Hitler the Christmas Weirdo

Have a very merry powerful struggle between power and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak

In keeping with the spirit of the season, I would submit to you several portions of Richard Weikart’s work pertaining to Hitler and his ideological position relating to Christmas.

While carrying on this wrestling match with the churches in the 1930s, the Nazi regime also tried to co-opt Christian festivals by emptying them of their Christian content and imbuing them with Nazi ideology. One of the best examples of this was Christmas. As previously mentioned, Hitler invoked Jesus in some of his Christmas speeches in the 1920s always as a great anti-Semitic Aryan fighter, never as the one who came to bring "peace on earth, goodwill toward men.”

According to historians Joe Perry and Corey Ross, the Nazi regime tried to de-Christianize the Christmas festivities by emphasizing the pagan Germanic roots of many Christmas traditions. Nazi Christmas celebrations focused on building German unity, not on the birth of Jesus. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Deutsche Kriegsweihnacht (German War Christmas) books issued during the war by the Nazi regime, which celebrated Christmas with poems, stories, and songs devoid of religious content. One edition prominently displayed this quotation from Hitler, which set the tone: "All of nature is a powerful struggle between power and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak." For Germans accustomed to singing “Silent Night” during the holiday season, Hitler’s statement would not have seemed like a traditional Christmas message.

Joe Perry, Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 191–99, 224, 238; Joe Perry, "Nazifying Christmas: Political Culture and Popular Celebration in the Third Reich," Central European History 38 (2005): 572-605; and Corey Ross, "Celebrating Christmas in the Third Reich and the GDR: Political Instrumentalization and Cultural Continuity under the German Dictatorships," in Karin Friedrich, ed., Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 323-42. Deutsche Kriegsweihnacht, 3rd ed. (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Verlag, 1943), 150.

Richard Weikart, Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich

Wagener also recalled Hitler discussing the celebration of Christmas. After noting that Christmas had originated as a pagan ceremony at the time of the winter solstice, Hitler indicated his approval for celebrating Christmas, but not in honor of Jesus’s birth. He asked, “Now, why shouldn’t our young people be led back to nature?” He hoped that Christmas festivities could lead children away from the church and “into the great outdoors, to show them the powerful workings of divine creation and make vivid to them the eternal rotation of the earth and the world and life.” He desired the Hitler Youth to introduce Christmas traditions in which “the young people should be led back to nature, they should recognize nature as the giver of life and energy. . . . [I]t is only in the freedom of nature that a human being can also open himself to a higher morality and a higher ethic.”

Otto Wagener, Hitler—Memoirs of a Confidant, ed. Henry Ashby Turner, trans. Ruth Hein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 224-225.

Richard Weikart, Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich

Did the war years, perhaps, bring about a renewed appreciation for religion, as it did for some German troops? In a recent book on Hitler’s life as a soldier in World War I, Thomas Weber answers no. According to Weber, even though many frontline soldiers turned to religion in the heat of battle, Hitler, as a messenger, was surrounded by officers who were, for the most part, antireligious and even atheist. Weber states, “There was little chance that he would turn towards religion as a strategy for dealing with the war, when many of the officers of his regiment were full of disdain for religion.” Weber also did not discover any evidence or testimony suggesting that Hitler was religiously inclined. On the contrary, Weber writes, “By all accounts, Adolf Hitler was highly critical of religion.” Though the evidence is scarce, almost all of it points to Hitler being more antireligious than religious. In his book on the Christmas truce of 1914, Stanley Weintraub concurs, claiming that Hitler had shed “every vestige of religious observance” and refused to attend the 1914 Christmas service that most of his unit attended.

Thomas Weber, Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 52, 135–36. 63.

Stanley Weintraub, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 71.

Richard Weikart, Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich

There is also no evidence he ever went to Confession in his adult life, so he was not exactly a member in good standing. In fact, according to Catholic theology, he was committing mortal sin by avoiding the sacraments. The few times that Hitler did attend church services were for special occasions, such as weddings, funerals for state officials (both Protestant and Catholic), or the Protestant baptism of Goering’s child. For example, Hitler attended the requiem Mass in Berlin for the Polish dictator Joseph Pilsudski in May 1935. However, right after the Pilsudski Mass, Goebbels noted in his diary that Hitler was “horrified by the ceremonial nonsense” of the Mass he had just attended. Clearly, Hitler’s heart was not really in it (and we do not know if Hitler actually took Holy Communion while he was there). In February 1942, Hitler remarked that he did not want any priests within ten kilometers of his funeral. He also had little appetite for Christian festivals, such as Christmas. His press chief claimed Hitler’s distaste for the Christmas celebrations prompted him to try to escape it by going out driving.

Goebbels, diary entry for May 19, 1935, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, part I: Aufzeichnungen 1923– 1941, vol. 3/I: April 1934–Februar 1936 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2005), 234. 66.

Hitler, monologue on February 27, 1942, in Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed.

Werner Jochmann (Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus, 1980), 303. 67. Dietrich, The Hitler I Knew, 181–82.

Richard Weikart, Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich

Have a very merry Christmas, remember the reason for the season, and don’t be a weirdo.