"Hear Hitler, Who Speaks from First-Hand Knowledge”: Reverend William Bell Riley, Anticommunist Conspiracy Theory, and the Culture Wars of the 1920s and 30s

A common tactic of twenty-first century antievolutionists is to link Charles Darwin to Adolph Hitler. Somehow “survival of the fittest” inevitably led to the Nazi concentration camps. And yet, during the interwar period, Rev. William Bell Riley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis and the “grand old man of midwestern fundamentalism,” was an open supporter of Adolph Hitler. Relying heavily on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Riley disclaimed any animus toward Jews, arguing rather that “Jew-communists” posed a mortal threat to human civilization and had to be stopped by any means necessary.