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#Post#: 32362--------------------------------------------------
Re: Right-left (Judeo-)Christian divergence
By: antihellenistic Date: March 16, 2026, 9:11 am
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Hitler’s View of Christianity
[quote]In August 1924, while imprisoned in Landsberg Prison,
Adolf Hitler privately told Rudolf Hess that he had to
camouflage his opposition to religion, just as he had to conceal
his hostility toward alcohol.
During a discussion in which Hess and other Nazis were debating
their positions regarding the Protestant Church, Hitler remained
silent. Later, however, he confided to Hess how he truly felt.
Although Hitler found it distasteful to behave like a religious
hypocrite, he believed he could not openly criticize the church,
because doing so might alienate many people.[/quote]
Source:
Rudolf Hess to Ilse Pröhl, August 20, 1924, in Rudolf Hess
Briefe 1908–1933, edited by Wolf Rüdiger Hess (Munich: Langen
Müller, 1987), pp. 350–351.
[quote]In 1927, Hitler corresponded with a Catholic priest who
had previously supported Nazism but by this time had some
misgivings. Hitler contradicted the priest's claim that
Christianity had brought an end to Roman barbarism. Instead,
Hitler insisted that Christianity was even more barbaric than
the Romans had been, killing hundreds of thousands for their
heretical beliefs. He then rattled off a list of Christian
atrocities: killing the Aztecs and Incas, slave hunts during
medieval times, and enslaving millions of black
Africans.[/quote]
Translated from German to English with ChatGPT :
[quote]...followed the collapse of Rome were often far more
barbaric in their customs: that to the 68 torches of Nero were
added 100,000 stakes of burning; to the martyrs of Christianity,
millions of tortured victims; to the gladiatorial combats,
tournaments often no less cruel; to the animal hunts, the human
hunts against the Aztecs and the Incas; to ancient slavery, the
slave hunts of the Middle Ages and the transplantation of
millions of Blacks to the American continent.
And all this in times when there was no liberal state, but when
the Church itself appeared as the highest political
power.[/quote]
- Adolf Hitler, Letter to Mr. Gött Magnus, Beneficiary of
Lehenbühl, 2 March 1927.
Original text :
„… daß die Jahrhunderte, die nach Roms Zusammenbruch kamen, in
den Sitten noch viel barbarischer waren, daß den 68 Fackeln
eines Nero 100 000 von Scheiterhaufen folgten, den Märtyrern des
Christentums Millionen von Gefolterten, den Gladiatorenkämpfen
oft nicht minder grausamen Turniere, den Tierhetzen die
Menschenjagden auf Azteken und Inkas, der antiken Sklaverei die
Sklavenjagden des Mittelalters, die Verpflanzung von Millionen
Negern auf den amerikanischen Kontinent
Und das alles in Zeiten, in denen es keinen liberalen Staat gab,
sondern die Kirche selbst als höchster politischer Machtfaktor
in Erscheinung trat.“
Source :
Paul Hoser, Hitler und die katholische Kirche. Zwei Briefe aus
dem Jahr 1927, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 42, 3
(1994): 489
HTML https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1994_3.pdf
[quote]Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that Adolf Hitler not
only wanted to officially withdraw from the Catholic Church, but
even intended to “wage war against it” at a later time.
However, Hitler understood that leaving the Catholic Church at
that moment would create a major scandal and would undermine his
chances of gaining political power. Rather than commit political
suicide, he preferred to wait for a more favorable moment before
moving against the churches.
Goebbels, for his part, was convinced that a decisive day would
eventually come when he, Hitler, and other Nazi leaders would
collectively withdraw from the Church.[/quote]
Source:
Joseph Goebbels, diary entry for September 12, 1931, in Die
Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, edited by Elke Fröhlich, Part I:
Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, Vol. 2/II: June 1931–September 1932
(Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004), p. 96.
Original German provided and originally translated by Richard
Weikart:
Auch er möchte aus der kath. Kirche austreten. Will sogar später
einmal den Kampf dagegen durchführen. Aber der Zeitpunkt! An den
Zeitpunkten werden wir nochmal kaputt gehen. Zum Kotzen! Wir
Führer sollen uns eines Tages geschlossen in diesem
Christenverein abmelden. Na, das gäbe ja einen Skandal.
[quote]In September 1931, Joseph Goebbels recorded in his diary
that Adolf Hitler wished to withdraw from the Catholic Church
but was waiting for the right moment. Hitler’s intention seemed
to excite Goebbels, even though he acknowledged that such a step
would cause a scandal. Nevertheless, Goebbels relished the idea
that he, Hitler, and other Nazi leaders might one day leave the
churches en masse. He also wrote that Hitler “even wants
sometime later to carry out the fight against it [the Catholic
Church].”[/quote]
Source:
Goebbels, diary entry of September 12, 1931, in Die Tagebücher
von Joseph Goebbels, edited by Elke Fröhlich, Part I:
Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, Vol. 2/II: June 1931–September 1932
(Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004), p. 96.
[quote]In January 1937, Goebbels was present with Hitler during
an internal discussion on religion and later reported in his
diary: “The Führer thinks Christianity is ripe for destruction.
That may still take a long time, but it is coming.”[/quote]
Source:
Goebbels, diary entry for January 5, 1937, in Die Tagebücher von
Joseph Goebbels, edited by Elke Fröhlich, Part I: Aufzeichnungen
1923–1941, Vol. 3/II: March 1936–February 1937 (Munich: K. G.
Saur, 2001), p. 316.
[quote]In a private conversation with Goebbels just a few days
after Christmas in 1939, Hitler referred to “positive
Christianity” in a far more cynical tone than in his pious
public pronouncements.
This does not tell us what Hitler thought about positive
Christianity in the 1920s, when he used the term more freely,
but it still provides insight into his perspective in 1939 (only
ten months after he had publicly equated positive Christianity
with Nazi social programs).
In this conversation, Goebbels complained to Hitler about the
churches. Hitler expressed sympathy for Goebbels’ anti-church
attitude but told him that he would not take any action during
the war. He then suggested another approach:
“The best way to finish off the churches is to pretend to be a
more positive Christian.”[/quote]
Source:
Goebbels’ diary entry, December 28, 1939, in Die Tagebücher von
Joseph Goebbels, edited by Elke Fröhlich, Part I: Aufzeichnungen
1923–1941, Vol. 7: July 1939–March 1940 (Munich: K. G. Saur,
1998), p. 248.
[quote]Alfred Rosenberg noted in his diary that Adolf Hitler
once cited Arthur Schopenhauer as the source of the saying that
“antiquity did not know two evils: Christianity and syphilis.”
Rosenberg, who was himself an admirer of Schopenhauer,
apparently was unsure whether this quotation actually came from
Schopenhauer, since he placed a question mark next to it in his
diary.
Joseph Goebbels recorded the same conversation in his own diary,
but he remembered Hitler phrasing the statement somewhat
differently. According to Goebbels, Hitler said that
“Christianity and syphilis made humanity unhappy and
unfree.”[/quote]
Sources:
1. Rosenberg, diary entry for April 9, 1941, in Alfred Rosenberg
Diary, p. 531, (accessed January 22, 2014).
2. Goebbels, diary entry for April 8, 1941, in Die Tagebücher
von Joseph Goebbels, edited by Elke Fröhlich, Part I:
Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, Vol. 9: December 1940–July 1941
(Munich: K. G. Saur, 1998), p. 234.
[quote]On December 13, 1941—two days after declaring war on the
United States—Hitler told his Gauleiters (district leaders) that
he intended to annihilate the Jews, but that he would postpone
his campaign against the churches until after the war, when he
would deal with them. According to Alfred Rosenberg, both on
that day and the following day Hitler’s monologues focused
primarily on what he called the “problem of Christianity.”
Rosenberg even underlined this phrase in his diary.[/quote]
Sources:
1. Goebbels, diary entry for December 13, 1941, in Die
Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, edited by Elke Fröhlich, Part
II: Diktate 1941–1945, Vol. 2: October–December 1941 (Munich: K.
G. Saur, 1996), pp. 498–500.
2. Rosenberg, diary entry for December 14, 1941, in Alfred
Rosenberg Diary, p. 625, accessed January 22, 2014, at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives.
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