Talk:Religious views of Adolf Hitler
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Religious views of Adolf Hitler article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10Auto-archiving period: 30 days |
This article has not yet been rated on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
|
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Religious views of Adolf Hitler article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10Auto-archiving period: 30 days |
Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments, look in the archives, and review the FAQ before commenting. |
Q1: "Why do the views of historians dominate the introduction, rather than us just relying on extended quotes from Hitler speeches?"
A1: The first reason is because Wikipedia policy requires an emphasis on reliable secondary sources, and secondly because of the contradictory nature of so many of Hitler's words and actions. The article covers several decades during which Hitler contradicted himself in word and action repeatedly. Relying on extended quotes, (especially from narrowly-sourced websites or blogs,) is therefore neither practical, nor likely to accurately summarise our article in a reasonable space. Wikipedia policy on sourcing, such as our policy on original synthesis and original research discourages users from interpreting the sources by themselves because people will disagree with the interpretation. Wikipedia policy is to regurgitate claims from secondary sources we think of as reliable. (We already have a section for "Hitler's public rhetoric and writings about religion".)
Isn't the idea that he wasn't Christian in and of itself revisionism?
No. The long established, mainstream, orthodox viewpoint is that Hitler was not Christian. Prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials after the War put the case that Hitler had engaged in a slow and cautious policy to eliminate Christianity. Richard Steigmann-Gall, (who is one of the scholars that we cite in partial opposition to this view,) in his book The Holy Reich notes that the concept has gone "unquestioned" by scholarship (p.3), in spite of the fact that "[n]early all aspects of Nazism" (p.3) have been challenged by "revisionist scrutiny"(p.3) and proceeds to challenge it. Here is a review by Ernst Piper, saying "'the contention that National Socialism was a profoundly anti-Christian movement endured for so long not because it was convenient for researchers not to prove otherwise but..." "If Hitler was raised a Catholic and wasn't formally excommunicated, doesn't that make him a Catholic?"
Many irreligious people were raised in religious households, but it does not mean they cannot change their religious identity. Accordingly, the article notes the view of Hitler biographers and historians like Ian Kershaw, Alan Bullock, William Shirer, Laurence Rees and others, that Hitler came to despise Christianity, and that his government in many ways harassed the Catholic Church via piecemeal attacks in an attempt to undermine (see Kirchenkampf) The article notes too however Albert Speer and John Toland's view that Hitler, while being anti-clerical and having no connection to the Church, did not formally leave it before his death. Where are these historians even drawing from?
Sources include Goebbels' diary on Hitler, Albert Speer's memoirs, and Hitler's Table Talk as transcribed by Bormann and the memoirs of his secretaries, other confidants and eye witness accounts who had observed his behaviour. Historians also cite the Nazi policy toward the churches, and Hitler's promotion of Anti-Christian radicals to key posts in his inner circle throughout his career: Himmler, Baldur von Shirach#Shirach, Rosenberg, Adolf Wagner, and Bormann were all virulent enemies of Christianity. What about Carrier and Mittschang's work on the subject? Shouldn't it destroy Table Talk?
Yes, Carrier and Mittschang have challenged several statements in Table Talk. See this thread. Is the church persecution thing based off Table Talk?
No, sources are multiple. They include the Nuremberg documents, the Goebbels Diaries, and Speer's memoirs. Other evidence of the Hitler regime's harassment of Christianity includes the Pope's Mit brennender Sorge 1937 encyclical and emergence of the Protestant Confessing Church, the Priest's block in Dachau, and of course closure of religious schools and newspapers, arrest of clergymen, and seizure of church properties in Germany, and the moral processes against Catholic clegry and religious orders in schools from 1936 to 1937. All are well-documented. May I add a new scholarly work to the article if it suits your definition of a good source, without rewriting the lede entirely?
We should definitely be wary of undue weight, but if you find something directly relevant to Hitler, okay, you can put it in a relevant section. |
Revisionist history
This article represents an attempt at revisionist history of the worst kind. The extensive bias is the largest but not it's only problem. It is also so systemically full of problems that the whole thing should be scrapped and started over.
I also feel the claim that "the majority of wikipedia editors agree with the lead in is an appeal to authority of the worst kind, it niether offers prove for this being the case, nor why this should let such terrible writing let alone poor content stand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.192.103.31 (talk) 20:54, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
- Hi. This article would only be revisionist if it gave greater weight to the view that Hitler was Christian, because the long standing view has been that he was not. Some modern authors challenge the timing and extent of his abandonment of Christianity, but that's about it. His major biographers seem to be of one accord: in the broad, he was anti-Christian and opportunist in relation to religion, though some suspect he remained deist or at least held hubristic notions of his own destiny. Ozhistory (talk) 00:37, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
hitler islam
"Hitler was also quoted in the early war years stating, "We shall continue to make disturbances in the Far East and in Arabia. Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples at best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash.""
Also you should put that this quote was wrote 2 years before meeting the mufti, maybe Hitler did change the way of thiking after meeting him and wasnt that much hating on Arabs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.190.253.53 (talk) 20:17, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
NPOV tag
An IP editor tagged the article for NPOV this morning. The edit summary said: This is an attempt to rewrite history as part the current american political dialogue to cast negative aspersions on atheism through association. Hitler was catholic who spoke positively of his christian.
WP:MTR says that the NPOV template is meant to be accompanied by discussion on the talk page, identifying specific issues. Since there's been no discussion here, I removed the template. I would be happy to have the discussion, though. I'm not sure I agree that the article casts negative aspersions against atheism. But I might be too close to the article at this point, and not able to see biases creeping in. The tag will be replaced if the IP editor, or any other editor, states a rationale here at the talk page. JerryRussell (talk) 16:36, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
- I agree. TFD (talk) 16:41, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
I agree with the NPOV flagging. There is heavy political pressure from Christians to brand Hitler as an atheist and an anti-Christian and I think this article can be very misleading at some places in that regard. The article is pretty well-sourced as a whole and is based on solid historical data such as Mein Kampf, Hitler's speeches, Albert Speer's memoirs, and the Goebbels diaries. These sources have a pretty clear message overall : that Hitler unquestionably says throughout his life that he believes in a God / the "Providence" / the "almighty Creator" which he constantly mentions even when he has no political reason to do so, that he thinks his actions are inspired by this "Providence", however that his attitude towards Christianity and the Catholic Church as a political institution are controversial, changing through time, and often contradictory. The article starts by saying "Aspects of Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs have been a matter of debate". When you read through the rest of the article, you see that there is indeed a controversy, and that this controversy is on a very specific point : was Hitler a Christian who tried to adapt parts of the Catholic dogma to fit his political agenda, or was Hitler a Deist who progressively became thoroughly anti-Christian since he viewed Xtianity as an obstacle to his nationalism. Since there are quotes that support both points of view, I think the bulk of the article is pretty honest on that subject ; however the introduction is extremely misleading. The introduction literally implies that Hitler was an atheist (or at least an anti-Christian Nihilist) who used Christianity as an opportunist move for his political agenda. However you can't claim this as a fact and say there is a controversy at the same time, since this is the very subject of the controversy in the first place!
The article is also way too biased toward Alan Bullock's opinions. The whole article stands on the assumption that Hitler is purely an opportunist, and the only source for that is that Bullock said so. I think it's downright misleading to call Hitler an opportunist, when he was clearly an extreme German nationalist through and through, and everything he did was in the name of nationalism, as you can see in Mein Kampf. It's easy to call Hitler an opportunist based on hatred during the post WW2 climate, still doesn't make it accurate. Hell, even Bullock *himself* changed his mind on that idea. Quoted from Wikipedia's article on Bullock : "Later, Bullock to some extent changed his mind about Hitler. His later works show the dictator as much more of an ideologue, who pursued the ideas expressed in Mein Kampf (and elsewhere) despite their consequences.".
List of contestable statements in the article :
- "Hitler was baptised and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church as a boy, but became hostile to Catholicism in adulthood." This is downright false. Hitler was born in 1889. He was clearly an adult when he said in 1941, at age 52, as reported in Engel's diary, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." At most you can say "Some historians argue that he progressively became hostile to Catholicism towards the end of WW2".
- "Many scholars believe that Hitler's expressed views on religion were always and entirely cynical throughout his political career, and that he was in fact an atheist.[citation needed] ". Citation needed indeed. This is a baseless claim and should be either supported or removed. The following quote by Bullock is even self-contradictory, since it says Hitler sees himself as "a man with a mission marked by Providence", but he believes "neither in God nor in conscience". If the point is that the "providence" Hitler refers to is not actually God, this is severely misleading, since Hitler alternatively uses the words "providence", "God" and "the almighty Creator" (3 different German words) in both his speeches and Mein Kampf.
- "In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf, Hitler outlines a nihilistic philosophy". This feels both biased and false. Hitler is anything but a nihilist, as I've said, he's a German ultra-nationalist who wants to free Germany from the Versailles treaty and the "Jewish conspiracy", and he believed in the "Providence/almighty Creator". I don't have the same edition of Mein Kampf so I can't pinpoint the exact references in [12], but I read Mein Kampf and this feels really out of place. I'm just going to say "Mein Kampf" means "My Fight". What does a nihilist fight for exactly???-
- "In practice Hitler's regime persecuted the churches, and worked to reduce the influence of Christianity on society." Even if this statement is true, it's still biased. Hitler persecuted atheists too, there's even a section on it. If you mention this, you have to mention that he persecuted atheists as well.
- "Hitler was reluctant to make public attacks on the Church for political reasons,[20] but generally permitted or encouraged his inner-circle of anti-church radicals such as Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann to perpetrate the Nazi persecutions of the churches." This is extremely biased, because it implies that Hitler always wanted to attack the Church, and it fails to mention that Hitler was on extremely good terms with the Vatican throughout his period in power, which drove german Christians to accept his rule.
- The fact that the SS had the policy that believing in God is a *requirement* to join should be mentioned. "I never allowed an unbeliever to join the SS" - Himmler, 1944. The SS oath was : “What is your oath ?” – “I vow to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and chancellor of the German Reich loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and to the leaders, that you set for me, absolute allegiance, till death. So help me god !” “So you believe in a god ?” – “Yes, I believe in a supreme being.” “What do you think about a man who does not believe in a god ?” – “I think he is overbearing, megalomaniac and foolish; he is not adequate for our society.”
- "Officially, the Party endorsed what it termed "Positive Christianity" which stripped the religion of its Jewish origins and certain key doctrines such as belief in the divinity of Christ." The claim that Positive Christianity stripped the religion of the divinity of Christ is misleading and unfounded. The reference given is [15], a quote by Hans Kerrl, which says that Christianity is "not dependent" upon the Apostle's creed and the divinity of Christ. Not that it rejects it. That's a big nuance. And why use this convoluted quote instead of the much simpler one, by Kerrl as well : “The question of the divinity of Christ is ridiculous and inessential. A new answer has arisen as to what Christ and Christianity are: Adolph Hitler.”. If the message is to say that Hitler can't be a Christian because Positive Christianity rejects the divinity of Christ, then this claim is purely and simply unsupported.
- "Plans to destroy Christianity", also all references to Hitler wanting to destroy Christianity throughout the article. This is biased because all the evidence talks about plans against the two major Christian *Churches*, both the Catholic and Protestant ones, not Christianity itself. It's kind of a No True Scotsman fallacy, since it assumes at the very beginning that Nazism is not Christian (otherwise you couldn't say that he planned to destroy all of Christianity, just all the other forms of it), and it's ironic that this assumption is made here since this exact argument of persecution against Catholics and Protestants is often quoted in the Christian narrative as evidence that...Hitler wasn't a Christian! The provable historic facts are that Hitler wanted to subjugate the Christian churches to the Nazi state, that the Nazis persecuted all the churches that resisted which led to persecutions of both Catholics and Protestants, that the Nazis tried to absorb the Christian doctrine and subjugate it to their own racist and militaristic ideology, that Hitler was very critical of some aspects of Xtianity, and that they made significant alterations to the Christian dogma through the impulse of Hans Kerrl to fit their ideology. However, what if Positive Christianity is like Mormonism, a doctrine significantly different from Catholicism and Protestantism, but that still qualifies as Christian? If fundamentalist Mormons made a totalitarian state, of course they'd be fighting against both Catholics and Protestants, oppressing them and trying to subjugate them, since they would be rivals. But in that case it'd be called a religious struggle *inside* Christianity, not a plan to destroy Christianity. I'm not claiming that this interpretation is true. I'm just saying that as long as no evidence is presented that this interpretation is impossible, the article cannot straight up rule it out like it does right now. IMO it has to be more factual like saying "Plan to subjugate the Catholic and Protestant Churches" for example. The OSS report "the Nazi master plan" for example clearly talks about the two Churches as political entities, not Xtianity as a belief system.
All in all, the bulk of the article is good, but the introduction is extremely biased and should be rewritten at least partially IMO, and the bias for Bullock's "opportunist Hitler" should be either reworked or supported with other independent sources. For the sake of honesty, the introduction should IMO be clear on the fact that there is massive evidence of Hitler saying that he believes in a personal God at every point of his life, zero evidence that he's an atheist, however that the exact nature of his religious beliefs remains controversial and unclear and can range anywhere from Deism/Pantheism to Christianity (at least his interpretation of it, but any religious person relies on interpretation anyways), with the truth probably somewhere in between.
Since I've provided with material to work with in the discussion I think I can safely put back the NPOV tag.
Hamstergamer (talk) 12:01, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
- You arguing with (usually) sourced material is original research, which we don't use. You alone do not make up a consensus. Also, as you admit, "the bulk of the article is good." As such, tagging the whole article is inappropriate. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:23, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
- In order to show that the article is biased towards a certain point of view, you cannot merely show that other interpretations are possible. You need to show that other interpretations have prominence in reliable sources, per neutrality policy. TFD (talk) 13:55, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
- I have no problem with quoting Bullock's opinion on the subject. But the entire article is based on portraying Hitler as an opportunist, with only Bullock quoted as a source. So there is a neutrality problem because the whole article is founded on an appeal to authority to one specific historian at one specific time of his work. The issues I pointed out in my post run through the entirety of the article so I don't see how you could come to any other conclusion from what I said than tagging the entire article. When I said the bulk of the article is good, I meant that the article was well-sourced and written professionally, however that the writer(s) have a bias throughout the entire article that should be corrected. Hamstergamer (talk) 15:07, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
"as you can see in Mein Kampf". This seems problematic. Mein Kampf is an autobiography, and presents ideas and events that Hitler wanted to make public. Its factual nature is somewhat questionable, particularly whether it should be taken at face value. Would Hitler publicize controversial ideas that could damage his political career? Probably not.
And the work was actually published in 1925-1926, when Hitler was still far from achieving political power. He lived for another 20 years and his religious views could have changed.
Take this passage from the Murphy translation of Mein Kampf, regarding Hitler's childhood experience with religion: "In my freetime I practised singing in the choir of the monastery church at Lambach, and thus it happened that I was placed in a very favourable position to be emotionally impressed again and again by the magnificent splendour of ecclesiastical ceremonial. What could be more natural for me than to look upon the Abbot as representing the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the position of the humble village priest had appeared to my father in his own boyhood days?"
A choir boy enamored with church ceremony. Do you think his views did not change with time?
On another topic, Hitler claims to have had little knowledge of Jews as as a boy and no personal familiarity with them. "To-day it is hard and almost impossible for me to say when the word 'Jew' first began to raise any particular thought in my mind. I do not remember even having heard the word at home during my father's lifetime. If this name were mentioned in a derogatory sense I think the old gentleman would just have considered those who used it in this way as being uneducated reactionaries." ... "At the REALSCHULE I knew one Jewish boy. We were all on our guard in our relations with him, but only because his reticence and certain actions of his warned us to be discreet. Beyond that my companions and myself formed no particular opinions in regard to him."
Do you think his views did not change? Dimadick (talk) 23:14, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
- I believe we have two votes in favor of tagging the article for POV -- @Hamstergamer: as well as the earlier IP visitor. I'm not a big fan of maintenance tags, but the rules say if there's a substantive dispute going on, the article should be tagged. So, I'm restoring the tag.
- And, I agree with most of Hamstergamer's specific points. I would encourage Hamstergamer to go ahead and make whatever changes to the text as he feels would be appropriate to fix the problems he's identified, and then we can discuss. Maybe one item at a time, to prevent mass reverts and confusion? JerryRussell (talk) 18:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
- Pretty quiet around here, eh? I'll start the ball rolling:
Many scholars believe that Hitler's expressed views on religion were always and entirely cynical throughout his political career, and that he was in fact an atheist.[citation needed] "
I think I inserted the cn tag when I was last working on the article. I'm deleting it. JerryRussell (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- Pretty quiet around here, eh? I'll start the ball rolling:
- I'm quiet because I just noticed several days ago the MASSIVE archive of debate on this article, and it takes a while to process it so as not to say the same things again for the 100th time. I'm still not done with my criticism and there are a few other claims I want to examine in closer detail before I get to the editing. For example the claims about a "consensus of historians" on specific topics. This takes some research. I will update you accordingly and I have no problem with JerryRussel or someone else doing the editing at least for now. Hamstergamer (talk) 18:47, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks Hamstergamer, good to know you're still working on it. I look forward to your contributions. You'll notice I've done a lot of editing on the article recently, and I don't want to be accused of ownership behavior. JerryRussell (talk) 19:24, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, I saw that you had a hand in writing the article, but if you just deal with the specific issues honestly I see no problem with it. Talking about accusations, I just have to respond to the original research accusation I received for what I said, which is completely unfounded. Wikipedia is pretty clear that original research is "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist.". I never used any of that. Pointing out that one specific reference of the article is in direct contradiction with another reference is the very opposite of original research. It means that there's a contradiction that needs to be worked out. Hamstergamer (talk) 12:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
- First round of editing.
- - "plans to destroy Christianity" -> "plans against the Christian churches". You can't claim as a fact that there was a plan to destroy Christianity when the paragraph underneath clearly has several quotes that support the interpretation that the Nazis wanted to subjugate Christianity to the Nazi doctrine, which is a very different thing. You can't take an interpretation of the facts and claim it as a fact.
- - "he became hostile to Xtianity in adulthood" -> "towards the end of his life". The anti-Xtian quotes of Hitler are all dated from after 1941.
- - "Officially, the Party endorsed what it termed "Positive Christianity" which stripped the religion of its Jewish origins and certain key doctrines such as belief in the divinity of Christ." -> "which stripped the religion of its Jewish origins, set up Hitler as a messianic figure, and did not require the belief in the divinity of Christ.". Look at Kerrl's quote, my version matches the quote, the previous version didn't.
- The bias of the article is mainly in the introduction, which IMO needs to be rewritten. I will make a separate section to explain why the current introduction is heavily biased, misleading, and does not give an accurate summary of the bulk of the article. I will then write my own introduction and start a discussion.
- Hamstergamer (talk) 15:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
"Augustinian"
There is a probable misspelling in the article: "Hitler, wrote Goebbels, saw the pre-Christian Augustinian Age as the high point of history"
There is no such thing as an Augustinian Age, but the term Augustan Age is used for the reign of Augustus over the Roman Empire. And it is often considered a peak for Roman culture and literature. Dimadick (talk) 22:26, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- The source says Augustinian Google books but I suppose there's no obligation for us to reproduce a deprecated word form. I'm fixing it. JerryRussell (talk) 16:54, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Debunking the bias in the introduction
The entire introduction has a *massive* bias. It doesn't give an accurate summary of the bulk of the article by any stretch of the word. Instead, it cherrypicks the most extreme position among all the quotes and evidence available in the references and puts that position on display at the front of the article. It is also extremely misleading by both stating some provably incorrect facts (some of which I've already corrected), and by taking quotes out of context. This section is dedicated to debunking that bias.
"Goebbels wrote in 1941 that Hitler "hates Christianity"". But Goebbels also said in the same diary : "The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian". The quote is even in the bulk of the article! So the part about Hitler being deeply religious is not relevant enough to be included apparently. Only the part about him hating Christianity. On an article about Hitler's *religious views*. You can't truncate the complete message from Goebbels' diaries if you want to include it.
"transcripts of Hitler's private conversations recorded by Martin Bormann in Hitler's Table Talk, indicate anti-Christian beliefs.". Yes, they definitely do. However, these transcripts *also* indicate anti-atheist beliefs, which aren't included in the references but are on Wikiquote. Again, you can't have one without the other. Either mention both or don't mention the Table Talk in the introduction.
"Bullock considered Hitler to be a rationalist and a materialist who did not believe in God, but who frequently employed the language of "divine providence" in defence of his own myth." The bias here by putting this quote in the introduction is so massive it's laughable. This is ONE quote. One single quote in the entire set of 268 references in the article that claim that Hitler did not believe in God. It's not representative of anything. It's not a consensus of historians by any stretch of the word, it's not representative in any way of the general message gives by the bulk of the article since no other quote says that. It's even directly contradicted by several OTHER references. And it's put in the freaking introduction, which is supposed to give an overall view of the bulk of the evidence! I think it should be removed from the introduction (since it's already quoted twice in the bulk) and replaced with a much more middle-ground quote that *actually* reflects the majority of the bulk.
This reference : "Wheaton, Eliot Barculo The Nazi revolution, 1933–1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era, p. 290, 363, Doubleday 1968: The Nazis sought "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch." given in [36]. I can't check it directly, but the expression is oddly reminiscent of this quote : "The religions are all alike, no matter what they call themselves. They have no future—certainly none for the Germans. Fascism, if it likes, may come to terms with the Church. So shall I. Why not? That will not prevent me from tearing up Christianity, root and branch and annihilating it in Germany.", present on https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler#Misattributed. It's the exact same expression "eradicate Christianity root and branch". And it's...a forgery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamstergamer (talk • contribs) 02:56, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
"eradicate Christianity" replaced by "eliminate the christian churches". You can't conflate the churches with "Christianity". The references clearly talk about the churches as political entities.
Even if everything said in the introduction was accurate and unbiased (which it isn't), the introduction is still lacking. The question is Hitler's religious views. And the text only explains why Hitler is not a Christian. "not a Christian" is not "religious views". "religious views" means POSITIVE religious views. Where is that? Hamstergamer (talk) 16:04, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
First significant edit of the introduction. Since editing involves dealing with references I can't post drafts on this discussion page, I have to edit the actual article straight away. Feel free to compare with the previous version to see the changes. What I plan to do do in subsequent edits: include persecutions of atheist groups along with Jehovah's witnesses and others, give a more accurate summary of the section on Mein Kampf in the bulk, and give a more faithful overview of the interpretations of historians compared to what's in the bulk of the artcle. Don't hesitate to discuss. Hamstergamer (talk) 00:57, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
- I appreciate the changes. Perhaps in place of
In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf, Hitler outlines a nihilistic philosophy
we should say a nationalistic philosophy? JerryRussell (talk) 22:53, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
- I agree it should be changed, nihilistic is really poor wording but I'm not sure naturalistic is the word to replace it as. After all he does use the words ,creator, lord and god .
- Nationalistic? If there's a one word summary of Mein Kampf, that would have to be it. JerryRussell (talk) 23:27, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
- Okay, done. I've edited everything that in my opinion posed a neutrality issue in the article. I changed the "nihilistic" part into the more factual statement already used in the Mein Kampf section. I apologize if my editing was done all at once and on my own terms, but as I've said before I didn't have the option to post drafts on this page because my editing required messing with the reference table and I can't post 200+ references here. I think I've explained in detail the reasoning behind my editing. Don't hesitate to look at the change log for exact changes. I'm available for debate and I welcome any kind of discussion or constructive criticism. If there are no objections to the changes I'm willing to drop the NPOV tag. Hamstergamer (talk) 14:33, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks, Hamstergamer! I agree that the changes make for a more accurate and neutral article. I would also endorse removing the NPOV tag at this point.
- One other problem I've noticed is that the ToolTip hover-over citations are broken in the lede now. I've studied the citations and I can't see what's gone wrong. Does anyone else see this? JerryRussell (talk) 16:59, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
- @JerryRussell: The problem seem to have started by your edit here Worked before, not after. Jim1138 (talk) 08:55, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
Tacit Assumptions of Evidence in Confusion
"Raised by an anti-clerical father and practising Catholic mother, Hitler was baptised and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church as a boy, which he never officially left, and openly supported Christianity in his public speeches and in some private statements. However, there is a general consensus among historians that he became hostile to religion, especially Christianity, towards the end of his life."
There's a logical structure suggested by the two sentences as currently juxtaposed that's a problem. The first closes as though it were tacitly compounding a series of facts that might suggest the conclusion that the "Religious views of Adolf Hitler" (the title) are possibly quite Christian: "...and openly supported Christianity in his public speeches and in some private statements." The idea that this sentence is cohesively suggesting the possible conclusion of a Christian Hitler is re-enforced as the next sentence leads with "However"; setting up the juxtaposition, then providing the alternative (the general historic consensus).
On closer examination, sentence 1 begins not with evidence but with counter-evidence (was raised by an anti-clerical father). It also artlessly blurs passive participation (baptised as an infant--apparently he made no strenuous objections) and active initiative (and supported Christianity in his public speeches). Guilty on 2 counts. It conflates legitimate biographical details (his mother was a practising Catholic) with compelling evidences of the Fuhrer's own views (his own private statements). Lastly, it fails to distinguish between the evidence of action and of inaction (which he never officially left) and tacitly assumes the latter to have (obvious) meaning.
This article has problems that can't be remedied by voices aggressively competing to rewrite history. Somebody fix this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:3BB:2400:3169:E794:38A2:FDD6 (talk) 02:29, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
- I think it is quite balanced considering Hitler's complicated views on religion. I assume you are well enough informed to know that he made openly Christian claims in public and then took openly anti-Christian actions as a leader. How do we balance the prose in an article about a person who says one thing and does another? We just repeat what reliable sources say about the matter and leave the speculation to the reader, which is what we have done. Lipsquid (talk) 04:55, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
- I think it's quite balanced. I agree there are a lot of people (atheists) attempting to rewrite history by presenting Hitler as a christian when he clearly wasn't. He was at least anti-religion and at the most an atheist. 10:39, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
- Well I think he was really an elf from Middle Earth, but luckily we don't put editor opinions on Wikipedia. Lipsquid (talk) 17:29, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
- I think it's quite balanced. I agree there are a lot of people (atheists) attempting to rewrite history by presenting Hitler as a christian when he clearly wasn't. He was at least anti-religion and at the most an atheist. 10:39, 27 December 2016 (UTC)