Q&A: Did Hitler study and act in the name of God?
Did Hitler study and act in the name of God?
Question
With God’s help.
Hello.
A. Hitler was schizophrenic and acted in the name of that all-powerful God. “I am carrying out the orders that Divine Providence has laid upon me,” Hitler told the journalist Karl von Wiegand. “There is now no power in the world that can shake the German Reich,” Hitler said in an interview with the American journalist Pierre Huss, later published in his book The Foe We Face. “It is the will of Divine Providence that I carry out Germany’s mission,” he told him. The American psychoanalyst Walter Langer submitted a report to the OSS in 1943 that remained classified for a long time and was cleared for publication in 1968. “Hitler believes almost with certainty that he was sent by Divine Providence and that he has a specific mission to carry out,” Langer wrote. “Exactly how his mission will be carried out is not clear to him, but that does not trouble him because there is an ‘inner voice’ guiding him in the steps he must take.” “But if the voice speaks to me, I know that the time has come to act,” Hitler told Hermann Rauschning.
1. Where was God in Hitler’s schizophrenia, which led to the slaughter—carried out with indescribable cruelty—of tens of millions?
2. Perhaps he went in God’s name like all the prophets?
B. Granot: If one examines Hitler’s behavior carefully, as well as Stalin’s, one easily sees that they completely imitated religion: they crowned themselves as gods whose every commandment was sacred and beyond challenge; they created a cult of personality—just like the worship of God; they established doctrines that could not be changed, only interpreted—just like the doctrines of religions; and they demanded blind obedience to their most horrifying orders—just as religion demands obedience: “We will do and we will hear.”
Hitler was an anti-humanist, an extreme and uncompromising hater of morality, and these warped tendencies have their source in religion, which seeks a supreme value beyond the human sphere. What differed between Hitler and religion is only that he founded a new religion, at whose center he placed himself as a kind of god. In the eyes of the German people, Hitler had the aura of a god. Hitler in effect founded a state with religious characteristics, in which the supreme value was revealed in himself. The religious command recognizes the existence of peoples destined מראש for destruction (Genesis 15; Deuteronomy 20); it recognizes sorting and selection among human beings before killing them (Numbers 31; II Samuel 8); the religious command requires the slaughter of human beings as a solution to heresy and idolatry. So did Moses (Exodus 32), so did Elijah (I Kings 18), so did Jehu (II Kings 10—even though Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, still in the matter of murdering masses of heretics he merited praise); and so did the righteous King Josiah (II Kings 23). The religious command requires separation from other peoples to the point of expelling women and children (Ezra 9–10). Etc.
1. What difference is there between religion, which claims to quote God and in His name commit all these horrors, and Hitler and Stalin, who acted from semi-religious motives?
Answer
This is not the place for declarations, but for questions. If you have a question, ask it. If not, please choose a more suitable site on which to post your musings.
Discussion on Answer
As you can see, the points are reasoned and the questions are in place, with question marks at the end. You have nothing to answer because the questions are too difficult.
For the public good, you should emphasize that the questions are not only difficult but also original and new
I phrased the questions from my own thoughts, and they stand where they should.
The question is wrong. Hitler brought the madness on himself. Hitler was a compulsive drug addict and lived day and night on hard drugs. Didn’t you read the new investigation? See the Haaretz article on the book that blows your mind. Nazi Germany was an assembly line for hallucinogens and stimulants on a crazy scale. What does that have to do with a prophet who hears the word of God without stimulants and without wine, and sits down to write noble poetry like the prophet Isaiah, Amos, or Hosea? What’s the connection?! Read Heschel on the gap between the prophet and the mystic, and your questions will curl back into your dogmatic shell.
I read it, I read it. The drugs were in between and afterward. His schizophrenia was before, with drugs and without drugs. If you read the texts carefully, you’ll see that prophecy is closely tied to madness. In their time they didn’t know how to give a defined diagnosis of schizophrenia, but the symptoms are similar. I didn’t come to detract from mystical experiences, but every coin has two sides. You’re welcome to curl back in yourself.
With God’s help, 11 Elul 5780
It may be that Hitler personally had some mental illness or another, but he acted out of an ideology with deep roots, which saw Jewish morality as the factor that castrates the “blond beast” and prevents it from acting according to its animal instincts. The destruction of the Jews was an ideological necessity in order to eliminate also “Jewish morality” and the pangs of conscience it arouses in human savages.
Regards, S.Tz.
There is no peace for the wicked. Therefore, no hello to you, A’. It was quiet from you for a week and a half. And now you’ve come back to bother us with your klutz kashyas. As you wrote in a comment on one of Rabbi David M. D.’s articles (I don’t have the energy to look for it now), that you’ll be with us until…
Even though I told you to go study. You claimed you’re already learned enough, and time after time you reveal your ignorance and shallowness.
Your questions aren’t difficult. And also, you owe me an answer from your previous question about something related to inconsistency, from which it developed into sacrificial worship. Look there in the thread and don’t dodge it!!!
Anyway, to your questions this time.
A. Surely you learned from the texts, whether Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), Mishnah, and Talmud, that once upon a time we had a magnificent and holy Temple. But the Holy One, blessed be He, destroyed it. See Babylonian Talmud Yoma 9: Why was the First Temple destroyed? And likewise, why was the Second Temple destroyed? (Also in tractate Shabbat and tractate Bava Metzia and in Tosafot’s answer there.)
Why don’t you ask: where was the Holy One, blessed be He, in the destruction of the Temple?
And the answer is simple: He was there!! He is the One who gave the Babylonians and the Romans the power to destroy the Temple. He is the One who gives our enemies the power to overcome us. For “when the voice is the voice of Jacob,” then “the hands are not the hands of Esau”; but “when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from off your neck.”
Are you looking for a spiritual reason why there was a Holocaust? Do you want to understand for what sin and iniquity this evil came upon us? Do you want to know the calculations of Heaven?
Many want that. But the answer is above, and whoever seeks can go up there with a one-way ticket only. And there you’ll get answers to all the questions!
Or choose the sentence I already wrote to you in your previous question: “Faith begins where the intellect ends”!!
B. You ask about Hitler’s schizophrenia. Whatever the reason for the Holocaust may have been—whether the spiritual reason or the physical one—the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged things in such a way that there was a Holocaust and the whole world stood by.
In the Holocaust there was revealed the peak splendor of the Jews in the fine points of Jewish law, or in the laws between man and his fellow. And there were also non-Jews who are legally called “Righteous Among the Nations” who saved Jews.
From the standpoint of divine reality—everything that happened in the Holocaust was under the individual providence of the blessed God, Creator of the world.
C. Even though your questions are phrased well and you often correct others on matters of grammar, in practice the Rabbi is right that these are declarations. Because you didn’t come to receive answers, but to declare that because of these questions you cast off the yoke of religion!
D. Also in the last part of your questions regarding the killing of the seven nations dwelling in the land of Canaan, and likewise in the other citations you mentioned from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).
First, regarding the seven nations—as is known, the Girgashites evacuated their place and went to Africa and were not killed. The other nations could have done so too, but they chose to fight over the land of Canaan.
Second—regarding Jews who worship idols. The religious command does not require slaughter. Because by the same token you could ask about desecrating the Sabbath, which incurs stoning, or “do not murder,” which incurs death by the sword. In short, you could ask about all the death penalties of the religious court.
As you know from your studies, these deaths constitute atonement for the sinner, and also serve “so that they shall hear and fear.” There is no slaughter here.
The idiotic idea that you compare this to Stalin or Hitler, who killed out of madness and mental illness, egoism, and sadism, does not even begin to resemble Judaism.
After all, you’ll agree (haha, you have no choice) that it cannot be that to the same extent that the Torah commands mercy and compassion, it would command genocide—just because I feel like it?
Third and last—I already wrote to you: “If you read and did not review, and if you reviewed and did not study a third time, and if you studied a third time and they did not explain it to you”—go study the Torah and the history of the Jewish people and stop talking nonsense!!
Hopefully I wasn’t speaking to a wall. And I don’t need you to answer me back.
He acted out of a street-level antisemitic ideology. He worked as a painter’s assistant, and he listened to his antisemitic speeches and absorbed them. From that uneducated German painter’s assistant, and from the rejected and talentless artist he was, tens of millions were slaughtered. Truly the hand of fate.
A. I didn’t notice that you’re the one who asked the main question here. Hello hello! I of course don’t agree with the comparison between the prophet and the schizophrenic. Personally, I was convinced by Eliezer Berkovits’s substantive arguments on the issue in his book God, Man and History. As stated, in my understanding a schizophrenic doesn’t write Isaiah and doesn’t influence history like the prophets of Israel. By the same token, neither did the Buddha nor Jesus. If there was a crazy bastard, maybe it was Muhammad, whose teaching led to bloodshed. The Torah of Israel did not lead to bloodshed. If I believe that Moses wrote the Torah and the book of Deuteronomy from the mouth of God—I have no difficulty with that, because God knows what He is doing and everything is for the good. This is not the god of the false prophet Hitler, who speaks from his own heart. And if I accept the scholarly view that the book of Deuteronomy was written by the sages of Israel at the end of the First Temple period (on the basis of a tradition of the Oral Torah and the like from Moses, whether there was or wasn’t—see Tigay’s comprehensive introduction in the JPS commentary on Deuteronomy), then I have no difficulty at all. The killing of the nations was not carried out in practice and is entirely a myth intended to convey a message. Either way, the Torah of Israel did not bring more destruction into the world, but the opposite. That’s a huge difference from those who actually massacred and killed in the name of their religion or their atheism. And so on and so forth—I don’t have the time to comment here more.
P.S. Regarding your questions about drugs, here’s what I recommend to Michi: A. Ayahuasca—real, and without reading. Drink it! B. Read Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind—fascinating and consciousness-changing.
https://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2890972
gil, I’m not expecting special treatment, my brother. The comparison between prophecy and schizophrenia doesn’t depend on your opinion, but on research. The ones who wrote the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) were not those same prophets, but scribes in the Second Temple. On the one hand you write that “the Torah of Israel did not lead to bloodshed,” and on the other hand, “if I believe that Moses wrote the Torah from the mouth of God.” If you accept what’s in the Torah as it stands, then there was bloodshed. Even if you don’t accept it, it doesn’t depend on you but on whether it is in fact historically true.
They didn’t kill in the name of atheism. True, there were atheists among them in the broader picture, but the spearhead there believed in their own ancient idols, and Hitler acted in the name of God, even though, absurdly enough, he turned himself into a kind of god. Don’t deny the comparisons made here between religion and their new religion. Put a question mark next to it for yourself and investigate.
As for the P.S., I know ayahuasca and its effects, and I read Michael Pollan’s really recommended book.
A.
Heaven forbid, not special treatment—but after I asked forgiveness for my unjustified hurtfulness, it wouldn’t be proper for me to write to you that you should curl up inside your shell (even if it’s very poetic). Of course I’ll continue to disagree, and I’ll stand my ground. Not over and not finished.
I meant “hurt,” not “arrival.” Autocorrect.
In a shell there’s the Fibonacci golden ratio, so I took it as a compliment (;
Tzachi, you have no idea how much pleasure I get from being called wicked. It just shows me on the compass how much I’m headed in the right direction morally. As for the rest of what you wrote, I skimmed it once and gave up. Because as soon as you read one line, you’re too lazy to read the next one, from the sheer echo of stupidity. My suggestion to you: first free yourself from religion—it’ll open up some horizons in your narrow mind—and second, go study.
Good morning. It’s interesting to note that one of Hitler’s arguments was that the Jews introduced two defects into man: one in his body, and one in his soul.
In his body, that was of course circumcision.
In his soul, it was *morality* (an inseparable part of their religion), and morality is for the weak… and this is very widely known. So exactly from which religion did he draw?
Also according to the site owner’s view, that morality and command are legal commands, it is interesting to see how in some commands they overlap in a striking way. (I think they are legal commands, but in my view some of the commands clothed themselves in moral ideas, and not for nothing—to fulfill in practice “and you shall do what is right and good,” and so that the nation of God should also get polished morally along the way.)
As for the analogy between killing Nazis and wiping out Amalek—I don’t know where to begin to refute this joke.
Instead of refuting it, I’ll say that I heard Aristotle did not tend to clarify deep issues with every person. (Unlike Socrates, his exemplar [who was the “Rabbi Michi” of Athens], Aristotle’s spiritual grandfather.) He would argue:
A) that a person who is not old,
B) and who is not possessed of good character traits,
C) is not a person of sound intellect.
There is no point even beginning to discuss with him at all. Because he will not be able to deepen the discussion with you. (And maybe he can’t even understand. In Aristotle’s view, young age prevents the grasp of deep concepts.)
I don’t know who the youth of Athens were back then, or why Aristotle claimed one can discuss only with old people (I understand that old age is a sufficient condition for a good discussion, but I don’t understand why it would be a necessary one… and this is not the place to investigate).
But regarding the soul of the disputant, I agree 100%. You can’t have deep conversations with every person.
There’s a person who is shallow on topic A and deep on other topics; with that person I would not recommend philosophers delve deeply into A.
In my humble opinion, you are currently in a psychological position whose whole place is to attack every religious scent wherever it appears. Therefore, of course it’s ridiculous to write you complex responses that require shared thought and clarification.
If you notice, just like you, I didn’t write any real give-and-take argument either. But I somehow managed to spin it into a response to you—exactly what you did with Rabbi Michi in this responsum thread. {And proof of the matter is that I say that Rabbi Michi’s view on divine intervention is very widely known, so it’s rather amusing to read to whom you directed your question 🙂 }
So apparently either 1) analogy is not your strong side, or 2) you came to practice being a writer (and not to ask. Like all your “questions.” No wonder that in almost every “question” there is an abundance of logical fallacies; the reason is—it simply isn’t a question (!) it’s a heretical musing disguised as a question). [And as a musing, it’s not such a logical fallacy, because one does not expect consistency in feelings.]
And since I don’t take you for a donkey, I rule like the later authorities. (A writer and all that…) Have a good day.
A quote from A.’s response: “I know ayahuasca and its effects, and I read Michael Pollan’s really recommended book.”
A’, you’re simply a clown with a red nose! You’re trying to play the learned man. Reading books and recommending them.
By the same token you could also read Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, or Karl May (just throwing things in…)
Because in all the books you invest reading and research in, there is no progress whatsoever on the issue where you’re stuck.
Are you honestly certain that you’re coming up with new difficulties and questions based on what you read?
After all, your questions boil down to the general question, “Where was God in the Holocaust?”—which is a question I have heard so many times in my life. (And as far as I know, my age is nearly double yours.) Almost every secular 90-year-old Holocaust survivor asks this question. (And truly, who are we to stand before him? It is really not simple to withstand such a trial.)
In the previous question that you began with “the inconsistency” etc.—the questions were in the style of the wicked Turnus Rufus.
And if we sum up all your questions from past, present, and future, they boil down to the wicked son’s question in the Passover Haggadah:
“What is this service to you?”
Funny A’, there is nothing new under the sun. You’re not inventing questions. Read books of debates between Jews and Christians from previous generations. Study the Kuzari or other books written for the perplexed in our generation, and you’ll see that some of the questions have clear answers and some depend on faith!!
If I were really to recommend a book to you (even though I know I’d stir up a whole congregation of shouters against me), then read In the Garden of Faith by Rabbi Shalom Arush.
Good luck!!
Also, I went over your stupid response too. And aside from evasion, I saw no response at all.
And as Rabbi David M. D. wrote to you—find yourself another site to spread your musings.
It is worth noting another aspect of Hitler, namely: obsessive reading. He read books endlessly and gathered from them everything that strengthened his burning hatred. That is also how he gave his ideas an intellectual image. The combination of obsessive reading and pathological hatred is a dangerous combination…
Regards,, Anonymous So-and-so
In line 3
… an intellectual image…
You too were sent by God to ask this question.
Everything is from God.