The religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, have been a matter of debate. His opinions regarding religious matters changed considerably over time. During the beginning of his political career, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards traditional Christian ideals, but later deviated from them., p. 265: "During the Kampfzeit and into the first years of the Third Reich, he maintained – both publicly and privately – that the movement bore some fundamental relationship to Christianity, as witnessed by his repeated intonations of positive Christianity and his repeated reference to the relevance, even priority, of Christian social ideas to his own movement. Then we see an apparent total rejection of those same ideas near the end." Most historians describe his later posture as adversarial to organized Christianity and to established Christian denominations.: "Hitler had been brought up a Catholic and was impressed by the organization and power of the Church... [but] to its teachings he showed only the sharpest hostility... he detested [Christianity]'s ethics in particular".
Evans wrote that Hitler believed Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope; and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks'." Evans noted that Hitler saw Christianity as "indelibly Jewish in origin and character" and a "prototype of Bolshevism", which "violated the law of natural selection".
Hastings considers it plausible that Hitler was a Catholic as late as his trial in 1924, but writes that "there is little doubt that Hitler was a staunch opponent of Christianity throughout the duration of the Third Reich." In his entry for 29 April 1941, Goebbels noted long discussions about the Vatican and Christianity, and wrote: "The Fuhrer is a fierce opponent of all that humbug".
Hitler's Table Talk: "The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity." He also staunchly criticized atheism.
Hitler was born to a practicing Catholic mother, Klara Hitler, and was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church; his father, Alois Hitler, was a free-thinker and skeptical of the Catholic Church. In 1904, he was confirmed at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Linz, Austria, where the family lived. According to John Willard Toland, witnesses indicate that Hitler's confirmation sponsor had to "drag the words out of him ... almost as though the whole confirmation was repugnant to him". Toland offers the opinion that Hitler "carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God".
Toland is wrong with regard to the official teaching of the Church, since during this period, the church already taught that the Jews were not collectively (or rather, exclusively) responsible for deicide, and that instead all human beings of a sinful were responsible for the death of their Lord and Saviour, especially—and perhaps ironically—the Catholic Church itself (Catechism of Trent).
Michael Rissmann notes that, according to several witnesses who lived with Hitler in a men's home in Vienna, he never again attended Mass or received the sacraments after leaving home at 18 years old.
After becoming absolute dictator of Germany, Hitler in December 1934 was reported by newspapers declaring that National Socialism was "based on positive Christianity. This comprises positive Catholicism and positive Protestantism. The essential element of positive Christianity is faith, coupled with Christian neighborly love."
Hitler seemingly praised Islam during several talks with intimate political and military allies, describing Islam as a religion of warriors. Much of these originate with Hitler's Table Talks and the "Last Testament of Adolf Hitler", which are considered unreliable on his religious views and an outright forgery respectively.
In a speech in 1932, Hitler declared himself "not a Catholic and not a Protestant, but a German Christian". The German Christians were a Protestant group that supported Nazi ideology. Both Hitler and the Nazi Party promoted "nondenominational" positive Christianity, In one widely-quoted remark, Hitler described Jesus as an "Aryan fighter" who struggled against "the power and pretensions of the corrupt Pharisees" Originally published as the introduction to and against Jewish materialism. Hitler spoke often of Protestantism and Lutheranism, stating, "Through me the Evangelical Protestant Church could become the established church, as in England", and that the "great reformer" Martin Luther "has the merit of rising against the Pope and the Catholic Church".
In the field of policy, the Nazis applied the practice of ('coordination') to the disparate Christian churches in Germany. Within months of coming to power, Hitler's régime launched an effort toward coordination of German Protestants into a joint Protestant Reich Church, and also moved early to eliminate political Catholicism. Hitler agreed to his 1933 Reich concordat with the Vatican, but then routinely ignored it, and permitted persecutions of the Catholic Church.
Several historians have insisted that Hitler and his inner circle were influenced by other religions. In a eulogy for a friend, Hitler called on him to enter Valhalla but he later stated that it would be foolish to the worship of Odin (or Wotan) within Germanic paganism. Most historians argue he was prepared to delay conflicts for political reasons and that he had long-term intentions to eliminate Christianity in Germany, or at least to reform it to suit a Nazi outlook.
Historiography Alan Bullock wrote that Hitler had been raised Catholic, but, though impressed by its organizational powers, repudiated Christianity on what he considered to be rational and moral grounds. Bullock wrote that Hitler believed neither in "God nor conscience", but found both "justification and absolution" in a view of himself echoing Hegel's view that heroes were above conventional morality, and that the role of "world-historical individuals" as the agents by which the "Will of the World Spirit", the plan of Providence is carried out. Following his early military successes, Hitler "abandoned himself entirely to megalomania" and the "sin of hubris", an exaggerated self-pride, believing himself to be more than a man. Once the war was over, wrote Bullock, Hitler wanted to root out and destroy the influence of the churches, though until then he would be circumspect for political reasons:
At the turn of the century, leading Hitler expertSir Ian Kershaw: Dissecting Hitler; BBC News; 14 June 2002. Ian Kershaw wrote an influential biography of Hitler which used new sources to expound on Hitler's religious views. He concluded that Hitler was spiritual, but nevertheless critical of the churches:
British historian Richard J. Evans, who writes primarily on Nazi Germany and World War II, noted Hitler claiming that Nazism is founded on science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition' Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and 'Priests', he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks'."Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p. 547
British historian Richard Overy, biographer of Hitler, sees Hitler as having been a skeptic of religion: "Both Stalin and Hitler wanted a neutered religion, subservient to the state, while the slow programme of scientific revelation destroyed the foundation of religious myth."Overy, Richard (2004) The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. Allen Lane/Penguin. pp. 281, 287 Overy writes of Hitler as skeptical of all religious belief, but politically prudent enough not to "trumpet his scientific views publicly", partly in order to maintain the distinction between his own movement and the godlessness of Soviet Communism.Richard Overy; The Third Reich, A Chronicle; Quercus; 2010; p. 99 In 2004, he wrote:Overy, Richard (2004)The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. Allen Lane/Penguin. pp. 280–281
Historian Percy Ernst Schramm describes Hitler's personal religious creed, after his rejection of the Christian beliefs of his youth, as "a variant of the monism so common before the First World War". According to Schramm, these views were indirectly influenced by the work of Ernst Haeckel and his disciple, Wilhelm Bölsche. Schramm quotes Dr. Hanskarl von Hasselbach, one of Hitler's personal physicians, as saying that Hitler was a "religious person, or at least one who was struggling with religious clarity". According to von Hasselbach, Hitler did not share Martin Bormann's conception that Nazi ceremonies could become a substitute for church ceremonies, and was aware of the religious needs of the masses. "He went on for hours discussing the possibility of bridging the confessional division of the German people and helping them find a religion appropriate to their character and modern man's understanding of the world."
Hitler's personal conception of God was as "Providence". For instance, when he survived the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, he ascribed it to Providence saving him to pursue his tasks. In fact, as time went on, Hitler's conception of Providence became more and more intertwined with his belief in his own inability to make an error of judgment. Alfred Jodl stated at Nuremberg that Hitler had "an almost mystical conviction of his infallibility as leader of the nation and of the war". Another of his physicians, Dr. Karl Brandt, said that Hitler saw himself as a "tool of Providence. He was ... consumed by the desire to give the German people everything and to help them out of their distress. He was possessed by the thought that this was his task and that only he could fulfill it."
BBC historian Laurence Rees characterises Hitler's relationship to religion as one of opportunism and pragmatism: "his relationship in public to Christianityindeed his relationship to religion in generalwas opportunistic. There is no evidence that Hitler himself, in his personal life, ever expressed any individual belief in the basic tenets of the Christian church".Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler; Ebury Press; 2012; p. 135. Considering the religious allusions found in Mein Kampf, Rees writes that "the most coherent reading" of the book is that Hitler was prepared to believe in an initial creator God, but did "not accept the conventional Christian vision of heaven and hell, nor the survival of an individual 'soul'."Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler; Ebury Press; 2012; p. 135