Ex-Hitler youth's warning to America

[Laisrean]

Originally Posted by Infinite Grey

Yes, but a lot of those doctrines were lifted from Lutheranism... And to gain total control of a populations you need to control all avenues of influence - that includes religion. It's also why communist governments did their best to control and/or obliterate religious organizations.

The NAZIs actions towards control were not all that dissimilar to most Theocracies.

Yes, but they themselves didn't believe in God. They only seen is as a tool to control people. And that's where the Godlessness comes in. You could go to church and do all the rituals and stuff every day of your life, but if you don't believe you are still Godless.

[Shawn Blackwolf]

Incorrect , if you know the reality , underneath your truth...

http://alkman1.blogspot.com/2007/10/...-on-wotan.html

Originally Posted by Laisrean

Yes, but they themselves didn't believe in God. They only seen is as a tool to control people. And that's where the Godlessness comes in. You could go to church and do all the rituals and stuff every day of your life, but if you don't believe you are still Godless.

[Infinite Grey]

Originally Posted by Laisrean

Yes, but they themselves didn't believe in God. They only seen is as a tool to control people. And that's where the Godlessness comes in. You could go to church and do all the rituals and stuff every day of your life, but if you don't believe you are still Godless.

Actually most of them did indeed believe in God, what they did though was leave the respective Churches. The NAZIs did not attack belief in God, but like all good Fascism the attacked the Religious Hierarchy and eliminated potential competition for political influence.

The religious nature of a lot of the tenets of Nazism are so blatant as to be almost considered a Political Religion in it's own right.

[Infinite Grey]

Originally Posted by memnoch

Fine, but how about I point out some other truths about fascism.
1. Fascism decrees that people get their power from the state.
2. Social interventionism, that could be anything from national health care to welfare and social security
3. State controlled education (when a government doesn't want an individual to have any say in the education of children)
4. Government promoted abortions, especially when it was used for eugenics (look into the history of planned parenthood, a government funded pro abortion group founded on eugenics)
5. Nazi's promoted pre marital sex, and divorces
6. Fascists believed in a "third position" that a country should be somewhere between capitalism and communism
7. Fascists believed in a minimum wage
8. Fascists promoted labor unions
9. Fascists believed in a progressive tax
10. Fascists believed in a state ran banking system, capping corporate wages, and price controls
11. Fascists believed in creating government jobs to replace private market jobs
12. Fascists opposed religious views in a public place.
13. Fascists opposed the individuals rights to gun

What I am showing here is that people can manipulate facts (although how fascists were anti labor and pro corporation I don't understand) to show fascism to be either right or left, because it had policies of both sides.

Also any country or politician to point out as fascist because they did have such varied beliefs that when you pick and choose just a few anyone will fall under them.

Actually capitalism rather enjoys Fascism over most other political ideals - the government tend to be far more reliably static and the various laws and restrictions predictable. Just look at China, which is communism only in name - it is closer to a mature Fascism, with the largest expanding economy.

[Meabh23]

Originally Posted by Infinite Grey

Oh no doubt he wanted to set himself up as a veritable god figure - but it is a falsehood to claim the Nazis were atheists. I wonder where that bullshit started; probably during the coldwar when the US propaganda machine tried (and was largely successful) in painting communists as being godless monsters and the USA was the loving and righteous children of god (so to speak).

I doubt it. Hitler saw himself as special, no doubt. Akin to a messiah like figure who would save the German people. But I think, from reading his own writings and hearing recordings, he was a very devoutly Christian person. (This says nothing bad about Christians, as many people from many faiths do all sorts of heinous things). Hitler was even considered very Catholic by many of the bishops who supported him. Sure it could work that he was pulling their legs, but I think, as evil as his racial and national ideals were, the man was serious about his religion. He only barely tolerated the neo-pagan and mystical trappings some of his cronies seemed to dabble in.

Hitler actually said many times that he was doing the work of his Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder why these expressions are left untranslated into English, or they are poopooed with the spurious and poorly researched notion that Hitler was merely using religion in an opportunistic way. (The danger of the latter notion is in forgetting the much of Western Christianity was anti-human and also very anti-semitic for centuries. Hitler was only the latest in a history of such thugs, and the sad fact is that he had much traditional piety from generations before him to stand on.)

Where did the idea came from that the Nazis were atheists? American propaganda from years after the end of WWII. American Christians seemed to be unable to stomach that a group of their co-religionists would have done such things. (But does religious belief or practice really tell you a thing about people's character? Or is that simply our own ignorance leaping to conclusions?)

Where Hitler and the Nazis differed from most Christians is in their Aryanist creed which assumed that Jesus was not Jewish and was actually Aryan. Other than that, much of the Nazi ideology in terms of religious belief was influenced by the writings of Martin Luther and others. Hitler praises the man in Mein Kampf.

People should read Mein Kampf. It makes for a chill since Hitler spells out what his feelings are on several matters, and lo and behold, when his administration came to power, they went about implementing policies based on those.

[Meabh23]

Originally Posted by Laisrean

Yes, but they themselves didn't believe in God. They only seen is as a tool to control people. And that's where the Godlessness comes in. You could go to church and do all the rituals and stuff every day of your life, but if you don't believe you are still Godless.

You assume that the piety expressed by the majority of members of the Nazi party was simply blind ritual? Or opportunism?

Do you not know that the Nazis were one of the few groups actively supported by both Catholics and Protestants, who swelled their ranks? Do you also not know that the Church was one of the cornerstones of the Third Reich?

Did the Nazis, if they were really godless need the religious institutional support? No. They could have pulled a Lenin, and destroyed the whole edifice of religion. But they did not.

The sad fact that gets obfuscated by arguments that posit the Nazis as being opportunists (and therefore not really believers) is that their government enjoyed massive support by both Protestant and Catholic institutional hierarchies, as well as common people. Hitler himself practiced his Catholicism in a dedicated way and in Rome's eyes, he was never excommunicated (meaning he died in the bosom of salvation and is sitting up their with Jesus right now).

[watersprite]

Originally Posted by Philosophia

WND?

Anyway, sounds like a guy trying to sell a book and install fear into people. Kinda like a politician really.

I agree!

[Laisrean]

Originally Posted by Meabh23

Hitler was even considered very Catholic by many of the bishops who supported him.

Then why did he want to arrest the Pope? I don't see how one could be considered a good Catholic while at the same time plotting against the head of the Catholic church. That would be like saying someone who wanted to harm the Dalai Lama is a great Tibetan Buddhist. I just don't see how that's possible.

Sure, Hitler did play lip-service to religion whenever it suited him, like any dictator would. I'm sure he would have eradicated religion if he were able to, but even dictators are limited by how much their citizens are willing to tolerate. An assault on the pope or the church would not have been tolerated, and what little support the Nazi regime actually had would have evaporated if that had happened.

[Laisrean]

Originally Posted by Meabh23

Do you not know that the Nazis were one of the few groups actively supported by both Catholics and Protestants, who swelled their ranks? Do you also not know that the Church was one of the cornerstones of the Third Reich?

Just because someone was a Catholic or Protestant doesn't mean they couldn't also have been a fervant Nationalist as well. People are multi-faceted, and just because you're one thing doesn't mean you can't also be something else at the same time. Christians did support the Nazis, but they didn't support the Nazis for religious reasons. They did so because Hitler portrayed himself as Germany's savior who would undo the humiliation and devastation imposed by the treaty of Versailles.

Like any politician, Hitler wasn't afraid to attach himself to religion when it suited his purposes (even Stalin did when things became desperate), but this doesn't mean Hitler was a believer. If Hitler was a "good catholic" why didn't he go to church? And why did he want to arrest the Pope? Why did he send so many Christian clergymen to concentration camps? Hitler tolerated the clergy who supported him, but those who were critical or thought they church should be an independent organization were rounded up.

[Infinite Grey]

Originally Posted by Laisrean

Just because someone was a Catholic or Protestant doesn't mean they couldn't also have been a fervant Nationalist as well. People are multi-faceted, and just because you're one thing doesn't mean you can't also be something else at the same time. Christians did support the Nazis, but they didn't support the Nazis for religious reasons. They did so because Hitler portrayed himself as Germany's savior who would undo the humiliation and devastation imposed by the treaty of Versailles.

Like any politician, Hitler wasn't afraid to attach himself to religion when it suited his purposes (even Stalin did when things became desperate), but this doesn't mean Hitler was a believer. If Hitler was a "good catholic" why didn't he go to church? And why did he want to arrest the Pope? Why did he send so many Christian clergymen to concentration camps? Hitler tolerated the clergy who supported him, but those who were critical or thought they church should be an independent organization were rounded up.

Hitler's racial attitudes were probably influenced by Christian literature, especially the works of Martin Luther and Paul de Lagarde.

He wanted Germany to be religiously Neutral, but not Atheistic as he feared the political power churches gained. But he was devoutly Christian to the end, going so far as to hold contempt for the members of the Thule Society. Hilter did lean more towards protestantism towards the end, but he admired the pomp of Catholic ritual and the hierarchical organization of the clergy. He drew on these elements, organizing his party along hierarchical lines and including liturgical forms into events or using phraseology taken from hymns.

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. .. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison." Hitler - Mein Kampf