefs.
Hitler greeting a Cardinal Throughout his career however, Adolf Hitler never ceased trying to project to his Christian countrymen and their clergy the image of a "man of God", chosen to lead a Christian nation into a more perfect state, purified of the demonic influence of Jews and "Bolsheviks". And history proves that he succeeded in persuading the vast majority of his countrymen not just to let him proceed, but to do his dirty work for him. In a speech that Adolf Hitler gave in April, 1922, and then published in "My New Order", he proclaimed:
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who - God's truth! - was greatest, not as a sufferer, but as a fighter."
Hitler rallying his Nazi supporters in front of
Church of our Lady, in Nuremberg, circa 1928,
by Heinrich Hoffmann - US Holocaust Museum.
# "In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. "Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross."
# "As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice . And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.
When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited."
Hitler, or others in his sphere of influence, may well have been aware of what Aristotle said on this subject,
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side." - Aristotle
One thing that is certain is that Christian churchmen used what IMHO is one of the most horrible passages in the New Testament in support of Hitler and his regime, namely ch. 13 of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Projecting an image of religiosity was so important to Hitler that he reinforced that image, over and over and over again, as in :
* "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 46
* "What we have to fight for. . . is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator." [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125]
* "This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."
[Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152]
* "Adolf Hitler recognized at an early stage the potential for Catholic resistance to National Socialism. In Mein Kampf (meaning "My Struggle"), he wrote that a confrontation (i.e. in the open) with the Catholic Church in Germany would prove disastrous." (to his NAZI cause).
* 'In early Feb. of 1933, he declared in the Reichstag (parliament) that the churches were to be an integral part of German national life.' " . . .
*
The important thing about Hitler's faith isn't his relationship with God (which is between him and God) but his relationship to the 98% of Germans who considered themselves "Christian". Shrewd politician that he was, Hitler knew it was best that he appear to be a "Christian" like them, and it was crucial that his church not deny him that political asset - which is exactly what the church should have done had it been faithful instead of cowardly and complicit in this deceit.
"The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life."
* "The National Government regards the two Christian confessions as factors essential to the soul of the German people. It will respect the contracts they have made with the various regions. It declares its determination to leave their rights intact. In the schools, the government will protect the rightful influence of the Christian bodies. We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people. We hope to develop friendly relations with the Holy See" ( addressed the Reichstag on March 23, 1933)
* "The Government of the Reich regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation." "The rights of the churches will not be diminished." ( from The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1, pg. 369-372 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942 - edition of 1969.)
* "National Socialism, he proclaimed, 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 fulfill their religious mission. Indeed, the churches demand this protection from the State." [Hitler - in his first radio address to the German people after coming to power (1933).]
* "The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie." Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted in John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" )
* A few days after the signing of the Lateran Treaty, Hitler wrote an article for the Volkischer Reobachter, published on February 22, 1929, warmly welcoming the agreement. "The fact that the Curia is now making its peace with Fascism," he wrote, "shows that the Vatican trusts the new political realities far more than did the former liberal democracy with which it could not come to terms." Turning to the German situation, he rebuked the Center Party leadership for its recalcitrant attachment to democratic politics. "By trying to preach that democracy is still in the best interests of German Catholics, the Center Party ... is placing itself in stark contradiction to the spirit of the treaty signed today by the Holy See." The conclusion of his rant contained a gross distortion as well as a remarkable intuition of future opportunities: "The fact that the Catholic Church has come to an agreement with Fascist Italy." he went on, "... Proves beyond doubt that the Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity y than those of Jewish liberalism or even atheistic Marxism, to which the so-called Catholic Center Party sees itself so closely bound, to the detriment of Christianity today and our German people."
* "While we destroyed the (Catholic) Centre 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. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co-operation between the Reich and the two Confessions." Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934
* "I know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity. No, it is not that we 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 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.
* "There may have been a time when even parties founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity. (Between World War I & II, the Catholic "Center Party" had been one of the most powerful political parties in Germany.) At that time Liberalism was opposed to the Church, while Marxism was anti-religious. But that time is past. National Socialism neither opposes the church, nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity."
* "The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for the 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."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934.
* " I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work."
Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, 1936
* "And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."
Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174
* "Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church."
Adolf Hitler, reported to have said in Berlin in 1936, on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism."
* Impressed with the organization of the Papacy, Hitler is quoted as saying the following: "I learned much from the Order of the Jesuits…until now there has never been anything more grandiose on the earth than the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. I transferred much of this organization into my own party."
Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Said To Me (1939), 266-267.
* "I believe that it was God’s will to send a youth from here into the Reich, to let him grow up, to raise him to be the leader of the nation so as to enable him to lead back his homeland into the Reich….In three days the Lord has smitten them….And to me the grace was given on the day of the betrayal to be able to unite my homeland [Austria] with the Reich….I would now give thanks to Him who let me return to my homeland in order than I might now lead it into my German Reich. Tomorrow, may every German recognize the hour, and measure its import and bow in humility before the Almighty who in a few weeks has wrought a miracle upon us. [Closing speech of the campaign at Vienna, 9 April 1938]"
* "I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at the Nuremberg Parteitag of [11 Sept. 1936]
* "We National Socialists, too, have deep in our hearts our own faith. We cannot do otherwise. No man can mould the history of peoples or of the world unless he has upon his will and his capacities the blessing of Providence."
Adolf Hitler, to Nazi leaders on 2 June 1937, as reported by a correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph":
* "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 judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant 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 . . . I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty. . . If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths . . . Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937
* "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 (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted . . .
2. The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State . . . Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.
It is therefore, to put mildly-- effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich. . .
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 .
There are ... ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State.
But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy."
Adolf Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan., 1939
[ That last sentence sums up Hitler's stand on the priesthood. Rather than standing for atheism, as today's Christians would like, Hitler attacked the priesthood only to the extent that they got in his way.]
"When Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in Munich in November, 1939, he gave the credit to providence. 'Now I am completely content,' he exclaimed. 'The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to let me reach my goal.' Catholic newspapers throughout the Reich echoed this, declaring that it was a miraculous working of providence that had protected their Fuëhrer. One cardinal, Michael Faulhaber, sent a telegram instructing that a Te Deum be sung in the cathedral of Munich, 'to thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuëhrer's fortunate escape. ' The Pope also sent his special personal congratulations."
( from http://skeptically.org/againstreligion/id13.html )
* "The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press-in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years."
( a Radio Broadcast July 22, 1933; from My New Order. ) (The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1. pp. 871-872, Oxford University Press,London, 1942)
One of the most frightening quotes (from one of Hitler's Tischgespräche: )
* "If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness. If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good faith." "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 a natural law framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by the lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of Providence."
[ Hitler, in a 1944 speech ].
* "Woman's world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men."
Adolph Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New Feminism
* "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people."
Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933
On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday. The celebrations, initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest congratulations to the Fuëhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany" and added with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars."
(from Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell )
* "I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."
Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40
* "There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland."
[Message painted on walls of concentration camps and signed , signed "Hitler"; Life, August 21, 1939]
"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."
+ The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. +
"Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law (as well as the church) on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."
- Historian Alan Bullock Hitler was a great fan of "Passion Plays." No doubt he would have loved Mel Gibson's movie, which might well be the most viewed "Passion Play" of all time:
* "It is vital that the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry."
Still another example of Catholic worship promoting hatred of the Jews at the time was the annual commemoration in Deggendorf in Catholic Bavaria of the professed miraculous appearance of "a lovely little child" from a communion wafer, which had allegedly been stolen and desecrated by the Jews of the town on 9/30/1337. On the same day, the pious Catholics of the town, acting "out of legitimate zeal pleasing to God," killed off all of the town's Jews. Many of the 10,000 pilgrims who came to celebrate these events each year in Hitler's day could read the inscription under a picture depicting the massacre in the Catholic Church, "God grant that our fatherland be forever free from this hellish scum." (Lewy, p. 272-72)
Eva Braun "Hitler did well in monastery school. He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests. Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood."
[ from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html ]
According to http://www.reformation.org/inquisit.html, the picture on the right is of young Eva Braun, as a nun at Simbach Convent.
Even the members of Hitler's nefarous Nazi S. S., swore
a loyalty oath that appealed to God: "I pledge to you, Adolf Hitler,
my obedience unto death, so help me God." Members of the Wehrmacht (regular army) swore this loyalty oath:
"I swear by God this holy oath to the Fuëhrer of
the German Reich and the German people, Adolf Hitler." And every time regular army NAZI soldiers put on their uniforms,
their belt buckle proclaimed "God is with us".
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