Nazism and Christianity

This is partly a reply to a comment here. A little ground clearing, I have not written that fascism is socialism. Fascism is socialism's heretical branch, it is a pattern on the tree of ideas that can be traced back to its socialist trunk rather easily. The fact that fascists and leftists fought each other viciously cannot be used to avoid their common ancestry in the history of ideas anymore than the fact that Catholics and Protestants have fought means that they have no similarities or do not share a common heritage. Indeed, internecine fighting over heresy in the world of ideas often serves as evidence that a splitting and branching off is happening and in no way demonstrates that a foundational philosophy is not shared. Given that this type of thing is not easy to deny and would be like trying to deny that Islam and Christianity trace back to Jewish origins, a person trying to obscure or deny the foundation seems to settle for little factoids and false associations.

E.g.,
Not only was Hitler so into Chrisitianity that he even made the German Protestant Chrurch[sic] the OFFICIAL Church of Germany....

The historical context:

In July 1933 representatives of the Protestant churches had written a constitution for a new “Reich Church,” and it was formally recognized by the Reichstag on July 14. Immediately there broke out a heated struggle over the election of the first Reich Bishop. Hitler insisted that his friend, Chaplain Mueller, whom he had appointed his adviser on Protestant church affairs, be given this highest office. The leaders of the Church Federation proposed an eminent divine, Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. But they were naïve. The Nazi government intervened, dissolved a number of provincial church organizations, suspended from office several leading dignitaries of the Protestant churches, loosed the S.A. and the Gestapo on recalcitrant clergymen—in fact, terrorized all who supported Bodelschwingh. On the eve of the elections of delegates to the synod which would elect the Reich Bishop, Hitler personally took to the radio to “urge” the election of “German Christians” whose candidate Mueller was. The intimidation was highly successful. Bodelschwingh in the meantime had been forced to withdraw his candidacy, and the “elections” returned a majority of “German Christians,” who in September at the synod in Wittenberg, where Luther had first defied Rome, elected Mueller Reich Bishop.

But the new head of the Church, a heavy-handed man, was not able to establish a unified Church or to completely Nazify the Protestant congregations. On November 13, 1933, the day after the German people had overwhelmingly backed Hitler in a national plebiscite, the “German Christians” staged a massive rally in the Sportpalast in Berlin. A Dr. Reinhardt Krause, the Berlin district leader of the sect, proposed the abandonment of the Old Testament, “with its tales of cattle merchants and pimps” and the revision of the New Testament with the teaching of Jesus “corresponding entirely with the demands of National Socialism.” Resolutions were drawn up demanding “One People, One Reich, One Faith,” requiring all pastors to take an oath of allegiance to Hitler and insisting that all churches institute the Aryan paragraph and exclude converted Jews. This was too much even for the timid Protestants who had declined to take any part in the church war, and Bishop Mueller was forced to suspend Dr. Krause and disavow him.

(The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
By William Shirer :237)

Note how proto-Nazis will tend to do two things, they minimize the Old Testament and change the teachings of Jesus to comport with socialism for "the people." If you exchange "fundie" for "Jewish influence" in the words typical to the moveon.org types these days the rhetoric is similar. It seems that the American Left awaits the heretical split when even Hillary Clinton will be shouted down. They do not seem to see things coming, as they have little spiritual and conceptual insight.

Fundamentalism vs. Nazism:

The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive Christianity is National Socialism . . . National Socialism is the doing of God’s will . . . God’s will reveals itself in German blood . . . Dr. Zoellner and Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh . . . No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle’s Creed . . . True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity . . .

(Ib. :239) (Emphasis added)

Ironically, proto-Nazis feel that they speak for "true Christianity" and supposedly what Christ would really do and so on. Yet it is easy to see that they do not biblically. Thus:

The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany.

(Ib. 240)

The American Left focuses on imagery, even as the Nazis were masters of imagery and propaganda: "Want to see how close Hitler was to Christianity? How about some photographic evidence?"

I wonder if pictures of Howard Dean with Jesse Jackson would "prove" how close he is to the doctrines of Christ? For that matter, how easily will the Left be taken in by the public show and imagery typically put on by any anti-Christ type figure? There is this little matter that principles must be defined by text and not imagery or false visions, as even the Christ said in reply to such things: "As it is written."

At any rate, note:

Hitler stopped and looked me in the eyes,‘Christianity is, for the moment, one of the points in the programme I have laid down. But
we must look ahead. Rosenberg is a forerunner, a prophet. His theories are the expression of the German soul.’

(Hitler and I
By Otto Strasser
(Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940) :96)

Bill Clinton is a Christian too according to the Americal Left, for that matter, yet he supports the killing of partially born babies. All these self-defined Christians, one wonders if those who are so open-minded are Christians when Christ said that the right way is narrow and the other broad. It is generally among the American Left that proto-Nazis are gathering and even now they run into similar conflicts with the "religious right" or anyone else even minimally focused on righteousness, even noble pagans. Note that it's all supposedly so clear now with respect to Nazism, yet was not then. In fact, it was rather deceptive given the obsfucation, the scientism, the propaganda, the emotional conditioning and so on that the Nazis relied on. It's so easy to look back and judge, so we come to the American Leftist who sits back and judges those whom he knows not for doing that which he would not, as even today his philosophy and politics tend towards Nazi principles.

E.g.

The most ringing Catholic protest against “euthanasia” was the famous sermon of Clemens Count von Galen, then bishop of Munster. It was given on 3 August 1941,just four Sundays after the highly significant pastoral letter of German bishops had been read from every Catholic pulpit in the country; the letter reaffirmed “obligations of conscience” at opposing the taking of “innocent” life, “even if it were to cost us our lives.” The first part of Galen’s sermon explored the Biblical theme of how “Jesus, the Son of God, wept,” how even God wept “be cause of stupidity, injustice . . . and because of the disaster which came about as a result.” Then, after declaring, “It is a terrible, unjust and catastrophic thing when man opposes his will to the will of God,” Galen quoted the pastoral letter of 6 July and made clear that the “catastrophic thing” he had in mind was the killing of innocent mental patients and “a doctrine which authorizes the violent death of invalids and elderly people.”

He further declared that he himself had “filed formal charges” with police and legal authorities in Munster over deportations from a nearby institution. He went on in words that every farmer and laborer could understand:

It is said of these patients: They are like an old machine which no longer runs, like an old horse which is hopelessly paralyzed, like a cow which no longer gives milk.
What do we do with a machine of this kind? We put it in the junkyard. What do we do with a paralyzed horse? No, I do not wish to push the comparison to the end. . . . We are not talking here about a machine, a horse, nor a cow... . No, we are talking about men and women, our compatriots, our brothers and sisters. Poor unproductive people if you wish, but does this mean that they have lost their right to live?

He pointed out that, should such a principle be maintained, “then think of the horrible state we shall all be in when we are weak and sick!” The danger extended not only to “invalids” who, when healthy, had been hard and productive workers and “brave soldiers, when they come back seriously wounded,” but “none of us here will be certain of his life.”

And after a couple of poignant examples of specific people killed, the bishop concluded, as he had begun, with Biblical imagery, this time not of Jesus weeping but of “divine justice”—ultimate punishment—for those “making a blasphemy of our faith” by persecuting clergy and “sending innocent people to their death.” He asked that such people (who could only be the Nazi authorities) be ostracized and left to their divine retribution:

We wish to withdraw ourselves and our faithful from their influence, so that we may not be contaminated by their thinking and their ungodly behavior, so that we may not participate and share with them in the punishment which ajust God should and will pronounce upon all those who—like ungrateful Jerusalem-do not wish what God wishes!

With the authority of his office, a Catholic bishop invoked the wrath of God on those who were killing the innocent. This powerful, populist sermon was immediately reproduced and distributed throughout Ger many—indeed, it was dropped among German troops by British Royal Air Force flyers. Galen’s sermon probably had a greater impact than any other one statement in consolidating anti-”euthanasia” sentiment; hence, Bormann’s judgment that the bishop deserved the death penalty.

(The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
By Robert Lifton :93-94)

As Einstein noted, there was no one left to speak except the more fundamentalist Church. It is not as if leftists disagree with their heretical branch all that much.

Perhaps we could not have expected from the medical or the psychiatric profession as impassioned an ethical condemnation as Bishop Galen’s.
[...]
Dr. Ewald’s actions and memorandum come closest. But he was constrained—other physicians more so—by Nazi affiliations, by the German tradition of psychiatric and medical subservience to governmental authority, and, more broadly, by ethical gaps in twentieth-century medical professionalism. I say this not to render the churches as a whole heroic: most Protestant and Catholic leaders either went along with the Nazis or did nothing. Rather my point is that the Nazi attempt at medical mystification of killing was given the lie not primarily by psychiatrists or other physicians, many of whom were directly involved in carrying out the program, but by a few church leaders, who gave voice to the grief and rage of victimized families with ethical passions stemming from their own religious traditions.

(Ib. :95)

Back to the Leftist:
Have you got any photos of Hitler participating in any pagan religious rites?

It's a funny thing about the occult, it tends to be hidden as the word implies.

I am uninterested in photos. This mind claims that it does not think as a child in imagery and feelings? But anyway, see: (The Nordic Pagan Chant Grows Louder
By Albion Rossberlin
The New York Times, Aug 4, 1935; pg. 3-4)

[Related posts: Nazism and Christianity and The Separation of Church and State]