Hitler
Posted on: February 26, 2008 - 9:30pm
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Hitler
I've read before that Hitler held two views on religion - his real beliefs and his public views. This sites site (which someone tried to use to dispel the 'myth of him being a Catholic') outlines some of them... obviously there also those where he affirms his religious views. What were his actual beliefs?
http://www.geocities.com/chiniquy/Hitler.html
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan
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I think the debates about the religious views of Hitler and Einstein are a worthless sidetrack to what we are trying to discuss. They are both appeals to authority. I'm done with discussing such a thing.
Forget debating Hitlers personal views on religion. The most important thing to think on with Hitler is the antisemitism that led Hitler to see the reason to enact the holocaust was definetly religious in nature as the guilt of the jews in Jesus' death sentence was established by the Ecumenical council of the christian church. Fuck the personal views of the individual in question. Seek out the sources of beliefs that cause people to hate or kill others because of their personal beliefs or ethnic group.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
As I recall, Hitler believed in god and jeebus but disregarded christianity as a corruption of god's word. He was catholic but favored, I believe, the protestant church. His ultimate plan was to end christianity once he achieved world domination. What is in contention is just how much christianity influenced his anti-semitism.
"Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society." Thomas Jefferson
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Completely agree... although since it's often raised by theists, usually when they point to the bad things 'atheist' have done, it's hard to avoid. Obviously the most important thing to point out is that whether Hitler or others were atheists or theists is irrelevant to why they did what they did, although I'd still correct their error rather than let the misconception go.
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan
Watcher is right. Hitler was nothing without the German people following him willingly. He DID get elected after all, based on his public proclamations of nationalism and religion. The people ate it up just like they ate up George W. Bush. Furthermore, Hitler didn't execute the Jews, his followers did. They hated Jews, too, and they were mostly Christians.
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Well he didn't get elected exactly. When the 1932 elections happened, Hitler came in second to Hindenburg. This was followed by parliamentary elections in which the Nazi party gained over 200 seats in the Reichstag, making them the largest party (although they didn't hold a majority of seats). This allowed Hitler to force Hindenburg to appoint him Chancellor of a unity government in 1933. However, the whole point of doing that was an attempt of controlling Hitler. Essentially, they felt that by naming him Chancellor, they could control him, as well as marginalize the communists.
Unfortunately, this attempt failed because Hindenburg was very inconsiderate and died in 1934. At this point, Hitler and the Nazi party were able to appoint Hitler as president for life without having presidential elections. This is why he wasn't technically elected into his dictatorship, although his party did do rather well in parliamentary elections.
Hitler got elected because he offered a new hope for Germany.
After WWI, Germany got hit hard with sanctions and economic slow down. Hitler offered a way out by eliminating the 'undeseriable' (Gypsies, Jews, Disabled etc...) because he felt they were the ones preventing Germany from reaching it's full glory with the Aryan race.
The resichteg(sp?.) fire was blamed on Communism, and Hitler used it to show how much the Communists and inferiors were pulling back Germany and didn't want a wonderful life for the Aryan race.
So I think in that context, his personal views were irrelavent, what matters is his driving force which was Nazism, based on racial and nationalist views.
As Watcher said, I don't think discussing Hitlers religious views can really make a point about theists or atheists. There are good and evil theists as well as good and evil atheists. Hitler's views are ambiguous. I think much of his admissions of being a Christian are propagandist, but he did say a lot of different things. He also started the German Faith Movement as an attempt to get back to German Pagan Origins and away from Christianity which ultimately he viewed as a Jewish religion.
Atheist Books
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume 1, Chapter 2, Years of Studying and Suffering in Vienna
Think that's clear enough?
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
We can quote mine Hitler all day. He talked like a christian sometimes and like an atheist sometimes. Every pro-christian quote you post from hitler a theist can throw in an anti-christian quote. It's a quagmire.
I've played that game before. And even the point of the debate is pointless. Hitler's beliefs do not prove nor disprove god.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
This one usually shows up in the "benefits of religion" debate, though. It's one I've heard a lot once believers give up trying to prove they're worshipping something real. I can understand wanting just one quote, so that the follow-up is, "Okay, so we've determined that Hitler is a big liar."
Personally, my favourite tactic is telling believers they're atheists. "But I believe in God!" "Well, that's what Hitler said, and you're convinced he's an atheist." It usually gets a laugh, but it can't really end the argument.
Of course the argument itself is bogus anyway, since blaming Hitler for killings makes it seem like he didn't have help. Should we examine the individual beliefs of everyone involved? Ridiculous.
Better yet is the turn-around that Hitler preached an irrational dogma that nobody doubted because it benefited them.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I think it is worth noting that Hitler and the Nazis outlawed the German Freethinkers League (ie. the Rational Responders of that time). It should be emphasized that any individual or group with a fanatical devotion to an ideology are ultimately in the same camp as religious fundamentalists. In Rwanda, 90% of the population is Christian and many Hutu Catholic priests participated in the genocide of the Tutsis. I have yet to see a similar atrocity committed in the atheist Scandinavian countries. I think the real question is whether we harbor innate genocidal tendencies which are tempered by our innate reason and empathy. And humanity caves in to mass murder when our social networks which promote rationalism break down.
hitler's view on religion is immaterial, what matters is
1) he didn't invent antisemitism, religion did.
2) he didn't have to invent religious persecution - religion did
3) He didn't have to call for christian hatred of jews, it already existed.
Hitler called upon a pre-existing hatred and desire to persecute jews... christians were slaughtering jews in germany centuries before there was a hitler... between scapegoating jews for the plagues, the pogroms, and Martin Luther's homicidal hatred of jews, germany was ripe for a hitler.
Hitler was the torch, christianity created the powderkeg. Hitler's religion didn't matter shit, what matters is that he could use christian hatred of jews to gain power and he did it.
Hitler was one man. millions of germans were required for the holocaust.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
It's my belief that all theists hold two views on religion. What they say they believe and what they really, in their heart of hearts know to be true. That there isn't a god.
That aside I read some interesting information regarding Hitler and religion in Richard Dawkins book The god Delusion. Starting on page 272 in a section titled "What about Hitler and Stalin? Weren't they Atheists?
Respectfully,
Lenny
"The righteous rise, With burning eyes, Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies, To beat and burn and kill"
Witch Hunt from the album Moving Pictures. Neal Pert, Rush
This is true of many, and especially of those who publically display their beliefs for profit and personal gain.
Political figureheads often exaggerate their beliefs just as much as their policies just to up the vote count. Despite the notion of separation of church and state, it would be difficult for an atheist to become president in the USA without openly expressing his religious convictions. Whether they actually do hold true to their beliefs is secondary to how effectively express that they do.
Lower down the food chain, I personally know people who express their beliefs and follow rituals of worship purely to be accepted in areas of their societal spheres. One drunken conversation even revealed not only a theist facade, but a deep hatred for being forced by society to uphold it. His endless next day pleading, although unecessary as I would never shop the poor fellow, did drive home the point that statistical presentation of theist figures is likely inflated by the phenomena of forced societal compliance.
Try not to be daunted by the task of asserting that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the best actor that ever lived, you have to ignore a lot less facts than you do to assert that the Earth is only 6,000 years old!
Why does it matter? I'm not Hitler and neither are you. Even if Hitler was an atheist, what would that prove? Nothing. It's a correlation without a cause. The society in Communist societies were nominally atheistic, but they made the worship of the state and the salvation by the Proletariat into a religion. Atheism is a lack of belief, not a consistent set of beliefs.
“It is true that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. It is equally true that in the land of the blind, the two-eyed man is an enemy of the state, the people, and domestic tranquility… and necessarily so. Someone has to rearrange the furniture.”