Hitler's 'Positive Christianity' project
Attempts to distort the saving doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ have always existed. We see similar attempts to distort Christianity in our own time. The authorities were particularly interested in such distortion. Altered and distorted Christianity was perfectly suited for controlling their own people. The German dictator Hitler made such an attempt.
The God-Building of the Third Reich
The collapse of the empire buried Nazi mysticism and German paganism under its rubble.
From the very moment of its emergence, National Socialism was not a purely political movement. A significant number of its founders and leaders saw Nazism as a new worldview and, ultimately, the foundation for a new faith that would replace all the world’s religions. As early as 1920, the year the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) was founded, its program declared that it “represents the viewpoint of positive Christianity.” That was the first time one of the possible names for the new religious teaching being created by the Nazis was heard, a teaching that became an integral part of their ideology.
The Religion of Jesus Had to Be Corrected
In this regard, among the works written by Nazi leaders before they came to power, a prominent place belongs to the 1929 book The Myth of the Twentieth Century by Alfred Rosenberg, the NSDAP ideologue and editor-in-chief of the party’s central organ, the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. Rosenberg sought to create not just another theory of social development, but an entirely new religion. Its foundations were the doctrines of the chosenness of a specific race and blood, which implied an outright break with the moral principles of Christianity that spoke of the equality of all peoples and races. According to Rosenberg, “the religion of Jesus” had to be corrected and freed from the preaching of humility and love for one’s neighbor.
Fortunately, a religion built on the principles of Nazi ideology was not completed in the Third Reich. Two traditional Christian churches—the Lutheran and the Catholic—wielded great influence in Germany, and the NSDAP leadership had to reckon with them in one way or another throughout its rule. Moreover, within the Nazi movement, there were differing views on relations with Christian confessions; some of its figures considered it entirely possible to fully subordinate them and use them for their own purposes. After the Nazis came to power, they fundamentally rejected all existing church-state agreements. But the newly established regime could not yet afford open persecution of religious organizations. Having become Chancellor, Adolf Hitler drew the Lutheran and Catholic Churches into the orbit of the official Gleichschaltung policy, according to which all spheres of German public life were to be subordinated to the new ideology.
The first transformations in this direction were to take place among the Lutherans. As early as 1932, a pro-Nazi movement of “German Christians” had formed within the Lutheran Church. On 14 July 1933, the Reichstag approved a decree on a new Imperial Church, after which a struggle erupted over the election of the first Imperial Bishop. The Nazis put forward the candidacy of Ludwig Müller, representing the “German Christians.” Having won the election on 27 July, the movement proclaimed itself the “Evangelical Church of the German Nation,” called to present the world with “a German Christ of a dejudaized Church.”
But some Lutheran pastors protested against the introduction of pseudo-Christian Nordic mythology and the “Aryan paragraph” in the racial legislation of the General Synod, which many called “brown.” These protests became part of the program of the Emergency Synod in the city of Barmen (now Wuppertal), where pastors gathered to launch an evangelical resistance movement. After the Barmen Synod (31 May 1934), this movement became known as the “Confessing Church” (Bekennende Kirche). It refused to recognize the authority of Imperial Bishop Müller and made it clear that Christian dogmas were incompatible with the worldview and policies of Nazism. About 7,000 of Germany’s 17,000 pastors joined the “Confessing Church” and became targets of persecution. Subsequently, repression was directed at the movement’s main leaders—Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth, and the renowned Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was arrested on 5 April 1943 and hanged on 9 April 1945. Despite the persecution, the “Confessing Church” managed to survive until the collapse of the Reich.
The NSDAP leadership held an even more hostile attitude toward Catholicism, with its strict dogmatics and direct subordination to the center of world Catholicism in Rome. Although Hitler was born into a Catholic family, this confession was the most odious to him. Nevertheless, upon becoming Chancellor, he repeatedly stated that the new government aimed to create favorable conditions for religious life, and in July 1933 he proposed concluding an agreement (concordat) with the Vatican. The concordat was signed on 20 July, but Hitler intended to keep it only to the extent that it was profitable for him.
“Either you are a Christian, or you are a pagan”
In the first months of his rule, Hitler avoided openly entering into conflict with the Church, although even then, in the circle of his closest associates, he did not hide his plans in this sphere. According to the testimony of the head of the Danzig Senate, Hermann Rauschning, in the autumn of 1933 the Führer declared: “The Italian fascists prefer to make peace with the Church in the name of the Lord. I will do the same… But that will not stop me from eradicating Christianity in Germany, destroying it completely down to the smallest roots… For our people, the decisive question is whether they will follow Jewish Christianity with its soft, compassionate morality—or a heroic faith in the God… of their own people, the God of their own destiny, their own blood… Either you are a Christian, or you are a pagan. You cannot combine both.” Thus, the schemes with the Lutheran Imperial Church or with Catholics independent of Rome were for Hitler merely a temporary means of destroying the traditional confessions from within.
The first serious blow to the sentiment of a significant part of church circles in favor of cooperation with Hitler’s government was dealt on January 24, 1934, when the latter entrusted Rosenberg with control over the entire spiritual worldview and education of NSDAP members and affiliated organizations. The author of “The Myth of the 20th Century” was known at that time as the leader of anti-Christian forces within the Nazi party, and his appointment was a very alarming signal. The emergence of the “Confessing Church” and criticism of Nazism by some representatives of the Catholic clergy contributed to the long-planned shift to anti-church actions. Already in 1934, many religious public organizations were dissolved, church property was confiscated, active Christians were dismissed from public service, and some pastors were expelled from their parishes. From March 1935, a wave of trials swept across the country aimed at discrediting the Catholic Church.
The ecclesiastical-political failures of the “German Christians” gave stimulus to certain forces in the NSDAP to distance themselves from the Church and form their own non-Christian forms of faith and life. An experiment was begun to de-Christianize the peasantry by introducing pagan customs — celebrations of the winter and summer solstices, etc. Soon, pressure to leave church congregations followed. The swastika, associated with the sun and fire cult, was contrasted with the Christian cross as a symbol of humiliation, worthy only of “subhumans.”
The Heritage of Ancestors
One of the main initiators of the first phase of the anti-church campaign was Rosenberg, who in 1935 issued an anti-Catholic pamphlet “On the Dark Men of Our Time,” and in 1937 he attacked Lutheran pastors in another work, “Protestant Pilgrims to Rome.” Both writings explained the incompatibility of Christian tradition with the new worldview. Rosenberg was supported by the heads of certain state structures, in particular Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, leader of the “Hitler Youth” Baldur von Schirach, and head of the German Labor Front Robert Ley.
But this group did not have great influence. In mid-1935, influenced by a number of domestic and international factors, Hitler came to the idea of temporarily normalizing the sharply strained relations with the Church and on July 16 signed a decree establishing the Reich Ministry of Church Affairs. Its head was appointed that same day: Prussian Minister of Justice Hans Kerrl. He belonged to the “inner circle of the Führer” — a group of party and state functionaries, but at the same time he was a deeply religious man close to the Church. Such a personality seemed capable of defusing tensions in church-state relations. Kerrl largely staffed his ministry with officials who had dealt with religious organizations back in the days of the Weimar Republic and did not share the anti-Christian ideas of Nazi ideologues.
He was among the few idealists to whom the synthesis of National Socialism with Christianity seemed not only desirable but possible. In a public explanation of his activities on August 8, 1935, the minister distanced himself from the Rosenberg line and the religious policy of the “Brown House” (NSDAP headquarters in Munich), aimed at the radical separation of Church and state.
Formally, Kerrl had great authority, but he lacked the political influence to implement it. Kerrl’s actions contributed to the consolidation of his opponents and a clearer revelation of their position. In 1935–1936, the head of the Party Chancellery, Rudolf Hess, and his deputy, Martin Bormann, openly began their anti-church activities. The latter’s power in the NSDAP apparatus grew rapidly, and it was he who later became the greatest enemy of the Church. At this time, the SS under Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler also showed its anti-Christian orientation. By the mid-1930s, the SS had developed into a structure resembling the knightly orders of the Middle Ages, but with an anti-Christian essence. Holidays here were observed according to the runic zodiacal circle, the summer solstice was considered the main one, there were rituals of fire worship, etc.
In 1935, Himmler gave the status of a state institution to the organization “Ahnenerbe” (“Ancestral Heritage”) founded in 1933. Its full name was: “German Society for the Study of Ancient Germanic History and Ancestral Heritage,” and this institution was now tasked with studying everything related to the spirit, deeds, traditions, distinctive features, and heritage of the “Indo-Germanic Nordic race.” In 1937, Himmler integrated the society into the SS, subordinating it as a department to the concentration camp administration. From January 1, 1939, the “Ahnenerbe” received a new status and had almost 50 subdivisions. From 1938, all archaeological excavations in the Reich were carried out with its permission. For example, the “Ahnenerbe” organized several expeditions to Tibet, the Middle East, and southern Ukraine to confirm the superiority of the Aryan race.
The most famous is the Schäfer expedition organized in 1937 by the SS services, which among other things studied the Buddhist shrines of Tibet. A documentary film shot by its participants has survived, which was viewed at Hitler’s headquarters in May 1942. In addition to purely scientific research, the “Ahnenerbe” also studied occult secret societies and the revival of ancient mystical cults. Among its areas of activity was the development of psychotropic weapons designed to suppress “crystals of will.” In its final stage, it went as far as monstrous medical experiments on living people in concentration camps.
The Great Campaign Against the Catholic Church
Anti-Christian actions, which had subsided for a time after the establishment of the Ministry of Church Affairs, later resumed with renewed vigor. The churches came under increasing pressure and restriction. By the end of 1936, plans were already being submitted to the Ministry of Church Affairs to denounce the concordat with the Vatican. In this situation, on 14 March 1937, Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, addressed to German Catholics.
Under conditions of deep secrecy, it was brought into Germany and, on Palm Sunday, 21 March, read from the pulpits of all the country’s Catholic churches. It spoke of the non-Christian essence of National Socialism and the incompatibility with the foundations of faith of the pro-Nazi movements that had arisen among German Christians, but it drew a distinction between the anti-church actions of the NSDAP and the imperial government. The Pope wanted to preserve the concordat.
For Hitler, the publication of the encyclical came as a complete surprise. The Gestapo confiscated every copy it could seize, but was unable to prevent its dissemination. The response was an intensification of repression. Entries in Goebbels’s diary testify that in May 1937 the Führer spoke of a “great campaign” against the Catholic Church. In 1937 the NSDAP also officially announced a mass withdrawal of its members and supporters from the Church. Whereas previously clergy had only been sent to concentration camps in exceptional cases, there were now 304 priests in the Dachau camp near Munich.
It seemed that a little more—and Hitler would decide on a rupture and direct confrontation with the Vatican. But this did not happen. The territorial expansion that had begun and preparations for war shifted the Führer’s main attention to other problems and forced him to distance himself somewhat from anti-church actions. In this situation, the struggle intensified between Kerrl and his staff, on the one hand, and the radical wing of the NSDAP led by Bormann and Rosenberg, on the other. Unlike Kerrl, who championed the model of a loyal centralized state church, Bormann advocated the complete separation of state and church, so that, having deprived the latter of all privileges, it could be liquidated at a convenient moment.
With the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Bormann for the first time had a practical opportunity to implement his ideas and he devised a new legal status for the Church on the concordat-free territory of the Ostmark. After a long struggle, he managed to limit Kerrl’s competence solely to the “Old Reich.” The “Law on the Registration of Church Contributions,” issued on 28 April 1939, significantly restricted the rights of religious organizations. Kerrl’s position weakened more and more. On 14 December 1941 the minister died or, according to another version, was secretly killed by the Gestapo in Paris, and his post remained vacant until the collapse of the Reich.
In 1939 the newly formed Reich Main Security Office, whose head, Reinhard Heydrich, was one of the most active and convinced enemies of Christianity, became actively involved in anti-church actions. The Gestapo (secret police), which formed part of this service, had within its structure a special “church desk,” whose direct function was to oversee the activity of religious organizations. The efforts of the various security services had two main directions: the destruction of traditional, stable church structures that had taken shape, and total control over all manifestations of religious life. On 30 January 1939 Hitler declared at a Reichstag session that there could be no mercy for persecuted church ministers, since they represented the interests of Germany’s enemies. The concordat with the Vatican continued to be viewed merely as a postponement of the decisive blow.
The Warthegau Region as a Testing Ground
At the first stage, the neo-pagan Germanic movement still had to remain “for tactical reasons without state recognition as a religious community.” The situation was planned to be altered in 10–15 years: “The state recognizes the Germanic-Nordic religious movement. It is based on a historically founded religion free from Christianity and develops religious forms appropriate to a state religion in private life.” At this intermediate stage, the following goal was set: “Youth educated in the National Socialist spirit will replace the older generation closely tied to the Church, which will die out.” And finally, “in approximately 25 years” the state religion was to come into force.
And for the Party Chancellery, essentially no restrictions whatsoever existed in this regard. Bormann had long laid claim to directing all church policy of the Reich and made no secret of his views. In 1940 he considered that the time had come to move on to practical experiments in working out a model for future anti-church policy across the entire territory of the Reich and its conquered lands. The region of Warthegau, centered on Poznań, which had been annexed to Germany after the defeat of Poland, was chosen as a testing ground. The proposals put forward by Bormann were fully reflected in the so-called “13 Points,” handed over on 10 July 1940 by the authorities to the representative of the Poznań Lutheran consistory. These points were subsequently finalized in the decree of the Warthegau’s governor of 13 September 1941.
The Church was completely abolished. Only individual self-governing religious societies were permitted, and they were forbidden from entering into any relations with church structures in the former Germany. Only adults could be members of congregations, and religion classes in schools were also prohibited. Only priests from the Warthegau could serve in churches, and they were furthermore required to hold another profession; payment for their liturgical activity could come only from voluntary contributions by members of the congregations. Finally, Germans and Poles were forbidden to belong together to the same congregation.
On May 29, 1941, Bormann was appointed head of the Party Chancellery, replacing Hess, who had flown to England. In this capacity, he was responsible for both the drafting and the final editing and publication of all Reich laws and decrees. Just 10 days after his appointment, Bormann sent a letter to all Gauleiters of the Reich titled “Relations between National Socialism and Christianity,” which stated that “the National Socialist and Christian worldviews are incompatible.” Only by completely eliminating the Church’s influence could “the people and the Reich be assured of the strength of their future.” Bormann’s letter became scandalously notorious, and Hitler was forced to recall it.
The Interim Stage Dragged On
At the same time, the difficulties of the military campaign in Russia forced the Nazi leadership to exercise a certain degree of caution. The defeat near Moscow at the end of 1941 made it clear that the time for a “final solution” to the church question in the Reich had not yet come. But Hitler was impatient to root out the influence of the Christian confessions as soon as possible. Insights into his true feelings and intentions in July 1941 – July 1942 are provided by the shorthand records of the Führer’s table talk at the Supreme Command headquarters. According to these records, on December 13, 1941, Hitler stated: “The war is coming to an end. The last great task of our era is to solve the problem of the Church… In my youth, I recognized only one means—dynamite. Only later did I understand: in this matter, you cannot break it over your knee. You have to wait until the Church rots completely, like an organ infected with gangrene.” There are many such statements by the Führer in the records of his conversations; he frequently returned to his post-war anti-church plans in his talk.
Sometimes doubts are expressed in the literature about the authenticity of the published records from 1941–1942. However, there is no basis for this. In German archives, later notes—made personally by Bormann and certified with his signature—have been preserved, in which completely identical, sharply anti-Christian statements by Hitler are cited. Thus, on January 26, 1943, the Führer at his headquarters said: “The Roman state was destroyed by Christianity; the so-called religion of Paul revolutionized the slaves and the Roman sub-humanity… The full magnitude of the contrast between paganism and Christianity is evident in the hygiene that both possessed: even today we marvel at Roman aqueducts and baths! Christianity, on the contrary, suppressed all naturally necessary hygiene… What would the world look like if Christianity had not come and scientific research had not been halted for 1500 years!”
Thus, despite all the fierce hostility toward Christianity on the part of the Nazi leaders, the “intermediate stage” in their anti-church policy continued until the end of the war. In the context of the prolonged military operations and the subsequent setbacks, they did not dare to move on to the next stages of their plans. The defeats at the front themselves were perceived by the Reich leaders in a mystical light. In early 1943, after the defeat at Stalingrad, Goebbels wrote: “Understand! The idea itself, the very understanding of the Universe, is suffering defeat. Spiritual forces will be overcome, and the hour of the Last Judgment is approaching.” The Nazis did not manage to create either a coherent religious doctrine or a single set of rituals. Probably, Hitler’s new religion would have been an eclectic mixture of Germanic paganism, various occult teachings, some external elements of Christianity, and even Buddhism. But in May 1945, the “Thousand-Year Reich” collapsed, burying Nazi mysticism under its rubble.
Mikhail Vitalievich Shkarovsky — Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg.
Related articles
- Yandex covers up provocations by special services: “Project Sinitsky” strides across the Internet! Well-known Services of Russia and Ukraine(!) surprisingly quickly but, indecently openly, reacted to…
- Vladimir Popov. The Geneva Reformer John Calvin Article by Vladimir Alexandrovich Popov, teacher of history and theology at the Moscow Theological Institute of the Russian Union of Evangelical…