G. Alston (207)
While a “*real* scholar”, as you put it asserts that the German Nation as a whole was a Christian nation he gives short shrift to the history of Christianity of Germany. The German states were some of the bloodiest war zones between Roman Catholicism and Luther Protestants. As the title states, it begins at 1919, far too late to determine anything about the real, deeply held, beliefs of the German population because starvation, economic collapse, and military defeat, had turned all but the strongest or most faithful of Germans into agnostics at best. True, the generation coming of age after about 1925 could be strongly Christian, but why would an older generation still struggling to convince themselves that life could be nearly normal again put any effort into ensuring that their children were actually Christian rather than followers of Christian traditions just like they were followers of a beer drinking tradition?
He begins his analysis after WWI with little if any thought to the fact that Germany was very young as a nation rather than a collection of royal houses. He then aggregates all variations of Christianity into a single group he calls Christian as if calling a gothic railway station a gothic cathedral makes it one. Being Luther’s home, Germany had been fairly well blooded both within German states and by participation in battles elsewhere. In spite of all the blood shed by Germans, there remained sufficient Roman Catholic Christians and sympathizers to predominate in large areas of what was to become Germany. Neither Catholic nor Lutheran really accepted the other as a true Christians right up to the time that nationalism swept Germany along early in WWI. Those two missing, little details, alone suffice to make the authors conclusions tenuous, based as it is on the view through an extremely small window.
Hitler, whatever he was, was not a Pagan, nor was he a Christian. He was extremely proud to be neither, considering himself to have faith in realism alone rather than Christ alone. He had a deep faith in his mystical destiny rather than God. If he worshipped anything, it was Wagner for his mystic interpretation of Parsifal and the Holy Grail. He absolutely considered the Holy Grail to be a hidden message about his personal obsession, the purity of national blood. He had no sympathy with the ideas of people like Himmler who wanted to create a new “Religion of the Blood”, complaining that Himmler wanted the state subservient to the new religion rather than the other way around as it should be. He even banished Rosenberg who’s “Mythus of the Twentieth Century” was considered to be such an influence on and statement of Nazism that he was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremburg trials and hanged. Whether doing so constituted both national and international legal precedent to hang someone for his beliefs and writings, I don’t know.
I’m sure Hitler liked the idea of Germany being characterized a Christian nation just as the other European nations were characterized as Christian nations. Leaving alone Lutherans when Luther himself expected anti-Semitism of true believers made a lot of sense since he knew he could control Lutheran pulpits one way or another. While Roman Catholics swung between supporting pogroms periodically, and just discriminating against Jews, by the 1900s lethal anti-Semitism was openly considered a sin despite the inherent guilt still attributed to all Jews . Neither group was anything like Christians from the Anabaptist, Dutch, and English, Doctrinal traditions. Anti-Semitism in other than Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions petered out into widely separated, intermittent, local affairs, the damage caused by the anti-Semitic outbursts during waves of plague having been fully digested and considered not worth suffering just to rid oneself of a few Jews.
After considering the major differences between just the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christians, one has to ask what sort of true Christian would replace the Cross or Angel atop a Christmas Tree and even Cross on a grave with the Swastika? The kind of Christian who respects structure and discipline, respects their elders and superiors, and put duty above personal fulfillment. The sort of Christian who considers the doctrines of the Church well below his social obligations and social status, and never considering Christian duties until after having fulfilled his social duties.
Being an incredible student of human nature, Hitler recognized that combining Roman Catholic respect for hierarchy with spectacle, with the Lutheran nearly Hindu belief in election and predestination, that he would only need the proper state oversight structure and an impressive face on his ambitions in order to finally meld both groups of German Christians into a single Germanic citizen shed of almost all more than superficial beliefs as long as traditional, inherited, norms were not eroded too rapidly. The youth could be taught en masse to adopt new, Nazi values, rather than traditional ones. Any questions from the older generations could be brushed aside by dwelling on the single universally held bedrock belief of all Germans at that time. That bedrock was the belief that in spite of being more literate, better organized, and smarter, than other nations, other nations would always band together to deny Germany the opportunity for the expansion and wealth it’s superior industriousness so richly deserved. Belief in Germany itself remained nearly universal in spite of the effects of WWI having made beliefs in Christ superficial. Hitler knew how to harness both the belief in the state than the superficiality of the average German Christian’s belief in Christ.
Far from having a true, simple statement of faith like, “by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone”, the Germans shuffled into a single pile in his work were far more likely to try and share the good news about their new Nazi society than to share their faith in Christ. Indeed, the belief in predestination had become so widespread among Lutherans that they saw no point any effort to halt the unfolding events even if they did think they were e wrong. There were a few exceptions among Lutherans, and slightly more among Roman Catholics, but there most certainly weren’t masses of people calling themselves Christian who believed that what Christ expected should interfere with what their superiors expected. Any group that doesn’t put Christ’s expectations first isn’t a group of Christians no matter what they call themselves or what others like to call them.
Steigman-Gall is by definition a “*real*” scholar given that he has obtained the paperwork to prove he is one. Nonetheless, he draws vast conclusions from half-vast data.
