Comment Re:Hmm (Score 1) 1168
Hitler and Nazi Germany were opposed to religion.
I have many more than just one quote. Hitler refers to the Christian God and Jesus many times in his various speeches; at one point the Nazis even tried to setup their own church. There were attempts to evict those Christian sects that were felt to be insufficiently Germanic, but the Nazis in general were a Christian group.
A more telling quote from historian Richard Steigmann-Gall is more telling:
"What we suppose Nazism must surely have been about usually tells us as much about contemporary societies as about the past purportedly under review. The insistence that Nazism was an anti-Christian movement has been one of the most enduring truisms of the past fifty years.... Exploring the possibility that many Nazis regarded themselves as Christian would have decisively undermined the myths of the Cold War and the regeneration of the German nation
The Nazis used the writings of Martin Luther in particular to support their beliefs; the party even held mass celebrations in support of his 450th birthday.
Also inarguable is the fact that 95+% of Nazis were brought up in Christian households with Christian values. None of which apparently did anything to stop them from perpetrating the worst injustices of the modern age.
I'd be careful using Wikipedia as a reference here. There are unfortunately many writings both for and against Hitler's belief or disbelief in 'God'; however the Nazi regime was much bigger than just Hitler. And as Mr. Steigmann-Gall alludes to in the above quote, many historians and writers since the end of WWII have tried to paint Hitler as being non-Christian, as they are unable to conceive how a Christian person could commit such atrocities, in "No True Scotsman" fashion. Regardless, Hitler wasn't brought up as an Atheist with modern Humanist values, and he certainly wasn't opposed to religion -- at the very least, everyone can pretty much agree that he was more than happy to use it as a useful tool in advancing his agenda.
Yaz