Religion in Nazi Germany

For the attitude of the Nazi Party towards religion, and the significance of occultism and paganism, see the article religious aspects of Nazism.

This article gives an overview about religion in Nazi Germany and the Nazis' complex and shifting policy towards religion. The German census of May 1939 indicates that 54 percent of Germans considered themselves Protestant and 40 percent considered themselves Catholic, with only 3.5 percent claiming to be neo-pagan "believers in God," and 1.5 percent unbelievers. This census came more than six years into the Hitler era.

Organized religion in Germany 1933-1945

Kirchenaustritte 1932-1944

	Cath.	Protest.	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, however, this translation has been considered misleading, since it might suggest that the context of religion in Germany could be described with the common parabola of the religious marketplace, which is not the case. In Germany, "to this day religion nominally remains a state affair." For the large churches in Germany (Catholic and evangelisch) 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 had ceased to attend Catholic mass or to go to Confession long before 1933, but neither had officially left the Church or refused to pay his church taxes. For this reason, historian Richard Steigmann-Gall argues that "nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context" and determining ones actual religious convictions should be based on other criteria.

Historians have taken a look at the numbers of people who left the 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. For parity this was made possible for Protestants, too, and for the next 40 years it was mostly they 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 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. The number of Kirchenaustritte reached its "historical high" 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.

Protestantism

Martin Luther

Further information: Martin Luther and antisemitism

During the First and Second World War, German leaders used the writings of Luther to support the cause of German nationalism. At the 450th anniversary of Luther's birth, which took place only a few months after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, there were celebrations conducted on a large scale both by the Protestant Churches and the Nazi Party. 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. 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 [of the elected president of a provincial Church synod] through a genuine commitment to Protestantism and its institutions."

The prominent Protestant theologian Karl Barth 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", 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, which was seen as a God ordained instrument.

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. 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", 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".

German Christians movement

Main article: German Christians

The German Christians (Deutsche Christen) constituted the strongest Protestant movement in Germany after the 1932 Church elections, with the aim of synthesising Christianity with the ideology of National Socialism. There were various groups within the German Evangelical Church including the Deutsche Christen and opposition factions that later split under the name Confessing Church. The Deutsche Christen factions were united in the goal of establishing a national socialist Protestantism Deutsche Christen abolished what they considered to be Jewish traditions in Christianity, and some but not all rejected the Old Testament altogether. They rejected academic theology as sterile and not populist enough and were often anti-Catholic. 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.

A claim exists that Adolf Hitler converted to Protestantism and joined the German Christians, according to the National Secretary Klundt on April 25, 1933, in Königsberg, Eastern Prussia. An official confirmation or denial was not issued by the Chancellor.

Ludwig Müller

Ludwig Müller (1883–1945), after his first meeting with Hitler, 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 subordinated to the National Socialist State. Ludwig Müller headed the German Christians, which increased to about 600,000 members in the mid-1930s and won all Church elections since 1932, after dissenters were silenced by expulsion or violence. However he could not deliver on conforming all Christians to National Socialism, and Hitler's condescending attitudes toward Protestants increased: "Protestant clergy, don’t believe in anything except their well-being and office". However, the personal relation between Reichsbischof Müller and Hitler remained cordial and good to 1945, when both committed suicide. Of lasting value of Bishop Müller's efforts was the recognition of the National Socialist State of "The German Evangelical Church" as a legal entity on July 14, 1933, a law which promised a melting of State, people and Church into one body.

General views

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. Still, many Protestant organisations or denominations were solidly opposed to Nazism after the nature of the movement was better understood. Rev. Martin Niemöller, who was imprisoned in 1937, was charged with "misuse of the pulpit to vilify the State and the Party and attack the authority of the Government." 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.

Yet Lutherans voted for Hitler in greater numbers than Catholics. 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 main aspect being Hitler's citing anti-Semitic pamphlets by Martin Luther and accusations that the Lutheran establishment supported Hitler. 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. Outside of Germany, Melle's views were overwhelmingly rejected by most Methodists. The leader of pro-Nazi segment of Baptists was Paul Schmidt. Hitler also led to the unification of Pro-Nazi Protestants in the Protestant Reich Church which was led by Ludwig Müller. The idea of such 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 in Catholicism.

During the 1930s Hitler tried to nationalize Germany's churches (German Christian), with restrictions allowing only German membership. Some Protestants resisted by forming the Confessing Church.

After a failed assassination on Hitler's life in 1943 which involved Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other elements of the Confessing Church (a Protestant organisation), Hitler ordered the arrest of Protestant, mainly Lutheran clergy. Catholic clergy were also suppressed if they spoke out against the régime.

Jehovah's Witnesses

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

Jehovah's Witnesses, which comprised 25,000 members in Germany, were among those persecuted by the Nazi government. All incarcerated members were identified by a unique purple triangle. Members of the religious group refused to serve in the German military or give allegiance to the Nazi government, for which 250 were executed. An estimated 10,000 were arrested for various crimes, and 2,000 were sent to Nazi concentration camps, where approximately 1,200 were killed. . Jehovah's Witnesses are among the few who could leave the concentration camps, simply by signing a document renouncing their religious beliefs.

Catholicism

Main article: Catholic Bishops in Nazi Germany

The attitude of the Nazi party to the Catholic Church ranged from tolerance to outright aggression in service of their covert plan to near total renunciation. 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.

Although both Hitler and Mussolini were anticlerical, they both understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampfs prematurely, such a clash, possibly inevitable in the future, were put off while they dealt with other enemies.

Church hierarchy

The nature of the Nazi Party's relations with the Catholic Church is also complicated. Before Hitler rose to power, many Catholic priests and leaders vociferously opposed Nazism on the grounds of its incompatibility with Christian morals. After Hitler took over and rose to power, party membership was not forbidden anymore and the Catholic Church actively looked for opportunities to work together with the Nazi government. At his trial Franz von Papen said that until 1936 the Catholic Church hoped for a Christian alignment to the beneficial aspects he said they saw in national socialism. (This statement came after Pope Pius XII ended Von Papen's appointment as Papal chamberlain and ambassador to the Holy See, but before his restoration under Pope John XXIII.)

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 him dying 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 quietly ended on 28 August 1941, (according to Spielvogel pp. 257–258) in contrast Catholics only at some occasions actively and openly protested Nazi anti-Semitism in any comparable way, except for several bishops and priests like bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster.

In Nazi Germany, all known 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. Several Catholic bishops in Germany or Austria are recorded as encouraging prayers of support for "The Führer"; this despite the fact the original Reichskonkordat (1933) of Germany with the Holy See proscribed any active political participation by the priesthood.

Criticism also arose in that the Vatican pontificate 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 anti-semitism, but Pius XII is criticised by people like John Cornwell for being unspecific. Pius XI may have underestimated the degree that Hitler's ideas influenced the laity in light of hopes the Concordat would preserve Catholic influences among them. The evolution of the Vatican's understanding has faced criticism of weakness, slowness, or even culpability. On culpability with regards to the German hierarchy after the Concordat, according to Daniel Goldhagen and others, there was a radical reversal of the former episcopal condemnation of Nazism. It is less certain in other cases. From the other extreme the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands officially and formally condemned Nazism in 1941 and therefore faced violence and deportation of its priests, along with attacks upon monasteries and Catholic hospitals, and, the deportation of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz, who were hiding in the Catholic institutions, among them the famous Saint Edith Stein. Likewise, the Polish Roman Catholic hierarchy was violently attacked by the Nazis and saw thousands of its clerics sent to concentration camps or simply killed, a famous example of this being Father Maksymilian Kolbe. Most nations' hierarchy took a mixture of the two positions, oscillating between collaboration and active resistance.

Tangential to the more extreme of collaborationist accusations is the characterisation that Nazism actively based itself on a similar pontifical structure and corps of functionaries. For example the special clothing, ghettoization, and badges demanded of Jews were once common or even began in the Papal States. Also, that the Nazis saw themselves as an effective replacement of Catholicism that would co-opt its unity and respect for hierarchy. Hence attempts were made to unite other religions, as in the earlier example of the Protestant Reich Church.

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.

Nazism and Christianity

Nazi Attitudes towards Christianity

Many Nazis promoted positive Christianity a militant, non-denominational form of Christianity which emphasized Christ as an active fighter and anti-semite who opposed the institutionalized Judaism of his day. Even in the later years of the Third Reich, many Protestant and Catholic clergy within Germany persisted in believing that Nazism was in its essence in accordance with Christian precepts.

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. Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler, subscribed either to a mixture of pseudoscientific theories, particularly Social Darwinism, or to mysticism and occultism, which was especially strong in the SS. Central to both groupings was the belief in Germanic (white Northern-European) 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.

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

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.

Some Nazis, like Alfred Rosenberg and Martin Bormann, viewed Christianity and National Socialism as competing world views. However other Nazis like Dietrich Eckart and Walter Buch, saw them as part of the same movement.

From the mid 1930s, anti-Christian elements within the Nazi party became more prominent, however they were restrained by Hitler. 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. 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.

Nazi policy towards the Churches

Soon after their takeover of power in Germany, the Nazi government resumed talks with the Holy See concerning the establishment of a concordat. Previously, concordats, regulating the relation between the Catholic Church and the state, had been established in Bavaria (1924), Prussia (1929) and Baden (1932), but talks had failed on a federal level for several reasons. This attempt achieved the signing of the Reichskonkordat on July 20, 1933.

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

Further information: Kirchenkampf

The opposition of many adherents of traditional religions to Nazism is only one side of the issue. Within the Lutheran Churches in Germany, the most prominent members of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, opposed Nazism. They rejected the Nazi efforts to meld volkisch principles with traditional Lutheran doctrine. They were, however, (as of 1932) in the minority within the Protestant church bodies in Germany, compared to the Deutsche Christen (German Christians), who supported National Socialism and cooperated with the Nazis. 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. However, even the "Confessing Church made frequent declarations of loyalty to Hitler".

The resistance of churches against the Nazis was the longest lasting and most bitter of any German institution. The Nazis weakened the churches' resistance from within and a significant number of the clergy, particularly Protestant, supported National Socialism, but the Nazis had not yet succeeded in taking control of the churches, evidenced by the thousands of clergy sent to concentration camps. 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. 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 alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different 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, 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 other historians maintain no such plan existed. 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. However the report stated this goal was limmited to a "sector of the National Socialist party," namely Alfred Rosenberg 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."

However, since 2003 this view has been challenged. 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."

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

Christianity and Nazi Anti-Semitism

According to Jewish American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, Anti-Semitism has a long history within Christianity. The line of "anti-Semitic 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 anti-Semitism 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 anti-Semitism also has its roots in German nationalism and the liberal revolution of 1848, Christian Anti-Semitism she writes is a foundation that was laid by the Roman Catholic Church and "upon which Luther built." 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." 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."

Plan 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." 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.

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).

Christians imprisoned or died under the Third Reich

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. 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. 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.

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" or even the "Bahai Sect."

Atheists

On October 13, 1933, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess issued a decree stating that: "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 most of Germany's freethinking (freigeist), atheist, and largely left-wing organizations were banned the same year. In a speech made 24 October 1933, Hitler claimed to have "undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." 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." One of the groups closed down by the Nazi regime was the German Freethinkers League. One of its chairmen, Max Sievers, was beheaded by the Nazis on January 17, 1944 for treason. According to a 1945 U.S. Office of Strategic Services report, the Nazis "abolished the right to pursue anti-religious and anti-Church propaganda. The Prussian government closed the so-called secular (weltliche) schools in which no religious instruction was given and reestablished religious instruction in professional and vocation schools. All organizations of free-thinkers were forbidden."

Esoteric groups

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

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." These kinds of religious aspects of Nazism have led some scholars to consider Nazism, like communism, a kind of political religion.

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. 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. 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."

Relation of religion to fascism

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." 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 a total ideology, making totalitarianism possible, and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of anti-religious political religion. However Richard L. Rubenstein maintains that the religious dimensions of the holocaust and Nazi fascism were decidedly unique.

Messianic aspects of Nazism

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." This session report was preserved in a private collection. Daim holds towards the authenticity of the document. 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:

Prayer to Hitler

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

• Religion and politics
• Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs
• Kirchenkampf
• Clerical fascism
• Neofascism and religion
• Positive Christianity
• Nazi eugenics
• Christmas in Nazi Germany

Referred literature

• 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 Template:De icon, pp. 38–58
• Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82371-5..

External links

• Review of Richard Steigmann-Gall's Holy Reich - by John S. Conway
• Christianity and the Nazi Movement - by Richard Steigmann-Gall
• Religion in Nazi Germany - at Alpha History