How the Catholic and Confessing Church Survived Under Hitler's Pagan Nazi Regime

Today we will learn and reflect on the question, How could Christians
either tolerate or support the totalitarian Nazi regime of
Hitler? We cannot help but ask that question because we see
bulging eyes of the skeletal concentration camp victims looking
up in those black and white photographs, but we must realize
that nobody in the prewar years could have predicted that the
concentration camps would come to define Nazism. In the
prewar years many saw a reawakened national German pride
and family values after the humiliation imposed by the Treaty of
Versailles that ended World War I.

Young survivors at the camp, liberated
by the Red Army in January 1945

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for this
video, and my blogs that also cover this topic. Please, we
welcome interesting questions in the comments. Let us learn
and reflect together!

YouTube Video:
Christians Keep the Faith in Nazi Germany
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In the beginning of Hitler’s term as Chancellor of Germany, before the Enabling Act
was voted on that gave him dictatorial powers, he posed as both anti-Semitic and as
a friend of the German Catholic and Protestant Churches. To understand why Hitler
was seen as a friend of Christianity for a short time after he was elected, you need
to understand the history behind the fascists Mussolini, who was initially an
inspiration for Hitler, and the Russian Revolution. Because Mussolini was a hedonist
and not a good Catholic, he was a friend of convenience to the Catholic Church in
Italy. Mussolini’s fascist government had pro-Catholic policies and helped pass
much pro-Catholic legislation. Although he was granted dictatorial powers,
Mussolini did not pass anti-Semitic legislation until the year preceding World War II.
The video on Fascist Italy includes the backstory of how the Church sought to
survive in a modern secular world by negotiating a Concordat first with Napoleon,
and also with Mussolini when it signed the Lateran Accords of 1929 creating the
Vatican City. The Catholic Church did not fare nearly so well when it negotiated a
Concordat with Hitler.

On the other hand, Communism was the enemy of Christianity, the bolsheviks in the
decades after the Russian Revolution martyred tens of millions of Christians, mostly
Orthodox Christians, which outnumbered the cumulative number of martyrs in all
countries in all prior centuries. Hitler always painted Nazism as ideologically
opposed to Bolshevism and the Jews, which were the same in his delusions.

Lenin in 1920 speech in Russia.

Revolutionaries attacking tsarist police.

(REPEAT) Germany on the eve of World War II was about 97% Christian, a third
were Catholics, two-thirds were Protestants. Therefore, the story of Christianity
under Hitler is really two interlocking stories. First, there is the story of the
German Catholic Church and its futile attempt to negotiate a Concordat with the
Nazis. Second is the story of the German Protestant Church. The Nazis tried to
commandeer the Lutheran Church and turn it into a German Christian Church
that denied the Old Testament and the Jewishness of Jesus, glorifying the
fatherland and the Nazi doctrines on race. Some churches formed the
Confessing Church that resisted Nazi intrusions into Church doctrines. About a
sixth of German Protestant Churches were Confessing Churches, another sixth
were Nazi German Christian Churches, the rest declined not to be political and
to take neither position. So we also want to ask, Why did only a minority of
Protestant Churches join the Confessing Church movement? Why did so many
churches refuse to resist the attempts by Nazi ideologues to corrupt Church
doctrine and beliefs?

Christianity: Eve of World War II
Germany was 97% Christian
Two-thirds Protestant, One-third Catholic
PROTESTANT CHURCH
One-sixth: German Christians: Denied the Old
Testament and the Jewishness of Jesus,
glorified the fatherland and the Nazi
doctrines on race.
One-sixth: Confessing Church resisted Nazi
intrusions into Church doctrines.
Remainder: tried to stay neutral
CATHOLIC CHURCH
Signed Concordat with Pope in 1933, Hitler
and the Nazis ignored treaty provisions.
Cologne Cathedral, Germany, is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.

PRE-NAZI GERMAN HISTORY
Under the Peace of Augsburg, the treaty ending the religious wars following the
Reformation, the prince of each state determined the religion of that state. During
the 1870s Bismarck unified the small German states under the Prussian throne,
creating the modern German state governed under a constitutional monarchy. As
Prime Minister, Bismarck launched the Kulturkampf, or culture struggle, against the
Catholic Church to limit the influence the Pope had over German affairs. All
Prussian bishops and many priests were imprisoned or exiled. Catholics responded
by organizing the Catholic Centre Party. In time, after Pope Pius IX died and the
more pragmatic Pope Leo XIII negotiated for Germany to repeal most of the anti-
Catholic laws. Afterwards, the Centre Party generally supported Bismarck’s policies,
though they were wary. The new German state paid the salaries of both pastors
and priests, and later Hitler’s Nazi Germany would continue to pay the clerical
salaries throughout the war, including the pastors of SOME of the Confessing
Churches.

Surrender of Napoleon III, Franco Prussian War, 1870.
This war set the stage for the two World Wars.

"Between Berlin and
Rome", with Bismarck on
the left and the Pope on
the right, from the
German satirical
magazine
Kladderadatsch, 1875.
Pope: "Admittedly, the
last move was
unpleasant for me; but
the game still isn't lost. I
still have a very beautiful
secret move." Bismarck:
"That will also be the last
one, and then you'll be
mated in a few moves –
at least in Germany."

Like the American Civil War, the casualties in World War I were staggering, the war in the Western
Front was fought in muddy trenches stretching from the ocean to the Alps. Tens and hundreds of
thousands of soldiers would perish when they climbed out from the trenches to an eerie no-man’s
land full of muddy mortar craters littered with corpses and the debris of war, anxious that they
would not fall victim to the mortars and machine guns of the enemy before and after they
reached the enemy’s trenches in their attacks.
The privations and defeats of Germany of World War I discredited the monarchy, which was
overthrown and replaced by the Weimar Republic. Intense propaganda throughout the war led
the German people to believe until the very end that victory was in sight. The trenches were dug
in French territory, no battles were fought on German soil. Not only was victory not possible, but
the Germans were short on food and ammunition, and everything needed to wage war. The
Germans were shocked by the draconian terms of the Versailles Treaty ending World War I,
restrictions were placed on German industry and the military, German colonies were distributed
among the Allies, Germany had to pay heavy war reparations, and were forced to accept a
humiliating war guilt clause.

France, Western Front in World War I

Treaty of Versailles : German delegate Johannes Bell signing the treaty in the Hall of
Mirrors, with various Allied delegations sitting and standing in front of him
The Germans were shocked by the draconian terms of the Versailles Treaty, restrictions were
placed on German industry and military, German colonies were distributed among the Allies,
Germany had to pay heavy reparations, and were forced to accept a humiliating war guilt clause.

Hitler was not the only German
nor the first German to label the
Weimar politicians as traitors, to
accuse the Weimar politicians of
snatching away German victory
and “stabbing Germany in the
back,” allowing the Allies to
declare victory. Shamefully, the
German generals did not dare to
contradict this conspiracy
theory, instead they repeated
the stab in the back lie loudly
and constantly.
An illustration from a 1919 Austrian postcard showing a
caricatured Jew stabbing a personified German Army in
the back with a dagger. The capitulation of the Central
Powers was blamed upon Socialists, Bolsheviks, the
Weimar Republic, and especially the Jews.
Stab in the back myth

The Weimar Republic could not easily pay these heavy reparations. Likewise, the Allies could not
easily repay the vast loans America advanced them during the war. So the American bankers
engaged in a shell game, America would loan Germany the money to pay their reparations to the
Allies, and then the Allies would use this money to pay the American loans.
The Weimar German economy was in crisis in the early 1920’s, suffering from hunger,
unemployment, and general dislocation. The Germans started printing money, eventually causing
hyperinflation, wiping out German savings accounts and pensions and salaries. Within months a
loaf of bread that previously cost a mark would cost a trillion marks. Prices rose during the day,
anytime you were paid you ran to spend the money. Then in the 1930’s the Great Depression hit
Germany hard, causing broad discontent that was fertile soil for the malignant Nazi ideology to
take root and thrive.

Hyper Inflation
Weimar Republic
of Germany
1920’s

Mussolini in Italy had grabbed power in Italy after his fascist thugs marched
on Rome in 1922. The next year a then obscure Adolph Hitler, inspired by
Mussolini’s example, tried to march on Munich with two thousand Nazis,
but due to poor planning and a strong police force, the march was broken
up and Hitler was charged with treason. During his trial, a sympathetic
judge allowed Hitler to deliver fiery speeches during his trial that were
covered by the major newspapers, gaining notoriety, broadening his
base. In prison, Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf, where he laid out in
surprising detail how he intended to seize power in Germany. After his
release he changed tactics and sought to achieve power somewhat legally.

Blackshirts
with Benito
Mussolini
during the
March on
Rome, 28
October
1922.

Munich Marienplatz during
the failed Beer Hall Putsch
by Hitler’s Nazi Party

Fascists were the enemy of the godless communists. All Europe were
fearful that Lenin’s Communist Party would succeed in igniting violent
revolutions in Europe. Many Europeans thought that since the fascists
were the avowed enemies of godless communism that they might shield
the Churches from communism, so fascist were seen at least as the least
worst choice.
Later the Spanish Civil War, fought from 1936 to 1939, degenerated into a
brutal and bloody war between the Republican Communists and the
Nationalist Fascists under General Franco. This was also a proxy war
between Russian on one side and Fascist Germany and Italy on the other
side, the Allies were neutral in the conflict. Although both sides were guilty
of massacres, the communists brutally murdered thousands of priests,
monks, and nuns. The Nazis were able to test their new machines of war in
actual combat.

Mural of the painting "Guernica" by Picasso made in tiles, depicting the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War.

HITLER RISES TO POWER
Although for many years the Nazi Party was a small minority in the
1920’s, after the coming of the Great Depression it grew to become the
largest party in Germany. Although the Nazis lost seats in the 1932
Reichstag election, the conservatives formed a coalition government with
the Nazis on January 30, 1933. Hindenburg, the aging World War I
general, would be the President, Hitler would be appointed Chancellor,
and Papen as Vice-Chancellor. Hindenburg and Papen thought they could
control this corporal with an eighth-grade education, but Hitler quickly
outwitted both of them. Hitler’s first act as Chancellor was to ask
Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag to pave the way for the passage of
the Enabling Act. New elections were scheduled for March 5, 1933.

On February 27, 1933 the Reichstag building caught fire, and a communist
arsonist was arrested, tried, and executed. Historians debate whether this
was a false flag operation, whether the fire was actually set by the Nazis
and pinned on the communists. This was seen by many Germans as the
beginning of a communist revolution in Germany, the next day, at Hitler’s
urging, Hindenburg issued the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending most
civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus and the freedoms of
press, expression, and public assembly.

Reichstag Fire Reichstag Today

Even with anti-red hysteria the Nazis would still only receive 37% of the
vote in the March Reichstag election. To pass the Enabling Act, which
would transform Hitler’s government into a legal dictatorship, checked
only by the authority of President Hindenburg, would require a two-
thirds majority vote. To reach this two thirds threshold Hitler would need
the support of the Nazi, Conservative, and the Catholic Center Party.
How did Hitler gain the support of the Catholic Center Party and alleviate
the fears of Christians that the Nazi Party was essentially pagan and anti-
Christian? By blatant lies and deceitful reassurances. Hitler got religion
for the day of the vote, March 23, 1933.

WHY DID MANY CHRISTIANS TOLERATE NAZISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM?
Let us listen to post-war interviews of members of the Confessing Church
as they struggle to answer this question.
We have heard similar dodges among some white Christians who were
hesitant about supporting the civil rights legislation when the Jim Crow
laws were weakened.

WHY DID MANY CHRISTIANS TOLERATE NAZISM AND
ANTI-SEMITISM?
The son of a pastor explained why many Christians went
along with the persecution of the Jews under Hitler:
“Just as the average Protestant was middle class and
‘national,’ he was also anti-Semitic. Today you can
hardly speak of ‘harmless’ anti-Semitism, but at that
time we saw it as harmless.” “I was raised to believe
that, until the Jews rejected Jesus, they were a loyal
people, a wonderful people. They were farmers and
shepherds. Then God rejected them, and since that
time they have been merchants, good for nothing, and
they infiltrate everything, everywhere they go. And
against that you had to defend yourself.” “Certain kinds
of restrictions on the civil rights of Jews, that was
generally talked about and sympathized with.”

One German said this, “This way of
thinking was embedded in the Christian
tradition (in Germany): the persecutions
were hard on the Jews and one had to
pity them, but they had brought it upon
themselves somehow. Either because
there had been Jews who had dominated
the business sector or because they had
immoral business methods, or, this was a
reason of the pious, that it was the wrath
of God which now, after such a long time,
had turned upon the Jews.”

One German explained his experience as a Jewish Christian member of the
Confessing Church, and this viewpoint influences many middle-class parish
members in our current day:

“As a matter of principle, the German bourgeoisie, to
which the overwhelming majority of pastors and parish
members belonged, was anti-Semitic in the sense that
Jews didn’t ‘belong’ to the church.” “The guilt of the
Christians and the church rests in the fact that the
commandment to love your neighbor was interpreted or
taken to mean that one looked after your Christian
brothers and sisters, those who had been baptized. That
means that when Christians came into conflict with the
state or with the police, the church or parish took care of
them as long as it had to do with the church. They didn’t
look after these people when it was a political matter. The
Christians in the church cared for Christians when
something happened because they were Christians. The
responsibility for society, the Jews, Social Democrats,
communists, gypsies, atheists, the responsibility for all
these was not seen as a responsibility of the church.”

There is also the backstory of the Dreyfus Affair we discussed in our
video for Vichy France, where a Jewish army diplomat was falsely
convicted of treason, and the French army refused to exonerate him
since he was Jewish.
Although Alfred Dreyfus was clearly innocent, French politics split
between those who championed justice and those who wanted him to
rot and die on Devil’s Island. This major scandal split France for over a
decade and fanned the flames of anti-Semitism all over Europe.

Dreyfus Affair Timeline
1894: Alfred Dreyfus convicted of
treason, sentenced to Devil’s Island in
French Guiana.
1896: New evidence points to
someone else, but is suppressed,
army does not want to be
embarrassed.
Zola pens J’Accuse, creating an
uproar in the media.
1899: Dreyfus retried, loses.
Pardoned and released.
1906: Dreyfus reinstated in the
military, serves in WWI, retires.
France splits into pro-republican
Dreyfusards, and pro-Catholic, pro-
Army anti-Dreyfusards.

PASSING THE ENABLING ACT
Hitler reassured these believers in his
speech to the Reichstag, “the national
government regards the two Christian
confessions as the most important
factors for the preservation of our
national culture… Their rights will not
be infringed.” Hitler promised that
Christian teachings would be welcome
in the schools. Of course, the Reich
“regards Christianity as the
unshakable foundation of our
national life and morality.” Hitler
promised friendly relations with the
Vatican Holy See. About the only
promise Hitler kept was that the state
would continue paying clerical salaries
through the duration of the Third
Reich.

Soon after seizing power, the Nazis went to work drafting the Nuremberg
Race Laws that made Jews second class citizens, initiating the persecution
of the Jews. How these laws were drafted, and how they used the Deep
South Jim Crow segregation laws as precedent is the subject of a separate
video. We also mention in this video how the false sciences of Eugenics
and so-called Scientific Racism dulled the moral sensibilities of ordinary
people across Europe.

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
Vice Chancellor Papen had managed to both alienate the Catholic Parties
and enable the rise of Hitler through complex political maneuvering that
eventually caused his undoing. Papen and Hindenburg became
concerned at the brutality and overreach of the Nazi government, and the
army command was concerned by Hitler’s huge SA brownshirt gangs that
were causing terror in the streets of Germany. With Hindenburg’s
encouragement, Papen delivered an address at the University of Marburg
on June 17, 1934. In this speech Papen called for the restoration of some
freedoms and advocated the end of SA terror in the streets.
Hitler was furious. The publication of the Marburg address was
suppressed. Papen then met with Hitler and threatened to resign unless
the publication ban was lifted, threatening action by Hindenburg. Hitler
outwitted Papen, telling him that the ban on publication would be lifted at
once and the SA brownshirts would be suppressed, if Papen would not
resign and they would meet with Hindenburg.

Nazi Party (NSDAP)
leader Adolf Hitler
saluting members of
the Sturmabteilung
in Brunswick, Lower
Saxony, 1932

The SA unit in
Nuremberg,
1929

Two weeks later Hitler kept his promise, and Papen discovered he could
not manipulate and control Hitler. Now that Hitler was in power the
troublesome the thuggish SA brownshirt mobs needed to be reigned in,
the ambitious head of the SA, the homosexual Ernst Rohm was a loose
cannon and a threat to his power. During the Night of the Long Knives
Hitler directed the SS troops to purge the SA leadership. In addition to
Rohm, between a hundred and a thousand of Hitler’s enemies died
during the purge, including several Nazis whose politics were suspect,
several Catholic politicians, and some of Papen’s associates.

Hitler
triumphant:
The Führer
reviewing the
SA in 1935.
Hitler and Ernest Rohm

Papen himself was placed under house arrest. And we found several
photos from this period that appear to document how Hitler and his
thugs sought to drive Papen to the sidelines. After several weeks, Papen
resigned as Vice Chancellor, and served out the war as ambassador to
Austria and Turkey. After the purge the SA brown shirt forces were
downsized while the paramilitary SS forces gained in strength. Both the
SA and the SS forces terrorized the Jews.
Soon after, on August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died of lung cancer, he was 86
years old. Quickly a law was passed that declared the office of President
vacant, Hitler was now both Chancellor and Fuhrer, his hold on power
was now absolute.

Reichstag on 12 September 1932 –
Papen (stands, left) demands the floor,
ignored by Speaker Göring (right)
Papen with Hitler on 1 May 1933

CATHOLICS NEGOTIATE CONCORDAT ON CHURCH RELATIONS WITH THE NAZIS
There was no German Archbishop heading the German Catholic Church, and the
exact Catholic policies on relations with the state varied from bishop to
bishop. Prior to the Enabling Act Catholics in many bishoprics were forbidden from
joining the Nazi Party, Nazis were not welcome to attend funerals or other group
functions in Nazi regalia with Nazi banners, and any Catholics who were known Nazi
sympathizers were forbidden from receiving the sacraments. Since the Catholics
acquiesced in the passage of the Enabling Act, these restrictions were relaxed and
Catholics could support the Nazis and join the Nazi Party, and some did. Although
there were definitely anti-Christian elements in the Nazi program, many Catholics
were reassured by the Nazi reassertion of the values of religion (as the Nazis
defined it) and the love of the fatherland, and the Nazi’s strong opposition to the
godless Bolshevism. Why shouldn’t Hitler be trusted? After all in Mein Kampf he
said he was not interested in interfering with German religious institutions.

Signing of the Reichskonkordat on 20 July 1933. From left to right:
German prelate Ludwig Kaas, German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen,
representing Germany, Monsignor Giuseppe Pizzardo, Cardinal Pacelli,
Monsignor Alfredo Ottaviani, German ambassador Rudolf Buttmann.
Cardinal Pacelli is the future Pope Pius XII.

The Pope had negotiated a Concordat with fascist Italy with generally positive results in
the early years. Soon after the passage of the Enabling Act, Papen initiated
negotiations for a German Concordat with the Vatican. There were many parallels
between the two Concordats. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler were religious men, both
were dictators of totalitarian police states with personality cults, both sought total
control over their citizens, both sought to control the church, both fascist regimes
employed thugs who harassed and persecuted Christians, and both Concordats were
negotiated during times when both regimes openly committed murder to consolidate
their power. In both instances the Pope, being suspicious of democracy, betrayed the
Catholic political parties who supported the Church, instead choosing the fascist parties
as likely political victors. But Mussolini generally kept his word, becoming a real partner
with the Catholic Church up to the start of the war, whereas Hitler broke the terms of the
Concordat before the ink had dried.

Mussolini, Cardinal Gaspari,
and Vatican delegation prior
to signing the Lateran Treaty

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN REGIMES: ITALIAN & GERMAN CONCORDATS
Neither Hitler nor Mussolini were religious men.
Both were dictators of totalitarian states with personality cults.
Both fascist regimes had armies of thugs who harassed Christians.
Both fascist regimes openly murdered their opponents.
In both instances, Pope Pius XI betrayed the Catholic
Parties to throw his lot with the fascists and Nazis.
Mussolini kept his word (for many years), Hitler did not.

Hitler was more interested in how the news of the Concordat would be received
diplomatically and in the newspapers than he was in the actual terms of the
Concordat. Although there intense negotiations, in the end the exact terms meant
nothing to Hitler since he intended to break the terms of the Concordat immediately
and with impunity, while expecting the Catholic Church to always conform to their part
of the treaty.
What were the terms of the treaty? Catholics were free to profess their faith and run
their churches independently “within the limits of the law,” an unfortunate Nazi
loophole. Bishops appointed by the Pope would need to be approved by the state,
which was a standard clause, but also the bishops were also required to take an oath of
loyalty to the state. The Catholic Church was guaranteed control over church schools,
seminaries, and Catholic teachers. An army bishop overseeing the Catholic chaplains
would be appointed jointly by the state and the Holy See. Although the Church won the
right to offer pastoral care in hospitals and prisons, this was soon violated when the
church was forbidden to hold services in concentration camps. Already stories were
leaking out about the brutal conditions in these camps. Hitler got his wish in a clause
that forbade priests from participating in politics.

Hitler and
Cardinal
Pacelli,
future Pope
Pius XII

The Concordat was finally approved in September 1934. The Concordat was a
political victory for Hitler, the Catholic Church had put their stamp of approval on
the Nazi regime. Maybe the Catholic Church was more likely to survive having
negotiated the Concordat, but the church sold its soul and made resistance to the
regime more problematic for Catholics. The consent to liquidate all Catholic
organizations with a political program helped strengthen the Nazi regime. But both
the German and Italian Concordats survived the end of the war, and they are still in
effect today.
Just like in fascist Italy, after the Concordat was signed the church bells rung for
special Thanksgiving masses celebrating the signing of the Concordat. Just like in
fascist Italy, formations of SA and SS Nazi thugs with swastikas and banners marched
into the churches alongside Catholic bishops and diplomats. Just like in fascist Italy,
members of the Catholic organizations rushed to affirm their loyalties to the Nazi
party and state.

Barracks at Dachau Concentration Camp for 400 Catholic Priests
Catholic politician Eugen Bolz at the People's Court.
Minister-President of Württemberg in 1933, he was
overthrown by the Nazis; arrested for his role in the 20
July plot, he was executed in January 1945.

PROTESTANT POSITIVE NAZI CHRISTIANITY VS THE
CONFESSING CHURCHES
Hitler in the 1920 Nazi Party platform supported the notion of
positive Christianity which sought to fuse Christianity with Nazi
racial ideology. This was a Christianity without an Old Testament,
an Aryan Christ who was not a Jew, an absorbing Nazi Christianity
that would absorb all other Christian Churches, a Nazi Church
that would glorify the fatherland. These Nazi leaning churches
were known as German Christians, and they managed to gain
control of a minority of the Lutheran German Evangelical
Churches. Hitler proposed to combine these German Protestant
churches into one Reich Church.

Nazi Corruption: German Christian Rally, 1933

When a moderate was elected as the Protestant German
Evangelical bishop, Hitler, the Nazi Party and press, the SA and SS
and the Gestapo joined together to coerce the election of a Nazi
bishop, Ludwig Muller, who was both politically inept and an early
member of the Nazi Party.
These machinations caused many member churches to distance
themselves from the national organization. Also deeply
controversial were the racial policies that decreed that any
converted Jew should be dismissed from the clergy, and could
not draw a state salary. Many churches were offended by the
heavy-handed Nazi attempt to hijack the churches, and by Bishop
Muller’s crude attempts to grab power from his fellow bishops.

Hitler greets the
Protestant
Archbishop of
Nuremberg,
Ludwig Müller,
and Benedictine
Abbott Albanus
Schachleitner at
the Reich Party
Rally of 1934.

The Confessing Church movement formed to resist this pressure to Nazify
the German Protestant Churches. The leading theologian of this
movement was Karl Barth, then theology professor at Bonn, known for his
groundbreaking Commentary on Romans. During a synod in 1934, Barth
was the primary author of the Barmen Declaration, the main confession of
the Confessing Church.

Karl Barth was a hero to his followers. One of his students
said, “If it hadn’t been for Barth, Hitler would have had no
difficulty with the church. Barth theologically prepared a
church to ask if it really had a common confession, and the
word ‘confession’ caught fire.” Barth helped Protestants
rediscover the concept of true heresy.
One of his students remembered that as the war
progressed, “Karl Barth had progressed further
theologically. His basis for his demands that we help the
Jews was that they are the people of God. That was a new
basis for understanding the Bible, Judaism, and, with that,
for understanding anti-Semitism as well. The view that
anti-Semitism was merely the antipathy of a majority
against a minority had to be abolished.” Persecution of
the Jews led to the persecution of the gypsies. “How do
we unlearn the anti-Semitism in the Christian tradition?”
Karl Barth in 1956

The Confessing Church was not monolithic. Confessing Churches did not
leave their denomination, they were a church within a church. Some
Confessing Church pastors refused to make any compromises, chief
among them was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who eventually was involved in the
plot to assassinate Hitler and would die in a Gestapo prison near the end
of the war. Bonhoeffer was also adamant that Christians should concern
themselves with the fate of all Jews.

The Barmen Declaration declared
that Jesus is the sole authority of
the Church, not the Fuhrer; that
the Word of God is the source of
revelation, not Nazi ideology; and
that the message and order of the
Church should not be influenced
by Nazi politics. German
Christians had the freedom to
disobey Nazi dictates when they
conflicted with scriptural
mandates. The Confessing Church
had no place for Nazi Aryan
ideals, the German Christians
worshiped a different God.

The Barmen declaration repeated Barth’s claim that Christ, as
recounted by the Bible, was the only authority over the Church,
and its source of revelation. Two participants in this conference
remember:
“People later became agitated over what was not said in Barmen.
And, of course, it is true. In Barmen, Nazism wasn’t directly
addressed, anti-Semitism wasn’t directly addressed, nor
militarism or the authoritarian system as such. Indirectly, Barmen
has some of that, but Barmen was above all a rediscovery of the
identity of the church within a divided church. Basically, we were
not a church; we were a collection of different confessions within
a church awash in generalities.”
“The merging of Christian and national identity was almost
complete in a large sector of German Protestantism. We hoped
to bring our brethren away from that so they could recognize the
contradictions of being a Christian and a Nazi, and perhaps bring
them away from this Prussian nationalism.”
German Church of Our Lady

The next year Barth was deported to
Switzerland when he courageously refused
to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler.
One Barmen participant remembers,
“Barmen discovered the identity of the
church” in opposition to the Nazi
regime. Although the Confessing Church
resisted Nazi encroachments into the
church, it did not encourage political
opposition to the Nazis. Indeed, some of
the Confessing pastors were card carrying
Nazi party members, which sometimes
caused the Gestapo to be more lenient
when they harassed them.

Despite this harassment from the Gestapo and the Nazi regime, the Confessing Church
grew to over 5,000 churches while the Reich Church stagnated. Sometimes there were
show trials, but once when several Protestant bishops were arrested the protests both
home and abroad, including a march of thousands of parishioners singing Luther’s “A
Mighty Fortress is our God” embarrassed the regime. Some bishops appealed and met
with Hitler, who washed his hands of the inept Bishop Mueller. Though he would
remain as the Reich Bishop, the Nazis lost interest in the German Christian project.

The Confessing Church would be persecuted increasingly through the end of the war,
and many confessing pastors served time and often died in Gestapo prisons or the
concentration camps in Germany. Many Confessing Church students were purposely
drafted into military service. Many Confessing Germans wrestled with the question of
whether they should have done more during the war to oppose the Nazis, but many
who actually did died in concentration labor camps or on the battlefield.
Unlike the fascist regime in Italy, the Nazis in Germany immediately and relentlessly
sought to undermine both the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany in every
way possible. Though the individual churches initially sought mainly the freedom to
worship and congregate without governmental interference, they were increasingly
forced to face the many moral challenges thrust upon them.

The cathedral in Aachen,
Imperial Cathedral, viewed
from north at evening. The
oldest part of the church
(built around the year 800
by Charlemagne) has an
octagonal shape and can be
seen in the middle. The
gothic part on the left was
built around 1350. It was a
site of imperial coronations
and pilgrimage for many
centuries.

NAZI STERILIZATION AND EUTHANASIA POLICIES
Nazi ideology had always championed an extreme form of social Darwinism to achieve
a pure and healthy Aryan race partly by denying life to those the Nazis considered
unworthy of life. At the 1929 Nazi Party gathering in Nuremberg Hitler praised the
Spartan ideal of infanticide, where the community leaders rather than the parents
selected those infants that were sufficiently virile to benefit the state, exposing the less
viable infants to wild animals. Hitler proclaimed, “If Germans every year would give
birth to one million children and eliminate 800,000 of the weakest, this would
strengthen our nation.” How chilling: the Final Solution of the Holocaust may not have
gone as far as Hitler wanted to go.
Soon after the Nazis grabbed power they tried to implement first voluntary, then later
compulsory, sterilization for certain disabled and institutionalized patients. The Nazis
encountered public resistance from several Catholic bishops as sterilization was
specifically forbidden by church teaching, and doctors could decline to perform
sterilizations on grounds of conscience.

The Nazis encountered stiffer resistance from both Catholics and Protestants against
their euthanasia initiatives. In September 1939 Hitler issued an order to euthanize
all patients with incurable diseases to eliminate “useless eaters.” The disabled and
retarded patients were also targeted. At first the victims were shot, but as the
program expanded the Nazis experimented with gassing patients in rooms disguised
as showers. Those who lived near these institutions noticed buses arriving with
patients and always leaving empty and chimneys constantly belching smoke.
The euthanasia program soon became an open secret, too many were involved in its
administration. Many of these institutions were run by the churches. Many
administrators refused to answer questionnaires inquiring about the status of their
institutionalized patients. Sometimes the government had to send in their own
doctors to fill out the forms to expedite the killings. Doctors argued to get people
off the lists, sometimes sending the patients back home to avoid execution. In
addition, doctors and midwives were likewise requested to fill out questionnaires on
infants born with birth defects.

Propaganda for Nazi Germany's T-4 Euthanasia Program:
"This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the
community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow
German, that is your money, too."
Collection bus for killing patients

Gas chamber in Hadamar
Psychiatric Hospital
Viktor Brack testifies in his own defence at
the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg in 1947
Dr Karl Brandt in Doctor’s
Trial at Nuremberg, 1947

In 1940, after the war started, a Protestant minister spoke out publicly to his congregation, telling
them how “we received the urns from the murder institutions with the letter of lies, ‘So and so
dies of this or that illness, and the body was cremated immediately due to danger of an epidemic.’
We could not stand at the grave and say, ‘After it has pleased Almighty God to call our sister from
this life,’ when we knew that she had been murdered! We have to stand in front of our patients as
say publicly, as the church: ‘This is murder. This goes against God’s commandment and God’s will.’”
We can lobby the government quietly
for more humane policies for only so
long. “But there is a limit, when silence
has to have an end, when we can no
longer remain silent about dreadful
crimes, because otherwise we make
ourselves guilty of these crimes.”
Schönbrunn Psychiatric Hospital, 1934
(Photo by SS photographer Friedrich Franz Bauer)

Sometime after the practice had been revealed to the
public, Bishop von Galen bravely condemned the
practice from his pulpit: “Do you or I have the right
to live only as long as we are productive? Then
someone has only to order a secret decree that the
measures tried out on the mentally ill be extended to
other ‘nonproductive’ people, like those who are
incurably ill with lung disease, those disabled on the
job, those severely wounded soldiers. Then not a one
of us is sure anymore of the sanctity of his own life.”
“Woe to humanity, woe to our German people, when
the sacred commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ is not
only violated, but when this violation is tolerated and
carried out without punishment!” And he could have
added, without permission.
Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Munster,
was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005

Many were horrified by these killings. Sometimes pastors and bishops
publicly criticized the killings, more often they appealed directly to high
Nazi officials. For once the Nazis backed down, less than a month later
Hitler signed an order ending the euthanasia program that had killed over
70,000 patients. But the euthanasia program did not finally end until the
war ended, it was simply carried out on a quieter and smaller scale.

Hitler’s rants in his Mein Kampf reveal that the elevation of the Aryan race was central to
the Nazi ideology, that the Jews did not deserve to be citizens, they did not deserve
their jobs, they did not deserve their possessions, they did not deserve their family, they
deserved only persecution and misery, Jews should either be driven to exile or
executed. Soon after they came to power the Nazis drafted the Nuremberg Laws
against the Jews.
Who was Jewish? This did not depend on your faith but your blood, you were Jewish if
you had three Jewish grandparents, or two grandparents if you were married to a
Jew. First, Jewish shops were boycotted, then Jews were fired from their jobs as
teachers and civil servants, then they were banned from the professions, including
pastors. The problem was that since converted Jewish pastors were civil servants, they
were considered Jews by virtue of their grandparents even though they had converted
to Christianity many years ago.

"Selection" of
Hungarian
Jews on the
ramp at
Auschwitz II-
Birkenau in
German-
occupied
Poland, around
May 1944.
Jews were sent
either to work
or to the gas
chamber.

Auschitz Crematoria II and III and their chimneys in the background.

These race laws had another immediate effect on the churches. Everyone was
desperate to prove to the government that they had no Jewish blood. The proof was
often in the baptismal registries, churches had to hire full-time secretaries to process
the proof of ancestry paperwork for their parishioners. The first protests for both the
Catholic and Protestants were made on behalf of those few of their clergy and
parishioners who had converted from Judaism, but even in the Confessing Churches
many acquiesced to Nazi pressure. There were many Christians who would protest the
injustices against converted Jews, but they never protested persecutions against
practicing Jews.
But some pastors like Dietrich Bonhoeffer wanted not only to oppose the persecution
of converted Jews but of all Jews and all others persecuted under the Nazi Race Laws
since all Christians were bound to love their neighbor as themselves, that is the core
principle of Christianity. Karl Barth agreed but encouraged Bonhoeffer to be patient.

PALM SUNDAY ADDRESS OF POPE PIUS XI
The Catholic Church may have experienced even greater persecution than the
Protestant and Confessing Churches, in part because it was more centralized and thus
an easier target. Although the Italian and German Concordats were similar, the Catholic
Church fared much worse under the German Concordat, Hitler started bending and
breaking his part of the agreement even before the ink was dry. Great pressure was
placed on the Catholic Youth and Student Organizations, finally they were disbanded
and merged into the Nazi Youth Organizations. Likewise, great pressure was placed on
the Catholic Press, and even when they published pieces praising the regime, these
praises were never sufficiently subservient, and the Catholic Press was eventually shut
down. And the Pope was receiving ever more worrying reports about the abysmal
conditions in the concentration camps, with ever increasing death tolls. More and more
Catholic Priests were forced to serve time in the camps, alongside many Confessing
Church pastors.

Nuncio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, celebrates Mass in Germany.

Pope Pius XII celebrates Mass in the Vatican.

Pope Pius XI was aging and worried about his eternal salvation. He knew that if he
spoke out forcefully that the persecution of the church would increase. But enough was
enough, 300,000 copies of the papal encyclical “With Burning Concern”, were
successfully secretly smuggled into Germany and read from every Catholic pulpit on
Palm Sunday. Hitler was not named but rather referred to as the mad prophet
oppressing the Church and breaking the terms of the Concordat. The encyclical
proclaimed the true belief in God could not be reconciled with the idolatrous
deification of a race, people or state, that the God of Christianity could not be
imprisoned in a single race. The Nazi principle that “right is what is advantageous to
the people,” what is morally illicit can never be truly advantageous, and Christians have
no obligation to obey laws contrary to natural moral laws. The faithful were bound to
believe in Christ, divine revelation, and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, challenging
the totalitarian claims of the Nazi regime. The encyclical proclaimed that “humility in
the spirit of the Gospel and prayer for the assistance of grace are perfectly compatible
with self-confidence and heroism,” and that “the priest’s first loving gift to his neighbors
is to serve truth and refute error in any of its forms,” both of these proclamations are
anathema to Nazi sensibilities of superiority.

Last Judgement by Michelangelo, 1541

Hitler was furious. The Gestapo seized many of the copies of the encyclical, a dozen
print shops were seized, and hundreds of Catholics were thrown in prison and in
concentration camps. The Nazis trumped up immorality trials against priests, monks,
and nuns and confiscated church assets. But the encyclical did not totally condemn
totalitarianism. Succumbing to the relentless anti-Catholic Nazi propaganda, many
Catholics left the church. Also, around this time Catholic priests were being persecuted
and murdered by the Bolsheviks in the Spanish Civil War where the fascist General
Franco protected the Church in Spain. Hitler did not want to overreact, he wanted the
allegiance of Catholics. Hitler planned further retributions against Catholics and the
Pope and all Christians after the war.

Hitler accepts the ovation of the Reichstag after
announcing an Anschluss with Austria, March 1938

There was a rare incident when Hitler was forced to back down from his extreme
persecution of the Jews.
The Nuremberg Race Laws had forbidden new marriages between Jews and Aryans,
but existing marriages were not annulled. Hitler decided to close this loophole and in
early 1943 ordered that all such existing marriages be annulled and the Jewish
husbands be arrested, in Berlin alone 6,000 Jews were arrested. Surprisingly, their
Aryan wives followed them to their temporary detention and spent hours screaming
and howling for their husbands. The Gestapo just did not want their secrecy over this
operation blown, so they released their non-Aryan husbands, and Catholic bishops
agitated for the husbands that had been deported to be returned. For once outraged
virtue stared down the evil Nazi regime.

The Women's Block: this 1994 sandstone sculpture by artist
Inge Hunzinger was erected in memory of Aryan German
wives of Jewish husbands who protested fiercely against
the Nazis who decided to deport their husbands.

KRISTALLNACHT, THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS
If anyone had any doubts about the cruel evil nature of the Nazi regime, these doubts were
shattered by the events of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, on November 9-10,
1938. Throughout Germany the SA Storm-trooper thugs smashed the windows of Jewish stores,
homes, hospitals, and synagogues, they were burned, looted, and demolished by
sledgehammers. Prayer books, Torah scrolls, artworks, and philosophical texts were
burned. Many ordinary Germans gleefully joined in the mob violence. Many Jews were
murdered, and many more committed suicide.
The Nazis had to pin the blame for these rampages on the Jews themselves, so they waited for an
incident, the assassination of a German diplomat by a Polish Jewish boy in Paris. Since it was their
fault, the Jewish community was fined one billion Reichsmarks. Over 20,000 Jews were sent to
concentration camps, some were released when they promised to emigrate for the price of all
their property. Jews were no longer welcome in Germany, many Jews tried to emigrate, but the
United States and other countries had restrictive immigration laws and rejected them, many had
to return to the continent and their eventual deaths. Some Christians privately tried to help the
Jews financially and in other ways, some Confessing pastors actively helped many Jews to
emigrate, even obtaining false passports and hiding Jews. Jews in Germany feared for their lives.

Why didn’t more Germans speak out during the
Kristallnacht, when Jewish businesses, homes,
and synagogues were attacked, looted, and
often burned? One newlywed admitted,
“I frankly admit to you that sometimes you had
to push yourself not to be a coward. I had
married in 1936.” “I had to weigh every word I
spoke on a scale. When you have a child, then
you’re not as courageous as the Catholic
priests are, with their light baggage.”
One confessing German remembers the large
number of suicides among the Jews in Berlin,
“Jews had to wait one week and a half for a
funeral, due to overload caused by twenty to
thirty Jewish suicides per day, of which the
German people, because of the isolation of
the Jews, learned nothing.”

DARK DAYS DOOM MORDOR
Hitler was cheated out of his war in Munich in September 1938, Prime Minister
Chamberlain appeased Hitler and proclaimed “peace for our time” by allowing Hitler to
swallow the German speaking Sudetenland, and he soon broke this agreement by
swallowing all of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain should have realized who he was
dealing with when he was discussing England’s problem with Gandhi, the Indian
leader. Hitler’s advice: shoot Gandhi.

Neville Chamberlain
holding the paper
containing the
resolution to commit
to peaceful methods
signed by both Hitler
and himself on his
return from Munich.
He addresses the
crowd: "My good
friends, a British
Prime Minister has
returned from
Germany bringing
peace with honor. I
believe it is peace for
our time."

Less than a year later Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, starting World War II in
Europe. Hitler planned to exterminate all the Polish Jews and the Polish intelligentsia,
including over a thousand Polish Catholic priests, and enslave the rest of the Slavic
peoples. Soldiers on the Eastern Front were telling horrible stories how Russian Jewish
men, women, and children were lined up and machine-gunned by the thousands. Gas
chamber showers in the Polish death camps suffocated more than 100,000 German
Jews by the end of 1942. The Catholic bishops were kept informed of these killings by
friendly German intelligence officers.

September 1939 Hitler invades
Poland.
The long bloody war that all
Europe expected finally
commenced. In September
1939 the Nazis invaded Poland,
imprisoning and murdering
many Polish Catholic priests.
Franco declares Spain to be a
neutral country in WWII, and
does not persecute the Jews.
Hitler invades Poland

Most of the German concentration camps were labor camps with massive mortality
rates, while the massive concentration camps in Poland were mostly extermination
camps. While German Jews were shipped to the eastern camps in Poland, over seven
million Polish and Russian slave laborers were shipped west to Germany, where they
made up twenty percent of the workforce.
The size of the camps grew as the war progressed, in 1939 there were six major
concentration camps, including Dachau, with over 20,000 total inmates. By 1944 there
were twenty major concentration camps, many of them death camps, 165 work camps,
and over a thousand feeder and subsidiary camps, holding millions of inmates, and in
1944 ninety percent of the inmates were non-German, and many women and children
were slave laborers.

Unfortunately, in their invasion of France, the Nazis gained a
tremendous tactical advantage by driving their tanks through
what the Allies thought was the impenetrable Ardennes Forest
rather than the heavily defended Maginot Line, and in two weeks
the German tanks and troops trapped the British forces at Dunkirk
and also reached Paris, objectives never reached in the many
bloody years of World War I. This swift victory caused great
patriotic pride and fervor in Germany, making it more difficult for
the Church to oppose the totalitarian policies of the Nazi police
state.

Blitzkrieg, Invasion of France

May to June, 1940
Hitler invades France.
In the spring of 1940 Mussolini
gleefully joined with Hitler in their
invasions of France and all of
Europe.
After a month of invading France
in World War I, the Germans get
bogged down in trench warfare
about forty miles from Paris.
In World War II, the Nazis
blitzkrieg to Paris in two weeks.
Hitler invades France

You never saw an organized resistance in Nazi Germany that you saw in Vichy and
Occupied France, but then Germany was the conquerors rather than the
conquered. There were many individual cases of resistance, a priest in Berlin offered up
prayers for Jews in this daily masses, he died in the Dachau camp. There were many
other Catholic priest who were either executed or died in concentration camps for both
brave moral stances and for trivial offenses. Although Confessing Church was never a
resistance organization, some individuals were part of the small German resistance,
including the martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
What could the ordinary devout do in such extraordinarily evil times? Should they try to comfort
their Jewish neighbors who had been ordered to the train station to be sent to the death camps?
Do they help them flee from deep inside Germany? Do they accompany them to the train station?
What could they do?

One Confessing Christian
who was haunted by
these choices remembers,
“We were never sure
whether were doing the
right thing or not. We had
been brought up
differently, and it was war,
and then, it’s hard to
undertake something
against your own country.
Later, when young people
asked us, particularly
abroad, why we hadn’t
resisted more, I tried to
explain to them how hard
it is, particularly during a
war, to do something
illegal that could lead to
punishment.”

Our Confession
Christian continues,
“We were simply too
cowardly. That is what
I would say today.
That is the great guilt
we have taken upon
ourselves. It was due
to the war. We were
against the
government, but our
men were on the
front. My two
brothers were also
soldiers.” Since they
were ‘also’ soldiers,
that must mean they
were also Confessing
Christians.

Many today do not realize that thousands of
concentration labor camps were built in Germany
and the Third Reich. A German pastor remembers,
“The concentration camp lay between my two
parishes; the borders of the camp were a few
hundred meters from my parsonage. From the fields
behind my house, you saw the towers and boundary
walls of the camp.” “When the prisoners were taken
to their workplace, we saw them, emaciated,
wraithlike. Parish members and school children
often put bread unobtrusively on the street curb,
out of pity, so that the prisoners could grab it and
get a little more nourishment. This happened even
during the war when food was rationed.”
Prisoners from Buchenwald concentration
camp at forced labor building the
Weimar-Buchenwald railroad line.

Our pastor continues:
“There were no gas chambers in the
Sachsenhausen camp, but they had a
crematorium. When the prisoners died as a
result of the treatment in the camp, not
enough food, overwork, and the gruesome
treatment, then they were cremated. We
could see the number of murdered
prisoners in the perpetually smoking
chimneys of the crematorium. Some were
murdered when, out of desperation, they
ran into the barbed wire.”
Prisoners from Buchenwald concentration
camp at forced labor building the
Weimar-Buchenwald railroad line.

“Those of us who lived in the south part of the parish
witnessed the Russian POW’s arriving, totally exhausted.
They had been transported for weeks, standing and
closely penned in cattle cars, and when they pulled up to
the train station, they just fell out. This always took place
at night, under the glare of spotlights. A tower of corpses
rose beside the still living bodies that tumbled out onto
the platform. The living prisoners would be driven by the
SS men with whips and dogs into the camp. Those who
collapsed got a kick that snapped their necks.”
“Our parishes knew what was happening there. The
knowledge about the procedures in the camp lay like a
poison cloud over our parishes. Because of that, the
recognition grew quickly that this war would work its way
out on us like the judgement of God.”
Prisoners hauling earth for
construction of "Russian camp"
at Mauthausen

There were many labor camps where conditions
were harsh, but were not as harsh as the
concentration camps. One half-Aryan worker
recalls,
“We were housed in military barracks, where
twenty-four people slept instead of sixteen. The
room was overfilled. But we had an oven in the
room, and we had as much wood as we could take
from the forest to heat the oven. We received our
board, and we even had the chance to steal sugar
beets or potatoes from the fields, whatever we
wanted, so we had enough to eat.”
Concentration camp prisoners at Messerschmitt
factory which was damaged in an air raid.

Although the camp was under the control of the
Gestapo, “we had a camp commandant who
screamed like a starling, by the didn’t touch
anyone physically. And under the most threadbare
pretenses, he gave individuals weekend leaves. I
had such a leave once myself.” From the account
it seems they were paid very little if anything for
their labor, but there was no labor unrest there!
They weren’t starved or beaten or overworked,
life was good as life could be for a slave in Nazi
Germany. Many French POW’s worked in many
camps like this camp.
Concentration camp prisoners at Messerschmitt
factory which was damaged in an air raid.

Many criticized Pope Pius XII, who was more diplomatic than his predecessor, for his
failure to protest publicly against Nazi atrocities. During his 1942 Christmas radio
address called for a more humane conduct of the war, but he never directly criticized
Hitler. His fear was that abandonment of papal neutrality by directly criticizing Nazi
brutality in the middle of a bloody war would only worsen the conditions of Catholics in
Nazi-occupied countries. After Italy was taken out of the war, the Nazis began rounding
up the 8,000 Jews of Rome. About 7,000 Jews were able to avoid this roundup by
going into hiding, many into the monasteries and convents and other buildings in the
Vatican. In his book Guenter Lewy further discusses the question of whether more
could have been done by the Catholic Church, but what we must keep in mind that the
Nazi army largely left alone the Vatican City and the Catholic institutions alone during
their occupation and retreat from Rome. What would the occupying Nazi forces have
done had Pope Pius XII openly antagonized the ever more desperate Nazis?

Members of the Canadian Royal 22nd Regiment in audience
with Pope Pius XII, following the 1944 Liberation of Rome.

Pope Pius XII survived the war with his reputation intact. There are many
who today argue he could have done far more to protest the Holocaust,
but if had been more vocal, perhaps Fascist and Nazi troops would have
marched in and murdered everyone in the Vatican. Hitler and been
planning to murder the pope once he won the war in Europe.
His successor, Pope John XXIII, opened the windows of the Catholic
Church to the modern world by calling the Second Vatican Council. The
experiences of the Catholic Church in Italy, Germany, and France
influenced the decrees of the Council, Vatican II in its Decree on Religious
Freedom extolled the virtues of democracy. After her experiences under
the Fascist Mussolini and the Nazi Hitler, the Catholic Church no longer
trusted totalitarian regimes, even when they seemed to be the friend of the
church. We have a blog on this topic, soon in late 2021 we will be
recording a video on this decree.

The war brought out the worst in the
morally weak. One prison chaplain
was discussing his war experiences
with a farmer, and he remembered:
“I had SS men in my prison who
loaded Jewish children onto a bus
and said they were taking them on
an outing, and they hanged them in
a forest.”
The farmer said, “Oh, oh, what
criminals they were.”
The chaplain responded, “They were
farm boys from Schleswig-Holstein.
Before, they wouldn’t have bent a
hair on a dog or a horse or any
animal. But, they hung children.”
Gates at main entrance to Dachau concentration camp, 1945

The government tried to keep news of these mass murders from the
ordinary people.

Young survivors at the camp, liberated
by the Red Army in January 1945
One lady could not recall when she first
heard of the mass murders:
“We knew some things, but we never
knew the entirety. We knew more than
others, but we actually learned the
extent of the horrors after 1945. No one
ever came back from the concentration
camps, and when people did return,
they had to sign that they wouldn’t talk,
and they were much too afraid to talk.”
The war softened the hearts of many
Germans. One German remembers
shopping during the brutal Allied
bombing of Berlin, the “shopkeeper was
talking to another customer whom she
knew and said, ‘This is the punishment
for what we’ve done to the Jews.’ And
she dared to say that much, although I
was a stranger in her shop.”

And now we will talk about the SOURCES we used for this video:
My only complaint with the books that I used for this video is they
were written so soon after the war that the assume the reader already
has a basic knowledge of the events that had so recently been covered
in the newspapers. As a result, I used Wikipedia more than usual to
backfill and confirm my knowledge of the events of World War II.
One treasured source is Victoria Barnett’s Book, For the Soul of the
People, that told the story of the Confessing Church, and she used as a
primary source about sixty interviews with Confessing Protestants
who survived the war. There were also interviews on what it was like
for them to be drafted to serve on the Eastern Front, and many other
interviews, a fascinating book to read.

Another valuable source is Guenter Lewy’s book on The Catholic
Church and Nazi Germany, which also has many stories of individuals
who resisted the increasing Nazification of German and the Church.
A distant third is the Complicity in the Holocaust, it was not as spell
binding and said very little that was not said in the other two books.
We included the book we used as a main source for our video on
Fascist Italy, the Pope and Mussolini, because it so excellently depicts
how closely intertwined the Fascist Italian regime under Mussolini was
with the Catholic Church under first Pope Pius XI, then Pope Pius XII,
and how the Catholic Church first thrived, then regretted being
partners with a regime turned evil when Mussolini followed the lead
of Hitler, passing the Italian Jewish race laws in 1938.

And we have the slender book on Hitler’s American Model, which
shows how the Nazi lawyers used the precedent of America’s Jim Crow
racial segregation laws as precedent when drafting the Nazi
Nuremburg Race Laws that initiated the persecution of the Jews. We
have a video specifically discussing this horrifying connection.
And we have other videos on anti-Semitism and racism in the war
years and the post-war years.

Viktor Frankl’s message in his book, In Man’s Search For Meaning, is that no matter
what challenges life throws at you, even the challenges of the Nazi concentration
work camps, you can find the strength to persevere if your life has meaning.
The stoicism of Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who went from prison to the
Presidency, who was imprisoned for challenging apartheid, shows how we can
persevere and defeat racial hatred in our lives and society.
And finally, the spiritual danger of white evangelical Christian Nationalism is that it
can too easily morph into white supremacy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-YtC9qGWPI&list=PLJVlY2bjK8ljmWA9WwFz3IeRonyUNxRKO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxDnJ6sBoJc&list=PLJVlY2bjK8lgJZvnhM6Mte9kyUnmaW_ip

We challenge our white Christian listeners to sample our videos on Civil Rights so you can be
more compassionate towards the plight of our black brothers in Christ.
Frederick Douglass belongs to the first generation of black leaders. He escapes from slavery and
became a leading abolitionist orator before the Civil, and a leading Civil Rights leader during the
Reconstruction years after the Civil War.
Booker T Washington was a teenage when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation
freeing the slaves in the Deep South, and he was both an orator and a second-generation black
leader who focused educating the freed slaves so they could improve themselves.
WEB Dubois was born during Reconstruction, and was an orator, writer, and was a third-
generation activist black leader who helped found the NAACP.
Father Tolton, like Booker T Washington, was emancipated during the Civil War. He was invited
to study in Rome for the priesthood; and was the first former slave who was ordained as a
priest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxDnJ6sBoJc&list=PLJVlY2bjK8lgJZvnhM6Mte9kyUnmaW_ip

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How the Catholic and Confessing Church Survived Under Hitler's Pagan Nazi Regime

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How the Catholic and Confessing Church Survived Under Hitler's Pagan Nazi Regime