Myth:
Atheists and other critics of religion claim that the Holocaust was directly descended from medieval Christianity, but if that were true there should have been a Hitler or Holocaust in the Middle Ages. That didn't happen, so the Holocaust must not be Christianity's fault.
Response:
Critics of Christianity and the history of Christian violence commonly point out the massive death toll of the Holocaust, arguing that it was largely a product of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. Defenders of Christianity usually try to argue, incorrectly, that Hitler and the Nazis followed an atheist, anti-Christian ideology which was resisted by Christians and Christianity. This closely associated myth claims that if they were produced by Christianity, they would have appeared sooner.
There is a certain ambiguity in the above myth in that it's not clear what exactly they mean by "Hitler." Are they referring to Hitler, the person with a vicious ideology of anti-Semitism, or Hitler the symbol of the Holocaust? If they are asking why there wasn't a medieval Hitler in the sense of a person who was viciously anti-Semitic and wanted to eliminate all the Jews, how do they know there was no such person? There may have been many such people throughout the Middle Ages, but they lacked the power and technical means to accomplish what the 20th century Hitler did.
If they are asking about Hitler as a symbol of the Holocaust, then it's difficult to understand how anyone could offer such a claim because it appears to be so silly. It's a bit likely saying that if I were really directly descended from my grandfather, then my grandfather should have already done all the things I am doing. Obviously my grandfather wasn't writing about atheism and religion on the internet, therefore I must not be directly descended from him. Right?
That's absurd. Being directly descended from someone or something doesn't mean that the two are exactly identical, such that one should be expected to do all or even many of same things as the other. There are always new developments and ideas which influence that which is descended from something else. No one claims that the murderous anti-Semitism of the Nazis is exactly identical to the medieval anti-Semitism of Christianity, they claim that the latter is a direct descendant of the former. Being a direct descendent means that many essential, necessary elements are derived from something earlier and it's undeniable that many of the most basic features of Nazi anti-Semitism are drawn directly from the anti-Semitism of Christianity throughout the Middle Ages.
Every major feature short of the extermination camps was in fact pioneered by Christians and promoted as theological necessities: forcing Jews to wear special badges, forcing Jews to live in ghettos, restricting Jews from attending schools or working in certain professions, imposing special curfews on Jews, the association of Jews with communism, socialism, and other modernist ideologies, limiting Jews interaction with Christians, and so forth. Attempts by Christian apologists to differentiate between "legitimate" Christian anti-Semitism and illegitimate racial anti-Semitism all fall flat — there are indeed some differences, but they are more a matter of degree than sharp separation. Racist anti-Semites often employed religious arguments; Christian anti-Semites often employed racial arguments.
Medieval Christian anti-Semitism may have produced the attitudes and ideologies which made the Holocaust possible in a psychological sense, but they obviously weren't the only relevant elements. There were, for example, many modern developments which were also necessary: mass bureaucracy, large-scale transportation systems like railroads, technical means for keeping track of people provided by IBM, poison gasses for easier mass executions, etc. There are also ideological elements which contributed: extreme nationalism, the development of a German rather than universal Christianity, ideas about race and racial characteristics, modern sanitation and medicine (creating the ability to describe enemies as a disease to be eradicated), etc.
Atheists who criticize religion and Christianity by pointing out their connections to the Holocaust should not allow themselves to be distracted by claims like the one above. Centuries of Christian anti-Semitism played a critical role in making the Holocaust possible. Christian anti-Semitism wasn't the only factor, and wasn't even the only ideological factor, but it's inconceivable that the Holocaust would have occurred without it. This fundamental connection cannot be denied by pretending that medieval Christianity should have produced a Hitler if it really helped produce the Holocaust. Historical and ideological connections don't work that way because the existence of a connection does not imply that the things connected are also identical.
