Christian Churches and Nazi Germany (Book Notes: The Hitler Myth)

Christians today often like to make a big deal about Christian opposition to the Nazis in Germany, but such 'opposition' was often more hype than reality. When Christian churches did oppose the Nazis, it was usually in cases of perceived threats to church authority and not in cases of violence towards Jews or Hitler's wars of aggression.

In The 'Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw explains why this was so:

The ambivalence of the Churches’ stance towards Nazism during the Third Reich is, of course, well established. Where Church institutions, traditions, practices, and belief were directly under attack by the Nazis, defiance was bold, resilient, and at times successful. Elsewhere, a level of accommodation and a modus vivendi were sought. ... Where Nazism did not openly threaten, it could be at least tolerated by both major denominations, attacks on racial, social, and political minorities accepted without demur, the expansionist foreign policy generally applauded. ...

Loyalty to the Führer was pointedly emphasized by the Churches in light of the ‘Bolshevik danger’, blown up by Nazi propaganda in extensive campaigns following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Even those sharply critical of the regime’s anti-Church policies were ready to offer their public support for the Führer’s ‘fight against Bolshevism’. This is well illustrated in the comments in June 1937 of a Bavarian Protestant pastor at a gathering of the ‘Confessing Front’ — the wing of the Church which had openly opposed attempts to assail the traditional basis of Protestantism. His reported words were: ‘We all stand solidly behind our Führer. We all know that if the Third Reich were to collapse today, Bolshevism would come in its place. Therefore: loyalty to our Führer, who has saved us from Bolshevism and given us a better future’.

Christian churches were willing to tolerate widespread violence against Jews, military rearmament, invasions of foreign nations, banning labor unions, imprisonment of political dissenters, preventative detention of people who had committed no crimes, sterilization of the handicapped, and more. Why? Whether despite or because of all this, Hitler was seen as someone who was restoring traditional values and morality to Germany.

Hitler and the Nazis cracked down on pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, and all sorts of sexual “deviance.” They promised to reduce the crime rate and appeared to do so — or at least there were fewer reports of crimes in the media, once newspapers, magazines, and radio came under Nazi control. They promoted respect for authority and traditions in the nation’s youth, promising to eliminate the negative influences of “degenerate” art and entertainment.

So what if all this caused grief for a few minorities? As far as ordinary Germans were concerned, those who suffered simply got what was coming to them. There was simply nothing for the Christian churches to oppose because the Nazis were acting in accordance with the principles the churches had been espousing for decades. Nazi policy wasn’t exactly the same as German church policy, but they were rather close.

 

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