Our Discovery Institute colleague Richard Weikart’s forthcoming book, Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich, is out on November 21 but it’s already won favorable attention from a seeming unlikely venue.
Writing for The Humanist, Ron Capshaw concludes that Weikart, a historian at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of From Darwin to Hitler and other books, “provides an invaluable and insightful look at the twisted beliefs of a figure many still regard as proof of sin in the world.” Indeed. It’s a nice review, including an interesting citation from Philip K. Dick’s great novel The Man in the High Tower.
I guess delivering Hitler from the charge of atheism must have some appeal to humanists:
Having dispensed with Hitler as Christian or atheist or occultist, Weikart defines him as a pantheist who believed that “God was an impersonal force” who set down immutable “laws of nature” that demanded a race war where only the “fittest” — read Aryans — could survive.
Pantheism certainly explains much, particularly Hitler’s “morality.” For him, moral goodness was anything that advanced Aryans, the superior race. Hence, he could justify sterilizing the handicapped and conquering and murdering Jews and Slavs as carrying out “God’s will.”
But that leaves the thorny matter of Hitler’s religious speeches. It is here that Weikart effectively demonstrates that Hitler was merely acting as a politician in a predominantly religious country by telling audiences what they wanted to hear. This argument is strengthened when one considers that Hitler denounced Christianity only in private.
Mr. Capshaw also chides fellow atheists, “normally rational,” who “when confronted with Hitler, throw up their hands and seek a supernatural explanation for him.” He prefers Dr. Weikart’s analysis.
Hitler’s Religion follows hard on the heels of Weikart’s most recent and likewise important book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life. For excerpts, see here and here. For Michael Flannery’s review, see here.
Professor Weikart was interviewed by PJ Media about Hitler’s Religion. See the video at the top.