Hitler’s faith: The debate over Nazism and religion

During last week’s Q & A debate between Cardinal George Pell and Richard Dawkins, it was interesting that both men had perspectives on Nazism that were at once opposed and yet entirely congruent.

Pell argued that Nazism and Stalinism were the “two great atheist movements of the last century.” Dawkins responded that while Stalin was an atheist, Hitler was not. However, they both agreed that Hitler represented the “personification of social Darwinism” (Pell) or that certain of what he tried to achieve arose “out of Darwinian natural selection” (Dawkins).

Part of this to and fro was certainly the kind of argument that often arises in contemporary debates, often through a process one could think of as Nazification: one disputant involved in a debate on any given topic attempts to associate their opponent’s views with the Nazis. It is the kind of thing that one could summarise in a sloganistic t-shirt: “I’m okay, you’re a fascist” (with an arrow pointing to the far-right).

But how could there be such opposing views when it comes to Nazism and atheism? People may not generally realise it, but the divergence of opinion between Pell and Dawkins reflects deep divisions among historians themselves as to what the Nazis believed about religion.

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.”
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