19th-century Germany

The so-called Enlightenment and the French Revolution naturally had a deep impact on neighboring Germany, and while hostility toward the church was not so great there (the political situation not permitting such flagrant ecclesiastical abuses and evils as occurred in France), the idea that man was free from submission to ancient dogmas and had at last come of age was met with widespread acceptance, even enthusiasm. This is a common belief that runs through all of the pseudo-philosophy of 19th-century Germany - the belief that man's reason is paramount. That the bible is not from God, but is a fallible book from which parts can be taken or left according to personal whim, if it is even worth bothering with at all, is accepted as a given. The basic ideas of Christianity, such as the virgin birth; the deity, atoning death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ; the day of judgement and eternal life in heaven or hell for each individual immortal human soul; salvation through faith in Christ alone; the divine inerrancy of scripture - all of these and other biblical truths were increasingly considered to be nothing more than outmoded superstitions, contrary to logic, reason, common sense, and even elementary human justice. All of the major developments of 19th-century German philosophy and culture, as presented by any general history, were not merely influenced by but were predicated upon a rejection of biblical Christianity. The memory of basic Christian ethics lingered - being deeply rooted in God's truth, certain ethical and moral ideas would not go away immediately. It was considered a scandal to be pregnant out of wedlock, and a disgrace to be a public homosexual; divorce was considered wrong, and even expressions of overt hostility to Christianity were frowned on, at least early in the 19th century. These and other social norms would grow weaker over time, and with the real reasons for adhering to them fading (faith in and love of God) would be increasingly flouted. This, by the way, is why Nietzsche had so many negative things to say about the Germans - the docile submission of much of Wilhelmine Germany to contemptible middle class values based on the slave religion, Christianity, aroused his scorn. How he would have rejoiced, if he could have seen the Germans casting off the false old Semitic-Christian values and rising up strong and free, like fierce beats of prey, in the glory of a new paganism. While, however, the basic concepts of biblical morality lingered as a memory, as customs, to be openly rebelled against with great gusto after the First World War, the forces of spiritual rebellion were permeating society to its deepest levels. Communism, Freudianism, social Darwinism (an attempt to bring society into conformity with the teachings of evolution), National Socialism, the philosophies (or I could say "misosophies," meaning systems based on hatred of wisdom) of Kant and Hegel, not to mention the intellectual fantasies of numerous other lesser lights such as Schopenhauer, Treitschke, Fichte, and so on - all presupposed the falsehood and irrelevance of basic Christian teachings. Here is one of the main roots of the Holocaust - man without God, free to invent his own philosophies; and what philosophies he invented. The withering away of the state and the natural development of a classless society (once the reactionaries had all been exterminated - reactionary of course meaning anyone with a different point of view); sex as the key to the human personality; Aryan supremacy; social Darwinism, seeking to make survival of the fittest the law of society (and of course survival of the fittest means that the weak and the inferior perish, people not excluded); imperialism; militarism; nature worship; free love - behind the respectable bourgeois facade of Wilhelmine Germany there was a teeming jungle of modern fantasies and delusions. As Jesus said, "If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness." Marx, Freud, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, Wellhausen, Nietzsche, Wagner, Fichte, Haeckel - all of their teachings were darkness, and they created a great spiritual emptiness and confusion out of which came that hunger and thirst for order, for someone to tell them what to do and how to live, which left the Germans ready to fall into the arms of a saviour. They wanted to be free from God's law - but freedom from God's law is really slavery, slavery to the sinful self. Man is not autonomous, he was not created to be autonomous, and subjection to God's moral and spiritual laws does not degrade and lessen us as Nietzsche and Hegel and so many others mistakenly thought in the pride of their vanity. Subjection to God ennobles and elevates us - it is rebelling against his light that degrades and lessens us. No discussion of the origins of the Holocaust is credible without a recognition of the deep turning away from and hostility toward Christianity which characterized so much of German thought in the century before World War I - a century in which, I should not need to point out, Hitler was born. Judging by outward appearances, it is too easy to imagine that there is a great gulf between 1930 and 1880 - after all, in 1930 people had cars and airplanes and radios, and in 1880 they did not. But these technological superfluities obscure the basic intellectual continuities that permeated German intellectual life for decades, and came to such hideous fruition after the destruction of the old moral and political order (which had been dying from within for some time).

Where was the church?

Where was the church in all of this? Confining ourselves for the time being to the 19th century, many people remained faithful to the old teachings, and even strongly argued against modern trends (if they did not ignore them altogether, as Christians are wont to do until it is too late) - but these were considered backward and ignorant, and dismissed as Schwaermer, meaning "gushers" or "enthusiasts." They were increasingly less relevant in society as modernist trends took root and flourished, and are almost totally ignored by historians. Gasman's highly detailed study of the social Darwinist and pseudo-scientist Ernst Haeckel mentions in passing one Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, whose orthodoxy was haughtily dismissed by Haeckel. Hengstenberg (1802-1869), a Lutheran pastor and theologian, argued for the authority of the bible and the divine origins of Christianity. He also argued against the rationalism that was spreading through the Protestant churches, particularly as it was used to undermine faith in the bible. He edited a journal, the Evangelische Kirchenzeiten, which sought to defend the faith (ineffectively or not, I have no idea) - but, the powerful modernist trends passed him and others like him by. A significant portion of the Protestant churches in Germany, however - and this has caused a great deal of confusion in the minds of unbelievers - sought not to resist but to accommodate the new secularist trends. Occupying influential pastorates and seminary professorships in Germany's leading churches, universities, and seminaries, countless "pastors" and "theologians" retained the name and the ceremonies and the vestments of Protestantism, but abjectly capitulated to the forces of modernism - and imagined that they were doing Christianity a favor by making it more reasonable and more respectable . Assuming that human reason was paramount, they rejected or sought to explain away any and all portions of scripture that were not agreeable to unbelievers. We are as a result presented with the sorry spectacle of "Lutherans," "Protestants," and "Christians" who denied the most essential teachings of the bible and in fact presented an entirely new religion cunningly and deceitfully disguised as Christianity. These enemies of the cross of Christ, wolves in sheep's clothing, bear a significant degree of responsibility for the Holocaust, since they destroyed the biblical truth which alone, if believed by enough people, would have been powerful enough to expose and to withstand the lies of National Socialism, and of its 19th-century predecessors. Such false apostles of strange new doctrines asserted that the real essence of Christ's teaching was ethical ("Love your neighbor as you love yourself"), while such doctrines as the resurrection, the virgin birth, the historicity of scripture, miracles, the immortality of the soul, heaven, hell, original sin, were all superfluous. One of Germany's leading "Protestant" "pastors" and "theologians" of the day, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), was so eager to accommodate the despisers of Christianity, and groveled so abjectly before them, that he even asserted Jesus did not die on the cross, but only swooned, and was mistakenly placed in the tomb. Jesus then managed to revive and emerge from the tomb, subsequent to which stories about his death and resurrection were invented, thus starting a new religion which swept through the Roman empire. Since Schleiermacher is so representative of the liberal "Protestantism" that contributed to the destruction of Protestantism in Germany with its false teachings, and contributed greatly to the spiritual emptiness of Germany that (along with previously mentioned factors) left the Germans thirsting for a Fuhrer, a brief examination of his teachings is in order. This will also help to explain many of the "Christians" who supported Hitler, "Christians" who had long since abandoned the basic tenets of Christianity and had no understanding of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Expressing the basic view which dominates liberal Protestantism to this very day - that true religion consists primarily in feeling rather than doctrine - Schleiermacher had a vague concept of the "eternal" and the "infinite" that he confused with Christianity. He dreamed of personal communion between man and God without repentance for sin, and without salvation by faith in Christ, which he considered to be at best secondary accretions to true religion. This communion with God required no death or resurrection of Christ, only "sincerity." Aware that Christianity was being increasingly rejected by educated people, he sought to make it more respectable by eliminating its objectionable elements. Thus, Christianity is reduced to whatever the world will tolerate, after everything offensive or disturbing has been removed. This of course is not Christianity at all, but a deception which the church has acquiesced in far too lightly. Further analysis of his tedious pseudo-theology is unnecessary - suffice it to say that he represented a dominant response on the part of the church to the secular challenge: total surrender. Needless to say, man's deepest spiritual needs are not met by a bad tasting mixture of Kant, Spinoza, Plato, and a Jesus who was nothing more than a wise spiritual teacher. It is much more sensible to just abandon Christianity altogether, if its central teachings are not true. This of course is precisely what many Germans had already done and would continue to do with greater vehemence as the century progressed.

Wellhausen, Kittel, and the Tubingen school of "theology"

The brief review of Schleiermacher's thought should be sufficient to convey something of modern German "Protestantism," but since so much has been written by others blaming Christianity for the Holocaust, asserting that the Nazis were Christians or the sons of Christians; since people like to point at "seminary" professors, "pastors," "scholars," and "theologians" who supported Hitler, thus greatly hindering efforts to expose the true roots of the Holocaust, some brief comments about other German false Christians and enemies of Christ are in order. One of these was Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918). A biblical "scholar" and professor of Oriental languages, he sought to study the Old Testament "scientifically" - not that he had any empirically verifiable results. He imagined, and liked to boast, that his blundering conclusions were "scientific," but in fact they were nothing more than his own opinions, void of substance, and at times outright lies. Operating from the assumption that the bible was not the divinely inspired word of God (for which he had no empirically verifiable evidence), he was a leading advocate of the so-called higher criticism of the bible. With no real methodology other than his own fleshly whims, he asserted that the Old Testament was not the word of God, and that (among other things) the events described in Torah were written centuries after the fact, and had never occurred. One proof for this was the fallacious argument that writing had not been invented in Moses' lifetime. This assumption, made without evidence and subsequently disproved, was then magically converted into fact, and used to prove a scientific conclusion. Thus, imagination becomes fact, and great edifices of scientific speculation are built on shifting sand, and used to deceive gullible people who are too easily impressed by the seeming weight of scholars who in fact are nothing but enemies of Jesus Christ. And these monuments of man-made theology that are built on sand collapse when the storms come. Needless to say, for Wellhausen not only the Old Testament (Moses did not receive a revelation from God on Sinai) but also the New Testament were human inventions, written long after the facts they purport to describe, full of mistakes, errors, and myths. Anti-biblical opinions are automatically invested with the sanctity of science, and are questioned only by those who are unscientific. But, of course, this is not science at all, and the word "science" is only used to invest vain speculations with a borrowed authority. People who object to the church's failure to withstand Hitler, or who point to the church's acceptance and even approval of Hitler, do not understand the extent to which German Protestantism was in many cases dead, and in many other cases dying. Recently for example I ran across a website in which someone pointed to one Gerhard Kittel, who taught at the University of Tubingen, as an example of Christian support for Hitler. His scholarship in the area of New Testament Greek established him as a real authority in that field - his enthusiasm for Hitler and hostility to Jews established him as a spiritual blind man and a moral midget. But surely a seminary professor if anyone should be an authority on Christianity? Not if he was a professor at Tubingen, which for decades had been known as a leader in attacking the foundations of the Christian faith. As difficult as it might be for a non-Christian to believe that a Protestant seminary would be deeply hostile to the Christian faith, it is true nonetheless. In fact, even today many seminaries (which might more aptly be called "cemeteries") are staffed by professors who claim to be Christian but have distorted the word beyond recognition and are purveyors of a new religion that dishonestly disguises itself as Christianity in order the more effectively to deceive people and lead them away from Christ into an eternity separated from God.

What did those so-called theologians who supported Hitler think of the inerrancy of scripture? The virgin birth of Christ? The elementary biblical truth that being a blonde-haired blue-eyed Aryan would count for nothing on the day of judgement? That it profited a man nothing if his country gained Lebensraum in the east but he himself lost his immortal soul? That Hitler needed to repent of his sins and be cleansed by the blood of Christ or he would be cast into the lake of fire to suffer eternal torment? Influenced more by Kant, Hegel, Darwin, and Fichte, by the wisdom of the world that passes away, than by the Holy Spirit, Schleiermacher and other German "theologians" led the way in establishing an entirely new religion which consisted primarily of vague feelings about God, without regard for doctrinal truths. Operating under the unwarranted assumption that 19th-century science was superior to biblical revelation, they served only to undermine Christianity with great swelling words of enticing human wisdom. Far from the simplicity of Christ, they asserted that the bible had poetical and moral truth, but not historical truth, and was in fact full of mistakes, myths, errors, and falsehoods. Nevertheless, it was for them still the "words of God" because on occasion you could get a glimmer of God consciousness from somewhere while reading it. Some apt words on this sort of Christianity can be found in the writings of the American Christian writer A.W. Tozer. In a book entitled The Warfare of the Spirit he states: Any appeal to the public in the name of Christ that rises no higher than an invitation to tranquility must be recognized as mere humanism with a few words of Jesus thrown in to make it appear Christian. But only that is truly Christian which accords with the Spirit and teachings of Christ. Everything else is un-Christian or anti-Christian, no matter whence it emanates [p. 79]. Whether it comes from a pastor or a theologian or a seminary professor or a scholar, be they never so exalted, any teaching that contradicts the fundamentals of Christianity, that even dispenses with the death and resurrection of Christ and forgiveness of sins and eternal life, is the spirit of the Antichrist, no matter how cleverly it is concealed. Another passage from the prophet Malachi is even more apt: Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and has married the daughter of a strange God. The Lord will cut off the man that does this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offers an offering unto the Lord of hosts. Many passages in scripture have two applications, a literal and a spiritual. Thus, the blood put on the lintel and the door posts in Exodus has a literal application, as a historical description of what occurred, but also a spiritual application, referring to the blood of Christ that protects the children of Christ from God's wrath. David's victory over Goliath refers to a literal historical event, but it also has a spiritual application and reminds us that we can do great things for God and overcome great obstacles with his help. God's promises to return the Jews to the land of the Israel have a literal application, but can also be applied spiritually to the gathering together of his children from all over the world into the heavenly Jerusalem. This passage from Malachi also can have two applications.

The literal application has to do with the unfaithfulness of the Israelites, who profaned the holiness of the Lord. The spiritual application refers to those in the church, even leaders in the church, "masters and scholars," who deal treacherously, commit an abomination, and profane the holiness of God when they present their new teachings in the guise of Christianity. They have married the daughter of a strange god, that daughter being the simple minded rationalism which believes that the human mind in itself is an all-sufficient guide, that anything in scripture contrary to the dictates (or I should say the whims, or whimsies) of human reason must be abandoned. They can call themselves Christians if they like, but the Lord will cut them off, because as Malachi says of them: "...you are departed out of the way; you have caused many to stumble at the law; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts." It would be too much of a digression, and tedious in the extreme, to try and dissect all of the half truths, distortions, and outright deceptions practiced by the wolves in sheep's clothing of the Tubingen School of theology. Suffice it to say that to a large extent, German Christianity prior to 1933 was not even Christianity at all - it was a great and dark emptiness, which left many who thought of themselves as Christians ready to fall into the tender embraces of the Nazis. This is why there is a very conspicuous absence of any significant references to real biblical Christianity in any general history of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. Because of the deadness of a state-controlled Lutheran church which seemed to be most concerned about propping up the status quo on the one hand, and the deadness of its liberalism on the other, Christianity in 19th- and early 20th-century Germany was for the most part simply bypassed as irrelevant to the modern era. Those Christians who did have a living relationship with Christ, and served him truly and faithfully, were too insignificant to be noticed by the historians. Common and ordinary people, they lived obscure lives in the gathering darkness of the modern age, and have long since gone on to be with Christ. Catholics were outwardly more resistant to secular trends, the Vatican being less vulnerable to contemporary pressures, and Catholic churches prior to 1933 were more outspoken in their recognition that Hitler and his movement were fundamentally unchristian. But, the failure to see Hitler for what he really was; the desire for political order and a revived Germany; the excessive preoccupation with material interests; adherence to a Christianity that was more doctrinal and theoretical than spiritually vital; these and other factors (also shared by Protestants) diluted and nullified the Catholic Church's response to Hitler. Also, general feelings of anti-Semitism were unquestionably a factor - but when Hitler came into power in 1933 people had no idea of what Hitler would become, and no one envisioned the death camps or the Holocaust. Hitler often successfully portrayed himself as more moderate and reasonable than he really was, and his incendiary speeches were dismissed as "rhetoric" and "politics" - an illusion Hitler himself encouraged. And, it is easy to overlook the fact that when the Vatican signed the Concordat with Hitler, it was assumed that he was someone who could be dealt with rationally (a misconception common to the French and English governments).

The real problem with both the Catholic and the Protestant churches in their dealings with Hitler was their spiritual deadness. No one with a living faith in Christ, whose home was in heaven and who looked with the eyes of faith toward things unseen, no one with a real understanding of the bible, could possibly have had any interest in German racial superiority, or in the glorification of military power, or in extreme nationalism, or in revenge for the humiliation of WWI. The great majority of people who had the name and the outward appearance of Christians failed to withstand these lies and failed to present a biblical alternative because they lacked spiritual power. The false teachings of the liberal Protestants killed the church from within, and the history of being allied to the state and dependent on the state encouraged even those who were theoretically orthodox to look to human government for a solution to the many problems facing Germany after WWI instead of to the teachings of Christ. Nevertheless, there was still a significant percentage of Germans who did not like Hitler, and did not support him at all, or supported him as the lesser of two evils - the other evil being political chaos culminating in a Communist takeover. This was a real threat in the minds of many. Germany did have the largest and most active Communist party in Europe, and its stated goal was the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

The decline of Christianity and the rise of the Volkish movement

It will perhaps be recalled that the aforementioned Lagarde and Langbehn were described as prophets of the Volkish movement. This widespread and popular belief in German racial superiority (combined with a repudiation of traditional western values) was a uniquely German form of intellectual deviance that contributed greatly to the rise of Hitler by creating a favorable cultural climate for his sinister ideas. Since the decline of Christianity was a major factor in the rise of said Volkish movement, and in the subsequent rise of National Socialism as well, a few more comments on this subject are appropriate. The reasons for this decline have occupied the pens of those more scholarly than myself. Ultimately, the reason is the will of God. He gives or withholds his Spirit when and as he wills, and if Christianity was seemingly vanquished by the forces of secularism, this is not due to the inherent superiority of the latter. It is due to God's grand cosmic scheme, which includes a gathering darkness prior to the final end. As Jesus said, one sign of the end of the world is that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold." The same passage says that "many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many." This includes not only Hitler, Marx, Freud, Darwin, and Lenin - it also applies to many other lesser preachers of false philosophies and ideologies such as Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Fichte, Treitschke, Baur, Wellhausen, Haeckel, and countless others. These of course are German names - but the French and the English and the Americans also have their own false lights, including Voltaire, Sartre, Shelley, J.S. Mill, Dewey, Mencken among who knows how many others. As Paul said, "evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." As Peter said, "there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?" As Isaiah said, "For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people." This describes the spiritually backward modern era so truly. Humanly speaking, it is possible to assign more easily discernible causes to the decline of religion. The increase in scientific knowledge naturally encouraged the belief that because man's mind was learning more about little things, it was therefore competent to master all things, that no significant knowledge lay outside of its power. Scientific knowledge fostered an illusion of wisdom and inflated worldly hopes and ambitions, making God seem less relevant. Darwinism of course played a key role in this, giving people an illusion of understanding life's origins, making faith in God and the bible superfluous. It was imagined that science had even disproved the biblical account of the creation of the world, although of course there was no empirically verifiable evidence for what was really only a faith proposition - naturalistic materialism. The Great War also contributed to the decline. German churchmen claiming God's blessing and standing in their priestly garments praying in vain for victory could only have greatly discredited the church in the eyes of many. Moreover, a shallow liberal version of Christianity that had no real concept of sin, evil or the wrath of God must have seemed singularly useless and impotent while great storms of war were raging. Other factors could be mentioned, but what is significant for the purposes of this discussion is that the decline of religion removed irksome and humbling barriers of truth, which in turn facilitated the rise of substitutes (since man, created in the image of God, needs something to live by). Naziism filled a great moral and spiritual emptiness. People who reject religion are not the proud and brave free thinkers they like to imagine, but seek for substitutes. One substitute for divinely revealed religion was a belief in German racial supremacy known as the Volkish movement, which at times was allied with the aforementioned German Christianity. Mosse spent much time studying the Volkish movement and gives much information about it. Appropriately, he spends little time discussing orthodox Christianity - it was so irrelevant to the intellectual origins of the Third Reich, the subject of his book (The Crisis of German Ideology). He has more to say about German Christianity, but mentions orthodox Christianity only in passing:

Christianity, already weakened by a prolonged attack by the school of Biblical higher criticism, stripped of dogma and historicity, was sucked into the all-pervasive Germanic faith. Religious liberalism suffered this fate nowhere else in Europe [p. 50]. A frustrated and emotional rejection of the materialistic social norms and values that were increasingly being adopted in society led to a similar discarding of religious orthodoxy, which seemed unable to grapple with the problem of modernity...The historical Christ became merely a symbol of appropriately pious and moral behavior, or, as with Lagarde, the symbol of a person infused with the dynamic life spirit [p. 46]. This is stated in a different way by Conway: "The Nazis' campaign would never have achieved the success it did if the estrangement of millions from the faith of the church had not already revealed a fatal weakening of Christianity" [p. 329]. The fundamental shift away from orthodox Christianity on a national level occurred earlier than Mosse seems to indicate, if I read him correctly, but the basic point is clear, and central to an understanding of later developments. As to the fact that religious liberalism succumbed to the Germanic faith only in Germany and nowhere else, this is because such an extreme nationalistic faith was not so powerful anywhere else. But in every case, religious liberalism surrendered and always will surrender to the dominant ethos of the world around it, whatever it may be, since theological liberalism is empty. Devoid of intellectual and moral integrity, it is inspired primarily by the desire to accommodate itself to the world around it. Trying to make Christianity more acceptable and popular by adapting it to meet the demands of the times, the "pastors" and "theologians" and "scholars" only destroy Christianity, and are in actuality enemies of Christ. As James said, "You adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." Schleiermacher, Wellhausen - they and many others like them poisoned the church with lies and destroyed it from within. Many are doing the same today, and Christians have been far too ready to embrace them, in total disobedience to the teachings of scripture. Doesn't John say "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world"? Too many Christians have not learned to "discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serves God and him that serves him not." As to the Volkish movement, which increased in popularity even as Christianity decreased, this manifestation of the belief in German racial superiority was not just the peculiar preoccupation of a limited number of frustrated individuals. Taken up with increasing avidity by an increasing number of lost people groping for meaning in the darkness of modernism, it attracted intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, educators, and journalists, as well as common people (and many who imagine themselves leaders are in fact merely common in their approach to life's basic questions). Its precepts were as time went by increasingly taught to children and young people in schools and disseminated through novels, journals, newspapers, and youth groups. Mosse has described in great detail the spread of the Volkish movement and the depth of its influence in Wilhelmine Germany. A passage from his book is pertinent:

Fritz Stern writes quite correctly that "a thousand teachers in republican Germany who in their youth had worshipped Lagarde or Langbehn were just as important in the triumph of National Socialism as all the putative millions of marks that Hitler collected from the German tycoons" [p. 152]. The Volkish movement could be dismissed with a smile as an insignificant intellectual curiosity if it had not spread to such a disastrous extent, and had (along with other contributing factors) such unimaginable consequences. Named after the German word Volk, which is related to the English word "folk" or "people," it can be ultimately be traced back to sin and the Devil. Humanly speaking it goes back to an unhealthy cultural environment of which the misosopher Hegel was a profound if unwitting expression.

Hegel

Rejecting the literal truth of the bible like many others, but still feeling the need for a higher power, Hegel invented the existence of some sort of a nebulous and insubstantial "World Spirit." This spirit was, or so Hegel imagined, working in history to guide the human race to higher and higher levels of awareness and self realization - and its instruments for this were certain historically significant peoples, such as the Greeks, the Romans, the French, and of course the Germans. These people were governed by states and led by leaders, great men of history who were agents of the spirit - which was not only leading mankind to higher levels, but was also developing its own consciousness and learning more about itself in the process. Thus the state, and the Great Leader, are agents of a higher power and as such in a special category of veneration, compared to whom the individual is not significant. Hegel called this spirit "God," although it had nothing to do with the one true God revealed in the bible. This should serve as a reminder that not every idea that uses the terms "God," "Providence," "Heaven," or whatever is Christian or derived from Christianity. God-language is not proof of a Christian origin, and has often been used to express thoroughly un-biblical and un-Christian concepts. The Greeks, or Hegel's imaginary spirit working through the Greeks, introduced such basic ideas as philosophy, history, poetry, art, and architecture. The Romans introduced law and wider concepts of government and civilization. The French under Napoleon were instrumental in breaking up the old order, and Napoleon was an instrument of "destiny," "providence," or "fate," all of them interchangeable terms (not necessarily for Hegel) for the vague cosmic force that was only the product of Hegel's finite, cloudy, and misguided brain. This is why Hegel's attitude toward Napoleon was similar to that of a teenager's toward the Beatles - never mind that Napoleon was a proud, cruel, deceitful, and arrogant man totally indifferent to the suffering he caused in the senseless pursuit of his fleeting and trivial human glory. That sort of judgement requires higher spiritual values to which Hegel was oblivious. He viewed such great men as too far above the common people to be concerned about them as they crushed them beneath their military boots on the glorious and irresistible march toward their destined end. And there are some who do not see Hitler in this, but look instead at the Apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus Christ. Returning to the subject of Hegel's vain and profane babblings, the alleged world spirit finished with Napoleon and was now working through its chosen instrument of destiny - the German people. The Germans were represented by a state, the state of Prussia, which now, as the agent of a higher invisible power, was considered to be superior to other forms of government. Of course, the Prussian government was also naturally superior to the individual citizens themselves, who had no real personal or eternal significance. They were merely the raw material which the world spirit used for the foundation of the state and the deeds of the world-historical heroes such as Napoleon (and Hitler). And, as the world spirit developed its consciousness through the German people and the state of Prussia, it also reached higher degrees of self-realization in the philosophy of - who else? - Hegel. One commentator on Hegel suggested that the incarnation of Jesus Christ was for Hegel a profound moment in history, and the next significant event in world history after that was Hegel's discovery of the process of history. I am not familiar enough with Hegel's writing to know if the author was joking or not, but I suspect he wasn't. This is an example of how the human mind, free from the doctrines of the bible, liberated from concepts of sin, judgement, the afterlife, and Jesus Christ (except as a wise moral teacher), is now mature and emancipated enough to invent all kinds of new philosophies and ideas - never mind that these new ideas and philosophies are largely or wholly false. It is most striking that Christian "pastors" and "theologians" were swayed by this rubbish instead of exposing it. The concept (not unique to Hegel) that the German people had been uniquely chosen by an invisible spiritual power to play a key role in history, making them in fact a new Chosen People, gave the concept of Volk a quasi-religious significance. This was appealing to the minds of those who had no interest in the God of the bible but still needed something higher to give their lives meaning - and the national ethnic group, the race, the Volk, was an ideal-seeming substitute. In the national ethnic group we have a larger entity whose existence (unlike that of the Christian God) is manifestly evident to the natural mind. Furthermore, it extends back into the indefinite past, and forward into the indefinite future, fostering the illusion of transcendence and permanence. The fact that Germany had not yet been unified and the German people were scattered throughout a number of independent states prevented this from degenerating into a merely localized nationalism, and added to its mystical and unearthly nature. All of this was deeply inspiring to those who wanted a substitute god. It now seems difficult to believe that many people would take this ludicrous and contemptible pseudo-philosophy seriously, but others not only took it seriously, they elaborated on it - and not necessarily under the direct influence of Hegel. His tedious verbosity confined his immediate influence to the upper strata of pseudo-intellectuals. But, even for those who were not directly influenced by Hegel, attachment to the people, the Volk, as something higher to give one's life meaning and purpose, was a natural downward step away from God. Hegel did not invent the basic trend - he was influenced by it and articulated it.

Fichte

Lest it seem that I exaggerate the quasi-religious nature of the newly discovered devotion to one's national ethnic group (in total contradiction to basic biblical doctrines), a brief examination of another German misosopher is in order - Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). That Fichte preceded Hegel slightly but had some similar concepts (including the spiritual uniqueness of the German people and a concept of history as the outworking of a higher spiritual reality, "the Absolute" or "God" if you like) illustrates that they were both themselves the products of a similar time and place. Other writers and thinkers of the time also had similar ideas, as they were all under the influence not of their own independent human reason and intelligence as they fondly imagined, but of "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience," as God speaking through Paul says. More important for the purposes of this discussion of the Volkish movement is a brief examination of Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation. Here we see an importance accorded to the German people which goes far beyond the bounds of ordinary patriotism. In fact, Fichte's concept of the German people is so integral to the development of National Socialism that no analysis of the origins of the Holocaust is complete without a brief discussion of his concept of nationality and its relationship to higher spiritual reality. That Hitler was familiar with Fichte is not a matter of conjecture. A portion of Hitler's library was retrieved from Berchtesgaden and is now stored in the Library of Congress (about 1200 volumes). A study of the books [http://www.fpp.co.uk/Hitler/library/Atlantic_Monthly.html] revealed some useful information. Included among the books is a first edition in eight volumes of Fichte's writings. Given to him by the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, they had been (unlike many other books in the collection) not merely read, but heavily marked and underlined in Hitler's distinctive way (authenticated from other documents in the Federal German Archives). A passage from Timothy W. Ryback's analysis is useful here: In the Fichte volumes given to him by Riefenstahl, I encountered a veritable blizzard of underlines, question marks, exclamation points, and marginal strikes that sweeps across a hundred printed pages of dense theological prose. Where Fichte peeled away the spiritual trappings of the Holy Trinity, positing the Father as "a natural universal force," the Son as the "physical embodiment of this force," and the Holy Ghost as an expression of the "light of reason," Hitler not only underlined the entire passage but placed a thick vertical line in the margin, and added an exclamation point for good measure. It says something about Hitler, that he was willing and able to read many pages of Fichte's complex philosophy, and confirms his own assertion (supported by others) that he was an avid (if haphazard) reader. Also, it shows how German "philosophers" (and those who read them) could use theological and even biblical terminology to express exceedingly unbiblical concepts. It also shows that the "natural universal force" of German so-called Idealism served as a religious sounding substitute for the biblical God. This is why Haeckel and others, including Hitler and other Nazis, could use god-language in a way that is easily misinterpreted by those who are unfamiliar with German misosophy, and try to explain the origins of the Holocaust without having done sufficient research. Other items in the library reveal that Hitler was definitely interested in spiritual things. Another typewritten manuscript of an unpublished book marked by Hitler also equated God with natural law. Thus someone could say "the will of God" and be referring to "the essence of that which is as revealed by science" and not to the God of the bible. Parenthetically, no heavily underlined bible with numerous marginal notations was found in the collection (which was far from complete). It is ludicrous to even think of Hitler carefully studying Romans or I Corinthians and placing two or three lines under significant passages. Getting back to the subject of Fichte, when we look at his Addresses to the German Nation and see his concepts of the German people, it is not hard to see why Hitler would have been attracted to him. Some key elements in the National Socialist ideology had deep roots in the 19th century - and although Fichte could never have imagined a Holocaust, and would not doubt have been horrified by it if he could have imagined it, the ideas of which he was merely an unwitting mouthpiece were added to, and followed with a remorseless and bizarre logic to the terrible end we are discussing. The Wright brothers did not imagine the massive bombing raids that wrought such fiery devastation on German cities, but they were connected to them. Like other German "Idealists" who rejected the arid intellectualism and superficial conceit of the "Enlightenment" (while accepting it's basic starting point of man's independence from the Christian God), Fichte believed that there was some sort of animating spirit at work in the cosmos, and this spirit expressed itself through individuals and through peoples, through national groups. Thus national groups were manifestations of the pseudo-divinity of idealistic German philosophy, a vague sort of life force confined within the limits of the cosmos itself (which is of course related to and sometimes was synonymous with pantheism).

Moreover, this imaginary concept of the cosmic life force working through a people was elevated by Fichte to the status of spiritual law (as if his confused imaginations were synonymous with spiritual law). Thus the basic qualities of a nation are the manifestation of the basic life force, and it is these qualities that are the guarantee of a people's merit, worth, and significance. The dilution of these spiritual qualities (through interbreeding or through the importation of foreign ideas) leads to a separation from the deeper cosmic spiritual reality, and ends with the destruction of the group. Thus, the greatest virtue is preservation of the people, and the worst evil is that which dilutes the quality of a people and leads to its destruction. Anyone who finds it difficult to believe that an intelligent adult would postulate such groundless ideas and pass them off as philosophy is invited to peruse Fichte's "Thirteenth Address" [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1806fichte.html]. Unfortunately, there is more. In another Address [http://library.flawlesslogic.com/fichte.htm], Fichte asserts that man needs the eternal, and cannot even love without some concept of eternity - and what is eternal? The fatherland. The fatherland, in which the world spirit expresses itself through a people, is the meeting point of heaven and earth, and our real heaven, where we find our deepest fullfilment. Significantly, the link just referred to is a white racialist website - meaning that even today Fichte is being used to justify the importance of keeping the nation (in this case America) pure of foreign influences. I didn't look at the whole site but I didn't see any references to the bible on it. There was an emphasis on Germanic mythology and other pagan themes such as Sun-worship, identical to that found in certain circles in 19th-century Germany. Now such people are considered the lunatic fringe, but if America suffers sufficient hardship, and no credible spiritual alternative is presented, their numbers could swell dramatically - and many proud modern secularists and free-thinkers would gladly sacrifice their freedom in exchange for order and stability. Returning to Fichte, the early 19th century is still a long way from Auschwitz, but now the fatherland and the Volk, the People, are elevated to a religious level that admits of further unpleasant developments. Moreover, Fichte goes on to assert in this same Address that the life of the individual is not important. What is most important is the existence of the nation, and it is the nation which gives meaning to life. Thus the Volk (and of course the state which gives the people cohesiveness, and the geographical area which also imparts some distinctive qualities to the people residing in it) becomes the source of meaning in life for the individual, the meeting point with the "divine" cosmic life force, the context in which one can find true fulfillment. This is getting closer to "Germany is our God and Hitler is our Messiah," but many key elements are still lacking (we are after all still only at the beginning of the century. There is more to come - much more). Other ideas of Fichte's merit consideration. For example, what is freedom? Jesus said "The truth shall make you free," but Fichte, and many others who shared his views, felt that freedom meant being a German, living in accordance with the true spirit of the race. Consequently, a true German's real reason for living was to be a German and to bring up his children to be Germans [www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1807fichte1.html]. Thus he could ensure the perpetuation of the German people, fulfilling his need for transcendence, immortality, and eternity. This does not cause Hitler or inevitably lead to the death camps, but it helps to open the door. More significantly for our understanding of Hitler, Fichte (whose philosophy was devoid of higher ethical content) felt that the state was above moral considerations. In the words of Viereck, Fichte felt that

...the state should use for victory, if needed, all possible frauds, violations of law, and violent crimes. The collective Volk-ego should be bound by no external laws or limits [p. 192]...Fichte in his Speeches says: "Between states there is neither law nor right save the law of the strongest...(Germany) has the moral right to fulfil its destiny by every means of cunning and force." Starting the myth of racial purity, Fichte calls the Germans the most unmixed of all peoples and the closest to the mystic powers of nature. Their unique purity and their romantic idealism make the Germans not merely "a Volk" but "the Volk." This superiority justifies "the Volk" in seizing whatever Lebensraum it needs and expelling or enslaving other Volk. In doing this, Germans must not be deterred by legality or by their own written promises, for the Volk is above all such scraps of paper and above such sentimental rubbish as international morality. The Volk must impose a German peace on Europe. This peace must be based not on treaties and written pledges but on brute force alone, a self-justified force. These axioms of Fichte's Realpolitik were developed into a philosophic glorification of war by his fellow-romanticist Hegel. Thence they were carried even further by Treitschke and Houston Chamberlain and all the other philosophers and historians who form the long but unbroken chain linking Fichte's nineteenth-century theories with Hitler's twentieth-century practice [p. 194]. I am not sure of the exact nature of the relationship between Fichte and Hegel, but the main point is evident - that Hitler's ideas were being advocated more than a century before, and not by devout bible-believing Christians. Of course, Fichte did not invent Realpolitik, but when we examine the German context out of which Hitler arose, this elevation of violence, deceit, and war to virtues rather than unavoidable necessities, virtues that were thought to be in harmony with the underlying spiritual reality of the world, the significance should be clear. Unfortunately, it is not clear to some who want to blame Hitler on something else and have made up their minds well in advance. Fichte represents a trend that took deep root in German society and helped (along with other factors) to prepare a nation vulnerable to the deceptions of Naziism.

Jahn

There were many other people early in the 19th century who were caught up in this misguided and hopeless search for meaning. One of them, Friedrich Jahn (1778-1852) was a Prussian who worked as a school teacher and public lecturer. He organized secret nationalist youth societies (Germany was then under French occupation) and devoted his life to the cause of German nationalism. He was according to Viereck worshipped as a Fuhrer by his youthful followers, and was imprisoned for his nationalistic activities - not by the French, as the occupation had long since ended, but by German authorities who found his calls for German unity a threat to their own local powers. His dream of all Germans being united in one state was never to be realized (he had hoped for the inclusion of Switzerland). He believed that history was determined by the power of the Volk and, like Hegel, saw the Germans as "humanity's holy people" [Viereck, p. 69]. He was also obsessed with keeping the Volk pure from foreign influences (whether ideological or biological) and condemned the Jews because as a people without a state they were "nothing, a lifeless frivolous phantom" [ibid. p. 70]. Jahn was also opposed to democracy - the Volk should be led by a Fuhrer, a Saviour, and not by a bunch of chattering parliamentarians. Mosse and Viereck both connect Jahn (though indirectly) to a burning of anti-nationalist books that took place at a congress of student representatives of national student leagues - this occurred in 1817. A passage from Viereck that refers to both Fichte and Jahn is illuminating: A parliamentary committee of the German Diet classified Jahn's German Volkdom of 1810 with Fichte's Speeches to the German Nation of 1808 as "the spiritual godfathers of the newer Germany." Both works were written while French troops still occupied Germany; this background accounts for the fanatic bitterness of Jahn's and Fichte's nationalism. Fichte's work was limited in its appeal by its abstruse metaphysics. Jahn's book offered a more practical program, in colorful demagogic style. General Blucher, the German co-victor at Waterloo, called Jahn's book "the Germanest verbal gun [sic]" [pp. 68-69].

The intensification of Volkish tendencies

There was much more to the volkish movement of course than the opinions of a few writers. As the century advanced, the elevation of the Volk to a quasi- religious status became increasingly popular. Moreover, it was intensified, even radicalized, by some significant factors. One of these factors was the increase in Germany's military and economic power after the unification of the German states subsequent to the Franco-Prussian war. "Power corrupts," as is often said, and a world view that was based largely on conceit and egotism to begin with (with no external restraint such as a salutary fear of God) was inevitably greatly magnified by the increase of national power. Many Germans in this period were intoxicated with vanity and blind love of power. A second factor was the introduction of Darwinism. The Germans had a greater emphasis on the philosophical and ethical implications of Darwin's theory than the English did, and were much more enamored of the idea that life was basically a struggle in which the strong survived and the weak died (and racial purity of course was a part of strength). A quote from Gasman explaining German modifications of Darwinism (chiefly by Ernst Haeckel) is suitable here: To identify Darwin, instead of Haeckel, as the matrix of Hitler's social Darwinism, as is generally done, is to ignore...the obvious reality that since the publication in 1866 of Haeckel's Naturliche Schoepfungsgeschichte, the Germans understood Darwin and Darwinism through the distorted lenses of Haeckel. When the Germans refer to Darwin, more often than not they in fact mean, not Darwin, but Haeckel and his Monist philosophy [p. 161]. Nevertheless, no ethics had any validity other than those necessary for survival. This incessant struggle was good, the foundation of life as we know it, the means by which higher life forms emerged. This was transferred to the human plane and contributed greatly to the glorification of war as not merely a regrettable necessity, but a positive good and a source of progress. Yet another factor was the increasing complexity of modern life. Industrialization that led to the well-known problems of alienation and artificiality; economic complexity; political complexity as government became a tedious affair of budgets and parliamentary maneuvering; a bewildering number of new options, schools of thought and art, numerous "isms" - all of these contributed to an increasing longing for an idealized past. In this idealized past - a totally unchristian concept, since Christians are supposed to look forward to something better after this sinful world - people lived simple lives, close to nature and the land. Government was an admirably simple affair of a king and nobles whom people obeyed. Commerce and industry were also conducted on a simple medieval level. Women stayed at home, took care of the house, and gave birth to little Germans. Also, the primitive and unspoiled Saxons ("primitive" being a word with positive connotations) were able to rampage freely, plundering and pillaging without being handicapped by such spiritually enervating concepts as guilt, sin, righteousness, or the afterlife. Thus there was also an increasing hostility and contempt for Christianity, which was now openly attacked and repudiated (those who didn't accept it earlier in the century had moderated their criticisms so as to avoid giving offense). This brief overview of the Volkish ideology is still incomplete. Omitted were such aspects as the desire for Lebensraum in the east and the desire to have all Germans unified in a single state (known as Pan-Germanism). Hostility to democracy was also the natural result of believing that not all people were equal - why should the strong be hindered by the weak? Some advocated the elimination of defective children in the name of racial "hygiene." Extreme advocates of racial purity were active in proto-Nazi youth groups such as the Artamenen - two of its members were the youthful Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hoess (the commandant of Auschwitz). It was thought that the establishment of racially pure communes would help to build an Aryan elite - and such experiments were tried. There were also attempts to discover new religions such as Sun worship and Nature worship to replace Christianity.

Mosse describes in depth the pervasive influence of Volkish ideas in Germany before the First World War. He does refer to other more typically modern trends that were also at work. Positivism and materialism found their devotees, and Marxism as well as various brands of socialism were of course popular. It even seemed to many that Marxism was the wave of the future, but it proved to be incapable of generating the enthusiasm that the stronger and deeper forces of nationalism, racism, imperialism, and militarism aroused on the right. Many were surprised that the German Communist Party, the largest in Europe, was so swiftly and easily crushed in 1933. Some comments from Mosse aptly describe the relationship of Volkish ideology to the Third Reich: ...the Volkish ideology cannot be viewed as a transient phenomenon; it was a new religion whose roots, like those of all religions and faiths, not only entered man's subconscious but penetrated deeper and became a whole new way of life. In the end, those feelings became tradition itself, readily acceptable and constituting weighty evidence for the sanctity of the Volkish purpose. Hitler only promised to fulfill a concept of life which had permeated much of the nation before he ever entered the scene [p. 301]. Hitler took this opportunity, toward which all of Volkish history had led, and exploited it. Indeed, he drove it to its logical conclusion, for he gave it a concrete direction [p. 292]. There was one thing, though, that distinguished Hitler from countless other advocates of Volkish ideology - his ability and willingness to act. Hitler himself referred to this in a passage of Mein Kampf quoted by Mosse: "A world view can be right a thousand times, but it will be without significance for the life of the Volk if it does not combine with the goals of a fighting movement, a political party" [p. 298]. Many people were talking about destroying the Weimar Republic, rebuilding Germany, expanding to the east, and getting rid of the Jews, but no one else had such a unique combination of oratorical ability and practical political skills. These were combined with sufficient treachery, deviousness, ruthlessness and fearlessness to set Hitler apart from many others who shared his basic views and needed no persuasion to become his followers. In connection with this, it is interesting to contrast Hitler with another would-be Fuhrer, Heinrich Class. Class was president of the Pan-German Association from 1908 until it was disbanded in 1939. This organization was, according to Mosse, the most important of the Volkish organizations before World War I [p. 219]. The group advocated territorial expansion, and wanted to unite all Germans in one state. In addition to having various agricultural and economic policies, the Pan-Germans were strongly anti-communist and anti-socialist, and included some prestigious men among their membership. Max Weber, the sociologist, was a member, and so was Gustav Stresemann, the politician who became both chancellor and foreign minister of the Weimar Republic (though both of them left the organization). Another member was Ernst Haeckel, the prestigious social Darwinist, about whom more will be said later. Among other things, Class advocated a dictatorship as suitable to the organic unity of the German people. Of course he was aware of the Jewish conspiracy, which was especially manifested in department stores and banks. Mosse says: From 1908 on, Class launched a determined campaign against the Jews, declaring them to be carriers of modern materialism and, consequently, enemies of the Germanic spiritual substance...Class would also restrict the cultural and professional activities of native German Jews. The Jews were to be excluded from teaching, banking, and public office and forbidden to own landed property...Class went on to support, by 1928, the so-called "Juden Ordnung," a foreshadowing of the Nazis' Nuremberg Laws, proposed in 1919 by Mueller von Hausen and his "Society Against Jewish Domination" which had been the first to publish a German translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...Mueller von Hausen's proposal merely repeated the points which Class himself had proposed in his book [pp. 221-22].

Class thought that he himself might be a good choice for dictator, but was never able to establish a mass following. Mosse has researched in detail many Volkish groups and spokesmen - one small group, called the Hawks (Die Griefen) had Adolf Eichmann as a young member. Also interesting are the references to Volkish persons who disliked Hitler for various reasons. One man objected to Hitler because he thought the Volk needed further purification before a truly German state could be founded, and Hitler was therefore premature in his eagerness to seize power. He also disliked Hitler's willingness to negotiate with the Catholic Center party, because he feared excessive Catholic influence. In spite of his being in agreement with Hitler on Marxism and anti-Semitism, Mosse relates that the man (Reinhold Wulle) was sent to a concentration camp after Hitler came to power [p. 230]. Another individual supported Hitler at first, but thought Hitler had betrayed the Volk by being willing to accept Mussolini's rule over the Germans in the southern Tyrol. He concluded that Hitler was part of the international Catholic conspiracy because of his cooperation with Mussolini. This same individual objected to Hitler's self-glorification, as well as to his southern "Catholic" origins - he felt that the real saviour of Germany should come from the "Protestant" north, like Luther and Bismarck. As to why Hitler's National Socialist party should have come to power while the many Volkish groups came to nothing, Mosse points out that they never organized themselves and didn't even want to appeal to the masses, being fundamentally elitist. The leaders of the various Volkish groups agreed with Hitler ideologically, but he understood power politics and they did not. Even those who opposed Hitler for various personal reasons "helped to spread the Volkish ideology, tried to destroy the Republic, assisted the rise of Hitler, and turned on him only when he became the principal threat to their aspirations" [p. 232]. After Hitler came to power they either accommodated themselves to the New Order or were silenced. One Volkish group did become a significant political party - the German National People's Party (the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, or DNVP). This party retained its faith in the Hohenzollerns as late as 1928, and was closer to prewar conservative values, including a nominal cultural Christianity. Mosse describes the attraction of this party to "Protestants" who felt its more traditional appeal would benefit the state, the church, and the family as well. Mosse refers to the preaching of Volkish ideals behind a facade of "Protestant" "orthodoxy" - I am indebted to him for his analysis here [pp. 238-53]. Nationalistic and anti-Semitic, this party was in agreement with Hitler in general, but many of its members were uncomfortable with his extremism, and some of them minimized the Jewish question. It was for them a problem, but not the central problem. Alfred Hugenberg became leader of the party in 1928 and participated with Hitler in the coalition government of 1933. He thought he could manipulate and control Hitler, and in the end come to power himself. Outwardly more moderate than the Nazis, the DNVP had many of the same basic ideas and ultimately fell under the complete domination of the stronger and more ruthless party. These brief digressions give a hint of what Mosse elaborates on in great detail throughout the course of his book - the pervasiveness and the popularity of the Volkish movement. Germany before Hitler was a dark, miserable, and evil society and Hitler was the embodiment and personification of trends that had been conceived and gathering strength long before his birth.

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