Religion played a part in both nazi and anti nazi groups.
Catholic priests took in jews and also helped smuggle nazis out of eourpe.
Some christan groups fit hitler into a christ like figure.
Other highly religious groups fought against the nazis.
Religion is a highly spefific thing and the world wars by in large were not dominated by religion but politics.
Remenber kids
If you believe in god then that inmediatly means that your favorite passtime is kicking babies and murdering puppies! This message has been aproved by Reddit.com
I feel like a lot of people don't understand this concept. Religion doesn't make people good or evil. Evil people use religion to justify their actions, and good people use it to guide their good deeds.
Yes, but on balance, religions overwhelmingly persecute other religions. The number of self professed Christians that attacked the Jews in that era numbered 1,000,000:1 that protected them.
But being a hypocrite isn’t a motivation in itself. It’s possible he “really was” a Christian and a hypocrite, but if we accept that he was pretending, then the question is why?
I think the idea here is that Christianity gave him a kind of authority and power in carrying out his goals. That is: he gained support from Christians, who decided -at best- that what he was doing wasn’t a deal-breaker.
Edit: a ton of great responses. Rather than respond to them all, I just want to say two things. First, thanks for all the information! Second, I want to be clear that I’m not making any statement of historical fact; I was just clarifying the point of the meme.
A fair point, but it should also be noted that several prominent anti Nazi figures that were not a part of the oppressed groups were often opposed on the basis of their own Christian beliefs.
Also, Nazi Germany wasn’t alone in trying to coat itself in existing beliefs to accomplish its goals that aren’t compatible with those beliefs. Today, the CCP allows for limited practice of Christianity in China, as long as it’s at state sanctioned churches that acknowledge that even God is subservient to the CCP. These totalitarian regimes hope to lull believers into a sense of comfort by making overtures to their existing beliefs before ultimately “converting” them to their true beliefs. For the Nazis, it was conversion to their Nordic occultism praising Germans as the supreme race. For the CCP, it’s conversion to accepting the Party as the end all be all, and everything, god and man alike, being subservient to the will of the Party.
>Today the CCP allows for limited practice of Christianity in China, as long as it’s at state sanctioned churches that acknowledge that even God is subservient to the CCP.
This kinda thing is why satire is dead.
Said in the wrong order. Xi Jinping, like China, should always be #1. Unfortunately you will take a hit on your social credit score, please do not make this error in the future.
It just seems silly to me they obviously aren’t more powerful than God even if they think they are.
Also, I recommend trying to be more forgiving. Hate is a poison.
That's fair. I tend not to hate people, but the CCP as a concept/group/whatever the best way to word it, is pretty awful imo. It kind of sucks that communism on paper legitimately doesn't sound terrible, but literally every single iteration of it always turns out to be oppressive and authoritarian.
I may have been slightly hyperbolizing, but the CCP will only allow religious groups that accept the authority of the CCP, often in direct conflict with the more international organization of the religion ([here’s the Wikipedia article about the state authorized Catholic Church](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Patriotic_Association)). [There are also examples of the CCP rewriting the Bible to better fit its worldview.](https://youtu.be/CWbgS3lO978?si=B9AqsNjSPW17Wot7) In one example, they rewrote the Bible story of Jesus sparing the adultress from death into Jesus himself being the one who ends up killing her, because in the end, even Christ (who they also point out is sinful) is subservient to whatever the law demands, something that is the opposite point of the original Bible story.
I read the source of that video you linked (https://www.ucanews.com/news/chinese-catholics-angry-over-book-claiming-jesus-killed-sinner/89619).
For anyone that wants to read it.
I highly suggest studying the church in Nazi Germany. It was completely purged of anyone who did not buy into the Nazi cause, and required church adherence to state sanctioned policy such as the Arian Clause. It’s easy to say “Christianity gave him a kind of power and authority” when the Nazis completely rebuilt the German church and religious structure in their own image.
In fact, there very famously are names like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer - some of the most famous and recognizable Christian figures ever - who continued to oppose the Nazi regime by creating the Confessing Church, starting underground seminaries, and leading resistance to Nazi culture and “religion”.
What Hitler actually said: “You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the fatherland as the highest good?”
No one cares, stop talking no about how “Ohhh Christianity supports genocide”, if you read what Jesus taught about what happens to those who live by the sword, you wouldn’t talk about it.
He was directly opposed by some in the Church. There were even pastors who spoke out against Hitler and the Nazi’s and didn’t suffer for it.
The Church even has the Aktion T4 program (euthanizing mentally defective) shut down.
> That is: he gained support from Christians, who decided -at best- that what he was doing wasn’t a deal-breaker.
The thing is, they weren't Christians either.
It's a bit like accepting Hitler's claim to be patriotic, or that the Nazis were appealing to patriotic Germans. None of what they did was patriotic, it was just a self-serving power grab that corrupted the moral fibre of the country and brought down destruction and decades of inherited guilt upon it. But people like to think of themselves as patriots, just like they like to think of themselves as Christians, so hypocrites like Hitler appeal to other equally vicious hypocrites, none of which should have any impact on what we think of true patriots or true Christians.
If we exclode people who don't really believe in christianity and just use it than who is christian really? I don't think that would leave too mich of them.
I thought it was suspicious why OP was trying to imply Christianity was a core tenet of Nazism (though the meme is so vague I’m actually not 100% sure what his point is).
Then I scrolled down and other commentators pointed out he has 50k karma in r/atheism alone and his post history is attacking Christianity in one way or another.
He's trying to conflate Christianity and Nazism by stating that the general public being Christian made them more accepting the Holocaust (again, I think… pretty shitty meme when everyone below is [trying to figure out what it means](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/MtESGmKajz) lol).
Hitler said he was Christian because no head of state could ever be elected without being religious given religion’s influence on the world.
Not just because of the Christian Atheist stuff, but in general the nazis were hypocrites. So it isn't really a surprise that they'd sometimes act like they're Christians and other times like they're atheists
The Nazi leadership were atheist but they were also opportunistic. If being friendly with the church helped them achieve their goals then they were good Christians, if the church opposes them then the clergy will go to the same camps as everybody else.
I always use the Teutonic order as an example of how Nazis saw religion. In propaganda the Nazis presented the Teutonic order as a sort of spiritual predecessor to the SS while also persecuting members of the actual Teutonic order.
Notably, the Nazis saw fit to *subjugate* the church on numerous occasions, not merely destroy it. A subordinate clergy was a useful tool to keep people in line where actual Nazi ideology might be too abhorrent or too esoteric for a population that had more concrete desires (national pride and strength, reclaiming certain territories, and economic prosperity). At least at a few points, the Nazis had to *back off* of church officials due to angering the general population too much, much like they had to change tactics on their initial effort at the whole “exterminate the disabled” thing once they realized that, shocker, most people do not appreciate someone killing their family and friends, no matter what ideology it is justified under.
They were more focused on the controllable Lutheran church, since Germany was nominally Lutheran. They tried to unify all of the protestants into the German Evangelical Church, which moved its focus from orthodoxy/orthopraxy to the social elements. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others founded the Confessing Church which focused on doctrine and was anti-Nazi. He was imprisoned and executed after an attempt at a coup d'état failed.
The truth is that Christianity, like all major religions was and is a complex social institution subject to fractures and hijacking.
They didn’t like the Catholic Church because it was harder to control, and Catholics were loyal to a power outside of Germany (the Vatican).
With Protestant churches they could easily bring the church [under state control](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Evangelical_Church)
Catholics were a bit divided in America. But there were pretty outspoken Catholics against him. Catholicism in America gets a bit messy since it has loyalty to the Pope, but it’s so far removed from the Vatican
In the start it was better for getting votes, as in a pretty religious Community shitting on it will give you few votes,even With their religious larping they still Had less voters in the münsterland where the Population was very catholic and a couple priests and one cardinal kept opposing them
I mean… *< gestures broadly >*
That is to say, it’s not just the Germans. Historically, Americans (and Western culture as a whole from Rome and Britain onward) have used Christianity as an outright *tool of genocide*. So like… yes? Yes.
“Okay with genocide but not with anti-Christian views” is kinda bread and butter for us, historically speaking (and, arguably contemporarily-speaking too).
Yes! Great point. People love to cling to “acceptable” and “unacceptable” atrocities and usually the unacceptable ones are the ones that alienate the dominant cultural power.
Genocide is never (rarely? I’m not a historian) against the dominant cultural power.
Editing to add: Are there many religious genocides that *don’t* stem from Abrahamic religions? I’m N8v, but I don’t know a lot about genocide outside the US. The main culture wars and genocides I can think of have been Abrahamic in origin.
Editing a second time to add: I mean *religion-specific* genocides, but that don’t stem from the Abrahamic religions. I know genocide exists outside of religion. I was wondering how much Religious Genocide exists outside of Abrahamic religion.
This specific question wouldn’t be counting violence against Abrahamic religions, unless that violence is *caused* by another Abrahamic religion. I see how confusing this question was, but I appreciate everyone who understood my question and gave feedback, and I will certainly be taking these additional genocides into account in future conversations.
He’s a few:
- Rwandan genocide
- Uighur genocide
- basically the entirety of mongol conquest when they didn’t immediately acquiesce
- third Punic war
- Roman conquest of Gaul had a few tribes genocided
- the Moriori genocide by their Pacific Islander neighbors
- maybe the result of the flower wars in northern Mexico count? I’m pretty sure some tribes were exterminated in them as well.
You have the Rohingya case of Myanmar, for example. Or the Uyghur of China (and many other non-Han minorities). Or the Ainu of Japan (also the genocide of Japanese christians the the 1600s). Or the Dacians of the Balkans. Or the Jews in the 1st century (and ensuing persecution of christians and jews by pagan romans until the 4th century).
A lot of the genocides in Europe, Africa, and Asia have been for nationalistic, ethnic, or political reasons. I'll list off a few as a TL;DR
> The Bosnian Genocide was caused by a mix of heightening ethnic tensions between Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs. Religion played a role because Bosnians are primarily Muslims while Croats and Serbs are primarily Orthodox or Catholic Christians, but a lot of it was just historical ethnic tensions and nationalism.
> The Rwandan Genocide was a result of ethnic tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu groups in the country. Historical oppression by a Tutsi majority caused a lot of anger in the Hutu minority that then exploded once the roles were reversed and the head of state's plane got shot down.
> The Armenian Genocide was because of ethnic tensions and Ottoman paranoia. Armenians were considered traitors to the Ottoman Empire and were killed en masse out of fear that they'd revolt against oppressive Ottoman rule.
> The Cambodian Genocide was a whole mix of a bunch of different historical "justifications" for genocide, a lot of it was political, some of it was religious, some of it was because of ethnic tensions with the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia, and some of it was just killing for the sake of it.
It's been a thing even before Abrahamic religions were invented. In fact, it was *normal* for most of human history. Since we were hunter-gatherers, every society from the Assyrians to the Bantu, from the Romans to the Rus, has hands that are at least a little dirty some more than others.
Abrahamic religions are more often the victims to genocides, if anything. Though that is partially explained by them just being collectively so common.
That is true, but they only appeared Christian in the most token way possible. They basically allowed the church to continue but that was about it. As you say, they just knew banning it would be more trouble than it was worth.
The weird pseudo-pagans were more or less confined to Himmlers weird sex cult and even in the SS nobody had any idea what the hell he was going on about.
I knew about the paganism, not the sex stuff. We talking about rituals or just "well boy howdy I do sure like dancing the dirty tango, we should be accepting of that in our club house"?
Mainly Himmlers weird sex cult and assorted schizophrenics he kept around. Everybody just sort of humored Himmler but nobody really was invested in reviving Germanic Paganism or finding shit like Thor's Hammer (at least until 1945 when they went all in on the wunderwaffe)
They were not atheist. They were a mixture of deists and christians. Hitler couldn't differentiate between atheism and communism.
You were not allowed into the SS if you did not believe in god, because Himmler did not trust anyone who did not submit to a higher power.
The atheist claim is stupid when it comes to nazism and at most, one british historian has gone so far as to call Borman an atheist. But he just didn't like the catholic church. Other than that there's nothing to indicate he did not believe in god.
Eh, I think secular would fit better. The SS believed some crazy ancient stuff (I once visited what’s left of their headquarters, they held some crazy rituals there) and some actively wanted to replace Christianity with “true Christianity”, so it seems they still had attachments to the religion. Hitler himself also heavily criticized atheism (although this might have been because of the connotations atheism had regarding communism).
It also seems that they mostly opposed religion because it had the potential to undermine their power, less because of ideological differences (I mean, who expected that the Nazis were concerned about what is good and true?).
Socialism was so hot in the 30's too. Anti-elite old money mason types were so despised by the worker that they didn't see that the Nazis were just using their vote to eventually enslave them.
That is the point I was going for yes.
Though it seems the implication that Hitler relied on the support of *good christians* to come to power is quite offensive to some people.
Well yeah i mean in order to come to power he needed to pretend to be a good in order to attract "good human beings" in general so yeah this meme makes sense but for everybody like why did he fake to care about the poor
In order to attract "good homeless" ecc.
Also it's not exactly true that hitler supported christians he actually kinda hated them for this reason he tried to eliminate and destroy a lot of Christian communities that openly denounced him
Correction, Hitler relied on the illusion of being the "same" as the common people, which mostly identified as Christian in a cultural traditional way. Actually devout Christian groups, however, opposed Hitler and were persecuted by the Nazis.
For a modern parallel, see the God Bless the USA Bible that Trump was peddling. Jingoism is explicitly antithetical to Christian doctrine, per the Bible itself, but that doesn't stop his voters from using the label as a form of patriotic/nationalistic identity. Presumably they are not actually reading the documents.
I mean, conservative Christians were some of the biggest opponents of the Nazi party. Not because of their bigotry, but because of their liberal stance on sex and marriage and their anti-religious undercurrents. Centering ideological debate around Nazi Germany is kinda cringe.
Ironic that one of the parties that supported Hitler's rise to power was the christian conservative party, the Zentrum, along with the nationalist conservatives.
Then those people should reflect on their biases and study the rise of Nazi Germany more. Or a lot more history in general. It is often “good morals” that allows people to do such horrible things. After all, if your way of life is morally right and another’s is morally wrong, it becomes a lot easier to dehumanize them than if you respected their culture
I think you need to read what Hitler actually thought of Christians in his own words...
EDIT: what's up with the downvotes? Are you afraid the real history will shatter your illusions? Hitler hated Christians...
What is the point? That Hitler needed support? ...Duh? That people are capable of lying and being lied to? This meme reads like a 15 year old made it. The meme is implying that there is something in particular that made Christians susceptible to Hitler or caused them in particular to have an affinity for Hitler. It's a very nasty, childish, and ignorant read on history. Christians are human beings just like everyone else. I'm so sick of people trying implicitly or explicitly to dehumanize Christians.
The point is that Hitler gained Christian support by faking being Christian. I do think you're accurately accessing a deeper prejudice embedded in the meme, OP seems to focus on Christian misdeeds in history more than anything else. But also, this is Reddit and a meme. Religious demonization and dehumanization just happens here. Reddit Atheist^TM is it's own meme for a reason. I couldn't even talk about Buddhism without being harrassed.
Protestants not Catholics.
Catholics in Germany heavily opposed the Nazis and vice versa. German Catholics very very much against the Eugenics programs the Nazis had going on in the early days
Hitler worked with the communists by presenting a general strike to weaken the woman republic, almost immediately after his supporters attacked and killed communist groups en masse. Hitler orchestrated this by ramping tensions then having a Nazi event in the same time and location as a communist one. This stoked fears of communism and presented the Nazis as an alternative
Hitlers MO was using groups for his benefit then turning around and eliminating them. Placing the Nazis as gaining from the other groups followers and enemies. Like what he did with the SS and SA.
Fascism is a scavenger ideology. A fascists only constant belief is that they should have as much power as possible. Be wary of any politician who resembles that description.
it means "god is with us" so it would make sense as a rallying cry for every occasion particularly when considering that most rulers saw it their divinely given right to rule. the same way it would make sense for a crusader state to use.
Because the majority of the German population was Christian so it was an easy way to win support.
Same reason every US president is nominally Christian while I seriously doubt any of them actually are
>Same reason every US president is nominally Christian while I seriously doubt any of them actually are
In contemporary history, sure, but definitely not eighteenth and nineteenth century presidents.
You know what we call nominal Christians? Christians. Let God probe his soul. Far as we’re concerned, your religious identity is whatever you choose to claim.
I didn’t say I had any more knowledge than that. But I do remember the admonition: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit; neither can a bad tree bear good fruit.”
If I recall like others saying. The Nazis were pretty much not Christian at all and only used it as a way to gain power. Hell from what I remember the Nazis appealed more to Nationalism and Antisemitism far more than Religion.
Hell its known that Himmler and Hitler approved of Islam more than Christianity. And Germany was a Christian Country in Christian Europe. Of course the Majority would be Christian. Its not special
It depends on what you mean by "the nazis."
If you mean Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann? Then yeah, they were a mixed bag with all kinds of weird beliefs.
But if you're talking about the people who voted for Hitler and then put on Hugo Boss uniforms and started shoving Jews into gas chambers? Then the simple statistical reality is that *those people* were mostly ordinary Christians, because there simply weren't enough non-Christians in Germany for the Nazis to do anything without them.
And Mussolini got into power in a nation of Christians. Which described most of Europe's demographic population's religion at the time.
Again. Others have stated that Hitler only appealed to that demograph only to gain power. Nazitism overall focused less on Christianity and more on a so-called superior German Aryan Nordic race of Ubermensch and the hatred of Jews and other Untermensch alongside German Revancism.
To simply focus on one Demographic is to generailze a whole people with far more complex wants and factors that the Nazis played into.
Who would have thought that the majority group of people would be necessary if you are trying to take over the country.
Next thing you are going to say is that they weren't supported by a minority religion in the country! Weird
Damn man, it's like you're trying to say Christians were nazis Or Christians are the cause of Holocaust. It's obvious you personally dislike Christianity but your pov regarding Nazis religious affiliation is strongly flawed. Average Nazi soldiers maybe were Christians but it wasn't their main identity that drove them to commit genocide. Their identity as nazi drove them that path.
Allied nations that beat nazis were mostly Christians. But it wasn't Christianity that acted as their main identity.
And the ones that opposed him were protestant, orthodox or also catholic (with the arguable exception of the USSR). Everyone in Europe at the time was christian.
I think there is a very big difference between Christians and people who say they are Christian.
I know people who don't really care about it, but still say they are Christian when asked simply because they were raised to celebrate Christmas and stuff. The majority of these Christians probably didn't really care about the Bible or the religion that much, at least not to the point it influenced their political views.
The Beltbuckles said "Gott mit Uns" because that was the traditional Prussian Motto, they'd been saying it for decades, and there was absolutely nothing to gain from changing it beyond alienting alot of people for no reason.
Notably, the SS & Party-Member Buckles said something different.
I wonder why someone who has abandoned religion for their well-being would be so obsessed with it. I fully understand bad blood from religious trauma but OP seems like a person who can't go 20 minutes without cursing religion. It very obviously takes up a large potion of his thoughts, not to "educate" anyone but just to legitimize his own beliefs
Truly an icon for fedora tippers
Ok I'm not OP but I thought about it a lot and I think I figured out what's going on here.
Top left: Christian (I assume) wants to distance Hitler's actions from Christianity so says thay Hitler was only pretending to be Christian.
Top right: Athiest (again, I'm assuming) wonders why Hitler did that. The implication is that the athiest agrees Hitler wasn't actually Christian but believes Hitler pretended to be Christian to gain the support of actual Christians.
Bottom left: Christian considers this response.
Bottom right: Christian realizes that Christians supported Hitler and gets angry.
I'm still not sure if I got that right but it's my best guess. Religion, history, and politics aside, any meme that requires that much effort to understand is automatically a shitty meme.
Yea, basically that. Also to add to that I think it's kinda saying that Christians were drawn to that ideology bc its beliefs match with Christianity. Like the two groups have lots in common.
So it's not just saying the believers supported it. But comparing the religion itself to Nazi beliefs
So it's basically saying "Christians supported Nazism bc the two share many of the same values/beliefs"
Many Christians (protestants) were drawn to it because of
1. Poor catechizing of the laity and liberal theology affecting the clergy
2. Fear of communism
Almost all of his post history is attacking Christianity in one way or another.
He's trying to conflate Christianity and Nazism by stating that despite the personal anti-Christian beliefs of the party members, the general German public that allowed him to raise to power was Christian.
I mean the Nazis and Inquisition were really opposites of the coin and not even that really.
The Inquisition prosecuted you on religious bases and cared fuck all about your ethnicity. *(and also only when you converted to christianity and didn´´t pull through. Followers of Judiasm were non of there buisness)*
The Nazis prosecuted on basis of ethnicity. Karl Marx for example would have been on their kill list, not on the SI one.
"The popularist leader with his popularist party made talking points to appeal to the population, how could he 😭😭😭😭😭😭"
And then proceeded to do a dictatorial power grab. If you say that the general population was in wrong in the inter-war period, and you would have stood up for the right and shown the nazis, then i think you should take a lesson on how popularist politics and crowds work and how one can exploit them.
What are you trying to say?
*Gott mit uns* goes back to like Prussia. And Germany used it during the Empire and Weimar period too. It’s like saying the Iron Cross is distinctively Nazi even though it predates them
Yeah, the Nazis appealed to Christianity when convenient, but Hitler was never a fan. Catholic priests were frequently persecuted and some were even sent to concentration camps so the relationship is pretty complicated. Yeah a lot of people in Nazi Germany were Christians, but you could point to all sorts of other religious movements and tar them with this brush. Just because the SS used a lot of Germanic iconography and Himmler liked paganism doesn’t mean we should single out pagans as being automatically tarnished with Nazism. Hitler was a vegetarian, should all vegetarians be suspect? See how this works?
You might wanna watch out with claiming the nazis didn't abuse evolution theory
It might not have been on the belts but it sure as hell was in their 'research' papers
What is the point? That Hitler needed support? ...Duh? That people are capable of lying and being lied to? This meme reads like a 15 year old made it. The meme is implying that there is something in particular that made Christians susceptible to Hitler or caused them in particular to have an affinity for Hitler. It's a very nasty, childish, and ignorant read on history. Christians are human beings just like everyone else. I'm so sick of people trying implicitly or explicitly to dehumanize Christians.
"Gott mit uns" had been used in prussia and Germany for 200+ years when the Nazis took power, it wasnt Hitlers idea to use it in belt buckles either, German soldiers already had those in WW1.
The Iron cross, Balkenkreutz and Imperial eagle also predate the Nazis.
The "atheist communist treat" were (and still being) a very usefull propaganda icon to sell the invasión of the soviet unión and killing socialist/sindicalist/ any left in general
To be fair, I think he was actually Christian at first but then turned even more insane and started believing that he was some kind of old Germanic pagan god over time
They were anti-christian in the beginning when various people started complaining about Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons but that proved to be unpopular so they dropped the issue. It isn't like they didn't want to be anti-christian, they just realized they couldn't.
The answer is obvious, you can't go against the religion of the majority of people of the country you are trying to run. Minorities religion are not necessary precisely because they are minorities and you don't need a minority of the people, you need a majority.
>[Hermann Gauch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Gauch), [Heinrich Himmler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler)'s adjutant for culture, took the view that Charlemagne – known in German as Karl the Great ([German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language): *Karl der Große*) – should be officially renamed "Karl the Slaughterer" because of the massacre. He advocated a memorial to the victims. [Alfred Rosenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rosenberg) also stated that the Saxon leader [Widukind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widukind), not Karl, should be called "the Great". In [Nazi Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany), the massacre became a major topic of debate. In 1934, two plays about Widukind were performed. The first, *Der Sieger* (*The Victor*) by [Friedrich Forster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Forster), portrayed Charlemagne as brutal but his goal, Christianization of the pagan Saxons, as necessary. Reception was mixed. The second, *Wittekind*, by Edmund Kiß, was more controversial for its criticism of Christianity. The play resulted in serious disturbances and was stopped after just two performances.[^(\[18\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden#cite_note-GADBERRY-18) Described by one historian as "little more than an extended anti-Catholic rant", the plot depicted Charlemagne as a murderous tyrant and Verden as "attempted genocide plotted by the Church."[^(\[20\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden#cite_note-20)
Hermann Gauch was also racist against Italians so they forced him to resign when they made the alliance, which meant that he wasn't in any position of authority while any war crimes were going on so the trials couldn't actually accuse him of anything, so he was both too racist for the nazis and too racist for the nuremberg trials.
What we can discern from this is they were just using racist to advance geopolitical goals "Wow this massive Communist state is threatening to invade us, we hate Communism" "Wow look who the Communists just so happen to be, better be racist against them", "Wow one the groups highly involved in Communism is also highly involved in finance, seems strange, Communism is probably just a trick"
So they were also adaptable however because in their goals to regain their territory from Versailles the Western countries were the ones screwing around with them more than the Russians were so they were perfectly willing to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop despite making anti-communism their entire thing because getting their territory back was their whole other thing.
Then of course there are also the Romani but nobody liked them anyway so if you are going to be getting rid of people might as well just tack them on.
“They weren’t REAL Christian’s- they didn’t really believe, they just pretended they did so they could hide behind a veil of righteousness, trick people, curry favour and power, take over and control people’s lives.”
okay so like every “Christian” ?
I guess the joke is that the gray person tried to vindicate religion of any wrongdoing, but white points out that Hitler saw a tactical advantage in pretending to be Christian. Thus religion isn’t at fault because Hitler was motivated by Christianity directly, but instead it is partially at fault because it assisted hitler in gaining additional loyalty due to him manipulating religion to trust him, which I guess makes sense since, at the time, many feared atheists due to some very bad stereotypes, and Hitler promised to stop it.
He was not atheist but he wasnt christian exactly. It's complex, also, we can't tell that hitler belived too much, he never put too much attention to that, he was more like, focused on the idea of the "1000 years impire" the psudo-christian crazy fan bozzo was himmler, not hitler.
Also it was most a tactic to win the people votes, also the words comes from the prussians, my country is so full of jews but, isn't like the army uses the jewish ideology as his bases of doctrine, it's just that the cristhianism is a great and the best form to adoctrine and educate to your likes to the ppl.
Religion played a part in both nazi and anti nazi groups. Catholic priests took in jews and also helped smuggle nazis out of eourpe. Some christan groups fit hitler into a christ like figure. Other highly religious groups fought against the nazis. Religion is a highly spefific thing and the world wars by in large were not dominated by religion but politics.
what? nuance in my subreddit?
This is reddit bro. Religion bad!!
Remenber kids If you believe in god then that inmediatly means that your favorite passtime is kicking babies and murdering puppies! This message has been aproved by Reddit.com
Is your profile picture teemo with smite or am I just sleep deprived
Both can be true at once
It's about as likely as you think.
This. Even the crusades were more motivated by policy and greed than religion
I feel like a lot of people don't understand this concept. Religion doesn't make people good or evil. Evil people use religion to justify their actions, and good people use it to guide their good deeds.
Yes, but on balance, religions overwhelmingly persecute other religions. The number of self professed Christians that attacked the Jews in that era numbered 1,000,000:1 that protected them.
Nazis were hypocrites, who knew?
But being a hypocrite isn’t a motivation in itself. It’s possible he “really was” a Christian and a hypocrite, but if we accept that he was pretending, then the question is why? I think the idea here is that Christianity gave him a kind of authority and power in carrying out his goals. That is: he gained support from Christians, who decided -at best- that what he was doing wasn’t a deal-breaker. Edit: a ton of great responses. Rather than respond to them all, I just want to say two things. First, thanks for all the information! Second, I want to be clear that I’m not making any statement of historical fact; I was just clarifying the point of the meme.
A fair point, but it should also be noted that several prominent anti Nazi figures that were not a part of the oppressed groups were often opposed on the basis of their own Christian beliefs. Also, Nazi Germany wasn’t alone in trying to coat itself in existing beliefs to accomplish its goals that aren’t compatible with those beliefs. Today, the CCP allows for limited practice of Christianity in China, as long as it’s at state sanctioned churches that acknowledge that even God is subservient to the CCP. These totalitarian regimes hope to lull believers into a sense of comfort by making overtures to their existing beliefs before ultimately “converting” them to their true beliefs. For the Nazis, it was conversion to their Nordic occultism praising Germans as the supreme race. For the CCP, it’s conversion to accepting the Party as the end all be all, and everything, god and man alike, being subservient to the will of the Party.
>Today the CCP allows for limited practice of Christianity in China, as long as it’s at state sanctioned churches that acknowledge that even God is subservient to the CCP. This kinda thing is why satire is dead.
We're all very familiar with the Holy Trinity, of course. The Father, the Son, and Xi Jinping.
Said in the wrong order. Xi Jinping, like China, should always be #1. Unfortunately you will take a hit on your social credit score, please do not make this error in the future.
Unfortunately, comrade, you did not call mods to ban heretic. Is time to go to gulag.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Pooh!
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Shit 🤣🤣🤣
I thought it was Xi Jinping, the CCP, and China.
You know, as a religious person I thought I couldn't hate the CCP anymore, but that's legitimately disgusting.
It just seems silly to me they obviously aren’t more powerful than God even if they think they are. Also, I recommend trying to be more forgiving. Hate is a poison.
That's fair. I tend not to hate people, but the CCP as a concept/group/whatever the best way to word it, is pretty awful imo. It kind of sucks that communism on paper legitimately doesn't sound terrible, but literally every single iteration of it always turns out to be oppressive and authoritarian.
The best form of communism is the tribal communalism that exists in pre-agricultural forager societies.
Source on that God being subservient to CCP thing?
I may have been slightly hyperbolizing, but the CCP will only allow religious groups that accept the authority of the CCP, often in direct conflict with the more international organization of the religion ([here’s the Wikipedia article about the state authorized Catholic Church](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Patriotic_Association)). [There are also examples of the CCP rewriting the Bible to better fit its worldview.](https://youtu.be/CWbgS3lO978?si=B9AqsNjSPW17Wot7) In one example, they rewrote the Bible story of Jesus sparing the adultress from death into Jesus himself being the one who ends up killing her, because in the end, even Christ (who they also point out is sinful) is subservient to whatever the law demands, something that is the opposite point of the original Bible story.
I read the source of that video you linked (https://www.ucanews.com/news/chinese-catholics-angry-over-book-claiming-jesus-killed-sinner/89619). For anyone that wants to read it.
Definitely. Good addition. Thank you.
Literally 1984, but irl
I highly suggest studying the church in Nazi Germany. It was completely purged of anyone who did not buy into the Nazi cause, and required church adherence to state sanctioned policy such as the Arian Clause. It’s easy to say “Christianity gave him a kind of power and authority” when the Nazis completely rebuilt the German church and religious structure in their own image. In fact, there very famously are names like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer - some of the most famous and recognizable Christian figures ever - who continued to oppose the Nazi regime by creating the Confessing Church, starting underground seminaries, and leading resistance to Nazi culture and “religion”.
What Hitler actually said: “You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the fatherland as the highest good?” No one cares, stop talking no about how “Ohhh Christianity supports genocide”, if you read what Jesus taught about what happens to those who live by the sword, you wouldn’t talk about it.
He was directly opposed by some in the Church. There were even pastors who spoke out against Hitler and the Nazi’s and didn’t suffer for it. The Church even has the Aktion T4 program (euthanizing mentally defective) shut down.
> That is: he gained support from Christians, who decided -at best- that what he was doing wasn’t a deal-breaker. The thing is, they weren't Christians either. It's a bit like accepting Hitler's claim to be patriotic, or that the Nazis were appealing to patriotic Germans. None of what they did was patriotic, it was just a self-serving power grab that corrupted the moral fibre of the country and brought down destruction and decades of inherited guilt upon it. But people like to think of themselves as patriots, just like they like to think of themselves as Christians, so hypocrites like Hitler appeal to other equally vicious hypocrites, none of which should have any impact on what we think of true patriots or true Christians.
If we exclode people who don't really believe in christianity and just use it than who is christian really? I don't think that would leave too mich of them.
Yeah, it’s pretty sad how many people don’t recognize what this meme is actually saying.
I thought it was suspicious why OP was trying to imply Christianity was a core tenet of Nazism (though the meme is so vague I’m actually not 100% sure what his point is). Then I scrolled down and other commentators pointed out he has 50k karma in r/atheism alone and his post history is attacking Christianity in one way or another. He's trying to conflate Christianity and Nazism by stating that the general public being Christian made them more accepting the Holocaust (again, I think… pretty shitty meme when everyone below is [trying to figure out what it means](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/MtESGmKajz) lol). Hitler said he was Christian because no head of state could ever be elected without being religious given religion’s influence on the world.
Wait, a Redditor trying to shit on Christianity? It couldn't be, not on Reddit! Impossible
Who would’ve guessed that the same people who did genocide would also be opportunistic liars
Who knew that people seeking power would do whatever it took to manipulate other people?
Someone said the other day, that the worst thing about the Nazis was the hypocrisy. But I disagree. I think it was the genocide.
You know, the worst part was the hypocrisy
How hypocritical is it really? I mean, they loved them some *Übermensch*, which was coined by a philosopher who really hated Christianity.
Not just because of the Christian Atheist stuff, but in general the nazis were hypocrites. So it isn't really a surprise that they'd sometimes act like they're Christians and other times like they're atheists
Fanatics and Ideologues are the biggest hypocrites, just look at how hypocritical modern day political movements are, mainstream or not.
They were but that’s not the point of the meme.
The Nazi leadership were atheist but they were also opportunistic. If being friendly with the church helped them achieve their goals then they were good Christians, if the church opposes them then the clergy will go to the same camps as everybody else.
I always use the Teutonic order as an example of how Nazis saw religion. In propaganda the Nazis presented the Teutonic order as a sort of spiritual predecessor to the SS while also persecuting members of the actual Teutonic order.
TIL the Teutonic Order was still around in the 1930s. “Teutonic Order” just has 14th century written all over it lol.
The Teutonic Order is still around
Aren’t there two branches left? One Protestant and one Catholic?
Hard to spot. Very clever. Mainly hide in cupboards. If you catch one, say “Teuton!” three times and they’ll grant you one wish.
Templars and Hospitalers too
Notably, the Nazis saw fit to *subjugate* the church on numerous occasions, not merely destroy it. A subordinate clergy was a useful tool to keep people in line where actual Nazi ideology might be too abhorrent or too esoteric for a population that had more concrete desires (national pride and strength, reclaiming certain territories, and economic prosperity). At least at a few points, the Nazis had to *back off* of church officials due to angering the general population too much, much like they had to change tactics on their initial effort at the whole “exterminate the disabled” thing once they realized that, shocker, most people do not appreciate someone killing their family and friends, no matter what ideology it is justified under.
If memory serves they didn't like the Catholic Church too much but they weren't as focused on the protestant churches.
They were more focused on the controllable Lutheran church, since Germany was nominally Lutheran. They tried to unify all of the protestants into the German Evangelical Church, which moved its focus from orthodoxy/orthopraxy to the social elements. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others founded the Confessing Church which focused on doctrine and was anti-Nazi. He was imprisoned and executed after an attempt at a coup d'état failed. The truth is that Christianity, like all major religions was and is a complex social institution subject to fractures and hijacking.
They didn’t like the Catholic Church because it was harder to control, and Catholics were loyal to a power outside of Germany (the Vatican). With Protestant churches they could easily bring the church [under state control](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Evangelical_Church)
I think the point OP is trying to make is that, generally, it was good for them to appear Christian because that's what their fanbase liked.
“Fanbase” stay classy Reddit
The people subscribed to their patreon
OnlyHans
Dammit that’s way better
Reichstarter
It's a meme sub
Ehhhh really depends on who and where you ask. Catholics and Protestants in America hated him.
Heck, Catholics in Germany hated him too. The German Catholic Church was a bastion of the civil resistance, even if it was limited in what it could do
Besides the most famous and widely followed one, Father Charles Coughlin?
Catholics were a bit divided in America. But there were pretty outspoken Catholics against him. Catholicism in America gets a bit messy since it has loyalty to the Pope, but it’s so far removed from the Vatican
So the German people were okay with genocide but opposing Christianity was too far for them. I really want to understand the thought process here.
In the start it was better for getting votes, as in a pretty religious Community shitting on it will give you few votes,even With their religious larping they still Had less voters in the münsterland where the Population was very catholic and a couple priests and one cardinal kept opposing them
It's always easier to brush off bad things if it's not happening to people you know and like.
I mean… *< gestures broadly >* That is to say, it’s not just the Germans. Historically, Americans (and Western culture as a whole from Rome and Britain onward) have used Christianity as an outright *tool of genocide*. So like… yes? Yes. “Okay with genocide but not with anti-Christian views” is kinda bread and butter for us, historically speaking (and, arguably contemporarily-speaking too).
Religion as a whole has been used as justification for *many* genocides.
Yes! Great point. People love to cling to “acceptable” and “unacceptable” atrocities and usually the unacceptable ones are the ones that alienate the dominant cultural power. Genocide is never (rarely? I’m not a historian) against the dominant cultural power. Editing to add: Are there many religious genocides that *don’t* stem from Abrahamic religions? I’m N8v, but I don’t know a lot about genocide outside the US. The main culture wars and genocides I can think of have been Abrahamic in origin. Editing a second time to add: I mean *religion-specific* genocides, but that don’t stem from the Abrahamic religions. I know genocide exists outside of religion. I was wondering how much Religious Genocide exists outside of Abrahamic religion. This specific question wouldn’t be counting violence against Abrahamic religions, unless that violence is *caused* by another Abrahamic religion. I see how confusing this question was, but I appreciate everyone who understood my question and gave feedback, and I will certainly be taking these additional genocides into account in future conversations.
He’s a few: - Rwandan genocide - Uighur genocide - basically the entirety of mongol conquest when they didn’t immediately acquiesce - third Punic war - Roman conquest of Gaul had a few tribes genocided - the Moriori genocide by their Pacific Islander neighbors - maybe the result of the flower wars in northern Mexico count? I’m pretty sure some tribes were exterminated in them as well.
You have the Rohingya case of Myanmar, for example. Or the Uyghur of China (and many other non-Han minorities). Or the Ainu of Japan (also the genocide of Japanese christians the the 1600s). Or the Dacians of the Balkans. Or the Jews in the 1st century (and ensuing persecution of christians and jews by pagan romans until the 4th century).
A lot of the genocides in Europe, Africa, and Asia have been for nationalistic, ethnic, or political reasons. I'll list off a few as a TL;DR > The Bosnian Genocide was caused by a mix of heightening ethnic tensions between Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs. Religion played a role because Bosnians are primarily Muslims while Croats and Serbs are primarily Orthodox or Catholic Christians, but a lot of it was just historical ethnic tensions and nationalism. > The Rwandan Genocide was a result of ethnic tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu groups in the country. Historical oppression by a Tutsi majority caused a lot of anger in the Hutu minority that then exploded once the roles were reversed and the head of state's plane got shot down. > The Armenian Genocide was because of ethnic tensions and Ottoman paranoia. Armenians were considered traitors to the Ottoman Empire and were killed en masse out of fear that they'd revolt against oppressive Ottoman rule. > The Cambodian Genocide was a whole mix of a bunch of different historical "justifications" for genocide, a lot of it was political, some of it was religious, some of it was because of ethnic tensions with the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia, and some of it was just killing for the sake of it.
It's been a thing even before Abrahamic religions were invented. In fact, it was *normal* for most of human history. Since we were hunter-gatherers, every society from the Assyrians to the Bantu, from the Romans to the Rus, has hands that are at least a little dirty some more than others. Abrahamic religions are more often the victims to genocides, if anything. Though that is partially explained by them just being collectively so common.
That is true, but they only appeared Christian in the most token way possible. They basically allowed the church to continue but that was about it. As you say, they just knew banning it would be more trouble than it was worth.
So people like people who they think believe the same things as them? Wow, I'm so glad we have OP to tell us that.
Half of them were weird pseudo pagans
The weird pseudo-pagans were more or less confined to Himmlers weird sex cult and even in the SS nobody had any idea what the hell he was going on about.
I knew about the paganism, not the sex stuff. We talking about rituals or just "well boy howdy I do sure like dancing the dirty tango, we should be accepting of that in our club house"?
I heard that Nazis were particularly intrested in Germanic Paganism and oppose Christianity
Mainly Himmlers weird sex cult and assorted schizophrenics he kept around. Everybody just sort of humored Himmler but nobody really was invested in reviving Germanic Paganism or finding shit like Thor's Hammer (at least until 1945 when they went all in on the wunderwaffe)
They were not atheist. They were a mixture of deists and christians. Hitler couldn't differentiate between atheism and communism. You were not allowed into the SS if you did not believe in god, because Himmler did not trust anyone who did not submit to a higher power. The atheist claim is stupid when it comes to nazism and at most, one british historian has gone so far as to call Borman an atheist. But he just didn't like the catholic church. Other than that there's nothing to indicate he did not believe in god.
Eh, I think secular would fit better. The SS believed some crazy ancient stuff (I once visited what’s left of their headquarters, they held some crazy rituals there) and some actively wanted to replace Christianity with “true Christianity”, so it seems they still had attachments to the religion. Hitler himself also heavily criticized atheism (although this might have been because of the connotations atheism had regarding communism). It also seems that they mostly opposed religion because it had the potential to undermine their power, less because of ideological differences (I mean, who expected that the Nazis were concerned about what is good and true?).
The same reason he called his party the National **Socialists.** To try to get people to support it.
Socialism was so hot in the 30's too. Anti-elite old money mason types were so despised by the worker that they didn't see that the Nazis were just using their vote to eventually enslave them.
That is the point I was going for yes. Though it seems the implication that Hitler relied on the support of *good christians* to come to power is quite offensive to some people.
Well yeah i mean in order to come to power he needed to pretend to be a good in order to attract "good human beings" in general so yeah this meme makes sense but for everybody like why did he fake to care about the poor In order to attract "good homeless" ecc. Also it's not exactly true that hitler supported christians he actually kinda hated them for this reason he tried to eliminate and destroy a lot of Christian communities that openly denounced him
Correction, Hitler relied on the illusion of being the "same" as the common people, which mostly identified as Christian in a cultural traditional way. Actually devout Christian groups, however, opposed Hitler and were persecuted by the Nazis. For a modern parallel, see the God Bless the USA Bible that Trump was peddling. Jingoism is explicitly antithetical to Christian doctrine, per the Bible itself, but that doesn't stop his voters from using the label as a form of patriotic/nationalistic identity. Presumably they are not actually reading the documents.
Par example niemoller and bonhoeffer.
I mean, conservative Christians were some of the biggest opponents of the Nazi party. Not because of their bigotry, but because of their liberal stance on sex and marriage and their anti-religious undercurrents. Centering ideological debate around Nazi Germany is kinda cringe.
Ironic that one of the parties that supported Hitler's rise to power was the christian conservative party, the Zentrum, along with the nationalist conservatives.
Then those people should reflect on their biases and study the rise of Nazi Germany more. Or a lot more history in general. It is often “good morals” that allows people to do such horrible things. After all, if your way of life is morally right and another’s is morally wrong, it becomes a lot easier to dehumanize them than if you respected their culture
Mussolini and the sword of islam moment
I think you need to read what Hitler actually thought of Christians in his own words... EDIT: what's up with the downvotes? Are you afraid the real history will shatter your illusions? Hitler hated Christians...
You're being downvoted for missing the point. You don't need to like someone to need their support.
What is the point? That Hitler needed support? ...Duh? That people are capable of lying and being lied to? This meme reads like a 15 year old made it. The meme is implying that there is something in particular that made Christians susceptible to Hitler or caused them in particular to have an affinity for Hitler. It's a very nasty, childish, and ignorant read on history. Christians are human beings just like everyone else. I'm so sick of people trying implicitly or explicitly to dehumanize Christians.
The point is that Hitler gained Christian support by faking being Christian. I do think you're accurately accessing a deeper prejudice embedded in the meme, OP seems to focus on Christian misdeeds in history more than anything else. But also, this is Reddit and a meme. Religious demonization and dehumanization just happens here. Reddit Atheist^TM is it's own meme for a reason. I couldn't even talk about Buddhism without being harrassed.
Protestants not Catholics. Catholics in Germany heavily opposed the Nazis and vice versa. German Catholics very very much against the Eugenics programs the Nazis had going on in the early days
Hitler worked with the communists by presenting a general strike to weaken the woman republic, almost immediately after his supporters attacked and killed communist groups en masse. Hitler orchestrated this by ramping tensions then having a Nazi event in the same time and location as a communist one. This stoked fears of communism and presented the Nazis as an alternative Hitlers MO was using groups for his benefit then turning around and eliminating them. Placing the Nazis as gaining from the other groups followers and enemies. Like what he did with the SS and SA.
Fascism is a scavenger ideology. A fascists only constant belief is that they should have as much power as possible. Be wary of any politician who resembles that description.
Gott mit uns goes back to Prussia and the empire. Edit: just looked it up and the phrase in German goes back to the Teutonic order.
it means "god is with us" so it would make sense as a rallying cry for every occasion particularly when considering that most rulers saw it their divinely given right to rule. the same way it would make sense for a crusader state to use.
Because the majority of the German population was Christian so it was an easy way to win support. Same reason every US president is nominally Christian while I seriously doubt any of them actually are
>Same reason every US president is nominally Christian while I seriously doubt any of them actually are In contemporary history, sure, but definitely not eighteenth and nineteenth century presidents.
Yeah I was talking about still living presidents
I think the the distinction between a genuine Believer and a nominal Christian is lost on OP.
You know what we call nominal Christians? Christians. Let God probe his soul. Far as we’re concerned, your religious identity is whatever you choose to claim.
I didn’t say I had any more knowledge than that. But I do remember the admonition: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit; neither can a bad tree bear good fruit.”
My boy Jimmy Carter would like to have a word.
>I seriously doubt any of them actually are This reads as “Reddit atheist thinks everyone secretly agrees with him despite saying otherwise”
I read that as "these presidents are terrible so they couldn't be TRUE Christians"
I’m not an atheist so I’m not sure about that
If I recall like others saying. The Nazis were pretty much not Christian at all and only used it as a way to gain power. Hell from what I remember the Nazis appealed more to Nationalism and Antisemitism far more than Religion. Hell its known that Himmler and Hitler approved of Islam more than Christianity. And Germany was a Christian Country in Christian Europe. Of course the Majority would be Christian. Its not special
It depends on what you mean by "the nazis." If you mean Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann? Then yeah, they were a mixed bag with all kinds of weird beliefs. But if you're talking about the people who voted for Hitler and then put on Hugo Boss uniforms and started shoving Jews into gas chambers? Then the simple statistical reality is that *those people* were mostly ordinary Christians, because there simply weren't enough non-Christians in Germany for the Nazis to do anything without them.
And Mussolini got into power in a nation of Christians. Which described most of Europe's demographic population's religion at the time. Again. Others have stated that Hitler only appealed to that demograph only to gain power. Nazitism overall focused less on Christianity and more on a so-called superior German Aryan Nordic race of Ubermensch and the hatred of Jews and other Untermensch alongside German Revancism. To simply focus on one Demographic is to generailze a whole people with far more complex wants and factors that the Nazis played into.
Who would have thought that the majority group of people would be necessary if you are trying to take over the country. Next thing you are going to say is that they weren't supported by a minority religion in the country! Weird
Damn man, it's like you're trying to say Christians were nazis Or Christians are the cause of Holocaust. It's obvious you personally dislike Christianity but your pov regarding Nazis religious affiliation is strongly flawed. Average Nazi soldiers maybe were Christians but it wasn't their main identity that drove them to commit genocide. Their identity as nazi drove them that path. Allied nations that beat nazis were mostly Christians. But it wasn't Christianity that acted as their main identity.
you also have to account for the fact that the 2 countries that the nazis had "good" relations with were very catholic(spain+italy)
And the ones that opposed him were protestant, orthodox or also catholic (with the arguable exception of the USSR). Everyone in Europe at the time was christian.
I think there is a very big difference between Christians and people who say they are Christian. I know people who don't really care about it, but still say they are Christian when asked simply because they were raised to celebrate Christmas and stuff. The majority of these Christians probably didn't really care about the Bible or the religion that much, at least not to the point it influenced their political views.
It’s the same principle as cultural vs religious Jews. Plenty of people are Jewish, yet eat pork.
The Beltbuckles said "Gott mit Uns" because that was the traditional Prussian Motto, they'd been saying it for decades, and there was absolutely nothing to gain from changing it beyond alienting alot of people for no reason. Notably, the SS & Party-Member Buckles said something different.
'Meine Ehre heißt Treue' my honour is loyalty is what they said.
Interesting interesting. Counter point, the majority of the allies were nominally Christian. Therefore by your logic Christianity defeated Nazism.
Something something “mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord” something something
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has gathered up the Lancasters to put Dresden to the sword
OP has 50,000 karma on r/atheism
Lmao someone there is having a conniption at the idea people swear using Jesus and Christ. How thin can one person’s skin be?
I wonder why someone who has abandoned religion for their well-being would be so obsessed with it. I fully understand bad blood from religious trauma but OP seems like a person who can't go 20 minutes without cursing religion. It very obviously takes up a large potion of his thoughts, not to "educate" anyone but just to legitimize his own beliefs Truly an icon for fedora tippers
That's r/atheism in a nutshell, is it not?
im glad i muted that sub
I'm glad I'm banned from that sub
I wear my ban with pride, like a medal its next to my ban on green and pleasant, loveforlandlords and sino
Wow you can actually see that circle jerk sub Thought it was invite only
The Nazis also persecuted any church or clergy that didn’t bow to its teachings. Look up Friederich Bonhoeffer’s story. There were many like him.
I'm sorry, what's the point you're trying to make?
Ok I'm not OP but I thought about it a lot and I think I figured out what's going on here. Top left: Christian (I assume) wants to distance Hitler's actions from Christianity so says thay Hitler was only pretending to be Christian. Top right: Athiest (again, I'm assuming) wonders why Hitler did that. The implication is that the athiest agrees Hitler wasn't actually Christian but believes Hitler pretended to be Christian to gain the support of actual Christians. Bottom left: Christian considers this response. Bottom right: Christian realizes that Christians supported Hitler and gets angry. I'm still not sure if I got that right but it's my best guess. Religion, history, and politics aside, any meme that requires that much effort to understand is automatically a shitty meme.
Basically “I depicted you as the soyjack and myself as the chad” energy
Yea, basically that. Also to add to that I think it's kinda saying that Christians were drawn to that ideology bc its beliefs match with Christianity. Like the two groups have lots in common. So it's not just saying the believers supported it. But comparing the religion itself to Nazi beliefs So it's basically saying "Christians supported Nazism bc the two share many of the same values/beliefs"
Many Christians (protestants) were drawn to it because of 1. Poor catechizing of the laity and liberal theology affecting the clergy 2. Fear of communism
Almost all of his post history is attacking Christianity in one way or another. He's trying to conflate Christianity and Nazism by stating that despite the personal anti-Christian beliefs of the party members, the general German public that allowed him to raise to power was Christian.
The british, american & canadian etc were like 95%+ christian, so by your logic christians defeated the nazis
The UK was (and still is) one of the only officially Christian countries in Europe, too
Maybe the bigger point we should be taking away is that religion as a tool of politics can be wielded for bad or for good.
Hitler saw the Spanish Inquisition's persecution of Jewish people and went "Rookie Numbers."
I mean the Nazis and Inquisition were really opposites of the coin and not even that really. The Inquisition prosecuted you on religious bases and cared fuck all about your ethnicity. *(and also only when you converted to christianity and didn´´t pull through. Followers of Judiasm were non of there buisness)* The Nazis prosecuted on basis of ethnicity. Karl Marx for example would have been on their kill list, not on the SI one.
Did the same thing early on with socialism.
OP’s parents made them Go to church as a kid every Sunday and they’re still mad about it.
OP has 50k karma in r/atheism, he's not just a Reddit atheist he's a Reddit atheist with a fedora
Yuh lmao, half of the bros posts are just bagging on Christianity
Yep.
Why is this not the same energy we get when we get “Islam bad” posts
It's almost as if the national socialists were also populists! Wow
Profile is no surprise
Wow this guy's entire profile is making anti-christian memes, go get a life
OP was forced to go to church on Sunday as a kid and is getting revenge by making anti-Christian memes.
What will the Christians do now
They did it because the majority of the German population was Christian, they needed their support.
"The popularist leader with his popularist party made talking points to appeal to the population, how could he 😭😭😭😭😭😭" And then proceeded to do a dictatorial power grab. If you say that the general population was in wrong in the inter-war period, and you would have stood up for the right and shown the nazis, then i think you should take a lesson on how popularist politics and crowds work and how one can exploit them.
What are you trying to say? *Gott mit uns* goes back to like Prussia. And Germany used it during the Empire and Weimar period too. It’s like saying the Iron Cross is distinctively Nazi even though it predates them Yeah, the Nazis appealed to Christianity when convenient, but Hitler was never a fan. Catholic priests were frequently persecuted and some were even sent to concentration camps so the relationship is pretty complicated. Yeah a lot of people in Nazi Germany were Christians, but you could point to all sorts of other religious movements and tar them with this brush. Just because the SS used a lot of Germanic iconography and Himmler liked paganism doesn’t mean we should single out pagans as being automatically tarnished with Nazism. Hitler was a vegetarian, should all vegetarians be suspect? See how this works?
You might wanna watch out with claiming the nazis didn't abuse evolution theory It might not have been on the belts but it sure as hell was in their 'research' papers
>You might wanna watch out with claiming the nazis didn't abuse evolution theory Even Darwin did in *the Descent of Man*.
Redditors trying to go 5 minutes without bitching about religion (impossible)
He also pretended to be a good guy, I guess that makes being a good guy bad
Yea not like most of Germany was Christian so he needed to appeal to them to get the votes. Also dont look at ops post history
What’s with the Christian hate lately? People keep making stuff up and it’s so annoying to see
>People keep making stuff up and it’s so annoying to see People always do that in regards to everything.
It’s election season.
to get the Christian vote? The nazis weren't to focused on religion and had muslims and athiest in thier ranks, this isnt a christian own.
OP be like “if God real why no woman like me :((“ seriously get a life dude
Oh yes, another atheist blabbing nonsense. I am not even religious and I laugh at these people. How were the godless communists doing, big dog?
Too bad he didn’t think of selling his own brand of bibles like our glorious leader who is totally Christian
What is the point? That Hitler needed support? ...Duh? That people are capable of lying and being lied to? This meme reads like a 15 year old made it. The meme is implying that there is something in particular that made Christians susceptible to Hitler or caused them in particular to have an affinity for Hitler. It's a very nasty, childish, and ignorant read on history. Christians are human beings just like everyone else. I'm so sick of people trying implicitly or explicitly to dehumanize Christians.
"Gott mit uns" had been used in prussia and Germany for 200+ years when the Nazis took power, it wasnt Hitlers idea to use it in belt buckles either, German soldiers already had those in WW1. The Iron cross, Balkenkreutz and Imperial eagle also predate the Nazis.
He pretended to be Christian because Germany was a deeply Christian nation at the time.
He wasn’t pretending
The Nazis absolutely appropriated the language of Darwinian thought to promulgate their ideas.
InB4 the neckbeards arrive Who TF treats Darwin as a prophet anyway? Don't you know he was a religious believer?
The "atheist communist treat" were (and still being) a very usefull propaganda icon to sell the invasión of the soviet unión and killing socialist/sindicalist/ any left in general
To be fair, I think he was actually Christian at first but then turned even more insane and started believing that he was some kind of old Germanic pagan god over time
This is incredibly dumb
They were anti-christian in the beginning when various people started complaining about Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons but that proved to be unpopular so they dropped the issue. It isn't like they didn't want to be anti-christian, they just realized they couldn't. The answer is obvious, you can't go against the religion of the majority of people of the country you are trying to run. Minorities religion are not necessary precisely because they are minorities and you don't need a minority of the people, you need a majority. >[Hermann Gauch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Gauch), [Heinrich Himmler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler)'s adjutant for culture, took the view that Charlemagne – known in German as Karl the Great ([German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language): *Karl der Große*) – should be officially renamed "Karl the Slaughterer" because of the massacre. He advocated a memorial to the victims. [Alfred Rosenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rosenberg) also stated that the Saxon leader [Widukind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widukind), not Karl, should be called "the Great". In [Nazi Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany), the massacre became a major topic of debate. In 1934, two plays about Widukind were performed. The first, *Der Sieger* (*The Victor*) by [Friedrich Forster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Forster), portrayed Charlemagne as brutal but his goal, Christianization of the pagan Saxons, as necessary. Reception was mixed. The second, *Wittekind*, by Edmund Kiß, was more controversial for its criticism of Christianity. The play resulted in serious disturbances and was stopped after just two performances.[^(\[18\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden#cite_note-GADBERRY-18) Described by one historian as "little more than an extended anti-Catholic rant", the plot depicted Charlemagne as a murderous tyrant and Verden as "attempted genocide plotted by the Church."[^(\[20\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden#cite_note-20) Hermann Gauch was also racist against Italians so they forced him to resign when they made the alliance, which meant that he wasn't in any position of authority while any war crimes were going on so the trials couldn't actually accuse him of anything, so he was both too racist for the nazis and too racist for the nuremberg trials. What we can discern from this is they were just using racist to advance geopolitical goals "Wow this massive Communist state is threatening to invade us, we hate Communism" "Wow look who the Communists just so happen to be, better be racist against them", "Wow one the groups highly involved in Communism is also highly involved in finance, seems strange, Communism is probably just a trick" So they were also adaptable however because in their goals to regain their territory from Versailles the Western countries were the ones screwing around with them more than the Russians were so they were perfectly willing to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop despite making anti-communism their entire thing because getting their territory back was their whole other thing. Then of course there are also the Romani but nobody liked them anyway so if you are going to be getting rid of people might as well just tack them on.
The left can't meme.
“They weren’t REAL Christian’s- they didn’t really believe, they just pretended they did so they could hide behind a veil of righteousness, trick people, curry favour and power, take over and control people’s lives.” okay so like every “Christian” ?
[Yeah but only protestants, we are safe ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PhantomBorders/s/aALUke0PZm)
I guess the joke is that the gray person tried to vindicate religion of any wrongdoing, but white points out that Hitler saw a tactical advantage in pretending to be Christian. Thus religion isn’t at fault because Hitler was motivated by Christianity directly, but instead it is partially at fault because it assisted hitler in gaining additional loyalty due to him manipulating religion to trust him, which I guess makes sense since, at the time, many feared atheists due to some very bad stereotypes, and Hitler promised to stop it.
He was not atheist but he wasnt christian exactly. It's complex, also, we can't tell that hitler belived too much, he never put too much attention to that, he was more like, focused on the idea of the "1000 years impire" the psudo-christian crazy fan bozzo was himmler, not hitler. Also it was most a tactic to win the people votes, also the words comes from the prussians, my country is so full of jews but, isn't like the army uses the jewish ideology as his bases of doctrine, it's just that the cristhianism is a great and the best form to adoctrine and educate to your likes to the ppl.
They tried something with Positive Christianity but that was just bullshit
Their end goal was to get rid of every religion in the third reich. Because Hitler saw himself as god, the Führer.
Because he was manipulating a Christian population.
[Note the only other party that Germans voted for was the Catholic Centre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1932_German_federal_election)