These guidelines illustrate how the National Socialist party was trying to embed the Protestant Churches with the same ideologies from their 1920 twenty-five point program. A wealth of new guidelines persisted in this
fresh document, but its underlying philosophies were the equivalent. The tactic, here, by the party is evidently to try to unite all of the Protestant Churches into one united church, namely a Protestant Reich Church. The National Socialist party was manipulating the Protestant Churches by chipping away at their foundations. If they could unite the Protestant Churches beneath one body, the NSDAP could control the Protestant Church body by appointing a Reich Bishop over it. The National Socialists go as far as to call Marxism the “enemy of God”, and they call the Catholic Centre Party “unspiritual.” They were principally beseeching with the Protestants to see things their way. Martin Luther is even referred to as a champion, and they censure the Jews for contaminating Germany’s culture. The GCFM is a tactic that worked, and the German Christians gained one-third of the chairs during this election.
The brilliance of this tactic lies in the principle that was noted earlier. The National Socialist party created mutual enemies or communal values between them and the Protestant Churches’ leadership. Initially, they both shared distrust for the Weimar Republic’s leniency. Then, this was accompanied by a hatred for Communism. From 1922 the Bolshevik regime in Russia had systematically eradicated Christianity and thousands of priests and bishops had been executed or imprisoned, whilst monasteries had been completely eliminated. The Nazi regime used such events as these, and they connected the Jews to Bolshevism. By sharing adversaries, the National Socialist increased their influence that they needed from the Protestant and Catholic Churches. Without the Protestant and Catholic Churches’ consent, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime might not have come into control legally. Many scholars accept that the Nazi regime and the Protestant Churches shared at least some values. Perhaps an insight to the understanding of the National Socialists Party’s plan to coordinate the Protestant Churches into one body. It was insinuated as:
“Groups in any sort of war situations are not tolerant. They cannot afford individual deviations from the unity of the coordinating principle beyond a definitely limited degree”.
“A relatively small fighting group, in a situation of acute conflict, may benefit from a decline in its membership, as long as this decline purifies it of elements which tend to mediation and compromise….The majority group does not have to insist on such decisiveness of pro and con. Vacillating and conditional members are less dangerous to it because…its large volume can afford such peripheral phenomena without being affected in its center, every uncertainty of a member at once threatens the core and hence the cohesion of the whole. The slight span between the elements makes for the absence of that elasticity of the group which… is the condition of tolerance”.
The German Christians follow the typical pattern of a sect. They were relatively small in size, and they focused their efforts on a principle that Max Weber called an ecclesia pura. This movement had its National Socialist party twists to it; the GCFM followers believed that they were purifying Germany of such factions as atheists and Jews, which they saw as debasing their nation. They held incredibly steady to a ten-point guideline that the movement leaders had created. These guiding principles mean that they would not endure anything less. The GCFM would not allow any exterior beliefs than what they deemed as a Godly doctrine.
It is very important to see this movement as a sect because it is very complicated to appreciate the German Christians’ tendencies if they are not seen as a sect. This movement gradually tries to implement to the National Socialist party’s main objective which was to progress the German Christians into an ecclesia or state religion which will be discussed later on in this study. With Hitler’s sponsorship, the GCFM would rapidly grow in size. This augmentation in volume is another sign that Hitler and the regime supported the German Christians because most sects take years or even centuries to grow just into a church. The German Christians would grow into an ecclesia, which is larger than a church, in less than a year after Hitler and the Nazi regime came into power. This kind of expansion is debatably impossible without the regime lending aid and support. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s support of the GCFM would amplify along with their increased development in power.
B. Hitler’s Manipulation of Religious Autonomy
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was elevated to power as he became the Chancellor over Germany. Hitler did not take long to influence the Protestant Churches; in fact, he addressed the Protestant Churches in his first radio transmission after rising into his Chancellor position. On February 1, 1933, Hitler declared, “The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life”. Only fifteen days later, at Stuttgart, on February 16, 1933, Hitler announced, “We want to fill our culture again with Christian spirit, not only in the theory. No, we want to burn out the putrefaction of appearances in our literature, in the theater, in the press, and shortly in our whole culture …” Hitler’s strategy, in his first few speeches, seems to announce that Christianity would have liberty to practice as it may. Hitler even held the churches in high regard, and he credited them with being the moral fiber of Germany’s culture. Nevertheless, in private, Hitler planned to assimilate the Protestant Churches to Nazi ideologies. His unspoken goal was to combine the Protestant Churches under one Reich Bishop. Obviously, a Reich Bishop which he would appoint himself. This Reich Bishop would be in charge of distributing the Nazi’s propaganda. The objective of pretending to allow such things as religious autonomy, at first, is to get more support from the German people. Hitler saw no better opportunity to gain control of the state than through the state’s main organizations the “Protestant Churches.” In Hitler’s design, this German Christian sect would be evolved into a Nazi ecclesia. This state religion would teach Germans what it meant to be a Nazi. The evidence that supports such a theory lies in hidden illustrations all throughout the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.
Hitler, in the speech mentioned previously, called for a religious revival, and it was a revival that he would deliver. By calling for a religious revival, the National Socialist party gained in several ways. This demand for purity showed that even though the National Socialist party did not hold fast to a particular denomination; it did take Christianity seriously. The call for religious purity elevated the National Socialist party’s popularity among the Protestant Churches throughout Germany. This was a major aspect because for over fourteen years the Protestant Churches had been under scrutiny during the Weimar years. Now, Hitler and the National Socialist party called for a resurgence of religion, something that had not happened for the Protestant Churches in Germany for over a decade. an illustrated of such a revival by attesting:
“…National Socialists flocked to church services and many who had left the church rejoined. Not to belong to a church was a tantamount to being a Social Democrat or Communist, of which no good Nazi would wish to be suspect. The government had concretely shown its religious orientation by providing on February 25, 1933, for the gradual abolition of the 295 secular schools… Furthermore the classes in moral or ethical instruction which had been instituted in some elementary schools for those pupils who had been withdrawn from religious instruction were abolished…Instruction in all schools of Bavaria was to start and end with prayer and in general religion was to be stressed. Similar ordinances were issued by most of the other state governments. To the churchmen this all seemed a striking contrast to the time of the Revolution of 1918, when many of the new governments started out by taking action against school prayers and the traditional role of religion in schools. An example of this contrast may be found in the practice in Hamburg, where after 1920 it had been the rule that pupils had to make application for religious instruction. This procedure was reversed in 1933, and all students took religion in the schools unless they specifically applied to be exempted from these classes.”
C. Relevance of Group Size
The Nazi regime did not only attack secularism; they harassed other enemies of the Protestant and Catholic Churches. Jehovah’s Witnesses soon became the target of Hitler and the Nazi regime. The regime went after the Witnesses mostly because they would not profess allegiance to the Nazi regime. Their “disloyalty” came in different forms such as: non-membership to the German Labor Front, lack of participation, and even failures to report for enlistment duties. Jehovah’s Witnesses did not backpedal from the Nazi’s persecutions despite being sent to concentration camps, and sometimes even their children suffered their parent’s same fates. They even produced memorandums deprecating Nazi maltreatment of Jews even though the state was applying much pressure to quiet them (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Website).
To logically comprehend the Jehovah’s Witnesses high level of disapproval and the Protestant Churches’ acceptance of the Nazi Regime, an individual might look at the size of their groups. This dissimilarity in size is the apparent variation between the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Protestant Churches. Experts stated that, “…group structure helps to define the intensity of actual or expected conflict with the outside; …actual or expected intensity of external conflict in turn exerts pressure toward numerical smallness and high membership involvement.” In other words the bigger that a religious group is in structure, the less prepared for external conflict it will be like the Protestant Churches. Alternatively, the smaller the religious group is in structural size; the more prepared the group is for exterior conflict like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ smaller size qualifies it, in experts’ ideal type, as being a group that would have higher group membership participation. On the other hand, the Protestant Churches’ large size makes it more likely to have lower group involvement. The Jehovah’s Witnesses appear to fit experts’ model of sect with their member’s involvement as well with a large number being devoted against the Nazi regime, and the Protestant Churches fit the larger structures model with a lower concentration of involvement. Besides virtual size and extent of contribution proclaimed, “…these must be considered in relation to a third … continuously struggling as against only occasionally struggling groups.” Put simply, religious groups that are expecting an immense amount of exterior conflict set up their organizations to be small with a profound importance on the members’ personalities; whereas, religious groups that do not presume a multitude of outer conflict set up their organizations to be large with relatively few of their peoples’ individualities being known. The size of the religious group did appear to have a significant influence on the degree of resistance; yet, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime were difficult to hinder either way.
D. The Nazi’s Emergence to Power
On February 27, 1933, no one (in Germany) could have predicted what happened next. The Reichstag Building, the gathering place for the German legislature, was burning. After the fire was finally put out, the police explored the building and found many packages with combustible materials which had been used to start this inferno. The National Socialist party used these circumstances as a way to transfer their party even further up in authority. On the subsequent day, Adolf Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to establish the Reichstag Fire Decree. Perhaps, the largest mistake in Hindenburg’s life occurred when he signed this decree into law under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. This gave the National Socialist party exactly what they had been trying to accomplish all along. This restricted the rights of civil liberties for the German people. Therefore, the National Socialist party was free to go after anyone they deemed as antagonists while using the justification and the backing of the state. To secure a majority vote for the National Socialist party, Adolf Hitler abruptly became exceptionally spiritual. Translated Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933, as follows:
“The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life….The advantages of a personal and political nature that might arise from compromising with atheistic organizations would not outweigh the consequences which would become apparent in the destruction of general moral basic values. The National Government regards the two Christian Confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality. They will respect the agreements concluded between them and the federal States. Their rights are not to be infringed. But the Government hopes and expects that the work on the national and moral regeneration of our nation which they have made their task will, on the other hand, be treated with the same respect. They will adopt an attitude of objective justice towards all other Confessions. But they cannot permit the fact of belonging to a certain Confession or a certain race should constitute a release from general legal obligations or even a license for the commission with impunity or the toleration of crimes. It will be the Government’s care to maintain honest co-operation between the Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith….The Government will only make use of these powers in so far as they are essential for carrying out the vitally necessary measures….The rights of the Churches will not be diminished, and their relationship to the State will not be modified.”
The theme of Hitler’s speech mentioned previously is for political party increase. He never had the notion to honor this contract that he proposed to the churches in his speech to the Reichstag; however, this address won him immense support in churches all throughout Germany. This speech is also an attempt to secure a majority vote on the Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich. This law is what people refer to now as the “Enabling Act of 1933.” The Enabling Act is an expansion of the Reichstag Fire Decree. The Enabling Act gave Hitler and his cabinet the right to make laws without, first, having to go through the Reichstag. This was an enormous stride in the Nazi’s takeover of Germany. Experts declared:
“Political parties, trade unions, business organizations, professional groups, and even to a great extent the army, succumbed to these Gleichschaltung (Regimentation or Coordination) procedures—but not the churches. The Nazis attempt to coordinate the churches led to the long, serious, complex conflict which has been aptly named the Kirchenkampf….The Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) had many aspects. The Struggle to maintain purity of doctrine was more critical in the Protestant than in the Catholic church, for the German Christians, with their acceptance of many of the Nazi racial and folk ideas, threatened to take over the whole Evangelical church….The support lent by the state to the German Christians, as well as state policies toward the Christian youth organizations, the church press, the schools, the clergy, and above all the Jews, inevitably brought the churches into varying degrees of conflict with the state and party. While the Kirchenkampf as such was primarily concerned with the freedom of the church within the state and did not challenge Nazism directly as a political system, it was nevertheless, a broad channel through which criticism of Nazi policy could and did flow. It was not clear to churchmen at that time that in a totalitarian state all opposition in the end becomes political opposition.”
