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Adolf Hitler privately to Heinrich Himmler, October 14, 1941:
"It may be asked whether concluding a concordat with the churches wouldn't facilitate our exercise of power.
"First, in this way the authority of the state would be vitiated by the fact of the intervention of a third power concerning which it is impossible to say how long it would remain reliable. In the case of the Anglican Church, this objection does not arise, for England knows she can depend upon her church. But what about the Catholic Church? Wouldn't we be running the risk of her one day going into reverse after having put herself at the service of the state solely in order to safeguard her power? If one day the state's policy ceased to suit Rome or the clergy, the priests would turn against the state, as they are doing now. History provides examples that should make us careful.
"Secondly there is also a question of principle. Trying to take a long- range view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable based on falsehood? When I think of our people's future, I must look beyond immediate advantages, even if these advantages were to last 300-500 years or more. I'm convinced that any pact with the church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such a compromise. Thus the state will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse.
"An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature, and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the state, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science.
"Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can't, or can't yet be explained - that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can't satisfy them with the party's program. Time will pass until the moment when science can answer all the questions.
"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advance of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there's no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds - perhaps inhabited worlds like ours - then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.
"But one must continue to pay attention to another aspect of the problem. It's possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature., or by knowledge of the past. Only a minority, however, at the present stage of the mind's development, can feel the respect inspired by the unknown and thus satisfy the metaphysical needs of the soul. The average human being has the same needs, but can satisfy them only by elementary means. That's particularly true of women, as also of peasants who impotently watch the destruction of their crops. The person whose life tends to simplification is thirsty for belief, and he dimly clings to it with all his strength.
"Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they've acquired others that are more reasonable. Indeed it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this. But it would serve no purpose to replace an old belief by a new one that would merely fill the place left vacant by its predecessor.
"It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to reestablish the worship of Odin. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that point the ancient world was divided between the systems of philosophy and the worship of idols. It's not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified - and the only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.
"If in the course of 1-2,000 years science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity which is the liar; it's in perpetual conflict with itself.
"One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of a belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretize the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?"
- Adolf Hitler, in _Bormann-Vermerke_ (transcribed by Martin Bormann), reprinted as _Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944_ (H.R. Trevor-Roper, Trans.), New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953, pages #48-51.
To take this letter as indicating Hitler to have been Pagan is incorrectly defining "Pagan" as anyone not Christian or anyone opposed to Christianity. This leaves out Muslim, Jewish, and many other religions that are not Pagan and not Christian as well. Often times people confuse "pagan" with "heathen." Pagan is a term used to label a collection of Earth-based religions. The terms are not interchangeable. People who define Pagan as anyone not Christian are excluding the majority of the world's spiritual paths.
"Heathen" means "of the Hearth" and was used by early Christian priests to identify the common village folk, most of whom still held their pagan roots. The word eventually became the label of all pagans, and eventually all sinners in general. A number of modern pagans still use that term when refering to themselves. (This paragraph sited to an anonymous guestbook entry.)
In looking at this, we must remember that a word is only as "good" as the way people use it and the term "heathen" within the mouth of a Christian generally holds the connotation of one who is the enemy of Christianity and in need of being converted.
Hitler recognized that the Church, and Christianity as a whole, was not an immediate threat to his plans. He believed in his German Aryan God, which was supposedly the thought path that began his Aryan supremacy goals. Most Pagan Gods or Goddesses are not blonde haired and blue eyed (many aren't even portrayed as a material entity at all).
Hitler was neither Pagan nor Christian. He did, however, attempt to "preach" Pagan ideas, hoping to attract Pagans to his side and believing they would be more receptive to his slaughters. He was wrong, and Pagans of the time were just as repulsed as the rest of the world.
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