In 1933, Hitler outlawed all atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany.

[trotsky]

The German Freethinkers League, with a purported membership of about 500,000, was disbanded and its national headquarters "converted to a bureau advising the public on church matters."

In 1944, after tracking down former GFL Charman Max Sievers in Belgium and arresting him, he was executed for "conspiracy to commit high treason." His offenses including writing against the 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty between the Nazi government and the Catholic Church.

Tell me again how the Nazis were atheists, Pope Ratzi.

BONUS CONTENT: Massive list of Hitler quotes from PZ Myers.

[charlie]

1. He did it to hide his secret atheism

I'm surprised you didn't know that. In fact, he invented atheism. Take the blinders off.

[PassingFair]

13. LOL n/t

[Iggo]

18. Also, separation of church and state was his idea.

:crazy:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

2. K&R for the TRUTH.

[trotsky]

3. It is mind-blowingly depressing that even some DUers...

will swallow the pope's and Glenn Beck's historical revisionism.

[toddwv]

4. The far-right media ignores or rewrites history so we are doomed to repeat it.

"My feelings 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 for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in 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.... 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 to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited."
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has 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, speech given during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933, 26 April 1933

"Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction." Adolf Hitler, quoted in H. Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction: Hitler Speaks, p. 42, New York: Putnam’s, 1940

"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 theater, and in the press.... We want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess...." Adolf Hitler, in a speech given to the Reichstag, March 1936, from M. Hakeem, The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1, pp. 871-872, London: Oxford University Press, 1942

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

5. Can you imagine Stalin saying anything even remotely close to that?

Me neither.

"Nazis = Commies" ==> idiot.

[happyslug]

6. After 1944, the Nazi went on a killing spree, German was a mad house

A couple of the leaders in the 1917-1918 German Naval Mutinies were executed along with any other POTENTIAL enemy of the state. These Mutinies had been left alone after the Mutinies and even during 1930s, only after it became crystal clear that Germany had lost the war were these people rounded up an executed (Some round up after the June 6, 1944 landings in France, but more after the July 20th failed plot to kill Hitler).

As to the Catholic Church of that time period, Pope Pius XI sent a letter to be read in Church by Catholic Priests to their congregations saying that Hitler had broken his word in regards to the Church and could NOT be trusted. The Conspirators actually approached the Catholic Church for support (and did received some support) even through most of the Conspirators were Protestant. The reason the Catholic Church was picked was do to it having an organization that reached outside Germany AND its opposition to the German rule of Hitler. Pope Pius XII (Pius Xi died in 1939) had come through the diplomatic section of the Vatican and turned away most request for assistance to over throw Hitler. Pius XII opposed Hitler, but was NOT going to risk the Church in over throwing him. Furthermore Poland was under German Occupation from 1939 and the Poles were asking the Pope to help them in regards to the occupation and Pius XII did not think he could reduce the pressure on the Poles without being able to talk to Hitler and that meant the Catholic Church did NOT want to be part of any coup, even while in opposition to Hitler.

People have to accept that Hitler worshiped only one god, himself, as did the Nazi party. This was re-affirmed after the 1923 failed Putsch when Hitler was jailed. The Nazi Party literally fell apart NOT do to any government action, but it no longer had Hitler to hold it together by his Speech making. Hitler was the draw and his imprisonment showed that to the Nazi Leadership and Membership. Thus any attack on Hitler was an attack on the Nazi Party. Thus the Nazis went nuts after the July 20th 1944 plot, they started to round up anyone who they even THOUGHT was involved with ANY opposition to the Party. There were ways to avoid the round up. One way was to stay in the Army, if you were in the Army at the front you came under Army law (on leave or in Berlin it was different). Many opposition leaders stayed in the German Army at the front, for their more feared going home then being killed by the Allies. One Conspiracy took a flight to Spain and sat out the rest of the War in Spain.

Just a comment on how bad it was in Germany from July 20th 1944 till the German Surrendered on May 7, 1945. Worse, many prisoners were held and then executed as allied troops came near the prison they were being held at. This was quite common, the guards, all good Nazis, did NOT want their prisoners to go free so they hanged them (Often by the use of Piano Wire). Several opposition leaders to the Nazis were killed this way. Remember at that time period, Hitler did NOT have to justify his killings to anyone, even foreign papers, he was becoming that isolated. The Nazis were to tied in with him as their leader they would do anything they THOUGHT he wanted them to do. If you want to put a religious angle on this train of thought it is one of the most anti-Catholic, Anti-Christian, Anti-Judaical-Christian-Islamic thought you can image. Justice did NOT matter, only Hitler did, and it is that mind set that we have to understand and attack (And Hitler was good at mixing Christian imagery, Teutonic Imagery, pagan imagery, Darwin/evaluational imagery and any thing else that he could use to justify his actions. He did NOT leave religion stand in his way, or any other theology for that matter. Hitler would use them all and ignore them all whenever it was convenient to him.

As to Hitler outlawing atheist groups, after he won power in 1933 Hitler did that to any group he thought he could get away with. This includes the Communists, other political parties, Labor unions etc. He did permit the Protestant and Catholic Churches to survive, not because he wanted to them survive, it would have turned some of his supporters against him (Remember the Nazis only win 34% of the vote, most people voted for some one else in the 1933-1934 elections). To eliminate this opposition he outlawed any possible opposition and replaced them with a Nazi controlled similar organization (For example, Unions were abolished and replaced by a Nazi Controlled Labor organization).

A major exception was the Churches, do to the fact most Germans were members of them and to outlaw them would be counter productive. Hitler did undermine the Protestant Churches, for most were more dependent on State tolerance then the Catholic Church was (and withdraw of tolerance and FUNDS could wreak such Churches AND almost all Secular organization, thus most Protestant AND secular groups either became pro-Nazis, or neutral). The Catholic Church had always been more centralized (in many ways the Catholic Church is more a parallel Government to the Secular Government then a religion within a society). Thus the Catholic Hierarchy could and did unite on various subjects (For example approved various Catholics in their helping the Jews escape the Nazis, while trying to minimize the effects of such laws with direct contract with Hitler). The above letter from Pius XI had to be smuggled into Germany for it was so opposed by the Nazis (and it was a relatively mild rebuke, but Hitler opposed ANY and ALL opposition no matter how mild, thus the Post WWII German President sat out the Nazi era, he did NOT support the Nazis, nor opposed them, just sat at home, till after WWII when he was seen as the only non-Nazi senior politician and was elected the First President of West Germany).

It is easy, today, 60 years later to see the errors the people of the 1930s and 1940s made in Germany, but when judging them we have to look at the world as they saw it. The Holocaust was in the Future (1940s) AND only occurred when Hitler was at war with the World and no longer cared what people thought over seas (The Holocaust was NOT set up till December 1941, Six months AFTER the Nazis had attacked Russia AND after Pearl Harbor). Once was was on, even the German Military opposition stood down and after the Fall of France stood down even more on the grounds "One can NOT overthrow a Military Winner" and that is how Hitler was seen in Germany in 1940-1941. Only with the failure of the Russian Campaign did the opposition rebuild, and by that time Pius XII had other problems (one of which was do to the Russian Campaign, things had improved in Poland and the Bishops of Poland was warning the Pope NOT to do anything that would make the Germans return to their practices of 1939-June 1941). Thus Pius XII refused to do anything that would make Hitler and the Nazis mad. Lets remember all restraints was off Hitler do to the on going war, and thus the Holocaust could occur. The Holocaust was NOT Possible till Germany was at war with the USSR AND the US on the grounds Hitler need oil from one or the other. Once Germany was at war with BOTH, Hitler wanted to stay in power EVEN IF THAT MEANT THE COMPLETE DEFEAT OF GERMANY. Complete defeat was certain by 1942, with the US in the War, AND the Russian Campaign failing to take Moscow. It was only a matter of time, and everyone knew it. The problem was HOW do you handle Hitler and the Nazis while the allies slowly crushed them? Not Much till an allied army took more and more of Europe. As the Allied Armies marched on, Hitler still had complete power in Germany, It was a mess, and everyone knew it. No one in the West Thought Hitler would do anything irrational (this no one believed the Holocaust stories even when told first hand, most people had heard similar stories 1914-1918 of the Germans and found after WWI that the stores were all lies so during WWII people took the stories as lies till allied armies marched into the death Camps).

To this day I hate when people lie about war crimes. The evil "Huns Bayoneting Belgium Babies", was a well known WWI British Propaganda lie. It was known to be a lie by 1920 by most people (and many people dismissed is as a lie during WWI when you had no evidence either way, it could be true, might not be and no one was relying on German denials for if true the Germans had good reasons to lie). The affect of that lie and that most people knew it to be a lie by 1940, colored people's perceptions of the Holocaust as it was occurring. You had good reliable first hand accounts of the Holocaust, but until you had IRREFUTABLE proof in the form of the death camps themselves, most people dismissed the claims as propaganda like "Huns Bayoneting Belgium Babies". This is the side affect of people lying about war crimes, such lies lead to people NOT believing any accusation of war crimes till you have over whelming evidence. It permitted the Nazis a free hands with the Jews during WWII.

[trotsky]

7. Attempts to whitewash history and absolve not only the Catholic Church...

but, as you are trying to do, ANY religious influence from Hitler and Nazi Germany are despicable. We are supposed to be better than Glenn Beck and Bill Donohue.

[happyslug]

8. I added my last two paragraphs while you were posting your statement

I do NOT white wash history, nor do I try to make it a list of Crimes. Both are wrong for when people do either, they tend to miss the lessons of History, one of which history is most gray not white or black.

Hitler and Goebbels used Religion, just like they used the Theory of Evolution in "showing" how the Jews were different from "Germans" and in a battle of the survival of the Fittest the German people had to kill off the "inferior" Jews OR face annihilation by the Jews themselves (Nazis and Antisemitism does NOT have to make sense, Hitler did not bother with logic, all he cared about was getting the German People to support him and his party).

Just pointing out the problem with Hitler was NOT religion (Unless you mean the worship of Hitler) but Hitler's use of any dogma, news, theology etc to justify his actions. Beck and company fall into the same trap, justifying their actions on any grounds that appeals to people who are listening to them. It can be religion, or attack on religion, it does NOT matter.

Just a word of warning do NOT get hung up on the use of religion terminology by people on the Right. Most of them have a weak understanding of their own religion let alone the differences between the Protestants and the Catholics. Many ways one way to attack them is to use the dogma of their religion against them. Puritanism and other Reform Churches emphasis it is your duty to do charity. Catholics dogma is that one can NOT get to heaven on a belief in Christ alone, but you need good works (Most Protestants religion rejects this concept BUT still demand that you do charity and good work). I am amazed at how often the Right Ring claim to be religious and then reject ANY concept of charity or other good works. It is frightening and something that needs to be used against these right wing fanatics.

Yes, if they want to use religion, respond with religion. They are NOT following the doctrines of most Christian Churches, but a doctrine that is, at best, a corruption of the teaching of Christ (and Mohammad and Moses and even Buddha).

[trotsky]

9. How disappointing.

The "No True Scotsman" fallacy is what you close with?

(BTW, you should take a bit of your own advice and not get hung up yourself on the use of religious terminology by the right. They've tried to link Hitler & Darwin for years, and here you repeat the meme. Evolution has nothing at all to do with the "inferiority" of one race or species over another, and your misuse of the term "fittest" demonstrates your lack of understanding about evolution too.)

[TZ]

10. I've heard myself in the near past

Churches preaching about how the Jews killed Jesus! If thats being said in 1990's America, what the hell do you think they were saying in the Catholic Churches before WWII. Fuck you, and your soon to be sainted Pope who knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it.

[trotsky]

11. The craziest part of that....

is that the Christian religion wouldn't exist if someone hadn't allegedly killed the Jesus character. That was kinda necessary to fulfill the retrofitted prophecies and please Yahweh's thirst for blood sacrifice, wasn't it? So that whole box of hatred against the Jews has always confused me. (Not that any of the others made much sense either!)

[DeSwiss]

12. K&R!!!

- If there were any justice......

[struggle4progress]

14. The Nazis more or less systematically outlawed every group not under direct NSDAP control:

communists, Social Democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses, ... "Treason" in the Nazi era was a flexible concept: people were executed for failing to give the Hitler salute, for opposing the German war effort, for handing out anti-Nazi leaflets ...

I rather doubt the Nazis targeted Sievers for his atheism: he was an active communist, which in that era almost invariably meant one was an atheist, and the German communists had opposed the Nazis from the start. A month after Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazis burned the Reichstag, blamed the communists, and began to suppress all groups that opposed them, beginning with the communists

[skepticscott]

15. Which was also the case during Stalin's regime

but of course in that case, it was ALL about atheists persecuting Christians, if you believe some of the more rabid anti-atheists here. Funny that double standard of judgement.

[struggle4progress]

16. Yes, well, Stalin was dreadful, too. And there are countless other examples:

the slave-based Caribbean sugar plantation was dreadful; the English imperial sack of India of dreadful; the Spanish Inquisition was dreadful; the European colonial exploitation of Africa was dreadful; the Shoah was dreadful; the US-backed so-called "low-intensity warfare" against impoverished Central Americans in the Reagan era was dreadful; the Balkan tribal conflicts of the 1990s were dreadful ...

There is, roughly speaking, no limit to the dreadful examples we can pile up. If one wants to work effectively to prevent future occurrences, then one ought to conduct careful and exacting examinations of the processes involved, with some eye towards the actual historical details and some attention to what people actually thought at the time: noisy empty abstract sloganeering can't substitute for real analytical understanding

[trotsky]

17. The point, which you of course choose to ignore yet again...

and opt to defend the indefensible, is that if the Nazis were atheists, why did they outlaw an atheist group?

But you've demonstrated already that you seem to agree with Pope Ratzi's condemnation of atheists anyway.

[struggle4progress]

21. What part of "The Nazis more or less systematically outlawed every group not under direct NSDAP

control" do you not understand? Perhaps I should phrase my view in even simpler language? I might say something like "The Nazis were control freaks" but I fear it would grossly misrepresent the situation by trivializing the Nazi attempt at total domination of every aspect of life. It is my view that the Nazis were not really principled about anything: they wanted absolute power, and they set about in a systematic and cynical way to obtain it. I rather doubt that the decision from the top, to murder all the Jews in Europe, was based on much logic other than a mere power calculus, including the realization that such murders would consolidate support for the Nazis by anti-semitic groups and that by redistributing the goods and real estate of the murdered the Nazis could gain further political support from those who received those things. This desire for power extended, on the Night of Long Knives, to the point of murdering fellow Nazis along with any other prominent person who seemed to threaten the totalitarian project

But I think you and I would be hampered in any attempt to discuss more fully "atheism" or "religion" in the Nazi era, because you and I seem to use the words in rather different senses

[trotsky]

23. What part of "more or less" did you miss?

But I think you and I would be hampered in any attempt to discuss more fully "atheism" or "religion" in the Nazi era, because you and I seem to use the words in rather different senses

Well sure, because your posting history makes it clear you'd rather obfuscate and spam with pages of Google results than face any evidence that not every Christian is a perfect human being like you.

[onager]

19. Irony! The Germans don't have a problem with any of this...

"Any of this" meaning all the Xian-whitewash threads I'm seeing, ever since Pope Panzer decided to blame Hitler on us atheists.

Sorry, Trotsky, I just chose your thread to bring this up.

In Berlin, you can visit a whole ROOM full of evidence about the blatant official Xian collaboration with the Nazis from 1933-45.

Along with poster-size photos of priests and pastors throwing the Nazi salute and schmoozing with Hitler, it contains many of the cheery original letters, telegrams, etc., sent back and forth between Church leaders and top Nazis.

This fascinating stuff is located in the Memorial to the German Resistance. The Memorial is a small museum dedicated to Germans who opposed Hitler. When I visited (some years ago, I should admit), each room of the Memorial showcased one aspect of German life and how the Nazis took it over - government, schools, etc. And churches.

When I went, visitors entered the Memorial by walking right under Martin Niemoller's famous quote: "First they came for the Communists..."

Adding to the Historical Chill of this place - the Memorial is inside the Bendlerblock, a building that housed the German General Staff in the 1930's. So you're standing in the very building where Hitler's plans to conquer Europe were hatched.

Even chillier - you're standing just a few feet away from the wall where the July 1944 conspirators against Hitler were shot. That happened in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock.

Purely by accident, I happened to be visiting the memorial in July, when Germans come to leave flowers at that spot. It was very moving.

Oh, and I recently saw that incident re-enacted. In a movie starring some dwarf Scientologist actor...

[struggle4progress]

20. It seems to escape the keen wit of both you and PZ, that topnazi was a sociopathic liar,

whose proclamations and promises were again and again revealed as mere strategic manipulations. Topnazi seems to have been very good at that, and quite a number of people fell for it at the time. But many decades have elapsed now, and the record is rather clear and extensive, so I don't really understand how anyone today would take any of topnazi's quotes at face value: the proper attitude towards evaluating any part of the record should be that one inspects carefully the date of a speech or text, the intended audience, the political context of the speech or text, and the possible intended political effects of the speech or text. To do otherwise, is to act inappropriately as if one still believed the utterances, despite the mountains of evidence that he was a sociopathic liar

[trotsky]

22. Yet what escapes your "keen wit" is the simple question:

Can a Christian lie?

You apparently believe the answer to that question is no, and the fact that "topnazi" (why the cutesy nickname for Hitler all of a sudden?) may have lied is what makes him "not a perfect Christian" like you evidently are. Believing that someone couldn't be a Christian because they lie, or sin in some other way which one does not approve, is bigotry plain and simple.

Christians can be sociopathic assholes too.

[skepticscott]

24. By the same logic

one might just as easily argue that Pope Ratzi isn't really a "true" Catholic, but has just been faking it all along to achieve a position of power and authority. That he has seriously difficulty with the truth is unquestionable.

And you are, still, unqualified to make arguments about "putting things in context", since it is a principle that you yourself reject when it happens to be inconvenient.

[Silent3]

25. But Stalin didn't outlaw atheists!!!

Stalin! Stalin! Don't forget Stalin! :sarcasm: :)

[laconicsax]

26. zOMG!!! He was a secret atheist!!!

I'd be curious to see if there's any significant overlap between people who believe that Hitler was an atheist and people who believe that the President is Muslim.

[trotsky]

27. Well prior to the pope's announcement,

it was an idea primarily promoted by right-wing historical revisionist nuts like Glenn Beck and so didn't get a lot of traction on DU. But the pedophile-protecting pope has now given cover to the (thankfully few) DUers who buy into the nonsense.