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Did Hitler wish he was Muslim?
Why Hitler Wished He Was Muslim
‘It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler complained to his pet architect Albert Speer.
“Why did it have to be Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?” Islam was a Männerreligion—a “religion of men”—and hygienic too. The “soldiers of Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise” with “houris” and “wine flowing.”
This, Hitler argued, was much more suited to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle” of Christianity.
‘It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler complained to his pet architect Albert Speer.
“Why did it have to be Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?” Islam was a Männerreligion—a “religion of men”—and hygienic too. The “soldiers of Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise” with “houris” and “wine flowing.”
This, Hitler argued, was much more suited to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle” of Christianity.
11 Answers
No. After all, he was Germany's absolute dictator; if he'd wanted to convert to Islam, who exactly would have been able to stop him?
The thing to remember about Hitler is that while he was certainly a talented politician, he wasn't a great thinker or a philosopher or an intellectual. He left school at the age of 16, failed to get into art college and spent the next few years as a homeless labourer in Vienna before joining the army. His head was stuffed with a vast assortment of trivia he'd picked up over the years, mixed with half-baked conspiracy theories and partially-understood racial dogma, seasoned with a burning hatred of Jews and Communists. He was the sort of person who'd corner you in a bar or at a party and - if you failed to escape - monologue at you for two hours about his pet theories on how the world really worked, that those fancy ivory-tower academics with their university degrees refused to acknowledge. Once he became Führer, he had a captive audience for his rants because nobody would dare to tell him to shut up... but we certainly shouldn't expect his theories to be consistent or coherent, or to make any sort of sense.
He wasn't especially interested in religion. He was raised a Roman Catholic and seems to have never formally broken with the Church. Throughout his life he continued to make vague references to God or 'Providence' guiding his actions; but he also told his colleagues that they shouldn't expect him to come up with answers to theological questions, since he was no expert. Some of the senior Nazis around him had stronger ideas about religion one way or another, and Hitler let them pursue their interests to an extent, but he stayed aloof from them himself.
In private he mocked people like Himmler and Rosenberg who talked about reviving the old pagan, Nordic religion; he thought the idea was ridiculous, but didn't do anything to stop them in public. He also, early in his reign, sponsored an attempt to unite the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany into a single national church; when that experiment failed he soured on the idea and thought it was a mistake to have become involved.
He made several private comments expressing contempt of Christianity as it was practised in the 20th century. However, this is in the context of the Nazi endorsement of 'Positive Christianity' - the idea that Jesus was an Aryan (of Amorite descent) whose original teachings had been closer to Nazi doctrines, but had been corrupted into weak, flabby pacifism under the malign influence of the Jew Saul of Tarsus. He was hostile to the Church hierarchies as a potential source of opposition to his rule, and he thought they'd "got it wrong" about what Jesus had really wanted.
His comments about Islam should be read in this light. He wasn't making a serious proposal. He'd heard the exotic Western stereotype of Islam, with the promise of virgins in paradise for people who die fighting for the faith, and thought it sounded a good idea - more interesting than the Christian idea of heaven. So we can picture him sitting back in his chair, replete after an excellent meal in the Wolf's Lair, and fixing his long-suffering dinner guests with a stare as he tells them, "You know what would make Germany a stronger country? Islam, that's what. If we were all Muslims we'd fight a lot harder in battle, because - I swear this is true, I read it in a book - they believe... (etc etc for the next hour)".
As a final point; Nazi racial theory is sometimes over-simplified down to the idea that they "hated all the other races" and wanted them exterminated. It wasn't like that. Rather, they believed that all the races of the world were in conflict, fighting for supremacy, and through the process of survival of the fittest, some races would be able to dominate and rule over the others. Anything that weakened the race - such as miscegenation with 'lesser' races, or the adoption of a cowardly and pacifistic doctrine such as Pauline Christianity or Communism - was a mistake since it would lead to them being superseded by a stronger, more vigorous race. However, Hitler was quite capable of expressing admiration for other races who, in his eyes, were 'worthy opponents' of his own Nordic/Aryan race. After all, if the strength of a race is honed by war, you will always need people to fight against...
The thing to remember about Hitler is that while he was certainly a talented politician, he wasn't a great thinker or a philosopher or an intellectual. He left school at the age of 16, failed to get into art college and spent the next few years as a homeless labourer in Vienna before joining the army. His head was stuffed with a vast assortment of trivia he'd picked up over the years, mixed with half-baked conspiracy theories and partially-understood racial dogma, seasoned with a burning hatred of Jews and Communists. He was the sort of person who'd corner you in a bar or at a party and - if you failed to escape - monologue at you for two hours about his pet theories on how the world really worked, that those fancy ivory-tower academics with their university degrees refused to acknowledge. Once he became Führer, he had a captive audience for his rants because nobody would dare to tell him to shut up... but we certainly shouldn't expect his theories to be consistent or coherent, or to make any sort of sense.
He wasn't especially interested in religion. He was raised a Roman Catholic and seems to have never formally broken with the Church. Throughout his life he continued to make vague references to God or 'Providence' guiding his actions; but he also told his colleagues that they shouldn't expect him to come up with answers to theological questions, since he was no expert. Some of the senior Nazis around him had stronger ideas about religion one way or another, and Hitler let them pursue their interests to an extent, but he stayed aloof from them himself.
In private he mocked people like Himmler and Rosenberg who talked about reviving the old pagan, Nordic religion; he thought the idea was ridiculous, but didn't do anything to stop them in public. He also, early in his reign, sponsored an attempt to unite the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany into a single national church; when that experiment failed he soured on the idea and thought it was a mistake to have become involved.
He made several private comments expressing contempt of Christianity as it was practised in the 20th century. However, this is in the context of the Nazi endorsement of 'Positive Christianity' - the idea that Jesus was an Aryan (of Amorite descent) whose original teachings had been closer to Nazi doctrines, but had been corrupted into weak, flabby pacifism under the malign influence of the Jew Saul of Tarsus. He was hostile to the Church hierarchies as a potential source of opposition to his rule, and he thought they'd "got it wrong" about what Jesus had really wanted.
His comments about Islam should be read in this light. He wasn't making a serious proposal. He'd heard the exotic Western stereotype of Islam, with the promise of virgins in paradise for people who die fighting for the faith, and thought it sounded a good idea - more interesting than the Christian idea of heaven. So we can picture him sitting back in his chair, replete after an excellent meal in the Wolf's Lair, and fixing his long-suffering dinner guests with a stare as he tells them, "You know what would make Germany a stronger country? Islam, that's what. If we were all Muslims we'd fight a lot harder in battle, because - I swear this is true, I read it in a book - they believe... (etc etc for the next hour)".
As a final point; Nazi racial theory is sometimes over-simplified down to the idea that they "hated all the other races" and wanted them exterminated. It wasn't like that. Rather, they believed that all the races of the world were in conflict, fighting for supremacy, and through the process of survival of the fittest, some races would be able to dominate and rule over the others. Anything that weakened the race - such as miscegenation with 'lesser' races, or the adoption of a cowardly and pacifistic doctrine such as Pauline Christianity or Communism - was a mistake since it would lead to them being superseded by a stronger, more vigorous race. However, Hitler was quite capable of expressing admiration for other races who, in his eyes, were 'worthy opponents' of his own Nordic/Aryan race. After all, if the strength of a race is honed by war, you will always need people to fight against...
Per Speer he had expressed admiration for it, apparently. As noted in your notes on the question, above. He also seemed to have gotten on well with the Grand Mufti, or well enough, when they met, and the SS eventually fielded a couple of specifically Muslim European divisions (for Balkan Slavic Muslim Nazis or collaborators). Thus the Nazis clearly were not rabidly anti-Islam like they were anti-Jewish, not by a long shot.
My personal feeling on Hitler's religiosity, or lack thereof, is that he was what I would term a pragmatic agnostic. By the later period of his life leaning more so towards atheism, misanthropy, and a harsh social Darwinist type of outlook. At least privately. Formally, I believe he never became officially disconnected, so to speak, at any time from his Catholic roots. But, at the same time, would not be exactly accurate to call him a devout or practicing Catholic all his life either. Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Some of the Nazi upper echelon, including him as well, disliked or resented Christianity in general -- to varying extents -- due to its deeply ancestral roots in Judaism. Still though, attempting to break entirely with Christian tradition was not something that the leadership appeared to have been prepared to do during the pre-war and war period.
Himmler and some of his close associates in the SS were distinctly more pagan-inclined, I would say, more so than Hitler. Himmler envisioned a time where a reconstructed version of ancient Germanic or Nordic paganism, now Nazi-themed, would rival or supplant Christianity amongst future German settler-colonist-farmers called Wehrbauer . Who were supposed to have been moved into the 'living space' to the east after many of the Slavs were either pushed out, killed, or entirely subjugated to their new overlords.
Mufti inspecting Slavic Muslim SS:
Bosnian Waffen SS:
Mein Kampf, Arabic edition:
My personal feeling on Hitler's religiosity, or lack thereof, is that he was what I would term a pragmatic agnostic. By the later period of his life leaning more so towards atheism, misanthropy, and a harsh social Darwinist type of outlook. At least privately. Formally, I believe he never became officially disconnected, so to speak, at any time from his Catholic roots. But, at the same time, would not be exactly accurate to call him a devout or practicing Catholic all his life either. Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Some of the Nazi upper echelon, including him as well, disliked or resented Christianity in general -- to varying extents -- due to its deeply ancestral roots in Judaism. Still though, attempting to break entirely with Christian tradition was not something that the leadership appeared to have been prepared to do during the pre-war and war period.
Himmler and some of his close associates in the SS were distinctly more pagan-inclined, I would say, more so than Hitler. Himmler envisioned a time where a reconstructed version of ancient Germanic or Nordic paganism, now Nazi-themed, would rival or supplant Christianity amongst future German settler-colonist-farmers called Wehrbauer . Who were supposed to have been moved into the 'living space' to the east after many of the Slavs were either pushed out, killed, or entirely subjugated to their new overlords.
Mufti inspecting Slavic Muslim SS:
Bosnian Waffen SS:
Mein Kampf, Arabic edition:
Hitler admired both Islam and Shinto for their war theology, over the pacifism which is part of the Christian message. There is no evidence, however, that he wanted be a Muslim. Although Islam idealizes war, there is also verses with promote peace and tolerance. This just wouldn't do. He did plan to create a new Germanic religion based on NAZI ideology after the War. It would have been too disruptive during the War. He had begun to attack the Church, especially the Catholic Church. Many priests were arrested and died in concentration camps before the War, The Protestant Church proved more amenable to the NAZI message. One of the high priorities was to get the church out of Germany schools.
t is no accident many involved in the bomb plot weee Catholics.
NAZI assault on religion
t is no accident many involved in the bomb plot weee Catholics.
NAZI assault on religion
I am actually more curious to know who might be interested in knowing whether Hitler wished to be a Muslim than in addressing the question itself. This is not the sort of question that one can attempt to answer without incurring the potential wrath of the nabobs who pull the strings at Quora, so I'll be civil and suggest that the OP might want to take this opportunity to provide more supporting detail. Then we'll talk.
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