The belief in the animal nature of man explains some of the more bizarre and seemingly inexplicable aspects of the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of cattle or poultry can be legally and ethically slaughtered to prevent the spread of cattle disease or bird flu. If people are essentially animals, who-except a born weakling, a pacifist windbag, or someone who thoughtlessly parroted Jewish nonsense-would allow poetical ethical notions to interfere with the need to eliminate harmful human beings for the good of society? By the way, I could slaughter a hundred thousand chickens to prevent the spread of bird flu and then go home and enjoy a normal life with my family-and so could someone who rid the earth of some noxious and harmful subhumans.

Also, we breed better forms of cattle or horses, and there is nothing wrong with that. Himmler was being perfectly logical and reasonable in trying to breed better and more advanced types of humans-if, that is, people are essentially no more than animals as Darwinists claim. We use the hair and skin of dead animals-why not do the same with people? To waste the skin and other useful by-products of dead people makes no sense at all-if people are the same as animals.

One of the most weird and difficult aspects of Nazi ideology and actions to comprehend is that they followed logically from certain presuppositions. The Nazis had a clear, consistent, and coherent world-view and acted accordingly. Much of their world view-thought not all of it of course-can be found in the writings of Haeckel, and of many other less prominent German social Darwinists who shared his views.

Returning to our comparison, both Haeckel and Hitler had a sense of hierarchy. Some human animals were higher than, superior to, and worth more than others. This follows logically from an evolutionary scenario-and which group of people, according to secular standards, was the most highly developed in the world? Who had the most advanced technology, and were able to dominate other groups most easily? The Europeans. And who dominated among the Europeans? The Spaniards, the Greeks, the French, the Italians had had their day. The Eastern Europeans were dismissed as backward. It was the northern Europeans, the Germanic peoples, who occupied by right the highest place on the evolutionary tree-all others were beneath them.

Haeckel and Hitler also had an authoritarian and hierarchical view of government. Haeckel never advocated National Socialism-that was (in its final form) inconceivable given the stability of the imperial government. Nevertheless, a shared philosophical hostility to democracy as unhealthy and unnatural, with a strong emphasis on the right of the stronger to dominate, is significant.

Also significant is the very similar concept of God shared by the two men. This was not the God the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It was a god that emerged out of a modern and uniquely German philosophical tradition, a god that was merely the projection of man-made ideas onto the cosmos as a whole. Hitler was not a systematic thinker outside of the limited confines of his ideology, though within those confines he was rigorously logical. Basically his concept of god was a peculiar hybrid: a combination of a Folkish spirit that advanced the human race through the instrumentality of conflict with the German people as its chosen group, and a scientific naturalist view of God as working through, and being understood by, scientific and natural law.

“God” for Haeckel and for Hitler, and for many others of that day, was thus merely an abstract and impersonal concept. It could be described with language borrowed from religion-”Almighty,” “Supreme Being,” “the Creator,” “Providence”-but it was a god invented by human reason and working within the confines of human reason. This is clearly illustrated by Martin Bormann’s concept of God.

It is worth noting how perfectly Bormann’s concepts match Haeckel’s. Some of those concepts are (quoting a Nuremberg document written by Bormann):

National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable . . . National Socialism is based on scientific foundations . . . National Socialism on the other hand must always, if it is to fulfill its job in the future, be organized according to the latest knowledge of scientific research . . .

. . . the concepts of Christianity, which in their essential points have been taken over from Jewry.

When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not understand by God, like naïve Christians and their spiritual opportunists, a human-type being, who sits around somewhere in space . . . The force of natural law, with which all these innumerable planets move in the universe, we call the Almighty or God.

. . . we National Socialists impose on ourselves the demand to live naturally as much as possible, i.e., biologically. The more accurately we recognize and observe the laws of nature and of life, the more we adhere to them, so much the more do we conform to the will of the Almighty.[i]

That Hitler valued science is insufficiently appreciated. Some quotes from his Table Talk could easily have been made by such apostles of the New Atheism and enemies of Christianity as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, or Richard Dawkins. For example, he reportedly stated that people were attracted to religion by fear of the unknown or by intellectual simplicity, but the time would come “when science can answer all the questions.”[ii]

This source has many comments to that effect. Religion would “crumble” before the “advances of science”; science cannot err too much because it is non-dogmatic and self-correcting. Hitler is quoted as saying, “science postulates the search for, and not the certain knowledge of, the truth.” Religious dogma was in conflict with research, and would collapse “under the battering-ram of science.”[iii]

In what became a minor internet controversy, the aforementioned Richard Dawkins compared one of his opponents, Shmuley Boteach (a Jewish rabbi), to Hitler. Elaborating on his comment, Dawkins was careful to explain that he did not mean Boteach thought like Hitler, or acted like Hitler, only that he sounded like Hitler, or spoke like Hitler.[iv] Not enough people have pointed out that, on the level of ideas, Dawkins can also be compared to Hitler-although Dawkins is far too humane and decent a man to really try and live by the evolutionary theory he professes to believe in. Hitler was much more consistent.

[ii] “Excerpts from Hitler’s Table Talk,” see note 7 above.

[iii] Ibid.

In his book A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People 110 B.C. to the 21st Century (London 2004), Prof. Steven Ozment uses the Table Talk to document Hitler’s belief in evolution and in the superiority of science over religion (p 282). He also states that it was the decline of traditional values and the emergence of modern ideology that opened the door to Hitler (pp. 252, 276, 286).

[iv] Richard Dawkins, “My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach,” The Huffington Post; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-dawkins/my-response-to-rabbi-shmu_b_100910.html; accessed September 2008.