Does it matter if Hitler was an Atheist?

[dekesler]

I wrote this in response to someone who was wrongly convinced that Adolf Hitler was an atheist. This person was using the Third Reich as an example of what happens to nations led by Atheists. They did not want to hear about Sweden or Japan

Comments

[christhegeek]

The crime of the holocaust was not based on religious persecution. These people were not being persecuted because they were religiously Jewish. It was about RACIAL purity. These people were part of a demographic, a caste that were being extinguished. That main proponent of the anti jew paraphenalia and brainwashing was about the ethnic qualities of the Jewish people present in Europe at the time

[dekesler]

I am not saying that the German people did what they did because they were Christian. I am saying that the German people professed Christianity when they did what they did. I will allow others to sort out to what extent their faith influenced or hindered their actions.

[christhegeek]

It was the phrase "For this reason, the crime of the Holocaust falls squarely upon Christianity," which mislead me, then.

[dekesler]

I was being provocative with that phrase. I will concede as much. Bear in mind, I was engaged in an exchange with someone who was spreading the myth that Hitler was some sort of Atheist.

comparing Atheism to Hitler is a slander

[shaun_l]

even if he was Atheist, which he wasn't, he used religion to further is plans. I think its worth adding that many of the Catholics and Protestants in Germany at the time, without hesitation, supported Hitler and fought for him...it would seem that the claim that Christianity gives people morals is quite inaccurate. In fact, I would hypothesize that religion prevents people from thinking for themselves and rationally deciding their own morals...this would, I suppose, explain, in part, why so many Catholics and Protestants in Germany were so easily swayed by Hitlers orations.

Re: comparing Atheism to Hitler is a slander

[christhegeek]

Of course, then there were people like this guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

Re: comparing Atheism to Hitler is a slander

[dekesler]

I was not attempting to explore the mental and emotional gymnastics a society would have to perform to get their head around the idea of genocide. I would imagine that focusing on differences such as race and religion would be important.

The initial point that I was attempting to make was that the vast majority of people in Germany during the Second World War professed Christianity as their faith. They were the people who did the grim and horrible work. I bring this up to refute the claim that Adolf Hitler’s atheistic Nazi’s perpetrated the holocaust.

[bonnie_halfelvn]

Wow. I know something about the Holocaust, though I've not studied it extensively, but I never thought of Hitler as anything other than Christian. He believed he was doing God's work and said so more than once.

People can say he was not a REAL Christian - a phrase that some judgmental people have used regarding me, as well, but he claimed it, and as such represented it.

It is my opinion that he was aiming for both racial and Christian purity, and we as Christians need to own this and see that it does not happen again.

[nsingman]

Your last paragraph's "reasoning" makes no sense, provocatively phrased or not (I read the other comments above). The fact that a religion's adherents ignore the core tenets of the religion (as any Christian who murders or steals must) does not implicate the religion in their crimes. That self-professed Christians were a majority of those who carried out the Holocaust in no way makes the crime of the Holocaust fall upon Christianity. That is precisely the same mistake made by those who blame atheism for the depredations of communist regimes like the Soviet Union and Mao's China (both with far more innocent blood on their hands than Hitler's Germany).

And unlike Hitler, I am an atheist