What were the general veiws of Nazi leaders on Christianity?

>>137575684

Those who deny Hitler as a Christian will invariably find the recorded table talk conversations of Hitler from 1941 to 1944 as incontrovertible evidence that he could not have been a Christian. The source usually comes from the English translation (from a French translation) edition by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, with an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper.

The table-talk has Hitler saying such things such as:

>"I shall never come to terms with the Christian lie. . .",

> "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity".

The problem with these anti-Christian quotes is that the German text of the table-talk does not include them, they were made up by François Genoud, the translator of the French version, the very version that English translations rely on>

Even if you believed the table-talk included the anti-Christian quotes, nowhere in the talk does Hitler speak against Jesus or his own brand of Christianity. On the contrary, the table-talk has Hitler speaking admirably about Jesus. Hitler did, of course criticize organized religion in a political sense (as do many Christians today), but never in a religious sense. But the problems with using Hitler's table talk conversations as evidence for Hitler's apostasy are manyfold:

1) The reliability of the source (hearsay and editing by the anti-Catholic, Bormann)
2) The reliability of multiple translations, from German to French to English.
3) The bias of the translators (especially Genoud).

4) The table-talk reflects thoughts that do not occur in Hitler's other private or public conversations.

5) Nowhere does Hitler denounce Jesus or his own brand of Christianity.

6) The "anti-Christian" portions of Table-Talk does not concur with Hitler's actions for "positive" Christianity.

>>137575896

In the Secret Conversations with Hitler, two recently discovered confidential interviews were given by Richard Breiting in 1931. Breiting was a member of the German People's Party. In these conversations, (which were actually more private than the Table-Talk), Hitler reveals his aims and plans. Like the Table-Talk, the notes were taken in short-hand. Unlike the Table-Talk, which Hitler knew would later be revealed, Hitler was assured that his statements would be kept secret. Moreover, the Secret Conversations were authenticated as written solely by Breiting (unlike the editing by Bormann). Yet nowhere in these conversations does Hitler denounce religion. On the contrary, Hitler mentions a conciliation with Roman and German Catholicism where

>"people like von Papen and many others are establishing good relations with the Vatican."

In Hitler-- Memoirs of a Confidant, Hitler reveals himself through conversation to colleagues from a conference on economic policy. In it Hitler is reported to have spoken, glowingly, about raising the

>"treasures of the living Christ,"


> "The persecution of the true Christians and sanctimonious churches that have placed themselves between God and man and to turn away from the anti-Christian , smug individualism of the past,"

and

>"to educate the youth in particular 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!" [Turner, Ch. 23]

Nowhere in the Memoirs do we find a Bormann-like anti-Christian statements as found in the Table-Talk.

>>137575684
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
German Nazi dictator who is responsible for the Holocaust (a.k.a. The Shoah), a genocide that killed 11 million people, notably killing 6 million Jews due to the Nazis' particularly anti-semitic policies. While he would sometimes claim to be a Christian to the religious public, Hitler also declared, "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity," and claimed that "The Christian religion is nothing but a Jewish sect," and that, "One is either a Christian or a German. You cannot be both." Joseph Goebbels affirmed that Hitler was "completely anti-Christian" and said the best way for them to deter the churches from fighting the Nazi government was to "claim" to be Christian while gradually "strangle any attempt" of religion from interfering with the state. Hitler said that he used the term "God" to refer to "the dominion of natural laws throughout the universe" (and said that he was opposed to "atheism" if it meant denying that). However, he was against any religious conception of God, saying that priests have exploited people's feeling, and that "In the long run, National Socialism [a.k.a. Nazism] and religion will no longer be able to exist together." For such reasons, there have obviously been historians who have classified Hitler as an atheist.

>>137575684
>References
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/NonJewishVictims.html ↩
Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Yale Nota Bene, 2001), 355-256. ↩
Armin Robinson, ed., The Ten Commandments: Ten Short Novels of Hitler’s War Against the Moral Code, with a preface by Herman Rauscing, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943), ixhn. ↩
Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series Of Political Conversations With Adolf Hitler On His Real Aims (London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1939), 57. ↩
Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, 1939-1941 (New York: G.P Putnam's Sons, 1983), 76-77. ↩
Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944: His Private Conversations, trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens (New York: Enigma Books, 2000), 6. As explained on this page, Hitler avoided promoting the term "atheism" and the denial of the term "God" as such things currently had explicit connotation with the Bolsheviks, with whom the Nazis were at war. ↩
Geoffrey Blainey, A Short History of Christianity (Melbourne: Viking, 2011), 495–496. ↩

>>137575896
>>137576002
>>137576393
>>137576556
Thanks for the really detailed responses anons. Appreciated!