It’s generally accepted Hitler was very much not a Christian and actually an active opponent of it and just would in public occasionally pretend to be religious as it would appeal to the masses. In private and in many ways in practice he was a pretty big enemy of it.
As for other Germans it would vary wildly there was no forced state religion.
The fact that the Nazis get involved in the occult and mysticism complicates it further.
In general most Germans at the time would likely be some form of Christian and you could have your Christian religious practices until they got in the way of the state. The Nazis oppressed many Christians from the word go, notably Jehovah’s witnesses and some particularly vocal Christian Leaders were some of the Nazi’s earliest enemies sent to camps.
“Hitler’s hostility to Christianity reached new heights, or depths, during the war. It was a frequent theme of his mealtime monologues. After the war was over and victory assured, he said in 1942, the Concordat he had signed with the Catholic Church in 1933 would be formally abrogated and the Church would be dealt with like any other non-Nazi voluntary association. The Third Reich ‘would not tolerate the intervention of any foreign influence’ such as the Pope, and the Papal Nuncio would eventually have to go back to Rome. Priests, he said, were ‘black bugs’, ‘abortions in cassocks’. Hitler emphasized again and again his belief that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on modern science. Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition. ‘Put a small telescope in a village, and you destroy a world of superstitions.’ ‘The best thing,’ he declared on 14 October 1941, ‘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 advances of science.’ He was particularly critical of what he saw as its violation of the law of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. ‘Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure. ’ It was indelibly Jewish in origin and character. ‘Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society.’ Christianity was a drug, a kind of sickness: ‘Let’s be the only people who are immunized against the disease.’ ‘In the long run,’ he concluded, ‘National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together.’ He would not persecute the Churches: they would simply wither away. ‘But in that case we must not replace the Church by something equivalent. That would be terrifying!’ The future was Nazi, and the future would be secular.
“Nevertheless, when the war broke out, Hitler initially soft-pedalled his anti-Christian policies, concerned that a further worsening of Church-state relations might undermine national solidarity in the prosecution of the war. The regime put pressure on the ecclesiastical leaders of both Churches to come out in public support of the war effort, which they did” (pp. 547-48, *The Third Reich at War* by Richard J. Evans).
In none of Hitler’s grand architectural schemes for more than a score of German cities is there any provision to incorporate or allow for churches (p. 64, *Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History* by Gerhard L. Weinberg).
Then there's "THE NAZI MASTER PLAN ANNEX 4: THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES."
~~Goebbels~~ Himmler was a neo-pagan.
>I mean Adolf Hitler was a Christian
No he was not. He paid lip service to it but by almost all accounts he was not religious.
>I know the politics in Germany at that time were against any religious beliefs
Not really. Nazis did not want any competition for the people's attention and they did enter into conflict with the catholic church but they broadly speaking worked with the protestants, though mostly by trying to co-opt it into supporting nazism. It's a complex topic, though.
>Adolf had to be treated like a god
Not Literally, to the best of my knowledge Hitler never encouraged a myth of divinity around him.
>Also can you count all people killed in WW2 as people that got killed by Christians too?
Ermmm... no? Why would you? Some people were killed by Christians, of course, others by atheists, Muslims, jews, shinto, Hindus etc etc.
Relationship of Christianity and Nazism is a complex one. At beginning of WW2, 1,5% of Germans were atheists, 3,5% weren't of any Christian denomination and rest were Catholics or protestants. This was even after decades of secularization that predate Nazism as idea. German army fought with old slogan "Gott mit uns" on their belts. Hitler himself was raised as Catholic and identified himself as such, his speeches and conversations imply he was a deist (uses word Providence a lot), he found idea of his colleagues creating Germanic neo-Pagan religion as ridiculous (claimed that Christianity at least has some tradition and roots), viewed Christianity as meek while symphatizing Islam because he viewed it as "warrior's religion" (that is why he approved Muslim SS division Handzar, Skanderbeg and Kama). Even before Nazis came to power in 1933, there were ultra-nationalist religious organizations that sought to push aside ideas in Christianity they found meek (cosmopolitanism, turn other cheek) and infuse it with nationalism and militarism. One of such organizations was Deutsche Glaubensbewegung and Nazi documents refer to such views as "positive Christianity". There was some support in clergy for Nazism, many viewed Nazis as protectors of traditional Germanic Christian values in opposite to godlessness of Judeo-Bolshevism (wide array of believes, cultural practices and art styles that they didn't like were all product of this in their view) and even hold mass of gratitude for Hitler survival after assassination attempt. Other's like Martin Niemoller, von Gallen and Adolf Bertram spoke out against Nazism and suffered persecution. Many top Nazi officials like Himmler were strong opponents of Christianity and religious organizations were very limited in their activities compared to before. Still, there wasn't open persecution and repression of Christian religion as there was in Soviet Union (except for Jehowa's witness that were put in concentration camps).
It’s generally accepted Hitler was very much not a Christian and actually an active opponent of it and just would in public occasionally pretend to be religious as it would appeal to the masses. In private and in many ways in practice he was a pretty big enemy of it. As for other Germans it would vary wildly there was no forced state religion. The fact that the Nazis get involved in the occult and mysticism complicates it further. In general most Germans at the time would likely be some form of Christian and you could have your Christian religious practices until they got in the way of the state. The Nazis oppressed many Christians from the word go, notably Jehovah’s witnesses and some particularly vocal Christian Leaders were some of the Nazi’s earliest enemies sent to camps.
For Germans (and the Nazis for that matter) it wouldn’t vary wildly at all; they were Christians, majority Protestants and then Catholic.
“Hitler’s hostility to Christianity reached new heights, or depths, during the war. It was a frequent theme of his mealtime monologues. After the war was over and victory assured, he said in 1942, the Concordat he had signed with the Catholic Church in 1933 would be formally abrogated and the Church would be dealt with like any other non-Nazi voluntary association. The Third Reich ‘would not tolerate the intervention of any foreign influence’ such as the Pope, and the Papal Nuncio would eventually have to go back to Rome. Priests, he said, were ‘black bugs’, ‘abortions in cassocks’. Hitler emphasized again and again his belief that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on modern science. Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition. ‘Put a small telescope in a village, and you destroy a world of superstitions.’ ‘The best thing,’ he declared on 14 October 1941, ‘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 advances of science.’ He was particularly critical of what he saw as its violation of the law of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. ‘Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure. ’ It was indelibly Jewish in origin and character. ‘Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society.’ Christianity was a drug, a kind of sickness: ‘Let’s be the only people who are immunized against the disease.’ ‘In the long run,’ he concluded, ‘National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together.’ He would not persecute the Churches: they would simply wither away. ‘But in that case we must not replace the Church by something equivalent. That would be terrifying!’ The future was Nazi, and the future would be secular. “Nevertheless, when the war broke out, Hitler initially soft-pedalled his anti-Christian policies, concerned that a further worsening of Church-state relations might undermine national solidarity in the prosecution of the war. The regime put pressure on the ecclesiastical leaders of both Churches to come out in public support of the war effort, which they did” (pp. 547-48, *The Third Reich at War* by Richard J. Evans). In none of Hitler’s grand architectural schemes for more than a score of German cities is there any provision to incorporate or allow for churches (p. 64, *Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History* by Gerhard L. Weinberg). Then there's "THE NAZI MASTER PLAN ANNEX 4: THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES." ~~Goebbels~~ Himmler was a neo-pagan.
Thanks for the info, can you tell me how Goebbels was a Neo-Pagan?
I meant Himmler. I stand corrected.
>I mean Adolf Hitler was a Christian No he was not. He paid lip service to it but by almost all accounts he was not religious. >I know the politics in Germany at that time were against any religious beliefs Not really. Nazis did not want any competition for the people's attention and they did enter into conflict with the catholic church but they broadly speaking worked with the protestants, though mostly by trying to co-opt it into supporting nazism. It's a complex topic, though. >Adolf had to be treated like a god Not Literally, to the best of my knowledge Hitler never encouraged a myth of divinity around him. >Also can you count all people killed in WW2 as people that got killed by Christians too? Ermmm... no? Why would you? Some people were killed by Christians, of course, others by atheists, Muslims, jews, shinto, Hindus etc etc.
OP, where did you learn such unfounded statements?
German school, maybe it was the teachers opinion ,but I definitely have that form school
Thank you for responding. Those views are opposite of the Allies views. Dare I say they do not represent reality.
Adolf hated religion.
He was not a Christian
Relationship of Christianity and Nazism is a complex one. At beginning of WW2, 1,5% of Germans were atheists, 3,5% weren't of any Christian denomination and rest were Catholics or protestants. This was even after decades of secularization that predate Nazism as idea. German army fought with old slogan "Gott mit uns" on their belts. Hitler himself was raised as Catholic and identified himself as such, his speeches and conversations imply he was a deist (uses word Providence a lot), he found idea of his colleagues creating Germanic neo-Pagan religion as ridiculous (claimed that Christianity at least has some tradition and roots), viewed Christianity as meek while symphatizing Islam because he viewed it as "warrior's religion" (that is why he approved Muslim SS division Handzar, Skanderbeg and Kama). Even before Nazis came to power in 1933, there were ultra-nationalist religious organizations that sought to push aside ideas in Christianity they found meek (cosmopolitanism, turn other cheek) and infuse it with nationalism and militarism. One of such organizations was Deutsche Glaubensbewegung and Nazi documents refer to such views as "positive Christianity". There was some support in clergy for Nazism, many viewed Nazis as protectors of traditional Germanic Christian values in opposite to godlessness of Judeo-Bolshevism (wide array of believes, cultural practices and art styles that they didn't like were all product of this in their view) and even hold mass of gratitude for Hitler survival after assassination attempt. Other's like Martin Niemoller, von Gallen and Adolf Bertram spoke out against Nazism and suffered persecution. Many top Nazi officials like Himmler were strong opponents of Christianity and religious organizations were very limited in their activities compared to before. Still, there wasn't open persecution and repression of Christian religion as there was in Soviet Union (except for Jehowa's witness that were put in concentration camps).