http://www.entheology.org/library/winters/NAZIS.TXT
Lack of Any Significant Religious Criticism to Hitler's Third Reich
Hitler was brought up as a Catholic, and indeed is said to have
taken
part in Communion during the 1914-1918 war. After this time, he slowly
abandoned Catholic belief and practice after what he termed a "hard
struggle".
Although he admired Jesus for his gifts as a propagandist, he detested
the
way he believed Christianity had been infiltrated by the Jewish
"effeminate
pity ethic." Although no longer a Christian, Hitler believed in the
importance
of religion to instill "true" moral values in the people.
Publicly, Hitler spoke of his support of faith vis-à-vis reason.
In
a speech made on April 26, 1933, Hitler stated:
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no
religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without
religious
foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training
and
religion must be derived from faith...Faith transcends reason, and
too much reasoning can destroy faith... We need a believing
people."
Although, Hitler wanted his German subjects to be religious,
PRIVATELY
he spoke of his desire to replace Christianity with an Aryan pagan
religion:
"The peasant will be told what the Church has destroyed for him: the
whole of the secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the
shapeless, the
demonic...We shall wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a
religion
peculiar to our race. And this is where we must begin. Not in the
great
cities...There we shall only lose ourselves in the stupid godless
propaganda of the Marxists: free sex in nature and that sort of bad
taste.
The urban masses are empty. Where all is extinguished, nothing can
be
aroused. But our peasantry still lives in heathen beliefs and
values."
(Sklar p 147)
Again, in PUBLIC, the Nazis denied charges of being hostile to the
Church--
although their speeches show how they were trying to shift from
Christianity
into a nationalistic, patriotic religion. For example, Hitler's
handpicked
Minister for Church Affairs, Hans Kerrl had this to say about the
party's
attitude toward Christianity in 1937:
"The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and
Positive
Christianity is National Socialism...National Socialism is the doing
of God's will...God's will reveals itself in German blood...Dr.
Zoellner
and Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity
consists
in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh...No,
Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed...True
Christianity '
is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by
the
party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity...The
Fuehrer
is the herald of a new revelation."
Christian Support for Hitler's Regime.
Hitler had always been politically astute enough to NEVER publicly
confront Christian churches. Upon coming into power, Hitler signed
his
first international treaty with the Vatican, which promised that (1)
Germany
would protect the Germany clergy, (2) the government would not push
for a
Protestant state religion, and (3) (last but not least), the State tax
agency
would collect taxes for the church. In return, the Vatican muted its
criticism of Nazi policies, and encouraged its clergy to stay out of
German
politics.
The fact is that the churches, for the most part, had almost from
the
beginning, shown sympathy with German volkish ideas--and their
"shared" hatred
for Jews and communists. Still, it seems amazing, in looking back,
how MOST
of the major Christian denominations went along with Hitler--even
giving
enthusiastic support of Hitler throughout his regime. In addition,
there
was an embarrassing lack of SIGNIFICANT resistance by German religious
leaders to the Nazis throughout the war. (Indeed, after WWII was over,
it
was through Church networks that many Nazis war criminals received
assistance
in secretly leaving Germany for Brazil.)
One important exception to the above was the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Identifying
Hitler's regime as evil almost from the start, they refused to
co-operate with
the German Nazis--often paying the consequences by being sent to
concentration
camps and being executed.
Another exception were roughly four thousand Protestant ministers.
They
formed the Confessing Church which, in 1934, declared that no human
FUHRER
could hold a higher place than the Word of God. Hitler quietly shut
down the
Confessing Church--appropriating its properties, and impressing many
of the
clergy into the war effort. One of its leaders, a Lutheran pastor
named Martin
Niemoeller (who had originally supported Hitler and the Nazis),
bravely refused
to capitulate to the Nazis-- and was sent to a concentration camp.
(He was
freed by Allied troops in 1945 towards the end of WW II. A quote from
Niemoeller
appears at the beginning of this chapter.)
Among Catholics, only one bishop was expelled from his diocese
during
Hitler's regime, while another bishop received a short prison term for
violating currency laws. Only seven Catholics throughout WW II refused
to
engage in military service. Overall, there was little resistance from
the
Catholics, including from the current pope, Pius XII.
Before being elected pope in 1939, Pius XII participated in the
encyclical
MIT BRENNENDER SORGER (With Burning Sorrow), which attacked Hitler for
"aspirations to divinity...placing himself on the same level as
Christ"
and calling him "a mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance".
However, Hitler shrewdly ignored the references. Less than a year
after
Pius XII was elected pope in 1939, Hitler abolished all religious
schools in
Germany. Pius XI did not take a stand against Hitler's actions,
presumably
because he felt it was better to compromise still with the Nazis, in
order
to combat the "worse" evil of socialism/communism.) When
Czechoslovakia was
taken over (which would mean the Catholic schools there would be
closed too),
the pope described this as one of many "historical processes in which,
from
the political point of view, the church is not interested." During the
same
year, both Catholic and Protestant church bells rang in celebration of
Hitler's
birthday.
In all, only a small percentage of religious leaders ever stood up
to Hitler.
By 1938, the vast majority of Protestant clergymen and Catholic
priests had
taken an oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer.
Even up until the very end of the war, the mainline Churches
supported
Hitler's regime. In January 1945, Archbishop Jager, calling on the
German
Catholic community for support, defined Germany's two greatest enemies
as
"liberalism and individualism [ie, republicanism] on the one side,
collectivism
[ie socialism/communism] on the other." There was never any
condemnation--
never any excommunications, on the part of the pope towards Catholics
fighting
on the side of the Nazis, or even working in the concentration camps.
In fact,
there was no significant Christian protest regarding the extermination
of the
Jews at the concentration camps. Most religious leaders simply told
their
followers to obey Hitler. (Paul Johnson, op. cit, p 490)
Pope Pius XII decried the horrors of war, which he attributed
largely
to nationalistic forces (ie in contrast to obeying spiritual
authorities).
He advised Catholics (who fought on both sides in WW II) to "fight
with
valour and charity", regardless of which side they found themselves
on.
Only AFTER the Germans had surrendered, and Hitler had committed
suicide,
did Pope Pius XII begin publicly condemning the Nazis.--But by then,
he was
just confirming what everyone else already knew. In a speech dated
June 1945,
made before the College of Cardinals, Pope Pius XII now described
Nazism as
"a satanic spectre...the arrogant apostasy from Jesus Christ, the
denial
of his doctrine and of his work of redemption, the cult of
violence, the
idolatry of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty and
dignity."
Again, supporters of the pope have countered that Pius XII was not
in a
position to protest the Nazis, as this would only have AGGRAVATED a
bad
situation. Others have pointed out that Pius XII believed he had to
CHOOSE
between the TWO EVILS of socialism/communism AND nazism.--He targeted
communism as the WORST of these two evils, which made him only APPEAR
to be
relatively friendly to the Nazis.
As for Pope Pius XII himself, he defined the causes of World War
II, to be
largely the result of the secular world's ABANDONMENT of Catholic
leadership
in the Vatican. He personally made NO reference to his earlier policy,
which
for the most part, "appeared" pro-Nazi. Also, he never hinted at an
apology
to the Jews--or any other victims of Nazis atrocities.
* * *
--
The official spokesman of the Foxes said
today that investigation into what happened
to the henhouse may be needed.
Cheerful Charlie
.
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