Hitler & Christianity.

From "God Is With Us": Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of "Moral Values"

by Maureen Farrell

...If photographic evidence of the Third Reich's Christian leanings were not enough, Hitler's own speeches and writings prove, at the very least, that he presented many of the same faith-based arguments heard in America today. Religion in the schools? Hitler was for it. Intellectuals who practiced "anti-Christian, smug individualism"? According to Hitler, their days were numbered. Divine Providence's role in shaping Germany's ultimate victory? Who could argue?... Writing for Free Inquiry, John Patrick Michael Murphy explained:



...Leo Strauss, the philosopher who has influenced neoconservativism, and by proxy, George Bush's America, felt that religion, like deception, was crucial to maintaining social order. Meanwhile, neoconservative kingpin Irving Kristol has argued similar points -- bragging about how easy it is to fool the public into accepting the government's actions while arguing that America's Founding Fathers were wrong to insist on the separation of church and state. Why? According to Jim Lobe, it's because religion, as Strauss and his disciples see it, is "absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control..."

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/12/far04041.html

The Great Scandal: Christianity's Role in the Rise of the Nazis
by Gregory S. Paul

.

Hitler was a Christian, but his Christ was no Jew. In his youth he dabbled with occult thinking but never became a devotee. As a young man he grew increasingly bohemian and stopped attending church. Initially no more anti-Semitic than the norm, in the years before the Great War he fell under the anti-Semitic influence of the Volkish Christian Social Party and other Aryan movements. After Germany’s stunning defeat and the ruinous terms of peace, Hitler became a full-blown Aryanist and anti-Semite. He grew obsessed with racial issues, which he unfailingly embedded in a religious context.

Apologists often suggest that Hitler did not hold a traditional belief in God because he believed that he was God. True, Hitler thought himself God’s chosen leader for the Aryan race. But he never claimed to be divine, and never presented himself in that manner to his followers. Members of the Wehrmacht swore this loyalty oath: “I swear by God this holy oath to the Führer of the German Reich and the German people, Adolf Hitler.” For Schutzstaffel (S.S.) members it was: “I pledge to you, Adolf Hitler, my obedience unto death, so help me God.”

Hitler repeatedly thanked God or Providence for his survival on the western front during the Great War, his safe escape from multiple assassination attempts, his seemingly miraculous rise from homelessness to influence and power, and his amazing international successes. He never tired of proclaiming that all of this was beyond the power of any mere mortal. Later in the war, Hitler portrayed German defeats as part of an epic test: God would reward his true chosen people with the final victory they deserved so long as they never gave up the struggle.

Reich iconography, too, reveals that Nazism never cut its ties to Christianity. The markings of Luftwaffe aircraft comprised just two swastikas—and six crosses. Likewise the Kreigsmarine (German Navy) flag combined the symbols. Hitler participated in public prayers and religious services at which the swastika and the cross were displayed together.

Hitler openly admired Martin Luther, whom he considered a brilliant reformer. Yet he said in several private conversations that he considered himself a Catholic. He said publicly on several occasions that Christ was his savior. As late as 1944, planning the last-ditch offensive the world would know as the Battle of the Bulge, he code-named it “Operation Christrose.”

Among his Nazi cronies Hitler criticized the established churches harshly and often. Some of these alleged statements must be treated with skepticism, but clearly he viewed the traditional Christian faiths as weak and contaminated by Judaism. Still, there is no warrant for the claim that he became anti-Christian or antireligious after coming to power. No reliably attributed quote reveals Hitler to be an atheist or in any way sympathetic to atheism. On the contrary, he often condemned atheism, as he did Christians who collaborated with such atheistic forces as Bolshevism. He consistently denied that the state could replace faith and instructed Speer to include churches in his beloved plans for a rebuilt Berlin. The Nazi-era constitution explicitly evoked God. Calculating that his victories over Europe and Bolshevism would make him so popular that people would be willing to abandon their traditional faiths, Hitler entertained plans to replace Protestantism and Catholicism with a reformed Christian church that would include all Aryans while removing foreign (Rome-based) influence. German Protestants had already rejected a more modest effort along these lines, as will be seen below. How Germans as a whole would have received this reform after a Nazi victory is open to question. In any case, Hitler saw himself as Christianity’s ultimate reformer, not its dedicated enemy.

So much for the Nazi leaders’ religious backgrounds. Assessing their religious views as adults is more difficult. On ancillary issues such as religion, Party doctrine was a deliberate tangle of contradictions. For Hitler consistency mattered less than having a statement at hand for any situation that might arise. History records many things that Hitler wrote or said about religion, but they too are sometimes contradictory. Many were crafted for a particular audience or moment and have limited value for illuminating Hitler’s true opinion; in any case, neither Hitler nor any other key Nazi leader was a trained theologian with carefully thought-out views.

Accuracy of transcription is another concern. Hitler’s public speeches were recorded reliably, but were often propagandistic. His private statements seem more likely to reflect his actual views, but their reliability varies widely. The passages Christian apologists cite most often to prove Hitler’s atheism are of questionable accuracy. Apologists often brandish them without noting historians’ reservations. Hitler’s personal library has been partly preserved, and a good deal is known about his reading habits, another possible window onto Hitler’s beliefs. Also important, and often ignored by apologists, are statements made by religious figures of the time, who generally—at least for public consumption—viewed Hitler as a Christian and a Catholic in good standing. Meanwhile, the silent testimony of photographs is irrefutable, much as apologists struggle to evade this damning visual evidence...

Hitler was a complex figure, but based on the available evidence we can conclude our inquiry into his personal religious convictions by describing him as an Aryan Volkist Christian who had deep Catholic roots, strongly influenced by Protestantism, touched by strands of neopaganism and Darwinism, and minimally influenced by the occult. Though Hitler pontificated about God and religion at great length, he considered politics more important than religion as the means to achieve his agenda.

None of the leaders immediately beneath Hitler was a pious traditional Christian....

The Concordat between the Vatican and the Nazis

Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) signs the Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican at a formal ceremony in Rome on 20 July 1933. Nazi Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen sits at the left, Pacelli in the middle, and the Rudolf Buttmann sits at the right.

The Concordat effectively legitimized Hitler and the Nazi government to the eyes of Catholicism, Christianity, and the world.

Medieval Sourcebook:
Martin Luther (1483-1546):
The Jews and Their Lies, excerpts (1543)

At the beginning of his career it is often said that Luther was apparently sympathetic to Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church. He wrote, early in his career:

The Jews are blood-relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papist, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew.

However, sometime before 1517, in his Letters to Spalatin, we can already see that Luther's hatred of Jews, best seen in tis 1543 letter, was not some affectation of old age, but was present very early on. Luther expected Jews to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against them.

It is impossible for modern people to read the horrible passages below and not to think of the burning of synagogues in November 1938 on Krystalnacht. Nor would one wish to excuse Luther for this text.

A number of points must, however, be made. The most important concerns the language used. Luther used violent and vulgar language throughout his career: he was not a man to say "manure" when he meant "shit". We do not expect religious figures to use this sort of language in the modern world, but it was not uncommon in the early 16th century. Second, although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition of Medieval Christian anti-semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on pseud-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them.

None of this justifies what follows, but it may help to comprehend what is being written here.

The full text of this text is also available http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/1543-Luther-JewsandLies-full.html

On the Jews and Their Lies (1543)
By

Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)

Part XI

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

The Concordat’s disastrous consequences cannot be exaggerated. It bound all devout German Catholics to the state—the clergy through an oath and income, the laity through the authority of the church. If at any time the regime chose not to honor the agreement, Catholics had no open legal right to oppose it or its policies. Opponents of Nazism, Catholic and non-Catholic, were further discouraged and marginalized because the church had shown such want of moral fiber and consistency.

Apologists have insisted that the church had no choice but to accept the Concordat for the modest protections it provided. But those provisions were never needed. Major Protestant denominations suffered no more than Catholicism, though the Protestant churches lacked protective agreements and had snubbed Hitler’s early attempt to unite them. Apologists make much of Vatican “resistance” to Nazism, but the net effect of Vatican policy toward Hitler was collaborative.

Indeed, the 1933 Concordat stands as one of the most unethical, corrupt, duplicitous, and dangerous agreements ever forged between two authoritarian powers. Perhaps the Catholic strategy was to outlast the Nazi’s frankly popular tyranny rather than try to bring it down. But the Catholic Church made no attempt to revoke the Concordat and its loyalty clause during the Nazi regime. Indeed, the 1933 Concordat is the only diplomatic accord negotiated with the Nazi regime that remains in force anywhere in the world.

Germany’s Protestant sects were too decentralized to be coopted by a single document. To this extent Protestants who disputed Nazi policies could be said to enjoy a more favorable position than Catholics. But opposition was rare among Protestants too. Hitler cynically courted the major denominations even as they cynically courted him. Most smaller traditional Christian sects did little better. For example, Germany’s Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists bent over backwards to accommodate National Socialism.

Medieval Sourcebook:
Martin Luther (1483-1546):
The Jews and Their Lies, excerpts (1543)

At the beginning of his career it is often said that Luther was apparently sympathetic to Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church. He wrote, early in his career:

The Jews are blood-relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papist, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew.

However, sometime before 1517, in his Letters to Spalatin, we can already see that Luther's hatred of Jews, best seen in tis 1543 letter, was not some affectation of old age, but was present very early on. Luther expected Jews to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against them.

It is impossible for modern people to read the horrible passages below and not to think of the burning of synagogues in November 1938 on Krystalnacht. Nor would one wish to excuse Luther for this text.

A number of points must, however, be made. The most important concerns the language used. Luther used violent and vulgar language throughout his career: he was not a man to say "manure" when he meant "shit". We do not expect religious figures to use this sort of language in the modern world, but it was not uncommon in the early 16th century. Second, although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition of Medieval Christian anti-semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on pseud-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them.

The object of historical inquiry should be to provide ideas that enable us to discern more clearly the material currents of our own time.

But vague and sweeping generalizations shed no practical light whatsoever on events.

An important change in Christian antisemitism occurred after Spain expelled all Jews in 1492. At the time, Jews who converted to Christianity were allowed to remain and many took advantage of the opportunity. Laws which once restricted their movement and ability to engage in commerce were lifted and they eagarly pursued their new opportunities, with many entering some of the highest reaches of Spanish society.

Of course, this produced no small measure of resentment and envy among other Spanish Christians and in order to restore the status quo, the government passed laws restricting the actions of these converts - laws which defined people based upon whether or not they had "pure blood." Thus, for the first time, Jews were defined not by their religion but rather as a biological group whose "blood" rendered them impure and inelligible for the same rights and privileges as other members of society. These concepts would later become key ingredients in the racial and biological antisemitism of modern Europe, culminating in the Holocaust at the hands of Nazis in Germany.

Modern Antisemitism

Traditional antisemitism began to disappear only with the advent of the Enlightenment. Secular ideas about the nature of political authority and social relationships allowed for people of any religion to play an equal role. On September 28, 1791, the French National Assembly which came out of the French Revolution declared that all Jews would have full and equal citizenship. Wherever Napoleon's armies went, local authorities were either urged or forced to follow the French example.

Because of this, Jews were often among those who worked hardest for the promotion of Enlightenment and the secularization of society. Predictably, then, Jews also became the favorite target of those who were opposed to the growing secularization and liberalizing of society. However, the Enlightenment had already had a profound impact upon them as well, and the traditional charges against the Jews did not work as well as they once did. So, in addition to those new, "scientific" complaints were added - they included the allegation that Jews were working to take over the world and that the Jews, as a race, are biologically inferior to Europeans.

The German Crusade
Main article: German Crusade, 1096

The First Crusade ignited a long tradition of organized violence against Jews in European culture. While anti-Semitism had existed in Europe for centuries, the First Crusade marks the first mass organized violence against Jewish communities. Setting off in the early summer of 1096, a German army of around 10,000 soldiers led by Gottschalk, Volkmar, and Emicho, proceeded northward through the Rhine valley, in the opposite direction of Jerusalem, began a series of pogroms which some historians call "the first Holocaust" (1986, Jonathan Riley-Smith "The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading", pg. 50).

The preaching of the crusade inspired further anti-Semitism. According to some preachers, Jews and Muslims were enemies of Christ, and enemies were to be fought or converted to Christianity. The general public apparently assumed that "fought" meant "fought to the death", or "killed". The Christian conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of a Christian emperor there would supposedly instigate the End Times, during which the Jews were supposed to convert to Christianity. In parts of France and Germany, Jews were thought to be responsible for the crucifixion, and they were more immediately visible than the far-away Muslims. Many people wondered why they should travel thousands of miles to fight non-believers when there were already non-believers closer to home.

The crusaders moved north through the Rhine valley into well-known Jewish communities such as Cologne, and then southward. Jewish communities were given the option of converting to Christianity or be slaughtered. Most would not convert and as news of the mass killings spread many Jewish communities committed mass suicides in horrific scenes. Thousands of Jews were massacred, despite some attempts by local clergy and secular authorities to shelter them. The massacres were justified by the claim that Urban's speech at Clermont promised reward from God for killing non-Christians of any sort, not just Muslims. Although the papacy abhorred and preached against the purging of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants during this and future crusades, there were numerous attacks on Jews following every crusade movement.

Anti-Semitism (alternatively spelled antisemitism) is hostility toward or prejudice against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group, which can range from individual hatred to institutionalized, violent persecution. The highly explicit ideology of Adolf Hitler's Nazism was the most extreme example of this phenomenon, leading to a genocide of the European Jewry. Anti-Semitism takes different forms:

Religious anti-Semitism, or anti-Judaism. Before the 19th century, most anti-Semitism was primarily religious in nature, based on Christian or Islamic interactions with and interpretations of Judaism. Since Judaism was generally the largest minority religion in Christian Europe and much of the Islamic world, Jews were often the primary targets of religiously-motivated violence and persecution from Christian and, to a lesser degree, Islamic rulers. Unlike anti-Semitism in general, this form of prejudice is directed at the religion itself, and so generally does not affect those of Jewish ancestry who have converted to another religion, although the case of Conversos in Spain was a notable exception. Laws banning Jewish religious practices may be rooted in religious anti-Semitism, as were the expulsions of Jews that happened throughout the Middle Ages.

Racial anti-Semitism. With its origins in the early and popularly misunderstood evolutionary ideas of race that started during the Enlightenment, racial anti-Semitism became the dominant form of anti-Semitism from the late 19th century through today. Racial anti-Semitism replaced the hatred of Judaism as a religion with the idea that the Jews themselves were a racially distinct group, regardless of their religious practice, and that they were inferior or worthy of animosity. With the rise of racial anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories about Jewish plots in which Jews were somehow acting in concert to dominate the world became a popular form of anti-Semitic expression.

Classical Anti-Semitism

.

Although the term "anti-Semitism" is thus relatively modern, documented prejudice, social and economic isolation, persecution and violence against the Jews predates Marr and his supporters by more than 2,300 years. In what is acknowledged to be the first historical reference to an anti-Semitic act, the Biblical account of the Purim story (the Book of Esther) recounts how the Jewish people narrowly escaped destruction in Persia in the 5th century B.C.E. All Jews in the kingdom were targeted for annihilation because one Jewish official refused to bow to the top aide of the king. Only as a result of the intervention of the queen, a Jew, who pleaded for saving her people, were the Jews saved from mass murder.

Classical anti-Semitism in the pre-Christian world followed along the same lines as the Purim story. For most of recorded history, the Jewish people had been the subjects of conquerors, such as the Persians, Greeks, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Romans. Most Jews refused to convert to the religion of their hosts and instead maintained their own religion, rituals and customs, often at great personal sacrifice.

The Jewish religion forbids Jews to bow down to any person or god other than the Creator. In the story of Purim, the failure of Mordecai, the Jewish, Persian official, to bow down to Haman, the top aide to the king, created conflict. This conflict between observing the Jewish religion and being sensitive to local customs was the basis for much of the anti-Semitism the Jewish people endured.

Examples are the following:

· Jews observed strict dietary laws. Thus they could not, according to their law, share a meal in their neighbors' homes.

· Jews also could not, according to their law, work on the seventh day. Christians observed Sunday as their Sabbath, and Moslems observed Friday as their Sabbath. As a result, Jews were often "out of step."

· People who observed minority religions were, for the most part, quite willing to make sacrifices to the gods of their host countries, even as they worshipped their own gods. With only few exceptions, Jews refused to do so.

· Also according to their law, Jews were not supposed to marry outside their faith, and most did not. Intergroup marriages often served as a bond in ancient times to promote intergroup harmony. This refusal also retarded any assimilation which would have narrowed the differences between the Jews and their host communities.

· Enlightened ancient political leaders often granted privileges and exemptions to Jews because of knowledge about their religious conflicts. Those who were not granted these privileges and exemptions often resented this special treatment.

· Jews maintained their traditional dress and continued to wear beards and earlocks even when styles changed among their hosts. The result was that Jews became more easily identified as a stereotyped culture which had ramifications beyond religious differences.

Evidence of anti-Semitism has been found in the writings of those who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 4th century, B.C.E. In the first century C.E., Apion, a writer from Alexandria, wrote the "History of Egypt" which was the source for many of the false accusations about Jewish religious rituals which have plagued Jews throughout later history.

Isolated incidents of persecution against the Jews were recorded in the first century. As many as 4,000 Jews were deported to the island of Sardinia during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. The first recorded pogrom took place during the reign of the Roman Emperor Caligula in 38 C.E.

Classical Roman writers such as Cicero and Ovid wrote about the differences between Jewish observances and those of the Romans in less than flattering terms.

Christian Anti-Semitism

.

By the second century C.E., both Judaism and Christianity were trying to distinguish each from the other in the eyes of Rome, as both had unique political concerns. Judaism by then had attained legal status in the Roman world as a religion and did not want Christianity, with its loyalty to a King other than Caesar, to be associated with it. The church, now largely Gentile, also wanted to obtain legal status in the eyes of Rome so that it would not be identified with the Jews, who had rebelled against Rome under Bar Kochba. Once it was clear to Rome that Christianity was not a sect of Judaism, Christianity was regarded as an illegal sect and was no longer under the protective umbrella of the legal status of Judaism. With the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire by Constantine in the fourth century, however, Christianity soon began to enjoy a position of superiority over Judaism which caused serious consequences for Judaism. The new "Christian" empire began to enact such changes as:

· The removal of former religious and governing privileges

· The curtailment of Rabbinical jurisdiction

· Prohibition of missionary work

· Jews were no longer allowed to hold high offices or have military careers (e.g. legislation in 537 C.E. which prohibited local Jewish people from serving on municipal bodies).

Negative theological attitudes began to abound, such as the idea that Jews had lost their right to exist; Jews only exist as a testimony to the truth of Christianity; Jews are suffering justly at the hands of the Gentiles because God is angry with them, etc. Various church councils drew up damaging anti-Jewish legislation such as:

· banning contact with Jews

· the forbidding of the reading of the Torah exclusively in Hebrew (553 C.E.) (see Parkes, 251ff, 392).

· confiscation of Jewish property and the prohibition of the sale of Christian property to Jews (545 C.E.).

Subsequent writings by church fathers (and church leaders throughout church history) condemned Jews, accusing them of being idolaters, torturers, spiritually deaf, blasphemers, gluttons, adulterers, canibals, Christ-killers, and beyond God's forgiveness. Church Father John Chrysostom in particular pushed the idea of Jewish sensuality, gluttony, stubbornness and rejection by God.

With the rise of the Church-State, certain religio-political attitudes such as Jesus ruling the world through the Roman Christian government became evident in the Church. This attitude of superiority, flamed by the ever-increasing integration of the Church into Roman government, continued on into the Middle Ages and was translated into repeated actual restrictions on Jews, as is evidenced by the following examples.

The Justinian Code

The Justinian Code was an edict of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527-564). A section of the code negated civil rights for Jews. Once the code was enforced, Jews in the Empire could not build synagogues, read the Bible in Hebrew, gather in public places, celebrate Passover before Easter, or give evidence in a judicial case in which a Christian was a party. Decrees by the early Catholic Church (partial list)

· Synod of Elvira (306)_prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, and prohibited them from eating together.

· Councils of Orleans (533-541)_prohibited marriages between Christians and Jews and forbade the conversion to Judaism by Christians.

· Trulanic Synod (692)_prohibited Christians from being treated by Jewish doctors.

· Synod of Narbonne (1050)_prohibited Christians from living in Jewish homes.

· Synod of Gerona (1078)_required Jews to pay taxes to support the Church.

· Third Lateran Council (1179)_prohibited certain medical care to be provided by Christians to Jews.

· Fourth Lateran Council (1215)_required Jews to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians.

· Council of Basel (1431-1443)_forbade Jews to attend universities, them from acting as agents in the conclusion of contracts between Christians, and required that they attend church sermons.

Crusades

The Catholic Church launched a series of nine holy wars from 1096-1272. The purpose of these wars was to march to the Holy Land of Palestine and liberate it from Moslem "infidels." Along the way, the crusaders massacred all "infidels" in their path who refused to be baptized on the spot to Christianity. Thousands of Jews were massacred in Germany and France.

Blood Libel and the Black Death

In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of all kinds of slanders and were scapegoats for the problems of the day.

· Blood Libel _ In 1144, a myth began in England that Jews murdered Christian children. This myth was expanded to become an accusation which persisted for centuries that the Jews used the blood of Christian children in the preparation of their Passover unleavened bread (matzohs). This "blood libel" was ironic in that the consumption of any blood is expressly prohibited by Jewish law.

· Black Death_ the bubonic plague, the cause of the Black Death that liquidated a quarter of the population of Europe in the 14th century, was blamed on the Jews in Europe and Asia. The Pope issued a bull declaring that Jews were not responsible for the plague, but not before many Jews were burned alive or hanged by enraged mobs.

During this period, Jews were permitted to be moneylenders and act as financiers, only because this activity, while necessary for a prosperous economy, was viewed by the Church as sinful. Because Jews enjoyed a monopoly over an activity viewed as sinful, a Jewish stereotype was perpetuated.

The Inquisition

The Inquisition was a tribunal established in the Middle Ages (13th Cent.) by the Catholic Church in Rome designed to suppress heresy. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX formally established the papal Inquisition and sent Dominican friars to South France and Northern Italy to conduct inquests. The Dominican order had set as one of their goals the conversion of Jews to Christianity. This aim, backed by the power of the Inquisition, brought on a wave of persecution.

Torture was not an approved method of extracting confessions of guilt from heretics, yet it was practiced and finally approved by Pope Innocent IV. The goal of the Inquisition was not the destruction of the heretics but rather their repentance. Burning at the stake was not common. The ordinary penalties were penance, fines and imprisonment. Penalties were often carried out by the local government, especially the death penalty. Because the fines extracted and the property of the accused were turned over to the local government which often returned a portion to the Church, graft, bribery and blackmail were common.

The church rulers were often satisfied with assurances of goodwill. The secular rulers, however, used the persecution of heresy as a weapon to further their own designs.

Unlike the Medieval Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with only the reluctant approval of Pope Sixtus IV. The Roman Church's only hold over the Spanish Inquisition was the appointment of the inquisitor general, the first of which was Tom_s de Torquemada. The popes never reconciled themselves to the practices of that inquisition. Attempts by Sixtus IV to interfere with an inquisition that had become too severe were thwarted by Ferdinand and Isabella who now had a potent tool to subvert the population of Spain.

"The purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was to discover and punish converted Jews (and later Muslims) who were insincere. However, all Spaniards began to fear its prying eyes. The death penalty was used more often than in the Roman Inquisition, and rules that condemned one for heresy were far stricter, often outlawing things the Roman Church approved.

"For centuries, the Jewish community in Spain had flourished and grown in numbers and influence, though anti-Semitism had from time to time made itself felt and pressure to convert was brought to bear on the Jews. Nominal converts from Judaism were called Marranos (Jews who had been baptized under duress, but were believed to be still surreptitiously practicing Judaism). After... the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (1469), the Marranos were denounced as a danger to the existence of Christian Spain." Suspected Marranos were tortured until they confessed to practicing Judaism, and then were burned to death en masse at an auto-da-fe.

After some fourteen years of torture and death by burning, in 1492, by edict, the Spanish Jews were given the choice of exile or baptism. Almost all Jews chose to leave at this time.

The Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther (1483-1546) founded a new Christian faith, Protestantism, in the 16th century. He had been an ordained priest, but disputed Church policy with respect to the sale of indulgences (a partial remission of the punishment for a sin). Once a supporter of the Jews, he was frustrated by their unwillingness to embrace his own religion. Martin Luther became one of the most intensely bitter anti-Semites in history. His writings described Jews as the anti-Christ, worse than devils. Jews were poisoners, ritual murderers, and parasites, he preached, and they should be expelled from Germany. His view was that synagogues should all be burned to the ground, and all Jewish books should be seized.

"Refusing to be photographed, Hitler's aim was to create an air of mystery about himself, hoping that it would encourage others to come and hear the man who was now being described as "the new Messiah".

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERhitler.htm

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist, said in a broadcast on 19 April 1936, that "Germany has been transformed into a great house of the Lord where the Fuhrer as our mediator stands before the throne of God."

"Spiritual" sentiments of this kind were echoed time and again during Hitler’s glory years. Another powerful voice in the Nazi party, Dr. Robert Ley, proclaimed that "We believe on this earth in Adolf Hitler alone! We believe in National Socialism as the creed which is the sole source of grace!"

...But it is true. Millions of German households actually erected shrines that featured a photograph of what they thought of as their dictator’s divine countenance. They said prayers in his behalf — even directed prayers to him — throughout the day.

....Germans had only to find the right passages in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, to understand that Hitler literally demanded planetary conquest of them. As he put it himself, world peace could not arrive until "that day when the man superior to all others will have conquered and subjugated the world."

After his forces quickly overran France in May and June of 1940, Hitler redoubled his faith in his supposedly supernatural powers. He told one of his victorious commanders that he was now "more godlike than human," and was no longer "bound by the conventions of human morality."

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Stadium/6712/hitleras.htm

"Himmler believed Hitler was the Messiah"

I don't think most Christians are going around saying that they are the Messiah - and/or that their friends are too.

I say that as an adult - Hitler was NOT a Christian. As I understand the term. And I don't think he even considered himself to be.

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

“For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: ‘Lord, make us free!’ is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: ‘Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!’”

“Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time. A fight for freedom had begun mightier than the earth had ever seen; for once Destiny had begun its course, the conviction dawned on even the broad masses that this time not the fate of Serbia or Austria was involved, but whether the German nation was to be or not to be.”

“The world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free…”

Disown the book of Leviticus for yourselves if you like, but don't try to deny that it's canon for the Christian faith. It is Biblical law. And don't try to say that people who are following Biblical law are not true Christians. They are the very definition of true Christians.

But I would not say that Hitler - when he was using Christianity (or Bush* now) was necessarily a Christian. If you have someone who sees a religion as a tool to manipulate people and that person is using religion for his own gain - then I think that that person is no longer (necessarily) a follower of religion - but a user of religion.

And I think that it's reasonable to believe that the person, Hitler, was NOT a "Christian" in the sense that he was NOT trying to follow the teachings of "Jesus". I think it is reasonable to surmise that Hitler was not concerned about others, he was not concerned about his relationship to any deities as he may have imagined them - if anything - it seems that Hitler was his own deity. And some say that Germany was his religion.

So say you have someone who sees through religion and sees religion (esp. Christianity) as the perfect way to manipulate people - why would you think that that person still believed in the religion for himself? Does it really make sense that someone would see through a religion so clearly to use it as Hitler did then (and as Bush/Rove/etc. do now) - at the same time embrace that which they see as just a tool. I don't see it that way.

What did Hitler believe? Who knows. I'm not saying he was an atheist or a deist or any other thing. I just don't think that someone like Hitler necessarily believed anything - except maybe that might makes right - and eugenics - and we don't really know what else.

And while I think it's worthwhile for atheists to encourage people to question religion and esp. to question government leaders who use religion, I don't it's good to start demonizing people because they belong to a certain religious group (unless that particular group is responsible for encouraging atrocities) or the demonizers start to sound like the bad guys. IOW - that's exactly the kind of rhetoric that leads to problems.

It encourages an attitude of moral superiority.

I think it's reasonable to think that someone who manipulates religion in a cynical way - people who see followers of a particular religion as "suckers" or something like that (much in the same way that some atheists do) would not follow the religion themselves.

People who manipulate others through religion - they may see religion in a similar fashion to some other non-religious people. That doesn't mean that non-religious people share anything more (than the sucker idea) with the manipulators.

The third group is the group of fraudulent manipulators. They would most likely have some religious background - and have decided to use that for their own profit or glory or some other thing. Ron L. Hubbard would be an example. It is not thought by most people that he believed any of his scientology stuff. I think that chances are that such people are more likely to be atheists than not. Or if they believe in God - they aren't expecting "It" to act on anything. They don't expect consequences.

Where you have someone like Hitler - who seemed to have given himself "God on Earth" status - it's hard to tell if he believed in an abstract "God" or that he was taking over Jesus place on earth or what.

From the evidence out there - there is much to contradict that and even the secular humanist site cited above (by ozone-man) didn't seem to be able to say for sure that there was evidence. And it sounded like they would have if they could have.

I think religions should have expectations of their leaders (If Christians had the same expectations I do - there would be no Falwells, there would be no Robertsons - as leaders). And that they reject fraudulent manipulators. Hitler wasn't leading a religion. But he did end up leading the country as if he were leading a religion. That's the problem with church/state overlap. And he got the churches on board (the churches and leaders who didn't go along were subject to arrest, etc.)

The bottom line is - Christians may or may not say this person or that person is a Christian or not. But I can. Because I'm not. And since I don't think it's reasonable that religions will be eliminated any time soon - I think there are steps that can and should be taken with the leadership - for churches that have leaders, that is.

Because of space I cannot quote further examples. Yet there are hundreds and thousands of documents like this. All documents demonstrate clearly an agressive opposition to Jesus Christ and to the Christian faith. All make the reason for National Socialism’s unbelievable success clear – its religious enthusiasm. All of the documents mentioned above were available to the public, and had been either published or sanctioned by the Party. These are no peripheral idiosyncrasies, but were accessible to anyone interested in reading them. One only needs to browse through the song books of the Hitler Youth, the SS or the Arbeitsdienst (Worker’s Society) to find further examples. Each of these documents speaks for itself, and is sufficient to remind us how an antichristian religion propelled the world to the brink.

Incidentally, the attitude of the German Dispensational churches toward Hitler and the Jews compared to those of the Reformed (and Lutheran) Christians is a striking argument against Hal Lindsey's rude attack that Reformed theology will lead to a second holocaust.<32> Normally, it is the Dispensationalist who will not step in for others, because this would mean becoming involved in politics or economics. Lindsey must be reminded that love in the Bible is to be measured by deeds (1 John 3,18), not by nice words, proclamations or best-selling books.

The German Crusade
Main article: German Crusade, 1096

The First Crusade ignited a long tradition of organized violence against Jews in European culture. While anti-Semitism had existed in Europe for centuries, the First Crusade marks the first mass organized violence against Jewish communities. Setting off in the early summer of 1096, a German army of around 10,000 soldiers led by Gottschalk, Volkmar, and Emicho, proceeded northward through the Rhine valley, in the opposite direction of Jerusalem, began a series of pogroms which some historians call "the first Holocaust" (1986, Jonathan Riley-Smith "The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading", pg. 50).

The preaching of the crusade inspired further anti-Semitism. According to some preachers, Jews and Muslims were enemies of Christ, and enemies were to be fought or converted to Christianity. The general public apparently assumed that "fought" meant "fought to the death", or "killed". The Christian conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of a Christian emperor there would supposedly instigate the End Times, during which the Jews were supposed to convert to Christianity. In parts of France and Germany, Jews were thought to be responsible for the crucifixion, and they were more immediately visible than the far-away Muslims. Many people wondered why they should travel thousands of miles to fight non-believers when there were already non-believers closer to home.

The crusaders moved north through the Rhine valley into well-known Jewish communities such as Cologne, and then southward. Jewish communities were given the option of converting to Christianity or be slaughtered. Most would not convert and as news of the mass killings spread many Jewish communities committed mass suicides in horrific scenes. Thousands of Jews were massacred, despite some attempts by local clergy and secular authorities to shelter them. The massacres were justified by the claim that Urban's speech at Clermont promised reward from God for killing non-Christians of any sort, not just Muslims. Although the papacy abhorred and preached against the purging of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants during this and future crusades, there were numerous attacks on Jews following every crusade movement.

The expulsions from England, France, Germany, and Spain

Only a few expulsions of the Jews are described in this section, for a more extended list see History of anti-Semitism, and also the History of the Jews in England, Germany, Spain, and France.

The practice of expelling the Jews accompanied by confiscation of their property, followed by temporary readmissions for ransom, was utilized to enrich the French crown during 12th-14th centuries. The most notable such expulsions were: from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from the entirety of France by Louis IX in 1254, by Charles IV in 1322, by Charles V in 1359, by Charles VI in 1394.

To finance his war to conquer Wales, Edward I of England taxed the Jewish moneylenders. When the Jews could no longer pay, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, the Jews saw Edward abolish their "privilege" to lend money, choke their movements and activities and were forced to wear a yellow patch. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested, over 300 of them taken to the Tower of London and executed, while others killed in their homes. The complete banishment of all Jews from the country in 1290 led to thousands killed and drowned while fleeing and the absence of Jews from England for three and a half centuries, until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell reversed the policy.

In 1492, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile issued General Edict on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (see also Spanish Inquisition) and many Sephardi Jews fled to the Ottoman Empire, some to the Land of Israel.

In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia limited Breslau to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged similar practice in other Prussian cities. In 1750 he issued Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die Judenschaft: the "protected" Jews had an alternative to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin" (quoting Simon Dubnow). In the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa ordered Jews out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on condition that Jews pay for readmission every ten years. This extortion was known as malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced the law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II abolished most of persecution practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the condition that Yiddish and Hebrew are eliminated from public records and judicial autonomy is annulled. Moses Mendelssohn wrote that "Such a tolerance... is even more dangerous play in tolerance than open persecution

Anti-Judaism and the Reformation

Main article: Christianity and anti-Semitism

Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation, wrote antagonistically about Jews in his book On the Jews and their Lies, which describes the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriating them, and providing detailed recommendation for a pogrom against them and their permanent oppression and/or expulsion. According to Paul Johnson, it "may be termed the first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust."<19> In his final sermon shortly before his death, however, Luther preached "We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord."<20> Still, Luther's harsh comments about the Jews are seen by many as a continuation of medieval Christian anti-Semitism. See also Martin Luther and Antisemitism