Was Hitler a Christian and were his actions prompted by his Catholicism

[SoulMonster]

On 17.6.2016 at 5:29 PM, DieselDaisy said:

There has not been a significant religious war in Western Europe since the Treaty of Westphalia. Consider some of the wars which have occurred after this date, of Spanish Succession, Protestant Britain and the Dutch Republic allied with the Catholic Hapsburg against Catholic France; the Seven Years' War, Protestant Britain and Prussia allied with Catholic Portugal against Catholic France, Protestant Sweden and (eventually) Orthodox Russia; Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, secular(ising) French states pitted against just about the whole of Europe; World War One, Catholic France, Orthodox Russia and Protestant Britain allied against Protestant/Catholic Germany...

The whole religion causes wars maan is just lazy hyperbole. Dynastic politics and territorial expansion have played a much bigger role in European warfare since the 17th century.

That humans fight over religions is beyond doubt. We fight over just about anything else, suggesting that for some weird reason we won't fight over something as important too us as religion is patently absurd. Sure, every war tend to have many components, but one can easily point to contributing religious factors in many wars, and for some wars these religions factors seem to be predominant. Dismissing the argument that religions contibute to wars, is completely wrong and suggests some unspoken agenda.

You are right that Europe has experienced much less religious warfare in recent times, but we are not speaking about only Europe, are we? We are talking about religion world-wide and since the 17th century we've had the War in Sudan, Partition of India, Mahdi Revolt, Hui Rebellion, Panthay Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion -- all major war events where religion played a dominant role. As far as ideological warfare goes, in a broader sense, religion is the dominant factor and trumphs political wars and others.

I know you don't deny that relious wars exist, Diesel, but some do, and I will quote this to them:

"The strangest thing about religious conflicts is that some people deny they ever happen. They will say the Crusades were about economics and the Inquisition was a consolidation of power. They will deny that anyone fights over religion, despite the fact that the participants reely admit to fiighting over religion.

Obviously, no was is 100 % religious (or 100 % anything) in motivation, but we can't' duck the fact that some comflicts involve more religion than others. So how can we decide when religion is the real cause of conlict and not just a convenient cover story?

Well, for starters, if the only difference between the two sides is religion, then it is a safe bet that the conflict is religious. Serbs, Croats, and Bosniacs are basically the same people except for religion. Ditto the Dutch and the Flemings. In the French Wars of Religion, the partition of India, The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the war in Lebanon, people who looked alike, spoke the same languages, and lived in tge same communities wre at each other's throats only because they followed different religions-

Another consideration: How easily can youo describe a conflict without mentioning religion? The American Civil War certainly had religious elements to it - John Brown's fanaticism, Lincolm's inaugural address, "The Batlle Hymn of the Republic" - but you could easily write a detailed history of the war without mentioning any of these. Contrast that with, for example, the Crusades. Could you even get one paragraph into it without mentioning the pope, the Holy Land, or Jerusalem? You can argue that the Crusades were about something other than religion, but try writing two pages without brining it up.

Finally, if the parties declare religious motives, we should at least consider the possibilities that they are telling the truth. Religion is so central to a person's world-view that most big decisions have some sort of religious consideration. Even if the warmonger-in-chief is using religion only as a convenient and cynical excuse to stir up the masses, the main reason he does that is because it works. You never see warmongers rallying armies to destroy an eney that spells or shaves differently, because those are stupid reasons to fight a war. A different religion by contrast is usually accepted as a perfectly fine reason to kill someone. If it weren't, why would people rally behind it?

Still, not every conflict between different religions is a religious conflict, especially when there are multiple differences between the conflicting groups. In teh European conquest of Americas, the desire the convert the natives fell far behind the desire to rob them. The Pacific war between the Japanese and the Americans is easily explained as a gopolitical power struggle. When the Turks pushed into Europe, religions played a role in motivating both attackers and defenders, but it was secondary to the simple empire-building that was occuring along all the borders of the empire." [Matthew White "Atrocitology".]

[SoulMonster]

On 17.6.2016 at 8:16 PM, DieselDaisy said:

This ridiculous acronym; why are Lesbians first? Why not GTBL or or BTLG?

Because one of the words simply has to be first? Are you outraged because women comes first or becacuse the acronym to you somehow suggests lesbians are more important thans gays, transgenders and bisexuals? I don't get it.

 

[DieselDaisy]

1 hour ago, SoulMonster said:

Because one of the words simply has to be first? Are you outraged because women comes first or becacuse the acronym to you somehow suggests lesbians are more important thans gays, transgenders and bisexuals? I don't get it.

 

You interpret everything I say so literally and seriously?

[SoulMonster]

5 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

You interpret everything I say so literally and seriously?

How should it have been interpreted?

[DieselDaisy]

1 minute ago, SoulMonster said:

How should it have been interpreted?

With a bit of humour you teutonic fella, you!

[SoulMonster]

7 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

With a bit of humour you teutonic fella, you!

It was daft.

[DieselDaisy]

2 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

It was daft.

I'm sure it was but it prompted an equally daft, typical Anglocentric mygnr I suppose, discussion among the usual culprits. An interesting diversion from tedious Christian bashing.

[SoulMonster]

2 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

I'm sure it was but it prompted an equally daft, typical Anglocentric mygnr I suppose, discussion among the usual culprits. An interesting diversion from tedious Christian bashing.

A clever diversion, in other words.

Anyway, back to Hitler. Here's what Matthew White has to say about his religiousity:

"Confusing the issue [on the religiosity of the Holocaust] is the ambiguity of Hitler's religion. In public, Hitler was a Catholic. He spoke kindly of Christ and was never excommunicated. Many of his followers proudly considered themselves to be Christians fighting against godless Communism. Whatever Hitler's long-term plans for Christianity may have been, he treated it more gently and with more respect than he did Coommunism, Judaism, or homosexuality.

Hitler's personal religion is hard to nail down. Hard-core Nazis preferred to label themselves gottgläubiger, "god-believers", as a formal break from Christianity, and the borad category that best fits Hitler is Deism, the belief in an impersonal higher power, based on reason and nature, without revelations or miracles. This puts him in the same general belief system as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson, although clearly at the other end of the moral spectrum".

In my opinion, the Holocaust was caused by Hitler's hatred of the Jews, not due to their religion but due to presumed traits of their ethnicicity.

 

 

[DieselDaisy]

1 minute ago, SoulMonster said:

A clever diversion, in other words.

Anyway, back to Hitler. Here's what Matthew White has to say about his religiousity:

"Confusing the issue [on the religiosity of the Holocaust] is the ambiguity of Hitler's religion. In public, Hitler was a Catholic. He spoke kindly of Christ and was never excommunicated. Many of his followers proudly considered themselves to be Christians fighting against godless Communism. Whatever Hitler's long-term plans for Christianity may have been, he treated it more gently and with more respect than he did Coommunism, Judaism, or homosexuality.

Hitler's personal religion is hard to nail down. Hard-core Nazis preferred to label themselves gottgläubiger, "god-believers", as a formal break from Christianity, and the borad category that best fits Hitler is Deism, the belief in an impersonal higher power, based on reason and nature, without revelations or miracles. This puts him in the same general belief system as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson, although clearly at the other end of the moral spectrum".

In my opinion, the Holocaust was caused by Hitler's hatred of the Jews, not due to their religion but due to presumed traits of their ethnicicity.

 

 

I do not believe Hitler had tolerably fleshed out arguments pertaining to deism - or any kind of religiosity - like the 18th century thinkers, however there is certainly a deistic element there in the sense that Hitler found institutional Christianity a collosal pain in the arse yet professed allegiance to a Christianity, in neither a strictly Catholic way, nor Lutheran for that matter. I just don't think Hitler ever thought about religion, beyond utilising it as realpolitik. He was disdainful of it, but couldn't be so disdainful publicly. I do not think he ever thought about religion with any degree of passion. He preferred to spend his time dreaming up architectural projects, listening to Wagner and walking his dogs.

You have to understand that Hitler was rather lazy, and emitted rather weak and confused orders. How the Reich operated was through multiple apparatchiks trying to conclude ''what the Fuhrer would do?''. It was chaos. This is also one of the reasons why it has proven difficult to find that all important Hitler order instigating the holocaust, and why some Germans, critical of Nazi totalitarianism would say things like, ''if only the Fuhrer knew of this?'' - the seed of post-war Neonazi apologia. If an uneven policy on the two churches in Germany, and religion in general, emerges from the Third Reich, much of it can be attributed to this.

You also have to understand that the war terminated the Nazi state in its infancy.