The Chilling Truth about Christians in the Third Reich
The name Adolf Hitler invokes images of the death and destruction caused by his evil regime. If asked to describe Hitler's Germany, many Christians would probably say something like this: Nazis were pagans who wanted to destroy Christianity and rule the world, and true Christians either opposed these monsters by being part of the resistance, or were frightened into silence by the Gestapo and SS.
But what if that description is not historically accurate? What if sincere Christians actually supported Adolf Hitler? Consider the following:
- 95% of Hitler's Germans declared themselves officially as Christian.
- During the first years of Hitler's rule, 95 - 98% of this same population supported Nazi policies through regular referendum.
- Hitler never closed a church.
- Hitler banned pagans from school boards and banished pagan literature from the military.
- Hitler had to order some churches to remove his picture from their altars.
- The Hitler Youth had youth pastors and over 100 Hitler Youth camps had Bible teaching.
- The Gestapo raised funds for African missions.
So what was going on‚ really?
Background
After World War I, Germany was a shattered nation. The war had ended with an armistice - a truce, not a surrender. But when officials of the German government met at Versailles to sign a peace treaty, they were forced to surrender. The German people felt betrayed. The terms of surrender required the Germans to admit fault for a war they believed was fought in self-defense, give up land, agree to an occupation of much of their country, and pay reparations to the winners.
This humiliating defeat was followed by an economic collapse. When the war ended, the German mark was valued at nine marks to the dollar. Four years later, the dollar was valued at 4 billion marks! Prices rose hourly, and savings were wiped out. Housewives found it cheaper to burn their money than buy coal. War veterans could find no work. By 1932, German unemployment had reached 30%. In cities like Berlin, the old German values of law and order, public decency, Christian morality, and high art fell victim to street violence, panhandling, blatant prostitution, and risque theater. Abortion became common, and homosexuality was flaunted. The world of the ordinary German was disintegrating.
But Germany had another fear--Communism. Not far from their borders, Stalin was burning churches, murdering pastors, and terrorizing his own people through torture, imprisonment, and mass starvation. Many Germans did not believe that their new government would be able to protect them. Humiliated, angry, and fearful, the average German was desperate for salvation and looking for someone to blame.
Enter Adolf Hitler
Into this climate of fear, shame, and hopelessness, a charismatic war veteran entered the political scene and promised economic relief, protection from Communism, moral order, and the reclamation of national dignity. In addition, he offered an explanation for the country's woes-- the Jews. He argued that the Jews had betrayed Germany at Versailles and were responsible for ruining Germany's moral tradition. He also claimed that the Jews were the force behind Communism. The man's name, of course, was Adolf Hitler an Austrian Catholic decorated for bravery in World War I.
Hitler was eventually appointed Chancellor, and his success in solving many of Germany's problems tempted most to look past his extreme racial views and vicious claims about the Jews.
In the next few years, what came to be called the "Hitler Miracle" swept through Germany. Unemployment vanished. German pride was restored. Hope abounded. And, as many had predicted, Hitler's rhetoric calmed. He went three years without mentioning the word "Jew" in a single public event. Even the New York Times reported that his anti-Semitism had moderated.
As a result, Hitler enjoyed enormous popular support. Many Christians were convinced that Hitler's successes were proof of God's blessing, and God's blessing was proof that Hitler was the right man for Germany. After all, Hitler invoked "Divine Providence" in nearly every speech, and his torchlight rallies ended with Luther's hymns. He constantly referred to his goals as those of a "positive Christianity," and his Nazi Party platform included protection for the Christian Church. He stood firm against Communism, made peace with the Roman Catholic Church, and worked hard to bring unity to Protestants. Why wouldn't God bless a man like this?
In retrospect, of course, we marvel at the blindness of those who supported Adolf Hitler. But before we judge the Germans too harshly, consider how we might have responded to a man who invoked the name of God as he promoted traditional family values with motherhood awards and marriage loans, opposed homosexuality, abortion and communism, eliminated unemployment, provided law, order, and national security, discouraged smoking and drinking, and encouraged the humane treatment of animals.
Is it possible that we, too, might have been enthusiastic? If the Jews were arrested later, might we have been tempted to overlook his hateful rhetoric? Couldn't we have been seduced by a man who promised that "The national government ...will take Christianity, as the basis for our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our people and state, under its firm protection"?
Church Support of the Third Reich
Germany is historically rich in Christian tradition. Much of the German population considered themselves to be Christian, but despite a cultural identification with Christianity, many Germans had lost touch with faith as a personal experience. For some, the defeat of World War I had contributed to doubts about God's existence. For others, their faith had become a matter of culture. In particular, liberal Protestant theologians had presented Jesus more as an ethical example than a personal Lord and Savior. By the time Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, church attendance had fallen.
Nevertheless, the German people still held to a Christian cultural perspective and were hungry for spiritual awakening. Hitler was quickly perceived as a leader of messianic quality, and in revivalist fashion, both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches began to fill.
The Roman Catholic Church lagged behind the Protestants in its enthusiasm for Hitler and his movement. Perhaps because of its international nature, the Catholic Church had less interest in a nationalist movement than its Protestant counterparts. However, it had a deep fear of Communism and saw a strong, anti-communist Germany as an important defense against Stalin and his godless revolution.
So, in spite of his reservations, the Pope gave formal support to Hitler's government in 1933 by signing an agreement which promised Rome's support of Hitler so long as Hitler defended the Church. Once signed, the Concordat opened the door for priests to overtly support the Nazis, and some did so with great enthusiasm. Consider the words of Father Erhard Schlund, a Franciscan publicist: "We must fight the destructive influences of Jews on religion, morality, literature, art, and political and social life." Archbishop T. Karl Innitzer of Vienna stated in 1938: "We joyfully recognize that the National Socialist Movement has accomplished marvelous deeds for the German Reich...The bishops promise their cooperation and add their benediction. They also will admonish their people to follow their example."
Hitler enjoyed widespread support from the Protestant churches. Rev. Martin Niemoller, one of the eventual "resistors," voted Nazi in 1933 and urged his congregation to do so as well. And why not? Hitler's close confidant Joseph Goebbels told his friends that he read the New Testament every night, and Hitler's mentor, Dietrich Eckardt, said: "In Christ, the embodiment of all manliness, we find all that we need."
Even the famous martyr Dietrich Bonheoffer offered wary approval of Hitler's Jewish policies in the early days. In a 1933 church newsletter, Bonheoffer wrote: "Without a doubt the Jewish question is one of the historical problems with which the state must deal, and without a doubt the state is justified in blazing new trails here."
About 6,000 (one third) Protestant pastors formed a group called the Deutsche Christen (German Christians). This organization was expressly created to merge Christian doctrine and Nazi ideology! Their national periodical was named The Gospel in the Third Reich. Another third of Germany's Protestant churches were deeply offended by those extremes and, led by Niemoller and Bonheoffer, began declaring their opposition. Their opposition, however, was directed more against church administrative policies than Nazi ideology. Sadly, the vast majority of Protestant leaders continued to seek reasons for continued confidence in Hitler. Even as late as 1939, Rev. Niemoller wrote a letter from his prison cell requesting to be reinstated into the navy to fight for Germany.
Consider these other troubling examples of Protestant support for the Hitler regime: nearly 85% of Protestant pastors took the oath of personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler (some under duress, but most willingly). The Lippe Regional Church Administration required all employees to greet one another with the Hitler salute at work. Pastors in the Rhineland recruited their young people into the Hitler Youth. "Sieg Heil" was used in church benedictions. In fact, enthusiasm for the Hitler regime was so great among the churches that the Nazi state had to enforce its own version of separation of Church and State. Hitler forbade the wearing of Nazi uniforms at church except at funerals and ordered churches to stop flying the Nazi flag, to remove the flag from their altars, and to stop stamping their correspondence with the swastika!
Hindsight is 20/20
It is easy to see how grievously Christians in Germany erred in their support of Adolf Hitler, but we must be careful not to judge them as if they were somehow different from ourselves. As St. Paul states, "we (all) see through a glass, darkly." Individually and collectively, we are capable of incredible blindness. We can learn from the mistakes of the Germans of that time by looking at a few considerations.
So What Can We Learn?
- Poor grounding in the essentials of the faith - With many theologians losing sight of Jesus as Lord, the Germans lost perspective on the proper limitation of moral/political authority. Limiting Christ to the role of an ethical example allowed for misinterpretation of His message.
- Self-righteousness - Many Germans believed they were culturally superior. Whether they thought this superiority was a natural effect of history or God's special calling, it made the Nazi racial claims more easy to accept.
Primacy of self-interest - Germans lost a sense of being one another's keeper. Their suffering blinded them to the needs of any but their own "kind," and loving one's neighbor was viewed as "loving one's German neighbor." - Placing evil outside of themselves - Blame is a natural extension of self-righteousness and important to self-preservation. For the Germans, blaming the Jew became easy. Once a scapegoat was created, all manner of evil was projected away from themselves.
- Naivete - When we lose sight of man's potential for evil, we place blind trust in others. Germans had a history of following leaders they could trust and their culture was truth-based. But losing perspective on what could happen proved disastrous.
- Compartmentalization - Segmenting life into manageable compartments allowed the Germans to separate personal morality from public standards
Originally published June 11, 2010.
