#STRask - If the Idea of Intrinsic Human Value Came from Christianity, Then What Happened with Germany in World War II?

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Questions about what happened with Germany in World War II if the idea of intrinsic human value came from the Christian worldview, and how to explain the fact that Christians on both sides of World War II slaughtered each other while claiming to fight in the name of God.   If the idea of intrinsic human value came from the Christian worldview, then what happened with Germany in World War II? How do you explain the reality that World War II saw roughly 40 million Christians slaughtering other Christians—both sides claiming to fight in the name of God?

Thanks for joining us on the hashtag STRASK podcast. Actually, thanks for joining us for the podcast. You're not on the podcast. Okay, but you are, Greg. So I'm going to ask you a question. And this one comes from Dave. And just to set up this question, it came in response. Alan had sent out an email, Alan Schleiman.

Every month he writes a newsletter for his supporters. We also put it on the website. And this email went out, and it was about how the idea of intrinsic human value came from the Christian worldview. And it's affected how we view reality. And we don't even realize that it came from Christianity. Right. Okay. So this question came back in response from Dave.

What happened then with Germany in World War II? Okay. I presume that this question is meant to rebut the particular claim that human beings are made with intrinsic value, and that's part of the Christian worldview, and the Western culture is deeply influenced by that, and it is flourished for that reason. But just because there are exceptions to the rule doesn't mean that it disqualifies the rule. rule. What Alan was observing was that, as we see, the unfolding and development of Western civilization, it was influenced by ideas. And the ideas that influenced it were directly related

to the prosperity. For example, science. Okay, scientific method, Francis Bacon, he was a Christian. These are guys that you read Stephen Myers' new book or most recent book on, here goes the title. The Rebirth of the God Hypothesis, is that? The return of the God hypothesis. The point that those early scientists understood the concept of law, book, and clockwork mechanism. These were three different metaphors they used to describe the nature of the universe. all this entailed the notion of intelligent design. So science grew out of that Christian worldview, the whole scientific enterprise didn't come out of a pagan worldview because they didn't have the

resources in their worldview to do that. What did the slavery was all over the whole world. Everybody practiced slavery. But it was only the Western civilization that had practiced it, inconsistent with their views, the groundings of their views, that, you know, came to their senses and then abolished it in virtue of the views that were there at the foundation. So you're going to have what outliers of sort because part of the Christian worldview is that human beings are fallen, which is why you have a bicameral or tricameral system here, the legislature, the executive branch, the judicial, because now power is divided up because our founders understood that human beings were fallen.

There had to be a balance of powers, all right? But sometimes that balance of powers is lost, and that's what happened in Germany in 1933 when Hitler was elected as what they call them, not premier, but chancellor, whatever he was. And then took over entirely a couple of years later. And then that whole system was abolished. In other words, all the things that were part of or foundational to the Christian worldview were set aside and a whole new set of values came in. That doesn't, it seems to me, that doesn't argue that or it doesn't indicate that what Alan said about Western civilization isn't true.

We see it everywhere. It just means that another feature of the Christian worldview that human beings are fallen can override our foundational conviction that human beings are made the image of God and have intrinsic value. And so that in the case of the Third Reich, they can say, livin, son, vert, In other words, this is life not worthy of life. That was directly contradictory to the Christian worldview. But that's because another foreign ideology had taken power and was able to live contrary to it. So I'm not sure what Dave thinks the Third Reich, in a sense, indicates or even proves with regards to the notion of Western civilization having the idea that human beings are made the image of God in virtue of their biblical foundations.

It's just obvious everywhere. Are there going to be exceptions, of course? Are there exceptions in every culture, every town, and every city in America to those things where people still do not live consistently with that desire? The question is the ideas that have formed the foundation. We've gotten away from those to our detriment. And the further we get away from those ideas that further, culture actually deteriorates. The closer we get to those ideas, the more it reverses that process

of deterioration. So you have to look at kind of what was going on in the ideas behind this. Did the ideas of Christianity lead to what happened in World War II? I think they very clearly did not. In fact, if you look at, and there are lots of books, that talk about this. In fact, one I just finished was John West's book endowed by our creator, where he goes through the Christian worldview ideas behind the founding of this country. But then what he starts to explain is that what happened is when Darwinism took hold and the ideas of Darwinism, you start to see all these ways that these foundational ideas in this country began to be undermined. And this happened everywhere. It wasn't just in this country.

So think about how this idea that we are only animals that we were, I was going to say we were created, but we happened to come about because of some animals were stronger than others. They had adaptations. They survived longer. And so it's just survival of the fittest, basically. Now, out of this idea, the view of human beings began to do. change, especially among the kind of intellectual elites where this was popular. So what you find out is things like eugenics. So people said, well, why are we keeping, why are we taking care of all these people who are not worthy of life? Why are we doing this? So what you start to see in Germany,

but also elsewhere, also here. It actually started here. Starded here. Eugenics started here. With Planned Parenthood, Gell. What's her name? Oh, she was part, yeah, Margaret Sanger was part of that movement. But you start to see this idea of treating human beings as animals that came about by chance, not with the image of God with intrinsic value. because there came to be these efforts to sort of manage the evolution of human beings by managing who could have children and who couldn't as a way of getting the best of our population. So you can read stuff that Darwin said about this.

You can read people in the same era. Even the title of the Origin of Species, that's the short title. The long title talks about how nature is favoring best. races or something to that effect. I don't know. But you could look it up. Well, and there's – It was another book, and I can't think of the name of it that he wrote that was more

specifically making claims about the different races and how they – they – since they didn't all have one ancestor of human being or they've evolved to different levels, so some are worth more than others. And all of these ideas started coming in. And then Germany began by euthanizing. I think this is the case, euthanizing those who were disabled in different ways. That's right. Right.

I've written about this in the great book Nazi Doctors by Robert J. Lifton chronicles all of this. Yeah. So what you see is you see how it's the Darwinian ideas that came in and their view of human beings that was taking over amongst the elites and the people with power and the people writing their ideas and spreading their ideas that were popular among the elite. these were the ideas that were taking hold that led to all these various problems. Right, right. And Hitler, he really liked Darwin's ideas. I mean, the survival of the fittest, and you have social Darwinism that came out of that, which ironically, a lot of people like Richard Dawkins now will completely disavow.

Oh, we're not into social Darwinism. That is the strong rule of weak on a social system. But I don't know why not in light of his presuppositions about this. But Hitler was also very taken with Nietzsche, and Nietzsche's Ubermensch, which is the overman, the Superman, as it were. And Hitler saw himself in that category, the Superman overpowering the weaker people. And as you pointed out, the killing process started with the younger, the defective, in their view, human beings, life not worthy of life. this was called healing. This was a healing act for the race and for the vulk for the people to weed out these specimens, these individuals that were weaker. And it came precisely because of a

change in the view of the intrinsic value of human beings based on the image of God. That's right. Because if we do not, if we do not have intrinsic value based on the image of God, then we are our abilities. That's the only thing you can base our value on. And then some people are worth more than others because some people are better at things than others. And some people can't express all of their capabilities. And so they're worth less. And so this came from that idea. Now, one thing that's really interesting, I read a couple of books last year. One was called Mission at Nuremberg and one was called The Struggle for a Soul. And they were both about chaplains who were interacting with the lead Nazis who were about to go on trial at Nuremberg.

It is fascinating. The, gosh, the struggle for a soul, I think that was the one, I think it was Eichmann, that was about, and it's practically just a transcript. So you can actually see what his ideas were. And I can't remember who said what at which point, but I remember reading that one of them was saying they had to denounce Jesus in order to be in the SS because they were against Jesus. Like, this is the thing. You can be giving lip service to a, you know, a type of Christianity to your people, even if that's not driving what you're doing. And for the people who are actually in the know, Christianity was not driving what they were doing. It was paganism and it was Darwinism.

And so those two books were very interesting to see how they were thinking and what their views were. So if somebody wants a real education on these things and you're willing to go in for the long haul, read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shearer, because that is the quintessential work to track the political and philosophical views of the era because he was there for the whole thing and his reporter there. and it's over a thousand pages, and it is fascinating. I read it two years ago, but it's also – there was a chapter in there that I honestly I could not continue reading. And it wasn't the one about the concentration camps. It was about what Hitler planned to do. That was part of it.

And I've been to two concentration camps by Dona Knauzhwitz in Poland. That wasn't it. It was what Hitler planned to do when he won and how he planned to do. enslave the rest of the European continent, sans Jews now, because he's going to destroy them, in order to serve the Volk, the German people. Take all that land and then use that. Leibostrom, the living room, living space is what the expansion was justified by, and he was a tremendous opportunist.

He would posture as a Christian when it was helpful, but that wasn't his belief system, and naive people have latched on to that and made a big fuss about, well, well, Hitler was a Christian. Really? You know, anyway. You can also look at what was happening with liberalism in the churches. And by liberalism, I mean, I don't mean the political moniker there. I'm talking about the theological idea that said, you know, it kind of denied the supernatural, and it was more about helping people, and it was a whole different thing. But that had taken hold, too. So at the same time, that Darwinism was taking hold, the churches were being gutted in terms of what they were teaching. And you can see this if you just read about Bonhofer and find out what was going on with him.

And the people around him, you can see what was going on with the churches. So this is what happened in World War II at Germany. It wasn't because of the Christian worldview. It was because of a slow rejection of the Christian worldview and the coming in of other ideas. It was the corruption of that view because another idea had come in. that actually overwhelmed that culture and is overwhelmed ours. So just because your culture is built on a certain foundation of values that is like this one that we're talking about, it doesn't mean it can't shift.

And over time, these things do. You know, ideas of consequences, what is John Stone Street says, bad ideas have victims. And what we've had is a steady diet of bad ideas for the last 150 years or longer now, almost 200 years since Darwin in the mid-1850s or so, the origin of species. What is it, 1859 or 1856? And all these ideas begin to take root, and they influence how people think. And what we've seen here, especially with Hitler, is he's just living out that ethos, the ethos of power, the Ubermensch, you know, the strong man,

and which fit perfectly with a materialistic view of reality, at least with regards to human beings, even though he had some spiritual pagan influences in his life. All right, let's go to a question from Jesse. It's related to this last one. How do you explain the reality that World War II saw roughly 40 million Christians slaughtering other Christians, both sides claiming to fight in the name of God? All right. There are two things that ought to be obvious from that observation.

Claiming to fight in the name of God means nothing. The claim means nothing. What one has to do is look at the details of the circumstances and see whether it's reasonable to say that one side who is fighting is on the side of virtue. If a person is on the side of virtue against vice, then I think it's safe to say God is on our side, because God is pro-virtue and he's not pro-vice. All right.

So just because people make this claim doesn't mean anything. It means nothing at all. Ignore it. Make your own assessments about the nature of the conflict. Secondly, when somebody says they're Christian, that means nothing at all. Now, it's a little bit of an overstatement. But the claim to be a Christian is not a Christian. enough because 65% of the people in this country or so, I think, self-identify as Christians,

but do you think that these are 65% of the population of our country are dedicated followers of Christ? No, that's nonsense. Maybe 5%, maybe the same number of real Christians as atheists, as it turns out. So just because a person kind of hangs his hat on a Christian religion, doesn't it all mean that they're Christian? What's a common complaint against Christians? The church is filled with hypocrites. You're right. There's all kinds of people who are not Christian at all, but they claim the moniker.

And so what one has to do is look at the behaviors to see if the behaviors are consistent with a Christian ethic. Now, also, this is another thing we have to be careful of. because Jesus doesn't, Jesus isn't the whole of the Christian ethic. From Genesis to Revelation, we got the whole of the Christian ethic, the biblical world view. And there's all kinds of things that are involved in that that Jesus did not address. He came for a specific reason. He did not come to champion the poor or the outcast or restore social justice. That is completely absent from the Gospels.

The word poor, the few times it's used by Jesus, is using, is talking about the poor and spirit. And those who were oppressed, as Peter puts it, oppressed by the devil, because he never did anything to help any poor people, financially poor, or to release any captives from any prison. He didn't do a thing. He had a different message, okay? So, Jesus' message, we don't want to say Christianity, the Christian worldview, and the Christian ethic that we live out is just the ethic of Jesus, because Jesus was there to accomplish a very specific thing as the Messiah to die on the cross and to communicate important stuff,

but not to give the whole picture. The whole picture is in everything else that we see in the writings of Paul, after Jesus and John and Peter, et cetera, and also the Hebrew prophets in that they touched on ethical issues that apply to all human beings. It's that full or thing that is the substance of the Christian worldview. So I feel I'm getting a little feeling. of the point. Do you read this question again?

Because I know there's something else I wanted to say about this. How do we explain the reality that World War II saw roughly 40 million Christians slaughtering other Christians? Okay. So the point here is, first of all, you know, we don't want to take the word Christian too seriously when people make these claims or, as I said, a moment ago, being on God's side. You have to look at the behaviors. You have to look at the behaviors.

I, you know, like people we mentioned already, people say, well, Hitler was a Christian. Well, he was an opportunist, and he pretended to be one when it was convenient at the moment, politically convenient. But when you look at his behaviors, obviously there was nothing Christian about anything he did. He didn't even love the German people. He hated the German people. He thought they all ought to die the whole thing. If you follow anything, what happened in the last couple months of the war. And he didn't care about them.

So you've got to look at the behaviors of these people, not just how they labeled themselves, okay? And nothing about the behaviors of the Third Reich was in any way Christian. Which we've already brought up and explained. But the thing is, of course, there were Christians fighting for the Germans. I mean, a lot of people didn't have a choice. They were fighting. And Christians on the other side were fighting them. Yes, that's true.

And unfortunately, that's because Hitler was in charge. So we're in a fallen world, and that's how things worked out. It would have been better if the real Christians there didn't have to die for Hitler, but that's because we're in a fallen world, and the leaders have that kind of influence on their people. And we see this with Israel, too, throughout when they had the bad kings, there were certainly good Jewish people under them, but they still suffered with the whole nation because that's just how it works.

That's right. And I forgot to say, I'm going to add one last thing about the last question. Because if you want to see, this last question about what happened with Germany, we already said Hitler wasn't a result of the Christian worldview. If you want to see what's a result of the Christian worldview, look at the Christian worldview, look at Cory Tinboom. Look at the Christians who protected Jews and took care of them and saved their lives and did it because of Christ. So if you want to see how the Christian worldview shaped their understanding of human value and intrinsic value, that's where you should go.

The people who actually put their lives on the line for the Christian worldview, not the people who used it in order to mitigate. manipulate others or use the idea of it. Dieter Bonhofer fighting a different kind of battle, lost his life as a result of that fight. Martin Niemöller, also a Lutheran pastor, was in Dachau for five years, survived the war, but suffered terribly, as did many other pastors who were willing to stand up in some measure. I mean, suicidal to directly oppose Hitler.

They had to be very careful how they did it. But many did lose their lives. Niemolar survived Achao, but many didn't. And many survived by doing what was right. And the Corey Ten Boom story is an example. They lost members of their family and some survived, you know. So there you go. All right.

Thank you, Dave and Jesse. And we would love to hear your question. Just send it on X with the hashtag STR Ask. Or if you just go to our website at STR.org, all you have to do is look for our podcast page. You'll find a little link at the top of the page and then look for hashtag SDRSk and find the link at the top left of the page to submit a question. We'd love to hear your question. Thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.