Was Hitler a Christian?

However, a question as provocative as this actually needs some unpacking, and it really opens a theological can of worms. After all, what does it mean to be a Christian? Does denominational affiliation make you a Christian?

Is it belief in Jesus that constitutes your Christianity? Does one need to be “saved” in order to qualify as a Christian? Does the practice of Christ’s central teachings matter in being Christian?

What about one’s religion of birth; does that play a role—particularly for traditions which practice infant baptism? In the case of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), all of these questions are germane in answering the question, “Was Hitler a Christian?”

Ironically, rather than asking if he was a Christian, the more common question (for nearly 100 years) has been, “Was Hitler a Jew?”

As recently as May of 2020, Sergey Lavrov (Russia’s Foreign Minister) claimed publicly that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish Blood.” Could it be? And does that have bearing on whether he was a Christian?

Well, here’s what we know.

Hitler’s Early Religious Background

Both of Hitler’s parents were connected to the Roman Catholic Church. His mother, Klara, was quite devout, though his father, Alois, was less practicing. (Alois has been

considered by some “culturally” Catholic, and not nearly as involved in the Church as his Mass-attending wife.).

Adolf was baptized into Catholicism at St. Michael’s Catholic Church (in Leonding, Austria) on April 22, 1889—one day after his birth. As a child, he attended a Benedictine-run Catholic school in Lambach, Austria (at least until he was nine years old). There, he was part of the choir and was engaged in daily Mass. He received the sacrament of confirmation in 1904, at around 15 years of age.

However, when his mother died (three years later), Adolf became disillusioned with his Christian faith and began to pull away from it. Since the time of his mother’s passing (in 1907) until 1913, Adolf lived in Vienna and was likely impacted by popular ideas in the region, which were outwardly nationalistic and anti-clerical.

Regardless, as an adult, Hitler distanced himself from Christianity specifically and organized religion generally, and he began embracing and then even promoting what might be called a version of neo- paganismcombined with a form of Germanic mysticism.

These found their way into his Nazi ideology. (For example, the swastika was used by many pagan Dharmic religions. Hitler believed it had supernatural powers and embraced it, not for its religious connotations, but as a sort of “good luck charm,” ultimately corrupting a religious symbol which had carried positive connotations for more than 2,500 years.)

As an adult, Hitler appears to have been more superstitious than religious, though he did see the value in using religion as a means of manipulating people whom he perceived as gullible.

Hitler’s Alleged Jewish Ancestry

After his rise to power, and in the midst of his efforts to exterminate the Jewish race, Hitler supposedly received a letter from a nephew of his (William Stuart-Houston), claiming that they had Jewish ancestry. According to the story, the nephew threatened to expose Hitler, revealing to the world his Jewish ancestry.

Adolf was sufficiently convinced that this might be the case that he assigned his lawyer (Hans Frank) to investigate the claims. Frank unearthed what he considered to be “potential evidence” that Hitler’s maternal grandfather was a Jew and that Adolf’s paternal grandmother got pregnant by a Jewish man in whose home she worked.

In addition, in 2010, Britain’s The Daily Telegraph claimed that there was DNA evidence that Adolf Hitler had the Haplogroup E1b1b1 chromosome, common among Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews. In the end, none of this was provable, and it all goes back to the ultimate question we began with: “Was Hitler a Christian?” In other words, we know he never embraced or practiced Judaism, regardless of the questionable claims about his ancestry.

While he had been told he might have Jewish heritage, he wholesale rejected any connection to the people or their religion, and he loathed the possibility of such a lineage. We know his parents were Catholics, and we know that the various sacraments Adolf received were all Catholic.

Thus, if he did have any Jewish ancestry, and we stress IF, he certainly didn’t practice Judaism and wasn’t convinced of his nephew’s claims about their supposed ancestry.

Defining Christianity

So, what makes someone a Christian?

As we pointed out above, there are a variety of factors, and not all Christians will agree as to which matter. At least as early as Martin Luther (1483-1546), some began questioning the Christianity of Roman Catholics (the Church in which Adolf was a baptized member).

The primary concerns of certain Protestants were what they perceived as a “works-based” form of salvation (in Catholicism), and because of a measure of corruption in the clergy of the day. Today, some Low-Church Protestants call into question the Christianity of groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, claiming that their rejection of the Trinity and their perception of Jesus as an “archangel” disqualifies them.

Thus, there is no cut-and-dried definition of what constitutes a Christian; at least not one that all Christians would embrace.

Evaluating Hitler’s Christianity

However, in the case of Adolf Hiter, we should ask the questions posed above as a sort of litmus test of his Christianity. If denominational affiliation makes one a Christian, Hitler doesn’t qualify since, by his early twenties, he had completely rejected Christianity and become, by all accounts, pagan if not agnostic.

If belief in Jesus is required to be a Christian, Hitler certainly was not. He didn’t deny the historicity of Jesus’ existence, but any mention he made of Jesus was always for the purpose of propaganda, and any talk of Christ in private was consistently antagonistic.  If one needs to be “saved” in order to qualify as a Christian, Hitler fails on this front as well.

Not only did he never profess (publicly or privately) to have been “saved” or to have “accepted” Jesus as his Savior, in Hitler’s private remarks (as recorded in sources like Hitler’s Table Talk) the Führer showed that he was deeply skeptical of Christianity and saw it as “weak” and “incompatible” with his ideology.

If the practice of Christ’s central teachings matter in being a Christian, Adolf Hitler was an epic failure. He ordered the torture and execution of millions of human beings:

Conclusion and Answer

While most know of the Holocaust against Jewish people, many are unaware of the many other groups which Hitler targeted, tortured, and killed. Indeed, one source claims that Hitler was guilty of each of the “Seven Deadly Sins”—pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Whether that is true or not, if following the teachings of Jesus is requisite to being a Christian, the German dictator was certainly not a Christian.

Whether you see Hitler through his supposed Jewish genetics (which is highly suspect), his Christian birth and upbringing, or his few uses of the name of Jesus as a “leader” in Germany, the history is clear.

In his adulthood, Adolf Hitler rejected the divinity of Jesus, the Christian faith, the lifestyle and teachings of Jesus, and anything you might consider good, holy, or righteous.

He was not a Christian.

He didn’t qualify as a Christian (in belief, affiliation, or practice). And he did not respect Christianity or its founder. Perhaps his only enduring connection to Christianity would be that some in that tradition see him as a sort of anti-Christ who did nothing less than the bidding of the devil. While that may be pure hyperbole, Adolf certainly didn’t do the bidding of Jesus or His Church, and he found such things “pathetic” and “weak.” Ironically, the name “Adolf” is German for “majestic wolf.” Wisely, Jesus warned people about “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15), and Hitler turned out to be exactly that.