Book contents
- Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology
- Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Christ on the Crooked Cross, Part I
- 2 Hitler’s Religious Teachers
- 3 Christ on the Crooked Cross, Part II
- 4 Hitler’s Damascus Road Experience
- 5 Jesus as an Ideological Inspiration for Hitler and the NSDAP
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Christ on the Crooked Cross, Part I
Jesus as an Aryan, Antisemitic Warrior
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- Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology
- Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Christ on the Crooked Cross, Part I
- 2 Hitler’s Religious Teachers
- 3 Christ on the Crooked Cross, Part II
- 4 Hitler’s Damascus Road Experience
- 5 Jesus as an Ideological Inspiration for Hitler and the NSDAP
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, I cover the religious and ideological background development of how the character of Jesus came to be remade a Jew into an Aryan. I show the complicity of many leading Christian theologians in this development through their willingness to adapt to racist ideas and to integrate these into the Christian faith, thereby laying the foundation for what became National Socialist Christianity, most clearly embodied in the form of the splinter group in the German Protestant church known as German Christians (Deutsche Christen). This chapter is crucial in order for the reader to be able to understand how Hitler’s interpretation of Jesus could ever have come about and been accepted. It was not Hitler who created the idea of Jesus as an Aryan warrior attacking the Jews; Hitler only integrated an already existing and established idea into his own worldview.
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- Christianity in Hitler's IdeologyThe Role of Jesus in National Socialism, pp. 32 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024