I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be prepared, as a brave soldier, to give my life for this oath.
[Wehrmacht Oath]
"The struggle we are now waging today until victory or the bitter end is, in its deepest sense, a struggle between Marx and Christ."Joseph Goebbels, Michael: A Novel
{p. 13}
"We demand freedom for all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or conflict with the customs and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The party as such represents the standpoint of a positive Christianity, without tying itself to a particular confession. It fights the spirit of Jewish materialism within us and without us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our Volk can only take place from within, on the basis of the principle: public need comes before private greed."
Point 24, Party Program, National Socialist Workers Party of Germany
{p. 14}
"And among [our heroes] I want to count that man, one of the best, who devoted his life to the awakening of his -- our -- people, in his writings and his thoughts and finally his deeds: Dietrich Eckart."
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
{p. 17}
"Christ stands never otherwise than erect, never otherwise than upright ... eyes flashing in the midst of the creeping Jewish rabble .. and the words fall like lashes of the whip: 'Your father is the devil' (John 8:44)."
Dietrich Eckart, Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin
{p. 18}
"In Christ, the embodiment of all manliness, we find all that we need."
Dietrich Eckart, Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin
{p. 18}
"We seek God nowhere but in ourselves. For us the soul is divine, of which the Jew, on the other hand, knows nothing. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you (Luke 17:21), thus God also, who belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven. We feel our soul is immortal, eternal from the beginning, and therefore we refuse to be told that we are created from nothingness."
Dietrich Eckart Auf gut deutsch (1919)
{p. 30}
"I converse with Christ."
Joseph Goebbels, Michael: A Novel
{p. 21}
"I take the Bible, and all evening long I read the simplest and grandest sermon that has ever been given to mankind: The Sermon on the Mount!"
Joseph Goebbels, Michael: A Novel
{p. 21}
"Today's youth is not against God, we are only against his cowardly religious menials, who try to commercialize Him as they do everything else. We have to square off against them if we want to square ourselves with God."
Joseph Goebbels, Michael: A Novel
{p. 22}
"When we call for the unification of the Protestant Church, we do so because we do not see how, in a time when the whole Reich is unifying itself, twenty-eight Landeskirchen can persist.... In the interpretation of the Gospel one may hold the command of God higher than human commands. In the interpretation of political realities, we consider ourselves to be God's instrument."
Joseph Goebbels, Hannover Kurier, 29 March 1935
{p. 178}
"Our religion is Christ, our politics Fatherland."Hans Schemm, leader of National Socialist Teachers' League and Gauleiter of Beyreuth
(Schemm often ended his speeches by leading the audience in A Mighty Fortress is our God)
{p. 25}
"We struggle for a union of the small Protestant state churches into a strong Protestant Reich Church.... We are acting not as a party, but as Protestant Christians who only follow a call to faith from God, which we here in our Volk movement. As true members of our church we have a legitimate claim to have appropriate consideration given to the greatness and inner strength of National Socialism in church life and the church administration."
Helmut Brucker, Gauletier of Silesia, "Richtlinien fur Kirchenfragen," Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf (10 Nov. 1932: Breslau)
{p. 73}
"The party stands for positive Christianity. The National Socialist state is absolutely ready to work with the Christian churches."
Wilhelm Frick, one of only three Nazis in the original Hitler Cabinet, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 2 June 1935
{p. 121}
"We have told the churches that we stand for positive Christianity. Through the zeal of our faith, the strength of our faith, we have once again shown what faith means, we have once again taken the Volk, which believed in nothing, back to faith."
Hermann Göring in a 1935 speech, Positives Christentum, 3 Nov. 1935
{p. 120}
"When Point 24 of our program says the party stands for a positive Christianity, here above all is the cornerstone of our thinking."
Walter Buch, President of Nazi Party Supreme Court, "Geist und Kampf" (speech): Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf (probably given between 1930 and 1932)
{p. 23}
"Public need before private greed.... So important and meaningful is this phrase that Jesus Christ placed it in the center of his religious teaching. However, since Christ was not a politician, since his Reich was not of this world, he put the calling into other words. He taught: love your neighbors as yourself! National Socialism is therefore nothing new, nothing that a person after much consideration would not come upon as the solution to the economic plight of the Germans."Walter Buch Der Aufmarsch, Blatter der deutschen Jugend 2 (January 1931)
{p. 44}
"Many people confess their amazement that Hitler preaches ideas which they have always held.... From the Middle Ages we can look to the same example in Martin Luther. What stirred in the soul and spirit of the German people of that time, finally found expression in his person, in his words and deeds."
Walter Buch "Geist und Kampf" (speech), Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf
{p. 55}
This post is part of the series on "Nazis & Christians & Pagans":
[1] Nazis and Christians and Pagans, Oh My! (Part One)
[2] Christian Nazi Quote-fest (Part Two)
[3] Fascism, Islam, and Freedom of Expression (Part Three)
[4] "Hitler was not an occultist": Mitch Horowitz is right but his sourcing is all wrong (Part Four)
[5] Karla Poewe's "New Religions and the Nazis" reviewed by Richard Steigmann-Gall (Part Five)
[6] Rosenberg, Chamberlain, Harnack (Part Six)
