Was Hitler a Christian?

[Minimalist]

They deserve all the scorn they can get.

[abaris]

Hitler became a German citizen by being appointed to a position in Brunswick by the Nazi party, Hitler refused to become a citizen by standing in line like all others did. Hitler was an egomaniac from the start. Like everything else be bullied his way in.

In short, he was naturalized in 1932, after being stateless for almost a decade. He left Austria in 1913, fought in a Bavarian regiment and was on an Austrian watchlist after founding the NSDAP.

But all of this doesn't really matter in this context. What matters is his religiosity. I always argue that it is as stupid to call him an atheist as it is to call him a christian, just because he didn't leave the Catholic church till his death. His private conversations, recorded by Henry Picker, show he wasn't an atheist. His writings do too. He had some kind of spirituality, endlessly talking about providence.

[drfuzzy]

The wholly babble has plenty of validity to people who were brainwashed into believing that that ridiculous grouping of bronze-age fairy tales was actually written - or at least inspired - by their imaginary sky-daddy.  I was there once.  I memorized most of it.  Then I read it from the mindset that it was the work of men, and yeah . . . it's utter trash.  But you keep worshiping your book, if it makes you happy.

I don't worship the Bible, I worship God and you know squat about the Bible. All you care about is your hatred for God and His people. It's obvious what the Bible teaches and the reasonable part of society you don't hold with, you would rather try and run people down than hold any kind of honor for yourself or others.

GC

You can't hate something that doesn't exist.  I have a lot of xtian friends who do not try to preach at me, and live their lives quietly.  I don't hate them either.  The rest of your statement is just judgmental character assassination of someone you've never met - which is the type of behavior that I expect of most of the theists here.  They've judged me just by coming to this forum, so I get to make fun of the delusion that enslaved me for over 40 years.

[Cyberman]

Hitler became a German citizen by being appointed to a position in Brunswick by the Nazi party, Hitler refused to become a citizen by standing in line like all others did. Hitler was an egomaniac from the start. Like everything else be bullied his way in.

In short, he was naturalized in 1932, after being stateless for almost a decade. He left Austria in 1913, fought in a Bavarian regiment and was on an Austrian watchlist after founding the NSDAP.

But all of this doesn't really matter in this context. What matters is his religiosity. I always argue that it is as stupid to call him an atheist as it is to call him a christian, just because he didn't leave the Catholic church till his death. His private conversations, recorded by Henry Picker, show he wasn't an atheist. His writings do too. He had some kind of spirituality, endlessly talking about providence.

Exactly. All this talk about whether Hitler was a German is a huge red herring, intended to deflect from the issue of whether he was a xtian.

[Minimalist]

Hitler was a yooge German.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Austria was a sovereign nation then, doesn't matter if it was once part of a larger country loosely organized.


Hitler became a German citizen by being appointed to a position in Brunswick by the Nazi party, Hitler refused to become a citizen by standing in line like all others did. Hitler was an egomaniac from the start. Like everything else be bullied his way in.

So you admit he was German. Thank you.


Anyway, it's beside the point. The point is that he was Catholic, which means he was a Christian.

It's not my problem, the problem belongs to non- believers like yourself. It says if a person pretends to be a Christian and claims to do work that wasn't God's work then they will wind up in hell. 

Way to miss the point entirely, GC. Knew I could count on you.


The "problem" we're talking about here is the one you'r having with the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Stop trying to change the subject.

You need to prove that each denomination has a different view as to what it takes to be a Christian. The great majority believe in grace through acceptance of Christ into one's life.

You're joking, right? If those denominations didn't have differing opinions on what it takes to be a Christian, why are there different denominations in the first place? I was a Christian for over 20 years, and I know this statement isn't true. Different denominations have all kinds of different ideas about exactly what you must/mustn't do in order to be saved/damned.


How exactly does one determine whether somebody has "accepted Christ" into their lives? The Bible says that all who believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths that Christ is Lord will be saved, does it not? Is this sufficient for salvation according to your view?


If it is, and Hitler professed sincere beliefs in God, Jesus, and the Catholic Church, how exactly is it you claim to know he wasn't really Christian? How do you know he didn't sincerely accept Christ, and if he did, then why wouldn't God forgive his wrongdoings and accept him into Heaven?


According to your model, a kind, compassionate person who doesn't believe in God will go to Hell, but a person who rapes a baby a day and then accepts Christ on his deathbed will go to Heaven. Based on that very logic, there is no reason to believe that Hitler wouldn't have been admitted to Heaven.


If he sincerely believed in Jesus (like he said he did) and really did strive toward God's will with some or all of his being, why wouldn't God forgive him for the Holocaust and accept him into Heaven as a Christian? Are you saying that Hitler's sins are too great for your god to forgive? If so, that's in direct contention with Christian doctrine. Are you saying that he was lying about being a Christian just so he could come to power in Germany? How would you know that he didn't really believe? How do you know he wasn't just a severely misguided Christian? You might say that a Christian would never commit the warlike acts or atrocities that he did, but you're forgetting a significant portion of the Old Testament if you say that. Plenty of sincere men of god were commanded to slaughter loads of people for various reasons. Samson, for example, is said to have personally murdered, like, all of the Philistines, and he's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of stuff about laying waste to whole cities, dashing their babies on the rocks, and keeping the virgin girls for yourselves. Your god is a war-god, bro.


An interesting side note: how much of the stuff have you read about the captivity in Babylon? I think the passages I'm referencing come from Isaiah, but it talks about how the people will be stripped of their freedom and clothes, and how they'll have their heads shaved, be made to work, be made to march around in lines...the whole thing is very Holocaust-like in the imagery it presents. Given that Christians like to interpret random Bible passages as being predictions from the future (with some prophecies even being fulfilled multiple times), how do you know these passages aren't also a prophecy about the Holocaust? How do you know that your god wasn't using the Christian Nazis in Germany to punish is wayward "chosen people" the same way he did with Babylon? He does have a track record for that, after all (according to the Bible, anyway...I'm not saying I endorse the "history" presented there). If that were the case, then Hitler may have actually been doing God's will. You don't know.


Furthermore, even if I granted that Hitler was pretending to be Christian just to gain power in Germany so he could do all the things he did without being questioned, is that argument really helping Christianity?


"Hey, Hitler! You can't be the Fuhrer of Germany because you're an atheist/satanist/whatever, and German is a nation of Christians. The only way to get the Germans to unquestioningly commit the mass murder, the torture, the bombings, the racial and social injustice, and the wishes of our dark Lord Satan is to pretend to be Christian!"


Yeah...I don't really think that's helping you guys.

Some denominations do that true. You do not know what God's will is because you are not part of His family. God's ultimate will is made quite clear in the scriptures and then His will for each Christian is part of a personal relationship. People can say I'm not a Christian, but then all that really matters is that Jesus knows I'm his. Christians do not live a life as Hitler did, that's obvious to all who can see, believer and non-believer alike.

GC

And again, the problem with that is that all the different denominations and individuals are looking at scripture and coming to wildly different conclusions about what god's will is. Your assertion that they all agree on god's will just isn't true. All we have to go on is what people profess to believe. No one person, church, or denomination has given evidence of having the "correct" iteration of god's will figured out, so until that happens a Christian is somebody who believes in Jesus Christ, and if that's what they profess then I have no reason to disbelieve that. Based on what I know of Christian and Jewish history and scripture, nothing about Hitler's behavior necessarily suggests that he was false in what he professed to believe, and what he professed to believe in was Jesus.

[Brian37]

[quote='abaris' pid='1245309' dateline='1460402036']
[quote='Godschild' pid='1245282' dateline='1460400710']

Hitler became a German citizen by being appointed to a position in Brunswick by the Nazi party, Hitler refused to become a citizen by standing in line like all others did. Hitler was an egomaniac from the start. Like everything else be bullied his way in.

[/quote]

In short, he was naturalized in 1932, after being stateless for almost a decade. He left Austria in 1913, fought in a Bavarian regiment and was on an Austrian watchlist after founding the NSDAP.

But all of this doesn't really matter in this context. What matters is his religiosity. I always argue that it is as stupid to call him an atheist as it is to call him a christian, just because he didn't leave the Catholic church till his death. His private conversations, recorded by Henry Picker, show he wasn't an atheist. His writings do too. He had some kind of spirituality, endlessly talking about providence.
[/quote]

BINGO, It does upset me that some wiki articles, and they do fact check for the most part and provide balance as far as views. But the one on his religious views does seem slanted just like how Christians try to twist the views of the founders.

When you add up all his spiritual talk and use of the word God and providence all the time, it comes a cross as his own brand of deism. A mix of Catholic/deist/Occult, and he most certainly did use religion to set up the uber nationalistic "God's master race" idea to get Germans to follow.

There is no logical way one could call Hitler an atheist who didn't believe in some super natural divine intervention. 

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Religious_...olf_Hitler

Tons of quotes about God in Mein Kampf and quotes about God in his speeches.

But, I doubt the accuracy of this next entry below . I see no way to say that Hitler didn't believe but was just using religion as an ends to a means. I think after the fact "historians" simply didn't like Hitler using his beliefs to gain support, and even in his own ranks the alleged "anti religion"  rhetoric certainly happened, but moreso as a warning to any dissent and not an outright rejection of religion. There are too many pictures of him smiling at clergy and they smiling back in support to think it was in every single case an act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_...olf_Hitler

If Hitler hated religion, it wasn't that he hated the idea of god or some sort of providence, but the idea of ANY dissent to his power, including religion. And as a far as claiming to be a promoter of of a science based word, that too was bullshit, because no sane ethical scientist would advocate what the Nazis did. Again, that would have merely been his own distorted view of science, not a ethical science.

And even with atheists Hitler would have gone after any dissent there too. Here is a quote under the heading in black bold "Hitler and Atheism" from the last article listed above.

[quote=wiki article] During his career, and for a variety of reasons, Hitler made various comments against "atheistic" movements. He associated atheism with Bolshevism, Communism, and Jewish materialism.[139] In 1933, the regime banned most atheistic and  groups in Germany—other than those that supported the Nazis [quote]

Believers will skip over that part of the article. So when you add his views up it still remains he had a belief and what he really hated was any dissent to his power, not all Christians though, nor did he support all atheists either. He would leave supporters alone of any label and oppress anyone who raised a peep of any label, including atheists.

[abaris]

When you add up all his spiritual talk and use of the word God and providence all the time, it comes a cross as his own brand of deism. A mix of Catholic/deist/Occult, and he most certainly did use religion to set up the uber nationalistic "God's master race" idea to get Germans to follow.

We will never know for certain. Deism of some kind, following the paper trail and the evidence, seems to be the most probable position. But it's not a hard fact. As I said in another thread, he brought Bormann to heels, when he wanted to abolish the churches. But only because he thought it politically unwise in times of war. On the other hand he admired the catholic church for being a force and for it's ability to control the masses.

The best lead are his private conversation, recorded by the aforementioned Henri Picker. He always played to some mysticism, but he also laughed about Himmler, whom he considered a nutter for his germanic occultism. Hitler's regime certainly wasn't an atheist one. His followers came in all shades and colors when it comes to religion. Atheists, mysthicists and christians.

That's why the matter is far too complicated to just say, Hitler was this or that.

[Brian37]

When you add up all his spiritual talk and use of the word God and providence all the time, it comes a cross as his own brand of deism. A mix of Catholic/deist/Occult, and he most certainly did use religion to set up the uber nationalistic "God's master race" idea to get Germans to follow.

We will never know for certain. Deism of some kind, following the paper trail and the evidence, seems to be the most probable position. But it's not a hard fact. As I said in another thread, he brought Bormann to heels, when he wanted to abolish the churches. But only because he thought it politically unwise in times of war. On the other hand he admired the catholic church for being a force and for it's ability to control the masses.

The best lead are his private conversation, recorded by the aforementioned Henri Picker. He always played to some mysticism, but he also laughed about Himmler, whom he considered a nutter for his germanic occultism. Hitler's regime certainly wasn't an atheist one. His followers came in all shades and colors when it comes to religion. Atheists, mysthicists and christians.

That's why the matter is far too complicated to just say, Hitler was this or that.

If you read the totality of his life, he had some sort of belief. The anti religion crap was only about dissent. He also would go after atheists too, anyone who resisted his rule.

It is just as stupid to say Cuba is an atheist country considering last month the Pope visited a Catholic church in Cuba.

What despots care about isn't theism or atheism, what they care about is absolute power.

[Minimalist]

When you add up all his spiritual talk and use of the word God and providence all the time, it comes a cross as his own brand of deism. A mix of Catholic/deist/Occult, and he most certainly did use religion to set up the uber nationalistic "God's master race" idea to get Germans to follow.

That really isn't all that uncommon among religious shitters, is it?  98% of so-called catholic women who are sexually active have used some form of birth control which would make Pope Fuckface shit his dress.  Hypocrites like G-C would call them "not TRUE catholics" but who gives a shit what he thinks?

The religious pick and choose.  Its why they are phonies.