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Rethinking Nazism and Religion: How Anti-Christian were the “Pagans”?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
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In June 1937, a thirteen-year-old boy by the name of Fritz Brüggemann wrote Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS and head of the German police, asking for some theological advice. Himmler, a leading “neopagan” in the Nazi movement, had formally left the Catholic Church in 1936, but had been lost to Christianity years before. Fritz Brüggemann had also left his church, which meant that he, like Himmler, formally went by the designation gottgläubig (literally “believing in God”). Those designated as “believing in God” did not just avoid church taxes; they were also making a statement about their rejection of Germany's two confessions and their interest in a new völkisch alternative. Still, for this young Hitler Youth squad leader from Schönebeck, a speech on religion delivered to his troop was causing him concern. He was not sure if he had heard correctly, but he thought he understood the speaker to say that Jesus had been a Jew. He wrote to see if the Reichsführer-SS could perhaps enlighten him on this question. He received a reply from Rudolf Brandt, Himmler's personal assistant and a leading figure in his entourage. “The Reichsführer is of the opinion,” wrote Brandt, “that Christ was not a Jew. You must certainly have misunderstood the speaker.”
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References
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