The Deification Of Hitler Through Nazi Interpretations Of The Bible
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Like the Biblical God, Hitler created war and destruction. Like the Biblical Jesus, Hitler did not live for peace. He created many divisions among the people. But, the Nazi regimes reign of terror upon the world was only made possible by Christianity. Fueled by Hitler and the Nazi partys misinterpretations of the Bible, and stereotyped by the past, the Jews elimination was portrayed as a necessary and sufficient condition for the return of both Germany and the world to its Ðoriginal condition. Anti-Semitism stems from Christianity. It is on which anti-Judaic beliefs ever began. Christians have always inherently, yet subconsciously resented the divine nomination of Jews as the Ðchosen ones. The inferiority complex caused by this jealousy eventually resulted in anti-Semitism.
When Constantine adopted Christianity in the fourth century, he halted the persecution of Christians. He also made the discrimination and legal and social subordination of Jews into law. When Christianity became officially accepted in the 4th century, the Christians began to act openly against Jews. Constantine commenced the imposition of heavy penalties on anyone who visited a pagan temple or converted to Judaism. Further, mixed marriages between Jews and Christians were punished by death. After Constantines reign, in 408, Theodosis II assumed power. In the “Codex Theodosianus” of Jews were forbidden to hold any public office. It first came from Justinian who legalized the burning and pillaging of Jewish synagogues by Christian bishops and monks. The Catholic Church would later play both a direct and an indirect role in the Nazi movement.
The practices by the Nazis can be interpreted as reenactments of older measures
of the Christian world. Short of the Final Solution, Nazi ideology coincided with
classic laws of state and church meant to subordinate Jews.” (Nicholls, 26)
Across history, Christians saw the Jews disbelief in Jesus as stubbornness and immorality. This was a result of the Jewish refusal to accept Jesus Christ “The myth of the Jews as Christ-killers has powered anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism all through the Christian centuries” (Nicholls, 19). For Christians, the refusal of Jews to renounce material possessions for the higher kingdom within was sinful “Their rejection of the Christian path to salvation, instead opting for a life of alleged superficial-worldly gains, resulted in the typical-greedy-Jew notions” (Stackelberg, 47-48). In Mein Kampf, Hitler makes mention of this reachery:
The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education,
the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to
true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great
founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude
toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive
from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always
saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return,
Christ was nailed to the crossÐ (Hitler)
All the while, Jews continued their Ðusurious and sinful, in Christians eyes, moneymaking practices leading Judaism to be further associated with selfishness, lacking of self restraint, and trickery. Moreover, Christians viewed the ÐJewish murder of Jesus as the breaking of an ancient covenant with God, giving way to a superseding group of new Ðchosen ones that were created from the blood of Christ himself. This breaking of the divine covenant was later used by Hitler for comparison to the Genesis 3, the fall from paradise, making them the original-sinners, “the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion” (Hitler). Turning the Jews into a group of inherently tarnished people was something that coincided with scripture, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15, “…the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men”. Such Ðspun views on the Bible were utilized by Hitler and his totalitarian regime to invoke genocide in a manner that portrayed him as divinely justified by the Bible. Paul, by declaring faith in Jesus over law, effectively separated Christianity from Judaism.
Medieval religious views of Jews paralleled German stereotypes. The middle ages were filled with hysteria and paranoia. The apocalyptic fervor and attempts by millenarian sects to purify the world led to the hanging of witches and the Crusades (Wistrich, 4). Papal sanctioning of the Holy War led to the idea that the Christians were now the Ðchosen ones. Now they wanted their Holy Land back from the Muslims. In churches and homes the teachings of centuries of misdeeds done by Jews were being forced into every Christian-head. The only way, at the time, for a Jew to wash himself of the tainted, sinful life he or she was born into, was through baptism and conversion to Christianity. All hereditary sins were thus washed away. This unenlightened period resulted in the depiction of the people that remained Jews as the sons of Satan and led to the Spanish Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition arrived in the 15th century. As a result of the paranoia caused by the Jewish question, the Inquisition occurred. It was enacted to control local mobs that were upsetting Christianity, forcing the Church to step in. Upon its beginning, converting Jews to Christianity through baptism ended. No longer could a Jew be baptized and converted into Christianity. The Church would send an inquisitor to investigate claims of heresy and if the claim was found to be legitimate, the person would be handed over to the civil authorities, guilty of treason, and tortured or killed en route to salvation. The civil authority was the left hand of the Church dealing out murder and torture to help heretics Ðsee their way. In the utilization of a civil authority, the Church kept their hands clean. These practices led the Church to convey a sense of superiority. This furthered the idea that the Catholics were now the chosen ones and that all others should want to be Christians. Devout Catholics viewed themselves as superior and the subordination of Jews deepened into their hearts.
At the same time, Martin Luther was preaching of inborn Jewish traits, something that Hitler agreed with, “The Jew has always been a people with definite racial characteristics and never a religion” (Hitler). Lutheranism heavily influenced the ideologies of Adolf Hitler. When Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543, he invoked anti-Semitic thoughts and