Can We Finally Crucify Liberalism?/Hitler’s Triumph of the Will & Christ

[Sandra]

Can We Finally Crucify Liberalism?

Hitler’s Triumph of the Will & Christ

 By Kelly O'Connell  Sunday,
December 26, 2010

Do

Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther and Christ really have anything in
common? Consider the story of Hitler’s battle against Luther over the
soul of Germany. This event reveals the political side of religion in
Hitler’s Germany, found in the Nazis and their propaganda film

Triumph of the Will (1934), placed against Luther’s greatest
work­
Bondage of the Will (1525). Hitler sought to move Germany beyond
indomitable Luther and his Bible by sheer humanistic effort. Here was a
politician trying to advance his cause by undermining traditional
religion, which still occurs today, perhaps more than ever.

When analyzing Nazis beliefs, much like totalitarian regimes of Italy,
the USSR and China, we are presented with a single theme. The claim is
mankind alone is sufficient for any problem or achievement. This
atheistic foundation is the premise and purpose of the entire system.
Hitler well-understood the Bible could only cause division since it
offered an external standard outside of German society. It would
undermine Nazi aspirations to wholly remake society. Therefore, when he
commissioned Triumph of the Will it was in the interest of removing, root
and branch, Luther’s achievement of building a society upon God’s Things.
This timeless struggle between humanism and revelation is the topic of
this essay.

I. Hitler, Nazism & the Triumph of the Will

A. Background to Hitler

Adolf
Hitler (1889­1945) came into pubic life at a time of grave doubt, anger
and confusion in Germany, after the humiliation of World War I. The
substance of Hitler’s policy is described by Eberhard Jackel, in

Hitler’s World View, A Blueprint For Power. It consisted of a few
basic themes. First, and most important, Hitler craved power; but he
wanted power for a Germanic mission to produce a neo-pagan
thousand-year-reign.

Hitler’s policies reveal these beliefs:

1. Germany is destined to rule the world, war is the means;
2. A Master Race of Teutonic Aryans are bedeviled by Jews who harm Germany and must be eliminated via “Final Solution;”
3. German land was imbued with spiritual properties and is therefore holy and must be protected. Foreign lands can be added as farmland for Germans, or lebensraum, ie living space;
   
4. France & Russia must be destroyed with the help of the British and Italians;
5. Teutonic religion must rise up, cobbled from pseudo-Christian and pagan German elements;
6. Darwinian theories of evolutionary human development encourage eugenics and human breeding, justifying Aryan takeover of earth;
7. Totalitarian leadership allows inferior human stock to be culled so mankind can achieve its potential;

B. Fascism

Germany’s fascism is an
elusive subject. According to Kevin
Passmore’s
Fascism, A Very Short Introduction, it is not synonymous with
communism, but bears much in common. These similar traits are discernible
in Fascism:

1. It is a totalitarian system meaning a total theory of life, enforced by threat, and organized from the top-down by government.
2. Much like Marxism, it offers a political religion in the place of historic belief systems.
3. It persuades the populace on the basis of propaganda and the threat of terror for those who refuse the system.
4. It opposes the rule of law, exactly as communism.
5. It boasts a highly aggressive, militaristic, conquering approach to international relations.
6. It claims to supersede all reproductive and family rights, identical to communism.

C. Nazi Ideas

Nazism was a
hodgepodge of racist, ultra-national and pseudo-scientific beliefs under
a veneer of contradictory religious notions. It rejected genuine
Christianity, but tried to return to mythical paganism, meant to revive
Germany’s vital volk roots.

Anti-Christian Humanism
There is no doubt Nazism is a highly anti-biblical philosophy, making all
the more puzzling repeated claims Hitler was Christian. For example, it
makes little sense to suggest hating and killing Jews is “Christian” when
their same Bible describes the Jews as God’s “Chosen People.” That being
said, there were unfortunate cases of Catholic and Protestant Nazi
sympathizers. This cannot be surprising given the menace of the
regime.

Karla Poewe, in her important book

New Religions And The Nazis, explains how New Age, Eastern and pagan
religions came to dominate much German thinking in the early 20th
century. Exemplified by the
German Faith
Movement, apostate

Jakob Wilhelm Hauer railed against confining German Christianity to
the Bible, a theme Hitler pounced on. Nazis were appalled by a racially
inferior sect teaching others about morality through such doctrines as
the Ten Commandments.

German thinkers like mentally deranged
Friedrich
Nietzsche­who absolutely
hated Christianity

and Judaism­became dominant to the Nazis. Son of a Protestant pastor,
Nietzsche claimed Christianity was
a faith for weaklings. Nazis came to favor Hinduism and Buddhism,
which appealed to Hitler’s desire to cancel the rule of law. Nietzsche
loved Islam for its Christian repudiation.

Paganism
Important Nazi influences, such as Nietzsche, were infatuated with
ancient Greek paganism. Giant halls were constructed across Germany to
help revive a

Teutonic
volk

religion based upon the old
Norse and Germanic
gods. In keeping with ancient Greece, a strong thread of
homosexuality also ran through Nazism. For example,

Ernst Rohm, founder and leader of the Nazi Storm Troopers, or
Sturm Abteilung, was a vociferously
open
homosexual, well-described in the

Pink Triangle. Hitler may have been homosexual himself. Fascism was
an overly-dramatic, hyper-masculine movement, strongly anti-Feminist. It
is well known that
Hitler was into
the occult, deeply influenced by such writers as
Guido
von Liszt.

Pseudo-Science
Darwinism was a key
element of Nazi beliefs, eminently justifying
Third Reich
eugenics,
racial
theories, antisemitism, and the Aryan fixation on the
Master Race. Many cruel
and bizarre experiments were done in the name of Nazi “science,” such as
Heinrich Himmler’s quest to trace German blood Aryan race back to the
Himalayas, noted in Christopher Hale’s

Himmler’s Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan
Race.

II. Luther’s Bondage of the Will

A. Renaissance Humanism

Martin
Luther lived during the Renaissance, from 1483-1546. Humanism, in its
original sense, refers to works of classical writers rediscovered during
this period, writes James Mackinnon in

Luther And The Reformation. But the combination of pagan philosophy
and the Bible caused tensions. The great
humanist Erasmus
debated Luther over the meaning of the Bible and the place of the
Church in society and salvation. Erasmus was essentially what we would
consider today as a religious liberal.

B. Luther & the Reformation

Martin Luther’s father wanted his
gifted son to enter the law. But while traveling in a heavy storm by
horseback through a deep forest, he was

knocked from his mount by a lightning stroke. This apparent miracle,
a seeming echo of Paul’s
Road to Damascus
epiphany, convinced him to change his godless ways. Martin left law
and entered seminary. But Martin was bedeviled over the true meaning of
salvation, and would not rest till he understood the Bible’s
explanation.

When Luther challenged the Church over the definition of salvation, it
set off a struggle resulting in the Reformation, the defining moment of
Protestantism. And according to many theologians, the zenith of Reformed
theology regarding salvation is Luther’s powerful Bondage of the
Will.

III Comparing Triumph to Bondage of the Will

The issue of “Will” looms large in German
history. Free will represents humanism versus biblical literalism, or the
choice between the power of man versus that of God. Hitler celebrated
Nietzsche’s

Will to Power which stood for the idea only power matters, no matter
how depraved or evil its use.

A. Bondage of the Will

Luther’s
book

Bondage of the Will established the core of Luther’s challenge to the
Church, and also to the Christian humanists of his day. In fact, he

dedicated the book to Erasmus who was perhaps the one man who could
best challenge Luther in Greek translation.

The argument in Bondage of the Will is simple, yet profound, and
devastating to the humanistic mindset. Luther argues the
“Natural
Man” or woman is born into this world in a state of spiritual death.
A

Natural Man is born only once in this world, never experiencing
a
second “spiritual birth.”

Sin results from Adam and Eve’s fall in the garden, which

God promised would cause death. Luther argues that, because of this
morbid state, no person has any choice in this world, except to sin,
because they are spiritually dead. Therefore, the will of mankind has
been made a slave to sin.

Luther writes,

For if man has lost his freedom, and is forced to serve sin, and cannot will good, what conclusion can more justly be drawn concerning him, than that he sins and wills evil necessarily?

Luther referred to the natural human condition as Bondage of the Will. Only when a man or woman became saved, or regenerated, or “born
again” could they could decide in any given moment whether they would
sin. And so since mankind then had a choice, he was then spiritually
alive, and his will could be used to choose whether he would sin or
follow God’s will.

B. Triumph of the Will

The movie

Triumph of the Will was created to show the power and majesty of
Nazism. Some consider it the greatest work of propaganda in history. It
celebrates Nazism and especially the rise of Adolf Hitler
(
his speech)
(
entire film here). The message is Nazism is the new religion, the new
salvation for people, where mankind saves himself through heroic deeds.
Nietzsche celebrates this in
Ecce
Homo, demanding humans reject all previous beliefs and create a new
moral system. Ironically, this book decisively proved Nietzsche was
hopelessly insane.

Hitler himself chose the title, an

explicit refutation of Martin Luther‘s Bondage of the Will and German
Christianity in general. It’s easy to see now Hitler was likewise on an
insane mission to replace God with the swastika over human ambition. This
was set against Luther’s mantra,
“
The just shall live by faith.”

In a speech from Triumph one detects the extreme humanism of Nazism when
Hitler states:

It is our wish and will that this State and Reich will endure for millennia to come. We are happy in the knowledge that this fortune belongs to us completely!...Only when the Party, with the cooperation of
everyone, make it the highest embodiment of National Socialist thought
and spirit will the Party be an eternal and indestructible pillar of the
German people and of our Reich…

Yet, it is not generally admitted all totalitarian movements, from Mussolini’s Italy, Mao’s communist China, to Lenin and Stalin’s Marxist
USSR all suffered from the same delusion that man’s magnificent willpower
trumps God.

IV. Christmas, Humanism and Christ

So Luther’s view was man is utterly helpless without God; whereas ironically­Hitler believed mankind with the biblical God is also helpless. Nazis believed Christ was a sick man dragging
humanity towards defeat. All totalitarian systems believed the Bible was
for losers, so communism made religion illegal, while Fascism demanded
the state formulate sermons.

The Bible presents a story about God come to earth as man, a sacrificial
savior of the world. This is the story of Christmas. Repeated failures of
regimes rejecting the Bible are proverbial. Economies collapsed under
communism, human rights were canceled, and hundreds of millions murdered.
In fact, perhaps 200 million were killed by totalitarian leaders last
century.

For the practical minded, we can put aside whether the Bible’s claims are
literally true under the Lockean theory government cannot properly judge
religion. But from a public policy perspective, can we possibly ignore
the fact that when Christianity is shunted aside and replaced by
atheistic philosophies, it always results in untold suffering? Further,
is it really so unacceptable to ask­when comparing the message of
Christmas against leftism, while bearing in mind the latter’s appalling
record of unmitigated failure­which one really seems the most incredible?

 


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