The religious views of Adolf Hitler are a matter of

debate. According to Alan Bullock, Hitler was a

rationalist and materialist "who believed neither in
God nor in conscience".[1] Nonetheless, Hitler
opportunistically employed the language of "divine
providence" in defence of his own myth.[2] When
young, Hitler was baptised and confirmed in the
Roman Catholic Church and raised by an anticlerical father and practising Catholic mother. In
adulthood, he became disdainful of Christianity, but
retained some respect for the organisational power
of the Church. Although he was prepared to allay
conflicts for political reasons, according
to Kershaw, Bullock, Evans, Fest, Phayer,Shirer and
others, he eventually hoped to eradicate Christianity
in Germany.[3] Prosecutors at the Nuremberg
Trials submitted that Hitler engaged in a slow and
cautious policy to eliminate Christianity.
[4]
Historians such as Fischel and Dill have written
that if the regime could not eradicate Christianity, it
hoped instead to subjugate or distort it to a Nazi
world view. Steigmann-Gall interprets Hitler's
language to mean that Hitler held Jesus in high
esteem as an "Aryan fighter" who struggled against

Jewry, but notes that, over time, his Nazi movement

became "increasingly hostile to the churches".[5]
According to Kershaw, Hitler was "a very private,
even secretive individual", able to deceive "even
hardened critics" as to his true beliefs. His antiChristian world view is evidenced in sources such as
the Goebbels Diaries, the memoirs of Albert Speer,
and the transcripts edited by Martin
Bormann in Hitler's Table Talk. The
historian Evans wrote that Hitler repeatedly called
Nazism a secular ideology founded on science,
which in the long run could not co-exist with
religion. Goebbels wrote in 1941 that Hitler "hates
Christianity".[6] Speer wrote after the war that Hitler
had "no real attachment" to Catholicism, but that he
never formally left the Church. Rees concludes that
"Hitler's relationship in public to Christianity
indeed 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".[7]
Although skeptical of religion, Hitler referred to
belief in a "creator" and sometimes Christianity in

speeches. Given his hostility to Christianity, Rees

wrote, "the most persuasive explanation of these
statements is that Hitler, as a politician, simply
recognised the practical reality of the world he
inhabited... Had Hitler distanced himself or his
movement too much from Christianity, it is all but
impossible to see how he could ever have been
successful in a free election". Hitler's public
relationship to religion was one of opportunistic
pragmatism. He saw Christianity as a temporary ally
against Communism. Use of the term "Positive
Christianity" in the Nazi Party Program of the 1920s
is commonly regarded as a tactical measure. Julian
Baggini writes that Hitler's Germany was not a
"straightforwardly atheist state," but one which
"sacrilized" notions of blood and nation.[8] Hitler
angered Christians by appointing the neopagan Alfred Rosenberg as official Nazi ideologist
(although, according to Speer, Hitler had contempt
for the neo-pagan views of Rosenberg and Heinrich
Himmler[9][10]). According to Max Domarus, Hitler
had fully discarded belief in the JudeoChristian conception of God by 1937, but continued
to use the word "God" in speeches.[11]

Until the mid 1930s, Hitler's speeches sometimes

advocated "Positive Christianity"[12] (a movement
which sought to "Nazify" Christianity[13]). In 1933,
Hitler promised not to interfere with the churches if
given power, and called Christianity the foundation
of German morality. Once in Office however, the
regime sought to reduce the influence of Christianity
on society. Hitler was reluctant to make public
attacks on the Church for political reasons,[14] but
generally permitted or encouraged anti-church
radicals such as Himmler, Goebbels and Bormann to
perpetrate the Nazi persecutions of the churches.
[15]
The regime launched an effort toward
coordination of German Protestants under a
unified Protestant Reich Church (but this was
resisted by the Confessing Church), and moved early
to eliminate political Catholicism.[16] Hitler agreed,
then routinely ignored aReich concordat with Rome
and permitted persecutions of the Catholic
Church[17] (the Pope denounced his religious policies
in 1937's Mit brennender Sorge).[18] Smaller religious
minorities faced harsher repression, with the Jews of
Germany expelled for extermination on the grounds
of racist ideology, and Jehovah's
Witnesses ruthlessly persecuted for refusing both

military service and any allegiance to Hitler's

movement. Writers including Heschel and Toland,
have drawn links between Hitler's Catholic
background and his anti-Semitism.[19][citation needed]