Hitler as the Messiah: Come Again?

I had mentioned in my Holocaust blog post that I wanted to blog about a really bizarre and sort of horrific thing I saw at the museum in the Propaganda Exhibit. That thing? Here it is:

You might look at this and be like, well, it's horrific because Hitler's in it, and you're putting it on your blog, and that's pretty horrific. But the reality of it is that this painting has a name, and that name is "In the Beginning There Was the Word." Anyone who knows their Christian Bible will recognize this phrase from John 1:1. There are a million paintings of Jesus out there in which he's emanating light, where he is, in fact, the only light in a room of people listening to him speak. Take this one, for example, by Rembrandt, called "Jesus Among his Students."

The crappy thing about that first photo, the image of the Hitler painting, is that you don't really get the full effect of the painting. In person, the thing is huge, wall-size. The room is black, save the light issuing from perfect angles from Hitler's face to those around him.

The shocking/disgusting thing about this portrayal of Hitler, in my mind, is that it's incredibly messianic. Hitler as Jesus, Hitler as the savior of the German people. The Nazis found religion pretty repugnant, despite forcing religious leaders to swear allegiance and all. In fact, in the Nazi's plans for a new, worldwide capital, there wasn't a single church in the building plans. What does that say? It says that the Nazis devalued religion, period.

So why portray Hitler as the messiah? Why depict him as the shining light of German redemption? Aside from the basic reason that for the Nazis and their masters of propaganda Hitler was Germany's only future in crawling out of economic turmoil and the disgrace of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. But it goes deeper than that. The propaganda artists knew, very well, that they had to play to every last member of the German audience, no matter what they did or didn't believe.

The propaganda machine started small, with basic messages like "Buy War Bonds" and "Bread and Water." The machine really got in motion as it started to change its image, depicting the German as breaking his bonds from the Treaty of Versailles and standing firm in Nationalistic, German values. Still later, and almost in slow-motion ramping up to blunt-force came the blaming of Germany's woes on Jews. Then you had things like this that, well, don't hide their message.

This being a book about the Poisonous Mushroom, which, as you can tell, is a Jew. Surprise? Not really. But beware the poisonous Jew out in the wilderness. This was dished out to kids just as radios were dished out to people -- en masse.

I am fully intrigued and disgusted by Hitler as messiah, however. I'm interested in other depictions of Hitler as messiah, in fact. I'm interested in what the Church thought of those images, too. A simple Amazon book search of "Hitler messiah" produces a bounty of interesting books, including some that cite the Swastika as the new cross -- a new cross for a new messiah.

What do you guys think? Does anyone have experience with this Hitler/Messiah theme? Again, I am horrified/disgusted. Hitler, for all intents and purposes, antagonized Modern Christianity. In Hitler's mind, Christianity was meant to be entrenched in its ancient, almost pagan rituals and understandings.

But seriously. A mushroom?

(Note: As I'm preparing to PUBLISH this, two guys sit down next to me at Starbucks and start discussing Hitler and his secret liquor stash. Weird.)

A Hat Tip to Another Blog.

The post-holiday days have left me feeling sort of tired. Luckily, there are those who are managing to turn out brilliant and thoughtful morsels of wisdom, and this means I get to share their words with the rest of the blogsophere.

This evening? It's a post by A Simple Jew aptly titled "Anticipating His Arrival Every Single Day? "

In this post, ASJ succinctly detailed his feelings about the coming of Moshiach and how he relates -- day to day -- to this idea, and how he davened day after day but never really connected. And then? He read something.

In this letter dated 13 Nissan 5593 (1833), Reb Nosson of Breslov instructed his son to attempt to remember what happened every day and not to regard anything that happened to him as trivial. He further explained that when Moshiach came that Moshiach would be able to reveal to him the meaning of every single thing that happened to him every day of his life.

For me, reading this, it's such a relief. It says to me that the very activities of the every day are significant, and every little piece of every little day means something. As such, those things in our everyday that seem to set us back or lift us up, Moshiach will explain such things -- it's such a personal touch to such a big, gigantic, ridiculously otherworldly concept that is even still very much beyond me. But it's posts like this that help me understand, just a little bit more, what to expect.

On the Donmeh.

We all know about Sabbatai Zevi, the 17th century Turkish Jew who claimed to be the messiah, but later converted to Islam when he was given the choice of conversion or death. His antics appear in Gluckel of Hameln's memoir and in an abundance of other texts. What I didn't know, however, and I don't know that many really know, is that ... there are still followers!

Yes, there are still followers, known as Donmeh, the Turkish word for converts. Also known as the Sabbateans, the Donmeh still exist in parts of the world, including in northeast Iran. No known followers are said to exist in the Western world. These followers represent Zevi under the guise of Islam or Christianity (more often the former than the latter), and save for the observance of some Jewish rituals, are caught in this void of ... well ... I'm not sure what. One of the rituals they take to is circumcision, but get this: at age three, not eight days. Talk about the terrible threes ...

Over on this blog, there is an entire post about the Donmeh, including a listing of their commandments and bits about the different sects. It's pretty interesting stuff, I'd say. So go take a look and be mystified! And if you want to see something related, check out the Donmeh West internet collective for the "foundation for religious education in Neo-Sabbatian Kabbalah and related subjects such as comparative religion and Jungian spirituality."

The Donmeh West collective has a little biography on Zevi, which says "In 1666 the entire Jewish world -- and much of the Christian and Muslim as well -- accepted the Jewish Kabbalist, Sabbatai Zevi, as the Mystical Messiah of Israel (See Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, Princeton University Press, 1973.)" Now, call me crazy, but because Zevi wasn't taken seriously by the rabbis of the Holy Land, and was threatened with excommunication, something tells me that the entire Jewish world was not accepting Zevi as the messiah of Israel.

What a subject. I might have to look into a few of the books cited on the blog post about the Donmeh.