against the Pope and the Catholic Church". Hitler's regime launched an effort toward coordination of German Protestants into a joint Protestant Reich Church (but this was resisted by the Confessing Church), and moved early to eliminate political Catholicism. Even though Nazi leadership was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, Hitler agreed to the Reich concordat with the Vatican, but then routinely ignored it, and permitted persecutions of the Catholic Church. Several historians have insisted that Hitler and his inner circle were influenced by other religions. In a eulogy for a friend, Hitler called on him to enter Valhalla but he later stated that it would be foolish to the worship of Odin (or Wotan) within Germanic paganism. Some historians argue he was prepared to delay conflicts for political reasons and that his intentions were to eventually eliminate Christianity in Germany, or at least reform it to suit a Nazi outlook. Historiography Alan Bullock wrote that Hitler had been raised Catholic, but, though impressed by its organizational powers, repudiated Christianity on what he considered to be rational and moral grounds. Bullock wrote that Hitler believed neither in "God nor conscience", but found both "justification and absolution" in a view of himself echoing Hegel's view that heroes were above conventional morality, and that the role of "world-historical individuals" as the agents by which the "Will of the World Spirit", the plan of Providence is carried out. Following his early military successes, Hitler "abandoned himself entirely to megalomania" and the "sin of hubris", an exaggerated self-pride, believing himself to be more than a man. Once the war was over, wrote Bullock, Hitler wanted to root out and destroy the influence of the churches, though until then he would be circumspect for political reasons: At the turn of the century, leading Hitler expert Ian Kershaw wrote an influential biography of Hitler which used new sources to expound on Hitler's religious views. He concluded that Hitler was spiritual, but nevertheless critical of the churches: British historian Richard J. Evans, who writes primarily on Nazi Germany and World War II, noted Hitler claiming that Nazism is founded on science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition' Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and 'Priests', he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks'." British historian Richard Overy, biographer of Hitler, sees Hitler as having been