Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

632 DER FUEHRERearth; the second is Germany.' But 'we' are Germany, Hitler had said onanother occasion, and 'we' meant 'I.' And so there were people whoprayed to Hitler, perhaps without realizing that this was prayer.But now there arose voices among the National Socialists, openlydeclaring that the new movement must renew the German belief in God— making it clear that God was embodied in the German people. Manyinsisted that German religion must free itself from the Jewish Biblicaltradition — from 'Satan's Bible,' as Hitler eleven years before, in aconversation with Dietrich Eckart, had called the Old Testament. TheNew Testament was no better, said others, perhaps fewer in number.General Ludendorff, head of a politico-religious sect numbering severaltens of thousands, which he called the 'Tannenberg League,' after hismost famous military victory, rejected both the teachings and the personof Jesus, whom even Gobineau and Wagner had declared to be 'white,'that is non-Semitic. Hitler himself in his youth, as he told his friendHanisch, had been convinced that the historical Jesus had been no Jew,but the son of one Pantherus, a Greek soldier in the Roman army. InLudendorff's eyes, however, the Saviour was the embodiment of Asiaticmagic, a force destructive to the Germanic peoples. And, it must beadded, to him one of the most dangerous agents of the Romanpriesthood was Hitler himself.For it could not be denied that Hitler still belonged to the CatholicChurch. In March, 1933, it is true, he had demonstratively remainedabsent from the services of his Church; there was the story that in hisyouth he had spat out the Host. But he was on terms of intimatefriendship with several Catholic clergymen, such as Abbot AlbanSchachleitner, former head of the Emmaus Cloister in Prague, who after1918 had been driven out by the Czechoslo-vakian revolution. In hiswhole being Schachleitner was a fragment of that German nationaldynamite scattered through the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. Itis possible that his faith in his people overshadowed his faith in hisSaviour. Hitler, who in 1918 certainly still went to confession andcommunion, is even said later to have received the sacrament from thehands of this National Socialist abbot. At all events, on July 1, he let itbe officially pro-