Page 159 - Fascism: The Bloody Ideology Of Darwinsim

Fascism's Hatred Of Religion 159

The "Racist Christianity" of the Nazis

Although ultimately opposed to religion, in practice, the Nazis behaved
diplomatically towards it. Their real aim was to use religious organizations as
a tool to achieve their ends. Hitler was a particular enemy of the Catholic
Church, which looked on all Christians as a supranational community. In its
place, he intended to establish a church for Germans only, and by stages, to
develop religion as a tool of German fascism. In a report entitled "The Nazi
Party's Program and World View," the Nazi ideologist Gottfried Feder wrote:

Surely, some day the German people also will find a form for its
perception and experience of God, a form dictated by its Nordic blood.
Surely, only then will the trinity of blood, faith and state be complete. 106
According to this perspective, it is necessary for religion to be in
harmony with the ideals of "blood and state,' in other words with the Nazis'
racist ideology. In Mein Kampf, Hitler summed up how religion was to be
manipulated, "Anyone who wants to win the broad masses must know the key
that opens the door to their heart." 107
In order to appeal to various communities, Hitler used religious terms
as this "key," and sought to portray racism as a sacred ideal. Though he was a
Darwinist, that is, one who denies creation by a divine being, when
formulating his racist propaganda, Hitler made reference to creation, although
distorting the idea, to use it as a justification for racism. For example, in Mein
Kampf, he said:
The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following:
(a) Lowering of the level of higher race; (b) Physical and intellectual
regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing
sickness. To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but
to sin against the will of the eternal creator. 108

Peoples who bastardise themselves or let themselves be bastardised, sin
against the will of eternal Providence, and when their ruin is
encompassed by a stronger enemy it is not an injustice done to them,
but only the restoration of justice. 109

Nazism's distortion of religious ideas in this manner, and its use of them
to serve its own racist ideology, were to some extent effective, with the
opportunistic administrators of a number of German churches playing an
important role in the strategy. These hypocritical men of religion, collaborating
with Hitler, helped to disseminate Nazi propaganda in several ways. In 1933,