Hitler and his God

“National Socialism is a Religion”

It was the future propaganda-tsar Goebbels who wrote in 1928: “National Socialism is a religion. Only the religious inspiration, which shatters the old, outmoded formulas and creates new ones, is still missing. What we lack is a ritual. The time must come that National Socialism becomes the state religion of the Germans. My Party is my Church, and I believe that I serve my Lord in the best possible way when I execute his will and free my suppressed people from the chains of slavery.” 794 The younger generation of historians has no longer any difficulty in accepting Nazism as an ersatz-, pseudo- or semi-religion, or as a religion pure and simple, which it certainly was for those who responded to the call of the Führer-Messiah. “I call Hitler’s world vision and consequently National Socialism a religion”, 795 states Orzechowski; Bärsch writes that National Socialism “was not one or other ideology, but essentially a religion”; 796 and Klaus Vondung sees as the decisive factor in National Socialism that it consisted of “an independent religion”. 797

The Nazis had their own yearly cycle of hallowed rites. Every one of these occasions developed its own regimented rituals, with forests of flags and banners, ambience-creating music, torches and fires, and was held at the most suggestive moment of the day or night. The great were praised, the dead commemorated and the living transformed into initiates in the mystic mysteries of the fatherland and of the holy blood flowing in their veins. And there were the ceremonies of initiation into the party organizations, the army and the SS, always including an oath on Adolf Hitler personally, represented by the Blood Banner, the sacred banner magically containing and able to impart the presence and force of the Führer.

The crowning festivity of the year was the Party Rally, held in Nuremberg in the month of September. It lasted a whole week and delegations of party organizations everywhere in Germany participated. In 1938 Hitler declared: “Several of the [ritual] acts have by now reached their definitive form.” “Up to this point”, writes Speer, “I had taken the phrase Das Tausendjährige Reich [the Reich of a Thousand Years] as purely theoretical, a mere claim to establishing something that would last more than a single lifetime. But when I saw Hitler virtually canonizing the ritual in this manner, I realized for the first time that the phrase was intended literally. I had long thought that all these formations, processions and dedications were part of a clever propagandistic revue. Now I finally understood that for Hitler they were almost like rites of the founding of a church … It now seems to me more likely that he was deliberately giving up the smaller claim to the status of a celebrated popular hero in order to gain the far greater status of founder of a religion.” 798
For countless Germans, especially Protestants, the Hitler religion coexisted with their belief in Christ. For many others Hitler replaced Christ. Altars to him were built in the homes, daily adorned with fresh flowers and prayed for. Letters were written to “my dear, fantastic, almost improbable Führer” by women “immeasurably surrendered” to him in “a madness of unimaginable happiness”. Photos of the letter writers were sent “together with the totality of my life”. Hands touched by the Führer were not washed for weeks, a pebble on which his boot had stepped became a relic, a woman at whom he had smiled was treated like a saint in her village. “While you liberated the Sudetenland, I knitted these stockings for you. Now we have both reached our goal, you a big one, I a small one”, a teacher wrote to Hitler. “He does not speak, something speaks through him … An essential characteristic of his is the absolute virility … He is full of an immense kind-heartedness, a boundless faith, a total modesty about his person, but also a limitless pride of his people and what has been accomplished, and a noble hope in what will be accomplished …” 799

Hitler’s true objectives, even though quite explicitly stated by him, were so fantastic that they were understood only metaphorically – at least by the first generation of Nazis, for the second generation of Hitler Youth, SS-men and young army officers towards the end of the war was already sufficiently fanaticized to take his words literally. All Hitler’s efforts were focused on fighting the wars necessary to establish the foundations of the Aryan world empire, and the Germans of that time did not realize that their use consisted in bringing this about and serve as the required canon fodder. Hitler, though, had warned them early on: “If the struggle on behalf of the world vision is not conducted by men of heroic spirit who are ready to sacrifice everything, within a short while it will become impossible to find real fighting followers who are ready to lay down their lives for the cause … In order to secure the conditions that are necessary for success, everybody concerned must be made to understand that the new movement looks to posterity for its honour and glory but that it has no recompense to offer to the present-day members.” 800

“Hitler never left his people in doubt that war was to come”, testifies Rauschning. “We must be prepared for the toughest war which a people ever had to wage,” Hitler said. “Only by this test of the will can we mature for the sovereignty to which we are called. It will be my duty to fight this war without considerations for losses. The blood sacrifices will be appalling.” 801 He was prepared “to justify the blood sacrifice of a whole generation of the German youth”, if necessary surpassing the losses in the First World War, for he had “the right to send the youth to their death”. When the day came that he would order war, he could not be withheld by “the thought of the ten million young men whom he would send to their death”. 802

We know about Hitler’s contempt for the German people from the time we examined the main themes of Mein Kampf. (Goebbels’ disdain for “the human canaille” was not less.) Already during the battle of Stalingrad he said: “In this too I am cold as ice: if the German Volk is not ready to fight for its self-preservation, very well, then it must vanish.” 803 This attitude of Hitler will take on monstrous proportions towards the end. “If the German people are no longer so strong and ready for sacrifice that they will stake their own blood on their existence, they deserve to pass away and be annihilated by another, stronger power … If this is the case I would not shed a tear for the German people.” 804 And to Albert Speer he said: “If the German nation is now defeated in this struggle, it has been too weak. That will mean it has not withstood the test of history and was destined for nothing but doom.” 805

The man became ever more cynical. “The less the population has to lose, the more fanatically it will fight”, he said to Speer in connection with the bombings. “If the German people are incapable of appreciating me, I’ll fight this war alone!” he exclaimed, in the safety of his bunker moving phantom armies about in imaginary positions with broad sweeps of his hand. Finally, when the allied fronts moved unstoppably forward towards the centre of Germany, Hitler issued the orders for his scorched earth policy. “No German was to inhabit territory occupied by the enemy”, writes Speer. The entire population of the threatened areas was to be forcibly evacuated and all that remained behind destroyed. When his attention was drawn to the lack of transport for hundreds of thousands of people in the middle of the winter, he barked: “Let them walk!” and added to Keitel: “We can no longer afford to concern ourselves with the population.” 806

“If the war is lost”, he said to Speer, “the people will be lost also. It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation [he meant the USSR]. In any case only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.” 807 The Messiah had not failed the Chosen People, his people had failed and betrayed him, all of them.