To: alt.pagan
From: mimir@io.com (Al Billings)
Subject: Re: Hitler and paganism (9409.htlrpgn.ab)
Date: 49940912
Quoting: |Damian Anderson (damiana@cap.gwu.edu) wrote:

|I know that Hitler denied and persecuted Christianity, though he may have
|been raised Catholic. Was he not Austrian? My mother was raised in Nazi
|Germany and they were taught to be anti-Catholic. She subsequently became
|a Catholic! :-) It also appears that Hitler's maternal grandfather was
|Jewish, but that Hitler's mother, whose name was Heidler, was born
|illegitimate and never took her father's name. It may be out of loathing
|for this man that he became so fanatically anti-Semitic. However, I am
|pretty sure about his interest in pre-Christian German pagan religion. 

Unfortunately for your argument, it is well documented that Hitler was at 
least nominally Christian. His party co-opted the Volk movement in 
Germany and used its support and that of others to gain power. Several of 
his underlings had occult interests but any attempts to create a religion 
for the Reich (note the difference between this and an actual revival of 
Germanic religion) were ended in the middle of his reign as the 
opposition to it among Germans was too great and Hitler himself didn't 
place a big personal emphasis on it. It is quite clear from Nazi doctrine 
that the Third Reich, the State, was the be all and end all of Hitler's 
emphasis when it came to propaganda and the training of the young Germans.

As a Germanic heathen myself, I can tell you that nothing of what Hitler 
revived had a more than passing similarity to what pre-Christian Germanic 
peoples practiced. Fascism and control were his goals, nothing religious.

--
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