Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (14 page)

The major exception was the Theological Declaration of Barmen (
Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung
) in 1934, a statement written by the Confessing Church opposing the Nazi-supported “German Christian” movement which was anti-Semitic and extremely nationalistic. The Declaration was written by Reformed theologian Karl Barth and other Confessing Church leaders, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Nonetheless, the churches cannot by any stretch of the imagination be held responsible as the cause of Nazism.

In the end, to its great detriment, except the Confessing Church, the church largely stayed out of politics—as many people think the church also should do in North America today. At the time, most mainline German churches had abandoned biblical Christianity, and those that had not were more apt to oppose Hitler and Nazism.
⁸¹
As a result of the passiveness of both the German church and people in general, Hitler was able to carry out many of his goals—such as the almost total destruction of the Jewish people in Europe—with relatively little opposition.

_______________

1
Kevin Phillips,
Post-Conservative America: People, Politics, and Ideology in a Time of Crisis
(New York: Random House, 1982), 161.

2
Richard Dawkins,
A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 158.

3
Richard Dawkins,
The God Delusion
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 273.

4
Dawkins,
The God Delusion
, 273–274.

5
http://waynepaulson.topcities.com/DialogX1.htm;
accessed March 12, 2005; emphasis mine.

6
Anonymous, “Hitler’s Religion” (
http://www.creationtheory.org/Essays/Hitler.xhtml;
accessed August 10, 2012); and “Atheist Morality: Was Hitler an Atheist?” (http://www.creationtheory.org/Morality/AtheistMorality-Hitler.xhtml; accessed August 10, 2012).

7
August Kubizek,
The Young Hitler I Knew
(London: Greenhill Books, 2006), 94.

8
George Victor,
Hitler: The Pathology of Evil
(Washington: Brassey’s, 1998), 21.

9
Kubizek,
The Young Hitler
, 95.

10
Cited in Adolf Hitler,
The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939,
ed. Norman Baynes
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1942), 369.

11
Jack R. Fischel and Susan M. Ortmann,
The Holocaust and Its Religious Impact: A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography
(Westport: Praeger, 2004), 43–44.

12
Cited in Ian Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45: Nemesis
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 936.

13
Adolf Hitler,
Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941–1944
, trans. Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens; intro. H.R. Trevor-Roper, “The Mind of Adolf Hitler” (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953), 6.

14
Karla Poewe,
New Religions and the Nazis
(New York: Routledge, 2006), 118.

15
Larry Azar,
Twentieth Century in Crisis
(Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 1990), 154.

16
Fischel and Ortmann,
The Holocaust and Its Religious Impact
, 44.

17
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 330, 488.

18
Poewe,
New Religions and the Nazis
, 118.

19
Christopher R. Browning,
The Origins of the Final Solution
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 370.

20
Gilmer W. Blackburn, “The Portrayal of Christianity in the History Textbooks of Nazi Germany,”
Church History
49, Vol. 4 (December 1980): 433–446.

21
Richard Milner,
The Encyclopedia of Evolution
(New York: Facts on File, 1990), 206.

22
Fischel and Ortmann,
The Holocaust and Its Religious Impact
, 44.

23
Arthur Keith,
Evolution and Ethics
(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), 72.

24
Donald Dietrich, “Racial Eugenics in the Third Reich: The Catholic Response,” in Jack R. Fischel and Sanford Pinsker, eds.,
The Churches’ Response to the Holocaust
(Greenwood: Penkevill Publishing Company, 1986), 88.

25
Azar,
Twentieth Century in Crisis
, 154.

26
George Stein, “Biological Science and the Roots of Nazism,”
American Scientist
76, No. 1 (Jan–Feb 1988): 50–58.

27
George L. Mosse,
Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), 244.

28
Mosse,
Nazi Culture
, 244.

29
Alan Bullock,
Hitler, A Study in Tyranny
(New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 389.

30
See Eric Metaxas,
Bonhoeffer—Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. The Third Reich
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010).

31
Fischel and Pinsker, eds.,
The Churches’ Response to the Holocaust
.

32
Victor,
Hitler: The Pathology of Evil
, 112.

33
Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf
(Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin/The Riverside Press, 1962), 286, 325, 402–403, 285, 289.

34
George Hawtin,
The Living Creature: The Origin of the Negro
(self published, 1980); Charles Lee Magne,
The Negro and the World Crisis
(Hollywood: New Christian Crusade Church, 1972).

35
John S. Conway,
The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945
(New York: Basic Books, 1968), 29.

36
Poewe,
New Religions and the Nazis
, 112.

37
Poewe,
New Religions and the Nazis
, 112.

38
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 238.

39
The Speeches of Adolf Hitler
, 369–370.

40
The Speeches of Adolf Hitler
, 369

41
Bullock,
Hitler, A Study in Tyranny
, 389.

42
The Speeches of Adolf Hitler
, 19–20.

43
Phillips,
Post-Conservative America
, 161.

44
Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, 65, emphasis in the original.

45
Poewe,
New Religions and the Nazis
, 112.

46
Gerald Astor,
The Last Nazi: The Life and Times of Joseph Mengele
(New York: Donald Fine, 1985), 22.

47
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 516.

48
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 39.

49
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 449.

50
John Laffin,
Hitler Warned Us
(New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1998), 17.

51
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 28.

52
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
,29.

53
Conway,
The Nazi Persecution of the Churches
, 67.

54
Erwin W. Lutzer,
Hitler’s Cross: The Revealing Story of How the Cross of Christ Was Used as a Symbol of the Nazi Agenda
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 95.

55
Gilmer W. Blackburn, “The Portrayal of Christianity in the History Textbooks of Nazi Germany,”
Church History
49, Vol. 4 (December 1990): 433–446.

56
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 243.

57
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 702.

58
Victor,
Hitler: The Pathology of Evil
, 111.

59
Max I. Dimont,
Jews, God and History
(New York: New American Library, 1994), 397.

60
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 582–583.

61
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 461.

62
Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–45
, 615.

63
Lutzer,
Hitler’s Cross
, 104.

64
“German Martyrs,”
Time Magazine
36, Vol. 26 (December 23, 1940): 38–41.

65
Fischel and Pinsker, eds.,
The Churches’ Response to the Holocaust
, 19.

66
Victor,
Hitler: The Pathology of Evil
, 83.

67
Eugen Gerstenmaier, “The Church Conspiratorial,” in Eric H. Boehm, ed.,
We Survived: Fourteen Histories of the Hidden and Hunted in Nazi Germany
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2003), 172–189.

68
Conway,
The Nazi Persecution of the Churches
, 297.

69
Conway,
The Nazi Persecution of the Churches
, 297.

70
David Boyle,
World War II: A Photographic History
(The Netherlands: Metro Books, 2001), 22.

71
Eric A. Johnson,
Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans
(New York: Basic Books, 1999), 224.

72
Richard C. Lukas,
Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation, 1939–1944
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1997).

73
Dimont,
Jews, God and History
, 391–392.

74
Azar,
Twentieth Century in Crisis
, 154.

75
Johannes Lenz,
Untersuchungen über die künstliche Zündung von Lichtbögen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lichtobogen-Stromrichter nach Erwin Marx
(Braunschweig: Hunold, 2004).

76
Dimont,
Jews, God and History
, 397.

77
Donald Dietrich, “Racial Eugenics in the Third Reich: The Catholic Response,” in Fischel and Pinsker, eds.,
The Churches’ Response to the Holocaust
,
87.

78
Sheila Hotchkin, “Rare Documents from Nazi Trial Being Posted on Internet,”
The Bryan Times
, Thursday, January 10, 2002, 3.