...I am sorry to say that the truth is a little bit more complicated. Nazis - even nazi war criminals - were absolutely convinced that their "mission" was absolutely compatible with being a good Christian...
I think I can understand this mindset.
For nearly 100 years proceeding the rise of Nazism, 'Higher Criticism', and Darwinism had taken root in Western Europe. Nietzsche, Haeckel, and others watered this weed - which resulted in a version of 'christianity' that was not rooted in God's Word but was a reflection of the attitude expressed in the Book Judges - when the Hebrews forgot their ancient landmarks, and 'everyone did what was right in their eyes'...
Thus it wasn't hard for the Nazis to convince themselves, and others, that this amalgamated soup of Nordic paganism, and national and racial pride could be grafted onto the pure vine of Christianity. Once you've decided that the Bible isn't the Word of God and that you can cut out the parts you don't like (e.g., we are all sinners in desperate need of a Saviour; and that we are all related, in the not so distant past, through our common ancestor Noah) - one can justify 'anything'. So in this regard I fault less the Nazis who claimed they were 'Christians', than I do their 'fathers' who tore down the old landmarks and foundations when they accepted the world's lie that the Bible was not God's inerrant and infallible Word.
Without these guideposts, man will inevitably succumb to their own vain imaginations as their foolish hearts become darkened in pride.
Yep, you hit the bullseye... Many also forget that der Fuhrer was heavily influenced by Catholicism, as were the Italian Fascists.
The Fascist Party (Partito Fascista Repubblicano) and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) were certainly no different than the Soviet Socialists in blending their occult hierarchy with a mechanism of the Christian churches. The Russian Orthodox church was also an unwitting tool for the Soviets. When some of the clergy outlived their usefulness, they were exterminated by the KGB.
All three were pagan cults and used carefully crafted pagan symbolism (idols) to generate a climate of fear in the unwashed masses.
Without these guideposts, man will inevitably succumb to their own vain imaginations as their foolish hearts become darkened in pride.
Soren Kierkegaard from The Sickness Unto Death:
The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination [phantasien], but the imagination is related in itÂ’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a personÂ’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitizationÂ…Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido (ειδο) signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.
see #245
Amen, El Cid.