The sources that I use come from very old books, rather than Wikipedia. I own these books and the books were written during the very years in which Nazism came to power. The authors of these books came from a wide variety of perspectives -- Christian, Jewish, atheist, Marxist and the like.
Christianity had declined severely in Germany at the time the Nazis came to power, which is why the Nazis were able to come to power. In his book, The Dictators, Richard Overy states that in the decades preceding the First World War Germany was becoming increasingly secular, and that after that war, from 1918 to 1931, 2.4 million Evangelical Christians formally renounced their faith as well as almost half a million Catholics. In Prussia, only 21% of the population took communion and in Hamburg only five percent of the population took communion. Before Hitler, German religious leaders were publicly condemning the rise of moral relativism and decline of traditional religious values.
Weimar Germany largely had abandoned Christianity and increasingly was embracing hedonism, Marxism and paganism. There, decline of Christianity in Germany led directly to the rise of Nazism. Professor Henri Lichtenberger in his 1937 book, The Third Reich, describes the religious life of the Weimar Republic as a place in which the large cities were "spiritual cemeteries" with almost no believers at all, except for those who were members of the clergy. The middle class went through the motions, but lacked all living faith. The workers, influenced by socialism, were suspicious of the church. Even in the countryside, preachers had little influence on the people. In the 1938 book, The War Against God, by Sidney Dark and R.S. Essex, describes pre-Nazi antipathy toward Christianity by noting that churches had lost all their vitality and that their services were lifeless. Mower, in his 1938 book, Germany Puts the Clock Back, wrote that by 1920, God and Christianity had been in steady decline, a process that had begun in 1860. Mower talks about a culture not so much casual as vicious about sexuality. He writes of art sickened into atonal music, about the absence of any sense of sin, about entire graduating classes in high school turning up for birth control devices, and about the commonplace occurrence of abortion.
This hostility or indifference toward Christianity in Europe, and especially in Germany, led naturally to a profound anti-Christian sentiment in Nazi Germany. Nazis, more than most Germans, were indifferent or hostile to Christianity. Hitler originally appeared to just ignore Christianity. Dark and Essex write in their 1938 book that Mein Kampf has few passages which in any way refer to religion, none that refer to Hitler's own personal religion, or to the teaching of the Bible, nor any branch of Christian teaching. Jacob Marcus in his 1934 book by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations notes that "Though his parents were both Catholics, Hitler himself has apparently no interest in any organized religion."
Mann notes that the three enemies constantly cited by Nazis were Judaism, Freemasonry and Christianity; and that the remedy proposed by the Nazis to solve the enemy of Christianity was to take Christian children, whose parents insisted on teaching them Christian virtues, away from their parents (much like the Bolsheviks would take Christian children away from their parents).
This is similar to what Pierre van Paassen wrote in his 1939 book, Days of Our Lives, who says that Germany is farther on the road to dechristianization than the Soviet Union and that in place of God, Nazis have placed the almighty state which demands everything from man. Also in 1939 Ernest Hambloch wrote that because the Roman Catholic Church had been opposing the Nazis as pagan, the Nazis accused the Vatican of being in league with Communism. The same year Ogg wrote in European Government and Politics that from the Nazi viewpoint Christianity was part of the common value systems which the Nazis most vigorously opposed, that the Nazis specifically objected to values of "a common European origin" and that Nazism opposed reason as a workable guide to social action."
Even the most superficial Christianity was rejected by many Nazi leaders and Nazi organizations. Karl Haushoffer, the mentor of many early Nazi leaders, preached non-Christian beliefs, and Nazi metaphysics included organizations like the Thule Society whose members greatly admired the Japanese Black Dragon Society. The Thule Society practiced occultism, alchemy and Islamic mysticism. Perhaps the best example of absolute repudiation of Christianity, even nominal Christianity contorted into something grotesquely different than any professed Christianity, comes from the mouth of Julius Streicher, a notorious defamer of Jews.
The Nazis even forbade parents to give their children Christian names and ordered babies instead to be given names like Dietrich, Otto or Siegfried. The teaching of Christianity by parents in the home was forbidden. Churches were not allowed to collect funds for charitable work. The Nazis transferred Catholic clergy to Protestant areas and Protestant clergy to Catholic areas. Nazis smeared excrement on church altars and church doors, desecrated shrines, and threw statutes of saints into dung piles; and when synagogues were not available to attack and loot, churches were the target with Nazis yelling: "Down with Christians and Jews!" In many places, historic church feast days and holidays were banned and even the display of religious flags and banners was outlawed; often Nazis cordoned off areas necessary for church pilgrimages and offered free beer and sausages for secular events that deliberately coincided with church festivals.
This article is but the tip of the iceberg of evidence showing the total hatred for Christianity held by the Nazis. It is also instructive to note that these same authors (and many others) observed that the only organized resistance to Nazism in Germany came from devout Christians.
Now, the atheist response to this is that the Nazis believed in some sort of non-Christian metaphysical system, but that demonstrates the point in my article "The Godless Delusion" - everyone, even atheists, believe in something and all belief systems are not equal. Belief in the Judeo-Christian faith is uniquely good.
Thw Christian way is to be outspoken. The smoke and mirror tactics have always been the tricks of the enemies of God. Followers of Christ are blunt to the point of rudeness and despise the idea of masks.
masked regimes try to hide who they truly are
Followers of Christ?
Konservative Kristians wearing masKs....
bulmabriefs144 wrote:Thw Christian way is to be outspoken. The smoke and mirror tactics have always been the tricks of the enemies of God. Followers of Christ are blunt to the point of rudeness and despise the idea of masks.
What an idiot.
bulmabriefs144 wrote:masked regimes try to hide who they truly are
The third picture was of "conservatives" protesting in Europe. Not vikings...
Your people wearing masks, ashamed someone might recognize them for who they really are, racist nazis.
Your party detests dark skin, Asians, Jews, independent women, LGBTQ...
Your hooded Nazis show up at peaceful protests with guns and loot...
The republican party does not represent humanity as a whole.
You are enabling their hate and you are anti-Christ.
