BOOK CHALLENGES CHARGE THAT HITLER WAS A CHRISTIAN...AND WHY IT MATTERS

Today, my ministry is releasing Joseph Keysor's Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible. This 488 page refutation of the growing charge that Hitler was a Christian and the holocaust is an outgrowth of Christian anti-semitism is desperately needed. Website: www.hitlerandchristianity.com

The reader may very well wonder why it even matters. In my experience as a Christian apologist, I have seen how insinuations and associations have effectively replaced argument and evidence. For forty years, the idea that Hitler and his Final Solution had even a remote resemblance to Christianity would never have been considered. Indeed, the biggest complaint was that Christians themselves allowed a man such as Hitler to get away with so much- implicitly acknowledging that what Hitler did was anything but Christian. Today it is enough to cite a quote by Hitler claiming to be Christian and that is enough to persuade people, and thus by associating Christianity with such an evil man, paint Christianity itself as evil.

This is a front in the cultural war but it isn't only about this issue. For example, there are plenty of quotations by Hitler where he shows contempt for Christianity. Remember, Hitler hated the Jews, and Christianity's founder was a Jew. I mean, think about it. Think.

Intelligent analysis. That is the first hill to fall in this culture war. The ability to think logically and rationally and critically interpret disparate pieces of evidence is disappearing. We are talking here of nothing less than the law of non-contradiction: two contradictory propositions cannot both be true at the same time. If Hitler says, "I am a Christian" and also says, "I am not a Christian." Both statements cannot be true at the same time. (These are illustrations, not real quotes).

When one surveys the wealth of available material on Hitler, much of it from Hitler himself, we find evidence for both positions. Only in 2010 and on the Internet can people get away with citing only the "I am a Christian" side of the argument and only in 2010 and on the Internet can skeptics find a way to take a man like Hitler at his word while casting 100% doubt on the words recorded in the New Testament, and, well, any document that might support Christian claims.

Joseph Keysor's first important contribution in light of the foregoing is that he documents Hitler's stated views in the other direction. However, he does not let it rest there, examining the Nazi platform and Nazi policies wherever it ruled. People who agree that what a person does speaks more about what they actually believe than what they say will find this information useful.

Secondly, Mr. Keysor addresses the concept of 'Christian' itself, exploring in detail whether or not the Bible could conceivably be used to justify something like Hitler's Final Solution. I note, in passing, that any fair reader could figure this one out just by reading the Bible for themselves.

Thirdly, Mr. Keysor goes further, searching out which influences the Nazis and Hitler said were critical to them to see which of them they actually acted on. This, again, is useful if one believes that a person's deeds speak louder than their words.

This latter effort is probably at the heart of the 'new atheist' assertion that Hitler was a Christian. People like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins make a lot of noise about religion being dangerous. It is in their interests, therefore, to frame any terrible thing that happens as being 'religious' and to ignore or repress evidence showing horrors being perpetrated on the principles that they themselves hold dear.

I am not here saying that Hitler was an atheist. I am simply pointing out what Joseph Keysor documents: Hitler and Nazi party leaders in their own writings appeal to people like Wagner, Hegel, Chamberlain, Haeckel, and Nietzsche. These appeals are sometimes explicit. Other times they are implicit, with the Nazis espousing identical concepts to other thinkers, most of whom were hostile to Christianity.

The logic and logical conclusions of these writers have fallen out of favor today but their influence in Germany and other places in the late 1800s and early 1900s among the secular humanist community is a historical reality. It is no wonder that the 'new atheists' wish to distance themselves from these connections in the culture war. But can they pull the ultimate switcheroo and obliterate those associations and re-assign them to Christianity? That appears to be the strategy and it appears to be working, if only because people are ignorant of the intellectual climate during the time period in question.

With the resurgence of eugenics and population control, albeit usually under different names, countering this strategy is of grave importance.

A final note is in order. One of the chief complaints with Mr. Keysor's book is that it is not thoroughly academic. (See, for example, one of the reviews on Amazon.com) Mr. Keysor is clear that he is approaching the subject as a Christian and that he believes that the heart of this matter is spiritual. I do not believe that this makes his arguments inferior or his evidence suspect. Personally, I prefer it when someone is up front about his assumptions, because then I can take them into account as I weigh his arguments.

I find it curious, though, that the only people considered by some as credible to set the record straight on this issue would be... secularist academics. Doesn't it make sense that if Christians are being accused it is appropriate for them to respond?

Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible is a treasure trove of sources, documentation, and argumentation for the Christian who wishes to add their voice in response. It is also a retort and challenge to those who persist in making their accusations as though there is no response.

I am proud to release it in hard cover and an updated soft cover on this March 8th of 2010, and hope that it will be useful to pastors, teachers, apologists and anyone else who believes that truth, evidence, and the law of non-contradiction are still important in the culture wars we find ourselves in.

Anthony Horvath is the Executive Director of Athanatos Christian Ministries.

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Added: March 17, 2010. 10:59 PM CST

Let's look at Hitler in terms of his time.

There was in fact in inter-war Germany a movement within the German Protestant churches called "German Christianity". It did not originate with Hitler, but his beliefs seem to have been pretty much in line with it.

"German Christians" viewed Jesus as a proto-Aryan, not as a Jew, and sought to discard the Old Testament as a Jewish document (like the Marcionites of the second century). They wanted to purge German society of Jewish "contamination". They used a swastika in their logo.

Indeed, we can see with hindsight that such a sect would not have been recognizable to Jesus himself. But they were thought of by most people at the time as a kind of Christians. Hitler's thinking was much in line with theirs. He subordinated any belief in a God to a much stronger belief in the innate racial superiority of Aryan Germans; but then, so did they.

Note that this isn't the same question at all as what God thinks of Hitler. I think that we can all agree that a God who would not abhor pretty much everything Hitler ever did would not be worth worshipping!

Hitler was interested in spiritualism and the occult, but a short course of inter-war Agatha Christie novels will show you that belief in spiritualism and the occult was much more mainstream and common then than it is today, and was prevalent among many quite ordinary people (just as anti-semitism was). As for Nietzsche and Wagner, I like them both myself, but that of itself doesn't make you not a Christian any more than liking Tolkien or Spinoza.

Hitler was born into a Catholic family, and in many ways the Catholic church found in him a natural ally. Like the Church, Hitler hated and sought to undermine Soviet communism; democracy; capitalism, with its origin in "Jewish finance capital"; and the liberal values of a secular state. German Catholics were made comfortable in supporting Hitler by the concordat between Hitler and the Papacy in 1934. Opponents, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the "Confessing Church", were few and brave indeed and were not within the Catholic church at all.

It is possible that Hitler and the Nazis aimed ultimately at the obliteration of any form of Christianity other than one wholly subordinated to Nazi notions. If they did (historians are still debating it), they were in this respect not unlike the Chinese communist leaders of the present day, who view religion as something that cannot appropriately exist apart from or in opposition to the State. But whatever plans they had were certainly not ones that they put forward publicly, and Hitler remained a kind of public and political Christian, whom Christians could readily support. How many of our modern-day politicians are Christians in the strictest and most fundamentalist sense? Yet they still do present themselves as Christians, and Hitler did too.

So, to sum up: Yes, in terms of his time, and on a fair historical assessment, most people in 1930s Europe considered Hitler a kind of Christian. We wouldn't think of him as being a Christian now, because the kind of Christianity he represents no longer exists, any more than the Marcionites do. Claiming that he was "a Christian", or that he was "not a Christian", both say more about what modern-day people are trying to prove than they do about Hitler himself.

As a side (and sad) note (and this is really a separate discussion): Does it really matter, when considering horrific mass murders of innocent people, who it is that is doing it? You speak as if it being the Israelites doing the horrific mass murder would somehow make it moral!

Zander

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Added: March 09, 2010. 04:01 PM CST

To Innominate:

"Hitler was neither an atheist nor a Christian, as the book points out. He was most likely an occultist"

Yes, that is probably right.

"One wonders whether a religion whose followers are naive enough"

Well, let's be fair, shall we? This was in one country, Germany, and it could be pointed out that much liberal Christianity originated in Germany. Perhaps more to the point, the US was far more Christian in 1940 than today, and it was the US, filled with Christians, who did not fall for Hitler and instead took him down hard.

Your brush is too wide.

"Counter to your assertion that the Bible does not support Christianity,"

That's not what I said. I doubt this is what you meant to say.

"Hitler was certainly not a Christian, but the Old Testament contains repeated instructions to commit horrific mass murders."

Let us concede this much for the sake of discussion. Would you care to provide me any passage anywhere in the Bible where anyone besides the Israelites were ordered to carry out these activities?

I said a fair reading. Taking a description of events as being prescribed for all readers of those events is not only unfair, it is absurd.

I am open to correction. If you can find the passage where it says, "And God commanded Hitler to go and round up all the Jews and exterminate them" or even, "And God commanded the Israelites to go out into all the world throughout all time and exterminate the gentiles" I will happily concede the point.

Barring that, I think you should retract your assertion as being baseless and unfounded.

Anthony H

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Added: March 08, 2010. 09:14 PM CST

Hitler was neither an atheist nor a Christian, as the book points out. He was most likely an occultist along with many powerful figures in the Nazi party. He did, however, manipulate people into killing others by pretending to be a Christian in public. One wonders whether a religion whose followers are naive enough to follow such a man into genocide and world war can really be absolved of responsibility.

Counter to your assertion that the Bible does not support Christianity, I propose that a thorough reading of the Bible would reveal that God apparently ordains dozens of genocides for lesser crimes than killing somebody who was allegedly the son of God. Hitler was certainly not a Christian, but the Old Testament contains repeated instructions to commit horrific mass murders.

Innominate

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