Post Author: Bill Pratt

Because of some public statements Hitler made about Christianity, some have argued that he was a Christian himself, notwithstanding the fact that all of the the atrocities he committed were blatantly contrary to everything Jesus and his apostles ever taught.  Nevertheless, these people maintain that he considered himself a Christian.

David Robertson, in his book The Dawkins Letters, explains that “if we really want to know what Hitler thought, his actions and above all his private words are the most compelling evidence.”  Roberston, who has studied Nazi Germany extensively, quotes Hitler’s personal secretary, Traudl Junge, speaking about conversations they had concerning Christianity.

Sometimes we also had interesting conversations about the church and the development of the human race.  Perhaps it’s going too far to call them discussions, because he would begin explaining his ideas when some question or remark from one of us had set them off, and we just listened.  He was not a member of any church, and thought the Christian religions were outdated, hypocritical institutions that lured people into them.  The laws of nature were his religion.  He could reconcile his dogma of violence better with nature than with the Christian doctrine of loving your neighbour and your enemy.  ‘Science isn’t yet clear about the origins of humanity,’ he once said.  ‘We are probably the highest stage of development of some mammal which developed from reptiles and moved on to human beings, perhaps by way of the apes.  We are a part of creation and children of nature, and the same laws apply to us as to all living creatures.  And in nature the law of the struggle for survival has reigned from the first.  Everything incapable of life, everything weak is eliminated.  Only mankind and above all the church have made it their aim to keep alive the weak, those unfit to live, and people of an inferior kind.’

As Robertson aptly comments after this quote, “That just about says it all.””