Ernst
Zündel Ernst
Zündel There is a very selfish reason why Christian churches have traditionally
supported the Holocaust. It's called self-interest and territoriality.
Many
Christian leaders saw National Socialism as a competing religion. As a
coherent and internally consistent value system, National Socialisms was
enormously appealing to many decent people because it offered many things
the Churches had traditionally proffered: A deep belief in a higher Being
and one's own role in Destiny, a strong value system that clearly delineated
right from wrong, a sense of community and belonging, emphasis on clean
living and, hence, rejection of foul sex and art, rejection of alcohol,
nicotin and drugs, respect for unborn life (abortions were outlawed) a
sense of mission and purpose for the greater good, the worship of martyrs
in powerful, torch-lit or candle-lit rituals, quasi-religious holidays
etc.
The spiritual character of National Socialism is largely unknown in the
Western world, but those who experienced it will tell you that it was seductive
and powerful stuff. It had a much wider scope than people realize - it
wasn't just political. It was both a theology of liberation and a theology
of ecology. "Volk" is a religious value in Germany, as is the
concept "Heimat" - meaning homeland but having a much deeper
emotional resonance than the English term conveys.
Additionally, National Socialism gave the people something that the churches
had never offered: rewards on earth on behalf of the earth by tying the
"Volk" to the soil. Hitler might well have invented the drive
for pure air and healthy bodies through properly grown food, which has
led many who understand National Socialism to use the phrase: "The
first Greens were the Browns".
Take this Hitler statement, for example:
"A god should take a mighty hammer and smash all the industrial centers, and with them the musty living quarters in the large cities. Only then would it be possible to undo the wrong that has been done; only then would we be in a position to build for the German Volk, for the working man, for German youth the homes they need, the homes they have the right to demand and we have a duty to give them. . .
I see a flourishing land before me more beautiful than it has ever been. A coming century will see the plow of forgiveness and a new life over the ugly sites of black factory chimneys and narrow mass living quarters. . .
I am convinced that, if we pursue new avenues with persistence and consistency - to speed up, for example, the length of time it takes for vegetables to grow, to double the fruit harvests and increase the size of fruits, our efforts will succeed. . . we must pull the sun down from the heavens!" (Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, Edited by Ashby Turner, p 111)
It is one thing to be virtuous in hopes of going to Heaven; it is far
more immediate and convincing to know that it is possible through selfless
dedication to a higher cause to create a near-Heaven on earth. That is
what the Germans believed. Personal honor was everything. Loyalty counted
for something - as did diligence, selflessness, honesty. Between business
partners who exchanged "Ehrenwort", a handshake was customarily
enough.
The National Socialist ideology was not "otherwordly"; it was
enormously rewarding and soul-fulfilling in the here-and-now. There were
immediate, tangible benefits. It paid to have strong, clean and healthy
families. It paid to pull good grades in school. It paid not just for people
who applied themselves - it paid dividends for the state in money saved
on welfare cases; it spared families the trauma and cost of illness; and
it empowered healthy and capable individuals to rise to their fullest potential,
while providing role models for those less endowed.
Otto Wagener, one of Hitler's early confidants, recalls that Hitler said:
". . . the introduction of a socialist economy is more than a decree. It requires a moral understanding, an ethical conviction, a religious profession of faith.
For in its innermost essence, it is a turning away from the idolatry of previous millenia, the overcoming of a monetary system already attacked by Moses and Christ, which could be maintained to the present day only by keeping people stupid and terrorizing them, and by a mendacious sanctimoniousness. To bring about this powerful revolution is our mission. . . "
(Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. p. 263)
Hitler put the finger on the sore of what ailed many churches today,
and what makes people turn away from traditional and often empty dogma.
These days, "Judeo-Christianity" is one of the favorite liberal
shibbolets that the liberal churches pursue. Not so in Hitler's time.
According to a recent theological essay by Thomas Schirrmacher (National
Socialism, Christian Reconstruction and the Future of Germany, Calvinism
Today, 1991) one of the first actions of Hitler's was to insist that the
churches purge themselves of "Jewish-Christian" members. This
meant that all the members of all churches from a Jewish background were
disciplined - and this in churches where church discipline had nearly totally
faded! This gigantic church discipline, claims Schirrmacher, a theologian
himself, took place quietly and without big protests. Another spirit had
taken over the churches.
Schirrmacher explains how the liberal churches in Germany in our era
". . . more or less equate(s) religion and culture. The sociology of religion in Germany is run by very strong and convinced atheists who work with the illusion that they can study religions from a neutral standpoint. But they understand that you can only define religion if you define its function in society."
Conventional pietism, writes Schirrmacher,
". . . started its message with claiming a bad conscience and Jesus as the solution to get rid of it. Sin was what produced a bad conscience. This made sin a subjective feeling. There was no discussion about the objective law which must rule and guide the conscience. . . . Jesus only dealt with part of the inner life, not with the thought and work of the whole person - not to speak about the family, the church or the state."
Hitler embraced all aspects the way the churches in his time did not
- the inner life, the family, the church, the state, the channeling of
money where it would do most good. He had, essentiallly, the Christian
view of marriage and family - that is, uncompromising monogamy. The protection
of the family meant that abortion, homosexuality, incest, pornography and
other things were strictly forbidden by law and incarceration and sentences
at concentration camps like Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald etc. were imposed
on the transgressors. (This means that not all inmates in these camps were
the "noble" anti-Nazis the way they pose today. . . )
In summary, the German leader Adolf Hitler managed to convince the people
that there was a natural moral code of benefit to individuals as well as
to the state - and that that natural moral code would do away with decadence.
A second, powerful reason why there was resistance and resentment in the
traditional churches to a "rival religion" was that National
Socialism infringed on previous church authority that charged for controlling
society. For instance, everybody had to marry at a state office, so that
the Christian or religious marriage inside a stale and boring church became
an optional ceremony with no legal value.
Also, there was a constant interplay with words used as efficient tools
of social shaping. For instance, take the word "Heil!" The German
word for Saviour is "Heiland" - He Who Heals the Land. The word
had strong religious overtones. Writes Schirrmacher:
It is impossible to count how many billion times the Germans said "Heil Hitler" during the Third Reich. . . only a few non-Germans realize that "Heil" is the German word for 'salvation' which is extensively used in the German Bible translations. "Salvation Hitler" or "Salvation through Hitler" was the daily message; every German, including nearly all the Christians . . . Although some tried to explain "Heil Hitler" was wishing salvation for Hitler, the official meaning was clear: Hitler is the salvation for Germany and for the world.
These religious overtones were present in practically all state functions. The chief of the united trade unions, for instance, proclaimed in a speech:
"We believe that National Socialism is the alone saving faith for our people. We believe that there is a Lord-God in heaven, who created us, who leads us, who directs us and who blesses us visibly.
And we believe that this Lord-God sent Adolf Hitler to us, so that Germany becomes a foundation for all eternity."
It is easy to see how intellectually stodgy church leaders saw themselves
replaced and made obsolete. Their perks and power were waning. Their idle
life was soon replaced by the necessity of having to work for a living.
For that reason alone - along with many others - the church ideologues
feared National Socialism as a new religion as the Devil fears the holy
water.
This explained and still explains the traditional churches' willingness
to cooperate with Jews, Freemasonry and even atheistic Bolsheviks - who
were killing millions of Christians at the time in Soviet Russia, Spain,
Hungary and China to help them get rid of Hitler by sabotaging and betraying
his regime.
It still explains the churches' disgusting role today in Holocaust Promotion
- making saints out of people like Kolbe, the Jewish-nun Stein etc. who
are being canonized for having been in concentration camps by a politicized
church under a politically active and astute Polish Pope once an Anti-Nazi
guerilla fighter - a man who is believed by many be at least partly of
Jewish origin.
Again, to quote Schirrmacher:
"We could discuss the parallels between the salvation history of orthodox Christianity and of National Socialism. But surely the most impressive argument is the everyday songs, the poems, official rituals and lectures of the Third Reich. The Nazis never hid the religious character of their actions.
Take, for example, the following statement:
'National Socialism is a religion, born out of blood and race, not a political world view. It is the new, alone true religion, born out of a nordic spirit and an aric soul.'
(Quoted from an anti-Nazi postwar occupation publication, Johann Neuhäuser, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz, part 1, München: Verlag Katholische Kirche Bayerns, 1946, p. 261)
No wonder the churches felt threatened. They were becoming irrelevant
and marginal in their influence and, hence, desperate to hang onto their
power perks and control over the German people. No surprise that this is
true in Germany even today.
With Hitler Germany's demise, the German churches have become the wealthiest
churches in the world - and some of the most stagnant. Hundreds of thousands
of church members have resigned in recent years because the existing church
dogma is hollow, and no longer addresses the spiritual needs of the German
people!
November 16, 1996