“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.”