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Hitler and the Nazi party promoted Positive Christianity, [38] which rejected most traditional Christian doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus, as well as Jewish elements such as the Old Testament. [ 39 ] [ 40 ] In one widely quoted remark, he described Jesus as an "Aryan fighter" who struggled against "the power and pretensions of the ...
In the 1920 programme of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), Adolf Hitler first mentioned the phrase "Positive Christianity".The Nazi Party did not wish to tie itself to a particular Christian denomination but with Christianity in general, [6] [7] and sought freedom of religion for all denominations "so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race."
In this sense, the word Nazi was a hypocorism of the German male name Igna(t)z (itself a variation of the name Ignatius)—Igna(t)z being a common name at the time in Bavaria, the area from which the NSDAP emerged. [17] [18] In the 1920s, political opponents of the NSDAP in the German labour movement seized on this.
Use of the term "positive Christianity" in the Nazi Party Program of the 1920s is generally regarded as a tactical measure, rooted in politics rather than religious conviction. Author Steigmann-Gall has put forward a minority interpretation, that positive Christianity had an "inner logic" and been "more than a political ploy". [18]
Once in power, Hitler and most Nazi leaders sought to unify the Christian denominations in favor of "positive Christianity". Hitler privately condemned mystical and pseudoreligious interests as "nonsense", [ 87 ] and maintained that National Socialism was based on science and should avoid mystic and cultic practices. [ 88 ]
From the mid-1930s anti-Christian elements within the Nazi Party became more prominent; however, they were restrained by Hitler because of the negative press their actions were receiving, and by 1934 the Nazi Party pretended a neutral position in regard to the Protestant Churches. [76] Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi philosopher.
The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit root swasti, which is composed of su 'good, well' and asti 'is; it is; there is'. [31] The word swasti occurs frequently in the Vedas as well as in classical literature, meaning 'health, luck, success, prosperity', and it was commonly used as a greeting.
Positive Christianity was, by design, entirely reliant on the leadership and ideology of the Nazi movement; Nazi journals such as Der Stürmer and Völkischer Beobachter were major sources of the dissemination and promotion of positive Christian ideals, stressing the "Nordic" character of Jesus. Despite these radical divergences from ...