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Was the Nazi Holocaust religious or was it secular? A bit of both, actually. Nazi oppression and massacres against political opponents and gypsies were obviously secular in nature - but the determination to exterminate the Jews from the face of the earth cannot possibly be understood without the background of centuries of persistent and violent anti-semitism, generally encouraged by religious authorities.
Throughout Christian European history, Jews were accused of "Host Nailing" - ritually nailing communion wafers to wood as a symbolic recreation of the killing of Jesus. Jews were accused of the infamous "Blood Libel" - killing young Christian children in bizarre, satanic rituals.
Jews were forcibly baptized, then treated as heretics under the Inquisition if they dared to return to Jewish ways. Jews were accused of poisoning wells in an attempt to exterminate Christians (oh, the irony!). Jews were forced into ghettos. Jews were prohibited from participating in a wide variety of occupations. Jews were ordered to wear identifying badges by religious authorities so that everyone would know who they were.
Christians were regularly told by their church leaders that the Jews killed Christ - killed God, in fact. Christians were told that Jews were greedy and untrustworthy. Passion plays - recreations of Jesus' alleged sacrifice - depicted Jews as cruel mockers of Jesus. Cathedral paintings depicted Jews in a terrible manner. I remember from my stay in Germany a painting high up on the outside of a Lutheran church: a Jew with his arm pushed way up the nether-regions of a pig. This would be insulting enough even if we didn't remember that pigs are considered unclean by Jews.
This is how Jews were portrayed day-in and day-out by both Catholic and Protestant churches for hundreds of years. No one can reasonably look at this situation and not realize how tremendous a role Christian churches had in tilling and fertilizing the ground of anti-semitism and general hatred of others which ultimately led to the Holocaust. When Adolf Hitler needed a scapegoat, he needed look no further than the Jews which were regularly lambasted in his own Catholic churches.
Anyone who looks through Nazi propaganda of the time will quickly notice that religious - which is to say Christian - imagery appears very often. It's not uncommon to see Jews draining blood from Christians and reports of plans to kill off the German race. Such vilification of Jews simply would not have been possible had not the churches already paved the way. Fortunately, some Christian leaders have recognized this and attempted to apologize. In the early 1960's, Pope John XXIII wrote:
The mark of Cain is stamped upon our foreheads. Across the centuries, our brother Abel has lain in blood which we drew, and shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love. Forgive us, Lord, for the curse we falsely attributed to their name as Jews.
Blood Libel
The Jews in Europe did not only suffer at the hands of Christians during spasms of crusading fever. Indeed, their lives were long on desperation and short of Christian love or tolerance. Most people are vaguely aware of the fact that Jews suffered through centuries of anti-Semitism, but too few are aware of the extent of human suffering - it's too remote in history for most.
The basis, as many know, was the popular perception that Jews were all "Christ-killers" and directly responsible for the death of Jesus. The fact that none of the Jews they knew were alive at the time was irrelevant - the fact that they were Jews meant that they had inherited any sins - real or perceived - from earlier Jews, whether direct ancestors or not.
The Christian church did not hesitate to promote this perception and encourage persecution. Saint Gregory called Jews "slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God." And he was one of the nicer critics. Saint Ambrose wrote "Who cares if a synagogue - home of insanity and unbelief - is destroyed?" This sort of attitude among Christians was not limited to idle propaganda, but in the course of time boiled over into actual acts of violence.
Unfortunately, having killed God wasn't quite enough to inspire massacres, so something else had to fill that void. In 1144 a 12-year-old boy was found dead near Norwich England, and for some reason rumors started that the Jews had killed him in some sort of demonic ritual.
Thus began the infamous "Blood Libel" - the story that Christian children were kidnapped and sacrificed by evil Jews as part of their plot to undermine Christianity and help Satan. Killing God wasn't enough to inspire violence, but killing Christians was - and so Jews across Europe would be seized and executed en masse whenever blood libel hysteria arose.
Actual incidents are too numerous to fully list, so only a few can be briefly mentioned. Thirty-eight Jewish leaders in Blois, France, were burned alive after refusing to convert to Christianity in payment for the death of a boy whose body was never found and who in fact may never have existed. In England, 18 Jews were tortured and hung for having allegedly crucified a boy.
In 1285, 180 Munich Jews were burned for having allegedly bled a Christian boy to death. In 1475, nearly all the Jews in Trent, Italy, were tortured and killed after rumors circulated that a boy had been sacrificed. Even as late as 1801, 128 Jews had their throats slit by Orthodox priests after being accused to drinking blood.
Host Nailing
A particularly odd form of persecution resulted from the decision of Christian leaders to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation: in other words, that the host wafer in holy communion miraculously changes into the actual body of Jesus. For some reason, superstitious Christians started believing that Jews would take the communion wafer and ritually nail it up in a grisly re-enactment of the crucifixion. The result was hundreds of massacres all across Europe. It seems like Christians would seize upon any excuse to kill off a few Jews.
In 1298, 628 Jews were killed in Nuremberg after host-nailing rumors spread. That same year, Bavarian knight Rindfleisch exterminated 146 Jewish communities in just six months. In 1337, the entire Jewish population of Deggendorf, Bavaria, was burned after stories of host-nailing became popular. In 1370, nearly all Belgian Jews were killed after someone in Brussels reported seeing a Jew break a communion wafer. Even as late as 1761, Jews were executed in Nancy, France, based upon similar allegations. I could go on and on with similar reports, but I am honestly sickened by having to spend so much time on these examples of how Christianity relates to violence.
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