I was listening to a podcast that suggested the main reason the Nazis wanted to kill Jews is because they felt that the rise of Christianity, originating among the Jews, was what weakened the Roman Empire and caused it to crumble.
For their own empire, modeled along Roman lines, they didn’t want the same thing to happen.
ehh… I see a lot of ‘the nazis were pagan not christian’ apologism; their belt buckles say otherwise. the vast majorities were church going christians who had wildly varying records on which sects participated in persecution but overall none stepped up to stop the state’s genocide, so like catholics, they can protest but I’m not convinced.
Hitler hated Christianity for its worship of meekness, weakness, a dead man, etc, but used it very well politically. Nazi leadership ranged from full on Christians to pagan weirdos. Jews were associated with Bolshevism, and their hard antibolshevim especially appealed to people who had emigrated to the Weimar Republic during the Russian revolution. Communism and unions were the first targets and how they wedged themselves in to power in the first place. Hitlers first major political victory was the concordat with the Roman Catholic church, promising freedom of religion. In the late 30s Catholic pulpits were ordered to recite a condemnation of Hitler for betraying the concordat. The Nazis implemented a Christian denomination and sent pastors and priests who didn’t comply (many did of course) to the camps. One of these was the famous poet who wrote the “first they came” poem, at first a Hitler supporter who recanted when it was too late, like many of them.
They had all kinds of weird views about Aryans, a very fluid and subjective category in practice, and the history of Aryans. There were archeologists tasked with digging up the magnificent history of the Aryan race etc. Some people like Japanese were honorary Aryans etc. Down to weird specific traits of people based on the false premise of race being a real thing.
I was listening to a podcast that suggested the main reason the Nazis wanted to kill Jews is because they felt that the rise of Christianity, originating among the Jews, was what weakened the Roman Empire and caused it to crumble.
For their own empire, modeled along Roman lines, they didn’t want the same thing to happen.
ehh… I see a lot of ‘the nazis were pagan not christian’ apologism; their belt buckles say otherwise. the vast majorities were church going christians who had wildly varying records on which sects participated in persecution but overall none stepped up to stop the state’s genocide, so like catholics, they can protest but I’m not convinced.
Hitler hated Christianity for its worship of meekness, weakness, a dead man, etc, but used it very well politically. Nazi leadership ranged from full on Christians to pagan weirdos. Jews were associated with Bolshevism, and their hard antibolshevim especially appealed to people who had emigrated to the Weimar Republic during the Russian revolution. Communism and unions were the first targets and how they wedged themselves in to power in the first place. Hitlers first major political victory was the concordat with the Roman Catholic church, promising freedom of religion. In the late 30s Catholic pulpits were ordered to recite a condemnation of Hitler for betraying the concordat. The Nazis implemented a Christian denomination and sent pastors and priests who didn’t comply (many did of course) to the camps. One of these was the famous poet who wrote the “first they came” poem, at first a Hitler supporter who recanted when it was too late, like many of them.
They had all kinds of weird views about Aryans, a very fluid and subjective category in practice, and the history of Aryans. There were archeologists tasked with digging up the magnificent history of the Aryan race etc. Some people like Japanese were honorary Aryans etc. Down to weird specific traits of people based on the false premise of race being a real thing.
Replace Jewish people with like Templars or something and I’d read this trashy historical fiction