Everytime I see someone ramble about how all kinds of famous people have been accused of being The Antichrist throughout history they always throw Hitler into the list. But was he though???
I have an interest in studying past theories about Bible Prophecy that turned out to be wrong, knowing the history of how people have read Revelation and other Bible Prophecies is useful. And frankly....
I've had trouble finding any evidence that people at the time thought Hitler was the Antichrist. A google search on the subject brings up a lot of websites that have all the key words but aren't about that at all. As well as the Nostradamus predicted Hitler stuff that misleadingly uses the word Antichrist. And there is a site listing The 7 most popular contenders for the title 'Antichrist' that says on the Hitler entry "For obvious reasons" and nothing else, no elaboration or sources at all.
It wasn't difficult for me to find the documentation on Napoleon being believed to be The Antichrist at the time, even though that subject also has the Nostradamus distraction. It is well documented that Tsar Alexander and many people in Britain thought he was, even though their reasons for why and what that meant reflected very different basic views of Eschatology. In fact people thinking Napoleon was the Antichrist is actually a major plot point in the novel War and Peace but all the film adaptations have left that out. And while I was looking into the original Napoleon by pure accident I stumbled upon a book written during the reign of Napoleon III arguing he was The Antichrist, which repackages a lot of the original Napoleon arguments.
What's interesting is I found pretty quickly evidence of people in the 20s and 30s thinking Mussolini was the Antichrist. Here is one book written back then.
https://www.amazon.com/Mussolini-Antichrist-Introductory-Chapters-Nebuchadnezzars/dp/B00088FFCM
And apparently some American missionaries met with Mussolini and talked with him in person about it.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/the-day-missionaries-met-with-mussolini-to-show-him-the-bible-predicted-him-as-the-antichrist/
Mussolini was literally trying to restore the Roman Empire, so he fits the Biblical scenario in a way that Hitler didn't (the revived Roman Empire view isn't purely a product of anti EU hysteria, it was part of the Napoleon argument as well since he was very much a new Caesar). He offered to give Italian Jews a homeland in Ethiopia, which implies to me if he'd had control of the Holy Land he may have been willing to offer it to the Jews. He wasn't as blatantly anti-Semitic as Hitler.
That's the thing, Hitler being blatantly Anti-Semitic from day one was a pretty big argument against it being him. Almost all Futurist Premillenial Christians expect The Antichrist to at least start out as a friend of the Jews, Dispensationalists and some others think he'll betray them eventually, but few expect him to be obviously their enemy from the beginning.
What's really disturbing is how popular it was to think FDR was the Antichrist. American Evangelicalism was taking it's anti-Progressive form a lot earlier then people realize.
Maybe it was more of a thing within Germany, stuff not written in English? Thing is most Continental European Protestants held a Historicist view of Bible Prophecy that insisted on the Antichrist being the Pope, and the Pope excommunicated the Nazis. Maybe the Catholics of Germany and Austria considered it, but modern Catholics in general have been not as interested in End Times subjects.
I have seen writers decades later try to argue that the Antichrist will be Hitler somehow risen from the dead, the "Mortal wound was healed", because no Resurrection could shock the world more then that. But that's just it, Hitler didn't get his current most obviously Evil person ever reputation over night, it really didn't fully happen till he had been dead for awhile already, after the full extremity of the Holocaust was shown to the world at the Nuremberg trails. Before that he was just one of many historical tyrants who the allies didn't necessarily hate any more then they hated the Kaiser during WWI.
Maybe I'm wrong, I can't claim I've read every book or article or sermon on Bible Prophecy from the 1920s, 30s and 40s. But I'd expect the traces of it to be easier to find online. If anyone has any information I don't please let me know in the comments.
