A census in May 1939, six years into the
Nazi era
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
and after the annexation of mostly
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
Austria and mostly Catholic
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as ''
Gottgläubig
In Nazi Germany, ''gottgläubig'' (literally: "believing in God") was a Religious aspects of Nazism, Nazi religious term for a form of non-denominationalism practised by those Germans who had Apostasy in Christianity, officially left Christian ...
''
(lit. "believing in God"),
and 1.5% as "atheist".
Protestants were over-represented in the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
's membership and electorate, and Catholics were under-represented.
Smaller religious minorities such as the
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...
and the
Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith is a religion founded in the 19th century that teaches the Baháʼí Faith and the unity of religion, essential worth of all religions and Baháʼí Faith and the unity of humanity, the unity of all people. Established by ...
were banned in Germany, while the eradication of
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...
was attempted along with the
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
of its adherents. The
Salvation Army
Salvation (from Latin: ''salvatio'', from ''salva'', 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, ''salvation'' generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its c ...
and the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath, and ...
both disappeared from Germany, while
astrologers
Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Dif ...
,
healers,
fortune tellers
Fortune telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115-116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical wi ...
, and
witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
were all banned.
Some religious minority groups had a more complicated relationship with the new state, for example the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The c ...
(LDS) withdrew its missionaries from Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1938, but German LDS church branches were permitted to continue to operate throughout the war, however, they were forced to make some changes in their structure and teachings. The Nazi Party was frequently at odds with the
Pope
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
, who denounced the party by claiming that it had an
anti-Catholic
Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its Hierarchy of the Catholic Church, clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestantism, Protestant states, ...
veneer.
There were differing views among the Nazi leaders as to the future of
religion in Germany
Christianity is the largest religion in Germany. It was introduced to the area of modern Germany by 300 AD, while parts of that area belonged to the Roman Empire, and later, when Franks and other Germanic tribes converted to Christianity from t ...
. Anti-Church radicals included Hitler's personal secretary
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
, the propagandist
Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
, and
Reichsführer-SS
(, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest-servi ...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
. Some Nazis, such as
Hans Kerrl
Hanns Kerrl (11 December 1887 – 14 December 1941) was a German Nazi politician. His most prominent position, from July 1935, was that of Reichsminister of Church Affairs. He was also President of the Prussian Landtag (1932–1933) and head of ...
, who served as Hitler's Minister for Church Affairs, advocated "
Positive Christianity
Positive Christianity (german: Positives Christentum) was a movement within Nazi Germany which promoted the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing racialistic Nazi ideology with either fundamental or s ...
", a uniquely Nazi form of Christianity which rejected Christianity's Jewish origins and the
Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
, and portrayed "true" Christianity as a fight against Jews, with
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
depicted as an
Aryan
Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ' ...
.
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
wanted to transform the subjective consciousness of the German peopleits attitudes, values and mentalitiesinto a single-minded, obedient "national community". The Nazis believed that they would therefore have to replace class, religious and regional allegiances. Under the ''
Gleichschaltung
The Nazi term () or "coordination" was the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied b ...
'' (Nazification) process, Hitler attempted to create a unified
Protestant Reich Church
The German Evangelical Church (german: Deutsche Evangelische Kirche) was a successor to the German Evangelical Church Confederation from 1933 until 1945.
The German Christians, an antisemitic and racist pressure group and ''Kirchenpartei'', gai ...
from Germany's 28 existing Protestant churches. The plan failed, and was resisted by the
Confessing Church
The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German E ...
. Persecution of the
Catholic Church in Germany
, native_name_lang = de
, image = Hohe_Domkirche_St._Petrus.jpg
, imagewidth = 200px
, alt =
, caption = Cologne Cathedral, Cologne
, abbreviation =
, type = Nati ...
followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate
political Catholicism
The Catholic Church and politics concerns the interplay of Catholicism with religious, and later secular, politics. Historically, the Church opposed liberal ideas such as democracy, freedom of speech, and the separation of church and state unde ...
. Amid harassment of the Church, the
Reich concordat
The ''Reichskonkordat'' ("Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich") is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later b ...
treaty with
the Vatican was signed in 1933, and promised to respect Church autonomy. Hitler routinely disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious. Clergy, nuns, and lay leaders were targeted, with thousands of arrests over the ensuing years. The Catholic Church accused the regime of "fundamental hostility to Christ and his Church". Many historians believe that the Nazis intended to eradicate Christianity in Germany after victory in the war.
[
* Sharkey]
Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity
''The New York Times'', 13 January 2002
The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches
Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Winter 2001, publishing evidence compiled by the O.S.S. for the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of 1945 and 1946
* Griffin, Roger ''Fascism's relation to religion'' in Blamires, Cyprian
World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1
p. 10, ABC-CLIO, 2006: “There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it.”
* Mosse, George Lachmann
Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich
p. 240, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2003: "Had the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical policies would have gone beyond those of the German Christians, to the utter destruction of both the Protestant and the Catholic Church."
* Shirer, William L.
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
pp. 240, Simon and Schuster, 1990: “And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.”
* Fischel, Jack R.
Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust, p. 161
Rowman & Littlefield, 2020: “The objective was to either destroy Christianity and restore the German gods of antiquity or to turn Jesus into an Aryan.”
* Dill, Marshall
Germany: a modern history
p. 365, University of Michigan Press, 1970: “It seems no exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at least to subjugate it to their general world outlook.”
* Wheaton, Eliot Barcul
The Nazi revolution, 1933–1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era
pp. 290, 363, Doubleday 1968: The Nazis sought "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch."
* Bendersky, Joseph W.
A concise history of Nazi Germany, p. 147
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: “Consequently, it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire.”
Background
Christianity has ancient roots among Germanic peoples dating to the missionary work of
Columbanus
Columbanus ( ga, Columbán; 543 – 21 November 615) was an Irish missionary notable for founding a number of monasteries after 590 in the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms, most notably Luxeuil Abbey in present-day France and Bobbio Abbey in pr ...
and
St. Boniface in the 6th–8th centuries.
The Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
, initiated by
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Reformation, Protestant Refo ...
in 1517, divided the German population between a two-thirds majority of
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
s and a one-third minority of
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
s. The south and west remained mainly Catholic, while north and east became mainly Protestant. The Catholic Church enjoyed a degree of privilege in the Bavarian region, the Rhineland and Westphalia as well as parts in south-west Germany, while in the Protestant north, Catholics suffered some discrimination.
Bismarck's ''
Kulturkampf
(, 'culture struggle') was the conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 between the Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX and the government of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastic ...
'' ("Culture Struggle") of 1871–1878 had seen an attempt to assert a Protestant vision of German nationalism over Germany, and fused anticlericalism and suspicion of the Catholic population, whose loyalty was presumed to lie with Austria and France, rather than the new German Empire. The Centre Party had formed in 1870, initially to represent the religious interests of Catholics and Protestants, but was transformed by the ''Kulturkampf'' into the "political voice of Catholics". Bismarck's "Culture Struggle" failed in its attempt to eliminate Catholic institutions in Germany, or their strong connections outside of Germany, particularly various international missions and Rome.
[Encyclopædia Britannica Online: ''Blessed Clemens August, Graf von Galen''; web Apr 2013.]
In the course of the 19th century, both the rise of
historical-critical scholarship of the Bible and
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
by
David Strauss
David Friedrich Strauss (german: link=no, Strauß ; 27 January 1808 – 8 February 1874) was a German liberal Protestant theologian and writer, who influenced Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus", whose divine nature h ...
,
Ernest Renan
Joseph Ernest Renan (; 27 February 18232 October 1892) was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, expert of Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic. He wrote influe ...
and others, progress in the natural sciences, especially the field of
evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...
by
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
,
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
and others, and opposition to oppressive socioeconomic circumstances by
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
,
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
,
Ludwig Büchner
Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig Büchner (29 March 1824 – 30 April 1899) was a German philosopher, physiologist and physician who became one of the exponents of 19th-century scientific materialism.
Biography
Büchner was born at Darmstadt on ...
established the
German Freethinkers League
The German Freethinkers League ('Deutscher Freidenkerbund') was an organization founded in the late 19th century by German freethinkers and atheists with the main goal to oppose the power of the state churches in Germany. Its aim was to provide a ...
(''Deutscher Freidenkerbund'') as the first German organisation for
atheists
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...
and
agnostics
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. (page 56 in 1967 edition) Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient ...
. In 1892 the ''Freidenker-Gesellschaft'' and in 1906 the ' were formed.
In 1933, 5 years prior to the
annexation of Austria into Germany, the population of Germany was approximately 67% Protestant and 33% Catholic, while the Jewish population was less than 1%.
Denominational trends during the Nazi period
Christianity in Germany has, since the
Protestant Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
in 1517, been divided into Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. As a specific outcome of the Reformation in Germany, the large Protestant denominations are organized into ''
Landeskirche
In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche (plural: Landeskirchen) is the church of a region. The term usually refers to Protestant churches, but—in case of Switzerland—also Roman Catholic dioceses. They originated as the national churches of ...
n'' (roughly: ''State Churches''). The German word for
denomination is ''Konfession''. For the large churches in Germany (Catholic and ''Evangelical'', i.e. Protestant) the German government collects the
church tax
A church tax is a tax collected by the state from members of some religious denominations to provide financial support of churches, such as the salaries of its clergy and to pay the operating cost of the church.
The constitution of a number of ...
, which is then given to these churches. For this reason, membership in the Catholic or the Evangelical Church is officially registered.
[Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). ''The Holy Reich''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]
p. XV.
/ref> It is apparent they were politically motivated. For this reason historian Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall (Born October 3, 1965) is an Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and the former Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010.
Education
He received his BA in history in 1989 and MA ...
argues that "nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context"[Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2007)]
"Christianity and the Nazi Movement: A Response."
'' Journal of Contemporary History'' 42 (2): 205. and determining someone's actual religious convictions should be based on other criteria. It is important to keep this 'official aspect' in mind when turning to such questions as the religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler or these of Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
. Both men had ceased to attend Catholic mass or to go to confession
A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of persons – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information th ...
long before 1933, but neither had officially left the Church and neither of them refused to pay their church taxes.
Historians have taken a look at the number of people who left their church in Germany during the 1933–1945 period. There was "no substantial decline in religious practice and church membership between 1933 and 1939". The option to be taken off the church rolls (''Kirchenaustritt'') has existed in Germany since 1873, when Otto von Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of J ...
had introduced it as part of the ''Kulturkampf
(, 'culture struggle') was the conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 between the Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX and the government of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastic ...
'' aimed against Catholicism.[Granzow et al. 2006: 39] For parity this was also made possible for Protestants, and for the next 40 years it was mostly them who took advantage of it. Statistics exist since 1884 for the Protestant churches and since 1917 for the Catholic Church.
An analysis of this data for the era of the Nazis' rule is available in a paper by Sven Granzow et al., published in a collection edited by Götz Aly
Götz Haydar Aly (; born 3 May 1947) is a German journalist, historian and political scientist.
Life and career
Aly was born in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg. He is a patrilineal descendant of a Mixed Turkish-Kurdish convert to Christianity name ...
. Altogether more Protestants than Catholics left their church, however, overall Protestants and Catholics decided similarly.[Granzow et al. 2006: 50] One has to keep in mind that German Protestants were twice the number of Catholics. The spike in the numbers from 1937 to 1938 is the result of the annexation of Austria in 1938 and other territories. The number of ''Kirchenaustritte'' reached its "historical high"[Granzow et al. 2006: 58] in 1939 when it peaked at 480,000. Granzow et al. see the numbers not only in relation to the Nazi policy towards the churches, (which changed drastically from 1935 onwards) but also as indicator of the trust in the ''Führer'' and the Nazi leadership. The decline in the number of people who left the church after 1942 is explained as resulting from a loss of confidence in the future of Nazi Germany. People tended to keep their ties to the church, because they feared an uncertain future.
According to Evans, those members of the affiliation ''gottgläubig'' (lit. "believers in god", a non-denominational nazified outlook on god beliefs, often described as predominately based on creationist and deistic views), "were convinced Nazis who had left their Church at the behest of the Party, which had been trying since the mid 1930s to reduce the influence of Christianity in society".Richard J. Evans
Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
; ''The Third Reich at War''; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p. 546 Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
was a strong promoter of the ''gottgläubig'' movement and did not allow atheists into the SS, arguing that their "refusal to acknowledge higher powers" would be a "potential source of indiscipline".[ Burleigh, Michael]
The Third Reich: A New History; 2012; pp. 196-197
/ref> The majority of the three million Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
members continued to pay their church taxes and register as either Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
or Protestants
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
. The Salvation Army, Christian Saints
In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and denomination. In Catholic, Eastern Ortho ...
and Seventh Day Adventist Church all disappeared from Germany during the Nazi era.
'' Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS'' (or SD) members withdrew from their Christian denominations, changing their religious affiliation to ''gottgläubig'', while nearly 70% of the officers of the ''Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...
'' (SS) did the same.
Nazi attitudes towards Christianity
Nazi ideology
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. It desired the subordination of the church to the state. Although the broader membership of the Nazi Party after 1933 came to include many Catholics and Protestants, aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
, Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
, Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
, and Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
saw the ''Kirchenkampf
''Kirchenkampf'' (, lit. 'church struggle') is a German term which pertains to the situation of the Christian churches in Germany during the Nazi period (1933–1945). Sometimes used ambiguously, the term may refer to one or more of the follo ...
'' campaign against the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anticlerical
Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...
sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.[Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; W.W. Norton & Co; London; pp. 381–382]
Hitler's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, saw an "insoluble opposition" between the Christian and Nazi world views. The ''Führer'' angered the churches by appointing Alfred Rosenberg, an outspoken pagan, as official Nazi ideologist in 1934.[William L. Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; p. 240] Heinrich Himmler saw the main task of his SS organization to be that of acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a "Germanic" way of living. Hitler's chosen deputy, Martin Bormann, advised Nazi officials in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."
Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the conflict with the Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer, according to Kershaw. In public speeches, he portrayed himself and the Nazi movement as faithful Christians.[Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19–20, Oxford University Press, 1942][Hitler, Adolf (1999). "Mein Kampf." Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, pp. 65, 119, 152, 161, 214, 375, 383, 403, 436, 562, 565, 622, 632-33.] In 1928 Hitler said in a speech: "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian." But, according to the Goebbels Diaries
The Goebbels Diaries are a collection of writings by Joseph Goebbels, a leading member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Adolf Hitler's government from 1933 ...
, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity." In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure".Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock, (13 December 1914 – 2 February 2004) was a British historian. He is best known for his book '' Hitler: A Study in Tyranny'' (1952), the first comprehensive biography of Adolf Hitler, which influence ...
; ''Hitler: A Study in Tyranny''; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; pp. 2, 18 Bullock wrote: "In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest."
As a measure in the struggle for power against the influence of the churches (''Kirchenkampf'') the Nazis tried to establish a "third denomination" called "Positive Christianity
Positive Christianity (german: Positives Christentum) was a movement within Nazi Germany which promoted the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing racialistic Nazi ideology with either fundamental or s ...
", aiming to replace the established churches to reduce their influence. Historians have suspected this was an attempt to start a cult which worshipped Hitler as the new Messiah. However, in a diary entry of 28 December 1939, Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
wrote that "the Fuhrer passionately rejects any thought of founding a religion. He has no intention of becoming a priest. His sole exclusive role is that of a politician." In Hitler's political relations dealing with religion he readily adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes."
The Nazi leadership made use of indigenous Germanic pagan imagery and ancient Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
symbolism in their propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
. However, the use of pagan symbolism worried some Protestants.[Ross, Albion (1935). "Paganism Worries Reich Protestants; They Are Distrustful of Nazis, Fearing Trap in the New Church Dictatorship." "The New York Times" (3 Nov.): E5.] Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler, subscribed either to a mixture of pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...
theories, and also Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
as well as mysticism and occultism, which was especially strong in the SS. Central to both groupings was the belief in Germanic (white Nordic) racial superiority. The existence of a Ministry of Church Affairs, instituted in 1935 and headed by Hanns Kerrl
Hanns Kerrl (11 December 1887 – 14 December 1941) was a German Nazi politician. His most prominent position, from July 1935, was that of Reichsminister of Church Affairs. He was also President of the Prussian Landtag (1932–1933) and head of ...
, was hardly recognized by ideologists such as Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
or by other political decision-makers. A relative moderate, Kerrl accused dissident churchmen of failing to appreciate the Nazi doctrine of "Race, blood and soil" and gave the following explanation of the Nazi conception of "Positive Christianity," telling a group of submissive clergy in 1937:
During the war Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
formulated a thirty-point program for the National Reich Church, which included:
* The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
* The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
* The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
.
* The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifix
A crucifix (from Latin ''cruci fixus'' meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the ''corpus'' (Lati ...
es, Bibles, and pictures of Saint
In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...
s.
* On the altars there must be nothing but "Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
" and to the left of the altar a sword.
When exploring the Nazi Party's public speeches and writings, Steigmann-Gall notes that they can provide insight into their "untempered" ideas.
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act
An enabling act is a piece of legislation by which a legislative body grants an entity which depends on it (for authorization or legitimacy) the power to take certain actions. For example, enabling acts often establish government agencies to car ...
under which Hitler gained legislative powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi ''Kirchenkampf
''Kirchenkampf'' (, lit. 'church struggle') is a German term which pertains to the situation of the Christian churches in Germany during the Nazi period (1933–1945). Sometimes used ambiguously, the term may refer to one or more of the follo ...
'' ("Church Struggle") entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches.[Frank J. Copp]
Controversial Concordats
p. 124, CUA Press, 1999 However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.
William Shirer
William Lawrence Shirer (; February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly w ...
wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann Bormann is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Albert Bormann (1902–1989), German Nazi Party official, adjutant to Adolf Hitler
* Cheryl Bormann (fl. 2008), American attorney
* Edwin Bormann (1851–1912), German writer
* ...
and Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." During a speech on 27 October 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
revealed evidence of Hitler's plan to abolish all religions in Germany, declaring:
Your Government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler's Government... It is a plan to abolish all existing religions –Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.
But according to Steigman-Gall, some Nazis, like Dietrich Eckart
Dietrich Eckart (; 23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German '' völkisch'' poet, playwright, journalist, publicist, and political activist who was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party. Eckart ...
(died 1923) and Walter Buch
Walter Buch (24 October 1883 – 12 September 1949) was a German jurist as well as an SA and SS official during the Nazi era. He was Martin Bormann's father-in-law. As head of the Supreme Party Court, he was an important Party official. ...
, saw Nazism and Christianity as part of the same movement. Aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
and Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.[Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; pp. 381–382]
Writing for Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
, the historian Michael Phayer
Michael Phayer (born 1935) is an American historian and professor emeritus at Marquette University in Milwaukee and has written on 19th- and 20th-century European history and the Holocaust.
Phayer received his PhD from the University of Munich i ...
wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long-term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal. According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war.Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock, (13 December 1914 – 2 February 2004) was a British historian. He is best known for his book '' Hitler: A Study in Tyranny'' (1952), the first comprehensive biography of Adolf Hitler, which influence ...
; ''Hitler: A Study in Tyranny''; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p. 219 In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he ...
recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
that churches were not to receive building sites. Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches".
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...
wrote that Hitler and his fascist ally Mussolini were atheists, but that Hitler courted and benefited from fear among German Christians of militant communist atheism.Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...
; ''A Short History of Christianity
''A Short History of Christianity'' is a non-fiction book on the history of the Christian religion written by the Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey. First published in 2012 by Penguin Books, it describes the history of Christianity, from i ...
''; Viking; 2011; pp. 495–496 (Other historians have characterised Hitler's mature religious position as a form of deism
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin ''deus'', meaning "god") is the Philosophy, philosophical position and Rationalism, rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that Empirical evi ...
.) "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of communism in Germany: " itlerhimself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar asGermany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions". Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the ''Führer'' complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser
Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser (also german: link=no, Straßer, see ß; 10 September 1897 – 27 August 1974) was a German politician and an early member of the Nazi Party. Otto Strasser, together with his brother Gregor Strasser, was a lead ...
, disclosed in his 1940 book, ''Hitler and I,'' that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: "Hitler is an atheist."
According to Kershaw, following the Nazi takeover, race policy and the church struggle were among the most important ideological spheres: "In both areas, the party had no difficulty in mobilizing its activists, whose radicalism in turn forced the government into legislative action. In fact the party leadership often found itself compelled to respond to pressures from below, stirred up by the Gauleiter
A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...
playing their own game, or emanating sometimes from radical activists at a local level". As time went on, anti-clericalism and anti-church sentiment among grass roots party activists "simply couldn't be eradicated", wrote Kershaw and they could "draw on the verbal violence of party leaders towards the churches for their encouragement." Unlike some other fascist movements of the era, Nazi ideology was essentially hostile to Christianity and clashed with Christian beliefs in many respects.[Encyclopædia Britannica Online: ''Fascism – Identification with Christianity''; 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013] The Nazis seized hundreds of monasteries in Germany and Austria and removed clergymen and laymen alike. In other cases, religious journals and newspapers were censored or banned. The Nazi regime attempted to shut down the Catholic press, which declined "from 435 periodicals in 1934 to just seven in 1943." From the beginning in 1935, the Gestapo arrested and jailed over 2720 clerics who were interned at Germany's Dachau concentration camp, leading to over 1,000 deaths. Nazism saw the Christian ideals of meekness and conscience as obstacles to the violent instincts required to defeat other races. From the mid-1930s anti-Christian elements within the Nazi Party became more prominent; however, they were restrained by Hitler because of the negative press their actions were receiving, and by 1934 the Nazi Party pretended a neutral position in regard to the Protestant Churches.
Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
, an "outspoken pagan", held among offices the title of "the Fuehrer's Delegate for the Entire Intellectual and Philosophical Education and Instruction for the National Socialist Party". In his '' Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930), Rosenberg wrote that the main enemies of the Germans were the "Russian Tartars" and "Semites" – with "Semites" including Christians, especially the Catholic Church: Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, was among the most aggressive anti-Church Nazi radicals. Goebbels led the Nazi persecution of the German clergy and, as the war progressed, on the "Church Question", he wrote "after the war it has to be generally solved... There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view". Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
became Hitler's private secretary and de facto "deputy" ''führer'' from 1941. He was a leading advocate of the ''Kirchenkampf'', a project which Hitler for the most part wished to keep until after the war.[Wistrich, Robert Solomon]
Who's Who in Nazi Germany
p. 11, Psychology Press, 2002 Bormann was a rigid guardian of Nazi orthodoxy and saw Christianity and Nazism as "incompatible". He said publicly in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable". In a confidential message to the Gauleiter
A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...
on 9 June 1941, Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
, had declared that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."[Conway, John S. (1997). ''The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945''. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing]
p. 383.
He also declared that the Churches' influence in the leadership of the people "must absolutely and finally be broken." Bormann believed Nazism was based on a "scientific" world-view, and was completely incompatible with Christianity. Bormann stated:
When we National Socialist
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
s speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a man-like being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God. The assertion that this universal force can trouble itself about the destiny of each individual being, every smallest earthly bacillus, can be influenced by so-called prayers or other surprising things, depends upon a requisite dose of naivety or else upon shameless professional self-interest.
Nazi anti-Semitism
Instead of focusing on religious differentiation, Hitler maintained that it was important to promote "an antisemitism of reason", one that acknowledged the racial basis of Jewry. Interviews with Nazis by other historians show that the Nazis thought that their views were rooted in biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
, not in historical prejudices. For example, "S. became a missionary for this biomedical vision... As for anti-Semitic attitudes and actions, he insisted that "the racial question... ndresentment of the Jewish race... had nothing to do with medieval anti-Semitism...That is, it was all a matter of scientific biology and of community."
In his book about the history of Christianity
The history of Christianity concerns the Christian religion, Christian countries, and the Christians with their various denominations, from the 1st century to the present. Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teach ...
, Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...
wrote that "Christianity could not escape some indirect blame for the terrible Holocaust. The Jews and Christians had been rivals and sometimes enemies for a long period of history. Furthermore, it was traditional for Christians to blame Jewish leaders for the crucifixion of Christ...", but, Blainey noted, "At the same time, Christians showed devotion and respect. They were conscious of their debt to the Jews. Jesus and all the disciples and all the authors of his Gospels were of the Jewish race. Christians viewed the Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
, the holy book of the synagogue
A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...
s as equally a holy book for them...".
Laurence Rees
Laurence Rees (born 1957) is an English historian. He is a BAFTA winning historical documentary filmmaker and a British Book Award winning author of several books about Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the atrocities committed, especially by them, ...
noted that "emphasis on Christianity" was absent from the vision expressed by Hitler in ''Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'' and his "bleak and violent vision" and visceral hatred of the Jews had been influenced by quite different sources: the notion of life as struggle he drew from Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
, the notion of the superiority of the "Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...
" he drew from Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Ary ...
's ''The Inequality of the Human Races''; and from Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
he took the idea of a link between Judaism and Bolshevism. Hitler espoused a ruthless policy of "negative eugenic selection", believing that world history consisted of a struggle for survival between races, in which the Jews plotted to undermine the Germans, and inferior groups like Slavs
Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
and defective individuals in the German gene pool, threatened the Aryan "master race
The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific concept in Nazism, Nazi ideology in which the putative "Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of Race (classification of human beings), human racial hierarchy. Members wer ...
". Richard J. Evans
Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
wrote that his views on these subjects have often been called "social Darwinist
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in W ...
", but that there is little agreement among historians as to what this term may mean. According to Evans, Hitler "used his own version of the language of social Darwinism as a central element in the discursive practice of extermination...", and the language of Social Darwinism, in its Nazi variant, helped to remove all restraint from the directors of the "terroristic and exterminatory" policies of the regime, by "persuading them that what they were doing was justified by history, science and nature".
''Kirchenkampf'' (Church Struggle)
As the Nazi Party began its takeover of power in Germany in 1933 the struggling, but still nominally functioning Weimar government
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, led by its President, Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg (; abbreviated ; 2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934) was a German field marshal and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany fro ...
, and represented by his appointed Vice-Chancellor, Franz von Papen
Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk (; 29 October 18792 May 1969) was a German conservative politician, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as the chancellor of Germany i ...
, initiated talks with the Holy See
The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of Rome ...
concerning the establishment of a concordat
A concordat is a convention between the Holy See and a sovereign state that defines the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in matters that concern both,René Metz, ''What is Canon Law?'' (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1960 st Ed ...
. The talks lasted three and half months while Hitler consolidated his hold on power. This attempt achieved the signing of the ''Reichskonkordat
The ''Reichskonkordat'' ("Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich") is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later be ...
'' on 20 July 1933, which protected the freedom of the Catholic Church and restricted priests and bishops from political activity.
Like the idea of the ''Reichskonkordat'', the notion of a Protestant Reich Church
The German Evangelical Church (german: Deutsche Evangelische Kirche) was a successor to the German Evangelical Church Confederation from 1933 until 1945.
The German Christians, an antisemitic and racist pressure group and ''Kirchenpartei'', gai ...
, which would unify the Protestant Churches, also had been considered previously.[Steigmann-Gall 2003: 156.] Hitler had discussed the matter as early as 1927 with Ludwig Müller
Johan Heinrich Ludwig Müller (23 June 1883 – 31 July 1945) was a German theologian, a Lutheran pastor, and leading member of the pro-Nazi "German Christians" (german: Deutsche Christen) faith movement. In 1933 he was appointed by the Nazi go ...
, who was at that time the military chaplain of Königsberg.
Christianity remained the dominant religion in Germany through the Nazi period, and its influence over Germans displeased the Nazi hierarchy. Evans
Evans may refer to:
People
*Evans (surname)
*List of people with surname Evans
Places United States
*Evans Island, an island of Alaska
*Evans, Colorado
*Evans, Georgia
*Evans County, Georgia
*Evans, New York
*Evans Mills, New York
*Evans City, ...
wrote that Hitler believed that in the long run Nazism and religion would not be able to coexist, and stressed repeatedly that it was a secular ideology, founded on modern science. According to Evans: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition." Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope, and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs,' abortions in black cassocks.Richard J. Evans
Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
; ''The Third Reich at War''; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p. 547
During Hitler's dictatorship, more than 6,000 clergymen, on the charge of treasonable activity, were imprisoned or executed. The same measures were taken in the occupied territories; in French Lorraine
Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of Gr ...
, the Nazis forbade religious youth movements, parish meetings, and scout meetings. Church assets were taken, Church schools were closed, and teachers in religious institute
A religious institute is a type of institute of consecrated life in the Catholic Church whose members take religious vows and lead a life in community with fellow members. Religious institutes are one of the two types of institutes of consecrate ...
s were dismissed. The Episcopal seminary was closed, and the SA and SS desecrated churches and religious statues and pictures. Three hundred clergy were expelled from the Lorraine region; monks and nuns were deported or forced to renounce their vows.
The Catholic Church was particularly suppressed in Poland: between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy, were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps.[Craughwell, Thomas J.]
The Gentile Holocaust
Catholic Culture, Accessed 18 July 2008 In the annexed territory of ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' it was even more harsh: churches were systematically closed and most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. Eighty per cent of the Catholic clergy and five bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; 108 of them are regarded as blessed martyrs. Religious persecution was not confined to Poland: in Dachau concentration camp
,
, commandant = List of commandants
, known for =
, location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany
, built by = Germany
, operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS)
, original use = Political prison
, construction ...
alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 countries were killed.
A number of historians maintain that the Nazis had a general covert plan, which some argue existed before the Nazis' rose to power,[Bonney, Richard]
Confronting the Nazi war on Christianity: the Kulturkampf newsletters, 1936–1939
p. 10, Peter Lang, 2009 to destroy Christianity within the Reich. To what extent a plan to subordinate the churches and limit their role in the country's life existed before the Nazi rise to power, and exactly who among the Nazi leadership supported such a move remains contested. However, a minority of historians maintain, against consensus, that no such plan existed.[Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003)' ''The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]
259-260.
/ref> Summarizing a 1945 Office of Strategic Services report, ''The New York Times'' columnist Joe Sharkey, stated that the Nazis had a plan to "subvert and destroy German Christianity," which was to be accomplished through control and subversion of the churches and to be completed after the war.[Sharkey]
Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity
, ''The New York Times'', 13 January 2002[ Griffin, Roger (2006). "Fascism's relation to religion", in Cyprian Blamires ]
World Fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1
'. Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO, p. 10[The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches](_blank)
, Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Winter 2001, publishing evidence compiled by the O.S.S. for the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of 1945 and 1946 However, the report stated this goal was limited to a "sector of the National Socialist party," namely Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
and Baldur von Schirach. Historian Roger Griffin maintains: "There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it." In his study ''The Holy Reich'', the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall (Born October 3, 1965) is an Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and the former Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010.
Education
He received his BA in history in 1989 and MA ...
comes to the opposite conclusion, "Totally absent, besides Hitler's vague ranting, is any firm evidence that Hitler or the Nazis were going to 'destroy' or 'eliminate' the churches once the war was over." Regarding his wider thesis that, "leading Nazis in fact considered themselves Christian" or at least understood their movement "within a Christian frame of reference", Steigmann-Gall admits he "argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it."
Although there are high-profile cases of individual Lutherans and Catholics who died in prison or in concentration camps, the largest number of Christians who died would have been Jewish Christians or ''mischlinge'' who were sent to death camps for their race rather than their religion. Kahane (1999) cites an estimate that there were approximately 200,000 Christians of Jewish descent in Nazi Germany. Among the Gentile Christians 11,300 Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...
were placed in camps, and about 1,490 died, of whom 270 were executed as conscientious objectors. Dachau had a special "priest block." Of the 2,720 priests (among them 2,579 Catholic) held in Dachau, 1,034 did not survive the camp. The majority of these priests were Polish (1,780), of whom 868 died in Dachau.
Specific groups
Catholicism
The attitude of the Nazi Party towards the Catholic Church ranged from tolerance to near-total renunciation and outright aggression.[Laqueur, Walte]
Fascism: Past, Present, Future
p.41 1996 Oxford University Press] Bullock wrote that Hitler had some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but he had utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". Many Nazis were anti-clerical in both private and public life. The Nazi Party had decidedly pagan elements. One position is that the Church and fascism could never have a lasting connection because both are a "holistic Weltanschauung" claiming the whole of the person.
Adolf Hitler himself has been described as a "spiritualist" by Laqueur; but he has been described by Alan Bullock, Bullock as a "rationalist" and a "materialist" with no appreciation for the spiritual side of humanity; and a simple "atheist" by Geoffrey Blainey, Blainey. His fascist comrade Benito Mussolini was an atheist. Both were anticlerical
Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...
, but they understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampf
(, 'culture struggle') was the conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 between the Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX and the government of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastic ...
s against Catholicism prematurely. Such a clash, possibly inevitable in the future, was put off while they dealt with other enemies.
The nature of the Nazi Party's relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, Catholic Church was also complicated. In early 1931, the German bishops issued an edict excommunicating all leaders of the Nazi Party and banning all Catholics from membership. The ban was conditionally modified in 1933 when State law mandated that all trade union workers and civil servants must be members of the Nazi Party. In July 1933 a Concord ''Reichskonkordat
The ''Reichskonkordat'' ("Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich") is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later be ...
'' was signed with the Holy See, Vatican which prevented the Church in Germany from engaging in political activities; however, the Vatican continued to Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, speak out on issues of faith and morals and it opposed Nazi philosophy.
In 1937 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical ''Mit brennender Sorge'' condemning Nazi ideology, notably the ''Gleichschaltung
The Nazi term () or "coordination" was the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied b ...
'' policy directed against religious influences upon education, as well as Nazi racism and antisemitism. His death prevented the issuing of a planned encyclical ''Humani generis unitas'', but the similar ''Summi Pontificatus'' was the first encyclical released by his successor (Pius XII), in October 1939. This encyclical strongly condemned both racism and totalitarianism, without the anti-Judaism present in the draft presented to Pope Pius XI for ''Humani generis unitas''. The massive Catholic opposition to the Nazi euthanasia programs led them to be quieted on 28 August 1941. Catholics, on occasion, actively and openly protested against Nazi antisemitism through several bishops and priests such as Bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster.
In Nazi Germany, political dissenters were imprisoned, and some German priests were sent to the concentration camps for their opposition, including the pastor of Berlin's Catholic Cathedral Bernhard Lichtenberg and the seminarian Karl Leisner.
Criticism arose based on the charge that the Vatican headed by Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII had remained circumspect about the national-scale race hatred before 1937 (''Mit brennender Sorge''). In 1937, just before the publishing of the anti-Nazi encyclical, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli in Lourdes, France, Lourdes, France condemned discrimination against Jews and the neopaganism of the Nazi régime. A statement by Pius XI on 8 September 1938 spoke of the "inadmissibility" of antisemitism, but Pius XII is criticised by people like John Cornwell (writer), John Cornwell for being unspecific.
In 1941 the Nazi authorities decreed the dissolution of all monastery, monasteries and abbeys in the German Reich, many of them effectively being occupied and secularized by the ''Allgemeine SS'' under Himmler. However, on 30 July 1941 the ''Aktion Klostersturm'' (Operation Monastery Storm) was put to an end by a decree from Hitler, who feared that the increasing protests by the Catholic segment of the German population might result in passive rebellions and thereby harm the Nazi war effort on the eastern front.
Plans for the Roman Catholic Church
Historian Heinz Hürten (professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Eichstaett) noted that the Nazi Party had plans for the Roman Catholic Church, according to which the Church was supposed to "eat from the hands of the government." Hürten states the sequence of these plans: an abolition of the clerical celibacy, priestly celibacy and a nationalisation of all Church property, the dissolution of monastic religious institute
A religious institute is a type of institute of consecrated life in the Catholic Church whose members take religious vows and lead a life in community with fellow members. Religious institutes are one of the two types of institutes of consecrate ...
s, and an end to the influence of the Catholic Church upon education. Hürten states that Hitler proposed to reduce vocations to the priesthood by forbidding seminaries from receiving applicants before their 25th birthdays, and thus he had hoped that these men would marry beforehand, during the time (18–25 years) in which they were obliged to work in military or labour service. Also, along with this process, the Church's sacraments would be revised and changed to so-called "Lebensfeiern", the non-Christian celebrations of different periods of life.
There existed some considerable differences among officials within the Nazi Party on the question of Christianity. Goebbels is purported to have feared the creation of a third front of Catholics against their regime in Germany itself. In his diary, Goebbels wrote about the "traitors of the Black International who again stabbed our glorious government in the back by their criticism", by which Hürten states he meant the indirectly or actively resisting Catholic clergymen (who wore black cassocks).
Protestantism
According to Peter Stachura, the backbone of Nazi electoral support was rural and small-town Protestant middle class, whereas German Catholics rejected the party and overwhelmingly voted for the confessional Centre Party (Germany), Catholic Centre Party and Bavarian People's Party instead. Both Protestant clergy and laymen were generally supportive of National Socialism, with Paul Althaus writing that "our Protestant churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle from God". According to Robert Ericksen, sermons in Protestant churches were full of praise for the new regime, with a Protestant church in Bavaria announcing that the Nazi party "may expect not just the applause but the joyous cooperation of the church." Lutherans were particularly supportive of the Nazi regime, with a Lutheran Diocesan magazines, diocesan magazine ''Allgemeine Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung'' welcoming the rise of Hitler as a "great thing [that] God has done for our Volk" in April 1933. Ericksen also notes that the "most thoroughly Protestant regions of Germany gave the Nazi Party its strongest support". Protestants were overrepresented within the Nazi Party, and according to Jürgen W. Falter, 83 % of recruits to the NSDAP between 1925 and 1932 were Protestant. Falter observes that the Nazi Party found it challenging to build up any support amongst Catholics, and fared considerably worse in terms of both electoral support and new recruits in Catholic areas.
Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall (Born October 3, 1965) is an Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and the former Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010.
Education
He received his BA in history in 1989 and MA ...
remarks that "scholarship since the 1980s has quite clearly demonstrated that nominal Protestant confessional membership was a better indicator of who voted for the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) than any other single category like class, region, geography or gender." Analysing the results of the July 1932 German federal election, Steigmann-Gall concludes that religious piety among German Protestants, rather than apostasy, was the defining factor in regards to supporting National Socialism, with most religious Protestants being most likely to vote for NSDAP. He also observes a stark contrast between Catholic and Protestant voters in mixed areas; regarding Baden, Steigmann-Gall observes that "in contrast to the Catholic south, which saw near total opposition to the Nazis, the Protestant north saw a clear ascendancy of the Nazi party", while "in Bonn, the Protestant ''Mittelstand'' made up the bulk of the party's
success, while the Catholic population almost entirely stayed away". Steigmann-Gall concludes that "Nazi party's share of a region's vote was inversely proportional to the Catholic percentage of its population".
According to Ericksen, the reason for Protestant support for Nationalism Socialism was the reactionary and nationalist nature of Political Protestantism, noting that "the German Protestant church was a place where hyper-nationalism, overt militarism, and hostility toward modern culture were in full flower". Despite the generally supportive attitude towards National Socialism amongst German Protestants, there was also resistance. Some Protestant theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer were outspoken opponents of the new regime since the beginning, while others such as Martin Niemöller came to oppose the NSDAP once the extremist nature of its rule manifested itself. Richard Steigmann-Gall believes that the apparent swing towards the right of German Protestants can be attributed to the nationalist and reactionary character that the Protestant churches have assumed in the German Empire, imperial and Kulturkampf
(, 'culture struggle') was the conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 between the Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX and the government of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastic ...
era. It was believed that "the true German is a Protestant",[Andrzej Chwalba - ''Historia Polski'' 1795-1918 pages 175-184, 461-463] and as such, "the narrative of national identity in Germany was written in a distinctly Protestant language". Protestant theology focused on German nationalism and showed Germany as a nation favoured by God itself, which Steigmann-Gall calls "war theology". The first known intance of the stab-in-the-back myth, Dolchstoßlegende came from a Protestant court chaplain Bruno Doehring, and following the end of World War I, the political and social influence that the Protestant churches have amassed was used to attack the Weimar Republic, portraying it as a "metaphor for cultural and social degeneracy".
Martin Luther
During the World War I, First and World War II, Second World Wars, German Protestant leaders used the Martin Luther (resources), writings of Luther to support the cause of German nationalism. On the 450th anniversary of Luther's birth, which fell only a few months after the Nazi Party began its seizure of power in 1933, celebrations were conducted on a large scale by both the Protestant Churches and the Nazi Party.[Steigmann-Gall 2003:1] At a celebration in Königsberg, Erich Koch, at that time the Gauleiter
A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...
of East Prussia, made a speech in which he, among other things, compared Adolf Hitler to Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Reformation, Protestant Refo ...
and claimed that the Nazis fought with Luther's spirit. Such a speech might be dismissed as mere propaganda, but, as Steigmann-Gall points out: "Contemporaries regarded Koch as a bona fide Christian who had attained his position [as the elected president of a provincial Church synod] through a genuine commitment to Protestantism and its institutions."[Steigmann-Gall 2003:2] Even so, Steigmann-Gall states that the Nazis were not a List of Christian movements, Christian movement.
The prominent Protestant theologian Karl Barth, of the Swiss Reformed Church, opposed this appropriation of Luther in both the German Empire and Nazi Germany, when he stated in 1939 that the writings of Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Reformation, Protestant Refo ...
were used by the Nazis to glorify both the State and state absolutism: "The German people suffer under his error of the relationship between the law and the Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
, between secular and spiritual power", in which Luther divided the State (polity), temporal State from the inward state, focusing instead on spiritual matters, thus limiting the ability of the individual or the church to question the actions of the State, which was seen as a God ordained instrument.
In February 1940, Barth specifically accused German Lutherans of separating biblical teachings from the teachings of the State and thus legitimizing the Nazi state ideology. He was not alone with his view. A few years earlier on 5 October 1933, Pastor Wilhelm Rehm from Reutlingen declared publicly that "Hitler would not have been possible without Martin Luther", though many have also made this same statement about other influences on Hitler's rise to power. Anti-communist historian Paul Johnson (writer), Paul Johnson has said that "without Lenin, Hitler would not have been possible".
Protestant groups
Different German states possessed regional social variations as to class densities and religious denomination. Richard Steigmann-Gall alleges a linkage between several Protestant churches and Nazism. The German Christians (movement), German Christians (''Deutsche Christen'') were a movement within the Protestant Church of Germany with the aim of changing traditional Christian teachings to align with the ideology of Nazism and its anti-Jewish policies. The ''Deutsche Christen'' factions were united in the goal of establishing a Nazi Protestantism and abolishing what they considered to be Jewish traditions in Christianity, and some but not all rejected the Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
and the teaching of the Apostle Paul. In November 1933, a Protestant mass rally of the ''Deutsche Christen'', which brought together a record 20,000 people, passed three resolutions:
* ''Adolf Hitler is the completion of the Protestant Reformation, Reformation'',
* ''Baptized Jews are to be dismissed from the Church''
* ''The Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
is to be excluded from Sacred Scriptures.''
The German Christians selected Ludwig Müller
Johan Heinrich Ludwig Müller (23 June 1883 – 31 July 1945) was a German theologian, a Lutheran pastor, and leading member of the pro-Nazi "German Christians" (german: Deutsche Christen) faith movement. In 1933 he was appointed by the Nazi go ...
(1883–1945) as their candidate for in 1933. In response to Hitler's campaigning, two-thirds of those Protestants who voted elected Ludwig Müller, a neo-pagan candidate, to govern the Protestant Churches. Müller was convinced that he had a divine responsibility to promote Hitler and his ideals, and together with Hitler, he favoured a unified Reichskirche of Protestants and Catholics. This Reichskirche was to be a loose federation in the form of a council, but it would be subordinated to the Nazi regime.
The level of ties between Nazism and the Protestant churches has been a contentious issue for decades. One difficulty is that Protestantism includes a number of religious bodies and many of them had little relation to each other. Added to that, Protestantism tends to allow more variation among individual congregations than Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which makes statements about the official positions of denominations problematic. The German Christians were a minority within the Protestant population, numbering one fourth to one third of the 40 million Protestants in Germany. With Bishop Müller's efforts and Hitler's support, the German Evangelical Church was formed and recognized by the state as a legal entity on 14 July 1933, with the aim of melding the State, the people and the Church into one body. Dissenters were silenced by expulsion or violence.
The support of the German Christian movement within the churches was opposed by many adherents of traditional Christian teachings. Other groups within the Protestant church included members of the ''Bekennende Kirche'', Confessing Church
The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German E ...
, which included such prominent members as Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer; both rejected the Nazi efforts to meld ''volkisch'' principles with traditional Lutheran doctrine. Martin Niemöller organized the ''Pfarrernotbund'' (Pastors' Emergency League) which was supported by nearly 40 percent of the Evangelical pastors. They were, however, (as of 1932) a minority within the Protestant Landeskirche, church bodies in Germany. But in 1933, a number of ''Deutsche Christen'' left the movement after a November speech by Reinhold Krause urged, among other things, the rejection of the Old Testament as Jewish superstition. So when Ludwig Müller could not deliver on conforming all Christians to Nazism, and after some of the German Christian rallies and more radical ideas generated a backlash, Hitler's condescending attitudes towards Protestants increased and he lost all interest in Protestant church affairs.
The resistance within the churches to Nazi ideology was the longest lasting and most bitter of any German institution. The Nazis weakened the churches' resistance from within but the Nazis had not yet succeeded in taking full control of the churches, which was evidenced by the thousands of clergy who were sent to concentration camps. Rev. Martin Niemöller was imprisoned in 1937, charged with "misuse of the pulpit to vilify the State and the Party and attack the authority of the Government." After a failed assassination on Hitler's life in 1943 by members of the military and members of the German resistance to Nazism, German Resistance movement, to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the Confessing Church movement belonged, Hitler ordered the arrest of Protestant, mainly Lutheran clergy. However, even the "Confessing Church made frequent declarations of loyalty to Hitler". But later many Protestants were solidly opposed to Nazism after the nature of the movement was better understood but a number also maintained until the end of the war the view that Nazism was compatible with the teachings of the church.
The small Methodist population was deemed foreign at times; this stemmed from the fact that Methodism began in England, and did not develop in Germany until the nineteenth century under the leadership of Christoph Gottlob Müller and Louis Jacoby. Because of this history they felt the urge to be "more German than the Germans" in order to avoid coming under suspicion. Methodist Bishop John L. Nelsen toured the U.S. on Hitler's behalf in order to protect his church, but in private letters he indicated that he feared and hated Nazism, and he eventually retired and fled to Switzerland. Methodist Bishop F. H. Otto Melle took a far more collaborationist position that included his apparently sincere support for Nazism. He was also committed to an asylum near the war's end. To show his gratitude to the latter bishop, Hitler made a gift of 10,000 marks in 1939 to a Methodist congregation so it could pay for the purchase of an organ. The money was never used.
Outside Germany, Melle's views were overwhelmingly rejected by most Methodists.
The leader of the pro-Nazi segment of the Baptists was Paul Schmidt. The idea of a "national church" was possible in the history of mainstream German Protestantism, but generally forbidden among the Anabaptists, the Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...
, and the Catholic Church. The forms or offshoots of Protestantism that advocated pacifism, anti-nationalism, or racial equality tended to oppose the Nazi state in the strongest possible terms. Other Christian groups known for their efforts against Nazism include the Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...
.
Jehovah's Witnesses
In 1934, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society published a letter entitled "Declaration of Facts".[Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (1934) "1934 Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses p. 131, Brooklyn, N]
In this personal letter to then Chancellor of Germany, Reich Chancellor Hitler, J. F. Rutherford stated that "the Bible Researchers of Germany are fighting for the very same high ethical goals and ideals which also the national government of the German Reich proclaimed respecting the relationship of humans to God, namely: honesty of the created being towards its creator". However, while the Jehovah's Witnesses sought to reassure the Nazi government that their goals were purely religious and non-political and they expressed the hope that the government would allow them to continue their preaching, Hitler still restricted their work in Nazi Germany. After this, Rutherford began denouncing Hitler in articles through his publications, potentially making the plight of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany worse.
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...
or "Bible Researchers" () as they were known in Germany, comprised 25,000 members and they were among those persecuted by the Nazi government. All incarcerated members were identified by a unique purple triangle. Some members of the religious group refused to serve in the Wehrmacht, German military or give allegiance to the Nazi government, for which 250 were executed.[Hesse, Hans (2001). ''Persecution and resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses during the Nazi Regime''. Chicago: Berghahn Books]
p. 12.
/ref> An estimated 10,000 were arrested for various crimes, and 2,000 were sent to Nazi concentration camps, where approximately 1,200 were killed. Unlike Jews and Romani, who were persecuted on the basis of their ethnicity, Jehovah's Witnesses could escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs by signing a document indicating renunciation of their faith, submission to state authority, and support of the German military.
Atheists
On 13 October 1933, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess issued a decree stating: "No National Socialist may suffer any detriment on the ground that he does not profess any particular faith or confession or on the ground that he does not make any religious profession at all." However, the regime strongly opposed "Godless Communism" and all of Germany's Freethought, freethinking (''freigeist''), atheist, and largely Communist Party of Germany#Nazi era, left-wing organizations were banned the same year.
In a speech made during the negotiations for the Reichskonkordat, Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933, Hitler argued against secular schools, stating: "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith." One of the groups closed down by the Nazi regime was the German Freethinkers League
The German Freethinkers League ('Deutscher Freidenkerbund') was an organization founded in the late 19th century by German freethinkers and atheists with the main goal to oppose the power of the state churches in Germany. Its aim was to provide a ...
. Christians appealed to Hitler to end anti-religious and anti-Church propaganda promulgated by Free Thinkers, and within Hitler's Nazi Party some atheists were quite vocal in their anti-Christian views, especially Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
. Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
, who himself was fascinated with Germanic paganism, was a strong promoter of the ''gottgläubig'' movement and he did not allow atheists into the Schutzstaffel, SS, arguing that their "refusal to acknowledge higher powers" would be a "potential source of indiscipline". In the SS, Himmler announced: "We believe in a God Almighty who stands above us; he has created the earth, the Fatherland, and the Volk, and he has sent us the Führer. Any human being who does not believe in God should be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid and thus not suited for the SS." He also declared: "As National Socialists, we believe in a Godly worldview."
Esoteric groups
In the 1930s there already existed an Esotericism in Germany and Austria, esoteric scene in Germany and Austria. The organisations within this spectrum were suppressed, but, unlike Suppression of Freemasonry#Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, Freemasonry in Nazi Germany, they were not persecuted. The only known case in which an occultist might have been sent to a concentration camp for his beliefs is that of Friedrich Bernhard Marby.
Also, some Nazi leaders had an interest in esotericism. Rudolf Hess had an interest in Anthroposophy. Himmler, Heinrich Himmler showed a strong interest in esoteric matters.
The esoteric Thule-gesellschaft, Thule Society lent support to the German Workers' Party, which was eventually transformed into the Nazi Party in 1920. Dietrich Eckart
Dietrich Eckart (; 23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German '' völkisch'' poet, playwright, journalist, publicist, and political activist who was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party. Eckart ...
, a remote associate of the Thule Society, actually coached Hitler on his public speaking skills, and while Hitler has not been shown to have been a member of Thule, he received support from the group. Hitler later dedicated the second volume of ''Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'' to Eckart. The racist-occult doctrines of Ariosophy contributed to the atmosphere of the völkisch movement in the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
that eventually led to the rise of Nazism.
Other beliefs
In the Appendix of ''The Nazi Persecution of the Churches'', Conway has included a document: "List of sects prohibited by the Gestapo up to December 1938." It mentions the "International Jehovah's Witness" under No.1, but also includes a so-called "Study group for Psychic Research" and even the "Baháʼí Faith, Bahai Sect."
Astrologers, healers and fortune tellers were banned under the Nazis, while the small pagan "German Faith Movement", which worshipped the sun and the seasons, supported the Nazis.
Churches and the war effort
Hitler called a truce to the Church conflict with the outbreak of war, wanting to back away from policies which were likely to cause internal friction inside Germany. He decreed at the outset of war that "no further action should be taken against the Evangelicalism, Evangelical and Catholic Churches for the duration of the war". According to John Conway, "The Nazis had to reckon with the fact that, despite all of Rosenberg's efforts, only 5 percent of the population registered themselves at the 1930 census as no longer connected with Christian Churches." The support of millions of German Christians was needed in order for Hitler's plans to come to fruition. It was Hitler's belief that if religion is a help, "it can only be an advantage". Most of the 3 million Nazi Party members "still paid the Church taxes" and considered themselves Christians. Regardless, a number of Nazi radicals in the party hierarchy determined that the Church Struggle should be continued.[John S. Conway; ''The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945''; Regent College Publishing; p. 235] Following the Nazi victory in Poland, the repression of the Churches was extended, despite their early protestations of loyalty to the cause.[John S. Conway; ''The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945''; Regent College Publishing; p. 237]
Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda issued threats and applied intense pressure on the Churches to voice support for the war, and the Gestapo banned Church meetings for a few weeks. In the first few months of the war, the German Churches complied. No denunciations of the invasion of Poland, or the Blitzkrieg were issued. On the contrary, Bishop Marahrens gave thanks to God that the Polish conflict was over, and "that He has granted our armies a quick victory." The Ministry for Church Affairs suggested that Church bells across Germany ring for a week in celebration, and that pastors and priests "flocked to volunteer as chaplains" for the German forces.[The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 By John S. Conway p. 235; Regent College Publishing] The Catholic bishops asked their followers to support the war effort: "We appeal to the faithful to join in ardent prayer that God's providence may lead this war to blessed success for Fatherland and people."[The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 By John S. Conway p. 234; Regent College Publishing] Likewise, the Evangelicals proclaimed: "We unite in this hour with our people in intercession for our Fuhrer and Reich, for all the armed forces, and for all who do their duty for the fatherland."
Even in the face of evidence of Nazi atrocities against Catholic priests and lay people in Poland, which were broadcast on Vatican Radio, German Catholic religious leaders continued to express their support for the Nazi war effort. They urged their Catholic followers to "fulfill their duty to the Fuhrer". Nazi war actions in 1940 and 1941 similarly prompted the Church to voice its support. The bishops declared that the Church "assents to the just war, especially one designed for the safeguarding of the state and the people" and wants a "peace beneficial to Germany and Europe" and calls the faithful to "fulfill their civil and military virtues." But the Nazis strongly disapproved of the sentiments against war expressed by the Pope through his first encyclical, ''Summi Pontificatus'' and his 1939 Christmas message, and they were angered by his support for Poland and the "provocative" use of Vatican Radio by Cardinal Hlond of Poland. Distribution of the encyclical was banned.
Conway wrote that anti-church radical Reinhard Heydrich estimated in a report to Hitler dated October 1939, that the majority of Church people were supporting the war effort – although a few "well known agitators among the pastors needed to be dealt with". Heydrich determined that support from church leaders could not be expected because of the nature of their doctrines and their internationalism, so he devised measures to restrict the operation of the Churches under cover of war time exigencies, such as reducing the resources available to Church presses on the basis of rationing, and prohibiting pilgrimages and large church gatherings on the basis of transportation difficulties. Churches were closed for being "too far from bomb shelters". Bells were melted down. Presses were closed.
With the expansion of the war in the east from 1941, there also came an expansion of the regime's attack on the churches. Monasteries and convents were targeted and expropriations of Church properties surged. The Nazi authorities claimed that the properties were needed for wartime necessities such as hospitals, or accommodations for refugees or children, but they instead used them for their own purposes. "Hostility to the state" was another common cause given for the confiscations, and the actions of a single member of a monastery could result in the seizure of the whole. The Society of Jesus, Jesuits were especially targeted. The Papal Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo and Cardinal Bertram complained constantly to the authorities but they were told to expect more requisitions owing to war-time needs.
Religious aspects of Nazism
Several elements of Nazism were quasi-religious in nature. The Cult of personality, cult of Adolf Hitler, Hitler as the ''Führer'', the "huge congregations, banners, sacred flames, processions, a style of popular and radical preaching, prayers-and-responses, memorials and funeral marches" have all been described by historians of esotericism such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as "essential props for the cult of race and nation, the mission of Aryan Germany and her victory over her enemies." These different religious aspects of Nazism have led some scholars to consider Nazism, like communism, to be a kind of political religion.
Hitler's plan, for example, to erect a magnificent new capital in Berlin (Welthauptstadt Germania), has been described as his attempt to build a version of the New Jerusalem. Since Fritz Stern's classical study ''The Politics of Cultural Despair'', most historians have viewed the relationship between Nazism and religion in this way. Some historians see the Nazi movement and Adolf Hitler as fundamentally hostile to Christianity, though not irreligious. In the first chapter of ''The Nazi Persecution of the Churches'', historian John S. Conway (historian), John S. Conway elaborates that Christian Churches had lost their appeal in Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, and Hitler responded to it by offering "what appeared to be a vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of Christianity."
Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he ...
, wrote in his memoirs that Hitler himself had a negative view of the mystical notions which were pushed by Heinrich Himmler, Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
. Speer quotes Hitler as having said of Himmler's attempt to mythologize the Schutzstaffel, SS:
Relationship between religion and fascism
The scholar of fascism, Stanley Payne notes that fundamental to fascism was the foundation of a purely materialistic "civic religion" that would "displace preceding structures of belief and relegate supernatural religion to a secondary role, or relegate it to none at all", and "though there were specific examples of religious or would-be 'Christofascism, Christian fascists,' fascism presupposed a post-Christian, post-religious, secularism, secular, and immanent frame of reference." One theory is that religion and fascism could never have a lasting connection because both are a "holistic weltanschauung" claiming the whole of the person. Along these lines, Yale political scientist, Juan Linz and others have noted that secularization had created a void which could be filled by another total ideology, making secular totalitarianism possible,[Maier, Hans and Jodi Bruh]
Totalitarianism and Political Religions
p. 108, 2004 Routledge and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of Antireligion, anti-religious political religion.
However, Robert Paxton finds that "Fascists often cursed ... materialist secularism" and he adds that the circumstances of past fascisms do not mean that future fascisms can not "build upon a religion in place of a nation, or serve as the expression of national identity. Even in Europe, Clerical fascism, religion-based fascisms were not unknown: the Falange Española, the Belgian Rexism, the Finnish Lapua Movement, and the Romanian Legion of the Archangel Michael are all good examples". Separately, Richard L. Rubenstein maintains that the religious dimensions of the Holocaust and Nazi fascism were decidedly unique.
Messianic aspects of Nazism
A significant amount of literature about the potential religious aspects of Nazism has been published. Wilfried Daim suggests that Hitler and the Nazi leadership planned to replace Christianity in Germany with a new religion in which Hitler would be considered the messiah complex, messiah. In his book on the connection between Lanz von Liebenfels and Hitler, Daim published a reprint of an alleged document of a session on "the unconditional abolishment of all religious commitments (Religionsbekenntnisse) after the final victory (Endsieg) ... with a simultaneous proclamation of Adolf Hitler as the new messiah." This session report came from a private collection.
Thuringian German Christian Prayer for Hitler
:Schütze, Herr, mit starker Hand
:unser Volk und Vaterland!
:Laß' auf unsres Führers Pfade
:leuchten Deine Huld und Gnade!
:Weck' in unserem Herz aufs neue
:deutscher Ahnen Kraft und Treue!
:Und so laß' uns stark und rein
:Deine deutschen Kinder sein![Heschel, Susannah. "The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany." p. 123.]
This translates roughly as:
:Protect, O God in Christianity, Lord, with strength of hand,
:Our people and our fatherland!
:Allow upon our leader's course
:To shine your mercy and your grace!
:Awaken in our hearts anew
:Our German bloodline, loyalty, and strength!
:And so allow us, strong and pure,
:To be your German youth!
See also
* Antisemitism in Christianity
* Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany
* Christmas in Nazi Germany
* Christofascism
* Clerical fascism
* Criticism of Christianity
* Savitri Devi
* Esoteric Nazism
* Marcionism
* Nazi eugenics
* Occultism in Nazism
* Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world
* Religion and politics
Notes and references
Bibliography
*John S. Conway 1968: ''The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–45'', Weidenfeld and Nicolson
*
*Sven Granzow, Bettina Müller-Sidibé, Andrea Simml 2006: ''Gottvertrauen und Führerglaube'', in: Götz Aly
Götz Haydar Aly (; born 3 May 1947) is a German journalist, historian and political scientist.
Life and career
Aly was born in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg. He is a patrilineal descendant of a Mixed Turkish-Kurdish convert to Christianity name ...
(ed.): ''Volkes Stimme. Skepsis und Führervertrauen im Nationalsozialismus'', Fischer TB , pp. 38–58
*
*Aurel Kolnai, Kolnai, Aurel ''The War Against the West'', New York, 1938: Viking Press
*
*
*.
External links
The German Churches and the Nazi State in the Holocaust Encyclopedia
Review of Richard Steigmann-Gall's ''Holy Reich''
- by John S. Conway (historian), John S. Conway
Christianity and the Nazi Movement
- by Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall (Born October 3, 1965) is an Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and the former Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010.
Education
He received his BA in history in 1989 and MA ...
Faith And Thought
- Aurel Kolnai, Kolnai, Aurel, ''The War Against the West''
{{Christianity footer
Religion in Nazi Germany,
Messianism