Christianity and the Nazis
by Steven Morris, PhD.

"It is of no matter whether or not the individual Jew is decent or not. He possesses certain characteristics given to him by nature and he never can rid himself of those characteristics. The Jew is harmful to us... My feeling as a Christian beads me to be a fighter for my Lord and Savior. It leads me to the man who, at one time lonely and with only a few followers, recognized the Jews for what they were, and called on men to fight against them... As a Christian, I owe something to my own people." -- Adolf Hitler, 1922 (1)

How was it possible for the people of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to turn to the leadership of Hitler, Himmler and Hess? When the film The Final Solution was shown in Germany, one young German left the theater shaking his head and muttering, "How in the world could my parents have been taken in by that clown?" (2)

Hitler's Germany, allied with Mussolini's Italy, was responsible for the worst war of the twentieth century. Every thinking Christian should cringe at the fact that these two countries were also the fountainhead of the two most popular brands of Christianity on the market today, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. These two were allied with Imperialist Japan, whose Shinto religion taught that their Emperor was a god. World War II not only killed millions in conventional warfare, it also gave rise to a horror that remains unique in modern history: The Holocaust. Approximately six million Jews were put to death simply for being Jewish.

Martin Luther
The greatest anti-Semite in German history was also its greatest theologian; MartinLuther, the founder of Protestantism. Luther's advice concerning the Jews was: "First their synagogues or churches should be set on fire... Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed... Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayerbooks and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more... " (3) "I'd tear the tongues out of their throats. The Jews, in a word, should not be tolerated." (4)

Martin Luther was not adding anything new to Christianity with his venom, but upholding a long and vicious tradition. Century after century, the Catholic Church preached that the Jews were "Christ-killers." St. Gregory called them "slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God." St. Bernard of Clairvaux called them "a degraded and perfidious people." St. Ambrose wrote, "who cares if a synagogue--home of insanity and unbelief--is destroyed?" (5)

Adolph Hitler
As a child, Adolf Hitler attended classes at a Benedictine monastery, sang in the choir, and according to his own account, dreamed of one day taking holy orders. (6) Hitler never renounced his Roman Catholicism; "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so" he remarked to one of his generals, (7) and his Church never excommunicated him.

During the first few months of 1933, thousands of Jews were robbed, beaten and murdered. Hitler issued laws excluding Jews from public service, and the universities and the professions, and he proclaimed a national boycott of Jewish shops. (6) If Christianity created morality, the Protestant majority in Germany would have thrown off the Nazi yoke in 1933, when the Third Reich was born and Hitler became dictator. Yet in the face of this inhumanity, more than 15% of the Protestant pastors of Germany belonged to the German Christians' Faith Movement, which ardently supported the Nazi doctrines of race. (6)

The Catholic Church
The Catholic Church turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities because they didn't seem so atrocious to an anti-Semitic Church and because the Church got a great deal in the bargain, including special privileges for its priests and permission to massively interfere in the public school system. By 1940, Hitler had quashed 7000 legal cases against Catholic priests, and the Nazi state was spending about 400 million dollars annually on the Church.

In July 1933, the Nazi government concluded a Concordat with the Vatican which stated: "The German Reich guarantees the freedom of the profession and the public exercise of the Catholic Religion... ecclesiastics shall enjoy the protection of the State in the same manner as the employees of the State... The teaching of the Catholic religion in the elementary, vocational, secondary and superior schools shall be a regular subject and shall be given in conformity with the principles of the Catholic Church." (2) Coming as it did at a moment when the first excesses of the new regime had provoked world-wide revulsion, the Concordat undoubtedly lent the Hitler government much badly-needed prestige. (6)

Article 24 of the party platform stated that "The party stands for positive Christianity," and in a speech on March 23, 1933, Hitler paid tribute to the Christian faiths and promised "a peaceful accord between Church and State." (6) Army, navy, and police uniforms were decorated with belt buckles that read, "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). The wall of separation between church and state, which has helped keep America stable and free, was not favored by Hitler or the Vatican. It is sobering to realize how many Americans in the Christian Right don't favor it either.

Incredibly, the Roman Catholic Church continued to aid the Nazis who fled from justice after the war was over. For example, Paul Touvier was the only Frenchman convicted of World War II crimes against humanity. He spent much of his life on the run, sheltered by elements in the Roman Catholic Church. Twice convicted for treason, he was pardoned by French President Pompidou at the behest of leading Catholic officials. When new charges were brought, he went back into hiding, moving from convent to monastery, and living off handouts from individuals and church groups until he was arrested at a Catholic priory in 1989.

And what did Touvier have to say about the Jewish refugees who were lined up against the wall of a cemetery and shot one by one, first in the back, then in the head, on his orders?

"I never forgot this tragedy," Touvier testified. "I said Mass." (10)


REFERENCES:
1) Hitler's Third Reich: A Documentary History edited by L. Snyder, p. 29, 30. (1981, Nelson-Hall, Chicago Il) quoting speech delivered on April 12 1922 and printed in Volkischer Beobachter April 22, 1922.
2) Ibid. pg.1, 2, 140, 141
3) Encyclopedia Judaica v. 3, p. 106 (1971, McMillan, New York, NY) quoting Concerning the Jews and Their Lies by Martin Luther (1543).
4) Luther by H. Haile, p. 290 (1980, Doubleday, Garden City, NY).
5) Holy Horrors by J. Haught, p. 43 (1990, Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY)
6) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, p. 10, 11, 203, 234, 235 (1960, Simon & Schuster, New York NY)
7) Adolf Hitler by J. Toland, p. 703 (1976, Doubleday, New York NY) quoting p. 31 of Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938-1943 by General G. Engel (1974)
8) Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation by S. Friedlander, p. 43, 44 (1966, Knopf, New York, NY) quoting a conversation between Ribbentrop and Pope Pius XII on March 11, 1940.
9) Official Price Guide to Collectibles of the Third Reich, 2nd edition edited by T. Hudgeons III, p. 71, 72, 74, 79 (1985, The House of Collectibles, Orlando FL).
10) Los Angeles Times p. A21 (July 19, 1996).