At the risk of stating the obvious, the above quote was made up by someone on Twitter for the purpose of humour. However the feeling persists among Christians that Hitler was an atheist.
The logic appears to run something like this:
I am a good person because I am a Christian.
Hitler was a bad person.
Therefore, Hitler cannot have been a Christian
“Hitler was an Atheist.”
Let’s see what Hitler had to say about this himself.
In a speech on 12 April 1922, he said: “My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were…”
In Mein Kampf (1926), he said: “I consider the foundation or destruction of a religion far greater than the foundation or destruction of a state, let alone a party.”
Also from Mein Kampf: “By repelling the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.”
In a speech made in Passau, 27 October 1928, he said: “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity… in fact our movement is Christian.”
On 22 July 1933, he wrote in a letter to the Nazi Party: “This treaty [with the Vatican] shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that Nazism is hostile to religion is a lie.”
In 1941, Hitler wrote a letter to Gerhard Engel in which he said: “I am now, as before, a Catholic and will always remain so.”
And on and on.
The Vatican certainly considered all the top Nazis as not just Roman Catholics, but observant Roman Catholics. In fact, the only Nazi who was ever excommunicated was Joseph Goebbels; not for any of his actual crimes, but for marrying a Protestant.
“Hitler was just using Christianity to promote his personal agenda.”
Not like you, you mean?
“Yeah, but Hitler wasn’t a real Christian.”
Not like you, you mean?
“He was lying to manipulate others into his way of thinking.”
How do I know you’re not?
