Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (12 page)

Germany’s main father of Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel, argued in his
Natural History of Creation
(1868) that “the church with its morality of love and charity is an effete fraud, a perversion of the natural order.”
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This natural order, namely Darwinian natural selection, functions “without the recourse to mercy or compassion in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
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The Nazis also viewed Darwinism and Christianity as polar opposites because Christianity

makes no distinction of race or of colour; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In this respect, the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long ages to produce? May we not say, then, that Christianity is anti-evolutionary in its aim?
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Hitler was also very influenced by many leading German academics and scientists, especially during the 1930s when a “scientifically credible set of principles” in support of eugenics was widely supported by academia in Germany, America, Sweden and elsewhere.
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Furthermore, opposition to Christianity was a prominent feature of German science, and later German political theory, for decades. A major reason why Hitler opposed Christianity was that he viewed it and science as diametrically opposed to each other.
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Hitler concluded that, in the end, science would win and that the Christian church would eventually be destroyed. He believed that Darwinian mechanisms created the superior German race, and his goal was to use Darwinian mechanisms to create a utopia on earth by the elimination of inferior races. Typical claims by German scientists were in a lecture titled “On evolution: Darwin’s Theory,” by professor Ernst Haeckel who

argued that Darwin was correct…humankind had unquestionably evolved from the animal kingdom. Thus, and here the fatal step was taken in Haeckel’s first major exposition of Darwinism in Germany, humankind’s social and political existence is governed by the laws of evolution, natural selection, and biology, as clearly shown by Darwin. To argue otherwise was backward superstition. And, of course, it was organized religion which did this and thus stood in the way of scientific and social progress.
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Martin Bormann, Hitler’s closest associate for years, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, was equally blunt: the church was opposed to evolution and for this reason the church must be aggressively opposed. He stressed that the Nazis were on the side of science and evolution, not Christianity. Furthermore, Nazism and Christianity are incompatible because Christianity is built on the

ignorance of men and strive[s] to keep large portions of the people in ignorance.… On the other hand, National Socialism is based on scientific foundations. Christianity’s immutable principles, which were laid down almost two thousand years ago, have increasingly stiffened into life-alien dogmas. National Socialism, however, if it wants to fulfil its task further, must always guide itself according to the newest data of scientific researches.
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Bormann even claimed that the Christian churches have long been aware that

scientific knowledge poses a threat to their existence. Therefore, by means of such pseudo-sciences as theology, they take great pains to suppress or falsify scientific research. Our National Socialist worldview stands on a much higher level than the concepts of Christianity, which in their essentials were taken over from Judaism. For this reason, too, we can do without Christianity.
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That Hitler’s opposition to Christianity was based on Darwinism was detailed by Oxford historian Alan Bullock, who wrote that Hitler “showed the sharpest hostility” toward Christianity because, in

Hitler’s eyes Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teachings, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest. “Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.”
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In fact, much of the opposition to the eugenics movement came from conservative German Christians such as the confessing church.
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One reason was the confessing church’s Christian teaching that we should protect the poor, the weak and the sick, teachings that opposed Nazi eugenic goals.
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Himmler wrote that to be a Nazi and carry out their “good but dreadful work,” one must overcome Christian training.
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Hitler believed that persons of African descent were “monstrosities halfway between man and ape” and for this reason disapproved of German Christians going to “Central Africa” to establish “Negro missions,” resulting in the turning of “healthy…human beings into a rotten brood of bastards.”

In a chapter he titled, “Nation and Race,” Hitler wrote,

The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (
Hoherentwicklung
) of organic living beings would be unthinkable…. Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
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NON-NAZI RACIST THEORIES

Admittedly, some people who did not accept Darwinism espoused non-evolutionary theories that accommodated, or even espoused, racism, such as the idea that those of African descent were not the offspring of Adam but of the “beasts of the earth” that the Bible mentioned in Genesis 1:25,30. Nonetheless, these theories were developed mostly in response to justify existing social systems and unexamined biases.

German racism would have had a difficult time existing if the historical creation position void of “Ham” and other curse theories was widely accepted. One of these pseudo-biblical curse theories was the claim that Genesis teaches “two types of men” were originally created: the superior race line, Adam and Eve; and the “beasts of the earth,” the inferior black race line.
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Few people, though, accepted this line of argument and almost no one in Germany did.

Most biblical Christians have historically believed that, although blacks were culturally and physically different from whites, they were, nonetheless, fully human with a soul that needed to be saved. Consequently, extensive missionary activity was exerted to seek the conversion of those of African descent. Black tribal African religion almost disappeared as a result of Christian conversions as early as the middle 1800s, and only small remnants of it remained after the 1840s.

For these reasons, early in Nazi rule the Christian church, especially the Catholic Church, was one of the main targets of the Nazi policy of persecution. Specifically, the

SS was given a free hand in a reign of terror against both clergy and laity, as a demonstration that any institution or individual who might become a focal point of national resistance would be destroyed. The clergy, as always, were the chief suspects. Lists were drawn up of Catholics who were “especially hostile to Germany” and who, as such, deserved summary treatment. In November 1939 it was reported from the Polish town of Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) that the eradication of Polish priests was planned, preceded only by the prior extermination of the Jews.
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HITLER PLAYS POLITICS

In a talk given by Hitler on April 7, 1933, Hitler made it absolutely clear that in Germany’s future there would be “no place” in the German “utopia for the Christian Churches” and “nothing will prevent me from eradicating totally, root and branch, all Christianity in Germany.… A German Church, a German Christianity, it is all rubbish.… One is either Christian or German.”
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Soon after Hitler made this statement, he gave a radio talk on the night before the July 23 Protestant church elections urging the people to vote
Deutsche Christen
because they “stood self-aware on the same ground as the National Socialist state.”
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The
Deutsche Christen
was a pressure group movement within German Protestantism that supported the anti-Semitic and
Führerprinzip
ideological principles of Nazism with the goal of aligning German Protestantism as a whole toward those principles.
Führerprinzip
or “leader principle,” was the fundamental basis of political authority in the Third Reich, which is most succinctly understood to mean that the Führer’s word is above all written law (i.e., he is a dictator).

Hitler realized that elimination of Christianity was a long-term goal, and he “was prepared to put off long-term ideological goals in favour of short-term advantage.”
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He knew that he had to fight one German battle at a time—and elected to destroy the churches in due time.
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In 1942, Hitler said, “practical politics demands that, for the time being at least, we must avoid any appearance of a campaign against the church.”
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Bullock wrote, due to political considerations Hitler

restrained his anti-clericalism, seeing clearly the dangers of strengthening the Church by persecution. For this reason he was more circumspect than some of his followers, like Rosenberg and Bormann, in attacking the Church publicly. But, once the war was over, he promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian Churches. “The evil that is gnawing our vitals,” he remarked in February 1942, “is our priests, of both creeds. I can’t at present give them the answer they’ve been asking for but…it’s all written down in my big book. The time will come when I’ll settle my account with them.… They’ll hear from me all right. I shan’t let myself be hampered with judicial samples.”
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Although the Christian church would in time be destroyed, for now it was needed to help achieve Nazi goals. Hitler at times even included references to Christianity in his speeches, mostly in his very early speeches, but even here he exploited Christianity to justify his hatred of ethnic Jews. A typical example is in a speech given on April 12, 1922. He noted that one well-known German said being a Christian prevented him from being anti-Semitic, to which Hitler responded that, in contrast, his feelings as a

Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter…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 fighter. In boundless love as a Christian…in His might…seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of 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 the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the cross. As a Christian…I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world…which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.
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As a consummate politician, Hitler openly exploited the church by implying he was a Christian.
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In
Mein Kampf
, Hitler even wrote, “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator:
by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord
.”
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In the meantime, “Hitler’s henchman continued to cajole the Protestant church into doing their bidding.”
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The Nazis and their Führer were quite capable of deceptively declaring themselves fighters “on the Lord’s side” when it suited their purposes.
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Only after the war ended would Germany be able to fully implement the “final solution” to the “Christian problem.”
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Until then, “calm should be restored…in relations with the Churches.”
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But it was “‘clear,’ noted Geobbels, himself numbering among the most aggressive anti-Church radicals, ‘that after the war it has to find a general solution…. There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a Germanic-heroic world-view.’”
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Although the Nazis made it clear that they intended to “wipe out the Jews—as well as the Negroes, Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, priests of all religious persuasions, and all other ‘deviants and people of impure blood,’” they were also both “pathological and pragmatic” liars in claiming they were on the side of Christianity.
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The church, in turn, often thought the best of the Nazis and turned the other cheek to their evils. The state’s conflict with the churches was a source of great bitterness for many church members, but, amazingly,

Hitler was largely exempted from blame. Despite four years of fierce “Church struggle,” the head of the Protestant Church in Bavaria, Bishop Meiser, publicly offered prayers for Hitler, thanking God “for every success which, through your grace, you have so far granted him for the good of our people.” The negative features of daily life, most [people] imagined, were not of the Führer’s making. They were the fault of his underlings, who frequently kept him in the dark about what was happening.
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