Three Factions In National Socialist Religious Policy

Newsletter 72: 2 November 1937

“Amidst the complexity of National Socialist policy, the extreme wing, on the edge of, or outside the Party, embracing the organized ‘German Believers’, all the way to the Ludendorff adherents; and openly hostile to Christianity. Second, the ‘neo-pagans’: Rosenberg, the Schwarze Korps review, practically the whole of the SS men and the Hitler Youth – the most influential grouping in the Party. This describes itself as anti-denominational rather than anti-Christian. And third, the ‘German Christians’: not the small sect of that name, but those who hold the conception of a peculiarly National Socialistic Christianity, subserving the dictatorship, as expressed in article 24 of the Party programme and represented by Hitler, Frick and others. All three tendencies are in fact equally wide divorced from Christianity. We are not discussing their standing from this angle, however, but their relative political weight and their position in relation to the Kulturkampf.

Until now, it has been the second tendency which has led the attack upon religion. But now the third is pushing forward – the Fuhrer advances to the lead. Adolf Hitler never really desired the fight with the Church. He wanted a pliable Church, a Church which would pay him homage. The “positive Christianity” in his programme, the government’s statements which were friendly to the Church–these were sincerely intended. But sincere only when measured by the sole standard which applies to all his acts–his inordinate lust for power. At the state ceremony in the Potsdam Barracks on 21 March 1933, the generals bowed before the former corporal. Prussia surrendered to the Austrian. In order to complete the symbolic act, the Church should also assist at the enthronement.

The Concordat was one more attempt to secure this recognition by bartering peace with the Church. how could he have overlooked the Church–he who with such incomparable acuteness perceived every means which would bring him more power, which would consolidate his power in the minds of his subjects? Both Mein Kampf and his later speeches have shown that he coveted power over the Church more than any other institutions. He, whose method it is to possess himself of the existing mechanisms of power and influence, can never have despised that of the Church. Only the superficial will deny this. He has expressed himself drastically against the Church, you will say? His speeches against Hindenburg were a hundred-fold more hostile. Those words were afterwards buried as, with full honours, was later the old man himself; and, in his place, now sits his erstwhile reviler, a thousand times more powerful. That the Kulturkampf ever came about was not through Hitler’s design, but his mistake. He forgot that in Germany and the Church belongs to Christ.

He looked first upon the dispute with the Churches as a struggle for political power. It was not that, however; it was a spiritual conflict. Then he withdrew, to wait, and left the field almost entirely to the second tendency we have described. he was not satisfied as, bit by bit, the standing of the Church in public life was destroyed. Nor was he satisfied with the increasing sei-divine magnification of his own personality. He wished to be honoured by the existing, established Church. He wanted to possess the Church and therefore did not with to see destroyed that which he hoped to make his.

But the Churches did not yield to him. So now he is setting out to make a Church of his own. It must be a ‘Christian’, Messianic Church. Therefore he must take up the fight against the more extreme tendencies among his followers. It is an easy fight, which can be carried on by appealing to the Party programme. The liquidation of organized paganism, the prohibition of the Durchbruch—the other publication, the Blitz, has already been banned for some months past—and even putting General and Frau Ludendorff in their place, all this is easy…

And the second tendency? The fight is also on, for some weeks past. We have cited Rosenberg’s speech so extensively in this article because it so well illustrates the process of ‘co-ordination.’ Even at the last Party Congress at Nuremberg, Rosenberg gave notice that the Nazi party, just as it had ‘cleansed itself of political sects’, would also be able to reject ‘the religious fanaticism which had recently been manifesting itself’. For some time now, we have been noting, in such publications as the Schawrze Korpsand Wille und Macht, controlled by Rosenberg, how the Party, in order to consolidate its influence in the minds of citizens, has been making use of tradition and history, and not excluding, in its praise, the great man and monuments of Germany’s Christian past.

This ‘deviation’ of Rosenberg’s is not merely mechanical acquiescence in the wishes of the Führer; he himself has come to the conclusion that is more expedient not to smash the Church, but to let her die, to force her into the path of inconspicuous decay. His hopes, and those of all his group, lie now in the youth. As he said in his speech at Freiburg: ‘we are building on the fact that the generation now growing up will develop with less spiritual ballast and with a bolder insouciance.’

This is not the first time that Hitler has played the role of the tortoise in the race with the hare. He believes that the time has come for a strategic master-stroke—a clean-up in the field of the Kulturkampf as drastic, in its way, as the Rohm clean-up, but bloodless. The prohibition of organized paganism, the public repudiation of neo-paganism, the solemn declaration of his own Christian faith and friendship for the Church, his agreement with Mussolini—all this to culminate in some noisy public event, in some symbolic act: a blusterous friendly advance towards the Church, resulting in the triumphant counter-blasting of the conception abroad that his regime is anti-Christian—at last, he hopes, a way has been found toward achieving power over the Church, a way tohis own church. It is this scheme—but certainly not its achievement—which will characterize the next phase of the Kulturkampf.”

-Excerpted from “Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The Kulturkampf Newsletters” (1936-1939), Edited and translated by Richard Bonney