Religious views of Adolf Hitler

Hitler in 1933

Adolf Hitler's religious views are a matter of some dispute. While raised by a skeptic father and Catholic mother, after childhood, he ceased to participate in the Sacraments completely. He sometimes made public statements which seemed to affirm religion (which suited his political purposes) and prior to 1940 had promoted a "positive Christianity", purged of Judaism and instilled with Nazi philosophy, but in private was hostile to Christianity and had a plan to destroy it after the war. The degree to which he imbibed in and was influenced by the racist occultism, paganism and esotericism which was popular in late 19th, early 20th century Germany is also a matter of dispute.

Childhood and youth

According to historian Bradley F. Smith, Hitler's father Alois, though nominally a Catholic, was somewhat religiously skeptical, while his mother Klara was a practicing Catholic. At the Benedictine monastery school which Hitler attended for one school year as a child (1897–1898), Hitler became top of his class, receiving 12 1's, the highest grade, in the final quarter. He also sang in the choir at the monastery. According to historian Michael Rissmann, young Hitler was influenced in school by Pan-Germanism and began to reject the Catholic Church, receiving Confirmation only unwillingly. A boyhood friend reports that after Hitler had left home, he never again attended a Catholic Mass or received the Church's Sacraments. Georg Ritter von Schönerer's writings and the written legacy of his Pan-German Away from Rome! movement, which agitated against the Catholic Church at the end of the 19th century, may have influenced the young Hitler.

World War I experiences

According to an interview with a British correspondent years after the Great War, Hitler claimed a mysterious voice told him to leave a section of a crowded trench during a minor barrage. Moments after he left the area, a shell fell on that particular spot. Hitler saw this experience as a message that he was a uniquely illuminated individual who had a special task to fulfill. This story did not, however, appear in Mein Kampf.

Views as an adult

Something of Hitler's religious beliefs can be gathered from his public and private statements; however, they present a conflicting picture of a man who is somewhat spiritual and yet against organized religion. Some private statements attributed to him remain disputed.

Public statements

In public statements, especially at the beginning of his rule, Hitler frequently spoke positively about the Christian German culture, and his belief in the "Aryan" Christ. In a proclamation to the German Nation February 1, 1933 Hitler stated, "The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."

Historian Joachim Fest wrote, "Hitler knew, through the constant invocation of the God the Lord (German: Herrgott) or of providence (German: Vorsehung), to make the impression of a godly way of thought." He used his "ability to simulate, even to potentially critical Church leaders, an image of a leader keen to uphold and protect Christianity," according to biographer Ian Kershaw. Kershaw adds that Hitler's ability also succeeded in appeasing possible Church resistance to anti-Christian Nazi Party radicals. For example, on March 23, 1933, he addressed the Reichstag: "The National Government regards the two Christian confessions (i.e. Catholicism and Protestantism) as factors essential to the soul of the German people. ... We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people."

According to Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer, Hitler remained a formal member of the Catholic Church until his death, although it was Speer's opinion that "he had no real attachment to it." According to biographer John Toland, Hitler was still "a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite his detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within himself its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God — so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty." However, Hitler's own words from Mein Kampf seem to conflict with the idea that his antisemitism was religiously motivated. From childhood onward, Hitler seems to have continued to reject antisemitism or anti-Judaism based on religious arguments like the deicide claim:

There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their Faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism.

Then I came to Vienna.

Confused by the mass of impressions I received from the architectural surroundings and depressed by my own troubles, I did not at first distinguish between the different social strata of which the population of that mammoth city was composed. Although Vienna then had about two hundred thousand Jews among its population of two millions, I did not notice them. During the first weeks of my sojourn my eyes and my mind were unable to cope with the onrush of new ideas and values. Not until I gradually settled down to my surroundings, and the confused picture began to grow clearer, did I acquire a more discriminating view of my new world. And with that I came up against the Jewish problem.

I will not say that the manner in which I first became acquainted with it was particularly unpleasant for me. In the Jew I still saw only a man who was of a different religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I was against the idea that he should be attacked because he had a different faith. And so I considered that the tone adopted by the anti-Semitic Press in Vienna was unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people. The memory of certain events which happened in the Middle Ages came into my mind, and I felt that I should not like to see them repeated....

According to historian Richard Steigmann-Gall, much is known about Hitler's views on religion through Hitler's book, Mein Kampf. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote neither as an atheist, an agnostic, nor as a believer in a remote, rationalist divinity. Instead he expressed his belief in one providential, active, deity:

"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and the reproduction of our race...so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe...Peoples that bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence."

In an attempt to justify Nazi intolerance he recommends militantism, which he associates with Christianity's rise to Roman state religion, as a model for the Nazis in their pursuit of power, while simultaneously lamenting the demise of Pre-Christian Roman Religion,

The individual may establish with pain today that with the appearance of Christianity the first spiritual terror entered into the far freer ancient world, but he will not be able to contest the fact that since then the world has been afflicted and dominated by this coercion, and that coercion is broken only by coercion, and terror only by terror. Only then can a new state of affairs be constructively created. Political parties are inclined to compromises; philosophies never. Political parties even reckon with opponents; philosophies proclaim their infallibility.

Elsewhere in Mein Kampf Hitler speaks of the "creator of the universe" and "eternal Providence." He also states his belief that the Aryan race was created by God, and that it would be a sin to dilute it through racial intermixing. Hitler writes:

The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.

According to Steigmann-Gall, Hitler's reference to God as the "Lord of Creation" and the necessity of obeying "His will" along with several references to Jesus, reveals the infusion of Christianity into his thinking. Other sources also show Hitler's Christian thinking, according to Steigmann-Gall. He notes an unpublished manuscript where Hitler sketched out his world-view with similar Christian references, and he gives as an example a speech on April 1922 where Hitler said that Jesus was "the true God." Finally, Steigmann-Gall gives another example where in a private Nazi meeting Hitler again stated the centrality of Jesus' teachings to the Nazi movement.

Derek Hastings sees Hitler's commitment to Christianity as more tenuous. He considers it "eminently plausible" that Hitler was a believing Catholic as late as his trial in 1924, but writes that "there is little doubt that Hitler was a staunch opponent of Christianity throughout the duration of the Third Reich."

Private statements

Hitler's private statements about Christianity were often conflicting. Hitler's intimates, such as Joseph Goebbels, Albert Speer, and Martin Bormann suggest that Hitler generally had negative opinions of religion, although the historical validity of some remarks has been questioned, particularly the English translation of Hitler's Table Talk. Historian Ian Kershaw remarked upon the questionable nature of Table Talk as a source, stating "the `table talk’ monologues of the last months (the so called 'bunkergespräche’) of which no German text has ever been brought to light must be treated with due caution." Albert Speer confirmed the authenticity of Henry Picker's German transcripts, which were published in 1951 as Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier. Carrier states, "It is clear that Picker and Jochmann have the correct text and Trevor-Roper's is entirely untrustworthy." One disputed example from the English translation of Hitler's Table Talk includes Hitler's statement that, "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity." Which Dr. Carrier translates as:

I have never found pleasure in maltreating others, even if I know it isn't possible to maintain oneself in the world without force. Life is granted only to those who fight the hardest. It is the law of life: Defend yourself!

The time in which we live has the appearance of the collapse of this idea. It can still take 100 or 200 years. I am sorry that, like Moses, I can only see the Promised Land from a distance.

Goebbels notes in a diary entry in 1939 a conversation in which Hitler had "expressed his revulsion against Christianity. He wished that the time were ripe for him to be able to openly express that. Christianity had corrupted and infected the entire world of antiquity." Albert Speer reports in his memoirs of a similar statement made by Hitler: "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

In 1941, Hitler praised an anti-Christian tract from AD 362, neo-platonist and pagan Roman emperor Julian the Apostate's Against the Galileans, saying "I really hadn't known how clearly a man like Julian had judged Christians and Christianity, one must read this...."

In 1941, according to the diary of Nazi General Gerhart Engel, Hitler stated "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."

Author Konrad Heiden has quoted Hitler as stating, "We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany." According to historian Laurence Rees, "Hitler did not believe in the afterlife, but he did believe he would have a life after death because of what he had achieved."

Positive Christianity

Some scholars maintain that, in contrast to other Nazi leaders, Hitler did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism, or mysticism, (see also Nazism and occultism) and even ridiculed such beliefs in private and possibly in public. Hitler stated: "We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else—in any case something which has nothing to do with us." Other scholars believe the young Hitler was strongly influenced, particularly in his racial views, by an abundance of occult works on the mystical superiority of the Germans, like the occult and anti-semitic magazine Ostara, and give credence to the claim of its publisher Lanz von Liebenfels that Hitler visited him in 1909 and praised his work. Indeed, evidence indicates Hitler was a regular reader of Ostara. Drawing on higher criticism and some branches of theologically liberal Protestantism, Hitler for a time advocated for German Christians a Positive Christianity, traditional Christianity purged of everything that he found objectionable and with certain, particularly racist, additions. Hitler never directed his attacks on Jesus himself, but viewed traditional Christianity as a corruption of the original ideas of Jesus, whom Hitler regarded as an Aryan opponent of the Jews. In Mein Kampf Hitler writes that Jesus "made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross." By 1940, however, it was public knowledge that Hitler had abandoned advocating for Germans even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianity.

Hitler was not opposed to and, in fact, made use of calling on references to traditional symbols of Christianity. One example often used to indicate Hitler's Christianity (or at least his public profession of such beliefs), is in actual truth, Hitler rejecting some central tenets of traditional Christian beliefs regarding love and compassion and calling on any listeners who might adhere to such beliefs to fully reject them as well. Count Hugo Graf von und zu Lerchenfeld auf Köfering und Schönberg (1871–1944), Prime Minister of Bavaria (1921–1922) stated in a speech before the Landtag of Bavaria, in reaction to growing Anti-Semitism spurred on by the fledgling Nazi Party, that his beliefs "...as a man and a Christian..." prevented him from being an Anti-Semite or from pursuing Anti-Semitic public policies. The text may be interpreted as Hitler mocking the Christianity of Lerchenfeld, or it may be interpreted as a statement of Hitler's own brand of Christianity. With either interpretation, Hitler skillfully drew a parallel between himself and Jesus and turned Lerchenfeld's perspective of Jesus on its head for the purposes of furthering National Socialism. At the Bürgerbräukeller on April 12, 1922, Hitler said:

I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man and a Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I say: 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 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. .. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison.

Perhaps for the above reasons, Hitler demonstrated a preference for Protestantism over Catholicism, as Protestantism was more open to reinterpretations, especially Positive Christianity, and a non-traditional re-reading of sacred scripture, and because some of its liberal branches had similar views. These views were supported by the German Christians movement, but rejected by the Confessing Church. According to Steigmann-Gall, Hitler regretted that "the churches had failed to back him and his movement as he had hoped;" and he stated according to Albert Speer: "Through me the Protestant Church could become the established church, as in England."

Not all the Protestant churches submitted to the state, which Hitler said in Mein Kampf was important in forming a political movement. Hitler supported the appointment of Ludwig Müller as Reichsbischof over the Protestant churches, hoping that he would get them to adhere to Nazi positions. After 1935 Hitler was advised by the newly-appointed Reich Minister for Church Affairs Hans Kerrl. Many Protestants who were not persuaded by argument were arrested and their property and funds confiscated. Hitler said of the Protestants "you can do anything you want with them, they will submit..."

By 1940 it was public knowledge that Hitler had abandoned advocating for Germans even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianity.

Historian Richard Overy maintains that Hitler was not a Christian, nor was his ideology influenced by Christianity, but believed in Arthur de Gobineau's ideas of struggle for survival between the different races, among which the "Aryan race" — guided by a pantheistic "providence" — was supposed to be the torchbearers of civilization. In Hitler's conception, Jews were enemies of all civilization, especially the Volk; this idea was rooted in an ideology based on Social Darwinism and antisemitism. His understanding of Darwinism was incomplete and based on the theory of "survival of the fittest" in a social context, as popularly misunderstood at the time.

In 1998 documents were released by Cornell University from the Nuremberg Trials, that revealed Nazi plans to eliminate Christianity entirely. One senior member of the U.S. prosecution team, General William Donovan, as part of his work on documenting Nazi war crimes, compiled large amounts of documentation that the Nazis persecuted Christian Churches.

Donovan's documents include almost 150 bound volumes currently stored at Cornell University after his death in 1959; these documents state

"Important leaders of the National Socialist party would have liked to meet this situation [church influence] by complete extirpation of Christianity and the substitution of a purely racial religion," said an OSS report in July 1945. "The best evidence now available as to the existence of an anti-Church plan is to be found in the systematic nature of the persecution itself.

Statements against atheism

Hitler often associated atheism with Germany's communist enemy. Hitler stated in a speech to the Stuttgart February 15, 1933: "Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity. Fourteen years they have gone arm in arm with atheism. At no time was greater damage ever done to Christianity than in those years when the Christian parties ruled side by side with those who denied the very existence of God. Germany's entire cultural life was shattered and contaminated in this period. It shall be our task to burn out these manifestations of degeneracy in literature, theater, schools, and the press—that is, in our entire culture—and to eliminate the poison which has been permeating every facet of our lives for these past fourteen years."

In a radio address October 14, 1933 Hitler stated "For eight months we have been waging a heroic battle against the Communist threat to our Volk, the decomposition of our culture, the subversion of our art, and the poisoning of our public morality. We have put an end to denial of God and abuse of religion. We owe Providence humble gratitude for not allowing us to lose our battle against the misery of unemployment and for the salvation of the German peasant."

In a speech delivered in Berlin, October 24, 1933, Hitler stated: "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."

In a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934 Hitler states: "There may have been a time when even parties founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity. 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."

During negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of April 26, 1933 Hitler argued that "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."

Hinduism and Buddhism

The basis of Adolf Hitler Aryan theory was inspired by the Hindu texts which talk about the Superior Aryan Race which will take control of the people who belong to inferior race. Hitler was fascinated by Hinduism and other expression of occultism. The Hindu idea of Master Aryan race was already forming in his mind,Though he borrowed Swastika symbol from Guido Von List but the origin of Swastika was Hinduism which was using it for more than 8000 years.[1]

Islam and eastern religions

Among eastern religions, Hitler described religious leaders such as "Confucius, Buddha, and Mohammed" as providers of "spiritual sustenance". In this context, Hitler's connection to Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem — which included asylum in 1941, the honorary rank of an SS Major-General, and a "respected racial genealogy" — has been interpreted more as a sign of respect than political expedience. Hitler expressed admiration for the Muslim military tradition and directed Himmler to initiate Muslim SS Divisions as a matter of policy. According to Nazi-era Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer, Hitler stated in private, "The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?" According to Speer, when discussing with Hitler events which might have occurred had Islam absorbed Europe:

"Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire."

Hitler's choice of the Hindu Swastika as the Nazis' main and official symbol, was linked to the belief in the Aryan cultural descent of the German people. They considered the early Aryans of India to be the prototypical white invaders and the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race.

Role of religion in the Nazi state

Hitler was opposed to state atheism, which for example was part of the political system of the Soviet Union. He issued a statement saying that he wished to avoid factional disputes in Germany's churches. Hitler feared the political power that the churches had, and did not want to openly antagonize that political base until he had securely gained control of the country. Once in power Hitler showed his contempt for non-Aryan religion and sought to eliminate it from areas under his rule. Within Hitler's Nazi Party some atheists were quite vocal, especially Martin Bormann. During negotiations relating to the Concordat that the Roman Catholic Church would agree with the Nazis in 1933 Hitler expressed his view on the relationship between race and religion to Bishop Wilhelm Berning.

I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognised the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognised. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognise the representatives of this race as pestilant for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions

Hitler often used religious speech and symbolism in his propaganda to promote Nazism to those that he feared would be disposed to act against him. He also used religion as a pretext in diplomacies. The Soviet Union feared that if they commenced a programme of persecution against religion in the western regions, Hitler would use that as a pretext for war.

In 1985 the Austrian author Wilfried Daim published a photograph of an alleged document signed by Hitler in 1943, which proposed the:

"Immediate and unconditional abolition of all religions after the final victory ('Endsieg') not only for the territory of Greater Germany but also for all released, occupied and annexed countries ..., proclaiming at the same time Hitler as the new messiah. Out of political considerations the Muslim, Buddhist and Shintoist religion will be spared for the present. The 'Führer' has to be presented as an intermediate between a redeemer and a liberator, yet surely as one sent by God, who has to get godly honour. The existing churches, chapels, temples and cult places of the different religions have to be changed into 'Adolf-Hitler-consecration places'. The theological faculties of the universities have to be transformed into the new faith. Special emphasis has to be laid on the education of missionaries and wandering preachers, who have to proclaim the teaching in Greater Germany and in the rest of the world and have to form religious bodies, which can be used as centres for further extension. (With this the problems with the abolition of monogamy will disappear, because polygamy can be included into the new teaching as one of the statements of faith.)"

Marriage

In the Führerbunker on April 29, 1945, the day before their suicide, Hitler and Eva Braun married in front of a civil servant of the city of Berlin, in a cramped map room without a religious service or blessing ceremony.

God, racism and anti-Semitism

To the extent he believed in a divinity, Hitler did not believe in a "remote, rationalist divinity" but in an "active deity," which he frequently referred to as "Creator" or "Providence". In Hitler's belief God created a world in which different races fought each other for survival as depicted by Arthur de Gobineau. The "Aryan race," supposedly the bearer of civilization, is allocated a special place:

What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and the reproduction of our race ... so that our people may mature for the fulfilment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. ... Peoples that bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence.

In November 1936 the Roman Catholic prelate Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber met Hitler at Berghof for a three hour meeting. He left the meeting convinced that "Hitler was deeply religious" and that 'The Reich Chancellor undoubtedly lives in belief in God..He recognises Christianity as the builder of Western culture'.

Hitler viewed the Jews as enemies of all civilization and as materialistic, unspiritual beings, writing in Mein Kampf: "His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine." Hitler described his supposedly divine mandate for his anti-Semitism: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

In his rhetoric Hitler also fed on the old accusation of Jewish Deicide. Because of this it has been speculated that Christian anti-Semitism influenced Hitler's ideas, especially such works as Martin Luther's essay On the Jews and Their Lies and the writings of Paul de Lagarde. Others disagree with this view. In support of this view, Hitler biographer John Toland opines that Hitler "carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God..." Nevertheless, in Mein Kampf Hitler writes of an upbringing in which no particular anti-Semitic prejudice prevailed.

According to Jewish, American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, Anti-Semitism has a long history within Christianity, and that the line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw." In her The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, she writes that Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews. Dawidowicz states that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern Anti-Semitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass, which can be traced to Haman's advice to Ahasuerus, although modern German anti-Semitism also has its roots in German nationalism.

Catholic ritual

In his childhood, Hitler had admired the pomp of Catholic ritual and the hierarchical organisation of the clergy. Later, although he had rejected the Church, he drew on these elements, organizing his party along hierarchical lines and including liturgical forms into events or using phraseology taken from hymns. Because of these liturgical elements, Hitler's Messiah-like status and the ideology's all-encompassing nature, the Nazi movement, like communism is sometimes termed a "political religion".

Ariosophy

Hitler's contact to Lanz von Liebenfels makes it necessary to examine how far his religious views were influenced by Ariosophy, an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. (Whether Ariosophy is to be classified as Germanic paganism or Occultism is a different question.) The seminal work on Ariosophy, The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, devotes its last chapter the topic of Ariosophy and Adolf Hitler. Not at least due to the difficulty of sources, historians disagree about the importance of Ariosophy for Hitler's religious views. As noted in the foreword of The Occult Roots of Nazism by Rohan Butler, Goodrick-Clarke is more cautious in assessing the influence of Lanz von Liebenfels on Hitler than Joachim Fest in his biography of Hitler. A Hitler biography by John Toland that appeared in 1992 reprints a poem that Hitler allegedly wrote while serving in the German Army on the Western Front in 1915. This poem includes references to magical runes and the pre-Christian Germanic deity Woden, but it is mentioned neither by Goodrick-Clarke nor by Fest.

While he was in power, Hitler was definitely less interested in the occult or the esoteric than other Nazi leaders. Unlike Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess, for example, Hitler had no interest in astrology. Nevertheless, Hitler is the most important figure in the Modern Mythology of Nazi occultism. There are teledocumentaries about this topic, with the titles Hitler and the Occult and Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail.

Comparing him to Erich von Ludendorff, Fest writes: "Hitler had detached himself from such affections, in which he encountered the obscurantism of his early years, Lanz v. Liebenfels and the Thule Society, again, long ago and had, in Mein Kampf, formulated his scathing contempt for that völkish romanticism, which however his own cosmos of imagination preserved rudimentarily." Fest refers to the following passage from Mein Kampf:

The characteristic thing about these people [modern-day followers of the early Germanic religion] is that they rave about the old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack.

However, this statement isn't really a denouncing of Germanic Paganism or Occultism, rather it is a denouncing of people who admire ancient Germanic warriors, but don't heroically fight like the ancients did. It is not clear if this statement is an attack at anyone specific. It could have been aimed at Karl Harrer or at the Strasser group. According to Goodrick-Clarke, "In any case, the outburst clearly implies Hitler's contempt for conspiratorial circles and occult-racist studies and his preference for direct activism." Hitler also said something similar in public speeches.

Older literature states that Hitler had no intention of instituting worship of the ancient Germanic gods in contrast to the beliefs of some other Nazi officials. In Hitler's Table Talk one can find this quote:

It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund.

Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles in an article published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center assert that the influence of the anti-Judaic, Gnostic and root race teachings of H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers, through Ariosophy, the Germanenorden and the Thule Society, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but decisive influence over the developing mind of Hitler. The scholars state that Hitler himself may be responsible for turning historians from investigating his occult influences. While he publicly condemned and even persecuted occultists, Freemasons, and astrologers, his nightly private talks disclosed his belief in the ideas of these competing occult groups - demonstrated by his discussion of reincarnation, Atlantis, world ice theory, and his belief that esoteric myths and legends of cataclysm and battles between gods and titans were a vague collective memory of monumental early events.

Plan to destroy Christianity

In the political relations dealing with religion Hitler readily adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes". Nonetheless, Hitler had a general plan, even before the rise of the Nazis to power, to destroy Christianity within the Reich. The leader of the Hitler Youth stated "the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement" from the start, but "considerations of expedience made it impossible" publicly to express this extreme position. His intention was to wait until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity. The plan was conceived by Hitler and an inner circle, including the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, before the Nazis even came to power.

See also

• Benito Mussolini's religious beliefs
• German Christians
• Guilt by association
• Kirchenkampf
• Nazi occultism
• Positive Christianity
• Race of Jesus
• Religion in Nazi Germany
• Religious aspects of Nazism
• The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

References

• Angebert, Jean-Michel (1974), The Occult and the Third Reich, Macmillan, ISBN 0025021508.
• Baynes, Norman (1942), The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-598-75893-3.
• Carrier, Richard (2003), ""Hitler's Table Talk": Troubling Finds", German Studies Review, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 561–576, doi:10.2307/1432747.
• Davies, Norman (1996), Europe: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-820171-0.
• Dawidowicz, Lucy (1986), The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945, Bantam, ISBN 978-0553345322.
• De George, Richard; Scanlan, James (1975), Marxism and religion in Eastern Europe: papers presented at the Banff International Slavic Conference, September 4–7, 1974, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
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External links

• A review of Richard Steigmann-Gall's book on Nazism, Hitler, and Christianity.
• An English translation of Mein Kampf