Hitler's propagandist use of Christian Thought and Belief


Hitler's propagandist use of Christian Thought and Belief as a reason to propagate the destruction of the Jewish population stands as the best example I've ever seen to defend the seperation of church and state.

"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."

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922

Jewish hatred did not spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion.

In his book, "On the Jews and their Lies," Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War II. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther.

I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought.

At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

(Karl Lueger (1844-1910) belonged as a member of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Party, he became mayor of Vienna and kept his post until his death.)

How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my attitude toward the Christian Social movement!

My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

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)

Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached the apogee of its glory. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

Protestantism as such is a better defender of the interests of Germanism, in so far as this is grounded in its genesis and later tradition; it fails, however, in the moment when this defense of national interests must take place in a province which is either absent from the general line of its ideological world and traditional development, or is for some reason rejected. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the advancement of all Germans as such, as long as matters of inner purity or national deepening as well as German freedom are involved, since all these things have a firm foundation in its own being; but it combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmatically established. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people. Adolf Hitler speaking about the leader of the Christian Social movement (Mein Kampf)

I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian-Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world. Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)




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