"National Socialism and Christian concepts are incompatible. The Christian Churches build upon the ignorance of men and strive to keep large portions of the people in ignorance because only in this way can the Christian Churches maintain their power. 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 fulfill its task further, must always guide itself according to the newest data of scientific researches.
The Christian Churches have long been aware that exact 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.
No one would know anything about Christianity if pastors had not crammed it down his throat in childhood. The so-called loving God by no means reveals the knowledge of His existence to young people, but amazingly enough, and despite His omnipotence, He leaves this to the efforts of a pastor. When in the future our youth no longer hear anything about this Christianity, whose doctrine is far below our own, Christianity will automatically disappear.
It is also astonishing that prior to our own era nothing was known to mankind about this Christian God and even since then the great majority of the inhabitants of our earth have known nothing about Christianity. Because of this, according to the arrogant Christian dogma, they are damned from the outset.
When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God (Gottlaubigkeit: non-Christian theism), by God we do not understand, as do naive Christians and their clerical beneficiaries, a manlike being who is sitting around in some corner of the spheres. Rather, we must open the eyes of mankind to the fact that in addition to our unimportant Earth there exist countless other bodies in the universe, many of them surrounded, like the Sun, by planets and these again by smaller bodies, the moons. The force which moves all these bodies in the universe, in accordance with natural law, is what we call the Almighty or God. The assertion that this world-force can worry about the fate of every individual, every bacillus on Earth, and that it can be influenced by so-called prayer or other astonishing things, is based on a suitable dose of naivete or on outright commercial effrontery.
In contrast, we National Socialists call upon ourselves to live as naturally as possible -- that is, in keeping with the laws of life. The more thoroughly we know and attend to the laws of nature and life, the more we adhere to them, the more we correspond to the will of the Almighty. The deeper our insight into the will of the Almighty, the greater will be our success.
It follows from the incompatibility of National Socialist and Christian concepts that we must oppose any strengthening of existing Christian denominations and must refuse to give them any assistance. We can make no differentiation between the various Christian confessions. That is also why the idea of establishing an Evangelical Reich Church by gathering together the various Evangelical Church bodies has to be fully abandoned. For the Evangelical Church opposes us with the same hostility as the Catholic Church. Any strengthening of the Evangelical Church would merely work against us.
In earlier generations, the leadership of the people lay exclusively in the hands of the Church. The state limited itself to passing laws and regulations and above all to the task of administration. The actual leadership of the people was not vested in the state, but in the Church, which, through the agency of the pastor, exercised the strongest influence over the lives of individuals, families, and the community as a whole. Anything that was not to the liking of the Church was supressed with unexampled ruthlessness. For centuries the state had to borrow from the influence of the Church through the most varied donations. The Church alone decided whether it would aid the state or range itself against it. The state was fully dependent on the assistance of the Church. The struggles of the German emperors against the Pope, in the Middle Ages and in modern times, were always bound to fail, since it was not the emperor but the Church that exercised leadership over the people.
This ideological dependence of the state on the Church, and the fact that the state had relinquished the leadership of the people, essentially became so obvious that no one dared seriously question it. Not to take this indisputable fact into consideration was regarded as the acme of political stupidity -- up to the time of the Nazi seizure of power.
For the first time in German history, the Fuhrer consciously has the leadership of the people entirely in his own hands. With the party, its subordinate apparatus, and the associations connected with it, the Fuhrer wrought for himself and the German Reich leadership an instrument that made him entirely independent of the Church. Any influence that would impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuhrer with the aid of the National Socialist German Workers Party has to be eliminated. To an ever increasing degree the people must be wrested from Churches and their agents, the pastors. Obviously, the Churches, from their standpoint, will and must defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must the Church regain an influence in the leadership of the people. This must absolutely and finally be broken.
Only the Reich leadership, together with the party and the organs and associations connected with it, has the right to lead the people. Just as the harmful influence of astrologers, soothsayers, and other swindlers has been suppressed by the state, so it must be made absolutely impossible for the Church to exercise its old influence over all racial comrades. Only then will the future of the Reich and Volk be secured for all time.
We would be repeating the catastrophic mistakes of past centuries if after our comprehension of the ideological hostility of all Christian denominations we were now in any manner whatever to contribute to the strengthening of the various Churches. The interest of the Reich does not lie in overcoming ecclesiastical particularism but, rather, in maintaining and strengthening it.
Martin Bormann
Reich Leader
1942
From Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1933-1944, pp 470-472
reprinted in Nazi Culture, George Mosse, Schocken, 1966 |
