The Christianity of Hitler revealed in his speeches and proclamations
Through subterfuge and concealment, many of today’s Church leaders and faithful Christians have camouflaged the Christianity of Adolf Hitler and have attempted to mark him an atheist, a pagan cult worshipper, or a false Christian. However, from the earliest formation of the Nazi party and throughout the period of conquest and growth, Hitler expressed his Christian support to the German citizenry and soldiers.
In the 1920s, Hitler’s German Workers’ Party (pre Nazi term) adopted a “Programme” with twenty-five points (the Nazi version of a constitution). In point twenty-four, their intent clearly demonstrates, from the very beginning, their stand in favor of a “positive” Christianity:
| 24. We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health from within only on the principle: the common interest before self-interest. |
Hitler’s speeches and proclamations, even more clearly, reveal his faith and feelings toward a Christianized Germany. Nazism presents an embarrassment to Christianity and demonstrates the danger of faith. The following words from Hitler show his disdain for atheism, and pagan cults, and reveals the strength of his Christian feelings:
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
[Note, “brood of vipers” appears in Matt. 3:7 & 12:34. John 2:15 depicts Jesus driving out the money changers (adders) from the temple. The word “adders” also appears in Psalms 140:3]
Just as the Jew could once incite the mob of Jerusalem against Christ, so today he must succeed in inciting folk who have been duped into madness to attack those who, God’s truth! seek to deal with this people in utter honesty and sincerity.-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 28 July 1922
In the Bible we find the text, ‘That which is neither hot nor cold will I spew out of my mouth.’ This utterance of the great Nazarene has kept its profound validity until the present day.-Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich, 10 April 1923
[The Bible quote comes from Jesus in Revelation 3:16]
In the life of nations, what in the last resort decides questions is a kind of Judgment Court of God…. Always before god and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills.
-Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich, 13 April 1923
There are three words which many use without a thought which for us are no catch-phrases: Love, Faith, and Hope…. We are fanatical in our love for our people….
We have faith in the rights of our people, the rights which have existed time out of mind. We protest against the view that every other nation should have rights – and we have none. We must learn to make our own this blind faith in the rights of our people, in the necessity of devoting ourselves to the service of these rights; we must make our own the faith that gradually victory must be granted us if only we are fanatical enough.
And from this love and from this faith there emerges for us the idea of hope. When others doubt and hesitate for the future of Germany – we have no doubts. We have both the hope and the faith that Germany will and must once more become great and mighty.
We have faith that one day Heaven will bring the Germans back into a Reich over which there shall be no Soviet star, no Jewish star of David, but above that Reich there shall be the symbol of German labor – the Swastika. And that will mean that the first of May has truly come.
-Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich, 01 May 1923
[Love, Faith, and Hope comes from I Corinthians 13:13 NIV]
People ask: is there someone fit to be our leader? Our task is not to search for that person. Either God will give him to us or he will not come. Our task is to shape the sword that he will need when he comes. Our task it to provide the leader with a nation which is ready for him when he comes! My fellow Germans, awaken! The new day is dawning!
-Adolf Hitler, 04 May 1923
It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God.
-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 01 Aug. 1923
It will at any rate be my supreme task to see to it that in the newly awakened NSDAP, the adherents of both Confessions can live peacefully together side by side in order that they may take their stand in the common fight against the power which is the mortal foe of any true Christianity.-Adolf Hitler, in an article headed “A New Beginning,” 26 Feb. 1925
A few days ago I was in Eisenach and stood on top of the Wartburg, where a great German once translated the Bible.
-Adolf Hitler, in Schleiz, Thuringia, 18 Jan. 1927
[The great German Hitler speaks about, of course, describes Martin Luther]
We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls…. We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity… in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich]
We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk…. This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests.
It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection….May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk.
-Adolf Hitler, on 1 Feb. 1933, addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the first time, Volkischer Beobachter, 5 Aug. 1935, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich]
Except the Lord built the house they labour in vain…. The truth of that text was proved if one looks at the house of which the foundations were laid in 1918 and which since then has been in building…. The world will not help, the people must help itself. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it we may wage the battle of our life….
The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty– of Him Who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us…. We are all proud that through God’s powerful aid we have become once more true Germans.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in March 1933
[Note, “Except the Lord built the house, they labour in vain” comes from Psalms 127:1 ]
The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life…. The National Government regard the two Christian Confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality. They will respect the agreements concluded between them and the federal States.
Their rights are not to be infringed…. It will be the Government’s care to maintain honest co-operation between Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith.
The Government of the Reich, who regard Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attach the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See and are endeavouring to develop them.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech to the Reichstag on 23 March 1933
The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were”…. I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.
-Adolf Hitler, 26 April 1933, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich]
We want honestly to earn the resurrection of our people through our industry, our perseverance, our will. We ask not of the Almighty ‘Lord, make us free’!– we want to be active, to work, to agree together as brothers, to strive in rivalry with one another to bring about the hour when we can come before Him and when we may ask of Him:
‘Lord, Thou seest that we have transformed ourselves, the German people is not longer the people of dishonour, of shame, of war within itself, of faintheartedness and little faith: no, Lord, the German people has become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices.’
‘Lord, we will not let Thee go: bless now our fight for our freedom; the fight we wage for our German people and Fatherland.’
-Adolf Hitler, giving prayer in a speech on May Day 1933
This is for us a ground for satisfaction, since we desire that the fight in the religious camps should come to an end… all political action in the parties will be forbidden to priests for all time, happy because we know what is wanted by millions who long to see in the priest only the comforter of their souls and not the representative of their political convictions.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to the men of the SA. at Dormund, 9 July 1933 on the day after the signing of the Concordat.
National Socialism has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State…. The decisive factor which can justify the existence alike of Church and State is the maintenance of men’s spiritual and bodily health, for it that health were destroyed it would mean the end of the State and also the end of the Church….
It is my sincere hope that thereby for Germany, too, through free agreement there has been produced a final clarification of spheres in the functions of the State and of one Church.-Adolf Hitler, on a wireless on 22 July, the evening before the Evangelical Church Election
The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie.-Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted from John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope”
Among the congregations of the Protestant confessions there has arisen in the “German Christians’ a movement that is filled with the determination to do justice to the great tasks of the day and has aimed at a union of the Protestant state churches and confessions.
If this question is not really on the way towards a solution, in the judgement of history no false or stupid objections will be able to dispute the fact that this service was rendered by the volkisch movement at a time when, unfortunately, just as in the Roman Church,
many pastors and superintendents without reason have opposed the national uprising in the most violent, indeed, often fanatical, way.-Adolf Hitler, in a radio address on 22 July 1933 to the German people after a performance of Wagner’s Christian allegory Parsifal in Bayreuth. [from Richard Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich]
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
[This statement clearly refutes modern Christians who claim Hitler as favoring atheism.]
I believe that Providence would never have allowed us to see the victory of the Movement if it had the intention after all to destroy us at the end.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to old members of the Party at Munich on 8 Nov. 1933
The German Church and the People are practically the same body. Therefore there could be no issue between Church and State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church. The election of November 12th would be an expression of church constituency, but not as a Church.-Adolf Hitler, answering C. F. Macfarland about Church & State (in his book, The New Church and the New Germany)
While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions.-Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934
Imbued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions.-Adolf Hitler, speaking in the Reichstag on 30 Jan. 1934
It would have been more to the point, more honest and more Christian, in past decades not to support those who intentionally destroyed healthy life than to rebel against those who have no other wish than to avoid disease. Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole….
If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them.-Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 30 Jan. 1934
We have experienced a miracle, something unique, something the like of which there has hardly been in the history of the world. God first allowed our people to be victorious for four and a half years, then He abased us, laid upon us a period of shamelessness, but now after a struggle of fourteen years he has permitted us to bring that period to a close. It is a miracle which has been wrought upon the German people….
It shows us that the Almighty has not deserted our people, that He received it into favour at the moment when it rediscovered itself. And that our people shall never again lose itself, that must be our vow so long as we shall live and so long as the Lord gives us the strength to carry on the fight.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to the “Old Guard” of the Party at Munich on 19 March, 1934
The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavour to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren ), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of to-day.-Adolf Hitler, on 26 June 1934, to Catholic bishops to assure them that he would take action against the new pagan propaganda
No, it is not we that have deserted Christianity, it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have only carried through a clear division between politics which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere.
There has been no interference with the doctrine (Lehre ) of the Confessions or with their religious freedom (Bekenntnisfreiheit ), nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends….
National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity…. For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life…
These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles! And I believe that if we should fail to follow these principles then we should to be able to point to our successes, for the result of our political battle is surely not unblest by God.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech at Koblenz, to the Germans of the Saar, 26 Aug. 1934
So far as the Evangelical Confessions are concerned we are determined to put an end to existing divisions, which are concerned only with the forms of organization, and to create a single Evangelical Church for the whole Reich….And we know that were the great German reformer [Martin Luther]
with us to-day he would rejoice to be freed from the necessity of his own time and, like Ulrich von Hutten, his last prayer would be not for the Churches of the separate States: it would be of Germany that he would think and of the Evangelical Church of Germany.
-Adolf Hitler, in his Proclamation at the Parteitag at Nuremberg on 5 Sept. 1934
[Note, Martin Luther provided Germany with the seeds of violent antisemitism. Learn about Martin Luther’s dirty little book.
So we have come together on this day to prove symbolically that we are more than a collection of individuals striving one against another, that none of us is too proud, none of us too high, none is too rich, and none too poor, to stand together before the face of the Lord and of the world in this indissoluble, sworn community. And this united nation, we have need of it.
-Adolf Hitler, in Berlin, 01 May 1935
What we are we have become not against, but with, the will of Providence. And so long as we are true and honourable and of good courage in fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall continue to enjoy in the future the blessing of Providence.
-Adolf Hitler, at Rosenheim in Bavaria, 11 Aug. 1935
Only so you can appeal to your God and pray Him to support and bless your courage, your work, your perseverance, your strength, your resolution, and with all these your claim on life.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Frankfurt on 16 March 1936
In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Hamburg on 20 March 1936
Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church.-Adolf Hitler, reportedly to have said in Berlin in 1936 on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism
I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at the Nuremberg Parteitag of 1936 [11 Sept. 1936]
I say that they can be solved; there is no problem that cannot be, but faith is necessary. Think of the faith I had to have eighteen years ago, a single man on a lonely path. Yet I have come to leadership of the German people….
Life is hard for many, but it is hardest if you are unhappy and have no faith. Have faith.
Nothing can make me change my own belief.
-Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg, 12 Sept. 1936
We had no prayer but this during our long years of struggle: Lord, give our people peace at home and abroad!
-Adolf Hitler, at the Oath Under the Cathedral of Light, 14 Sept. 1936
And I especially greet the youth who are present. Become men like those you see before you! fight as they have fought! Be upright and determined, fear no one and do your duty! If you do so, the Lord God will never leave our people.
-Adolf Hitler, at the Oath Under the Cathedral of Light, 14 Sept. 1936
This is probably the first time and this is the first country in which people are being taught to realize that, of all the tasks which we have to face, the noblest and most sacred for mankind is that each racial species must preserve the purity of the blood which God has given it….
The greatest revolution which National Socialism has brought about is that it has rent asunder the veil which hid from us the knowledge that all human failures and mistakes are due to the conditions of the time and therefore can be remedied, but that there is one error which cannot be remedied once men have made it, namely the failure to
recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture and thereby the racial aspect and character which are God’s gift and God’s handiwork. It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation….
As I look back on the great work that has been done during the past four years you will understand quite well that my first feeling is simply one of thankfulness to our Almighty God for having allowed me to bring this work to success. He has blessed our labors and has enabled our people to come through all the obstacles which encompassed them on their way….
Today I must humbly thank Providence, whose grace has enabled me, who was once an unknown soldier in the War, to bring to a successful issue the struggle for the restoration of our honor and rights as a nation.
-Adolf Hitler, before the Reichstag, 30 Jan. 1937
So long as they concern themselves with their religious problems the State does not concern itself with them. But so soon as they attempt by any means whatsoever– by letters, Encyclica, or otherwise– to arrogate to themselves rights which belong to the State alone we shall force them back into their proper spiritual, pastoral activity.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered in Berlin on the May Day festival, 1937
We National Socialists, too, have deep in our hearts our own faith. We cannot do otherwise. No man can mould the history of peoples or of the world unless he has upon his will and his capacities the blessing of Providence.-Adolf Hitler, to Nazi leaders on 2 June 1937, as reported by a correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph”
I will never allow anyone to divide this people once more into religious camps, each fighting the other….You, my Brown Guard, will regard it as a matter of course that this German people should go only by the way which Providence ordained for it when it gave to Germans the common language. So we go forward with the profoundest faith in God into the future. Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us?
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Regensburg on 6 June 1937
If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing.-Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937
This Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When I see, as I so often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a Christianity– and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession, for behind it stand not words but deeds.-Adolf Hitler, speaking of the Winter Help Campaign on 5 Oct. 1937
Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Coburg on 15 Oct. 1937
In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility,
that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger…. I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty….
If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths…. Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence.-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937
National Socialism is not a cult-movement– a movement for worship; it is exclusively a ‘volkic’ political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship….
We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else– in any case something which has nothing to do with us.
At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will– not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord….
Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men.-Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept. 1938.
[Christians have always accused Hitler of believing in pagan cult mythology. Here he clearly expresses his stand against cults and reinforces his Christian views.]
Thus one of Europe’s most serious crises will be ended, and all of us, not only in Germany but those far beyond our frontiers, will then in this year for the first time really rejoice at the Christmas festival. It should for us all be a true Festival of Peace….
-Adolf Hitler, in Berlin, 05 Oct. 1938
[This statement disputes some who claim that Hitler outlawed Christmas.]
God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves.
-Adolf Hitler, 06 Nov. 1938, Weimar
The National Socialist Movement has wrought this miracle. If Almighty God granted success to this work, then the Party was His instrument.-Adolf Hitler, in his proclamation to the German People on 01 Jan. 1939
We are indeed perhaps better able than other generations to realize the full meaning of those pious words “What a change by the grace of God”.
Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration:
1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted…. The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State… Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.
It is therefore, to put mildly– effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich…. I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds?
3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion….
There are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State…. This State has only once intervened in the internal regulation of the Churches, that is when I myself in 1933 endeavoured to unite the weak and divided Protestant Churches of the different States into one great and powerful Evangelical Church of the Reich.
That attempt failed through the opposition of the bishops of some States; it was therefore abandoned. For it is in the last resort not our task to defend or even to strengthen the Evangelical Church through violence against its own representatives…. But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy.
-Adolf Hitler, a speech in the Reichstag on 30 Jan. 1939
[That last sentence sums up Hitler’s stand on the priesthood. Rather than standing for atheism, as today’s Christians would like, Hitler attacked the priesthood only if they stood in Hitler’s political path.]
If positive Christianity means love of one’s neighbour, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work.-Adolf Hitler, in his speech to the “Old Guard” at Munich on 24 Feb. 1939
Help yourself, then God will also help you!
The German people was created by Providence, not in order to obey a law which suits Englishmen or Frenchmen, but to stand up for its vital right. That is what we are there for!
-Adolf Hitler, at Wilhemshaven, 01 April 1939
I can give vent to my inmost feelings only in the form of humble thanks to Providence which called upon me and vouchsafed it to me, once an unknown soldier of the Great War, to rise to be the Leader of my people, so dear to me.
Providence showed me the way to free our people from the depths of its misery without bloodshed and to lead it upward once again.
Providence granted that I might fulfill my life’s task-to raise my German people out of the depths of defeat and to liberate it from the bonds of the most outrageous dictate of all times….
I have regarded myself as called upon by Providence to serve my own people alone and to deliver them from their frightful misery.
-Adolf Hitler, before the Reichstag, 28 April 1939
As Fuehrer of the German people and Chancellor of the Reich, I can thank God at this moment that he has so wonderfully blessed us in our hard struggle for what is our right, and beg Him that we and all other nations may find the right way, so that not only the German people but all Europe may once more be granted the blessing of peace.
-Adolf Hitler, before the Reichstag, 06 Oct. 1939
[I] never lost my belief, in the midst of setbacks which were not spared me during my period of struggle. Providence has had the last word and brought me success.
-Adolf Hitler, speech of 23 Nov. 1939
It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the ideas which are accepted facts to us today.
-Adolf Hitler, 10 Dec. 1940, in Berlin
The conception of the new Movement, whose fundamentals can be expressed in a single sentence: “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” opposed this. That is not only a very pious phrase, but a very just one. For one cannot assume that God exists to help people who are too cowardly and too lazy to help themselves and think that God exists only to make up for the weakness of mankind. He does not exist for that purpose. He has always, at all times, blessed only those who were prepared to fight their own battles….
Providence has not led us along these amazing paths in vain. On the day that the party was founded I recalled that our nation once gained immense victories. Then it became ungrateful, disunited, sinned against itself. Thereupon it was punished by Providence. We deserved our defeat. If a nation forgets itself as completely as the German nation did at that time, if it thinks that it can shake off all honor and all good faith, Providence can do nothing but teach it a hard and bitter lesson.
But even at that time we were convinced that once our nation found itself again, once it again became industrious and honorable, once each individual German stood up for his nation first and not for himself, once he placed the interests of the community above his own personal interests, once the whole nation again pursued a great ideal, once it was prepared to stake everything for this ideal, the hour would come when the Lord would declare our trials at an end.
If fate should once more call us to the battlefield, the blessing of Providence will be with those who have merited it by years of hard work. When I compare myself and my opponents in other countries in the light of history, I do not fear the verdict on our respective mentalities.
Who are these egoists? Each one of them merely defends the interests of his class. Behind them all stands either the Jew or their own moneybags. They are all nothing but money-grubbers, living on the profits of this war. No blessing can come of that. I oppose these people merely as the 0 champion of my country. I am convinced that our struggle will in the future be blessed by Providence, as it has been blessed up to now.
-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 24 Feb. 1941
But he who dares to use the word “God” for such devilish activity blasphemes against Providence and, according to our belief, he cannot end except in destruction.
-Adolf Hitler, speaking about Jews and international “warmongers,” on 04 May 1941, before the Reichstag
I did not want this struggle. Since January, 1933, when Providence entrusted me with the leadership of the German Reich, I had an aim before my eyes which was essentially incorporated in the program of our National Socialist party. I have never been disloyal to this aim and have never abandoned my program….
Only when the entire German people become a single community of sacrifice can we expect and hope that Almighty God will help us. The Almighty has never helped a lazy man. He does not help the coward. He does not help a people that cannot help itself.
The principle applies here, help yourselves and Almighty God will not deny you his assistance.
-Adolf Hitler, in a broadcast from Berlin, 03 Oct.1941
If the Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world. The German people and their soldiers are working and fighting today, not only for the present, but for the coming, nay the most distant, generations. A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator….
The next incursion against this homestead of European culture was carried out from the distant East. A terrible stream of barbarous, uncultured hordes sallied forth from the interior of Asia deep into the hearts of the European Continent, burning, looting, murdering-a true scourge of the Lord….
From the time when the Movement I consisted of seven men, until we took over power in January 1933, the path was so miraculous that only Providence itself with its blessing could have made this possible….
Our enemies must not deceive themselves-in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today. The Lord of the Universe has treated us so well in the past years that we bow in gratitude to a providence which has allowed us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that we also can be entered with honor into the ever-lasting book of German history!
-Adolf Hitler, on 11 Dec.1941 before the Reichstag
My fame, if Providence preserves my life, will consist in … works of peace, which I still intend to create. But I think that if Providence has already disposed that I can do what must be done according to the inscrutable will of the Providence, then I can at least just ask Providence to entrust to me the burden of this war, to load it on me. I will beat it! I will shrink from no responsibility; in every hour which … I will take this burden upon me. I will bear every responsibility, just as I have always borne them.”….
Thus the home-front need not be warned, and the prayer of this priest of the devil, the wish that Europe may be punished with Bolshevism, will not be fulfilled, but rather that the prayer may be fulfilled: “Lord God, give us the strength that we may retain our liberty for our children and our children’s children, not only for ourselves but also for the other peoples of Europe, for this is a war which we all wage, this time, not for our German people alone, it is a war for all of Europe and with it, in the long run, for all of mankind.”
-Adolf Hitler, 30 Jan. 1942, in Berlin (note the prayer at the end of the speech.)
May therefore God give us the strength to continue to do our duty and with this prayer we bow in homage before our dead heroes, before those whom they have left behind in bereavement, and before all the other victims of this war.
-Adolf Hitler, in prayer at the end of a radio address on 15 March 1942.
I, for my part, acknowledge another precept which says that man must deal the final blow to those whose downfall is destined by God.
-Adolf Hitler, in an address to the Reichstag, 06 April 1942
In my eyes, the year 1942 already has behind it the most fateful trial of our people. That was the winter of ’41 to ’42. I may be permitted to say that in that winter the German people, and in particular its Wehrmacht, were weighed in the balance by Providence. Nothing worse can or will happen. That we conquered that winter, that “General Winter,” that at last the German fronts stood, and that this spring, that is, early this summer, we were able to proceed again, that, I believe, is the proof that Providence was content with the German people….
You do not realize what is hidden beneath these words in the way of human heroism, and also of human pain, and suffering, and we may say, often anxiety too, naturally, deathly anxiety on the part of all those who, especially for the first time, are placed before the trial of God in this highest court.
-Adolf Hitler, 30 Sept. 1942, in Berlin
And today I stand by this same view. Fate, or Providence, will give the victory to those who most deserve it….
And when now, after 10 years, I again survey this period, I can say that upon no people has Providence ever bestowed more successes than upon us. The miracles we have achieved in the last three years in the face of a whole world of enemies are unique in history, especially the crises we very naturally often had in these years.
-Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 08 Nov. 1942
The bomb which was planted by Colonel von Stauffenberg exploded two meters to my right. It seriously injured a number of my colleagues who are very dear to me; one has died. I myself am completely unhurt apart from a few minor skin abrasions, bruises and burns. I interpret this as confirmation that Providence wishes me to continue my life’s mission as I have in the past.
Few people can begin to imagine the fate which would have overtaken Germany had the assassination attempt succeeded. I myself thank Providence and my Creator not for preserving me – my life consists only of worry and work for my People – I thank him only for allowing me to continue to bear this burden of worry, and to carry on my work to the best of my ability.
Once again I take this opportunity, my old comrades in arms, to greet you, joyful that I have once again been spared a fate which, while it held no terror for me personally, would have had terrible consequences for the German People. I interpret this as a sign from Providence that I must continue my work, and therefore I shall continue it.
-Adolf Hitler, speaking about the attempt to kill him, in a radio broadcast on 20 July 1944
God the Almighty has made our nation. By defending its existence we are defending His work….
Only He can relieve me of this duty Who called me to it. It was in the hand of Providence to snuff me out by the bomb that exploded only one and a half meters from me on July 20, and thus to terminate my life’s work. That the Almighty protected me on that day I consider a renewed affirmation of the task entrusted to me….
Therefore, it is all the more necessary on this twelfth anniversary of the rise to power to strengthen the heart more than ever before and to steel ourselves in the holy determination to wield the sword, no-matter where and under what circumstances, until final victory crowns our efforts….
In the years to come I shall continue on this road, uncompromisingly safeguarding my people’s interests, oblivious to all misery and danger, and filled with the holy conviction that God the Almighty will not abandon him who, during all his life, had no desire but to save his people from a fate it had never deserved, neither by virtue of its number nor by way of its importance….
In vowing ourselves to one another, we are entitled to stand before the Almighty and ask Him for His grace and His blessing. No people can do more than that everybody who can fight, fights, and that everybody who can work, works, and that they all sacrifice in common, filled with but one thought: to safeguard freedom and national honor and thus the future of life.
-Adolf Hitler, in a radio address, 30 Jan. 1945
Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations….
This Jewish bolshevist annihilation of nations and its western European and American procurers can be met only in one way: by using every ounce of strength with the extreme fanaticism and stubborn steadfastness that merciful God gives to men in hard times for the defense of their own lives….
We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate Our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this bate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end. During its 2,000-year history our people has survived so many terrible times that we have no doubt that we will also master our present plight.
-Adolf Hitler, in a recorded radio address, 24 Feb. 1945
Compiled by Jim Walker
SOURCES:Baynes, Norman H. Ed. “The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939,” Vol. 1 of 2, Oxford University Press, 1942
Cornwell, John, “Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,” Viking, 1999
Steigmann-Gall, Richard “The Holy Reich: Nazi conception of Christianity, 1919-1945,” Cambridge University Press, 2003
Online:
Adolf Hitler Speeches from www.adolfhitler.ws/