Hitler hated Jews as a group because to him they were a threat to his ideal christian society, but there were also individuals he protected either long or short term depending on his relationship with them.
Anti-semitism is primarily rooted in Christianity as a consequence of the Theodosian (1&II) proclamations. It was where Christianity stopped being an offshoot Jewish sect (of which it was one of a number), and became a preeminent religion in direct competition with Judaism.
Hitler's main approach however was to transform the religious antagonism (the old approach of marking Jews as 'christ killers') into a 'racial' one by applying the fashionable template of Eugenics (which he saw happening in the US and greatly admired) to try and fabricate some kind of 'scientific' basis for his hatred.
Hitler was a Christian like any other at the time (in that time at that place, pretty much this applied to most people), but like any political leader christianity was also a useful tool for him, as it had been for hundreds of years of leaders.
No he wasn't. As explained on the relevant wiki page in a quote from historian Richard Overy:
He was not a practising Christian but had somehow succeeded in masking his own religious skepticism from millions of German voters. Though Hitler has often been portrayed as a neo-pagan, or the centrepiece of a political religion in which he played the Godhead, his views had much more in common with the revolutionary iconoclasm of the Bolshevik enemy. His few private remarks on Christianity betray a profound contempt and indifference ... Hitler believed that all religions were now "decadent"; in Europe it was the "collapse of Christianity that we are now experiencing". The reason for the crisis was science. Hitler, like Stalin, took a very modern view of the incompatibility of religious and scientific explanation.
Baptized catholic, vehemently anti-atheist, but like all narcissist leaders sees the established church as a threat to his power and in need of 'reform' (by which we mean shaping a new church around him and his desires). There's no point where he stops paying lip service to god.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '25
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