Hitler, antisemitism, and Christianity

If we want to understand the holocaust, the most detailed possible examination of Hitler's life prior to 1918 will yield no clues. In his years of heavy reading prior to joining the army he was exposed to a number of books and writers whose influence can be discerned in later years, but whatever impression they may have made on the young Hitler remains concealed behind a facade of normality. Of course, there must have been some personal, internal conflicts - hostility toward his father, probably; frustration over his failure to fulfill his artistic ambitions, maybe; a certain metaphysical or spiritual emptiness which only true faith in God can fill - we will never know the details of Hitler's adolescent psychological and emotional development. Fortunately, that is not necessary to our purpose. Hitler's thought, once it reached a certain level of development, fits very definitely into distinct and clearly recognizable patterns evident in Germany long before 1914, and explicitly articulated by thinkers whose parallels with Hitler are unmistakable. The Holocaust was the result of distinct thought processes that can be generally delineated - it being recognized of course that behind the men who articulated these philosophies there were also the spiritual powers of evil and deceit of which they were the mouthpieces. It was from these same sinister and invisible higher powers of evil that Hitler received not merely his ideas, but more importantly his passion and his mysterious power, without which he would have remained a mere intellectual eccentric - one extreme nationalist and racial supremacist out of many.

Hitler's antisemitism

Before examining the philosophical background out of which Hitler emerged, a brief discussion of some aspects of his antisemitism and his religious views is appropriate. They should be discussed here, rather than later, as to some extent they were the direct result of his personal experiences, and so can be considered separately from more "intellectual" influences. Hitler's attitudes toward the Jews originated from four areas: the spiritual, the philosophical, the personal, and the temporal. As to the temporal, that includes the political and economic developments which transpired in Germany around and after the end of the Great War. The personal refers, obviously, to Hitler's experience of those events, but also to previously mentioned internal emotional and psychological developments which as has just been said remain concealed. The philosophical refers to certain thinkers whose works and ideas will be examined more closely later. That will involve an examination of modern racial as opposed to traditional religious antisemitism. The spiritual has been discussed at length already. In his attempt to exterminate the Jews, Hitler was outwardly acting out a certain philosophy, but in reality was serving Satan, the Prince of Darkness, and acting out the Devil's malignant hatred toward the people through whom God revealed himself to the world through Christ, the apostles, Moses, and the prophets.

Germany in defeat

It appears from available evidence that Hitler was not seriously committed to antisemitism until after the end of the war. Since Frank states this comprehensively yet concisely, another excerpt from his website is in order. Although many historians like to state that Hitler was a Jew hater during and before the war, the evidence is to the contrary. His comrades at the front, including Schmidt, never heard Hitler make any serious anti-Jewish remarks.* In discussions with his other messenger friend, Westenkirchner, about the great influence the Jews had in Vienna politics, Hitler never spoke about it with "spitefulness,"* even though Vienna was one of the first places where strikes broke out against the war and which had a large Jewish participation. As for other people, like Hans Mend, who accused Hitler of being anti-Semitic during the war, their comments came much later when they had some political advantage to gain.* The only reliable negative comment Hitler ever made to his comrades about the Jews during the war concerned a Jewish telephone operator named Stein whom Hitler considered not too bright and said: "If all Jews were no more intelligent than Stein, then there wouldn't be trouble."* Such a statement shows that Hitler was well aware of the large part that Jews played in the leadership of the Socialists and Communists parties. He, nonetheless, did not single out the Jews at that point or rail against them. As Lieutenant Wiedemann stated later: "It really seems impossible for me to believe that Hitler's hatred for Jews dated back to that time."* As Dr. Rudolph Binion wrote: "On balance, the evidence that he was not an anti-Semite until after World War I, despite his own account in Mein Kampf, is compelling."* Hitler also served side by side with Jewish soldiers and was often under Jewish officers; yet, no one of Jewish decent ever came forward to state that Hitler was "anti-Semitic" during the war. Hugo Gutmann, the officer who initiated and presented Hitler with his Iron Cross First Class was a Jew.** [III. 12] Extant letters written by Hitler during the war bear no trace of antisemitism. Reinhold Hanisch, who had known Hitler well in Vienna and had sold paintings for him, asserted that Hitler at that time saw merit in the poems of Heinrich Heine, and in the music of Mahler and Mendelssohn. Also, while living in Vienna, Hitler sent a postcard to Eduard Bloch, the Jewish doctor who had treated his mother while she was dying of cancer. The card read, "A toast to the New Year," and after friendly greetings ended with the words, "In everlasting thankfulness, Adolf Hitler" [II. 6]. In Mein Kampf Hitler stated that his antisemitism began shortly after he moved to Vienna, but it would have been to his advantage to backdate his antisemitic awakening. Kubizek remembered his friend having made some antisemitic statements, but those could have been casual and thoughtless comments in keeping with the cultural antisemitism acceptable in that time, and not necessarily indicative of a deeply seated hatred. At any rate, it is not difficult to see how Hitler's hostility could have been inflamed by the bitterness of defeat and by subsequent events. Certainly, if Germany had won the First World War and the old order had remained intact, antisemitism could not have had nearly such a powerful appeal. Given the condemnation of the Jewish people as a whole (conservative or liberal, secular or religious) by such thinkers as Wagner and Nietzsche, with whose ideas Hitler was familiar (as will be discussed later in this essay), the prominence of even a few Jews in German socialist and communist movements would have been (to a diseased mind) striking confirmation of Nietzsche's dictum in the Antichrist that the Jews were behind every form of decadence. What to a logical mind would have been the activity of a few appeared to the illogical mind as proof of the degenerative power of Judaism. A small handful of Jews were prominent in post-war left-wing revolutionary movements. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, both Jews, led an unsuccessful attempt to seize power in Berlin and establish a Soviet state. Kurt Eisner, another Jew, led a revolution that established a "Bavarian People's Republic" in Munich. After Eisner was assassinated, two more Jews, Ernst Toller and Gustav Landauer, set up a new leftist government, called it the "Bavarian Soviet Republic" and sought to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat." They were subsidized by Moscow, and the government was eventually taken over by another Jew, Eugen Levine, who had been sent by the head of the Communist Party in Germany, Paul Levi. Levine's right hand man was, according to Frank, Max Levien, another Jew [III. 13]. The communists that seized power in Hungary about this time were led by a Jew, Bela Kun. Trotsky was a Jew, as of course was Karl Marx - obviously, clearly, undeniably, to Hitler (and to many others thoroughly corrupted by false philosophies of life), Communism was a Jewish conspiracy. A more reasonable person would have considered that the vast majority of Jews were ordinary people with no interest in Communism. He would also have reasoned that it was their status as second-class citizens that caused Jews to be disproportionately active in revolutionary movements. Hitler, however, was clearly not an ordinary individual, and must have been predisposed to hatred by various personal factors which as has been said will never be known. This is not to say that Hitler's anti-Semitism can be easily explained by obvious political factors and unknown personal factors alone. There were deep philosophical factors as well, manifested in the false philosophies of life preached by Nietzsche and by other German thinkers that we will examine in due course. These were deeply rooted and widespread in Germany before Hitler was even born, and became more popular as time went by, reaching their final fruition in the terrible events whose origins we are now examining. It was these ideas, along with the power firmly in Hitler's grip, that transformed mere hatred of Jews into a vast program, carefully and methodically carried out, that led to such extraordinary misery and suffering. The enormous bureaucratic and military powers of a modern industrial state were mere instruments to carry out an idea, and it is in the realm of ideas that the deeper roots of the Holocaust must be sought. Some assert that Hitler got his antisemitism from the church - as if the church ever taught that the blond-haired blue-eyed Aryans were the master race and needed to get rid of the Jews to preserve their racial purity. These people should read a little about Gobineau, Lagarde, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Wagner, or Haeckel if they want to know about the origins of modern racial antisemitism. But, why bother to do research if one only wants to attack Christianity? Others recognize what should be the obvious fact that Naziism is fundamentally different from and contrary to Christianity, but claim that Hitler tapped into a deep well of hostility to the Jews established by centuries of Christian antisemitism - although in 1900 years of Christianity no Christian ever advocated exterminating all of the Jews.

Hitler's Christianity

National Socialism was deeply rooted in the 19th century. That this is so can be demonstrated by examining some of the German thinkers just mentioned. Some people like to jump from 1st-century Roman Palestine to Luther and from thence to Hitler, as if the entire 19th century never occurred. Their reason and logic only serve their willful desire to discredit Christianity, and a thousand books would not suffice to change their minds. Nevertheless, I would like to examine some arguments put forth by someone who claimed that Hitler was a Christian. It will be impossible to see the significance for the Holocaust of certain trends in 19th-century science (or pseudo-science) and philosophy (or pseudo-philosophy) if one imagines at the same time that Hitler was a Christian, or even influenced by Christianity. It will be understood that I am not attempting to treat these topics exhaustively, since that would take many volumes. For years, in casual and haphazard reading about modern history and culture, the fact that Hitler had nothing to do with Christianity seemed to me to be so self-evident as to not require consideration. In doing some research for this essay, however, I have run across a number of arguments claiming that Hitler was a Christian, or that he was deeply influenced by Christianity. Some people have even gone to great lengths to assemble quotes from Hitler which show any kind of Christian or even vaguely religious influence. One website posted not only quotes but also photos of Hitler or groups of Nazis near churches, implying a connection between Hitler and Christianity (it didn't show any photos of Hitler with little children, attempting to prove what a kind and decent man he was). Significantly, in all of the quotes attempting to link Hitler to Christianity, put together after diligent search by the enemies of Jesus Christ, there is nothing about forgiveness for sin through the blood of Christ shed on the cross; nothing about eternal life in heaven or eternal punishment in hell; nothing about the Trinity or the virgin birth; nothing about the bible as the divinely inspired and infallible word of God, or about any other of the most basic doctrines of Christianity. The same website asserted that the only evidence Christians had against Hitler's having been a Christian were some quotes from the Table Talk - but claimed that the statements had been edited by the extremely anti-Catholic Bormann and thus did not reflect Hitler's real views. In the book, Hitler makes a number of fiercely anti-Christian statements that reveal his contempt for Christianity. These statements closely parallel Nietzsche, who described Christianity as nothing other than a Jewish plot, a sickly religion of weakness and decadence - and Hitler's admiration for Nietzsche is well-known. What about Bormann's editing though? Apart from the fact that Bormann did not become Hitler's right hand man as a result of his independence of mind and tendency to contradict the Fuhrer, what kind of Catholic (such as Hitler is alleged by some to have been) would have a rabid anti-Catholic (such as Bormann was known to have been) as his trusted right hand man? The question answers itself. But why did Hitler not express such sentiments publicly? He believed that Christianity was going to die out eventually - what benefit would there be from revealing his true views, when it was more expedient to accept Christians as long as they obeyed him? But then, why would Hitler make such statements if he did not want them to be known? He believed his Reich would last for a thousand years - it is reasonable to assume that he wanted his real views recorded for posterity, knowing that with his total control of the press and publishing there was no chance of anything leaking out prematurely. But, it is asserted that Bormann worked against the church without Hitler's knowledge, and that Hitler was unwilling to follow some of Bormann's more extreme views. More will be said shortly about the policies of the Nazi government toward the churches. That Hitler saw unnecessary and useless religious conflicts between churches as in no way beneficial to his program, and extraneous to his goals, and preferred to leave the churches alone with their pointless squabbles as long as they obeyed him on essential points, is evident to anyone who has made any real effort to understand the situation of the church in Hitler's Germany. Hitler was in his rise to power and for some time afterward not just a maniac but a very canny politician. Nevertheless, some will continue to assert that Hitler was a Christian (and Stalin was a secular humanist?) - but when some opponent of Christ quotes the Table Talk and shows that Hitler admired Jesus, proving him to have been a Christian, while ignoring statements in the very same passage condemning Christianity as the Jewish Paul's distortions of the Aryan Jesus (who was probably the son of Mary and a Roman soldier stationed in the Galilee), then it is apparent that there are some people for whom a real understanding of Hitler is not the goal. However, the question of Hitler's attitudes toward Christianity doesn't depend only on a few quotes from Table Talk. I don't know what sort of people the perpetrator of that website had been reading or talking to, but it would be sad if someone who wanted to show that Hitler was not a Christian could do nothing more than point to some quotes from a book - though feeble and ineffectual responses are all too often characteristic of today's feeble and ineffectual Christianity. People who put up such websites are motivated by hostility to Christianity, and want only to attack the Christian faith by linking it to the evils of the Third Reich. They do not post quotes from Lenin, Stalin, or Mao showing a direct correlation between atheism and the horrors of those secular tyrants who, speaking strictly in terms of numbers of people killed, were even worse than Hitler (if evil could be reduced to a mere question of numerical calculation). Nor will they spend a lot of time on serious study of the cultural climate of 19th-century Germany where Hitler's true roots (humanly speaking) lay. They do not know or want to know about the deep affinities between Hitler and Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Nietzsche, Haeckel, or other earlier German thinkers and writers. They won't comb through Mein Kampf hunting for anything suggestive of Darwinism or evolution, of Entwicklung or the struggle for survival. No, they will only take and misrepresent some vague references to God and Christianity, all of which are totally void of any real Christian doctrine, many of which were designed solely for self-serving political purposes, and have as much validity as Hitler's promise at Munich, "This will be my last territorial demand."

If we want to understand the real nature of Hitler's relationship to Christianity, the starting point as always is Jesus Christ and his teachings. He said "Blessed are the peacemakers" - was Hitler a peacemaker? Jesus said "Blessed are the merciful" - was Hitler merciful? Jesus said "Blessed are the meek" - was Hitler meek? No man in the history of the world has ever exalted himself more highly than Hitler did. Jesus said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - this obviously has nothing to do with Hitler. Looking at the teachings of the apostles, we see that Paul describes the works of the flesh, of the natural man without God, in Galatians. These include hatred, wrath, strife, and murder, and he says plainly "They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." These works of the flesh are contrasted with the works of those who have received the Spirit of Christ - love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, and meekness. John writes "no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" and also says "He that loves not knows not God; for God is love." James writes: Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descends not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. Anyone who has any real understanding of the Spirit and intention of sincere biblical Christianity does not need any explanation to see that Hitler had nothing to do with these things. But, there are some whose sole desire is to discredit Christ, his teachings, and his followers, and such will resolutely refuse to consider any real evidence about the origins of the Third Reich, or, worse, they will deliberately make assertions they know to be false - for which God will reward them if they do not repent of their evildoing. What about the many quotes from Hitler, though, in which he refers to "God" or "Providence" or Christianity in some way? In one speech in 1922 he even said [www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html]: My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago - a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people. Hitler claimed to be a Christian - who can deny his own words? Certainly honest Adolf would never tell a lie, and we can always take his statements at face value, right? Parenthetically, it is odd that Gould's name is used for this website asserting Hitler's Christianity, when Daniel Gasman says in the introduction to his book The Scientific Origins of National Socialism that Stephen Jay Gould "adopted my evaluation of the National Socialist political significance of Haeckel" [p. xii] - and Gasman not only documents Haeckel's overt hostility to Christianity, but also shows unmistakable parallels between the thought and philosophy of Hitler and Haeckel (about which more later). Before examining Hitler's "Christianity" in further detail, let's examine some other public statements of honest Adolf's. The following were made shortly after he came to power, when Germany was still militarily weak [www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/speeches/text/speeches.htm]: It [the German government] is impressed with the importance of its duty to use this nation of equal rights as an instrument for the securing and maintenance of that peace which the world requires today more than ever before. May the good will of all others assist in the fulfillment of this our earnest wish for the welfare of Europe and of the whole world. (February 1, 1933) It is the sincere desire of the National Government to be able to refrain from increasing our army and our weapons, insofar as the rest of the world is now also ready to fulfill its obligations in the matter of radical disarmament. For Germany desires nothing except an equal right to live and equal freedom...The German nation wishes to live in peace with the rest of the world...The keeping open of this wound leads to distrust on the one side and hatred on the other, and thus to a general feeling of insecurity. The National Government is ready to extend a hand in sincere understanding to every nation that is ready finally to make an end of the tragic past. The international economic distress can only disappear when the basis has been provided by stable political relations and when the nations have regained confidence in each other...we are ready to co-operate with absolute sincerity on the basis it provides, in order to unite the four Great Powers, England, France, Italy, and Germany, in friendly co-operation in attacking with courage and determination the problems upon the solution of which the fate of Europe depends. (March 23, 1933) What we want lies clear before us: not war and not strife. Just as we have established peace within our own people, so we want nothing else than peace with the world. For we all know that our great work can succeed only in a time of peace (May 1, 1935).

To avenge the defeat of WWI; to tear up the Versailles Treaty; to expand to the east; to destroy the Weimar government; to get rid of the Jews - Hitler stated his main goals openly and repeatedly. But, as he maneuvered his way to power before 1933, seeking to cast his net over as many people as possible, and as he maneuvered in the first few years of coming to power, putting his adversaries at ease with peaceful words while rearming at top speed and preparing for war, here Hitler repeatedly and systematically (not pathologically) told lies to achieve his ends. If anyone was curious enough to ask him about his radical statements they could be easily disarmed by saying "That was just political rhetoric," and most were happy to leave it at that. They wanted to believe Hitler was not a threat and did so regardless of the evidence. If he had told the British and the French of his true intentions, they might have combined against him early to bring him down before he was ready to strike. If the Nazis had told the Jews "We are going to send you to death camps and put you in gas chambers disguised as showers" the Final Solution would have been immeasurably complicated. Deceit was an integral part of the program to ensure a minimum of resistance. If Hitler had said to the Germans in the 1920's "If I become the leader of Germany I will totally subordinate the church to the state; I will leave the church with no freedom whatsoever, and any Christians who do not accept my program will be cruelly persecuted. I consider Christianity to be an outdated collection of Jewish superstitions that is headed for extinction and I will do everything I can to facilitate that extinction" - if he had revealed his true sentiments he would have alienated millions of Germans. Christianity was no longer a dominant force, and was remarkably passive in the great political and ideological battles of the 20's and 30's, but there was still a significant number of people for whom Christianity was important (in varying degrees) and it was not to Hitler's advantage to alienate them. In his book Meta-politics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind, Peter Viereck states that Hitler finally broke with Ludendorff over that very point - the previous ally of Hitler was alienating too many potential voters with his public hostility to Christianity. Ludendorff responded by accusing Hitler's party of being "entirely Judaized" [p. 298]. The support, or even the lack of opposition from the churches, were useful to Hitler in his rise to power, and he was mindful of this. Hitler was, before he became intoxicated with his own greatness, a very skilful politician, and was careful not to attack Christianity publicly. It is too easy to imagine, when one sees the photographs of cheering throngs, that Hitler had the support of all, or at least of the vast majority of the German people. In the presidential election of 1932, however, Hitler received only 36.8% of the vote. In the last free election held in Germany in March of 1933, after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor but before the Enabling Law granted him full dictatorial powers, the Nazi party received only 44% of the vote. The Nazis had to enter a formal coalition with Hugenberg's German National People's Party to attain a majority in the Reichstag. Even this was not sufficient to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority required to pass the Enabling Law. Negotiations with the Catholic Centre Party (which J.S. Conway describes in some detail in his thoroughly researched work The Nazi Persecution of the Churches) were successful, which would of course not have been the case if Hitler's promises to respect the rights and status of the church not been accepted. Conway's comments are illuminating here: Although up to the time of the Nazi takeover of power, Catholics had been forbidden to have anything to do with Naziism, a sudden and disastrous change took place. Not only did the leaders of the largely Catholic Centre party voluntarily lead their party into self-immolation, with their support of the Enabling Law of March 1933 which extinguished the last hopes of democracy in Germany, but the Catholic hierarchy welcomed all too readily the signing of the Concordat in July [p. xxii]. The purpose of this is not to blame the Catholics - non-Catholic churches supported Hitler with equal or greater zeal. It is only to indicate that Hitler's policy of not criticizing the church or Christianity too openly, and making a few suitable Christian noises on occasion, yielded rich political dividends and eliminated a lot of potential conflicts. It is also too easy to forget where Hitler was in 1922 when he made the previously quoted comment about being a Christian. The insignificant leader of a minor fringe party seeking to broaden his base of support as much as possible, it cost him nothing to make a few statements about Christianity that were totally insincere. Thus, when Hitler, in the same reasonable and peaceful speeches just cited above, made positive statements about Christianity (which will be cited shortly), he was lying while he sought to consolidate his power: and many people (including both Christians and non-Christians) for the most part trusted Hitler and took his words at face value.

Another passage from Conway is helpful here. Referring to the German attitudes in 1933, he says: In many nominally Protestant households there was the innocent belief that Hitler, like Bismarck, was essentially a 'pious' man, piety being a characteristic of all Germany's historic leaders. Hitler was careful to foster such illusions. He never officially 'left' the church and he continued to pay compulsory church taxes. In the first years of power he attended several Catholic Church services, including the Requiem for the Polish dictator Marshal Pilsudski in Berlin Cathedral in 1935. Photographs of his presence on such occasions and his frequent references to 'Providence' in his speeches were designed to show his respect for Christian values. For the large majority of Protestants and Catholics, such manifestations justified them in resuming their traditional attitude of support for the State... In seeking to understand the almost incredible blindness of churchmen to the spread of Nazi totalitarianism, this attitude of mind, so deeply ingrained, particularly among the Protestants, must be taken into account [p. 14] [the Catholics had had a less comfortable relationship with the state in the 19th century, and in fact experienced severe conflicts with it - my comment]. Conway continues with a 1934 quote on the next page from a contemporary foreign observer: There is almost unanimity [among churchmen] in standing by Hitler. Many reasons for it appear. They have confidence in him. They feel the need of a strong hand upon the nation. They believe in his sincerity and in his unselfish interest in nation and people. More than one churchman emphasized Hitler's personal integrity and his belief in a moral character for the state... [p. 15] Publicly, it was to Hitler's advantage to deceive the naive and gullible Christians, which was not hard to do, and required nothing other than an avoidance of outright hostility, and an issuance of a few religious noises at odd intervals. In private, however, Hitler's attitudes toward Christianity were very different. For example, Conway cites a significant comment made by Hitler to Ludendorff concerning the former's failure to attack Christianity (a longing for the glorious days of pre-Christian paganism was a vital element in the thought of many German nationalists): I entirely agree with His Excellency, but His Excellency [Hitler spoke to the General always in a servile and devoted way and addressed him always in the third person as he had learnt to do as a corporal - Conway's note] can afford to announce to his opponents that he will strike them dead. 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 [p. 5]. Viereck saw Naziism as a new religion and, unlike some dishonest or superficial people, seriously studied Nazi attitudes toward Jesus Christ. In chapter XIII, entitled "Nazi Religion Versus Christian Religion," he devotes some time to analyzing the Aryan Christ and has a subtitle in the chapter "Christ Aryanized." Christ the Aryan warrior, the bold fighter against Judaism, whose teachings were corrupted by the Jewish rabbi Paul and used as an instrument of Jewish domination - this attempt to conform Christianity to the falsehoods of the world has died a natural death and needs little comment - though it does reveal the fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the two gospels. More useful are other examples given by Viereck of the fundamental antagonism between Christianity and Naziism that was papered over by Hitler during his rise to power, but became more and more overt after Hitler began to consolidate his grip over every aspect of German life. He points out that "The Black Corps," the official SS magazine, attacked Protestant pastors and had a favorable interest in pre-Christian cults [p. 283]. Alfred Rosenberg, the party's official ideologue, wrote a pamphlet denouncing the Lutheran churches as "racial traitors" because they refused to accept racism or denounce the Jewish Old Testament [p. 283]. A Protestant clergyman's rebuttal was suppressed. The real relationship between biblical Christianity and Nazi Germany's "Positive" or "Aryan" Christianity is succinctly described by Viereck: How much Christianity remains in Rosenberg, the "true Christian," after he throws out its love, its universalism, the whole Old Testament, and all of the New Testament connected with Paul, and links Jesus with Wotan as just one more example of Nordic blood?...Hitler's and Rosenberg's Positive Christianity means nordic paganism plus lip-service to a falsified Jesus [pp. 286-7]. Keeping this (along with Hitler's integrity) in mind, consider the following quotes from the same speeches cited previously that affirmed Hitler's desire for peace and cooperation with other countries:

The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life... (February 1, 1933) The National Government regards the two Christian confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality... (March 23, 1933) These comments have as much meaning as his professed desire for international peace and harmony. If someone wants to pull out a few isolated quotes with no understanding of the circumstances of Hitler's rise to power, they can find some statements showing Hitler to have been supportive of Christianity. Looking more closely at the many religious or seemingly religious statements by Hitler cited on the website given above, we see that some of them are simply lies, such as his statement "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." Moreover, apart from Hitler's genius at deceiving people (and he was a genius of lies and murder, just as Einstein was a scientific genius and Bach was a musical one), other quoted statements use vague terminology such as the "Lord's creation" or "the divine will" which is not in itself Christian. Hitler was not an atheist or a materialist, and railed against "godless Communism." His references to God and Christianity, however, are either lies, or religious language that had a very different meaning from what the superficial reader or listener might assume. Religious sounding language was and still is often used in a non-Christian context. Thus one of Hitler's ideological predecessors, the extreme social Darwinist and Aryan supremacist Ernst Haeckel, (cited in Daniel Gasman's previously mentioned Scientific Origins of National Socialism) could say "God is everywhere....God is almighty; He is the single Creator, the single Cause of all things....God is absolute perfection...." [p. 65] and someone who had zero understanding of 19th-century culture could say "Haeckel was a Christian! He used the word 'God'! " However, the God that Haeckel had in mind was not the God of the bible. Haeckel believed in God as a huge cosmic entity animated by some sort of a mysterious force that seemed according to Haeckel's other comments to find its highest expression in the Nordic race which occupied the apex of the pyramid of evolutionary development. Haeckel's God was "the sum of all energy and matter" [p. 65] and not the biblical God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Haeckel strongly affirmed some spiritual reality, but confined it within pseudo-scientific parameters. Gasman elaborates: Haeckel presented the universe to his followers as a "colossal organism" bound together by a "mobile cosmic ether" which by its universal diffusion "created divinity" and linked each individual to the divine cosmos [p. 65]. Religious sounding words were used by other writers of the period also. Viereck examines the tendency of the romantics and other German pseudo-philosophers to imagine that the cosmos itself was a single vast organism animated by a certain vital principle that was referred to as "divine." There was some sort of a "divine presence," a spiritual power present in creation and animating it, but this force was not distinct from creation like the Judaeo-Christian God, but rather present in creation. Thus Viereck states: The philosophy or religion most typical of the romantic school is vitalistic pantheism. This is illustrated by the very title of the book by the influential romantic philosopher Schelling: World-Soul (1798). The universe is greater than the sum of all its parts and contains a vital omnipresent spirit which analysis can never find. [p. 30] This ties in easily with Hegel's vague world spirit or world soul, an attempt to replace the God of the bible with a considerably lesser power of human invention, an attempt to meet man's need for the divine by inventing fantasies, fantasies which never existed outside of the imagination of Hegel and his misguided followers. It also fits well with Schopenhauer's "pantheistic Will, which is unconscious, supernatural, eternal" [p. 104]. Viereck says much more about this tendency to identify Nature, or the entire Cosmos, with God. "To worship nature's allness as God, as so many German romantics did and do, is the heathen religion known as pantheism" [p. 25-6]. Thus, some of Hitler's religious comments were deliberate deceptions. Others were not even Christian at all, and were uttered in the context of 19th-century pseudo-mysticism wholly beyond the ken of those who want to try and explain the origins of the Holocaust in an exceedingly simple-minded way. Other comments were referring to a German Christianity found nowhere in the bible, and are in and of themselves blatantly contrary to Christianity. For example, in the previously cited speech from 1922, in which Hitler asserted his Christianity, "fighting against the Jews" is not the Christian message, and Jesus did not shed his blood on the cross to fight the "Jewish poison." Even when Hitler tried to use Christianity for political purposes, as many other politicians have also done, he revealed his lack of familiarity with it. He also said in the speech that ancient civilization was ruined by the Jews. Now, no one ever suggested that traditional Judaism ruined the Roman empire - but it was a staple of German or Positive Christianity that the Jewish Paul distorted the teachings of the Aryan Jesus and invented a new religion. This new religion was, as Nietzsche said shortly before he lapsed into total (as opposed to partial) insanity, a Jewish plot. When we consider Nietzsche's idea (as expressed in The Antichrist: A Curse on Christianity) that Christianity was merely an extension of Judaism, that Paul was a Jew and his new doctrine was a Jewish trick, it is easy to see that when Hitler blamed Judaism for the fall of the ancient world, he was referring to Christianity. That Christianity led to the fall of Rome and the decline of ancient civilization was also the view of Ernst Haeckel, a thinker with whom Hitler had much in common as we shall see later.

Also, Hitler referred in the speech to his "saviour" as a warrior, reflecting not the bible but rather German Christianity. Never mind about the Trinity, the resurrection from the dead, heaven, hell, the day of judgement, or other such useless trifles invented by the Jews so they could dominate stronger peoples with a fake ethical system of mercy, kindness, forgiveness, and love - Nietzsche spells this out clearly in The Antichrist. Referring to Aryan Christianity, Hitler could use standard Christian vocabulary like "Jesus" or "Saviour" or "God" while deviously attaching meanings to those words significantly different from what they convey when honestly and correctly used. Theological liberals routinely do that today - they use standard God-words which sound very orthodox, while privately assigning very different meanings to them so as to leave the listener with a false impression of spirituality. At this point, it is appropriate to mention Point 24 of the NSDAP platform. It reads [http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Points.html]: 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 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; Point 7 would have been nice for Germans interned in concentration camps ("every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood); Point 9 says "All citizens must possess equal rights and duties," not "all citizens who agree with Hitler"; Point 12 calls 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; 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. Someone who does not understand even this much should not be attempting to discuss Hitler on a serious level. 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. Thus when Jim Walker uses the Nazi Party Platform to prove a connection between Naziism and Christianity on the "nobeliefs" website cited in the bibliography, he reveals either his lack of understanding, or his deliberate deceitfulness. Parenthetically, if someone really has "no beliefs," why does he proclaim his opinions to the world? A blank website would be more suitable for someone who truly has no beliefs. Then he can share his mental blankness with one and all. More to the point, Viereck has some comments about German or Positive Christianity that 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]. Hitler himself was much closer spiritually to Nietzsche and Haeckel, neither of whom needed Christianity in any form, but this new creed was at least compatible with National Socialism and hence useful for propaganda purposes. This explains the reference to "Positive Christianity" in the party platform. All of this is central to an understanding of the origins of the Holocaust. If anyone conceives that Hitler was a Christian, instead of an enemy of Christianity; if they imagine he was influenced by Christian ideas or Christian teachings, instead of the opposite, they will never understand the ideological roots of Hitler's thoughts and actions.

Hitler was very far from Christianity. If he had been a serious bible believing Christian he would have made the following sort of speech in 1922: "Germany's defeat in the war was God's judgement. Germany as a nation was guilty of rushing too enthusiastically off to war, and the government was wrong to give Austria a blank check. While other nations were certainly at fault also, and it is historically inaccurate to blame Germany alone for the war, 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.' We are all under the same condemnation for sin..."

German Christians

Hitler the Christian! Was such a message ever given anywhere in Germany in the 1920's? Possibly, in some ordinary church that attracted no attention. One of the biggest mistakes made by those who blame Christianity on the Holocaust has been to assume that Germany was a Christian country. None of the histories of Weimar Germany that I have seen make any reference at all to a real Christian message. There may have been some socially conservative political parties with Christian affiliations, but there was no nationally recognized voice or presence that dealt in a compelling way with the great issues of the day from a biblical point of view. The two great contending ideologies of the day were fascism on the right and Communism on the left - and where were the Christians? Many of them had no authentic faith left, after having been taught for fifty years and more by liberal "pastors" and "theologians" that the bible was full of mistakes and errors, and the most important thing was to be a good person. The pseudo-theological balderdash of the so-called Protestant Friedrich Schleiermacher, who sought to adapt Christianity to the secular forces of the day, and denied the fundamentals of the faith; the deceptions of the Tubingen school of "theology" which the taught that the bible was not the divinely inspired word of God and hence was full of mistakes and errors - this had eaten out the heart and the core and the spirit of the church, and left nothing more than an empty facade that was ripe for deception. What can you expect of a church when Schleiermacher, its greatest 19th century "theologian," asserted that Christ didn't even die on the cross at all, but went into a deep swoon and only appeared to be dead, and revived after having been placed in the tomb? In trying to win the respect of unbelievers by making Christianity more "rational" the liberal theologians achieved the opposite - if Christianity is not true then it is of no value at all. Paradoxically, the Christians would have had more respect from the 19th-century secularists if they had stood solidly on the rock of biblical truth and warned people of the judgement and of the eternity to be revealed. Too many "Christians" in fact had no real faith at all, and were waiting to fall into the arms any Fuhrer who came along. The heresy of theological liberalism as well as a dead orthodoxy destroyed the German church, and led to its complete collapse before the forces of secularism, just as the victory of the same form of liberalism in many American churches and seminaries after WWI combined with the merely intellectual orthodoxy of many other churches and seminaries to leave most of the American church weak and helpless before the forces of modernism that are arrayed against it - not National Socialism, but the forces of feminism, homosexuality, abortion, and pornography, among others. These are destroying America from within, and the response of the American church has for the most part been like that of the German church before Hitler - spineless acquiescence or even outright endorsement. The sincere Christians who did hold to the truths of the faith, revealed by God and far above the ability of man to add or detract - these were marginalized and ignored, while the great storms of the 20's and 30's raged around them. In the book of Exodus God said to the children of Israel, "Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you go, lest it be for a snare in the midst of you...For you shall worship no other god...Lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land." This is yet one more passage out of many in the bible to be ignored by those who will turn from the God of the bible and make a covenant with the Nazis or the homosexuals or the baby killers or the apostles of unisex, turning from the holiness and righteousness of the one true God and embracing the false gods of the sinful world around them. A god who tolerates and embraces and condones sin is not the God of the bible. And where were the Christians? Too many were deceived by Hitler's seeming moderation, and his promises to respect the rights of the churches - and it should not be forgotten that Hitler was considered a minor figure until 1930 or so when due to the Depression his party made astonishing gains in the parliamentary elections. As his grip on the reins of power was strengthened after 1933 and it became more and more clear that he intended to totally enslave the churches to the state and crush all opposition, it was too late and Christians had few options. Some easily adapted their faith to the times - the vast majority of them, or all of them, had no real faith to begin with, or were like the seeds sown in the parable of Christ; they began to take root and grow, but had no depth of root and withered away in times of tribulation or persecution. Some Christians kept as quiet as possible and merely tried to survive; and a very few placed the truths of Christ above life itself and refused to bow the knee before the new pagan gods. There are a few stories, too few, of real heroism and martyrdom in the German church. They are vastly outnumbered by stories of cowardice and unbelief. But then, what is a Christian? Anyone who was born in Germany? Someone who said "I am a Christian" but denied the basics of the faith, in teaching and practice? Perhaps an event described by Conway illustrates most clearly the real relationship between Christianity and National Socialism:

When Rosenberg published his vitriolic attack against the church in the pamphlet An die Dunkelmaenner unserer Zeit, the Confessing Church was constrained to protest strongly. In early March [1935] the Synod of the Prussian Union of the Confessing Church issued an uncompromising statement, to be read from the pulpits of all the Confessing Churches on 17 March, rejecting the 'new religion' as a heresy against the first commandment and an attempt to set in its place the Nazi racialist Weltanschauung, with its worship of blood and race and its exaltation of 'eternal Germany'. This, the statement protested, had nothing to do with Christianity: it was nothing less than anti-Christ. The Nazis reacted quickly. Spurred on by Rosenberg, the political police prohibited the reading of the statement. On the evening of 16 March all clergy were so informed; but the ban was widely defied and large-scale arrests were made. Within a few days five hundred pastors from Prussia alone were taken from their homes and families [p. 122]. It may not seem like much compared to six million, but thousands of Christians were arrested and sent to prison camps. It would be too much of a digression to try and describe even a fraction of this, but those who see a photograph of the German Reichs Bishop smiling and shaking hands with Hitler should not think that he was representative of all Christians. In Poland the treatment of the churches was especially harsh. The examples I have given are of Protestants, but much could be said in a similar vein about the Catholics also. Another quotation from Conway is pertinent. Speaking of Poland, he writes: From previously prepared lists, members of the clergy were arrested immediately following the German occupation, and virtually the whole of the Evangelical clergy in the Teschen (Cieszyn) area of Silesia were consigned to the concentration camps of Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Oranienburg, their places being taken by Germans who conducted their services in German only. Among those who succumbed in the concentration camps were the Reverend Karol Kulisz, the director of the largest Evangelical charitable institution, who died in Buchenwald in November 1939, and Professor Edmund Bursche, of the Evangelical Faculty of Theology in the University of Warsaw, who died while working in the stone quarries of Mauthausen [pp. 296-7].

The difficult case of Martin Niemoller

Unfortunately, we cannot say that Christian support for Hitler was attributable solely to theological liberalism. It is necessary to address the fact that theologically conservative Christians were far too often unable to recognize the real nature of Hitler. An excellent example of this is Martin Niemoller. A brief look at this theologically conservative and politically foolish Christian and pastor who at first supported Hitler but came to realize the seriousness of his mistake is in order. Some years ago I read an article by Niemoller called (as I remember) "My three meetings with Hitler." I have been unable to locate the article, but the basic points as I recall them are worth repeating here. This is offered as illustration, not as proof. If upon locating the article it should turn out that my recollection of it was faulty, that would not detract from the main points of this essay. Niemoller's first meeting with Hitler was (again according to my recollection) at a conference of church leaders prior to Hitler's becoming Chancellor in 1933. Hitler spoke to the group and asked for their political support. His tone was very calm and reasonable, and according to Niemoller, Hitler made a favorable impression on most of the people present. Hitler stated that he himself was not a Christian, but he had a lot of respect for Christianity and felt that it was necessary to build a morally strong Germany. He said that if he were in power he would make sure that the churches would have more influence in Germany, and he recognized the importance of the church in the fight against Bolshevism. Niemoller's second meeting with Hitler was not long after Hitler had come to power. There were disturbing incidents of Nazi hostility toward Christianity. For example, Nazi youth meetings would be scheduled for Sunday mornings, and pressure would be put on the families of young people who wanted to go to church instead. As a WWI veteran and a recognized leader of the Lutheran church in Germany, Niemoller was able to secure a personal audience with the Fuhrer. Once again Hitler was calm, modest, and reasonable. He said he recognized that there were abuses, that the government was still new and it would take some time to control unruly elements. He asked for patience and, like Neville Chamberlain, Niemoller took Hitler at his word. The third and last meeting took place some time later when Nazi abuses had become worse. Niemoller was again able to obtain an interview with the Fuhrer, and he said this time Hitler was a totally different man. Before he had been quiet and reasonable, asking for cooperation and understanding. This time, he was the Fuhrer - haughty, arrogant, and contemptuous. He had no interest in Niemoller's problems, and asserted that as the Fuhrer he would decide what was Christian and what was not Christian, and that Germans should follow him. Niemoller stated that at this interview he told Hitler personally that Hitler was not his leader, God was his leader - shortly after that he was arrested. He remained in confinement (in Sachsenhausen and Dachau) until the end of the war. At this point it is useful to recall some of the statements quoted from Conway in the preceding subsection "Hitler's Christianity." Many people, not only Christians, did not know what Hitler was. They believed he was a basically decent man whose word could be trusted. Extreme statements were explained away, and someone like Churchill who recognized the true nature of Hitler was considered to be too cynical and pessimistic. This is not to excuse the German Christians. There were more than enough indications that Hitler was an evil and a wicked man. He was very deceptive and fooled many people, but someone with spiritual discernment should not have been taken in by Hitler for a moment.

Two of the faults of German Christians are highlighted here - being gullible and naive politically, but also looking to the state to strengthen and support the church. The Lutherans in particular had long been a state church, dependent on the state for their support - this was a fatal flaw. The New Testament knows nothing of a church that is propped up by the government and relies on the government. German Christians had, too many of them, become accustomed to looking for political solutions, and were too far removed from the spiritual kingdom of God. Many American Christians are making the same mistake today, in a different context. They look to the government and the courts to achieve their ends, and do not understand that the government is now a foe rather than an ally of biblical Christianity. Yet, there is more to be said about Niemoller - it is necessary to discuss the extent to which anti-Semitism was found among doctrinally orthodox Christians. It has already been said that anti-Semitism is unbiblical, but Christians unfortunately do pick up false ideas and values from the world around them (in disobedience to the biblical command "Do not be conformed to the world"). We have faults and mistaken attitudes of varying kinds, which is why David said in one of the Psalms, "Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults." A good discussion of Niemoller's anti-Semitism is found in an exchange of correspondence on the subject found on a website about Niemoller set up by Harold Marcuse, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara [www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/NiemAntisemCohnHMCorresp034.htm]. Another professor responding to the website, Werner Cohn, felt that Niemoller was being whitewashed and asserted that Niemoller was a vicious anti-Semite. Reference is made to "the pervasive anti-Semitism of the non-Nazi right wing" and Niemoller is accused of being a strong racial anti-Semite. The reasons (with ample documentation) are as follows. First, although "he opposed the introduction of the 'Aryan paragraph' in the Protestant church on doctrinal grounds," meaning that his objection to Jews was not racial, he asserted "that Jews had done great harm to Germany" and wrote that "baptized Christians of Jewish origins" were "personally distasteful to him." Moreover, it is said that he went "out of his way to preach hatred against the Jews." The following quote is given: "What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!" Also, "He supported the Nazis early on, and he surely would not have done this without partaking of their racial attitudes. He seems to have been close in his thinking to the DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei), whose racism during Weimar times is well documented." It is conceded that Niemoller "was not an 'eliminationist' anti-Semite as far as we know, i.e. I don't think that that he would have approved of the mass killings." Towards the close of the correspondence, Professor Cohn adds a personal note: "I lived as a Jew under the Nazis in the very years that he told his Dahlem congregation that we Jews were race aliens, and also that we deserved what we got, having murdered Christ. I lived not too far from his church, and his name was mentioned in my home." A close analysis of some of the points here might contribute to the clearing up of some significant misconceptions. First of all, his objection to the Aryan paragraph, an attempt to keep non-Aryans (that is, Jews) from serving in the church as ministers or religious teachers, shows that he was not opposed to the Jews on racial grounds. The belief that a Jew who converted was to be allowed to serve in the church in any capacity was directly contrary to the most fundamental precepts of National Socialism, and in and of itself proves that Niemoller was not a racial anti-Semite. Asserting that Jews were "personally distasteful" is not a racial argument, nor is it "vicious," if unaccompanied by cruel acts. It is possible to look down on or dislike a certain group without feeling that members of that group should be exterminated or cruelly treated. Before the Holocaust made anti-Semitism thoroughly odious, many Americans looked down on Jews as peculiar people and disliked them in a vague sort of way, but never instituted a pogrom or harmed Jews in any way (unless being excluded from a country club constitutes persecution, which I don't believe it does).

As to the belief that the Jews had harmed Germany, some more information might be helpful here. If he was referring to Jewish participation in socialist and communist movements, or if he was referring to Jewish participation in the Weimar government (thinking of Hugo Preuss or Walther Rathenau), or if he felt the building pressure of National Socialism and was too concerned about making as many concessions as he could to the new ideology (some or all of his quoted statements were made after 1933), this is not racial anti-semitism of the sort advocated by the Nazis, and is in fact very far from it. Such statements do not reflect a high degree of Christian spirituality, but it would be possible for someone to hold such views and not feel that Jews were subhumans who should be exterminated. An excerpt showing something of Niemoller's views on the Jews will follow shortly - he was misguided and confused, and (like many others) very gullible and naive in his dealings with Hitler, but not "vicious." The following narrative about Niemoller in prison shows that he wanted the Jewish influence minimized, but was far from advocating violence against them. As to the Jews suffering divine punishment because of having crucified Christ, this is most definitely not racial. Moreover, it is, as has been said, possible for a Christian to make such an assertion, and believe it to be true, and still feel that the Jews should not be exterminated or persecuted. Christians should offer love and forgiveness - punishment is left to God. Christians are not supposed to be agents of God's wrath. Also, it is a mistake to assert that Niemoller would not have supported the Nazis without sharing their racial attitudes. Many Germans did precisely that - they wanted to restore lost territory, make Germany strong again, put an end to ceaseless parliamentary squabbles and economic problems, and deal with the threat of Communism. They felt that Hitler was the only one who was capable of doing this, while at the same time feeling uncomfortable with some aspects of Hitler's personality or ideology. As to being close to the DNVP, reference will be made to that party later. It did have racial attitudes, but was considerably less violent and more restrained than the Nazis. Parenthetically, as was said before, the German Communist party was the largest and most aggressive in Europe. It had aggressively tried to seize power after WWI, and concern about the threat of Communism was legitimate. As to the Jews having deserved what they got, Christians should to be mindful of the fact that we do not want to get what we deserve from God. We all deserve punishment for our many sins. What we want, or should want for ourselves, and for others, is God's mercy, grace, and forgiveness. If God does punish someone - often by abandoning them to the hands of wicked and evil men, brutal and cruel - Christians are not to be highminded or callous. Still less are we to rejoice in the awful subject of God's wrath. These statements show Niemoller to have been confused in some ways, and too much influenced by the culture of his day - they do not show him to have been a vicious, evil, and brutal man. Moreover, it is necessary to repeat that Niemoller could not possibly have imagined the depths of Hitler's cruelty. It is easy to be wise after the fact, and while it is true that any spiritually mature Christian should have been able to instantly recognize that Hitler was not a good man, Niemoller's gullibility and stupidity were shared by many who were not Christians. Perhaps he would have had more spiritual clarity if he had not been a hireling in a state church - but Jesus said, "Judge not that you be not judged." That Niemoller was not a racial anti-Semite can be seen from the following account of his imprisonment. Printed in the National Jewish Monthly, it was written by Leo Stein about his incarceration in Moabit Prison and in Sachsenhausen [http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/njm415/NatJewMonthly415.htm]:

NIEMOELLER ON THE JEWISH QUESTION We "discussed" the Jewish question frequently. I put "discussed" in quotes, because Niemoeller does not really like to "discuss" matters; he rather thinks of his listeners as a church audience. He lectures, without realizing it. "Jesus Christ," he said, "the founder of Christendom, was a Jew. I love the Old Testament more than anything else. Hitler is trying to denounce this Testament as 'Jewish,' but there is no Christianity without it. Whoever is an anti-Semite and persecutes the Jews can never be a real Christian. Hitler is the true anti-Christ." In view of that fact, I once asked him how it had ever been possible for him to become a member of the Nazi party. "I find myself wondering about that too," he answered. "I wonder about it is much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: 'There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany'." "I really believed," Niemoeller continued, "given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time--that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while. "I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me." Niemoeller was honest about what he said, as most prisoners are honest who know that for an indeterminate length of time they must accept their fellow-prisoners as friends. He had the following to say concerning the Jews from Eastern Europe who settled in Germany after the First World War: "I love Sholem Asch, although I don't love all of his heroes equally. The German is super-patriotic; he does not love strangers. But if those strangers make no effort to adjust themselves to his way of doing things, he begins to hate them. That is a national characteristic. I know, of course, that these Jews were persecuted in the Middle Ages, that cruel legislation prevented them from working at most occupations. Hitler is enforcing the same laws today. "But the Jew who adjusts himself to the country he lives in is much better off than the one who considers himself a Jew first, and only then a German, Frenchman, American, etc." "You see," he told me on another occasion, "Germany had lost the war; we had an alarming crisis, inflation, [end 285; p. 301] an enormous unemployment problem. Certain Russian and Polish Jews had taken refuge in Germany; the great mass of the poor and unemployed believed them to be well-to-do. Envy developed into hatred. Instead of feeling sorry for these miserable refugees, some people begrudged them the little they had. Hitler quickly stimulated these low passions, which finally brought him to power. Today, Hitler persecutes Jews and Christians alike. There isn't a single Nazi leader in the country today who has not cut himself off from the Christian faith. The so-called 'German Christians' are just heathen, who see in Hitler the Messiah; they have made him their 'Jesus Christ' ".... SACRIFICED SELF FOR JEWS Niemoeller himself never treated Jews differently from Christians. Repeatedly he gave of his bread to Jews, since the Jewish ration was smaller than the "normal" one. He was particularly charitable to the suffering and sick Jews. At the camp, additional food could be purchased--at extortionate rates; many Jewish prisoners were penniless, and Niemoeller did all he could for them. He never made any effort to keep his feelings a secret. At one of our talks, he said: "No power on earth can force me not to see in the Jew my fellow man. Persecutions of the Jews are un-Christian." He demonstrated his attitude publicly by always speaking to Jews, by helping them even though it meant punishment for himself. "All prisoners are my brothers," he declared, "whether they be Jews or Christians." All this did not make things any easier for him. Some of the prisoners denounced him to the authorities, hoping to ingratiate themselves thereby; each such traitor received a package of cigarettes...

Further comments on Hitler's Christianity

It is not possible or desirable to answer all of the arguments by those who want to obscure a real understanding of Hitler, but it might be useful to look at some. Why did Hitler keep the Concordat with the Vatican? If someone would spend less time poring over Hitler's writings and speeches looking for every scrap that might link him to Christianity, and read only one book such as Conway's about the church under Nazi rule, they would find that Hitler did not keep the Concordat, and violated it numerous times. The "Protest of the Austrian Bishops to the Ministry of the Interior, 1 July 1941" found in Nazi government files and quoted by Conway [p. 393] refers to the seizure of property from monasteries and nunneries, the closing of a college and a seminary, and other violations of Hitler's promise not to interfere in the churches. Conway gives other examples [pp. 277-79]. "But Hitler wanted to unite all of the churches into one German church - why would he do that if he wasn't interested in Christianity?" Never mind about liturgy, doctrine, baptism, communion - forget all of that trivia! We are all Germans now! This proves Hitler's total contempt for the church and indifference to its teachings - and at this point the churches openly defied Hitler and refused to cooperate, the only Germans to ever do so. Hitler backed down for the time being, as a major conflict of this sort was not in his interest. There are indications he was planning to deal with the churches more rigorously after the war was won. Significantly, Chairman Mao also tried to forcibly unify the much smaller and less influential Chinese churches into one group totally subject to the state's Religious Affairs Bureau. If it was not possible to simply eliminate all of the Christians, it was desirable to bring them under the control of the state as much as possible. This was also the policy of the communist governments of Eastern Europe and of Soviet Russia, after attempts to exterminate Christianity by force proved futile and counterproductive. But did Hitler's rejection of attempts by other Nazis to revive the old Germanic gods prove he was not a pagan? There are many forms of paganism, old and new - Hitler was not stupid enough to try and convert people to worshipping Thor and Odin, though often the names of the pre-Christian gods were appealing to some, or were used symbolically to refer to pre-Christian German paganism in general. Did Hitler pull a New Testament out of his pocket to impress a group of Christian visitors? A nice little trick from a man who boasted he was the finest actor in Europe. I wonder where his staff located a bible for him - maybe from his housekeeper, if the incident even occurred. Did Speer portray Hitler's attitudes toward religion in a more reasonable light? What if Speer was only minimizing his own guilt by portraying his Fuhrer as a more moderate individual? Did many Christians follow Hitler? Many atheists and Darwinists and socialists and even Communists converted to Naziism and followed Hitler too, but never mind about that. If America experiences enough suffering many who pride themselves on their liberalism and their tolerance will also be crying out for a "saviour" to rescue them, and they will be looking for scapegoats as well. Did Hitler have a religious education? He repudiated it, as many people have repudiated their religious education after leaving home. Was European fascism the result of Christian European culture? Yes - if you don't understand the Sermon on the Mount and know nothing about the French Revolution and the following 19th century. One person asserted that before Hitler, Germany was a powder keg of Christian fundamentalists waiting to explode! That is a novel theory of Hitler's rise to power, one that has eluded historians to date. In fact, it was the failure to follow the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles that led to the horrors of the Second World War. Would someone say that early 20th-century Russia was a powderkeg of secular humanists, atheists, liberals, communists, and agnostics just waiting to explode when Lenin lit the spark? But the cruelties and horrors perpetrated by people on the left who (like the Nazis) rejected the bible as unscientific are best ignored.

But Hitler and the Nazis championed "family values," just like the Christian fundamentalists in America today! I am not aware of any Christians in America saying that women should stay home and breed more children who will grow up to be warriors needed to fulfill America's destiny to rule the world. Hitler also advocated decent roads, and adequate housing and affordable transportation for workers, as well as an end to unemployment. Those who think that fundamentalist American preachers are like Hitler, and that American Christians want to put the Jews in the gas chambers, are probably not too concerned about the real threats to America's security and democracy coming from an entirely different direction. Like the French who built the Maginot Line, people who are frightened of a Nazi revival in the USA are focusing on the last war and oblivious to the new one. "But Hitler wanted to control the schools, just like the right-wing Christians want to do in America today." Of course, the left-wing secularists do not want to control the schools, and are quite happy to teach equally the theory of evolution and arguments against the theory; they are quite happy to have the children in school taught that homosexuality is morally wrong, and that there is a God. It is the secular left that dominates the schools today, and how jealously they cling to the levers of power - and linking Hitler to the Christians is a useful propaganda technique, a dishonest but effective tactic in the culture wars. "But why did the 'pope' send birthday greetings to Hitler?" This diplomatic courtesy has nothing to do with whether Hitler was a Christian or not - and it is insufficiently mentioned that when the Vatican signed the Concordat with Hitler in 1933, most people, including the leaders of France and England, did not understand the nature of the new government. What about some quotes someone dug up from other Nazi leaders to show their Christian influence [www.nobeliefs.com/henchmen.htm]? All of them show a total absence of Christian teaching. God sent Hitler to save Germany (Goering); God will pronounce me innocent on the day of judgement because I served Hitler (Hess); SS men have a duty before God to carry out the will of the Fuhrer (Himmler); Christ could not possibly have been a Jew, Nazi Germany is the house of God, and Hitler is the intermediary between God and man (Goebbels). Anyone who asserts this is Christianity either does not know what Christianity is, or else is deliberately lying, secure in the knowledge that some will be stupid enough to believe them. Hitler wanted a state controlled German church; Hitler was the saviour of Germany; Hitler had a divine mission; National Socialism was the means of obtaining God's grace; one was saved by obeying Hitler - that this is not Christianity should require no explanation, and would require no explanation were it not for the fact that there are those who write from a secret and hidden motive. It is good propaganda to mention that Goering referred to himself as a Protestant at the Nuremberg trials - of course, the prosecutor had other things on his mind, and did not ask the truthful and candid Mr. Goering if he was trying to cast dust in the eyes of the court by making himself appear more normal and reasonable than he really was; if he believed that Jesus Christ died on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the human race; if he believed that Jesus had risen from the dead and would return someday with great power and glory to gather his children into paradise and destroy Satan, sin, and death; if he had repented of his sins and looked to Christ's mercy and grace for forgiveness and eternal life with the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; or how he reconciled his belief in Aryan supremacy with biblical teachings to the contrary. The prosecutor might have asked him why, as a devout Protestant who said his prayers before he went to bed every night, Goering "refused to admit any chaplains at all within the ranks of the Air Force," as Conway relates [p.238]. If people would do a little research about the actual practices of the Nazis, and read even one single book such as Conway's, they might learn something. Goering also said that he had church functions such as marriage, christening, and burial performed in his house - none of those are mentioned in the bible; they are cultural additions that have no spiritual significance for the salvation of the individual. An issue is also made of the fact that Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, received a Catholic upbringing. More will be said about this in the conclusion of the essay. A mere glance at the preceding quotes suffices to show the depth of the gulf separating National Socialism from orthodox Christianity. More relevant to this topic is a Nuremberg trial document, "Bormann's Circular on the Relationship of National Socialism and Christianity," cited by Conway:

National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable. Christian churches build on the uncertainty of human beings and attempt to preserve this fear in as wide segments of the population as possible, for only in this way can Christian churches keep their power. In opposition to this, National Socialism is based on scientific foundations. Christianity has invariable tenets, which were set up almost 2,000 years ago and have petrified into dogmas incompatible with reality. National Socialism on the other hand must always, if it is to fulfil its job in the future, be organized according to the latest knowledge of scientific research. Christian churches have long recognized the dangers which threaten their existence on account of exact scientific knowledge and therefore attempt by means of pseudo-science, such as theology, to suppress or falsify scientific research by means of the concepts of Christianity, which in their essential points have been taken over from Jewry... When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not understand by God, like naive Christians and their spiritual opportunists, 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 Almighty or God. The claim that this world force is concerned about the fate of every single being, of every smallest earth bacillus, 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. In opposition to this, we National Socialists impose on ourselves the demand to live naturally as much as possible, i.e., biologically. 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. The more insight we have into the will of the Almighty, the greater will be our successes... ...never again must influence in the leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This (influence) must be broken completely and finally...so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed... [pp. 383-4] Based on this document, it is not people who believe in the bible that are a threat to unbelievers. It is people who boast that they have no need of the God of the bible, that their worldview is scientific, who feel that the churches are outdated and should be excluded from public life, and who declare people that do not fit into their worldview subhuman (Jews or unborn infants) and murder them by the millions with a clear conscience - it is they who are a threat to unbelievers and to civilization itself. But, followers of Christ should have confidence and hope, for we know that the forces of secular darkness, obscurantism, and evil will be defeated in the end.

Naziism linked to the bible

It is not necessary to spend much time refuting the assertion that a page of Hitler's notebooks containing such phrases as "racial purity the highest law" or "miscegenation with inferior types" or "purification of the bible" (meaning removal of its Jewish Bolshevik elements, including 99% of the Old Testament) or other vague scribblings demonstrates Hitler's Christianity. "He looked at the bible and commented on it - he must have been a Christian!" Some people hunt for hints, scraps, clues, in little corners when the facts of Wagner, Treitschke, Chamberlain, Fichte, Haeckel and Nietzsche, and a century of German intellectual development prior to Hitler, are staring them right in the face. Another assertion though merits a little examination. One enemy of Christianity and the bible asserts that Hitler was acting according to the bible. He massacred a lot of people - but the God of the Old Testament did as well! A verse from the Psalms (140:10) about people being cast into the fire is compared to the ovens ("Let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again"). Isaiah 45:7 says "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things" - and Hitler supposedly did the same. The bible forbade the Jews to marry women of other nations, and this is related to Hitler's racial laws (an argument made by one of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials). All of this is called "frightening." Perhaps the author really is "frightened" of American Christians and Jews and thinks that America today is like Germany in the 1920's, and Hitler is about to come to power soon - or maybe he is really not "frightened" at all but just propagandizing in the culture wars. Of course, since Stalin and Mao rejected the bible and hated Christianity, the Christians could say they were "frightened" of the radical secular left that wants to destroy Christianity, or at least keep it isolated in the churches, with nothing to say about the relevant issues of the day - but the bible says, "I will fear no evil," so there is no need for fear on the part of those who know God in truth. Looking at these points in order, what about the Old Testament massacres of the Canaanites? God is the giver of life, and he has the right to take it. We all belong to him, we receive our existence from him, and as Creator he has as much right to terminate our existence as we do to switch our cars on and off. Hitler tried to put himself in the place of God - but no mortal has the right to assume a divine or quasi-divine status as Hitler did. As to the massacres of the Old Testament, they occurred more than 3,000 years ago. Those were unique events, happening once in human history and have never been repeated. They were confined to one time and to one very limited location, with a restricted and limited purpose - to establish the Jews in the land of Israel. Also, Moses was truly acting as an instrument of God. This will "terrify" some who do not think enough to realize that never in more than 2,000 years of the Judaeo-Christian tradition has such an event ever been repeated. They may point to the Inquisition and the Crusades - never mind that these were totally contrary to the teachings of Christ; they were also not in the least like Israel's conquest of Canaan. Christians are not called to live by the ceremonial and political laws of Moses - although we hold to the moral law - but are called to follow the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, which has nothing to do with massacres of any sort. But, those who are impervious to the much more recent massacres wrought in the name of modern paganisms, such as Communism or Naziism, who are not overly concerned about the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao which are much closer to us not only temporally but psychologically, who are not in the least concerned about the massacre of millions of innocent people that is happening right now in the abortion clinics, these people pretend to be greatly concerned about the Canaanites. The verse from the Psalms refers to God's righteous judgement on evildoers, not to the persecution of innocent people by evildoers. It may be referring specifically to the final day of judgement. If it has any earthly application, it has much more to do with the fiery destruction rained down from above on German cities by the Allied air forces, which can be seen as the righteous justice of a holy God who does use governments to achieve his ends. The verse in Isaiah has to do with the mystery of evil, a deep problem far beyond those who have no real interest in the truth and want only to attack the truth so that they might practice evil more freely. The question of evil has been briefly discussed in the first section of this essay, and perhaps is best summarized in this way. What we commonly call "evil" - wars, disasters, illness, death, poverty - are allowed to exist for a time until Christ returns and establishes his kingdom. These evils can be sent by Satan, but they are not done without God's knowledge, and hence, as we see in Job, can be said to be from God. For example, God could easily have prevented the recent Space Shuttle disaster - if he chose not to do so, this is because he wanted it to occur, probably because this is not the time for the corrupt, spoiled, immoral, and evil Americans to be boasting of their technology. Other negative things that the world calls "evil" can be sent directly from the hand of God himself, if he wants to punish evildoers, or if he wants to chasten his children and discipline them - and as it says in Hebrews, "Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

This is God's power - it is not man's. God uses this power infallibly, for good, even if the good is concealed from us for now. This has nothing to do with the haughtiness and cruelty of little human grasshoppers like Stalin, and Mao, and Pol Pot, and Lenin, and Hitler, who imagine they can take the place of God and follow their own evil impulses without restraint. As to the Jewish prohibition on intermarriage, this was for religious, not racial reasons. The bible records instances of Jews marrying women from outside the Jewish community - Moses married an Ethiopian. The question was not "Will marrying foreigners lower the racial purity of the Jewish race?" The question was, "Will marrying foreigners who follow different religions cause the Jews to forsake the worship of God?" It took modern man with his pseudo-science to uncover the "truth" that we come from an evolutionary process of pitiless struggle in which the strong survive and the weak die, period. Man is at the apex of the evolutionary pyramid, and the white races are at the apex of man, and the Germans are at the apex of the white races, and need to keep their blood pure so they can prevail in the evolutionary struggle. Any honest person can see that these lies come not from the bible, but from a rejection of the bible - but a thousand explanations will not avail to overcome the tenacious opinions of those whose motivation is not to find the truth but to obscure it. We can only hope that God himself will have mercy on them and deliver them from their blindness and from their bondage to sin. In the meantime, there is no cause for us to be vexed by their misguided words, since there will be a day of judgement and everything will be sorted out in the end. Viereck quotes a remarkable prediction made by the 19th century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. It clearly demonstrates the relationship between the old religion and the new one: Should the subduing talisman, the Cross, break, then will come roaring forth the wild madness of the old champions, the insane Berserker rage, of which the northern poets sing. That talisman is brittle, and the day will come when it will pitifully break. The old stone gods will rise from the long-forgotten ruin and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes; and Thor, leaping to life with his giant hammer, will crush the Gothic cathedrals [p. 301]. Yet, however much damage was done to the visible church, the outward structure that had been for too long tied to the state, and for too long robbed of its power by the deceptions of modern theological liberalism, vitiated by cowardice, naivety, and conformity to the world, Christ remains seated at the right hand of God, while Hitler and his movement have passed away.

Complicity of Christians in Hitler's rise to power

To what extent were Christians complicit in Hitler's political success? How does one define "Christian" or "complicit"? The leaders of France and England were complicit, because they should have removed Hitler from power as soon as he began to violate the Versailles Treaty - and they could have done so, but they were afraid to fight. The people of those countries were also complicit, because their elected leaders were only carrying out the wishes of the electorate. Yes, they were complicit, but they didn't know. Of course, if they had been able to foresee the future, they would have acted differently. Similarly, many Germans really did not understand Hitler. They accepted his promises, and could not imagine what he would do. Also, many Germans never voted for Hitler and did not like or trust him, but once he lied his way into power there was nothing they could do. As to the Christians, some of them enthusiastically embraced the new order, and adapted their religion to meet the demands of the times. God will judge, but to me such people were not even Christians at all. They did not believe in the bible or in the teachings of Christ, but rather had that "friendship with the world" which James teaches is "enmity with God." As it is written, "Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." Too little is said of the fact that many churches had abandoned historic biblical Christianity because of the influence of theological liberalism, and were dead long before Hitler came to power. Others were theoretically orthodox, but were lacking in spiritual vitality and seemed to be most concerned with political solutions to Germany's problems. As to those who supported the persecution and extermination of the Jews, I assert that they had no understanding of biblical Christianity, denied the Saviour they claimed to believe in, and did not even know the Gospel message. No matter if they went to church; no matter if they called themselves Christians and even sincerely considered themselves to be such - they were enemies of Christ and of God, blinded by sin, ignorant of the glorious light of Christ. Many other Christians were deceived, and sincerely believed that Hitler was a reasonable man who would stabilize Germany and undo the injustices of the Versailles Treaty. They were guilty of naivety and stupidity - but Hitler fooled many people. He was a new phenomenon in history, and who understood what he really was? After Hitler came to power, those Christians who privately opposed him but kept quiet out of fear, or pretended to go along only to save their own skins, were guilty of cowardice, and disobeyed the teaching of Christ, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." If they did not help the Jews, it was not because of centuries of "Christian" antisemitism - it was because of fear (speaking of Christians who did not embrace the Nazi doctrines). There is nothing in the entire New Testament to support racism, militarism, imperialism, or fascism. The bible does teach obedience to the authorities, until they command us to violate God's law. It does not teach us to support or embrace the evildoing of the authorities. True Christians, sincere Christians, who love the Lord in truth and have received the precious gift of the Holy Spirit through faith in God's Son Jesus Christ, the visible manifestation of the eternal God - such people are commanded to walk in holiness and righteousness. They are to show the love of God to all men, and help them to find peace with God, being entrusted with the gospel of reconciliation. The fact that so many Christians have failed to do this is attributable to our fallen sinful natures, not to the teachings of the bible which exhort us to strive for spiritual perfection. The bible also warns of false Christians, who have the name of Christians but do not follow the teachings of Christ at all.

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