What is the difference between the fall of the Poland...

Post Reply New Topic

and Germany.

I once met a perverse mind. What is the difference between Hitler and Igancym Moscicki? Hitler persevered in his capital to the bitter end, and Polish ruling class fled like cowards, because most of the poles has for their contempt.

Hitler was never Catholic...

Actually, as an Austrian, Hitler had been born and raised in the Catholic faith, and never technically disavowed his faith. That said, Hitler and his henchmen hardly lived up to any Christian church's ideal.

Hitler never really trusted the Catholic church. He was more the Protestant, like the German Martin Luther whom I am sure he highly regarded like many of his fellow Germans. And yes, I am aware he was Austrian but he felt his mother tongue, the German language, and culture united all Germans.

The German culture is more protestant while the traditional Polish one is very Catholic so you see this clash in Christianities.

Actually, Austrians and south Germans are very Catholic. My maternal grandfather's family, who were Bavarian Catholics, had opposed his marriage to my Prussian Lutheran grandmother. This sentiment was hardly unique to my grandfather's family, as the Bavarians had always resisted "Prussianization" on both cultural and religious matters.
And as far as Antisemitism being associated with Lutherans, it has to be remembered that Catholicism hardly had a sterling record on that matter (not to label all Catholics today as Antisemites). As well, it should be remembered, that while Germany, which was responsible for the Holocaust, was a country of mixed religious affiliation (Lutheran and Calvinist Protestant and Catholic), it was the primarily Lutheran Scandinavian countries that had resisted the Nazis almost to a man, and had at great personal risk rescued their Jewish populations from otherwise certain death. And lest they be forgotten, German Lutherans such as clergymen like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, laity such as Erwin Rommel and Wilhelm Cannaris, and as well as many others had lost their lives in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler and remove the Nazis from power.

Hitler wanted to appeal to Prussians. He wasn't as concerned with the Catholic minority within the German people as he was appeasing the Protestant Majority and the Prussian-type culture so he could stay in power. They believed they were liberating the German in foreign lands, the ones who still clung to German culture and language only to be oppressed by foreigners. The Nazis wanted to invade other countries, liberate these captive Germans and then create more living space for Germans in general. That was pretty much their goal.

Hitler did alienate the Catholic church.

It's true, in the south and Austria you are inching closer to Italy where the Vatican is but you have that great region to the north, birthplace of Prussia and the Protestant Reformation/Revolution and that is very strong in the German psyche.

While Hitler did try to connect himself to the Prussian military tradition, the fact is, the Prussian officer corps mostly held the Nazis in contempt as Austrian and Bavarian guttersnipes - unfortunately, they also believed they had to follow their commander's orders, even if their commander was evil and insane. The Germans who proved to be the most Anti-Nazi were the Wurttembergers, who included Lutherans like Rommel, and Catholics like Stauffenberg, both of whom had tried to rid Germany and the world of Hitler, and both of whom payed with their lives when their conspiracy failed.

People often do not realize there are many examples of hostility against Jews throughout the history of Europe. It is certainly not a "Catholic" nor "Protestant" problem neither is it partial to Prussia. It is quite honestly and unabashedly a European problem. Europe had anti-Semiticism it refused to address throughout history.

Europe is to blame for that.

Take Voltaire, for instance, a French dude who rejected religion for hedonism, pretty much, and yet Candide drips with anti-Semitic sentiment. Different part of Europe but equally as anti-Semitic and we have the writing to prove it.

All true.

But all 100 percent irrelevant to the fact that your assertion that "Hitler was never Catholic" was an erroneous blunder. And that your equation that "German speaking Europe = Protestantism" is simplistic as heck.

Parts of German speaking Europe are Catholic, and parts are various kinds of Protestant.

Austria, and Bavaria, are staunchly Catholic regions. The Austrian Empire had partnered with Spain as the military muscle of Catholic southern Europe against the Protestant north for Centuries before Hitler.

Hitler was raised Catholic in the Catholic culture of Austria.

And right after the war the some Nazi war criminals were even sheltered in Italy by Cardinals.

Hitler was all about keeping both sides of the Germanic Mason-Dixon line welded together. He merged Austria with Germany. And he combined the worst aspects of both north German culture (Prussian militarism) with those of the south (Austrian antisemitism). Though antisemitism was endemic throughout Europe Jews were more integrated into north German society than they were in Austria. And Austrians were much more virulently anti semetic than west Europeans in general in the early 20th Century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_ ... olf_Hitler

And it is generally agreed Nazism rejected Catholicism.

And you keep trying to divide everything up when Nazis wanted nothing more than to UNITE all Germans under one Nazi flag and to remove everything but the Germans from places with ethnic Germans and people who spoke the German langauge. They saw language being the most important thing. Yes you can go on about Catholicism but you are missing out on just how anti Catholic the Nazis were.

Check out this informative article:

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/ ... ecnum=1438

But you're right- and its good that you point out that: though there have been Christian antisemites who hated Jews because the "Jews reject Christianity", that there have ALSO been ANTI christian anti semites (like Voltaire) who hated Jews because "the Jews spawned Christianity"!

Go figure.

The problem was, Europe had an anti-Semitic tradition so yeah, there are going to be Catholics, Protestants, Prussians, Poles, French, Brits and Russians, too, who are all going to have elements of anti-semiticism just by being located in Europe. It is not any individual organization but an issue an entire continent addressed only in very limited quantities and in Nazism we see it spiraling completely out of control, venturing into genocide and the holocaust.

Any minority, to Hitler, was troublesome in Deutschland, Deutschland über alles and Catholicism was simply thought of as a troublesome minority in the Empire. Might have not been an actual minority in Austria, but Hitler recognized the ambition of a Reich, not necessarily individual states. Catholicism simply did not fit into the Reich.

I keeping dividing things up? WTF?
The German speaking peoples have been dividing themselves up for centuries. I didnt do that to them!

Thanks for informing me of the very point I just made: that Hitler was all about uniting the German speaking world!

This "informative article" is also Catholic propaganda. The relationship between Hitler and the Vatican was more complicated than just pro/anti, and all of that is beside the points.

The points are two: Hitler was raised Catholic, and the country he grew up in was predominently Catholic.
If you claim otherwise on either point you are wrong.

Hitler was essentially secular, and didnt favor either branch of Christianity. He sometimes spoke fondly of ancient Germanic Paganism. The pillars of his ideology were language (like you said) and more important: "race" (ie blood, or genes).

Last edited by naturalplastic on 02 Mar 2015, 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It should be pointed out that Prussia had been one of the few states of Europe, despite their militarism, who were enlightened enough to attract Jewish refugees from all over with laws shielding freedom of religion.
As a side note, Prussia had also been the first European state to outlaw torture (till the Nazis brought it back), and to institute public education and social security. Not bad for guys with spikes on their helmets.

That IS interesting.^

Someone once said that "somehow Austrians have convinced the World that Hitler was German, and that Beethoven was Austrian."