Hitler was NOT christian!

I know, I know... Not this again. I'm sure you all are as sick of hearing this lame-ass defense as I am. However,I recently came across a new spin (new to me) on the Hitler debate. Here is what I encountered posted on a Christian forum in response to one of my posts:

In 1998 documents were released by Cornell University from the Nuremberg Trials that revealed Nazi plans to exterminate Christianity at the end of World War II The documents cover the Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis and demonstrate the deliberate genocide of Jews during the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were killed. One senior member of the U.S. prosecution team, General William Donovan, as part of his work on documenting Nazi war crimes, compiled large amounts of documentation that the Nazis also planned to systematically destroy Christianity.

The defense is that Hitler secretly hated Christianity and, despite fairly extensive historical documentation where Hitler expresses his belief in the Christian god, his public support of Christian ideals was all just a well-calculated ruse to rid Germany of Christianity, thus Hitler couldn’t possibly have been a Christian (Catholic… for you fussy-types).

Upon investigating this further, this has become a very popular response. Has anyone encountered this before or even read the documents for themselves? Thoughts, comments, insight? No doubt there is more to this than what was posted (in terms of omitted detail).

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Comment by Artor on December 21, 2011 at 11:22am: If such documents have been public since 1998, I think it's likely that I would have heard something about them before now, so I suspect it's a load of crap. This isn't conclusive, but it doesn't pass the smell test. If Hitler was not an Xtian, I think we can safely say he was no true Scottsman either.

Comment by Rick on December 21, 2011 at 12:04pm: Artor, the doccuments are real and Cornell does have them (according to the university's site). What information they actually contain is another matter.

Comment by Gerry Rival on December 21, 2011 at 2:23pm: i've heard the claim that hitler was an atheist and secretly despised the church but haven't heard the claim that they wanted to exterminate christianity. and certainly haven't heard any reference to these documents (not to say i don't believe they exist).

i just don't see how it could've happened since majority of german citizens (at the time) and nazi's soldiers themselves were christians/catholics.

Comment by Robert Karp on December 21, 2011 at 2:30pm: If that was the plan, then I seriously doubt the nazi foot soldiers were in on the joke and would be hard pressed to find evidence to the contrary. Therefore they were acting with the idea that god was with with them, got mit unz, therefore they acted in the name of christianity even if their leader "thought" otherwise. Bottom line regardless of hitler's final plan with chrisitanity, or his true system of belief or non-belief, he used christianty and the church to commit his heinous acts and to motivate others to do so. It makes no difference to me what he may or may not have ultimately believed.

Comment by Artor on December 21, 2011 at 3:04pm: Exactly, Robert. And it hardly matters if Hitler was Xtian or not, when the Catholic Church supported him. The Church still ends up with the bad mark on it's long record of bad marks.

Comment by Rick on December 21, 2011 at 3:09pm: @ Rich: this is the info I found that says it is housed at Cornell

http://library.lawschool.cornell.edu/WhatWeHave/SpecialCollections/...

Comment by Dale Headley on December 21, 2011 at 3:18pm: Sneaky guy, that Hitler: in March, 1933, he REALLY fooled all of us by having atheism declared illegal in Germany.

Comment by james d on December 21, 2011 at 3:56pm: well, anyone who claims to have 'more insight' about hitler than the volumes of stuff written by the guy is full of hot air! it is clear from the many letters and books written BY hitler that he was doing what he was doing for the glory of his god, the catholic one he grew up with and never renounced. any speculation beyond that is not supported by the stuff hitler wrote about what he believed. the fundies can not get around that, so they again, just make shit up!

Comment by Albert Bakker on December 21, 2011 at 4:22pm: For Hitler there seems to have been a direct link between atheism and communism, or Bolshevism that he saw as a Jewish conspiracy, as he wrote down in Mein Kampf. With the word he used "Gottlosenbewegung" he meant that, not atheism in general. Atheists could become Nazi's without (institutional) problem.

For the Vatican the Godless communists were always a much bigger threat than the relatively well behaved National Socialist movement. For reference on the Nazi-Vatican concordat of 1933 full text.

Comment by Jacob on December 21, 2011 at 5:49pm: from what i've learnt, Hitler was definitely not a Christian and viewed it as important for his longevity as a leader for people to revere him like a god, whether he was an atheist or not his hard to know

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