Too Early A Stage To Draw Conclusions

Submitted by Gerhard (Argentina), Jan 28, 2006 at 20:50

Dear Jan

The dictionary definition of "religion" includes:
"(a) a set of beliefs, values and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader" and
"(b) a cause, principle or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."
Whereas it may be, for all I know, that Islam is a religion par excellence, National Socialism is a religion under either category above. Simply because there are those vast political, social and religious differences between Nazism and Islam to which you have drawn attention, these do not invalidate the proposal that Nazism was a religion. I do not say personally that Nazism was more than a religion, I am simply quoting Hitler.

The spiritual influence in Hitler's life was not Nietzsche but Schopenhauer:
"Throughout the entire First World War I carried all five volumes of the works of Schopenhauer around with me in my gas-mask case." (Hitler's Table Talks, 19.5.44)

Kant and Nietzsche were to be honoured with Schopenhauer by the erection of statues to the three philosophers in the Inner Hall of the Great Library at Linz. Hitler was known to be so impressed by Schopenhauer that he committed vast texts of the work to memory. Schopenhauer's ideas were mainly Buddhist and of the Egyptian Hermetic tradition. Hitler's success is said to have been based on a profound knowledge of magical causes occasioned by his reading of Schopenhauer's account of the Hermetic tradition. Schopenhauer suggested a means by which the Universal Will can, in full consciousness of its nature, act through an individual, and this was probably confirmation for the belief that Higher Powers acted through Hitler in the fulfillment of Destiny.

I have to confess that the so-called "Christianity" of the Nazis looks rather similar to my own. Born and baptized a Christian, I believe in reincarnation, do not accept the divinity of Jesus as Son of God, and I accept the Virgin Mary as my personal Saviour on the basis of the mariological apparitions. You will not find many Churchmen to swear on a bible that a person holding such beliefs is a Christian, he is a Pagan.

Why did Goering and Goebbels leave the Church so that they had to be ordered to rejoin it? This act required a signed document of renunciation. Had they ceased to believe, or was it a political ploy?
Now, were such a thing possible, the Powers That Be might well order Goebbels, Goering and myself to rejoin the Church as full members, and perhaps we might even turn up on Sundays and chant the Apostles' Creed with the best of them, but that would still be no guarantee that any of us believed it.

Let us now look at what our Catholic neighbour, Adolf Hitler, held to be true as a Christian:
(1) "I believe in reincarnation." (Hitler's Table Talks, 13.12.1941)
(2) "There is no heaven, this is a filthy lie for which the Judeo-Christian tradition is responsible" (HTT 13.12.1941)
(3) "Judeo-Christianity is nothing but communism, and modern Bolshevism is nothing but Christianity without the metaphysical trappings." (HTT 30.11.1944)
(4) "The world of antiquity was a wonderful place because it was spared the twin curses of syphilis and Christianity." (HTT 19.10.1941)
(5) "Christianity is the most lunatic idea that a diseased mind could ever conceive, a mockery of everything holy. The black man with his fetish, who earnestly believes in the wonders of the Cosmos, is toweringly superior to the Christian." (HTT 13.12.1941)
(6) "I do not believe that Jesus was a Jew. I think he probably came from Galilee and was the son of a Roman legionaire, many of whom lived there. I suppose his mother might have been Jewish. Jesus fought against the materialism of the time, but the Jew St Paul made him into a divinity for political purposes." (HTT 30.11.44)
(7) "I have nothing against a State Church such as the Church of England. But you cannot go on for ever preaching a lie. Between the 6th to 8th centuries our people were forced into Christianity by the princes, who held with it. Before that the people had survived without it. I have six SS-Divisions which have renounced the Church: their men die with the greatest spiritual certainty." (HTT 13.12.1941).

It may be that a Churchman could be found to swear that Hitler was a Christian and not a lapsed Catholic who a couple of centuries earlier would have been burnt at the stake, but to find such a innocent soul would be such an all-devouring quest that I would not wish to undertake it myself. Temples were not erected to Hitler because HE was the Temple. The raising of the arm in the Hitler salute and the use of the phrase "Heil Hitler" was the salute to the Divine Force acting through the person of Adolf Hitler.

As regards the "tangible scientific results" which you require, this will require a fairly long response which I need a day or so to draft.

My compliments
Gerhard

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