Why can't Christians accept the fact that Hitler was a Christian

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The SS officer corps matched the general German demographics to 97%. This included religious belief. So Christians did the Holocaust.

[Simon Moon]

Evidence.... seems to be mostly against it....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiou...olf_Hitler

Doesn't matter.

Over 85% of the rest of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were Christian.

The fact that Hitler may not have been a Christian really doesn't help your cause.

[Isis]

If you read quotes from Mein Kampf and some of his speeches, they definitely suggest that he was influenced by religion in one way or another. You could argue forever whether he was a "true" Christian or not but there is a lot of evidence out there. However it may have just been away to attract more support.

“The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement) was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.”

[Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf”, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

“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, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so”

[Adolf Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

“Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another… while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve.”

[Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.309]

“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]

You can find more quotes here.

[Simon Moon]

Evidence.... seems to be mostly against it....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiou...olf_Hitler

And by the way, Hitler outlawed atheist groups.

Not a very good atheist, was he?

"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, speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant



"A campaign against the 'godless movement' and an appeal for Catholic support were launched by Chancellor Adolf Hitler's forces."

- Associated Press story, February 23, 1933, quoted from Positive Atheism

[AceBoogie]

Evidence.... seems to be mostly against it....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiou...olf_Hitler

Your citing a wikipedia article means very little in the face of several thing....

-Hitler is quoted in my different places being in support of Christianity

-Hitler has been quoted saying that god is, basically, in support of what him and the Nazi party were doing

-Many of the Nazi soldiers even wore belt buckles with Nazi symbols on them that also had the words "God is with Us" on the buckles

-The demographics of Germany at that period

Hitler was more than likely Christian.

Period.

You don't have to like it for it to be true. My whole thing is this... so the fuck what? Are you people that insecure in your beliefs that you have to deny basic facts to protect your fragile psyches? How does Hitler being a Christian discredit Christianity in any way shape or form? Christianity discredits itself enough as it is, it doesn't really need any help. Hitler was a fucking nut. Christianity has nothing to do with that man being fucked in the head.

If someone robs a bank and is later found out to be an atheist, that has nothing to do with atheism. You people kill me sometimes.

[Alex K]

- that he opposed Atheism is not really showing that he was a Christian. More like a convenient way to get the masses behind him to eliminate communists, intellectuals.
- that he claimed to do God's work doesn't automatically make him a Christian either. He appeared to have some weird mythology and belief in divine providence...


In the end he said what he said for all kinds of reasons, I'm doubtful he deserves the label Christian. This is complicated by the fact that it is far from easy to nail down exactly what one needs to be to count as a Christian.

But more to the point, I also don't worry much about it because it is just a label and its use does not serve to elucidate anything. Quite the opposite, by slapping that category or label on someone and then arguing from that, one always makes an argument less clear and precise. If your argument needs such a blunt generalization to work, it's probably not very good. It's a bit like arguments about evolution that hinge on Archaeopteryx being a bird or not. You need to argue based on the details, not based on some label.

[Minimalist]

Evidence.... seems to be mostly against it....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiou...olf_Hitler

Why do you not take the man at his word?

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a
fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded
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. 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 exposed.”

[Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a
political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on
his personal Christian feelings. Published in “My New Order”, quoted
in Freethought Today April 1990]

He's only claiming to be a xtian.  It isn't as if he's saying anything important.

[RoadRunner79]

Yes, there are arguement a for both points of view, and we can't just pick only the ones that suite us. My opinion is based on, that the. Oreprivate and personal accounts seem to point against.

And I agree with you, it doesn't effect Christianity either way.

[AceBoogie]

- that he opposed Atheism is not really showing that he was a Christian. More like a convenient way to get the masses behind him to eliminate communists, intellectuals.
- that he claimed to do God's work doesn't automatically make him a Christian either. He appeared to have some weird mythology and belief in divine providence...


In the end he said what he said for all kinds of reasons, I'm doubtful he deserves the label Christian. This is complicated by the fact that it is far from easy to nail down exactly what one needs to be to count as a Christian.

But more to the point,  I also don't worry much about it because it is just a label and its use does not serve to elucidate anything. Quite the opposite, by slapping that category or label on someone and then arguing from that, one always makes an argument less clear and precise. If your argument needs such a blunt generalization to work, it's probably not very good. It's a bit like arguments about evolution that hinge on Archaeopteryx being a bird or not. You need to argue based on the details, not based on some label.

1. This does show that he was more than likely not an atheist.
2. True, but coupled with the fact that most Germans at this time were Christian doesn't do much to steer us away from thinking that he was the same.

We can't really debate why when we don't really know why. Plenty of people debate that Hitler didn't actually harbor any hatred towards Jews, this doesn't change the fact that he ordered the killing of about 6 million of them. Above all else, the requirement for being a christian is belief in god and Jesus Christ. Whether or not he was a good Christian is far more debatable.

I agree it doesn't really matter either way.. but christians denial of the facts comes off as desperate and childish.

[paulpablo]

I don't think it matters if he was a Christian or not.

I don't necesserily think he was, based on his private conversations, his possible interest in Nietzche and Darwin.  Plus another aspect I've mentioned before talking about this subject, his drug intake at certain points in his life.  He probably had times where he believed he was god, was doing gods work, there was no god and everything is futile, all in the same day.

His main goal, which I don't really question much, seems to be the importance of the power of the state above all else.