# Humanities & Anthropology > History & Civilisations >  Offtopic : Was Hitler a Christian ?

## Maciamo

> None of the major armed conflicts of the 20th centrury was a religious war.


Just want to say that Hitler was a Christian and WWII in Europe was inspired by religious hatred toward the Jews (a religious group). Anyway...

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## No-name

Hitler was not a Christian, but he was a vegetarian. He wanted to replace Christianity with a true German "scientific" worship of the state. Like you, he wished to abolish the teaching of all religion. WWII was "inspired" by many things including emperialism, nationalism, and the grab for natural resources. No country in WWII was involved in order to spread a religion or for religious reasons. (Unless you include Japan's Emperor worship). The mass murder of a "race" of people had little or nothing to do with "religion." And blaming the victims for their religious affiliation makes little sense when homosexuals, jews, the handicapped, slavs, gypsies and communists were all slaughtered regardless of what they believed.

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## Revenant

> ...WWII in Europe was inspired by religious hatred toward the Jews...


Maciamo, can you make a case for that? It seems a little stretched to say WWII was brought about by religious hatred. According to this site Hitler was neither Christian nor Atheist.

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## No-name

Nice site.

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## Maciamo

> Hitler was not a Christian, but he was a vegetarian.


 And he ate the same thing at breakfast everyday. He was also a painter. Are these adjectives exclusive of each others ? He may not have been a Christian all his life, but he was raised as a Catholic, believed in for a while, believed in God probably till his death, and his hatred of the Jews had a lot more to do with religion than race. 

Revenant posted a link, here is my contribution. 

We could argue that G.W. Bush is not a Christian for many reasons, such as his non respect of some fundamental Christian values (love for others, non violence...). Same for Hitler. Have you read Mein Kampf ? It's full of allusions or citation from the Bible and his inspiration from (the Christian) God. Now that I think of it, it reminds me a bit of Bush's speech about how god talked to him. At other times Hitler dismiss Christianity as a Jewish invention, so we can certainly say that he was a contradictory person. Nevertheless he did believe in an almight creator with all the Christian attributes.




> The mass murder of a "race" of people had little or nothing to do with "religion."


For your information, the Jews are probably the worst example of "race" that could be (worse than the Arabs), because of the diaspora and the numerous intermarriages. There are blond and blue-eyed Jews (I have seen many in Israel). There are even Black Jews ! What they share in common in their religious and cultural heritage.



> And blaming the victims for their religious affiliation makes little sense when homosexuals, jews, the handicapped, slavs, gypsies and communists were all slaughtered regardless of what they believed.


That was for another reasons : 
- Homosexuality was condemned as immoral and against nature by the Catholic Church (at the time)
- Hitler considered handicapped people as a burden to society. 
- Gypsies were seen as thieves who had never managed to integrate into any society. Many Europeans harboured negative feelings against them for centuries (even more than towards the Jews maybe).
- Communists were the political ennemies of Nazis (and Americans).

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## No-name

And aparently none of this furthers your argument that WWII was a religiously inspired war.

The Jews were considered Jews regardless of what religion they practiced. If it had been about religion, forced conversion or only the extermination of practicing Jews would have been the course.

I'm not certain why you are bringing up the reason for the Nazi's hatred and extermination of others. I brought it up to show that religion was not the most important consideration. I'm not certain how your statements refute that.

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## No-name

And like I said on the other thread- Race-- especially as applied in the 1930's and 40's is not a scientific concept. Hitler's goal was a pure "race" not a pure "religion."

And the original intent of my statement was to say that the wars of the 20th century were not religious in nature. The wider context is that religion is a convenient thing to blame humananity's propensity toward violence and war. The 20th century should serve as a counter example that shows that it is merely an excuse.

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## Maciamo

> The Jews were considered Jews regardless of what religion they practiced. If it had been about religion, forced conversion or only the extermination of practicing Jews would have been the course.


Where did you get that ? How do you distinguish a Jew converted to Christianity from a non Jew ? Not physically, I can tell you ! Have you ever been to Israel ? How many Jews do you know in person ?

Btw, some genealogical research on Hitler's ancestor claimed that he could have had distant Jewish ancestry too (supreme irony  :Laughing:  ). Anyway Hitler was a wacko. He wanted to create a pure Germanic race of tall, blond and blue-eyed people, but he was short, brown-eyed and had dark hair...  :Blush:  Don't try to find logic in Hitler's mind !




> I'm not certain why you are bringing up the reason for the Nazi's hatred and extermination of others. I brought it up to show that religion was not the most important consideration. I'm not certain how your statements refute that.


Well, my statement says that he executed people for different reasons : religious (the Jews and homosexuals), political (the Communists), practical (the handicapped)... Why does everything always have to be exclusive with you ? You always seem to think that an argument has been refuted when there is an opposite to it. It's like you work in binary mode : if it's not black, it must be white ! What about other colours and gradients of grey ? It's not because Hitler exterminated people for other reasons than religion that he didn't also exterminate people for their religion. Even for the Jews, religion was not the only factor; there was also the envy and resentment of the German population toward rich Jews during the economic depression, for instance - but that was little compared to the distrust and hatred brought by Christianity toward the Jews for centuries on end. Please keep you mind open. Things are often more complicated than black vs white ! Now that I realise how you think, I am not surprised that you can almost never understand what I am writing !

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## Maciamo

> And like I said on the other thread- Race-- especially as applied in the 1930's and 40's is not a scientific concept. Hitler's goal was a pure "race" not a pure "religion."


Hitler was confused and contradictory. If he wanted a pure race, how comes he was allied to Italy and Japan ? How comes he didn't exterminate Black Africans or Arabs when he had the opportunity in Africa ?

If you ever try to understand Hitler's mind by reading and analysing Mein Kampf and his speeches (as I did for history class when I was 17), you will see that Christianity played an enormous part in his hatred towards the Jews, eventhough he was confused and incoherent about it.

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## No-name

In Hitler's Germany, you were considered a Jew even if you converted to Christianity or were an athiest. All that was necessary was for one of your great grandparents to be Jewish. How did the tell? They searched records.

It wasn't that it had to be "exclusive" me. I was refuting your claim that WWII in Europe was started for religious reasons. Just as there were a multiplicity of reasons you cited, WWII, even in Europe can not be considered a religious conflict.

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## No-name

I'm not going to defend Hitler's theories or actions. He was intolerant of religion and proudly so and believed the state should decide what people believe and teach their children. I find that type of abridgement of personal liberty particularly offensive and abhorent.

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## Maciamo

> In Hitler's Germany, you were considered a Jew even if you converted to Christianity or were an athiest. All that was necessary was for one of your great grandparents to be Jewish. How did the tell? They searched records.


That was not that simple. Jews that had blond hair and blue eyes were often spared concentration camps, even when the rest of their family who looked less "Germanic" weren't. So it was more based on looks ans appearances than properly race. Maybe that is because Hitler was not on the field to directly supervise the operation, and his messages being contradictory (blond=good but Jew=bad, so what do we do of a blond Jew ?), the Nazi soldier or officers had to make their own decisions.

If race had been the sole or main reason of exterminating Jews, there would be no exception made for people with even partly Jewish ancestry but Christian, or descendant of Jews converted to Christianity for several generations. But the Nazi didn't go so far, otherwise a third of the "German nation" might have ended up in concenrtation camps. Again, they were trying to be practical rather than completely coherent and logical. What first characterised (and still characterise) a Jew is Jewish religion, more than looks or anything else. Even non-religious Israeli keep something from their religious heritage that makes them distinctively Jewish.




> It wasn't that it had to be "exclusive" me. I was refuting your claim that WWII in Europe was started for religious reasons. Just as there were a multiplicity of reasons you cited, WWII, even in Europe can not be considered a religious conflict.


I doubt that major wars start for only one reason. Again, black and white mentality. WWII started for all of the following :

- desire of revenge by the losers of WWI for the dishonour of the _Diktat_ imposed by the winners (so there was a will to fight in Germany/Austria, although not elsewhere)
- economic troubles of the 1930's (which made Hitler's rise to power easier).
- resentment against the Jews amplified by Hitler's hatred speech against them, condeming them as the cause of all of Germany's problems. It was one pretext to invade the rest of Europe, so that Germany could "purify" Europe. That is partly why so countries (or rather people) didn't show much resistance toward the invador or cooperated with them.

Hitler first and foremost wanted Germany to regain its pride and become a more powerful, efficient and racially and ideologically pure country. For this he needed to get rid of all those that didn't make it possible : political opponents, 
unefficient people (e.g. the old and the handicapped), and those that were seen as stains to the purity of the nations for ideological reasons inspired in great part by the Catholic Church (the homosexuals, the Jews, the Gypsies...). Let us not forget that the Vatican collaborated with Hitler and Mussolini, although it tried to deny it afterwards (=> see Hitler's Pope). 

Hitler did very well at the beginning, erasing unemployment, making the economy surge, raising great national buildings and giving a new confidence to the German people. In the last 2 years of his life, when he saw his empire crumble and Germany being destroyed little by little, he became seriously depressed. When he committed suicide, people who knew him said that he was a distraught man who look much older than his age. This was because he realised his huge failure in regaining Germany's power and pride, and instead making more harm than good to his own nation. He sincerely believed in his quest and was completely devastated by what he had caused (to Germany, not to the Jews).

All this to say that there were many reasons behind the war and Hitler's intentions, but he did believe that the Jews were evil, and this probably because of the rising antisemitic climate in Germany during his childhood, which were mostly based on Christian ideologies. We may not call him a real Christian, he may have been anti-religious, but he was influenced by Christianity, he did believe in an almighty Christian-like god, and did have good relations with the Holy See in Rome.

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## No-name

I think the site provided by Revenant does a perfectly fine job of addressing this. Hitler was no more a Christian than Maciamo. Christianity had significantly less influence over his demented and twisted thinking than did Nietsche or Freud.

Hitler was an evil man. No one, as the article that was link states, "wants him on their team." To make excuses for anything he did or to suggest that he was okay in the beginning and somehow went wrong later on denies the fact that the entire Nazi movement was racist from the beginning and it's intentions should have been apparent early on.

The holocaust ("final solution" phase) began in the east with the less "Aryan looking Jews and with Poles, Slavs and other Eastern European populations-- it then spread to Jews living in the rest of Europe. There weren't any exceptions to exterminations and plenty of Nordic looking Jews did die at the hands of Nazis. So did Jews from France and Italy that were more European looking. Once they identified you as a Jew you were either slated for death or to be worked to death in a slave camp. Blonde hair could no more save you than a St. Christoper medallion, gold, a German name, or German medals from WWI.

And as you can see from your own list, religion has no place in the reasons for Germany's entrance to WWII except peripherally in its identification of the _victims_  of the holocaust. Unless you are willing to make the arguement that the Holocaust is somehow the Jew's fault for not assimilating and abandoning their faith generations before, I find it a ridiculous argument.

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## Minty

I am told that Hitler wanted to be an architect. The head of the department just so happened to be a Jewish rejected him and he hold grudge against the Jew since then.

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## No-name

Your site- Hitler and Christianity-- pulls a lot from the pre 1935 period when the Nazis still had to play nice with the world at large. They courted the church, used religious imagery and actively tried to look like good German Christians. After 1935, they definitely embarked on a campaign to erase Christianity and replace it with National Socialism's purpose designed state religion.

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## Wilhelm

Not only he was not a Christian but anti-Christian.
Christianity is of jewish origin, and it is anti-European, but he didn't want to do anything about it because christianity was in Europeans heart, but he said to let Christianity die , and he wanted Europe to become again free of christianity or other jewish religions

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## Mycernius

I've seen this arguement on many an atheist site. Unfortunately for all you christians out there Hitler was a christian like it or not. He was raised catholic, never left the faith and was a believer in god until the day he died.
Many Nazi symbols bore christian icongraphy.
http://nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm

Another outright lie put about by christians is that Hitler believed in evolution. Again they are wrong, Hitler was a creationist and believed in the creation of man from Gods image.
http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Hitler_and_evolution

As with anything to do with this man, people try to write their own versions of him instead of the truth. For the christians their way is to try and make him out as yet another evil, baby eating atheist. Sorry, but the facts speak for themselves, he was a creationist and a christian. Kirk Cameron and Ray "Banana man" Comfort are lying to you, but, hey, those two do it all the time, why change a habit.

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## Nicolas Peucelle

More facts: Hitler during his entire life was considered by the german law as a "Catholic Christian". He was born "Austrian" national in the "Austrian Hungarian" multinational monarchy. His mother was a devote christian. He was baptized in a catholic church in Austria. He never quit the catholic church when he was an austrian citizen neither changed he to another faith. When he moved away from Austria to Munich (after 1905.. or so) Hitler also remained a catholic. Because people who do not know well germany cannot know that the religious obedience is always part of declarations in Germany and Austria. Therefore the fact that he is "catholic" is mentionned in most relevant documents concerning his person. In 1914 as an Austrian citizen he succeeded to enlist into a german military unit. He succeded to do so despite the fact that years before he had objected to military service in Austria and even had to be arrested by the german police and be forcefully deported to Austria to a military check-up which concluded his unfitness). In the military ID documents of Hitler he is listed as Roman Catholic. After 1918 Hitler was still a member of the Catholic church and after 1923 it seems that Hitler was considered a "stateless" alien in germany with catholic faith and no german citizenship. In 1931 or 1932 Hitler became a citizen of Germany and was agin listed as a catholic. After 1933 Hitler as a Chancelor and later President-Chancelor negotiated a so called "Konkordat" with the Vatican. That treaty created a clear financial situation between the german administration and the catholic church and also the catholic church was granted all of the existing privileges resulting from former treaties signed with the various german states and kingdoms. Every German citizen has to declare his religion to the state authorities (this was always like that before, too) and a so called "Church tax" is collected from the citizen by the tax offices. That means that Hitler as a german citizen also paid very month his tax to the catholic church, and this till his death in 1945. I once read that when Goering was telling to Hitler that he wished to leave the catholic church and be just a "god believer" Hitler told him to not leave the church. (yet.?). So this is for the official part... Was Hitler practising any religious rythe which could be "catholic" ? As a child he did, later in Worl War I it is very possible that in his bavarian unit he may have assisted like so many at field holy mass and when funerals where done in the presence of priests. But I did not read yet anything showing that Hitler ever went to a church in order to pray there, like so many other political leaders did openly in the 20ies.But Hitler was present at weddings in christian churches when his friends did religious weddings. There is no report of any Sunday in church with holy communion, but there was a pseudo religious ceremony in Potsdam Garrison Church with the faithfull protestant Hindenburg in 1933. When we compare the public image Hitler was giving of himself through the thousands of pictures produced he obviously never wishes to have anything to do with prayers in churches of whatever sort. Compare this with the former monarchs and the contrast is like dark and white. For his wedding in the Bunker 1945 he also did not request a catholic priest, but just a legal represenatative. Hitler I know at least once used the word "Amen" in a public party rally speach, but as part of a kind of "prayer" for his nazi germany. I would say that Hitler was not in favor of total open war against the venerable roman church and others because they root in the history of europe. But he was not believing that Jesus and his roots in the world of the orient are to be sponsored any further by his future Reich. Still he had no better religion to offer and the attempts of Himmler to forge something in that direction where not taken very serioulsy by Hitler who left the question open, having as a priority to win the fight against the soviet ideology and the jewish people. Maybe a way of "Don't ask me and don't talk about" policy.. leaving a field open for free actions whenever required. The younger generations and the pagan educated youth had first to become more numerous so that Hitler as a man of the "older generations" would openly give up his official connection to the catholic church. But he never did... His sister Paula was after 1945 known for her devotion to her catholic faith. (And therefore praying for her brother...) I still add here... that Martin Bormann was "cleaning up" the entire Obersalzberg area arround Hitler's Mountain residency from christian crosses and chapels. One of these chapels was still used a few years after 1933. But the peridodical devotions there and ceremonies irritated Bormann who had the place demolished and by this eliminated the reason for further trespassings of priests and pilgrims to that location. It may be noticed that any photography of Hitlers private residencies shows a christian cross on display, which could at least optically indicate some kind of catholic style of fervor. Especially in the traditional fiefs in bavaria were his house stood crosses are very commun in homes and not to have one is uncommun.

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## Nicolas Peucelle

To well understand the intimate Hitler after 1941 concerning religious matters it is quite enough to read what his secretary Martin Bormann was generating in written orders and comments. You feel the magnetic attraction to soviet methods and the more open hostility against the "blacks" (church) which will have to be solved in a harsh way once the battles of the war will be over.

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## Maciamo

Thanks for this well researched and factual explanation, Nicolas. This gives me a clearer image of what Hitler's religious convictions were. Like most Europeans until the 1960's he was a Christian. Like almost all Austrians and Bavarians at the time, he was a Roman Catholic, and always remained one, though without being a devout or even very practising one. That's a balanced and fair view, I believe.

There is also the question of Hitler's family roots. It has been said that Hitler had Jews among his ancestors. This is plausible considering the high number of Jews in his native region, but also based on his darker-than-average-Austrian looks. Whatever the truth about that, it is undeniable that all Europeans have some Levantine blood, dating from the Neolithic diffusion of agriculture from present-day Israel/Palestine and Lebanon. 

Central Europeans are those with the highest incidence of Near-Eastern haplogroups after the Greeks, Albanians and Serbs. The Danube itself was the main highway for the spread of early farming. Many of the oldest European cities founded by these Near-Eastern immigrants are in modern southern Germany, Austria and Slovakia. 

In Austria itself about 30% of Y-DNA haplogroups come from the Near East, and the proportion is higher along the Danubian plains than in the Alps. It's harder to estimate the proportion for mtDNA, but it is somewhere between 20 and 40%, so let's say 30% too. This means that, even if he did not have recent Jewish ancestry, almost a third of Hitler's DNA would be of Near-Eastern origin, and very close to the Jews (or "nigger" as he calls them) he despised so much. It's ironic, but it's like that. I wonder how he would have felt if DNA studies had developed 70 years earlier. We might have prevented the Holocaust !

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## Nicolas Peucelle

About Adolf Hitlers family and roots: a few facts (easy to find in regular research) : His genealogy was done extensively and it exists online. I mean the "official tree which was also available to anyone during his time in power. Adolf Hitlers father was named "Alois Schicklgruber" till january 1877. "Alois" was first recorded as the child out of wedlock of Mrs Maria Anna Schickelgruber and his fathers name "Johann Georg Hiedler" was not entered yet in the records. On 6 january 1877 Alois Schicklgruber switched name to "Alois Hitler" when his (already deceased) father's name was finaly declared to the town civil records admininstration and the paternity confirmed by 3 eyewittnesses ). The word "Hiedler" was on that same day written down as "Hitler" by the clerc which is a not uncommun practise in those days. (Google up these names and you will know all in detail..). "Johann Georg Hiedler" had a married brother "Johann Nepomuk Hiedler" who swiftly took care of baby boy "Alois Schicklgruber" all along his childhood, raising him in his farm "like his own son", while his brother "Johan Georg" left the area to live with "Maria Anna Schicklgruber" happily elsewhere. It may be possible that "Johann Nepomuk" had fathered the boy "Alois" with "Maria Anna" but had to make up the story vis a vis of his wife that the boy was fathered by his brother with whom he had at one point shared "Anna Maria". In fact thanks to this "story involving his brother" he could take care of his own boy by letting his brother appear as the father and not offend his wife and other neighbours. His brother knowing the truth never recognized in writing the boy and was anyhow not interested by him but only by "Maria Anna". (Today the Y-chromosome of the Hitler nephews in the USA can be compared with those of other "Hiedler" side lines descendants in austria and the lineage can be checked quite easy. 1946 Hans Frank, former chief of the Nazi Justice Department and intimate of Adolf Hitler wrote a book in the Nurnberg Jail where he expected capital punishment. In the book "Im Angesicht des Galgens" he wrote that Alois Schicklgruber(alias Hitler's) mother "Maria Anna" had the boy Alois fathered by the son of a jewish resident of Graz named "Leopold Frankenberger". It must be known here that it is very easy to check in the Graz town records if such a person lived in that town, since all residents having houses and adresses in Graz must be recorded by the town police. I never read about anyhting confirming the existense of such a resident, neither that "Maria Anna Schicklgruber" had lived and worked there in any official document, neither. The Graz town records are open and easy to check! But sure is that 1946 Hans Frank wrote this story in his still available book. Maybe Frank, repenting from his own sins and converting to catholicism in jail, who fervently admitted that the nazi regime was a criminal gang, was just trying to be more anti-jew than ever, by creating an even more evil Adolf Hitler fathered (of cause) by a half jew. Considering the information available today, Hans Frank's actions reflect more a last hate-revenge of the "freshly reborn christian" Hans Frank against his fallen master Hitler and the ever evil jews together. You speculate about the possibility that Hitler suspecting with or without reason any "non-aryen" lineage in his family tree, or even jewish ancestors, would not have been persecuting the jews? I disagree. I think it is even somehow obvious that any doubts may even lead to more hate. Hans "Frank" is not a family name without ambiguity neither. Sometimes childhood experiences can create the foundations for further interest in anti-jew activities. I think that Reinhard Heydrich is such a person, too. He was for sure often "insulted" as Jude by youngsters in his early years and even if he had no jewish ancestors, the name and his looks as a young boy made him "special" and easy to tease. I think that Himmler with his "mongolian" style facial features had understood that with a Reinhard Heydrich he found the same kind of restless soul in need to "clean up" with dark suspicions and sufferings about himself by eliminating the jews and "clean the blood". Therefore Hitler, even if he may have well heard about "the jew Frankenberger" story, would just have felt more hate against the jews as did a lot of others arround him. 
Reinhold Hanisch, who was one of Hitlers first art business associates 1909 in Vienna described in his 1939 published "memoirs" his first encounters with the young pennyless Adolf (Check out on google "Reinhold Hanisch" "I Was Hitler's Buddy"): "With his black beard, his faded blue long coat and the black melon hat, I first thought he may be a jew". It seems that during his time in Vienna Hitler had frequently personal contacts with jews, especialy art gallery owner and some residents in his Worker'sHostel. It was even a jewish Postcard dealer who alerted the street police and was a wittness for Hitler in a court case against the former friend Hanisch who was accused by Hitler to have betrayed him financialy and "stolen" some of his aquarels. Another story: Hitler as chief of state has sponsored the emigration of the jewish doctor who took care of Hitler's mother during her (long lasting and finaly lost) fight against cancer. Hitler commented " We all have our "special jew...".

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## Carlos

Particularly I see Hitler as a Christian who it wanted not to be. He had to be a man who was really alone; although it was always surrounded with the people or Eva Braun over there giving jumping. Hitler was improvising and being created to yes same. He had to know to the perfection the virtues and shortcomings of the German people of that epoch to manage to inoculate their own metamorphosis in such a enormous quantity of minds. To want to imitate God, Debíó wanted to create a new world and for it he could not be a Christian, he should have detested the Christianity and any religion, got tired of the God who was going, of the God who was looking and remained with the God that we do all. 

Son of the hate and the rancor wanted to do the world playing with bubbles of soap. These poems of Machado always remind me to Hitler.

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## Templar

> Maciamo, can you make a case for that? It seems a little stretched to say WWII was brought about by religious hatred. According to this site Hitler was neither Christian nor Atheist.


I agree with the site. He was irreligious but he believed in a higher power.

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## L.D.Brousse

I think if NAZI Germany would have had DNA testing they would have found many Jewish DNA types in their ranks "Christian converts". To be a member of the SS one had to prove no Jewish blood back to 1700 . For the normal German I think they only went back 1 or 2 generations. Hitler was so worried about maybe having Jewish blood he had his fathers birth village used as a impact area for for the big guns

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## UnionJack

> Btw, some genealogical research on Hitler's ancestor claimed that he could have had distant Jewish ancestry too (supreme irony  ). Anyway Hitler was a wacko. He wanted to create a pure Germanic race of tall, blond and blue-eyed people, but he was short, brown-eyed and had dark hair...  Don't try to find logic in Hitler's mind !


The DNA findings is not reliable it is inconclusive and proves nothing - let's start with the 'African ancestry' bit. All members of Homo Sapiens Sapiens can trace their ancestry back to Africa, where the human species originated. Next: Mulders and Vermeeren suggest that, because Jews have more of the E1B1B1 gene, Hitler may have had Jewish ancestors. But Hitler's family was Austrian and it turns out that 9% of Austrians currently carry the E1B1B1 gene. We can safely presume the gene was also common in 19th Century Austria among non-Jewish citizens.

The DNA found was also taken from a napkin, that is hardly very credible, the DNA testing on his grand nephew is not credible neither as the person could have got his results (according to them) from the non-Hitler side as well.

Anyhow, back to the main urban legend myth that Hitler had Jewish ancestors - this has been disproved many moons ago.

The third possibility is that Adolf Hitler's grandfather was Jewish. Rumours to that effect circulated in Munich cafes in the early 1920s, and were fostered by sensationalist journalism of the foreign press during the 1930s. It was suggested that the name `Huttler' was Jewish, `revealed' that he could be traced to a Jewish family called Hitler in Bucharest, and even claimed that his father had been sired by Baron Rothschild, in whose house in Vienna his grandmother had allegedly spent some time as a servant. But the most serious speculation about Hitler's supposed Jewish background has occurred since the Second World War, and is directly traceable to the memoirs of the leading Nazi lawyer and Governor General of Poland, Hans Frank, dictated in his Nuremberg cell while awaiting the hangman.

Frank claimed that he had been called in by Hitler towards the end of 1930 and shown a letter from his nephew William Patrick Hitler (the son of his half-brother Alois, who had been briefly married to an Irish woman) threatening, in connection with the press stories circulating about Hitler's background, to expose the fact that Hitler had Jewish blood flowing in his veins. Allegedly commissioned by Hitler to look into his family history, Frank reportedly discovered that Maria Anna Schicklgruber had given birth to her child while serving as a cook in the home of a Jewish family called Frankenberger in Graz. Not only that: Frankenberger senior had reputedly paid regular instalments to support the child on behalf of his son, around nineteen years old at the birth, until the child's fourteenth birthday. Letters were allegedly exchanged for years between Maria Anna Schicklgruber and the Frankenbergers. According to Frank, Hitler declared that he knew, from what his father and grandmother had said, that his grandfather was not the Jew from Graz, but because his grandmother and her subsequent husband were so poor they had conned the Jew into believing he was the father and into paying for the boy's support.

Frank's story gained wide circulation in the 1950s. But it simply does not stand up. There was no Jewish family called Frankenberger in Graz during the 1830s. In fact, there were no Jews at all in the whole of Styria at the time, since Jews were not permitted in that part of Austria until the 1860s. A family named Frankenreiter did live there, but was not Jewish. There is no evidence that Maria Anna was ever in Graz, let alone was employed by the butcher Leopold Frankenreiter. No correspondence between Maria Anna and a family called Frankenberg or Frankenreiter has ever turned up. The son of Leopold Frankenreiter and alleged father of the baby (according to Frank's story and accepting that he had merely confused names) for whom Frankenreiter was seemingly prepared to pay child support for thirteen years was ten years old at the time of Alois's birth. The Frankenreiter family had moreover hit upon such hard times that payment of any support to Maria Anna Schicklgruber would have been inconceivable. Equally lacking in credibility is Frank's comment that Hitler had learnt from his grandmother that there was no truth in the Graz story: his grandmother had been dead for over forty years at the time of Hitler's birth. And whether in fact Hitler received a blackmail letter from his nephew in 1930 is also doubtful. If such was the case, then Patrick -- who repeatedly made a nuisance of himself by scrounging from his famous uncle -- was lucky to survive the next few years which he spent for the most part in Germany, and to be able to leave the country for good in December 1938. His `revelations', when they came in a Paris journal in August 1939, contained nothing about the Graz story. Nor did a number of different Gestapo inquiries into Hitler's family background in the 1930s and 1940s contain any reference to the alleged Graz background. Indeed they discovered no new skeletons in the cupboard. Hans Frank's memoirs, dictated at a time when he was waiting for the hangman and plainly undergoing a psychological crisis, are full of inaccuracies and have to be used with caution. With regard to the story of Hitler's alleged Jewish grandfather, they are valueless. Hitler's grandfather, whoever he was, was not a Jew from Graz.

The only serious contenders for the paternity of Hitler's father remain, therefore, Johann Georg Hiedler and Johann Nepomuk Hiedler (or Huttler). The official version always declared Johann Georg to be Adolf's grandfather.

So there you have it, Hitler's family were all Austrian Germans and like many living on the Austro-German border were German nationalists hence why Hitler considered himself a German - which he was an ethnic German - and believed in a 'Greater Germany', since remember Bismarck excluded Austria from Germany nearly two decades before Hitler's birth.  :Good Job: 

Hitler also had blue eyes NOT brown eyes.

"Hitler was a slight, pale man with brown hair parted to one side. He had steel-blue eyes...he had the look of a fanatic....he held the audience, and me with them, under a hypnotic spell by the sheer force of his conviction."

He wasn't short, he was 5'9 which was average for someone born in 1889, hey some people aren't even that height in today's society, 100+ years on and its still only 'average', you ain't confusing him with the Georgian by birth, Stalin who was only 5'5, are you?

Hitler was not that dark haired it just got darker as he got older.

Hitler was a Catholic, as were all his family - he even had ideas of being a priest before he wanted to be an artist.

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## Carlos

How can you please think Hitler was a Catholic? Hitler probably served the God of the world which is Satan. The problem is that left fans in all parts of the world, even from the countries that eventually ended with Hitler.

At any given time anyone can play to believe a God, but it's so easy to realize how fragile we are as humans and our place in the outer Galaxy, which at that Hitler and his philosophy become trifles, before the true God.

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## Mycernius

Hark, I see the No True Scotsman being played here. Pray tell us all Carlos, who is the one true god? Maybe it is the one you worship, not that I see any bias towards your own religion at all /sarcasm off
First establish the existance of any god, then establish that the god that you have is your god. Good luck with that because every religion in the world, including yours, has failed at it everytime.

Tough, Hitler was a catholic whether you like it or not.

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## JFWR

Yes, Hitler was a Catholic. There have been plenty of horrible Christians in history of all stripes, and Hitler was amongst them.

However, you can rejoice that Communism, which is far worse than Nazism and Fascism in general in murdering 100 million individuals, is an unmitigated atheist philosophy.

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## King Niall

> Yes, Hitler was a Catholic. There have been plenty of horrible Christians in history of all stripes, and Hitler was amongst them.
> 
> However, you can rejoice that Communism, which is far worse than Nazism and Fascism in general in murdering 100 million individuals, is an unmitigated atheist philosophy.



Hitler was a Meir descendant and the anti-christ.

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## Mitsuo

As many have said, Hitler was indeed a Catholic, and many quotes show that he believed it into his "Fuhrerhood". However, while there are many quotes that indicate his belief in a god, there are some that indicate a hatred of Christianity and god. Nevertheless, he used a god and the bible to inspire his countrymen and Nazi army. Whether he was a "true believer" or not, it's safe to say that there were Nazi soldiers, that were god-fearing Christians, killing innocent people.

I'll search for these quotes and post them later, if I can remember...




> Hitler was a Meir descendant and the anti-christ.


What does this even mean?

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## JFWR

Oh, and Maciamo's opening statement must be refuted:

It is ludicrous to classify WWII as a "religious" war. Hitler's anti-Jewish beliefs had nothing to do with religion (as one can read for youself in Mein Kampf) but his belief that they represented an alien, subversive, defeatist, and communist element in Germany. 

He did not hate the Jews because they were Christ killers like historical Spanish anti-Jewish practices, but simply for political and racial reasons.

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## JFWR

> Hitler was a Meir descendant and the anti-christ.


There is no proof that Hitler was a descendant of rabbi Meir. 

He was also, to be precise, the second anti-Christ if you are referencing Nostradamus. Otherwise, he wasn't the anti-Christ in the Biblical sense, and it would be quite odd if the anti-Christ wouldn't be Stalin or Mao, who together murdered more people than Hitler ever dreamed of.

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## Taranis

> Hitler was a Meir descendant and the anti-christ.


King Niall, you've been warned before to stop this behaviour.

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## King Niall

Tunisia was Roman province where the emperor was from and also where E1b1 M35 was from. Tunisia was always know as a Roman colony.

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## JFWR

> Tunisia was Roman province where the emperor was from and also where E1b1 M35 was from. Tunisia was always know as a Roman colony.


So?

Tunisia isn't Jerusalem. It's over a thousand miles West. 

If anything, if he was a native of the area, he'd likely be Carthaginian. Also: He was born in Antium, near Rome, not Tunis. I don't know where you're getting your information from. He was also pure on Roman.

Hitler was a German Austrian Catholic. He had no Jewish blood.

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## Dianatomia

According to Hitler's personal secretary who died only recently, after Hitler survived an assassination attempt on his life in Munich he became convinced that God spared him to fulfil his duty. Hitler even bragged about it to Mussolini. 

Also, most men who put the jews in gas chambers were christians. 

The Christians can get Hitler, the atheists can have Stalin.

Whether they believed in God or not is irrelevant. Their religions were responsible for their actions. Hitler's religion was National Socialism and Stalin's religion was Communism.

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## Templar

How could someone disprove beliefs which are neither theist nor atheist/agnostic. Such as: Pantheism, Deism, Panentheism, etc. Their "evidence" doesn't stem from concrete and physical evidence (such as miracles or holy books). 

It also seems like Hitler would have followed something akin to English Deism.

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## JFWR

> How could someone disprove beliefs which are neither theist nor atheist/agnostic. Such as: Pantheism, Deism, Panentheism, etc. Their "evidence" doesn't stem from concrete and physical evidence (such as miracles or holy books).


All the philosophical positions you spoke about are subdivisions of theism and have established arguments for them dating to antiquity. This is not a matter of miracles and holy books exclusively, and in fact, those are the weakest of all arguments, excepting for a miracle one personally witnesses.




> It also seems like Hitler would have followed something akin to English Deism.


No, he was a pretty standard Christian when he speaks about matters pertaining to Christianity.

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## skaheen15

Hitler was born and bred into a traditionally Roman Catholic society, but he himself never identified with this tradition once he had matured. The confusion about the Nazis being 'Christians' largely results from the well-publicized fact of their association(purely for political ends) with the Roman Catholic church, photos of archbishops shaking hands with nazis, etc.
It's obvious to anyone who has studied nazi philosophy that Christianity was _not_ compatible with the main thought current of the movement, Himmler, Rosenberg, and others who exemplified the movement's philosophical orientation were very much obsessed with the old Nordic pagan way of thinking, National Socialism was fundamentally a neo-pagan movement.

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## skaheen15

Templar:

The main conclusions of modern physics, especially quantum mechanics, seem to very strongly suggest that everything is 'alive' in a sense, absolutely everything at the fundamental level seems to have a sort of consciousness, I think one could make an argument that this is evidence for pantheistic beliefs. At the very least it would constitute much more 'concrete' evidence than 'holy books', which were written by basically ignorant men in a pre-rational time.

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## JFWR

> Templar:
> 
> The main conclusions of modern physics, especially quantum mechanics, seem to very strongly suggest that everything is 'alive' in a sense, absolutely everything at the fundamental level seems to have a sort of consciousness, I think one could make an argument that this is evidence for pantheistic beliefs. At the very least it would constitute much more 'concrete' evidence than 'holy books', which were written by basically ignorant men in a pre-rational time.


Cite your sources of any reputable science suggesting that quantum mechanics suggests the "consciousness" of atoms, molecules, et cetera. Because as far as I am aware, it is only new age gurus with hardly any understanding of science at all that suggest such ideas.

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## skaheen15

I'm not saying that it has been directly suggested by reputable scientists, definitely not.
But one could make the argument, based on what has been acknowledged by reputable scientists, I think.

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## JFWR

> I'm not saying that it has been directly suggested by reputable scientists, definitely not.
> But one could make the argument, based on what has been acknowledged by reputable scientists, I think.


Well, make the argument. What aspects of QM lead you to think that atoms are conscious?

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## skaheen15

> Well, make the argument. What aspects of QM lead you to think that atoms are conscious?


If you're aware of the general way in which subatomic particles behave, then you must have some idea of what I mean, it's not my intention to make some kind of scientific argument for them being conscious in the animal sense.
In a very loose and roundabout way, though, one could easily suppose that all matter is 'alive' _in some sense_, although it's certainly not an idea that would fit within the scientific cannon at present.

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## LeBrok

Spooky action at the distance.
It means that particles might "communicate" and at speeds faster than speed of light. In short, through still unknown laws of physics, and, one might argue, by spiritual/supernatural way.
I'm guessing, but I think, this is what shaheen15 implied.

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## JFWR

> If you're aware of the general way in which subatomic particles behave, then you must have some idea of what I mean, it's not my intention to make some kind of scientific argument for them being conscious in the animal sense.
> In a very loose and roundabout way, though, one could easily suppose that all matter is 'alive' _in some sense_, although it's certainly not an idea that would fit within the scientific cannon at present.


Subatomic particles behave in many ways, but none of them seem at all intentional. 

They don't even seem alive. Life is filled with voluntary activity and purpose driven (foor, sex, water, fear) behaviour. Atoms blindly obey natural laws, like rocks and wind.

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## JFWR

> Spooky action at the distance.
> It means that particles might "communicate" and at speeds faster than speed of light. In short, through still unknown laws of physics, and, one might argue, by spiritual/supernatural way.
> I'm guessing, but I think, this is what shaheen15 implied.


I was thinking he was going to go with the "observerer effect" which is one of the more poorly named phenomenon in science as it implies consciousness to that which isn't. 

Spooky action at a distance, moreover, is well explained by reality conserving the laws of logic more than anything else. "You have two particles that exist in a mutually exclusive entagled pair, such that if one is X, than the other must be Y. We separate these entangled particles over a distance such that we can observe both before they could possibly communicate via any force that depends on the speed of light. We observe one as X and simultaneously observe the other as Y. Hot damn! The logic of their relationship was maintained in spite of their distance!" 

It's the one shadow of hope, I'd say, that time paradoxes would also be ruled out by the universe, also. Cool stuff.

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## kesi

if religion is not hereditary it follows he was not a Christian cause he did not follow Christ teaching

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## LeBrok

> if religion is not hereditary it follows he was not a Christian cause he did not follow Christ teaching


On this logic you can prove that most people that consider themselves Christians are not really Christians. Not many follows closely Christ teachings anyway.

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## kesi

> On this logic you can prove that most people that consider themselves Christians are not really Christians. Not many follows closely Christ teachings anyway.


I think Christians are those that follow Christ or profess Christianity as their religion publicly and consistently try to live as their religion tells them to. Did Hitler follow Christ teaching? Perhaps he did follow the Aryan "Christ" 

If one's religion is considered what religion one is born into then we should say Stalin was Orthodox, Charles Darwin was a Christian in fact he wanted to become a clergy man etc

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