We will not consider each of the quotes that I provided in the previous segment:
I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.
What providence? Who’s providence? Anyone who knows Adolf Hitler knows that the answer is “Hitler’s ‘providence.’” To Hitler, “God” was that which approved of and guided his actions, “Jesus” was not a Jew, the “Bible” was Jewish propaganda that was to be replaced by Mein Kampf, etc. Consider the following quote:
In a speech at Munich in 193,6 he said, ‘I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker’, and his biographer says of him:
It was in this sense of mission that Hitler, a man who believed neither in God nor in conscience (‘a Jewish invention, a blemish like circumcision’), found both justification and absolution. He was the Siegfried come to reawaken Germany to greatness, for whom morality, suffering and ‘the litany of private virtues’ were irrelevant. It was by such dreams that he sustained the ruthlessness and determination of his own will….Hitler played out his ‘world-historical’ role to the bitter end. But it was this same belief which curtained him into illusion and blinded him to what was actually happening, leading him into that arrogant overestimation of his own genius which brought him to defeat. The sin which Hitler committed was that which the ancient Greeks called hybris, the sin of overweening pride, of believing himself to be more than a man.[1]
Perhaps, in my claim that I see no direct evidence of Hitler being an atheist I will have to consider the words of Hitler very own biographer who claimed that Hitler did not believe in God. In any regard, I claimed that the providence to which Hitler referred was “Hitler’s ‘providence’” and here it is, “he sustained the ruthlessness and determination of his own will.”
I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work. This is an argument from personal credulity; he can believe whatever he wants but he is simply wrong. His actions were towards the goal of “warding off the Jews” and this is “fighting for the Lord’s work.” Yet, what does the New Testament state about the Jews and the Lord’s work?
Here are mere examples:
What advantage then has the Jew…Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God… (Romans 3:1-2).
I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not!…God has not cast away His people…you [Gentile Christians], being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them [the Jews], and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches [the Jews]…Do not be haughty…they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience (gleaned from Romans ch. 11).
As for the “Lord’s work”:
Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent” (John 6:28-29).
The Catholic Church should not deceive herself…Man cannot exist without belief in God….
Indeed, Hitler, the Roman Catholic, sought to protect the Roman Catholic church and thereby promulgate his faith in God. Not so. Need it be pointed out that this was stated to a Cardinal? Is that surprising? Note the other side of the Hitlerian manipulation coin. While General Ludendorff spoke out against the Catholic Church, Hitler stated
I entirely agree with His Excellency…but I need, for the building up of a great political movement, the Catholics of Bavaria just as the Protestants of Prussia, the rest can come later.[2] He also stated,
The enemies of National Socialism include not only the “Jewish Marxists” and the Catholics but also certain elements of an incorrigible, stupid and reactionary bourgeoisie.[3]
“Yea!” when it is convenient and “Nay!” when it is convenient.
Joe Keysor notes:
…in March of 1937 a papal encyclical (Mil Brennender Sorge) was read in Catholic churches throughout Germany. It objected to the Nazi cult of race, and called for resistance to perversions of Christian doctrine and morality…This encyclical referred directly to the persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany.[4]
Hitler – 1933
Let us now go to the Hitler of 1933 and consider the quote that Austin Cline provided:
14. Adolf Hitler: Doing Justice to God
To do justice to God and our own conscience, we have turned once more to the German Volk. – Adolf Hitler in speech about the need for a moral regeneration of German, February 10, 1933…
16. Adolf Hitler: May God Bless Us
May divine providence bless us with enough courage and enough determination to perceive within ourselves this holy German space. – Adolf Hitler, Speech, March 24, 193317. Adolf Hitler: When We Appear Before God…
We don’t ask the Almighty, ‘Lord, make us free!” We want to be active, to work, to work together, so that when the hour comes that we appear before the Lord we can say to him: ‘Lord, you see that we have changed.’ The German people is no longer a people of dishonor and shame, of self-destructiveness and cowardice. No, Lord, the German people is once more strong in spirit, strong in determination, strong in the willingness to bear every sacrifice. Lord, now bless our battle and our freedom, and therefore our German people and fatherland. – Adolf Hitler, Prayer, May 1, 1933
These are quite simple to review as the common thread which they share, the emphasis, is not God but in each case: Germany and the German people. Hitler’s consuming motivation was not serving God but nation and race: Germany and the Aryans/Germans. “God” what whatever would approve of and assist in purifying Aryan/German blood and restore Germany to greatness.
In the next segment we will consider the quotes from “Mein Kampf.”
[1] Richard Cavendish, The Powers of Evil in Western Religion, Magic and Folk Belief (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 77-78
[2] Geoffrey Pridham, The Rise of Hitler to Power (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973), p. 148
[3] Speech by Hitler, 1 April 1933. David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, 1997 reprint, p. 65
[4] Joey Keysor, Hitler, the Holocaust and the Bible (Athanatos Publishing Group: pre-release review ed., 2009), p. 87