"I think we should throw those books in a fire"

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Ya know, this is some of your worst hypocrisy --- you constantly weigh in on everything and anything about which you have ZERO qualifications, then you pull this crap.

Seriously, I don't know if we've ever had a bigger hypocrite than you.

I do not affect to be an expert on US politics.

Furthermore what "qualifications" apart from living in the USA do you have? Are you an accredited expert on the Constitution, jurisprudence, US political history? Where precisely are your qualifications?
,

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

What qualifies you to "be an expert" on US politics, social issues, and such?

I do not affect to be an expert.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

No, that is a statement of fact. There is nothing generalized about the statement. Anti-semitism existed before Christianity. That is recorded historical fact. You've already been soundly spanked on this topic MULTIPLE times in the past, and at this point it's probably best you just run along because at this point it is embarrassing to watch you fail to learn from your own mistakes and continue to speak falsehoods..

Anti-Semitism as we understand it today did not exist in the ancient world.

[Gondwanaland]

That is, as is your wont, a sweeping generalisation. You would need to define what you understand by "Anti-Semitism" when applying that term to the ancient world. However, I doubt that will occur because i suspect you do not know enough about the subject.

No, that is a statement of fact. There is nothing generalized about the statement. Anti-semitism existed before Christianity. That is recorded historical fact. You've already been soundly spanked on this topic MULTIPLE times in the past, and at this point it's probably best you just run along because at this point it is embarrassing to watch you fail to learn from your own mistakes and continue to speak falsehoods..

[Cow Poke]

If you observe her long enough, you realize she pulls this out as a dismissive technique. Based on observations she doesn't care about your qualifications, she just pulls that defense out to dismiss what you say without having to actually address it.

Similar to her objections about "overly simplistic answers." She brings that up, without addressing the answer itself.

Classic tactics.

[CivilDiscourse]

Ya know, this is some of your worst hypocrisy --- you constantly weigh in on everything and anything about which you have ZERO qualifications, then you pull this crap.

Seriously, I don't know if we've ever had a bigger hypocrite than you.

If you observe her long enough, you realize she pulls this out as a dismissive technique. Based on observations she doesn't care about your qualifications, she just pulls that defense out to dismiss what you say without having to actually address it.

Similar to her objections about "overly simplistic answers." She brings that up, without addressing the answer itself.

[CivilDiscourse]

And how does your ancestry qualify you to be an expert on the rise of Nazism in Germany?

What qualifies you to "be an expert" on US politics, social issues, and such?

[Cow Poke]

And that qualifies you to comment on anti-Judaism in the ancient world, exactly how precisely?

Ya know, this is some of your worst hypocrisy --- you constantly weigh in on everything and anything about which you have ZERO qualifications, then you pull this crap.

Seriously, I don't know if we've ever had a bigger hypocrite than you.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

The fact that they came from Christian societies and cultures pretty much amounts to squat given that they forcibly rejected it.

Not the tropes against the Jews. Martin Luther was very popular during the Reich years. The Nazis did not need to lie about him or invent things he had written. It was there for all to read. He had articulated centuries of theological anti-Semitism into an especially dangerous and virulent composition.

And I can understand that since I left you no room for your fairy tale that you would do your typical snipped for irrelevance ploy. smiley snicker.gif

I am not interested in you riding a hobbyhorse around the nursery table.

The exchange was about anti-Semitism as we understand it today. And the roots of that anti-Semitism lie within early Christianity.

I realise that many Christians find this fact unpleasant but there it is.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Um, that particular remark stems from my comment

Using terms like "The Nazis merely" while directly discussing what they did to the Jews, places you dangerously close to being a Nazi apologist

Nothing to do with anti-Judaism in the ancient world.

Please do try to keep up.

And how does your ancestry qualify you to be an expert on the rise of Nazism in Germany?

[rogue06]

I have never stated that any of the Nazi leaders were themselves practising Christians. However, they all came from Christian societies and cultures. Furthermore, personal background with regard to their individual upbringing and early experiences cannot be discounted..

As the rest of your post is irrelevant to this particular topic I have disregarded it. However, congratulations on your efforts with Google.

The fact that they came from Christian societies and cultures pretty much amounts to squat given that they forcibly rejected it.

And I can understand that since I left you no room for your fairy tale that you would do your typical snipped for irrelevance ploy. smiley snicker.gif

[rogue06]

And that qualifies you to comment on anti-Judaism in the ancient world, exactly how precisely?

Um, that particular remark stems from my comment

Using terms like "The Nazis merely" while directly discussing what they did to the Jews, places you dangerously close to being a Nazi apologist

Nothing to do with anti-Judaism in the ancient world.

Please do try to keep up.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

At this point in time suffice it to say that it involves family history. I'm a quarter German from my mother's father.

And that qualifies you to comment on anti-Judaism in the ancient world, exactly how precisely?

[rogue06]

Go on then. Surprise me!

At this point in time suffice it to say that it involves family history. I'm a quarter German from my mother's father.

[rogue06]

Pointing out the indisputable historic fact that anti-Semitism predates Christianity is now a "sweeping generalization"?

This looks more like a pathetic attempt to frantically hand wave off an inconvenient truth because it messes up the narrative that you seek to convey.


The standard one will do just fine. No need to play your definition game which is little more than a transparently obvious attempt to distract and deflect attention.


Anything you don't like is always "complicated."

You need for anti-Semitism to be a Christian invention so you can use it as a club and anyone pointing out that it existed long before the advent of Christianity poops in your punch bowl.


Sexist much?


I might know a lot more about this and have a motivation for doing so than you might ever suspect.


Shouldn't you, to be consisted, note that this issue is "complicated"? You know, like "with all history."

Again you so desperately want to convey the impression that anti-Semitism is something that uniquely appeared in Christianity that you spend this much time seeking to minimize the fact that anti-Semitism existed long before Christianity because that kind of upsets your narrative.


There's the Nazi apologist we all know.

Regardless of their backgrounds and the regions they came from, many of the highest ranked Nazis expressed nothing but contempt for Christianity and weren't too subtle about wanting to eliminate it after it had served its purpose.

The following is a summary and therefore by its very nature will tend to be somewhat simplified and I do not intend on indulging in the various rabbit hole games H_A insists on playing:

The Nazis patronized Christianity solely in order to prevent having to fight the church as well. As Anton Gill explained in his An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945:

"For his part, Hitler naturally wanted to bring the church into line with everything else in his scheme of things. He knew he dare not simply eradicate it: that would not have been possible with such an international organization, and he would have lost many Christian supporters had he tried to. His principal aim was to unify the German Evangelical Church under a pro-Nazi banner, and to come to an accommodation with the Catholics."

But as they grew in power anti-Christian remarks increased in frequency as they began to see Christianity as a threat to the Nazis domination of Germany.

"It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood," he said in 1933. His countrymen would have to make a choice: "One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both." In the same year he is supposed to have told Hermann Rauschnig that he intended "to stamp out Christianity root and branch."

In the next couple years Hitler started arguing that Christian worship was a sign of weakness, and that it should be replaced by reverence for the nation and the state (the latter two embodied by the Nazi Party of course). Almost immediately after Hitler took power he said: "Christianity was incapable of uniting the Germans, and that only an entirely new world-theory was capable of doing so."

According to Albert Speer (the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, who served as Hitler's main architect before this period), on page 96 of his "Inside the Third Reich," at the conclusion of speculating on history Hitler often remarked:

"You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness."

Arthur Stuart Duncan-Jones, in his 1938 book The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Germany, also quoted Hitler describing his attitude toward Christianity before gaining power: "I insist on the certainty that sooner or later, once we hold power, Christianity will be overcome."

Another telling quote comes from Allan Bullocks "A Study in Tyranny," who cites Hitler as saying:

"I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews."

Bullock also wrote that, "once the war was over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian Churches." This is in agreement with Joseph W. Bendersky's assessment in A concise history of Nazi Germany in which he stated that "it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire."^[1]

Note also that when his private secretary, Martin Bormann, declared publicly in 1941 that "National Socialism [Nazism] and Christianity are irreconcilable" Hitler didn't raise much if any objection. Borman went on to say that Christianity's influence in the leadership of the people "must absolutely and finally be broken."

According to "The Face of the Third Reich" by Joachim Fest, Bormann proclaimed:

"When we National Socialists speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a man-like being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God."^[2]

Albert Speer noted in Inside the Third Reich that when he was drafting his plans for Hitler's "new Berlin", when he informed Bormann that he had consulted with Protestant and Catholic authorities over the locations for churches, "Bormann curtly informed me that churches were not to receive building sites."

It should be kept in mind that Hitler put Bormann in charge of maintaining Nazi orthodoxy so his opinions almost certainly mirrored official Nazi policy and what Hitler believed.

One of the primary sources for the evidence revealing Hitler's increasingly anti-Christian rhetoric and sentiment would have to be the controversial Table Talk^[3]. From it we get such gems as:

• "Christianity is an invention of sick brains"

• "So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death"

• "When National Socialism has ruled long enough, it will no longer be possible to conceive of a form of life different from ours. In the long run, National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together."

• "The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity ... The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity"

• "I shall never come to terms with the Christian lie . . . Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity"

• "The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

In it he apparently accepted a largely Nietzschean explanation of Christianity as being a conspiracy of the Jews for a slave revolt against their Roman conquerors:

• "Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society"

But, as they say, actions speak louder than words. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, members of the clergy were specially targeted. For instance, in West Prussia two-thirds of the 690 parish priests were rounded up with only those that fled escaping. After only a month in custody 214 of those priests were executed while by the end of 1940 only 20 (about 3.5%) were left in their parishes.

Further, according to testimony presented by several top Nazi officials including Albert Speer, Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Alfred Rosenberg at the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazis had a plan to eliminate Christianity altogether.

You might find this, The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches put together by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, an interesting read.

Finally, many historians have argued that even before their rise to power the Nazis had intended to obliterate Christianity wherever they gained control. Here is a short list of some:

• Joseph W. Bendersky, "A concise history of Nazi Germany" (2007)

• Marshall Dill, "Germany: A Modern History" (1970)

• Jack R. Fischel, "Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust" (2010)

• Roger Griffin, "Fascism's relation to religion" (2006)

• George Lachmann Mosse, "Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich" (2003)

• William L. Shirer, "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" (1990)

• Eliot Barculo Wheaton, " The Nazi revolution, 1933-1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era" (1968)

Wheaton probably put it most succinctly when he wrote that the Nazis sought to "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch." But Hitler well understood that it wouldn't be wise to start a "Kulturkampf" against Christianity until after the Nazis had eliminated their other enemies first. Doing so prematurely would be disastrous.

The fact is that Hitler had little use for Christianity except to act as window dressing and ultimately sought to replace Christianity with Nazism.





1. There is also this:

Source: Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity

''The Persecution of the Christian Churches,'' summarizes the Nazi plan to subvert and destroy German Christianity, which it calls ''an integral part of the National Socialist scheme of world conquest.''

According to Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi leader of the German youth corps that would later be known as the Hitler Youth, ''the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement'' from the beginning, though ''considerations of expedience made it impossible'' for the movement to adopt this radical stance officially until it had consolidated power, the outline says.

Attracted by the strategic value inherent in the churches' ''historic mission of conservative social discipline,'' the Nazis simply lied and made deals with the churches while planning a ''slow and cautious policy of gradual encroachment'' to eliminate Christianity.



Source

© Copyright Original Source

2. As Jehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote in "The Trauma of the Holocaust: Some Historical Perspectives":

"[Hitler and the Nazis] wanted to go back to a pagan world, beautiful, naturalistic, where natural hierarchies based on the supremacy of the strong would be established, because strong equaled good, powerful equaled civilized. The world did have a kind of God, the merciless God of nature, the brutal God of races, the oppressive God of hierarchies."

3. It's accuracy has been questioned for good reason by many but in this case, as can be seen by the other sources I listed, the claims made in this case are supported.

Oops. Should note that Bormann was tried in absentia so it could only have been his written remarks made earlier.