Freud Vs. Hitler on Religion
Essay Preview: Freud Vs. Hitler on Religion
Report this essay
Religious belief in itself is one of the most puzzling and questionable concepts thrown upon us as a society. It is something felt and practiced, yet not seen or fully understood. Religion is a composition and balance of two variables: Materialism and emotion derived from ones psyche. Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany (1933-1945), aspired to create a religion of his own which would construct a structure for the world in his favor. However, Sigmund Freud, a neurologist interested in psychoanalysis, brought upon his own controversial theories of religion as an infantile state of ones delusions. Ones emotions are subject to change in immense variability depending on the independent variable, human beings. Humans provide an absolute amount of combinations one could not possibly summarize all in one general statement. Ones highest good acquired from “religion” is a mixture of their personality, self-identity, past experiences, goals, aspirations towards life and perspective. Primarily, love was meant to be the fundamental cornerstone of religion, but somehow it found itself at the center of all major disputes known to man.
Hitler is considered by many Christians to be the antithesis of all that is good and sought out after by true followers of the Christian/Catholic faith. Hitler became most acknowledged by conservative Christians because of their desires to restore traditional Christian values unbiased by the influences of aliens and minorities. Adolf Hitler promoted a religion of love; he promised the restoration of historic churches, the return of valued German priests to their churches and he spoke a promise of peace. If Hitler believed in such a golden country of peace and tranquility, why would he unleash so much hate, despair, anguish and distress onto the world? It was ironic how the conservatives of the Catholic religion followed him closely and other Christians realized Hitler as a human being was not holy or pure at all. They completely discarded the thought of him ever being a Catholic and pronounced him atheist because of all the sinful things he committed.
Living in an already anti-Semitic society that was hostile and that was living in a bitter-hate world from the economic depression, Hitler grasped this vulnerable Germany and molded her into a shape that would favor him. Even though some people were reluctant, many viewed Hitler as a passage way to a better future. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) severed German nationalism immensely and fed a burning fire of hate into the hearts of its inhabitants towards allied countries, as well as most non-Germans, minorities and especially Jews. Hitler swore by the reestablishment of the church, that it will be stronger than it had been before. The people loved him through his propaganda and false compassion. He strived for creating a superior race of an Aryan Germany.
Such Aryans, Hitler and his closest occultist followers believed, were direct decedents of the Gods. His right hand, Heinrich Himmler – head of the SS, the Gestapo and death camps, financed several expeditions to the far East to the Himalayan mountains, where in a remote area not spoiled or biased by any type of inbreeding of nationalities, Heinrich believed that the direct decedents of G-ds lived. These people were said to have ancestral blood lines leading to the lost and mysterious people of the vanished civilization of Atlantis, they all came from a common proto-indo-European root. These beings had angular features which the Germans considered to be Aryan and the direct vision of what the Caucasian being should look like. The Nazis used these measurements and observed data as a set of standards for qualifications of the Aryan race. These measurements were used to discriminate against Jews, who were commonly portrayed as evil elderly men with hunched backs, long noses and dark, foreign facial features which frightened many Germans and created a stronger prejudice against the stereotype.
Controversially, Hitler placed himself in power of his own “church” propaganda, which so many of his followers so blindly misunderstood the intents of. He preached his devotions to religion, and believed that everything that was in store for unknowing Germany was for the better. Accrediting the thought that religion was a means of keeping human beings in line and under control, Hitler used it as his strongest defense. He did not expect Germany to turn on him because he knew religion was acceptance, and acceptance, instinctively, is among the most desired of feelings of human beings. By nature humans are social creatures, they will not break away, because the means of survival with that also diminish. Hitler knew that religion would instill in the minds of his followers that he is the master of Germany and the inglorious conqueror of Europe. A sense of nationalism through a sense of acceptance would prove religion as a promising means to an end for Adolf Hitler.
Conflicting with the views of Hitler, Sigmund Freud had a very adverse approach towards religion. Freud, a Jew at birth and later a converted self-pronounced Atheist, basically claimed that religion was a childish delusion, a state of deep neurosis. To Freud as a psychoanalyst, religion only existed and formed in the minds of human beings when they are vulnerable to weakness and distress. Religion, he accepted, was a neurotic response to extensive emotional trauma, a means to escape the real world and an illusion created in the mind only for comfort. Once the mind would find serenity and bliss, then it could reject the illusions of religion which it created for itself.
Freud, determined and having his passions subsided in contemplating upon, and studying human cognitive processes, has considered himself one of the few during his era, to not