Jesus is Savior—Hitler Never Was.

The angel announced to the Christmas shepherd that on that very day their Savior, the Messiah/Christ had been born in Bethlehem, the city of the original and great king, David (Luke 2:8-12).

The Greek term for savior was Soter, a name given to gods men believed would continue to protect them and their countries. It was also given to kings, princes and, in general, to anyone who had acted to save the land and protect its people. Thus the Israelites, in Greek fashion, might have called King David their savior. Now, however, the angel announced that David's descendant, the true and eternal Lord, had come to rescue His people from their great enemies—sin, death and the dark powers led by the devil.

I find it fascinating and disturbing that the Nazis adopted and adapted this term for Adolf Hitler. For millions of Germans in the 1920s and 30s Hitler was their Savior. He was widely beloved, adored and worshipped. Some even suggested that he was the avatar of one of the Hindu gods, making him into a kind of deity. Everyone in Nazi Germany was required to greet one another with the well known raised right arm, open handed salute and the words Heil Hitler! The salute has been used since the end of WW II by neo-Nazis. Their abbreviation for it is 88—8 pointing to the eighth letter in the alphabet, H.

In German the word Heil means salvation. The verb heilen means to heal. Thus a Heiland is a healer or savior. Heiland was the term well known to the German Christian community as the name for Jesus. Hitler accepted this greeting and commanded it. The Heil was more than merely hale, as in our 'hale and hearty'. It meant that the gods or God had given Germany a Savior and his name was Hitler—Heil Hitler! Salvation has come to our nation.

This bit of recent history is a sober reminder that we must never allow a man to be so worshipped and adored, regardless of his leadership.

Hitler—Artist, Thief and Destroyer

Like me you have undoubtedly heard again and again that Adolph Hitler was a second-rate artist. Since I had little or not interest in Hitler's abilities as an artist, I let the whole matter rest at that—until now.

A few days ago I began to listen to another audio book from Audible.com, as I am accustomed to do during my almost daily 45 minute walk. The one I'm listening to is The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert Edsel and Bret Witter.

WW II was the most destructive war in history. This war and the Nazis also caused the destruction and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of paintings, sculptures and other art treasures. The burden of trying to save and preserve what they could fell to a few hundred men and women from thirteen nations, led by a small operation of the Allied armed forces called the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (MFAA). The military operation was made up of a tiny group of eleven men. The book is an entirely fascinating account of the work of these unsung heroes.

Hitler and his henchmen believed that everything that was created by an Aryan or even looked like it was, belonged to the Third Reich. So they made it legal and gave themselves the right to pillage in all directions. The results are nearly impossible to comprehend. We can only thank God for the work of those who hunted these treasures down during and after the war in order to preserve them for future generations. 

Cathedral in Vienna by Adolph Hitler

Getting back to Hitler as an artist, if you do a Google search you will come up with quite a list. Most of the paintings are unknown. But as Randall L. Bytwerk says, "He probably sold several thousand paintings and postcards during his stay in Vienna."

Frederic Spotts' Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics writes, Hitler "had a modicum of talent—at least in sketching buildings—but what technique he learned he picked up on his own. Like most amateurs, he began by painting simple landscapes. . . He had to paint the sort of thing that an unknown and untalented amateur might be able to sell . . ."

This unknown and untalented amateur led in the damaging, desecration and destruction of thousands of items of priceless art and architecture. 

Here Comes The Bride And Richard Wagner

When I was training to be a pastor of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod back in the 1950s I heard my profs tell me that we should never permit the traditional wedding march, commonly known as "Here Comes The Bride," to be played in our churches. The reason given was that this was pagan music, taken from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin and therefore entirely unfitting in a Christian worship service.



I obeyed this injunction during those formative years of my parish ministry. I certainly didn't want pagan music in my churches. Nevertheless, the young women who requested it never seemed to comprehend what I was getting at. Who was this guy Wagner anyway? And what or who was Lohengrin? What did opera have to do with a wedding in the first place? In other words, it was simply a well-known piece of music they had heard at all the weddings they ever attended. But, being obedient and willing to put up with the pastor's idiosyncrasies, they usually went along with it and chose one of the other Christian marches I suggested.


This whole idea of anti-Wagnerian views is related to the fact that my church body is rooted in the Lutheran emigration from Germany in the middle to late 19th century. During those years Wagner's music and his operas at Bayreuth were gaining in popularity. Bayreuth is a city in northern Bavaria,Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Frankish Alb and the Fichtelgebirge. In the third quarter of the 19th century it became the home of Wagner's operas. 

Bayreuth Opera House

All pious Lutherans knew of Wagner's love for the Nordic gods and German-Aryanism, as well as his radical anti-semitism. How then could any true Lutheran allow any such vulgar, pagan, evil music to be played in a Lutheran church? We must choose Lutheran music like that composed by J.S. Bach. 


There are many sites that share details of Wagner's life. I won't comment on it other than to say that Adolph Hitler, born a few years after Wagner died, considered Wagner the "one legitimate predecessor to National Socialism." He loved Wagner's music and the Nazis played it over and over again at their rallies.


It is interesting to learn that the Lohengrin of Wagner's opera by that name was actually a Christian knight of the 10th century. The offensive music is from Act III where Elsa enters the cathedral. This music is called the Bridal Chorus. So what's so terrible about that? Obviously it has to do with Wagner himself. 


Another interesting side note is that Wagner never heard the first performance of his opera in Weimar, Germany on August 28, 1850. He had been involved in one of those many revolutions of the time in the patchwork of German states and fled to Switzerland.


The first performance of the opera was conducted by the great pianist Franz Liszt, who often played Wagner's music and supported and encouraged Wagner while he was in exile in Switzerland.


Another day I'll share more about Wagner's anti-semitism and one of his most vulgar tracts, The Jew in Music,

Destiny And The Holy Lance

Do you believe in destiny? That question plays an important part in my forthcoming novel. Do you?  

It seems that Adolph Hitler did. He believed it was his destiny to lead the Germanic/Aryan peoples to glorious rule of the entire world. To aid in this Hitler claimed it was his destiny to own the mysterious Holy Lance—the very lance driven by the Roman centurion into the side of the crucified Christ.

The Bible Probe website describes this passion of Hitler, together with a long and detailed history of this sacred relic.

"The spear finally wound up in the possession of the House of the Habsburgs and by 1912 was part of the treasure collection stored in Hofburg Museum. According to Ravenscroft it was in September of that year, while living in Vienna and working as a watercolor painter, that a young Adolf Hitler visited the Museum and learned of the lance and its reputation. Dr. Walter Stein, who accompanied Hitler on that visit, remembered, 'when we first stood side by side in front of the Spear of Destiny it appeared to me that Hitler was in so deep a condition of trance that he was suffering almost complete sense-denudation and a total lack of self-consciousness.'

"Hitler later said, 'I stood there quietly gazing upon it for several minutes quite oblivious to the scene around me. It seemed to carry some hidden inner meaning which evaded me, a meaning which I felt I inwardly knew yet could not bring to consciousness...I felt as though I myself had held it before in some earlier century of history. That I myself had once claimed it as my talisman of power and held the destiny of the world in my hands...'

"Hitler saw the lance as his mystical connection with generations of conquering Germanic leaders that had come before him. On March 14, 1938, after he had risen to power as the chancellor of Germany, Hitler annexed the state of Austria and ordered that the spear, along with the rest of the Habsburg collection, be sent to the city of Nuremberg, heart of the Nazi movement."

Hitler was destined, to be sure, but destined to be the most horrible murderer of millions and millions in all of human history.

Historians  H. Buechner & W. Bernhart, "Adolf Hitler and the Secrets of the Holy Lance, claim that a replica of the Holy Lance was returned to the Vienna Museum after WW II, while the real lance may have been squirreled away with other secret Nazi plundered treasure by Himmler and the SS to South America or Antarctica. Many mysteries of that infamous era remain unsolved. 

My Decision To Self-Publish

This past summer has been a time of transition for me. When Sylvia and I went to our vacation home in Colorado for two months I fully intended to devote a major chunk of my time to writing. As it turned out, that didn't happen. What did happen is a decision to move more deeply into self-publishing. For starters I decided to publish the third novel in what I call the Albert and Tillie series.

I decided to do this for a couple reasons. I've dropped a summary of this novel, Freya's Child, into the hands of a about three dozen editors. One after the other said he or she was not interested in representing me to the publishing world. My writing friends kept telling me to persist. Some wise agent would finally come along to represent me, they insisted. I decided to ignore their counsel. Let me tell you why.

What I am trying to do with this novel is unique in a sense. Albert Freitag, my protagonist, is forced to deal with the occult side of the Nazi movement, a side never or seldom portrayed in fiction. To date I have yet to find a novel that explores this issue. Hitler, Himmler and a large number of other Nazi leaders were committed to the overthrow of the Christian church and all it stands for. They sought to replace it with what they considered the real religion of the Aryan race.

Freitag, whose family name means Friday in English, has to question his own faith and his commitment to his wife and newborn daughter. He has to deal with a priestess devoted to this revived worship of ancient Nordic gods. Specifically, she is a devotee of the goddess Freya. The goddess Freya is the Nordic equivalent of Venus or Aphrodite among the Greeks and Romans. She is the goddess of love, family, home--and often war. Albert is forced by this priestess to question his belief in Christ and the entire Christian story. This confrontation goes to the very roots of his existence. Ironically, his last name, Freitag, points to that day in the week originally named after the goddess Freya. In fact, we seldom realize that every day in our week is named after one of the Nordic gods. But I get ahead of myself.

In my story Hulda Schwarz, the priestess, uses her wiles, her beauty, her seductive powers and her considerable contacts with demonic forces to draw Albert away, both from his beliefs and from his wife. The story question is whether he will be able to resist the temptation.

I have found no agents willing to represent me as I strive to surface these issues  in a world now removed by half a century from Nazism and what it represented. However, the gods are still with us! They have not left. They may have lost World War II. The mere humans they used to tear up and destroy the lives of millions are dead. But the gods live on, still ripping down and overthrowing Christian civilization to replace it with the same idolatry, bigotry, hatred, racial prejudice, pride, lust, lawlessness and greed they have always promoted.

Since I found no agent to represent me to the publishing world, I decided to do my own representing. I decided to work with a print-on-demand publisher and some marketing experts who will assist me in getting Freya's Child into print and into the hands of people interested in learning about the occult side of Nazis and the demonic forces that continue to war against everything we Christians have inherited and still believe in. 

Keep tuned for more about my journey in days to come.