Hitler's attitude to Christian
Churches in Germany
● Hitler born a catholic
●Later abandoned religion
●As Fuhrer did not want major conflict with Christian Churches in Germany
Christians in Nazi Germany
●A religious census taken in 1925 revealed that of an overall German population of 65 million.
● 40 million belonged to the main Protestant
(Evangelical Lutheran) church
● 21 million to the Roman Catholic church
●620,000 to various smaller, mostly Protestant denominations.
The attitude of the Nazi government to religion
●The Nazi government also attempted to supplant Christian worship with secular Nazi party celebrations which adopted many symbols of religious ritual but instead glorified the party and the Fuhrer.
●Efforts were also made to dilute clerical influence on religious instruction in the public schools, as well as to curb the activities and influence the curricula of religious schools.
The'German Christian' Movement and Reich Bishop Mueller
●In an attempt to synchronize religious thought with state policy, the Nazis sought, unsuccessfully, to establish a unified national church.
●Hitler appointed a Reich Bishop, Ludwig Mueller, who led a "German Christian" movement within the
church.
●Mueller sought to synthesize Nazi ideology and Protestant tradition and to agitate for a "people's church" based on "good Aryan blood."
●This movement had gained 600,000 adherents by the mid-1930s.
●Ludwig Mueller, a Nazi sympathizer, was elected to the position of Reich Bishop in 1933 as Hitler
attempted to unite regional
Protestant churches under Nazi control. Berlin, Germany, November 17,
1933.
Niemoller and the Pastors' Emergency
League and the Confessing Church
●In 1933, a small group of Protestant clergy formed the Pastors' Emergency League.
●Founded by Martin Niemöller, the league took a stand against Nazi domination of the church. In 1934, the League's leaders founded the Confessing Church, representing a minority of all Protestant pastors in Germany.
●Its ideology was to resist Nazi coercion and to expose the moral hollowness of the pro-Nazi "German Christian" movement.
●The Confessing Church did not, however, protest Nazi racial or social policies.
●Martin Niemöller, a German theologian and pastor, on a visit to the United States after the war. A leader of the anti- Nazi Confessing Church,
he spent the last 7 years
of Nazi rule in concentration camps. United States, October 4,
1946
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
● He was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian.
● He was a founding member of the Confessing
Church.
●He was also a participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism.
●His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April
1943
●He was executed by hanging in April 1945, shortly before the war's end.
●Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Protestant theologian who was executed in the Flossenbürg
concentration camp on
April 9, 1945. Germany, date uncertain
TheNazis and smaller Christian groups
●Some smaller christian groups were considered politically dangerous because of their adventist, millennial, and international tendencies.
●Some were banned by the Nazi government and most were subject to constant surveillance by the secret police.
●These smaller groups were an easier target for the government than the major churches.
Persecution of smaller christian groups
● Nazi policy varied depending on the group.
●Some, such as Jehovah's Witnesses (banned in Prussia in 1933) were persecuted and many adherents were incarcerated in concentration camps.
●Others, such as New Apostolics, Christian Scientists (banned in 1941), and Seventh Day Adventists, experienced intermittent harassment.
1933 Hitler's Government sign Concordat (Agreement) with Catholic Church
●In July 1933 Deputy Chancellor Franz von Papen and Papal Nuncio Pacelli signed Concordat (agreement) in Berlin
concession to Catholic Church in
Germany
●Catholic Church given
●control of religious education in catholic schools
●guarantee of religious freedom/worship
●guarantee on property rights
●right to appoint bishops
Pope Pius XI
undertakings made by Catholic
Church in Germany
●
●
●(Catholic Church subsequently also withdrew support for catholic Centre Party)
●Catholic clergy and Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels (far right) and Wilhelm Frick (second from right), give the Nazi salute. Germany, date uncertain.
Sources of tension between Nazis and the Catholic Church
●Nazi Secession Campaign encouraged people to leave church
●Attempts in catholic regions to remove crucifix from classrooms
● Catholic youth groups harassed
● Catholic Youth League forced to disband
●Nazis highlighted the 'immorality trials' about monks/nuns/priests involved in sexual misconduct/embezzling of money
Criticism of Nazis by Catholic
Church
●1936 Bavarian catholic bishops criticised government policies against catholics
●1937-Pius XI publishes Papal Encyclical 'Mit Brenneder Sorge' (With Deep Anxiety) criticising the Nazi government
●Cardinal Galen of Munster spoke out against Nazi euthanasia programme (the so called 'mercy killing' the very old, very ill and mentaly ill)
● Pius XI on point of publishing 2nd Encyclical criticising
Nazi's anti-semitic policies when he died in 1939
Pius XII, pope from 1939 to 1958.
Vatican City, 1939
Pius XII visits Papal Nuncio in
Berlin
Relations between Nazis and
Catholic Church during WWII
● Many monasteries closed down
● Nazis organised attacks on church property
● Catholic press/newspapers closed down
● Pius XII less openly critical of Nazis than predessor
(perhaps feared backlash)
●Over 600 catholic priests convicted of 'oppositional activities'
●Some of these killed, others sent to prison/concentration camps
● Alfred Delp-executed for conspiring to kill Hitler
●"Well, his baptism didn't un-Jew him," snickers one Aryan girl to her friend. This Nazi cartoon from the 1930s is primarily anti-Catholic in thrust, taking for granted the viewer's anti-Semitism. The wholesome maidens watch as the convert Jew and his convert wife exit the patently Catholic church (all the expected Romish props are in sight) and they observe that one's ethnicity is not left behind by a change in religious conviction. These are good German lasses, you see -- no missals or rosaries in their pretty hands -- and they understand that Race is more basic than Faith.
●The Catholic Church hadn't moved with Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age, but remained stuck in her inherited belief that her first members were baptised Jews and that any person of any race that submitted to her teachings and discipline could belong. Nazis resented this retrograde view, especially as the Catholic Church's willingness to accept Jewish converts put those converts into a position vexing to the Nazis' own plans for them.
● Hitler: b. Catholic but not religious
●Wanted people devoted to Nazism rather than religion
●Didn't want churches undermining Nazi ideas/indoctrination
● Mueller: Reich Bishop: German Christian
Movement
●Niemoller: Pastor's Emergency League, Confessing Church (7 yr prison)
● Bonhoffer: Lutheran minister, plot to kill Hitler:
hung in 1945
●Minority Christian Groups: persecuted: Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists
● 1933 Concordat with Pope and Catholic
Church
●Tensions between Nazis and the Catholic church
● Criticisms of the Nazis by the Catholic Church
● Relations between the Nazis and the Catholic
Church during WWII