How German Mennonites Came To Defend The Use Of The 'Heil Hitler" Greeting

Facebook removed this post on the Anabaptist Collective site, but here are its main points.

Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, Associate Professor of Theology and VP and Dean of the Seminary at Tyndale University in Toronto, has done considerable research on European Mennonites prior to and during World War II. Some of his findings, including a recent post on the use of the "Heil Hitler" greeting, I found chilling and disturbing.

One quote he gives is by Walter [Jakob] Quiring, who in 1934 explained the “Heil Hitler” greeting as being the way in which millions of Germans “express their desire for strength, health, knowledge, in short, the blessing of God for their spiritual leader in his titanic battle against evil.”

Another Mennonite leader, Benjamin H. Unruh, who was exiled to Germany by the Stalin regime in 1921, wrote the following in 1937 to the District Administrator of Fernheim, the pioneer Mennonite colony in Paraguay:

“Heil Hitler” means that one heartily wishes the head of the new Germany hail [well-being]. Above all, believing Christians think of “salvation from God,” whom the Chancellor and Führer honestly confesses, for which we cannot be thankful enough. Just think of Stalin! ... In the Hitler greeting “Hitler” is in the dative case. Have you never read 1 Timothy 2:2? … Adolf Hitler wants nothing for himself, everything only for his Volk. I honour him with my whole heart, and I love him as one can only love a sovereign (Fürst means the first among his people!). Only history will reveal what God through Adolf Hitler has granted the German Volk in its entirety, including Germans in host countries, and what he will still grant to Europe and the world as well. Hitler is the great combatant of Stalin."

Elsewhere, Neufeldt-Fast states that the justification Mennonites and other professed Christians most often gave for supporting Hitler was his rhetoric on resisting the socialism of Stalinist Russia. Sadly, this rationalization resulted in many individuals and whole congregations embracing one of the most demonic regimes in history. Prussian Mennonite church leaders, he notes, "regularly signed formal and informal correspondence to each other in a way that linked traditional Mennonite piety with piety toward the Führer: 'With brotherly greetings, Heil Hitler!' ”

"History does not repeat," Neufeldt-Fast believes, "but it can rhyme." He concludes that apostasy is rarely obvious to people at the time they are embracing it.

This should serve as a reminder of how easy it is to become seduced by any mix of nationalism and the Christian faith.