Very recently I came across the following infographic being used to support the claim that ‘Adolf Hitler hated Christianity’: (1)
The lady who posted this infographic who goes by the name Sarah on Twitter/X accompanied it with the following commentary:
‘And yet here is Hitler likening Christianity to Bolshevism. He also says that we shouldn’t assume that the Bible is true word for word because the Jews had written it. The Christian larpers on this platform are some of the most disingenuous people I’ve ever met in my life.’ (2)
The first problem with this is that the quotation in the infographic is misattributed to ‘BArch NS 26/53 p. 23’ (Bundesarchiv National Socialist Box/Collection 26 File 53 p. 23 to translate into plain English) but is actually from BArch NS 26/53 p. 11. This isn’t a huge problem per se although it does speak to poor referencing behaviour.
For proof of this incorrect reference this is the relevant page from BARch NS 26/53 as you can see below:
The real (and the second) problem is that the quotation doesn’t support Hitler ‘hating Christianity’ or even being remotely negative about it really nor does the passage include any reference to Bolshevism whatsoever. Although the speech does make reference to Bolshevism elsewhere, but it is not part of the immediate context of the quote nor does it have anything to do with the point Hitler is making.
The passage concerned plus the preceding paragraph and the two paragraphs afterwards is the following in simple German (my transcription) from Hitler’s speech in Munich on Friday 13th August 1920:
‘Wir konnen diese Schicksal des Judentims verfolgen von der grauesten Urzeit heraus.
Es ist nicht notig, dass alles wahr ist Wort fur Wort, was die Bible schreibt, aber im grossen und ganzen gibt sie doch einen Extrakt zum mindesten der Auffassung der Geschichte des Judentums, wie sie sich die Juden selber machten und da sehen wir, dass der Jude ganz harmlos dieses Werk schreibt. Es erscheint ihm nicht ungehuerlich, dass er schildert, wie er durch List und Trug Rasse um Rasse durchsetzt und verseucht hat, immer hinausgeworfen wurde, aber ohne beleidigt zu sein, eine andere sich aussuchte. Wie er kupplete und schacherte, wenn es sich um seine Ideale handelte, bereit auch seine Familie zu opfern. Wir wissen, dass vor Kurzem ein Herr sich hier aufielt, Sigmund Fraenkel der Mann schrieb in den Neuesten, dass es ganz ungerecht waere, den Juden materialististischen Geist vorzuwerfen, man besehe sich nur das sonnige innige Familienleben des Juden. Dieses innige Familienleben hat ihren eigenen Erzvater Abraham nicht einen Moment gehindiert, seine eigene Frau sofort zu verkuppeln an den Pharao von Aegypten, nur damit er Geschaefte machen konnte.’ (3)
This translates into English – with my supplementary words/notes given in [ ] as is my custom – as follows:
‘We can trace jewry’s [strategy and] fate back to the most ancient times.
It is not necessary that everything the Bible says is true word for word, but on the whole, it does provide an example, at least, of the understanding of jewish history as the Jews themselves conceive it, and there we see that the jew writes this work quite innocently. It does not seem outrageous to him to describe how – through cunning and deceit – he has infiltrated and contaminated race after race, was always expelled, but without taking offense, [he then] chooses another. How he has sacrificed and slaughtered, when it came to his ideals, [and he is even] ready even to sacrifice his family. We know that recently a gentleman, [named] Sigmund Fraenkel, wrote in the newspaper ‘Die Neuesten’ [= the ‘Munchner Neuesten Nachrichten’; a conservative pro-monarchist newspaper paper in Munich at the time], made a point of stating that it would be quite unfair to accuse the jew of [having] a materialistic spirit; one only needs to look at the sunny, intimate family life of the Jew. This close family life did not prevent their own patriarch Abraham for a moment from immediately marrying off his own wife to the Pharaoh of Egypt, just so that he could do business.’
We can thus see that what Hitler is actually saying is that the Bible – he means the Old Testament in this instance and more specifically the Pentateuch/Written Torah – gives us a potted history of jewish behaviour and immorality that can inform our understanding that jews are thoroughly dishonest and immoral as a people.
Hitler cites the behaviour of the Patriarch Abraham in bigamously presenting his wife Sarah as his sister when coming before Pharaoh (Gen. 12:10-20) so that he could ‘do business [in Egypt]’ so that Pharoah would take her as his wife in return for said trading rights.
Another similar example of this found in the story of Esther and Mordechai in the eponymous book of Esther in the Old Testament/Tanakh, but the point that Hitler is making here is that – contrary to the claims of one Sigmund Fraenkel (4) in the ‘Munchner Neuesten Nachrichten’ – jews are extremely materialistic (and essentially classically psychopathic) and this is powerfully illustrated by stories from the Bible.
Hitler is not – per Sarah’s claim – ‘likening Christianity to Bolshevism’ or ‘claiming that the Bible isn’t true word for word because jews wrote it’ (he is actually stating something quite different to this; i.e. the Bible isn’t necessarily true word for word but it does give us an accurate record of jewish behaviour recorded by them from their own traditions [notice the lack of the value judgement that Sarah has inserted contrary to what Hitler said in order to twist it to make a claim and attribute her claim to Hitler]) at all as is patently just by reading Hitler’s words translated into English.
Further Hitler uses the Bible the same way in the dialogue called ‘Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin’ that his political mentor Dietrich Eckart published posthumously in 1924 where we read Eckart quoting Hitler as stating that:
‘In Egypt the scoundrels’ scheme succeeded only about halfway,” he finished. “The Egyptians became masters of the situation at the last moment and sent the ‘mixed multitude’ to the devil, together with the Jews. There must have been a desperate struggle. The slaughter of the firstborn reveals that clearly enough. Just as they have done with us, the Jews had won the great lower stratum of the population for themselves — ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!’ – until one night they sent out the order, ‘Down with the bourgeois! Kill them, the dogs!’ but things didn’t turn out so well as they had expected. That portion of the Egyptian nation that had remained patriotic turned the tables and booted Moses, Cohn, and Levi out of the country, followed by the inhabitants whom they had incited. During this exodus they carried along as much stolen booty as they could manage, the Bible reports with satisfaction. It also reports, in no uncertain terms, that the Egyptians were glad to be rid of them (Exodus 12:35-36; Psalms 105:38). The best, though, was the reward the Jews gave their stupid accomplices. Suddenly they began calling them ‘rabble,’ whereas formerly they had called them ‘comrade’ and pretended to love them. Imagine the faces these deluded ones must have made in the desert when they heard this.’ (5)
We can thus see that Hitler is using the Bible – especially again the Pentateuch/Written Torah – precisely the same way: as an illustrative history of the perfidy and evil of the jews from their own lips, but what is not doing is calling the Bible or Christianity ‘jewish’ (he is how inferring that the Old Testament is a jewish document but he casts no aspersions on the New Testament ergo he isn’t referring to the entire Bible or Christianity as ‘jewish’). What he is doing is using the well-known stories of the Bible to make a rhetorical but intellectually correct point that would have been known to his uneducated or semi-educated audience among the German working-class using stories that they would have been familiar with from their Catechism classes, Sunday sermons and attendance at Sunday school rather than primarily making an intellectual about the Bible or Christianity themselves.
Ergo this quote doesn’t mean what Sarah is claim it means.
References
(1) https://x .com/sarahwillcry/status/2059337886026080379
(2) Idem.
(3) BArch NS 26/53 p. 11
(4) Possibly the prominent jewish chemist in Austria of the same name (see: https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6298-frankel-sigmund), but I judge this unlikely and it likely just another jew (likely also from Poland) with the same name who has been lost to history.
(5) Dietrich Eckart, William Pierce (Trans.), 1966, [1924], ‘Bolshevism between Moses and Lenin: A Dialogue between Adolf Hitler and Me’, 1st Edition, National Vanguard Books: Mill Point, pp. 7-8
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