For Hitler it's far more complex than "he was a Christian or Atheist or whatever". He made lots of statements in support of Christianity, especially early on.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Hitler
My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only 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 against the Jewish poison. Today, 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."
or
"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."
|
He compared atheism to Communism, banning atheist groups that didn't support Nazism.
But his actions against churches and religious organizations that had any power and could offer resistance doesn't look like he was after establishing a Christian nation by any means.
Hitler was religious, in his own religion Nazism and he's the top of it. It looks to me like the things he said and did were designed to manipulate the religious and un-religious alike to his own ends.
He didn't do things in the name of Christianity to establish a Christian nation, and he didn't do things in the name of atheism either. He probably wasn't a Christian by what we would define it, he probably wasn't a complete atheist either, he could have been a deist with himself in the role of saviour. In the end I don't think his beliefs are very important because to try and prove something with "Hitler was x therefore x is bad because Hitler did bad things" is like saying "Newton was an alchemist therefore the laws of motion are wrong."