Adolf Hitler - Christian, Atheist, or Neither?
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Was Hitler a Christian?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describes the real "god" of Hitler and the Nazis in his article, "The Trauma of the Holocaust: Some Historical Perspectives," by saying: ""They wanted to go back to a pagan world, beautiful, naturalistic, where natural hierarchies based on the supremacy of the strong would be established, because strong equaled good, powerful equaled civilized. The world did have a kind of God, the merciless God of nature, the brutal God of races, the oppressive God of hierarchies." In other words, definitely non-Christian.
Historian Paul Johnson wrote that Hitler hated Christianity with a passion, adding that shortly after assuming power in 1933, Hitler told Hermann Rauschnig t
hat he intended "to stamp out Christianity root and branch."
nAs Hitler grew in power, he made other anti-Christian statements. For example, he was quoted in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Allan Bullock, as saying: "I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the J*ws."
But in contrast to these quotes, some of Hitler's speeches definitely seem to put him in the Christian camp as a fighter against atheism. For example, he said, on signing the Nazi-Vatican Concordat, April 26, 1933: "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction,
and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all characte
r training and religion must be derived from faith . . ."
An Associated Press article from the Lansing State Journal, February 23, 1933, is headlined, "Hitler Aims Blow at 'Godless' Move," and talks about how Hitler was campaigning against atheist communists and wanted support from Catholic Nazis. One line in the article specifically says, "Hitler, himself, is a Catholic." (You can see the entire article at www.infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/hitler.html.) In addition, in 1941, Hitler told General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church. He was baptized a Roman Catholic as an infant and was a communicant and altar boy in his youth.
In a speech at Koblenz, August 26, 1934, Hitler said: &q
uot;National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity . . . For their interests cann
ot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life . . . These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles!"
Related to the above, the "Religion" article in The Oxford Companion to World War II notes that early on in his career, Hitler sponsored something called "practical Christianity," and that "German Christians emerged who claimed to be able to synthesize the best of National Socialism [Nazism] and the best of Christianity. Many Christians seemed to be able to reconcile themselves to at least certain aspects of anti-Semitic legislation. Those who could not . . .
often ended up in concentration camps . . . Many anguished Christians serving in the Wehrmacht began to feel a little more comfortable about supporting a war that now included the overthrow of godless commu
nism."
Anton Gil notes in his book, An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945: "For his part, Hitler naturally wanted to bring the church into line with everything else in his scheme of things. He knew he dare not simply eradicate it: that would not have been possible with such an international organisation, and he would have lost many Christian supporters had he tried to. His principal aim was to unify the German Evangelical Church under a pro-Nazi banner, and to come to an accommodation with the Catholics."
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhitlerchristian.html
Adolf Hitler privately to Heinrich Himmler, October 14, 1941:
"I
t may be asked whether concluding a concordat with the churches wouldn't facilitate our exercise of power.
"First, in this way the authority of the state would be vitiated by the fact of the intervention of a third power concerning which it is impossible to
say how long it would remain reliable. In the case of the Anglican Church, this objection does not arise, for England knows she can depend upon her church. But what about the Catholic Church? Wouldn't we be running the risk of her one day going into reverse after having put herself at the service of the state solely in order to safeguard her power? If one day the state's policy ceased to suit Rome or the clergy, the priests would turn against the state, as they are doing now. History provides examples that should make us careful.
"Secondly there is also a question of principle. Trying to take a long- range view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable based on falsehood? When I think of our
people's future, I must look beyond immediate advantages, even if these advantages were to last 300-500 years or more. I'm convinced that any pact with the church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such
a compromise. Thus the state will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse.
"An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature, and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the state, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science.
"Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can't, or can't yet be explained - that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can
't satisfy them with the party's program. Time will pass until the moment when science can answer all the questions.
"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The d
ogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advance of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there's no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds - perhaps inhabited worlds like ours - then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.
"But one must continue to pay attention to another aspect of the problem. It's possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature., or by k
nowledge of the past. Only a minority, however, at the present stage of the mind's development, can feel the respect inspired by the unknown and thus satisfy the metaphysical needs of the soul. The average human being has the same needs, but can satisfy them only by elementary means. That's particularly true of women, as also of peasants who impot
ently watch the destruction of their crops. The person whose life tends to simplification is thirsty for belief, and he dimly clings to it with all his strength.
"Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they've acquired others that are more reasonable. Indeed it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this. But it would serve no purpose to replace an old belief by a new one that would merely fill the place left vacant by its predecessor.
"It seems to me that nothing would be more foo
lish than to reestablish the worship of Odin. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that point the ancient world was divided between the systems of philosophy and the worship of idols. It's not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified - and the only way of getting rid of Christiani
ty is to allow it to die little by little.
"If in the course of 1-2,000 years science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity which is the liar; it's in perpetual conflict with itself.
"One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of a belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most m
en the opportunity to concretize the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?"
- Adolf Hitler, in _Bormann-Vermerke_ (transcribed by Martin Bormann), reprinted as _Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944_ (H.R. Trevor-Roper, Trans.), New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953, pages #48-
51.
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/4885/hitler.html
Was Hitler a Christian?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describes the real "god" of Hitler and the Nazis in his article, "The Trauma of the Holocaust: Some Historical Perspectives," by saying: ""They wanted to go back to a pagan world, beautiful, naturalistic, where natural hierarchies based on the supremacy of the strong would be established, because strong equaled good, powerful equaled civilized. The world did have a kind of God, the merciless God of nature, the brutal God of races, the oppressive God of hierarchies." In other words, definitely non-Christian.
Historian Paul Johnson wrote that Hitler hated Christianity with a passion, adding that shortly after assuming power in 1933, Hitler told Hermann Rauschnig t
hat he intended "to stamp out Christianity root and branch."
nAs Hitler grew in power, he made other anti-Christian statements. For example, he was quoted in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Allan Bullock, as saying: "I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the J*ws."
But in contrast to these quotes, some of Hitler's speeches definitely seem to put him in the Christian camp as a fighter against atheism. For example, he said, on signing the Nazi-Vatican Concordat, April 26, 1933: "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction,
and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all characte
r training and religion must be derived from faith . . ."
An Associated Press article from the Lansing State Journal, February 23, 1933, is headlined, "Hitler Aims Blow at 'Godless' Move," and talks about how Hitler was campaigning against atheist communists and wanted support from Catholic Nazis. One line in the article specifically says, "Hitler, himself, is a Catholic." (You can see the entire article at www.infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/hitler.html.) In addition, in 1941, Hitler told General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church. He was baptized a Roman Catholic as an infant and was a communicant and altar boy in his youth.
In a speech at Koblenz, August 26, 1934, Hitler said: &q
uot;National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity . . . For their interests cann
ot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life . . . These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles!"
Related to the above, the "Religion" article in The Oxford Companion to World War II notes that early on in his career, Hitler sponsored something called "practical Christianity," and that "German Christians emerged who claimed to be able to synthesize the best of National Socialism [Nazism] and the best of Christianity. Many Christians seemed to be able to reconcile themselves to at least certain aspects of anti-Semitic legislation. Those who could not . . .
often ended up in concentration camps . . . Many anguished Christians serving in the Wehrmacht began to feel a little more comfortable about supporting a war that now included the overthrow of godless commu
nism."
Anton Gil notes in his book, An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945: "For his part, Hitler naturally wanted to bring the church into line with everything else in his scheme of things. He knew he dare not simply eradicate it: that would not have been possible with such an international organisation, and he would have lost many Christian supporters had he tried to. His principal aim was to unify the German Evangelical Church under a pro-Nazi banner, and to come to an accommodation with the Catholics."
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhitlerchristian.html
Adolf Hitler privately to Heinrich Himmler, October 14, 1941:
"I
t may be asked whether concluding a concordat with the churches wouldn't facilitate our exercise of power.
"First, in this way the authority of the state would be vitiated by the fact of the intervention of a third power concerning which it is impossible to
say how long it would remain reliable. In the case of the Anglican Church, this objection does not arise, for England knows she can depend upon her church. But what about the Catholic Church? Wouldn't we be running the risk of her one day going into reverse after having put herself at the service of the state solely in order to safeguard her power? If one day the state's policy ceased to suit Rome or the clergy, the priests would turn against the state, as they are doing now. History provides examples that should make us careful.
"Secondly there is also a question of principle. Trying to take a long- range view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable based on falsehood? When I think of our
people's future, I must look beyond immediate advantages, even if these advantages were to last 300-500 years or more. I'm convinced that any pact with the church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such
a compromise. Thus the state will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse.
"An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature, and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the state, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science.
"Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can't, or can't yet be explained - that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can
't satisfy them with the party's program. Time will pass until the moment when science can answer all the questions.
"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The d
ogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advance of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there's no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds - perhaps inhabited worlds like ours - then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.
"But one must continue to pay attention to another aspect of the problem. It's possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature., or by k
nowledge of the past. Only a minority, however, at the present stage of the mind's development, can feel the respect inspired by the unknown and thus satisfy the metaphysical needs of the soul. The average human being has the same needs, but can satisfy them only by elementary means. That's particularly true of women, as also of peasants who impot
ently watch the destruction of their crops. The person whose life tends to simplification is thirsty for belief, and he dimly clings to it with all his strength.
"Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they've acquired others that are more reasonable. Indeed it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this. But it would serve no purpose to replace an old belief by a new one that would merely fill the place left vacant by its predecessor.
"It seems to me that nothing would be more foo
lish than to reestablish the worship of Odin. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that point the ancient world was divided between the systems of philosophy and the worship of idols. It's not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified - and the only way of getting rid of Christiani
ty is to allow it to die little by little.
"If in the course of 1-2,000 years science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity which is the liar; it's in perpetual conflict with itself.
"One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of a belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most m
en the opportunity to concretize the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?"
- Adolf Hitler, in _Bormann-Vermerke_ (transcribed by Martin Bormann), reprinted as _Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944_ (H.R. Trevor-Roper, Trans.), New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953, pages #48-
51.
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/4885/hitler.html
albion
Registered
29
The best book on this subject is Richard Steigmann-Gall's recently published
"The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945."
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521...1279944-0950734
Synopsis:
Analyzing the previously unexplored religious views of the Nazi elite, Richard Steigmann-Gall argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it. He demonstrates that many participants in the Nazi movement believed that the contours of their ideology were based on a Christian understanding of Germany's ills and their cure. A program usually regarded as secular in inspiration - the creation of a racialist 'people's community' embracing antisemitism, an
tiliberalism and anti-Marxism - was, for these Nazis, conceived in explicitl
y Christian terms. His examination centers on the concept of 'positive Christianity,' a religion espoused by many members of the party leadership. He also explores the struggle the 'positive Christians' waged with the party's paganists - those who rejected Christianity in toto as foreign and corrupting - and demonstrates that this was not just a conflict over religion, but over the very meaning of Nazi ideology itself. "
Editorial Review
A number of studies have examined the relationship between Nazism and the German Christian churches (most notably Klaus Scholder's well-known The Churches and the Third Reich). There are, of course, also studies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and others that explore the relationship between the Reich and the church in terms of the Christian protest against Nazism. Steigmann-Gall, a history professor at Kent State, adds a new chapter to the story
by investigating the way that Christianity functioned within the Nazi party itself. Using party pamphl
ets and writings of key members, he demonstrates that as early as 1920 the group declared that it represented the standpoint of a positive Christianity, which provided the tenets of its anti-Semitic and antimaterialist stance. Many of the Nazi elite believed that their own party doctrine and Christianity shared common themes such as the opposition of good against evil, God against the devil and the struggle for national salvation from the J*ws and Marxism. This positive Christianity enfolded both Catholicism and Protestantism, for the Nazis believed that confessional disunity presented the greatest challenge to national unity. Steigmann-Gall examines the leaders of the party and shows how many of them contributed to the view of an intimate relationship between Nazism and Christianity. He also explores how the Nazis identified the J*ws with the Devil and believed that God would liberate them from this evil. A
lthough this revised dissertation plods along in workmanlike fashion, Steigmann-Gall uncovers new inf
ormation and helpful insights about the period.
The best book on this subject is Richard Steigmann-Gall's recently published
"The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945."
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521...1279944-0950734
Synopsis:
Analyzing the previously unexplored religious views of the Nazi elite, Richard Steigmann-Gall argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it. He demonstrates that many participants in the Nazi movement believed that the contours of their ideology were based on a Christian understanding of Germany's ills and their cure. A program usually regarded as secular in inspiration - the creation of a racialist 'people's community' embracing antisemitism, an
tiliberalism and anti-Marxism - was, for these Nazis, conceived in explicitl
y Christian terms. His examination centers on the concept of 'positive Christianity,' a religion espoused by many members of the party leadership. He also explores the struggle the 'positive Christians' waged with the party's paganists - those who rejected Christianity in toto as foreign and corrupting - and demonstrates that this was not just a conflict over religion, but over the very meaning of Nazi ideology itself. "
Editorial Review
A number of studies have examined the relationship between Nazism and the German Christian churches (most notably Klaus Scholder's well-known The Churches and the Third Reich). There are, of course, also studies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and others that explore the relationship between the Reich and the church in terms of the Christian protest against Nazism. Steigmann-Gall, a history professor at Kent State, adds a new chapter to the story
by investigating the way that Christianity functioned within the Nazi party itself. Using party pamphl
ets and writings of key members, he demonstrates that as early as 1920 the group declared that it represented the standpoint of a positive Christianity, which provided the tenets of its anti-Semitic and antimaterialist stance. Many of the Nazi elite believed that their own party doctrine and Christianity shared common themes such as the opposition of good against evil, God against the devil and the struggle for national salvation from the J*ws and Marxism. This positive Christianity enfolded both Catholicism and Protestantism, for the Nazis believed that confessional disunity presented the greatest challenge to national unity. Steigmann-Gall examines the leaders of the party and shows how many of them contributed to the view of an intimate relationship between Nazism and Christianity. He also explores how the Nazis identified the J*ws with the Devil and believed that God would liberate them from this evil. A
lthough this revised dissertation plods along in workmanlike fashion, Steigmann-Gall uncovers new inf
ormation and helpful insights about the period.
albion
Registered
29
The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology _ by Nicholas Goodrick-Clark
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...4840593-4012166?
is an intriguing academic study on the pre-Nazi occult scene in Germany. The cover features a rather threatening Thule Gesellschaft symbol: a sword and swastika wrapped in laurels and a halo of emanating light. Many of the occult practices described in this book--palmistry, crystals, secret orders, hidden knowledge, spirit guides, channeling, tarot cards, fortune telling,
strology--have retained their popularity today in the New Age movement.
What's particularly interesting about Goodrick-Clarke's work is he compares the Ariosophists List and Lanz to the ancient duelis
t philosophies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism in thei
r extreme division of reality into two eternally conflicting forces of good (Aryans) and evil (J*ws).
Goodrick-Clarke begins his discussion by going back to the writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky, her two books _The Secret Doctrine_ and _Isis Unvieled_, and her occult Theosophical Society. Her books propagated a form of anti-rationalism and anti-scientism, instead relying upon supposed revealed secret doctrines by hidden masters in Tibet. Blavatsky believed there was a series of seven "root races" that lived on earth, of which the Aryan race was the fifth.
Other notables connected with the occult at this time included Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Bulwer Lytton. Lytton wrote in his work _The Coming Race_ of a subterranean race that was to give mankind new enlightenment and psychic abilities. Ariosophy, the so-called wisdom of the Aryans, developed from theosophical ideas and the general occult subcultures of the time. The p
olitical and motivation for the rise of occultism in Germany and Aust
ria was the situation of the Austro -Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg monarchy. Prussia had permanently excluded Austria from a role in a united German state by Bismark's military victories before 1871. However the Austrian Empire encompassed not only Hungary but also many nationalities of Slavic, non-German descent, in addition to Jewish minorities.
The status of Germans as a whole in Austria was tenuous and the conservative elements of the populace were more inclined to fall for unorthodox metaphysical beliefs that would allow them to fight against the tides of political liberalism in the Empire. Hitler, it is to be noted, was not actually born in "Germany" proper but in the Austro-Hungarian Empire near the German border. Goodrick-Clarke takes care to note that Hitler despised the Hapsburg monarchy, while his sectarian occultist predecessors admired it as a bastion of German mystical/mythical tradition.
In Vi
enna, during the late 1800s and early 1900s before World War I, two radical German natio
nalists, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz (who self-styled himself with the aristocratic title of von Liebenfels) researched and published a considerable amount of literature dealing with Germany's so-called repressed history. List believed that ancient, pagan, pre-Christian Germany was a center of culture kept alive by a secret order of initiates, the Armanenschaft, who established a decentralized aristocratic hierarchy and kept the German race pure through eugenic practices. Oddly enough, their secret doctrine, according to List, was encoded and given to the Rabbis for safekeeping in the form of the Cabala, in order to preserve it from Christian destruction.
Lanz, whose _Ostara_ pamphlets Hitler is likely to have read, was an ex-Cistercian monk who joined the pan-German movement. Lanz made an extensive study of ancient civilizations and the Old Testament and concluded that the ancestors of the German race lived
on Atlantis, which sank, and spread to Northern Europe and the Middle East. The supposed Aryan
Middle Easterners founded the great civilizations of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, including the Hebrews.
The Hebrew Scripture, according to Lanz's analysis, was a history of the attempt for Aryans to preserve their race. He interpreted the fall as the miscegenation between Aryans and lesser races. Lanz believed Jesus ("Frauja") was an Aryan savior and the medieval Christian character of Europe, with its monasteries and nobility, embodied the Aryan ideal. He believed Alexandria, known for its library and scholarship, was the center of gravity of ancient Ariosophy. The first bishop to convert the Germans to Christianity was Ulifas, an Arian bishop from Alexandria, thus Lanz equates
"Aryanism" with the Christian heresy of "Arianism," or disbelief in the deity of Christ.
The Ariosophists and pan-Germanists believed the only way to preserve Germany's Aryan past
was to fight against modern liberal tendencies and take aggressive action against those corrupting Germany?s traditional landscape: the J
*ws, communists and Slavs. Several quasi-Masonic lodges were founded throughout Germany and Austria before, during and after WWI. Among these were the Thule Society and the Germannorden. There is some speculation that the Thule Society, its membership being a collection of well-educated professionals and aristocrats, founded the German Workers Party (DAP) as an activist political party to attract a mass membership. Hitler was sent as a spy to the DAP to survey its activities. Hitler later joined this party, which eventually renamed itself the German National Socialist Party (NASDAP or Nazi Party).
Although Hitler never mentioned Lanz by name in any of his re
corded words, Goodrick-Clarke attributes this fact to Hitler not wanting to call attention to where he got his ideas during his formative years in Vienna. Although Hitler did not have much of an interest in a
ctual occult practices, his chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, did. Himmler consulted a former mental asylum inmate, Karl Maria Willigut (a.k.
a. Weisthor), who claimed to possess an ancient ancestral knowledge of the German race.
Himmler constructed a "Nazi Vatican" at a castle in Wewelsburg where neo-pagan ceremonies for the Nazi SS were held. Goodrick-Clarke's final appendix to this study is an examination of the mythology Nazi Germany's meteoric rise and fall from an obscure party from the 1920s to a totalitarian government that had Europe from the English Channel to the Caucasus Mountains under its thumb (albeit briefly). A considerable amount of literature has been published in various countries about how the Nazi Party's rise to power was aided by supernatural and demonic forces.
The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology _ by Nicholas Goodrick-Clark
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...4840593-4012166?
is an intriguing academic study on the pre-Nazi occult scene in Germany. The cover features a rather threatening Thule Gesellschaft symbol: a sword and swastika wrapped in laurels and a halo of emanating light. Many of the occult practices described in this book--palmistry, crystals, secret orders, hidden knowledge, spirit guides, channeling, tarot cards, fortune telling,
strology--have retained their popularity today in the New Age movement.
What's particularly interesting about Goodrick-Clarke's work is he compares the Ariosophists List and Lanz to the ancient duelis
t philosophies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism in thei
r extreme division of reality into two eternally conflicting forces of good (Aryans) and evil (J*ws).
Goodrick-Clarke begins his discussion by going back to the writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky, her two books _The Secret Doctrine_ and _Isis Unvieled_, and her occult Theosophical Society. Her books propagated a form of anti-rationalism and anti-scientism, instead relying upon supposed revealed secret doctrines by hidden masters in Tibet. Blavatsky believed there was a series of seven "root races" that lived on earth, of which the Aryan race was the fifth.
Other notables connected with the occult at this time included Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Bulwer Lytton. Lytton wrote in his work _The Coming Race_ of a subterranean race that was to give mankind new enlightenment and psychic abilities. Ariosophy, the so-called wisdom of the Aryans, developed from theosophical ideas and the general occult subcultures of the time. The p
olitical and motivation for the rise of occultism in Germany and Aust
ria was the situation of the Austro -Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg monarchy. Prussia had permanently excluded Austria from a role in a united German state by Bismark's military victories before 1871. However the Austrian Empire encompassed not only Hungary but also many nationalities of Slavic, non-German descent, in addition to Jewish minorities.
The status of Germans as a whole in Austria was tenuous and the conservative elements of the populace were more inclined to fall for unorthodox metaphysical beliefs that would allow them to fight against the tides of political liberalism in the Empire. Hitler, it is to be noted, was not actually born in "Germany" proper but in the Austro-Hungarian Empire near the German border. Goodrick-Clarke takes care to note that Hitler despised the Hapsburg monarchy, while his sectarian occultist predecessors admired it as a bastion of German mystical/mythical tradition.
In Vi
enna, during the late 1800s and early 1900s before World War I, two radical German natio
nalists, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz (who self-styled himself with the aristocratic title of von Liebenfels) researched and published a considerable amount of literature dealing with Germany's so-called repressed history. List believed that ancient, pagan, pre-Christian Germany was a center of culture kept alive by a secret order of initiates, the Armanenschaft, who established a decentralized aristocratic hierarchy and kept the German race pure through eugenic practices. Oddly enough, their secret doctrine, according to List, was encoded and given to the Rabbis for safekeeping in the form of the Cabala, in order to preserve it from Christian destruction.
Lanz, whose _Ostara_ pamphlets Hitler is likely to have read, was an ex-Cistercian monk who joined the pan-German movement. Lanz made an extensive study of ancient civilizations and the Old Testament and concluded that the ancestors of the German race lived
on Atlantis, which sank, and spread to Northern Europe and the Middle East. The supposed Aryan
Middle Easterners founded the great civilizations of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, including the Hebrews.
The Hebrew Scripture, according to Lanz's analysis, was a history of the attempt for Aryans to preserve their race. He interpreted the fall as the miscegenation between Aryans and lesser races. Lanz believed Jesus ("Frauja") was an Aryan savior and the medieval Christian character of Europe, with its monasteries and nobility, embodied the Aryan ideal. He believed Alexandria, known for its library and scholarship, was the center of gravity of ancient Ariosophy. The first bishop to convert the Germans to Christianity was Ulifas, an Arian bishop from Alexandria, thus Lanz equates
"Aryanism" with the Christian heresy of "Arianism," or disbelief in the deity of Christ.
The Ariosophists and pan-Germanists believed the only way to preserve Germany's Aryan past
was to fight against modern liberal tendencies and take aggressive action against those corrupting Germany?s traditional landscape: the J
*ws, communists and Slavs. Several quasi-Masonic lodges were founded throughout Germany and Austria before, during and after WWI. Among these were the Thule Society and the Germannorden. There is some speculation that the Thule Society, its membership being a collection of well-educated professionals and aristocrats, founded the German Workers Party (DAP) as an activist political party to attract a mass membership. Hitler was sent as a spy to the DAP to survey its activities. Hitler later joined this party, which eventually renamed itself the German National Socialist Party (NASDAP or Nazi Party).
Although Hitler never mentioned Lanz by name in any of his re
corded words, Goodrick-Clarke attributes this fact to Hitler not wanting to call attention to where he got his ideas during his formative years in Vienna. Although Hitler did not have much of an interest in a
ctual occult practices, his chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, did. Himmler consulted a former mental asylum inmate, Karl Maria Willigut (a.k.
a. Weisthor), who claimed to possess an ancient ancestral knowledge of the German race.
Himmler constructed a "Nazi Vatican" at a castle in Wewelsburg where neo-pagan ceremonies for the Nazi SS were held. Goodrick-Clarke's final appendix to this study is an examination of the mythology Nazi Germany's meteoric rise and fall from an obscure party from the 1920s to a totalitarian government that had Europe from the English Channel to the Caucasus Mountains under its thumb (albeit briefly). A considerable amount of literature has been published in various countries about how the Nazi Party's rise to power was aided by supernatural and demonic forces.
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'Germanic', 'Celtic' 'pagan' religion, and the far Right
http://www.stelling.nl/simpos/asatru.htm#univers
Esoteric Hitlerism
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/...ric%20Hitlerism
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/110...remarksandlinks
For some information on the occult background of Nazism, see Trevor Ravenscroft's work The Spear of Destiny (Samuel Weiser; 1982; and Neville Spearman; 1973), as well as one in German: Karl Heyer's Wesen und Wollen des National-Socialismus; Perseus Verlag; Basel; 1991. (I should note that some Anthroposoph
ists have a low opinion of Ravenscroft's book.)
'Germanic', 'Celtic' 'pagan' religion, and the far Right
http://www.stelling.nl/simpos/asatru.htm#univers
Esoteric Hitlerism
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/...ric%20Hitlerism
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/110...remarksandlinks
For some information on the occult background of Nazism, see Trevor Ravenscroft's work The Spear of Destiny (Samuel Weiser; 1982; and Neville Spearman; 1973), as well as one in German: Karl Heyer's Wesen und Wollen des National-Socialismus; Perseus Verlag; Basel; 1991. (I should note that some Anthroposoph
ists have a low opinion of Ravenscroft's book.)
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Hitler was baptized a Catholic, attended a monastery school early in life, and was a communicant and altar boy as a youth. During his years as Chancellor and then dictator of Nazi Germany, he was never excommunicated or condemned, even though the Vatican knew much of his policies and activities. The only major complaints from Rome regarded interference in Church matters. And those were largely silenced by the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican, under Pope Pius XII, which to Hitler meant that the Catholic Church recognized the Nazi state.
And, indeed, Pius XII ordered German Catholics not to oppose Hitler. No prelate of any influence in Germany did so, even after the June 1934 Blood Purge that took the lives of several Catholic leaders. The wartime Pope made only mild and highly generalized protests against any Nazi actions and pretty much acquiesced in Hitler's treatment of the J*ws, about which Pius
had a pretty goo
d idea. For their part, the Roman Church got support for mandatory school prayer and for "family values" ”” much like the Christian fundamentalist wish list in the modern US.
But in fact, Germany was Hitler's religion. Though far from an atheist, Hitler was a Roman Catholic apostate. He at times would say things such as, "The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to Positive Christianity" [1934] ”” Positive Christianity being nonsectarian ”” and at other times would say, "National Socialism and Christianity cannot exist together" [1941]. It is certainly reasonable to suppose that Hitler used religion as Machiavelli recommended: as a tool of political influence and control. Therefore, Hitler would say about churches, "For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the degeneracy in the world of today" (sometime 1922-1939).
The Nazi slogan
Got
t mit uns or "God with us"
But taken in chronological context, it would seem that Hitler's most anti-Christian statements were delivered after his election as Chancellor, and when he saw interference from the Roman Church (and all religion) as a threat to his control of the state. The appearance of piety was important: the Nazi military wore belt buckles on which was the legend Gott Mit Uns ("God with us"), and much of his political philosophy was adapted from the Bible. Hitler would not have been successful without the support of German Christians. However, Adolph Hitler perpetrated a serious Catholic sin when he committed suicide on April 30, 1945.
Hitler was baptized a Catholic, attended a monastery school early in life, and was a communicant and altar boy as a youth. During his years as Chancellor and then dictator of Nazi Germany, he was never excommunicated or condemned, even though the Vatican knew much of his policies and activities. The only major complaints from Rome regarded interference in Church matters. And those were largely silenced by the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican, under Pope Pius XII, which to Hitler meant that the Catholic Church recognized the Nazi state.
And, indeed, Pius XII ordered German Catholics not to oppose Hitler. No prelate of any influence in Germany did so, even after the June 1934 Blood Purge that took the lives of several Catholic leaders. The wartime Pope made only mild and highly generalized protests against any Nazi actions and pretty much acquiesced in Hitler's treatment of the J*ws, about which Pius
had a pretty goo
d idea. For their part, the Roman Church got support for mandatory school prayer and for "family values" ”” much like the Christian fundamentalist wish list in the modern US.
But in fact, Germany was Hitler's religion. Though far from an atheist, Hitler was a Roman Catholic apostate. He at times would say things such as, "The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to Positive Christianity" [1934] ”” Positive Christianity being nonsectarian ”” and at other times would say, "National Socialism and Christianity cannot exist together" [1941]. It is certainly reasonable to suppose that Hitler used religion as Machiavelli recommended: as a tool of political influence and control. Therefore, Hitler would say about churches, "For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the degeneracy in the world of today" (sometime 1922-1939).
The Nazi slogan
Got
t mit uns or "God with us"
But taken in chronological context, it would seem that Hitler's most anti-Christian statements were delivered after his election as Chancellor, and when he saw interference from the Roman Church (and all religion) as a threat to his control of the state. The appearance of piety was important: the Nazi military wore belt buckles on which was the legend Gott Mit Uns ("God with us"), and much of his political philosophy was adapted from the Bible. Hitler would not have been successful without the support of German Christians. However, Adolph Hitler perpetrated a serious Catholic sin when he committed suicide on April 30, 1945.