Rudolf Hoess was commander of Auschwitz. Before his execution in 1947 he said that he would have gassed and burned his own wife, children and even himself had der Führer commanded it. At a Nazi rally, the caption on a giant photo of Hitler said, "In the beginning was the Word." Some Germans changed the Lord’s Prayer to read, "Our Father Adolf who art in Nuremberg, Hallowed be thy name, the Third Reich come . . . ." If you did not say, "Heil Hitler!" when you entered a restaurant, you would not be served.

Quite a promotion for a slime bucket who started as a homosexual prostitute in Vienna. Believe it or not, the buggers there thought young Adolf was "cute."

The book includes a photograph of the dining hall in the barracks of the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s SS bodyguard. The slogan on the wall beneath the Nazi eagle says: "The will of the Führer remains our faith." Lutzer says this of the Nazis: ". . . They were embarking on a cause that was so noble that they should suspend their natural judgment; they were on the cutting edge of creating a new society. . . ."

Hermann Göring was Hitler’s Ted Kennedy, except that Teddy can’t fly. Göring explained, "I have no conscience! Adolf Hitler is my conscience!" Indeed, "It is not I who live, but the Führer who lives in me." Churches of the day, putatively Christian, offered swastikas with the cross of Christ neatly woven in the center.

But what about the pastors? Hitler explained, ". . . The parsons will dig their own graves. They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable jobs and incomes." Today we have incorporated multi-million dollar celebrity churches that are profit-making businesses, not houses of worship. Indeed, German Protestant churches called for a synthesis of Christianity and state, even for a revision of doctrine to conform to National Socialism.

Dedication services for Hitler’s storm troopers were conducted in Protestant and Catholic churches. One theologian hailed Hitler as follows: "Now he stands before us; he whom the voices of our poets and sages have summoned, the liberator of the German genius. He had removed the blindfold from our eyes, and through all political, economic and social and confessional covers has enabled us to see and love again the one essential thing – our unity of blood, our German self, the homo germanus."

Large crowds flocked to the farm house where Hitler spent his summers as a boy. John Toland writes that they "found their way into the courtyard to wash at the wooden trough as if it contained holy water and chipped pieces from the large stones supporting the barn." Canadian missionary Oswald Smith went to Germany in 1936. Smith reported: ". . . Every true Christian is for Hitler. I know for it was from the Christians I got most of my information, and right or wrong they endorse Adolf Hitler."

The Hitler church glorified war. Germans were taught to do whatever the Führer commanded. Pastors quoted Romans 13 often to keep the restive in line. Some churches retreated into pietism, which believed that the church’s mission was to preach Christ and ignore everything else; to maintain intense loyalty to the politicians and obedience to the state even when it contradicted one’s own personal beliefs.

Needless to say, the schools were perverted. Lutzer writes: "In 1935 prayers ceased to be obligatory in schools; religious instruction was not yet exactly prohibited, but it was limited to those who had been licensed by the state. Thus the dogmas of Nazism were substituted for the doctrines of the Bible. The schools taught their subjects through the eyes of the regime."

Hitler turned Christmas into a totally pagan festival. He even changed its name to "Yuletide." In 1938, he banned carols and Nativity plays from the schools. Crucifixes were banned from classrooms. Easter became a holiday that heralded the arrival of spring. Does any of this sound familiar? Private schools were abolished. All education was unified under the Nazis.

Indeed, Göring said, "The law and the will of the Führer are one." In other words, the law – right and wrong – was whatever Hitler said it was. Treason was whatever he said it was: anything "contrary to the purposes of the Reich. Criticism was treason; freedom of the press was treason; a failure to further the agenda of the Reich was treason. If you disagreed with Adolf, you were "unpatriotic."

Most Germans were Protestants, at least on paper. Here is what Hitler said of them: "You can do anything you want with them. . . . They will submit . . . they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them." Of course there were heroic exceptions, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller.

On September 5^th, 1933, the Prussian General Synod met in Berlin. Erwin Lutzer tells us that delegations of pastors and church leaders arrived "wearing Nazi uniforms and giving the Nazi salute." All German pastors were required to sign a statement pledging "unconditional support to the National Socialist State." There was opposition, but it was shouted down.

Finally, on November 13, 1933, Nazi "Christians" rallied at the Sports Palace in Berlin. One speaker demanded that "all obviously distorted and superstitious reports should be expunged from the New Testament, and that the whole scapegoat and inferiority-type theology of the Rabbi Paul should be renounced in principle, for it has perpetuated a falsification of the Gospel." Another speaker complained that "the exaggerated display of the crucified Jesus is intolerable in the German Church."

Yes, I recognize that the likeness is not exact. Allowances must be made for all the subtle differences that flow from language, time and culture. But the similarity is sufficient to make one’s hair stand on end. As far as we know, George never labored as a homosexual prostitute and Adolf never was a career drunk. But George said there is nothing wrong with dictatorship, as long as he runs it, and Adolf certainly agreed.

Certainly one big reason for the perversion in today’s American church is the utterly spurious, unscriptural doctrine, according to which man is basically good, and therefore can "save" himself simply by making a "decision" to "accept" Jesus as his "personal savior." That perverted doctrine says in effect that man is already "half-saved," a lot better than he is, the result of which is the hubris that can produce a Hitler or a Bush.