Was Hitler a Christian?

If you’re a veteran of online arguments, I’m sure you’ve heard it said that Hitler was a Christian and that Nazi ideology can be blamed on Christian thought. After all, it’s easy to point to quotes from Adolf that appear to assert his belief in “divine providence” or God—even in Mein Kampf.

So was he a Christian? Some critics of the faith would like you to think so, so that they can cast the Holocaust as a Christian problem—the end product of Christian thought. But reading even a little history dispels this notion quickly and seems to indicate that Hitler was formulating his thoughts in a way that made sense to a largely Christian nation.

The truth of the matter is a story that comes as a shock to the unaware.

Blavatsky and Neopaganism

Leading Nazis were, to a large extent, neopagans who attempted to recapture much of the Teutonic culture that faded into the background after the Christianization of Europe. One of their more surprising influences was Madame Blavatsky, the notorious founder of an occult religion known as Theosophy. Most of what Blavatsky taught was a rehash of the ancient pagan mystery schools, including a theory about “root races”—a theory that will seem familiar to students of World War II.

Blavatsky believed, as many of the world’s religions do, that human history is cyclical, or at least nearly so. In common with very ancient pagan belief, she taught that the universe began as an ethereal mist that degenerated into a more physical state—a worse form of existence. This was nothing new; students of Plato have noted that he held the material world to be the work of lesser gods who essentially messed up—which is why Socrates, on the eve of his execution, encouraged his students to stop mourning his impending death:

“It really has been shown to us that, if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe things in themselves with the soul by itself. It seems likely that we shall, only then, when we are dead, attain that which we desire and of which we claim to be lovers, namely, wisdom, as our argument shows, not while we live; for if it is impossible to attain any pure knowledge with the body, then one of two things is true: either we can never attain knowledge or we can do so after death.”[1]

The Greeks taught that your material body is part of an imperfect creation and that your senses will ultimately deceive you. Real knowledge is truly attained only after death, when you leave your physical body to be reabsorbed into the original cosmic mind. Almost every belief system outside of the Abrahamic faiths teaches some variation of this idea, from the ancient Egyptians and Greeks to the pagan Asian and European barbarians who terrified the Romans.

Blavatsky used these dualistic notions as one of the threads to form the fabric of her strange belief system. She borrowed many symbols common to ancient religions, including the swastika, a Hindu symbol representing the cyclical nature of the universe. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, swastikas were rather widespread—and inoffensive—symbols, found in cultures ranging from Asia to the ancient Americas. Blavatsky, however, used it to illustrate a rather odd idea. The human race, she said, has endured over long historical cycles, and there will be seven “root races” of humans that rise and fall before the end of history, when all of us are finally re-absorbed into the divine mind of the cosmos. The spark, to use a common esoteric metaphor, returns to the original fire—and of course, sparks disappear in a fire, losing their distinct identity.

The first race on this planet (the Polarians), she taught,[2] was originally immortal and invisible, living in Paradise. It was something of a derivative Eden story that included fantastical elements that denied what the Bible teaches about creation (God’s creation was decidedly physical, and He declared that state of being to be very good [Gen. 1:31]). After the first race perished, Blavatsky continued, another took its place: the Hyperboreans, who lived on a massive polar continent that has now disappeared. The third race was the Lemurians, who made their home on a continent somewhere in the Indian Ocean, but they failed to survive because they compromised their racial purity by mixing with inferior races.

You’re probably seeing the seeds of Nazi ideology already.

A handful of Lemurian priests managed to remain pure and survived. They became teachers to the fourth great root race—the Atlanteans—who lived somewhere west of the Mediterranean, out in the Atlantic Ocean, in a land that was ultimately destroyed by a flood.

Blavatsky’s tale was starting to blend with what could be actual historical events. Most people assume that Atlantis is mere mythology, and modern tales about it certainly are. But the Greeks remember an actual Atlantean people, mentioned by Plato in matter-of-fact terms in his work Critias. They were, according to the great philosopher, a real people who once attacked the Greeks in the very ancient past. Far from being the subject matter for eccentric conspiracy theorists (the way people talk about Atlantis today), the Atlanteans were, the Greeks maintained, an ancient and vanished people.

There is little question that the Nazis were drinking from the fountain of pagan mythology but consuming water that was laced with heavy doses of Theosophy.

It may well be that they were remembering the antediluvian world, which really was destroyed by a flood. Their version was a shadow of the Genesis account, adapted to suit fallen humanity’s self-centered preferences. Blavatsky taught that the Atlanteans were destroyed because they listened to a false teacher who took his ideas from a serpent—another shadow of what actually happened. A handful of them escaped and made their way to Tibet, she taught, where their descendants continue to live as ascended spiritual masters to this day.

Perhaps you’ve heard that Heinrich Himmler sent a delegation to Tibet. That’s at least part of the reason they went—in addition to studying the region for strategic purposes, they believed they were studying their cosmic destiny. How? Blavatsky’s fifth root race was the Aryans—a race that she said would evolve to perfection in the coming years. Writing in the nineteenth century, she was referring to the twentieth. From there, it’s easy to connect the dots: Nazis adopted the swastika and taught the ascendancy of the Aryan race. Blavatsky was far from their only influence, of course, because the movement was diverse—however, there is little question that they were drinking from the fountain of pagan mythology but consuming water that was laced with heavy doses of Theosophy.

The Birth of Ariosophy

This is one of the reasons that Wagner’s operas were so popular with members of the party: the Ring of the Nibelungen, Parsifal, Tannhäuser, and other works were revivals of ancient Teutonic mythology. At their core the Germanic myths ran parallel to those of the Greeks and Romans. Blavatsky, a fan of ancient pagan mythology, naturally attracted attention from the neopagan movement that was blossoming in Germany around the turn of the past century. The interest in ancient esoteric thought was, in part, a knee-jerk reaction against the Enlightenment, which had seemingly robbed humanity of purpose by suggesting that the universe was an impersonal machine. That idea left people feeling as if our human existence lacked any real meaning.

In Germany, the Lebensreform movement took root—a sort of proto-hippie movement that stressed getting back to nature to discover the real meaning of life. Alternative lifestyles were celebrated, emphasizing such things as natural medicine, vegetarianism, communalism, and even nudism. Some people also call it the Volkisch movement, because it also emphasized radical nationalism, insisting that Germany should be only for German people, and that the Germanic peoples should get back to their ancient pagan roots.

In 1884 the first German Theosophical Society was founded, after which a character by the name of Guido von List founded a new variation of Theosophy, which was eventually rebranded as Ariosophy—after the Aryan race. It was a synthesis of Blavatsky and the Volkisch movement, stressing that outsiders like the Jews were standing in the way of Aryan greatness. Germans, they taught, could reclaim their original—and pure—identity by returning to a devotion to Odin and other forgotten pagan gods.

The Nazis were Christians? Hardly. Sure, you’ll find them using Christian language (which is what you’d expect in a Christian nation)—and yes, the church was hardly innocent when it came to anti-Semitic thought—but there was a strong vein of neopagan thought that led the Nazis to final, terrible expression.

As Theosophy took root, archaeologists unearthed the ruins of Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrians. The Assyrians were a people who ruthlessly dominated their supposedly inferior neighbors, often resorting to sickening brutality to beat their enemies into submission. Some came to believe that because the Assyrians were also Aryans, perhaps Germany could learn something from their methods.

Prior to World War II, German thinkers traveled the globe in search of ancient spiritual masters who could help them achieve their racial destiny. Notable names include Jörg Lanz von Liebensfels (the man who coined the term Ariosophy) and Rudolf von Sebottendorf, who studied occultism in Turkey and then founded the Thule Society, an organization named after a mythical country mentioned by the Greeks. Thule was also an old name for Iceland—an ancient land steeped in Teutonic mythology. Since the Thule Society emphasized the concept of a homeland for the Germanic peoples, it naturally became political, giving rise to the German Workers’ Party in 1919, immediately after the embarrassment of losing World War I. In 1920 it was reconstituted as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—the Nazis.

Admittedly, Hitler’s own personal connection to ancient spiritualism and Blavatsky is not entirely clear, but there is little doubt about the neopagan influence found among many of his closest compatriots. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), became convinced that Thor’s hammer was real—that it was some kind of ancient weapon that might grant the Nazis global domination.

Other Influences

We also have the example of Otto Rahn, a man who became convinced that the Cathars, a mysterious sect that used to live in the mountains of France, possessed powerful ancient secrets. He believed that they were in possession of the Holy Grail,[3] the cup that Christ used at the Last Supper. The Grail was a powerful symbol for alchemists and occultists across Europe, so Rahn sought it at the ancient Cathar fortress of Montségur, which the Catholic Church had decimated in the thirteenth century. His expeditions, of course, were financed by the Nazis[4] . . . and he eventually became the inspiration for Indiana Jones, who, as you know, also went in search of such ancient artifacts as the ark of the covenant and the Holy Grail.

The church was hardly innocent when it came to anti-Semitic thought—but there was a strong vein of neopagan thought that led the Nazis to final, terrible expression.

Again, were the Nazis really a product of Christianity? Doubtful. Of course, we can no more blame modern pagans for what happened in the camps than we can the Christian Church, but the philosophical relationship with paganism is far more pronounced. It’s not that Christians can entirely avoid blame for the anti-Semitism of the twentieth century. Our history is replete with anti-Semitic sentiments, including from the much-revered Martin Luther, who occasionally spoke of the Jews in a shockingly disparaging tone. He was at first complimentary to our spiritual cousins, but when it became obvious that most Jews were not interested in converting, his attitude shifted, resulting in such works as On the Jews and Their Lies, published in 1543.

To be sure, there was some Christian thought woven into the party, which is to be expected when most of your soldiers come from a Christian background. German military belt buckles were often inscribed with the words “Gott mit uns,” or God with us. But this was not unique to the Second World War; the phrase, common on Germanic heraldry of the eighteenth century, also appeared on helmets during World War I, well before the Nazis took power.[5]

Other influences should be mentioned as well, not least of which is Darwinism, a relatively new school of thought at the time that bolstered the idea that some races are less evolved than others and may be of less value to the future of humanity. Ernst Haeckel’s notorious faked sketches of fetuses were still in circulation at the time, creating the impression that human beings relive the various phases of evolution in the womb, beginning as mere animals and eventually transforming into human beings. (Those sketches still appear in some biology textbooks to this day, even though they were long ago demonstrated to be a hoax.) The key idea was that some people simply don’t evolve as far past the animal stage of evolution as others. The philosophy of Nietzsche is another important thread in the fabric of Nazi thought, with its promise of the Übermensch (the idealized superhuman, Superman). Nietzsche himself was influenced by Schopenhauer’s idea of the will, which helped shape his later articulation of the will to power.

Popular movements are seldom the product of just one idea; they generally represent an amalgamation of influences. But that’s the story of Bible prophecy, as well: a Christianity muddied by inappropriate fallen influences. Seventh-day Adventists are keenly aware that spiritualism will play a key role in last-day events; the twentieth century provides a poignant example of how spiritualist influences can make things go sideways in a hurry.

So Christians don’t get an entirely perfect bill of health; we have behaved abysmally across the centuries, including such shameful events as the expulsion of Jews from Spain. And to be sure, there were churches that not only turned a blind eye to what Hitler was doing, but even championed it, turning the pulpit into a political platform.

But to place the blame for the Holocaust on Christian thought, as skeptical social media combatants sometimes do? It’s disingenuous. To the extent that Christians participated in genocide, it was in spite of biblical teaching, not because of it. It was because of their sin, not their Savior.

Paganism, however? It can’t really make that claim.

[1] Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo (Hackett Classics), (Function) Kindle Edition, pp. 103, 104.

[2] H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vols. 1 & 2 (USA: Start Publishing, 2012), n.p. You will find much of this story spread across the work. I considered providing quotes, but the work is verbose, and it would fill too many pages.

[3] Otto Rahn, Lucifer’s Court (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2004), p. 21.

[4] He also conducted a research tour of Iceland, in search of a lost Germanic religious tradition that could be used to unite the Reich. See Nichlas Goodric-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2004), p. 189

[5] Robert M. Spector, World Without Civilization: Mass Murder and the Holocaust, History and Analysis (University Press of America, 2004), Vol. I, p. 14.