Some digressions: 1. Hitler's Table Talk

   Before examining the last of what I take to be five flaws that run through Mr. Walker's entire site - an ignorance of Christianity - it might be helpful to look at some other parts of the site. For one thing, a brief overview of Christianity and the teachings of Christ relative to Hitler makes a fitting conclusion to the study of a truly unique website; for another, looking at some more details of the site might clarify the final remarks.
   It is not necessary to deal with the entire site. Four sections will be examined - Hitler's table talk and other extraneous sources; Quotes from Hitler's Henchmen and Nazi Sympathizers; Nazi photos; and Nazi Artifacts.
   Concerning a book called Hitler's Table Talk, some background information is in order. For some time during the war, Hitler allowed a couple of stenographers to record his casual conversation. The transcripts were edited by Martin Bormann and survived the war to be published as Hitler's Table Talk.
   The book shows Hitler as being extremely hostile to Christianity. In it Hitler refers to Christianity as a lie; a disease; an invention (along with Bolshevism) of the Jew; a religion that violates the natural law of struggle by preserving human failures. He predicts that Christianity will die, says it is senseless and unhealthy, and claims (among other things) that Paul falsified the teachings of Jesus.
   Reputable historians as far as I know accept the book, and even Mr. Walker accepts some of it as genuine. He asserts, though, that the anti-Christian statements do not reflect Hitler's beliefs, but reflect instead the bias of Bormann, who edited them. To me, this topic is of secondary importance. I have not needed to use Table Talk so far (though I believe it is genuine), and think that Hitler's public statements and actions, taken together, reveal what sort of a man Hitler was. I agree with Mr. Walker's statement: "The best way to evaluate a person involves examining the words and actions of the person directly rather than indirectly from editors and hearsay accounts." Nevertheless, I would like to comment on Mr. Walker's attempts to discredit a potentially useful source of insight into Hitler's mind.
   First, is it reasonable to assume that a genuine, serious Christian (such as Mr. Walker claims Hitler to have been) would allow someone very hostile to Christianity (as Mr. Walker admits Bormann was) to become his trusted secretary? Would a left-wing anti-Christian like Mr. Walker choose a right-wing Christian fundamentalist to become his right-hand man and allow him to administer his important affairs? And, if he did, what fundamentalist would want to work with him?
   Secondly, there was a real possibility that Hitler would ask to see the result. He would not have been pleased to find that his statements had been so completely falsified as to present the opposite of what he intended. This would not have been beneficial to Bormann's career. If Mr. Walker's imaginary Christian fundamentalist assistant had falsifed Mr. Walker's conversations so as to make him appear to be a devout, bible-believing Christian, what would Mr. Walker's reaction be?
   Furthermore, Hitler's admiration for Nietzsche is well known - and some of the comments expressed in these passages are identical to those expressed by Nietzsche in The Antichrist: that Paul falsified the teachings of Jesus; that Christianity subverts life by helping the weak and pitying them; that Christianity is an invention of the Jew.
   Finally, it is a mistake to say that Hitler never criticized Christianity publicly, as Mr. Walker does when saying that anti-Christian statements in the Table Talk are not consistent with Hitler's other public statements. We have already seen statements that the Old Testament historical record on which so much of Christianity is based were dismissed by Hitler as contrary to fact. We have also seen statements that we owe everything to human intelligence alone, and that ethical ideas are strictly the invention of the human brain with no higher external source. This nullifies Christianity. It is true, Hitler never attacked Christianity so bitterly in public - as has already been said, this would not have profited Hitler and would have interfered with his long-range goals.
   Looking at some specifics of this section, we find it asserted that the persecution of the churches was Bormann's "pet project." This omits Himmler, Rosenberg, and Goebbels. Odd, that Hitler (the Roman Catholic in good standing until his death, according to Mr. Walker) surrounded himself with so many close advisors who hated the church. I once had a German tell me personally that Hitler was a good man who was led astray by bad advisors - but why does a good man choose evil advisors? And why didn't church leaders come to Hitler and inform him that Bormann was making trouble for them? Then Hitler could have fired Bormann and protected the churches and safeguarded their rights, as he had promised he would.
   But, Mr. Walker asks "If Hitler actually desired to eliminate personal Christianity, then why do we not find it in his other private dialogs and conversations?" He then cites two private interviews from 1931 which Hitler had been assured would be kept secret, and hence represent his real views. In these interviews Hitler does not denounce religion and mentions "a conciliation with German and Roman Catholicism" which shows his interest in religion and the well-being of the church. There is even another conversation where Hitler talks about educating the youth "in the spirit of those of Christ's words that we must interpret anew: love one another; be considerate of your fellow man; remember that each of you is not alone a creature of God, but that you are all brothers!"
   We have already looked at reasons why public denunciations of Christianity by Hitler would have interfered with his plans and created unnecessary political obstacles for him. As to the statements about love, I leave it for intelligent people to judge for themselves, whether or not Hitler sincerely meant those words, and practiced them - if, that is, he ever really said them. Mr. Walker accepts as genuine words by Hitler reported second hand that completely contradict everything that is known about him. Perhaps those statements were falsified to present Hitler in a more favorable light, or maybe Hitler was pulling the wool over someone's eyes, as he did so often and so well. Supposedly confidential statements could still have been made guardedly - would Hitler, who broke his own word so often, trust other people to keep theirs?
   Mr. Walker goes on to refer to Hitler's "admiration" for Christ in the Table Talk (why didn't Bormann edit that out as well?). This "admiration" consists of saying that Jesus' object was "to liberate His country from Jewish oppression." So, Jesus was a national liberator, a Palestinian Simon Bolivar, who was "liquidated" by the Jews with no mention made of his resurrection. How does this prove Hitler's Christianity?
   But, Mr. Walker goes on to ask, "If Hitler did not see himself as a Christian, then why doesn't he condemn Jesus?" Hitler saw Jesus as an Aryan who died fighting the Jews. Why would he condemn an Aryan who died fighting Jewry, whose teachings were later falsified by the apostle Paul? Anyway, there is considerably more to being a Christian than "not condemning Jesus."
   A few other statements merit comment - such as, "Hitler's Christianity in Germany was never questioned until years after WWII." We have already referred to Pastor Julius von Jan. There are also some statements from Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor who was arrested and spent years in prisons and concentration camps before being liberated at the end of the war. Here are some of his comments about Hitler (related by Leo Stein, who was with Niemoller during part of his captivity):

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'."
[http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/njm415/NatJewMonthly415.htm]

   Professor Conway relates that in 1936 the governing body of the Prussian Union of the Confessing Church issued a statement denouncing the Nazi "worship of blood and race" and the exaltation of "eternal Germany." It was stated that Naziism was a new religion, "nothing less than Antichrist" (Conway, p. 122). The Nazi reaction was predictable. Clergy were prohibited from reading the statement, but many of them ignored the ban and read the statement from their pulpits. This led to the arrests of hundreds of pastors (seven hundred according to Professor Conway). When Mr. Walker says that Hitler's Christianity was never questioned until years after 1945, he is mistaken.
   Another question raised on this website is, "If Hitler was opposed to personal Christianity then why did he order his chief associates, including Goering and Goebbels, to remain members of the church?" So, they wanted to leave the church, but remained in it because Hitler ordered them to? That doesn't sound very devout to me. As to Hitler's reasoning - if Mr. Walker's information is correct - the answer is simple: public relations.
   Then we are given some statements from Speer, who tried to paint himself and Hitler in the most favorable possible light - admitting what could not be denied, but shading the truth as much as possible. Personally, I have no confidence in the integrity and honesty of Mr. Speer, who was smart enough to say some true things when it was impossible to deny them, but has been proven by historians to have been a cunning liar.
   Since Mr. Walker quotes Speer at length, and repeats as truthful Speer's statement that Hitler "sharply condemned the campaign against the church," and did not want to replace the church by party ideology, a few comments about Speer are in order. Incidentally, what was this "campaign against the church"? And who believes Hitler sharply condemned a practice by one of his top leaders but did nothing to prevent it?
Anyway, Speer's credibility ranges from slight to non-existent, since he claimed to have no knowledge of the mass murder of Jews, but a recently discovered report on the expansion of Auschwitz with express reference to the Final Solution has emerged - with Speer's handwritten notes in the margins. [http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=JLEKBHGLJPHLNQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2005/05/11/wspeer11.xml] Speer's touching fable of himself as the innocent architect who was led astray by ambition when in fact he was one of the most power hungry and devoted followers of Hitler is convincing to some, but sound historians will not accept his whitewashing of Hitler.
   When discussing Speer's memoirs, Mr. Walker includes the following quote from Hitler's Table Talk: "I envisage the future, therefore, as follows: First of all, to each man his private creed. Superstition shall not lose its rights. The Party is sheltered from the danger of competing with the religions." This quote is accepted as genuine by Mr. Walker because it does not conflict with his purpose. He presents it as evidence of Hitler's not having wanted to destroy the churches. However, several comments need to be made about this statement.
   To begin with, Hitler refers here to religion as "superstition." Secondly, Hitler really did not care if someone was a Catholic or Protestant, and Germans of those persuasions were free to go to their respective churches - as long as they believed that the Germans were the master race, and obeyed the Fuhrer in every respect. Thirdly, the Party was sheltered from the "danger" of competing with the religions by the simple expedient of excluding the churches from public life, confining them to their sanctuaries, and throwing opponents of the regime into jail.
   Parenthetically, the rights of the mainline superstitions - Lutheranism and Catholicism - to be muzzled and locked up in their churches were to be protected. Less influential groups had no such rights. Prof. Conway provides a Gestapo document listing the lesser groups and sects that were weak enough to be summarily banned over the period of 1933-1938. Some of them, and by no means all, were: Seventh Day Adventists; Bible Faith Fellowship; Free Pentecostalists of Berlin; German People's Church; The Church of the Apostle John; Bible Community; Gathering of Mankind's Friends; Union of Free Religious Communities in Germany; God's Social Parish; Anabaptist Sect; Mission for Awakening in Germany; Christian Gathering; New Salem Company; Shepherd and Flock; Association for a Common Life; Bahais; Jehovah's Witnesses. (pp. 370-374) But Mr. Walker quotes Hitler's 1939 speech to the Reichstag to the effect that "The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service." Could someone who accepted as truthful Hitler's comments on the origins of WWII rightly be considered an idiot? But the facts about the invasion of Poland are well known - the facts about the Bible Faith Fellowship, the Anabaptist Sect, and the Mission for Awakening in Germany are not.
   We are then presented with this statement: "the Christian churches remained strong in Germany until Hitler died." Anyone who thinks the German church was strong in 1944 has a peculiar understanding of the Third Reich. Shirer mentions the following incident that shows the strength and freedom of the German church as promised by Hitler: Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor, had been arrested. He was brought before a court for making "underhand attacks against the state" (a good example of Nazi freedom of religion. The Nazis never closed a church door or interfered with a service - they only arrested a pastor who said something they didn't like).
   Anyway, Niemoller was acquitted of the main charge, found guilty of a lesser offense, and released since the time he had spent in prison awaiting trial exceeded the sentence imposed. However, "he was seized by the Gestapo as he was leaving the courtroom, placed in 'protective custody' and confined in concentration camps, first at Sachsenhausen and then at Dachau, where he remained for seven years until liberated by allied troops." (Shirer, p. 239)
   Next a "Minister Rust" is quoted praising Hitler at a Christian meeting, and it is said "Here we have a Christian minister to his fellow Christians." "Minister" Rust was the Reich Minister of Science, Education, and Popular Culture."
   Of equal value is a quote from Hitler about Luther. Referring to pictures of Frederick the Great, Luther, and Bismarck, Hitler supposedly said: "The greatest of the three is Dr. Martin Luther, for he made it possible to bring unity among the German tribes by giving them a common language through his translation of the Bible into German...." Why did Hitler admire Luther? Because of Luther's doctrines? His emphasis on the teaching of salvation by faith? His attempted purification of the church? No, because Luther made it possible to unify the German people. This shows Hitler's indifference to theological doctrines - and, by the way, why would a Catholic admire Martin Luther and have his picture on the wall, instead of the Pope, the Virgin, or a crucifix?
   Still in the same section about Hitler's Table Talk, we read a touching story about how Hitler pulled a "very much" used New Testament out of his pocket and impressed some visiting deaconesses with it. That was a nice little trick from a man who boasted that he was the finest actor in Europe. I wonder where they found a used bible for him - maybe from one of his housekeepers: if, that is, the incident really happened.
   There are also some quotes from contemporaries praising Hitler's Christianity. Some people (like French and British diplomats, and reporters and editors for England's most prestigious newspapers) were easily fooled and took Hitler's promises to respect the church at face value. Others were just making propaganda.
   Finally, there is a long speech by Hitler praising Jesus as a socialist, this one too from a second hand source, Otto Wagener. Mr. Walker accepts it as valid because is suits him but, as has been said before, it contains none of the essential Christian doctrines. Moreover, a review of the book states that Wagener presents to us a Hitler that "is so opposed to conflict that he is reluctant to arm his storm troops (SA) against their domestic opponents and agrees with Wagener that the time for large-scale international conflict is definitely past." [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A07E4D7163BF936A1575BC0A963948260]

The time for large-scale international conflict was definitely past, and Hitler really don't know if his SA should be armed? All that street brawling must have been deeply troubling to his tender conscience.
   These conversations were held, according to the review, over the period from 1929 to 1933. In this period Hitler - while making plenty of bloodthirsty remarks to his followers - consistently presented an image of peace and moderation to the world. Mr. Walker chooses to take these comments at face value - people with more knowledge of Hitler will not. They also will not accept the image presented in these conversations of a Hitler who was unwittingly controlled by Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, and unable to prevent them from carrying out their criminal schemes in opposition to his own plans.
   Yet, Hitler did mix truth with his lies - one thing that makes it so difficult to determine what he actually meant if one only looks at his word and ignores the historical record. These conversations - reconstructed  by Wagener from memory years after the event, while in captivity after the war - are accepted by Mr. Walker as valid. Perhaps if he had read them more carefully he would have decided that they were unreliable and not trustworthy - for the quotes show not Hitler's support of Catholicism, but his hostility to it.
   After some vague and confusing comments about how the Christian communities betrayed and killed Jesus' teachings on socialism at the same time that the Jews killed Christ, Hitler supposedly states that the churches then "allowed" Christ to be resurrected, "instigating the belief that his teachings too, were reborn!" This sounds as if the church killed Jesus' socialism, then "allowed" him to be resurrected so that they might replace his teachings with their own - but the passage is sufficiently muddled to make it possibly genuine. 
   Then in the passage cited with approval by Mr. Walker as proving Hitler's Christianity, we find these attacks on Catholicism and on organized religion:

The suppression of freedom of opinion, the persecution of the true Christians, the vile mass murders of the Inquisition and the burning of witches, the armed campaigns against the people of free and true Christian faith, the destruction of towns and villages...the condemnation of their leaders before tribunals, which, in their unrelenting hypocrisy, can only be described as blasphemous.

Here we see deep hostility to the Catholic Church. There is also contempt for organized religion as well:

...(with) the basest hypocrisy they carry before them the cross...They even pretend to be preaching the teachings of Christ...That is the true face of these sanctimonious churches that have placed themselves between God and man, motivated by selfishness, personal greed for recognition and gain...smug individualism, egotism and stupid Phariseeism...hypocrites who have Christ on their lips but the devil in their hearts...

Secular humanists like Mr. Walker can applaud Hitler's wisdom here. Mr. Walker can argue, as he does elsewhere on his site, that hostility toward established religion is consistent with some Christian reformers who objected to ecclesiastical abuses, but the specific reference to the Inquisition shows a hostility to the Roman Church on the part of the supposedly Catholic Hitler. Moreover, if these are taken as attacks on the organized church in general, they radically conflict with his stated views about the importance of the organized churches, and show the hollowness of his promises to cooperate with and support them.