ADL Blasts Christian Supremacist TV Special & Book Blaming Darwin For Hitler

The idea that Hitler, because he had been baptized as a baby, could be considered in any sense a Christian is wholly unsupportable and false. In truth, Hitler despised the Christian religion and considered it, along with the pox, as the great scourge of mankind.

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. When you read them, you can sense the real evil behind the madman.

For actual quotes from Hitler regarding his vehement opposition to Christianity:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1682299/posts

I am talking about the claims that it was scientific in nature. I think its bogus. I doubt they used the term 'darwinism' though

Historically, there is simply no question that Darwinism was a powerful influence on Nazi thinking.

I deny it. Hitler's ideas regarding Darwinism were as laughably wrong-headed as those of any FreeRepublic creationist.

You cannot lay Hitler at Darwin's feet without laying Jim Jones/Savonarola/David Koresh/the Conquistadors/molesting priests/Salem Witch Trials/the Inquisition/etc/etc/etc at Christ's.

Actually, Hitler drew more inspiration from Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger than they did from Darwin. They had a lot in common those two.

"Saying that Darwin caused the holocaust is like blaming blitzkrieg on Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler and Orville and Wilbur Wright."

Or blaming Henry Ford for car accidents.

From the article:

Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

[my bolding]

Precisely

> That's a crock and you know it!

Too bad Hitler didn't. From: http://www.creationtheory.org/Essays/index.php?page=Hitler

"I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal."2 (Hitler admired religious figures).

"I thank Heaven that a portion of the memories of those days still remains with me. Woods and meadows were the battlefields on which the 'conflicts' which exist everywhere in life were decided."3 (Hitler believed in Heaven).

"I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party ... The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times ... How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my attitude toward the Christian Social movement! My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all."4 (Hitler was inspired to become a radical anti-Semite by the Viennese Christian Social movement, whose attitudes are almost identical to the far-right American Christian fundamentalist movement today).

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."5 (Hitler obviously believed in a supreme being).

"Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be 'discovered' by an election"6 (Hitler was fond of paraphrasing the Bible (Mark 10:25 in this case), and he does this many, many times elsewhere in the book).

"The root of the whole evil lay, particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the directing body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our nationality."7 (affirming that Hitler's only real problem with his childhood religion was the fact that its power base was not in Germany).

"I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction."8 (the "divine court of the eternal judge" seems a rather strange idea from anyone but a Judeo-Christian, since Pagan and Eastern religions generally lack any such divine judgemental entity, to say nothing of atheism)

"Certainly we don't have to discuss these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the Lord's image."9

"Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children."10 (recalling World War I).

"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe."11 (it would appear that Hitler agreed with modern "intelligent design" creationists on the existence of a Creator).

"Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth ... Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world ..."12 (Jerry Falwell? Is that you?)

"But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God"13 (note that when he says "images of God", he refers to racially pure Aryans; this sentence comes in the context of a diatribe against racial intermixing).

"While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply so their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable."14 (Hitler agrees with George W. Bush that religion and morality are intertwined).

"Also noteworthy is the increasingly violent struggle against the dogmatic foundations of the various churches without which in this human world the practical existence of a religious faith is not conceivable ... The attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and, as the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious nihilism."15 (Hitler, trying to equate criticism of dogma to an assault on civilization)

"The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following: (a) Lowering of the level of the higher race; (b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness. To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator."16 (Hitler tries to define racial intermarriage as defiance of God's will, in exactly the way modern racists do, particularly in the southern American states; indeed, 40% of Alabama voters voted to keep interracial marriage illegal in November 2000)

"And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world."17 (Hitler believes in the afterlife, and he agrees with modern Christian fundamentalists about the importance of religious matters over material matters)

"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."18 (Hitler demonstrates the common anti-Semitic view that Jesus was an Aryan rather than a Jew, and glowingly described him as "the great founder of the new doctrine".

"The Jew almost never marries a Christian woman; it is the Christian who marries a Jewess ... The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew ... With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people."19 (Hitler echoes Martin Luther's thoughts on Satan and Jewry; note that Hitler openly admired Luther, who wrote the virulent anti-Semitic screed "On Jews And Their Lies", and the infamous Kristallnacht was committed on Luther's birthday. Also note that he reiterates his hatred of intermarriage, but this time on religious rather than racial grounds. He tends to use the terms "German" and "Christian" interchangeably, which makes sense since he believed that Jesus was an Aryan and that true Christianity recognized the supremacy of the Aryan race).

"The future of a movement is conditioned by the fanaticism, yes, the intolerance, with which its adherents uphold it as the sole correct movement, and push it past other formations of a similar sort ... absolute intolerance also provides long growth ... The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others."20 (Hitler explains why he thinks religious intolerance is good, agreeing in principle with modern right-wing Christian fundamentalists who bemoan that if they are not intolerant of diversity, their belief system will have no future).

"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine."21

"The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack."22 (Hitler's own words demonstrate clearly that despite the common myth that the religion of Nazism was Nordic paganism, he actually regarded the Nordic pagan revival movement with nothing but contempt and derision, and Rosenberg was obviously charting his own path).

"A man who knows a thing, who is aware of a given danger, and sees the possibility of a remedy with his own eyes, has the duty and obligation, by God, not to work 'silently,' but to stand up before the whole public against the evil and for its cure."23 (isn't it interesting that you could easily imagine many of these quotes coming from the mouth of a modern-day preacher?)

"By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic principles-- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles-- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence."24 (Hitler equates religious dogma to ethics and morality, again just like modern right-wing intolerant Christians)

"Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."25 (Hitler believes in the Genesis story of expulsion from Paradise).

"The task of preserving and advancing the highest humanity, given to this earth by the benevolence of the Almighty, seems a truly high mission."26

"A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape."27 (Hitler believed that Aryans are holy and were created in God's "image", while other races evolved from apes, hence his hatred for racial mixing because it diluted God's image).

"It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world."28 (Hitler outlines some of his eugenics ideas; note that he described black humans as "Negroes" and white humans as "European humanity". Like the medieval European Christian conquerors, he obviously thought of black people as sub-human, and he often described Czechs as "sub-humans" as well)

"That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?"29 (Hitler believes that racial mixing is an extension of "original sin")

"It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions."30 (again, he repeats his belief that Aryans come from God while other races evolved from apes).

"It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god"31 (just for fun, try asking people whether quotes like this came from Jerry Falwell or Adolf Hitler).

"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."32 (again Hitler repeats his belief that the Aryan race was created by God, and that it would be a sin to dilute it through racial intermixing with inferior races which evolved naturally).

"If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recognize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concentrated power. And if this victory is obtained through sacrifices elsewhere, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us."33 (he seems to have learned the lessons of the Biblical Old Testament well: God punishes the people when they disobey him, so they must not make an enemy of God)

"For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!'"34

"we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and or German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread..."35 (again, Hitler tries to justify his actions as the will of God, as countless Christians have done before him).

"And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer. Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent..."36 (Hitler explaining that the German people must send the "heaven-stormer" back to Hell).

None of this says that Hitler was a Christian in any real sense. But it *does* provide good evidence that he was influenced by Christianity.

Those are not quotes from Hitler, they are undocumented statements that they are reports of private conversations.

Find a primary source: something Hither wrote or something said in a public setting that was reported on at the time.

I sincerely doubt they're directly blaming Darwin. Unfortunately, Hitler did draw on Darwin to justify his eugenic views - as did many others at the time. Seems to me that if you take human beings as nothing more than common stock, eugenic views are naturally going to arise. Putting eugenics into action, as Hitler did, requires more honesty than the West is willing to admit at this time.

The following is from Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 (Farrar, Straus and Young).
All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler. He may have used religious language in Mein Kampf in order to sway the masses, but he reveals his true beliefs in the quotes below:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:

National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)
10th October, 1941, midday:

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 43)
14th October, 1941, midday:

The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)
19th October, 1941, night:

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.
21st October, 1941, midday:

Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)
13th December, 1941, midnight:

Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:

Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)
9th April, 1942, dinner:

There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)
27th February, 1942, midday:

It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 yearse will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

I fail to see how it trivializes the horrors of the holocaust. That is a totally bogus charge. He may disagree with Kennedy's premise, but that's no reason to make phone accusations.

Oh, and as for the Christian supremacist stuff.....Kennedy just wants the judges to stop claiming that morality is an invalid basis of law. And any morality Kennedy subscribes to is dervived first from Judaism, so I hardly think it leaves Christians as supreme. Free? Yes! Supreme? Get outta here.

Hitler was born and raised in a Catholic environment in Austria, just as Lenin and Stalin came from Orthodox backgrounds in the Russian Empire. In fact, Stalin studied for the priesthood before his "conversion" to Marxism while at seminary. However, Hitler rejected the teachings of his birth religion as surely as Lenin and Stalin did. This is evident in Mein Kampf as surely as in the policies of the Third Reich. Few, if any, of the top National Socialist leaders were practicing Protestants or Catholics, and none could be considered Christian believers.

There were self-described Christians in Germany who supported the Nazi regime. Many of them, including the "German Christian" movement of Protestant clergy, seriously compromised their faith in so doing. In a like manner, many Russian Orthodox clergy became supporters of the Soviet regime in Stalin's time after the brutal persecution of the 1920s and 1930s ended.

Who wrote down Hitler's "secret conversations"?

This is the kind of controversy that develops when small minds learn a little bit of something that is much bigger than they are.

I'm no fan of Kennedy's, and I don't know if the premise of this DVD is true or not.

What I want to know is how does the DVD trivialize the Holocaust? If there is no connection, or a tenuous one at best, between Darwinian theory and Nazism, and Kennedy's outfit is saying Darwinism is bad and -- see?-- it's the source of Nazism, then he's just doing what tends to be done these days whenever there is a discussion of evil -- tie it to Nazism whether there is a basis for it or not. I could see how Foxman might take offense at that, if that is what the DVD does.

But I don't see the problem with exploring the intellectual foundations and influences of Nazism, if done in a proper and valid way. There was an intellectual foundation to it -- it wasn't just Hitler's pure irrational rotteness.

It is true that Christ has an influence over everything and everyone. Including Hitler. Including you. Including me.

Not sure what point you're making. Are you blaming the Holocaust on Jesus and His followers? Hm.

Are you blaming the Holocaust on Jesus and His followers? Hm.

Almost as absurd as blaming the holocaust on biologists or on the theory of evolution, ain't it?

Darwin influenced/inspired Nietzsche. Nietzsche influenced/inspired Hitler.

Sorry, but entirely wrong on the first point, and mostly wrong on the second.

Nietzsche (for whom I hold no brief) had neither understanding nor appreciation of Darwin. An interesting essay on this can be found Visit here, which also includes some telling passages from Nietzsche's published work, e.g. (from Der Wille zur Macht:

Anti Darwin.- What surprises me most on making a general survey of the great destinies of man, is that I invariably see the reverse of what today Darwin and his school sees or will persist in seeing: selection in favour of the stronger, the better constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the reverse of this stares one in the face: the suppression of the lucky cases, the uselessness of the more highly constituted types, the inevitable mastery of the mediocre, and even of those who are below mediocrity. Unless we are shown some reason why man is an exception among living creatures, I incline to the view that Darwin's school is everywhere at fault.

Unless, by "influence/inspired", you mean that much of what Nietzsche wrote was antithetical to Darwin?

The later use (Nietzsche died in 1900) by Hitler's National Socialists was in fact a massive exercise in quote-mining--an exercise encouraged by Nietzsche's sister, who married a prominent anti-semite. Nietzsche, with his many faults, was not a proto-Nazi; the Nazis had to ignore/expunge huge portions of his works, in which he descried, inter alia, German nationalism.

Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery....