Wiki entry on Hitler's religious beliefs.

[Brian37]

Indeed. And we've said it a million times before: what made people worship even atheist dictators like Stalin was, in no small part, the centuries of conditioning performed by the church. It suppressed the critical thinking abilities of the population in order to remain in power, and when its power broke away, the dictators that followed found fertile ground - the people merely had to change from one leader who was not to be questioned rationally, to another.

Now, was Stalin more brutal because he was not Christian? Maybe, maybe not; but be that as it may - do the theists here really want to argue that Christianity makes better dictators? Because it obviously doesn't make a better people.

The point of posting it at all is to allow for a conversation, not so much for atheists, but for theists to see, that atheists just because we do not believe in a god, does not mean we value dictatorships. It does not matter to sane atheists with empathy that Hitler did or did not believe, he did have a warped sense of the divine magic hand regardless. But to demonstrate that the word "atheist" is not a club or loyalty oath and it does not make us worship dictators.

Worship of gods, in antiquity polytheist and monotheist was a result of humans falsely attributing their success to the divine, that was combined feudal system with centralized wealth. Not even the ancient Roman/Greek "democracies" were truly western like today. They were puppet governments still under rule of Caesars who still had final say, just like a god.