4/6/2005
Marx & Engels: writings quotes and parallels to today’s leftists
The authors of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Engels, did a lot more than just write that text together. They wrote speeches and letters, and others have written about their thoughts and ideas. From the Manifesto itself, their writings and letters, you can easily discover an ideology that you can identify when you hear people talk or when you read what they’ve written. The key to understanding communism socialism and fascism is to have read the pages of not only Mein Kampf, but the Communist Manifesto, and letters, speeches and other items. The Cranky Liberal (apparently I must credit the appropriate person as I received an email to change this from the bastard to the cranky liberal) is totally wrong about my not being able to defend my position, lo (I’d like to see him use Marx and Engels’ to defend HIS)…I will quote from what they actually said.
Check here for a blog totally dedicated to quotes from Marx and Engels. I’m going to extrapolate a few quotes here to show you where the authors of The Communist Manifesto were coming from.
Hitler and Marx agreed about the jews:
Written: Autumn 1843;
First Published: February, 1844 in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher;
Proofed and Corrected: by Andy Blunden, February 2005.
See Citizen in the Encyclopedia of Marxism, for an explanation of the various words for “citizen.”
I have noted previously important ways in which Friedrich Engels had similar views to Hitler. The most spectacular aspect of Nazism, however, was surely its antisemitism. And that had a grounding in Marx himself. The following passage is from Marx but it could just as well have been from Hitler:
“Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew — not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time…. We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development — to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed — has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry”.
Note that Marx wanted to “emancipate” (free) mankind from Jewry (”Judentum” in Marx’s original German), just as Hitler did and that the title of Marx’s essay in German was “Zur Judenfrage” — which is exactly the same expression (”Jewish question”) that Hitler used in his famous phrase “Endloesung der Judenfrage” (”Final solution of the Jewish question”). And when Marx speaks of the end of Jewry by saying that Jewish identity must necessarily “dissolve” itself, the word he uses in German is “aufloesen”, which is a close relative of Hitler’s word “Endloesung” (”final solution”). So all the most condemned features of Nazism can be traced back to Marx and Engels. The thinking of Hitler, Marx and Engels differed mainly in emphasis rather than in content. All three were second-rate German intellectuals of their times.
Marx’s original German for confirming the translation above is given below:
Zur Judenfrage
“Welches ist der weltliche Grund des Judentums? Das praktische Bedürfnis, der Eigennutz. Welches ist der weltliche Kultus des Juden? Der Schacher. Welches ist sein weltlicher Gott? Das Geld. Nun wohl! Die Emanzipation vom Schacher und vom Geld, also vom praktischen, realen Judentum wäre die Selbstemanzipation unsrer Zeit…. Wir erkennen also im Judentum ein allgemeines gegenwärtiges antisoziales Element, welches durch die geschichtliche Entwicklung, an welcher die Juden in dieser schlechten Beziehung eifrig mitgearbeitet, auf seine jetzige Höhe getrieben wurde, auf eine Höhe, auf welcher es sich notwendig auflösen muß. Die Judenemanzipation in ihrer letzten Bedeutung ist die Emanzipation der Menschheit vom Judentum.”
(MEW a.a.O. 1, 372 f.)
Find a translation into English by Marxists here. They do their best to “correct” it.
Engels was a German Nationalist
This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom.
So Engels said. See here.
And who does not know of Hitler’s glorification of military sacrifice and his aim to establish a “thousand-year Reich”? What a copycat old Adolf was!
The ideological origins of Genocide
“In January 1849, months before he migrated to London, Karl Marx published an article by Friedrich Engels in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung announcing that in Central Europe only Germans, Hungarians and Poles counted as bearers of progress. The rest must go. “The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust.”
Genocide arose out of Marx’s master-theory of history — feudalism giving place inevitably to capitalism, capitalism to socialism. The lesser races of Europe — Basques, Serbs, Bretons and others — being sunk in feudalism, were counter-revolutionary; having failed to develop a bourgeoisie, they would be two steps behind in the historical process. Engels dismissed them as left-overs and ethnic trash (Voelkerabfall), and called for their extinction.
So genocide was born as a doctrine in the German Rhineland in January 1849, in a Europe still reeling from the revolutions of 1848. It was to become the beacon light of socialism, proudly held and proudly proclaimed.”
The above is a quote from the latest article by George Watson — a literary historian specializing in the early history of socialism (I have an earlier article of his posted here and there is a review of his major book here). The quote is taken from an article in the December 2004 issue of Quadrant, Australia’s premier intellectual conservative magazine. The article will not be online for a month or so yet but I have temporarily posted here a PDF of the first page.
I have of course for some time been pointing out that eugenics was a great Leftist cause right up until Hitler thoroughly discredited the idea with his atrocities. Documenting the Leftist infatuation with eugenics in the first half of the 20th century is all too easy. But the fact that the idea largely originated with Marx and Engels themselves has been hidden from public awareness with almost total success. There are many avid scholars of Marx’s every word but some things are just too embarrassing to mention. I earnestly hope that the Marxian origin of Hitler’s doctrines will become increasingly well-known.
Cao’s Note: You would think because of the likes of bloggers like Benjamin Solah, a self-proclaimed socialist (and proud of it), that socialists are all they have over in Australia. Imagine my surprise when I ran across John Ray, a prolific writer on the conservative side, and the discovery that they actually have conservative publications in Australia.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
NIF linked with Under Deputy Junior Grade of Passers-By
April 6th, 2005 at 9:52 am
Excellent post as always!
April 6th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Under Deputy Junior Grade of Passers-By
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny
December 29th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Can anyone tell me which Communist leader said “where atheism begins, there Communism begins”?
December 30th, 2006 at 7:31 am
It was Karl Marx. Marx had called religion “the opiate of the masses” and said that “Communism begins where atheism begins.”
Reference: The American Spectator, The Center for Vision and Values, Reasoning Repaired, PA Townhall dot com
Vladimir Lenin said that religion was “abominable,” “a necrophilia,” and said that Christianity was akin to venereal disease.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Thank you very very much. It seems my memory got the quotation around the wrong way!
Have a Happy, Safe and Prosperous New Year
PS I have a favourite saying, which I consider to be original:
“An ounce of Good Example is worth a ton of talk”.
If someone else beat me to it I apologise, but I think it’s very true anyway.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
That is the truth. I like it.
December 31st, 2006 at 8:49 am
I like that quotation AA — say’s alot; thanks for posting that!
January 1st, 2007 at 12:11 am
Thanks Cao and SSgt Yatahey. The more people like it the happier I will be.
Happy and safe New Year to all.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Who’s the copycat? 1000 Years… so what if Hitler said this. Does it make him a criminal? I don’t see you criticizing Stalin much, murdered 40-60 Million and Commies murder 85-110 Million in one century alone! But you have double standards on your genocides. What does it matter. Can’t tell what’s true about Hitler anyway, because everything said about him was filtered through lying Moscow. Including those mass graves blamed on Germans (Ukraine and Katyn, Poland… wasn’t until 1989 they admitted Germans were innocent.. but refuse to release documents which could be used to prosecute criminals living in Russia.) Hypocritical, huh?
justthebook.wordpress dot com
“Augustine justified Constantine’s unscriptural marriage between church and state with the false doctrine he wrote in The Visible and Invisible Church. According to Augustine, the church could use violence to convert people or force people back to the church’s thinking. He encouraged the idea that the church replaced Israel. He changed to amillennial thinking denying a future, 1000 year, physical reign of Jesus Christ on earth, and claiming the church was currently living in the millennium. He wrote that unbaptized infants go to hell, bringing about the unbiblical practice of baptizing babies, who are not old enough to know to repent, but who do, according to 2 Samuel 12:23, go to heaven.”
October 11th, 2007 at 4:20 am
Hitler was a ‘deist’? bwahahahah!
That is too funny…Hitler was a GREEN socialist peacenik just like the leftists of today…who admired Islam; hated Christianity, because he thought Christianity was an extension of Judaism that should be destroyed.
and he sure did a good job with his ‘final solution’ in that attempt.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
quote “According to Augustine, the church could use violence to convert people or force people back to the church’s thinking” unquote.
—————————————-
Kinda sounds like what radical Islamists have in mind for the entire world! I guess the concept of “world domination” by a religion is as old as religion itself. One thing to take comfort in, the fact that no religion has ever been successful. Even the communists couldn’t wipe religion out like they wanted to.
October 11th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Note that Marx wanted to “emancipate” (free) mankind from Jewry (”Judentum” in Marx’s original German), just as Hitler did and that the title of Marx’s essay in German was “Zur Judenfrage” — which is exactly the same expression (”Jewish question”) that Hitler used in his famous phrase “Endloesung der Judenfrage” (”Final solution of the Jewish question”). And when Marx speaks of the end of Jewry by saying that Jewish identity must necessarily “dissolve” itself, the word he uses in German is “aufloesen”, which is a close relative of Hitler’s word “Endloesung” (”final solution”).
——–
Final Solution. Google “Final Solution Madagascar”. Bwahahahahahahaha!!! bwahahahahaah!!! Bwahahahaha!!! What little you know about anything.
YOU ARE COMPLETELY IGNORANT ABOUT HISTORY CAO.
I am amazed at every sentence how wrong you are.
Marx told the Jews to denounce Judaism. He was an atheist, and a militant atheist. Hitler was no atheist. Some jews followed Marxist ideologue and became Zionist and Atheist, and began terrorizing Europe. Marx was repeatedly banished in European nations. Deny that?
Also, these atheists wanted to bring their Communist **** into Germany and Hitler said HELL NO to their “free abortions” “legal prostitution” “breakdown in the church”… told the people in one speech, that compromise with atheistical organizations was not worth the the destruction to national morality. I have a photo where the Germans are demonstrating “Death to Marxism”… yet Cao, you’d sit there typing away, without an ounce of any real knowledge telling the people that Marx and Hitler had so much in common.
Hitler made war against Communists. You realize how many people Communists have murdered? 85-110 Millions, but you are too blind to see why Hitler said NO TO COMMUNISM… take a look at Christians getting murdered in Atheist North Korea today, that can explain something about Hitler’s choice on the matter. He did not want Communism in Europe to destroy their nations like USSR had been destroyed. Google up Goebbels + Communism with the mask off and you might actually learn something about National Socialism, their stance on religion and their hatred for Atheism and Communism, e.g.,
Goebbels: “At the second Congress of Atheists, Bucharin declared that religion must be “destroyed with the bayonet”. The Jew, Gubermann, who, under the name of Jaroslawski, is the leader of the Association of Militant Atheists in the Soviet Union, has made the following declaration: “It is our duty to destroy every religious world-concept… If the destruction of ten million human beings, as happened in the last war, should be necessary for the triumph of one definite class, then that must be done and it will be done.”
Lots of photos of a very religious Hitler.
Unlike that atheist Lenin and Stalin, who closed and even burned down churches, ten minute trials for Priests/Nuns for SLAVE LABOR, others just disappeared. Roosevelt makes trade deals with Stalin! Right during the peak of the famine holocaust by Stalin against SEVEN MILLION UKRAINIANS. But what could you know or care about REAL history? And, let’s not forget that Jews declared war on Germany in 1933 (See my link). I have photos of this stuff. I actually provide documentation, unlike you.
There was no excuse for what Stalin did, but here is what Military concludes about Hitler’s actions (with millions of Germans being slaughtered from Lenin’s time in the 1920’s to long after the war had ended and Nazi Germany defeated) 15 million Germans victim of ethnic cleansing after the war, 2 million did not survive and that is not counting the millions eradicated before Hitler took power. You know nothing about history. You’re another Hollywood chatterbox, full of hype and non-education about WWII history:
Stalin’s War of Extermination, (amazon)
” …”Hoffmann’s postulate should be decisive that the extent of Stalin’s war of conquest and extermination as well as of the strategical JUSTIFICATION of the German preventative war ought to be finally taken notice of.”
- Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, no. 1/1996
“Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians were deported en-masse to Siberia, and the lands were populated with Russians, as part of Stalin’s attempt to *eradicate nationalities. The affect in this post-cold war period - is a lot of Russians in the local community, where they are not just sizable minorities, but in the case of Latvia - a majority in all the cities.”
- liako, Travel
“In sum the communist probably have murdered something like 110,000,000, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987. Of course, the world total itself it shocking. It is several times the 38,000,000 battle-dead that have been killed in all this century’s international and domestic wars. Yet the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone–one communist country– well surpasses this cost of war. And those murders of communist China almost equal it.”
Source: Communist Megamurderers, Hawaii University
October 11th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Final Solution. Google “Final Solution Madagascar”. Bwahahahahahahaha!!! bwahahahahaah!!! Bwahahahaha!!! What little you know about anything.
YOU ARE COMPLETELY IGNORANT ABOUT HISTORY CAO.
I am amazed at every sentence how wrong you are.
Marx told the Jews to denounce Judaism. He was an atheist, and a militant atheist. Hitler was no atheist. Some jews followed Marxist ideologue and became Zionist and Atheist, and began terrorizing Europe. Marx was repeatedly banished in European nations. Deny that?
Also, these atheists wanted to bring their Communist **** into Germany and Hitler said HELL NO to their “free abortions” “legal prostitution” “breakdown in the church”… told the people in one speech, that compromise with atheistical organizations was not worth the the destruction to national morality. I have a photo where the Germans are demonstrating “Death to Marxism”… yet Cao, you’d sit there typing away, without an ounce of any real knowledge telling the people that Marx and Hitler had so much in common.
October 11th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Hitler made war against Communists. You realize how many people Communists have murdered? 85-110 Millions, but you are too blind to see why Hitler said NO TO COMMUNISM… take a look at Christians getting murdered in Atheist North Korea today, that can explain something about Hitler’s choice on the matter. He did not want Communism in Europe to destroy their nations like USSR had been destroyed. Google up Goebbels + Communism with the mask off and you might actually learn something about National Socialism, their stance on religion and their hatred for Atheism and Communism, e.g.,
Goebbels: “At the second Congress of Atheists, Bucharin declared that religion must be “destroyed with the bayonet”. The Jew, Gubermann, who, under the name of Jaroslawski, is the leader of the Association of Militant Atheists in the Soviet Union, has made the following declaration: “It is our duty to destroy every religious world-concept… If the destruction of ten million human beings, as happened in the last war, should be necessary for the triumph of one definite class, then that must be done and it will be done.”
October 11th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
There was no excuse for what Stalin did, but here is what Military concludes about Hitler’s actions (with millions of Germans being slaughtered from Lenin’s time in the 1920’s to long after the war had ended and Nazi Germany defeated) 15 million Germans victim of ethnic cleansing after the war, 2 million did not survive and that is not counting the millions eradicated before Hitler took power. You know nothing about history. You’re another Hollywood chatterbox, full of hype and non-education about WWII history:
Stalin’s War of Extermination, (amazon)
” …”Hoffmann’s postulate should be decisive that the extent of Stalin’s war of conquest and extermination as well as of the strategical JUSTIFICATION of the German preventative war ought to be finally taken notice of.”
- Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, no. 1/1996
“Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians were deported en-masse to Siberia, and the lands were populated with Russians, as part of Stalin’s attempt to *eradicate nationalities. The affect in this post-cold war period - is a lot of Russians in the local community, where they are not just sizable minorities, but in the case of Latvia - a majority in all the cities.”
- liako, Travel
October 11th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
“In sum the communist probably have murdered something like 110,000,000, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987. Of course, the world total itself it shocking. It is several times the 38,000,000 battle-dead that have been killed in all this century’s international and domestic wars. Yet the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone–one communist country– well surpasses this cost of war. And those murders of communist China almost equal it.”
Source: Communist Megamurderers, Hawaii University
Lots of photos of a very religious Hitler.
Unlike that atheist Lenin and Stalin, who closed and even burned down churches, ten minute trials for Priests/Nuns for SLAVE LABOR, others just disappeared. Roosevelt makes trade deals with Stalin! Right during the peak of the famine holocaust by Stalin against SEVEN MILLION UKRAINIANS. But what could you know or care about REAL history? And, let’s not forget that Jews declared war on Germany in 1933 (See my link). I have photos of this stuff. I actually provide documentation, unlike you.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:47 am
bwahahaha! Show me the photos of a very religious Hitler….and stop lying. What leftists, muslims and Hitler have in common is Judeophobia. Hitler actually had a campaign to destroy the Christian churches. If he was ‘religious’ I suppose you’ll have to define what precisely that means. Goebbels agreed with you on one point; he said Hitler was religious, too…but he was by no stretch “Christian”.
“The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian; he views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race.”—Joseph Goebbels, in his diary, December 28, 1939.
Hitler viewed Christianity as a symptom of decay.
In his introduction to Mein Kampf or Kempf, Konrad Heiden confirms Hitler’s hatred for Christianity, saying that the ‘belief in human equality’ is a Jewish plot, made popular by the “Christian churches.”
This is no different than the leftist/socialists of today who are masquerading as democrats. I hear a lot of the same rhetoric coming out of the Clintons, for example, even to the extent of promoting stormtrooper-like riots in the streets (read Hillary’s senior Wellesley thesis). They also make much ado about her Christian upbringing;
heh.
Or John Edwards’ anti-Christian bloggers as just two examples.
The Nazis were not Right-Wing Conservative Creationists: they were Left-Wing Darwinian Evolutionary Socialists
Hitler admired Islam-not Christianity
Hitler and Mussolini; nazism and fascism very close
Dave Shiflett, the coauthor of Christianity on Trial, points out in his article at NRO that:
And further evidence here:
“Christianity is the prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society.” —Hitler 1941
“The German people, especially the youth, have learned once again to value people racially-they have once again turned away from Christian theories, from Christian teaching which has ruled Germany for more than a thousand years and caused the racial decay of the German people, and almost its racial death.” —Heinrich Himmler May 22, 1936 at a speech in Brocken, Germany.
But then you wouldn’t know about anything like that because it doesn’t fit into your preconceived notions….facts matter little to beligerent stubborn fools aka leftists these days, who have a complete disconnect from reality.
Symposium: Stalin: The Great Warlord?
Insults are all you’ve got…and civilized debate is also something foreign to you; since you dont allow people to disagree with you. That’s really authoritarian. Geoffrey Roberts points some things out in his new book-
I think you may have forgotten about the Nazi-Soviet (Molotov-Ribbentrop) pact.
Hitler also enjoyed a relationship with Mussolini, and other dictators, too. To claim that he was anti-communist is a far-fetched notion which I will post on in a bit.
Geoffrey Roberts, Professor of History at the University College Cork, Ireland, is a frequent contributor to British, Irish and American newspapers and to popular history journals. He has acted as a consultant for a number of TV and radio documentaries. His publications include Victory at Stalingrad and The Soviet Union in World Politics. He is the author of the new book, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953..
Translated, the poster reads: “The Marshall and the corporal fight alongside us for peace and equal rights”
Can you get a more Leftist slogan than that? “Peace and equal rights”?
It reads: “Mit Adolf Hitler “Ja” fuer Gleichberechtigung und Frieden” — which translates as “With Adolf Hitler “Yes” for equal rights and peace” — the same old standby slogans that the Left trot out to this day.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Hitler and Stalin (from John Ray, here).
Hitler was, however, more Rightist than Stalin in the sense that, as a popular leader, he did not need to resort to extreme forms of oppressive control over his people (Unger, 1965). German primary and secondary industry did not need to be nationalized because they largely did Hitler’s bidding willingly. State control was indeed exercised over German industry but it was done without formally altering its ownership and without substantially alienating or killing its professional managers.
The contempt that Hitler had for Stalin and for “Bolshevism” generally should also not mislead us in assessing the similarity between Nazism and Communism. Leftist sects are very prone to rivalry, dissension, schism and hatred of one-another. One has only to think of the Bolsheviks versus the Mensheviks, Stalin versus Trotsky, China versus the Soviet Union, China “teaching Vietnam a lesson”, the Vietnamese suppression of the Khmer Rouge etc. Similarity does not preclude rivalry and in the end it was mainly competition for power that set Hitler and Stalin on a collision course.
Under Stalin’s wartime innovations, the difference between Nazism and Communism became largely a difference of emphasis. Both Nazism and Communism were nationalistic and socialist but with Communism, socialism was the ideological focus and justification for State power whereas with Nazism, nationalism was the ideological focus and justification for State power.
There always remained, however, one essential difference between Nazi and Communist ideology: Their responses to social class. Stalin preached class war and glorified class consciousness whereas Hitler wanted to abolish social classes and root out class-consciousness. Both leaders, as socialists, saw class inequality as a problem but their solutions to it differed radically. The great Nazi slogan Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuehrer (”One State, one people, one leader”) summed this up. Hitler wanted unity among Germans, not class antagonisms. He wanted loyalty to himself and to Germany as a whole, not loyalty to any class. Stalin wanted to unite the workers. Hitler wanted to unite ALL Germans. Stalin openly voiced his hatred of a large part of his own population; Hitler professed to love all Germans regardless of class (except for the Jews, of course). This was indeed a fundamental difference and substantially accounts both for Hitler’s unwavering contempt for Bolshevism and his popularity among all classes of Germans.
The differences are of little consequence in my estimation; their general attitude (that of socialists and communists) toward Judaism, Christianity, control, leftist authoritarianism, etc., appears to be the same.
It was the left who were on Hitler’s side; Joe Kennedy shared Hitler’s antipathy for the Jews, and told FDR that going to war wasn’t necessary; that Hitler ‘had it in the bag’ already. When Roosevelt appointed Joe Kennedy to the position of Ambassador to Britain in 1938, he thought he was on his way to the Presidency…but he argued for the appeasement of Hitler, which didn’t go over well with the English people or with conservative leaders such as future Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In 1940 Kennedy resigned, when war loomed.
This article sums it up on Joe Kennedy, leftists and Hitler:
During May of 1938, Kennedy engaged in extensive discussions with the new German Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Herbert von Dirksen. In the midst of these conversations (held without approval from the U.S. State Department), Kennedy advised von Dirksen that President Roosevelt was the victim of “Jewish influence” and was poorly informed as to the philosophy, ambitions and ideals of Hitler’s regime. (The Nazi ambassador subsequently told his bosses that Kennedy was “Germany’s best friend” in London.)…
October 12th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
The abuses and usurpations by the Nazis are innumerable and the pagan ideology of the Nazi state hoped to supplant the Christian church and herald Hitler as the embodiment of the messiah. The Nazis borrowed Christian concepts of redemption, and promised heaven on earth and a one-thousand year golden age of Nazi rule, and yet they only succeeded in creating its antithesis-a hell on earth.
Like the Soviets, the Germans wanted a church they could control. In the Soviet Union, a few token congregations were tolerated in major cities like Moscow, and the Soviet stooges heading the congregations therein boasted of their religious freedom, which was primarily for outward consumption as religious repression was the norm. In Nazi Germany, Christianity couldn’t be snuffed out, because it was so ingrained in the hearts and minds of the people. The Nazis hoped to muzzle nascent Christian resistance, and demarcated the boundaries of tolerated Christian assembly, under two confessional creeds-Catholic and Protestant. An organized resistance to the Nazi state and state-tolerated church was present in the church of Confessing Christians. They objected vehemently to Nazi edicts-the so called Aryan clauses-that forbid non-Germans from being members of the church. The Gestapo counterintelligence had two sections dedicating to domestic monitoring of religious groups and their resistance. The Himmler Decree punished the activities of the Confessing Church, effectively outlawing their seminary studies, exam taking, which made them criminal activities. Yet the Confessing Church persisted, but faced persecution. The anger of Nazis was kindled in one locale, as the locals much preferred the tranquility of Bible studies to being spoon fed by Nazi indoctrinators. One Nazi quipped, “A migration of people occurs when these so-called Bible studies take place…” The pastor soon heard of death threats leaking from the Gestapo. The Confessing Church was bound by a code of ethics, and many refused to turn snitch, as the Berlin Council of Brethren declared: “From the standpoint of honor of a Christian and a German man, it is ruled out absolutely that a pastor of the Confessing Church offer himself to the police as an informer on his colleagues… The honor and fellowship… forbid any pastor to contribute, in any form, to a colleague’s imprisonment…” Their constitution and resolve not to cooperate was perhaps much stronger than Soviet resistance. Yet anti-Christian, liberal and leftist historians who seek to besmirch Christianity and Christians would have you believe the Christian church was in cozy lockstep with the Nazi party. They offer a few pictures of browbeaten clergy saluting the Fuhrer to vindicate their point.
Many Confessing Christians found their fate in the concentration camps. Bonhoeffer believed that for Christian civilization to persevere that Nazi Germany must be brought to desolation. His patriotism compelled him to return to Germany, after seeking refuge in London and New York, even as war was on the horizon and endure suffering alongside his people. He couldn’t see himself involved in the reconstruction and ministry there if he would not suffer alongside his people. The Christian Resistance readily admits compromises were made. Many wrestled with the nature of resistance. Bonhoeffer, for example, lamented Hitler was “anti-Christ” and most be opposed. He came to see compromising the Gospel mission by turning the church into a propaganda instrument for the state and “giving that which was holy unto the dogs…” (Mt. 7:6) as a most egregious and disreputable compromise that would arouse God’s judgment. He was summarily implicated in the Abwehr conspiracy for his loose connections to a plot to assassinate the Fuhrer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was among the Flossenberg martyrs, and executed just days before the Allies liberated his camp.
Bonhoeffer is the archetype of the Christian resistance to tyranny. He would not submit to a self-aggrandizing demigod who trumped the Christian mission, zealously persecuted his opposition, and heralded destruction as a creative force. Nazi abuses against Christians were so crude as to include plastering churches with anticlerical posters, desecrating religious symbols, smearing excrement on altars and church doors. Clergy were routinely singled out for violence, assassination, internment. Throngs of Hitler Youth paraded with shouts of “Death to Christians and the Jews!” Those who cooperated willingly desecrated their altars with swastikas and compromise their pulpit sermons with Nazi propaganda.
October 12th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I didn’t mention what would be an important instructive read for you: For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler
October 12th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
wow, thanks.
ooh, I just found this: THE NAZI CHALLENGE TO THE GERMAN PROTESTANT CHURCH, by Victoria J. Barnett.
THE GERMAN CHURCHES BEFORE AND AFTER THE RISE OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM by John S. Conway
GERMAN RESISTANCE TO HITLER by Peter Hoffman, Professor of History at McGill University, author of The History of German Resistance
And of course there is a film about BONHOEFFER.
Fascinating.
Where leftists seem to have a disconnect is understanding how dictators, socialists and communists fight each other for power. Somehow, an anti-communist is equivalent to Hitler in the leftist’s mind…but Hitler didn’t oppose communism because he was a Christian.