Eljay whined:



I have said that he was a practicing Catholic and that he used Christianity in order to further divide the Christian civilian German population from the Jewish populace. I will not speak lies. I have a responsibility to speak only the truth here. I have my integrity. If you can prove any of this information unreliable, then get to it.

I mean someone who believes in the fundamentals of Catholicism and who professes to be a Catholic.

A Christian cross given to German mothers

Hitler encouraged several programs for the growth of a strong German Nazi Volk. These programs involved the encouragement of the virtues of German motherhood for the purpose of increasing the size of their families and the abolition of abortions (except for the mentally ill). In 1938, Hitler instituted a new award to honor German Nazi motherhood, especially for large families. He awarded such mothers the cross of Honor of the German Mother (Ehrenkreuz der deutschen Mutter).

Ah ha. Okay. So then Hitler is a practicing christain according to your definition.

I have a little bit of a hard time with his believing in the fundamentals of Catholicism. As I recall - Thou shall not murder - is one of those fundamentals. But I could be wrong.

Well I guess you personally would not refer to Adolph Hitler as a "Christian" simply because he professed to be a Catholic. You rejected Catholicism even though you were born into that religion unless I misread you on forum.

Hmm well one really only has to take a little stroll down memory lane to really get a full understanding of just how seriously the Christians have taken "thou shalt not kill" Shall we do that sir?

CRUSADES

WITCH BURNINGS

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS

GENOCIDE IN RWANDA

COLUMBUS AND THE CARIBBEAN

THE LIST GOES ON.....

Krimsa,

Perhaps you do not intent to spread lies. But that is not a picture of a Christian cross just because some madman says it is.

They can call it the cross of honor, but it is not a Christian cross by any stretch of the imagination.

I notice it comes from an atheist site.

One that is very big on trying to spread the myth that Hitler was a Christian.

What I am wondering though is why is it so important to try to convince people that Hitler was a Christian.

Why not ask the Christian who started the thread? Im not sure if it would matter if the site was atheist, agnostic, or secular. These are PHOTOGRAPHS in the public domain.

Unless you are now going to attempt to tell us they are photoshopped?

Miracles of modern technology?

You can go that route if you like.

If one word I have uttered on this forum is an untruth, please enlighten us.

no need, two little girls in England managed to convince a whole lot of people there were fairies in the garden without any of those modern entrapments, so cut the sarcasm.


I am not going any route other than to repeat the fact that Hitler lied if he said he was a Christian. He lied on so many fronts, why would anyone believe anything else, unless it is because it serves their own personal gain.



THE NAZI’S PERSECUTION OF RELIGION AS A WAR CRIME: THE OSS’S RESPONSE
WITHIN THE NUREMBERG TRIALS PROCESS
Claire Hulme* and Dr. Michael Salter**


“Throughout the period of National Socialist rule, the Nazis employed a combination of ‘lawful’ and criminal devices to persecute the Churches in a cynically opportunistic
manner designed to minimise damage to their other interests
[R]eligious liberties in Germany and in the occupied areas were seriously impaired. The various Christian Churches were systematically cut off from effective communication with the people. They were confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this sphere were subjected to as many hindrances as the Nazis dared to impose. Those results were accompanied partly by legal
and partly by illegal and terroristic means."

Yes, it’s the old question that keeps coming up, mostly when Christians either deny that Hitler was part of his club or when they try to shove them off on atheists and that’s exactly what happened in a recent debate over on the Richard Dawkins forums. Hitler came up for some reason and one of the resident theist loons ran off with it, claiming that Hitler couldn’t have been a Christian. For those playing along at home, it was another case of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy that Christians are so fond of because it allows them to easily dispose of anyone that doesn’t meet whatever criteria they currently decide to use for Christianity. Child-molesting Catholic priests? No, they’re not real Christians. Bloodthirsty, murderous tyrants? Nope, they’re not Christian either. What constitutes being a Christian, you might ask? Why, whatever the person making the claim believes at the time, of course!

The only thing we can go by in making real determinations are what a person says and how they act. We have no way of knowing what they really believed internally so such things are not up for discussion. Based on the facts, it is clear then that Hitler fit the criteria of being a Christian. He certainly said he was a Christian, both publically and privately, he acted as a Christian and it is clear that the Catholic Church supported his actions, both publically and clandestinely while Hitler was alive.

Adolph Hitler grew up as an ardent Christian. He was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in infancy, attended a monastery school, was an altar boy and was confirmed as a “soldier of Christ”. His most ardent goal at the time was to become a priest and often wrote of his love for the church and clergy. “I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.” -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf). This would prove to have a deep impact on him in later life, in fact, while he walked to school every day, he passed a stone arch that bore the monastery’s coat-of-arms, which included a swastika. Hitler, also an artist, painted religious portraits at the time, including one of Mary and Jesus, that we still have today.

Later, Hitler worked closely with Pope Pius in converting the Germanic people and supporting the church. Hitler, Franco and Mussolini were given veto powers over who the pope could appoint as bishops in Germany, Spain and Italy. In return, all Catholics were taxed and the money was given to the Vatican. Hitler, in a speech in July 1933, had this to say about the arrangement: “The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgment of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie.” In fact, the close arrangements went much farther than that, Hitler was personal friends with the high ranking Catholics in Germany and beyond. Many of the Nazi ideas were adopted by the Catholic Church and preached as part of their sermons. Hitler also incorporated Catholic ideas into the public educational system. This photo depicts Hitler with Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin. It was taken on April 20, 1939, when Orsenigo celebrated Hitler’s birthday. The celebrations were initiated by Pope Pius XII and became a tradition. Each April 20th, Cardinal Bertrand of Berlin was to send “warmest congratulations” to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany with “fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars.”

Because of his support of Christianity, Hitler introduced laws in Germany that played to Catholic sentiments. He outlawed abortion, homosexuality, and demanded corporal punishment in schools and home. “The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavor to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of today.” –Adolf Hitler, on 26 June 1934, to Catholic bishops to assure them that he would take action against the new pagan propaganda. “Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church.” -Adolf Hitler, reportedly to have said in Berlin in 1936 on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism.

You have to remember that religious antisemitism has a long history in Germany, going back hundreds of years. In fact, Martin Luther, famous reformer and father of the Reformation, was himself an ardent antisemite. In his book “The Jews and their Lies”, Martin Luther set the stage for Jewish hatred that lasted up until WWII. Luther advocated confiscating Jewish money and property and throwing them into the streets and if they didn’t like it, they could “whine to their God”. Hitler didn’t invent hatred of the Jews, it had a long history and Jewish inferiority was widely believed among the German Catholics at the time.

When Hitler started to set up the German Worker’s Party, the precursor to the Nazis, he was very specific about it’s basis. He set up a 25-point document, the equivalent of a constitution, which laid out the purposes behind the Party. Point 24 read: “We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession…”

In the schools, Hitler imposed Christian religious education that included antisemitic Christian authors, some of which were not removed from Catholic doctrine until 1961. All Nazi soldiers wore belt buckles that read “Gott Mit Uns” or “God With Us”. German soldiers were often sprinkled with holy water and required to listen to a sermon by a Catholic priest before going out on maneuvers. A secret service, called the “SS Reich” was created to spy on the German people and those who were suspected of heresy, not only going against the Nazis, but against Catholic doctrine, were prosecuted severely.

In the end, there’s really no way to argue that Hitler and the Nazis were not a Christian organization but people desperately try, the same way they deny that American racist organizations like the KKK are Christian in origin. Let’s look at what Hitler himself had to say about religion.

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.” –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 This proves conclusively that Christians who want to foist Hitler off on the atheists are out of their gourds.

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

“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.” –Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

The fact is that Hitler was a lifelong Catholic and has never been excommunicated by the Church. The Catholic Church supported Hitler throughout the war, only denying public support when it became a public relations nightmare, but after the war, the Catholic Church was responsible for smuggling Nazis out of Germany under Catholic Red Cross visas to South America, thus helping them escape from justice at the Nuremberg Trials. Even after Hitler lost, they still helped the Nazi butchers to go free.

Finally, for those who think that Hitler’s beliefs in the occult make him a non-Christian, that’s ridiculous. The majority of Christians today hold occult beliefs. Many believe in ghosts and spirits, read their horoscope and won’t let a black cat cross their path. Heck, even Ronald Reagan, hero to the religious political right, believed in astrology and fortune telling and no one says he wasn’t a Christian.

The whole idea is ludicrous. Hitler, both publically and privately, said he was a Christian, acted as a Christian and believed, at least from what we know, as a Christian. To claim he was otherwise is just theological stupidity and desperation

There is a long history of the persecution of Jews by Christians, starting with the burning of synagogues in the 4th century, to numerous killings of Jews who would not convert to Christianity, to the extermination of Jewish communities in many European countries, all the way to a number of extermination camps during World War II in Yugoslavia, headed by a Franciscan Friar and run by Catholics, which were the equal of the German kilns of Auschwitz — killing about half a million people alone in this small country

Britty said:

You were the one that quoted that one little paragraph. I took the liberty of disclosing your source. I dont even understand the relevance of the rest of your comment quite frankly.

Britty said



the “no true Scotsman” fallacy that Christians are so fond of because it allows them to easily dispose of anyone that doesn’t meet whatever criteria they currently decide to use for Christianity. Child-molesting Catholic priests? No, they’re not real Christians. Bloodthirsty, murderous tyrants? Nope, they’re not Christian either. What constitutes being a Christian, you might ask? Why, whatever the person making the claim believes at the time, of course!

My opinion - There are bad people in every single organization. That does not mean that the organizations are bad. The bad people are not the majority. They are the minority.

I dont think anyone would argue that Winx. I would argue with the assertion that Hitler was not a Catholic however.

Krimsa,

You are playing a semantics game and a dishonest one. "Christian" means "Christ Like". So obviously, the only true Christians are people who try to be like Christ. Those who willfully sin aren't considered Christians. I have shown you this in scripture (1 Corinthians 5). This is a precedent that is 1900+ years old, yet you feel it should be overturned so that you can get your licks in on Christianity. I hope that every Christian here will join me in ignoring you. We should turn our backs to you and forget about you, ignoring your every post and your cries for attention. It is your choice to be so stubbornly difficult, ignoring all reason and logic to continue to push your vile and bigoted beliefs.

I urge anyone who is a Christian to follow the commands of Jesus and turn away, nothing you say will change Krimsa's position. No facts or reason or logic that can come from your mind will change her. She has made her choice and we should accept that choice. If she is ever to change, it will have to come from within.

As I have stated repeatedly and in which you ignore. It matters not to me what your personal definition of Christianity is in this current moment. It did not matter to the German Christian population that chose to follow Hitler either. Nor did it bother the Catholic church who was responsible for the extermination of thousands of Jews. Unless now you will simply attempt to argue that they were not all Christians because they were Catholic. Eljay has already taken refuge in that "argument".

“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.” –Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

The thing here is we don't know what is definition of God is.

He also claimed that Jesus was an Aryan.

The Aryan race is a theory. That alone indicates that he did not truly believe in the Christian God and his view of the bible was twisted. Indeed it was his goal to replace it with his version of the bible and that is historical fact also.



Dietrich Bonhoeffer had already been hounded and silenced by the Nazi regime for his vocal opposition to its persecution of Jews. He had been offered safe haven by American friends, and had accepted it, only to change his mind.

In July 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer left New York to return to his native Germany. He is quoted as saying:

"I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America," he wrote. "I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless I share the trials of this time with my people."
In the spring of 1943, after using his church contacts to help a group of 14 Jews escape to Switzerland, Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo. For two years he waited in prison, quietly ministering to his fellow prisoners, writing a series of letters that survive as both a poignant testament to faith and a fragmented vision for a viable post-war Christianity. On July 20, 1944, the long-planned attempt against Hitler was finally made; a bomb smuggled into the Fuehrer’s head-quarters exploded but failed to kill him. There followed a vicious spasm of retribution in which some 5,000 people were killed: some summarily shot, others repeatedly strangled and revived, their agonies filmed for Hitler’s pleasure. One of those condemned to die was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.



It appears that Hitler was against anyone who stood in his way.

You state you took the liberty of disclosing my source. Indeed how can you know what my source was, unless you can read minds.

As I have stated that was not my source.

Well thats the site in which I found it. If there is another source that is not right wing Christian in designation, by all means produce it.

While you are at it, discredit one shred of evidence (including photographic) that I have presented.