No one in America thought Hitler was The Antichrist (a follow up post)

 This is a follow up to this post.

https://midseventiethweekrapture.blogspot.com/2019/08/did-anyone-actually-think-hitler-was.html

I've done some more research on this topic largely thanks to a book called Naming The Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession which focuses on the history of popular Antichrist views among Futurist Americans.

In that prior post I talked about the Mussolini theory existing at the time, and well it wasn't just a couple people, the popular mainstream view among most Futurist Evangelicals especially the Dispensationaliists was that he would be either Mussolini or rise to power via the League of Nations, and of course some combined those views.

The reason none of these Christians who were anti-Communist looked to Stalin or the USSR is because they knew Magog was Russia.  And while occasionally some have tried to make Gog and the Antichrist the same person they've generally been viewed as separate, and it turns out at this time it was popular to view Gog and the Antichrist as being adversaries.  So yeah the anti-Bolshevism of the Fascists in that context further helped make them an Antichrist candidate agaisnt Stalin as Gog.

But what about the fringe minorities who broke from standard Dispensationalist orthodoxy?  Well only one alternative approach to Bible Prophecy of this era was considered worth noting by this book anyway, and that was the views of William Dudley Pelley and other members of his Silver Legion of America commonly called The Silver Shirts.  They were the progenitors of what we today know as the Christian Identity Movement, an Antisemtic offshoot of British Israelism (which was Philosemitic originally).

The internet talks a lot about Post-War American Neo-Fascism, but the Silver Legion of America was the actual American Fascist Party of the Fascist era.  However they were distinct from their European Counterparts in the way they incorporated aspects of traditional American Fundamentalist Apocalypticism.  Pelley said different seemingly contradictory things about the Identity of The Antichrist.  He accused The Jews, Communists, FDR and Bernard Baruch.  What's interesting is that what he said about Hitler makes him the opposite of The Antichrist.  

There is no real basis in Revelation for some good mortal political leader who'll be opposed to or precede the Antichrist, but Extra-Biblical traditions have constantly tried to create one, from the Last Roman Emperor to the Great Catholic Monarch to the Islamic Mahdi tradition to Mormonism's Rider on the White prophecy. Back when people thought Napoleon was the Antichrist this role was given to Tsar Alexander and maybe also Wellington. Among those turn of the Millennium Evangelical End Times movies there were two that gave some role like this to a Last President of the United States Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 and Left Behind: World At War.  The Silver Shirts opposed the then current President however, Pelley was such a fan of Hitler that he seemed to be all for giving this unofficial Prophetic role to Hitler.

This was a very minority fringe belief however, Pelley ran in the 1936 Presidential Election but couldn't even get close to 0.03% of the vote.  Most Americans who had Futurist views of Bible Prophecy couldn't see Hitler as positioned to be relevant at all.

You may think, "if Hitler's geographical position as leading a country seemingly not mentioned in The Bible is a reason he wasn't eligible then how has accusing US Presidents been so popular?".  I think part of it is a logic similar to the Uncanny Valley, Germany was close enough to the Biblical World that the Prophets could have had a frame of reference to identify it, but the American Continents are so far removed that of course they couldn't have explained them to people living in Judea 2000 years ago.

But also American Exceptionalism has caused American Christians to ignore all logic when it comes to their wanting America to be in Bible Prophecy.  

Historicists of the era focused on the Vatican as they always do, and that never fit the Nazis who were quite Anti-Catholic.  But while Mussolini was also anti-Clerical originally he did wind up making a deal with the Vatican that has made him stay relevant to Historicism to this day.

The only people who might have seen Hitler as the Antichrist were Catholics in Germany and the countries Hitler invaded.  Maybe also the descendants of the Husites in Bohemia.  But I don't even know how to begin investigating that topic in English.

It's also possible some Jews of the time may have identified him with Armilus.  But I also know no Muslims called him the Dajjal because the Nazis actually made a cozy alliance with the radical Muslims in their war agaisnt The Jews.

Why do I want to talk about this subject so much?  Because the commonly unsourced claim that people thought Hitler was the Antichrist encourages a bad stereotype of Futurists, that we can see the Antichrist anywhere.  But the fact is at least during this era they knew certain requirements were necessary besides just being Popular or Evil enough.