Fascist religion. Fascism and religion are brothers in parasitism

In Western Europe there is an Italian fascist regime. The leader of the regime (Duce) Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy in the fall of 1922. By 1925, the main elements of a totalitarian state had formed here. Subsequently, Mussolini continued to eliminate constitutional and customary restrictions on his power.

In Germany, the totalitarian system began to take shape in 1933 with the coming to power of the National Socialists (Nazis).

Other Western European countries avoided the fate of totalitarianism.

Throughout the world, the Nazis were initially accepted as imitators of Italian fascism, so the adjective “fascist” was firmly attached to the Hitler movement.

At the same time, the basis of the political program of the German National Socialists was the idea of ​​conquering living space for the Aryan Germans. This was seen as the first step towards establishing world domination by the chosen race.

Racism

After the conquest of Ethiopia in 1936, Mussolini took a position of racism, proving the superiority of Italians over representatives of the black race. In April 1937, Italy adopted segregation laws(forced separation): blacks were prohibited from using public transport intended for whites, eating in cafes and restaurants for whites, using shops for whites, they were even forbidden to appear on the main street of Addis Ababa or simply cross it. In December 1937, similar racial laws were introduced for the Arabs, who made up the main population of the Italian colony of Libya.

Unlike Mussolini, Hitler never showed any inclination towards racism.

Antisemitism

One of the cornerstones of the National Socialist ideology was anti-Semitism. The persecution of Jews began with the boycott he declared on April 1, 1933, and the subsequent wave of racial laws aimed at Jews who worked in government agencies. The systematic extermination of this people dates back to the period 1939-1945.

In fascist Italy, on the contrary, there was no persecution of Jews for any ideological reasons. Only at the last stage of the existence of the fascist regime in Italy did cases of oppression of Jews take place. But they were not of a mass nature and were caused only by Mussolin’s desire to please Hitler.

Italian fascism began as an atheistic and anti-clerical movement, but then compromised with the church. The Catholic Church received, under the Lateran Treaty of February 1929, even more power and influence than before. Along with significant government subsidies, it acquired far-reaching rights of intervention and control in the field of education and family life. Since 1929, insulting the Pope has become a criminal offense.

In Germany, the National Socialists strengthened ties with the Protestant evangelical denomination and sought to limit the influence of the Catholic Church. However, there is no need to talk about a strong union of state and church in Germany. The religious component did not play any role in the ideology of the National Socialists. In fact, we can talk about a new pagan component, which was promoted through the efforts of the Nazi ideologist A. Rosenberg.

Economic policy

Coming to power, totalitarian leaders faced the need to implement their promises regarding bringing the economy out of the crisis. Material from the site

State regulation measures were carried out then in both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In Italy, the Institute of Industrial Reconstruction (IRI) was created in 1933, which controlled the activities of 120 enterprises with 280 thousand employees. Anti-crisis measures in Germany were associated with the militarization of the national economy, which was financed from the state budget. The state carried out public works (construction of highways, drainage of swamps, etc.). All these measures made it possible to eliminate unemployment. The Nazis paid significant attention to the peasantry. The adopted law on hereditary households did not allow under any circumstances to take away land from peasants. But this land could not be sold, donated or split up during inheritance. A fixed price for agricultural products was established.

Carrying out such an economic policy, the fascists and Nazis did not touch the structure of the market economy, but they actively sought to “reconcile” workers and entrepreneurs by promoting common national goals. In Germany there was a single corporation (fascist trade union), which regulated relations between workers and entrepreneurs. In Italy, a corporate system was created on the model of medieval guilds, which united all workers and entrepreneurs on an industry basis in more than 30 corporations. All issues of organizing wages were resolved within these corporations, and not in open class confrontation, as before. With the help of these measures, the Italian fascists and German National Socialists hoped to protect themselves from the threat of the spread of the proletarian revolution.

A treaty was signed with the Vatican in 1933, and promised to respect church autonomy. Hitler routinely ignored the concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders were targeted, with thousands of arrests over the following years. The Church accused the regime of "fundamental hostility towards Christ and His Church." Historians resist however the simple equation of Nazi opposition as Judaism and Christianity. Nazism was clearly willing to use the support of Christians who accepted its ideology, and Nazi opposition to both Judaism and Christianity was not entirely analogous in the minds of the Nazis.

Smaller religious minorities such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Baha'is were banned in Germany, while the eradication of Judaism by genocide of its adherents was attempted. The Salvation Army, Christian Saints and Seventh-day Adventist Churches disappeared from Germany, while astrologers, healers and fortune tellers were banned. The small pagan "German faith movement", which worshiped the sun and the seasons, supported the Nazis. Many historians believe that Hitler and the Nazis intended to eradicate Christianity in Germany after winning the war.

Background

Christianity has ancient roots among the Germanic peoples, dating back to the missionary work of Columbanus and St. Boniface in the 6th–8th centuries. The Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, divided the German population between two-thirds Protestants and a one-third minority of Roman Catholics. The south and west remained mostly Catholic, while the north and east became mainly Protestant. The Catholic Church enjoyed a degree of privilege in the Bavarian region, the Rhineland and Westphalia, as well as parts of southwest Germany, while in the Protestant North, Catholics suffered some discrimination.

The Catholic Church was particularly suppressed in Poland: between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy were killed; Of these, +1992 died in concentration camps. In the attached territory Wartheland this was even more severe: churches were systematically closed and most of the priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. Eighty percent of the Catholic clergy and five bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; 108 of them are considered blessed martyrs. Religious persecution is not limited to Poland: in Dachau alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different countries were killed.

A number of historians claim that the Nazis had a common hidden plan, which some claim predated the Nazis' rise to power, to destroy Christianity in the Reich. The extent to which the plan to subjugate the churches and limit their role in the life of the country existed before the Nazis came to power, and who exactly among the Nazi leadership supported such a move remains controversial." However, a minority of historians maintain, against the consensus, that such a plan did not exist. Summarizing in a 1945 Office of Strategic Services report, The New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey stated that the Nazis had a plan to "subvert and destroy German Christianity" which was to be achieved by controlling and subverting the church and to be completed after the war. However, the report said, this goal was limited to the "National Party sector." socialists" viz. Alfred Rosenberg and Baldur von Schirach Historian. Roger Griffin supports: "There is no doubt that in the long term Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other competing ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content with, to comp romises with him "In his study Holy Reich, historian Richard Steigmann-Gall comes to the opposite conclusion, "There is completely no evidence, other than Hitler's vague rantings, that Hitler or the Nazis intended to 'destroy' or 'eliminate' the churches after the war ended." thesis that "leading Nazis actually considered themselves Christian" or at least understood their movement "in a Christian frame of reference", Steigmann-Gall admits that he "opposes the view that Nazism as a whole was or was not associated with Christianity or actively against it."

Although there are cases of high-profile individual Lutherans and Catholics who died in prison or in concentration camps, the largest number of Christians who died were Jewish Christians or Mischlinge who were sent to death camps for their race, not their religion. Kahane (1999) estimates that there were approximately 200,000 Christians of Jewish origin in Nazi Germany. Among the pagans, 11,300 Jehovah's Witnesses were placed in camps, and about 1,490 died, of whom 270 were executed as conscientious objectors. Dachau had a special "priest block." Of the 2,720 priests (among them 2,579 Catholic) held at Dachau, 1,034 did not survive the camp. Most of these priests were Polish (+1780), of whom 868 died in Dachau.

Protestantism

Martin Luther

During the First and Second World Wars, German Protestant leaders used it to support the cause of German nationalism. On the 450th anniversary of the birth of Luther, who fell just months after the Nazi Party began its takeover of power in 1933, celebrations were held on a large scale by both the Protestant churches and the Nazi Party. At a celebration in Königsberg, Erich Koch, then Gauleiter of East Prussia, gave a speech in which he, among other things, compared Adolf Hitler with Martin Luther and argued that the Nazis were fighting against the spirit of Luther. Such speech may be dismissed as mere propaganda, but, as Steigmann-Gall points out: "Koch was regarded by his contemporaries as a bona fide Christian who had achieved his position [as the elected president of the provincial church synod] through a genuine commitment to Protestantism and its institutions." However, Steigmann-Gall argues that the Nazis were not a Christian movement.

The famous Protestant theologian Karl Barth, of the Swiss Reformed Church, opposed such appropriation of Luther in both the German Empire and Nazi Germany when he stated in 1939 that the writings of Martin Luther were used by the Nazis to glorify both state and state absolutism: "The German people suffer under his error in the relationship between law and the Bible, between secular and spiritual authority", in which Luther separated the temporal state from the internal state, focusing on spiritual matters, thereby limiting the ability of an individual or church to question the actions of the state, which was seen as a God-ordained instrument.

In February 1940, Barth specifically accused German Lutherans of separating biblical teachings from the teachings of the state and thereby legitimizing the Nazi state ideology. He was not alone with his point of view. Several years ago on October 5, 1933, Pastor Wilhelm Röhm from Reutlingen publicly stated that "Hitler would not have been possible without Martin Luther", although many also made the same statement about other factors influencing Hitler's rise to power. Anti-communist historian Paul Johnson said that "without Lenin, Hitler would not have been possible".

Protestant groups

Various German states exhibit regional social variations as to class density and religion. Richard Steigmann-Gall states a connection between several Protestant churches and Nazism. The "German Christians" (Deutsche christened) were a movement within the Protestant Church of Germany with the goal of changing traditional Christian teachings to conform with the ideology of National Socialism and its anti-Jewish policies. The Deutsche baptism factions were united in the goal of creating a national socialist Protestantism and abolishing what they considered Jewish traditions in Christianity, and some but not all rejected the Old Testament and the teachings of the Apostle Paul. In November 1933, the Protestant mass meeting Deutsche Christen, attended by a record 20,000 people, passed three resolutions:

• Adolf Hitler is the completion of the Reformation ,
• Baptized Jews should be fired from the church
• The Old Testament must be excluded from Holy Scripture.

Ludwig Müller

The "German Christians" selected Ludwig Müller (1883-1945) as a candidate for Reich Bishop in 1933 in response to Hitler's campaign, two-thirds of those Protestants who voted elected Ludwig Müller, the neo-pagan candidate to rule the Protestant Church. Müller was convinced that he had a divine duty to promote Hitler and his ideals, and together with Hitler, he advocated a united Reichskirche for Protestants and Catholics. This Reichskirche was to be a loose federation in the form of a council, but it would be subordinated to the National Socialist State.

The level of relations between Nazism and Protestant churches has been a controversial issue for decades. One difficulty is that Protestantism includes a number of religious organizations, and many of them had little relation to each other. To add to this, Protestantism tends to allow more variation between individual congregations than Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, making statements about the "official positions" of denominations problematic. The "German Christians" were a minority in Protestantism, numbering between one-fourth and one-third of the 40 million Protestants in Germany. With the efforts of Bishop Müller and the support of Hitler, "The German Evangelical Church" was formed and recognized by the state as a legal entity on July 14, 1933, with the goal of uniting the state, the people and the Church into one body. Dissenters are suppressed by expulsion or violence.

Support for the "German Christian" movement within the churches was opposed by many adherents of traditional Christian teachings. Other groups in the Protestant church included members Bekennende Kirche the Confessing Church, which included such prominent members as Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer; how he rejected Nazi efforts to unite Volkisch principles of traditional Lutheran doctrine. Niemöller organized the Emergency League of Pastors which was supported by almost 40 percent of evangelical pastors. They were, however (as of 1932) a minority in Protestant church bodies in Germany. But in 1933, a number Deutsche Christena left the movement after a November speech by Reinhold Krause called, among other things, for the rejection of the Old Testament as Jewish superstition. Therefore, when Ludwig Müller could not deliver on the conformity of National Socialism to all Christians, and after some of the "German Christian" rallies and more radical ideas caused a backlash, Hitler's condescending attitude towards Protestants increased, and he lost all interest to Protestant church affairs.

Resistance within the churches to Nazi ideology was the longest lasting and most bitter of any German institution. The Nazis weakened Church resistance from within, but the Nazis were not yet able to take full control of the churches, which witnessed the thousands of clergy who were sent to concentration camps. Rev. Niemöller was imprisoned in 1937, on charges of "abuse of the pulpit to vilify states and parties, and attacks on the authority of government." After a failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1943 by members of the military and members of the German resistance movement, to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the Confession of the Church movement belonged, Hitler ordered the arrest of Protestant, mostly Lutheran clergy. However, even the "Confessional Church made frequent statements of allegiance to Hitler". But later many Protestants were firmly against Nazism after the nature of the movement was better understood, but a number also persisted until the end of the war in the opinion that Nazism was compatible with the teachings of the church.

The small Methodist population is considered foreign times; this follows from the fact that the Methodists began in England and did not develop in Germany until the nineteenth century under the leadership of Christoph Gottlob Müller and Louis Jacoby. Because of this history, they believed the desire to be "more German than the Germans" in order to avoid coming under suspicion. Methodist Bishop John L. Nelson toured the United States on behalf of Hitler to defend his church, but in private letters he indicated that he feared and hated Nazism, and he eventually resigned and fled to Switzerland. Methodist Bishop FH Otto Meslier took a much more collaborationist position, which included his apparently sincere support for Nazism. He also tends to the mental hospital near the end of the war. To show his gratitude to the last bishop, Hitler made a gift of 10,000 marks in 1939 to the Methodist congregation, so that it could pay for the purchase of some kind of organ. The money was never used. Outside Germany, Mellier's views were overwhelmingly rejected by most Methodists. The leader of the pro-Nazi segment of the Baptists was Paul Schmidt. The idea of ​​a "national church" became possible in the history of mainline German Protestantism, but was generally prohibited among Anabaptists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Catholic Church. Forms or branches of Protestantism that promoted pacifism, anti-nationalism, or racial equality tended to oppose the Nazi state in the strongest possible terms. Other Christian groups known for their efforts against Nazism include the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jehovah witnesses

In 1934, Watch Tower Bibles and Tracts published a letter entitled “Declaration of Facts.” In this personal letter from Hitler's then Chancellor, J. F. Rutherford stated that "Bible Scholars from Germany are fighting for the same high ethical goals and ideals, which also the national government of the German Empire proclaimed respecting the relationship of man to God, namely: the honesty of created being towards its creator." However, while Jehovah's Witnesses tried to reassure the Nazi government that their goals were purely religious and non-political and expressed hope that the government would allow them to continue their preaching, Hitler continued to restrict their work in Nazi Germany. After this, Rutherford began denouncing Hitler in articles through his publications, potentially making the predicament of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany worse.

The criticism arose on the basis of the charge that the Vatican, led by Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII, remained circumspect about the national scale of racial hatred until 1937 (Mit brennender Sorg). In 1937, shortly before the publication of the anti-Hitler encyclical, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli at Lourdes, France condemned the discrimination against Jews and neo-paganism of the Nazi regime. Pius XI's statement on September 8, 1938 spoke of the "unacceptability" of anti-Semitism, but Pius XII has been criticized by people like John Cornwell for being unspecific.

In 1941, the Nazi authorities decreed the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys in the German Empire, many of them actually being occupied and secularized by the SS Allgemeine under Himmler. However, on July 30, 1941 Aktion Klostersturm(Operation Monastery) was brought to an end by decree from Hitler, who feared that increasing protests by the Catholic segment of the German population could lead to passive riots and thereby harm the Nazi effort on the eastern front.

Plans Roman Catholic Church

Churches and the war effort

Hitler called a truce in the church conflict at the outbreak of war, wanting to retreat from policies that were likely to cause internal friction within Germany. He decreed, at the very beginning of the war, that "no further action should be taken against the Evangelical and Catholic churches for the duration of the war." According to John Conway, "The Nazis were forced to reckon with the fact that, despite Rosenberg's best efforts, only 5 percent of the population registered in the 1930 census was no longer affiliated with the Christian Churches." The support of millions of German Christians was necessary in order for Hitler's plans to come true. It was Hitler's belief that if religion is a help, "it can only be an advantage." Most of the 3 million Nazi Party members "still paid taxes to the Church" and considered themselves Christians. Despite this, a number of Nazi radicals in the party hierarchy determined that the Church's struggle must continue. After the Nazi victory in Poland, the suppression of the Churches was prolonged, despite early assurances of fidelity to the cause.

Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda issued threats and exerted intense pressure on the Churches to voice support for the war, and the Gestapo banned church meetings for several weeks. In the first months of the war, German churches complied. No denunciations of an invasion of Poland, or a blitzkrieg, were issued. On the contrary, Bishop Marahrens thanked God that the Polish conflict was over, and "that He granted our army a quick victory." The Ministry of Church Affairs proposed that church bells throughout Germany ring for a week in celebration, and that pastors and priests "flocked to volunteer as chaplains" for the German troops. The Catholic bishops asked their followers to support the war effort: "We appeal to the faithful to join in the fervent prayer that God's providence may bring this war to a blessed success for the Fatherland and the people." In addition, the evangelists proclaimed: "We unite at this hour with our people in intercession for our Fuhrer and the Reich, for all armed forces, and for all who do their duty to the fatherland."

Even in the face of evidence of Nazi atrocities against Catholic priests and laity in Poland, which were broadcast on Vatican Radio, German Catholic religious leaders continued to express their support for the Nazi war. They called on their Catholic followers to "fulfill their duty to the Fuhrer." The Nazi military actions in 1940 and 1941 also prompted the Church to express its support. The bishops said that the Church “acquiesces to a just war, especially one intended for the preservation of the state and the people” and wants “a peace favorable to Germany and Europe” and calls on the faithful to “fulfill their civil and military virtues. "But the Nazis strongly approved of the anti-war sentiment expressed by the Pope through his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus and his 1939 Christmas message, and they were outraged by his support for Poland and the "provocative" use of Vatican radio by Cardinal Hlond of Poland. Distribution of the encyclical was prohibited.

Conway wrote that the anti-church radical Heydrich assessed in a report to Hitler from October 1939 that most church people supported the war effort - although a few were "well-known agitators among the pastors needed to be considered in". Heydrich determined that support from church leaders would not be expected due to the nature of their doctrines and their internationalism, so he developed measures to limit the functioning of churches under cover of the urgency of the war, such as reducing the amount of resources available to church presses on a rationing basis , as well as the prohibition of pilgrimages and large church gatherings based on transport difficulties. Temples were closed for being “too far from bomb shelters.” The bells were melted down. The presses were closed.

With the expansion of the war in the East from 1941, there also came an expansion of the regime's attacks on churches. Monasteries were targeted and the expropriation of Church properties increased. Authorities claimed that Nazi properties were needed for wartime needs such as hospitals, or housing for refugees or children, but they instead used them for their own purposes. "Hostility to the state" was another common reason given for confiscations, and the actions of one member of the monastery could lead to the seizure of the whole. The Jesuits were especially oriented. Papal nuncio Cesare Orsenigo and Cardinal Bertram constantly complained to the authorities, but they said to expect more exactions due to wartime needs.

National Socialist Antisemitism

Rather than focusing on religious differentiation, Hitler argued that it was important to promote "an anti-Semitism of reason", one that recognized the racial basis of Jewry. Interviews with Nazis by other historians indicate that the Nazis believed that their views were rooted in biology rather than historical prejudice. For example, "S. became a missionary for this biomedical vision... Regarding anti-Semitic sentiments and actions, he insisted that "the racial question... [and] the grievance of the Jewish race... had nothing to do with medieval anti-Semitism... that is, it was all a matter of scientific biology and the community."

In his history of Christianity, Geoffrey Blaney wrote that “Christianity cannot escape some indirect guilt for the terrible Holocaust. Jews and Christians have been rivals and sometimes enemies for a long period of history. Moreover, it was traditional for Christians to blame Jewish leaders for the crucifixion of Christ... “but,” Blainey noted, “at the same time, Christians showed loyalty and respect.” They were aware of their duty to the Jews. Jesus and all the disciples of N. all the authors of his Gospel were of the Jewish race. Christians considered the Old Testament, the holy book of the synagogues, as equally the holy book for them... ".

Astrologers, healers and fortune tellers were banned under the Nazis, while the small pagan "German faith movement", which worshiped the sun and the seasons, was supported by the Nazis.

Atheists

On 13 October 1933, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess issued a decree stating: "No National Socialist can suffer any damage on the grounds that he does not profess any particular faith or confession or on the grounds that he does not does any religious profession at all. "However, the regime is resolutely opposed to "godless communism" and everything in Germany is free-thinking ( Freigeist), atheist, and mostly left-wing organizations were banned that same year.

In a speech given during the negotiations for the German-Vatican Concordant of 1933, Hitler opposed secular schools, stating: "Secular schools can never be tolerated, because such schools have no religious instruction, and general moral instruction without a religious basis is built on the air and therefore all symbols of teaching and religion must be derived from faith." One of the groups closed by the Nazi regime was the German Freethinkers League. Christians turned to Hitler to end the anti-religious and anti-church propaganda proclaimed by the freethinkers, and in Hitler's Nazi party some atheists were quite vocal in their anti-Christian views, especially Martin Bormann. Heinrich Himmler, who was himself fascinated with Germanic paganism, was a strong promoter gottgläubig movement, and he did not allow atheists a minute, arguing that their "refusal to acknowledge a higher power" would be a "potential source of indiscipline". In the SS, Himmler announced: "We believe in God Almighty, who stands above us, he created the earth, the Fatherland, and the Volk, and he sent us the Fuhrer. Any person who does not believe in God must be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid, and thus not suitable for SS ". He also stated: "As National Socialists, we believe in a godly outlook."

Which ultimately led to growth.

Hitler's plans, for example, to erect a magnificent new capital in Berlin (Germany's Capital of the World), have been described as an attempt to build a version of the New Jerusalem. Since Fritz Stern's classical study Politics of cultural despair, most historians view the relationship between Nazism and religion this way. Some historians see the Nazi movement and Adolf Hitler as fundamentally hostile to Christianity, although not irreligious. In the first chapter Nazi persecution of churches, historian John S. Conway elaborates that Christian churches in Germany lost their appeal during the era of the Weimar Republic, and that Hitler offered "a seemingly vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of Christianity."

Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer wrote in his memoirs that Hitler himself had a negative view towards the mystical concepts pushed by Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg. Speer quotes Hitler as saying that Himmler's attempts to mythologize the SS:

What nonsense! Here we have finally reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now [Himmler] wants to start all over again. We could have just as easily stayed with the church. At least that was the tradition. To think that I could one day be turned into a Saint SS! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave...

The relationship of religion to fascism

A scholar of fascism, Stanley Payne notes that the basis of fascism is the basis of a purely materialist "civil religion" that "suppresses previous structures of faith and relegates supernatural religion to a secondary role, or none at all", and that "while there are concrete examples of religious or potential" Christian fascists, "fascism assumed a post-Christian, post-religious, secular, and immanent frame of reference." One theory is that religion and fascism can never have a lasting connection because both are "holistic worldviews" claiming to be all people. Along these lines, Yale political scientist Juan Linz and others have noted that secularization has created a vacuum that can be filled by another totalizing ideology, making secular totalitarianism possible, and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of anti-religious political religion

There has been significant literature about potential religious aspects of Nazism. Wilfried Daim suggests that Hitler and the Nazi leadership planned to replace Christianity in Germany with a new religion in which Hitler would be considered the messiah. In his book on the connection between Lanz von Liebenfels and Hitler, Daim published a reprint of the supposed document of the session on "the unconditional abolition of all religious obligations (Religionsbekenntnisse) after the final victory (Endsieg) ... with the simultaneous proclamation of Adolf Hitler as the new messiah." This session report comes from a private collection.

Thuringian German Christian prayer for Hitler ,

external reference

• Review by Richard Steigmann-Gall Holy Reich- by John S. Conway
• Christianity and the Nazi Movement - by Richard Steigmann-Gallen
• Faith and thought - Kolnai, Aurel, War against the West

RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE NATIONAL SOCIALISTS
RELATIONS OF THE NSDAP WITH CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS

To objectively consider this issue, one should turn to the original documents of the Third Reich.
However, strangely, many of these documents are still inaccessible, and those published in the form of various collections in the West and in the Russian Federation contain documents of dubious reliability. In particular, paragraphs of the charter of the so-called “Nazi Church” allegedly developed by Alfred Rosenberg are a deliberate fake that wanders from collection to collection.

Therefore, the most reliable sources in these conditions are the NSDAP program, books and articles by senior officials of the Third Reich, as well as statements by representatives of various faiths who were directly affected by the religious policies of the National Socialists.

RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE NSDAP BEFORE THE PARTY CAME TO POWER

In the conditions of centuries-old religious fragmentation in Germany, the National Socialists could not associate themselves with any one specific religious group, because this would mean a sharp narrowing of the social base of the movement. On the other hand, coming to power in a country like Germany, where the overwhelming majority of the population was Christian and lived by Christian traditions, was only possible by declaring one’s firm commitment to the Christian religion. Therefore, in the NSDAP program, the point regarding the religious guidelines of the party sounded like this:

NSDAP Fuhrer Adolf Hitler explained the party point of view in his book Mein Kampf:

“Let everyone remain with his own faith, but let everyone consider it his primary duty to fight against those who see the task of their life in undermining the faith of others. A Catholic does not dare to offend the religious feelings of a Protestant and vice versa... National unity cannot be strengthened by inciting war between Catholics and Protestants. Only with mutual compliance, only with equal tolerance on both sides, can the current state of affairs be changed and the nation truly become united and great in the future.”

Although the NSDAP itself consisted of people of various religious views, including even atheists, the bulk of the party and the majority of senior party functionaries fully supported Hitler on this issue.

This primarily applies to such a key figure as the future Minister of Education and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Like Hitler, Goebbels was born into a Catholic family and as a child dreamed of being a priest. While studying in Bonn, Goebbels joined the Catholic student organization Unitas Verband, whose members were expected to regularly attend church services and lead an exemplary life. Thanks to the Catholic Society of Albert Magnus, Goebbels had the opportunity to study at several universities in Germany and received the title of Doctor of Literature from the University of Heidelberg.

In his autobiographical novel "Michael" Goebbels shows the main character as an idealist, romantic and Christian: he writes a play about Jesus and contrasts Christ with Marx (in his opinion, if Jesus was the embodiment of love, then Marx became the embodiment of hatred). In his diary, Goebbels wrote: “The struggle that we must wage until victory (at least until the end) is a struggle, in the deepest sense, between the teachings of Christ and Marx.”
After the NSDAP came to power, Goebbels would become the implacable enemy of Bormann, the only atheist and opponent of Christianity among the party leadership.

Less definite were the views of the “chief party philosopher” Alfred Rosenberg, who, however, in his journalistic activities never went beyond the party program. Even in his “Myth”XXcentury", repeatedly attacked for its semi-pagan philosophy, Rosenberg, touching on the question of the Church, wrote:

“No German, aware of his responsibility, can demand the abandonment of the Church by those who are attached to the Church by faith. You can probably instill doubts in these people, split them spiritually, but it is impossible to give them a real replacement for what will be taken away from them... Dealing with religious issues is not the business of any existing ethical, social, political unions, and, on the contrary, they cannot be made responsible for the personal religious practice of their members.”

Rosenberg characterizes the Savior with the following words: “Jesus appears to us to be self-confident in the best and highest sense of the word... The love of Jesus Christ is the love of a person who is aware of the nobility of his soul and the strength of his personality.”
Rosenberg proclaims “the rejection of materialistic and witchcraft obscurantism” and sharply attacks the occultists: “The era of Darwinism ... was able to create monstrous confusion, simultaneously opening the way for occultist sects, theosophy, anthroposophy and many other secret teachings and charlatanism.”

In the preface to the third edition of Myth (October 1931), Rosenberg tried to answer accusations from church circles about the “pagan” content of his book. Noting that his remarks were "scrupulously twisted," Rosenberg said:

“The falsifiers hid the fact that I went so far as to postulate with respect to all German art a religious starting point and a religious background... The enormous respect expressed in the work for the founder of Christianity was hidden; it was hidden that religious practices had the obvious intention of discerning a great personality without further distorted additions from various Churches. It was concealed that I was highlighting Wotanism as a dead form of religion... and I was falsely and scrupulously attributed with the desire to reintroduce the pagan cult of Wotan (Odin).”

In accordance with the policy of the NSDAP, Rosenberg denies that the views he expressed belong to the entire movement. Repeating Hitler’s words from Mein Kampf almost verbatim, he writes: “A political movement... cannot consider issues of a religious nature... hence my ideological confession is personal...».

Party leaders who did not want to follow the NSDAP's program guidelines in the field of religion were simply expelled from the party by Hitler. Such a fate befell, for example, General Erich Ludendorff, who preached neo-paganism, and Gauleiter of Thuringia Arthur Dinter, author of “197 Theses for the Completion of the Reformation,” who proclaimed faith in the Aryan God of Light and rejected “Judeo-Christianity.”
In fact, all party functionaries were given a choice: either, while professing their worldview, they had to clearly stipulate that it had nothing to do with the official position of the party (as in the case of Rosenberg), or be expelled from the ranks of the movement (as in the case of Dinter) .

The NSDAP itself refused to take the side of any one of the Christian denominations, much less oppose itself to Christianity. Throughout the “years of struggle,” the National Socialists demonstrated loyalty to both major religious denominations in Germany.

Responsive attitude Catholic Church to national socialism was difficult.
Until 1933, individual Catholic hierarchs repeatedly prohibited their flock from joining the NSDAP. The last time such a ban was promulgated was on August 17, 1932.

At the same time, many Catholic clergy had a sharply negative attitude towards the Weimar Republic and Marxism and believed that, under the current conditions, National Socialism was the only real defender of Christian civilization from Jewry and Bolshevism.
For example, Munich Cardinal Michael Faulhaber called the revolution a crime of oath and high treason and defended the NSDAP from attacks by the Jewish press. Prelate Ludwig Kaas, the leader of the Center Party and a confidant of the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pacelli, also advocated a coalition with National Socialism.
At the Freiburg Catholic Council in 1929, he stated: “Never before have the German people waited so impatiently for the arrival of a true leader, never before have they prayed for him so fervently as in these days, when we all have a heavy heart, because terrible misfortunes have befallen us. our Fatherland and our culture."

The relationship between the National Socialists and Protestants, who represented the religious majority in Germany (45 million people by the early 1930s), was much more definite. German Protestants were attracted by such provisions of the National Socialist doctrine as the struggle against “godless Marxism” and “Jewish materialism.”

Hostility to Judaism among German Protestants has always been much more widespread than among Catholics. In this regard, it is significant that in the Protestant regions of Germany, members of the SS and SA went to worship in entire detachments, and until 1933 there was not a single case of NSDAP members leaving the church for ideological reasons.

Members of the assault squads at the service and leaving the church

In June 1932, various groups of believers and pastors in Thuringia, Mecklenburg and Saxony united in the "German Christian Faith Movement". In fact it was a National Socialist faction within the Evangelical Church. In 1933, out of 17 thousand Protestant clergy, this movement accounted for about 3 thousand priests.

Among the leaders of the National Socialist Party, the head of the NSDAP faction in the Prussian Landtag, Hans Kerrl, and the Kurmark Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube (during the Second World War, the Imperial Commissioner of Belarus) belonged to the “German Christians”. Priests were widely represented in the movement, and already from the mid-1920s. associated themselves with the National Socialists. One of them was the chaplain of the East Prussian military district, Ludwig Müller, who introduced Hitler to General Blomberg, the future Minister of the Reichswehr. After the NSDAP came to power, Müller became the Fuhrer's adviser on the affairs of the Protestant Church, and on July 23, 1933 he was elected Imperial Bishop.

Thus, before it came to power, the NSDAP tried in every possible way to avoid religious disputes, rightly believing that by relying on one denomination, it would lose the support of people professing a different form of faith. It was also pointless to position oneself as adherents of atheism or neo-paganism; this would mean alienating almost all of Christian Germany. Of course, the party always had alternative views on the problem of faith, but Hitler periodically made it clear that he would not tolerate “religious reformism” leading to a split in the nation.

RELATIONS OF THE NSDAP WITH CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AFTER THE PARTY CAME TO POWER

On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed NSDAP leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor and tasked him with forming and leading the government. This appointment of Hitler did not yet mean the complete victory of the NSDAP, because at that time the government could only be a coalition one, with the participation of conservatives and centrists.

To get rid of the coalition, Hitler needed a convincing victory in the elections, which would give an absolute majority in the Reichstag. For this, the NSDAP needed the support of clerical circles and Christian organizations. On February 1, in his radio address to voters, the Fuhrer promised to promote Christianity “as the basis of our national morality” and turned to God for the blessing of his government.
In many cities that Hitler visited during the election campaign, he was greeted by the ringing of bells, and the Reich Chancellor ended his passionate speeches with the word “Amen!” In his last address on the eve of the elections (March 4 in Königsberg), Hitler said: “Raise your heads! Thanks to the Lord, you are free again!”, after which, to the sound of church bells, those gathered sang “Ode to Joy.”

When the elections brought victory, Goebbels organized a magnificent ceremony to officially open the new session of the Reichstag. It took place in Potsdam Cathedral in the presence of the clergy, the Crown Prince and President Hindenburg.

On March 23, Hitler, calling Christian churches “an important element in preserving the soul of the German people” and promising to respect their rights, said: “We hope to strengthen friendly relations with the Holy See.” For this purpose, it was decided to send Goering to Rome.
In the month of April, Pope PiusXI spoke approvingly of Hitler's struggle against Bolshevism, and in June 1933, a joint pastoral letter of all German bishops called on Catholics to cooperate with the new state.

Adolf Hitler at a reception with Pope Pius XI

On June 20, 1933, a concordat was signed with the Vatican, guaranteeing the freedom of the Catholic faith and the right of the Church to independently regulate its internal affairs. The document proclaimed an oath of allegiance to the Catholic Church of the new Germany, spoke of respect for the constitutionally constituted government and the need to educate the clergy in the spirit of this respect. On the German side, the agreement was signed by Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, and on the Vatican side by Cardinal Pacelli.

Among the ardent supporters of the concordat was the aforementioned Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber. In March 1933 he visited Rome to inform Pope PiusXI about the new situation in Germany. When he returned, he told the assembly of bishops that the pontiff had publicly praised Chancellor Hitler for his opposition to communism. Faulhaber also said that he outlined to the pope his view of the differences between German National Socialism and Italian fascism. After signing the concordat, he sent a letter to Hitler that said: “Germany has extended its hand to the papacy, the greatest moral force in world history, and this is a truly great and good gesture, raising to a new level the authority of Germany in the West, in the East and throughout the world... We sincerely, from the bottom of our hearts, wish: God bless our Reich Chancellor, for our people need him.”

Thus, Hitler managed to win the support of Catholics in Germany and the approval of the Vatican. Subsequently, he repeatedly publicly spoke out in support of traditional faiths. For example, on August 17, 1934, speaking in Hamburg, Hitler said:
“I will use all my efforts to protect the rights of our two largest religions, to protect them from all attacks and to establish harmony between them and the existing state.”

Of course, there has always been a certain opposition to National Socialism among Catholics, which was due to difference of views on the most important ideological issues, in particular, racial issue.
However, the oppositionists were clearly in the minority, while the majority of Catholics supported Hitler’s program of struggle against Jewry, Bolshevism and Freemasonry.

The same Cardinal Faulhaber, in his 1933 Christmas sermon, delivered in Munich at St. Michael's Church, stated:

“The Church's point of view does not contain any contradiction to racial studies and racial culture. There is also no contradiction in it to the desire to preserve the national characteristics of the people, to maintain its purity and authenticity, and also to favor the revival of the national spirit on the basis of blood ties that unite people.”

In the same sermon, the bishop defended the Old Testament, noting that “we must distinguish between the people of Israel before and after the death of Christ.” Faulhaber ended his sermon with the words: “We should not forget that we cannot talk about salvation only on the basis of belonging to German blood. We will be saved by the precious blood of the crucified Christ.”

Bishop Machschen of Hildesheim also spoke out about racology, saying the following: “It is unthinkable for a Catholic bishop to deny everything that has to do with the concept of the people and the Motherland, everything that is valuable for blood and soil. Religious self-awareness gives us the confidence that our flesh has great value, bringing it closer to the Divine. As the Church teaches, nature is the basis of faith, and on the basis of the supernatural is laid the foundation of everything noble and Divine in human nature. The concepts of blood and soil have a place in the hierarchy and can blossom in an organic way.”

Another Catholic German bishop, Alois Hudal, also supported the policies of the NSDAP.
He openly stated that " against Bolshevism and communism there is only one remedy - destruction"and approved the efforts of the researcher. regime to create a unified society without classes and estates, as well as its opposition to godlessness.
In 1936, Hudal published the book “Foundations of National Socialism,” where he combined Christian and National Socialist doctrines. The book was published in Austria, and its first copy, equipped with a dedicatory inscription, was presented by Hudal to Hitler, who ordered the free import of the book into Germany.

The National Socialists never persecuted Catholics solely on the basis of their religion.

On January 30, 1939, Hitler, in his speech in the Reichstag, once again emphasized this: “In Germany so far, not a single person has been persecuted because of his religious beliefs, and no one will ever be persecuted!”

However, political Catholicism has always been perceived as an anti-state force, and those representatives of the clergy and flock who tried to put forward political demands and wage political struggle were invariably subjected to repression.

One of the typical examples of repressive actions against Catholic clergy is associated with arrest On October 23, 1941, the rector of the Berlin Catholic Cathedral of St. Hedwig B. Lichtenberg, who since November 1938 daily publicly prayed for the Jews.

In total, during the years of the Third Reich, about 9 thousand cases were considered accusing Catholics of anti-state activities.
The main opposition of Catholic organizations was caused by the desire of the National Socialists to unify the state in every possible way, which entailed serious restrictions on the activities of church structures.
Over time, all Catholic youth organizations were included in the Hitler Youth. Charity was also unified, in particular the Catholic “German Benevolent Union”, which had a rich tradition of welfare, a large staff of sisters and caregivers, and significant funds.

The same trends took place in the field of education.

By order of the authorities of December 8, 1936, all teachers of religious disciplines were required to sign a pledge to support the Hitler Youth and not to encourage students to participate in confessional (Christian) youth organizations. It went to extremes. Thus, in April 1941, the Gauleiter of Baden, Robert Wagner, demanded that images of the crucifixion be removed from school premises. It is significant, however, that this action caused a storm of public protests, the heroine mothers of Baden threatened to hand over their awards, and the workers threatened to go on strike. Under pressure from Hitler, Wagner canceled his order.

All this oppression(which seem simply ridiculous against the backdrop of the fierce Bolshevik terror against the Church in the USSR), caused outrage in the Vatican, who has repeatedly accused n.-s. regime in violation of the provisions of the concordat.
This, in particular, was the subject of the book published on March 14, 1937 by Pope Pius.XI encyclical "With deep sorrow" .

In response to criticism of the religious policies of the NSDAP, Hitler invited Cardinal Faulhaber to his residence at the Berghof, to whom he frankly explained his point of view:

“The Catholic Church must not be deceived. If National Socialism fails to defeat Bolshevism, then the Church and Christianity will also cease to exist in Europe. Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of the Church."

Faulhaber was forced to admit the truth of these words. Subsequently, he refused to join the conspiracy against Hitler, publicly condemned the attempted terrorist attack against the leader of the Reich, and confirmed his personal devotion and loyalty to the Fuhrer.

In general, despite criticism of the anti-Catholic actions of the Nazi leadership, representatives of the Pope constantly supported the general political course of Germany and spoke with praise of the National Socialists’ struggle against Bolshevism. The anti-Jewish policy of the Third Reich did not cause any criticism. All anti-Semitic statements by the leadership of the NSDAP and the Third Reich invariably found understanding and support among Catholics.

When a wave of Jewish pogroms (“Kristallnacht”) took place in the country on November 10, 1938, none of the Catholic bishops protested.

During the war, Pope Pius XII refused to publicly condemn the persecution of Jews, considering them deserved.

In November 1941, the papal nuncio conveyed to the German bishops the papal order that funeral services for Jews should not be held.

The exclusion of Jews from the political, state and cultural spheres and the restriction of their religious activities did not cause any criticism from the Vatican.

At the end of the war, the Vatican took effective measures to save high-ranking leaders of the Third Reich from the allied “justice”.

Monsignor Montini (future Pope Paul VI) with the direct support of the pope, gave instructions to issue Vatican passports to a number of SS and National Socialists who fled from Germany. Catholic priests sheltered defeated military and party functionaries in monasteries and prepared routes for movement and escape.

The aforementioned Bishop Alois Hudal, using his connections, achieved the issuance of foreign passports and identity cards to hundreds of National Socialists. Hudal managed to hide in a Roman Catholic hospital the former vice-governor of Poland, SS Sturmbannführer Baron von Wächter, who was wanted everywhere by Jewish and allied intelligence agencies.

With the help of Catholic organizations, hundreds of famous National Socialists managed to escape to Latin America alone, the most famous among whom was Adolf Eichmann.

Due to the national traditions of German Protestantism, there were practically no conflicts between it and the authorities during the Third Reich. Protestants were much less likely than Catholics to be subjected to repression and were much more active in supporting National Socialism.
In the NSDAP itself there was a kind of “Protestant lobby”, and most of the Protestant believers treated Hitler with reverence.

After coming to power, most of the propaganda actions of the NSDAP (the fight against “godless Marxism,” “Jewish materialism,” “degenerate art,” etc.) found constant support among Protestants. Many intellectuals representing Protestantism had a purely positive attitude towards the “national revolution”.

Professor at the University of Berlin, philosopher Eduard Spranger published an article “March 1933” in the journal Erziung, in which he stated:
“Germany has finally awakened, the post-war period of decline has ended... The will to become one people is also based on a religious and moral basis, which was born as a force from the experience of the war and constitutes the great positive core of the National Socialist movement.” The article ended like this: “Careful and detailed work begins! In many ways it will be harsh and difficult, especially in our cramped German world, tormented by poverty and disaster. But this educational work embraces everything at once: voluntary and militarized labor service, combat training of body and spirit, freedom and humble service to God!”

Hierarchs of Protestant churches reacted to the Nazis' rise to power much more enthusiastically than Catholics. In April 1933, Mecklenburg Bishop Rendtorf defiantly joined the NSDAP, expressing gratitude to the “God-given Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.”
The most fruitful relations between the regime and the “Movement of German Christians”, created in 1932, developed. An active participant in this evangelical movement, Ludwig Müller was an old friend of Hitler. In the elections to the governing bodies of evangelicals, 70% of the votes went to representatives of the “German Christians”.

Adolf Hitler and leader "German Christians" Ludwig Müller
greet each other at the NSDAP congress

"German Christians" generally reacted positively to the regime's anti-Semitism.
The leadership of the movement demanded that the Church be cleansed of Jewish elements; some believers demanded that Jews not be allowed into services at all, since they did not want to take communion with them.

Evangelists also supported the unification of youth organizations. In 1933, an agreement was signed between Reichsjugendführer Baldur von Schirach and Ludwig Müller to join the Hitler Youth, an 800-strong evangelical youth organization. According to this agreement, Protestant youth unions had the right to retain their banners and insignia. Two evenings a week and two Sundays a month were reserved for the young Protestants to do their own work, and the rest of the time they were to be employed in the Hitler Youth.

SA Obergruppenführer Hans Kerrl, a lawyer by profession, war veteran and party member since 1923, belonged to the German Christian Movement. After the NSDAP came to power, Kerrl first became a commissioner of the Prussian Ministry of Justice and State Councilor, and then headed the Imperial Ministry for Church Affairs.
In a public explanation of his future activities on August 8, 1935, the minister sharply dissociated himself from the policy of separation of Church and state, as he was convinced of the “necessity of their joint work.” In his speeches, the minister repeatedly emphasized that National Socialism is “a movement that necessarily recognizes the connection with God and the Divine order,” noting: “We consider it our duty, under all circumstances, to guarantee religious freedom to the Germans. Independent choice of a religious community is a personal right of the individual.”

Undoubtedly, and in the Protestant environment there were groups opposed to Nazism.

Already on September 21, 1933, the Extraordinary Union of Pastors, or Confessional Church, was formed. The organization was led by three Berlin pastors: Martin Niemeler, Gerharch Jacobi and Eitel-Friedrich von Rabenau. Until January 1934, about 7,000 priests joined the Confessional Church. Confessors protested against the use of the “Aryan paragraph” and a number of other actions, however, the majority of members of the Confessional Church fundamentally approved the NSDAP's coming to power and opposed only “certain negative excesses.”
Martin Niemeler himself was up to a certain point a member of the NSDAP, declared his allegiance to the “National Socialist Revolution” and publicly admired Hitler. In November 1933, he welcomed the decision to withdraw Germany from the League of Nations and in a congratulatory telegram to Hitler called this event a national feat.

But in 1937, completely unexpectedly, he publicly condemned the “anti-Semitism” of the regime, sending Hitler a corresponding memorandum. Niemeler was required to give written consent not to make any more political statements from the pulpit. However, Niemeler refused to give such an undertaking and was arrested and spent the rest of the war in prison.

In general, repressions against Protestants were much less radical than those against Catholics. Sometimes the courts refused to impose sanctions at all. In 1938, a court in Cologne left without consequences the case of a priest who, in a sermon, called the Nazis “brown pests.”

The following case is indicative, concerning the case of a high school teacher, Dr. Walter Hobom, a teacher of history, French and English. In June 1937, he turned to the Reich Chancellery with a request to expel him from the National Socialist Teachers' Union, since, according to his convictions, he could not follow the party, which had repeatedly tried to exclude members of the Confessional Church from public life. An investigation took place regarding the early resignation of the “politically unreliable” Khobom. During the proceedings, the latter stated that he did not deny the National Socialist worldview as such, but could not approve of the direction represented by Rosenberg, since it contradicted Christian principles. Ultimately, Reich Chancellery officials came to the conclusion that disagreement with Rosenberg's views was not a sufficient reason for resignation. Khobom was allowed to return to work.

By the way, government functionaries, in particular, the Minister of Education and Propaganda Goebbels, the Minister of Education Rust, and the Minister of Church Affairs Kerrl, repeatedly spoke out against Rosenberg’s ideological position. The latter wrote to the Reich Chancellery: “During the past years, the name of Rosenberg for large sections of the population - no matter whether rightly or wrongly - has to a certain extent become a symbol of hostility towards the Church and Christianity...
And the Third Reich needed Christianity and Religion, because to him nothing to offer in return Christian religion and Christian morality."

Ivan Petrov

Despite the fact that Hitler was born into a family that professed the Catholic religion, he very early rejected Christianity as an idea alien to the racist model. “Antiquity,” he said, “was much better than modern times, because it knew neither Christianity nor syphilis.” He would later formulate his negative attitude towards Christianity as follows:

1. Christianity is a religion that protects the weak and humiliated.
2. By its origin, this religion is Jewish, forcing people to “bend their backs at the sound of the church bell and crawl to the cross of an alien God.”
3. Christianity was born 2000 years ago among sick, exhausted and despairing people who had lost faith in life.
4. The Christian dogmas of forgiveness of sin, resurrection and salvation are outright nonsense.
5. Christian compassion is a dangerous un-German idea.
6. Christian love for one's neighbor is stupidity, since love paralyzes a person.
7. The Christian idea of ​​universal equality protects the racially inferior, sick, weak and wretched.

In the early years of the Nazi movement, Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg tried to introduce a certain amount of Christian principles into the party program. However, over time, most of them were replaced by such “positive” aspects as racism, the revival of Nordic values, and the cult of the superman. After becoming Chancellor of Germany, Hitler repeatedly stated that his government aimed to create favorable conditions for religious life, and that he would make every effort to establish friendly relations with the church. Many Germans sincerely believed that Hitler was able to save Christianity from the atheistic “Red Terror” and ensure truly free exercise of all religious needs in the country.

On July 20, 1933, Hitler entered into an agreement with the Catholic Church (see Concordat 1933), which guaranteed the inviolability of the Catholic faith and retained all the privileges and rights of Catholics. According to the agreement, all Catholic communities, schools, youth organizations and cultural societies were guaranteed state protection if they did not engage in any political activity. By signing this agreement, Hitler hoped to secure the trust of the world community, since the Catholic Church had significant influence in the world. As subsequent events showed, the agreement was a diplomatic trick, the obligations of which Hitler intended to fulfill only as long as it was beneficial to him.

However, Hitler failed to reach an understanding with the Protestant Church, as a result of which a call swept across the country to reject Protestantism and create a new “German” religion based on the unification of the idea of ​​“Blut und Boden” (“Blood and Soil”) and the principle of the Fuhrer. In 1934, theology professor Ernst Bergman published 25 theses of this new “religion.”

The Jewish Old Testament is not suitable for the new Germany.

Christ was not a Jew, but a Nordic martyr, sent to his death by the Jews, and a warrior called to save the world from Jewish influence.

Adolf Hitler is the new messiah sent to earth to save the world from the Jews.

The swastika is the successor of the sword as a symbol of German Christianity. German soil, blood, soul, art are the sacred categories of German Christianity.

Speaking about the new Germanic religion, Bergman said: “Either we will have a Germanic god, or we will not have any. We cannot kneel before a universal God who pays more attention to the French than to us. We Germans were abandoned by the Christian God to our fate. He is not fair, and that is why we suffered defeat after defeat because we believed in him and not in our German god.”

The Christian Church around the world was shocked by such statements. Within Germany, the Beckentniskirche movement, a denominational church that fought to preserve the purity of the evangelical faith, arose. This movement refused to recognize the Imperial Bishop appointed by the authorities, convened its own council and declared that Christian dogmas were incompatible with Nazism, its worldview and policies.

On March 29, 1934, in Barmen, a congress of pastors and laymen representing 18 denominations in Germany adopted a declaration condemning Nazi ideology as anti-Christian. The result of this congress was the creation of the so-called “Confessional Church”, consisting of people who had a negative attitude towards Hitler’s policies, considering fascism to be neo-paganism, creating idols from Germany, racial purity and the Fuhrer himself. Subsequently, many of them lost their livelihood for this, found themselves in prison or in exile, and even gave their lives. A striking example is the fate of Martin Niemöller, a German pastor who was not afraid to express his Christian position directly to Hitler’s face, for which the Fuhrer called him his personal enemy. By his order, the pastor was arrested and spent 7 years, until 1945, in a concentration camp.

According to Hitler, the churches of Germany were to serve the new ideology. However, here he encountered unexpected resistance. Yes, many priests and laity enthusiastically followed the Fuhrer, believing that the Germans were God’s chosen people and Hitler was the new messiah. But not everyone took the bait. This infuriated the Fuhrer, because he was convinced that “...they (that is, pastors and priests) will betray anything, just not to lose their wretched parishes and salaries.” Approximately half of the clergy formed the church opposition. They refused to turn a blind eye to the genocide of the Jews and to the attempt to create a new religion in which the Fuhrer would play the first fiddle, replacing the Jewish Messiah. And the bishops who were completely loyal to Hitler expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Nazis ruled the Church. In response, Hitler did not stand on ceremony: “Christianity will disappear in Germany just as it happened in Russia! The Germanic race existed thousands of years before Christ, and in the future we will get along just fine without Christianity. The Church must rely on the theory of purity of blood and racial characteristics.” The shocked bishops said that in this case they had no choice but to also go over to the opposition.

Then Hitler announced the subordination of the Protestant church to the state. Church schools were closed, church property was confiscated, many pastors were fired, and others were restricted from preaching, which was intended to undermine the power of the church opposition. And although some of the pastorate supported the Nazi regime, the majority, such as Dr. Karl Barth, refused to recognize Hitler as the newly-minted messiah. “I was a professor of theology at the University of Bonn for 10 years,” Dr. Barth later recalled in exile. — Until he refused to start his daily lectures by throwing up his hands and shouting “Heil Hitler!” I couldn’t do that, it would be blasphemy.” Dr. Martin Niemöller, a pastor in the wealthy Berlin district of Dahlem, who served as a submarine commander during World War I, was arrested by the Nazi authorities for his preaching. Despite the fact that the court acquitted him, Niemöller was arrested again and sent to a concentration camp.

The Catholic Church did not long enjoy the peace promised by the Concordat of 1933. The Catholic bishops still tried to maintain good relations with Hitler, but due to numerous violations of the terms of the treaty by the Nazi authorities, discontent grew in the middle and lower echelons of the Catholic Church. Many clergy were arrested on ridiculous charges of gold smuggling from Germany. The Catholic press was subject to severe censorship. Religious processions were banned, monasteries were closed, monks were subjected to show trials, accused of debauchery. The propaganda machine, led by Joseph Goebbels, tried to sow disgust among the Germans towards the “moral excesses” of Catholic priests. Resistance to the Catholic Church also grew. The Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Faulhaber, showed open disobedience to the Nazi regime, for which, despite his diplomatic immunity being declared by the papal legate, he was arrested. On March 21, 1937, the encyclical of Pope Pius XI “Mit brennender Sorge...” (“With deep concern...”) was read out from all Catholic sees in Germany, in which Hitler was accused of violating the terms of the agreement with the church and persecuting Catholics. In response, Nazi authorities organized a series of trials of priests, monks and flocks.

Hitler's struggle with the church suddenly ended with the outbreak of World War II. The Fuhrer considered that it was more profitable for him to ease the pressure on the church so as not to undermine the morale of his soldiers. But he did not abandon his ultimate goal - the extermination of both the Catholic and Protestant religions. However, he considered it more prudent not to openly support the organization of new paganism - the German Movement for Faith.

Hitler's relationship with Christianity is not accidental, just as it is not accidental that every tyrant desires not only to rule unlimitedly, but also to put himself in the place of God and demand worship. This is exactly how the “spirit of Antichrist” described in the Bible operates, which has already manifested itself more than once in the past in different guises. “This must not happen again,” the peoples of the world decided after the victory over fascism. However, there is no guarantee that in the future some new ideology, equally deceptive and promising, will not subjugate another great country, or even the whole world. But the experience of German (and not only) Christians shows that people for whom the most valuable thing is faith in Christ and subordination of their lives to His will, and not to the will of the crowd or any political leader, are not so easily deceived by new ideas, even if the most attractive. Even if everyone around is going crazy, those who know the truth will be able to recognize the lies under a beautiful mask.

On the buckles of Wehrmacht soldiers it was written “God is with us” (“Gott mit uns”), interestingly, this was also the motto of the Russian Empire. But in the field of ideology in the Third Reich there were ideas that were contrary to Christian ideology. Adolf Hitler himself did not hide the fact that he learned a lot from his “predecessors”: “I always learned from my opponents. I studied the revolutionary technology of Lenin, Trotsky, and other Marxists. And from the Catholic Church, from the Freemasons, I acquired ideas that I could not find from anyone else.”

The ideology of Nazism itself was not new to Germany; at the beginning of the 20th century, a state ideology was developed, which was based on three basic principles:

Pan-Germanism;
- the cult of the Kaiser, transformed into the cult of the leader;
- cult of the army.

That is why Hitler became popular so quickly; these attitudes and principles were familiar to the Germans. They were introduced back in the days of the German Empire. Ideas about the superiority of the German race over the “degenerate” West and the “barbaric” East were successfully introduced long before Hitler came to power. Although it is clear that the idea of ​​the “Nordic race”, that its “pure”, “direct” descendants are the Germans, was wrong. Thus, the population of Pomerania, Silesia, Austria, East Prussia, and in general Central and East Germany were mainly not Germans, but Germanized Slavs, who were converted to Catholicism and deprived of their faith and language. In addition, even during the terrible Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the German lands lost from a third to three-quarters of the population, after which the national composition was thoroughly diluted by mercenaries from the disbanded armies who settled in Germany - Spaniards, Italians, Swiss, Scots, etc. At the same time, Jews from Poland and Little Russia poured into Germany, who fled from the rebels and Cossacks of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who simply cut them out. As a result, many of them became “Germans”.

Even the aristocracy was thoroughly “diluted” with non-Nordic blood. Germany has long been a fragmented space, consisting of dozens of principalities, lands, and cities. Therefore, it was an ideal place for the activities of all kinds of traders, bankers, and money lenders. The princes and city magistrates, constantly in need of finances, welcomed them and gave them various benefits, so Italians and Jews went to Germany. Many German officers and nobles, in order to improve their financial situation, did not hesitate to marry the daughters of Jewish rich men.

Even outwardly, in Goebbels, Hitler, Himmler and a number of other top functionaries of the Reich, it is difficult to find the “Nordic” signs proclaimed by them. The same famous commander Manstein - Lewinsky, had Jewish roots and was the head of the Main Imperial Security Directorate, Heydrich. No one was embarrassed by the origins of the banker von Schroeder. In principle, the highest leaders of the Reich understood this. Thus, during the racial cleansing in the army and navy, after the Nazis came to power, only 7 officers, 6 cadets, 35 non-commissioned officers and soldiers were fired. And Hitler’s Nazism itself was quite close to Judaism - the idea of ​​​​the “chosenness of God” of Jews and, accordingly, Germans. Only Hitler replaced the Jews with the Germans, the Germans were supposed to rule the planet, becoming “the chosen ones of God.”

The cult of the German emperor - the Kaiser - was replaced by the cult of the Fuhrer (leader). An interesting fact is that Hitler, like Trotsky, knew how to put the crowd into a “trance” without preparing speeches in advance. Exerting a magical effect on her not with his words, but with direct influence - body movements, gestures, tonality of speech. The influence was on a subconscious level.

The cult of the army, “warriors”, “strength” (Nietzsche’s theories) was also not new for the Germans. It dates back to primitive antiquity and was preserved in the Middle Ages in the idea of ​​chivalry. Hitler and his associates and those who stood behind them simply breathed new life into them. Moreover, Christian shells were largely discarded - the same Nietzsche protested against Christian morality. Cruelty, the will to power, and leadership qualities were glorified. No mercy for enemies. The works of Friedrich Nietzsche were very popular in Germany, and not only, even during the First World War. The cult of force and cruelty was also absorbed by Nazism. Moreover, the leaders themselves were not all close to these ideals, for example, Goering was a drug addict, Ley and Kaltenbrunner were alcoholics, Goebbels was a libertine, etc.

Occult theories also entered into the ideology of Nazism - about the “higher unknowns”, about the “hollow moon”, the theory of “four moons”, “Ice and fire”. In addition, the Nazis actively developed themes from previous civilizations, the Order of the Green Dragon, etc.

As a result, Nazism became a new religion, as Goering said: “It is not true that Nazism is creating a new religion. He is the new religion." In many ways, it was neo-paganism, but distorted, based on the worship of the “Black Sun”. The result was a mixture of neo-paganism and Satanism, a breakthrough into inferno. Thus, Hitler himself believed that he was “guided by providence,” that he received strength and ideas “from Valhalla,” the other world of the dead, ancient Scandinavian peoples.

Himmler was involved in the creation of the “Aryan Church”; the SS units were to become its core. These were not only elite units of the Armed Forces, security units and punitive units, but also a kind of knightly order, which included the elite of the Reich - officers, officials, aristocrats, party leaders, scientists and cultural figures, industrialists, financiers. They developed their own symbols, rituals, ceremonies, and laws. One of the centers of the new cult was Wewelsburg Castle.

The most powerful institution of the new ideology and religion was the Ahnenerbe ("Heritage of the Ancestors") society, which carried out both scientific and occult searches. As a result, “The Heritage of Ancestors” began to include an entire system of 50 institutes and research centers. Even the creation of concentration camps was placed on an occult basis: places were calculated where such structures would not bring harm to the Reich and the people in terms of energy, but on the contrary, would be beneficial. As a result, the concentration camps became giant altars to the glory of the “Black Sun”. Hence the maximum cruelty in the East; the territory was being cleared for the “superior race”.

Moreover, Christian denominations in Germany were not prohibited; even the campaign to the East was proclaimed a “crusader”, against the “godless” Bolsheviks. The military had the right to profess the Catholic or Protestant faith. But the Reich elite strictly kept its distance from Christianity. Collective worship services were prohibited in the army and navy. Members of the SS did not have the right to celebrate Christmas, Easter and other Christian holidays. They celebrated their dates - black magic ones, although superimposed on ordinary natural cycles that were celebrated by all the peoples of Eurasia.

In general, the project implied a “restructuring” of the consciousness of the entire people: the same cult of “force” and violence was characteristic not only of SS units. Army units also took part in punitive measures; they left behind significant collections of film and photo chronicles, where Wehrmacht soldiers and officers boasted about their “exploits.” By the way, it’s similar to the modern “exploits” of the Americans in Vietnam, NATO members in Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on.

German industrialists used slave labor stolen from the East, not considering them as people. The Danzig Institute of Technology dealt with the problems of using corpses - methods for processing human skin and recipes for making soap from human fat were compiled. Hundreds of doctors, not only the SS, their assistants, and medical staff participated in experiments on people - infecting people with malaria, typhus, hepatitis, provoking gangrene, transplanting bones, freezing people, etc.

Farmers bought ashes from concentration camps to fertilize their fields, received male and female slaves at their disposal, and organized a “hunt” when they escaped. The Germans were not embarrassed by the use of things taken from people in concentration camps, purchased at reduced prices. And how many parcels did we receive from the East with looted junk? The banks were not embarrassed to receive the things of the executed: gold and silver items, including tooth crowns, earrings torn out of their ears. This stream of looted silver and gold then flowed from German banks to Swiss banks.

That is, it turns out that the god of the Germans and the Reich elite, as well as the puppeteers behind this project, at that time made the “dark lord” of inferno, the “Black Sun”, not for nothing that Lucifer, one of the names of the devil, means “luminiferous” in Latin "

Sources:
Bezymensky L. A. Solved mysteries of the Third Reich. M., 1984.
Zubkov S.V. Occult magic of the Third Reich. M., 2003.
Povel L., Bergier J. Morning of the Magicians. M., 2005.
Poltorak A.I. Nuremberg epilogue. M., 1969.
Schellenberg V. In the web of SD. Minsk. 1999.
http://lib.ru/NICSHE/zaratustra.txt
http://www.nazireich.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=26017&sid=
http://militera.lib.ru/research/shirer/index.html