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Every source I've ever found has dubbed him an Atheist who used both Christianity and Paganism as a means to an end.
There seems to be some discourse about this subject, though.

5767334 Well Hitler was skeptical of all religions including Christianity. I think he still believed in God, but shaped everything into his own image including religion. I think after he survived the assassination attempt by the July 20 plotters, he proclaimed that his survival was a sign from God or something.

I have never heard of Hitler being an atheist though there is plenty of evidence that while he did subvert Christianity for his own purposes from time to time that he did not actually regard himself as a Christian, With all the occultic rituals the Nazi elite were involved in, their obsession with Norse mythology as well as a serious of poems Hitler himself wrote during his military service during World War I about Odin, Thor and some other Norse gods point to Hitler being a Germanic pagan. It may sound odd to consider one that worships Norse gods a Germanic pagan, but what many people do not know is that the ancient Germanic tribes worshiped many of the same gods as the Norse did except with slightly different names much like the Greeks and Romans did. Common Germanic variations on the name Odin for example are Wotan, Wuotan, and Woden.

5767334
It was sort of a weird mix of Christianity, Germanic paganism, and even had a little Hinduism thrown in (the swastika was a symbol of a certain Hindu deity, I never remember which...)

Notice the little swastika on this temple. Even the idea of an "Aryan race" came directly from the ancient Vedic scriptures.
http://www.ibtimes.com/nazi-germanys-fascination-ancient-india-case-heinrich-himmler-214364

5767697 Well, the swastika he used was actually of Nordic origin.

5767334 Of Islam he said: "The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?

5767739 I guess he didn't know about the Crusades, then :rainbowlaugh:

5767334
I'm not sure I'd call him an atheist as there's no action to supporting it, but he certainly wasn't Christian. He simply couldn't come out as against Christianity or the German people would turn against him. Hitler did know his history, and he clearly remembered the one thing that was able to defeat Bismark was when he attacked religion in the Kulturkampf. His subversion of Christianity is pretty well documented, having scrubbed out the Old Testament and inserted a ton of Aryan propaganda into the rest.

Though considering some of the odd stuff he ordered, and some of the odd stuff that was carried out, and the documentation we have on the Nazi Occult, I wouldn't be surprised if he was more into Norse Paganism.

5767720
I didn't know the Nordic people had a swastika. I know that it was an ancient Hindu symbol (and Buddhists have a similar symbol called a "manji").

5767800 The Nordic Swastika was known as the "sunwheel". It was the symbol of Odin.
The Nazis had a bit of a fetish for Nordic imagery. The lightning runes for the SS, the Swastika, the Wolfsangel, etc.

5767978
And Richard Wagner was one of Hitler's favorite composers, and Wagner's works have a bunch of Norse mythology in them.

5767800 Various ancient cultures across various continents have some variation of the Swastika.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/symbol-swastika-and-its-12000-year-old-history-001312

5767997 Yes, as a matter of fact many of Wagner's operas are adaptations of the Norse sagas which of course Hitler was obsessed with. Add the unfortunate fact that Wagner was also a raging anti semite into the mix and you can see why Hitler liked him. It is a real shame as even for all of his faults Wagner was a phenomenal composer and showed that you can make good opera in languages other than Italian or Latin.

5768015

Wagner was also a raging anti semite

Huh. I did not know that...

5768031 Yes, Wagner wrote a rather infamous paper called Das Judenthum in der Musik where he decried the amount of Jewish influence in music at the time and even name dropped a couple of Jewish composers he had a particular disdain for. There is evidence that part of this was due to common prejudices among the general population at the time as well as jealousy toward those fairly successful Jewish composers in particular. Oddly enough though there were some Jews on which he was on friendly terms with which have lead some to question that he really was an anti semite. To be fair even if we were to assume the worst he probably wasn't much worse than most of his contemporaries though that paper in particular bears some controversy even to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_controversies

5768543 True. It was more directed at Hitler's assumption of Christianity as a meek and feeble.

I once heard that Hitlers view of religion was that service to the state would be the religion of National Socialist Germany.

I would say that he was a Roman Catholic who only invoked it for propaganda purposes, although he did tolerate Catholicism being practiced, even within the SS. He was mainly against the way the Roman Catholic church was organized and especially hated the "love thy neighbor" mantra (no surprises there) because he thought such a sentiment was a sign of weakness.

But he probably would never admit himself to be an atheist or deist mostly because he associated the atheist movement with Communism. (no surprises there either).

5767334 Officially he never made a statement about his confession I think, he did however have some connections to the protestant and catholic church. This was, however, mostly due to him knowing that the church held a big amount of power. There are photos of him visiting churches and praying, but those are (most likely) just meant as propaganda.

I have often times heard that Hitler, like many of his high-ranked officials (especially Himmler), was a strong believer in occultism and mysticism. He regularly had astronoms foretell him the stars and the like. This is what many figure out of secret documents, at least.

There were also documents to destroy the christian churches if the germans had successfully defeated Russia and Britain. Hitler saw them as a hurdle between him and complete power, seeing religion as a constant adversary when it came to making decisions.


In the end, nothing is certain on this topic. I usually go with him being an atheist or occultist in secret.

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