After 2000 years, a lot of people still hope that Jesus will return. But what do they expect to happen when he does? Will Jesus make things right? Will there be a showdown between the forces of good and evil? Will evil people burn in hell forever, and will there be no mercy? And how may this work out in practice?

And, who are the good people and who are the evil people? What about Buddhists and atheists? They do not believe in a god. And Hindus? They believe in many gods. Or Jews, Christians and Muslims? Who is right? Perhaps Jesus already returned, sort of at least, as a warning to us all.

The personification of evil

Jesus is the personification of goodness, while Adolf Hitler is the impersonation of evil. A closer inspection reveals some intriguing parallels between them. Many Germans considered Adolf Hitler their saviour and worshipped him like one. Some Christians believe there will be a rapture when Jesus returns (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Rapture means ecstasy, enchantment, enthusiasm and admiration. Few persons in history caused as much enchantment as Hitler. And the motto of the Third German German Empire was, ‘One people, one empire, one leader.’ And this is what Christians and Muslims expect when Jesus returns.

Hitler told the Germans that they were the chosen people because of their superior race. Many Jews believe they are the chosen people because of the special relationship between God and the Jewish people. Like Moses, Hitler promised that he would end the unjust oppression, in this case, caused by the Treaty of Versailles. He claimed that his Third German Empire would last a thousand years, while the Bible tells us that the reign of Christ will last a thousand years (Revelation 20:1-6). Perhaps not surprisingly, a British intelligence report noted that Hitler had a messiah complex.³

In traditional agricultural societies, lands remained within the family. The Bible states that the bond between the people and the land cannot be broken and that the land cannot be sold (Leviticus 25:23). That is similar to the Nazi ideology of Blood and Soil, which focuses on ethnicity and homeland. It stresses the importance of the land people live on and celebrates rural living. Selected lands were made hereditary. Those lands could not be mortgaged or sold.

The Hitler we know from the history books emerged out of circumstances. He could have been a painter if the Vienna Art School had not declined his application. And Hitler would not have sought revenge if Germany had not lost Word War I. And if there had been no widespread antisemitism already, he probably would not have hated the Jews. The following short animation picture tells more:

Hitler’s political views

Like many Germans, Hitler considered the Peace Treaty of Versailles unjust. The treaty stipulated that Germany accepted responsibility for causing World War I and had to pay massive reparations. The economist Keynes warned about the harsh peace terms imposed upon Germany, already shortly after World War I.

Hitler opposed interest. He had attended a lecture by Gottfried Feder named The Abolition of the Interest Servitude. It was the reason why Hitler joined the National Socialist Party. Hitler’s views on interest were similar to those expressed in the Bible and the Quran. The ideas of Feder became central in his views on international finance.

Hitler believed that the Germans were racially superior to other peoples and that Germany had to conquer territory to create more living space for the German people. That may have been the reason for him to start World War II. Hitler also thought that the Jews were secretly conspiring to gain world leadership.

A look in the mirror

Hitler was good at giving speeches, which were angry rants that fired up his following. Some of Hitler’s sponsors saw his messianic potential long before he became famous. During the Great Depression, Hitler gained popularity and grabbed power in Germany as the following short animation picture shows:

He started a war that killed fifty million people. Ten million people died in the Holocaust, of which six million were Jews. When American troops entered Germany in 1945, they were appalled by what they found in the concentration camps. Few people imagined it could be that bad, even though reports about the camps came in as early as 1943.

Words can never describe the horrors of the Nazi regime. In times of peace, it is hard to imagine that people can be that cruel. In times of war, it becomes easier to understand. The Nazis thought that they did the right thing. They believed that the human race needs improvement and that there is no place for the weak and the unfit. It is survival of the fittest taken to the extreme. History is full of tales of brutality and slaughter, but the Nazis outdid them all. The Nazis may be the closest thing to pure evil that ever existed. If there ever has been an Antichrist, Hitler would be the most suitable candidate.

In several ways, Hitler is like Christ in the way many expect him to be. They expect a final reckoning amounting to an atrocity one hundred times worse than World War II. Billions of people might lose their life or could face eternal torture in hell for not having the correct beliefs. If you think of it, being tortured eternally in hell is worse than starving in a concentration camp because there is no end to it. And Hitler killed and tortured only a fraction of the people that some expect Jesus to murder and torment on Judgement Day. If that is your expectation, I hope that Hitler has shown you what your beliefs mean in practice.

There is a lesson overlooked, which has become evident in modern multicultural societies. Some ethnic groups do not integrate well and cause more problems and harm than others. For centuries, the Jews did integrate into their host societies and clung to their identity. And they were engaged in harmful activities like charging interest on loans. There is a reason for that. Christians were not allowed to charge interest to their fellow Christians, while Jews were not allowed to do other professions. Money lending became an obvious choice. Blaming the Jews is pointless, but we must understand cause and effect. Minority groups are discriminated against and do not always integrate into their host societies. There are two sides to those situations. We need shared values and social cohesion to work together, so discrimination and identities must end. We are all one.

Eva Braun

Eva Braun was the mistress and later wife of Adolf Hitler. Most historians consider Her an insignificant figure who did not take part in political decisions. But opinions differ. A letter demonstrates that She knew of the concentration camps and the gas chambers. Some Nazi officials close to Hitler have stated that Braun was at the centre of Hitler’s life for most of his twelve years in power. She was committed to Hitler, won his affection, gave him moral support, and enjoyed a healthy sex life with him.⁷

After learning about a failed plot to kill Hitler in 1944, She wrote to him, ‘From our first meeting, I swore to follow you anywhere even unto death. I live only for your love.’ Over twenty plots to kill Hitler did not succeed, making Hitler believe that a supernatural force protected him. When the end of the Third Empire neared, Braun became merrier. She married Hitler and committed suicide together with him. That may have been the romantic ending She had in mind and why all the assassination attempts on Hitler failed.

For Eva, the story may not have ended here. She may have taken up another role to become Marilyn Monroe instead. While watching a Netflix documentary about Monroe’s life, I considered the idea. Immediately after the thought, the word goddess appeared on the screen. Monroe had an affair with President John F. Kennedy. He later dumped Her and was assassinated shortly afterwards. A set of peculiar coincidences surround the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. They appear to be part of an intricate plot involving the premature deaths of US Presidents, including James A. Garfield. Furthermore, the Kennedy family suffered a series of accidents and early deaths called the Kennedy Curse.

The prophecy of the Holocaust

Rumour has it that Nostradamus predicted the rise of Adolf Hitler, but that is not true. Far more ominous are the prophetic references to a number of six million Jews in danger of being exterminated or a coming Holocaust of Jews that appeared in Jewish magazines before World War II. It is not as remarkable as it might seem. The six million figure first emerged because six million Jews lived in the Russian Empire before World War I. The Jews in Russia suffered from a hostile government and pogroms. Pogroms were violent riots incited to massacre or expel the Jews.

The six million figure continued to circulate in Jewish media after the Russian Empire had collapsed. It subsequently became the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust.⁸ The prophetic statements are eerie, like the reference to the end date of World War I on the licence plate of Franz Ferdinand’s car. The most notable ones are listed below:

• In 1911, Max Nordau, co-founder of the World Zionist Organisation, together with Theodore Herzl, pronounced at the tenth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, that six million Jews would be annihilated.
• Shortly after World War I in 1919, Zionists feared that a Holocaust of six million Jews was imminent in Europe.
• In 1936, the New York Times reported that Zionists were lobbying for a Jewish state in Palestine to save the Jews from a European Holocaust. That was three years before World War II and five years before the extermination camps came into existence.
• In 1939, The Jewish Criterion predicted that the coming world war would annihilate six million Jews in East and Central Europe.
• In 1940, the Jewish leader Nahum Goldmann predicted that if the Nazis achieved victory, six million Jews would be doomed to destruction.

Hitler led Europe to destruction. ‘Never again’ became the motto following the Holocaust. Nazism is an ideology of hate, and the Holocaust is the ultimate outcome of hatred. But there is a lesson overlooked. The issue has reasserted itself in modern multicultural societies. There is a limit to the diversity we can handle, and there is a lack of unity because of identity politics. Tribal conflict may only end once humanity has one people, one empire, and one leader. We need shared values and social cohesion to overcome our differences. And we need an ideology of love rather than hate to make it happen.

Another conclusion is that we merely exist to entertain God. We are nothing. God did not seem to care about Jesus, Hitler or the Jews. It is unlikely that God cares much about you or me. That does not make God evil. Few people care about virtual reality characters in a computer game, and those who do, are crazy. We are nearing a global collapse of human civilisation because the planet cannot bear the burden of humanity much longer. We may need a leader as determined and uncompromising as Adolf Hitler to save us from our stupidity. And so, we are advised not to end up on the wrong side of history once the end times arrive.

Latest revision: 23 July 2022

Featured image: Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler

1. 1 Thessalonians 4:17 [link]
2. Revelation 20:1-6 [link]
3. WWII Adolf Hitler’s profile suggests a messiah complex. BBC (2012). [link]
4. Leviticus 25:23 [link]
5. Blood and soil. Wikipedia. [link]
6. Eva Braun. Wikipedia. [link]
7. Nazi loyalist and Adolf Hitler’s devoted aide: the true story of Eva Braun. The Guardian (2010). [link]
8. The Six Million Jews. [link]