This is the first in a two-part series. You can read the second part here.

Christianity and Nazism have been contrasted as opposing movements. Yet theologians and clergy in Germany supportive of the Nazi Party went to great lengths to make both agreeable to each other. In some instances, Christian priests and theologians became the best of collaborators with the Third Reich. Their rhetoric supported the regime and made it acceptable to the German public in a religious context, alluding to traditional Christian values, which the Nazis claimed they were returning to. The ideas for authoritarianism, antisemitism, and belligerence were allegedly found in Biblical scholarship and the tradition of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. This helped the Nazi regime run more smoothly in Germany, as the public felt comfortable with a political movement that did not appear to be radical to the ideas of their faith. However, many of these priests and theologians did not realize the monster they had helped grow until it was too late, and Europe was destroyed in the misery of a cruel and unjust war. A reflection on the ways in which theologians supported the rise and consolidation of power offers important clues for how Christian Nationalism serves to support the growing tide of American authoritarianism now at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Even before the end of World War I, much had happened in theological thinking due to social and political revolutions which had taken place in the nineteenth century. The idea of Christian authoritarianism—an idea which had been common in Western Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period—had ended at the chop of the guillotine. A further fear from theologians was the arrival of Marxist ideology, which calmed to create a classless society without religion at all. With a continued growing sense of malaise among the public about religion in the nineteenth early twentieth century due to the period’s events, most theologians were looking for someone to bring a spark back to the old way. Germany, unlike most of Western Europe, was a mixed Christian state, containing both Lutherans (northern and central Germany) and Catholics (Bavaria). Even while their traditions could lead to different specifics, many pro-Nazi theologians from both Christian traditions had similar general ideologies as to how Christian doctrine fit the reality of National Socialism in Germany.

The first measure National Socialist theologians had to introduce was the idea that Nazism did not go against Christian values—it affirmed them. The theologians had to reverse the current pattern of separation of church and state that had taken root in the nineteenth century. Abbot Schachleiter affirmed that both Christianity and Nazism had the same goal; one was just a religious entity, the other political.¹ Many Christians, especially Catholics, feared that they had to choose loyalty to Hitler and the state over their own religious loyalties, including allegiance to the Pope. However, some theologians went back to the old idea of integrated Church-state relations that had been the norm in prior centuries. Hitler and the party were the political establishment not unlike the Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages. The Church was the religious establishment. It was believed that both institutions were guarding traditional values against modernity, particularly Communism. The Church, like the Nazis, loathed Marxism, due to the political movement’s atheism. The Church also had criticized the march to republicanism that had been the backdrop of the turn of the nineteenth Century. Several theologians wrote against the Weimar Republic. Haueser in his “We German Catholics” rallied against the new regime stressing the return to monarchism.² The Nazis were a movement the opposite direction of democracy, and a return to an authoritarian regime. Totalitarianism was something theologians identified with European culture in the Middle Ages. All life was governed by Christian ethics and morals. Nazism was seen as a return to a totalitarian society, which had been seen as harmonious. Indeed, many of the Popes in thenineteenth century had spoken out against the ideas of the Enlightenment that were changing the very fabric of European society. The Church wished for a return to the old ways of society, which the Nazis openly agreed to pursue as well. Therefore, Christianity and Nazism were allies with the same values and the same enemies trying to restore the supposed calm before the French Revolution. The goal was to create a corporate state where all things fit together to create a harmonious society.

Most of the Nazi theologians had experienced the terrors of World War I. The war’s aftermath however affected them more profoundly. The harsh treatment of Germany at Versailles and beyond lead to suffering that dissatisfied the citizenry. They were looking for a savior like figure that would enable Germany to rise again. The eldest and most known theologian for German Catholics of the early period before Hitler won the Chancellery in 1933 was Albus Schachleiter, a Benedictine monk. He advocated for a nationalistic view of Germany expansionism. The Germans had to cross the “battle line” to fight anyone who stood in Germany’s way to greatness.³ His militant message appealed to Hitler who sought clergy that could support his cause. However, Hitler (Catholic himself) was wary about entirely combining Church and state into his National Socialist platform. Later joining Schachleiter’s militarism was Fr. Phillipp Hauser who agreed that only war could restore Germany after it’s loss in World War I; for Hauser the aim was to create a society geared for war, an “an ‘ethnic and national pride that is tied to sensible cultivation of the mind and strict schooling of the will and healthy military education.’” The aim of this was to “give back the Volk its lost honor and create the basis for a true rebuilding.”⁴ The Lutheran theologian Emanuel Hirsch’s outlook on war was similar: “War is a judgment of God, but a Volk has the right to demand this judgment of God only if it is ready, if necessary, to bleed to death in this war [World War I].”⁵ The message was clear: For Germany to revitalize itself it would have to seek vengeance against the Allies for the unjust terms of Versailles which had left it broke an impoverished. Only if the society was spiritually prepared to fight would they win. One could consider the rhetoric a holy war against secular values of democracy, capitalism, and Marxism which had battered Germany. This was a departure from the concept of peace typically found in Christianity and the just war doctrine officially embraced by the Church stressing conflict as a defensive last resort whose end goal was peace. The Nazi theologians however preferred an offensive total war and for Germany to gain vengeance over the Allies and secure her place as the greatest of nations.

National Socialism was seen as an awakening of the German people, a movement to return to their roots as a Christian people. Many theologians saw modernity as ruining German values which had been forged in the Middle Ages. The idea was to restore Germany to the First Reich, The Holy Roman Empire, with its brand of German Christendom. The nineteenth century and the Enlightenment had led to a disdain for Christianity among many intellectual elites who saw in it superstition or acquiescence to papal tyranny. This malaise continued right until World War I. The question which plagued many theologians and clergy was how to make Christianity relevant in a changing world of industry. For Germany, which had industrialized quickly after unification in 1871, this became an issue. The war also led to a malaise in German spirituality, giving in to defeat and despair. Above all Marxism was the movement that was feared the most since it espoused an atheistic world. Other political movements such as the Social Democrats and the Bavarian Catholic Center Party were viewed with suspicion.⁶ The idea was to reconstitute the Christian Volk which had been infected by modernity. However, both traditions had their differences in approach. The Lutherans desired a Germany separate from foreign, and, by extension, Catholic, elements, having waged a military conflict with Catholic France in 1871 and a social battle against the Church in the 1880s during the Kulturkampf. The Catholics in Germany affirmed the need for a Christian Nation. While the Enlightenment emphasized the individual, fascism (of which Nazism was one manifestation) advocated the importance of the community or the majority society above all else. Fascism believed that the individual was simply one part of the machine of society who “does not live for himself but is an integral part of the whole.”⁷ There was a desire in both denominations to return to a pre-Reformation idea of the fusion of Church and state. Indeed, Josef Goebbels concisely called this idea being “Christ-socialists.”⁸ The idea was for the people to live up to the virtues of their faith, namely, self-sacrifice for the greater good of one’s people who shared a common heritage and blood. Forgotten was the Good Samaritan where the idea was to be neighborly to all. The new teaching stressed a love only to one’s society and Nation. The loyalty of the person was to his people and his faith. The perceived troubles of the regime stemmed from everywhere, from democracy, Marxism, capitalism, all of which was believed to be driven by the Jews. The idea was to create an Aryan German society purged of these elements.

1. Kevin Spicer, Hitler’s Priests (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), 80.

2. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, 105-106.

3. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, 37.

4. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, 112

5. Emanuel Hirsch, “Unsere Frage an Gott,” Evangelische Wahrheit (1914) 372; quoted in Jens Holger Schjerring, Theologische Gewissensethik und politische Wirklichkeit: Das Beispiel Eduard Geismars und Emanuel Hirschs (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979) 57, and cited from Scott Travis Kline, A Genealogy of German-Lutheran Two-Kingdoms Concept: From a German Theology of the Status Guo to an East German Theology of Critical Solidarity (McGill University, 2001), 121.

6. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, 106

7. Roger Griffin, Fascism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995), 128.

8. Griffin, Fascism, 120