Month: September 2016

Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan on morphological freedom, death, ethics, etc.

Ever since being utterly irrelevant to the 2016 AD US presidential elections, Transhumanist, Atheist, socio-politically libertarian and instigator Zoltan Istvan can now, forever more, have “Presidential Candidate” next to his name—along with every other utterly irrelevant person who ever wrote themselves in. Now, what attention will the Transhumanist Party attract in coming elections is anyone’s guess.
I note that he is an instigator since he tends to make emotive and bombastic statements which get him much attention. He admits, for example, that he “put forth policies that were just sensational enough to get picked up by the media.”

He is also known for having written an anti-Christian novel, “The Transhumanist Wager”:

Zoltan Istvan made this bizarre statement during a recent debate with James Hughes who once headed the World Transhumanist Association aka Humanity+:

We live in a culture that for thousands of years has embraced a Judeo-Christian framework that really teaches us that the best way to live to live a good life and then to die and meet a maker in heaven. And it doesn’t matter if it’s the president swearing on the Bible, or the Pledge of Allegiance having the word “God” in it, it’s all around us. And even if we don’t believe in it, it’s still our framework and it leads to this culture of “deathism.”

Wait, what? A Judeo-Christian framework leads to a culture of “deathism”? It is not a Judeo-Christian framework that literally views death as the answer to many of our socio-political problems. It is libertarians, leftists and non-Judeo-Christians who, for example, prescribe abortion and euthanasia. Moreover, it was Istvan Atheist comrades who as recently as the last century mass murdered circa 200 million people in a mere few decades. Meanwhile, Christians have been busy engaging in charitable works around the world sometimes at the cost of their health, freedom and lives.

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Zoltan Istvan also notes that he “advocate morphological freedom, the freedom to do what you want with your own body, as long as it’s not hurting somebody else” with “hurting” being defined according to his subjective standard de jour. In fact, he followed his statements up with “We need to create a scenario where people can do whatever they want.”
This denotes the utter deconstruction of God’s created order and is the very heart of Transhumanism. As he elucidates it, “With some of the CRISPR gene technology coming out, and people trying to grow tails and whatever they’re trying to do, there’s going to be new ways of looking at ourselves as a species and I very much think we need to embrace that.”

Istvan states, “this idea that many people don’t mind dying is what needs to be changed. It’s why I drove a coffin across the county. We can change this. It’s not a matter of religion or right or wrong” which is interesting as he had just finished stating that morphological freedom’s premise is based on “as long as it’s not hurting somebody else” which is what, class? A matter of (his subjective de jour concept of) right and (his subjective de jour concept of) wrong.

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From Zeitgeist to Poltergeist, Part 8 of 13

life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle.In this struggle, the stronger, the more able,

win, while the less able, the weak, lose

-Adolf Hitler 1

What Smith and Dawkins Did Not Bother Mentioning
Here I will provide a partial list of certain facts that both Richard Smith and Richard Dawkins did not bother mentioning in their comments of Hitler, Christianity and the Holocaust.

One of the very many things not mentioned by neither Richard Smith nor Richard Dawkins is just how influenced Hitler was by the concept of social Darwinism and Herbert Spencer’s concept of “survival of the fittest” (which Darwin preferred over his own term “natural selection”).
The only mention that Richard Dawkins makes of anything that comes close to assigning Darwinian-evolution inspiration to Stalin or Hitler is one sentence referencing the “unscientific eugenics theory.”2 Incidentally, Richard Dawkins seeks to pave the way for neo-eugenics (From the Afterword).

Also not mentioned was H. G. Wells’ vision of a racist utopia, New Republic (1917):

And how will the New Republic treat the inferior races? How will it deal with the black?…the yellow man?…the Jew?…those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well, the world is a world, and not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go….And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favor the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity-beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds….And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness…is death….The men of the New Republic…will have an ideal that will make the killing worth the while.

This is the same H. G. Wells who upon meeting Joseph Stalin in 1934 described him as “candid, fair, and honest,” and noted that “no one is afraid of him and everyone trusts him.”3

Not one single mention of Freidrich Nietzsche’s visions of ubermensch-supermen and the death of God. While it has never been reported that Hitler handed his henchmen copies of the Bible it has been reported that he did hand them the works of Nietzsche. “Hitler often visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and published his veneration for the philosopher by posing for photographs of himself staring in rapture at the bust of the great man.”4

A handsomely bound copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra, now become a Bible for the goose-stepping, straight arm-saluting adolescents of Hitler-Jugend, had been solemnly placed, alongside Mein Kampf and Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century, in the vault of the Tannenberg-Memorial (commemorating the German’s decisive victory over the Russians in the Autumn of 1914) as one of the three ideological pillars of German’s Third Reich.5

The SS also studied the Bhagavad Gita and the Japanese Samurai (Bushido). “Tibetan Buddhism was particularly popular among the SS.”6 Moreover, the race and nationalism based National Reich Church decreed that “On the altars there must be nothing but ‘Mein Kampf’, which is to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book, and to the left of the altar a sword” (Encyclopedia Database).

Not one mention of those who had previously attempted to construct secular religions based on humanism, reason, science and enlightenment such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Auguste Comte (1798-1857).

No mention of Thomas Malthus’s “An Essay on The Principles of Population” (which influenced Charles Darwin, amongst others).

No mention of Francis Galton the originator of the “science” of eugenics.

No mention of Joseph Gobineau’s “Essays on The Inequality of The Human Races” with his characterization of the Aryan race as, “A branch of the white race which had originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence and strength.” Nor any mention of the German “Gobineau Associations.”

No mention of “The Volkisch Movement” with its exaltation of nationalism and racial purity.

No mention of Madame Blavatsky’s “Theosophical Society” with its focus on promoting the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions, and sciences. They also published the anti-Semitic book “The Hebrew Talisman.”

No mention of Friedrich Eckstein’s Viennese branch of the Theosophical Society.

No mention of Rudolf Steiner’s “Anthroposophical Society.”

No mention of Guido von List’s “Arisophy” with its belief in a pantheism-like god-energy that found perfect expression in blond haired blue eyed Aryans and thus, lent support to eugenics.

No mention of Herbert Reichstein who saw Hitler as a god ordained establisher of the occult.

No mention of the astrologer Wilhelm Wulff whom SS Reich Commander Heinrich Himmler consulted. Nor that Himmler held to the Buddhist doctrine of Karma and incarnation.

No mention of F. Wehrmann who formed the “Swastika Circle” which was committed to exterminating inferior races.

No mention of Lanz von Liebenfeld’s “Theozoology” and its influential occultism and anti-clerical books.

No mention of Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century” (1899) and its combination of eugenics and occultism. The Kaiser ordered this work to be read by all army officers.

No mention of Mathilde von Kemnitz’s antichristian “German God-Knowledge.” She once visited Hitler in prison and lectured to the Nazi Party Congress on “religion” in 1924.

No mention of the Theosophist Yuliana Glinka who may have inspired the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory known as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” In any case, Hitler was highly influenced by this conspiracy theory.

No mention of Grigori Bostunitsch who came to be known as Schwartz-Bostunitch when he joined the SS (he became an SS colonel). He concocted a mixture of occultism and anti-Semitism.

No mention of Alfred Rosenberg’s “The Myth of the Twentieth Century,” which to Nazism was considered second in importance only to Hitler’s own “Mein Kampf” and which referred to the Old Testament as “stories of pimps and cattle traders.” A phrase later popularized by “German Christian” Nazi supporter, Reinhold Krause. Rosenberg was also influenced by the “The Protocols” and mixed nationalist and occultism. While Hitler was in prison he appointed him as party leader and later appointed him as official Nazi party philosopher.

No mention of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the father of “Liberal Protestantism,” who wrote that “belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe.”7 It may be of interest to note that Hitler stated, “When understanding of the universe has become widespread…Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.” 8

No mention of Richard Wagner whose German nationalism was joined with the concepts of Gobineau and Chamberlain and whose works Hitler greatly admired.

No mention of Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), concocter of the “Documentary Hypothesis” (upon which Richard Dawkins appears to rely, see essay here). “Solomon Schechter, the founder of Conservative Judaism, stated his concerns in a 1903 seminary address titled ‘Higher Criticism-Higher Anti-Semitism.’ Schechter believed that the Documentary Hypothesis would lead to an attack on Judaism and ultimately an assault on the Jewish people. Jewish historian Marc Zvi Brettler summarized Schechter’s comments, which in hindsight seem rather prophetic: [He] equated Wellhausen’s approach with ‘professional and imperial anti-Semitism,’ calling it an ‘intellectual persecution’ of Judaism.9 In The History of Israel and Judah, Wellhausen predicted that Judaism and the Jewish people would become extinct: The…emancipation [i.e. assimilation] of the Jews must inevitably lead to the extinction of Judaism wherever the process is extended beyond the political to the social sphere. For the accomplishment of this centuries may be required.10“11

No mention of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s second in command, and an adherent of “Anthroposophy.”

No mention of Karl Wiligut, Himmler’s mythology advisor, and member of the “Thule.”

No mention of F. Krohn, member of the “Thule” and the “Deutschen Arbeiterpartie” the “German Workers’ Party.” He compiled a collection of books for the Nazi party, “Volkischer” books from which Hitler read.

No mention of Lanz von Liebenfeld’s “Ostara” which was read by Hitler.

No mention of Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) who though that retaining the Jew’s Old Testament was a mistake, “to conserve it after the nineteenth century as a canonical text in Protestantism, was the result of a religious and ecclesiastical paralysis.”12

No mention of Gottfried Feder, another member of the “Thule,” whom Hitler praised in “Mein Kampf” and who formulated the program of the Nazi Party.

No mention of “Thule” member Dietrich Eckart who influence Hitler’s Nazism.

No mention of Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller, who in 1934 stated, “We must emphasize with all decisiveness that Christianity did not grow out of Judaism but developed in opposition to Judaism. When we speak of Christianity and Judaism today, the two in their most fundamental essence stand in glaring contrast to one another. There is no bond between them, rather the sharpest opposition.”13

Not one mention of the Norse and Aryan mythology which influenced Nazism.

No mention of SS colonel Walther WW&#bc;st who based the concept of a Nazi religion on Vedic and Buddhist writings.

No mention of Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, SS captain and founder of the “German Faith Movement,” who based his vision of the Nazi war machine on the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist works.

No mention of SS brigadier Karl Maria Wiligut who claimed to work with the Tibetan Lamaist monasteries.

No mention of Ernst Schafer and Bruno Beger who were SS Tibetan researchers who lead the SS Tibet expedition and who were highly influenced by the concepts of war in Tibetan Buddhism.

No mention of Karl Haushofer, who based Nazism on Shinto state fascism.

No mention of Eugen Herrigel and Karlfried DD&#bc;rckheim who taught Zen Buddhism as a corollary between Nazism and Zen philosophy.

No mention of Julius Evola, who based his fascist philosophy on Buddhist and Tantric concepts.

No mention of Otto Rahn, SS mystic, who was heavily influenced by Buddhism.

No mention of Jean Marques-Riviere, Head of the French secret police who collaborator with the SS and who was heavily influenced by Tibetan Kalachakra Tantra.

No mention of Jacques Bergier, Louis Pauwels and Trevor Ravenscroft, who conceived the “Nazi mysteries” and drew correlations between Nazism and Indo-Tibetan Shambhala myths.

No mention of Wilhelm Landig, Rudolf J. Mund and Jan van Helsing who correlated Nazism with Tibetan – Mongolian Lamaism and stated that the esoteric teachings of Nazism both have their source in Atlantis.

No mention of Miguel Serrano who was influenced by Tantric works and considered Hitler to be an avatar of Krishna-Vishnu.

No mention of Eugen Herrigel and Karlfried Durckheim, who correlated Zen Buddhism and Nazism.

Lastly, no mention of a litany of philosophers who influenced Hitler which I quote from Joe Keysor who has conducted an survey of these and beginning with a reference to H. S. Chamberlain (1855-1927) as:

the racist anti-Semitic philosopher who endorsed Hitler and had a lot in common with him…wrote at length on the Jewish threat. His views were close or identical in many ways to those of his father-in-law, Richard Wagner [(1813-1883) who]…had a deep hatred of Jews, saw them as the source of Germany’s social ills, and is claimed by many to have had a deep influence on Hitler through his anti-Semitic writings….[Chamberlain] wrote a book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (published in 1899), that contained many parallels to Hitler’s thought (not only Aryan supremacy, but also anti-Semitic phobias…). He fervently embraced Hitler and identified him as the coming savior of Germany when the latter was still a minor figure with no apparent chance of success….the 25 points of the Nazi party platform were identical to Wagner’s agenda….

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)…expressed the idea that the Jews wanted to obey God only for the sake of the blessing she would give them, for material benefit…they were ‘materialistic,’ indifferent to higher philosophical truths, and selfishly sought nothing but their own earthly advantage. This became a standard theme of later Folkish anti-Semites and of the Nazis as well. Hitler stressed it in Mein Kampf [ vol. 1chapt. 11, ‘Nation and Race’]….

It has been asserted that Kant set the stage for modern secular anti-Semitism…Kant’s fundamental antinomy (free enlightened humanity versus Jews enslaved to materialism) provided the framework for future anti-Semites, notably the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel and the musician Richard Wagner. Since Wagner in particular was a cultural hero for Adolf Hitler, Kant’s own anti-Semitism can be seen as having a far-reaching effect….

If someone who lived 400 years before Hitler and wrote in the Protestant Reformation could have a great influence, or if someone who lived many centuries before in Roman Palestine could have an influence, could someone who died less than a century before Hitler was born also have an influence? Luther made negative comments about Jews-so did Kant. Hitler used the latter’s reasoning, not the former’s…
‘Kant was a particular favorite among academic philosophers of the Third Reich!’ This seems rather improbable, yet at his trial Adolf Eichmann made some comments about Kant that indicate how this might have been possible. Discussing Kant’s ethics, Eichmann said ‘for someone like myself fit is not possible to understand all of the subject of Kant completely; instead, I only took from these writings what I could understand, and what my imagination could somehow grasp’…

[French philosopher and champion of the Enlightenment; Voltaire (1694-1778)] His views of Jews were less enlightened: ‘They are all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and The Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not someday become deadly to the human race.’ Voltaire went on to condemn Jews for ‘their stubbornness, their new superstitions, and their hallowed usury.’ Addressing the Jews directly, Voltaire wrote, ‘You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny’….

Gobineau (1816-1882), a Frenchman, has been called the father of modern racism. His belief that racial purity was essential to the survival of a people, that pure races rose and dominated while impure races decayed and fell, was popular in Germany and became central to the Folkish movement. It was also a theme Hitler stressed in Mein Kampf and was basic to his ‘philosophy’…historian Paul Johnson states that just as Marx presented a theory of history driven by material, economic forces, so Hitler presented a theory of history driven by racial conflict (p. 296). He doesn’t mention the importance of Gobineau, who articulated this idea long before Hitler. This is not to deny significant differences between Gobineau and later German racists – Gobineau was not anti-Semitic, for example. Lenin also modified Marx’s ideas, but the connection is still indisputably there…

Dietrich Eckart, known by historians to have had a significant influence on the young Hitler, wrote ‘The Jew has no sense of the experience of what is eternal or of the need of immortality. Ergo: he has no soul, and is therefore the opposite pole of the Germans, who are always striving for something higher. They are as light is to darkness’…

In The Antichrist at any rate, Nietzsche described Jews as bloodsuckers and vampires who destroyed Roman civilization through their invention of Christianity. He found some good qualities in the warlike early Hebrews (hence a few positive comments about Jews that Nietzsche’s defenders emphasize), but saw later biblical Judaism as a traudulent invention of the priests. He identified Judaism as the source of Christianity which he loathed, and explicitly equated Jews with Christians. The Antichrist, which not only reveals a flaming hatred of Jews but also advocates the extermination of the weak and glorifies pitiless cruelty as a virtue, has been consistently misrepresented by Nietzsche’s disciples…

Georg von Schonerer (1842-1921) was the leader of the Austrian Pan-Germans, a racist and anti-Semitic organization that has been identified as an immediate ancestor of the Nazi party. Hitler commended von Schonerer for his correct understanding of the Jewish question, but criticized him for his inability to connect with the masses and for his lack of effectiveness as a political leader [vol. I chapt. 3, ‘General Political Considerations Based on my Vienna Period’].
Von Schonerer had an ‘Away from Rome’ policy, and Hitler’s comments on this shed light on his own policy toward the churches. Hitler stated that von Schonerer’s policy served only to alienate large numbers of people and cost him much valuable political support. Moreover, von Schonerer’s attacks on Rome did not harm the church in the least but only intensified the devotion of its followers. It was much better, Hitler stated, to focus on a single enemy and thus draw supporters from different camps. The relevance of this to Hitler’s policy of trying to limit the churches without attacking them head on does not need to be elaborated on.”14

From Zeitgeist to Poltergeist, Part 9 of 13

“National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable”
-Martin Borman, Head of the Nazi Chancellery1

The Topics Covered in This Essay Are As Follows:
Anti-Christian Nazism

Anti-Christian Nazism
Albert Einstein:

“Being a lover of freedom, when the (Nazi) revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks…Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”2

Joe Keysor wrote:

“There is another concept of God – Martin Bormann’s:
When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not understand by God, like naive Christians…a human-type being, who sits around somewhere in space…The force of natural law, with which all these innumerable planets move in the universe, we call the Almighty or God. The claim that this world force is concerned about the fate of every single being, of every smallest earth bacilIus, or can be influenced by so called prayers or other astonishing things, is based on a proper dose of naivety or alternatively on a commercial shamelessness…The more accurately we recognize and observe the laws of nature and of life, the more we adhere to them, so much the more do we conform to the will of the Almighty….”3

Joe Keysor further notes,

“It is commonly assumed that since Germany was a fundamentally Christian culture, any references by Hitler to ‘God’ should be understood in that context. This mistake derives from three sources: (a) eagerness to discredit Christianity; (b) ignorance of German cultural history; and (c) ignorance of biblical Christianity.”4

Also,

“Wagner thought that Christianity had originated in India, and sought-like Chamberlain-to purify it of its Jewish corruptions. Needless to say, when he was finished with his ‘purifications,’ Christ was nothing more than a philosophical symbol of dying to self, ‘divine’ in a limited sense only. The reader may recall Hitler’s attempt to ‘purify’ the Bible in his page of study notes discussed in chapter I of this study. The extent to which Hitler mayor may not have read Wagner’s numerous writings is debated. Viereck, who unlike some read a lot of Wagner, sees strong evidence that Hitler not merely read Wagner but studied him and was deeply influenced by him….
It is one of the most important yet little-known aspects of modern German anti-Semitism, that it included hostility to the Jews for having introduced false concepts via Christianity. This can be seen in the writings of Haeckel, Wagner, and Chamberlin…[and] Nietzsche.”5

Joseph Goebbels had noted:

“The Pope has made a Christmas speech. Full of bitter, covert attacks against the Reich and National Socialism. All the forces of internationalism are against us. We must break them.”6 He also viewed the Vatican as the “spiritual competitor of Nazism.”7

Peter Reydt, “Nazism and the myth of the ‘master-race’” – Britain’s Channel Four Secret History documentary on “Hitler’s search for the Holy Grail”:

“Himmler set out to re-establish an ancient Aryan religion within Germany in opposition to Christianity, as a basis for Nazi ideology…On 10 March 1937, SS officers gathered in Munich to listen to a lecture by Professor Wust [Walter Wust, a leading expert on India], with the title ‘Mein Kampf as the mirror of the Aryan worldview’. In it, Wust claims a ‘similarity between the words of the FF&#bc;hrer and those of that other great Aryan personality, the Buddha…the basic idea of racial identity and the sacred concept of ancestral heritage.'”

See part 8 for more on this.

The Nazis planned “to capture and use church organization for their own purposes” and “to secure the elimination of Christian influences in the German church by legal or quasi legal means.”8

“Italian generals said that ‘no country can ask Italy, cradle of Christianity and law, to be associated with these (Nazi) acts.'”9

Baldur von Scvhirach (lead the group which became the “Hitler youth”), “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement.”10

Claire Hulme and Dr. Michael Salter, The Nazi’s Persecution of Religion as a War Crime: The OSS’S Response Within the Nuremberg Trials Process (Humle is a current LLM research degree candidate at the University of Central Lancashire. LLB University of Central Lancashire. Slater is a Professor of Law, University of Central Lancashire. LLB Southampton University; Ph.D. University of Sheffield).


“Christian Churches were amongst the early victims of Nazi war criminality….

Throughout the period of National Socialist rule, the Nazis employed a combination of ‘lawful’ and criminal devices to persecute the Churches in a cynically opportunistic manner designed to minimise damage to their other interests…

The various Christian Churches were systematically cut off from effective communication with the people…

measures taken against the Christian Churches were an integral part of the National Socialist scheme of world conquest…

senior members of the Catholic Church had resisted Hitler’s policies by insisting – through their priests – on the essentially unchristian character of National Socialism. [Fabian Von] Schlabrendorff recalled that ‘quite a number of the lower clerics ended up in prison or in a concentration camp’11…

Through a series of incremental stages, this [totalitarian] system abolished the very distinction between the Nazi Party and the institutions of the German State and other public institutions within civil society, including the Churches, which could otherwise mediate or limit the Nazi’s political authority…planned ultimate destruction of the Christian Churches included a campaign of persecution of the Christian clergy together with ‘a large body of anti-Semitic and discriminatory laws’…
the SA [Sturmabteilungen: Stormtroopers] persecuted and destroyed Christian and Jewish institutions and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state as an integral part of a militaristic campaign…

The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of persecution of priests, clergy and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes and confiscated Church property…

This statement [a document dated 11-19-1945 containing statements by five German Generals] claims that the majority of the Army’s officer corps rejected and opposed many of the Nazi’s domestic policies as ‘unworthy of the German nation,’ including all forms of religious persecution. The Nazi’s leadership undertook such persecution with neither the advice nor the consent of the Army, who – in common with many Church leaders – represented one of the many semiautonomous institutions of German society that the Nazi regime had to subvert in order to fulfil [sic] its own political and genocidal programs…

the persecution of the Churches is represented as one part of a wider unacceptable programme involving Hitler’s policies on Jews, the indoctrination of youth…

domestic atrocities against the Churches, Jews and others civilians committed from 1933 onwards…Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth Leader…had, as Gauleiter of Vienna, initiated wartime measures persecuting the Churches in Austria, administered slave labor programmes and deported remaining Viennese Jews.”

Alfred Rosenberg (Nazi ideologue, German politician, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories and prominent member of the neo-pagan Thule Society) “drew up a thirty-point program for a new ‘National Reich Church’, which he hoped could replace Christianity entirely following victory in the war” (Encyclopedia Database). Following are some of his 30 points which make is undeniably clear that the Nazi plan was to supplant the Christian church by replacing the Bible, Christian symbolism and rituals with a race and nation centered focus. Whoever the “God” which this church served was, one thing is undeniable, it was certainly not the Biblical God of the Judeo-Christian Bible.

“The National Reich’s Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich; it declares these to be national churches

The German people must not serve the National Reich Church. The National Reich Church is absolutely and exclusively in the service of but one doctrine: race and nation

…The Church will do everything within its power to secure the adherence of every German soul. Other churches or similar communities and unions particularly such as are under international control or management cannot and shall not be tolerated in Germany.

The National Reich Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably and by every means the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.

The National Reich Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains or priests but National Reich orators are to speak in them…National Reich Church orators may never be those who today emphasize with all tricks and cunning verbally and in writing the necessity of maintaining and teaching of Christianity in Germany…National Reich Church orators hold office, government officials under Civil Service rules.

The National Reich Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany as well as the publication of Sunday papers, pamphlets, publications and books of a religious nature. The National Reich Church has to take severe measures in order to prevent the Bible and other Christian publications being imported into Germany. The National Reich Church declares that to it, and therefore to the German nation, it has been decided that the Fuhrer’s ‘Mein Kampf’ is the greatest of all documents. It is conscious that this book contains and embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation. The National Reich Church has made it its sacred duty to use all its energy to popularize the coeternal ‘Mein Kampf’ and to let every German live and complete his life according to this book. The National Reich Church will clear away from its altars all crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of Saints. On the altars there must be nothing but ‘Mein Kampf’, which is to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book, and to the left of the altar a sword.

The National Reich Church does not acknowledge forgiveness of sins. It represents the standpoint which it will always proclaim that a sin once committed will be ruthlessly punished by the honorable and indestructible laws of nature and punishment will follow during the sinner’s lifetime.

The National Reich Church repudiates the christening of German children…abolishes confirmation and religious education as well as the communion the religious preparation for the communion…The marriage ceremony of German men and women will consist of taking an oath of faithfulness and placing the right hand on the sword…The National Reich Church rejects the customary day of prayer and atonement

On the day of its foundation, the Christian cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels within the Reich and its colonies and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol of Germany the ‘Hakenkreuz’ (swastika).”

Heinrich Himmler wrote,

“I am to prepare a new Nazi religion. I am to draft the new Bible, the Bible of the faith …The Fuhrer has decided that, after the victory of the Third Reich, he will abolish Christianity throughout Great Germany, and establish the faith on its ruins. The latter will preserve the idea of God, but it will be very vague and indistinct. The Fuhrer will replace Christ as the savior of humanity. Thus, millions and millions of people will say only Hitler’s name in their prayers, and a hundred years from now nothing wi1l be known but the new religion, which will endure for centuries.”12

BBC News, “Nazi Trial Documents Made Public“:

“documents used as evidence in the Nuremberg war crimes trials…shows how the Nazis planned to supplant Christianity with a religion based on racial superiority…

The report, prepared by the Office of Strategic Services – a forerunner of the CIA – says: ‘Important leaders of the National Socialist party would have liked… complete extirpation of Christianity and the substitution of a purely racial religion.’ ‘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,’ it said. ‘Different steps in that persecution, such as the campaign for the suppression of denominational and youth organisations [sic], the campaign against denominational schools, the defamation campaign against the clergy, started on the same day in the whole area of the Reich…and were supported by the entire regimented press, by Nazi Party meetings, by travelling party speakers.’

Project editor Julie Seltzer Mandel believes the first instalment [sic] presents a different perspective on Nazi persecution. ‘A lot of people will say, ‘I didn’t realize that they were trying to convert Christians to a Nazi philosophy’, Ms Mandel, a third year law student, told Philadelphia’s The Inquirer newspaper.
‘They wanted to eliminate Jews altogether, but they were also looking to eliminate Christianity.'”

Cornell Law Library, “Relationship of the German Churches to Hitler,” this document is Fabian Von Schlabrendorff’s memo to General William J. Donovan dated 25 October 1945. “The German Churches” referred to are the Catholic Church which “was politically represented by the Center-Party (Zentrumspartei), the Bavarian People’s Party (Bayerische Volkspartei) and the Christian Trade-Unions (Christliche Gewerkschaften)”:

“these three groups stood in opposition to Hitler from the beginning, the Catholic Church before 1933 found itself in quite an obvious enmity towards the Nazis. As for the Protestant Church, this was not true in the extent it was in the Catholic church. Because there are no politics in the Protestant church. Therefore it may be said that before 1933 there was no relationship, either of a friendly or of an enemy nature, between Hitler on the one hand and the two churches on the other hand…

Immediately after Hitler had seized the power, National Socialism showed itself as an ideology plainly opposed to Christianism. Only a minority among the princes of the Catholic Church like for example Bishop Berning from Osnabruck and later Cardinal Innitzer from Vienna tried to show a friendly attitude towards Hitler. The majority of the princes of the Catholic Church left no doubt in their declarations and pastoral letters that there was no bridge between Naziism and the Catholic Church. As the years went by, the attitude of the Catholic Church became ever clearer. The rejection of Hitler became more and more obvious. Because of the hierarchic organizations of the Catholic Church, the denunciation of Hitler was propagated by the majority of the Catholic clergy in the land. The result of this was the [sic] enmity towards Hitler was promulgated not only by the high clerics but was also carried to the masses by the low clerics. This decisive credit for this attitude ought to be given to Cardinal von Faulhaber from Munich and whose personal sermons branded Naziism as the enemy of Christendom…

quite a number of the lower clerics ended up in prison or in a concentration camp. Also in the political resistance movement did the representatives of the Catholic Church play an important role…

Joseph Muller [lawyer and political representative of the Archdiocese of Munich] had orders from the Catholic Church to negotiate with representatives of the Protestant Church in order to harmonize their measures in the struggle against Hitler…

The Protestant Church in Germany does not have hierarchic but a democratic constitution…That is why the struggle of the Protestant Church against Hitler became much more difficult. If it was the clerics that bore the brunt of the struggle within the Catholic Church it was the congregation which became the nest of resistance within the Protestant Church…

All these men [various Protestant ministers] had taken up the fight against Hitler in speeches and in writings. But the majority of them was [sic] silenced by being put into the concentration camp or by being prohibited to speak or write. That did not prevent their followers from continuing the struggle…In spite of all prohibitions the Protestant Church…created an organization which helped to save the life of thousands of Jews…

Dietrich Bonhoffer…contacted the Protestant churches in Europe outside of Germany, informed them about the events in Germany and so created a common bond between resistance movements in Germany and Hitler’s enemies outside of Germany…He was later executed…

The resistance movement of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany had the following:A. The Churches have furnished the political resistance movement with spiritual and religious weapons.B. The Churches have carried the idea of the resistance against Hitler into the large masses of the people. Many ministers of both churches have become martyrs because of their resistance.

C. The Churches, thru their connections with foreign countries, have informed the world of the events that took place in Germany and have constantly kept contact with non-German resistance-groups.”

Martin Borman, head of the Nazi Chancellery, wrote the following in a publication entitled, “Relationship of National Socialism and Christianity”:

“National Socialist and Christian concepts are irreconcilable. Our National Socialist ideology is far loftier than the concepts of Christianity, which, in their essential points, have been taken over from Jewry. For this reason also, we do not need Christianity. If, therefore, in the future our youth learns nothing more of this Christianity, whose doctrines are far below ours, Christianity will disappear by itself. It follows from the irreconcilability of National Socialist and Christian concepts that a strengthening of existing confessions and every demand of originating Christian confessions is to be rejected by us. A differentiation between the various Christian confessions is not to be made here. For this reason, also, the thought of an erection of an Evangelical National Church by merger of the various Evangelical churches has been definitely given up, because the Evangelical Church is just as inimicable to us as the Catholic Church. Any strengthening of the Evangelical Church would merely react against us.”

“For the first time in German history, the Fuehrer consciously and completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand. With the Party, its components, and attached units, the Fuehrer has created for himself, and thereby the German Reich leadership, an instrument which makes him independent of the Church. All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer, with the help of the NSDAP, must be eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This influence must be broken completely and finally.”

“Only the Reich Government and, by its direction, the Party, its components and attached units have a right to leadership of the people. Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers, seers and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of Church influence also be totally removed. Not until this has happened, does the State leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are people and Reich secure in their existence for all the future.”

In a 1940 letter Bormann wrote:

“Christianity and National Socialism are phenomena which originated from entirely different basic causes. Both differ fundamentally so strongly, that it will not be possible to construct a Christian teaching which would be completely compatible with the point of view of the National Socialist ideology; just as the communications of Christian faith would never be able to stand by the ideology of National Socialism in its entirety.”

In 1941 Bormann’s office issued a letter recommending the replacing of “the confessional and general prayers…by national socialist mottos.”

Joe Sharkey, “Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler’s Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity“

“In the 1920’s, as they battled for power, the Nazis realized that the churches in overwhelmingly Christian Germany needed to be neutralized before they would get anywhere…

the Nazis simply lied and made deals with the churches while planning a ‘slow and cautious policy of gradual encroachment’ to eliminate Christianity. The prosecution investigators describe this as a criminal conspiracy. ‘This general plan had been established even before the rise of the Nazis to power,’ the outline says. ‘It apparently came out of discussions among an inner circle’ comprised of Hitler himself, other top Nazi leaders including the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, and a collection of party enforcers and veteran beer-hall agitators…

This facilitated plans ‘to capture and use the church organization for their own purposes’ and ‘to secure the elimination of Christian influences in the Evangelical Church by legal or quasi legal means’…

Of course, the churches stayed in Hitler’s good graces for only as long as the Nazis considered their cooperation expedient. Soon after Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, ‘relations between the Nazi state and the church became progressively worse’…

The Nazis ‘took advantage of their subsequently increasing strength to violate every one of the Concordat’s [that was signed between the Reich and the Roman Catholic Holy See] provisions’…

In 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced Nazi treachery in an encyclical that accused Hitler of ‘a war of extermination’ against the church. The battle had been joined on some fronts. Nazi street mobs, often in the company of the Gestapo, routinely stormed offices in Protestant and Catholic churches where clergymen were seen as lax in their support of the regime…

‘The Catholic Church need not imagine that we are going to create martyrs,’ Robert Wagner, the Nazi Gauleiter of Baden, said in a speech, according to the O.S.S. study. ‘We shall not give the church that satisfaction. She shall have not martyrs, but criminals’…the Nazis [also] arrested 700 Protestant pastors.”

‹ From Zeitgeist to Poltergeist, Part 8 of 13 up