Religion in Nazi Germany

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For the attitude of the Nazi Party towards religion, and the significance of occultism and paganism, see the article Religious aspects of Nazism.
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In 1933, prior to the annexation of Austria into Germany, the Christian population of Germany was 67% Protestant and 33% Catholic, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives.[1] A German census in May 1939, completed more than six years into the Nazi era[2] and incorporating the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria into Germany, indicates that 54% of Germans considered themselves Protestant, (including non-denominational Christians) and 40% considered themselves Catholic, with only 3.5% claiming to be neo-pagan "believers in God," and 1.5 % non-Christians, or "non-believers".

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Organized religion in Germany 1933-1945 [edit]

Kirchenaustritte 1932-1944[3]
Year Catholic Protestant Total
1932 52,000 225,000 277,000
1933 34,000 57,000 91,000
1934 27,000 29,000 56,000
1935 34,000 53,000 87,000
1936 46,000 98,000 144,000
1937 104,000 338,000 442,000
1938 97,000 343,000 430,000
1939 95,000 395,000 480,000
1940 52,000 160,000 212,000
1941 52,000 195,000 247,000
1942 37,000 105,000 142,000
1943 12,000 35,000 49,000
1944 6,000 17,000 23,000

Christianity in Germany has, since the Protestant Reformation, been divided into Catholicism and Protestantism. As a specific outcome of the Reformation in Germany, the large Protestant denominations are organized into Landeskirchen (roughly: Federal Churches). The German word for denomination is Konfession. For the large churches in Germany (Catholic and evangelisch i.e., Protestant ) the German government collects the church tax, which is then given to the Churches. For this reason, membership in the Catholic or Protestant (evangelische) Church is officially registered. It is important to keep this official aspect in mind when turning to such questions as the religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels. Both men were excommunicated through latae sententiae by virtue of their public statements and actions, having ceased to attend Catholic Mass or engage the Catholic Sacraments long before 1933. Yet, neither had individually, or officially, "left" the Church, or refused to pay its church taxes.[4] It is apparent they were politically motivated. For this reason Historian Richard Steigmann-Gall argues that "nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context"[5] and determining someone's actual religious convictions should be based on other criteria.

Historians have taken a look at the numbers of people who left their church in Germany 1933-45. The option to be taken off the church rolls (Kirchenaustritt) has existed in Germany since 1873, when Otto von Bismarck had introduced it as part of the Kulturkampf aimed against Catholicism.[6] For parity this was made possible for Protestants, too, and for the next 40 years it was mostly they who took advantage of it.[6] Statistics exist since 1884 for the Protestant churches and since 1917 for the Catholic Church.[6]

An analysis of this data for the time of the Nazi rule is available in a paper by Sven Granzow et al., published in a collection edited by Götz Aly. Altogether more Protestants than Catholics left their church, however, overall Protestants and Catholics decided similarly.[7] The spike in the numbers from 1937-38 is the result of the annexation of Austria in 1938 and other territories.The number of Kirchenaustritte reached its "historical high"[8] 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,[9] (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.[8]

Ninety percent of the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS or SD members withdrew from their churches, changing their religious affiliation to God-believing but non-church affiliated, while nearly 70% of the officers of the Schutzstaffel SS did the same.[10]

Nazi plan for religion in Third Reich [edit]

Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches.[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]

Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, "There would, he made clear, be no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches. For the time being, he ordered slow progress on the 'Church Question'. 'But it is clear', noted Goebells, himself among the most aggressive anti-Church radicals, 'that after the war it has to be solved... There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a Germanic-heroic world-view".[21] Biographer Alan Bullock similarly wrote that "once the war was over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian churches, but until then he would be circumspect":[22] Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer 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".[23]

In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he was admonished by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann for consulting with Protestant and Catholic authorities as to the locations for churches: "Bormann curtly informed me that churches were not to receive building sites.[24]

Protestantism [edit]

Martin Luther [edit]

Further information: Martin Luther and antisemitism

During the First and Second World War, German Protestant leaders used the writings of Luther to support the cause of German nationalism.[25] At the 450th anniversary of Luther's birth, which took place only a few months after the Nazi Party began its seizure of power in 1933, there were celebrations conducted on a large scale both by the Protestant Churches and the Nazi Party.[26] At a celebration at Königsberg, Erich Koch, at that time Gauleiter of East Prussia, made a speech which, among other things, compared Adolf Hitler and Martin Luther and claimed that the Nazis fought with Luther's spirit.[26] Such a speech might be dismissed as mere propaganda,[26] but, as Steigmann-Gall points out: "Contemporaries regarded Koch as a bona fide Christian who had attained his position [of the elected president of a provincial Church synod] through a genuine commitment to Protestantism and its institutions."[27] Even so, Steigmann-Gail states that the Nazis were not a Christian movement.[28]

The prominent Protestant theologian Karl Barth,of the Swiss Reformed, opposed this appropriation of Luther in the German Empire and Nazi Germany, when he stated in 1939 that the writings of Martin Luther were used by the Nazis to glorify the State and state absolutism:"The German people suffer under his error of the relation between law and bible, between secular and spiritual power",[29] in which Luther divided the temporal State from the inward focusing spiritual, thus limiting the ability of the individual or the church to question the actions of the State,[30] which was seen as a God ordained instrument.[31]

On February 1940, Barth accused German Lutherans specifically of separating Biblical teachings from its teachings of the State and thus legitimizing the Nazi state ideology.[32] He was not alone with his view. A few years earlier on October 5, 1933, Pastor Wilhelm Rehm from Reutlingen declared publicly that "Hitler would not have been possible without Martin Luther",[33] though many have also made this same statement about other influences in Hitler's rise to power. Anti-Communist historian Paul Johnson has said that "without Lenin, Hitler would not have been possible".[34]

Protestant Groups [edit]

Main article: German Christians

Different German states possessed regional social variations as to class densities and religious denomination;[35] Richard Steigmann-Gall alleges a linkage between several Protestant churches and Nazism,[36] The "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 National Socialism and its anti-Jewish policies.[37] The Deutsche Christen factions were united in the goal of establishing a national socialist Protestantism, [38] and abolishing what they considered to be Jewish traditions in Christianity, and some but not all rejected the Old Testament and the teaching of the Apostle Paul. On 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 Reformation,
  • Baptized Jews are to be dismissed from the Church
  • The Old Testament is to be excluded from Sacred Scriptures.[39]

Ludwig Müller [edit]

The "German Christians" selected Ludwig Müller (1883–1945) as their candidate for Reich bishop in 1933.[40] In response to Hitler's campaigning,[41] two-thirds of those Protestants who voted elected Ludwig Müller, a neo-pagan candidate, to govern the Protestant Churches.[42] Müller was convinced that he had a divine responsibility to promote Hitler and his ideals,[43] 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 subordinated to the National Socialist State.[44]

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 many of whom 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 "official positions" of denominations problematic. The "German Christians" were a minority within the Protestant population,[45] numbering one third to one forth of the 40 million protestants in Germany.[37] With Bishop Müller's efforts and Hitlers support "The German Evangelical Church" was formed and recognized by the state as a legal entity on July 14, 1933, with the aim of melting State, people and Church into one body.[46] Dissenters were silenced by expulsion or violence.[47]

The support of the "German Christian" movement within the churches was opposed by many adherents of traditional christian teachings.[48] Other groups within the Protestant church included members of the Confessing Church, prominent members of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), included Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer;[49] both rejected the Nazi efforts to meld volkisch principles with traditional Lutheran doctrine.[50] Martin Niemöller organized the Pastors' Emergency League which was supported by nearly 40 percent of the Evangelical pastors.[51][52] They were, however, (as of 1932) in the minority within the Protestant church bodies in Germany. But in 1933, a number of Deutsche Christen left the movement after a November speech by Reinhold Krause that urged, among other things, the rejection of the Old Testament as Jewish superstition.[53] So when Ludwig Müller could not deliver on conforming all Christians to National Socialism, and after some of the "German Christan" rallies and more radical ideas generated a backlash, Hitler's condescending attitudes toward Protestants increased and he lost all interest in Protestant church affairs.[41]

The resistance within the churches to Nazi ideology was the longest lasting and most bitter of any German institution.[54] The Nazis weakened the churches' resistance from within but the Nazis had not yet succeeded in taking full control of the churches, evidenced by the thousands of clergy sent to concentration camps.[55] 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."[56] After a failed assassination on Hitler's life in 1943 by members of the military and members of the German Resistance movement,[57] of which Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the Confessing Church movement belonged to, Hitler ordered the arrest of Protestant, mainly Lutheran clergy. However, even the "Confessing Church made frequent declarations of loyalty to Hitler".[58] 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 that Nazism was compatible with the church.

The small Methodist population at times was deemed foreign; this stemmed from the fact that Methodism began in England, while it did not develop in Germany until the nineteenth century with Christoph Gottlob Müller and Louis Jacoby. Because of this history they felt the urge to be "more German than the Germans" to avoid suspicion. Methodist Bishop John L. Nelsen toured the U.S. on Hitler's behalf to protect his church, but in private letters indicated that he feared or hated Nazism, and so retired to Switzerland. Methodist Bishop F. H. Otto Melle took a far more collaborationist position that included apparently sincere support for Nazism. He felt that serving the Reich was both a patriotic duty and a means of advancement. To show his gratitude, Hitler made a gift of 10,000 marks in 1939 to a Methodist congregation to purchase an organ.[59] Outside of Germany, Melle's views were overwhelmingly rejected by most Methodists. The leader of pro-Nazi segment of Baptists was Paul Schmidt. The idea of a "national church" was possible in the history of mainstream German Protestantism, but National Churches devoted primarily to the state were generally forbidden among the Anabaptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Catholic Church. The forms or offshoots of Protestantism that advocated pacificism, anti-nationalism, or racial equality tended to oppose the Nazi state in the strongest terms. Prominent Protestant, or Protestant offshoot, groups known for their efforts against Nazism include the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Nazi attitudes towards Christianity [edit]

Unlike some other Fascist movements of the era, Nazi ideology was essentially hostile to Christianity and clashed with Christian beliefs in many respects.[60] Nazism saw the Christian ideals of meekness and conscience as obstacles to the violent instincts required to defeat other races.[61] According to Blainey, Hitler was an atheist who, while seeing some political advantage in temporary allegiances with Christians, ultimately believed "one is either a Christian or a German" - to be both was impossible.[62] According to Bullock, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience ('a Jewish invention, a blemish like circumcission')".[63] Bullock wrote that "once the war was over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian churches, but until then he would be circumspect":[64]

The official Nazi philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg was an anti-Christian. 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:[65] Hitler's chosen deputy and private secretary, Martin Bormann, saw Christianity and Nazism as "incompatible" (mainly because of its Jewish origins)[66] Rosenberg and Bormann actively collaborated in the Nazi program to eliminate Church influence.

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.[42] A number of Nazis promoted positive Christianity, a militant, non-denominational form of Christianity which viewed Christ as an active fighter and antisemite who opposed the institutionalized Judaism of his day,[67] they denounced the Old testament, demanded the removal of Paul from the New Testament and changed Jesus into a German war hero.[42] As a result the Confessing Church movement was started in opposition to the nazification of the Protestant churches. In 1937 all Confessing Church seminaries and teaching was banned. Dissident Protestants were forbidden to attend universities. During Hitler's dictatorship, more than 6,000 clergymen, on the charge of treasonable activity, were imprisoned or executed.[68] The same measures were taken in the occupied territories, in French Lorraine, the Nazis forbid religious youth movements, parish meetings, scout meetings, and church assets were taken. Church schools were closed, and teachers in religious institutes were dismissed. The episcopal seminary was closed, and the SA and SS desecrated churches, religious statutes and pictures. 300 clergy were expelled from the Lorraine region, monks and nuns were deported or forced to renounce their vows.[69]

The Nazi leadership made use of both Christian symbolism, indigenous Germanic pagan imagery, and ancient Roman symbolism in their propaganda. However, the use of pagan symbolism worried some Protestants.[70] Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler,[68] subscribed either to a mixture of pseudoscientific theories, particularly Social Darwinism,[71] or to mysticism and occultism, which was especially strong in the SS.[72][73] 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, was hardly recognized by ideologists such as Alfred Rosenberg or by other political decision-makers.[74]

In a confidential message to the Gauleiter on June 9, 1941, Martin Bormann, had declared that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."[75] 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.[75] Bormann stated:

When we National Socialists 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.[76]

During the war Alfred Rosenberg 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 National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of Saints.
  • On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf and to the left of the altar a sword.[77]

Other Nazis, like Dietrich Eckart and Walter Buch, saw Nazism and Christianity as part of the same movement.[78]

Nazi policy towards the Churches [edit]

The signing of the Reichskonkordat on July 20, 1933 in Rome. (From left to right: German prelate Ludwig Kaas, German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Giuseppe Pizzardo, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, Alfredo Ottaviani, and member of Reichsministerium des Inneren (Home Office) Rudolf Buttmann)
Further information: Kirchenkampf

As the Nazi Party began its takeover of power in Germany in 1933 the struggling, but still nominally functioning, Weimar government, led by its President, Paul von Hindenburg, and represented by his appointed Vice-Chancellor, Franz von Papen, initiated talks with the Holy See concerning the establishment of a concordat. The talks lasted three and half months while Hitler consolidated his hold on power.[42] This attempt achieved the signing of the Reichskonkordat on July 20, 1933, which protected the freedom of the Catholic Church and restricted lay persons, priests and bishops from political activity.[42]

Like the idea of the Reichskonkordat, the notion of a Protestant Reich Church, which would unify the Protestant Churches, also had been considered previously.[79] Hitler had discussed the matter as early as 1927 with Ludwig Müller, who was at that time the military chaplain of Königsberg.[79]

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.[80] 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.[80] Religious persecution was not confined to Poland: in Dachau concentration camp alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different countries were killed.[80]

A number of historians maintain that the Nazis had a general covert plan, which some argue existed before the Nazis' rose to power,[81] to destroy Christianity within the Reich.[13][82][83][84][85][86][87] 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."[81] However other historians maintain no such plan existed.[88][89][90][91] Summarizing a 1945 Office of Strategic Services report, 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.[12][92] However the report stated this goal was limmited to a "sector of the National Socialist party," namely Alfred Rosenberg and Baldur von Schirach.[93] 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."[13]

In his study The Holy Reich, the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall comes to the conclusion that Christianity, "in the final analysis, did not constitute a barrier to Nazism." Furthermore, he comments on the reason why Nazism is quite often seen as the opposite of Christianity:

"What we suppose Nazism must surely have been about usually tells us as much about contemporary societies as about the past purportedly under review. The insistence that Nazism was an anti-Christian movement has been one of the most enduring truisms of the past fifty years.... Exploring the possibility that many Nazis regarded themselves as Christian would have decisively undermined the myths of the Cold War and the regeneration of the German nation ... Nearly all Western societies retain a sense of Christian identity to this day.... That Nazism as the world-historical metaphor for human evil and wickedness should in some way have been related to Christianity can therefore be regarded by many only as unthinkable."[94]

Steigmann-Gall's views, however, run against the general consensus on the subject.[95]

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) state that the total number of Christians of Jewish descent in the Third Reich is estimated at around 200,000.[96] Among the Gentile Christians 11,300 Jehovah's Witnesses were placed in camps, and about 1,490 died, of whom 270 were executed as conscientious objectors.[97] 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.

Jehovah's Witnesses [edit]

Main article: Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany

Initially J. F. Rutherford, president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society supported Hitler's views in a personal letter to Hitler as well as a widely published "Declaration of Facts".[98] The Jehovah's Witness leadership clearly 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".[99] However as the Jehovah's Witnesses sought a compromise with the Nazi leadership Hitler still restricted their work in Nazi Germany after which J. F. Rutherford started antagonizing Hitler in articles through his publications potentially making the plight of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany worse.[100]

Jehovah's Witnesses or "Bible Researchers" (Bibelforschers) as they were known in Germany, comprised 25,000 members and 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 German military or give allegiance to the Nazi government, for which 250 were executed.[101] An estimated 10,000 were arrested for various crimes, and 2,000 were sent to Nazi concentration camps, where approximately 1,200 were killed.[101] Jehovah's Witnesses were among the few who could leave the concentration camps simply by signing a document renouncing their religious beliefs.

Catholicism [edit]

Main article: Catholic Church and Nazi Germany

The attitude of the Nazi party to the Catholic Church ranged from tolerance, to near total renunciation and outright aggression.[102] Bullock wrote that Hitler had some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure".[103] Many Nazis were anti-clerical in both private and public life.[104] The Nazi party had decidedly pagan elements.[105] 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.[102] Adolf Hitler himself has been described as a "spiritualist" by Laqueur; but by Bullock as a "rationalist" and "materialist" with no appreciation of the spiritual side of humanity;[106] and a simple "atheist" by Blainey.[107] His Fascist comrade Benito Mussolini was an atheist. Both were anticlerical, but understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampfs against Catholicism prematurely. Such a clash, possibly inevitable in the future, was put off while they dealt with other enemies.[108]

Church hierarchy [edit]

The nature of the Nazi Party's relations with the Catholic Church was also complicated. As Hitler rose to power, many Catholic priests and leaders vociferously opposed Nazism on the grounds of its incompatibility with Christian morals. In July 1933 a Concord Reichskonkordat was signed with the Vatican which prevented political activity by the Church in Germany, but the Vatican continued to speak out on issues of faith and morals opposing the Nazi philosophy Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. In 1937 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge condemning Nazi ideology, notably the Gleichschaltung policy directed against religious influence upon education, as well as Nazi racism and antisemitism. Pius XI's encyclical Humani Generis Unitas was never published due to his death before it could be issued, 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 Humani Generis Unitas. The massive Catholic opposition to the euthanasia programs led them to be quieted on 28 August 1941, (according to Spielvogel pp. 257–258). Catholics, on occasion, actively and openly protested 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.[109]

Criticism arose 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 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 for being unspecific.

In 1941 the Nazi authorities decreed the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys in the German Reich, many of them effectively being occupied and secularized by the Allgemeine SS under Himmler. However, on July 30, 1941 the Aktion Klostersturm (Operation Monastery) was put to an end by a decree of Hitler, who feared the increasing protests by the Catholic part of German population might result in passive rebellions and thereby harm the Nazi war effort at the eastern front.[110]

Plan for the Roman Catholic Church [edit]

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." The sequence of these plans, he states, follow this sequence: an abolition of the priestly celibacy and a nationalisation of all church property, the dissolution of monastic religious institutes, and an end to the influence of the Catholic Church upon education. Hutzen states that Hitler proposed to reduce vocations to the priesthood by forbidding seminaries from receiving applicants before their 25th birthdays, and thus 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.[111]

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 Hutzen states meant the indirectly or actively resisting Catholic clergymen (who wore black cassocks).[112]

Christianity and Nazi antisemitism [edit]

According to Jewish American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, antisemitism has a long history within Christianity. The line of "antisemitic descent" from Luther, the author of On the Jews and Their Lies, to Hitler is "easy to draw." In her The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, she contends that Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews. Dawidowicz writes that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern antisemitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass, which can be traced to Haman's advice to Ahasuerus. Although modern German antisemitism also has its roots in German nationalism and the liberal revolution of 1848, Christian antisemitism, she writes, is a foundation that was laid by the conflict of Early Christianity with the Judaic faith "upon which Luther built."[113] Dawidowicz' allegations and positions are criticized and not accepted by most historians however. For example, in "Studying the Jew" Alan Steinweis notes that, "Old-fashioned antisemitism, Hitler argued, was insufficient, and would lead only to pogroms, which contribute little to a permanent solution. This is why, Hitler maintained, it was important to promote 'an antisemitism of reason,' one that acknowledged the racial basis of Jewry."[114] Interviews with Nazis by other historians show that the Nazis thought that their views were rooted in biology, not 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... [and] resentment 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."[115]

Other beliefs [edit]

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 "Bahai Sect."[116]

Atheists [edit]

On October 13, 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."[117] However, the regime strongly opposed "godless communism"[118][119] and most of Germany's freethinking (freigeist), atheist, and largely left-wing organizations were banned the same year.[120][121] And in a speech made during the negotiations for the 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."[122] One of the groups closed down by the Nazi regime was the German Freethinkers League. Christians appealed to Hitler to end anti-religious and anti-Church propaganda promulgated by Free Thinkers,[123] and within Hitler's Nazi Party some atheists were quite vocal in their anti-christian views, especially Martin Bormann.[124]

Esoteric groups [edit]

In the 1930s there already existed an esoteric scene in Germany and Austria. The organisations of this spectrum were suppressed, but, unlike Freemasonry in Nazi Germany, not persecuted. The only secure 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. Heinrich Himmler showed a strong interest in esoteric matters.

The esoteric Thule Society lent support to the German Workers' Party, which was eventually transformed into the Nazi Party in 1920. Dietrich 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 on dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to Eckart. The racist-occult doctrines of Ariosophy contributed to the atmosphere of the völkisch movement in the Weimar Republic that eventually led to rise of Nazism.

Religious aspects of Nazism [edit]

Main article: Religious aspects of Nazism

Several elements of Nazism were quasi-religious in nature. The cult around Hitler as the Führer, the "huge congregations, banners, sacred flames, processions, a style of popular and radical preachings, prayers-and-responses, memorials and funeral marches" have been described by historian of Esotericism Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as "essential props for the cult of race and nation, the mission of Aryan Germany and victory over her enemies."[125] These kinds of religious aspects of Nazism have led some scholars to consider Nazism, like communism, a kind of political religion.[126]

Hitler's plans, for example, to erect a magnificent new capital at Berlin (Welthauptstadt Germania), has been described as attempting to build a version of the New Jerusalem.[127] Since Fritz Stern's classical study The Politics of Cultural Despair, most historians have viewed the relation of Nazism and religion in this way. Some historians see the Nazi movement and Adolf Hitler as fundamentally hostile to Christianity, though not irreligious.[who?] In the first chapter of The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, historian John S. Conway elaborates that Christian Churches in Germany had lost their appeal in the time of the Weimar Republic, and that Hitler offered "what appeared to be a vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of Christianity."[128]

Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer, wrote in his memoirs that Hitler himself had a negative view toward the mystical notions pushed by Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg. Speer quotes Hitler as having said of Himmler's attempt to mythologize the SS:[129]

What nonsense! Here we have at last reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now [Himmler] wants to start that all over again. We might just as well have stayed with the church. At least it had tradition. To think that I may some day be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave...

— Adolf Hitler quoted in Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich

Relation of religion to fascism [edit]

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 to none at all", and that "though there were specific examples of religious or would-be 'Christian fascists,' fascism presupposed a post-Christian, post-religious, secular, and immanent frame of reference."[130] 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.[131] Along these lines, Yale political scientist, Juan Linz and others have noted that secularization had created a void which could be filled by a total ideology, making totalitarianism possible,[132][133] and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of anti-religious political religion.[134] However Richard L. Rubenstein maintains that the religious dimensions of the holocaust and Nazi fascism were decidedly unique.[135]

Messianic aspects of Nazism [edit]

There has been significant literature on the potential religious aspects of Nazism. Sometimes it is even asked whether Hitler and the Nazi leadership were about to replace Christianity in Germany with a new religion in which Hitler was to be considered as the messiah. The strongest hint in this direction comes from Wilfried Daim, who, in his book on the connection between Lanz von Liebenfels and Hitler, has brought a reprint of a document on 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."[136] This session report was preserved in a private collection. Daim holds towards the authenticity of the document.[136] Connected to this is the question if Hitler personally saw himself as the messiah of the German people; see Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs. Other evidence that Hitler was occasionally compared with Jesus, or revered as a savior sent by God is a prayer recited by orphans at orphanages. It runs as follows:[137][citation needed]

Prayer to Hitler [edit]

Führer, mein Führer, von Gott mir gegeben, beschütz und erhalte noch lange mein Leben
Du hast Deutschland errettet aus tiefster Not, Dir verdank ich mein tägliches Brot
Führer, mein Führer, mein Glaube, mein Licht
Führer mein Führer, verlasse mich nicht

This translates roughly as:

Leader, my Leader, given to me by God, protect me and sustain my life for a long time
you have rescued Germany out of deepest misery, to you I owe my daily bread
Leader, my Leader, my belief, my light
Leader my Leader, do not abandon me

See also [edit]

Notes and references [edit]

  1. ^ http://www.ushmm.org See The German Churches and the Nazi State.
  2. ^ Johnson, Eric (2000). Nazi terror: the Gestapo, Jews, and ordinary Germans" New York: Basic Books, p. 10.
  3. ^ In full thousand, rounded down. Numbers for Protestantism and Catholicism are approximates. Source: Granzow et al. 2006: 40, 207
  4. ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. XV.
  5. ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2007). "Christianity and the Nazi Movement: A Response." Journal of Contemporary History 42 (2): 205.
  6. ^ a b c Granzow et al. 2006: 39
  7. ^ Granzow et al. 2006: 50
  8. ^ a b Granzow et al. 2006: 58
  9. ^ Granzow et al. 2006: 42-46
  10. ^ State University of New York George C. Browder Professor of History College of Freedonia (16 September 1996). Hitler's Enforcers : The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution. Oxford University Press. pp. 166–. ISBN 978-0-19-534451-6. Retrieved 14 March 2013. 
  11. ^ Frank J. Coppa Controversial Concordats, p. 124, CUA Press, 1999
  12. ^ a b Sharkey, Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity, New York Times, January 13, 2002
  13. ^ a b c 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
  14. ^ 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."
  15. ^ 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.”
  16. ^ Wheaton, Eliot Barculo The Nazi revolution, 1933-1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era, p. 290, 363, Doubleday 1968: The Nazis sought to "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch."
  17. ^ 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
  18. ^ Bendersky, Joseph W., A concise history of Nazi Germany, p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: “Consequently, it was Hitler’s long rang goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire.”
  19. ^ Shirer, William L., Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, p. p 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.”
  20. ^ Fischel, Jack R., Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust , p. 123, Scarecrow Press, 2010: “The objective was to either destroy Christianity and restore the German gods of antiquity or to turn Jesus into an Aryan.”
  21. ^ Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London p.661
  22. ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p219
  23. ^ The Response of the German Catholic Church to National Socialism, by Michael Phayer published by Yad Vashem
  24. ^ Albert Speer. (1997). Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 177.
  25. ^ Wiley InterScience: Jan Herman Brinks - Luther and the German State (Abstract)
  26. ^ a b c Steigmann-Gall 2003:1
  27. ^ Steigmann-Gall 2003:2
  28. ^ Steigmann-Gall, R. (2007). "Christianity and the Nazi Movement: A Response". Journal of Contemporary History 42 (2): 187. doi:10.1177/0022009407075560. ISSN 0022-0094. 
  29. ^ Karl Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, Zürich 1939, 113
  30. ^ Karen L. Bloomquist; John R. Stumme (1998). The Promise of Lutheran Ethics. Augsburg Fortress, Publishers. pp. 99–. ISBN 978-0-8006-3132-1. Retrieved 26 April 2013. 
  31. ^ John R. Stumme; Robert W. Tuttle (2003). Church and State: Lutheran Perspectives. Fortress Press. pp. 58–. ISBN 978-1-4514-1748-7. Retrieved 26 April 2013. 
  32. ^ Karl Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, Zürich 1940, 122
  33. ^ in Heinonen, Anpassung und Identität 1933-1945 Göttingen 1978 p.150
  34. ^ TIME 100: Leaders & Revolutionaries - Historian Paul Johnson 4/8/98 Yahoo Chat
  35. ^ see Jackson J. Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany ISBN 0-13-189877-9
  36. ^ Steigmann-Gall, R., The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 ISBN 0-521-82371-4
  37. ^ a b The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Princeton University Press. 2008. pp. 3–. ISBN 978-0-691-12531-2. Retrieved 25 April 2013. 
  38. ^ Hans Buchheim, Glaubenskrise im 3. Reich,Stuttgart, 1953, 41-156
  39. ^ Buchheim, Glaubnskrise im 3.Reich,124-136
  40. ^ Victoria Barnett. For the Soul of the People. Oxford University Press. pp. 33–. ISBN 978-0-19-534418-9. Retrieved 25 April 2013. 
  41. ^ a b Ian Kershaw (2008). Hitler: A Biography. W W Norton & Company Incorporated. pp. 296–. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6. Retrieved 26 April 2013. 
  42. ^ a b c d e Gerhard L. Weinberg (18 May 2012). Hitler's Foreign Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II. Enigma Books. pp. 46–. ISBN 978-1-936274-84-0. Retrieved 13 March 2013. 
  43. ^ Manfred Korschoke, Geschichte der bekennenden Kirche Göttingen, 1976 495
  44. ^ Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, Zürich, 1940 54
  45. ^ Michael Berenbaum; Abraham J. Peck (1 June 2002). The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed and the Re-examined. Indiana University Press. pp. 567–. ISBN 978-0-253-21529-1. Retrieved 23 April 2013. 
  46. ^ Reichsgesetzblatt des deutschen Reiches 1933, I,1, p.47
  47. ^ Thomsett, Michael C. (1997). The German opposition to Hitler: the resistance, the underground, and assassination plots, 1938-1945. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 63. ISBN 0-7864-0372-1. 
  48. ^ Overy, Richard James (2004). The dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W. Norton. p. 283. ISBN 0-393-02030-4. 
  49. ^ Nazis in Pre-War London, 1930-1939: The Fate and Role of German Party Members and British Sympathizers. Sussex Academic Press. 30 April 2010. pp. 108–. ISBN 978-1-84519-054-5. Retrieved 23 April 2013. 
  50. ^ Stackelberg, Roderick (2007) The Routledge companion to Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge, p. 137.
  51. ^ Overy, Richard James (2004). The dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. pp. 283–284. ISBN 0-393-02030-4. 
  52. ^ Stackelberg, Roderick (2007). The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-30860-7. 
  53. ^ Bergen, Doris L. (1996). Twisted Cross: the German Christian movement in the Third Reich. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, p. 17.
  54. ^ Yahil, Leni; Friedman, Ina; Galai, Hayah (1991). "The Holocaust: the fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945". Oxford University Press US (Oxford University Press US). p. 57. ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9. Retrieved 2009-08-10 
  55. ^ Yahil, Leni; Friedman, Ina; Galai, Hayah (1991). "The Holocaust: the fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945". Oxford University Press US (Oxford University Press US). p. 57. ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9. Retrieved 2009-08-10 
  56. ^ Dynamite - TIME
  57. ^ Michael C Thomsett (1997). “The” German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938-1945. McFarland. pp. 180–. ISBN 978-0-7864-0372-1. Retrieved 26 April 2013. 
  58. ^ Richard, Steigmann-Gall (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945.] Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 5-6.
  59. ^ Protestant Churches in the Third Reich
  60. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Fascism - Identification with Christianity; 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013
  61. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Fascism - Identification with Christianity; 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013
  62. ^ Geoffrey Blainey; A Short History of Christianity; Viking; 2011
  63. ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p216
  64. ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p219
  65. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica: Alfred Rosenberg
  66. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Fascism - Identification with Christianity; 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013
  67. ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 20.
  68. ^ a b Overy, Richard (2004). The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W. W. Norton. p. 281. ISBN 978-0-393-02030-4. 
  69. ^ Halls, W.D. (1995). Politics, society and Christianity in Vichy France. Oxford: Berg. pp. 179–81. ISBN 1-85973-081-7. 
  70. ^ Ross, Albion (1935). "Paganism worries Reich Protestants; They Are Distrustful of Nazis, Fearing Trap in the New Church Dictatorship." The New York Times (Nov. 3): E5.
  71. ^ Levy, Richard S. (2005). Antisemitism : a historical encyclopedia of prejudice and persecution. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 665. ISBN 978-1-85109-439-4 
  72. ^ Williamson, Gordon (2005). The SS: Hitler's Instrument Of Terror. St. Paul MN: Zenith. pp. 31–32. ISBN 978-0760319338. 
  73. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (1993). The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology. New York: New York University Press. pp. 177–191. ISBN 978-0814730607. 
  74. ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0521603522. 
  75. ^ a b Conway, John S. (1997). The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, p. 383. Full Letter
  76. ^ Fest, Joachim (1999). The Face of the Third Reich. New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 132-133.
  77. ^ Shirer, William Lawrence (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 240.
  78. ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 23.
  79. ^ a b Steigmann-Gall 2003: 156.
  80. ^ a b c Craughwell, Thomas J., The Gentile Holocaust Catholic Culture, Accessed July 18, 2008
  81. ^ a b Bonney, Richard, Confronting the Nazi war on Christianity: the Kulturkampf newsletters, 1936-1939, p. 10, Peter Lang, 2009
  82. ^ Mosse, George Lachmann (2003). Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, p. 240: "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."
  83. ^ Bendersky, Joseph W. (2007). A concise history of Nazi Germany. Rowman & Littlefield, p. 147: "Consequently, it was Hitler’s long rang goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire."
  84. ^ Shirer, William L. (1990). Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster, p 240: "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."
  85. ^ Fischel, Jack R., Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust , p. 123, Scarecrow Press, 2010: “The objective was to either destroy Christianity and restore the German gods of antiquity or to turn Jesus into an Aryan.”
  86. ^ Dill, Marshall (1970). Germany: a modern history. University of Michigan Press, p. 365: "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."
  87. ^ Wheaton, Eliot Barculo (1968). The Nazi revolution, 1933-1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era. Doubleday, pp. 290, 363: The Nazis sought to "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch."
  88. ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003)' The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 260.
  89. ^ Snyder, Louis L. (1981) Hitler's Third Reich: A Documentary History. New York: Nelson-Hall, p. 249.
  90. ^ Dutton, Donald G. (2007). The psychology of genocide, massacres, and extreme violence: why "normal" people come to commit atrocities. Greenwod Publishing Group, p. 41.
  91. ^ Heschel, Susannah (2008). The Aryan Jesus. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 23.
  92. ^ 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
  93. ^ OSS (1945). The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches, p. 6.
  94. ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). p. 266.
  95. ^ Richard, Steigmann-Gall (2003). The Holy Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, p. i.
  96. ^ Charlotte Kahane - Rescue and Abandonment: The Complex Fate of Jews in Nazi Germany 1999 ".3 "The total number of Christians of Jewish descent in the Third Reich is estimated at around 200000 — although the true figure remains unknown, as many Mischlinge tried to hide their real status. The Jews remained unprotected "
  97. ^ http://www.museenkoeln.de/ns-dok_neu/homepage/JZ-NS-Verfolgung-Koeln.pdf, page 34
  98. ^ Rutherford, J. F. (1933) "Letter to Hitler"
  99. ^ Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (1934) "1934 Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses p. 131, Brooklyn, NY [1]"
  100. ^ Penton, M. James (2004). "Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics Under Persecution" [2]
  101. ^ a b Hesse, Hans (2001). Persecution and resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses during the Nazi Regime. Chicago: Berghahn Books, p. 12.
  102. ^ a b Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future p.41 1996 Oxford University Press]
  103. ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p218
  104. ^ Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future p.42 1996 Oxford University Press]
  105. ^ Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future p.148 1996 Oxford University Press]
  106. ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p219
  107. ^ Geoffrey Blainey; A Short History of Christianity; Viking; 2011; pp.495-6
  108. ^ Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future pp. 31, 42, 1996 Oxford University Press]
  109. ^ Alban Butler; Paul Burns (1995). Butler's lives of the saints: November. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 42–. ISBN 978-0-86012-260-9. Retrieved 23 April 2013. 
  110. ^ Mertens, Annette, Himmlers Klostersturm: der Angriff auf katholische Einrichtungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg und die Wiedergutmachung nach 1945, Paderborn; München ; Wien; Zürich : Schöningh, 2006, pp. 33, 120, 126.
  111. ^ HÜRTEN, H. `Endlösung` für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche, in: Stimmen der Zeit, 203 (1985) p. 535-538
  112. ^ HÜRTEN, H. `Endlösung` für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche, in: Stimmen der Zeit, 203 (1985) p. 534-546
  113. ^ The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945. First published 1975; this Bantam edition 1986, p.23. ISBN 0-553-34532-X
  114. ^ (Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany by Alan Steinweis :8)
  115. ^ (The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Lifton :130)
  116. ^ Conway 1968:370-374
  117. ^ Baynes, Norman H. ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig, p. 378.
  118. ^ Smith, Christian (1996). Disruptive religion: the force of faith in social-movement activism. Routledge. pp. 156–57. ISBN 978-0-415-91405-5. 
  119. ^ Stackelberg, Roderick (2007). The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany. Routledge. pp. 136–8. ISBN 978-0-415-30860-1. 
  120. ^ Bock, Heike (2006). "Secularization of the modern conduct of life? Reflections on the religiousness of early modern Europe". In Hanne May. Religiosität in der säkularisierten Welt. VS Verlag fnr Sozialw. p. 157. ISBN 3-8100-4039-8. 
  121. ^ Kaiser, Jochen-Christoph (2003). Christel Gärtner, ed. Atheismus und religiöse Indifferenz. Organisierter Atheismus. VS Verlag. pp. 122, 124–6. ISBN 978-3-8100-3639-1. 
  122. ^ Helmreich, Ernst (1979). The German Churches Under Hitler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 241.
  123. ^ John S. Conway (1997). The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945. Regent College Publishing. pp. 107–. ISBN 978-1-57383-080-5. Retrieved 25 March 2013. 
  124. ^ Overy, R. J. 2004. The dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. p. 286.
  125. ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, p.1.
  126. ^ Maier, Hans (2004). Totalitarianism and Political Religions. trans. Jodi Bruhn. Routledge. p. 153. ISBN 0-7146-8529-1. 
  127. ^ "The Nazi crusade was indeed essentially religious in its adoption of apocalyptic beliefs and fantasies including a New Jerusalem (cf. Hitler's plans for a magnificent new capital at Berlin)..." Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, p. 203.
  128. ^ Conway 1968: 2
  129. ^ Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs of Albert Speer; New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 94
  130. ^ Payne, Stanley, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945, p. 9, Routledge 1996.
  131. ^ Laqueur, Walter, Fascism: Past, Present, Future p. 41, 1996 Oxford University Press.
  132. ^ Griffin, Roger, Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion, p. 7, 2005 Routledge
  133. ^ Maier, Hans and Jodi Bruhn Totalitarianism and Political Religions, p. 108, 2004 Routledge
  134. ^ Eatwell, Roger The Nature of Fascism: or Essentialism by Another Name? 2004
  135. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein, R. L.(1998) "Religion an the uniqueness of the Holocaust" In A. S Rosenbaum Is the Holocaust unique? Boulder CO: Westview Press, pp. 11-17.
  136. ^ a b Wilfried Daim: Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab, Vienna 1994, p. 222; quoted after: H. T. Hakl: Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus. (German) In: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus, 1997, Graz, Austria: Stocker (German edition of The Occult Roots of Nazism), p. 196
  137. ^ From the German Wikipedia, at de:Religion während des Nationalsozialismus#Religiös anmutende Formen der Nationalsozialisten.

Referred literature [edit]

  • 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 (ed.): Volkes Stimme. Skepsis und Führervertrauen im Nationalsozialismus, Fischer TB (German), pp. 38–58
  • Aurel Kolnai The War Against the West, New York, 1938: Viking Press
  • Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82371-5 .

External links [edit]

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