By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
World War II films commonly feature the massive crowds cheering for their Führer, Adolph Hitler. Ironically, the central plank in Hitler’s government was not to bring prosperity to Germany, but rather to annihilate the Jews.
In fact, according to the authoritative organization, Jewish History.org, “Almost his (Hitler’s) entire war strategy was based upon the Jews.
Even as the end of Nazi Germany became obvious, Hitler and other Nazis felt they had accomplished some measure of victory because they had destroyed European Jewry.
Eichmann said that he would go to his grave happy in the knowledge that he helped destroy millions of Jews.”
The central support for this view was the widely accepted Darwinian belief that some races are superior to others. The Aryan race was considered the superior race, a view supported by the leading eugenic German scientists.
The Slavs, Negroes, Jews, and all other non-Aryan races were inferior. Furthermore, intermarriage with inferior races was thought to bring down the superior race, causing race degeneration.
The only way to permanently reduce this degeneration of the superior race is to destroy the inferior races, a view widely accepted by eugenists both in Europe and the Western world.
This was a problem in Germany because 97 percent of Germans were supportive members of Catholic or Lutheran churches, churches based on the teachings of Jesus. Furthermore, no self-respecting Nazi could worship a Jewish God.
For this reason, the Nazi leaders endeavored to prove that Jesus was not a Jew but rather was an Aryan. This was accomplished by the leading theologians in Nazi Germany, who were able to make a case that Jesus was not a Jew, but rather a member of the superior Aryan race.
The Nazi answer was not to reject Christianity, but rather to argue that Jesus was not only not a Jew but was an anti-Jewish Aryan whose true identity had been concealed by Jews who became part of the early Christian Church.
The historical evidence shows that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime explicitly used a distorted, “Aryan” image of Jesus Christ to support and justify their anti-Semitism.
Towards this end, many German theologians, as well as the Nazi party and Hitler himself, documented the claim that Jesus was an anti-Semite.
University of California professor John Connelly, in an article in the Commonweal Magazine titled “Hitler’s Gospel,” correctly concluded that “The greatest obstacle for Christian anti-Semites has always been Christ’s Jewishness.”
As Susannah Heschel shows, “Protestant theologians in Nazi Germany worked hard in a well-organized effort to not only deny that Christ was Jewish, but that He was anti-Semitic.”
As a result, German Protestantism generally accepted the belief about the evils of Jewishness taught by Jesus that justified their elimination. Such assumptions made the Holocaust possible.
The belief widespread among Christians in deicide: the notion that Jews lived under a historic “curse” for killing Christ, also supported Nazi anti-Semitism.
Actually, the heretical sect called the Sadducees, especially the High Priest and Sanhedrin members, were key leaders in the plot to crucify Jesus.
They feared Jesus’ popularity threatened their power and relationship with Rome, leading them to push for his execution through Roman authority.
The wealthy elite, dominated by Sadducees, controlled the Sanhedrin and instigated the process that resulted in His crucifixion. Note below where the Christ strongly condemned this anti-Jewish sect is documented.
When the “German Christians” got to work de-Judaizing Christianity, they found Scripture so full of positive references to Judaism that they had to produce their own German Bible translation.
The Nazis relied on the Greek scriptures to wrongly conclude that Jesus was anti-Semitic. The main problem with Nazi claims is that Judaism cannot be judged by the Sadducees, who reject the core teachings of the Jewish faith.
Jesus’ criticisms of the Sadducees included that they rejected the core of Judaism, including the resurrection, the existence of angels, and even the afterlife (Matthew 22:23-33). Jesus bluntly told them that they were scripturally ignorant: “You do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29).
They were the temple elites who prioritized stability with Rome, making them resistant to Jesus’s message of God’s kingdom. Matthew 22:23-33 references Jesus’s debate with the Sadducees about the resurrection.
Jesus also sharply criticized the Pharisees, telling them that they appeared righteous on the outside but were full of wickedness on the inside (Matthew 23:27-28). They “shut the kingdom of heaven” from people and made converts twice as bad as themselves (Matthew 23:13-15).
They focused on trivialities: They paid their tithe religiously down to the value of tiny herbs (like mint and dill) but neglected “the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23).
They loved status not humility as Jesus commanded and “sought prominent seats at the feasts, and greetings in the market” (Matthew 23:6-7). Most importantly, they honored God with their lips but not their hearts, and put traditions like Corban (setting aside money for the Temple) above family duty (Mark 7:6-13). Matthew 23 includes Jesus’ lengthy denunciation of the Pharisees, detailing their hypocrisy and blindness. Mark 7 condemns their many traditions that nullify God’s command to love their neighbor.
Conclusion
These same criticisms apply to some Christian leaders today, but that fact does not justify the conclusion that all Christians were, or are, corrupt. Because Jesus condemned several Jewish sects does not justify the conclusion that all Jews were corrupt, a conclusion which the Nazis successfully sold to the German population. In the end, anti-Semitism cost the lives of 80 million souls and directly adversely impacted the lives of much of the then-world’s population.
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Dr. Bergman is a multi-award-winning professor and author. Has 9 degrees and has taught at both the graduate and undergraduate level for over 40 years. His over 2,100 publications are in both scholarly and popular journals. Dr. Bergman’s work has been translated into 15 languages. He has spoken over 2,000 times to college, university and church groups in America, Canada, Europe, the South Sea Islands, and Africa. He lives in Montpelier and is available to present in churches and schools. Jerry can be reached at JerryBergman30@yahoo.com