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To: TobagoJack who wrote (40933)	11/5/2003 10:26:07 PM
From: AC Flyer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Jay: Your Hitler post was a knee jerk response to what you must have perceived as a culturally-based attack on Communism. Why you would feel a need to offer even an inferred defense of a political system that has so predictably and repeatedly fed its own followers to the meat grinder is completely beyond me. On to your question. Christianity is a religion. Communism is a system of political beliefs, although of course in some practitioners, like Ray Duray, politics can reach the level of zealotry and fervor normally associated with religious beliefs. As to Hitler's religion, the answer is not simple. From what I understand of Hitler's psychological makeup, his belief system was a somewhat confused mix of orthodox Christian beliefs and heroic Germanic paganism. Hitler's favorite composer was Wagner and for the simple reason that Wagner's operas fed Hitler's grandiose visions of Germanic heroic destiny. The more relevant question, perhaps, if what you are really interested in is how did Hitler achieve such an impressive body count, is harder to answer. Contemporary historians have come to believe that Hitler held a profound self-loathing, which manifested itself most visibly in the course of his relationships with women, which included profound masochism and sexual deviance. A corollary of such self-loathing is often a total absence of empathy - a convenient label for this today is psychopathy. It was this lack of empathy that enabled Hitler to use his genuine gift for oratory to cynically tap the deep vein of anti-Semitism that existed in Germany (and arguably in other European countries) at that time. Though little evidence exists that Hitler was personally anti-Semitic, this was the vehicle that brought him to power. A large minority of the German people were hungry for strong leadership and the German political elite did not seriously attempt to stop him until it was too late.