Why do Protestants claim that Hitler was not supported by the Catholic Church AND the PROTESTANTS ?

Question

Paul Althaus, a Lutheran theologian of renown in Germany, warmly greeted the rise of Hitler. He wrote that, “The Protestant churches have greeted the political turning point as a gift and miracle of God”.. (“Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche,” p.5)

In a speech to Polish Catholics, Hitler declared: “I as a German Catholic, ask only what is permitted to Polish Catholics. To be antisemitic is not to be un-Catholic. The Church used every weapon against the Jews, even the Inquisition. Christ himself was a pioneer in the fight against Judaism.” (ibid, p. 146)

At a Church conference, Hitler affirmed that the Catholic Church has always regarded Jews as evildoers and had banished them into ghettos. He (Hitler) is only doing what the Church had been doing for fifteen hundred years.. (ibid, p. 79)

“I do insist on the certainty that sooner or later – once we hold power – Christianity will be overcome and the German Church established. Yes, the German church, without a Pope, and Luther, if he could be with us, would give us his blessing.” (Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s speeches, edited by Prof. N.H. Baynes [oxford, 1942], pg. 369.)

“If I find a Jew to baptize, I shall lead him to the Elbe bridge, hang a stone around his neck, and push him into the water, baptizing him with the name of Avraham!.. I cannot convert the Jews. Our lord Christ did not succeed in doing so; but I can close their mouths so that there will be nothing for them to do but to lie upon the ground.” – Martin Luther

Answer 1

Just as Hitler's self-serving comments about being "Catholic" do not speak for the whole Catholic church, one theologian's support for Hitler's rise to power does not speak for the whole of Protestant churches.

Hitler never won a popular election - he was appointed - and his party received something like 30 percent of the vote. It is safe to say that not everyone supported him - just as not everyone in the Church supported him.

Answer 2

First you must remember that Martin Luther was raised Roman Catholic and even after Luther became a Christian he still had lots of bad ideas in his head put there by Rome.

I was raised Luthrean, and I've never heard of Paul Atlthaus, but I have heard of Detrick Bonhoffer and many other Lutherans who were persecuted by Hitler right along with the Jews.

There is no doubt that Hitler claimed to be a Roman Catholic, but he was not a Christian.

Al Capone also claimed to be a Roman Catholic, but does anyone believe he was a Christian?

Being a Roman Catholic or being a Lutheran or a Baptist does NOT make anyone a Christian.

No denomination, no church or religious organization can make anyone a Christian.

Only Jesus Christ Himself can wash away someone's sins.

I have never claimed that Hitler was not supported by the Catholic Church. But that only shows how corrupt the Catholic Church is.

35 years ago I left the Lutheran Church in Chicago because I had become convined that in 1972, in Chicago, the Lutheran church had long since stopped following the Bible.

And today the ELCA is worse than it was then.

What Hitler and many Popes have failed to realize is that:

1. Jesus was Jewish

2. Jesus was not killed by the Jews, Jesus laid His life down willingly to die for our sins.

3. It wasn't an accident that Jesus died, it was His plan from the beginning.

The fact that the leadership fails to grasp the above truths is one of the many evidences that the leadership of the RCC has, for the most part, not been Christians.

Jesus told us "you will know them by their fruit".

Based on that I can tell you that Pope Pius 12th was an evil man.

God alone knows if Pius 12th was a real Chrisitan or not, but based on Jesus Words, it sure seems to me like he was not.

As I look back over history and see the teaching that has come out of Rome it seems like most of the Popes were evil politicians and not real followers of Jesus.

And of course there are a number of frauds where are not Roman Catholics.

I'm not saying at all that Protestants are perfect by any means.

Hitler can claim all day long he was a Roman Catholic but that does not make him a Christian.

Hitler's actions speak louder than his words.

Anyone who thinks Hitler was a Christian has been deceived by the Evil one.

Adolph Hitler was one of the most evil men to walk the face of the earth.

Actually Hitler is one of the proofs that the Roman Catholic Church is an evil organization.

Not all Roman Catholics are evil, but the leadership is.

Pastor Art

Answer 3

No. In the "Table Talk" book Hitler said all sorts of nasty things about Christianity, and that the evil Jewish were responsible for both "it and Bolshevism". One of his associates thought you could combine Christianity with Nazism, but Hitler thought it was impossible because it preached "slaver morality" (be kind to others), not the rough Germanism he believed in. A document came up that revealed the Nazis eventually planned to start rounding up REAL Christians who didn't follow his Aryan Jesus business. I'd say more and provide documentation, but it looks like this question is about to close. So unless you want to email me on YA, you're going to have to Google it. Look up the Table Talk business. I can see the "liberal protestant" thing because they revised Jesus so make to make him an Aryan, but it's not true. The debate is over whether or not he was an atheist or some occultist. I don't know the answer to that one, but from his ACTIONS as well as private beliefs, he was explicitly Anti-Christian, and said nasty things about it. Sometimes you have to dig around Wiki to find the truth, depending on who has edited it, it might say anything. But usually sources exist on Wikipedia that go against the lies. Hitler hated Christians, he said so. Anyone saying anything else is just following Hitler's own propaganda(when he would claim Christianity in his speeches as a pretext to motivate people who would have otherwise been horrified by him).

Answer 4

Hitler's lies do not mean that he was supported by the Catholic Church.

No serious scholar contests the evidence that Pius XII took direct and indirect measures to save Jews from the Nazi death machine.

At the start of World War II, Pope Pius XII’s first encyclical was so anti-Hitler that the Royal Air Force and the French air force dropped 88,000 copies of it over Germany. Here is a link to the Summi Pontificatus: Encyclical of Pope Pius XII on the Unity of Human Society, October 20, 1939: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20101939_summi-pontificatus_en.html

Unfortunately the Soviet Union and others had been trying to convince the world that the Catholic Church was pro-Nazi since the death of Pope Pius in 1958. Here are some sources:
+ The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTUzYmJhMGQ5Y2UxOWUzNDUyNWUwODJiOTEzYjY4NzI=
+ The KGB campaign against Pius XII: http://www.the-tidings.com/2007/021607/difference.htm
+ Pius XII and the Jews: http://web.archive.org/web/20010919100700/http://www.weeklystandard.com/magazine/mag_6_23_01/dalin_bkart_6_23_01.asp
+ http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/ww2jews.html

See also "The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews From the Nazis" by David G. Dalin which has compiled further overwhelming proof of Pope Pius Xii"s friendship for the Jews beginning long before he became pope.

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

Because some leaders may have endorsed Hitler's rise to power does not mean he was supported by everyone. In the beginning, Hitler promised to restore a poverty stricken Germany to greatness, a promise most believed. Once his real intentions became clear, he had few real friends in the church. His true hostility to the church became clear by the end as well. You left out his famous quote about Christianity being the "greatest scourge to ever fall upon mankind" during one of his table side radio talks. You will never understand Hitler until you realize that his whole ethic was based on social Darwinism. He believed Christianity was evil because it gave the Jew and ***** an unnatural leg up, that left on his own the Jew and ***** was unfit for competition with the superior white race. The charity of the Christian churches was seen as interfering with the natural process of letting the 'weeds' in the human garden go extinct. This is how he justified treating everyone who wasn't part of the 'master race' as sub-human. It was all based on what they called 'applied biology' which was supposed to just give the natural process a little push in the right direction.

Answer 6

So Hitler twisted Jesus' words to justify himself. Satan twisted God's words in order to tempt Eve too. She & Adam along with the rest of us are sinners in need of the Savior, Jesus Christ. So even if Hitler succeeded in fooling some Christians, what makes them or Hitler any different from ourselves, "we are all poor miserable sinners" for whom Christ died! Yes, He died even for Hitler. That Hitler did not receive the free gift of forgiveness of sins, is not God's fault or Lutheran's, or Roman Catholic's fault.

Then Hitler claimed that the Pope & Luther would give him their blessing. Power hungry people always lie & twist the words of other established & accepted authorities to justify themselves. You can't ask Luther or the Pope to take responsibility for something Hitler said, any more than you can ask God to take responsibility for something Satan said.

So, Althaus said something that seems to be pro-Hitler. First, how do we know you haven't taken his words out of context? The quote itself doesn't even mention Nazism or Hitler. How do we know that's what the guy is talking about? Second, even if it is, he's an individual for crying out loud. It's unfair to take one man's words & apply them to the whole group who call themselves Lutheran. I would bet that you can't find an official document where Lutherans assembled & decided to back Hitler. Again, you can't ask a whole group to be responsible for the sin of one man. Third, even if a number of Lutherans in the past were misguided, you can't ask their descendants to take responsibility for their sin. Many times it's only in hind's sight that we see things for what they really are. Give the guy a break!

So Luther had some antisemitic thoughts & words. So did Jesus when He spoke to Pharisees (those who had fooled themselves into thinking that they were actually pleasing God with the outward keeping of the Law, while ignoring the inward keeping of it). In fact, He says much the same thing about them as Luther did. Jesus said, "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin (i.e. put their trust in themselves to keep the Law), it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea," (Matt. 18:6).

However, Luther *was* a sinner, just like you & I. I agree that he should never have been so vigilent in his thoughts & words, but let God do the judging. However, he never claimed that he was sinless, but confessed regularly, like most authentic Lutherans do today, that he was a "poor miserable sinner". Only God truly knows what Luther meant by those words, so we "put the best construction on everything" & then trust that God has forgiven him his error. Besides that, He also was an individual & the church as a whole didn't accept these words as official teaching of the church. Again, it's not fair to ask a whole group to take responsibility for an individual's sin. Lutherans as a group certainly did not & do not harbor or teach hate toward Jews, just because they're Jews.

Here is a document that refutes your accusations: https://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/WRHC/143_The%20Two%20Governments%20and%20the%20Two%20Kingdoms%20in%20Luthers%20Thou.PDF

Doctrine of Two Kingdoms: https://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/CTCR/chandst.pdf

Adam & Eve....Luther, Hitler, Althaus, Jews...US. All sinners!

Answer 7

First, he was officially a catholic, and was always meeting with the Pope at that time.

Also, it is a fact that the vatican is still in posession of things gained from the Holocost by the german army.

Martin Luther did write some bad things about Jews, but I am a Christian, not a Lutheran. Not all Chrisitans are protestants, but Lutherans are protestants.

Answer 8

well the pope did back hitler only cause hitler agreed to leave the vatican and vatican city alone

and why as a muslim are you always pulling out anti semitic quotes from martim luther

i can do the same with the quran and hadith you know

and many other prominent mullahs and imams

Answer 9

Very few want to be associated with Hitler - so, regardless of the facts, denial is in!

Answer 10

he was catholic, got lots of proof on the net, just type in "hitler and catholic church" in your search bar, here is a couple links :)