German Christians, Christian Nationalists, and the Resistance
Protestant or Evangelisch?
In my college days, my German professor was an older gentleman who had been too young to become a Nazi Jugend. At one point, he criticized my use of the word Protestant to describe my religion—”If you are Protestant, then you are protesting something. What are you protesting?” He encouraged me to use the term Evangelisch instead.
Die Deutsche Christlichen
A few years ago, I started looking into the role of Christians in Nazi Germany. I saw that the German Church had been used to further Nazi ideals. As I started learning more about Christian Nationalism, I thought it was important to understand their role in Hitler’s rise.
There is no shortage of information about the role that Christians played in Nazi Germany. However, the movement itself was based on the Handbuch der Deutsche Cristlichen, which had been pushed by the National Socialist Party itself.
Christian support for Nazi Germany has been used as a to bolster Christian Nationalism today. For example, the Theopolis Institute uses an article about Christians in Hitler’s Germany to argue that Christians, as a whole, supported the Nazi regime (and therefore, Christian Nationalists, in ensuring we have a “Christian” nation, should oppose the current regime).
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.
— Ralph Allen Smith, Evangelicals for Adolf: Christians in Hitler’s Germany
But this is not entirely true, and it is not clear that the Christian churches that supported the Nazi regime were supporting Christianity. Confessing Church leaders, like Dietrich Bohnhoeffer and Martin Niemöller, were sent to concentration camps for their faith.
The real goal of the SS wasn’t the elimination of the Jews, but the extermination of religion itself. Heinrich Himmler said that the goal of the SS was the extermination of Christianity in the entire world.1 And it was a movement of Christians that led the resistance against Hitler.
Von Schlarbendorff, The Secret War Against Hitler, p. 70.