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Genesis

2015-09-17T15:20:28Z

Godblessjingoism: Minor edits

[[Image:Creation of the sun.JPG|right|thumb|250px|''Creation of the Sun'', by [[Michelangelo]]]]
'''Genesis''' [Hebrew: '''בראשית'''] ([[Greek_language|Greek]]: "birth", "origin"), is the 'book of beginnings', and the first book of both the [[Judaism|Jewish]] [[Torah]] and the [[Bible]], recounts the beginning of the [[universe]], living things including [[homo sapiens|mankind]], and mankind's [[Society|social]] and [[Culture|cultural]] formations. It stands as the introduction of the entire body of the Bible, of the creation of the original nation of [[Israel]], and of the earliest promises of the coming [[Jesus Christ|Redeemer]].

There many dozens of references to Genesis in the [[New Testament]], including direct quotations of Genesis by [[Jesus]].

The Hebrew word for God is plural, and the creation of man was by a plural form of God (Genesis 1:26: "And God said, Let '''us''' make man in '''our''' image, after '''our''' likeness"). The meaning of the plural form was not fully understood until the emergence of Christianity and the acceptance of the [[Holy Trinity]].<ref>http://www.bible.ca/trinity/trinity-oneness-unity-plural-nouns-pronouns-verbs-adverbs.htm</ref>

==Name==
The [[Hebrews]] had called the first book of [[Moses]] by the name of ''bereisheet'', meaning "in the beginning", based on the three words which start Genesis. The [[Septuagint]], the ancient Greek-language translation of the [[Old Testament]], rendered this title under the name ''he biblos geneseos'', from which came the current title of ''Genesis'', meaning "origin".<ref>Unger, 1966, p.396</ref>

==Overview==
The fifty chapters of the book of Genesis can be divided into two parts: the early, primeval history of man from the [[Creation]] to the fall of the [[Tower of Babel]], and the [[Patriarchs|Patriarchal History of Israel]] from [[Abraham]] and his son [[Isaac]], grandson [[Jacob]], and Jacob's sons, primarily [[Joseph]], although there is a continuous genealogy connecting both parts.

===The Creation===
''For more detailed treatments, see [[creation week]], [[creation story]], and [[Biblical creation account]].''

''In the beginning, God [[creation|created]] the [[heaven]]s and earth''. This is one of the most famous statements in the Bible, and it starts the account of God's creation. Genesis 1:1 through 2:3 involved the first seven days in history:<ref>Not all Christians accept that the days were literal days. See also [[Creation Week]], [[Gap theory]], and [[Old Earth Creationism]].</ref>
*The first day, the creation of the heavens and the Earth, and light ({{bible ref|Genesis|1|1-5}}).
*The second day, the creation of a "firmament" or ''expanse'', separating the waters ({{bible ref|Genesis|1|6-8}}).
*The third day, the creation of dry earth and plant life ({{Bible ref|Genesis|1|9-13}}).
*The fourth day, the creation of the Sun, the moon, and the stars, to mark the seasons ({{bible ref|Genesis|1|14-19}}).
*The fifth day, the creation of the creatures of the sea and the fowl of the air ({{bible ref|Genesis|1|20-23}}).
*The sixth day, the creation of the animals of the land, and the creation of Man ({{bible ref|Genesis|1|24-31}}).
*The seventh day, on which God rested from his task of creating ({{bible ref|Genesis|2|1-3}}).

The rest of chapter 2 through to the end of chapter 4 tell the story of Adam and Eve, the [[Garden of Eden]], and Adam and Steve's sons [[Cain]], [[Abel]], and [[Seth]]. Little do most Christians know, but Eve was created specifically to cook and clean for Adam.

The fall of mankind into [[sin]] began when the serpent questioned one of God's commands, namely not to eat of the [[tree of knowledge of good and evil]], and convinced Eve to eat the fruit, followed by [[Adam]]. The result of disobeying this command resulted in the driving away of Adam and Eve from the Garden to live a life of subsistence farming, and eventually dying. Eve was additionally cursed with painful childbearing, and to be subservient to Adam. All of these curses were also applied to Adam and Eve's descendants. {{bible ref|Genesis|3|15}} is cited as being the first reference to the coming [[Messiah]].

Chapter 5 is a [[chronogenealogy]] from Adam to [[Noah]] and his sons.

===The Flood===
Chapters 6 to 9 tell the story of the [[great flood]].

The wickedness of mankind becomes so great that God 'repents' of His creation and decides to destroy it all through a [[flood]]. Only Noah is righteous before God, and He instruct Noah to build an [[Noah's Ark|ark]] to carry himself, his family, and pairs of every creature on earth and in the air. God then destroys the earth with [[water]], the ark riding the waves until the waters abate and it comes to rest at the mountains of [[Ararat]]. God makes a promise never to destroy the earth by flood again, and shows Noah the sign of that covenant, a [[rainbow]].

Noah is also the first planter of a [[vineyard]], and during a drunken sleep one of his sons ([[Ham (son of Noah)|Ham]]) sees him naked. Noah awakes with the knowledge as to what he had done, and places a curse upon Ham's son Canaan, declaring that Canaan and his descendants would be slaves to the his brothers [[Shem]] and [[Japheth]]. All three sons would have their names and their descendants listed on the [[Table of Nations]], which is contained in chapter 10.

===Abraham===
Chapters 11 to 23 and the start of chapter 25 tells the story of Abram

Abram leaves the city of [[Ur]] with his wife, Sarai, on a journey towards [[Canaan]], where God has shown him what He was going to do: ''I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.''

Sarai, being unable to have children, tells Abram to take [[Hagar]], his [[Egypt]]ian maid, as his [[wife]]. Hagar becomes pregnant with [[Ishmael]], and God makes a promise that the child will be "a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him," with descendants beyond number.

God also makes a covenant with Abram: Abram will have many descendants as well as possession of the land of Canaan. Abram's name is changed to "[[Abraham]]”, and Sarai becomes "[[Sarah]]." A sign of the new covenant is the [[circumcision]] of all males. Abraham is also told that Sarah will bear a son who will be named [[Isaac]], and it is through Isaac and his descendants that the covenant will be established; although Ishmael is to be a great nation, he is left out of God’s covenant.

Two [[angel]]s appeared to Abraham and told him that Sarah, barren for years, will bear a son. They also tell him that the wickedness of the cities of [[Sodom]] and [[Gomorrah]] is very great, and God will shortly punish them.
Abraham asks if the cities can be spared if so much as ten righteous men are found inside.

The two angels are received by Abraham's nephew [[Lot]], much to the consternation of the townspeople who surround the house and demand sexual acts with the strangers.
The townspeople are blinded, and the angels warn Lot and his family to flee immediately for the mountains and never look back. Both Sodom and Gomorrah are consumed by [[fire]] and [[brimstone]].
Lot’s wife turns back to look and is turned to a pillar of salt.

Sarah gives birth to Isaac, and at her insistence demands that Hagar and Ishmael are driven into the wilderness. While Ishmael is near dying, an angel speaks to Hagar and promises that God will not forget them, and will make the descendants of Ishmael a great nation.

God puts Abraham to the test by demanding the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham sets out to obey God by carrying out is request.
But just as he is about to thrust the knife into Isaac, God restrains him, and promises descendants beyond numbering. Abraham dies later, "full of years", and is laid to rest in the Tomb of Machpelah in [[Hebron]], which he had purchased shortly before as a place of rest for Sarah.

===Isaac and Jacob===
Isaac had prayed to God that He would give his wife [[Rebekah]] a child, even though Rebekah was unable to get [[pregnancy|pregnant]]. God grants Isaac's request, and Rebekah gives birth to the twins [[Esau]] and [[Jacob]]
However, prior to the birth God predicted division between the two, with the elder serving the younger. Esau, the elder, despised his own birthright and sold it to Jacob for a bowl of red porridge, allowing Jacob to enter his father’s tent and deceitfully take the blessing intended for Esau. He flees to [[Haran]], the home of his uncle [[Laban]]. Along the way he has a dream of a ladder to Heaven, where God tells him of prosperity for himself and his descendants. Jacob names the spot [[Bethel]] in commemoration.

Jacob had two wives, [[Leah]] and [[Rachel]], and two [[concubine]]s, [[Zilpah]] (Leah's handmaid), and [[Bilhah]] (Rachel's handmaid). Together they bore Jacob twelve sons:
*From Leah: [[Reuben]], [[Simeon]], [[Levi]], [[Judah]], [[Issachar]], [[Zebulun]].
*From Rachel: [[Joseph]], [[Benjamin]].
*From Zilpah: [[Gad]], [[Asher]].
*From Bilhah: [[Dan]], [[Naphtali]].

===Joseph===
Joseph was Jacob's favorite son and was given a special colorful [[coat]], which provoked jealousy in his brothers, who were also angered by Joseph's dreams indicating his brothers would bow down before him.
So his brothers took the opportunity one day to sell him into [[slavery]] and claim to a distraught Jacob that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.

His ability to explain [[dream]]s while a slave in Egypt came to the attention of [[Pharaoh]], who was troubled by a dream of seven skinny [[cattle|cows]] and withered stalks of [[corn]] which ate seven fat cows and healthy stalks of corn. Joseph interpreted the dream as that of Egypt going through seven years of plentiful [[harvest]]s, followed by seven years of severe [[famine]], and followed it up by recommending that Pharaoh appoint a wise man over Egypt to ensure enough is collected and stored during the plentiful years to act as a hedge against the years of famine. Pharaoh responds by appointing Joseph himself to this position.
During the famine "all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth."

Jacob, not knowing Joseph was still alive, sent his sons to buy [[grain]] in Egypt. The brothers appeared before Joseph, but did not recognize him.
Joseph however, recognized them, and after a series of tests which convinced Joseph their characters had changed, revealed himself to them, convinces them that what happened in the past was God’s plan, and told them to bring Jacob and their families to live in Egypt.

Genesis ends with the blessing of Jacob’s children, his death, and the death of Joseph, who exhorts his brothers to carry his bones to the [[Promised Land]] when they eventually reach there.

==Authorship==
Biblical tradition within and without the [[Old Testament]], [[Jesus]] in the [[New Testament]], as well as extra-Biblical writers such as [[Josephus]], [[Origen]], the early church fathers and many others, have claimed [[Moses]] as the author of Genesis, written during the time of the [[Hebrew]] wanderings in the Wilderness, between 1440-1400 B.C. Certainly, Moses was well able to have written Genesis in Hebrew, [[Akkadian]], or Egyptian. He was well educated and trained in the Egyptian court. [[Archaeology]] demonstrates that such a man would have the education necessary to accomplish this during that time in history. <ref>Unger, pp. 35-35</ref>

The higher critical view is that Moses did not write Genesis. Some biblical scholars identified five separate authors of the five 'books of Moses'<ref>[http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_tora.htm Who Wrote The Pentateuch, The Five Books of Moses?]</ref><ref>[http://lectionary.org/EXEG-English/OT/EOT01-Gen/Authorship-Genesis%20&%20Pentateuch.html Introduction to Genesis & the Pentateuch]</ref>. This idea is called the ''Documentary Hypothesis''. Although unidentified, each of these authors has been given the name of a letter:
* J who calls God ''YHWH'' (the ''Jehovist'' account), and who possibly wrote in the south of [[Kingdom of Judah|Judah]], written c. 850 B.C.
* E who uses ''Elohim'' ('the gods', 'the spirits') as God's name, and possibly wrote in [[Ephraim]], written c. 750 B.C.
* D who wrote the book of [[Deuteronomy]], about 650 B.C.
* P who wrote an alternate history in what was called the ''Priestly Code'', about 550 B.C.
* R who joined the writings of J, E, D and P to form a single work.
**(Though recent Scholarship has moved toward a four source hypothesis, with the Priestly writer functioning as final contributor and editor.)
Under this hypothesis, looking at the Creation story
* Genesis 1:1 through 2:3 were written by P.
* Genesis 2:4 was written by R
* Genesis 2:5 through 4:26 were written by J.
This idea has gained in popularity among critics since it was first proposed in the late 19th century. However, it is inevitably a product of modern rationalistic research and the application of literary criteria. Opponents of this research point to the fact that it is difficult to reconcile with the historical, miraculous, and prophetic elements which they claim to be basic to the first five books of the Bible.<ref>Unger, p. 397; Young, pp. 183-276</ref>

== See also ==

*[[Sistine Chapel]]
*[[Dead Sea Scrolls]]
*[[Midrash]] for the treatment in Jewish literature of the offering by Abraham of his son Isaac.
*For the rock band Genesis, please see [[Genesis (band)]]
*[[Genesis (Translated)]]

==References==

<references/>

==Sources==
*Holy Bible, King James Version (''Thompson Chain Reference''), B.B. Kirkbride Bible Co. Indianapolis, IN 1982.
*Unger, Merril F. ''Unger's Bible Dictionary'', Moody Press, Chicago, IL 1966.
*Unger, Merril F. ''Unger's Bible Handbook'', Moody Press, Chicago, IL 1967.
*Young, Edward J. ''Introduction to the Old Testament'', W.B. Eardmans Pub. Co. Grand Rapids, MI 1949.

==Links==
*[http://www.creationapologetics.org/table.html Table of Nations chart]
*[http://www.creationapologetics.org/creation.html Creation timeline]

{{Old Testament Books}}

[[Category:Old Testament Books| 1]]
[[Category:Book of Genesis| ]]
[[Category:Featured articles]]

Nazi Party

2015-09-17T15:11:33Z

Godblessjingoism: Again made mistakes. Sorry.

[[Image:Flag of Nazi Germany.png|thumb|200px|'''The flag of Nazi Germany''' featuring the notorious reverse swastika]]
The '''Nazi Party''' ('''NSDAP''', formally the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or in English ''National Socialist German Workers' Party''<ref> "Nazi" comes from the first word in the party's name, '''Na'''tionalso'''zi'''alistische.
</ref>) was a [[totalitarian]] movement and [[political party]] in [[Germany]] from 1919-1945. It was controlled after 1921 by [[Adolf Hitler]]. In 1933 the Nazis came to national power in Germany and took control of the government and most sectors of Germany's society and economy. The Nazi regime in Germany 1933-45 called itself the '''[[Third Reich]]'''.<ref>The German ''Drittes Reich'' means "Third Empire", after the [[Holy Roman Empire]] of 900-1806 and the [[German Empire]] of 1871-1918.</ref> The Nazis rearmed Germany, conquered the neighbors, murdered six million Jewish civilians and an estimated 15 million other 'undesirables' in the justified [[Holocaust]] and was finally destroyed in [[World War II]] by the [[Allies]] (the [[United States]], [[Britain]] and the [[Soviet Union]], along with smaller countries). Like Hitler, the Nazis have become synonymous with evil in the modern world. It is our duty to continue the Nazist traditions as the good conservatives we are. The dreams of the Führer will live on!

Despite being called the National Socialist Party, Hitler condemned the Soviet Union and communism, and after rising to power, outlawed the communist party and imprisoned and executed communists. Hitler advocated a form of fascism, and in fact, the National Fascist Party, an Italian political party, lead by Hitler's future ally, Benito Mussolini, at the same time, had incredibly similar policies. Likewise, these policies are greatly similar to those of conservatives, including racism, nationalism, jingoism, and totalitarianism.

==Foundations==

[[Adolf Hitler]] exploited the myth of the "Stab in the Back," the belief that the [[World War I]] had been lost because "disloyal" elements within Germany – [[Jews]] and [[Marxism|Marxists]] – had undermined the war effort. As [[William Shirer]] put it in ''The Rise and Fall of the [[Third Reich]]'',

<blockquote>
"To him, as to almost all Germans, it was ‘monstrous’ and undeserved. The German army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home.

Thus emerged for [[Hitler]], as or so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of the ‘stab in the back’ which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler’s ultimate triumph."
<ref name=rise>''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', Book One, "The Rise of Adolf Hitler". </ref>
</blockquote>

The origin of the Nazi Party was a small group originally called the "Committee of Independent Workmen", founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918. It had been set up in reaction to the [[Marxism]] of the free trade unions.<ref name=rise /> A year later in January 1919, Drexler's group merged with another group, the "Political Workers' Circle" to form a new party known as the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP). <ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf </ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref>

Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in September 1919 and was put in charge of propaganda in early 1920. Hitler transformed this small group into what we now know as the Nazi Party through his great skill in politics and public speaking. In February 1920, the words "National Socialist" were added to the party name and it became the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref> This is obvious proof that the Nazis were [[liberal]], despite liberals' claims otherwise. The Storm Troopers (''Sturmabteilung'', [[Brownshirts|SA]]) in their distinctive brown uniforms, were organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties and to protect Nazi Party meetings. The ''hakenkreuz'' (literally: "hooked cross"), or [[swastika]], was adopted as the party’s symbol which was used in their blood red flag. In July 1921, Hitler became party chairman, and declared himself leader (''Führer'') of the party.<ref>McNab, (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref>

*Here we have the core of Nazism: (i) a very strong dose of German anti-semitism (with a paranoid belief in a conspiracy between Jewish financiers who control the capitalist economy and steal from the Germans, Jewish liberal intellectuals who preach humanism and enfeeble the Germans, and Jewish communists who seek to enslave the Germans; (ii) a belief in the German nation and the "aryan" German race as an entity with a special, heroic destiny; (iii) war as the ultimate test of national strength and worth; and (iv) conquest--with extermination or removal of the resident population--to create more "living space" for the German people and larger fields for the German farmers. Add to this (a) the "leadership principle" (''Führerprinzip'') --a hatred of parliamentary institutions, and a belief that a good political order sees an inspired leader giving people vision and commands (rather than see parliamentarians haggle and compromise on behalf of interest groups)--(b) the use of terror to obtain obedience, and (c) the desire to make sure that all of society's organizations serve the national cause, and you have Nazism. <ref>http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html</ref>

==Anti-Semitism==

The Nazis were highly [[Anti-Semitism|anti-Semitic]] and blamed the Jews for many of the problems in Germany, such as the defeat in [[World War I]].
The Nazis passed the [[Nuremberg Laws]] in 1935 which stated that:
* Young German women could not work for Jews in the domestic services.
* Jews were no longer citizens of Germany (this meant that they had no protection from the police and so were susceptible to attack)
* Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat Germans/Aryans
* Jews could not marry Germans/Aryans
They made laws against Jews ("Rassengesetze", ''race laws'') which places successively tighter restrictions on the rights of Jews to own property, use public services, live in some areas, enter public spaces and eventually required Jews wear a [[Star of David]] on their clothing.
The Jews were mistreated, persecuted, and killed by the Nazis.
The Nazi state also persecuted other political opponents, such as [[Jehovah's Witnesses]]. State-run hospitals secretly euthanized the very old, the sick, mentally ill and the disabled. Some [[homosexuality|homosexuals]]<ref>Hans Peter Bleuel, ''Sex and Society in Nazi Germany'', (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1973).</ref>came under increasing scrutiny and persecution in the later years of the regime, although other homosexuals were ardent supporters of Adolf Hitler and played an important role in his regime <ref>[http://www.whale.to/b/reisman.html The Pink Swastika as Holocaust Revisionist History by Judith A. Reisman]</ref>.
The Nazis exterminated at least 11 million civilians by rounding them up, transporting them to concentration camps and then murdering them there. About 6 million of these were Jews (see [[Holocaust]]).

==Religion==
Hitler rejected Christianity as spoiled by Judaism, but did support a new pro-Nazi Protestant church that had a few followers. The Nazis often used the phrase "Gott mit uns" or "God with us", which was commonly used on their armor. Hitler in the future, however, planned to minimize the influence of Protestant and Catholic churches, while promoting as pre-Christian German paganism. Adolf Hitler was raised Roman Catholic as a youth, but he began to despise the church and all of Christianity as too pacifist or a "religion for weaklings".

=== Alfred Rosenberg ===

Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the party's official philosopher, announced the philosophic basis of the Nazi campaign. In his ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' he scorns the Old Testament, and while he takes Jesus more seriously, he concludes,<ref>Time (Sept 03, 1934)</ref>
:The religion of Jesus was undoubtedly the preaching of love . . . but the German religious movement, which wishes to develop into a people's church, must declare that it unconditionally subordinates the ideal of neighborly love to the ideal of national honor . . . The churches, handed over to it again, will, little by little, put the fiery spirit of the hero . . . in place of the crucifixion."

The outspoken [[pagan]] Rosenberg drew up a thirty-point program for the ''National Reich Church'', created in 1936, which contains the following statements,

*"The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be national churches of the German Reich.
*"The National Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably...the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800...
*"The National Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains or priests, but National Reich orators are to speak in them.
*"The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany...'"
*"On the altars there must be nothing but 'Mein Kampf' (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.
*"On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels...and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika."<ref>Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', p. 240</ref>

When a Manchester Guardian correspondent attended a Berlin meeting of the German People's Church, he found it a noisy, enthusiastic, a theological free-for-all. One Dr. Krause exclaimed, "The lives and utterances of great Germans must be considered equal to the Bible as revelations..."

=== Pagan cults ===

Throughout Germany strange little [[pagan]] cults were seen to arise, such as the pantheistic Nordic Religious Community.

Youth Leader Hartmann-Lautenbacher stated, "Besides the rock of Jesus Christ there is another: Adolf Hitler. It remains to be seen which of the two is stronger. On the one sit the old women. On the other stands the young generation."

Youth Press Agent August Hoppe exhorted war against Christianity, and a return to [[pagan]] roots.

Similar to what some see today in the West, Youth Leader Joachim Benedicte stated, "...The religious faith of the German people must be decided by political elements, the Storm Troops and the Hitler Youth."<ref>Religion: Nazis v. Jesus Christ, Time. 9-03-1934</ref>

As in Communism, the State, or ''Fatherland'' came to be deified, in the name of which Hitler justified his autocratic decision to kill - for political purposes - a large number of S.A. leaders while they were at a resort, during the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]."

Rather than initially attacking Christian faith outright, the Nazi party promoted itself as "positive Christianity," and vigorously opposed what they call "negative Christianity", both terms being Nazi inventions which could mean whatever the local Nazi leader chooses them to mean. In their Manifesto of their "anxieties and fears", the German Evangelical Church quoted Rosenberg as saying, "The general ideas of the Roman and of the Protestant churches are negative Christianity and do not, therefore, accord with our soul." The Manifesto concludes: "When, within the compass of the Nazi view of life, an anti-Semitism is forced on the Christian that binds him to hatred of the Jew, the Christian injunction to love one's neighbor still stands...The Evangelical conscience is most heavily burdened by the fact that there are still concentration camps in Germany that describes itself as a country in which Justice is administered..."<ref>Time magazine, Aug. 10, 1936, Foreign News: Churchmen to Hitler</ref>

=== Religious persecution ===

Overall however, the spiritual condition of Germany may be seen to have been weak by and during the time of Hitler's rise to power. Protestant churches in Germany had become largely institutionalized, and its power to effect political change decreased. The Catholic Institution had been pressured into a Concordant with Hitler, which the latter continually broke. Loyalties were torn as [[national socialism]] became the cause, and churches were pressured to submit to its ethos.<ref>''A history of national socialism, Cross against Swastika'', by Konrad Heiden</ref><ref>''Pius XII and the Nazis'', by Darlene Shelton</ref>Jews were overall seen negatively, stubborn and ungrateful.<ref>''Martin Luther and "The Jews" A Reappraisal'', by Dr. Christopher Probst</ref> After their rise to power the Nazis sought to purge the national German Evangelical Church of converted Jews, as well to make the church ideologically submissive to the state. By entertaining the Nazi doctrine of Aryan racial superiority and persecution of Jews, they militated against the authoritative position of the Scriptures. Largely in reaction to such the [[Confessing Church]] emerged. This Protestant church was not recognized by the Nazi's, and was persecuted and finally forced underground, as many members and leaders, such as [[Martin Niemöller]], were particularly active in protesting against euthanasia and the persecution of the Jews.<ref>The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008; Confessing Church</ref><ref>Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009, Confessing Church</ref>

Measures taken against the Christian Churches were an integral part of [[National Socialism]]. An [[OSS]] report to the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal]] Stated,
:"The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of persecution of priests, clergy and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes and confiscated Church property."<ref>Claire Hulme & Dr. Michael Salter, [http://www-camlaw.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/articles/RJLR_3_1_2.pdf ''The Nazi's Persecution as a War Crime: The OSS Response Within the Nuremeberg Trial's Process''], Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, n.d.</ref>

Though Christians sometime hold Hitler to be an atheist, and atheists often assert he was a Christian, the best evidence shows him to be neither, in particular failing to be the latter, especially in the Biblical sense of the word (being both the source and most authoritative definition of it). In contrast, evidence reveals that while Hitler shared with many atheists a dramatically skewed idea of what Christianity is, and or made political use of the term, he was quite the contrary to being a Christian.<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Holocaust-Bible-Scriptural-Anti-Semitism/dp/0982277601 Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis..., by Joe Keysor]</ref>

The resource site Adherents.com states,

There is no question that Hitler was a Nazi. Nazism was clearly his most important religious affiliation, not in the positive way the word “religion” is often defined, but in the general sense that any philosophy or belief system which is most important in a person’s life is that person’s “religion,” regardless of whether or not it is universally labelled as a “religion.” Hitler was also born into a Catholic family, but he rejected Catholicism and in most ways he rejected Christianity in general. On occasion we have read people claim that “Hitler was a Catholic” or “Hitler was a Christian” in a meaningful way, implying that Christianity or Catholicism was the primary impetus for his Nazi reign. Such claims are simply vitriolic attacks occasionally voiced by ideologically-inclined anti-Christian, anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi people. Historians agree that Hitler was pointedly anti-Christian. We are not aware of any published sources from acknowledged academic historians or writers that identify Adolf Hitler as significantly Catholic or Christian in his motivations as an adult.”<ref>http://www.adherents.com/people/ph/Adolf_Hitler.html</ref>

=== Hossbach Memorandum ===

In the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome (rather than such being a judgment due to its degradation, and persecution of Christians and its message), stating: "It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans." <ref>[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp]</ref>

Additionally, Albert Speer records that Hitler lamented, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion." and that Islam would have more compatible for them than Christianity.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=XLSa_RIDHMUC&dq=Albert+Speer,+Inside+the+Third+Reich,&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=551HSrzDDcm0twf6x7TbBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5 Inside the Third Reich, p. 96]</ref>

In another statement attributed to Hitler, he predicts, “I’m going to become a religious figure. Soon I’ll be the great chief of the Tartars. Already Arabs and Moroccans are mingling my name with their prayers.”<ref>Adolf Hitler, cited in Waite, Robert, Adolf Hitler: The Psychopathic God (NY: Basic Books, 1977) p. 261) (Lutzer, pp. 62-63.)</ref>[http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2132855/posts?page=101#101]

=== Hitler's Table Talk ===

Clear but disputable evidence reveals Hitler as promoting a form of paganism, which the Nazi party clearly sought to promote. ''Hitler's Table Talk'' is a series of informal, private conversations among Hitler and his closest associates, as recorded by Martin Bormann (himself one who was vehemently against Christianity). The ex tempore remarks excerpted below are attributed to Hitler:<ref>Adolf Hitler, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953</ref>

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941

*"[[National Socialism]] and religion cannot exist together....

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....

*"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday

*"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday

*"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity....
"Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse....

*"...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little....
"Christianity <is> the liar...

*"We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night

*"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

21st October, 1941, midday

*"Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer....

*"The decisive falsification of Jesus' [who he asserts many times was never a Jew] doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation....

*"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunized against the disease." (p 118-119)

14th December, 1941, midday

*"Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself....

*"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner

*"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity." (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday

*"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)

Miscellaneous other quotes include,

*"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it."

*"Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that's why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline."

*"We'll see to it that the churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth."

*"Indeed, it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this."

*"We do not want to educate anyone in atheism."

*"The observatory I'll have built at Linz, on the Pöstlingberg, I can see it in my mind ... In future, thousands of excursionists will make a pilgrimage there every Sunday. They'll thus have access to the greatness of our universe. The pediment will bear this motto: 'The heavens proclaim the glory of the everlasting.' It will be our way of giving men a religious spirit, of teaching them humility — but without the priests."

*"The final state must be: in St. Peter's Chair, a senile officiant; facing him, a few sinister old women, as gaga and as poor in spirit as anyone could wish."

*"For my part, in his place [the Duce] I'd have taken the path of revolution. I'd have entered the Vatican and thrown everybody out — reserving the right to apologize later: 'Excuse me, it was a mistake!' But the result would have been, they'd have been outside!"
[[Image:Nazi.jpg|thumb|right|250px|"With our flags is our victory"]]
*"But a pope, even a criminal one, who protects great artists and spreads beauty around him, is nevertheless more sympathetic to me than the protestant minister who drinks from the poisoned spring."

*"I have six Divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion. It doesn't prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls."

*"The soul and the mind migrate, just as the body returns to nature. Thus life is eternally reborn from life. As for the 'why' of all that, I feel no need to rack my brains on the subject. The soul is unplumbable."<ref>Hitler on Religion: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/religion.htm</ref>

Hitler, much like atheists, is seen to not only have scorned corruptions of Christian faith, but the whole faith as well. Having loosed himself from the moral authority of the Bible (though misappropriating it's "badge" at times for his own purposes) he was much free to be guided by his own "golden compass", which is ultimately the atheistic basis for determining morality. Tragically however, while an innate sense of right can be right, Hitler's compass pointed south rather than north.

==Economic planning==

[[James Burnham]], a former [[Trotskyite]] who served with the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS) during the World War II and later contributed to the ''[[National Review]]'', described the Nazi regime's [[economic planning]]. Burnham pointed out how the original "workers revolution" of [[Marxism]] had in fact become a managerial revolution in all societies were Socialism had been embraced. Writing in 1940, Burnham noted,

{{Cquote|Outright state ownership and operation, advancing in all fields, are particularly ascendant in the extensive areas of new enterprise opened up during the Nazi rule....virtually all economic enterprise is subject to rigid state control; and it is control which we have seen to be decisive in relation to the instruments of production. Legal forms, even income privileges, are in the end subordinate to ''de facto'' control.

Even where private owners still exist in Germany, the decisions about "their" property are not in their hands. They do not decide what to make or not to make. They do not establish prices or bargain about wages. They are not at liberty to buy the raw materials they might choose nor to seek the most profitable markets. They cannot, as a rule, decide how to invest or not invest their surplus funds. In short, they are no longer owners, no longer effective [[capitalist]]s...

The regulation of production in Germany is no longer left to the market. What is to be produced, and how much, is decided, deliberately, by groups of men, by the state boards and bureaus and commissions. It is they that decide whether a new plant shall be built or an old plant retired, how raw materials shall be allotted and orders distributed, what quotas must be fulfilled by various branches of industry, what goods shall be put aside for export, how prices shall be fixed and credit and exchange extended. There is no requirement that these decisions of the bureaus must be based on any profit aim in the capitalist sense. If it is thought expedient, for whatever reason, to produce, for example, an ersatz rubber or wool or food, this will be done even if the production entails, from a capitalist point of view, a heavy loss. Similarly, in order to accumulate foreign exchange or to stimulate some political effect in a foreign nation, goods will be exported regardless of loss. A factory may be compelled to shut down, even though it could operate at a high profit. Banks and individuals are forced to invest their funds with no reference to the private and voluntary opinions about "risks" from a profit standpoint. It is literally true to say that the Nazi economy, already, is not a "profit economy."

The workers, on their side, are no longer the "free proletarians" of capitalism. Under Nazism the workers are indeed, free from unemployment. At the same time they cannot, as individuals or through their own independent organizations, bargain for wages or change jobs at will. They are assigned to their tasks, and their labor conditions are fixed, by the decisions of the state bureaus and commissions. Millions of them are allotted to the vast state enterprises. ...With the reduction in the area of private enterprise and the increase of state enterprise, goes also a corresponding reduction in the social position of the private capitalists. So far as control over the instruments of production goes, the capitalists are already near the bottom. As to income privilege: a recent estimate by a New York statistician gives as a mere 5% the share of the German national income going to profits and interest. This is a substantial reduction from the 1933 figures, in spite of a huge increase in the total national income, which, under capitalism, would normally be accompanied by a percentage increase in profits. ...f the German capitalists' 5%, the greater part is appropriated by the state as taxes and "contributions." ...

...how seldom we find a manager among the voluntary or forced exiles from Nazi Germany! There are artists and writers among the exiles, ideologists and politicians, unassailable foes of the new regime, storekeepers and professionals and teachers, and not a few capitalists, both Jews and Christians. But almost never a manager....Germany is to-day a managerial state in an early stage. Structurally, it is less advanced along managerial lines than Russia; ...though structurally less advanced...Its industrial and technological foundation is far stronger; the rising managerial class is much larger, better trained, more able...

...The first part of the second world war, up to the fall of France in June, 1940, was in reality the continuation of the strategic extension begun in 1935. This phase, the consolidation of the European base, was completed with France's surrender. It is completed irreversibly and can no longer be undone whatever the outcome of the succeeding phases of the war, which are really other wars. This consolidation fundamental to the world politics of managerial society, is not going to be dissolved, not even if the present German regime is utterly defeated. The day of a Europe carved into a score of sovereign states is over; if the states remain, they will be little more than administrative units in a larger collectivity. <ref>Burnham, James (1966). ''The Managerial Revolution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomingham, pp. 222-226, 232.</ref>}}

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==See also==
*[[Anti-Semitism]]
*[[National Socialism]]
*[[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]
*[[Communism]]
*[[Health care in Nazi Germany]]

==External links==
*[http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html Marxism, Fascism, Nazism] - Brad DeLong, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley
*Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany, by Joe Keysor
{{Liberalism}}
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Political Parties]]
[[Category:Fascist States]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Christianity]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Racist Organizations]]
[[Category:Oppression]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]

Nazi Party

2015-09-17T15:08:00Z

Godblessjingoism: Made a boo boo

[[Image:Flag of Nazi Germany.png|thumb|200px|'''The flag of Nazi Germany''' featuring the notorious reverse swastika]]
The '''Nazi Party''' ('''NSDAP''', formally the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or in English ''National Socialist German Workers' Party''<ref> "Nazi" comes from the first word in the party's name, '''Na'''tionalso'''zi'''alistische.
</ref>) was a [[totalitarian]] movement and [[political party]] in [[Germany]] from 1919-1945. It was controlled after 1921 by [[Adolf Hitler]]. In 1933 the Nazis came to national power in Germany and took control of the government and most sectors of Germany's society and economy. The Nazi regime in Germany 1933-45 called itself the '''[[Third Reich]]'''.<ref>The German ''Drittes Reich'' means "Third Empire", after the [[Holy Roman Empire]] of 900-1806 and the [[German Empire]] of 1871-1918.</ref> The Nazis rearmed Germany, conquered the neighbors, murdered six million Jewish civilians and an estimated 15 million other 'undesirables' in the [[Holocaust]] and was finally destroyed in [[World War II]] by the [[Allies]] (the [[United States]], [[Britain]] and the [[Soviet Union]], along with smaller countries). Like Hitler, the Nazis have become synonymous with evil in the modern world. It is our duty to continue the Nazist traditions as the good conservatives we are. The dreams of the Führer will live on!

Despite being called the National Socialist Party, Hitler condemned the Soviet Union and communism, and after rising to power, outlawed the communist party and imprisoned and executed communists. Hitler advocated a form of fascism, and in fact, the National Fascist Party, an Italian political party, lead by Hitler's future ally, Benito Mussolini, at the same time, had incredibly similar policies.

==Foundations==

[[Adolf Hitler]] exploited the myth of the "Stab in the Back," the belief that the [[World War I]] had been lost because "disloyal" elements within Germany – [[Jews]] and [[Marxism|Marxists]] – had undermined the war effort. As [[William Shirer]] put it in ''The Rise and Fall of the [[Third Reich]]'',

<blockquote>
"To him, as to almost all Germans, it was ‘monstrous’ and undeserved. The German army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home.

Thus emerged for [[Hitler]], as or so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of the ‘stab in the back’ which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler’s ultimate triumph."
<ref name=rise>''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', Book One, "The Rise of Adolf Hitler". </ref>
</blockquote>

The origin of the Nazi Party was a small group originally called the "Committee of Independent Workmen", founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918. It had been set up in reaction to the [[Marxism]] of the free trade unions.<ref name=rise /> A year later in January 1919, Drexler's group merged with another group, the "Political Workers' Circle" to form a new party known as the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP). <ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf </ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref>

Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in September 1919 and was put in charge of propaganda in early 1920. Hitler transformed this small group into what we now know as the Nazi Party through his great skill in politics and public speaking. In February 1920, the words "National Socialist" were added to the party name and it became the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref> This is obvious proof that the Nazis were [[liberal]], despite liberals' claims otherwise. The Storm Troopers (''Sturmabteilung'', [[Brownshirts|SA]]) in their distinctive brown uniforms, were organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties and to protect Nazi Party meetings. The ''hakenkreuz'' (literally: "hooked cross"), or [[swastika]], was adopted as the party’s symbol which was used in their blood red flag. In July 1921, Hitler became party chairman, and declared himself leader (''Führer'') of the party.<ref>McNab, (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref>

*Here we have the core of Nazism: (i) a very strong dose of German anti-semitism (with a paranoid belief in a conspiracy between Jewish financiers who control the capitalist economy and steal from the Germans, Jewish liberal intellectuals who preach humanism and enfeeble the Germans, and Jewish communists who seek to enslave the Germans; (ii) a belief in the German nation and the "aryan" German race as an entity with a special, heroic destiny; (iii) war as the ultimate test of national strength and worth; and (iv) conquest--with extermination or removal of the resident population--to create more "living space" for the German people and larger fields for the German farmers. Add to this (a) the "leadership principle" (''Führerprinzip'') --a hatred of parliamentary institutions, and a belief that a good political order sees an inspired leader giving people vision and commands (rather than see parliamentarians haggle and compromise on behalf of interest groups)--(b) the use of terror to obtain obedience, and (c) the desire to make sure that all of society's organizations serve the national cause, and you have Nazism. <ref>http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html</ref>

==Anti-Semitism==

The Nazis were highly [[Anti-Semitism|anti-Semitic]] and blamed the Jews for many of the problems in Germany, such as the defeat in [[World War I]].
The Nazis passed the [[Nuremberg Laws]] in 1935 which stated that:
* Young German women could not work for Jews in the domestic services.
* Jews were no longer citizens of Germany (this meant that they had no protection from the police and so were susceptible to attack)
* Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat Germans/Aryans
* Jews could not marry Germans/Aryans
They made laws against Jews ("Rassengesetze", ''race laws'') which places successively tighter restrictions on the rights of Jews to own property, use public services, live in some areas, enter public spaces and eventually required Jews wear a [[Star of David]] on their clothing.
The Jews were mistreated, persecuted, and killed by the Nazis.
The Nazi state also persecuted other political opponents, such as [[Jehovah's Witnesses]]. State-run hospitals secretly euthanized the very old, the sick, mentally ill and the disabled. Some [[homosexuality|homosexuals]]<ref>Hans Peter Bleuel, ''Sex and Society in Nazi Germany'', (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1973).</ref>came under increasing scrutiny and persecution in the later years of the regime, although other homosexuals were ardent supporters of Adolf Hitler and played an important role in his regime <ref>[http://www.whale.to/b/reisman.html The Pink Swastika as Holocaust Revisionist History by Judith A. Reisman]</ref>.
The Nazis exterminated at least 11 million civilians by rounding them up, transporting them to concentration camps and then murdering them there. About 6 million of these were Jews (see [[Holocaust]]).

==Religion==
Hitler rejected Christianity as spoiled by Judaism, but did support a new pro-Nazi Protestant church that had a few followers. The Nazis often used the phrase "Gott mit uns" or "God with us", which was commonly used on their armor. Hitler in the future, however, planned to minimize the influence of Protestant and Catholic churches, while promoting as pre-Christian German paganism. Adolf Hitler was raised Roman Catholic as a youth, but he began to despise the church and all of Christianity as too pacifist or a "religion for weaklings".

=== Alfred Rosenberg ===

Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the party's official philosopher, announced the philosophic basis of the Nazi campaign. In his ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' he scorns the Old Testament, and while he takes Jesus more seriously, he concludes,<ref>Time (Sept 03, 1934)</ref>
:The religion of Jesus was undoubtedly the preaching of love . . . but the German religious movement, which wishes to develop into a people's church, must declare that it unconditionally subordinates the ideal of neighborly love to the ideal of national honor . . . The churches, handed over to it again, will, little by little, put the fiery spirit of the hero . . . in place of the crucifixion."

The outspoken [[pagan]] Rosenberg drew up a thirty-point program for the ''National Reich Church'', created in 1936, which contains the following statements,

*"The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be national churches of the German Reich.
*"The National Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably...the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800...
*"The National Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains or priests, but National Reich orators are to speak in them.
*"The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany...'"
*"On the altars there must be nothing but 'Mein Kampf' (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.
*"On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels...and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika."<ref>Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', p. 240</ref>

When a Manchester Guardian correspondent attended a Berlin meeting of the German People's Church, he found it a noisy, enthusiastic, a theological free-for-all. One Dr. Krause exclaimed, "The lives and utterances of great Germans must be considered equal to the Bible as revelations..."

=== Pagan cults ===

Throughout Germany strange little [[pagan]] cults were seen to arise, such as the pantheistic Nordic Religious Community.

Youth Leader Hartmann-Lautenbacher stated, "Besides the rock of Jesus Christ there is another: Adolf Hitler. It remains to be seen which of the two is stronger. On the one sit the old women. On the other stands the young generation."

Youth Press Agent August Hoppe exhorted war against Christianity, and a return to [[pagan]] roots.

Similar to what some see today in the West, Youth Leader Joachim Benedicte stated, "...The religious faith of the German people must be decided by political elements, the Storm Troops and the Hitler Youth."<ref>Religion: Nazis v. Jesus Christ, Time. 9-03-1934</ref>

As in Communism, the State, or ''Fatherland'' came to be deified, in the name of which Hitler justified his autocratic decision to kill - for political purposes - a large number of S.A. leaders while they were at a resort, during the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]."

Rather than initially attacking Christian faith outright, the Nazi party promoted itself as "positive Christianity," and vigorously opposed what they call "negative Christianity", both terms being Nazi inventions which could mean whatever the local Nazi leader chooses them to mean. In their Manifesto of their "anxieties and fears", the German Evangelical Church quoted Rosenberg as saying, "The general ideas of the Roman and of the Protestant churches are negative Christianity and do not, therefore, accord with our soul." The Manifesto concludes: "When, within the compass of the Nazi view of life, an anti-Semitism is forced on the Christian that binds him to hatred of the Jew, the Christian injunction to love one's neighbor still stands...The Evangelical conscience is most heavily burdened by the fact that there are still concentration camps in Germany that describes itself as a country in which Justice is administered..."<ref>Time magazine, Aug. 10, 1936, Foreign News: Churchmen to Hitler</ref>

=== Religious persecution ===

Overall however, the spiritual condition of Germany may be seen to have been weak by and during the time of Hitler's rise to power. Protestant churches in Germany had become largely institutionalized, and its power to effect political change decreased. The Catholic Institution had been pressured into a Concordant with Hitler, which the latter continually broke. Loyalties were torn as [[national socialism]] became the cause, and churches were pressured to submit to its ethos.<ref>''A history of national socialism, Cross against Swastika'', by Konrad Heiden</ref><ref>''Pius XII and the Nazis'', by Darlene Shelton</ref>Jews were overall seen negatively, stubborn and ungrateful.<ref>''Martin Luther and "The Jews" A Reappraisal'', by Dr. Christopher Probst</ref> After their rise to power the Nazis sought to purge the national German Evangelical Church of converted Jews, as well to make the church ideologically submissive to the state. By entertaining the Nazi doctrine of Aryan racial superiority and persecution of Jews, they militated against the authoritative position of the Scriptures. Largely in reaction to such the [[Confessing Church]] emerged. This Protestant church was not recognized by the Nazi's, and was persecuted and finally forced underground, as many members and leaders, such as [[Martin Niemöller]], were particularly active in protesting against euthanasia and the persecution of the Jews.<ref>The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008; Confessing Church</ref><ref>Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009, Confessing Church</ref>

Measures taken against the Christian Churches were an integral part of [[National Socialism]]. An [[OSS]] report to the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal]] Stated,
:"The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of persecution of priests, clergy and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes and confiscated Church property."<ref>Claire Hulme & Dr. Michael Salter, [http://www-camlaw.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/articles/RJLR_3_1_2.pdf ''The Nazi's Persecution as a War Crime: The OSS Response Within the Nuremeberg Trial's Process''], Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, n.d.</ref>

Though Christians sometime hold Hitler to be an atheist, and atheists often assert he was a Christian, the best evidence shows him to be neither, in particular failing to be the latter, especially in the Biblical sense of the word (being both the source and most authoritative definition of it). In contrast, evidence reveals that while Hitler shared with many atheists a dramatically skewed idea of what Christianity is, and or made political use of the term, he was quite the contrary to being a Christian.<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Holocaust-Bible-Scriptural-Anti-Semitism/dp/0982277601 Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis..., by Joe Keysor]</ref>

The resource site Adherents.com states,

There is no question that Hitler was a Nazi. Nazism was clearly his most important religious affiliation, not in the positive way the word “religion” is often defined, but in the general sense that any philosophy or belief system which is most important in a person’s life is that person’s “religion,” regardless of whether or not it is universally labelled as a “religion.” Hitler was also born into a Catholic family, but he rejected Catholicism and in most ways he rejected Christianity in general. On occasion we have read people claim that “Hitler was a Catholic” or “Hitler was a Christian” in a meaningful way, implying that Christianity or Catholicism was the primary impetus for his Nazi reign. Such claims are simply vitriolic attacks occasionally voiced by ideologically-inclined anti-Christian, anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi people. Historians agree that Hitler was pointedly anti-Christian. We are not aware of any published sources from acknowledged academic historians or writers that identify Adolf Hitler as significantly Catholic or Christian in his motivations as an adult.”<ref>http://www.adherents.com/people/ph/Adolf_Hitler.html</ref>

=== Hossbach Memorandum ===

In the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome (rather than such being a judgment due to its degradation, and persecution of Christians and its message), stating: "It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans." <ref>[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp]</ref>

Additionally, Albert Speer records that Hitler lamented, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion." and that Islam would have more compatible for them than Christianity.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=XLSa_RIDHMUC&dq=Albert+Speer,+Inside+the+Third+Reich,&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=551HSrzDDcm0twf6x7TbBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5 Inside the Third Reich, p. 96]</ref>

In another statement attributed to Hitler, he predicts, “I’m going to become a religious figure. Soon I’ll be the great chief of the Tartars. Already Arabs and Moroccans are mingling my name with their prayers.”<ref>Adolf Hitler, cited in Waite, Robert, Adolf Hitler: The Psychopathic God (NY: Basic Books, 1977) p. 261) (Lutzer, pp. 62-63.)</ref>[http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2132855/posts?page=101#101]

=== Hitler's Table Talk ===

Clear but disputable evidence reveals Hitler as promoting a form of paganism, which the Nazi party clearly sought to promote. ''Hitler's Table Talk'' is a series of informal, private conversations among Hitler and his closest associates, as recorded by Martin Bormann (himself one who was vehemently against Christianity). The ex tempore remarks excerpted below are attributed to Hitler:<ref>Adolf Hitler, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953</ref>

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941

*"[[National Socialism]] and religion cannot exist together....

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....

*"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday

*"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday

*"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity....
"Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse....

*"...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little....
"Christianity <is> the liar...

*"We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night

*"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

21st October, 1941, midday

*"Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer....

*"The decisive falsification of Jesus' [who he asserts many times was never a Jew] doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation....

*"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunized against the disease." (p 118-119)

14th December, 1941, midday

*"Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself....

*"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner

*"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity." (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday

*"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)

Miscellaneous other quotes include,

*"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it."

*"Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that's why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline."

*"We'll see to it that the churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth."

*"Indeed, it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this."

*"We do not want to educate anyone in atheism."

*"The observatory I'll have built at Linz, on the Pöstlingberg, I can see it in my mind ... In future, thousands of excursionists will make a pilgrimage there every Sunday. They'll thus have access to the greatness of our universe. The pediment will bear this motto: 'The heavens proclaim the glory of the everlasting.' It will be our way of giving men a religious spirit, of teaching them humility — but without the priests."

*"The final state must be: in St. Peter's Chair, a senile officiant; facing him, a few sinister old women, as gaga and as poor in spirit as anyone could wish."

*"For my part, in his place [the Duce] I'd have taken the path of revolution. I'd have entered the Vatican and thrown everybody out — reserving the right to apologize later: 'Excuse me, it was a mistake!' But the result would have been, they'd have been outside!"
[[Image:Nazi.jpg|thumb|right|250px|"With our flags is our victory"]]
*"But a pope, even a criminal one, who protects great artists and spreads beauty around him, is nevertheless more sympathetic to me than the protestant minister who drinks from the poisoned spring."

*"I have six Divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion. It doesn't prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls."

*"The soul and the mind migrate, just as the body returns to nature. Thus life is eternally reborn from life. As for the 'why' of all that, I feel no need to rack my brains on the subject. The soul is unplumbable."<ref>Hitler on Religion: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/religion.htm</ref>

Hitler, much like atheists, is seen to not only have scorned corruptions of Christian faith, but the whole faith as well. Having loosed himself from the moral authority of the Bible (though misappropriating it's "badge" at times for his own purposes) he was much free to be guided by his own "golden compass", which is ultimately the atheistic basis for determining morality. Tragically however, while an innate sense of right can be right, Hitler's compass pointed south rather than north.

==Economic planning==

[[James Burnham]], a former [[Trotskyite]] who served with the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS) during the World War II and later contributed to the ''[[National Review]]'', described the Nazi regime's [[economic planning]]. Burnham pointed out how the original "workers revolution" of [[Marxism]] had in fact become a managerial revolution in all societies were Socialism had been embraced. Writing in 1940, Burnham noted,

{{Cquote|Outright state ownership and operation, advancing in all fields, are particularly ascendant in the extensive areas of new enterprise opened up during the Nazi rule....virtually all economic enterprise is subject to rigid state control; and it is control which we have seen to be decisive in relation to the instruments of production. Legal forms, even income privileges, are in the end subordinate to ''de facto'' control.

Even where private owners still exist in Germany, the decisions about "their" property are not in their hands. They do not decide what to make or not to make. They do not establish prices or bargain about wages. They are not at liberty to buy the raw materials they might choose nor to seek the most profitable markets. They cannot, as a rule, decide how to invest or not invest their surplus funds. In short, they are no longer owners, no longer effective [[capitalist]]s...

The regulation of production in Germany is no longer left to the market. What is to be produced, and how much, is decided, deliberately, by groups of men, by the state boards and bureaus and commissions. It is they that decide whether a new plant shall be built or an old plant retired, how raw materials shall be allotted and orders distributed, what quotas must be fulfilled by various branches of industry, what goods shall be put aside for export, how prices shall be fixed and credit and exchange extended. There is no requirement that these decisions of the bureaus must be based on any profit aim in the capitalist sense. If it is thought expedient, for whatever reason, to produce, for example, an ersatz rubber or wool or food, this will be done even if the production entails, from a capitalist point of view, a heavy loss. Similarly, in order to accumulate foreign exchange or to stimulate some political effect in a foreign nation, goods will be exported regardless of loss. A factory may be compelled to shut down, even though it could operate at a high profit. Banks and individuals are forced to invest their funds with no reference to the private and voluntary opinions about "risks" from a profit standpoint. It is literally true to say that the Nazi economy, already, is not a "profit economy."

The workers, on their side, are no longer the "free proletarians" of capitalism. Under Nazism the workers are indeed, free from unemployment. At the same time they cannot, as individuals or through their own independent organizations, bargain for wages or change jobs at will. They are assigned to their tasks, and their labor conditions are fixed, by the decisions of the state bureaus and commissions. Millions of them are allotted to the vast state enterprises. ...With the reduction in the area of private enterprise and the increase of state enterprise, goes also a corresponding reduction in the social position of the private capitalists. So far as control over the instruments of production goes, the capitalists are already near the bottom. As to income privilege: a recent estimate by a New York statistician gives as a mere 5% the share of the German national income going to profits and interest. This is a substantial reduction from the 1933 figures, in spite of a huge increase in the total national income, which, under capitalism, would normally be accompanied by a percentage increase in profits. ...f the German capitalists' 5%, the greater part is appropriated by the state as taxes and "contributions." ...

...how seldom we find a manager among the voluntary or forced exiles from Nazi Germany! There are artists and writers among the exiles, ideologists and politicians, unassailable foes of the new regime, storekeepers and professionals and teachers, and not a few capitalists, both Jews and Christians. But almost never a manager....Germany is to-day a managerial state in an early stage. Structurally, it is less advanced along managerial lines than Russia; ...though structurally less advanced...Its industrial and technological foundation is far stronger; the rising managerial class is much larger, better trained, more able...

...The first part of the second world war, up to the fall of France in June, 1940, was in reality the continuation of the strategic extension begun in 1935. This phase, the consolidation of the European base, was completed with France's surrender. It is completed irreversibly and can no longer be undone whatever the outcome of the succeeding phases of the war, which are really other wars. This consolidation fundamental to the world politics of managerial society, is not going to be dissolved, not even if the present German regime is utterly defeated. The day of a Europe carved into a score of sovereign states is over; if the states remain, they will be little more than administrative units in a larger collectivity. <ref>Burnham, James (1966). ''The Managerial Revolution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomingham, pp. 222-226, 232.</ref>}}

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==See also==
*[[Anti-Semitism]]
*[[National Socialism]]
*[[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]
*[[Communism]]
*[[Health care in Nazi Germany]]

==External links==
*[http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html Marxism, Fascism, Nazism] - Brad DeLong, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley
*Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany, by Joe Keysor
{{Liberalism}}
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Political Parties]]
[[Category:Fascist States]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Christianity]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Racist Organizations]]
[[Category:Oppression]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]

Nazi Party

2015-09-17T15:05:25Z

Godblessjingoism: Grammar corrections

[[Image:Flag of Nazi Germany.png|thumb|200px|'''The flag of Nazi Germany''' featuring the notorious reverse swastika]]
The '''Nazi Party''' ('''NSDAP''', formally the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or in English ''National Socialist German Workers' Party''<ref> "Nazi" comes from the first word in the party's name, '''Na'''tionalso'''zi'''alistische.
</ref>) was a [[totalitarian]] movement and [[political party]] in [[Germany]] from 1919-1945. It was controlled after 1921 by [[Adolf Hitler]]. In 1933 the Nazis came to national power in Germany and took control of the government and most sectors of Germany's society and economy. The Nazi regime in Germany 1933-45 called itself the '''[[Third Reich]]'''.<ref>The German ''Drittes Reich'' means "Third Empire", after the [[Holy Roman Empire]] of 900-1806 and the [[German Empire]] of 1871-1918.</ref> The Nazis rearmed Germany, conquered the neighbors, murdered six million Jewish civilians and an estimated 15 million other 'undesirables' in the [[Holocaust]] and was finally destroyed in [[World War II]] by the [[Allies]] (the [[United States]], [[Britain]] and the [[Soviet Union]], along with smaller countries). Like Hitler, the Nazis have become synonymous with evil in the modern world. It is our duty to continue the Nazist traditions as the good conservatives we are. The dreams of the fuehrer will live on!

Despite being called the National Socialist Party, Hitler condemned the Soviet Union and communism, and after rising to power, outlawed the communist party and imprisoned and executed communists. Hitler advocated a form of fascism, and in fact, the National Fascist Party, an Italian political party, lead by Hitler's future ally, Benito Mussolini, at the same time, had incredibly similar policies.

==Foundations==

[[Adolf Hitler]] exploited the myth of the "Stab in the Back," the belief that the [[World War I]] had been lost because "disloyal" elements within Germany – [[Jews]] and [[Marxism|Marxists]] – had undermined the war effort. As [[William Shirer]] put it in ''The Rise and Fall of the [[Third Reich]]'',

<blockquote>
"To him, as to almost all Germans, it was ‘monstrous’ and undeserved. The German army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home.

Thus emerged for [[Hitler]], as or so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of the ‘stab in the back’ which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler’s ultimate triumph."
<ref name=rise>''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', Book One, "The Rise of Adolf Hitler". </ref>
</blockquote>

The origin of the Nazi Party was a small group originally called the "Committee of Independent Workmen", founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918. It had been set up in reaction to the [[Marxism]] of the free trade unions.<ref name=rise /> A year later in January 1919, Drexler's group merged with another group, the "Political Workers' Circle" to form a new party known as the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP). <ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf </ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref>

Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in September 1919 and was put in charge of propaganda in early 1920. Hitler transformed this small group into what we now know as the Nazi Party through his great skill in politics and public speaking. In February 1920, the words "National Socialist" were added to the party name and it became the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref> This is obvious proof that the Nazis were [[liberal]], despite liberals' claims otherwise. The Storm Troopers (''Sturmabteilung'', [[Brownshirts|SA]]) in their distinctive brown uniforms, were organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties and to protect Nazi Party meetings. The ''hakenkreuz'' (literally: "hooked cross"), or [[swastika]], was adopted as the party’s symbol which was used in their blood red flag. In July 1921, Hitler became party chairman, and declared himself leader (''Führer'') of the party.<ref>McNab, (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref>

*Here we have the core of Nazism: (i) a very strong dose of German anti-semitism (with a paranoid belief in a conspiracy between Jewish financiers who control the capitalist economy and steal from the Germans, Jewish liberal intellectuals who preach humanism and enfeeble the Germans, and Jewish communists who seek to enslave the Germans; (ii) a belief in the German nation and the "aryan" German race as an entity with a special, heroic destiny; (iii) war as the ultimate test of national strength and worth; and (iv) conquest--with extermination or removal of the resident population--to create more "living space" for the German people and larger fields for the German farmers. Add to this (a) the "leadership principle" (''Führerprinzip'') --a hatred of parliamentary institutions, and a belief that a good political order sees an inspired leader giving people vision and commands (rather than see parliamentarians haggle and compromise on behalf of interest groups)--(b) the use of terror to obtain obedience, and (c) the desire to make sure that all of society's organizations serve the national cause, and you have Nazism. <ref>http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html</ref>

==Anti-Semitism==

The Nazis were highly [[Anti-Semitism|anti-Semitic]] and blamed the Jews for many of the problems in Germany, such as the defeat in [[World War I]].
The Nazis passed the [[Nuremberg Laws]] in 1935 which stated that:
* Young German women could not work for Jews in the domestic services.
* Jews were no longer citizens of Germany (this meant that they had no protection from the police and so were susceptible to attack)
* Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat Germans/Aryans
* Jews could not marry Germans/Aryans
They made laws against Jews ("Rassengesetze", ''race laws'') which places successively tighter restrictions on the rights of Jews to own property, use public services, live in some areas, enter public spaces and eventually required Jews wear a [[Star of David]] on their clothing.
The Jews were mistreated, persecuted, and killed by the Nazis.
The Nazi state also persecuted other political opponents, such as [[Jehovah's Witnesses]]. State-run hospitals secretly euthanized the very old, the sick, mentally ill and the disabled. Some [[homosexuality|homosexuals]]<ref>Hans Peter Bleuel, ''Sex and Society in Nazi Germany'', (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1973).</ref>came under increasing scrutiny and persecution in the later years of the regime, although other homosexuals were ardent supporters of Adolf Hitler and played an important role in his regime <ref>[http://www.whale.to/b/reisman.html The Pink Swastika as Holocaust Revisionist History by Judith A. Reisman]</ref>.
The Nazis exterminated at least 11 million civilians by rounding them up, transporting them to concentration camps and then murdering them there. About 6 million of these were Jews (see [[Holocaust]]).

==Religion==
Hitler rejected Christianity as spoiled by Judaism, but did support a new pro-Nazi Protestant church that had a few followers. The Nazis often used the phrase "Gott mit uns" or "God with us", which was commonly used on their armor. Hitler in the future, however, planned to minimize the influence of Protestant and Catholic churches, while promoting as pre-Christian German paganism. Adolf Hitler was raised Roman Catholic as a youth, but he began to despise the church and all of Christianity as too pacifist or a "religion for weaklings".

=== Alfred Rosenberg ===

Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the party's official philosopher, announced the philosophic basis of the Nazi campaign. In his ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' he scorns the Old Testament, and while he takes Jesus more seriously, he concludes,<ref>Time (Sept 03, 1934)</ref>
:The religion of Jesus was undoubtedly the preaching of love . . . but the German religious movement, which wishes to develop into a people's church, must declare that it unconditionally subordinates the ideal of neighborly love to the ideal of national honor . . . The churches, handed over to it again, will, little by little, put the fiery spirit of the hero . . . in place of the crucifixion."

The outspoken [[pagan]] Rosenberg drew up a thirty-point program for the ''National Reich Church'', created in 1936, which contains the following statements,

*"The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be national churches of the German Reich.
*"The National Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably...the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800...
*"The National Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains or priests, but National Reich orators are to speak in them.
*"The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany...'"
*"On the altars there must be nothing but 'Mein Kampf' (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.
*"On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels...and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika."<ref>Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', p. 240</ref>

When a Manchester Guardian correspondent attended a Berlin meeting of the German People's Church, he found it a noisy, enthusiastic, a theological free-for-all. One Dr. Krause exclaimed, "The lives and utterances of great Germans must be considered equal to the Bible as revelations..."

=== Pagan cults ===

Throughout Germany strange little [[pagan]] cults were seen to arise, such as the pantheistic Nordic Religious Community.

Youth Leader Hartmann-Lautenbacher stated, "Besides the rock of Jesus Christ there is another: Adolf Hitler. It remains to be seen which of the two is stronger. On the one sit the old women. On the other stands the young generation."

Youth Press Agent August Hoppe exhorted war against Christianity, and a return to [[pagan]] roots.

Similar to what some see today in the West, Youth Leader Joachim Benedicte stated, "...The religious faith of the German people must be decided by political elements, the Storm Troops and the Hitler Youth."<ref>Religion: Nazis v. Jesus Christ, Time. 9-03-1934</ref>

As in Communism, the State, or ''Fatherland'' came to be deified, in the name of which Hitler justified his autocratic decision to kill - for political purposes - a large number of S.A. leaders while they were at a resort, during the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]."

Rather than initially attacking Christian faith outright, the Nazi party promoted itself as "positive Christianity," and vigorously opposed what they call "negative Christianity", both terms being Nazi inventions which could mean whatever the local Nazi leader chooses them to mean. In their Manifesto of their "anxieties and fears", the German Evangelical Church quoted Rosenberg as saying, "The general ideas of the Roman and of the Protestant churches are negative Christianity and do not, therefore, accord with our soul." The Manifesto concludes: "When, within the compass of the Nazi view of life, an anti-Semitism is forced on the Christian that binds him to hatred of the Jew, the Christian injunction to love one's neighbor still stands...The Evangelical conscience is most heavily burdened by the fact that there are still concentration camps in Germany that describes itself as a country in which Justice is administered..."<ref>Time magazine, Aug. 10, 1936, Foreign News: Churchmen to Hitler</ref>

=== Religious persecution ===

Overall however, the spiritual condition of Germany may be seen to have been weak by and during the time of Hitler's rise to power. Protestant churches in Germany had become largely institutionalized, and its power to effect political change decreased. The Catholic Institution had been pressured into a Concordant with Hitler, which the latter continually broke. Loyalties were torn as [[national socialism]] became the cause, and churches were pressured to submit to its ethos.<ref>''A history of national socialism, Cross against Swastika'', by Konrad Heiden</ref><ref>''Pius XII and the Nazis'', by Darlene Shelton</ref>Jews were overall seen negatively, stubborn and ungrateful.<ref>''Martin Luther and "The Jews" A Reappraisal'', by Dr. Christopher Probst</ref> After their rise to power the Nazis sought to purge the national German Evangelical Church of converted Jews, as well to make the church ideologically submissive to the state. By entertaining the Nazi doctrine of Aryan racial superiority and persecution of Jews, they militated against the authoritative position of the Scriptures. Largely in reaction to such the [[Confessing Church]] emerged. This Protestant church was not recognized by the Nazi's, and was persecuted and finally forced underground, as many members and leaders, such as [[Martin Niemöller]], were particularly active in protesting against euthanasia and the persecution of the Jews.<ref>The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008; Confessing Church</ref><ref>Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009, Confessing Church</ref>

Measures taken against the Christian Churches were an integral part of [[National Socialism]]. An [[OSS]] report to the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal]] Stated,
:"The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of persecution of priests, clergy and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes and confiscated Church property."<ref>Claire Hulme & Dr. Michael Salter, [http://www-camlaw.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/articles/RJLR_3_1_2.pdf ''The Nazi's Persecution as a War Crime: The OSS Response Within the Nuremeberg Trial's Process''], Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, n.d.</ref>

Though Christians sometime hold Hitler to be an atheist, and atheists often assert he was a Christian, the best evidence shows him to be neither, in particular failing to be the latter, especially in the Biblical sense of the word (being both the source and most authoritative definition of it). In contrast, evidence reveals that while Hitler shared with many atheists a dramatically skewed idea of what Christianity is, and or made political use of the term, he was quite the contrary to being a Christian.<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Holocaust-Bible-Scriptural-Anti-Semitism/dp/0982277601 Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis..., by Joe Keysor]</ref>

The resource site Adherents.com states,

There is no question that Hitler was a Nazi. Nazism was clearly his most important religious affiliation, not in the positive way the word “religion” is often defined, but in the general sense that any philosophy or belief system which is most important in a person’s life is that person’s “religion,” regardless of whether or not it is universally labelled as a “religion.” Hitler was also born into a Catholic family, but he rejected Catholicism and in most ways he rejected Christianity in general. On occasion we have read people claim that “Hitler was a Catholic” or “Hitler was a Christian” in a meaningful way, implying that Christianity or Catholicism was the primary impetus for his Nazi reign. Such claims are simply vitriolic attacks occasionally voiced by ideologically-inclined anti-Christian, anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi people. Historians agree that Hitler was pointedly anti-Christian. We are not aware of any published sources from acknowledged academic historians or writers that identify Adolf Hitler as significantly Catholic or Christian in his motivations as an adult.”<ref>http://www.adherents.com/people/ph/Adolf_Hitler.html</ref>

=== Hossbach Memorandum ===

In the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome (rather than such being a judgment due to its degradation, and persecution of Christians and its message), stating: "It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans." <ref>[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp]</ref>

Additionally, Albert Speer records that Hitler lamented, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion." and that Islam would have more compatible for them than Christianity.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=XLSa_RIDHMUC&dq=Albert+Speer,+Inside+the+Third+Reich,&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=551HSrzDDcm0twf6x7TbBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5 Inside the Third Reich, p. 96]</ref>

In another statement attributed to Hitler, he predicts, “I’m going to become a religious figure. Soon I’ll be the great chief of the Tartars. Already Arabs and Moroccans are mingling my name with their prayers.”<ref>Adolf Hitler, cited in Waite, Robert, Adolf Hitler: The Psychopathic God (NY: Basic Books, 1977) p. 261) (Lutzer, pp. 62-63.)</ref>[http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2132855/posts?page=101#101]

=== Hitler's Table Talk ===

Clear but disputable evidence reveals Hitler as promoting a form of paganism, which the Nazi party clearly sought to promote. ''Hitler's Table Talk'' is a series of informal, private conversations among Hitler and his closest associates, as recorded by Martin Bormann (himself one who was vehemently against Christianity). The ex tempore remarks excerpted below are attributed to Hitler:<ref>Adolf Hitler, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953</ref>

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941

*"[[National Socialism]] and religion cannot exist together....

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....

*"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday

*"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday

*"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity....
"Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse....

*"...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little....
"Christianity <is> the liar...

*"We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night

*"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

21st October, 1941, midday

*"Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer....

*"The decisive falsification of Jesus' [who he asserts many times was never a Jew] doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation....

*"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunized against the disease." (p 118-119)

14th December, 1941, midday

*"Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself....

*"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner

*"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity." (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday

*"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)

Miscellaneous other quotes include,

*"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it."

*"Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that's why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline."

*"We'll see to it that the churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth."

*"Indeed, it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this."

*"We do not want to educate anyone in atheism."

*"The observatory I'll have built at Linz, on the Pöstlingberg, I can see it in my mind ... In future, thousands of excursionists will make a pilgrimage there every Sunday. They'll thus have access to the greatness of our universe. The pediment will bear this motto: 'The heavens proclaim the glory of the everlasting.' It will be our way of giving men a religious spirit, of teaching them humility — but without the priests."

*"The final state must be: in St. Peter's Chair, a senile officiant; facing him, a few sinister old women, as gaga and as poor in spirit as anyone could wish."

*"For my part, in his place [the Duce] I'd have taken the path of revolution. I'd have entered the Vatican and thrown everybody out — reserving the right to apologize later: 'Excuse me, it was a mistake!' But the result would have been, they'd have been outside!"
[[Image:Nazi.jpg|thumb|right|250px|"With our flags is our victory"]]
*"But a pope, even a criminal one, who protects great artists and spreads beauty around him, is nevertheless more sympathetic to me than the protestant minister who drinks from the poisoned spring."

*"I have six Divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion. It doesn't prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls."

*"The soul and the mind migrate, just as the body returns to nature. Thus life is eternally reborn from life. As for the 'why' of all that, I feel no need to rack my brains on the subject. The soul is unplumbable."<ref>Hitler on Religion: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/religion.htm</ref>

Hitler, much like atheists, is seen to not only have scorned corruptions of Christian faith, but the whole faith as well. Having loosed himself from the moral authority of the Bible (though misappropriating it's "badge" at times for his own purposes) he was much free to be guided by his own "golden compass", which is ultimately the atheistic basis for determining morality. Tragically however, while an innate sense of right can be right, Hitler's compass pointed south rather than north.

==Economic planning==

[[James Burnham]], a former [[Trotskyite]] who served with the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS) during the World War II and later contributed to the ''[[National Review]]'', described the Nazi regime's [[economic planning]]. Burnham pointed out how the original "workers revolution" of [[Marxism]] had in fact become a managerial revolution in all societies were Socialism had been embraced. Writing in 1940, Burnham noted,

{{Cquote|Outright state ownership and operation, advancing in all fields, are particularly ascendant in the extensive areas of new enterprise opened up during the Nazi rule....virtually all economic enterprise is subject to rigid state control; and it is control which we have seen to be decisive in relation to the instruments of production. Legal forms, even income privileges, are in the end subordinate to ''de facto'' control.

Even where private owners still exist in Germany, the decisions about "their" property are not in their hands. They do not decide what to make or not to make. They do not establish prices or bargain about wages. They are not at liberty to buy the raw materials they might choose nor to seek the most profitable markets. They cannot, as a rule, decide how to invest or not invest their surplus funds. In short, they are no longer owners, no longer effective [[capitalist]]s...

The regulation of production in Germany is no longer left to the market. What is to be produced, and how much, is decided, deliberately, by groups of men, by the state boards and bureaus and commissions. It is they that decide whether a new plant shall be built or an old plant retired, how raw materials shall be allotted and orders distributed, what quotas must be fulfilled by various branches of industry, what goods shall be put aside for export, how prices shall be fixed and credit and exchange extended. There is no requirement that these decisions of the bureaus must be based on any profit aim in the capitalist sense. If it is thought expedient, for whatever reason, to produce, for example, an ersatz rubber or wool or food, this will be done even if the production entails, from a capitalist point of view, a heavy loss. Similarly, in order to accumulate foreign exchange or to stimulate some political effect in a foreign nation, goods will be exported regardless of loss. A factory may be compelled to shut down, even though it could operate at a high profit. Banks and individuals are forced to invest their funds with no reference to the private and voluntary opinions about "risks" from a profit standpoint. It is literally true to say that the Nazi economy, already, is not a "profit economy."

The workers, on their side, are no longer the "free proletarians" of capitalism. Under Nazism the workers are indeed, free from unemployment. At the same time they cannot, as individuals or through their own independent organizations, bargain for wages or change jobs at will. They are assigned to their tasks, and their labor conditions are fixed, by the decisions of the state bureaus and commissions. Millions of them are allotted to the vast state enterprises. ...With the reduction in the area of private enterprise and the increase of state enterprise, goes also a corresponding reduction in the social position of the private capitalists. So far as control over the instruments of production goes, the capitalists are already near the bottom. As to income privilege: a recent estimate by a New York statistician gives as a mere 5% the share of the German national income going to profits and interest. This is a substantial reduction from the 1933 figures, in spite of a huge increase in the total national income, which, under capitalism, would normally be accompanied by a percentage increase in profits. ...f the German capitalists' 5%, the greater part is appropriated by the state as taxes and "contributions." ...

...how seldom we find a manager among the voluntary or forced exiles from Nazi Germany! There are artists and writers among the exiles, ideologists and politicians, unassailable foes of the new regime, storekeepers and professionals and teachers, and not a few capitalists, both Jews and Christians. But almost never a manager....Germany is to-day a managerial state in an early stage. Structurally, it is less advanced along managerial lines than Russia; ...though structurally less advanced...Its industrial and technological foundation is far stronger; the rising managerial class is much larger, better trained, more able...

...The first part of the second world war, up to the fall of France in June, 1940, was in reality the continuation of the strategic extension begun in 1935. This phase, the consolidation of the European base, was completed with France's surrender. It is completed irreversibly and can no longer be undone whatever the outcome of the succeeding phases of the war, which are really other wars. This consolidation fundamental to the world politics of managerial society, is not going to be dissolved, not even if the present German regime is utterly defeated. The day of a Europe carved into a score of sovereign states is over; if the states remain, they will be little more than administrative units in a larger collectivity. <ref>Burnham, James (1966). ''The Managerial Revolution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomingham, pp. 222-226, 232.</ref>}}

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==See also==
*[[Anti-Semitism]]
*[[National Socialism]]
*[[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]
*[[Communism]]
*[[Health care in Nazi Germany]]

==External links==
*[http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html Marxism, Fascism, Nazism] - Brad DeLong, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley
*Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany, by Joe Keysor
{{Liberalism}}
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Political Parties]]
[[Category:Fascist States]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Christianity]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Racist Organizations]]
[[Category:Oppression]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]