Hitler and Christianity

Let’s jump right into the frey shall we?

Evilbible.org states emphatically, “History is currently being distorted by the millions of Christians who lie to have us believe that the Holocaust was not a Christian deed. Through subterfuge and concealment, many of today’s Church leaders and faithful Christians have camouflaged the Christianity of Adolf Hitler and have attempted to mark him an atheist, a pagan cult worshipper, or a false Christian in order to place his misdeeds on those with out Jesus.”

Well, that certainly is a most direct accusation, but does it have any merit?

Hitler’s early life

Hitler was baptized into the Catholic Church as a baby. While this is true, I am certain it is equally true that many avowed atheists were also baptized as infants and if that is all it takes to identify someone as a Christian then these atheists have a lot of explaining to do.

As a child, he participated in normal church activities as an altar boy. Nothing unusual here either for a male child of that time and place. Not all that dissimilar of Josef Stalin.

Hitler said “I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.” One may see even here, that it is not so much a spiritual faith Hitler had in his mind, rather a pomp and circumstance charade whose pinnacle of worship is the high priest rather than God.

In looking at Hitler one sees that this is the beginning of his own messianic imaginings of salvation, veneration, and worship with himself as the high priest.

Mein Kampf

Hitler certainly talked a lot about Christianity in his book Mein Kampf, but did he really? Even if one were to say he was a Christian, it is a different Christianity than what most people know. At one juncture pointing out that Jesus was a German no less.

From a 1922 speech we see the distortion that is pervasive of his Christianity: “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.”