HITLER HAD IT EASY IN CHRISTIAN GERMANY
Shmuel Golding
The following quotations from Millennium Fever concerning Hitler and the Nazis are all covered below.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Protestants constituted 49% of the German Christians, Catholics about 45%. Luther urged that Jews must be driven out of all Christian countries (The Jews and their Lies by Martin Luther).
Mein Kampf would be the best source for finding anti-Jewish statements made by Hitler. “By destroying the Jews, I am fighting Christ’s battles” is a quote from Hitler in Mein Kampf.
I saw a video docudrama on the Nuremberg trials. One of the Nazi henchmen emotionally declared that Luther if alive today should be on trial with us. I don’t recall the name of the one who said this.
The following quotations from my research, which were later published in my latest book Millennium Fever, may be of some use to you.
....Paul Althaus, a Lutheran theologian of renown in Germany, warmly greeted the rise of Hitler. He wrote that, “The Protestant churches have greeted the political turning point as a gift and miracle of God”... (‘Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche’, p.5)
Many times Althaus explained to Christians his preference for the Third Reich over the former Weimar Republic. “We Christians know,” he stated, “that we are bound by God’s will to the promotion of National Socialism, so that all members of the people will be ready for service and sacrifice.” (‘Kirche and Staat’, p. 29)
In a document signed by many Christian theologians it was stated, “We as believing Christians thank God our Father that he has given to our people in its time of need the Fuhrer as a pious and faithful sovereign, and that he wants to prepare for us in the National Socialist system of government, good rule, a government with discipline and honor. Accordingly, we know that we are responsible before God to assist the work of the Fuhrer in our calling and in our station in life.” (‘Ansbacher Ratschlag’, p. 145)
Another high ranking Christian theologian, Leutheuser, believed that the Holy Spirit moves where it chooses, and stated that, “more spirit of religion has come to Germans through Hitler, than through many of the churches.” (Julius Leutheuser. ‘Die deutsche Christusgemeinde’, p. 18,19)
This same Christian leader asserts that “Germany has been given a mission from God. The leader and prophet is Adolf Hitler.” (SiegfriedLeffer. ‘Christus im Drittem Reich der Deutschen’, p. 13-18)
The Vatican under Pope Pius XII made a Concordat of collaboration with National Socialism. Hitler’s portrait was placed on all walls of Catholic churches and Sunday schools. Church bells were rang at every Nazi victory, including the arrest and transportation of the last Jew from every town in Germany. The Roman Catholic Church never protested against Hitler’s barbarism including the massacre of a million and a half Jewish children.. (Dictionary of Antisemitism, p. 43)
At a Church conference, Hitler affirmed that the Catholic Church has always regarded Jews as evildoers and had banished them into ghettos. He (Hitler) is only doing what the Church had been doing for fifteen hundred years. (ibid, p. 79)
In fact the Catholic youth organization of Germany was combined with the Hitler youth following the signing of the Concordat of Collaboration sponsored by Msgr. Pacelli later to become Pope Pius XII. Together they sang the Horstwessel Lied in the church vestries “Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzed”. (‘When Jewish blood runs off the dagger’, ibid, p. 109)
In
a speech to Polish Catholics, Hitler declared: “I,
as a German Catholic, ask only what is permitted to Polish Catholics.
To be antisemitic is not to be un-Catholic. The Church used every weapon
against the Jews, even the Inquisition. Christ himself was a pioneer in the
fight against Judaism.” (ibid, p. 146)
An interesting quotation appears in the Encyclopedia Britannica under ‘German
Christians’:
“Protestants
who attempted to subordinate church policy to the political exigencies of Nazi
Germany. The German Christians’ Faith Movement, organized in 1932, was
nationalistic and so anti-Semitic that extremists wished to repudiate the Old
Testament and the Pauline Letters because of their Jewish authorship. In July
1933 the state territorial churches merged to form the German Evangelical Church, and in September the German Christian candidate, Ludwig Muller, became
Reichsbishop. Muller’s efforts to make the church an instrument of Nazi policy
were resisted by the Confessing Church, under the leadership of Martin
Niemoller. After World War II the German Christian Church party was
banned.”
Concluding:
Question: What was the common denominator in Christian Germany?
Answer: The Christian Bible, the New Testament.
SOURCE:
Shmuel Golding Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics, Israel