Hitler is often claimed to have been an atheist or a Christian by believers and skeptics eager to put the dictator in the other’s camp. Christian historian Richard Weikart argues he was neither in his new book “Hitler’s Religion: The twisted beliefs that drove the Third Reich”.

Richard Carrier is an atheist historian who has researched Hitler’s purported anti-Christian statements often quoted by apologists in his book “Hitler, Homer, Bible, Christ”. He says that Hitler was anti-Catholic but thought of himself as a “positivist” Christian. In contrast Weikart argues Hitler was a pantheist who personally despised Christianity and only used it in public to aid his rise to power.