PrintNovember 18, 2007
Further thoughts on Nazis and Christianity
The word Nazi is a contraction of the German for National Socialism, more fully, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (in German Nationalsozialistische Deutsch Arbeiterpartei which is why one of the Nazi badges was the letters NSDAP). Not much conservatism in that name.
National socialism as compared to what? As compared to international socialism, which was communism. National socialism focused on the national -- the people or, in German the volk -- community as the basis of society. Naziism was an atavistic reversion to a pre-modern idea of society, a reaction against the anonymity of modern industrial society.
Winston Churchill gives a brilliant sketch of the intellectual forces of Naziism in his book The Gathering Storm. Naziism was a descendant of social Darwinism; Life is the survival of the fittest. The State is the embodiment of the people which organizes them to fight for their survival. In this warrior view of national life, pacificism, even mercy, are seen as fatal weaknesses, inviting defeat of the national community by more vigorous outsiders. This is why the Nazis were proud to characterize themselves as barbarians, claiming to be more vigorous and ruthless than settled societies. Christianity is seen as a historic aberration, a weakening of the civilization by its concern for the weak and downtrodden, which in a Darwinian struggle must be sloughed off by the warrior society.
It is now forgotten that bien pensant society embraced eugenics in the period between the turn of the 20th century and World War II. Nazi theory fit right in with this -- weeding out the weak and unfit from the national gene pool to further perfect the volk. (It was this interpretation of Darwin that William Jennings Bryan was arguing against in the Scopes Trial, which is totally misrepresented in the play "Inherit the Wind.")
Thus, the state is a warrior organization for promulgating German kultur and the German community. International life is a struggle and anything that weakens the national strength or will for the struggle must be extirpated. Christianity is a weakness that will lead to the defeat of the volk, as it led to the defeat of the Roman Empire.
Christianity was the declared enemy of National Socialism.
