Adolf Hitler's Table Talk-1941-1944

58 CONCORDAT WITH

58 CONCORDAT WITH CHURCHES whom I completely trust, to do the work for which I can't find time? Hard men, who act as energetically as I would do myself. For me the best man is the man who removes the most from my shoulders, the man who can take 95 per cent of the decisions in my place. Of course, there are always cases in which I have to take the final decision myself. I couldn't say whether my eeling that I am indispensable has been strengthened during this war. One thing is certain, that without me the decisions to which we to-day owe our existence would not have been taken. 39 14th October 1941, midday SPECIAL GUEST: REICHSFUEHRER HIMMLER Disadvantages of a Concordat with the Churches— Difficulty of compromising with a lie—No truck with religion for the Party—Antagonism of dogma and science— Let Christianity die slowly—The metaphysical needs of the soul—No State religion—Freedom of belief. It may be asked whether concluding a concordat with the churches wouldn't facilitate our exercise of power. On this subject one may make the following remarks: Firstly, in this way the authority of the State would be vitiated by the fact of the intervention of a third power concerning which it is impossible to say how long it would remain reliable. In the case of the Anglican Church, this objection does not arise, for England knows she can depend on her Church. But what about the Catholic Church? Wouldn't we be running the risk of her one day going into reverse after having put herself at the service of the State solely in order to safeguard her power? If one day the State's policy ceased to suit Rome or the clergy, the priests would turn against the State, as they are doing now. History provides examples that should make us careful. Secondly, there is also a question of principle. Trying to take a long view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable on falsehood ? When I think of our people's future, I must look further than immediate advantages, even

THE FATE OF CHRISTIANITY 59 if these advantages were to last three hundred, five hundred years or more. I'm convinced that any pact with the Church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such a compromise. Thus the State will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse. An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the State, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science. That's why I've always kept the Party aloof from religious questions. I've thus prevented my Catholic and Protestant supporters from forming groups against one another, and inadvertently knocking each other out with the Bible and the sprinkler. So we never became involved with these Churches' forms of worship. And if that has momentarily made my task a little more difficult, at least I've never run the risk of carrying grist to my opponents' mill. The help we would have provisionally obtained from a concordat would have quickly become a burden on us. In any case, the main thing is to be clever in this matter and not to look for a struggle where it can be avoided. Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can't, or can't yet, be explained—that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can't satisfy them with the Party's programme. Time will go by until the moment when science can answer all the questions. So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the