IX. The Nazi Party Platform's support of "positive" Christianity was a carefully calculated political tactic devoid of any biblical principle. Other parts of the Platform were merely propaganda and Hitler made no attempt to carry them out after coming to power.

Point 24 of the NSDAP platform reads:

We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.

The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the principle:

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD
[www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Points.html]

This has been used to prove the Nazi-Christian connection - however, Point 2 stresses the equality of Germans with other nations, and we all know how sincerely Hitler was committed to that principle; Point 6 affirms the Nazi belief in democracy ("The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens") - it also objects to giving people posts on the basis of party affiliation. Someone who based their understanding of Hitler and the Third Reich on this platform would, frankly, be an idiot.

Some points refer to the socialist emphasis of National Socialism and were abandoned before Hitler came to power (he needed the support of wealthy undustrialists). Point 11 demanded the abolition of unearned income; Points 12 and 13 call for the abolition of war profits (which would have been bad news for the Krupps and other industrialists, if it had ever been sincerely applied) and the nationalization of trusts.

Point 22 demands the abolition of the regular army, which of course Hitler never even attempted to carry out; Point 23 demonstrates Hitler's love of honesty and journalistic integrity - it forbids political lies in the press (no doubt Goebbels and Hitler got a chuckle out of that one); Point 25 calls for "the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations."

Anyone who has a real understanding of the Third Reich, not to mention politics in general, understands that this party platform was meant to appeal to the electorate and did not fully express Hitler's deepest inner thoughts. When this was drawn up, Hitler was still a minor figure trying to appeal to as many people as possible, and he put together a pleasant mixture of lies, truths, and half truths to deceive the gullible electorate.

As to Point 24, it calls for "freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race." This meant freedom for all religions that did not contradict Naziism. The following reference to "positive Christianity" meant, as anyone with any knowledge of the subject is aware, Christianity purged of its "Jewish elements" and totally submissive to Naziism on all key points.

Peter Viereck's book Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind has some comments about German or Positive Christianity that reflect real knowledge of the subject and merit repetition:

Already in the 1880's Professor Paul de Lagarde was rejecting much of Christianity as Jewish. He replaced it by a compromise between Christianity and a new racist religion of the German Volk. From these ideas of Lagarde and Houston Stewart Chamberlain sprang Hitler's "positive Christianity," which is instilled into German youth today. [p. 168][Viereck's book was first published in 1941].

Speaking about Lagarde, Viereck goes on to say:

...his Oriental scholarship led him to a new interpretation of the bible by which the Jews are the arch-fiends of history and by which the Christian churches, save where purged of their Jewish origins by a German "awakening," are the curse of the Nordic super race [p. 169].

A few more illuminating comments from the same source are sufficient to explain this unique (and now fortunately extinct) attempt to conform Christianity to a false philosophy of the world. Referring to Alfred Rosenberg, appointed by Hitler in 1934 to be the Director of Party Education in Weltanschauung, Viereck says Rosenberg sought to make Christianity conform to the new revelation of Naziism. Rosenberg

...regards Christ as one of a long line of Aryan heroes, ranging from Wotan and Siegfried to Wagner and Hitler. Rosenberg "proves" Christ an anti-Semitic descendant of Atlantis....Lagarde, Chamberlain, and Rosenberg are all anti-Old-Testament and anti-church and dub Saint Paul the villain of the drama.

Saint Paul, according to these three writers, betrayed Jesus by founding his church on that obnoxious Judaism which He died to destroy. Thereby the Christian churches became just one more mask of the Jews, allied with Freemasons, Marxists, Tibetan lamas, and international bankers. The most villainous church of all is the Catholic because it is the most international [pp. 282-3].

Also referred to is the admiration of the aforementioned "theologians" - Lagarde, Chamberlain, and Rosenberg - for Martin Luther - "not Luther the great Christian, but Luther the German nationalist rebelling against the Mediterranean world and against Renaissance humanism" [p. 283]. Chamberlain saw Luther as a political hero, not a religious one, who "founded 'the future of German nationalism' by 'emancipating' the nordic from international Rome" [p. 283]. One last quote is instructive: "Luther is sharply distinguished from the Lutheran church; the latter must be exterminated in so far as it uses "the Jewish Bible" (the Old Testament) and rejects racism" [p. 283].

This new creed was compatible with National Socialism and hence useful for propaganda purposes. Someone who gave the following sermon after Hitler came to power would have suffered swift retribution for his Negative Christianity:

"Germany's defeat was God's judgement and we should accept his will. The Versailles Treaty is unquestionably unjust, but hatred and revenge will only make a bad situation worse. What is most important is, where will you spend eternity? What will it profit you if Germany is a great and mighty nation, but you die and stand before God only to be rejected and sent to hell? What will it harm you if Germany loses territory, but you die and stand before God and are accepted into paradise, where all of the trials and sufferings of the world will seem like nothing? We have all sinned, and are guilty of sin before a righteous and holy God, but in Jesus Christ God has revealed to us the sure and only way to find forgiveness and eternal life. In fact, we can rejoice in Germany's defeat and humiliation if, stripped of our vain and evil pride, we are left with nothing, and forced to realize the worthlessness of human power and glory, and left with nowhere to turn but Christ. Also, there are some who are asserting that the Germans are a superior race. This is not what the bible teaches. It says in the book of Acts that God 'has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.' Jew and Gentile, we are all under the same condemnation for sin..."


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