This was Hitler's favorite week.

[Hieronymus]

Thom Hartmann just said that, and that in 1934 Hitler established a state church, the Lutheran Church.:eyes:

[lenidog]

1. Thomas Hartman better crack the books back open

and reread about Hitler. Hitler was pretty much anti-Christian. He sorta got this weird idea in his head that Christianity was a Jewish plot to weaken the Aryan people. Yes he made deals with the Catholic Church recognizing their position in German society when he first came to power but that was to gain support and not for any personal feeling. Then Hitler was from a Catholic family so I doubt if he was a Christian he would have made Lutheranism the state religion.

[HawkerHurricane]

5. From his own mouth.

"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."


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"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."


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"What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."


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"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his
estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary,
He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."


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"It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god."


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"....the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."
precisely echoing Martin Luther's teachings]

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"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable
stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it."


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"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine."


"Around 1937, when Hitler heard that at the instigation of the party and the SS vast numbers of his followers had left the church because it was obstinately opposing his plans, he nevertheless ordered his chief associates, above all Goering and Gobbels, to remain members of the church. He too would remain a member of the Catholic Church, he said, although he had no real attachment to it. And in fact he remained in the church until his suicide." (Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer page 95-96)

"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 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. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

“National Socialism is not a cult-movement-- a movement for worship; it is exclusively a ‘volkic’ political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship... We will not allow mystically- minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else-- in any case something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will-- not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord… Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men.” -Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept.1938.

http://www.evilbible.com/hitler_was_christian.htm

Now you can claim that from his actions, Hitler was a poor Christian, and he certainly was no follower of Jesus, but he thought of himself as a Christian, and required the same of his followers.

[lenidog]

16. He gave them what they wanted

Hitler was a master orator and gave the people what they wanted to hear. But in private among the inner circle he showed his true feelings toward religion. Check out "Hitlers Table Talk" by Hugh Trevor-Roper. Its basically transcripts of dinner conversations had with the faithful. (Borman thought they were so fascinating that he asked Hitler to have a stenographer record them.) His more private thoughts went like this one, "Our Epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last anoother hundred years, twoo hundred years perhaps. My regret will have been that I couldn't, like whoever the prophet was, behold the promised land from afar."

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. I don't know who Thom Hartmann is, but his history is a bit off

Yes, Hitler did establish a state church - with the church's complicity, except for a few decent souls like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and some others (cf. Barmen Declaration and also cf. The Confessing Church), but Mr. Hartmann will find, if he digs into hios books, that the Lutheran Church had been around for about 400 years when Hitler was in power.

[HawkerHurricane]

3. Ah, but the Lutheran Church was not the STATE church...

which is the point he was trying to make, I think.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. No, the Lutheran church wasn't the state church

The German Reformed Church was the state church (and damn, but for the life of me, I can't remember it in German), and that was even before Hitler. But the church became hand-in-hand with Hitler, as did the Catholic Church and others. Except the Confessing Church. And Studenten Gegen Hitler. :-)

But Hitler did not create the Lutheran Church.

[HawkerHurricane]

6. Of course not...

and I hope that I never sounded like he did create the Lutheran Church...

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. No, you didn't - but according to Heironymous, that's what Hartmann said

I know you didn't make that claim about the Lutheran Church.

(and still, who is this Thom Hartmann? Never heard of him)

[Hieronymus]

13. I think most educated people know that the Lutheran Church predates Hitler

by a long time. Mr. Hartmann didn't claim that Hitler founded the Lutheran Church, Martin Luther, I believe, did that.

[Rabrrrrrr]

14. You said that Hartmann claimed that Hitler started the Lutheran Church

It's in your first post.

I was not claiming that you, or anyone else, other than Hartmann, was making that claim. I know the history of the Lutheran Church, as is evident in my posts - I, too, have said that the Lutheran Church long predates Hitler.

All I was pointing out was one thing: that Hartmann was wrong for saying that Hitler started the Lutheran Church. Which, according to your post that started this thread, is what Hartmann claimed.

[Hieronymus]

15. Never mind.....

[Rabrrrrrr]

17. I don't understand your pissiness on this

Did Hartmann make that claim or not? Am I misreading something in here somewhere?

And, for the love of God, could someone please tell me who the hell this Hartmann guy is?

[JVS]

8. The German reformed church was a weird combination originally made by...

Prussia.

Prussia didn't like having protestants split into Lutherans and Calvinists. So in a classic spirit of Teutonic compromise, they made both groups unhappy by merging the churches. One interesting result of this was German Lutherans leaving Saxony and founding the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, which to this day is marked by an fairly orthodox adherence to the Lutheran confessional statements of the 16th century and also tendency away from ecumenical activity rooted in the fact that forced ecumenism is what they left Germany over in the first place.

[JVS]

7. Look up Gleichschaltung to hear what really happened

Hitler did not found the Lutheran church. What's this Hartmann guy's damage?

What did happen though is that the nazis systematically either took over or shut down every organization within Germany, of course the Catholic church was in a better postion to resist this than any other organization because of it's strong international structure.

[juliagoolia]

9. Evangelical Church of Germany

So far as the Evangelical Confessions are concerned we are determined to put an end to existing divisions, which are concerned only with the forms of organization, and to create a single Evangelical Church for the whole Reich....
And we know that were the great German reformer with us to-day he would rejoice to be freed from the necessity of his own time and, like Ulrich von Hutten, his last prayer would be not for the Churches of the separate States: it would be of Germany that he would think and of the Evangelical Church of Germany.
-Adolf Hitler, in his Proclamation at the Parteitag at Nuremberg on 5 Sept. 1934 http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. That's the word I was looking for! Evangelical!

Deutsches Evangelische Kirche!

Thanks. That was driving me insane.

[juliagoolia]

12. frightening isn't it?

Evangelical Churchs of America are trying to run this country!

[Melodybe]

18. Exactly, just like shrub he SAYS he is a good christian

and way too many believe him.

[UncleSepp]

19. Read all you want., you won't get the answers

The man was not a Christian in a religious sense. Perhaps in a cultural sense, at the ends of his consciousness, or deep in the night. Table Talk is a good start. One really must dig long and hard to get to a sense of what the man was about, and if one is not doing such digging in German, then it's utterly useless. Hitler and National Socialism cannot be understood in translation.

By the way, what's the big whoop about Hitler lately? It was a long long time ago. We have real things happening RIGHT NOW. Forget looking at the shiny thing in the black boots - forget it, that's over and done. Look at the world as it is in the moment. I don't care any more if this was Hitler's favorite week, if he founded a new Church, or if he liked to wear stripey pajamas with a hatch in the back. It's irrelevant! What's happening today?

Good God. The threat is not coming through a friggin' time machine from Germany, it is NOW, and it ain't the Boys from Brazil. The next Fascist threat is not going to come neatly identified with swastikas and jackboots and limestone-cladded architecture. It's going to look like the guy next door, and if we liberals do not get over our Nazi night-terrors we will never be able to deal with the present. Also, Amerika, erwache - oder sterben!