INDIA BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

(Paper Presentation)

TOPIC: NAZISM AND ITS IMPACT ON CHRISTIANITY

PRESENTER: KITO TuKu. Mth. II (HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY)

SUBJECT: HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY (MODREN PERIOD)

FECILITATOR: DR. REEJU THARAKAN DATE: 20/01/2023

INTRODUCTION

Nazism, also spelled Naziism, in full National Socialism, German National socialism,
totalitarian movement led by Adolf Hitler as head of the Nazi Party in Germany. In its intense
nationalism, mass appeal, and dictatorial rule, Nazism shared many elements with Italian
fascism. However, Nazism was far more extreme both in its ideas and in its practice. In
almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and a theoretical movement, emphasizing the
will of the charismatic dictator as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation, as
well as a vision of annihilation of all enemies of the Aryan Volk as the one and only goal of
Nazi policy. In this midst of whole crises, there were individual Catholics and Protestants
Christians who spoke out on behalf of Jews, and small groups within both churches that
became involved in rescue and resistance activities and therefore the presentation would like
to focus more on Nazism and its impact towards Christianity.

1. THE ROOTS OF NAZISM

Nazism had peculiarly German roots. It can be partly traced to the Prussian tradition as
developed under Frederick William I (1688–1740), Frederick the Great (1712–68), and Otto
von Bismarck (1815–98), which regarded the militant spirit and the discipline of the Prussian
army as the model for all individual and civic life. To it was added the tradition of political
romanticism, with its sharp hostility to rationalism and to the principles underlying the
French Revolution, its emphasis on instinct and the past, and its proclamation of the rights of
Friedrich Nietzsche’s exceptional individual (the Ubermensch Superman over all universal
law and rules. These two traditions were later reinforced by the 19th-century adoration of
science and of the laws of nature, which seemed to operate independently of all concepts of
good and evil. Further reinforcements came from such 19th-century intellectual figures as the
comte de Gobineau (1816–82), Richard Wagner (1813–83), and Houston Stewart
Chamberlain (1855–1927), all of whom greatly influenced early Nazism with their claims of
the racial and cultural superiority of the “Nordic” (Germanic) peoples over all other
Europeans and all other races.1

Hitler’s intellectual viewpoint was influenced during his youth not only by these currents in
the German tradition but also by specific Austrian movements that professed various political
sentiments, notably those of pan-Germanic expansionism and anti-Semitism. Hitler’s
ferocious nationalism, his contempt of Slavs, and his hatred of Jews can largely be explained
by his bitter experiences as an unsuccessful artist living a threadbare existence on the streets
of Vienna, the capital of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hitler found this
common denominator in the Jewish people, whom he identified with both Bolshevism and a
kind of cosmic evil. Jews were to be discriminated against not according to their religion but
according to their “race.” Nazism declared Jews—whatever their educational and social
achievements—to be forever fundamentally different from and inimical to Germans.2

This intellectual preparation would probably not have been sufficient for the growth of
Nazism in Germany but for that country’s defeat in World War I. The defeat and the resulting
disillusionment, pauperization, and frustration—particularly among the lower middle classes
—paved the way for the success of the propaganda of Hitler and the Nazis. The Treaty of
Versailles (1919), the formal settlement of World War I drafted without German
participation, alienated many Germans with its imposition of harsh monetary and territorial
reparations. The significant resentment expressed toward the peace treaty gave Hitler a
starting point. Because German representatives (branded the “November criminals” by Nazis)
agreed to cease hostilities and did not unconditionally surrender in the armistice of November
11, 1918, there was a widespread feeling—particularly in the military—that Germany’s
defeat had been orchestrated by diplomats at the Versailles meetings. From the beginning,
Hitler’s propaganda of revenge for this “traitorous” act, through which the German people
had been “stabbed in the back,” and his call for rearmament had strong appeal within military
circles, which regarded the peace only as a temporary setback in Germany’s expansionist
program. The ruinous inflation of the German currency in 1923 wiped out the savings of
many middle-class households and led to further public alienation and dissatisfaction.3

1
S.P. Kohene, Nazism: The Rise of Adolph Hitler (London: Routledge, 1997), 234.
2
Kohene, Nazism: The Rise of Adolph Hitler, 234-236.
3
Kohene, Nazism: The Rise of Adolph Hitler, 237.
Nazism attempted to reconcile conservative, nationalist ideology with a socially radical
doctrine. In so doing, it became a profoundly revolutionary movement—albeit a largely
negative one. Rejecting rationalism, liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and
all movements of international cooperation and peace, it stressed instinct, the subordination
of the individual to the state, and the necessity of blind and unswerving obedience to leaders
appointed from above. It also emphasized the inequality of humans and races and the right of
the strong to rule the weak; sought to purge or suppress competing political, religious, and
social institutions; advanced an ethic of hardness and ferocity; and partly destroyed class
distinctions by drawing into the movement misfits and failures from all social classes.
Although socialism was traditionally an internationalist creed, the radical wing of Nazism
knew that a mass base existed for policies that were simultaneously anticapitalist and
nationalist. However, after Hitler secured power, this radical strain was eliminated.4

2. TOTALITARIANISM AND EXPANSIONISM

Working from these principles, Hitler carried his party from its inauspicious beginnings
in a beer cellar in Munich to a dominant position in world politics 20 years later. The Nazi
Party originated in 1919 and was led by Hitler from 1920. Through both successful
electioneering and intimidation, the party came to power in Germany in 1933 and governed
through totalitarian methods until 1945, when Hitler committed suicide and Germany was
defeated and occupied by the Allies at the close of World War II.5

The history of Nazism after 1934 can be divided into two periods of about equal length.
Between 1934 and 1939 the party established full control of all phases of life in Germany.
With many Germans weary of party conflicts, economic and political instability, and the
disorderly freedom that characterized the last years of the Weimar Republic (1919–33), Hitler
and his movement gained the support and even the enthusiasm of a majority of the German
population. In particular, the public welcomed the strong, decisive, and apparently effective
government provided by the Nazis. Germany’s endless ranks of unemployed rapidly
dwindled as the jobless were put to work in extensive public-works projects and in rapidly
multiplying armaments factories. Germans were swept up in this orderly, intensely
purposeful mass movement bent on restoring their country to its dignity, pride, and grandeur,
as well as to dominance on the European stage. Economic recovery from the effects of the
Great Depression and the forceful assertion of German nationalism were key factors in
4
Kohene, Nazism: The Rise of Adolph Hitler, 239.
5
Jonathan Storm, Development of the Nazi Party and Crises (Boston: Brill Academic, 2010), 47.
Nazism’s appeal to the German population. Further, Hitler’s continuous string of diplomatic
successes and foreign conquests from 1934 through the early years of World War II secured
the unqualified support of most Germans, including many who had previously opposed him.6

Despite its economic and political success, Nazism maintained its power by coercion and
mass manipulation. The Nazi regime disseminated a continual outpouring of propaganda
through all cultural and informational media. Its rallies—especially its elaborately staged
Nürnberg rallies—its insignia, and its uniformed cadres were designed to impart an aura of
omnipotence. The underside of its propaganda machine was its apparatus of terror, with its
ubiquitous secret police and concentration camps. It fanned and focused German anti-
Semitism to make the Jews a symbol of all that was hated and feared. By means of deceptive
rhetoric, the party portrayed the Jews as the enemy of all classes of society.7

Between 1938 and 1945 Hitler’s regime attempted to expand and apply the Nazi system to
territories outside the German Reich. This endeavour was confined, in 1938, to lands
inhabited by German-speaking populations, but in 1939 Germany began to subjugate non-
German-speaking nationalities as well. Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, which
initiated World War II, was the logical outcome of Hitler’s plans. His first years were spent in
preparing the Germans for the approaching struggle for world control and in forging the
military and industrial superiority that Germany would require to fulfill its ambitions. With
mounting diplomatic and military successes, his aims grew in quick progression. The first
was to unite all people of German descent within their historical homeland on the basis of
“self-determination.” His next step foresaw the creation, through the military conquest of
Poland and other Slavic nations to the east, of a Grosswirt schaftsraum (“large economic
unified space”) or a Lebensraum (“living space”), which thereby would allow Germany to
acquire sufficient territory to become economically self-sufficient and militarily impregnable.
There the German master race, or Herrenvolk, would rule over a hierarchy of subordinate
peoples and organize and exploit them with ruthlessness and efficiency. With the initial
successes of the military campaigns of 1939–41, his plan was expanded into a vision of a
hemispheric order that would embrace all of Europe, western Asia, and Africa and eventually
the entire world.8

6
Storm, Development of the Nazi Party and Crises, 47-49.
7
Storm, Development of the Nazi Party and Crises, 49-53.
8
Storm, Development of the Nazi Party and Crises, 53-55.
The extravagant hopes of Nazism came to an end with Germany’s defeat in 1945, after nearly
six years of war. To a certain extent World War II had repeated the pattern of World War I:
great initial German military successes, the forging of a large-scale coalition against
Germany as the result of German ambitions and behaviour, and the eventual loss of the war
because of German overreaching. Nazism as a mass movement effectively ended on April 30,
1945, when Hitler committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of Soviet troops
completing the occupation of Berlin. Out of the ruins of Nazism arose a Germany that was
divided until 1990. Remnants of Nazi ideology remained in Germany after Hitler’s suicide,
and a small number of Nazi-oriented political parties and other groups were formed in West
Germany from the late 1940s, though some were later banned. In the 1990s gangs of neo-
Nazi youths in eastern Germany staged attacks against immigrants, desecrated Jewish
cemeteries, and engaged in violent confrontations with leftists and police. In the early 21st
century, small neo-Nazi parties were to be found in most European countries as well as in the
United States, Canada, and several Central and South American countries. They were rare,
but not unheard of, in the rest of the world.9

3. CHRISTIANITY AND ITS IMPACT

The population of Germany in 1933 was around 60 million. Almost all Germans were
Christian, belonging either to the Roman Catholic (20 million members) or the Protestant (40
million members) churches. The Jewish community in Germany in 1933 was less than 1% of
the total population of the country. How did Christians and their churches in Germany
respond to the Nazi regime and its laws, particularly to the persecution of the Jews? The
racialized anti-Jewish Nazi ideology converged with antisemitism that was historically
widespread throughout Europe at the time and had deep roots in Christian history. For all too
many Christians, traditional interpretations of religious scriptures seemed to support these
prejudices.10

The attitudes and actions of German Catholics and Protestants during the Nazi era were
shaped not only by their religious beliefs, but by other factors as well, including. Backlash
against the Weimar Republic and the political, economic, and social changes in Germany that
occurred during the 1920s.11

9
Storm, Development of the Nazi Party and Crises, 56.
10
Volkischer Beobachter, “Nazism and Christianity” Nazi and Christianity,
Nazichristianity.com/history/issues/revolution.html (accessed January 11, 2023).
11
Beobachter, “Nazism and Christianity”.
 3.1. NATIONALISM

Resentment toward the international community in the wake of World War I, which
Germany lost and for which it was forced to pay heavy reparations, these were some of the
reasons why most Christians in Germany welcomed the rise of Nazism in 1933. They were
also persuaded by the statement on “positive Christianity” in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi
Party Platform, which read:12

“We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not
jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the
Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without
tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at
home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be
achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good.”13

Despite the open antisemitism of this statement and its linkage between confessional
"freedom" and a nationalistic, racialized understanding of morality, many Christians in
Germany at the time read this as an affirmation of Christian value.

3.2. PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN NAZI GERMANY

The largest Protestant church in Germany in the 1930s was the German Evangelical
Church, comprised of 28 regional churches or Landeskirchen that included the three major
theological traditions that had emerged from the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed, and
United. Most of Germany's 40 million Protestants were members of this church, although
there were smaller so-called "free" Protestant churches, such as Methodist and Baptist
churches.14

Historically the German Evangelical Church viewed itself as one of the pillars of German
culture and society, with a theologically grounded tradition of loyalty to the state. During the
1920s, a movement emerged within the German Evangelical Church called the Deutsche
Christen, or “German Christians.” The “German Christians” embraced many of the
nationalistic and racial aspects of Nazi ideology. Once the Nazis came to power, this group
sought the creation of a national “Reich Church” and supported a nazified version of
Christianity.15
12
Beobachter, “Nazism and Christianity”.
13
Beobachter, “Nazism and Christianity”.
14
Beobachter, “Nazism and Christianity”.
15
Richard Steigmann, Nazi Conceptions and Christianity (Ohio: Kent State University, 2003), 134.
The Bekennende Kirche—the “Confessing Church”—emerged in opposition to the “German
Christians.” Its founding document, the Barmen Confession of Faith, declared that the
church's allegiance was to God and scripture, not a worldly Führer. Both the Confessing
Church and the “German Christians” remained part of the German Evangelical Church, and
the result was a Kirchenkampf, or “church struggle” within German Protestantism—an
ongoing debate and struggle for control between those who sought a “nazified” church, those
who opposed it, and the so-called "neutral" church leaders whose priority was the avoidance
both of church schism and any kind of conflict with the Nazi state.16

The most famous members of the Confessing Church were the theologian Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, executed for his role in the conspiracy to overthrow the regime, and Pastor
Martin Niemoller, who spent seven years in concentration camps for his criticisms of Hitler.
Yet these clergymen were not typical of the Confessing Church; despite their examples, the
Protestant Kirchenkampf was mostly an internal church matter, not a fight against National
Socialism. Even in the Confessing Church, most church leaders were primarily concerned
with blocking state and ideological interference in church affairs. Yet there were certainly
members of the clergy and laity who opposed and resisted the regime, including some who
aided and hid Jews.17

3.3. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NAZI GERMANY

The Catholic Church was not as sharply divided by different ideological factions as the
Protestant church, and it never underwent an internal Kirchenkampf between these different
factions. Catholic leaders were initially more suspicious of National Socialism than their
Protestant counterparts. Nationalism was not as deeply embedded in the German Catholic
Church, and the rabid anti-Catholicism of figures such as Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi
ideologue during the Nazi rise to power, raised early concerns among Catholic leaders in
Germany and at the Vatican. In addition, the Catholic Centre Party had been a key coalition
governmental partner in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and was aligned with both the
Social Democrats and leftist German Democratic Party, pitting it politically against right-
wing parties like the Nazis.18

Before 1933, in fact, some bishops prohibited Catholics in their dioceses from joining the
Nazi Party. This ban was dropped after Hitler's March 23, 1933, speech to the Reichstag in
16
Steigmann, Nazi Conceptions and Christianity, 134-135.
17
Steigmann, Nazi Conceptions and Christianity, 137.
18
Steigmann, Nazi Conceptions and Christianity, 137-139.
which he described Christianity as the “foundation” for German values. The Centre Party was
dissolved as part of the signing of a 1933 Concordat between the Vatican and Nazi
governmental representatives, and several of its leaders were murdered in the Rohm purge in
July 1934.19

3.4. CHURCH OFFICE FUNCTIONAL

In both German churches there were members, including clergy and leading theologians,
who openly supported the Nazi regime. With time, anti-Nazi sentiment grew in both
Protestant and Catholic church circles, as the Nazi regime exerted greater pressure on them.
In turn, the Nazi regime saw a potential for dissent in church criticism of state measures.
When a protest statement was read from the pulpits of Confessing churches in March 1935,
for example, Nazi authorities reacted forcefully by briefly arresting over 700 pastors. After
the 1937 papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With burning concern) was read from
Catholic pulpits, the Gestapo confiscated copies from diocesan offices throughout the
country.20

The general tactic by the leadership of both Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany was
caution with respect to protest and compromise with the Nazi state leadership where possible.
There was criticism within both churches of Nazi racialized ideology and notions of
Arianism, and movements emerged in both churches to defend church members who were
considered non-Aryan under Nazi racial laws (e.g., Jews who had converted). Yet throughout
this period there was virtually no public opposition to antisemitism or any readiness by
church leaders to publicly oppose the regime on the issues of antisemitism and state-
sanctioned violence against the Jews.21

After 1945, the silence of the church leadership and the widespread complicity of ordinary
Christians compelled leaders of both churches to address issues of guilt and complicity
during the Holocaust—a process that continues internationally to this day.22

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION

19
Steigmann, Nazi Conceptions and Christianity, 142.
20
Reich Gall, Short History of Germany and Church (London: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
346.
21
Gall, Short History of Germany and Church, 346.
22
Gall, Short History of Germany and Church, 348.
 To use the example of Christianity and such a conception of ‘Germanic’ morality:
depending upon how one measured the cloth of religious belief against such a racial
yardstick, it was possible to cut out sections (the Old Testament, parts of the New
Testament), create a patchwork (joining fairy-tales or the Nordic sagas to the story of Christ),
or throw it away and sew a new garment altogether (neo-paganism, German Faith).
‘Germanizing and dejudaising’ religious teachings was a major concern––as it was in
movements amongst the German Christians. What was essential (at least in official
statements) was that religion meet racial requirements. The official position on religion was
not principally about the form of faith, but the actual content of faith. Further research is
required, yet this appears to help towards explaining the great disparity that was to be found
amongst the Nazi leaders, from those advocating a ‘Germanized’ Christianity through to the
pagans or paganists.

Morality is completely racially conditioned, and not abstract Catholic, Protestant or Muslim.’
It has been fascinating to find that there was opposition to the notion of revealed religions in
favor of the view that what was repugnant or acceptable in religious teaching would be
revealed through the response of one’s moral conscience, itself supposedly conditioned by
race. Religious or class conflicts will not be tolerated in the Movement. This was reconfirmed
at the Bamberg Conference of 1926, as reported in the Volkischer Beobachter, religious
problems have no role to play in the National Socialist Movement and are only suitable for
undermining its political effectiveness. It is incumbent on every individual to sort out such
problems for themselves. Their Christian faith was integral to their identity and their
members’ lives were dictated by religious belief, as they were mean to demonstrate an active
or lived Christianity in everyday life. This included a direct concern with politics, given a
chiliastic focus on reading current events through a religious lens.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gall, Reich. Short History of Germany and Church. London: Cambridge University Press,
2000.
Kohene, S.P. Nazism: The Rise of Adolph Hitler. London: Routledge, 1997.
Steigmann, Richard. Nazi Conceptions and Christianity. Ohio: Kent State University, 2003.
Storm, Jonathan. Development of the Nazi Party and Crises. Boston: Brill Academic, 2010.

WEB SOURCE

Beobachter, Volkischer. “Nazism and Christianity” Nazi and Christianity,