To your last point, you misunderstood me. I feel it's an important point, so I'll reiterate it.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Unless you fancy yourself a mind reader, which it seems you do.
But then so do you. Because you say (I discuss this below) that Hitler followed a particular theology which he stated explicitly. Yet even before his switch after 1933, the closest he ever came to an "explicit" theology was the ill-defined "positive Christianity" that never materialized because it was never actually conceived so far a we can tell.
He also made statements such as "Nothing will prevent me from eradicating totally, root and branch, all Christianity in Germany...One is either Christian or German". The Nazi pamphlet
Christlicher oder deutscher Staat? ("Christian or German State") "expressed Hitlers assertion" (quoted above) "that one is either Christian or German, but not both." Poewe's
New Religions and the Nazis
As the Nazis and Hitler began to distance themselves from Christian churches, the party became more and more framed by the Nazis' Nordic/Aryan/Germanic mythology, not Christianity. Not exactly coherent theology.
criticism or repression of certain iterations of christianity does not necessarily equate to a rejection of Christ and God.
I don't think I'm making myself clear enough. It's not just about criticism and/or repression of most (even all) demoninations. It's not even about a new Christianity or some such thing.
I'll try to lay out clearly some main points:
1) Hitler and the Nazis did not merely attack certain churches or even all churches. Rather, despite earlier pro-Christian statements, after Hitler became chancellor in 1933 we can clearly observe "the Nazis developing assault on Christianity" (from Roberts' book cited below). The issue was not that "most Christian denominations are corrupted and offensive", or even that all were, but that Christianity itself needed to end.
2) Central to the incompatibility between Christianity and Nazism were fundamental ideological issues. Bormann (the Nazi party secretary) expressed this plainly: "The National Socialist and Christian conceptions are incompatible. The reasons were manifold, from the fact that the values of the Nazis' "political faith were blood, soil, and race; being primordial their sources were not to be found in the period when Christianity reigned in Germany, but rather in the pre-Christian era" to Hitler and the Nazis'
Diesseitigkeit (focus only on this world, unlike the Christian faith). (Tal's
Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Third Reich)
3) The "threat" Christianity posed to Nazi power was not from any Church but religion itself: "Nazism could tolerate no other faith alongside itself. Recognizing that Christianity was a rival claimant for the German soul, the Nazis moved to repress the Protestant and Catholic churches" (
Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society Vol. 2). Even when it came to the German Christians (the fundamentally Nazi-based "church"), "Hitler allowed the so-called German Christians their head, until their attempts to widen the appeal of Protestantism" ("Political Religion & Social Evil; vol 3 no. 2 of
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions).
The "struggle between the Christian churches and totalitarian regimes" of the 20th century (including the Nazis) were not because of or about religious what Christianity is or should be. Rather, the ideology of National Socialism "became a new religion" solidified "through the repetition of slogans and symbols, the use of choruses and the participation of the people in group and mass ceremonies", as well as through "'the sacralisation of politics' in National Socialist propanda and the parallel process of 'politicisation of religion'" ("Understanding the Popular Appeal of Fascism, National Socialism and Soviet Communism: The Revival of Totalitarianism Theory and Political Religion"
History Compass 5/4).
4) The central evidence for thinking that Hitler and the Nazis thought themselves to be Christians relies on a lack of context. If Hitler and the Nazis really believed themselves to be Christians, and all the pro-Christian statements Hitler and others made earlier were genuine expressions of a Christian identity (and all the statements to the contrary can be ignored) rather than manipulation, then we would expect to see at least as much a pro-Christian Nazy party after 1933. We find instead a reverse in the treatment of Christianity and Churches. We also find anti-Christian statements, state-sponsored anti-Christian education, the increasing incorporation of "pagan" symbolisms, the replacement of Christian imagery, references, etc., with "pagan", and a general preperation for the "New Religion". In fact, "it seems likely that the Nazis would have attempted to supplant traditional religion their own neo-pagan
völkisch cult if they had won the war".
If Hitler saw organized religious institutions as a threat to his superiority and persecuted some of their members, that still says absolutely nothing about whether he considered himself a Christian, or had faith in God and Christ.
I agree.
Otherwise, why the movement to establish Hitler as the head of the German Christian church?
I was unclear I think. The "German Christians" were neither created nor supervised by the Nazi party. They were a group of protestants who, in 1932, founded their "German Christian" church with the goal to become the national church of the Reich. To accomplish this, they not only firmly supported the Nazis, but radically changed German Protestant Christianity to resemble Nazi ideology and reflect Nazi socio-cultural views.
But they were not Nazis. And during the brief period between 1932 and Oct. 1933, they had reason to believe the Nazis would favor them and (hopefully) make German Protestant Christianity into their German Christian Church. Then Hitler was elected and the Nazi power solidified, at which point Nazi support dried up:
"Ascendancy characterizes the movement's trajectory from its inception in 1932 to the Sports Palace affair in November 1933. During that time, German Christians enjoyed open support from Nazi party and state organs...For members of the movement, the euphoria of ascent proved short-lived. Withdrawal of party support, symbolized in the declaration of neutrality in church affairs by Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess on 13 October 1933, engendered a crisis of identity within German Christian ranks."
Bergen, D.
Twisted Cross : The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
"As events would show, the Nazis used the German Christians
as an instrument to gain control of the German Evangelical Church; when this failed, Nazi party support for the German Christians died."
Barnett, V.
For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1992).
"The Nazi regimes anti-Christian thrust is increasingly recognized as fundamental, despite the short-term compromises with the churches, the eagerness of the Protestant German Christians to cooperate, and Hitlers opposition to the overt neo-pagan tendencies within the Nazi movement"
Roberts, D.D.
The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth-Century Europe: Understanding the Poverty of Great Politics (Routledge, 2006).
I could go on, but hopefully this suffices to show what I want to: that the German Christian church, established in 1932 with the hope of becoming
the Nazi church and doing everything they could in order to accomplish this, were merely a tool.
As soon as Hitler established the Third Reich in 1933, the Nazi support for the German Chrisitan church abruptly changed.
when somebody explicitly states that they follow a particular theology
Hitler never stated he followed a particular theology, and neither did the Nazis. "Theologically, National Socialism may be termed a purely pagan movement that has also sometimes been called a political religion. There is no question that Hitler intended the Aryan racial ideology to fulfill a kind of religious function; the liturgical character of Nazi public rituals was pronounced. Hitler himself observed in private, I am a religious man although not in the usual sense of the word." Payne's
A History of Fascism 19141945
A theology is more than simply generic references to and support of aspects of Christianity. Hitler was deliberately quite vague in public. However, it is possible to look backward and to "see how Nazi ideology created its substitute religion" through our sources: "A systematic study of these sources, however, already clearly shows how Nazi ideology, with all its inner contradictions, made use of structural transformations in relations between theology and politics, and between myth and politics. In particular, it shows how theological concepts of God and man were now used as anthropological and political concepts...In the new conception God becomes man in a political sense, as a member of the Aryan race whose highest representative on earth is the
Führer. This transformation took place through public mass meetings staged and celebrated as sacred cults, as well as through education, indoctrination and the inculcation of discipline." from
Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Third Reich-
Selected Essays (Cass Series--Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions)
Nor was the above "change in the essential meaning of the concepts of God and man" the only transformation of traditional theology/religion into a "political/secular" religion. Tal (the author of the volume cited above) discusses the "Nazi mythology [which] exalted the old pagan Adam" and other transformations of Christian myth into Nazi.
