Religious Census reveals of how many members each church had as Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist party began to ascend to the top of the authority structure in Germany. Put succinctly, over forty-million Germans were Protestant eight years before the Nazi’s takeover. Around twenty-one million of these Christians were Catholic, and six-hundred and twenty-thousand Germans belonged to an assortment of smaller denominations, the majority of which were Protestant. Hitler and the regime realized one potential way to achieve control of the state was for the party to become appealing to the Protestant Churches.
A. The NSDAP’s Twenty-Five Point Program
As the National Socialist party was dashing through the ranks on its approach to capturing command and declaring the occasion as a new Third Reich in Germany, the party announced a twenty-five point program in a speech to the German people in Munich. On February 24, 1920 (point four and twenty-four) of the party’s twenty-five point program decreed:
Point Four: “None but members of the nation may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation”.
Point Twenty-Four: “We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for a positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health from within only on the principle: the common interest before self-interest”.
This twenty-five point program is the initial tactic of the National Socialist party’s strategy toward the Protestant Churches. Points four and twenty-four can be analyzed even further to assess more precisely as to what the National Socialist German Worker’s party (NSDAP) was trying to accomplish with this approach. Point four of this political strategy is to announce the eviction the Jews. The NSDAP boasted that not a soul could be considered as a citizen unless they were of Germanic descent. This is a type of secularized anti-Jewish policy noted earlier. This anti-Jewish policy was not based on religious differences. The NSDAP felt that the Jews were not even allowed to live among them. Therefore, they are calling initially for their expulsion from the country.
Point twenty-four is just as strategically important as point four in the NSDAP’s program. Point twenty-four pronounces autonomy for all religious denominations. This issue went over exceedingly well with the Protestant Churches throughout the nation. The NSDAP articulated that they wanted freedom for all religious denominations; however, the stipulation was as long as the Protestant Churches did not provide confrontation toward the state. The NSDAP’s unsurpassed scheme is revealed in the sentence which boasted that the party stood for a “positive Christianity.” It was a masterpiece of political formulation, for it was affirmative rather than negative, and yet it left the central concept undefined. Everyone was free to define “positive Christianity” as he would…Positive Christianity was obviously something which was anti-Marxist and anti-Jewish, and also something above petty interfaith and interdenominational differences. In general it was easier to point out what it was not than what it was. Positive in form, but paradoxically essentially negative in meaning.
Point twenty-four was not just brilliant tactically in logic; it was resourceful of the NSDAP because this twenty-five point program had already begun its manipulation of the Protestant Churches. Point twenty-four of this program gave the NSDAP and the Protestant Churches common enemies; although, it is important to note that the National Socialist party was not taken very seriously at this time. Conversely, this nonchalant position by the Protestant Churches benefited the NSDAP party. The Protestant Churches’ leaders were getting fatigued from numerous diverse aspects such as: the augmentation in atheism (which Marxism and Communism had been blamed for in Germany), the scarcity of resources (that struck the Protestant Churches because of the Great Depression during the course of the Weimar years.), and the Protestant Churches were still in the progression of a major shape change in power configuration. To reveal the structure of the Protestant Churches lucidly, experts pointed out that for a person to understand the Protestant Churches’ factional formation an individual must:
“…remember that at that time there was not one German Protestant Church. From the theological standpoint there were three groups with different traditions, the Lutherans who were the largest body, the Reformed (i.e., Calvinists) who were specially to be found in Westphalia and the Rhineland, and the United (i.e. combinations of Lutherans and Calvinists). Geographically there were twenty-eight separate Churches (Landskirchen) corresponding to the States that made up the Reich. In 1922, a German Evangelical Church Federation (Kirchenbund) had been formed with limited powers…”
B. Restructuring of the Protestant Churches’ Authority
Throughout this period, the Protestant Churches had been going through major restructuring in their authority. The Weimar Republic’s prominent members had merged the Protestant Churches beneath three clerics who were afterward designated by the name, Three Holy Kings. Before World War I, during the duration of the glory days of the first and second German Reichs, the Protestant Churches had been beneath various princes from an array of diverse provinces. The authority structure for the Protestant Churches was a very extensive progression that had been developing since the Protestant Reformation. When Martin Luther and the Protestants won their liberty from the Catholic Church, they spread the Protestant Church’s authority around to keep Papal power from reemerging in the Protestant Churches. The German princes of each territory that a church was within would be accountable for that particular parish, whether Catholic or Protestant. The Protestant Churches’ government evolved through dissimilar phases, but this type of Protestant Church supervision virtually lasted until the end of World War I.
After the Prussian Empire’s defeat in World War I, the Empire collapsed, sending Germany into a tailspin. Germany entered 1918 under the control of an entirely new type of government termed the Weimar Republic. The headship of the Weimar Republic compounded the Protestant Churches’ administration into the “Three Holy Kings” as noted earlier. For nearly four hundred years prior to this restructure, the princes had ruled over the land churches. However, the princes’ guidance had all come to an end by November of 1918. Most of the Protestant Churches’ powers shifted to regulatory courts known as consistories. This authoritarian collapse was not the only reason that the Protestant Churches’ influence had shrunk. Germany was no longer a part of the Prussian Empire; in fact, Prussia had been dissolved almost entirely. Germany’s king was in exile, and its people were scattered. Several of the German princes had vanished in this war along with their territories which held a large number of the Protestant Churches. A great amount of the Protestant Churches’ affiliates and facilities were lost as a corollary of this land diminution. So this is what they would remember: the German Empire. Otto von Bismarck had united 18 different German states; the largest was the kingdom of Prussia, covering two thirds of German territory. Prussia’s capital was Berlin; its territory extended east to the Lithuanian border, south to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and north along the Baltic Sea. Its western outposts included the farmlands of Westphalia, the Ruhr coal fields, and the vineyards and castles that flank the Rhine.
This land reduction is a noteworthy factor in the Protestant Churches’ paralysis during the Third Reich. It would be extremely dubious that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis could have neutralized the Protestant Churches so successfully if the Protestant Churches would not have been reduced so severely. If the number of members within the Protestant Churches had not been diminished, the National Socialist party would had to figure out a way to suppress a plethora of princes who were in authority over the Protestant Churches which would have been particularly complex as well. However, the NSDAP did not have to overcome the preceding situation, and they took advantage of the circumstances right away.
C. The Parallel Organization is Formed
The National Socialist party strategically placed soldiers throughout Germany in uniform and in ranks to win over the Protestant Churches’ consent. This incident would be the first time that the National Socialist party and the opposition would face down one another. On November 10, 1931, the Evangelical Supreme Church Council issued a proclamation which prohibited soldiers to be dressed in a uniform to attend church services. To counter the Protestant Churches’ “malevolent” attack and secure a majority vote in the Old Prussian Union, Wilhelm Kube (a leader of the National Socialist party in the Old Prussian Union) devised one of the party’s most clever tactics on their way to power. He switched the party’s name to the Evangelical National Socialists. Kube’s ingenious idea improved the party’s status in the Prussian lands, and it even helped to win over a lot of church laymen. Nevertheless, Hitler did not like the name because it tied them down to a denominational level. Afterward, Adolf Hitler and Gregor Strasser (Reich organization leader) changed the name to the Deutsche Christens or the German Christians.
Kube’s approach to enter the church elections in Prussia was purely for the NSDAP to gain politically, not religiously. This scheme was accepted by the Protestant Churches; no opposition from the Protestant Churches really took place from this tactic of the National Socialist party. These kinds of ploys actually elevated the National Socialist party’s sovereignty even further and launched them into their next major tactic to neutralize the church. The German Christian Faith Movement (GCFM) was born; this faction was an obvious attempt by the party to get the backing that it desperately needed by the Protestant Churches. On May 26, 1932, The German Christians issued a doctrine of ten guiding principles.
