Evangelicals For Adolph

Evangelicals for Adolf: Christians in Hitler’s Germany

Ralph Allan Smith
POSTED
October 20, 2020

2020!

From the article:

"It was once thought that Christians in Germany would have understood that Nazi ideology and Christianity are polar opposites — and why not, since this is undoubtedly true? But the historical record appears to be more embarrassing.

Several scholars have demonstrated the ambivalent and often positive stand that even members of the Confessing Church took toward the regime. We have come to realize with growing empirical certainty that many Christians of the day believed Nazism to be in some sense a Christian movement. Even in the later years of the Third Reich, as anticlerical hostility grew, churchmen of both confessions persisted in their belief that Nazism was essentially in conformity with Christian precepts.[iii]

At least two matters need to be emphasized: 1) even members of the “Confessing Church” — the most openly evangelical Christians of the time — took an ambivalent or even positive attitude toward Nazi rule; 2) even in the later years of Nazi rule, both Protestant and Catholic church leaders continued to believe that Nazism was in conformity with Christian beliefs. In the later years, the meaning of Nazi rule should have been apparent, but the Christian response was weak or worse.

At the root of this was the huge success of Nazi propaganda — even among the Christians in Germany."