The video above summarises the position as regards Hitler and Christianity: as regards “Citizen Hitler”, you will hear every opinion conceivable with reference to his faith. But, before we get to the meat, do we have to do Hitler again? It has been a long-standing joke that the History Channel is really the Hitler Channel, all it does is run documentaries about Hitler—and so will this website tread the same path? My answer is the answer I have given elsewhere: the war in the Ukraine, the major international event at the moment, is discussed in terms of “Zelensky’s regime, sponsors of neo-Nazi terror” and “Putler, Putin the new Hitler”. Quite aside from this issue, Trump is supposedly Hitler—and, then again, Obama was depicted in a neat SS uniform when he was in power.
In short, Hitler is everywhere—he is central to our politics, to what we consider moral or immoral. There is supposedly a logical fallacy called reductio ad Hitlerum whereby the first person to mention Hitler in an argument is disqualified; however, nobody takes this seriously—whether a policy or position is more or less like Hitler, what we imagine Hitler would think, is taken as deadly serious. Hitler is set to remain, short of WWIII (even then I’m not sure he would vanish), salient for all political, moral, and social debates—hence Hitler will remain a recurrent theme on this website. We all remain rather like the main character in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise (1985), a professor of “Hitler Studies” who is crippled by chronic anxiety related to the fact he has reached this storied position without ever learning German. In a sense, we are all “professors of Hitler Studies” who never learned German—to be so is to be a modern person (no need to be anxious).
As far as religion goes, Hitler is a hot potato: since religion—non-religion—remains a hard fought area, everyone wants to associate Hitler with the religious position they disdain. Hence atheists will swear blind that Hitler was a deeply religious man, dredge up a particular quote as regards his Catholicism. Indeed, in the late ‘90s a book called Hitler’s Pope emerged—the accusation being that the Vatican was starry-eyed for the Führer. The position has somewhat receded now, with evidence presented that various priests acted to shield Jews and so on and so forth.
Yet soon enough someone springs forward, perhaps with a copy of Table Talk from the Internet Archive, to argue that Hitler was a pure Machiavellian—a social Darwinist who would sweep away Christianity, a secular “neo-pagan” if you like. From right field, very right field, ride in the esoteric Hitlerists: forget Christianity, social Darwinism, or neo-paganism—Hitler was a living avatar of the god Vishnu. Before you have processed that line, a psephologist presents various charts to show that Hitler won his largest vote in Lutheran areas; he was no Catholic, he was a latter-day Luther—he wanted to liberate Germany from Versailles, a modern-day papacy.
And on it goes: he was a cynic, he was a Christian, he was a neo-pagan biding his time before he murdered all the Christians, he was a god, he was an atheist…stahp. When I used to argue with my fellow students on the anonymous Internet forums at university in the mid-2000s I rather glibly said, “Hitler was a Christian”. Then I did a bit more research and felt rather foolish, the matter was clearly complex—perhaps only knowledge of the archival material (in German, professor of Hitler Studies) could unravel anything like the truth. For fifteen years or so, I moved my position to “unsure”—the old Socratic, “All I can admit is that I know nothing as regards this matter.”
However, the other day I realised that it is all simple—and I was right first time, Hitler was a Christian. How did I reach this conclusion? Simple: Hitler was above all a Wagnerian—this was what he loved most in the world. Wagner was a Christian; ergo, Hitler was a Christian. Now, of course, Wagner’s Christianity was very much its own thing—with a strong inflection from Schopenhauer and Buddhism—yet Christian it undoubtedly was. Further, Wagner dramatised the Grail legend in Parsifal: the Grail is an ancient, ancient Hyperborean legend that was Christianised—ergo, Hitler was a pago-Christian. I put “pagan” first in this compound word because the Grail was a pre-Christian legend that was Christianised—in fact, you could say that is Europe in a nutshell “a pagan legend that was Christianised”.
“But Hitler killed Polish priests/Seventh-Day Adventists/the White Rose Group!” Yes, yet Christian monarchs have killed Christians for centuries—whether or not Hitler killed other people who professed Christianity, whether or not he was justified in his actions when he did so, has no bearing on whether or not he professed Christianity. The Seventh-Day Adventists may equally have argued the Catholic priests Hitler killed were not “real Christians”—even if they, unlike Hitler, would never use the state to persecute them. However, as truth-seekers, we cannot say that Catholics, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Hitler do not profess Christianity whether or not we feel they are good Christians or not. So Hitler was a Christian (sub-type Wagnerian, pago-Christian). Case closed—and perhaps atheists will celebrate at that.
Addendum: Stalin was definitely not a Christian. What about Churchill and FDR? Given that post-war progressivism has extirpated Christianity, even persecutes Christians (“bake the cake”) relative to other religions, we must confess these men professed Christianity albeit weakly; nor were they pagans. Given that under Hitler Wagnerian Christianity would be at the heart of Europe, whereas in Europe today Christianity has been extirpated, this leaves us with the conclusion that Hitler was Europe’s last—save Francisco Franco—Christian king. The repugnant conclusion: in World War II there was only one force that stood for Christianity and Europe—the Third Reich, the Axis (perhaps the axis mundi that is the bridge between Heaven and Earth).