Agreed

What the Nazi platform stated and what Nazi philosophers believed were diammetrically opposed. Most of the luminaries within Naziism were occultists and/or neo-pagans. In the traditional society of the Germany of the Weimar Republic, it would have been impossible for the Nazi Party to gain a foothold if it had honestly shown its pagan/occult face.

Totalitarianism has to destroy Christianity because it requires total subservience to the state. It cannot succeed otherwise.

Secular Jews tend toward utopian grand schemes much like secular Christians which we saw in the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution. Marxism is properly understood as a Christian heresy and therefore extremely attractive to the secularized mind whether Christian or Jew. Solzhenitsyn discussed these questions in his book “Two Hundred Years Together” which refutes the easy but historically inaccurate conclusion you draw above.

Two Hundred Years Together

Michael states: “I have never understood the mindset that sees any correlation between Nazi Fascist totalitarianism and any form of Christianity”

I don’t either. I don’t see any sort of mandate in Scripture to restrict the rights of nonbelievers or heretics or to otherwise harm them or destroy their property (not that I’d heed them if there were). Somehow, though, what seems obvious to us now apparently escaped the attention of our Christian ancestors for centuries. Really, one just needs to pick up a history book.

Although the persecution of Jews was perhaps at its worst under the Nazi regime (and its most violent), Jews have historically been targeted for harsh and unjust treatment by men still revered today as leaders of the Christian faith. Bishop Ambrose of Mediolanum opposed any efforts in acknowledging the civil rights of Jews as being equal to Christians. Chrysostom had a whole series of sermons that denigrated the Jews in the strongest language of the day.

Martin Luther was perhaps the most notorious anti-Semite. He insisted that rabbis should not be permitted to teach or travel and had sought the forced expulsion of Jews from German lands (as they had been in France and Spain). There are references to Luther having their synagogues and homes burned to the ground. In Spain, Jews were forced into Catholic baptisms during the early 15th century. There are numerous other examples, but I think you get the point.

Were they influenced by some secular spirit of their age? I don’t have an answer for that. However, I don’t think anyone can pretend that having a society dominated by Christian belief and thought will somehow guarantee against totalitarianism or fascism, given the evidence.

The fascist ethos is an attempt to embrace the will to power promulgated by Nietzche who was adamantly opposed to Christianity while quite willing to use, as Hitler, degenarate forms of it for his own purpose. The mere fact that there were some people who called themselves Christians and supported Hitler proves only that people are quite able to turn aside from Christ to serve other gods.

Mr. Bradshaw, notice how the 1920 statement coopts Christian identity in favor of its anti-Jewish and statist views. As for Nazi praxis, there is no possible connection between it and the Gospel.

The Catholic Church isn’t “roiled” by the Pope’s resignation, unless you count the predictable cries from the left for a new Pope who would accomodate to leftist views. But these cries emerge from un-Catholic — and often un-Christian — voices.

While it might be fair to suggest that the Nazi regime utilized a perverse and twisted form of “true” Christianity as the basis for its ideology, I don’t think it can fairly be said that it was primarily one that was atheistic and hostile towards Christian expression (unlike the regimes such as the ones found in China).

Article 20 of the 1920 Nazi Platform read:
“We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not jeopardize the state’s existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good.”

One can do a simple search to find now infamous photos of Catholic clergy alongside Goebbels and Wilhelm Frick. Even if the men had no real allegiance to the Reich, it seems that the regime itself had an interest in using Christian symbolism and authority to justify its actions.