THE GERMAN CHURCHES BEFORE AND AFTER
THE RISE OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM
by John S. Conway
Professor Emeritus of History at the University of British Columbia
author of The Nazi Persecution of the Churches
The outbreak of the First World War and the subsequent unprecedented violence and slaughter for more than four years thereafter, was a major catastrophe for all the Christian churches of Europe, especially for the Protestant churches of Germany. The German Evangelical Church was unrivaled in its fervent support of the war effort, justifying the use of military force not only out of loyalty to the Kaiser or nationalistic sentiment, but out of a deep-seated theological conviction that God called the German nation to a special destiny through the elimination of its enemies through war. This doctrine derived from the philosophy of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770 – 1831) who argued that the divine will was expressed through the strongest state imposing its culture over lesser neighbors. By advancing the progress of world history Germany was to be the example of divine approval. In short, virtually all Germans were agreed that God was on their side.
This idea, fervently upheld by church leaders and chaplains in repeated morale-boosting sermons, was shattered by the defeat of 1918, and by disastrous losses on the battlefield. How could God allow Germany to be defeated? In response a senior church official, Bruno von Doering, popularized the view that the true Germany had not been overthrown; its cause had been betrayed by treacherous internal elements. Socialists, communists and Jews, he said, had thwarted God's will. Therefore the duty of all churchmen was to defend the established order and the national cause against the dangers of revolution, godless disorder or materialist secularism.
At the end of 1918 the first Socialist government attempted to disestablish the church and take control of education. Alarmed church leaders mobilized their followers to resist the attempt. Instead, they became staunch champions of a return to the pre-war political setting, hoping for a return of the Kaiser. Protestant church leaders were unequivocally opposed to the egalitarian and democratic institutions of the new Weimar Republic. They were equally strident in their rejection of the Versailles Treaty. The humiliation of what they saw as an unjust and imposed settlement was not merely politically unacceptable; it was also in total contradiction to what they saw as the God-given mission of the German people.
This refusal to accept the consequences of the 1918 defeat was a major influence on the Protestant church's political stance for many years. What was left unanswered was the dilemma of how to explain, or explain away, the superheated militant Christianity of the early war years, with its unquestioning assertion of divinely approved victory. More significantly the German clergy never came to terms with the consequent effect on their credibility. As in many other countries, ordinary German Christians were wholly disillusioned by the seeming hypocrisy of their church leaders and military chaplains and their failure to explain how the terrible slaughter of the trenches could be squared with the worship of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. They saw instead how the church's spokesmen concentrated on blaming enemies at home or abroad for the sudden and unwelcome reversal of their fortunes.
The German churches, both Protestant and Catholic, took refuge in finding scapegoats for Germany's ignominy after 1919. Most serious of all was the deliberate spread of anti-Semitism. Jews were now blamed for the disruption of the pre-1914 national patterns, as well as for their alleged nefarious role during the war. The influx of eastern Jews after 1919, fleeing from persecution in Poland and the Soviet Union, caused further anti-Semitic resentment. Jews were seen as subversive, manipulative and materialistic. Above all, they challenged the churches' attempt to restore national and cultural integrity through the exclusion of alien influences. Still influenced by Luther, the Protestant church maintained that each nation had been given a special destiny by God with the different "orders of creation", which the Church must uphold. Their common enemies were Marxism and mammon. And it did not take long for the allegation to be widely believed that leading members of the Communist Revolution in Russia, and of the newly-established Soviet Union, were Jews. The virulence of the anti-Semitic tirades in the Protestant press of the 1920s was made worse by the awareness that these were defenses against such a much-feared enemy. The conservative values of inherited German traditions were seen to be under continuous threat. The well- entrenched folk memory of anti-Judaism was easily refurbished as a weapon in the armory of a beleaguered church.
In these volatile political circumstances, the response of the German theologians was both confused and conflicted. The prevailing theological climate before the war was one of optimistic liberalism. Its most prominent spokesman was the Berlin Professor Adolf von Harnack, who enjoyed both the Kaiser's favor and wide popular support. It was his belief that German Protestantism represented the highest pinnacle of Christianity's development, outstripping both Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which were still enmeshed in the dogmas of the past. Liberal Protestantism downplayed the traditional Christian teachings about the supernatural, and instead emphasized the value of Christian ethics, with Jesus seen mostly as a superb moral teacher. But after the war's horrors and violence, the credibility of liberal Protestantism was irreversibly damaged. And although Harnack continued to lecture to students, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his influence rapidly faded away.
In the aftermath, each theological faculty struggled to find a theological stance that could be seen as relevant in the new situation of the 1920s. Because Protestantism lacked any central teaching magisterium, in contrast to Roman Catholicism, there was no coherent or unified teaching pattern. But everyone was affected by the fact that most pastors and congregations remained strongly nationalistic and conservative. No strong support emerged for the newly-established democratic institutions of the Weimar Republic from the theologians' ranks, or for human or women's rights, or for international engagement with such bodies as the League of Nations. As before the war, Christian pacifism remained a shunned minority interest. The official line adopted by the Protestant church leaders was that "the church stood above politics," but it was well known that the majority voted for right-wing parties.
Theologians at the universities of Göttingen and Erlangen, such as Emanuel Hirsch, Werner Elert and Paul Althaus, gave active and vocal support to a movement that sought to infuse new vitality into the life of the church; it eventually came to be called The Faith Movement of German Christians. Its supporters rejected the outdated orthodoxies and bureaucratic leadership of their church officials who seemed to be too much tied to the old monarchical order. Instead they sought a new and popular interpretation of Christianity which would meet the needs of the new age. Their focus of loyalty could no longer be the exiled monarch, they felt, but should instead be placed on the national spirit or on a national leader who could unite all the people in a common bond of devotion to Germany.
To such people the essential need was not for Christian orthodoxy, but for Christian activism. In place of pietistic preaching, they demanded the church's complete commitment in political affairs in support of a vision of a renewed and strong Germany. Eagerly swallowing the nationalistic propaganda which ascribed Germany's recent defeat to internal enemies, principally Jews, these advocates sought to give a purely German character to the Christian gospel. They championed the overthrow of the new Republic with its imported liberal ideals and instead called for an authoritarian leadership which could unite and protect all Germans from such foreign dangers. Luther's Reformation would finally be completed by a national, spiritual reassertion of Germany's power and strength.
The rise of National Socialism in the turbulent and crisis-ridden years of the 1920s therefore found many supporters in the ranks of the churches. Its strident anticommunism, anti-Semitism and nationalistic militancy attracted many young people. And even in the ranks of German Roman Catholics, Nazism gained a considerable hold. The leaders of the Catholic church were preoccupied with their desire to overcome the second-class status imposed by Bismarck during the traumatic days of the Kulturkampf. They therefore sought to prove themselves ultra-nationalists in their political sympathies. The Vatican promoted a policy of seeking a new and legally-protected status through agreements (concordats) at the local and national levels. The readiness of the new Nazi government in 1933 to conclude such a Reich Concordat marked a significant, though transitory, agreement with the Catholic Church and provided increased legitimacy for the Nazi rulers in the eyes of German Catholics.
The rise of National Socialism as a popular movement throughout the country obliged Hitler to shed - or rather to conceal - his earlier virulent anti-clericalist and anti-Christian sentiments. He disowned those of his supporters who called for an all-out attack on church institutions and the creation of a new political faith. Instead, the Nazi Party program expressed support for "positive Christianity" without defining too closely what that meant. Hitler steadfastly refused to reveal his long-term intentions. His repeated proclamations of anticommunism and anti-Semitism led increasing numbers of church people to see Nazism as a bulwark against the danger of anti-German and anti-Christian forces. Even though a number of theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, realized the incompatibility of Nazi racism with Christian orthodoxy, this did not prevent widespread political support for the Nazi movement. Some church people were affected by the incessant Nazi propaganda, others by the widely propagated image of Hitler as a father figure who would rescue Germany from her economic, political and diplomatic woes.
As a result, when the new Nazi government took power in January 1933, wide sections of the churches saw this development as a welcome sign of the return of authoritarian government, or even as a moment when Germany's spiritual renewal could begin under Nazi leadership. To some of the more enthusiastic Protestants, Hitler "was the redeemer in the history of the Germans," or as one leading Nazi said, "Adolf Hitler has hammered home the truths of Christianity into the hearts of Germans." The Nazi minister of church affairs proclaimed his view that Nazi ideology and the Christian religion were identical, because "National Socialism is the fulfillment of the will of God which is demonstrated to us in our blood."
It was the tragedy of the German churches that they were so inadequately prepared to oppose such strident heresies. They lacked safety valves against the challenge of the ‘radical right' that offered a vision of church and state working hand in hand to renew the nation's strength. The more perceptive churchmen realized too late the dangers of Nazi ambitions. The heresy of a nationalist pseudo-religion had gained too many adherents for effective defenses to be built or successful alternatives to be preached. Cut off from potential allies in the ecumenical movement abroad, only a handful of staunchly orthodox members of the Protestant Confessing Church were ready to take up arms to uphold Christian truths and to suffer for their faith. The lessons to be drawn from the churches' behavior before and after the rise of National Socialism remain.
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