Amerika

As the WW2 narrative collapses, we can look more closely at the Hitler phenomenon, which was not unique to him although he brought together parts from multiple groups — anti-Communists, conservative Christians, nationalists, fascists, and social Democrats — to make a political movement.

Much of his rhetoric came from the revolution in German Christianity, which turned against its middle eastern origins:

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Jews turned to Jesus as Jewish redeemer and the universal savior, intermarrying with non-Jews, and assimilating into the German nation. At the same time, many Germans, reacting against the hated “Jewish” influences on the Church and German nation, had begun to relocate the origins of German Christianity in pagan, not Jewish, culture.

During the post-World War I era, Germany’s state church—the Evangelical Church—was increasingly influenced by German nationalist ideologies.

Historian Victoria Barnett explains that in the popular mind, “[T]he Jews were blamed for a number of crises, even when their purported role in one would logically eliminate their role in another.”

Eventually, the “German Christians” cut the Old Testament out of their Bibles and excised the “Hebraisms” out of the New Testament.

In addition, the core of Nazi philosophy came from a movement of the previous century:

The various forms of theosophical speculation have certain common characteristics. The first is an emphasis on mystical experience. Theosophical writers hold that there is a deeper spiritual reality and that direct contact with that reality can be established through intuition, meditation, revelation, or some other state transcending normal human consciousness. Theosophists also emphasize esoteric doctrine. Modern theosophists claim that all world religions contain such an inner teaching, and much attention is devoted to deciphering the meaning concealed in sacred texts. In addition, most theosophical speculation reveals a fascination with supernatural or other extraordinary occurrences and with the achievement of higher psychic and spiritual powers. Theosphists maintain that knowledge of the divine wisdom gives access to the mysteries of nature and humankind’s inner essence. Finally, theosophy displays a characteristic preference for monism (see pluralism and monism)—the view that reality is constituted of one principle or substance, such as mind or spirit. Although theosophists recognize the basic distinctions between the phenomenal world and a higher spiritual reality and between the human and the divine, which suggests dualism, most theosophists also affirm an overarching, all-encompassing unity that subsumes all differentiation. Associated with their monism are the beliefs that God is utterly transcendent and impersonal, that creation is the product of spiritual emanations from God, and that humans are sparks of the divine trapped in the material world who desire to return to their spiritual home.

What this tells us is that the ideas were out there but awaited a dynamic moment when the situation was bad enough that they wanted change. Unfortunately Hitler brought in a religious pathology against the Jews, when really he wanted to target materialism/individualism, and a Big State that backfired on him later.

Tags: adolf hitler, christianity, theosophy