The Cross vs. the Swastika

I vividly remember a high school conversation with a friend I’d known since we were eight. I’d pointed out that Hitler was essentially a pagan, not a Christian, but my friend absolutely refused to believe it. No matter how much evidence I presented, he kept insisting that Nazi Germany was an extension of Christianity, acting out its age-old vendetta against the Jews. Not that he spoke from any personal study of the subject; he just knew. He’d heard it so many times it’d become an article of faith — one of those things “everyone knows.”

Flash forward 25 years. A few weeks ago my last column (http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000528.html) refuted a number of familiar charges against Christianity, including the Christianity-created-Nazism shibboleth. Even though I only skimmed the subject, I thought the evidence I cited would’ve been hard to ignore; I quoted, for example, Hitler’s fond prediction that he would “destroy Christianity” and replace it with “a [pagan] religion rooted in nature and blood.” But sure enough, I still heard from people who couldn’t buy that.

Well, sometimes myths die hard. But this one took a hit in early January, at the hands of one Julie Seltzer Mandel, a Jewish law student at Rutgers whose grandmother survived internment at Auschwitz.

A couple of years ago Mandel read through 148 bound volumes of papers gathered by the American OSS (the World War II-era predecessor of the CIA) to build the case against Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg. Now she and some fellow students are publishing what they found in the journal Law and Religion(www.lawandreligion.com), which Mandel edits. The upshot: a ton of evidence that Hitler sought to wipe out Christianity just as surely as he sought to wipe out the Jews.

The first installment (the papers are being published in stages) includes a 108-page OSS outline, “The Persecution of the Christian Churches.” It’s not easy reading, but it’s an enlightening tale of how the Nazis — faced with a country where the overwhelming majority considered themselves Christians — built their power while plotting to undermine and eradicate the churches, and the people’s faith.

Before the Nazis came to power, the churches did hold some views that overlapped with the National Socialists — e.g., they opposed communism and resented the Versailles treaty that ended World War I by placing heavy burdens on defeated Germany. But, the OSS noted, the churches “could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, with a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or with a domestic policy involving the complete subservience of Church to State.” Thus, “conflict was inevitable.”

From the start of the Nazi movement, “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement,” said Baldur von Scvhirach, leader of the group that would come to be known as Hitler youth. But “explicitly” only within partly ranks: as the OSS stated, “considerations of expedience made it impossible” for the movement to make this public until it consolidated power.

So the Nazis lied to the churches, posing as a group with modest and agreeable goals like the restoration of social discipline in a country that was growing permissive. But as they gained power, they took advantage of the fact that many of the Protestant churches in the largest body (the German Evangelical Church) were government-financed and administered. This, the OSS reported, advanced the Nazi plan “to capture and use church organization for their own purposes” and “to secure the elimination of Christian influences in the German church by legal or quasi legal means.”

The Roman Catholic Church was another story; its administration came from Rome, not within German borders, and its relationship with the Nazis in the 1920s had been bitter. So Hitler lied again, offering a treaty pledging total freedom for the Catholic church, asking only that the church pledge loyalty to the civil government and emphasize citizens’ patriotic duties — principles which sounded a lot like what the church already promoted. Rome signed the treaty in 1933.

Only later, when Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, did his true policy toward both Catholics and Protestants become apparent. By 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced the Nazis for waging “a war of extermination” against the church, and dissidents like the Lutheran clergyman Martin Niemoller openly denounced state control of Protestant churches. The fiction of peaceful coexistence was rapidly fading: In the words of The New York Times (summarizing OSS conclusions), “Nazi street mobs, often in the company of the Gestapo, routinely stormed offices in Protestant and Catholic churches where clergymen were seen as lax in their support of the regime.”

The Nazis still paid enough attention to public perception to paint its church critics as traitors: the church “shall have not martyrs, but criminals,” an official said. But the campaign was increasingly unrestrained. Catholic priests found police snatching sermons out of their hands, often in mid-reading. Protestant churches issued a manifesto opposing Nazi practices, and in response 700 Protestant pastors were arrested. And so it went.

Not that Christians took this lying down; the OSS noted that despite this state terrorism, believers often acted with remarkable courage. The report tells, for example, of how massive public demonstrations protested the arrests of Lutheran pastors, and how individuals like pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (hanged just days before the war ended) and Catholic lay official Josef Mueller joined German military intelligence because that group sought to undermine the Nazis from within.

There is, of course, plenty of room for legitimate criticism of church leaders and laymen alike for getting suckered early on, and for failing to put up enough of a fight later. Yet we should approach such judgments with due humility. As Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett write in their book Christianity on Trial (to repeat a quote used in my last column), “It is easy for those who do not live under a totalitarian regime to expect heroism from those who do, but it is an expectation that will often be disappointed. . . . it should be less surprising that the mass of Christians were silent than that some believed strongly enough to pay for their faith with their lives.”

At any rate, my point is hardly to defend every action (or inaction) on the part of German churches. In fact, I think their failures bring us valuable lessons, not least about the dangers of government involvement in — and thus power over — any churches.

But the notion that the church either gave birth to Hitler or walked hand-in-hand with him as a partner is, simply, slander. Hitler himself knew better. “One is either a Christian or a German,” he said. “You can’t be both.”

This is something to bear in mind when some folk on the left trot out their well-worn accusation that conservative Christians are “Nazis” or “fascists.” It’s also relevant to answering the charge made by the likes of liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd: “History teaches that when religion is injected into politics — the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo — disaster follows.”

But it’s not Christianity that’s injected evil into the world. In fact, the worst massacres in history have been committed by atheists (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) and virtual pagans (Hitler). Christians have amassed their share of sins over the past 2,000 years, but the great murderers have been the church’s enemies, especially in the past century. It’s long past time to set the historical record straight.

The complete text of this article is available at http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000541.html

I'm late posting this, but I didn't realize how totally insane things would become in this thread.

So that everyone will have access to the accumulated "Creationism vs. Evolution" threads which have previously appeared on FreeRepublic, plus links to hundreds of sites with a vast amount of information on this topic, here's Junior's massive work, available for all to review: The Ultimate Creation vs. Evolution Resource [ver 14].

01: Site that debunks virtually all of creationism's fallacies. Excellent resource.
02: Creation "Science" Debunked.
03: Creationism and Pseudo Science. Familiar cartoon then lots of links.
04: The SKEPTIC annotated bibliography. Amazingly great meta-site!
05: The Evidence for Human Evolution. For the "no evidence" crowd.
06: Massive mega-site with thousands of links on evolution, creationism, young earth, etc..
07: Another amazing site full of links debunking creationism.
08: Creationism and Pseudo Science. Great cartoon!
09: Glenn R. Morton's site about creationism's fallacies. Another jennyp contribution.
10: CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA (Creation oriented)
11: Is Evolution Science?. Successful PREDICTIONS of evolution (Moonman62).
12: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution. On point and well-written.
13: Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions. A creationist nightmare!

" 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....the highest and most desirable ideal." (Quote from Mein Kampf)

I don't think he meant "moral ideal." What Hitler was referring to was the clergy's ceremonial leadership position that impressed him so much as a child. Later, as dictator, he constantly attempted to produce spectacles and events that would emulate and replace religious ceremonies in the life of the German people. And of course, the person at the center of these new rites would be - who else but Adolf himself?

Why even try. The "science" (or lack there of) quoted by O'l Sparky I find truly appalling.

I'm certainly not trying to persuade O'l Sparky. As you know, when we encounter such an intellectual brick wall, we are really putting up our side of things for the lurkers.

But there's more at stake here. Observe this comment of his, at post 74: "Why do you continue to promote and blindly believe this fairy tale[evolution] while claiming to be a Christian?" It's stuff like that which gives Christianity (and conservatism) a bad name, and it's why these debates are so essential on FreeRepublic.

No one seems to have taken up Sparky's whale gambit. For the lurkers who may be wondering if he has any point, I wearily dredge up what most have seen repeatedly.

A crude picture here:

Lesson: Whale Evolution. Alas, more of a lesson plan than an article.

A good whale history page:

Introduction to the Cetacea.

If the total energy available in the universe were zero, everything in it would be dead. If available energy in the universe were zero, everything in it would be dead. [snip]

Total energy, as in NET total energy, can be zero AND can still provide positive energy for naturally occurring thermodynamic processes. Think about it it.

If Evolution is true, there must be an extremely powerful force or mechanism at work in the cosmos that can steadily defeat the powerful, ultimate tendency toward "disarrangedness" brought by the 2nd Law. If such an important force or mechanism is in existence, it would seem it should be quite obvious to all scientists. Yet, the fact is, no such force of nature has been found.

You ignored what I said regarding the 2LoT. I repeat: there is nothing in the 2nd Law that precludes local decreases in entropy as long as the total entropy of the system and its environment experiences a net increase.

Ignoring my point and repeating your assertion that Evolution somehow violates the 2LoT doesn't make it true.

Just a note: Darwin revealed the processes of natural selection. He didn't invent them. What has been termed racialism in a few posts existed in ancient times and reading Herodotus you learn that the loser in a war gave up his best men to castration or murder (preventing the best in the loser's population from breeding) and the best women were made concubines of the victor. Since in Herodotus' time religions were ethnically based, warfare based on ethnic cleansing/racialism/racism or whatever term you want to use for it predated Nazism and Christianity as did anti-Semitism. In the Book of Daniel (2:43), Daniel tells King Nebuchadnezzar, "As in your vision, the iron was mixed with common clay, so shall men mix with each other by intermarriage. But such alliances shall not be stable: iron does not mix with clay." What is Daniel saying? He's saying marry well and marry the iron, not the common clay. Nehemiah, the prophet pulled men by the hair when they married outside of their race. "Social Darwinism" did not begin with Darwin. It's in the Old Testament as early as Genesis. It's also in the Vedas. ol' sparky - I'm not necessarily responding to your post but I'm new and have to get a handle on how these threads work. im d.

I'm new and have to get a handle on how these threads work.

Your post was fine, but in time you will learn that with a guy like Ol' Sparky, he will probably ignore what you say and go on repeating his dogma. The evolution/creationism threads are full of people like that. It's frustrating, but don't let it get to you.

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