Religious views of Adolf Hitler

Statements by Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) on the subjects of God, religion, and the Churches.

I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.

Mein Kampf (1925-1926)

Ralph Manheim, ed. (1998). Mein Kampf. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395951054. 

• Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. (p. 65)

• Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties. (p. 116)

• This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. (p. 152)

• Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time. A fight for freedom had begun mightier than the earth had ever seen; for once Destiny had begun its course, the conviction dawned on even the broad masses that this time not the fate of Serbia or Austria was involved, but whether the German nation was to be or not to be. (p. 161)

• And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God. (p. 174)

• His [the Jewish person's] life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took to the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In retum, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties — and this against their own nation. (p. 307)

• The characteristic thing about [Neo-Pagans] is that they rave about old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their bearded heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack. (p. 361)

• Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise. (p. 383)

• It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world. (p. 403)

• The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. (p. 562)

• As far as this variety of ‘folkish’ warriors, are concerned, I can only wish the National Socialist movement and the German people with all my heart: "Lord, preserve us from such friends, and then we can easily deal with our enemies." (p. 565)

• Since Germany never defends herself, except by a few flaming protests on the part of our parliamentary elite, and the rest of the world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free... (p. 622)

• For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: ‘Lord, make us free!’ is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: ‘Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!’ (pp. 632-633)

Public speeches

1922

• While the regime is determined to carry through the political and moral purging of our public life, it is creating and ensuring the prerequisites for a really deep inner religiousity. Benefits of a personal nature, which might arise from compromise with atheistic organisations, could outweigh the results which become apparent through the destruction of general basic religious-ethical values. The national regime seeks in both Christian confessions the factors most important for the maintenance of our folkdom.... The national regime will concede and safeguard to the Christian confessions the influence due them, in school and education. It is concerned with the sincere cooperation of church and state. The struggle against a materialistic philosophy for the creation of a true folk community serves the interests of the German nation as well as our Christian belief.
  • Speech delivered at the Reichstag 5 March 1922; Leo Stein (2003). Hitler came for Niemoeller. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, p. 27.

• I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man and a Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I say: 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 only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago—a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

  Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we pull ourselves together and make ourselves free!

  And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.

  • Speech delivered at Munich 12 April 1922; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1942). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 19-20. 

• I say: my Christian feeling tells me that my lord and savior is a warrior. It calls my attention to the man who, lonely and surrounded by only a few supporters, recognized what they [the Jews] were, and called for a battle against them, and who, by God, was not the greatest sufferer, but the greatest warrior. . .

  As a human being it is my duty to see to it that humanity will not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did that old civilization two thousand years ago, a civilization which was driven to its ruin by the Jews. . . I am convinced that I am really a devil and not a Christian if I do not feel compassion and do not wage war, as Christ did two thousand years ago, against those who are steeling and exploiting these poverty-stricken people.

  Two thousand years ago a man was similarly denounced by this particular race which today denounces and blasphememes all over the place. . . That man was dragged before a court and they said: he is arousing the people! So he, too, was an agitator!

  • Speech delivered on April 12, 1922; from Charles Bracelen Flood (1989). Hitler: The Path to Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 261-262. 

• Just as the Jew could once incite the mob of Jerusalem against Christ, so today he must succeed in inciting folk who have been duped into madness to attack those who, God's truth! seek to deal with this people in utter honesty and sincerity.
  • Speech delivered in Munich 28 July 1922; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 37. 

1923

• In the Bible we find the text, "That which is neither hot nor cold will I spew out of my mouth." This utterance of the great Nazarene has kept its profound validity until the present day. He who would pursue the golden mean must surrender the hope of achieving the great and the greatest aims.
  • Speech delivered at 10 April 1923; from Adolf Hitler (1973). My New Order. New York: Octagon Books. p. 47. 

November 11, 1923 — Hitler is arrested for treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.

1925

• It will at any rate be my supreme task to see to it that in the newly awakened NSDAP, the adherents of both Confessions can live peacefully together side by side in order that they may take their stand in the common fight against the power which is the mortal foe of any true Christianity.
  • Speech delivered 26 February 1925; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 368. 

1926

• The movement would complete the work which Christ had begun but could not finish.
  • Speech in Munich December 1926; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 27-28. 

• The movement's goal was to translate the ideals of Christ into deeds.
  • Speech in Munich December 1926; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 27-28. 

• We are the first to exhume these teachings! Through us alone, and not until now, do these teachings celebrate their resurrection! Mary and

Magdalene stood at the empty tomb. For they were seeking the dead man. But we intend to raise the treasures of the living Christ! we intend to raise the treasures of the living Christ!

• • Speech in Munich December 1926; from Otto Wagener (1985). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Germany: Yale University Press. pp. 139-140. 

1928

• We are a people of different religions, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls... We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity … in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people.
  • Speech in Passau 27 October 1928 Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 60-61. 

1933

January 30, 1933 — Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany

• May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany.
  • Speech delivered at Berlin 1 February 1933; from Adolf Hitler (1941). My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. p. 147.  [Photo.]

• The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."
  • Speech delivered at Berlin 1 February 1933; from Adolf Hitler (1941). My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. p. 144. 

• And now Staatspräsident Bolz says that Christianity and the Catholic faith are threatened by us. And to that charge I can answer: In the first place it is Christians and not international atheists who now stand at the head of Germany. I do not merely talk of Christianity, no, I also profess that I will never ally myself with the parties which destroy Christianity. If many wish today to take threatened Christianity under their protection, where, I would ask, was Christianity for them in these fourteen years when they went arm in arm with atheism? No, never and at no time was greater internal damage done to Christianity than in these fourteen years when a party, theoretically Christian, sat with those who denied God in one and the same Government.
  • Speech delivered at Stuttgart 15 February 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 240. 

• Except the Lord built the house they labour in vain... The truth of that text was proved if one looks at the house of which the foundations were laid in 1918 and which since then has been in building... The world will not help, the people must help itself. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it we may wage the battle of our life... The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty—of Him Who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us... We are all proud that through God's powerful aid we have become once more true Germans.
  • Speech 3 March 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 409. 

March 23, 1933 — Enabling Act grants Hitler dictatorial powers

Hitler at the Reichstag, 23 March 1933. "Since Germany never defends herself, except by a few flaming protests on the part of our parliamentary elite, and the rest of the world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free."

• The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life.
  • Speech at Reichstag Berlin 23 March 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 370. 

• The advantages of a personal and political nature that might arise from compromising with atheistic organizations would not outweigh the consequences which would become apparent in the destruction of general moral basic values. The national government regards the two Christian confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality: their rights are not to be infringed.
  • Speech at Reichstag Berlin 23 March 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 371. 

• The Government of the Reich, which regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attaches the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See, and is endeavouring to develop them.
  • Speech at Reichstag Berlin 23 March 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 2. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 1018. 

• The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were. [...] I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.
  • Speech 26 April 1933 in a reception for Catholic Bishop Berning; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 117-118. 

• Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.
  • Speech 26 April 1933 made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933; from Ernst Helmreich (1979). The German Churches Under Hitler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 241. 

• We want honestly to earn the resurrection of our people through our industry, our perseverance, our will. We ask not of the Almighty "Lord, make us free"!—we want to be active, to work, to agree together as brothers, to strive in rivalry with one another to bring about the hour when we can come before Him and when we may ask of Him: "Lord, Thou seest that we have transformed ourselves, the German people is not longer the people of dishonour, of shame, of war within itself, of faintheartedness and little faith: no, Lord, the German people has become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices." "Lord, we will not let Thee go: bless now our fight for our freedom; the fight we wage for our German people and Fatherland."
  • Speech 1 May 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 409. 

• This is for us a ground for satisfaction, since we desire that the fight in the religious camps should come to an end. We are happy that in Rome yesterday we succeeded in signing a Concordat on the basis of which all political action in the parties will be forbidden to priests for all time, happy because we know what is wanted by millions who long to see in the priest only the comforter of their souls and not the representative of their political convictions. Thus the political fight for power is finished.
  • Speech to the Sturmabteilung (SA) at Dortmund, 9 July 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 373. 

July 20, 1933 — Hitler signs the Reichskonkordat between the Holy See and Nazi government

• National Socialism has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State. For their part the churches cannot for a second doubt that they need the protection of the State, and that only through the State can they be enabled to fulfill their religious mission. Indeed, the churches demand this protection from the State. On the other hand, in consideration for this protection, the State must require from the Churches that they in their turn should render to it that support which it needs to secure its permanence. Churches which fail to render to the State any positive support in this sense are for the State just as worthless as is for a Church the State which is incapable of fulfilling its duties to the Church. The decisive factor which can justify the existence alike of Church and State is the maintenance of men's spiritual and bodily health, for if that health were destroyed it would mean the end of the State and also the end of the Church.
  • Radio address 22 July 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 375. 

• Among the congregations of the Protestant confessions there has arisen in the "German Christians" a movement that is filled with the determination to do justice to the great tasks of the day and has aimed at a union of the Protestant state churches and confessions. If this question is not really on the way towards a solution, in the judgement of history no false or stupid objections will be able to dispute the fact that this service was rendered by the volkisch movement at a time when, unfortunately, just as in the Roman Church, many pastors and superintendents without reason have opposed the national uprising in the most violent, indeed, often fanatical, way.
  • Radio address 22 July 1933; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 163. 

• We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
  • Speech delivered in Berlin 24 October 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 378. 

• The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism is hostile to religion is a lie.
  • Letter to the Nazi Party, 22 July 1933; John Cornwell (2008). Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. New York: Penguin, p. 118.

• The State and the People are one and the same body. The German Church and the People are practically the same body. Therefore there could be no issue between Church and State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church.
  • Interview with Charles S. Macfarland, autumn 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 380. 

1934

• While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions.
  • New Year Message 1 January 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 382. 

• Imbued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions.
  • Speech at Reichstag Berlin 30 January 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 383. 

• We have experienced a miracle, something unique, something the like of which there has hardly been in the history of the world. God first allowed our people to be victorious for four and a half years, then He abased us, laid upon us a period of shamelessness, but now after a struggle of fourteen years he has permitted us to bring that period to a close. It is a miracle which has been wrought upon the German people.... It shows us that the Almighty has not deserted our people, that He received it into favour at the moment when it rediscovered itself. And that our people shall never again lose itself, that must be our vow so long as we shall live and so long as the Lord gives us the strength to carry on the fight.
  • Speech 19 March 1934 to the Old Guard of the Party at Munich; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 405. 

• Finally, I would like to say something to those people who keep talking to me about religion: I am also religious, profoundly religious on the inside, and I believe that Providence weighs us human beings.
  • Speech 26 March 1934; Max Domarus. Speeches and proclamations, 1932-1945. Wauconda IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. 2004, p. 2841.

• The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavour to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of to-day.
  • Speech 26 June 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 385. 

August 2, 1934 — Hitler becomes Führer of the German Nation

• I know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity. No, it is not that we have deserted Christianity; it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have only carried through a clear division between politics, which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine of the Confessions or with their religious freedom, nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends.

  There may have been a time when even parties founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity. At that time Liberalism was opposed to the Church, while Marxism was anti-religious. But that time is past. National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity.

  The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for the consciousness of a community in our national life, for the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes, for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and discord. These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles.

  • Speech delivered at Koblenz 26 August 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 386. 

• So far as the Evangelical Confessions are concerned we are determined to put an end to existing divisions, which are concerned only with the forms of organization, and to create a single Evangelical Church for the whole Reich... And we know that were the great German reformer [Martin Luther] with us to-day he would rejoice to be freed from the necessity of his own time and, like Ulrich von Hutten, his last prayer would be not for the Churches of the separate States: it would be of Germany that he would think and of the Evangelical Church of Germany.
  • Proclamation at the Parteitag at Nuremberg, 5 September 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 387. 

1935

• We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk... This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection.... May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk.
  • Speech 1 February 1933 addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the first time; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 115.

• So we have come together on this day to prove symbolically that we are more than a collection of individuals striving one against another, that none of us is too proud, none of us too high, none is too rich, and none too poor, to stand together before the face of the Lord and of the world in this indissoluble, sworn community.
  • Speech in Berlin 1 May 1935; from Adolf Hitler (1973). My New Order. New York: Octagon Books. p. 306. 

• What we are we have become not against, but with, the will of Providence. And so long as we are true and honourable and of good courage in fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall continue to enjoy in the future the blessing of Providence.
  • Speech at Rosenheim in Bavaria 11 August 1935; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 388. 

1936

• I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.
  • Speech in Munich 15 March 1936; from Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. New York: Harper Collins, 1991, p. 209.

• Only so you can appeal to your God and pray Him to support and bless your courage, your work, your perseverance, your strength, your resolution, and with all these your claim on life.
  • Speech at Frankfurt, 16 March 1936; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 408. 

• In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.
  • Speech in Hamburg 20 March 1936; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 408. 

• I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright.
  • Speech at the Nuremberg Parteitag 11 September 1936; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 404. 

1937

• It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation... As I look back on the great work that has been done during the past four years you will understand quite well that my first feeling is simply one of thankfulness to our Almighty God for having allowed me to bring this work to success. He has blessed our labors and has enabled our people to come through all the obstacles which encompassed them on their way.
  • Speech before the Reichstag 30 January 1937; from Gordon W. Prange, ed., Hitler's Words. Washington, DC: American Council on Public Affairs, 1944, p. 80.

• So long as they concern themselves with their religious problems the State does not concern itself with them. But so soon as they attempt by any means whatsoever — by letters, Encyclica, or otherwise — to arrogate to themselves rights which belong to the State alone we shall force them back into their proper spiritual, pastoral activity.
  • Speech in Berlin on the May Day festival 1937; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 390. 

• We National Socialists, too, have deep in our hearts our own faith. We cannot do otherwise. No man can mould the history of peoples or of the world unless he has upon his will and his capacities the blessing of Providence.
  • Speech before Nazi leaders 2 June 1937; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 391. 

• I will never allow anyone to divide this people once more into religious camps, each fighting the other... You, my Brown Guard, will regard it as a matter of course that this German people should go only by the way which Providence ordained for it when it gave to Germans the common language. So we go forward with the profoundest faith in God into the future. Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us?
  • Speech in Regensburg 6 June 1937; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 392. 

• If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing.
  • Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Biickeberg held on 3 October 1937; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 407. 

• This Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When I see, as I so often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a Christianity—and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession, for behind it stand not words but deeds.
  • Speeking of the Winter Help Campaign 5 October 1937; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 393. 

1938

• In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger... I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty... If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths... Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence.
  • Speech at the Reichstag 20 February 1938; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 410. 

• National Socialism is not a cult-movement—a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship.... We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else—in any case something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will—not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord... Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men.
  • Speech delivered at Nuremberg 6 September 1938; from Adolf Hitler (1941). My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. p. 500. 

• God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves.
  • Speech at Weimar 6 November 1938; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 2. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 1544. 

1939

• The National Socialist Movement has wrought this miracle. If Almighty God granted success to this work, then the Party was His instrument.
  • New Year proclamation, 1 January 1939; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 406. 

• We are indeed perhaps better able than other generations to realize the full meaning of those pious words "What a change by the grace of God." Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies, is the charge that the National Socialist State is a hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration: 1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views, nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted. 2. The National Socialist State since 30 January 1933 from public monies derived from taxation through the organs of the State has placed at the disposal of both Churches the following sums:

In the fiscal year 1933 130 million Reichsmark

In the fiscal year 1934 170 million Reichsmark

In the fiscal year 1935 250 million Reichsmark

In the fiscal year 1936 320 million Reichsmark

In the fiscal year 1937 400 million Reichsmark

In the fiscal year 1938 500 million Reichsmark

In addition to this there has been paid over some 85 million Reichsmark each year from contributions of the separate States, and some 7 million Reichsmark from contributions of the parishes and parish-associations. . . . Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favored in regard to taxation and for gifts, legacies & etc., it enjoys immunity from Taxation. . . It is therefore, to put it mildly — effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich. But if it be true that the German Churches regard this position as intolerable, the the National Socialist State is at any time ready to undertake a clear separation between Church and State as is already the case in France, America and other countries, I would allow myself only one question: 'What contributions during the same period have France, England or the United States made through the State from the public funds?'"

• Speech delivered at the Reichstag 30 January 1939; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 398. 

• The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever excised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion. It is however true that if priests, instead of being servants of God, prefer to regard as their mission the abuse of our present Reich, its institutions or its leaders, then the National Socialist State will relentlessly force them to realize that no one will be suffered to destroy this State, and that priests so soon as they set themselves beyond the law will by the law be brought to account precisely in the same way as any other German citizen. But it must be at this point established that there are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as of probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State. To protect these the State regards as its task; the destruction of the enemies of the State it regards as its duty.
  • Speech delivered at the Reichstag 30 January 1939; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. pp. 398-399. 

• This State has only once intervened in the internal regulation of the Churches, that is when I myself in 1933 endeavoured to unite the weak and divided Protestant Churches of the different States into one great and powerful Evangelical Church of the Reich. That attempt failed through the opposition of the bishops of some States; it was therefore abandoned. For it is in the last resort not our task to defend or even to strengthen the Evangelical Church through violence against its own representatives... But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy.
  • Speech delivered at the Reichstag 30 January 1939; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. pp. 398-399. 

• If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbour, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work.
  • Speech to the Old Guard at Munich 24 February 1939; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 402. 

• Help yourself, then God will also help you! The German people was created by Providence, not in order to obey a law which suits Englishmen or Frenchmen, but to stand up for its vital right. That is what we are there for!
  • Speech at Wilhemshaven 1 April 1939; from Norman H. Baynes, ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 2. New York: Howard Fertig. p. 1594. 

• The judgment whether a people is virtuous or not virtuous can hardly be passed by a human being. That should be left to God.
  • Speech delivered at Wilhelmshaven 1 April 1939; from Adolf Hitler (1941). My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. p. 621. 

September 1, 1939 — Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II

• As Fuehrer of the German people and Chancellor of the Reich, I can thank God at this moment that he has so wonderfully blessed us in our hard struggle for what is our right, and beg Him that we and all other nations may find the right way, so that not only the German people but all Europe may once more be granted the blessing of peace.
  • Speech before the Reichstag 6 October 1939; from Adolf Hitler (1941). My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. p. 756.  [Photo]

1941

Hitler speaking before the Reichstag, 11 December 1941. See photo.

• The conception of the new Movement, whose fundamentals can be expressed in a single sentence: "The Lord helps those who help themselves," opposed this. That is not only a very pious phrase, but a very just one. For one cannot assume that God exists to help people who are too cowardly and too lazy to help themselves and think that God exists only to make up for the weakness of mankind. He does not exist for that purpose. He has always, at all times, blessed only those who were prepared to fight their own battles...
  • Speech in Munich 24 February 1941; Franklin Watts, ed. (1942). Voices of History: Great Speeches and Papers of the Year. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., p. 98.

• But he who dares to use the word "God" for such devilish activity blasphemes against Providence and, according to our belief, he cannot end except in destruction.
  • Speech before the Reichstag 4 May 1941; Franklin Watts, ed. (1942). Voices of History: Great Speeches and Papers of the Year. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., p. 211.

• The Lord God has never helped the lazy person. Nor does He help the coward. He will never help him who is not ready to help himself. Here the principle applies: Volk, help yourself, then the Lord God will not refuse you His assistance either.
  • Speech 9 October 1941; Max Domarus, ed. (2004). Speeches and proclamations, 1932-1945, Wauconda IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, p. 2496

• From the time when the Movement I consisted of seven men, until we took over power in January 1933, the path was so miraculous that only Providence itself with its blessing could have made this possible... Our enemies must not deceive themselves—in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today. The Lord of the Universe has treated us so well in the past years that we bow in gratitude to a providence which has allowed us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that we also can be entered with honor into the ever-lasting book of German history!
  • Speech before Reichstag 11 December 1941; Franklin Watts, ed. (1942). Voices of History: Great Speeches and Papers of the Year. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., p. 594.

1942

• But I think that if Providence has already disposed that I can do what must be done according to the inscrutable will of the Providence, then I can at least just ask Providence to entrust to me the burden of this war, to load it on me.... Thus the home-front need not be warned, and the prayer of this priest of the devil, the wish that Europe may be punished with Bolshevism, will not be fulfilled, but rather that the prayer may be fulfilled: "Lord God, give us the strength that we may retain our liberty for our children and our children's children, not only for ourselves but also for the other peoples of Europe, for this is a war which we all wage, this time, not for our German people alone, it is a war for all of Europe and with it, in the long run, for all of mankind."
  • Speech in Berlin 30 January 1942; Franklin Watts, ed. (1942). Voices of History: Great Speeches and Papers of the Year. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., p. 123.

• May therefore God give us the strength to continue to do our duty and with this prayer we bow in homage before our dead heroes, before those whom they have left behind in bereavement, and before all the other victims of this war.
  • Radio address 15 March 1942; Franklin Watts, ed. (1943). Voices of History, 1942-43. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., p. 202.

1943

• I, too, am religious; that is, religious deep inside, and I believe that Providence weighs us human beings, and that he who is unable to pass the test of Providence but is destroyed by it has not been destined for greater things.
  • Speech delivered 8 November 1943; Max Domarus (2007). Speeches and proclamations, 1932-1945. Wauconda IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, p. 21.

1944

• I may not be a light of the church, a pulpiteer, but deep down I am a pious man, and believe that whoever fights bravely in defense of the natural laws framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by the Lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of Providence.
  • Speech delivered on 5 July 1944; Charles Bracelen Flood, Hitler: The Path to Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989, p. 208.

• The bomb which was planted by Colonel Count von Stauffenberg burst two metres to my right. It very seriously injured a number of associates dear to me; one of them has died. I myself am completely uninjured except for some very small scrapes, bruises or burns. I regard it as a confirmation of my assignment from Providence to continue to pursue my life's goal as I have done hitherto.
  • Radio broadcast 20 July 1944; from Joachim Fest (2002). Hitler. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 710.

• I thank Providence and my Creator, not for saving my life, but for making it possible for me to endure my cares and pursue the task which my conscience commands me.
  • Radio broadcast 20 July 1944; Georges Blond (1954). The Death of Hitler's Germany. New York: Macmillan, p. 36.

1945

• God the Almighty has made our nation. By defending its existence we are defending His work.
  • Radio address, 30 January 1945; from Thomas Streissguth (2002). World War II. New York: Greenhaven Press, p. 118.

• Only He can relieve me of this duty Who called me to it. It was in the hand of Providence to snuff me out by the bomb that exploded only one and a half meters from me on July 20, and thus to terminate my life's work. That the Almighty protected me on that day I consider a renewed affirmation of the task entrusted to me. In the years to come I shall continue on this road, uncompromisingly safeguarding my people's interests, oblivious to all misery and danger, and filled with the holy conviction that God the Almighty will not abandon him who, during all his life, had no desire but to save his people from a fate it had never deserved, neither by virtue of its number nor by way of its importance.
  • Radio address, 30 January 1945; from Franklin Watts, ed. (1945). Voices of History. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., p. 49.

April 30, 1945 — Hitler commits suicide

Private statements

Mother Mary with the Holy Child Jesus Christ (1913) by Adolf Hitler.

• The Führer has always shielded my consistent stance over the years, to the extent he could do so, given his position. Now, with a laugh, he repeatedly emphasized that he has been a pagan all along, and the time has come when the Christian poisoning is approaching its end.
  • Alfred Rosenberg Diary. In The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg and the Onset of the Holocaust (2015). Frank Bajohr and Jürgen Matthäus. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, p. 36.

• It is such a far-reaching and complete conversion that the adult is no longer capable of it. Only youth can be converted, newly aligned and adjusted to the socialist sense of obligation toward the community. For almost two thousand years the Gospel of Christ has been preached, for two thousand years the sense of community has been taught... But today, at the end of these two thousand years, economic liberalism flourishes as never before!
  • Private statement to Nazi Economists. Otto Wagener's 1946 memoirs; Turner, Henry Ashby, ed. (1985). Memoirs of a Confidant. Yale University Press, pp. 56.

• I believe in God, and I am convinced that He will not desert 67 million Germans who have worked so hard to regain their rightful position in the world.
  • Statement to Ward Price. In Max Domarus (2007). The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary. Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, p. 21.

• We must seize the evil in Germany by the root and tear it out, to make way for true socialism, for the new faith, for the new religion.
  • As quoted by Otto Wagener in "Hitler Memoirs of a Confidant", editor, Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Yale University Press (1985) p. 59

• We are the first to exhume these teachings! Through us alone, and not until now, do these teachings celebrate their resurrection! Mary and Magdelene stood at the empty tomb. For they were seeking the dead man! But we intend to raise the treasures of the living Christ!
  • Major General Otto Wagener's 1946 memoirs; Turner, Henry Ashby, ed. (1985). Memoirs of a Confidant. Yale University Press, pp. 139-140.

• The church is certainly necessary for the people. It is a strong and conservative element.
  • Speer, Albert (1997). Inside the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 95.

• Through me the Evangelical [Protestant] Church could become the established church, as in England.
  • Speer, Albert (1997). Inside the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 95.

• 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? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?
  • Speer, Albert (1997). Inside the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 96.

Disputed

Hitler's Table Talk

Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ed (2000). Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944. Trans. N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens (3rd ed.). New York: Engima Books. LCC DD247.H5 A685 2000. ISBN 9781929631056.  The original German notebooks, which are the primary source for these quotations, are filtered through Martin Bormann, who was anti-Christian. It has been argued that some statements regarding Hitler's views of Christianity have not have been translated faithfully from the original German, and alternative versions have been put forward by Richard Carrier and Reinhold Mittschang. (See Carrier, R. C. (October 2003), "'Hitler's Table Talk': Troubling Finds", German Studies Review 26 (3): 566, ISSN 0149-7952 ) Citing alleged discrepancies, mistranslations, and distortions by Franqois Genoud (pp. 568, 574) in the Trevor-Roper edition, Carrier maintains that English edition is therefore "worthless." Carrier's alternative translations are noted in the text.

• Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another hundred years, two hundred years perhaps. My regret will have been that I couldn't, like whoever the prophet was, behold the promised land from afar.
  • Original German: "Ich bin auf Grund höherer Gewalt da, wenn ich zu etwas nötig bin. Abgesehen davon, dass sie mir zu grausam ist, die seligmachende Kirche! Ich habe noch nie Gefallen gefunden daran, andere zu schinden, wenn ich auch weiß, dass es ohne Gewalt nicht möglich ist, sich in der Welt zu behaupten. Es wird nur dem das Leben gegeben, der am stärksten darum ficht. Das Gesetz des Lebens heißt: Verteidige dich! Die Zeit, in der wir leben, ist die Erscheinung des Zusammenbruchs dieser Sache. Es kann 100 oder 200 Jahre noch dauern. Es tut mir leid, dass ich wie Moses das gelobte Land nur der Ferne sehen kann."
  • Alternative translation: "I have never found pleasure in maltreating others, even if I know it isn't possible to maintain oneself in the world without force. Life is granted only to those who fight the hardest. It is the law of life: Defend yourself! The time in which we live has the appearance of the collapse of this idea. It can still take 100 or 200 years. I am sorry that, like Moses, I can only see the Promised Land from a distance.
    • Carrier, R. C. (October 2003), "'Hitler's Table Talk': Troubling Finds", German Studies Review 26 (3): 566, ISSN 0149-7952 
• But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.
  • Original German: "Das Christentum (lehrt 'die Verwandlung,' das) ist das Tollste, was je ein Menschengehirn in seinem Wahn hervorgebracht hat, eine Verhöhnung von allem Göttlichen,"
  • Alternative translation: "Christianity teaches 'transubstantiation,' which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly."

• • • Carrier, R.C. (2003). "'Hitler's Table Talk': Troubling Finds." German Studies Review 26 (3): 573.
• I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. In acting as I do, I'm very far from the wish to scandalise. But I rebel when I see the very idea of Providence flouted in this fashion.
  • Original German: "Ich weiß, dass der Mensch in seiner Fehlerhaftigkeit tausend Dinge falsch machen wird. Aber entgegen dem eigenen Wissen etwas falsch tun, das kommt nicht in Frage! Man darf sich persönlich einer solchen Lüge niemals fügen. Nicht weil ich andere ärgern will, sondern weil ich darin eine Verhöhnung der ewigen Vorsehung erkenne. Ich bin froh, wenn ich mit denen keine innere Verbindung habe. Ich fühle mich wohl in der geschichtlichen Gesellschaft, in der ich mich befinde, wenn es einen Olymp gibt. In dem, in den ich eingehe, werden sich die erleuchtetsten Geister aller Zeiten finden."
  • Alternative translation: "I know that humans in their defectiveness will do a thousand things wrong. But to do something wrong against one's own knowledge, that is out of the question! One should never personally accept such a lie. Not because I want to annoy others, but because I recognize therein a mockery of the Eternal Providence."
    • Carrier, R.C. (2003). "'Hitler's Table Talk': Troubling Finds." German Studies Review 26 (3): 570.

• Already Arabs and Moroccans are mingling my name with their prayers.
  • Hitler, Table Talks 1941-44, 12/13 Jan 1942, and in Hitlers priestess by N G-Clarke, and Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 582

• Man has discovered in nature the wonderful notion of that all-mighty being whose law he worships. Fundamentally in everyone there is the feeling for this all-mighty, which we call God (that is to say, the dominion of natural laws throughout the whole universe). The priests, who have always succeeded in exploiting this feeling, threaten punishments for the man who refuses to accept the creed they impose. When one provokes in a child a fear of the dark, one awakens in him a feeling of atavistic dread. Thus this child will be ruled all his life by this dread, whereas another child, who has been intelligently brought up, will be free of it. It's said that every man needs a refuge where he can find consolation and help in unhappiness. I don't believe it! If humanity follows that path, it's solely a matter of tradition and habit. That's a lesson, by the way, that can be drawn from the Bolshevik front. The Russians have no God, and that doesn't prevent them from being able to face death. We don't want to educate anyone in atheism.

• Night of 11th-12th July 1941; p. 6.

• In the long run, National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together. [On a question from C. S., whether this antagonism might mean a war, the Fuehrer continued:] No, it does not mean a war. The ideal solution would be to leave the religions to devour themselves, without persecutions. But in that case we must not replace the Church by something equivalent. That would be terrifying! It goes without saying that the whole thing needs a lot of thought. Everything will occur in due time. . . . The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practises a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the ancient world, the relations between men and gods were founded on an instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its key-note is intolerance. Without Christianity, we should not have had Islam. The Roman Empire, under Germanic influence, would have developed in the direction of world-domination, and humanity would not have extinguished fifteen centuries of civilisation at a single stroke. Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. The result of the collapse of the Roman Empire was a night that lasted for centuries.

• Night of 11-12 July 1941; pp. 6-7.

• By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them. The great migrations set out from the East. With us begins the ebb, from West to East. That's in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of struggle, the élites are continually renewed. The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.

• Night of 10 October 1941; p. 51.

• Trying to take a long view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable on falsehood ? When I think of our people's future, I must look further than immediate advantages, even [p. 59] if these advantages were to last three hundred, five hundred years or more. I'm convinced that any pact with the Church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such a compromise. Thus the State will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse. An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the State, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science. That's why I've always kept the Party aloof from religious questions. I've thus prevented my Catholic and Protestant supporters from forming groups against one another, and inadvertently knocking each other out with the Bible and the sprinkler. So we never became involved with these Churches' forms of worship. And if that has momentarily made my task a little more difficult, at least I've never run the risk of carrying grist to my opponents' mill. The help we would have provisionally obtained from a concordat would have quickly become a burden on us. In any case, the main thing is to be clever in this matter and not to look for a struggle where it can be avoided. So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the [p. 60] stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.

• Midday 14th October 1941; pp. 58-60.

• It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that period the ancient world was divided between the systems of philosophy and the worship of idols. It's not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified—and the only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little. A movement like ours mustn't let itself be drawn into metaphysical digressions. It must stick to the spirit of exact science. It's not the Party's function to be a counterfeit for religion. If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself. One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretise the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them? The man who lives in communion with nature necessarily finds himself in opposition to the Churches. And that's why they're heading for ruin—for science is bound to win. I especially wouldn't want our movement to acquire a religious character and institute a form of worship. It would be appalling for me, and I would wish

• Midday 14th October 1941; p. 61.

• The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society. Thus one understands that the healthy elements of the Roman world were proof against this doctrine. Yet Rome to-day allows itself to reproach Bolshevism with having destroyed the Christian churches! As if Christianity hadn't behaved in the same way towards the pagan temples.
  • Night 19 October 1941; p. 61. Entry in Bormann Vermerke but not in Henry Picker's notebook.

• Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism the destroyer. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later was called the Christ, intended something quite different. He must be regarded as a popular leader who took up His position against Jewry. Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and it's certain that Jesus was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son of a whore—of a whore and a Roman soldier. The decisive falsification of Jesus's doctrine was the work of St. Paul. He gave himself to this work with subtlety and for purposes of personal exploitation. For the Galilean's object was to liberate His country from Jewish oppression. He set Himself against Jewish capitalism, and that's why the Jews liquidated Him. Paul of Tarsus (his name was Saul, before the road to Damascus) was one of those who persecuted Jesus most savagely. When he learnt that Jesus's supporters let their throats be cut for His ideas, he realised that, by making intelligent use of the Galilean's teaching, it would be possible to overthrow this [p. 77] Roman State which the Jews hated. It's in this context that we must understand the famous "illumination". Think of it, the Romans were daring to confiscate the most sacred thing the Jews possessed, the gold piled up in their temples! At that time, as now, money was their god. On the road to Damascus, St. Paul discovered that he could succeed in ruining the Roman State by causing the principle to triumph of the equality of all men before a single God—and by putting beyond the reach of the laws his private notions, which he alleged to be divinely inspired. If, into the bargain, one succeeded in imposing one man as the representative on earth of the only God, that man would possess boundless power.
  • Midday 21 October 1941; pp. 76-77. Entry made by Martin Bormann personally, according to Werner Jochmann.

• It's striking to observe that Christian ideas, despite all St. Paul's efforts, had no success in Athens. The philosophy of the Greeks was so much superior to this poverty-stricken rubbish that the Athenians burst out laughing when they listened to the apostle's teaching. But in Rome St. Paul found the ground prepared for him. His egalitarian theories had what was needed to win over a mass composed of innumerable uprooted people.
  • Midday 21 October 1941; p. 78.

• It was only later, under the influence of the Germanic spirit, that Christianity gradually lost its openly Bolshevistic character. It became, to a certain degree, tolerable. To-day, when Christianity is tottering, the Jew restores to pride of place Christianity in its Bolshevistic form.
  • Midday 21 October 1941; p. 78.

• Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. To-day, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday, the instigator was Saul: the instigator to-day, Mardochai. Saul has changed into St. Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest [Bolshevism], we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea.
  • 21 October 1941; p. 79.

• The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there's no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they're inspired by the best religious spirit, and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.
  • Evening 24th October 1941; p. 85.

• The Russians were entitled to attack their priests, but they had no right to assail the idea of a supreme force. It's a fact that we're feeble creatures, and that a creative force exists. To seek to deny it is folly. In that case, it's better to believe something false than not to believe anything at all. Who's that little Bolshevik professor who claims to triumph over creation? People like that, we'll break them. Whether we rely on the catechism or on philosophy, we have possibilities in reserve, whilst they, with their purely materialistic conceptions, can only devour one another.
  • Evening 24th October 1941; p. 87.

• I know nothing of the Other World, and I have the honesty to admit it. Other people know more about it than I do, and I'm incapable of proving that they're mistaken. I don't dream of imposing my philosophy on a village girl. Although religion does not aim at seeking for the truth, it is a kind of philosophy which can satisfy simple minds, and that does no harm to anyone. Everything is finally a matter of the feeling man has of his own impotence. In itself, this philosophy has nothing pernicious about it. The essential thing, really, is that man should know that salvation consists in the effort that each person makes to understand Providence and accept the laws of nature.
  • Night 11 November 1941; p. 122.

• The man of to-day, who is formed by the disciplines of science, has likewise ceased taking the teaching of religion very seriously. What is in opposition to the laws of nature cannot come from God. Moreover, thunderbolts do not spare churches. A system of metaphysics that is drawn from Christianity and founded on outmoded notions does not correspond to the level of modern knowledge. In Italy and in Spain, that will all end badly. They'll cut each other's throats. I don't want anything of that sort amongst us.
  • Night 11 November 1941; p. 123.

• Christ was an Aryan, and St. Paul used his doctrine to mobilise the criminal underworld and thus organise a proto-Bolshevism. This intrusion upon the world marks the end of a long reign, that of the clear Grasco-Latin genius. What is this God who takes pleasure only in seeing men grovel before Him? Try to picture to yourselves the meaning of the following, quite simple story. God creates the conditions for sin. Later on He succeeds, with the help of the Devil, in causing man to sin. Then He employs a virgin to bring into the world a son who, by His death, will redeem humanity! I can imagine people being enthusiastic about the paradise of Mahomet, but as for the insipid paradise of the Christians!
  • Midday 13 December 1941; p. 143.

• When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease.
  • Midday 13 December 1941; p. 145.

• Pure Christianity—the Christianity of the catacombs—is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.
  • 14 December 1941; p. 146

• But for the coming of Christianity, who knows how the history of Europe would have developed? Rome would have conquered all Europe, and the onrush of the Huns would have been broken on the legions. It was Christianity that brought about the fall of Rome—not the Germans or the Huns. What Bolshevism is achieving to-day on the materialist and technical level, Christianity had achieved on the metaphysical level.
  • 27 January 1942; p. 253.

• What is ruining Christianity to-day is what once ruined the ancient world. The pantheistic mythology would no longer suit the social conditions of the period. As soon as the idea was introduced that all men were equal before God, that world was bound to collapse.
  • 26 February 1942; p. 336.

• God made men. But thanks to original sin we are men in the image of our world, earning our bread in the sweat of our brow. For five hundred thousand years, God impassively contemplated the spectacle of which He is the author. Then one day He decided to send upon earth His only son. You remember the details of that complicated story! Those who don't believe should, it seems, have faith imposed on them by force. If God is truly interested in men being enlightened, one wonders why He resorts to torture for that purpose. While we're on the subject, let's add that, even amongst those who claim to be good Catholics, very few really believe in this humbug. Only old women, who have given up everything because life has already withdrawn from them, go regularly to church. All that's dead wood—and one shouldn't waste one's time in concerning oneself with such brains.
  • Midday 27 February 1942; pp. 341-342.

• The fact that the Japanese have retained their political philosophy, which is one of the essential reasons for their success, is due to their having been saved in time from the views of Christianity. Just as in Islam, there is no terrorism in the Japanese State religion, but, on the contrary, a promise of happiness. This terrorism in religion is, to put it briefly, of a Jewish dogma, which Christianity has universalized and whose effect is to sow trouble and confusion in men's minds. It's obvious that, in the realm of belief, terrorist teachings have no other object but to distract men from their natural optimism and to develop in them the instinct of cowardice. As far as we are concerned, we've succeeded in chasing the Jews from our midst and excluding Christianity from our political life.
  • Midday 4 April 1942; p. 393.

• It is a great pity that this tendency towards religious thought can find no better outlet than the Jewish pettifoggery of the Old Testament. For religious people who, in the solitude of winter, continually seek ultimate light on their religious problems with the assistance of the Bible, must eventually become spiritually deformed. The wretched people strive to extract truths from these Jewish chicaneries, where in fact no truths exist. As a result they become embedded in some rut of thought or other and, unless they possess an exceptionally commonsense mind, degenerate into religious maniacs. It is deplorable that the Bible should have been translated into German, and that the whole of the German Folk should have thus become exposed to the whole of this Jewish mumbo jumbo. So long as the wisdom, particularly of the Old Testament, remained exclusively in the Latin of the Church, there was little danger that sensible people would become the victims of illusions as the result of studying the Bible. But since the Bible became common property, a whole heap of people have found opened to them lines of religious thought which—particularly in conjunction with the German characteristic of persistent and somewhat melancholy meditation—as often as not turned them into religious maniacs. When one recollects further that the Catholic Church has elevated to the status of Saints a whole number of madmen, one realises why movements such as that of the Flagellants came inevitably into existence in the Middle Ages in Germany. As a sane German, one is flabbergasted to think that German human beings could have let themselves be brought to such a pass by Jewish filth and priestly twaddle, that they were little different from the howling dervish of the Turks and the negroes, at whom we laugh so scornfully. It angers one to think that, while in other parts of the globe religious teaching like that of Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed offers an undeniably broad basis for the religious-minded, Germans should have been duped by a theological exposition devoid of all honest depth.
  • Midday 5 June 1942; p. 513.

• Only in the Roman Empire and in Spain under Arab domination has culture been a potent factor. Under the Arab, the standard attained was wholly admirable; to Spain flocked the greatest scientists, thinkers, astronomers, and mathematicians of the world, and side by side there flourished a spirit of sweet human tolerance and a sense of purist chivalry. Then with the advent of Christianity, came the barbarians. Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers—already you see the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity!—then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so.
  • 28 August 1942; p. 667.

• Jesus was most certainly not a Jew. The Jews would never have handed one of their own people to the Roman courts; they would have condemned Him themselves. It is quite probable that a large number of the descendants of the Roman legionaries, mostly Gauls, were living in Galilee, and Jesus was probably one of them. His mother may well have been a Jewess. Jesus fought against the materialism of His age, and, therefore, against the Jews. Paul of Tarsus, who was originally one of the most stubborn enemies of the Christians, suddenly realised the immense possibilities of using, intelligently and for other ends, an idea which was exercising such great powers of fascination. He realised [p. 722] that the judicious exploitation of this idea among non-Jews would give him far greater power in the world than would the promise of material profit to the Jews themselves. It was then that the future St. Paul distorted with diabolical cunning the Christian idea. Out of this idea, which was a declaration of war on the golden calf, on the egotism and the materialism of the Jews, he created a rallying point for slaves of all kinds against the elite, the masters and those in dominant authority. The religion fabricated by Paul of Tarsus, which was later called Christianity, is nothing but the Communism of to-day.
  • Night of 29-30 November 1944; pp. 721-722.

wrongly assumed

Hitler Speaks

Rauschning, Hermann (1939). Hitler Speaks. London: Kessinger Publishing. Printed in the US in 1940 as: The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Putnam. The authenticity of Rauschning book has been thoroughly challenged, particularly by Wolfgang Hänel, Eckhard Jesse, and Fritz Tobias. The work "is now considered to be fraudulent" (Richard Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, 2003, p. 29) and "now regarded to have so little authenticity that it is best to disregard it altogether." (Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris, 2000, p. xiv.)

• The religions are all alike, no matter what they call themselves. They have no future—certainly none for the Germans. Fascism, if it likes, may come to terms with the Church. So shall I. Why not? That will not prevent me from tearing up Christianity, root and branch and annihilating it in Germany.
  • Rauschning, Hermann (2006). The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Kessinger Publishing, p. 57.

• It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity, because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood.
  • Rauschning, Hermann (2006). The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Kessinger Publishing, p. 56.

• Whether it's the Old Testament or the New, or simply the sayings of Jesus, according to Houston Stewart Chamberlain—it's all the same old Jewish swindle. It will not make us free. A German Church, a German Christianity, is distortion. One is either a German or a Christian. You cannot be both. You can throw the epileptic Paul out of Christianity—others have done so before us. You can make Christ into a noble human being, and deny his divinity and his role as a saviour. People have been doing it for centuries. I believe there are such Christians to-day in England and America—Unitarians they call themselves, or something like that. It's no use, you cannot get rid of the mentality behind it. We don't want people who keep one eye on the life hereafter. We need free men who feel and know that God is in themselves.
  • Rauschning, Hermann (2006). The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Kessinger Publishing, pp. 57-58.

• You can't make an Aryan of Jesus, that's nonsense. . . Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again? Nonsense! Never again. That tale is finished. No one will listen to it again. But we can hasten matters. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves. They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.
  • Rauschning, Hermann (2006). The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Kessinger Publishing, p. 58.

• I promise you that if I wished to, I could destroy the Church in a few years; it is hollow and rotten and false through and through. One push and the whole structure would collapse. We should trap the priests by their notorious greed and self-indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a few years' reprieve. Why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantages. Matters will never come to a head. They will recognize a firm will, and we need only show them once or twice who is the master. Then they will know which way the wind blows. They are no fools. The Church was something really big. Now we're its heirs. We, too, are a Church. Its day has gone. It will not fight. I'm quite satisfied. As long as youth follows me, I don't mind if the old people limp to the confessional. But the young ones—they will be different. I guarantee that.
  • Rauschning, Hermann (2006). The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Kessinger Publishing, pp. 60-61.

• The Protestants haven't the faintest conception of a church . . . You can do anything you like to them—they will submit. . . . They are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them. They have neither a religion that they can take seriously nor a great position to defend like Rome.
  • Rauschning, Hermann (2006). The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Kessinger Publishing, p. 62.

• The old beliefs will be brought back to honor again.... the whole secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the demonic.... We will wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race.
  • Rauschning, Hermann (2006). The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940. New York: Kessinger Publishing, pp. 62-63.

Quotes about religious views of Adolf Hitler

• He himself remained a member of the Catholic Church, although he had lost the inner connection with it. He was to remain one until his suicide.
  • Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, 1969, p 109 as quoted in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 875

• [Hitler in 1942 said] that he held the Church to be absolutely necessary in the life of the State.
  • Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, 1969, p 109 as quoted in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 865

• As for Hitler, his professed religion unhesitatingly juxtaposed the God-Providence and Valhalla. Actually his god was a political argument and a manner of reaching an impressive climax at the end of his speeches.
  • Albert Camus in The Rebel (1951)