did the nazis have "God is on our side" engraved

[private_ryan]

in their knives (or written somewhere) during WWII? 30 min of Googling produced no results so I would appreciate any help.

thank you in advance,

[atreides1]

1. GOTT MITT UNS

The Army had "GOTT MITT UNS" on their belt buckles. Try that on google.

[private_ryan]

9. thank you to all

I needed the german words. Got the article.

[dumpster_baby]

12. "We Got Mittens, Too"

That is what the Brits said....

[orestes]

2. Was on their belt buckles

and the phrase was "gott mit uns" i believe

[LoZoccolo]

3. This one is the correct spelling.

"Mit" with one "t".

[ForrestGump]

4. Actually, it was "Got Milk?"

[2cents]

10. On the Eastern Front, "Got Mittens?"

[ForrestGump]

19. Ja! I like it.

:D

I am a jelly doughnut!

[JVS]

5. Yeah, but I believe the tradition of "Gott mit uns" on the buckle...

pre-dates the Nazi's by quite some time.

[PurityOfEssence]

21. They didn't take it off, did they?

The inter-war army was very small, too, so they had to make lots of new ones; if that hadn't been the claim of the leadership, they'd have changed it.

[ForrestGump]

6. SS daggers were inscribed with

"meine ehre heisst treue," that translates as "my underwear are too tight." Either that or "my honor is loyalty." I always get those two mixed up.

[JVS]

8. "Meine Unterhose ist zu eng!"

[ForrestGump]

16. Gesundheit!

No need to get your knickers in ein twist, dudechen...

[Kellanved]

7. no, but the Germany army did and many of them were Nazis

And they marched under the swastika flag, so the real difference is that the motto is older than the Nazis.

The German Wehrmacht had the Motto "Gott mit uns" engraved in the belt-buckles.
Translating it to "God is on our side" is not entirely correct, but I can't think of a better translation right now.

Anyway: it was the Motto of the Prussian royal clan (Hohenzollern) and thus got adopted by the German Empire and the Weimar Republic - and later the Nazis.


All Catholic, Protestant and Jewish German soldiers got the "Gott mit uns" belt-buckle, atheists and followers of other faiths got issued a plain buckle.

The Federal Republic replaced the motto - modern German army Belt-buckles say "Unity and Right and Freedom".

[ForrestGump]

14. Wehrmacht soldiers were forbidden by law from being members

of the Nazi party.

Didn't know that about the generic blet buckle...pretty cool, actually. Better than "Nobody is with us" or "Whatever is with us"

[Kellanved]

15. As long as the Weimar Republic lasted

After the Nazis took over it was quite another story...

[ForrestGump]

17. I think the ban on political party membership continued

after the Nazis took over. Pretty sure of that, anyway. And, for the most part, the army and navy weren't very politicized...Luftwaffe was a different story, but look who was in charge of them.

[Zuni]

27. The Army and Navy were technically apolitical

some units like AG Centre in Russia was full of anti-Hitler officers. Some Wehrmacht generals like Von Reichenau or Model or Schorner were true Nazis. Most were apolitical.
The Army was generally apolitical and just went along with most of the Nazi system.
The Navy was a political too, but Doenitz has been labbelled through history as a Nazi Hitler supporter.

With Goering controlling the Luftwaffe and Himmler controlling the Waffen-SS, those units became much more Nazi in charecter

On edit---Germna military Intelligence, ABWEHR, was probably the most anti-Nazi organization in Germany. They were involved in attempts to reach deals with the allies, sent warnings and plotted against Hitler and other key Nazis

[ForrestGump]

29. Always thought that a good film could be made about Admiral Canaris

He was pretty remarkable.

Ditto, on the other side of the fence, for Otto Skorzeny. In unholy allegiance with some nasty people, but quite an amazing commando.

I think Doenitz's allegiance to the Nazis is way overstated...he was largely a good guy and did his best to work with the increasingly nutty cast of characters that pulled the military's strings.

[DrWeird]

11. Sieg Heil, Cornelius Drebbel!

Seig Heil!

[sasquatch]

13. GOTT MITT UNS=God is with us

It was on the army's belt buckle's.

[ForrestGump]

18. One without the Nazi swastika and one with...

And this one...much older?

[PurityOfEssence]

20. The national insignia on planes, tanks, etc. was A CROSS

And yes, it IS that cross. The Swastika was on the tail of Luftwaffe planes, but the cross was on the top and bottom of the wings, as well as the fuselage.

Christians have been attempting to disavow any religious element to the Nazi government since its inception. Hitler evoked the name of god as a justification for various things, and although one really couldn't call him a religious leader, he certainly used the handy power of religion to his ends. Much of the beef with Communism was due to the godlessness of it.

[DivinBreuvage]

22. The Nazis actually tried to diminish the influence of religion

in German life, but gave up when they found popular opposition too strong. A serious devotion to religious beliefs threatened one's proper devotion to Volk and Führer. This attitude is common among revolutionaries; Robespierre in France and the Bolsheviks in Russia both attempted to supplant Christianity with a pseudo-religion that would channel the strength of religious beliefs away from a "third party" and toward service to the revolution. Himmler too dabbled with creating an occultist pseudo-teutonic religious subsitute, but never made much progress with it.

Some German religious leaders loved Nazism, others opposed it so staunchly that they were punished. As you point out, Hitler's occasional references to God shouldn't be taken as an indication of any personal belief on his part, but as a sop to the traditional influence of religion in German life. Neither he nor Nazism embraced and identified with conservative or fundamentalist religious movements in the same way American Republicans do; and in fact Hitler is on record as being extremely contemptuous of Judeo-Christian religion. The frequently expressed statements on this board to the effect that there was any significant christian religious component to Nazism are in error.

[truthspeaker]

25. true, but Christians were responsible for European anti-Semitism

Going back at least to the 12th Century. Hitler just exploited it.

[Kellanved]

24. same story: the use of the Prussian Cross predates the Nazis

It is the Prussian cross and predates the Nazis by several centuries.
It was originally the flag of the Order of the German Knights.



In contrast of "Gott mit uns" it is still used today, in a slightly different form.

[Zuni]

28. No, you do not understand Hitler at all

Hitler despised Christianity, and in reality he wanted it abolished, since he believed that Jews created it to promote pacifiscm. The Nazis were pagans, who used Chritianity to help convert. It is no surprise that Hitler used religiuos symbols, because he tried to potray himself as a religious figure.
Many, many Christians were persecuted by the nazis.
Hitler's main beef with communism was not about athesim, but about what he saw as a Jewish-led movement. Hitler himself was pretty much an athesist, while some of the more nutty Nazis, like Himmler and other SS and Rosenburg, had elaborate pagan/viking/nordic religious systems.

[Enraged_Ape]

23. I have a 1908 German five-mark piece with "GOTT MIT UNS" on it

So this saying must go back a while.

[Zuni]

26. GOTT MIT UNS---pre-nazi German Army

God is with us was inscribed on beltbuckles.
This predates Nazi Germany. The Kaisers army marched in with the same belt buckle, I believe