Was Hitler a Christian?

[Mr. Ukucasha]

NOTE: First of all, Hitler's religious beliefs say nothing about the other people who share those beliefs. A religious belief is not evil because Hitler believed in it. Hitler was an animal rights activist, but that does not mean that animal rights activists are evil Nazis.

Anyways, I created a Reddit post arguing that although he was not an atheist as many people claim, he was also not a Christian as many people also claim:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/xzfrn6/hitler_wasnt_a_christian_the_fact_that_so_many/

The post received numerous responses challenging my arguments. Some of the responses are bullsh**t, but others do a great job at refuting my points. I highly recommend reading through that Reddit thread to hear both sides of the argument regarding Hitler's Christianity or lack thereof.

What do you think? Would it be accurate to call Hitler a "Christian"?

[TheReckoning]

  > Holy Roman Empire Avatar
  > Most threads are about Nazism

  hmm.jpg

[OSR stands with Israel]

Why are so many of your threads about Nazi Germany

[Senator Incitatus]

This is more my feeling out the question than asserting a strong position on it. I know very little about Hitler's internal life, so I'll only attempt to assess his public persona and ideology.

On the one hand, I think he was remarkably un-Christian for his time, at a minimum. Fascism is not a Christian ideology and any overlap they have today is more incidental, a product of confounding variables like race and rootedness. I think if you contrast the Christianity of the fascists with that of the liberals at the time, the latter seem certainly more sincere.

On the other, I can see historical roots for anti-semitism and brutal, violent nationalism in earlier German Christianity, in figures like Count Emicho. There is obviously no doubting that Hitler and the Nazis publicly claimed to be Christian, though I must assume that much of this was a natural political obligation of the time and, as said above, it strikes me as insincere.

[If my soul was made of stone]

  > Holy Roman Empire Avatar
  > Most threads are about Nazism

  hmm.jpg

[Benjamin Frank]

Hitler was an occultist.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Nazism absorbed many currents in Germany politics, some of which had religious ties or origin. But Nazism was very rooted in what we now call pseudo science and thus took a rather dim view of religion and faith. This doesn't meant that things weren't used to their full advantage, including appeals to various religious groups when it suited their interests.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

"But muh belt buckles!"

Typical Reddit.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

As I previously said God is cause and effect he can be a prophet Jews believe Moses was the prophet, Buddha believes that God was Buddha, Christians believe in Christ and Muslims believe in Muhammad and Pharaohs believe they were Gods it doesnt matter because it's cause and effect that what GOD is and we don't know if Christ was buried in an Ossuary box but there hasn't been any Rapture and many said yr 2000 even back to Mayan Calendar that Christ was supposed to be back so it's okay because Christ, Moses, Buddha and Mohammed was all Cause and Effect and did miracles and the Astral plane is the afterlife

But, if you don't follow the 10 Commandments thou shalt not kill that's not Christian thats the highest sin of all

But, as we know already there are no short cuts to the Afterlife with a Rapture, we must physically die in order to get to the Astral plane that's the lesson of Jesus not returning as horrible that may be because Modern technology with anesthesia makes it much more harder to physically die than before anthesisia, pre anesthesia, if you suffered a severe wound or pneumonia you died now even with AIDS you can still live

[LAKISYLVANIA]

No, he was not. He definitely never insulted/offended them either and knew he needed christians to do whatever he envisioned, but he definitely was not a christian, and would throw them under the bus if he had the chance or the opportunity to do so.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No, but he was very Christianity-influenced.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

No he wasn't because Moses said if you break one of the 10 Commandments thou shalt not commit adultery, steal, kill and kill and Adultery are the most consequential you don't get into Heaven which is Buddhahood in Buddhism

He killed 6 M person, Arafat, Putin, all of them Dictators aren't Christian, you launch a war in defense and can kill in Defense but if it's for offenses purposes like Putin did for conquest it's not the same

[Vice President Christian Man]

No he thought of himself as a God

[bagelman]

Hitler was so stupid lol

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

"But muh belt buckles!"

Typical Reddit.

That's an incredibly stupid "point" because that phrase had been on German military insignia for centuries and wasn't something the Nazis added or created.

The notion that Nazi Germany was some sort of Christian theocracy or a state that was Christian-based in any way moreso than most of Europe at the time is such a laughably dumb point, it's like the "Jesus = Horus" nonsense, and is a great sign that someone is not worth engaging with. (Along with the old standby typical sign of this of throwing out out of context Old Testament Mosaic Law verses as "proof" that modern day Christians are hypocrites or whatever.)

[Alben Barkley]

No, he was not. He definitely never insulted/offended them either and knew he needed christians to do whatever he envisioned, but he definitely was not a christian, and would throw them under the bus if he had the chance or the opportunity to do so.

Some priests were thrown into concentration camps. One famously died in place of another man.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Hitler's long-term plan was to replace Christianity with his own bastardized version of it and suppress real Christianity if Germany won the war.

But no, by any account he likely embraced some form of Germanic neopaganism or was religiously apathetic and only wanted to use the church to advance Nazism.

[Mr. Ukucasha]

"But muh belt buckles!"

Typical Reddit.

That's an incredibly stupid "point" because that phrase had been on German military insignia for centuries and wasn't something the Nazis added or created.

Like I said in response to someone using the argument on that Reddit thread, the argument is akin to accusing a hypothetical atheist/agnostic US president of being a theist because their country's currency has the slogan "In God We Trust" on it (and of course, the response received a bunch of downvotes).

[HisGrace]

If I had to guess I'd say he was an atheist. That's still a guess because there's no record of him ever specifically espousing belief or non belief in god. A lot of the top Nazis were atheists, it generally fits with his hypermaterialistic worldview, and he pretty clearly had a contempt for religion generally whether he believed in god or not. He specifically ridiculed Christianity in private due to its roots in Judaism and thinking it was weak much in the same way the alt-right does today.

History Channel junk documentaries and some movies also dramatically overemphasize his interest in the occult, trying to make him look like a dark sorcerer or something. He was interested in Germanic and Nordic mythology which makes sense with his emphasis on Aryan identity and there's no evidence it was anything more than a hobby.

[HisGrace]

"But muh belt buckles!"

Typical Reddit.

That's an incredibly stupid "point" because that phrase had been on German military insignia for centuries and wasn't something the Nazis added or created.

Like I said in response to someone using the argument on that Reddit thread, the argument is akin to accusing a hypothetical atheist/agnostic US president of being a theist because their country's currency has the slogan "In God We Trust" on it (and of course, the response received a bunch of downvotes).

Reddit's downvote feature sounds like a great idea except that the site is a giant circle jerk and it just gets used to hide any dissenting opinions.

[TDAS04]

Nope.