Ha, take that Ratzinger!

The Quadratic Equation wrote: »

Whatever their different styles of propaganda, they were both, covert or otherwise, atheistic regimes,

Ah yes, when all the evidence points to Christians doing bad things they must be covert atheists.
Ladies and gents, we have just passed over into the realm of the conspiracy theory.

The Quadratic Equation wrote: »

Except for one teensy weensy itsy bitsy problem.

Your argument becomes complete rubbish when you try to claim Hitler was a Christian.

Consider that this is a man who personally said,
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people"

Doesn't sound like an atheist to me. So at the very least we have a man who publicly professes to be Christian and yet you completely deny this. You cannot reasonably deny the obvious fact that Hitler professed to be a Christian. Of course, you claim he was an atheist in secret. Have you any evidence to back this up or do you simply claim to somehow know the mind of a long dead tyrant?

The danger with Hitler is interpreting his anti-clericalism and hatred of Judaeo-Christian morality (where it constricted his scope for action - Kinder Kirche Kueche was a modus vivendi he didn't have huge difficulties with) as mainline atheism.

He remained a person prone to spiritual fantasies. Even the Popes of the day drew that distinction when they labelled Nazism a 'pagan cult of blood and race' and placed him below Stalin's 'godless communism' in their hierarchy of threat perception as a result.

This 'living dead' stuff is quite risible though. Our souls are dead, as we've turned away from God, is that it? Yawn.

The Quadratic Equation wrote: »

Again, and most ironically you use Nazi Propaganda to back up your arguments.

And again you less than skilfully dodge the point of what someone else is saying.
What you have basically done is said, "Never mind what Hitler said, sure he's a Nazi, you cant trust them!"

Plus it's interesting how you went through the trouble to nip that sentence about Alan Bullock from Wikipedia, while ignoring so much else.

Because they knew at the time he was a tyrant ?

Very much yes. The Weimar government had lapsed into effective autocracy towards the end, with minority cabinets being rotated in every few months and rule by decree. Germans relished a strong-hand to accomplish the military revanchism which they were successfully sold as the panacea for their malaise.

Historian Alan Bullockagrees that it was Hitler's intention to wait until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity.

What does Bullock say? Remind me, because counter-factual isn't his style.

It's clear that the intention of the Reich is to accomplish assimilation of religion into the apparatus of the state. Whether you can call that a looting and pillage style uprooting and destruction is debatable - we can only speculate on the format that it would have taken, but Fattorini put it well when she described Catholicism and Nazism as competing in a totalitarian view of society. Catholicism wanted public life to be guided by obedience to God. This meant it couldn't expect a satisfactory arrangement with Fascism to persist.

Edit: Enver Hoxha could be defined as a Maoist for much of his political career, which entailed, but was not defined by, atheism. Quoting the 1976 Albanian Constitution is serious weak sauce for showing state-sanctioned murder ordained by atheism.

The Quadratic Equation wrote: »

Exactly Atheism/Theism can equally be used as a tool for ulterior means, it does not mean all Atheists/Theists use it that way, but some can, do, and will. Few Theists deny this, but dangerously many Atheists do, and fail to recognise it.

We're getting closer, but we aren't quite there yet. You see someone can kill in the name of God (just look at all of those 'God told me to do it' psycho murderers). However, no one ever cites a lack of God as a means to kill people. They may kill religious people if they think said religion is somehow hampering their control/power/dominance, but one thing they can never claim is that it was in the name of atheism as a lack of God can't tell you to do it.

The Quadratic Equation wrote: »

I'm glad you finally get it. God Bless.

I do not, and did not, need to 'get' anything. In between reading wikipedia, where have you studied History in an academic context?

Your argumentation is appalling, no-mark Godwin's Law schtick. There are several Christian historians I can think of who would cringe for you.