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To: Sam Hill
Hitler was mocking a speaker (Count Lerchenfeld) who had said in a speech that a Christian could not be anti-Semitic. Hitler's full text, available in the collection of his speeches called "My New Order," pp 14-27, is dripping with sarcasm as his audience would have realized.

Here's the full text, which oddly, you didn't quote.

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...

Please indicate to me anything that would lead one to believe this is intended to be sarcastic.

BTW, if you'd prefer it in the original...

“Ich sage: Mein christliches Gefühl weist mich hin auf meinen Herrn und Heiland als Kämpfe. Es weist mich hin auf den Mann, der einst einsam, nur von wenigen Anhängern umgeben, diese Juden erkannte und zum Kampf gegen sie aufrief, und der, wahrhaftiger Gott, nicht der Größte war als Dulder, sondern der Größte als Streiter! In grenzenloser Liebe lese ich als Christ und Mensch die Stelle durch, die uns verkündet, wie der Herr sich endlich aufraffte und zur Peitsche griff, um die Wucherer, das Nattern- und Ottergezücht hinauszutreiben aus dem Tempel! Seinen ungeheueren Kampf aber für diese Welt, gegen das jüdische Gift, den erkenne ich heute, nach zweitausend Jahren, in tiefster Ergriffenheit am gewaltigsten an der Tatsache, daß er dafür am Kreuze verbluten. Als Christ habe ich nicht die Verpflichtung, mir das Fell über die Ohren ziehen zu lassen, sondern habe die Verpflichtung, ein Streiter zu sein für die Wahrheit und für das Recht...

774 posted on 04/28/2006 3:26:37 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor

"Please indicate to me anything that would lead one to believe this is intended to be sarcastic."

I note in your rigor, you leave out the lead up to the quote. (How objective of you!).

"I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling as 'a man and a Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite.

I say: 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...."

Hitler used many rhetorical devices. (He was the only politician of his day to charge admission for his speeches.) Sarcasm was one of his favorite devices.

He is saying that it is the role of a good Christian to attack and destroy the Jews. That is absurdist sarcasm that his audience would have clearly understood.

If you don't know that Hitler loathed and despised Christianity, which he saw as just a furtherance of Judaism, than you know nothing about Hitler.


775 posted on 04/28/2006 3:31:49 PM PDT by Sam Hill
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