Why we need to protect the free speech rights of Nazis.

Because to the left who is in control of media, academia and government, everyone not coordinated to their goals is a Nazi, including centrist employees of Google.

These were the people who called Mitt Romney a Nazi, after all.

The Nazi War on Christmas.

I dove into reading scholarly books because of the atheist claims that "Hitler was a Catholic" or "Hitler was a Christian." After reading Richard Stegman-Gall's "Holy Reich" and Susan Heschel's "The Aryan Jesus" and Kevin Spicer's "Resisting the Third Reich" and Hubert Wolf's "Pope and Devil" and Derek Hastings' "Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism.", my conclusion is that the truth is far more complicated and far more interesting.

Hitler was a political opportunist who was willing to adopt any pose necessary to advance his true mission - his god, as it were - namely, his vision of the destiny of hte German people and his role in that destiny.  Nazism started out in Catholic Bavaria as a political party within the cultural and religious Catholicism of the region.  This phase lasted for only a few years - perhaps three to five prior to the Munich Putsch.  Shortly before, the putsch, Hitler decided that his future lay in breaking out of the minority status that being a "Catholic" regional party would consign the National Socialists to, and he formed an alliance with arch-anti-Catholic Erich Ludendorff and emerged onto the national stage. 

From that point on, Nazism decisively broke with the traces of political Catholicism. Priests were no longer welcome in the Nazi party, Jesuits and "political Catholicism" were linked into a triumverate of all things that were not German, including Jews and Marxists, and the Nazis turned to Protestantism as the sect it favored.  Hitler identified Luther and Frederich the Great of Prussia as model heroes of the German nation, something which appealed to Protestants and was a bete noir to Catholics. Protestant pastors and devout Protestants joined the Nazi party in droves.  On the other hand, the Catholics who joined were lapsed Catholics, such Himmler and Hitler himself.

The broad logic of this was that Protestantism in Germany was inherently nationalistic in a way that Catholicism with its ultramontane allegiance to an Italian Pope could never be. A Nazi party member could be a pious Protestant in a way that he couldn't be a devout Catholic.  Thus, Hermann Goering could claim to be a "good Lutheran" up to the time of his death; Catholics like Himmler, on the other hand, apostized early in their career, and sought more outre religious options, like paganism or occultism or other weird made-up beliefs.

The "Protestant option" came with a price, and that price was remodeling Protestantism into a bizarre version of Christianity as if it had been envisioned by a bad science fiction writer. Thus, the Nazi "German Christian" version of Protestantism stripped the Old Testament out of the Bible, envisioned Jesus as the first Anti-Semitic warrior against the Jews, demanded that Christians of Jewish descent be barred from being pastors and segregated within the local churches, and re-wrote Christian Hymns.

The stripping of the Old Testament from the canon sparked the revolt of Confessing Church, led by of Martin Niemoller, who was a member of the Nazi party, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was not.

Eventually, Hitler and the Nazis, particularly the evil atheist Martin Bormann decided Martin Bormann decided that the Protestant option, even mediated through an "L. Ron Hubbard-like" fantasy filter was too much trouble.  After the war, all of the Christian sects would be broken by the policies that were being implemented against Catholicism.

So, was Hitler a Catholic?  Was he a Christian?  The answer would seem to be: What year are you talkng about? And, it depends on what you mean by Christian.

The clear arc of the Nazi program was anti-Christian insofar as Christianity was an institution or belief system that could oppose the totalizing program of National Socialism.  If it could be modified, castrated, mutated and then incorporated into Nazism, then they were "Christians" of the religion they invented.  If not, they weren't.

But Christianity isn't something that can be re-invented like that.  It has a tradition, history and core text.  In Christ, there is no gentile or Jew, said Paul.  That the Nazis got as far as they did is amazing, but there were limits after which Christianity was not Christian, and those limits had been reached in the early '30s.

Modern atheists like the late Christopher Hitchens can make the claim that the Nazis were Christian, but that mistake was not made by Christians of the period.  No Pasarin points out that Christians of the period lived through a "War on Christmas" that was like no other:

The alleged link between Christianity and Nazism is quickly debunked by a few seconds' thought. Think about it, indeed: how many times, in how many World War II books, in how many documentaries with 1940s footage, have you seen pictures — whether fake poses deliberately prepared for propaganda purposes or simply "innocent", matter-of-fact news shots — of Adolf Hitler or any high-level Nazi official in silent (Christian or other) prayer? Hands joined and/or eyes closed with head down?

How many times have you seen photos of Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, or any SS member seated in a pew or even simply appearing inside a church?

That's right, it's like snapshots, or films, of ostriches sticking their necks in the sand: there ain't any.

Pictures of Nazis honoring traditional religion and religious traditions simply do not seem to exist.

(Unless, of course, the presence of the high-level Nazi inside or in front of a given church has nothing to do with religion per se. For instance, there may exist photos of der Führer in front of the Sacré-Cœur cathedral — just like when he poses at the Trocadéro with the Eiffel Tower in the background — but that is as a tourist visiting a foreign capital or, rather, as a war leader visiting a defeated city.)

Now, should the need for more confirmation really exist, we have the 75 Years Ago section in the International Herald Tribune.

It is edifying — to say the least.

1937 — ‘Neo-Pagans’ Target Carols

BERLIN — De-Christianization of famous German Christmas hymns, such as “Silent Night, Holy Night,” is the outstanding contribution to the current holiday season of the rapidly spreading German faith movement or “religion” of National Socialism. In the new versions of the old songs reference to Nazi tenets of race, blood and soil replace familiar words concerning Christ, Child and the like. The accepted English translation of Mohr’s “Silent Night,” stanza three lines two and three is: “The Son of God loves pure light, radiant beams from thy Holy faith.” Equivalent lines in the Nazified version are “German blood, O how laugh the lips of thy children, blessed with joy.”

 

Of course, another reason a Nazi leader might meet with a religious leader might be for reasons of diplomacy with an ally — but again, no pictures seem to exist with any Catholic priest or Protestant preacher, German or foreign
 

I think a fair point to thinking about history is to ask, "what did the people living at the time think was happening?"  It seems apparent that outside observers, like William Shirer, saw paganism in Nazism, not Christianity.

A Hitchens' worshipper is outraged that I didn't treat his deity with more respect.

At my review of Himmler, someone who goes by Elvisload wrote this:

You misrepresent Hitchens' claim. He says that at the time, the Catholic Church did not disassociate themselves from Hitler, and that is an accurate statement.

It's a teaching opportunity, so my response went:

Elvisload,

You are ignorant or disingenuous or both, but out of charity, I'm assuming that you are just ignorant.

First, Hitchens constantly claimed in debates that "fascism was simply right wing fascism." He would then go on to link the Catholic Church to Hitler, sometimes by falsely claiming that Geobbels was excommunicated for "marrying a Protestant."

Second, you clearly have no idea about what you are talking about. If you did you should be ashamed for ignoring Mit Brennender Sorge, which was read from Catholic pulpits and condemned the ideology of National Socialism and resulted in the arrest and transport to concentration camps of the Catholic publishers of the encyclical or the fact that Bishop von Preysing publically denounced the murder of the disabled and in return had Nazis shoot at his home and had Himmler, Bormann and Goebbels plot how they would execute him after the war or Another outspoken opponent of the euthanasia policy, Bishop Clement von Galen, who similarly aroused the ire of the Nazis and had had Martin Bormann call for his execution or Monsignor Bernard Lichtenbergm who spoke out in support of the Jews and who was arrested, transported to a concentration camp, beaten and died for his belief that he had to love the Jews as his neighbors or the fact that in the Berlin diocese out of 260 active priests by 1945, 79 of those priests had been interrogated, warned, fined, arrested, imprisoned, transported to a concentration camp or executed for speaking out or resisting in some way the Nazi regime or the murder of thousands of priests by the Nazis, etc., etc.

Did you know that prior to the 1933 elections that put Hitler in power, the Catholic hierarchy told Catholics that they could not vote for the Nazis or join the Nazi party?

I'm sure that you and Hitchens from the safety of the 21st Century can think of a lot of ther things that the Catholic Church could have done, but then you're probably also the kind of person who gets upset when the Catholic Church takes positions on "political" issues like contraception or healthcare.

You've been sucked in by your Hitchens worship.

The "what" of Himmler is laid out in horrifying detail; the "why" remains a mystery.

Heinrich Himmler: A Life by Peter Longerich 

5 Stars - My review is here.

Peter Longerich's Heinrich Himmler is an excellent book on the life of Heinrich Himmler. In 750 pages of text and 200 pages of endnotes, we learn what seems like everything there is to be known about the political career of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, with "political" meaning Himmler's indefatigable efforts to murder every Jew that he could extend his jurisdiction to. We also get an exhaustive look at Himmler's "origin story," including his parents' history and his youth, his frustrated WW I military ambitions, his friendships and his university years, and his decision to stay within the sphere of German post-war right-wing Volkisch radicalism.

I have not been - and am not now - a World War II "nut." I have had friends who can rattle off the details of the major campaigns of the Eastern Front and seem to be on a first name basis with Erwin Rommel. I've never really been interested in that level of information about the "tactical" details of National Socialism, but, recently, because of the late Christopher Hitchens' scurrilous and false claim that Nazism was "right wing Catholicism," I've been examining the Nazi years, which has raised the issue of how people subjected to the Nazi regime understood themselves in terms of that regime. I thought that looking at the life of Heinrich Himmler, born a Catholic but converted to one of the arch-anti-Catholics of the Nazi regime might shed some light on that question.

I found that the book was compelling history. To be fascinating to the non-"nut" - the person who is not obsessed with a particular historical topic - it helps if the historical subject has an inherent "gosh-wow!" factor. The life of Himmler, unfortunately, has that "gosh-wow!" factor. From an overall perspective, the arc of Himmler's life takes him from being someone who desperately wanted to be a soldier but never was, who went from being a low-level organizer of a not-terribly important part of Germany to organizing political speeches, which required that he also provide security for those speeches through a small group known as the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squad) aka the "SS," a side-line which took him to being the second most important politician at the end of World War II with a virtual empire of terror throughout Europe, and a responsibility for mass murder rivaling Genghis Khan.

In short, it is as if your Rotary Club's "program director" pushed the envelope of his job assignment and became "Dr. Evil."

Longerich does a good job of following Himmler's upward career path. Himmler's chief gift seems to have been his ability to be obsequious to superiors. Himmler did his job competently and without question, and, apparently, his personality was such that he was trusted, notwithstanding his ability to engage in the ultimate act of betrayal to his former mentors. Thus, for example, Himmler was brought into the right-wing Volkisch movement by Ernst Rohm, the head of the SA, and his career was fostered by being the protégé of "left-wing" Nazi Gregor Strasser. However, on the Night of Long Knives, Himmler had no difficulties in demonstrating his loyalty to Hitler by having his SS murder Rohm and Strasser, an act that Himmler subsequently touted as an indication of the toughness required of an "SS man."

Himmler's ascent seems almost effortless. Himmler seems to have simply accreted power and titles over time. His job as SS head seemed to logically imply that he should take over the police of various states, ultimately resulting in his being handed the Prussian secret state police, the Gestapo. The control over the police led to his control over concentration camps, which led to his control over Jewish policy, which led to his major role in the conquered territories, which led to the Waffen-SS, until eventually Himmler was the Interior Minister and, by the way, was also responsible for the department involved in farming a rubber substitute.

Longerich also demonstrates Himmler's single-minded determination to kill every last Jew in Europe, even when he was faced with opposition by Fascists. That last point struck me as surprising. It clearly doesn't fit the "narrative" that has been pressed for the last forty years that all of Christian Europe was just waiting for an opportunity to commit mass murder of the Jews, but it seems that Italy was a positive thorn in the side for Himmler, refusing to release any Jews to Himmler in Italy or in its zones of control in southern France and the Balkans. Himmler was able to seize Italian Jews only after Mussolini was removed from power, and Germany was able to take military control of Italy in 1943. The idea of Mussolini as protector of the Jews seems anomalous, but while he was no friend to the Jews, he was also no Himmler. Himmler had an easier time surmounting the opposition of Tiso in Slovakia and he was able to overcome Hungarian opposition to Jewish deportations with a coup.

For the wealth of information Longerich provides, we never do draw a real bead on Himmler's motivations. Longerich provides a lot of detail on Himmler's life before his Nazi years. We learn about his social awkwardness and his need to control the personal lives of others - something recreated by Himmler in the SS as prime mechanism of controlling his subordinates (along with the tried and true practice of giving disgraced failures from other walks of life a second chance in the SS.) But we don't see in those years the things that would make Himmler so very dedicated to the murder of Jews. Himmler's childhood exposure to anti-semitism was minimal, and there is nothing in his family upbringing that seems to have inculcated a hatred to Jews. During his university years, if anything, Himmler was exposed in Catholic circles to an anti-anti-semitic tendency; in a controversy over whether the dueling societies would permit dueling with Jews, the Catholic student organizations for matters of principle opposed the marginalization of Jews, although they remained traditionally anti-semitic on religious grounds (p. 34.)

It seems that during his early twenties - from age 23 to 25 - Himmler underwent a rejection of the values he had been raised in. It was during this period that the previously arch-Catholic Himmler rejected Catholicism and religious faith in favor of the weird interest in occultism and paganism that he would pursue throughout his life. Concomitant with this was his turn to racial anti-semitism. We don't really get a look at what caused this turn, except that Himmler seems to have "reasoned" his way into occultism, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism by reading occultic, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic books. (By the way, on that last, it's fascinating how often we find Himmler lumping "Jesuits" in with Jews as his particular bête noire. Himmler's attacks on the Jesuits and the Catholic Church are of a piece with the traditional liberal anti-Catholicism of the Kulturkampf. See The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany).)

A weakness of the book is that we don't really get an investigation of what this turn meant to Himmler. After his university years, the private life of Himmler closes off. We do find out about Himmler's relationship with his wife, and his apparently close relationship with his daughter. We hear about his affair with his secretary and the creation of his second family. But we don't really get any sense of what those relationships meant for him; like the mass murder of the Jews, they are just data of his life, without emotional "qualia." Surprisingly, we get very little insight into Himmler's relationship with Hitler, albeit we learn from an observer of his short, ill-fated tenure as a military general at the very end of the war that he was terrified of disappointing Hitler.

Longerich's book caused me to realize that our view of the Nazis was that portion of the National Socialist project that belonged to Himmler. If we think about what we view as the distinctive features of National Socialism, we might think of the occultism, or the cult of race, or the idea of disciplined, emotionless, loyal elite willing to subordinate their humanity for their leader, or their Nazi "super-science," or the mass-murder of the Jews. All of those features were part of Himmler's vision of what National Socialism meant. Those features don't necessarily apply to other Nazi leaders, e.g., Hitler had disdain for Himmler's occultism and Rohm's view of National Socialism was not elitist. As Longerich points out "[i]f Himmler had been replaced in the 1930s by someone else, this specific and highly dangerous network of different powers would not have come into being. If on the other hand, these responsibilities had been distributed among several Nazi politicians as separate domains, Nazi policy could not have led to its dreadful consequences in quite the same way."(p. 747 - 748.)

Nothing in Himmler's childhood and youth point to the man he became. Take out - or change - that man and perhaps, perhaps, millions don't die. That is maybe the saddest of "gosh-wow!" observations - individuals matter to history.

Hitler's Pope.

Here's a bit of Nazi propaganda from 1932.

This site explains:

From the July 1932 Reichstag election. The poster shows a Nazi pile driver hitting the party’s opponents. The gentlemen in black represents the Catholic Center Party, the one to the right the Marxist parties. The poster suggests the two are tied together in an unholy alliance against National Socialism. Courtesy of Dr. Robert D. Brooks.

There is also this one:

Which is explained as:

I think this dates to 1927, when Hitler was prohibited from speaking in most of Germany. The text translates:

“Who is Adolf Hitler? The man from the people, for the people! The German front soldier who risked his life in 48 battles for Germany! What does Adolf Hitler want? Freedom and food for every decent working German! The gallows for profiteers, black marketeers and exploiters, regardless of religious faith or race! Why is Adolf Hitler not allowed to speak? Because he is ruthless in uncovering the rulers of the German economy, the international bank Jews and their lackeys, the Democrats, Marxists, Jesuits, and Free Masons! Because he wants to free the workers from the domination of big money! Working Germans! Demand the lifting of the illegal ban on his speaking!

Courtesy of Dr. Robert D. Brooks.

The Nazis often grouped Jews, Marxist and Catholics, particularly Jesuits, together as objects of conspiratorial hate.

Nazi anti-catholicism was part of a long-standing tradition in German politics, going back to the Kulturkampf. Any number of reputable history books will provide significant descriptions on that history. I found these posters interesting as contemporary, mass-media, visual evidence of that tradition.

This Guy.

The photo was taken in Hamburg in 1936, during the celebrations for the launch of a ship. In the crowed, one person refuses to raise his arm to give the Nazi salute. The man was August Landmesser. He had already been in trouble with the authorities, having been sentenced to two years hard labour for marrying a Jewish woman.

We know little else about August Landmesser, except that he had two children. By pure chance, one of his children recognized her father in this photo when it was published in a German newspaper in 1991. How proud she must have been in that moment.

Just another unremembered act of courage - Anti-Nazi German Martyrs.

You get sense from the popular "Hitler's Pope" and "Hitler was a Christian" folderol that all Christians were uniformly carrying the water for the Nazis.  The subtext of this idea is the notion that all Christians - and particularly priests and pastors - were virulent anti-semites that supported the Nazi party on anti-semitic grounds.  This kind of mindset gets cemented by the attention that books like Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners," John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" and  James Carroll "Constantine's Sword" from the popular media, which helps to cement a zeitgeist that acts in the place of real knowledge.

One of the problem with such broad-brush approach to history is that it is slanderous to the many Christians who opposed the Nazi party on the grounds of their faith and suffered the consequences.  When I read about such instances, I am honestly surprised because despite the fact that I know that there were such martyrs, conditioned by the zeitgeist, I'm surprised to see so many.

A case in point is this article from Huffington Post, which still manages to give the story a liberal, anti-catholic spin, which is probably the only reason that the story gets attention:

Beatification Of WWII Martyrs Divides Lutherans, Catholics

LUEBECK, Germany (RNS) Residents of this north German city have long taken pride in four native sons -- three Catholic priests and a Lutheran pastor -- who were beheaded in quick succession on Nov. 10, 1943 by the Nazi regime.


The commingled blood of Catholic priests Johannes Prassek, Hermann Lange, Eduard Mueller and Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink spawned an ecumenical cooperation between the city's majority Lutherans and minority Catholics that still lasts.

But the Vatican's decision to beatify the three priests on June 25 -- but not Stellbrink -- is testing that ecumenical spirit, and has some religious leaders worried that the event could drive a wedge between the two communities.

"People worry that the priests who are beatified will be seen as higher than Stellbrink, and that the focus will be on the three, not the four," said the Rev. Constanze Maase, pastor of Luther Church in Luebeck.

"We recognize that beatification is an important part of the identity of the Catholic Church. But there is a sadness, because it makes the ecumenical work more complicated," he said.

Prassek was a 30-year-old chaplain at Luebeck's Sacred Heart Catholic Church when he met Stellbrink, a 47-year-old pastor at the nearby Luther Church, at a funeral in 1941. They had a shared disapproval of the Nazi regime, and Prassek soon introduced Stellbrink to his two Catholic colleagues, Lange and Mueller.

The four clergymen were active but discreet in their anti-Nazi activities, speaking out against the Nazis and distributing pamphlets to close friends and congregants.

That changed when the British Royal Air Force bombed Luebeck on March 28, 1942. After Stellbrink spent the night tending to the wounded, he went to his church to celebrate Palm Sunday, and attributed the bombing to divine punishment.

Stellbrink was arrested a few days later, followed soon after by the priests. All four were sentenced to death. Rather than fear their executions, the four were said to have died as happy martyrs, confident that they were going to be with God.

"Who can oppress one who dies," Prassek wrote in a farewell letter to his family.

Just as Christian tradition sees the blood of the martyrs as the seeds of the church, many observers credit the four clergymen with spawning a German ecumenism that had been almost unheard of until then.

What an impressive story, and let's acknowledge that in many ways Pastor Stellbrink's strength is particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that at least the Catholic priests knew that their church opposed Nazism, whereas Pastor Stellbrink's church was divided between the "German Christians" - who supported the "nazification" of the Protestant church - and the "Confessing Church" - which didn't.

But the anti-Catholic angle is just weird. Are we supposed to assume that the Lutheran church and Lutherans now recognize the Catholic Church as the authority on who is in heaven?  Has the Lutheran church amended its position on intercessionarly prayer, and that Lutherans are really go to say, "St. Karl Stellbrink, ora pro nobis."  I certainly can say such a thing, and there are examples of non-Catholics who have been canonized - such as St. Nicetas the Goth - but I just don't see Lutherans bending their knee to a Catholic saint.

Moreover, we could just imagine the outrage we would be hearing if the Catholic Church decided to beatify a Lutheran pastor - assuming that its post-Trent rules for canonization even allow such a thing.  Such a move would be taken as an indication of the Catholic Church's "imperialism" and its condescension that Karl Stellbrink's sacrifice was meaningless unless he was Catholic.

It's just another convenient stick for the folks at Huffington Post.


One thing that this rather inane story shows is that the Catholic Church matters.  It is the one church that non-members believe that they have a stake in running.  Non-Catholics, and Non-Christians, are constantly interjecting their views on what doctrines and practices that the Catholic Church should have and follow, as if (a) their opinion mattered and (b) the Catholic Church's doctrines and practices mattered.

Let's face it, when was the last time you saw a news story about non-Methodists being concerned about some doctrine or practice of the United Methodist Church.

Ditto for Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc.

Apart from the modern political angle, the historical circumstance is fascinating. How often did this kind of thing happen? What motivated the Nazis to pick up the priests?  Did they preach an anti-Nazi or "defeatist" sermon?  Who knows?  But this kind of thing was all too common at the time, notwithstanding the view of people like Cornwell who wish to opine on the decision and courage of people on the spot from the safety and security of the offices.

This is kind of unsettling to one of my cherished prejudices.

I had always had the unspoken assumption that the Nazi leadership was really stupid, because it seems that they would have had to have been stupid to believe the nonsense that passed for truth in Nazi ideology.

I know, of course, that this is my socially-conditioned prejudice.  I know intellectually that the ideas of eugenics and race and Social Darwinism were the common currency of the educated elites throughout America and Europe prior to World War II, and by "educated elites," I'm including free-thinking leftists like H.L. Mencken, who had quite the thing for Nietzsche.

Vox Day points to the results from IQ tests administered to Nazi leaders at Nuremberg:

Not that it is likely to, but the results of the IQ tests performed by an American Army psychologist at the Nuremberg Trials should put at least a slight damper on the often-heard atheist appeals to intelligence. Especially since at 121.72, the average IQs of the National Socialist leadership was more than a standard deviation higher than the 103.09 mean IQ reported for atheists:

IQ of Nazi leaders, cited from: Gilbert, G. M.: Nuremberg Diary. New York: Signet Book 1947, p. 34; Wechsler-Bellevue

Hjalmar Schacht, Reich Minister of Economics: IQ 143

Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Foreign Minister of Germany: IQ 141

Hermann Göring, President of the Reichstag and Reich Minister of Aviation: IQ 138

Karl Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine: IQ 138

Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production: IQ 128

Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht: IQ 127

Alfred Rosenberg, Commissar for Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Education of the German National Socialist Workers Party: IQ 127

Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer: IQ 120

In my mind, Hess and Rosenberg will always be high-functioning morons.

Actually, I'm still surprised the Hess did so well. A person who decides it would be a good idea for the second ranking leadier of a country to fly solo into an enemy country duing a war sounds like someone with a room temperature IQ at best, and a very cool room at that.

...which in light of his IQ score makes you wonder if there really wasn't something more to his flight....

...nah, what kind of game is it that puts such an intelligence asset into the hands of the enemy?