Catholics today all try to repudiate Adolf Hitler and deny that he was a fellow Roman Catholic.  But this was definitely not the case so long as he was in power, after he had given Germans jobs and reasons to be proud of their powerful country, following the period of great economic depression and great shame which were the results of the country's disastrous defeat in World War One.  Hitler understood how much it would hurt his cause if the 66% of the German population who were Protestants and the 33% who were fellow Catholics were to learn how anti-Christian he and his Nazi ring leaders actually were in their hearts.  Although we now know that Adolf Hitler expressed his true thoughts and feelings for his Catholic Church in his private writings and in his candid communications with his inner circle, we also know that he was a shrewd politician who knew how to manipulate the churchmen of both of the major German faiths to his advantage, by convincing them at the time that he was a champion, not a opponent, of Christianity.         Catholics today imagine that their church must have repudiated Hitler at that time, because they want so much to be disassocated from him in our time. But try as they may to rewrite history, the fact is that after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, neither the pope in Rome as leader of the church worldwide, nor the bishops as leaders of the church in Germany, ever denied Hitler himself (nor any of the many, many, other Roman Catholic leaders of the Third Reich) public access to the sacraments nor membership in the R.C. church.          Nor was "the Nazi Bible", Hitler's Mein Kampf, ever placed on the "Index" of books which Catholics were forbidden to read.   Nor were Catholics discouraged publicly or privately from serving in Hitler's administration.  The sad truth is that German Catholic bishops actually did forbid the faithful from joining the Nazi party.  But that was before Hitler came to power.  Once the Nazis came into power and Hitler was in a position to actually enact his diabolical schemes, the Catholic hierarchy reversed itself and lifted that ban.         In early 1933, Hitler vowed secretly to completely eradicate Christianity from Germany.  'You are either a Christian or a German, you cannot be both.'  But Hitler was smart enough to know that in a nation as Christian as Germany, the public and the churches must never know his true fellings and beliefs.         We honestly believe this is the best web site on this topic on the entire www, at least in English. Whether you agree or want to contest that claim, we invite you to publish your views on our public LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/forum.         Throughout his career however, Adolf Hitler never ceased trying to project to his Christian countrymen and their clergy the image of a "man of God", chosen to lead a Christian nation into a more perfect state, purified of the demonic influence of Jews and "Bolsheviks".  And history proves that he succeeded in persuading the vast majority of his countrymen not just to let him proceed, but to do his dirty work for him. In a speech that Adolf Hitler gave in April, 1922, and then published in "My New Order", he proclaimed:         "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." [ Hitler rallying his Nazi supporters in front of Church of our Lady in Nuremberg, circa 1928, photographed by Heinrich Hoffmann, from US Holocaust Museum.]         "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 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."         Projecting an image of religiosity was so important to Hitler that he reinforced that image, over and over and over again, as in : "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."  Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 46 "What we have to fight for. . .  is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."  [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125] "This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."   [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152] "Adolf Hitler recognized at an early stage the potential for Catholic resistance to National Socialism.  In Mein Kampf (meaning "My Struggle"), he wrote that a confrontation (i.e.  in the open) with the Catholic Church in Germany would prove disastrous." (to his NAZI cause). 'In early Feb. of 1933, he declared in the Reichstag (parliament) that the churches were to be an integral part of German national life.' " . . . "The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life." "The National Government regards the two Christian confessions as factors essential to the soul of the German people. It will respect the contracts they have made with the various regions. It declares its determination to leave their rights intact. In the schools, the government will protect the rightful influence of the Christian bodies. We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people. We hope to develop friendly relations with the Holy See" ( addressed the Reichstag on March 23, 1933) "The Government of the Reich regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation." "The rights of the churches will not be diminished."  ( froxm The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1, pg. 369-372 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942 - edition of 1969.) "National Socialism, he proclaimed, 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."  [Hitler - in his first radio address to the German people after coming to power (1933).] "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 [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie."  Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted in John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" ) "While we destroyed the (Catholic) 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."  Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934         "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.  (Between World War I & II, the Catholic "Center Party" had been one of the most powerful political parties in Germany.)  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." Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934. " I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator.  By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work. Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, 1936 "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.         Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174 "Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church." Adolf Hitler, reported to have said in Berlin in 1936, on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism.         Impressed with the organization of the Papacy, Hitler is quoted as saying the following:         "I learned much from the Order of the Jesuits…until now there has never been anything more grandiose on the earth than the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. I transferred much of this organization into my own party." Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Said To Me (1939), 266-267.         "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."         Adolf Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at the Nuremberg Parteitag of [11 Sept. 1936]         "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." Adolf Hitler, to Nazi leaders on 2 June 1937, as reported by a correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph":         "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." Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937         "Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is 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 (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted . . . 2. The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State . . .  Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.         It is therefore, to put mildly-- effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich. . .          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? 3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised 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 .         There are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State.         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."         Adolf Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan., 1939         [ That last sentence sums up Hitler's stand on the priesthood.  Rather than standing for atheism, as today's Christians would like, Hitler attacked the priesthood only to the extent that they got in his way.]         "When Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in Munich in November, 1939, he gave the credit to providence. 'Now I am completely content,' he exclaimed. 'The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to let me reach my goal.' Catholic newspapers throughout the Reich echoed this, declaring that it was a miraculous working of providence that had protected their Fuëhrer. One cardinal, Michael Faulhaber, sent a telegram instructing that a Te Deum be sung in the cathedral of Munich, 'to thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuëhrer's fortunate escape. ' The Pope also sent his special personal congratulations." ( from http://skeptically.org/againstreligion/id13.html )           "The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests.  It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.  Today Christians stand at the head of our country.  We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.  We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press-in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years." ( a Radio Broadcast July 22, 1933; from My New Order. )  (The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1.  pp. 871-872, Oxford University Press,London, 1942)         One of the most frightening quotes (from one of Hitler's Tischgespräche: )         "If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness.  If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good faith."         "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 a natural law framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by the lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of Providence." [ Hitler, in a 1944 speech ].         "Woman's world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men." Adolph Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New Feminism         "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 . . . we need believing people." Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933         On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday. The celebrations, initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany" and added with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." (from Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell )         "I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it." Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40         "There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland." [Message painted on walls of concentration camps and signed , signed "Hitler";  Life, August 21, 1939] "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." + The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. +         "Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law (as well as the church) on his side.  Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal." - Historian Alan Bullock         Hitler was a great fan of "Passion Plays."  No doubt he would have loved Mel Gibson's movie, which might well be the most viewed "Passion Play" of all time:         "It is vital that the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans.  There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry."         Still another example of Catholic worship promoting hatred of the Jews at the time was the annual commemoration in Deggendorf in Catholic Bavaria of the professed miraculous appearance of "a lovely little child" from a communion wafer, which had allegedly been stolen and desecrated by the Jews of the town on 9/30/1337. On the same day, the pious Catholics of the town, acting "out of legitimate zeal pleasing to God," killed off all of the town's Jews.  Many of the 10,000 pilgrims who came to celebrate these events each year in Hitler's day could read the inscription under a picture depicting the massacre in the Catholic Church, "God grant that our fatherland be forever free from this hellish scum."   (Lewy, p. 272-72)

"Hitler did well in monastery school.  He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests.  Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood."[ from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html ]         Members of the Wehrmacht (regular army) swore this loyalty oath: "I swear by God this holy oath to the Fuëhrer of the German Reich and the German people,  Adolf Hitler."         For the members of the elite Nazi S. S., it was: "I pledge to you, Adolf Hitler, my obedience unto death, so help me God."
	Hitler Was Not An Atheist by John Patrick Michael Murphy
	Every time Christian soldiers put on their NAZI uniforms, their belt buckle proclaimed "God is with us".
In George Orwell's 1984, it was stated, "Who controls the past controls neutralityture, who controls the present controls the past."  Who is going to control the present-fundamentalism or freedom?  History is being distorted by many preachers and politicians.  They are heard on the airwaves condemning atheists and routinely claim Adolf Hitler was one.         Hitler was a Roman Catholic, baptized into that religio-political institution as an infant in Austria.  He became a communicant and an altar boy in his youth and was confirmed as a "soldier of Christ" in that church.         Its worst doctrines never left him.  He was steeped in its liturgy, which contained the words "perfidious jew."  This hateful statement was not removed until 1961.  "Perfidy" means treachery.  In his day, hatred of Jews was the norm.  In great measure it was sponsored by two major religions of Germany, Catholicism and Lutheranism.         He greatly admired Martin Luther, who openly hated the Jews.  Luther condemned the Catholic Church for its pretensions and corruption, but he supported the centuries of papal pogroms against the Jews.  Luther said,  "The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves," and  "We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them."  "Ungodly wretches" he called the Jews in his book, Table Talk.         Hitler seeking power, wrote in Mein Kampf, " . . .  I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator.  By fighting off the Jews.  I am doing the Lord's work."  Years later, when in power, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.  Three years later he informed General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."  He never left the church, and the church never left him.  Great literature was banned by his church, but his miserable Mein Kampf never appeared on the index of Forbidden Books.  He was not excommunicated or even condemned by his church.  Popes, in fact, contracted with Hitler and his fascist friends Franco and Mussolini, giving them veto power over whom the pope could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain, and Italy.  The three thugs agreed to surtax the Catholics of these countries and send the money to Rome in exchange for making sure the state could control the church.         Those who would make Hitler an atheist should turn their eyes to history books before they address their pews and microphones.  Acclaimed Hitler biographer John Toland explains his heartlessness as follows: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite the detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jews was the killer of god.  The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god . . . "         Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church.  Soldiers of the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us).  His troops were often sprinkled with holy water by the priests.  It was a real (99%) Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical.         Hitler, like some of the today's politicians and preachers, politicized "family values."  He liked corporal punishment in home and school.  Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his administration.  While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages.  He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it."         The author is a retired attorney in Colorado Springs who writes a weekly column for an alternative newspaper. { from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 19, Number 2 }
When Hitler wanted to promote the production of human replacement parts for his Nazi machine, was it an accident that he come up with an annual award to women producing many children consisting of a cross enshrining another cross (the swastica is just one of many variations of a cross) in the shape of what was one of the most visible articles of Roman Catholic worship at the time, the "monstrance", used to display and worship the Eucharistic host?         See Wikipedia's article on the Nazi Mother's cross
After claiming throughout the period of the Third Reich that the Vatican "neutrality" prevented it from speaking out against the Nazis,  "The Catholic Church, which claimed the religious allegiance of 98 per cent of the Italian people, was forbidden by Italian electoral law from engaging in politics.  Nevertheless, the Church threw its entire weight behind the Christian Democrats, led by a former Librarian of the Vatican.  The Pope himself stated that Catholics who voted Communist would be denied absolution.  The implications of this were made clear in one highly publicized incident.  When the Communist mayor of the village of Giuliano, Francesco Frezza, who was also a devout Catholic that never missed a Sunday Mass in all his life, died, he was denied a Catholic burial by the local Bishop.  Peasants who attempted to bring his body into the church found their way blocked by a cordon of police.  In addition to invoking what for Catholics are the most serious religious sanctions, the Church also supplied an "infantry" for the Christian Democrat's campaign.  The Catholic Action organization set up "civic committees" in 18,000 parishes to get out the vote for the Christian Democrats.  After the election, the leaders of Catholic Action claimed to be directly responsible for 40 per cent of the Christian Democrat vote." [ from California State U. - www.csulb.edu/~eruyle/humanweb/07tridec2003.htm ]         "The Nazis championed traditional family values: their ideology was conservative, bourgeois, patriarchal, and strongly antifeminist.  Discipline and conformity were emphasized, marriage promoted, abortion and homosexuality despised. . .Most religious Germans detested the impiety, secularism, and hedonistic decadence that they associated with such modernist ideas as democracy and free speech.  If they feared democracy, they were terrified by Communism, to the point of being willing to accept extreme counter-methods." [ from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html ]         An online reviewer of the book, "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity", by Richard Steigmann-Gall (1919-1945 ) makes the following points about Hitler's supposed anti-Christian sentiments:         "Steigmann-Gall makes some important points about Hitler's rage against Christainity. First off, Hitler was not an atheist, despised atheism and of course despised the Enlightenment Liberalism and Marxist Socialism that are the main sources for modern atheism. Secondly, one should be cautious about Hitler's "Table Talk." Richard Carrier has argued that it has been unscrupulously translated: while in English Hitler denounces Christianity as the greatest idiocy, in the actual German it is clear that Hitler's target is transubstantiation. Steigmann-Gall points out that Hitler had the habit of telling people what they wanted to hear, and his most venomous comments were made in front of Bormann and Himmler. Third, Steigmann-Gall also makes the suggestion that instead of seeing Hitler's anger at Christianity as a revelation of Nazism's basic antipathy, it should be seen as the bitter rage of a defeated megalomaniac, a rage Hitler also directed at the army, some of his closest associates, and indeed the German people themselves."         "When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together."  - the Rev. Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 01-21-93         Au contraire, Mr. Robertson, most of the leaders were Conservative Christian heterosexuals like yourself! Hitler offered his countryman the family of his good friend as the model for all good Germans to follow:     Joseph Goebbels (seated) with his wife Magda, whose Jewish father died at the Buchenwald slave labor camp, and the six innocent children whom they killed before killing themselves, in Hitler's bunker.  The eldest son in uniform, by Magda's previous marriage, was in the Luftwaffe and survived the war.  Goebbels was so close to his Catholic boss that he asked and received the honor to have the Fuëhrer serve as first witness at his Catholic marriage. "Fuëhrer, my Fuëhrer, bequeathed to me by the Lord." Prelunch invocation of the German School Children.
Here is a whole site dedicated to actual Hitler quotes on his religious beliefs. and several other sites devoted to the question of Hitler's faith : Hitler's Christianity: by James Walker = Very Good - Lenghty! Hitler Was Not An Atheist : by John P. Murphy = Very Good - brief! Religion and the Holocaust : by Richard E. Smith Hitler: Christian, Atheist, or Neither? : by Dean Mischewski Was Hitler an Atheist or a Theist? More Importantly, Who Cares? : by Mark Vuletic Freethought Today, March 1997