Hitler’s Religious, Quasi-Religious and Anti-Religious Ideas

By Joseph Keysor

Hitler's combination of religious and secular rhetoric has led to diverse interpretations of his fundamental orientation. How can talk about some higher power harmonize with his concept of life as a brutal and amoral struggle for survival? A careful consideration of his views shows that while Hitler did have many religious elements in his ideology, these were used to advance a worldview that was fundamentally hostile to conventional religion. The higher power that he constantly evoked was not the god of the Bible, but something closer in spirit to the Will of Schopenhauer, the World Spirit of Hegel, or a vague Almighty of philosophical pantheism. Hitler's contempt for Semitic Christianity and his desire to replace it with a new concept of life are directly stated in strangely neglected passages in Mein Kampf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: apgroup
• Release date: May 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311336286

Joseph Keysor

Joseph Keysor is the author of "Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible" and an authority on Nazi ideology.

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Hitler’s Religious, Quasi-Religious and Anti-Religious Ideas

by Joseph Keysor

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Copyright Joseph Keysor 2014.

All Rights Reserved

Published by Athanatos Publishing.

Cover by Julius Broqueza.

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Hitler’s Religious, Quasi-Religious and Anti-Religious Ideas

Imagine a high-ranking official in the former Soviet Union. He is a member of the Communist Party, attends meetings, participates actively, and has pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin on his wall. He calls himself a Communist and is so considered by others, yet he lives a privileged life of luxury while the common workers leadmiserable lives. Is he really a Communist? The answer to that, of course, depends on your definition of Communism. For this reason, discussions of the genuineness of said official’s Communism should have something to do with what the word Communism actually means. This requires at least some significant and informed reference to the writings of Marx and Engels.

Such elementary considerations seem to be lacking from many discussions of Hitler’s relationship to Christianity. Can those who keep trying to connect Hitler’s comments about God to Christianity summarize even briefly some of the main teachings of Jesus? That we should treat others like we want them to treat us; that a poor beggar who dies and goes to heaven is better off than a rich man who dies and goes to hell; that God is aware of all that we say, think, and do, and we will be held accountable for it in the world to come; that there will be a resurrection from the dead, after which the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God while the wicked will be cast into a lake of eternal fire; that if our country is conquered by foreigners we should not be concerned about it and cooperate with them fully, as the spiritual kingdom of heaven is more important – does anyone imagine Hitler had any interest in such(to him) ridiculousnon-Aryan teachings?

People who want to bring Christianity into discussions about the origins of National Socialism on the basis of Hitler’s comments about the Almighty . . . the Lord . . . Providence . . . Fate . . . or whatever should be asked: "What do you think Jesus taught and represented? Deutschland uber alles?" Hitler made vague philosophical references to God, including a few to Jesus Christ (not all of them positive) – but mere references to some sort of God, or even to Jesus, are not proof of Christianity. Hitler’s higher power, whatever it was, was not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was not the God of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was not God in the flesh, born in a manger of a virgin, living a sinless life, dying on the cross and rising from the dead.

Hitler’s god was a nebulous philosophical entity in the German tradition of Hegel’s World Spirit, that used select people (the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans) to advance mankind. It was related to Fichte’s Absolute, with its special bond to the German people. It was in some ways identical to Schopenhauer’s vast and impersonal cosmic Will, ceaselessly striving and impelling conflict and change throughout creation. Needless to say, none of those men thought that the Bible gave us a true revelation of God’s character. All of them thought that higher truth was accessible to human reason alone, without divine guidance.

That Hitler’s Almighty came out of this tradition does not mean Hitler was a philosopher. He did not need to be – although there is more German philosophy scattered throughout the pages of Mein Kampf than many realize. Ideas first introduced by philosophers became over the decades part of the general vocabulary, and were frequently used even in newspapers and political debates to justify Germany’s unique superiority and destiny. Suchlofty concepts, now believed in by almost no one, had far more to do with the formation of the culture that Hitler emerged out of than did any authenticallybiblical teachings.

It is worth stressing what should be an obvious point - that the mere use of the word God is no proof of Christian influence. Francis Schaeffer wrote,

. . . no word is as meaningless as is the word ‘god.’ Of itself it means nothing. Like any other word, it is only a linguistic symbol – g-o-d – until content is put into it . . . no other word has been used to convey such absolutely opposite meanings. The mere use of the word ‘god’ proves nothing.¹

It can be used to represent either concepts derived from the Bible, or contrivances of merely human philosophical ingenuity predicated upon rejection of the Bible as a false book.

In Hitler’s case, god-wordsare confusing to people who interpret them with no knowledge of their use in the unbiblical context of nineteenth-century German secularism. It is hard for them to understand that people could completely reject the Bible as an authoritative to guide to life, emphasize science and human reason, be profoundly humanist in their approach to life, and yet still have some awareness of a higher spiritual reality. Traditional religion was rejected, but religious ideas and words were retained and recycled with entirely different meanings. This common phenomenon can be observed not merely in German Romanticism and Idealistic Philosophy, but also in the doctrines of liberal Protestantism.

The problem of understanding Hitler’s religious comments is further complicated by his lack of sincerity. So many people now take (or pretend to take)all of honest Adolf’s religious rhetoric at face value. He promised to support the churches - but failed, somehow, to keep his word. He made a few nice general statements about the importance of Christianity–most or all of them in the early part of his rule when he was not yet firmly in control. He was supported by many with the name of Christian –but how many of them did not know what Hitler really stood for?

Someone like Hitler had never appeared before in the history of the world, and many people – not only Christians – were deceived by him. Skilled diplomats and people who had devoted their professional lives to politics and to international relations were also fooled by Hitler. Hitler was a genius at lying just like Einstein was a genius at science. True, there were plenty of danger signals, but many people just could not imagine what they meant. Of course, if the Germans could have foreseen what Hitler would do to Germany he would have received no support.

Many Christians who supported Hitler had no real spiritual discernment, but were merely cultural Christians. They had been baptized into the Lutheran and Catholic church as infants, did not read or believe in the Bible, went to church two or three times a year if at all, and had no real commitment to the teachings of Christ. Many who were more serious believed that the Bible was full of mistakes and errors. They had vague religious ideas, what we now call theological liberalism, and but were more concerned with political security, national honor, and economic stability than with