HITLER’S GOD

In his new book, “Hitler’s Religion,” historian Richard Weikart attempts to pinpoint the beliefs had been central to Hitler’s worldview and his genocidal rampage. He identifies Pantheism:

·       In Mein Kampf, for instance, he often deifies nature.  This is so obvious that most translators often capitalize the word “Nature” therein.  Indeed Hitler on several occasions referred to nature as eternal, which means that it was not created, but in the same passages he refers to God as a Creator.  This seems rather contradictory at first, but it makes sense if you understand nature itself to be his God.  For this reason Pantheism seems the closest position to Hitler’s views.

But doesn’t Pantheism show respect for nature and living things? Isn’t it antithetical to genocide? If god is the entirety of nature, and nature contains many horrific elements like bubonic plague and the survival-of-the-fittest, then it would seem that this god sanctions genocide, among everything else that nature contains. What then would be the morality of this nature god? Anything that nature contains becomes a moral model. Therefore, anything goes. https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/hitlers-religion-the-twisted-beliefs-that-drove-the-third-reich/19078

It is therefore easy to understand how the god of Darwinism fits comfortably alongside of Pantheism:

·       Since Hitler thought that nature was God, he believed that morality was defined by conforming to nature’s laws.  One of the natural laws he thought most important was the Darwinian struggle for existence, which produced evolutionary progress.  Since the struggle in nature was vicious and resulted in the strong destroying the weak, Hitler considered it good and right to viciously destroy the weak.  He thought this would bring about a better world with superior humans.  He thought he had divine approval for annihilating the allegedly inferior races and people with disabilities.

Consequently, Hitler became a faithful servant of his beliefs.