Freemasons were persecuted by Hitler

From time to time, we see anti-Masons flailing about attempting to ´prove´ that Freemasonry is wrong because Adolph Hitler and his henchmen were fascinated by it. The claim is true - but totally and completely misleading.



Freemasons have for centuries suffered persecution because of their membership in the fraternity. Hitler´s Germany was its ultimate indignity. While those of the Jewish faith endured the greatest loss of life and humanity, most descriptions of the Holocaust refer to "Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons and others" being consigned to the dreaded Concentration Camps and gas chambers.

Author Michael Burleigh notes in his major work The Third Reich - A New History that the SD created surrogate public opinion and that "A 1938 report included what became routine surveys of Freemasonry, whose essentially benign activities have always been a bugbear to the paranoid left and right. It began with a disarming flourish of erudition, outlining the various lodges and national traditions. Organized Freemasonry had been smashed because of its Enlightenment legacy of ´humanity, tolerance and liberalism´, and because it was a vehicle for promoting ´Jewish ideas and objectives´."

The claim that Freemasonry and Hitler are intertwined is not wholly inaccurate: Masons suffered from his mass atrocities as did others!