Why Did Hitler Hate the Jews?

In a perfect world, this would have been my first article. The crazy was just so fast and unrelenting, that it had to wait until things died down. I have noticed that things are quieter—if you ignore the sunglasses clad Musk waving a gold chainsaw on a national stage. When I was a drug and alcohol counselor, I would make a client remove their sunglasses if they wore them inside. Sunglasses are too useful to hide glassy, bloodshot eyes from alcohol or drug use.

Just saying.

I don’t know if the question of why Hitler hated the Jews is still a current question, or if it is just accepted as a fact now. I remember in the early 70s this was a common discussion question. There were several philosophies—it was said that his mother was half Jewish, and he hated her so he hated all Jews. The issue of financial control by Jewish entities was discussed. There was also some really hateful religious rhetoric that I heard. And, being raised in the milieu I was raised in, the sexual proclivities of Jewish men always raised its ugly head. By those men with perverted proclivities, I might mention.

The true reason why Hitler hated the Jews is something that we are seeing again in our time, just focused on different people groups. So, I’ll raise it again and discuss it from what I assume and know would be Bonhoeffer’s perspective. I’ll indicate when I am assuming (still from Bonhoeffer’s actions and history), and when Bonhoeffer acted specifically.

I mentioned in an earlier post that many think and wish that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s resistance was to save the Jews. I pointed out that it wasn’t, and the situation of his brother-in-law’s father. (See my previous article, Follow the Information, here on substack.)

However, I also want everyone to understand why Bonhoeffer may not have taken the strong pro-Jewish stand they now wish for. The most obvious answer to that is that no one could fathom in a country as advanced as Germany was in the 1930s that there would ever be a final solution such as gassing and burning human beings on an industrial scale. At a point, Bonhoeffer did learn this was happening, and, if you know the chronology of his writing, his writing nearly explodes in outrage. At least a philosophical form of outrage.

It would be lovely and noble for us Bonhoeffer scholars if we could take the moral high ground and say that Bonhoeffer worked to save Jews. Although, in our time, Netanyahu may have put paid to that moral high ground.

The other side, however, is not that Bonhoeffer was prejudiced against Jews through chauvinism or what we still call “race.” That was clear in the embrace of that same Jewish brother-in-law who had been baptized into the church. What Bonhoeffer wanted—put in the crude jargon of MAGAot evangelicals—was for Jews to get “saved.”

I say that tongue in cheek because Bonhoeffer had a different perspective of salvation than the MAGAots. It would be a truer argument to say that Bonhoeffer wanted Jews to recognize their reality of their salvation and get baptized.

(For those pastors and theologians out there, Bonhoeffer’s understanding of salvation can be found through a close reading of Sanctorum Communio, following the topic of “Christ existing as Church-community.”)

That is the theological perspective from Bonhoeffer, but I suspect there may have been a sociological perspective to his thoughts about the Jewish Problem. This is where I am assuming what his reasoning would be based on my reading and reflecting from his biography and his own writings.

Before I begin, let me say this. As far as I know, Bonhoeffer never said anything or participated in any anti-Jewish activity that was rife in German society. An argument could be made that his mission to the Jews (to get them baptized and in the church) that he wrote about in his paper on the Jewish Question was a form of anti-Judaism. However, that would be placing on Bonhoeffer an ethic that has evolved since then. Moreover, he would have held the same standard for any people group who were not aware of their salvation.

I do believe that Bonhoeffer may have been affected by the prevailing idea behind what the term “Jew” included outside of religion for the German society. Simply explained in our current perspective, the stereotype of Jews in the 1930s were that they were liberal. They were the “left.” In staid Wilhelminian society left over from Kaizer Wilhelm’s reign, they were considered the progressives—especially in the field of sexual norms. Of course, along with being responsible for all things liberal, the old adage of the manipulators of the economical system was largely accepted.

In today’s world, the Jews would have been called Democrats. Or snowflakes. Or libtards. Or whatever slur the brainy propogandists call liberal citizens these days.

Whenever I watch Cabaret (Eddie Redmayne is my favorite!), I image this is how buttoned up Germans imagined liberalism during the Weimer Republic. Bonhoeffer happened to be one of those buttoned up Germans. He was raised in what we would now call an upper middle class family of aristocratic descent. His mother’s family was part of the Potsdam court. His ancestors were theologians. While his father was slightly progressive due to being a neuropsychiatrist, conservative and reserved norms were taught to the children from an early age. The new loosening of norms would have been uncomfortable for Bonhoeffer even if he was not a theologian.

In truth, there were indeed excesses that would shock even the progressives. Just as in every society, there are those who color outside of the lines. The difference was that before the Weimar Republic these actions occurred in secret, and during the Weimar Republic they were no longer hidden.

However, the idea that all Jews were liberal or immoral was ridiculous. There were as many conservative Jewish families as liberal families. Due to their religious observances, there were probably more moral Jewish citizens than immoral. (I don’t want to romanticize any people group—all groups have both moral and immoral people.) The truth did not matter to the Nazi propaganda machine. They painted all Jews with the brush stroke of being liberal. They needed a scapegoat in order to gain control over German society, and the Jews were their chosen scapegoat.

It must be said that the norms really were loosened if we are to understand the victims of the concentration camps. Homosexuality was coming into the open. Magazines supporting those people who are homosexual began publication. Clubs catering to sexual orientation were opened. This was an abrupt occurrence for those Germans who had never heard of such things before. Nazis were preoccupied with sexual issues—as is common in repressive organizations—and they used this occurrence to proclaim the decline of the German society. This is why homosexuals were also thrown into concentration camps. All imagined leftists—not just Jews—were going to be deleted from society.

Have you heard of any people groups who “need” to be eliminated from society in our time?

As I said, churchman Bonhoeffer was also conservative. I can imagine the idea of sexual promiscuity—heterosexual or homosexual—caused him some uncomfortable moments. I can also imagine it was difficult to get around the noise—dare I say “fake news”—that the Nazis were spreading about Jewish citizens. Finding opposing information was not a luxury that people enjoyed in the 1930s. They couldn’t hop on the internet to find opposing views. Most only read their own group’s newspapers, or belonged to their group’s clubs. (For my American readers, this was normal in many European countries. Even today people tell me what group that Dutch TV channels belong to, or what group has different newspapers—although this is becoming less as time goes on.)

It is my assumption that Bonhoeffer would have struggled with this looser atmosphere of sexual freedom. I cannot imagine that he would have attributed it to Judaism since he would understand that religion better than most citizens; however, I can see him being hesitant about supporting the activities that were included in the discussion. I can see him being careful not to support something he wouldn’t approve of, although he would have been careful to judge others because of his work in Creation and Fall where he writes that when one judges they set themselves above God and become the judge of God himself.

I admire Bonhoeffer for how he approached this societal and personal problem. First, he did not put his head down and only think of his own well-being. Second, he did not violate his own religious principles by judging others. Third, he did not buy into the ideology against the Jews as a people group. Even if he disagreed with some aspects of liberal society, he understood that every group has some people who may violate societal principles without believing the whole group is guilty.

What we see from his final writings, Ethics, is that he could separate behavior from his primary belief that Jesus died for humans, not ethics.

Bonhoeffer’s theology reflected human rights long before the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights codified them. It is for this reason that even a non-Christian such as myself (and those of my readers who are also not Christian) can still be an admirer of Bonhoeffer’s thought processes. He believed all humans were valuable because Jesus died to save them. I believe all humans are valuable because we have a role to play in the continuance of life. Even though our basis for valuing all humanity differs, our ideas for how this is implemented converge. Bonhoeffer would hope that I recognize the reality of my salvation, and I would hope for him that he could learn to live life for now without worrying about what comes later.

Maybe we are fortunate—at least the Christians among us—that I didn’t get my wish. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have Bonhoeffer’s amazing theology, which I think was often created from his own angst about dealing with the penultimate so he could get to the ultimate.

In any case, Bonhoeffer would have recognized the propaganda that we now hear about immigrants, trans people, the deep state, etc. It is the same hatred and “black balling” that was ginned up against the Jewish people in the Third Reich. Then the propaganda was that Jews controlled the financial systems and were responsible for economic difficulties. Now, immigrants are stealing jobs. (Well, to be fair, Musk did steal the presidency of the US à la Hitler’s method.) Today trans people are trying to destroy morality in the Nazi’s perspective. Then it was the so-called Jewish immorality and their lust for white women that was a danger to the Third Reich. Now, it is the deep state trying to get….well, I don’t know who the deep state is supposed to be out to get. That idea was always strange to me, and I’ve never been able to get my head wrapped around it. However, in the Reich it was the “communist” Jew who purposed to destroy German culture.

So, everything old is new again.

After Bannon’s Nazi salute at the CPAC convention last week, there is no longer any doubt that he and Musk are in the neo-Nazi camp. Only, to make it more palatable for the American public—many of whom had parents or grandparents who died to keep America out of the hands of the Nazis—now the hatred is targeted baldly at the left. The immigrants almost got the blame, but ICE can’t find enough to support Trump’s fear mongering.

However, it was always the left that Nazis hated, they just needed a whipping boy to get the society to go along with them. The biggest “other” in Nazi Germany was the Jews. There were not large immigrant groups to bear the lash of their whips as we have today, only those who were other in predominately Christian Germany.

This is why it is important that Bonhoeffer be recognized for what he really fought against rather than someone who worked to save Jews. Then we come to the question that you might think you already have the answer to. But I bet you don’t. You probably think it is the church since that was Bonhoeffer’s true love. However, it runs deeper and more applicable to us all.

I once heard Jürgen Moltmann—a Lutheran theologian—present on Nazism as hatred of life. I can agree wholeheartedly with this, particularly since Moltmann was also a Bonhoeffer scholar and understood what motivated Bonhoeffer. Much better than any MAGAot evangelical journalist that writes a biography selling Bonhoeffer out as a MAGAot Nazi. (But sometime I will tell you how I really feel—google it. You might find it if you google any current movies.)

Here is what make Bonhoeffer universal—he resisted hatred. In particular, hatred of those humans who Jesus died for regardless of whether they knew it or not. Did he always agree with the actions of these humans? No, I suspect not. He wrote that even though he believed that all people were saved in Christ, the Christian still had work to do in order for Jesus to come in mercy rather than wrath. (Ethics) However, as we would expect from Bonhoeffer, he saw beyond the flotsam and jetsam to go to the heart of the matter and find what was really at stake.

In the conclusion of my PhD dissertation, I wrote something to the effect of: Bonhoeffer could teach us how to live in our multicultural world. I was making an oblique reference to the anti-Muslim rhetoric that was becoming popular in the Netherlands at that time. Oblique because I was always careful not to give ammunition to other academics who wished to shoot down the message.

However, an astute colleague was not fooled. He asked me how I could say something like this when my dissertation was about the church and Bonhoeffer.

I’m pretty sure my answer wasn’t adequate, although I can’t remember how I answered. One of the other professors was acting like a real jerk (the words of those who observed the exchange, not mine) and trying to embarrass me in front of the audience, so my adrenaline was high from that exchange. However, I would like to answer that question again from a calmer and more thoughtful perspective.

When Bonhoeffer wrote, I imagine that probably at least 75% of German society were at least culturally Christian and belonged to churches. My dissertation opponent was right. With churches dying out, the current church influence today is minor compared to what it was in Bonhoeffer’s time. However, Bonhoeffer went deeper than just the church and recognized that it is the hatred for humanity that Nazis really preached—as Moltmann point out as well. Nazis were not a danger only to Jews, they are a danger to human life itself.

In his theology, Bonhoeffer stripped away all the “penultimate” dribble we are preoccupied with, even today. He got right to the point of life.

This is why Christians and non-Christians can enjoy Bonhoeffer’s theology. It embraces life. For Christians it is (or should be) the value of human life as the creation of God, saved by the blood of Jesus. Regardless of color, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc.

For non-Christians among us—I agree completely with Bonhoeffer’s formulation even though I no longer believe in his God. Something has put us here for a reason. I may not like what the MAGAot’s do or think, but I think their humanity has value. Well, if I’m being honest, it is hard to believe the unholy trio of Trump, Musk, Bannon has any value. But, I’m working on aligning my feelings with my own philosophy.

Whatever we are, I believe it is insanity to attack one’s own species. Life is meant to be fulfilled and to flourish. The unholy trinity, with a smirk on their faces, are attacking their own species and are breaking down structures meant to help humans flourish. In them I only see hatred for humanity.

This can be confusing because MAGAot evangelicals proclaim their love for life. If we look closer at what they are really saying is that they love how their own babies make them feel and from their cozy bubble, they think all babies should be saved. However, those babies grow up to work for federal government, and then the MAGAot’s think they are scum. When do the little humans end up being scum, and when does caring for them end?

MAGAot evangelical’s feelings are a surface, shallow emotion that is not well thought out nor congruent with their philosophy. If they really loved life, then they would recognize humanity at all stages and put themselves and their prejudices aside to help life flourish. If they did that, they may just recognize that the whole world is diverse, and they have a limited idea of life.

IF they would do that, I would be willing to bet that they wouldn’t have time or the inkling to wonder if the “others” were busy living up to their judgments. If they would do that, maybe we could have a president who is working to help America flourish rather than destroying the lives of it’s citizens and hanging out with Nazi saluting radicals.