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Hitler's policies towards religion

See also: Kirchenkampf, The Holocaust, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, and Confessing Church

Role of religion in the Nazi state

Main article: Religion in Nazi Germany

Hitler chose Ludwig Muller (pictured) to be Reich Bishop of the German Evangelical Church, which sought to subordinate German Protestantism to the Nazi Government.

Throughout the duration of the Third Reich, Hitler's government impaired the religious liberties of its citizens. However, and despite Hitler's personal skepticism towards religion, the National Socialist movement was not formally atheist, and, other than for Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses, religious observance was permitted. However, Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government, and desired the subordination of the church to the state. Article 24 of the National Socialist Programme of 1920 had endorsed what it termed "Positive Christianity", but placed religion below party ideology by adding the caveat that it must not offend "the moral sense of the German race". Hitler's regime responded to the ideological challenge of Christian morality using political repression and persecution and by challenging Christian teachings through education and propaganda.

In its brief of evidence for the Nuremberg Trials, the American OSS described the

Within Protestantism, nationalist movements had emerged in the 1920s. In 1932, Hitler came up with the name German Christians (Deutsche Christen) for a group within Evangelical Protestantism that wanted to see Christianity and National Socialism advance together. "Hitler saw the relationship in political terms. He was not a praticising Christian, but had somehow succeeded in masking his own religious skepticism from millions of German voters", wrote Overy, who considered that Hitler found the arrangement useful for a time, but ultimately expected Christianity to wilt and die before "the advances of science".

Around two thirds of Germans were Protestant - mostly Lutheran - and most of the rest were Catholic. German Protestantism had lost its privileged status as a state religion at the end of World War One, and church attendance had been in decline, amid widening secularization. 

Although the broader membership of the Nazi Party after 1933 came to include many Christians, aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler saw the kirchenkampf campaign against the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anticlerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.

Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained the "temporary" dictatorial powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the German Parliament that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. He divided the Protestant Church and instigated a brutal persecution of the Jehovah's Witnesses. He dishonoured a Concordat signed with the Vatican and permitted a persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany. William Shirer wrote that, under the leadership of Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler, backed by Hitler, the Nazis intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if they could."

In office, the Nazi leadership co-opted the term Gleichschaltung to mean conformity and subservience to the National Socialist German Workers' Party line: "there was to be no law but Hitler, and ultimately no god but Hitler". Nazi ideology conflicted with traditional Christianity in various respects. Nazis criticized Christian ideals of "meekness and guilt" on the basis that they "repressed the violent instincts necessary to prevent inferior races from dominating Aryans". The Nazi-backed "positivist" or "German Christian" church sought to make the evangelical churches of Germany an instrument of Nazi policy.

By 1939, Evans noted, some 95% of Germans still called themselves Protestant or Catholic, while only 3.5% 'Deist' (gottgläubig) and 1.5% atheist. Most in these latter categories were "convinced Nazis who had left their Church at the behest of the Party, which had been trying since the mid 1930s to reduce the influence of Christianity in society". John Conway notes that the majority of the three million Nazi Party members continued to pay their church taxes and register as either Roman Catholic or Evangelical Protestant Christians, "despite all Rosenberg's efforts."

Another alternative was the Gottgläubig" (lit. "believers in god") position. This was non-denominational and nazified, often described as predominantly based on creationist and deistic views. Heinrich Himmler was a strong promoter of the gottgläubig movement and didn't allow atheists into the SS, arguing that their "refusal to acknowledge higher powers" would be a "potential source of indiscipline". This was coupled with a strong antipathy to Christianity among SS officers 'that far exceeded traditional anti-clericalism,' with priests portrayed as 'befrocked homosexuals', and deliberate elision between Christianity, Judaism and Communism. Instead, they were encouraged to see Hitler as a Messianic figure and to adopt the religious aura that surrounded him for themselves as well.

Persecution of the Churches

According to Robert S. Wistrich Hitler thought Christianity was finished but wanted no direct confrontation for strategic reasons. For political reasons, Hitler restrained his anti-clericalism and refused "to let himself be drawn into attacking the Church publicly, as Bormann and other Nazis would have liked him to do. But he promised himself that, when the time came, he would settle his account with the priests of both creeds. When he did, he would not be restrained by any judicial scruples". German conservative elements, such as the officer corps, opposed Nazi efforts against the churches. According to Geoffrey Blainey, when the Nazis became the main opponent of Communism in Germany, Hitler saw Christianity as a temporary ally.

Hitler issued a statement saying that he wished to avoid factional disputes in Germany's churches. He feared the political power that the churches had, and did not want to openly antagonize that political base until he had securely gained control of the country. Once in power Hitler showed his contempt for "non-Aryan" religion and sought to eliminate it from areas under his rule. Within Hitler's Nazi Party, some atheists were quite vocal, especially Martin Bormann.

Hitler often used religious speech and symbolism to promote Nazism to those that he feared would be disposed to act against him. He also called upon religion as a pretext in diplomacies. The Soviet Union feared that if they commenced a programme of persecution against religion in the western regions, Hitler would use that as a pretext for war.

Steigmann-Gall argues that Hitler demonstrated a preference for Protestantism over Catholicism, as Protestantism was more liable to reinterpretation and a non-traditional readings, more receptive to positive Christianity, and because some of its liberal branches had held similar views. According to Steigmann-Gall, Hitler regretted that "the churches had failed to back him and his movement as he had hoped." Hitler stated to Albert Speer, "Through me the Protestant Church could become the established church, as in England."

Even after the rupture with institutional Christianity (which he dated to around 1937), Steigmann-Gall saw evidence that Hitler continued to hold Jesus in high esteem, and never directed his attacks on Jesus himself. Though anti-Christians later fought to "expunge Christian influence from Nazism" and the movement became "increasingly hostile to the churches", Steigmann-Gall wrote that even in the end, it was not "uniformly anti-Christian". However, he admits that by holding this position he "argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it."

Historian John S. Conway wrote that Steigmann-Gall made an "almost convincing case" and was "right to point out that there never was a consensus among the leading Nazis about the relationship between the Party and Christianity," but that "The differences between this interpretation and those put forward earlier are really only ones of degree and timing. Steigmann-Gall agrees that from 1937 onwards, Nazi policy toward the churches became much more hostile... [he] argues persuasively that the Nazi Party's 1924 program and Hitler's policy-making speeches of the early years were not just politically motivated or deceptive in intent... Steigmann-Gall considers these speeches to be a sincere appreciation of Christianity... Yet he is not ready to admit that this Nazi Christianity was eviscerated of all the most essential orthodox dogmas. What remained was the vaguest impression combined with anti-Jewish prejudice. Only a few radicals on the extreme wing of liberal Protestantism would recognize such a mish-mash as true Christianity."

Roman Catholicism

Polish prisoners in Dachau toast their liberation from the camp. Dachau had its own Priests' barracks for clerical enemies of the Hitler regime.

See also: Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany

In effort to counter the strength and influence of spiritual resistance, Nazi security services monitored clergy very closely. Priests were frequently denounced, arrested and sent to concentration camps. At Dachau Concentration Camp, the regime established a dedicated Clergy Barracks for church dissidents.

Hitler appointed Hanns Kerrl as Minister for Church Affairs in 1935. Kerrl called Hitler the "herald of a new revelation" and said that the Nazi conception of "Positive Christianity" did not depend on the Apostle's Creed or on belief in "Christ as the son of God".

Hitler possessed radical instincts in relation to the Nazi conflict with the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany, and though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay a struggle against the Church and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle', confident that they were 'working towards the Führer'". As with the "Jewish question", the radicals pushed the Church struggle forward, especially in Catholic areas, so that by the winter of 1935–1936 there was growing dissatisfaction with the Nazis in those areas. Kershaw wrote that in early 1937, Hitler again told his inner circle that though he "did not want a 'Church struggle' at this juncture", he expected "the great world struggle in a few years' time". Nevertheless, wrote Kershaw, Hitler's impatience with the churches "prompted frequent outbursts of hostility. In early 1937 he was declaring that 'Christianity was ripe for destruction', and that the Churches must yield to the "primacy of the state", railing against any compromise with "the most horrible institution imaginable".

After the Enabling Act, Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism in Germany. Amid intimidation, the Bavarian People's Party and Catholic Centre Party had ceased to exist by early July. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen meanwhile negotiated a Reich Concordat with the Vatican, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics. "The agreement", wrote Shirer, "was hardly put to paper before it was being broken by the Nazi Government". Almost immediately Hitler promulgated the sterilisation law, and began work to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders began to be targeted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or "immorality". In Hitler's bloody night of the long knives purge of 1934, leading Catholic dissidents Erich Klausener and Edgar Jung of Catholic Action were murdered, as was Adalbert Probst, the national director of the Catholic Youth Sports Association, and Catholic anti-Nazi journalist Fritz Gerlich. Catholic publications were shut down. The Gestapo began to violate the sanctity of the confessional. Goebbels noted heightened verbal attacks on the clergy from Hitler in his diary and wrote that Hitler had approved the start of trumped up "immorality trials" against clergy and anti-Church propaganda campaign. Goebbels' orchestrated attack included a staged "morality trial" of 37 Franciscans.

Marshall Dill noted that the list of Nazi affronts to and attacks on the Catholic Church is long. The attacks tended not to be overt, but were still dangerous; believers were made to feel that they were not good Germans and their leaders were painted as treasonous and contemptible. The state removed crucifixes from the walls of Catholic classrooms and replaced it with a photo of the Führer.

By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with Hitler, had become highly disillusioned and Pope Pius XI issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical—accusing the Hitler regime of violations of the Concordat and of sowing the tares of "open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church", and denounced the pagan myth of "blood and soil".

Hitler's invasion of the predominantly Catholic Poland in 1939 ignited the Second World War. Kerhsaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of the East, "There would, he made clear, be no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches". Hitler instigated a policy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites: including religious leaders. He proclaimed: "Poles may have only one master – a German. Two masters cannot exist side by side, and this is why all members of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed." Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy, were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps.

Protestantism

File:Il progioniero personale.JPG

Martin Niemoller, "Hitler's Personal Prisoner", was a leading Protestant voice against Nazism. He was incarcerated at Dachau from 1941 until liberation in 1945.

According to Bullock, Hitler considered the Protestant clergy to be "insignificant little people, submissive as dogs" and lacking in a religion to be taken seriously.

Nevertheless, efforts by the regime to impose a "positive Christianity" on a state controlled Protestant Reich Church essentially failed, and resulted in the formation of the dissident Confessing Church which saw great danger to Germany from the "new religion".

Kershaw wrote that the subjugation of the Protestant churches proved more difficult than Hitler had envisaged. With 28 separate regional churches, his bid to create a unified Reich Church through Gleichschaltung ultimately failed, and Hitler became disinterested in seeking supporting the so-called "German Christians" Nazi aligned movement. The Church Federation proposed the well qualified Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh to be the new Reich Bishop, but Hitler endorsed his friend Ludwig Muller and the Nazis terrorized supporters of Bodelschwingh. Muller's heretical views against St Paul and the Semitic origins of Christ and the Bible quickly alienated sections of the Protestant church. Not all the Protestant churches submitted to the state, which Hitler said in Mein Kampf was important in forming a political movement. Pastor Martin Niemöller responded with the Pastors' Emergency League, which resisted Muller's efforts in making the Protestant churches an instrument of Nazi policy. The movement grew into the Confessing Church, from which some clergymen opposed the Nazi regime. By 1940 it was public knowledge that Hitler had abandoned advocating for Germans even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianity.

By 1934, the Confessional Church had declared itself the legitimate Protestant Church of Germany, but Muller had failed to form a united Protestant movement behind the National Socialist Party. To instigate a new effort at coordinating the Protestant churches, Hitler appointed another friend, Hans Kerrl to the position of Minister for Church Affairs. A relative moderate, Kerrl initially had some success in this regard, but amid continuing protests by the Confessing Church against Nazi policies, he accused dissident churchmen of failing to appreciate the Nazi doctrine of "Race, blood and soil". He rejected the Apostle's Creed and called Hitler the herald of a new revelation.

The pretension of the Hitler regime that all Protestant churches in Germany should be subsumed under the leadership of the German Christians served as an impulse to action for other Christian leaders who saw the racist, ultra-nationalistic, and totalitarian emphases of the German Christian church as incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When those not in agreement organised their opposition and, calling themselves the Confessing Church, publicly proclaimed articles of faith that denied the position of the German Christians, they eventually came under severe persecution by the State. About the end of March 1935 six hundred of the principal leaders of the Confessing Church were arrested and many others received visits from the Gestapo to emphasize the government's point of view concerning these matters. Later, there were new arrests, and it began to be known that those who had been taken away were ending up in concentration camps. Given the totalitarian atmosphere of Nazi Germany at that time, it would be ingenuous to believe that these measures against the Confessing Church and in support of the policies of the German Christians might have been taken without Adolf Hitler's consent. The Confessing Church seminary was banned. Its leaders, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer were arrested. Implicated in the 1944 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, he was later executed.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Memorial to the Jehovah's Witnesses of Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Jehovah's Witnesses were numbering around 30,000 at the start of Hitler's rule in Germany. For refusing to declare loyalty to the Reich, and refusing conscription into the army, they were declared to be enemies of Germany and persecuted. About 6,000 were sent to the concentration camps.

Plans to destroy the Christian churches

In the long run, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of both the Catholic church and the Protestant church:

Bullock wrote that, "once the war was over, Hitler promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian Churches". Phayer wrote that "By the latter part of the decade of the thirties church officials were well aware that the ultimate aim of Hitler and other Nazis was the total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion. Since the overwhelming majority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant this goal had to be a long-term rather than a short-term Nazi objective." According to Shirer, "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists". Gill wrote that the Nazi plan was to "de-Christianise Germany after the final victory". Dill states, "It seems no exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at least to subjugate it to their general world outlook." According to Bendersky, it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire.

In 1999 Julie Seltzer Mandel, while researching documents for the "Nuremberg Project", discovered 150 bound volumes collected by Gen. William Donovan as part of his work on documenting Nazi war crimes. Donovan was a senior member of the U.S. prosecution team and had compiled large amounts of evidence that Nazis persecuted Christian churches. In a 108-page outline titled "The Nazi Master Plan" Office of Strategic Services investigators argued that the Nazi regime had a plan to reduce the influence of Christian churches through a campaign of systematic persecutions. "Important leaders of the National Socialist party would have liked to meet this situation [of church influence] by complete extirpation of Christianity and the substitution of a purely racial religion," said the report. The most persuasive evidence came from "the systematic nature of the persecution itself."

In Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, there was to be no place for Christian churches. For the time being, he ordered slow progress on the 'Church Question'. 'But is clear', noted Goebells, himself among the most aggressive anti-church radicals, 'that after the war it has to be solved... There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a Germanic-heroic world-view". Bullock wrote that "once the war was over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian churches, but until then he would be circumspect": Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion".

In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for Hitler's "new Berlin", when he told Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that he had consulted with Protestant and Catholic authorities over the locations for churches: "Bormann curtly informed me that churches were not to receive building sites."

Historian Marshall Dill wrote that if the regime could not eradicate Christianity, it hoped at least to subjugate or distort it to a Nazi world view. Dill noted that a major obstacle for the Nazis was that they could not justifiably connect German faith communities to the corruption of the old regime, because the Weimar had no close connection to the churches. Because of the long history of Christianity in Germany, Hitler could not attack Christianity as openly as he did Judaism, communism, or other political opponents.

In his personal life, Hitler showed skepticism towards religion from an early age. In his public life he was opportunistic and shrewdly aware of its impact on politics. Raised Catholic, he grew to be hostile to Catholicism. Hitler took the view that religious and scientific explanations were incompatible. He objected to Christian morality. But his National Socialist movement was not formally atheist and it courted public support as a bulwark against “godless” Bolshevism. He peppered his writings and speeches with the language of "divine providence”. He loathed Judaism, which he saw as the source of both Christianity and Bolshevism. He spoke of Jesus as an "Aryan" fighter. He also disdained the mysticism of other leading Nazis like Himmler and Rosenberg.

Nazi Germany permitted religious observance (other than for Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses), but Hitler perceived a threat from organised religion and his regime responded to the ideological challenge of Christian morality using political repression and persecution and by challenging Christian teachings through education and propaganda. Article 24 of his 1924 Nazi Party Platform endorsed "Positive Christianity", but set it below Nazi ideology with the caveat that it not offend "the sense of morality of the German people”. In a 1928 speech, he said: "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity ... in fact our movement is Christian." Hitler's Church Affairs Minister defined "Positive Christianity" as not depending on Christ and the Apostle's Creed, but on the party, and Hitler as "herald of a new revelation". In 1939, Goebbels wrote that the Fuhrer knew that he would "have to get around to a conflict between church and state" but that in the meantime "The best way to deal with the churches is to claim to be a 'positive Christian'." Speer's memoir says that Hitler had not left his church before his suicide, but had no connection to it and planned a clash after the war.

In practice, Hitler's regime oppressed the churches, and worked to reduce the impact of Christianity on society. Hitler appointed the anti-Christians Himmler, Goebbels and Heydrich to key positions in his government, chose the atheist Martin Bormann as his deputy and the the neo-Pagan Alfred Rosenberg as his official Nazi Ideologist. These men he then permitted or encouraged to undertake the regime’s persecutions of the churches. Hitler’s early ambition to combine German Protestants into one Nazified “Reich Church” was met with resistance. His regime’s constant breaches of a Concordat signed with the Catholic Church earned the protest of the Pope. 6000 clergy were imprisoned or killed by the Reich, Christian schools and press were closed and Christian youth and political associations were outlawed. Prosecutors at Nuremberg, along with various historians hold that Hitler ultimately intended the destruction of Christianity in Germany. For people belonging to certain other religious minorities, repression was far harsher and immediate - Jews and Jehovahs Witnesses were targeted for extermination.

Aspects of Adolf Hitler's views on religion have been a matter of debate. According to Hitler historians such as Kershaw, and Bullock, Rees, and Overy, Hitler was skeptical of religion, but opportunistic and shrewdly aware of its impact on politics. Raised Catholic (his father was an anti-clerical skeptic and his mother was devout), Hitler showed skepticism during school days and became hostile to Catholicism during adulthood.

Hitler's National Socialist movement was not formally atheist. Religious observance was permitted in Nazi Germany (other than for Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses) and Hitler referred to "God", "Providence" in public speeches and writings. Hitler courted support from Christians against "godless" Communism, but perceived a threat from organised religion and his regime ultimately responded to the ideological challenge of Christian morality in much the same way as atheist Communism: "On the one hand a policy of political repression and direct persecution, tempered by occasional political prudence in the face of widespread belief; on the other hand a direct contest in the field of education and propaganda", wrote Overy. In all, Over 6,000 clergymen were killed or imprisoned in Nazi Germany.

For political reasons, Hitler himself was hesitant to openly attack the churches. Article 24 of his 1924 Nazi Party Platform endorsed "Positive Christianity", but set it below Nazi ideology by including the caveat that it must not offend "the sense of morality of the German people". Before taking office in 1933, Hitler promised not to interfere with the churches, and called Christianity the "foundation of German morality". His early coalition government signed a Concordat with the Vatican guaranteeing Church rights. An attempt by the regime to control Protestantism under a unified Reich Church then met with resistance, and by 1937 a Papal encyclical was denouncing Nazi persecution of Catholics.

His atheist Deputy Martin Bormann and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels drove the regime's anti-church campaigns. He appointed the vehement anti-Christians Himmler and Heydrich as his security chiefs, and appointed the neo-Pagan Alfred Rosenberg as official Nazi Ideologist. Hitler in turn disdained the neo-pagan ideas of Himmler and Rosenberg. 

His remarks to confidants, as described in the Goebbels Diaries, the memoirs of Albert Speer, and transcripts of Hitler's private conversations recorded by Martin Bormann in Hitler's Table Talk, indicate stridently anti-Christian beliefs. Speer's memoir says that Hitler had not left his church, but had no connection to it and planned a reckoning with it after the war.

In his public rhetoric, Hitler the politician said he supported Christianity. He sometimes made the claim in private statements, His remarks to confidants, as described in the Goebbels Diaries, the memoirs of Albert Speer, and transcripts of Hitler's private conversations recorded by Martin Bormann in Hitler's Table Talk, indicate stridently anti-Christian beliefs. Speer's memoir says that Hitler had not left his church, but had no connection to it and planned a reckoning with it after the war. There is a consensus among historians that he became hostile to religion, mainly Christianity, at some point.

In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf, Hitler used the words "God", "the Creator", "Providence" and "the Lord". He outlines a nihilistic vision, describing human history as a constant racial struggle for supremacy. He criticized the churches for not knowing the "racial problem" and declares himself in favour of separation of church and state. Officially, the Nazi party endorsed what it termed "Positive Christianity" which removed the religion of its Jewish origins, set up Hitler as a messiah, and did not require the belief in the divinity of Christ. In practice, Hitler's regime oppressed the churches, and worked to reduce the impact of Christianity on society.

Hitler was hesitant to make public attacks on the Church for political reasons, but generally permitted or encouraged his inner-circle of anti-church radicals such as Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann to carry out Nazi oppression of the churches. Goebbels wrote in 1939 that Hitler is "deeply religious, but completely anti-Christian", and in 1941 he wrote that Hitler "hates Christianity". Alan Bullock considered that Hitler's central objection to Christianity was that its teaching was "a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest". Bullock considered Hitler to be a rationalist and a materialist who did not believe in God, but who often used the language of "divine providence" in defence of his own myth. Richard Steigmann-Gall has read Hitler's language to mean that he may have continued to believe in an active god and held Jesus in high esteem as an "Aryan fighter" who struggled against Jewry.

According to Speer, Hitler had disdain for the neo-pagan views of Alfred Rosenberg and Himmler. Hitler's appointment of the neo-pagan Rosenberg as official Nazi ideologist angered Christians. The regime began an effort toward coordination of German Protestants under a unified Protestant Reich Church (but this was resisted by the Confessing Church) and moved early to eliminate political Catholicism. Hitler agreed to the Reich concordat with Rome, but then routinely ignored it, and permitted persecutions of the Catholic Church. Smaller religious minorities faced worse repression, with the Jews of Germany facing death on the grounds of Nazi racial ideology. Jehovah's Witnesses were fiercely oppressed for refusing both military service and loyalty to Hitler's movement. Hitler spoke out against atheism, and the regime banned most of the atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in 1933. Many historians believe that Hitler eventually hoped to remove Christian churches in Germany, although he was prepared to delay conflicts for political reasons.

Augustin Rösch (centre) was the wartime Jesuit Provincial of Bavaria and one of three Jesuits in the inner Kreisau Circle of the German Resistance. He ended the War on death row.

At the outbreak of World War Two, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) had some 1700 members in the German Reich, divided into three provinces: Eastern, Lower and Upper Germany. Nazi leaders had some admiration for the discipline of the Jesuit Order, but opposed its principles. Of the 152 Jesuits murdered by the Nazis across Europe, 27 died in captivity or its results, and 43 in the concentration camps.

Hitler had particular disdain for the Jesuits, and the Jesuit Provincial, Augustin Rosch, ended the war on death row for his role in the July Plot to overthrow Hitler. The Catholic Church faced persecution in Nazi Germany and persecution was particularly severe in Poland. The Superior General of the Jesuits at the outbreak of War was Wlodzimierz Ledochowski, a Pole. Vatican Radio, which spoke out against Axis atrocities, was run by the Jesuit Filippo Soccorsi.

Several Jesuits were prominent in the small German Resistance, including the influential martyr Alfred Delp of the Kreisau Circle. The German Jesuit Robert Leiber acted as intermediary between Pius XII and the German Resistance. Among the Jesuit victims of the Nazis, Germany's Rupert Mayer, has been beatified. Among the Jesuit "Righteous Gentiles" recognised by Yad Vashem are France's Roger Braun, Pierre Chaillet, Jean Fleury, Emile Planckaert; Hungary's Jacob Raile; Belgium's Jean-Baptiste Janssens and Henri van Oostayen; and Poland's Adam Sztark.

Nazi attitudes to the Jesuits

The Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had been a student of Jesuits, and the Heinrich Himmler was impressed by the Order's organisational structure. Hitler wrote favourably of their influence on architecture and on him in Mein Kampf. But Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government and it desired the subordination of the church to the state.

Although the broader membership of the Nazi Party after 1933 came to include many Catholics, aggressive anti-Church radicals like Goebbels, Martin Bormann and Himmler saw the kirchenkampf campaign against the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anticlerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists. According to Himmler biographer Peter Longerich, Himmler was vehemently opposed to Christian sexual morality and the "principle of Christian mercy", both of which he saw as a dangerous obstacle to his plans battle with "subhumans". Biographer Alan Bullock wrote that, though Hitler was raised as a Catholic, and retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, he had utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure".

The Church suffered Persecution in Nazi Germany. In 1937, Himmler wrote: "We live in an era of the ultimate conflict with Christianity. It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives."

Jesuit Superior General

The Superior General of the worldwide Jesuit Order at the outbreak of war was Wlodzimierz Ledochowski, a Pole. The Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland was particularly severe. Vincent Lapomarda wrote that Polish nationality helped "stiffen the general attitude of the Jesuits against the Nazis" and that he permitted Vatican Radio to carry on its campaign against the Nazis in Poland. Vatican radion was run by the Jesuit Filippo Soccorsi, and spoke out against Nazi oppression - particularly with regard to Poland, and to Vichy-French anti-Semitism.

Jesuits and the German Resistance

The Vatican

Main article: Pius XII and the German Resistance

The Army was the only organisation in Germany with the capacity to overthrow the government, and from within it a small number of officers came to present the most serious threat posed to the Nazi regime. With Poland overrun in 1939, but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, the German Resistance wanted the Pope's assistance in preparations for a coup to oust Hitler. Colonel Hans Oster, the deputy head of the German counter-espionage bureau (Abwehr) supported General Ludwig Beck in instructing Abwehr officer Josef Müller to go on a clandestine trip to Rome to seek Papal assistance in the developing plot to oust Hitler. The Vatican agreed to offer the machinery for mediation. On 3 May, Müller told Fr Leiber that invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium was imminent. The Vatican advised the Netherlands envoy to the Vatican that the Germans planned to invade France through the Netherlands and Belgium on May 10. The Vatican also sent a coded radio message to its nuncios in Brussels and The Hague.

Alfred Jodl noted in his diary that the Germans knew the Belgian envoy to the Vatican had been tipped off, and the Fuehrer was greatly agitated by the danger of treachery. The German invasion of the Low Countries followed on 10 May, and Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were quickly overwhelmed. In 1943, Müller was arrested. Müller spent the rest of the war in concentration camps, ending up at Dachau. Hans Bernd Gisevius was sent in place of Müller to advise of the developments and met with Fr. Leiber. The Pope's Jesuit Private Secretary was under the surveilance of the Gestapo.

The Kreisau Circle

Religious motivations were particularly strong in the Kreisau Circle of the Resistance. Formed in 1937, though multi-denominational, it had a strongly Christian orientation. Its outlook was rooted both in German romantic and idealist tradition and in the Catholic doctrine of natural law. The Circle pressed for a coup against Hitler, but being unarmed was dependent on persuading military figures to take action.

Among the central membership of the Circle were the Jesuit Fathers Augustin Rösch, Alfred Delp and Lothar König. Bishop von Preysing had contact with the group. The Catholic conservative Karl Ludwig von Guttenberg brought the Jesuit Provincial of Southern Germany Augustin Rösch into the Kreisau Circle, along with Alfred Delp. For figures like Rösch, the Catholic trade unionists Jakob Kaiser and Bernhard Letterhaus and the July Plot leader Klaus von Stauffenberg, "religious motives and the determination to resist would seem to have developed hand in hand".

The Jesuit Alfred Delp was an influential member of the Kreisau Circle - one of the few clandestine German Resistance groups operating inside Nazi Germany. He was executed in February 1945.

According to Gill, "Delp's role was to sound out for [the group's leader] Moltke the possibilities in the Catholic Community of support for a new, post-war Germany". Rösch and Delp also explored the possibilities for common ground between Christian and socialist trade unions. Lothar König SJ became an important intermediary between the Circle and bishops Grober of Freiberg and Presying of Berlin.

The Kreisau group combined conservative notions of reform with socialist strains of thought - a symbiosis expressed by Delp's notion of "personal socialism". The group rejected Western models, but wanted to "associate conservative and socialist values, aristocracy and workers, in a new democratic synthesis which would include the churches. Delp wrote: "It is time the 20th Century revolution was given a definitive theme, and the opportunity to create new and lasting horizons for humanity", by which he meant, social security and the basics for individual intellectual and religious development. So long as people lacked dignity, they would be incapable of prayer or thought. In Die dritte Idee (The Third Idea), Delp expounded on the notion of a third way, which, as opposed to Communism and Capitalism, might restore the unity of the person and society.

The Solf Circle

Another non-military German Resistance group, dubbed the "Frau Solf Tea Party" by Gestapo, included the Jesuit Fr Friedrich Erxleben. The purpose of the Solf Circle was to seek out humanitarian ways of countering the Nazi regime. It met at either Frau Solf or Elizabeth von Thadden's home. Von Thadden was a Christian educational reformer and Red Cross worker. Otto Kiep and most of the group were arrested in 1941 and executed.

Rupert Mayer

The Blessed Rupert Mayer SJ was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939.

The Blessed Rupert Mayer, a Bavarian Jesuit and World War One army chaplain, had clashed with the National Socialists as early as 1923. Continuing his critique following Hitler's rise to power, Mayer was imprisoned in 1939 and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. As his health declined, the Nazis feared the creation of a martyr and sent him to the Abbey of Ettal, but Myer died in 1945.

The Nazi Empire

Austria

Baltic States & Soviet Union

Czechoslovakia

France

Italy

Low Countries

Poland

Rumania

Yugoslavia

See also

• Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp
• Catholic resistance to Nazism
• Catholic Church and Nazi Germany