Hitler & Christian Anti-Communism (Book Notes: The Hitler Myth)
Ian Kershaw writes in The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich:
Hitler’s Chancellorship was trumpeted as no mere change of government, but as ‘world-historical event’. Nazi speakers did not tire of portraying Hitler as the last bulwark against the threat of communism, the final hope of peasants and workers, the protector of the Christian religion....
[T]he draconian measures adopted by the government — suspension at one fell swoop of the most basic civil rights of the Reich Constitution through the promulgation of an ‘Emergency Decree for the Protection of People and State’ against ‘communist acts of force’, and massive police raids rounding up thousands of communists in Prussia in the night of 28 February — encountered little criticism and no small degree of favour among the majority of ordinary, middle-class Germans and among the rural population. The attack on the communists was seen, according to one fairly typical report as ‘a long-necessary act of liberation’.
The communist threat appeared very real to Germans of this era. Communists had taken over Russia at the end of World War I. After the troops had returned home, communists had briefly taken control in Bavaria, Germany’s largest, most conservative, and most Catholic state. Fear of communism was based on much more than simple paranoia and far-right political parties fed on this fear. The Nazis were not the only group to exploit fear of communism, but they seem to have used it most effectively.
Perhaps part of this was due to their explicitly Christian appeal. Like other right-wing extremists, they emphasized the importance of German culture and tradition, but they also put a lot of weight on the importance of German Christianity as well. The Nazis were Nationalists and Socialists, but both their nationalism and their socialism were explained, defended, and promoted on Christian terms.
German nationalism was predicated on German Christianity, a Christianity in which religious doctrine and German “character” were to tightly interwoven as to be almost indistinguishable. Nazi socialism was distinguished from the more prevalent forms of socialism in that it was Christian and based upon Christian principles whereas the others were atheistic and therefore lacked a foundation of Christian values — not to mention German-ness.
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I do not disagree with anything said here, but point out what is missing: the fact that Nazi Christianity hardly stood as a mainstream phenomenon within established Christianity. Nazi Christianity was definitely German Christianity, with the emphasis on German. Hitler basically approved of this German, or “positive,” Christianity insofar as it did not interfere with his political ambitions and was not Jewish–which meant he had to go to ridiculous lengths in explaining how Jesus was not really Jewish, but “Aryan.” Hitler was as close to being a mainstream exponent of Christianity as Osama Bin Laden is of mainstream Islam. To the contrary, the distance for Hitler may be even further: apart from private utterances in which he expressed disdain for Christianity as a sick “pity ethic” for the slave-minded, publicly he professed the separation of Church and State and expressed no attachment to the Christian mission, other than the manner in which it might serve the German state. He also once declared that his God is Germany–not even OBL has gone so far in identifying divinity with nationalism. “German Christianity” was as much a part of established Christianity as “German Physics” (Deutsche physics) was a part of established physics, which is to say, not very close at all.
Of course, there were many professed Christians who little or no problem with flocking to the swastika banner. This reflects, at a minimum, a weakness in conviction, moral laxity, and lack of real content in Christianity, at least in its modern form as held by its common adherents. It stands for so little other than platitude, has such a big tent, composed of so many denominations and different interpretations, and is comfortable with so many varying regimes, as to be indistinguishable from pure secularism–with the possible exception or one hour every Sunday. On the other hand, there were numerous physicists–well educated men, many of them secular and humanistic–who also joined the Nazi bandwagon. Moral indifferentism is not just a phenomenon within Christianity.