Religion in Nazi Germany
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: not encyclopedic and repetitive. (March 2018) |
Part of a series on |
Nazism |
---|
Smaller religious minorities such as the
There were differing views among the Nazi leaders as to the future of
Background
Christianity has ancient roots among Germanic peoples dating to the missionary work of
Bismarck's Kulturkampf ("Culture Struggle") of 1871–1878 had seen an attempt to assert a Protestant vision of German nationalism over Germany, and fused anticlericalism and suspicion of the Catholic population, whose loyalty was presumed to lie with Austria and France, rather than the new German Empire. The Centre Party had formed in 1870, initially to represent the religious interests of Catholics and Protestants, but was transformed by the Kulturkampf into the "political voice of Catholics".[22] Bismarck's "Culture Struggle" failed in its attempt to eliminate Catholic institutions in Germany, or their strong connections outside of Germany, particularly various international missions and Rome.[23]
In the course of the 19th century, both the rise of
In 1933, 5 years prior to the
Year | Total population | Protestant
|
Roman Catholic
|
Others (including Jews) | Jewish
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1910a | 64,926,000 | 39,991,000 (61.6%) | 23,821,000 (36.7%) | 1,113,000 (1.7%) | 615,000 (1.0%) |
1925b | 62,411,000 | 40,015,000 (64.1%) | 20,193,000 (32.4%) | 2,203,000 (3.5%) | 564,000 (0.9%) |
1933b | 65,218,000 | 40,865,000 (62.7%) | 21,172,000 (32.5%) | 3,181,000 (4.8%) | 500,000 (0.8%) |
1933b | 65,218,000 | 43,696,060 (67.0%) | 21,521,940 (33.0%) | - (<1%) | - (<1%) |
1939b | 69,314,000 | 42,103,000 (60.8%) | 23,024,000 (33.2%) | 4,188,000 (6.0%) | 222,000 (0.3%) |
1939c | 79,375,281 | 42,862,652 (54.0%) | 31,750,112 (40.0%) | 4,762,517 (6.0%)d | - |
a. German Empire borders. | |||||
b. Weimar Republic borders, i.e. German state borders of 31 December 1937.[26][25] | |||||
c. Nazi Germany borders in May 1939. Official census data.[3] | |||||
d. Including irreligious people at 1.5%, and other faiths at 1.0%.[3]
|
Denominational trends during the Nazi period
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
Historians have taken a look at the number of people who left their church in Germany during the 1933–1945 period. There was "no substantial decline in religious practice and church membership between 1933 and 1939".[31] 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.[32] For parity this was also made possible for Protestants, and for the next 40 years it was mostly them who took advantage of it.[32] Statistics exist since 1884 for the Protestant churches and since 1917 for the Catholic Church.[32]
An analysis of this data for the era of the Nazis' rule is available in a paper by Sven Granzow et al., published in a collection edited by Götz Aly. Altogether more Protestants than Catholics left their church, however, overall Protestants and Catholics decided similarly.[33] One has to keep in mind that German Protestants were twice the number of Catholics. The spike in the numbers from 1937 to 1938 is the result of the annexation of Austria in 1938 and other territories. The number of Kirchenaustritte reached its "historical high"[34] 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,[35] (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.[34]
According to Evans, those members of the affiliation gottgläubig (lit. "believers in god", a non-denominational nazified outlook on god beliefs, often described as predominately based on creationist and deistic views
Nazi attitudes towards Christianity
Hitler's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, saw an "insoluble opposition" between the Christian and Nazi world views.[40] The Führer angered the churches by appointing Alfred Rosenberg as official Nazi ideologist in 1934.[41] Heinrich Himmler saw the main task of his SS organization to be that of acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a "Germanic" way of living.[42] Hitler's chosen deputy, Martin Bormann, advised Nazi officials in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."[41]
Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the conflict with the Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer,'" according to Kershaw.[40] In public speeches, he portrayed himself and the Nazi movement as faithful Christians.[43][44] In 1928 Hitler said in a speech: "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian."[45] But, according to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."[46] In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure".[47][48] Bullock wrote: "In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest."[47]
As a measure in the struggle for power against the influence of the churches (Kirchenkampf), the Nazis tried to establish a "third denomination" called "Positive Christianity", aiming to replace the established churches to reduce their influence. Historians[who?] have suspected this was an attempt to start a cult which worshipped Hitler as the new Messiah. However, in a diary entry of 28 December 1939, Joseph Goebbels wrote that "the Fuhrer passionately rejects any thought of founding a religion. He has no intention of becoming a priest. His sole exclusive role is that of a politician."[49] In Hitler's political relations dealing with religion he readily adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes."[50]
Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler,[52] subscribed either to a mixture of pseudoscientific theories, such as Social Darwinism,[53] mysticism, and occultism, which was especially strong in the SS.[54][55] 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.[56] A relative moderate, Kerrl accused dissident churchmen of failing to appreciate the Nazi doctrine of "Race, blood and soil" and gave the following explanation of the Nazi conception of "Positive Christianity," telling a group of submissive clergy in 1937:[51]
Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster]
Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation.
During the war
- 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.[57]
When exploring the Nazi Party's public speeches and writings, Steigmann-Gall notes that they can provide insight into their "untempered" ideas.[58]
We are no theologians, no representatives of the teaching profession in this sense, put forth no theology. But we claim one thing for ourselves: that we place the great fundamental idea of Christianity in the center of our ideology [Ideenwelt] – the hero and sufferer Christ himself stands in the center.[59]
— Hans Schemm, Nazi Gauleiter
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained legislative powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise.[60][61] 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.[18][62] However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.
Your Government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler's Government... It is a plan to abolish all existing religions –Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.[63]
But according to Steigman-Gall, some Nazis, like Dietrich Eckart (died 1923) and Walter Buch, saw Nazism and Christianity as part of the same movement.[64] Aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.[65]
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", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal.[66] According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war.[67] In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that churches were not to receive building sites.[68] Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches".[69]
Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler and his fascist ally Mussolini were atheists, but that Hitler courted and benefited from fear among German Christians of militant communist atheism.[70] (Other historians have characterised Hitler's mature religious position as a form of deism.) "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions".[70] Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the Führer's complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser, disclosed in his 1940 book, Hitler and I, that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: "Hitler is an atheist."[71]
According to Kershaw, following the Nazi takeover, race policy and the church struggle were among the most important ideological spheres: "In both areas, the party had no difficulty in mobilizing its activists, whose radicalism in turn forced the government into legislative action. In fact the party leadership often found itself compelled to respond to pressures from below, stirred up by the Gauleiter playing their own game, or emanating sometimes from radical activists at a local level".[72] As time went on, anti-clericalism and anti-church sentiment among grass roots party activists "simply couldn't be eradicated", wrote Kershaw and they could "draw on the verbal violence of party leaders towards the churches for their encouragement."[73] Unlike some other fascist movements of the era, Nazi ideology was essentially hostile to Christianity and clashed with Christian beliefs in many respects.[74] The Nazis seized hundreds of monasteries in Germany and Austria and removed clergymen and laymen alike.[75] In other cases, religious journals and newspapers were censored or banned. The Nazi regime attempted to shut down the Catholic press, which declined "from 435 periodicals in 1934 to just seven in 1943."[76] From the beginning in 1935, the Gestapo arrested and jailed over 2720 clerics who were interned at Germany's Dachau concentration camp, leading to over 1,000 deaths.[77] Nazism saw the Christian ideals of meekness and conscience as obstacles to the violent instincts required to defeat other races.[74] 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.[78]
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.[83]
Nazi anti-Semitism
Instead of focusing on religious differentiation, Hitler maintained that it was important to promote "an antisemitism of reason", one that acknowledged the racial basis of Jewry.[84] Interviews with Nazis by other historians show that the Nazis thought that their views were rooted in biology, not in historical prejudices. For example, "S. became a missionary for this biomedical vision... As for anti-Semitic attitudes and actions, he insisted that "the racial question... [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."[85]
In his book about the
Kirchenkampf (church struggle)
As the Nazi Party began its
Like the idea of the Reichskonkordat, the notion of a
Christianity remained the dominant religion in Germany through the Nazi period, and its influence over Germans displeased the Nazi hierarchy. Evans wrote that Hitler believed that in the long run Nazism and religion would not be able to coexist, and stressed repeatedly that it was a secular ideology, founded on modern science. According to Evans: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition." Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope, and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs,' abortions in black cassocks.'"[91]
During Hitler's dictatorship, more than 6,000 clergymen, on the charge of treasonable activity, were imprisoned or executed.
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.[93] 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.[93] Religious persecution was not confined to Poland: in Dachau concentration camp alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 countries were killed.[93]
A number of historians maintain that the Nazis had a general covert plan, which some argue existed before the Nazis' rose to power,[94] to destroy Christianity within the Reich.[18] 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.[94] However, a minority of historians maintain, against consensus, that no such plan existed.[95][96][97][98][99][100] Summarizing a 1945 Office of Strategic Services report, The New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey, stated that the Nazis had a plan to "subvert and destroy German Christianity," which was to be accomplished through control and subversion of the churches and to be completed after the war.[101][102][103] However, the report stated this goal was limited to a "sector of the National Socialist party," namely Alfred Rosenberg and Baldur von Schirach.[104] 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."[102] In his study The Holy Reich, the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall comes to the opposite conclusion, "Totally absent, besides Hitler's vague ranting, is any firm evidence that Hitler or the Nazis were going to 'destroy' or 'eliminate' the churches once the war was over."[95] Regarding his wider thesis that, "leading Nazis in fact considered themselves Christian" or at least understood their movement "within a Christian frame of reference",[105] Steigmann-Gall admits he "argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it."[106]
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.[citation needed] Kahane (1999) cites an estimate that there were approximately 200,000 Christians of Jewish descent in Nazi Germany.[107] 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.[108] Dachau had a special "priest block." Of the 2,720 priests (among them 2,579 Catholic) held in Dachau, 1,034 did not survive the camp. The majority of these priests were Polish (1,780), of whom 868 died in Dachau.
Specific groups
Catholicism
The attitude of the Nazi Party towards the Catholic Church ranged from tolerance to near-total renunciation and outright aggression.
The nature of the Nazi Party's relationship with the
In 1937 Pope
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 30 July 1941 the Aktion Klostersturm (Operation Monastery Storm) was put to an end by a decree from Hitler, who feared that the increasing protests by the Catholic segment of the German population might result in passive rebellions and thereby harm the Nazi war effort on the eastern front.[121]
Plans for the Roman Catholic Church
Historian
There existed some considerable differences among officials within the Nazi Party on the question of Christianity. Goebbels is purported to have feared the creation of a third front of Catholics against their regime in Germany itself. In his diary, Goebbels wrote about the "traitors of the Black International who again stabbed our glorious government in the back by their criticism", by which Hürten states he meant the indirectly or actively resisting Catholic clergymen (who wore black cassocks).[123]
Protestantism
According to Peter Stachura, the backbone of Nazi electoral support was rural and small-town Protestant middle class, whereas German Catholics rejected the party and overwhelmingly voted for the confessional Catholic Centre Party and Bavarian People's Party instead.[124] Both Protestant clergy and laymen were generally supportive of National Socialism,[125] with Paul Althaus writing that "our Protestant churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle from God".[126] According to Robert Ericksen, sermons in Protestant churches were full of praise for the new regime, with a Protestant church in Bavaria announcing that the Nazi party "may expect not just the applause but the joyous cooperation of the church."[126] Lutherans were particularly supportive of the Nazi regime, with a Lutheran diocesan magazine Allgemeine Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung welcoming the rise of Hitler as a "great thing [that] God has done for our Volk" in April 1933.[126] Ericksen also notes that the "most thoroughly Protestant regions of Germany gave the Nazi Party its strongest support".[126] Protestants were overrepresented within the Nazi Party, and according to Jürgen W. Falter, 83 % of recruits to the NSDAP between 1925 and 1932 were Protestant.[127] Falter observes that the Nazi Party found it challenging to build up any support amongst Catholics, and fared considerably worse in terms of both electoral support and new recruits in Catholic areas.[127]
Richard Steigmann-Gall remarks that "scholarship since the 1980s has quite clearly demonstrated that nominal Protestant confessional membership was a better indicator of who voted for the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) than any other single category like class, region, geography or gender."[128] Analysing the results of the July 1932 German federal election, Steigmann-Gall concludes that religious piety among German Protestants, rather than apostasy, was the defining factor in regards to supporting National Socialism, with most religious Protestants being most likely to vote for NSDAP.[128] He also observes a stark contrast between Catholic and Protestant voters in mixed areas; regarding Baden, Steigmann-Gall observes that "in contrast to the Catholic south, which saw near total opposition to the Nazis, the Protestant north saw a clear ascendancy of the Nazi party", while "in Bonn, the Protestant Mittelstand made up the bulk of the party's success, while the Catholic population almost entirely stayed away".[128] Steigmann-Gall concludes that "Nazi party's share of a region's vote was inversely proportional to the Catholic percentage of its population".[128]
According to Ericksen, the reason for Protestant support for Nationalism Socialism was the reactionary and nationalist nature of Political Protestantism, noting that "the German Protestant church was a place where hyper-nationalism, overt militarism, and hostility toward modern culture were in full flower".[126] Despite the generally supportive attitude towards National Socialism amongst German Protestants, there was also resistance. Some Protestant theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer were outspoken opponents of the new regime since the beginning, while others such as Martin Niemöller came to oppose the NSDAP once the extremist nature of its rule manifested itself.[126] Richard Steigmann-Gall believes that the apparent swing towards the right of German Protestants can be attributed to the nationalist and reactionary character that the Protestant churches have assumed in the imperial and Kulturkampf era. It was believed that "the true German is a Protestant",[129] and as such, "the narrative of national identity in Germany was written in a distinctly Protestant language".[128] Protestant theology focused on German nationalism and showed Germany as a nation favoured by God itself, which Steigmann-Gall calls "war theology".[128] The first known instance of the Dolchstoßlegende came from a Protestant court chaplain Bruno Doehring, and following the end of World War I, the political and social influence that the Protestant churches have amassed was used to attack the Weimar Republic, portraying it as a "metaphor for cultural and social degeneracy".[128]
Martin Luther
During the
The prominent Protestant theologian
In February 1940, Barth specifically accused German Lutherans of separating biblical teachings from the teachings of the State and thus legitimizing the Nazi state ideology.
Protestant groups
Different German states possessed regional social variations as to class densities and religious denomination.
- Reformation,
- Baptized Jews are to be dismissed from the Church
- The Old Testament is to be excluded from Sacred Scriptures.
The German Christians selected
The level of ties between Nazism and the Protestant churches has been a contentious issue for decades. One difficulty is that Protestantism includes a number of religious bodies and many of them had little relation to each other. Added to that, Protestantism tends to allow more variation among individual congregations than Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which makes statements about the official positions of denominations problematic. The German Christians were a minority within the Protestant population,[150] numbering one fourth to one third of the 40 million Protestants in Germany.[142] With Bishop Müller's efforts and Hitler's support, the German Evangelical Church was formed and recognized by the state as a legal entity on 14 July 1933, with the aim of melding the State, the people and the Church into one body.[151] Dissenters were silenced by expulsion or violence.[152]
The support of the German Christian movement within the churches was opposed by many adherents of traditional Christian teachings.[153] Other groups within the Protestant church included members of the Bekennende Kirche, Confessing Church, which included such prominent members as Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer;[154] both rejected the Nazi efforts to meld volkisch principles with traditional Lutheran doctrine.[155] Martin Niemöller organized the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors' Emergency League) which was supported by nearly 40 percent of the Evangelical pastors.[156][157] They were, however, (as of 1932) a 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 urged, among other things, the rejection of the Old Testament as Jewish superstition.[158] So when Ludwig Müller could not deliver on conforming all Christians to Nazism, and after some of the German Christian rallies and more radical ideas generated a backlash, Hitler's condescending attitudes towards Protestants increased and he lost all interest in Protestant church affairs.[146]
The resistance within the churches to Nazi ideology was the longest lasting and most bitter of any German institution.[125] The Nazis weakened the churches' resistance from within, but had not yet succeeded in taking full control of the churches, which was evidenced by the thousands of clergy who were sent to concentration camps.[125] 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."[159] After a failed assassination on Hitler's life in 1943 by members of the military and members of the German Resistance movement,[160] to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the Confessing Church movement belonged, Hitler ordered the arrest of Protestant, mainly Lutheran clergy. However, even the "Confessing Church made frequent declarations of loyalty to Hitler".[161] Later, many Protestants were solidly opposed to Nazism after the nature of the movement was better understood.[citation needed] However, a number also maintained until the end of the war the view that Nazism was compatible with the teachings of the church.[citation needed]
The small Methodist population was deemed foreign at times; this stemmed from the fact that Methodism began in England, and did not develop in Germany until the nineteenth century under the leadership of Christoph Gottlob Müller and Louis Jacoby. Because of this history they felt the urge to be "more German than the Germans" in order to avoid coming under suspicion. Methodist Bishop John L. Nelsen toured the U.S. on Hitler's behalf in order to protect his church, but in private letters he indicated that he feared and hated Nazism, and he eventually retired and fled to Switzerland. Methodist Bishop F. H. Otto Melle took a far more collaborationist position that included his apparently sincere support for Nazism. He was also committed to an asylum near the war's end. To show his gratitude to the latter bishop, Hitler made a gift of 10,000 marks in 1939 to a Methodist congregation so it could pay for the purchase of an organ. The money was never used.[162] Outside Germany, Melle's views were overwhelmingly rejected by most Methodists.[citation needed]
The leader of the pro-Nazi segment of the
Jehovah's Witnesses
In 1934, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society published a letter entitled "
Jehovah's Witnesses or "Bible Researchers" (Bibelforschers) as they were known in Germany, comprised 25,000 members and they were among those persecuted by the Nazi government. All incarcerated members were identified by a unique purple triangle. Some members of the religious group refused to serve in the German military or give allegiance to the Nazi government, for which 250 were executed.[167] An estimated 10,000 were arrested for various crimes, and 2,000 were sent to Nazi concentration camps, where approximately 1,200 were killed.[167] Unlike Jews and Romani, who were persecuted on the basis of their ethnicity, Jehovah's Witnesses could escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs by signing a document indicating renunciation of their faith, submission to state authority, and support of the German military.[168]
Atheists
On 13 October 1933,
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."[174] 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,[175] and within Hitler's Nazi Party some atheists were quite vocal in their anti-Christian views, especially Martin Bormann.[176] Heinrich Himmler, who himself was fascinated with Germanic paganism,[177] was a strong promoter of the gottgläubig movement and he did not allow atheists into the SS, arguing that their "refusal to acknowledge higher powers" would be a "potential source of indiscipline".[36] In the SS, Himmler announced: "We believe in a God Almighty who stands above us; he has created the earth, the Fatherland, and the Volk, and he has sent us the Führer. Any human being who does not believe in God should be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid and thus not suited for the SS."[31] He also declared: "As National Socialists, we believe in a Godly worldview."[31]
Esoteric groups
In the 1930s there already existed an
Also, some Nazi leaders had an interest in esotericism.
The esoteric
Other beliefs
In the Appendix of The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, Conway has included a document: "List of sects prohibited by the Gestapo up to December 1938." It mentions the "International Jehovah's Witness" under No.1, but also includes a so-called "Study group for Psychic Research" and even the "Bahai [sic] Sect."[178]
Astrologers, healers and fortune tellers were banned under the Nazis, while the small pagan "German Faith Movement", which worshipped the sun and the seasons, supported the Nazis.[11]
Churches and the war effort
Hitler called a truce to the Church conflict with the outbreak of war, wanting to back away from policies which were likely to cause internal friction inside Germany. He decreed at the outset of war that "no further action should be taken against the Evangelical and Catholic Churches for the duration of the war". According to John Conway, "The Nazis had to reckon with the fact that, despite all of Rosenberg's efforts, only 5 percent of the population registered themselves at the 1930 census as no longer connected with Christian Churches."[179] The support of millions of German Christians was needed in order for Hitler's plans to come to fruition. It was Hitler's belief that if religion is a help, "it can only be an advantage". Most of the 3 million Nazi Party members "still paid the Church taxes" and considered themselves Christians.[180] Regardless, a number of Nazi radicals in the party hierarchy determined that the Church Struggle should be continued.[181] Following the Nazi victory in Poland, the repression of the Churches was extended, despite their early protestations of loyalty to the cause.[182]
Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda issued threats and applied intense pressure on the Churches to voice support for the war, and the Gestapo banned Church meetings for a few weeks. In the first few months of the war, the German Churches complied.[183] No denunciations of the invasion of Poland, or the Blitzkrieg were issued. On the contrary, Bishop Marahrens gave thanks to God that the Polish conflict was over, and "that He has granted our armies a quick victory." The Ministry for Church Affairs suggested that Church bells across Germany ring for a week in celebration, and that pastors and priests "flocked to volunteer as chaplains" for the German forces.[184] The Catholic bishops asked their followers to support the war effort: "We appeal to the faithful to join in ardent prayer that God's providence may lead this war to blessed success for Fatherland and people."[185] Likewise, the Evangelicals proclaimed: "We unite in this hour with our people in intercession for our Fuhrer and Reich, for all the armed forces, and for all who do their duty for the fatherland."[185]
Even in the face of evidence of Nazi atrocities against Catholic priests and lay people in Poland, which were broadcast on Vatican Radio, German Catholic religious leaders continued to express their support for the Nazi war effort. They urged their Catholic followers to "fulfill their duty to the Fuhrer".[185] Nazi war actions in 1940 and 1941 similarly prompted the Church to voice its support. The bishops declared that the Church "assents to the just war, especially one designed for the safeguarding of the state and the people" and wants a "peace beneficial to Germany and Europe" and calls the faithful to "fulfill their civil and military virtues."[184] But the Nazis strongly disapproved of the sentiments against war expressed by the Pope through his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus and his 1939 Christmas message, and they were angered by his support for Poland and the "provocative" use of Vatican Radio by Cardinal Hlond of Poland. Distribution of the encyclical was banned.[186]
Conway wrote that anti-church radical Reinhard Heydrich estimated in a report to Hitler dated October 1939, that the majority of Church people were supporting the war effort – although a few "well known agitators among the pastors needed to be dealt with".[181] Heydrich determined that support from church leaders could not be expected because of the nature of their doctrines and their internationalism, so he devised measures to restrict the operation of the Churches under cover of war time exigencies, such as reducing the resources available to Church presses on the basis of rationing, and prohibiting pilgrimages and large church gatherings on the basis of transportation difficulties. Churches were closed for being "too far from bomb shelters". Bells were melted down. Presses were closed.[182]
With the expansion of the war in the east from 1941, there also came an expansion of the regime's attack on the churches. Monasteries and convents were targeted and expropriations of Church properties surged. The Nazi authorities claimed that the properties were needed for wartime necessities such as hospitals, or accommodations for refugees or children, but they instead used them for their own purposes. "Hostility to the state" was another common cause given for the confiscations, and the actions of a single member of a monastery could result in the seizure of the whole. The
Religious aspects of Nazism
Several elements of Nazism were quasi-religious in nature. The
Hitler's plan, for example, to erect a magnificent new capital in Berlin (
Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer, wrote in his memoirs that Hitler himself had a negative view of the mystical notions which were pushed by Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg. Speer quotes Hitler as having said of Himmler's attempt to mythologize the SS:[193]
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
Relationship between religion and fascism
However,
Messianic aspects of Nazism
A significant amount of literature about the potential
Thuringian German Christian Prayer for Hitler
- Schütze, Herr, mit starker Hand
- unser Volk und Vaterland!
- Laß' auf unsres Führers Pfade
- leuchten Deine Huld und Gnade!
- Weck' in unserem Herz aufs neue
- deutscher Ahnen Kraft und Treue!
- Und so laß' uns stark und rein
- Deine deutschen Kinder sein![202]
This translates roughly as:
- Protect, O Lord, with strength of hand,
- Our people and our fatherland!
- Allow upon our leader's course
- To shine your mercy and your grace!
- Awaken in our hearts anew
- Our German bloodline, loyalty, and strength!
- And so allow us, strong and pure,
- To be your German youth!
See also
- Antisemitism in Christianity
- Antisemitism in Europe
- Antisemitism in 21st-century Germany
- Catholic Church and Nazi Germany
- Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany
- Christmas in Nazi Germany
- Christian Identity
- Christian nationalism
- Christofascism
- Clerical fascism
- Confessing Church
- Criticism of Christianity
- Savitri Devi
- Esoteric Nazism
- Ethnic nationalism
- Far-right politics#Völkisch and revolutionary right
- Far-right politics in Germany (1945–present)
- Far-right subcultures
- Fascism and ideology
- Fascism in Europe
- German Christian Movement
- The Holocaust in Germany
- Kinism
- Marcionism
- Nazi eugenics
- Nazi racial theories
- Occultism in Nazism
- Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany
- Positive Christianity
- Racial antisemitism
- Racial nationalism
- Racial policy of Nazi Germany
- Racism
- Racism in Europe
- Racism in Germany
- Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world
- Religion and politics
- Religion in Germany
- Religious antisemitism
- Religious aspects of Nazism
- Religious nationalism
- Religious views of Adolf Hitler
- White nationalism#Germany
- White supremacy#Germany
Notes and references
- ^ Johnson, Eric (2000). Nazi terror: the Gestapo, Jews, and ordinary Germans New York: Basic Books, p. 10.
- ^ In 1930, Czechia had 8.3 million inhabitants: 78.5% Catholics, 10% Protestants (Hussites and Czech Brethren) and 7.8% irreligious or undeclared citizens. "Population by religious belief and sex by 1921, 1930, 1950, 1991, 2001 and 2011 censuses 1)" (in Czech and English). Czech Statistical Office. Archived from the original on 17 January 2017. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
- ^ a b c d Ericksen & Heschel 1999, p. 10.
- ^ a b c Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p. 546
- ^ ISBN 9780807820667– via Google Books.
- ^ "Who voted (And didn't) for Hitler, and why?". 10 August 2017.
- ^ Simon, Dan (15 January 2021). "Who Voted for Hitler?". The Nation.
- ^ Geary, Dick. "Who voted for the Nazis?". John D. Clare. History Today.
- ^ "Who Voted for Hitler?".
- ISBN 9781800730885.
- ^ a b c "GCSE Bitesize: The Treatment of Religion". BBC; online. 13 July 2014. Archived from the original on 18 February 2015.
- ^ "Chapter Forty: The Saints during World War II". www.churchofjesuschrist.org. Retrieved 26 March 2021.
- ^ Minert, Roger P. (2010). "German and Austrian Latter-day Saints in World War II: An Analysis of the Casualties and Losses" (PDF). Mormon Historical Studies. 11 (2): 1–21.
- ^ https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity - Description: Probably, their opinion was exactly the opposite of the National Socialists regarding positive Christianity and negative Christianity.
- ISBN 9780521823715.
- ^ Ian Kershaw; The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation; 4th Edn; Oxford University Press; New York; 2000; pp. 173–74
- ^ Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence and the Holocaust, p. xx Indiana University Press
- ^ a b c
- Sharkey, Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity Archived 4 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, 13 January 2002
- The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches Archived 26 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Winter 2001, publishing evidence compiled by the O.S.S. for the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of 1945 and 1946
- Griffin, Roger Fascism's relation to religion in Blamires, Cyprian, World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1, p. 10, ABC-CLIO, 2006: “There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it.”
- Mosse, George Lachmann, Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich, p. 240, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2003: "Had the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical policies would have gone beyond those of the German Christians, to the utter destruction of both the Protestant and the Catholic Church."
- Shirer, William L., Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, pp. 240, Simon and Schuster, 1990: “And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.”
- Fischel, Jack R., Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust, p. 161, Rowman & Littlefield, 2020: “The objective was to either destroy Christianity and restore the German gods of antiquity or to turn Jesus into an Aryan.”
- Dill, Marshall, Germany: a modern history, p. 365, University of Michigan Press, 1970: “It seems no exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at least to subjugate it to their general world outlook.”
- Wheaton, Eliot Barculo The Nazi revolution, 1933–1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era, pp. 290, 363, Doubleday 1968: The Nazis sought "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch."
- Bendersky, Joseph W., A concise history of Nazi Germany, p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: “Consequently, it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire.”
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Germany : Religion Archived 18 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine; web 23 May 2013
- ^ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, @ushmm.org See Churches in Nazi Germany
- ^ Lewy, Gunther, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 1964, First Da Capo Press, pp. 342–45
- ^ Shelley Baranowski; Nazi Empire - German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler; Cambridge University Press; 2011; pp. 18–19
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online: Blessed Clemens August, Graf von Galen; web Apr 2013.
- ISBN 3-8100-4039-8.
- ^ a b "The German Churches and the Nazi State". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 27 November 2015. Retrieved 6 December 2015.
- ^ a b Evans 2005, p. 222.
- ^ a b "Bevölkerung nach Religionszugehörigkeit (1910–1939)" (PDF). Band 6. Die Weimarer Republik 1918/19–1933 (in German). Deutsche Geschichte in Dokumenten und Bildern. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 August 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ In full thousand, rounded down. Numbers for Protestantism and Catholicism are approximates. Source: Granzow et al. 2006: 40, 207
- ^ a b Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. XV.
- ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2007). "Christianity and the Nazi Movement: A Response." Archived 13 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine Journal of Contemporary History 42 (2): 205.
- ^ ISBN 9781400860364. Archivedfrom the original on 10 May 2018. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
- ^ a b c Granzow et al. 2006: 39
- ^ Granzow et al. 2006: 50
- ^ a b Granzow et al. 2006: 58
- ^ Granzow et al. 2006: 42-46
- ^ a b Burleigh, Michael: The Third Reich: A New History; 2012; pp. 196-197
- ^ The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 By John S. Conway p. 232; Regent College Publishing
- ISBN 978-0-19-534451-6. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
- ISBN 0-674-63680-5; p. 196
- ^ a b c d Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; W.W. Norton & Co; London; pp. 381–382
- ^ a b c d e William L. Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; p. 240
- ^ Peter Longerich; Heinrich Himmler; Translated by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe; Oxford University Press; 2012; p. 265
- ^ Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19–20, Oxford University Press, 1942
- ^ Hitler, Adolf (1999). "Mein Kampf." Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, pp. 65, 119, 152, 161, 214, 375, 383, 403, 436, 562, 565, 622, 632-33.
- ^ Speech in Passau 27 October 1928 Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 60–61
- ISBN 0-241-10893-4; pp. 304–305
- ^ a b c Alan Bullock; Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; pp. 2, 18
- ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p. 216
- ISBN 0-241-10893-4; p. 76
- ISBN 978-0-297-76315-4
- ^ a b c William L. Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; pp. 238–239
- ^ ISBN 978-0-393-02030-4.
- ISBN 978-1-85109-439-4.
- ]
- ISBN 978-0814730607.
- ISBN 978-0521603522.
- ^ Shirer, William Lawrence (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 240.
- ^ Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 p. 14 Cambridge University Press (2003)
- ^ Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion, Roger Griffin (Editor), p. 98 Routledge; 1 edition (Jan 31 2006)
- ^ Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; W.W. Norton & Company; London; pp. 281–283
- ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; pp. 146–149
- ^ Frank J. Coppa Controversial Concordats, p. 124, CUA Press, 1999
- ^ Speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Navy and Total Defense Day Address”, Oct. 27, 1941, Roosevelt, D. Franklin, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1941, vol. 10, p. 440
- ^ Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 23.
- ^ a b Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; pp. 381–382
- ^ Phayer, Michael. "The Response of the German Catholic Church to National Socialism" (PDF). yadvashem.org. Yad Vashem. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 January 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2013.
- ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p. 219
- ^ Albert Speer. (1997). Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 177.
- ^ Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London p. 661
- ^ a b Geoffrey Blainey; A Short History of Christianity; Viking; 2011; pp. 495–496
- ^ Otto Strasser, Hitler and I, Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940, p. 93
- ^ Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; p. 328
- ^ Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; p. 382
- ^ a b c Encyclopædia Britannica Online: Fascism – Identification with Christianity; 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013
- ^ Jochen von Lang, The Secretary: Martin Bormann, The Man Who Manipulated Hitler, New York: Random House, 1979, p. 221
- ^ Lauren Faulkner Rossi, Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the Nazi War of Annihilation, 2015, Harvard University Press, 2015, p. 41
- ^ Paul Berben, Dachau, 1933–1945: The Official History, Norfolk Press 1975, pp. 276–277
- ^ ISBN 978-1-936274-84-0. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica: Alfred Rosenberg
- ^ Wistrich, Robert Solomon, Who's Who in Nazi Germany, p. 11, Psychology Press, 2002
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online – Martin Bormann Archived 7 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine; web 25 April 2013
- ^ a b Conway, John S. (1997). The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, p. 383. Full Letter Archived 14 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Fest, Joachim (1999). The Face of the Third Reich. New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 132–133.
- ^ (Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany by Alan Steinweis :8)
- ^ (The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Lifton :130)
- ^ Geoffrey Blainey; A Short History of Christianity; Viking; 2011; pp. 499–502
- ^ Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler; Ebury Press 2012; pp. 61–62
- ^ Richard J. Evans; In Search of German Social Darwinism: The History and Historiography of a Concept; a chapter from Medicine & Modernity: Public Health & Medical Care in 19th and 20th Century Germany; Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge; 1997; pp.55-57
- ISBN 1-4039-7201-X; p.233)
- ^ a b Steigmann-Gall 2003: 156.
- ^ Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p. 547
- ISBN 1-85973-081-7.
- ^ a b c Craughwell, Thomas J., The Gentile Holocaust Archived 24 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine Catholic Culture, Accessed 18 July 2008
- ^ a b Bonney, Richard, Confronting the Nazi war on Christianity: the Kulturkampf newsletters, 1936–1939, p. 10, Peter Lang, 2009
- ^ a b Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003)' The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 259-260.
- ^ Snyder, Louis L. (1981) Hitler's Third Reich: A Documentary History. New York: Nelson-Hall, p. 249.
- ^ Dutton, Donald G. (2007). The Psychology of Genocide, Massacres, and Extreme Violence. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 41.
- ^ Heschel, Susannah (2008). The Aryan Jesus. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 23.
- ^ Confino, Alon (2014). A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. New York: Yale University Press, p. 127.
- ^ Confino, Alon (2011). Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 150.
- ^ Sharkey, Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity Archived 4 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, 13 January 2002
- ^ a b Griffin, Roger (2006). "Fascism's relation to religion", in Cyprian Blamires World Fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO, p. 10
- ^ The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches Archived 26 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine, 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
- ^ OSS (1945). The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches Archived 26 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine, p. 6.
- ^ Steigmann-Gall (2003), p. 3.
- ISBN 0-521-82371-4.
- ^ 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"
- ^ "Die NS-Verfolgung der Zeugen Jehovas in Köln (1933 – 1945)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2009. Retrieved 5 March 2009., p. 34
- ^ a b Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future p.41 1996 Oxford University Press]
- ^ Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future p.42 1996 Oxford University Press]
- ^ Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future p.148 1996 Oxford University Press]
- ^ Alan Bullock; Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p219
- ^ Geoffrey Blainey; A Short History of Christianity; Viking; 2011; pp.495-6
- ^ Jesse Greenspan (25 October 2012). "9 Things You May Not Know About Mussolini". Archived from the original on 18 October 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2015.
- ^ Laqueur, Walter Fascism: Past, Present, Future pp. 31, 42, 1996 Oxford University Press]
- ISBN 0-8091-4420-4.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano did condemn Adolf Hitler, Nazism, racism, and anti-Semitism by name.
- ^ Marchione 2006, p. 262: "As early as 1930, the paper had declared, with Pacelli’s approval, that “belonging to the National Socialist Party of Hitler is irreconcilable with the Catholic conscience.”"
- ^ William L. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1960, Simon & Schuster, pp. 180-225
- ^ Spielvogel pp. 257–258.
- ISBN 978-0-86012-260-9. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
- ^ 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.
- ^ HÜRTEN, H. `Endlösung` für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche, in: Stimmen der Zeit, 203 (1985) pp. 535-538
- ^ HÜRTEN, H. `Endlösung` für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche, in: Stimmen der Zeit, 203 (1985) pp. 534-546
- ^ Stachura, Peter (1993). The NSDAP and the German Working Class, 1925-1933. pp. 131–134. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9. Retrieved 10 August 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f Ericksen, Robert P. (15 April 2013). German Churches and the Holocaust: Assessing the Argument for Complicity (PDF). The University of Vermont: The Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center for Holocaust Studies. pp. 4–10. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
- ^ JSTOR 23608833. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
- ^ S2CID 143132907. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
- ^ Andrzej Chwalba - Historia Polski 1795-1918 pages 175-184, 461-463
- ^ Wiley InterScience: Jan Herman Brinks - Luther and the German State (Abstract)
- ^ a b c Steigmann-Gall 2003:1
- ^ Steigmann-Gall 2003:2
- S2CID 144033982.
- ^ Karl Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, Zürich 1939, 113
- ISBN 978-0-8006-3132-1. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-1-4514-1748-7. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
- ^ Karl Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, Zürich 1940, 122
- ^ in Heinonen, Anpassung und Identität 1933-1945 Göttingen 1978 p. 150
- ^ "TIME". Archived from the original on 10 November 2014 – via content.time.com.
- ISBN 0-13-189877-9
- ISBN 0-521-82371-4
- ^ ISBN 978-0-691-12531-2. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Hans Buchheim, Glaubenskrise im 3. Reich, Stuttgart, 1953, 41-156
- ^ Buchheim, Glaubnskrise im 3.Reich, 124-136
- ISBN 978-0-19-534418-9. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-1-936274-84-0. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
- ^ Manfred Korschoke, Geschichte der bekennenden Kirche Göttingen, 1976 495
- ^ Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, Zürich, 1940 54
- ISBN 978-0-253-21529-1. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
- ^ Reichsgesetzblatt des deutschen Reiches 1933, I,1, p. 47
- ISBN 0-7864-0372-1.
- ISBN 0-393-02030-4.
churches.
- ISBN 978-1-84519-054-5. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
- ^ Stackelberg, Roderick (2007) The Routledge companion to Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge, p. 137.
- ISBN 0-393-02030-4.
- ISBN 978-0-415-30860-1.
- ^ Bergen, Doris L. (1996). Twisted Cross: the German Christian movement in the Third Reich. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, p. 17.
- ^ "GERMANY: Dynamite". 21 February 1938. Archived from the original on 10 July 2010 – via www.time.com.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-0372-1. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
- ^ Richard, Steigmann-Gall (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945.] Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 5-6.
- ^ "Protestant Churches in the Third Reich". Archived from the original on 23 July 2008.
- ^ Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (1934) "1934 Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses p. 131, Brooklyn, NY [1]"
- ^ "Rutherford, J. F. (1933) "Letter to Hitler"". jwfacts.com. Archived from the original on 24 October 2012.
- ^ "English translation of letter to Hitler". iclnet.org. Archived from the original on 9 June 2012.
- ^ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany".
- ^ a b Hesse, Hans (2001). Persecution and resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses during the Nazi Regime. Chicago: Berghahn Books, p. 12.
- ^ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Declaration Renouncing Beliefs".
- ^ Baynes, Norman H. ed. (1969). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939. 1. New York: Howard Fertig, p. 378.
- ISBN 978-0-415-91405-5.
- ISBN 978-0-415-30860-1.
- ISBN 3-8100-4039-8.
- ISBN 978-3-8100-3639-1.
- ^ Helmreich, Ernst (1979). The German Churches Under Hitler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 241.
- ISBN 978-1-57383-080-5. Retrieved 25 March 2013.
- ^ Overy, R. J. 2004. The dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. p. 286.
- ^ Steigmann-Gall 2003: 106-108, 129-35., 234-35.
- ^ Conway 1968:370-374
- ^ John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 232
- ^ John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 233
- ^ a b John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 235
- ^ a b John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 237
- ^ John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 234
- ^ a b The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 By John S. Conway p. 235; Regent College Publishing
- ^ a b c The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 By John S. Conway p. 234; Regent College Publishing
- ^ John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 240
- ^ John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 255
- ^ John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing; p. 257
- ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, p.1.
- ^
Maier, Hans (2004). Totalitarianism and Political Religions. trans. Jodi Bruhn. Routledge. p. 153. ISBN 0-7146-8529-1.
- ^ "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.
- ^ Conway 1968: 2
- ^ Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs of Albert Speer; New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 94
- ^ Payne, Stanley, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945, p. 9, Routledge 1996.
- ^ Laqueur, Walter, Fascism: Past, Present, Future p. 41, 1996 Oxford University Press.
- ^ Griffin, Roger, Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion, p. 7, 2005 Routledge
- ^ Maier, Hans and Jodi Bruhn Totalitarianism and Political Religions, p. 108, 2004 Routledge
- ^ Eatwell, Roger The Nature of Fascism: or Essentialism by Another Name? Archived 29 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine 2004
- Robert O. Paxton. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York, New York, US; Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Random House, Inc., 2005
- ^ Richard L. Rubenstein, R. L.(1998) "Religion and the uniqueness of the Holocaust" In A. S Rosenbaum Is the Holocaust unique? Boulder CO: Westview Press, pp. 11-17.
- ^ Wilfried Daim: Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab, Vienna 1994, p. 222; quoted after: H. T. Hakl: Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus. (in German) In: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus, 1997, Graz, Austria: Stocker (German edition of The Occult Roots of Nazism), p. 196
- ^ Heschel, Susannah. "The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany." p. 123.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-8006-2931-1.
- Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-303790-3.
- John S. Conway 1968: The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–45, Weidenfeld and Nicolson
- ISBN 978-0-8147-3060-7.
- Sven Granzow, Bettina Müller-Sidibé, Andrea Simml 2006: Gottvertrauen und Führerglaube, in: Götz Aly (ed.): Volkes Stimme. Skepsis und Führervertrauen im Nationalsozialismus, Fischer TB (in German), pp. 38–58
- Koehne, Samuel (2014). "Were the National Socialists a Völkisch Party? Paganism, Christianity, and the Nazi Christmas". Central European History. 47 (4): 760–790. S2CID 146472475.
- Kolnai, Aurel The War Against the West, New York, 1938: Viking Press
- ISBN 978-0-300-19037-3.
- ISBN 978-0-19-934037-8
- Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82371-5..