Listening to Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” while cleaning the kitchen this evening. 

Hitler wrote about the Austrian Pan-German Nationalist Party of his youth, saying that its “struggle against the Catholic Church . . . robbed it of countless of the best elements that the nation can call its own." Shirer, quoting “Mein Kampf” at 116-117. 

Hitler frequently denounced the Catholic Church and Christianity, especially in private, and publicly taught against their principals, but he left most major attacks to surrogates and sought to bring the churches under state control while giving a “positive” vision for them rather than exclude them outright. 

This is why some trappings of his “faith” that Neonazis use to indemnify him are available. He was a shrewd politician.