If I may be permitted to interject some data into this discussion, the entry of 21 October 1941 from Hitler's Table Talk reveals a lot about Hitler's personal beliefs (as opposed to his publicly stated opinions, or those of the other Nazi leaders, or those of the German people in general).
When one thinks of the opinions held concerning Christianity
by our best minds a hundred, two hundred years ago, one is
ashamed to realise how little we have since evolved. I didn't
know that Julian the Apostate had passed judgment with such
clear-sightedness on Christianity and Christians. You should
read what he says on the subject.
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism
the destroyer. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later
was called the Christ, intended something quite different. He
must be regarded as a popular leader who took up His position
against Jewry. Galilee was a colony where the Romans had
probably installed Gallic legionaries, and it's certain that Jesus
was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son
of a whore—of a whore and a Roman soldier.
The decisive falsification of Jesus's doctrine was the work of
St. Paul. He gave himself to this work with subtlety and for
purposes of personal exploitation. For the Galilean's object was
to liberate His country from Jewish oppression. He set Himself
against Jewish capitalism, and that's why the Jews liquidated
Him. [Note: the capitalization of the pronouns was provided by
the English translators}.
Paul of Tarsus (his name was Saul, before the road to
Damascus) was one of those who persecuted Jesus most savagely.
When he learnt that Jesus's supporters let their throats be cut
for His ideas, he realised that, by making intelligent use of the
Galilean's teaching, it would be possible to overthrow this
Roman State which the Jews hated. It's in this context that we
must understand the famous "illumination". Think of it, the
Romans were daring to confiscate the most sacred thing the
Jews possessed, the gold piled up in their temples! At that
time, as now, money was their god.
On the road to Damascus, St. Paul discovered that he could
succeed in ruining the Roman State by causing the principle to
triumph of the equality of all men before a single God—and by
putting beyond the reach of the laws his private notions, which
he alleged to be divinely inspired. If, into the bargain, one
succeeded in imposing one man as the representative on earth
of the only God, that man would possess boundless power.
The ancient world had its gods and served them. But the
priests interposed between the gods and men were servants of
the State, for the gods protected the City. In short, they were
the emanation of a power that the people had created. For that
society, the idea of an only god was unthinkable. In this sphere,
the Romans were tolerance itself. The idea of a universal god
could seem to them only a mild form of madness—for, if three
peoples fight one another, each invoking the same god, this
means that, at any rate, two of them are praying in vain.
Nobody was more tolerant than the Romans. Every man could
pray to the god of his choice, and a place was even reserved in
the temples for the unknown god. Moreover, every man prayed
as he chose, and had the right to proclaim his preferences.
St. Paul knew how to exploit this state of affairs in order to
conduct his struggle against the Roman State. Nothing has
changed ; the method has remained sound. Under cover of a
pretended religious instruction, the priests continue to incite the
faithful against the State.
The religious ideas of the Romans are common to all Aryan
peoples. The Jew, on the other hand, worshipped and continues
to worship, then and now, nothing but the golden calf.
The Jewish religion is devoid of all metaphysics and has no
foundation but the most repulsive materialism. That's proved
even in the concrete representation they have of the Beyond-—
which for them is identified with Abraham's bosom.
It's since St. Paul's time that the Jews have manifested
themselves as a religious community, for until then they were
only a racial community. St. Paul was the first man to take
account of the possible advantages of using a religion as a
means of propaganda. If the Jew has succeeded in destroying
the Roman Empire, that's because St. Paul transformed a local
movement of Aryan opposition to Jewry into a supra-temporal
religion, which postulates the equality of all men amongst
themselves, and their obedience to an only god. This is what
caused the death of the Roman Empire.
It's striking to observe that Christian ideas, despite all St.
Paul's efforts, had no success in Athens. The philosophy of the
Greeks was so much superior to this poverty-stricken rubbish
that the Athenians burst out laughing when they listened to the
apostle's teaching. But in Rome St. Paul found the ground prepared
for him. His egalitarian theories had what was needed to
win over a mass composed of innumerable uprooted people.
Nevertheless, the Roman slave was not at all what the
expression encourages us to imagine to-day. In actual fact, the
people concerned were prisoners of war (as we understand the
term nowadays), of whom many had been freed and had the
possibility of becoming citizens—and it was St. Paul who introduced
this degrading overtone into the modern idea of Roman
slaves.
Think of the numerous Germanic people whom Rome welcomed.
Arminius himself, the first architect of our liberty,
wasn't he a Roman knight, and his brother a dignitary of the
State? By reason of these contacts, renewed throughout the
centuries, the population of Rome had ended by acquiring a
great esteem for the Germanic peoples. It's clear that there was
a preference in Rome for fair-haired women, to such a point
that many Roman women dyed their hair. Thus Germanic
blood constantly regenerated Roman society.
The Jew, on the other hand, was despised in Rome.
Whilst Roman society proved hostile to the new doctrine,
Christianity in its pure state stirred the population to revolt.
Rome was Bolshevised, and Bolshevism produced exactly the
same results in Rome as later in Russia.
It was only later, under the influence of the Germanic spirit,
that Christianity gradually lost its openly Bolshevistic character.
It became, to a certain degree, tolerable. To-day, when
Christianity is tottering, the Jew restores to pride of place
Christianity in its Bolshevistic form.
The Jew believed he could renew the experiment. To-day as
once before, the object is to destroy nations by vitiating their
racial integrity. It's not by chance that the Jews, in Russia,
have systematically deported hundreds of thousands of men,
delivering the women, whom the men were compelled to leave
behind, to males imported from other regions. They practised
on a vast scale the mixture of races.
In the old days, as now, destruction of art and civilisation.
The Bolsheviks of their day, what didn't they destroy in Rome,
in Greece and elsewhere? They've behaved in the same way
amongst us and in Russia.
One must compare the art and civilisation of the Romans—
their temples, their houses—with the art and civilisation represented
at the same period by the abject rabble of the catacombs.
In the old days, the destruction of the libraries. Isn't that what
happened in Russia? The result: a frightful levelling-down.
Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages,
the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was
in the name of Christianity. To-day, it's in the name of
Bolshevism.
Yesterday, the instigator was Saul: the instigator to-day,
Mardochai.
Saul has changed into St. Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx.
By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of
which our soldiers can have no idea.
(Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, translated by Norman Cameron and R.H Stephens; Richard Carrier has pointed out severe defects in the English edition. I have checked that this entry is indeed found in Werner Jochmann's German edition, Monologe in Führerhaupquartier 1941-1944, and spot-checked the translation; I can post the German text if anyone is interested).