Reading time: ~4 min read
Although ultimately opposed to religion, in practice, the Nazis behaved diplomatically towards it. Their real aim was to use religious organizations as a tool to achieve their ends. Hitler was a particular enemy of the Catholic Church, which looked on all Christians as a supranational community. In its place, he intended to establish a church for Germans only, and by stages, to develop religion as a tool of German fascism. In a report entitled "The Nazi Party's Program and World View," the Nazi ideologist Gottfried Feder wrote:
Surely, some day the German people also will find a form for its perception and experience of God, a form dictated by its Nordic blood. Surely, only then will the trinity of blood, faith and state be complete.106
According to this perspective, it is necessary for religion to be in harmony with the ideals of "blood and state,' in other words with the Nazis' racist ideology. In Mein Kampf, Hitler summed up how religion was to be manipulated, "Anyone who wants to win the broad masses must know the key that opens the door to their heart."107
In order to appeal to various communities, Hitler used religious terms as this "key," and sought to portray racism as a sacred ideal. Though he was a Darwinist, that is, one who denies creation by a divine being, when formulating his racist propaganda, Hitler made reference to creation, although distorting the idea, to use it as a justification for racism. For example, in Mein Kampf, he said:
The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following: (a) Lowering of the level of higher race; (b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness. To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator.108
Peoples who bastardise themselves or let themselves be bastardised, sin against the will of eternal Providence, and when their ruin is encompassed by a stronger enemy it is not an injustice done to them, but only the restoration of justice.109
Nazism's distortion of religious ideas in this manner, and its use of them to serve its own racist ideology, were to some extent effective, with the opportunistic administrators of a number of German churches playing an important role in the strategy. These hypocritical men of religion, collaborating with Hitler, helped to disseminate Nazi propaganda in several ways. In 1933, when Hitler had only recently come to power, the president of the Union of Catholic Germans, Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, said in a speech on November 2, 1933, "The kind Lord has blessed Germany by giving it in times of deep distress a leader who will lead it, through all distresses and weaknesses, through all crisis and moment of danger, with the sure instinct of the statesman into a happy future."110 Some others had also praised Hitler as someone who was specially chosen to rescue Germany from its historical misfortune and lead it to a bright future.
While the Nazis were duping some churches to collaborate with them, they tried to intimidate others through pressure and fear. In 1932, the Protestant clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a sermon in Berlin on the subject of "the truth." He praised the importance of love as opposed to a racist system based on hatred. He was condemned to death by the Nazis because of this subversive attitude.
Between 1933 and 1939, a large number of Catholic priests were arrested. Erich Klausener, the leader of German Catholic Action, was killed in the purge of 1934. Catholic publications were banned. The Nazis also attacked a number of Protestant churches.
However, those among the clergy who abetted the Nazi ideology were rewarded. One of these was Dr. Hans Kerrl, Hitler's Minister for Church Affairs. In an address he gave to church leaders on February 13, 1937, Dr. Kerrl openly declared Christianity a tool of Nazi ideology, "The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive Christianity is National Socialism... National Socialism is the doing of God's will."111
At the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938, Protestant clergymen, submitting to Nazi terrorism, took an oath of loyalty to Hitler, and thus sealed the surrender of the religious establishment. Hitler thereby enforced his domination over all spheres of life. Even the church was in his hands. But his real goal was to do away with all divine religions, and take Germany fully into paganism. In a secret decree dated June 1941, Nazis' aim of destroying religion was described in this way:
More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors... Never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This influence must be broken completely and finally. Only the Reich government, and by its direction the Party, its components, and attached units, have a right to leadership of the people.112