A selection from Robt Ericksen's Theologians under Hitler that provides some insight into the relationship of the Nazis to the German church:
The Case of Gerhard Kittel
After 1933 Kittel registered his approval of the Hitler phenomenon by joining the Nazi Party and working in Walter Frank's Reichsinstitute. Kittel admits in his defense statement that he joined the Party out of enthusiasm, not opportunism, and that he continued to feel responsible for the "purity of the movement" for many years. He adds the common, though in retrospect incredible, judgement that he took it for a Christian moral renewal. On the surface this judgement seems to have placed inordinate faith in Hitler's promise that the Party stood for "Positive Christianity". Mein Kampf was ignored. Alfred Rosenberg was ignored. The one explanation which clarifies this widespead misconception is that Christianity became confused with such a large package of cultural factors that it was no longer distinguishable on its own. Christianity was German culture. Christianity was middle-class morality. Christianity was respect for authority. Christianity was law and order. Christianity represented an established class in its opposition to turmoil from the left. It was on this basis that so many Christians mistook the Nazi movement for a religious renewal, and it was on this basis that Kittel joined the Nazi Party.
(It would have spared a great deal of confusion if Christians had read Rosenberg's definition of "Positive Christianity". i.e. Christianity cleansed of its Jewish roots. On the other hand, church membership and attendance did increase markedly in the first months of the Hitler regime. Part of the increase probably resulted from Nazi Party attempts to influence the church elections of 1933, but presumably this doesn't entirely explain the phenomenon.)
In the spring of 1933 the church struggle began.It was precipitated when German church leaders sensed that, in the spirit of the times, they should bring about the long-deferred unification of the several regional churches into one Reichs church. Hitler assisted their decision by naming his old friend, Chaplain Ludwig Mueller, special representative of the Fuhrer to the churches. A great deal of backstage maneuvering took place as the various factions hoped to strengthen their position in the new church, with the crucial decision centering around the naming of a Reichs bishop. Moderate hopes rested on Fritz von Bodelschwingh, who was non-political and widely respected. Mueller naturally thought the honor would fall to him. The first round in the rather confusing events which followed went to Bodelschwingh. In May he was announced by the regional church representatives as the new bishop. But Mueller and his allies, the radically Nazi Deutsche Christen, were outraged. They brought in the SA to harass Bodelschwingh's offices, and in Prussia they convinced the cultural minister, Rust, to appoint a state commisioner for the Prussian church. Bodelschwingh, recognizing his position was hopeless, resigned at the end of June. The election was then thrown open to a vote of the full church membership. On the evening of 22 July Hitler made a surprise radio broadcast, requesting support for Mueller; and in the elections of the next day, with Bodelschwingh out of the way and a number of unfamiliar faces filling the churches, Mueller achieved over 70% support.
In September this new church administration attempted to apply the restrictive Aryan Paragraph to the church (approximately 35 of the 18,000 pastors and church officials were non-Aryan). Martin Niemoeller responded by forming the Pastor's Emergency League. In November the Deutsche Christen held a rally at the Sports Palace in Berlin, during which a Dr Krauss delivered a speech denouncing the Jewish influence on Christianity and calling for the removal of the Old Testament from the Bible. This further discredited the new church officials and gave impetus to the formation of an opposition church structure. In 1934, the Barmen Declaration, inspired by Karl Barth, was established as a confession of faith on which the new church structure, the Confessing Church, could base its opposition to Deutsche Christen heresy.
Thus, in a very few months the lines were drawn between Nazi policy and the church. Church opposition was rarely thoroughgoing, it is true. Churchmen, accustomed to respecting the state and sharing much of the anti-Bolshevik and anti-Jewish bias of the Nazis, opposed interference with church affairs but not National Socialist policy in general. Only a few, Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, did that. But where did Kittel stand as his church was roughly treated? He supported Bishop Wurm against Nazi threats. He privately tried to assist individual members of the Confessing Church against reprisals. But he showed no public affection for the Confessing Church, and he attacked the Barmen Declaration on the basis that the church must respond to the "historical hour" of the German people. In a letter to Karl Barth in 1934, Kittel spoke for "some of us National Socialist theologians in Wurttemburg" who believed that agreement with state and Fuhrer was obediance to the law of God. And, somewhat ironically, he cited that passage in 1 Corinthians, "to the Jews I became a Jew, in order to win Jews", as support for his belief that Christians in Germany must endorse the Volk.
Kittel's instincts in 1933 were to side with the Deutsche Christen, who also believed in the "historical hour", but he realized before the year was out that he could not accept their exclusive polarization of the church and radicalization of the Jewish question. In 1938 the Deutsche Christen established at Eisenach an anti-Jewish institute. Again Kittel kept his distance. Indeed, the existence of the Deutsche Christen is one of the most fortuitous circumstances in Kittel's favor. Their extremism makes Kittel seem to have been in the mainstream by comparison. These theologians rejected the Old Testament, proclaimed an Aryan rather than a Jewish Jesus, and fused pagan and Christian elements into a peculiarly German mysticism. On all of these counts Kittel was innocent. He remained true to basic orthodoxy. Kittel thus fell into that vast middle sector of German Protestantism which accepted neither the religious heresy of radical Nazism nor the political heresy of opposition to the state. He claimed in 1945 to have worked within the system to protect the church, but he never took a clear, public stand against either Nazi policy or for the one rival alternative, the Confessing Church.
Theologians under Hitler, Robt Ericksen, Yale University Press, 1985, pg 46ff |
