Nazism itself was consistently a racial ideology, and Ian Kershaw noted in his definitive
biography of Hitler that one of the few things we can be certain about is that from the start of his political career to the bitter end, Hitler adhered to "anti-Semitism based on race theory."
When we look to religion, however, there is little agreement. The three main schools of thought are that the Nazis adhered to neo-paganism, that their ideology itself formed a "political religion" or that they advocated a particular form of Christianity.
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It is well established that Hitler quickly drew away from the esoteric world of the
volkisch movement, because he did not want the kind of secret society of initiates that characterised that tradition.
He wanted to build a mass movement. As a result, in Mein Kampf he wrote strongly in support of the Catholic Church and its traditions of authority and dogma. This was not out of any love for the content of church doctrine, but because he believed that the Nazis could use such forms to create their own "political confession," moving from "
volkisch feeling" to an absolute faith in the rectitude of Nazi racial nationalism.
Hitler argued that the lack of compromise in Catholic dogma could be used as a model for Nazi Party "dogmas," implying the establishment of a dogmatic ideological faith that would be intolerant of any other such faith. In practice, however, the Nazis played fast and loose with their "party dogmas" in order to achieve political gains.
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Which brings us to the third perspective - was
Hitler a Christian? Emphatically not, if we consider Christianity in its traditional or orthodox form: Jesus as the son of God, dying for the redemption of the sins of all humankind. It is a nonsense to state that Hitler (or any of the Nazis) adhered to Christianity of this form.
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Hitler often did argue in favour of the notion of a creator.For this reason, some recent works have argued Hitler was a Deist
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Was Hitler an atheist? Probably not
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