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Demythologizing Protestant Christianity's Relationship with Nazi Jameson Award Winners: Humanities and Theological Studies God in Our Own Image: Demythologizing Protestant Christianity’s Relationship with Nazi Germany Rebecca Ito This paper brilliantly integrates faith and learning. It tells the story of the “German Christians,” a movement of Protestant pastors, theologians, and laypersons who worked in the 1930s to accommodate Church doctrine to Nazi ideology. Hoping to “dejudaize” Christianity, the movement published nationalistic and racist material for use in pulpits, Sunday School classes, and theological seminaries. As the paper explains, the Nazi regime eventually tired of the German Christians, but not before the movement had sown confusion in Germany about Christian doctrine and the relationship between church and state. Engaging with an impressive body of scholarly literature, the paper shows how many Protestants came to believe that there was little contradiction in following both “the cross and the swastika.” A concluding theological meditation reminds readers to follow “the One who does not permit himself to be made a means to merely human ends.” What would the Bible look like without the Old Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Testament? What would the New Testament look like Einf usses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben (“Institute without the Epistles? And what would the Gospels for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Infuence on look like without a single mention of sin or grace? German Church Life”), was ofcially disbanded with Add to these the omission of any reference to the conclusion of World War Two.1 Christ’s Resurrection, the substitution of heil (“hail”) Today, much speculation and projection for hosanna (“save us”), and refusal to acknowledge surrounds the nature of this church-funded Jesus as a Jew or as the long-awaited Messiah, and movement, its infuence on German society, the one begins to get a picture of the Deutsch Christen Nazi political response and the theological backlash (“German Christian Faith”) Movement. German from Catholic and Protestant Christians. In popular Protestant pastors began this undertaking in the late discourse, Hitler and his regime are commonly 1920s, aiming to endear themselves and their religion viewed as the embodiment of evil; to associate or to the Nazi regime. Te strongest intellectual arm, analogize anything to Nazism is to unequivocally 1 Susannah Heschel, Te Aryan Jesus: Christian Teologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 1. 51 Jameson Award Winners: Humanities and Theological Studies Ito condemn it as defective at best and diabolical at Its Origins and Vision worst. And yet, despite popular, contradictory In her book Twisted Cross, Bergen describes statements like “Hitler supported Christianity,” or the ideological currents that eventually gave rise to “Hitler was the Antichrist,” the historical relationship the popularity of the German Christian movement. between church and state, as well as Christian Te most general of such currents was comprised of attitudes toward Hitler and the Nazi regime, were those within the established Protestant church who, more complex. Tis paper employs German Christian having beheld the economic stagnation and wounded declarations, state-sponsored propaganda, and national pride that Germany had been subjected to at scholarly works like Susannah Heschel’s Te Aryan the disgraceful end of the First World War, were set Jesus and Doris Bergen’s Twisted Cross: Te German on “reviving church life through increased emphasis Christian Movement in the Tird Reich to argue that on German culture and ethnicity.”2 the short-lived, early twentieth century alliance A more specifc example can be found in that the German Christian Faith Movement made teachings of Siegfried Lefer and Julius Leutheuser, with political Nazism was tenuous and mutually two pastors from the state Turingia in east-central opportunistic. Tus, as the Nazi vision for Germany Germany. In the 1920s, they “had been preaching never included an organized, supranational religion, religious renewal along nationalist, völkisch lines.”3 and certainly not one whose holy book commanded Seeing hope in the Nazi party, which at that time was submission, meekness, and love for one’s enemy, the only one party in a sea of competition for control state supported the institutionalized religion insofar over the otherwise inefective Weimar Republic, as it was useful in rallying religious Germans to their they dubbed their teaching and followers German nationalistic, anti-Semitic cause. Tis, I contend, Christians.4 By 1932, observing the rising popularity explains why the German Christian movement of Nazi party, some laity and other political and ultimately failed to gain ideological dominance over religious leaders met in Berlin to discuss how to the nation. integrate Christian theology with National Socialist Tis study begins with an investigation of the ideology.5 Nazi fags draping the altar and sermons movement’s grassroots beginnings, its deepest anti- declaring Jesus’ antagonistic attitude towards the Jews Semitic theology, its goals for creating the Institute, only began the long list of modifcations pastors made and the Institute’s projects. It then moves to an to their individual parishes as a result of this ongoing examination of how the Nazi regime encouraged discussion. and exploited this new theology of a manly, Aryan, One specifc example of this new ideological Jew-fghting Jesus to further unify the German rhetoric was expressed in Hanover German Christian Volk (“people”) and fuel radical anti-Semitism. leader Gerhard Hahn’s 1934 pamphlet piece, entitled I subsequently trace the trajectory of the Nazi “Christuskreuz und Hakenkreuz” (“Te Cross of party’s vague support for the German Christian Christ and the Swastika”).6 Found in a journal Movement in the 1930s to a complete disavowal sponsored by the movement, the article outlined the of the organization in the early 1940s. I fnish with basic tenets and rationales of this new order in lay a meditation on political idolatry and the folly of terms.7 designing God into our own image for the sake of furthering any human-conceived agenda. Te cross of Christ and the swastika do not THE GERMAN CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT need to oppose each other, and must not do so, 2 Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross: Te German Christian Movement in the Tird Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 5. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 See Appendix: Image 2. 7 Susannah Heschel, Te Aryan Jesus, 67. 52 Jameson Award Winners: Humanities and Theological Studies Ito but rather they can and should stand together. Christ; the German people stands there, which One should not dominate the other, but rather under the symbol of the swastika has awakened. each should maintain its own meaning and signifcance. In past decades, the subversive powers of liberalism, materialism, and Bolshevism alienated Te cross of Christ points toward heaven and millions of German people’s comrades from the admonishes us: remember that you are Christian German nation. It is doubtless God’s grace that people, carried by the eternal love of the heavenly our Führer Adolf Hitler has once again won back father, free through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to the nation the German people’s comrade and sanctifed by the power of God’s spirit. the German worker. Hitler could and had to achieve his goal, because he broke totally from Te swastika, however, points to the world as a the past and followed the entirely diferent, yet divine creation and admonishes us: remember ancient, path of National Socialism. that you are German, born in German territory to parents of German blood, flled with the In past decades, these satanic powers alienated German spirit and essence, formed according to millions of our German people’s comrades German nature. from the Evangelical Church. It is the holy duty and solemn goal of our movement of faith, the Both together, however, the cross of Christ and “German Christians,” to win back the German the swastika, admonish us: remember that you people’s comrade and the German worker, with are German Christian people and should become God’s help, to the Evangelical Church. To do ever more whole German Christian people, and that, we want to, and must, follow a diferent, yet remain so!8 ancient path in the church, namely the path of Martin Luther that leads to a deep connection of Te preponderance of the adjective “German” church and people, of Christianity and German makes this pamphlet the epitome of interpreting nature.10 the Gospel as a means to nationalistic ends. Also, despite the orthodox theology Hahn employs in the Rife in this excerpt are allusions to a tumultuous second paragraph, the rest of it could be categorized battle between a holy, pro-German God and a as fallacious non sequiturs, where the conclusions do Satan incarnate in divergent political ideologies. not logically follow from the arguments. Te same Te triumph of National Socialism over the power could be said of the vast majority of known Deutsch of communism afrmed God’s providential hand Christen writings, in which misapplications of in all the events leading to Hitler’s success and the Scripture, proof-texting, and logical fallacies abound.9 nation’s subsequent success. Dean Stroud, historian and complier of subversive sermons preached in Later on in the same article, Hahn recalled Nazi Germany, comments: “Hitler was the German another German Christian pastor justifying the savior and Jews were the devil incarnate. Both movement’s vision to embody the merging of the two Christianity and Nazism spoke of a Reich (“empire” symbols: or “kingdom”), but they had vastly diferent understandings about its meaning.”11 To label Te church stands here under the cross of Jesus communists and Jews “satanic” and parasitically 8 Gerhard Hahn and Randall Bytwerk, trans.,”Te Cross of Christ and the Swastika,” German Propaganda Archive, accessed March 19, 2015, http://research.calvin.edu/germanpropaganda-archive/christuskreuz.htm.
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