'HELL ON EARTH'- German Bishop Links Nazi Crimes to Atheism

In an Easter sermon that has drawn widespread criticism, the Catholic bishop of Augsburg has linked the crimes committed under Nazi and Communist regimes to atheism. Atheist groups have reacted with fury and accuse the cleric of rewriting history.

A Catholic German bishop has come under fire for his remarks condemning atheists. In a sermon given on Easter Sunday, the bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, warned of rising atheism in Germany. "Wherever God is denied or fought against, there people and their dignity will soon be denied and held in disregard," he said in the sermon. He also said that "a society without God is hell on earth" and quoted the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."

Most controversially, he linked the Nazi and Communist crimes to atheism. "In the last century, the godless regimes of Nazism and Communism, with their penal camps, their secret police and their mass murder, proved in a terrible way the inhumanity of atheism in practice." Christians and the Church were always the subject of "special persecution" under these systems, he said.

The Easter sermon was not the first time that Mixa has made comparisons to Nazism for rhetorical purposes. In February, the bishop compared the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust with the number of abortions performed over the past decades, according to a newspaper report. The bishop's spokesman also responded to criticism of Mixa from Germany's leading Green Party politician, Claudia Roth, who called the bishop a "crazy über-fundamentalist," by comparing her words to Nazi propaganda.

A uniform carryover that included the swastika?

They added the swastika and kept the “God is with us”, they didn't just “carryover” the design from WWI or before.

Come on now. Don't try to twist things around. I pointed out your error and then stated that the "Gott mit Uns" slogan was a uniform carryover from at least WWI.

You knew that I knew where the swastika on the buckle came from by reading the prior sentence I wrote in the post"

"What was new were the swastikas on everything. The swastikas came from the Nazis who in turn took it from ancient paganism."

Obviously those who designed the new buckle and those that wore it saw nothing akimbo about a swastika and “God is with us” on the same buckle.

True but I think what you are missing is that the swastika was a very common symbol of luck in the early 20th century Western World. American forces in WWI even used it. That the Nazis also used the swastika in and of itself would have been unremarkable to a person in the early 20th century.

What the percentage breakdown was of men who wore the German uniform and viewed the swastika as merely a good luck symbol, pagan symbol or the new German symbol I have no idea. I would generally assume that those who viewed the swastika as a pagan symbol also would have been the ones most reluctant to don the uniform.

“The image of a Nazi storm trooper side by side with Jesus Christ”

What, not a Nazi storm trooper with NOTHING beside him (atheism)?

OK. It appears that your definition of atheism is the belief in no spirit world. That's good because that is also my definition. (some view atheism as meaning no Christian God)

Anyway, the top Nazi's were not atheists, they were occultic/paganists.

Not a Nazi storm trooper with ODIN beside him (pagan)?

I can't readily cite such example inside a "Christian" church but there are plenty of Wotan/Odin examples in the 3rd Reich. Examples that come to mind are the 1943 Wotan defensive line in Russia. Not having lost faith when the Russians smashed through the 1943 Wotan line, the Germans in April 1945 named the final defensive line at Seelow Heights the Wotan Line. The Seelow Heights Wotan Line was the last defensive line to the East of Berlin.

A Nazi storm trooper with Jesus the Christ beside him.

Actually, an Aryanized Jesus who could have passed for a body builder in a different setting.

“God is with us” they cried as they drove off to war in equipment with a cross painted on it.

I don't doubt some Chaplain used such words of reassurance but keep in mind, German army chaplains were not conscientious objectors either. That having been said, if you can cite one original example of German soldiers shouting this please do so.

The cross on the vehicles was the Balkenkreuz which was a secularized straight armed cross that first appeared toward the end of WWI and continued until 1945.

Germany presently uses the Maltese style cross which is actually has greater religious symbolism but modern German soldiers don't think because they wear the Malta cross that they are Christian Soldiers.

Now years later some try to claim they were either atheists or pagans;

Not a claim but a fact as it pertained to the highest ranks and if you can refute that do so. So far, you haven't begun to.

simply ANYTHING other than what they thought of themselves as.... Christians.

Sort of like the Noam Chomsky secular Leftist Jew? He'll say that he's a Jew but not a joo.

Not good ones mind you, rather shoddy anti Semitic ones, easily led by a Socialism espousing madman; but they still thought that a Nazi storm trooper needed Jesus the Christ beside him.

You just described liberal Christian Churches. As a group, there's no better example than membership of The World Council of Churches. Should a modern Hitler comes along, they will be right out front goose stepping in fine form.

That having been said, I agree with you that Christian churches collaborated with the Nazis more than is commonly acknowledged.

Just as Night and day differentiate Liberal Christians from Conservative Christians. There were collaborationist Christians seeking to save their hides and then there were those Christians loaded onto the cattle cars.

If nothing else, what The Third Reich made painfully clear was that Christianity in Europe was dead... something most American immigrants fleeing European religious persecution knew long before Hitler came along.

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