Third Reich: "a religiosity exclusively oriented to the Germanic community, its mystic roots, its traditions, its future power"

Alberto da Veiga Simões (1888 – 1954), Portuguese ambassador to Germany (1933-1940), understood as early as 1937 the nature of Nazi ideology.

“In August 1933, after long years of service, Veiga Simões was appointed ambassador to Germany. His antagonism to Hitler’s policy and ideology and to the mystic zeal of the Nazi pseudo-religion increased with time, and this emerges in the long and frequent reports he sent to Salazar. For Veiga Simões, the German imperialistic rhetoric breached the limits of the norms ruling relationships between nations in the modern state. He witnessed the way in which the German Reich introduced new and threatening elements into the state, especially the concept of “Volk [which is a] dynamic assimilator of all the analogous elements that fall within the range of its functioning, and [are] in constant movement.” He understood clearly that the cult of the state, the subordination of the family unit to totalitarian guidelines, the disintegration of religious orders, and the gradual destruction of minorities would all produce a dangerous amorphous mass.

“In fact, the Third Reich’s eliminatory zeal regarding all the religious denominations ― Jews, Catholics, Lutherans of all kinds ― has one source and one end: to substitute all the religious truths of human and universal order that share a faith that joins them to all of mankind, with a religiosity exclusively oriented to the Germanic community, its mystic roots, its traditions, its future power.”

Veiga Simões frequently used irony and cynicism to express his contempt for German anti-humanism, which, within Portuguese governmental circles, greatly contributed to his image as an enemy of the Reich.”
Portugal, the Consuls, and the Jewish Refugees, 1938-1941, by Avraham Milgram, Shoah Resource Center, Yad Vashem
http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203230.pdf

Alberto da Veiga Simões in Berlin