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Was Hitler a Christian?

I spent much of today seeing what I could find on the net about Hitler. The most interesting thing I found (one of the few pieces that doesn't have an ax to grind, and that is consistent with what little I know) is a document prepared during the war by the OSS. The first section talks a bit about what he believed:

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-01.html

Both this and other sources say that he was baptized, confirmed, and participated in communion, though the OSS document says that he severed his connection with the Church immediately after WW I.

If their portait is right, it becomes a matter of definition whether he was a Christian. They say he believed he was in some way chosen by God, and in some way identified himself with Christ. However it was a Christ who was a fighter. He didn't accept the concept of Christ dying for people. Here is the key section:

During his speech, according to Hanfstangl, he swung his whip around violently as though to drive out the Jews and the forces of darkness, the enemies of Germany and German honor. Dietrich Eckart, who discovered Hitler as a possible leader and had witnessed this performance, said later, "When a man gets to the point of identifying himself with Jesus Christ, then he is ripe for an insane asylum." The identification in all this was not with Jesus Christ, the Crucified, but with Jesus Christ, the furious, lashing the crowds.

As a matter of fact, Hitler has very little admiration for Christ, the Crucified. Although he was brought up a Catholic, and received Communion, during the war, he severed his connection with the Church directly afterwards. This kind of Christ he considers soft and weak and unsuitable as a German Messiah.

The latter must be hard and brutal if he is to save Germany and lead it to its destiny.

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, [Page 14] surrounded by only a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned me 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 rose at last in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was the fight for the world against the Jewish poison." (M.N.O. 26)

And to Rauschning he once referred to "the Jewish Christ-creed with its effeminate, pity-ethics".

However I would note that in some of his private conversations, Hitler apparently rejected the label Christian. This information might not have been available to the OSS when the report was prepared. I quote from a earlier posting by morphis@niuhep.physics.niu.edu:

Under the direction of Martin Bormann, a stenographic record of Hitler's conversations was made. This, published under the title Hitler's Table Talk, shows that Christianity and the Jews were regular themes of Hitler's conversation

The ideal solution would be to leave the religions to devour themselves, without persecutions.[] [Hitler's Table Talk, p. 6-7]

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. [p. 51]

So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.[] [Hitler's Table Talk, pp 58-62]

The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. [Table Talk, p. 75]

The only hope of calling Hitler some kind of "Christian" lays in the following:

The decisive falsification of Jesus's doctrine was the work of St Paul....For the Galilean's object was to liberate His country from Jewish oppression. He set Himself against Jewish capitalism, and that's why the Jews liquidated Him....The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son of a whore and a Roman soldier. [Table Talk, p. 76] ... Christ was an Aryan and St Paul used his doctrine to mobilize the criminal underworld and this organize a proto-Bolshevism.... Christianity is an invention of sick brains....The war will be over one day. I shall then consider that my life's final task will be to solve the religious problem. [p. 142-4]

Thus there seems to have been some ambivalence as to whether Hitler would use the word "Christian" to describe his beliefs, but he seems to have acknowledged some dependence upon Christ -- or, I would say, a distorted view of Christ.

So we come to the question: what is a Christian? For purposes of moderation, I use the term "Christian" to refer to any group with historical connection to the Christian Church, and whose religion is primarily based on the Bible and other sources of Christianity. This definition includes groups that reject major Christian doctrines, e.g. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. However even those groups generally accept the significance of the crucifixion. So I'd place Hitler further from the mainstream than they are.

But there is precedent in some of the more radical theology, such as some of the feminists and "re-imaging" folks, for groups with at least an historical connection with Christianity rejecting the crucifixion as a vehicle for salvation, as Hitler seems to have done. (Note that I am not saying that all feminists or even all participants in "reimaging" have done this. I am sympathetic with many of the aims of both feminist theology and reimaging.) They also commonly accept other religions as valid approaches to God, as Hitler apparently had some attraction to "Aryan" mythology.

Thus I would be inclined to classify Hitler as being at the very edge of Christianity, with other groups that have some historical connection with Christianity, but reject enough of its theology that they are effectively different religions. He could call himself a Christian, particularly when there was a political reason to do so. He seems to have thought that he was a follower of the true Christ, while the mainstream Church had gotten things wrong. But that sort of belief isn't uncommon among radicals.

It's also pretty clear that he was influenced by Catholicism in a number of ways, particularly by the discipline and structure of the Jesuits, and their dedication to their Leader. Of course I'd have to say that he took a few details while rejecting the main point.

More information may be available in a set of postings on this topic that I've taken from the newsgroup over time:

hitler.txt