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Nazism and religion is a controversial area of study, with much debate centered on two key issues: the role of Protestant and Catholic clergy and hierarchies in defending, criticizing, or ignoring the Nazi regime and its inceasingly repressive actions towards Jews, religious and political minorities, and others; and the role of paganism, the occult, and mysticism in formulating the views of Hitler and the Nazi Party. This entry looks at the German Nazi movement between WWI and WWII. See also, Clerical fascism. For Post-WWII matters, see Neofascism and religion.
Nazism and Christianity
Hitler and other Nazi leaders clearly made use of both Christian and Pagan symbolism and emotion in propoganda for the Germanic public, and it remains a matter of controversy whether Hitler believed himself a Christian, a heathen, or something else entirely. Some historians have typified Hitler as a neo-Pagan, whereas other writers have referred to Nazism's occasional outward use of Christian doctrine, regardless of what its inner-party mythology may have been. Many Nazi leaders subscribed either to a mixture of modern (pseudo-)scientific theories, as Hitler himself did, or to mysticism and occultism, which was especially strong in the SS. Central to both groupings was the belief in German racial superiority. The existence of a Ministry of Church Affairs, instituted in 1935 and headed by Hanns Kerrl, was hardly recognized by ideologists such as Alfred Rosenberg or by other political decision-makers.
Despite Germany's long history as the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and the birthplace of the Reformation, Christianity was in a decline during the rise of the Nazi Party. Some of the factors leading to this decline were the after affects of World War I which challenged "traditional" European viewpoints, the decline in political parties backed by the Catholic Church. The decline of the Centre Party Germany was an enabler for the rise of the Nazi Party.
Many Christians believed Nazism to be a Christian movement. Even in the later years of the Third Reich, many Protestant and Catholic clergy persisted in believing that Nazism was in its essence in accordance with Christian precepts.
Protestantism
The level of ties between Nazism and the Protestant churches has been a contentious issue for decades. One difficulty is that Protestantism includes a vast number of religious bodies many of whom had little relation to each other. Added to that, Protestantism tends to allow more variation among individual congregations than Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which makes statements about "official positions" of denominations problematic. Still, many Protestant organizations or denominations were solidly opposed to Nazism and many Protestants died fighting it. The forms or offshoots of Protestantism that advocated pacificism, anti-nationalism, or racial equality tended to oppose in the strongest terms. Prominent Protestant, or Protestant offshoot, groups known for their efforts against Nazism include the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Confessing Church. Many of their members died in the camps or struggled fiercely against the Nazis.
Yet Lutherans voted for Hitler more than Catholics. Different German states possessed regional social variations as to class densities and religious denomination; Richard Steigmann-Gall alleges a linkage between several Protestant churches and Nazism, the main aspect being Hitler's citing anti-Semitic pamphlets by Martin Luther and accusations that the Lutheran establishment supported Hitler. The small Methodist population at times was deemed foreign; this stemmed from the fact that Methodism began in England, while it did not develop in Germany until the nineteenth century with Christoph Gottlob Müller and Louis Jacoby. Because of this history they felt the urge to be "more German than the Germans" to avoid suspicion. Methodist Bishop John L. Nelsen toured the U.S. on Hitler's behalf to protect his church, but in private letters indicated that he feared or hated Nazism, and so retired to Switzerland. Methodist Bishop F. H. Otto Melle took a far more collaborationist position that included apparently sincere support for Nazism. He felt that serving the Reich was both a patriotic duty and a means of advancement. To show his gratitude, Hitler made a gift of 10,000 marks in 1939 to a Methodist congregation to purchase an organ. Outside of Germany, Melle's views were overwhelmingly rejected by most Methodists. The leader of pro-Nazi segment of Baptists was Paul Schmidt. Hitler also led to the unification of Pro-Nazi Protestants in the Protestant Reich Church which was led by Ludwig Müller. The idea of such a "national church" was possible in the history of mainstream German Protestantism, but National Churches devoted primarily to the state were generally forbidden among the Anabaptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and in Catholicism.
During the 1930s Hitler tried to nationalize Germany's churches (German Christian), with restrictions allowing only German membership. Only some Protestants resisted by forming the Confessing Church. A common Nazi song replaced the words to the German carol Silent Night with the following lyrics:
- Silent night! Holy night!
- All is calm, and all is bright
- Only the Chancellor steadfast in fight
- Watches o’er Germany by day and by night
- Always caring for us.
- Silent night! Holy night!
- All is calm, and all is bright
- Adolf Hitler is Germany’s wealth
- Brings us greatness, favour and health
- Oh give us Germans all power!
After a failed assassination on Hitler's life in 1943 which involved elements of the Confessing Church (a protestant organization), Hitler ordered the arrest of Protestant, mainly Lutheran clergy. Catholic clergy were also suppressed if they spoke out against the regime.
Catholicism
Bernhard Stempfle
A certain priest called Father Bernhard Stempfle is credited with having helped editing Mein Kampf during his imprisoned days in the state prison at Landsberg together with Hitler. However, in 1934, after the Night of the Long Knives Stempfle was found dead in a wood near Munich, with his heart pierced and three bullets through his head. Stempfle is said to have been a member of the Hieronymites, and sources mention that the reason for his assassination was probably secret, private knowledge about Hitler. Allegations that Stempfle was the confessor of Hitler must however be firmly dismissed, as Hitler no longer received any of the sacraments after he had left his family's home long before the First World War.
Church hierarchy
The nature of the Nazi Party's relations with the Catholic Church is also complicated. Before Hitler rose to power, many Catholic priests and leaders vociferously opposed Nazism on the grounds of its incompatibility with Christian morals. Nazi Party membership was forbidden until the takeover and a policy reversal. At his trial Franz von Papen said that until 1936 the Catholic Church hoped for a Christian alignment to the beneficial aspects he said they saw in national socialism. (This statement came after Pope Pius XII ended Von Papen's appointment as Papal chamberlain and ambassador to the Holy See, but before his restoration under Pope John XXIII.) With the Church's strong view against Communism and their support for Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy, some in the Church looked at the Nazi party as an ally at first. The Church encouraged worshippers to support a state of fascism rather than Communism. By doing this the Church gave a boost to the National Socialist party in Germany.
In 1937 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge condemning Nazi ideology, notably the Gleichschaltung policy directed against religious influence upon education, as well as Nazi racism. The encyclical Humani Generis Unitas however was never published. The massive Catholic opposition to the euthanasia programs led them to be quietly ended in August 28, 1941, (according to Spielvogel pp. 257-258) but the German Catholics never actively and openly protested Nazi anti-Semitism in any comparable way, except for some bishops and priests like bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster; this might have been due to the restrictions imposed upon the small, remaining Catholic press by the Nazi government after the 1941 debacle about euthanasia.
In Nazi Germany, all known political dissenters were imprisoned, and many priests were sent to the concentration camps for their opposition, including the parson of the Berlin Cathedral Bernhard Lichtenberg. Among the punished priests were Poles persecuted primarily for their nationality. However, Hitler was never directly excommunicated by the Catholic Church and several Catholic bishops in Germany or Austria are recorded as encouraging prayers of support for "The Führer"; this despite the fact the original Reichskonkordat (1933) of Germany with the Holy See proscribed any active political participation by the priesthood.
Criticism also arose in that the Vatican pontificate headed by Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII had remained circumspect about the national-scale race hatred before 1937. A statement by Pius XI on 8 Sept 1938 spoke of the "inadmissability" of anti-semitism, but Pius XII is criticised by people like John Cornwell for being unspecific. Pius XI may have underestimated the degree that Hitler's ideas influenced the laity in light of hopes the Concordate would preserve Catholic influences amongst them. The evolution of the Vatican's understanding has faced criticism of weakness, slowness, or even culpability. On culpability this is perhaps clearest with regards to the German hierarchy as after the Concordate there was a radical reversal of the former episcopal condemnation of Nazism, according to Daniel Goldhagen and others. It is less certain in other cases. From the other extreme the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands officially condemned Nazism in 1941 and therefore faced violence and deportation of its priests, along with attacks upon monasteries and Catholic hospitals. Likewise, the Polish Roman Catholic hierarchy was violently attacked by the Nazis and saw many of its clerics sent to concentration camps, a famous example of this being Father Maksymilian Kolbe. Most nations' hierarchy took a mixture of the two positions, oscillating between collaboration and active resistance.
Tangential to the more extreme of collaborationist accusations is the characterisation that Nazism actively based itself on a similar pontifical structure and corps of functionaries. For example the special clothing, ghettoization, and badges demanded of Jews were once common or even began in the Papal States. Also that the Nazis saw themselves as an effective replacement of Catholicism that would co-opt its unity and respect for hierarchy. Hence attempts were made to unite other religions, as in the earlier example of the Protestant Reich Church.
Nazi mysticism
Nazi mysticism is a term used to describe a philosophical undercurrent of Nazism which denotes the combination of Nazism with theosophy, antroposophy, occultism, esotericism, cryptohistory, and/or the paranormal. The esoteric Thule Society and Germanenorden were secret societies which while only a small part of the Völkisch movement, led into the Nazi party.
Dietrich Eckart, a member of Thule, actually coached Hitler on his public speaking skills, and while Hitler has not been shown to have been a member of Thule, he received support from the group. Hitler later on dedicated Mein Kampf to Eckart. Heinrich Himmler showed a strong interest in such matters, although as Steigmann–Gall points out, Hitler and many of his key associates sometimes still attended Christian services of the nazified Reich Church. Himmler wanted to replace Christianity with a mixture of popular symbolism, Germanic paganism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Nazi mysticism, however, plays a major role in some forms of contemporary Nazism, with a mythology including such ideas as interdimensional vril-powered UFO's and hyperborean supermen, along with the more widely known myth of Hitler having escaped to the Antarctic. See the main discussion at Nazi mysticism, and the related Neofascism and religion.
See also
Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs
External links
Notes
- ^ Richard Steigmann–Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) p. 5
- see Jackson J. Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany ISBN 0-13-189877-9
- Steigmann-Gall, R., The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 ISBN 0-521-82371-4
- Hitler and the Thule Society
- Michael Rissmann, Hitlers Gott. Vorsehungsglaube und Sendungsbewußtsein des deutschen Diktators, Zürich München: Pendo, 2001, p. 94-96 ISBN 3-85842-421-8.