Excerpt from:

'Behind the Steel-Wall'

by Arvid Fredborg, 1944 
(a Swedish journalist in Berlin)

Spring 1943

How this happened cannot be explained without emphasizing that before Hitler's assumption of power only a few had any conception of what Nazism really meant. Most people looked upon it as a strong nationalist movement with an intensive social philosophy which would, under the pressure of circumstances, soon turn evolutionist and abandon its revolutionary ideas. Hitler and his men managed in a masterly way to camouflage their real purpose during the long years of advance towards power. Besides, Nazism only assumed its definite character after 1933. It was the mentality of the leaders which decided this character.

Rauschning has rightly predicted that Adolf Hitler and his men will go down in history as the big nihilists. The Nazis tried to change the whole basis of the life of the German nation. The German people were certainly secularized to a large extent before Hitler came to power, and indifference towards religion was rather on the increase than the reverse. Yet the ethical basis of society was undoubtedly Christian, and even the religiously indifferent were largely guided by norms common to Christian civilisation.

Hitler tried to give the German people a new religion. This was never frankly stated, nor did it seem to represent an unbroken line in Nazi ideology. But, looking back on Nazi policy throughout the last ten years, it appears obvious that a large-scale effort was launched to curb the Christianity of the German people as representing their last barricade against National Socialist nihilism.

An attempt was made to keep the youth away from the churches and give them something new to believe in. Hitler has been said to consider himself a Messiah, and worshipping his person in some quarters assumed the form of a real cult. But this was only a superficial phenomenon. What was inoculated into the German youth was rather Nature worship, a gospel of blood, strength and Germanity.

About a year ago a book appeared in Germany which, I think, is one of the most interesting manifestations of this new religion, or rather this attempt to replace Christianity with something else. Its title was Gott und Volk - God and People - and was written by a young anonymous S.S. man.

"The object of our faith," said the author,

is Germany, for whom we cherish not the lukewarm half-hearted love which is being preached in the churches, but a blind, fervent love which does not know of any limits or any reservations. Our path to God does not pass through the Bible and Jerusalem, it passes through Germany.

No reform of the Church avails us. We desire a faith growing out of the depths of the German essence, the German heart. A faith which suits Germans as the Teutoburger Forest, the North Sea, and the silent heath.

The German religion shall be soldierly. The fronts are clear. The one is called Christ, the other is Germany....
The issue to-day is not to weaken Catholicism in order to strengthen Protestantism. The issue is to replace a religion which is alien to our nature, with a faith born in the depths of the German soul.

Christianity is an artificial religion, a cleverly and cold calculated invention by the priests who prey on the stupidity and innocence of man. He who fights for the existence of the German Reich has the duty of rooting out the religious creeds, not faith in God. Our task is to cast out all foreign trash, to put an end to the dream of of the paradise of the angels and to return to earth. Whether we call the Ultimate God, Light, Providence, or Original Power makes no difference. The essential thing is that we do not say Judah, nor Rome, but Germany.

We want no reward in the shape of a life without sorrow after death.

That is liberalistic, Jewish mercenariness. No! Work, fight, and believe in your people! Do not ask for reward, not care about your life. Ask: How can I serve my people? 

German Piety recognizes the divine laws and the laws of Nature as a revelation and lets life and faith be guided by them. We must listen to the language of Nature, to the Genuine and original. We Germans have been called upon by destiny to be the first to break with Christianity. That will be our glory. 

We do not want to indulge in hairsplitting about God. He is, was, and will be eternally. We believe in the God, the origin of all reality, the secrecy of all life who reveals Himself in the eternal generation and extinction in nature. We do not derive our faith from books or empty commands. We create it out of daily life, out of the experience of people and history, out of race and blood, out of the earth of our native place.

The suffering pain-wracked figure of the Crucified must go. Our heroes must carry swords in their hands, not a cross on their backs. We have respect for Christ. But we do not love him, and do not want him as our leader. 

Christianity cannot be a soldiers goal. 'Pagan' is therefore a title of honour. Besides, it is the same to us whether we be called heretics or pagans if only we are good Germans. If we are to have a creed it should be: "I believe in the strong God and in Germany."

Our attitude must be heroic, forthright, and brave. For only the hero vanquishes the world. The humble avoids it. Love, therefore, must not determine our lives. We need stern laws, for life is stern. The soldier does not go to heaven. He is a sinner. But he becomes one with the immortality of his people. He is a man, and it is men we need. The greatest of all evil is cowardice. The Edda songs have taught us that. Live faithfully, fight with contempt of death, die laughing.

The Supreme is, for the peoples and for men, glory. Love shall work as a force of the heart, but not love for our neighbour. We do not love our enemies. We respect them if they deserve it, but we scorn the false, the mean, and the cowardly. He who only loves is cowardly or unrealistic. We shall hate out of a pure heart all our enemies, everything half-hearted and lukewarm, everything cowardly and alien which prays on our souls. We shall hate everything low and evil which daily tempts us to shirk all difficulties for a life of peace and enjoyment.

In the last chapter of his book the author defined the calling of the followers of "the German faith."

We shall keep the religious creed away from the youth and educate our children as if they had never heard of Christianity. We shall take them out into Nature and show them God's miracle. We shall teach them our holy history and awaken in them pride and consciousness of being the sons of great people.

I have quoted this book at some length as it gives an unusually clear idea of what Nazism has set out to achieve with the youth - a new ideology, a martial religion glorifying inflexibility, masculinity.

Its language is uniquely frank. It tells, in words perhaps too clear, the intentions of the Nazi youth leaders. These intentions were otherwise seldom openly pronounced. The Nazis preferred to act. But the worship of sternness and strength pleaded by the author was representative of wide circles of the youth of to-day. That should not be forgotten. 

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We must raise a new man - a new form of life

Excerpt from a speech that Hitler delivered to the youth of the nation in 1934:

From the German youth of the future I expect something different....something new. We must raise a New Man....so that we can give the German people a new ideal....forge a strong bond between the people and the ideal....and shape them into a new form of life. This shall be the greatest achievement of our people in this century. The young German of the future shall be slender and straight....fast as a greyhound, tough as leather and as hard as Krupp steel!

                                                       'Long Live Germany'

                                         An eagle hovers against the light of heaven over Hitler