Help!

He was brought up Catholic, but he definitly turned away from the Church. I'll have a look in the books I've got at home, but I don't think I've got anything specifically Hitler... I think all I've got is Stalin, which is no use to ya!

Clare xx

(PS- Hitler and Stalin are my history A Level- I don't have any sort of morbid fasination in them!)

I don't think you can prove anything about Hitler's religion, but you can argue convincingly that it was all a public show. Vincent Carroll's Christianity On Trial discusses the issue, arguing that Hitler was either a blood and soil pagan, or a pure politician who adopted whatever religion he thought would be convenient at a given moment.

On the other hand... What if he was a Catholic, and sincerely believed, but made some fairly astounding mistakes? Why are we always so fast to disclaim people as "not real Christians"?

seebs said:

Why are we always so fast to disclaim people as "not real Christians"?

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Because we often see what people do and we use the good ole' line, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

What we, as Christians, often forget, however, is that that particular verse says, "know them", not, "judge them".

It's when our human carnal side kicks in, and the sin of pride takes over. That's when we label people as non-Christian.

The function of an atheist is to drive you nuts. They are not looking for productive discourse.

Tell them to prove it. Look at their source and question the source. A lot of these sources are anti-Catholic in nature. Remember, the atheist is the one making the claim.

If he was Catholic, was he only raised Catholic and abonded the Faith?

As mentioned he was raised Catholic, and as all politicians do he used that association when it was convienent for him. Hitler at one point was popularly elected by the German people, he was a dynamic speaker able to rally people to action ... that is how he came to power.

Christians are known by their actions, so Hitler and many in Nazi Germany (the majority of the population was Lutheran) didn't live up to that. Catholics were certainly not given some sort of special status under Hitler, priests died with Jews in concentration camps (St. Maximilian Kolbe took the place of a Jewish man who had a family so that man could live - http://www.kolbenet.com/kolbe/) and the Nazis closed down religious activities of all kinds. When Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)was a young man in Nazi occupied Poland he and other young men wanting to be priests had to hide away, go undergound or be arrested and possibly die in concentration camps. (See "A Witness to Hope" - video or book by George Weigel, very likely your library would have that.)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pope/etc/bio.html

During the war, Wojtyla turned to the Polish Church--the only institution built on an indestructible, eternal truth. Yet even here, the Nazis were trying to choke off the breath of Catholicism. As soon as they took over Krakow, General Frank requisitioned the Royal Castle on Wawel Hill. He closed Wawel Cathedral, one of the oldest Catholic repositories and the very heart of religious life in Krakow. Frank allowed a priest to say Mass every Sunday, but only to an empty church--Krakowians were not allowed to attend. Hitler himself wrote General Frank that Polish priests "will preach what we want them to preach. If any priests acts differently, we shall make short work of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted...There should be only one master for the Poles, the German." Wojtyla had very real reason to believe that Nazis were going to destroy the Polish Church, along with Polish culture and the Polish nation itself. As Neal Ascherson said to us, "The genocide of the Poles appeared to be already beginning...It's very difficult to imagine that people can say to themselves, 'Maybe in twenty-five years time there'll be nobody alive who speaks Polish.' It seems outrageous, unimaginable. But that's how people thought. And the Nazis helped them to think like that, by what they said and what they did." After all he'd lost, the terror of losing the Word was too much. The Germans could kill priests, but not the Priesthood; they could destroy churches, but not the Church. When Karol Wojtyla joined Archbishop Sapieha's secret seminary in 1944, he was giving himself to the only power of goodness left in a dark world. He accepted it on its own terms. It was the last bastion of everything he loved. It was not in his power to change it--not yet.

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Like most communist/socialist states, Naziism promoted secularism and state/national interests and persecuted religion of most any kind. If they benefitted from it they'd use religion, but usually they would tromp it down because it gave people HOPE. Because nearly all religions teach values that competed against the national/statism of socialist regimes.

Marcia

That is interesting because I've always heard of the Luther-Hitler connection (which I
never really believed anyway). What's that all about?

Acceptance said:

That is interesting because I've always heard of the Luther-Hitler connection (which I
never really believed anyway). What's that all about?

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Antisemitism in Europe didn't suddenly start in Nazi Germany, Luther held very hard antiSemitic views. I don't believe that Luther had any direct influence on Hitler - just Luther shows that those views existed hundreds of years prior to Hitler. But Richard Wagner (the opera composer) held similiar views, he was active in pushing political agendas that were aimed against Jews, and Wagner I believe did have a fairly direct influence on Hitler. Hitler used a lot of Wagnerian music in his parades/propaganda.

Because Germany was the home of the reformation, most Germans were Lutheran, not Catholic. Hitler was actually Austrian, not German, by birth. That is why his first move in territory grabbing was to roll into Austria. Can't recall exactly how he became a German citizen - I know he fought in WWI for Germany - he won an iron cross, so perhaps he gained citizenship that way.

Another interesting aside is that Hitler's mother may have been 1/2 or 1/4 Jewish (would have to see if that is more than a rumor), but that her painful death from breast cancer under the care of a Jewish doctor was one of the early incidents combined with the common societal dislike of Jews that pushed Hitler on the path he took. That and he was rejected at the Vienna Art institute and blamed it on a general jewish plot.

Marcia

marciadietrich said:

Another interesting aside is that Hitler's mother may have been 1/2 or 1/4 Jewish (would have to see if that is more than a rumor), but that her painful death from breast cancer under the care of a Jewish doctor was one of the early incidents combined with the common societal dislike of Jews that pushed Hitler on the path he took. That and he was rejected at the Vienna Art institute and blamed it on a general jewish plot.

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I actually had to write an entire paper in college about how Hitler's mom having cancer caused WWII -- yikes talk about a stretch, IMHO.

Hitler was raised Catholic but lost his faith at the end of WWI. A priest came to bring Communion to the Catholic patients in the ward he was in as a result of a mustard gas attack. When he approached Hitler, Hitler cursed and swore at him and told him to go away. The priest said that Hitler had such hatred in his eyes that he thought the young man might have been possessed.

After the war, Hitler moved from atheism to a vague form of paganism, which he used to support his insane Darwinian racial theories. He used pagan symbolism but most biographers doubt that he believed in any of it. He was, however, very interested in some rather esoteric occultic practices.

If you really want to categorize him in a religious sense, I would say that "Atheistic Paganism" is a fair approximation.

marciadietrich said:

Antisemitism in Europe didn't suddenly start in Nazi Germany, Luther held very hard antiSemitic views. I don't believe that Luther had any direct influence on Hitler - just Luther shows that those views existed hundreds of years prior to Hitler. But Richard Wagner (the opera composer) held similiar views, he was active in pushing political agendas that were aimed against Jews, and Wagner I believe did have a fairly direct influence on Hitler. Hitler used a lot of Wagnerian music in his parades/propaganda.

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Just to be fair, antisemitism in the church didn't start with Luther either. It had a long history in the church both formally and informally even from the time of the earliest fathers. That being said, it is often not recognized though that there are many varieties of it out there. Some was directed against the Jews as a people group, some against the particulars of Jewish religion (in it's opposition to Christian practice), some of it against Jewish persecutors of Christians and still other varieties if one cares to look into it.

ken

ok ok hitler hated christians just as much as jews. in his heyday hitler was ...newage. he felt by eliminating all...monotheistic religions from the earth man could evolve into godlike beings..hence aryan race.

II Paradox II said:

Just to be fair, antisemitism in the church didn't start with Luther either. It had a long history in the church both formally and informally even from the time of the earliest fathers. That being said, it is often not recognized though that there are many varieties of it out there. Some was directed against the Jews as a people group, some against the particulars of Jewish religion (in it's opposition to Christian practice), some of it against Jewish persecutors of Christians and still other varieties if one cares to look into it.

ken

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Hi Ken,

Never meant to say Luther started it either, just that his writings exhibited the same ideas. Hitler was the product of his environment, which included a society that was heavily antiSemitic. Hitler couldn't have caused the holocaust on his own, and didn't.

Marcia