Austin Cline: "Was Hitler an Atheist Who Killed Millions in the Name of Atheism, Secularism?

This post of Cline's was sent today to subscribers.

Myth: Atheism is more dangerous than religion because atheists like Adolf Hitler killed millions in the name of their atheistic ideologies like Nazism. That's far more than have been killed in the name of religion.

Response:

A popular image of the Nazis is that they were fundamentally anti-Christian while devout Christians were anti-Nazi. The truth is that German Christians supported the Nazis because they believed that Adolf Hitler was a gift to the German people from God.

Was Adolf Hitler an Atheist?

Adolf Hitler was baptized in a Catholic Church in 1889 and was never be excommunicated or in any other way officially censured by the Catholic Church. Hitler frequently referred to God and Christianity in his various speeches and writings. In one 1933 speech, he said that "To do justice to God and our own conscience, we have turned once more to the German Volk." In another he said: "We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."

In a 1922 speech, he said: "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. ...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. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited."

Was Nazism an Atheist Ideology?

The NSDAP Party Program stated: “We demand freedom for all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or conflict with the customs and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The party as such represents the standpoint of a positive Christianity, without owing itself to a particular confession....”

Positive Christianity adhered to basic orthodox doctrines and asserted that Christianity must make a practical, positive difference in people’s lives. It's difficult to maintain that Nazi ideology was atheistic when it explicitly endorsed and promoted Christianity in the party platform.

Communism and traditional socialism were both intensely hated by the Nazi party which argued that, as atheistic and Jewish ideologies, they threatened the future of both German and Christian civilization. In this, most Christians in Germany and elsewhere agreed and this explains much of the Nazis popular support.

Christian Response to the Nazis

Key to understanding Nazism’s popularity with Christians is the Nazi condemnation of everything modern. The Weimar Republic was regarded as a godless, secular, and materialistic, betraying all of Germany’s traditional values and religious beliefs. Christians saw the social fabric of their community unravelling and the Nazis promised to restore order by attacking godlessness, homosexuality, abortion, liberalism, prostitution, pornography, obscenity, etc.

Early on, many Catholic leaders criticized Nazism; after 1933, criticism turned to support and praise. Commonalities between Nazism and Catholics were anti-communism, anti-atheism, and anti-secularism. Catholic churches helped identify Jews for extermination. After the war, Catholic leaders helped former Nazis back into power. Protestants were even more attracted to Nazism than Catholics; they, not Catholics, produced a movement (German Christians) dedicated to blending Nazi ideology and Christian doctrine.

Christian “resistance” was mostly against efforts to exert greater control over church activities. Christian churches were willing to tolerate widespread violence against Jews, military rearmament, invasions of foreign nations, banning labor unions, imprisonment of political dissenters, detention of people who had committed no crimes, etc. Why? Hitler was seen as someone restoring traditional Christian values and morality to Germany.

Christianity in Private & Public

There is no evidence that Hitler and top Nazis only endorsed Christianity for public consumption or as a political ploy — at least, no more so than political parties today which emphasize their support for traditional religious values and which rely heavily on support from religious citizens. Private remarks on religion and Christianity were the same as public remarks, indicating that they believed what they said and intended to act as they claimed. The few Nazis who endorsed paganism did so publicly, not secretly, and without official support.

Nazi Christians didn’t abandon basic Christian doctrines, like the divinity of Jesus. The actions of Hitler and the Nazis were as “Christian” as those of people during the Crusades or the Inquisition. Germany saw itself as a fundamentally Christian nation and millions of Christians enthusiastically endorsed Hitler and the Nazi Party, seeing both as embodiments of German and Christian ideals.

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While this is a good answer I want to inform everyone that Dr. Hector Avalos in chapter 14 of The Christian Delusion titled, Atheism Was Not the Reason Hitler Killed So Many People blows the doors off such a cockamamie idea. You'll want to get that book for this chapter alone, but there are other chapters that stand out as well. It's coming. Spread the word. The end of April. Publication will be on time.