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Nazi Germany as a Christian State: The “Protestant Experience” of 1933 in Württemberg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2013

Samuel Koehne
Samuel Koehne*
Affiliation:
Deakin University
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Extract

The study of German Christian responses to the Nazis is undoubtedly a growing field of historical inquiry. Within this topic much of the focus has been on larger church organizations, such as the Catholic Church or on those who were engaged in the “Church Struggle” (Kirchenkampf)––the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche, BK) or the German Christian Faith Movement (Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen, GDC). There are numerous such works that form excellent studies of church organizations, as well as individual theologians.

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Central European History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 97 - 123
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2013

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References

1 For instance, Conway, John S., The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–45 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968)Google Scholar; Helmreich, Ernst Christian, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Meier, Kurt, Der evangelische Kirchenkampf, 3 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976–1984)Google Scholar; Scholder, Klaus, The Churches and the Third Reich, 2 vols. (London: SCM Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Scholder, Klaus, A Requiem for Hitler, and Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle (London: SCM Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

2 See as examples Besier, Gerhard, The Holy See and Hitler's Germany, trans. Ward, W. R. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamm, Berndt, Oelke, Harry, and Schneider-Ludorff, Gury, Spielräume des Handelns und der Erinnerung. Die Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern und der Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For summaries of the literature, see Conway, John S., “Coming to Terms with the Past: Interpreting the German Church Struggles 1933–1990,” German History 16, no. 3 (1998): 377–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ericksen, Robert P. and Heschel, Susannah, “The German Churches Face Hitler: Assessment of the Historiography,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 23 (1994): 433–59Google Scholar.

3 Baranowski, Shelley, The Confessing Church, Conservative Elites, and the Nazi State (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Bergen, Doris L., Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Ericksen, Robert P., Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Heschel, Susannah, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Zabel, James A., Nazism and the Pastors: A Study of the Ideas of Three Deutsche Christen Groups (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

4 Gailus, Manfred, “Overwhelmed by their own Fascination with the ‘Ideas of 1933’: Berlin's Protestant Social Milieu in the Third Reich,” German History 20, no. 4 (2002): 463Google Scholar.

5 Gailus, Manfred, “1933 als protestantisches Erlebnis. Emphatische Selbsttransformation und Spaltung,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 29, no. 4 (2003): 481–511Google Scholar. See also Gailus, “The ‘Ideas of 1933,’” 462–93; Jantzen, Kyle, “National Socialism as a Force for German Protestant Renewal? Pastors and Parishioners Respond to Adolf Hitler's ‘National Renewal,’” in Christian Responses to the Holocaust: Moral and Ethical Issues, ed. Dietrich, Donald J. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 52–72Google Scholar.

6 The best recent study on Württemberg is Stephenson, Jill, Hitler's Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006)Google Scholar. Useful discussions of the diversity of church response in Württemberg can be found in Köhler, Joachim and Thierfelder, Jörg, “Anpassung oder Widerstand? Die Kirchen im Bann der ‘Machtergreifung’ Hitlers,” in Formen des Widerstandes im Südwesten 1933–1945, ed. Schnabel, Thomas and Hauser-Hauswirth, Angelika (Ulm: Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1994), 53–94Google Scholar; Thierfelder, Jörg, “Die Kirchen,” in Das Dritte Reich in Baden und Württemberg, ed. Borst, Otto (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1988), 74–95Google Scholar; Thierfelder, Jörg and Röhm, Eberhard, “Die evangelischen Landeskirchen von Baden und Württemberg,” in Die Machtergreifung in Südwestdeutschland. Das Ende der Weimarer Republik in Baden und Württemberg 1923–1933, ed. Schnabel, Thomas (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1982), 219–56Google Scholar.

7 See Lächele, Rainer, In der Welt leben, an Gott glauben. Ein Jahrhundert Frömmigkeit und Öffentlichkeit, das Evangelische Gemeindeblatt für Württemberg (Stuttgart: Evangelische Gemeindepresse, 2005)Google Scholar.

8 This has become a major focus of study, especially following assessements such as Gerlach, Wolfgang, And the Witnesses were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews, trans. Barnett, Victoria (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000)Google Scholar. See also Barnett, Victoria, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. Heschel provides an excellent review: Heschel, Susannah, “Historiography of Antisemitism versus Anti-Judaism: A Response to Robert Morgan,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33, no. 3 (2011): 257–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks to her for allowing me to view an earlier draft of this essay.

9 The group had about sixty members. Many acknowledged connections to Pietist organizations.

10 See generally Verhey, Jeffrey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Diephouse, David J., Pastors and Pluralism in Württemberg, 1918–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gailus, Manfred, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Durchdringung des protestantischen Sozialmilieus in Berlin (Cologne: Böhlau, 2001)Google Scholar; Jantzen, Kyle, Faith and Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler's Germany (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Lehmann, Hartmut, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Württemberg vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1969)Google Scholar. See also Gailus, Manfred and Krogel, Wolfgang, eds., Von der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der Kirche im Nationalen. Regionalstudien zu Protestantismus, Nationalsozialismus und Nachkriegsgeschichte 1930 bis 2000 (Berlin: Wichern-Verlag, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 See Gäbler, Ulrich, ed., Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. 3, 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000)Google Scholar; Greschat, Martin, ed., Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1982), vol. 7Google Scholar; Wallmann, Johannes, Der Pietismus. Ein Handbuch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990)Google Scholar.

13 This is a pietistic form with its own strain of chiliastic thought deriving from Johann Bengel. See Lehmann, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Württemberg, 158–59; Schäfer, Gerhard, Kleine württembergische Kirchengeschichte (Stuttgart: J. F. Steinkopf, 1964), 107–9Google Scholar; Wallmann, Johannes, Der Pietismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 223Google Scholar.

14 For the extant literature on the group, see Koehne, S. P., “Pietism as Societal Solution: The Foundation of the Korntal Brethren,” in Pietism and Community in Europe and North America, 1650–1850, ed. Strom, Jonathan (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic, 2010), 329–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Cited in EGK, March 1919, 4.

16 See File 4b, Korntal Brethren Archive (hereafter KBA).

17 Two of the main proponents of “political religion” are Burleigh, Michael, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror (London: HarperCollins, 2007)Google Scholar; and Maier, Hans, Totalitarianism and Political Religions (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar.

18 Lehmann, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Württemberg, 352. War, revolution, and even illness or poverty were interpreted as sent by God “to punish [people] for faithlessness and immorality, and to lead them back to the correct path”; 351.

19 Lehmann, Hartmut, “The Germans as a Chosen People: Old Testament Themes in German Nationalism,” German Studies Review 14, no. 2 (1991): 261–73, esp. 268–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the interrelations of nationalism and religion, see Gailus, Manfred and Lehmann, Hartmut, Nationalprotestantische Mentalitäten. Konturen, Entwicklungslinien und Umbrüche eines Weltbildes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005)Google Scholar; Lehmann, Hartmut and van der Veer, Peter, eds., Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

20 By contrast to the Nazis' “racial state,” see Burleigh, Michael and Wippermann, Wolfgang, The Racial State: Germany, 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

21 See, for instance, the comparison of Saxony, Württemberg, and Hanover in Green, Abigail, Fatherlands: State-building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

22 Nipperdey, Thomas, Religion im Umbruch. Deutschland, 1870–1918 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988), 94Google Scholar. On the hope for “religious, moral, and social revival” in 1871, see Lehmann, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Württemberg, 355. Lehmann also argued there was a shift in focus among Pietists from Württemberg to the German state in the nineteenth century.

23 Diephouse, Pastors and Pluralism, 18. On the Volkskirche in historical context, see Diephouse, Pastors and Pluralism, 17–23; Meier, Kurt, Volkskirche 1918–1945. Ekklesiologie und Zeitgeschichte (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1982)Google Scholar.

24 Gailus, “1933 als protestantisches Erlebnis,” 481.

25 Jantzen's cross-regional study encompassed Brandenburg, Saxony, and Württemberg: Jantzen, Faith and Fatherland, 41–42, 66.

26 Gailus, “The ‘Ideas of 1933,’” 464.

27 EGK, January 1930, 1; September 1930, 3; April 1931, 3; May 1931, 4; July 1931, 1; February 1932, 3.

28 Kershaw, Ian, “How Effective was Nazi Propaganda?,” in Nazi Propaganda: The Power and the Limitations, ed. Welch, David (London: Croom Helm, 1983), 200Google Scholar.

29 EGK articles relied heavily on these speeches. See, for example, June 1933, 1.

30 Hitler, Adolf, Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945, ed. Domarus, Max, trans. Gilbert, Mary, vol. 1 (London: Tauris, 1992), 232–35Google Scholar.

31 Speech, February 1, 1933, in the official translation: Hitler, Adolf, The New Germany Desires Work and Peace (Berlin: Liebheit & Thiesen, 1933), 5Google Scholar. I will rely on this publication as much as possible, both because it was available at the time and it demonstrates that the Nazis were open about their racial policies. To ensure accuracy, I have compared sections to Hitler, Speeches, ed. Domarus, vols. 1–4; and Hitler, Adolf, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939, ed. Baynes, Norman H., vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1969)Google Scholar. Certain sections were cut in the official translation, such as assurances on March 23 regarding Christian influence in education: Hitler, Speeches, ed. Baynes, 371.

32 Hitler, The New Germany, 6.

33 Hitler, Speeches, ed. Domarus, vol. 1, 233, with my own adjustments.

34 Hitler, The New Germany, 19–20; Matheson, Peter, The Third Reich and the Christian Churches: A Documentary Account of Christian Resistance and Complicity during the Nazi Era (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981), 9Google Scholar.

35 Speech, March 23, 1933, Gurian, Waldemar, Hitler and the Christians, trans. Peeler, E. F. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1936; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1981)Google Scholar, 27, 170; Hitler, The New Germany, 20.

36 Speech, March 23, 1933, Hitler, The New Germany, 20.

37 Ibid. Describing the government as “creating and securing the conditions necessary” for such.

38 Macfarland, Charles S., The New Church and the New Germany: A Study of Church and State (New York: Macmillan, 1934; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1983), 15Google Scholar. Diephouse noted the “emerging terror system” did not destroy belief “in Hitler as a loyal drummer for the cause of a restored moral commonwealth”: Diephouse, Pastors and Pluralism, 356. Many Germans saw a moral “revival” via Hitler as a “preacher of virtue” who “de-Nazified his public image by refining the myth of his personal virtue”: Koonz, Claudia, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003), 17–45Google Scholar, here 45. On the “Hitler Myth,” see Kershaw, Ian, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

39 EGK, June 1933, 3.

40 Gailus, “The ‘Ideas of 1933,’” 481–82. There has also been some question of a specific pietist-nationalist conflation; see Kaiser, Gerhard, Pietismus und Patriotismus im literarischen Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Säkularisation (Frankfurt: Athenäum Verlag, 1973)Google Scholar; and Pinson, Koppel S., Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1968Google Scholar). An excellent critique of both can be found in Lehmann, Hartmut, “Pietism and Nationalism: The Relationship between Protestant Revivalism and National Renewal in the Nineteenth Century,” Church History 51, no. 1 (1982): 39–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 EGK, June 1933, 3.

42 Ibid.

43 EGK, March 1933, 4.

44 Ibid. This also continued the notion of being “above parties.” See Wright, J. R. C., “Above Parties”: The Political Attitudes of the German Protestant Church Leadership, 1918–1933 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

45 EGK, March 1933, 4.

46 From July, Wurm was state bishop. Though a very contested figure, he formed a central focus of resistance in the Church Struggle, especially when he was placed under house arrest in 1934; see Baranowski, The Confessing Church, 66–74; Helmreich, Ernst Christian, “The Arrest and Freeing of the Protestant Bishops of Württemberg and Bavaria, September-October 1934,” Central European History 2, no. 2 (1969): 159–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Wurm and antisemitism, see Gerlach, And the Witnesses were Silent, 148–49, 198 ff.

47 EGK, April 1933, 1–2.

48 Ibid., 1.

49 Ibid. It called its members to such service.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid., 1–2.

52 Ibid., 2.

53 Ibid. He used the term verbinden, which means to link, join, or bind, but also to “bandage.” On this statement, see also Diephouse, Pastors and Pluralism, 357–58.

54 EGK, April 1933, 2.

55 EGK, June 1933, 1–2. See also EGK, May 1933, 4, which argued the state and the church (biblically founded) should work as independent powers, each in its own particular area. See further EGK, October 1933, 2.

56 EGK, June 1933, 1.

57 Ibid., 1–2.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., 2. This sentiment was echoed in EGK, December 1933, 1.

60 See also, for example, the statistics in Jantzen, “German Protestant Renewal?,” 58–59. It was temporary, and the filled churches of 1933 gave way to an exodus from the church by 1935. See Württemberg statistics in EGK, February 1937, 2.

61 Quoting a Berlin Protestant Church report, September 1914: McLeod, Hugh, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848–1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 277–78Google Scholar. Cf. Jantzen, “German Protestant Renewal?,” 58.

62 EGK, March 1916, 1, referring to the Apostles' Creed.

63 Lehmann, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Württemberg, 288–89.

64 Verhey, The Spirit of 1914, 4.

65 See generally Bailey, Charles Edward, Gott mit uns: Germany's Protestant Theologians in the First World War (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Krumeich, Gerd and Lehmann, Hartmut, eds., “Gott mit uns.” Nation, Religion und Gewalt im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000)Google Scholar. Dibelius's sermon text for the “Day of Potsdam” was also “If God is with us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31); Verhey, The Spirit of 1914, 4.

66 Röder, Adam, Reaktion und Antisemitismus, zugleich ein Mahnwort an die akademische Jugend, 2nd ed. (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn, 1921)Google Scholar, 49. See discussions on the 1914 “religious experience” from Protestant and Catholic perspectives in Baumgarten, Otto, Foerster, Erich, Rademacher, Arnold, and Flittner, Wilhelm, Geistige und sittliche Wirkungen des Krieges in Deutschland (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1927), 120–21Google Scholar (Erich Foerster), 161–62 (Arnold Rademacher). A quote cited by Otto Baumgarten described it as “like a couple of days of the Kingdom of God on earth”; 44.

67 Gailus describes this in terms of a national-religious conflation: Gailus, “The ‘Ideas of 1933,’” 467; on key differences, 493. Verhey records unity as dominant in the myth of the “spirit of 1914” during the 1920s: “a spiritual and ideological national union,” or “common culture, shared ideas, a shared national character”; Verhey, The Spirit of 1914, 216. His focus, however, is on the question of “national faith”; 217–18.

68 EGK, December 1933, 3.

69 Gailus, “The ‘Ideas of 1933,’” 467–68. The best expression of this is Lehmann, “Germans as a Chosen People,” 261–73. See also Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 98–99.

70 Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche, as translated in Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler, 86.

71 Ibid., 85–86.

72 See Lächele, Rainer, Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Glaube. Die “Deutschen Christen” in Württemberg 1925–1960 (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1994)Google Scholar.

73 EGK, June 1933, 1.

74 Ibid.

75 Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 35–38, 82; Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 1, 350–79; Wright, “Above Parties,” 117.

76 EGK, September 1934, 2, their emphasis.

77 EGK, July 1933, 1–3; August 1933, 1–3.

78 See Baranowski, Shelley, “The 1933 German Protestant Church Elections: Machtpolitik or Accommodation?,” Church History 49, no. 3 (1980): 298–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Baranowski argued the victory was due to both “explicit backing” by the NSDAP and no “effective counterattack” by “the Protestant establishment,” who believed some agreement might be reached with the GDC; 314.

79 EGK, September 1933, 2–3. Hitler's speech was reprinted in its entirety.

80 Ibid., 2.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid., 3.

84 As Conway put it, Hitler might not have cared about doctrine, but he did care who won the church elections. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 42–43.

85 EGK, September 1933, 3.

86 See Matheson, The Third Reich and the Christian Churches, 39–40; NSDAP and SS, Berichte des SD und der Gestapo über Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland, 1934–1944, ed. Boberach, Heinz (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1971), 54Google Scholar.

87 EGK, December 1933, 3. Their emphases. He used the term artgemäßes Christentum.

88 Ibid.

89 Though his statement created a furor in 1933, the basic position later became an accepted one among the German Christians: Bergen, Twisted Cross, 142–64; Heschel, The Aryan Jesus. Krause founded an even more radical group: Frey, Arthur, Cross and Swastika, trans. McNab, J. S. (London: SCM Press, 1938; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1981), 119Google Scholar; Protestantism in the Totalitarian State, Friends of Europe Publications, No. 12 (London: Friends of Europe, 1934), 17Google Scholar; Schmidt, K. D. and Garvie, A. E., Confessions: The Religious Conflict in Germany, Friends of Europe Publications, No. 20 (London: Friends of Europe, 1934)Google Scholar, 8. Both rely on Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich, Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äusserungen zur Kirchenfrage des Jahres 1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934), 135Google Scholar.

90 EGK, December 1933, 3. The larger report (partly relying on the National Bishop Ludwig Müller) dealt with the impracticality of instituting an “Aryan paragraph” and “Jewish Christian communities,” as well as the undesirable nature of such in light of the New Testament.

91 EGK, June 1933, 2.

92 EGK, December 1933, 3. Wurm was more cautious, stating simply, “The church must remain.”

93 EGK, June 1933, 2.

94 Ibid. Their emphasis.

95 Ibid., 1. It particularly emphasized this in the context of efforts to form the DEK; 1–2.

96 Ibid., 2.

97 Ibid.

98 There have been numerous collections of essays on the topic. See, for example, Spicer, Kevin P., ed., Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Heschel, Susannah and Ericksen, Robert P., eds., Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Dietrich, ed., Christian Responses to the Holocaust; Littell, Franklin H. and Locke, Hubert G., eds., The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

99 See, for instance, Kershaw, Ian, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933–45 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 376–78Google Scholar. As Gerlach noted, “In retrospect . . . the Confessing Church had concentrated too much on the confessional question.” Gerlach, And the Witnesses were Silent, 232.

100 EGK, November 1933, 4. His larger point was, “Germany is a center of order and authority.”

101 Protestants viewed this as their work and not that of Catholics. See EGK, April 1933, 1; September 1933, 1.

102 EGK, May 1933, 1, quoting Wurm's speech of April 2, 1933.

103 There was also tent revivalism in Württemberg. See EGK, May 1935, 4; April 1938, 4.

104 EGK, July 1933, 3.

105 Ibid., referring to John 9:4. The German Christians took a similar view; see Bergen, Twisted Cross, 1–2.

106 EGK, December 1933, 1.

107 Ibid.

108 This was a “strategy frequently propagated,” but one that failed. See Gailus, “The ‘Ideas of 1933,’” 492.

109 Letter, “Strictly Confidential!,” Pastor Keppler to Württemberg Evangelischer Jungmännerbund, May 6, 1933, File 18a, Berichte des Christlichen Vereins Junger Männer, Korntal: 1921–1941, KBA.

110 Led by Wilhelm Hauer (also of Württemberg). See Baumann, Shaul, Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung und ihr Gründer Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, trans. Lessing, Alma (Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 2005)Google Scholar; and Poewe, Karla O., New Religions and the Nazis (New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar. On the “fanatical godlessness movement,” see EGK, January 1933, 3.

111 Latourette, Kenneth Scott, A History of Christianity (New York: Harper, 1953), 1374Google Scholar.

112 Articles continued to appear about the oppression of Christians in Russia. See EGK, April 1933, 3; June 1933, 2–3; January 1934, 3; July 1935, 2.

113 EGK, April 1933, 3, which also listed pamphlets with similar emphases. See also EGK, September 1934, 3.

114 EGK, June 1933, 3.

115 EGK, May 1934, 3.

116 EGK, August 1932, 2.

117 Ibid., 1.

118 Ibid. The Nazi state was “based upon the exclusion and extermination of all those deemed to be ‘alien,’ ‘hereditarily ill,’ or ‘asocial.’” See Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, 304–7.

119 EGK, August 1932, 1. While he agreed with many specific policies, such as fighting alcoholism and prostitution, he believed “love and mercy” were the most important points and that the “betterment of the race” could only be achieved if the “strengths of Christian faith are living in the Volk.”

120 Ibid., 2. Cf. Sasse's criticism of racial theorists' misuse of the concepts of “creation” and the “orders of creation” to attempt to “religiously justify” their theories. See Deutschland, Evangelische Kirche, Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelischen Landeskirchen Deutschlands, ed. Sasse, Hermann, vol. 59 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1932), 72–73Google Scholar.

121 EGK, August 1932, 2.

122 EGK, December 1933, 1. The “German Faith” was part of Germany's “decomposition.”

123 Ibid. It asked that they not “disappoint” Hitler by failing to support the Protestant Church.

124 Ibid., also arguing for controls on radio, film, theater, and literature. As far away as Australia, such measures were reported as indicating Nazi support for religion. See Australasian Theological Review 7, no. 4 (October-December 1935): 134–35Google Scholar.

125 EGK, December 1933, 1.

126 Letter, September 15, 1933, File 4b, KBA. I have elected not to use the pastors' names, referring to each instead by an initial.

127 For such conceptions in Germany and the United States, see Hartmut Lehmann, “‘God Our Old Ally’: The Chosen People Theme in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German Nationalism”; and Moorhead, James H., “The American Israel: Protestant Tribalism and Universal Mission,” both in Many are Chosen: Divine Election and Western Nationalism, ed. Hutchison, William R. and Lehmann, Hartmut (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 85–107, 145–66Google Scholar.

128 Letter, September 15, 1933, File 4b, KBA.

129 EGK, October 1933, 2.

130 Letter, September 15, 1933, File 4b, KBA, referring to the machinations of the “old evil foe.”

131 The GDC-controlled Kurhessian Synod had put the question. See Koshar, Rudy, Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880–1935 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 266–67Google Scholar.

132 Macfarland, The New Church and the New Germany, 188. The Erlangen statement (September 25), signed by only some of the faculty, supported the antisemitic clauses. Macfarland published the main sections of both; 187–93.

133 Ibid., 189–90.

134 Letter, September 15, 1933, File 4b, KBA. This was, after all, a prayer group.

135 Ibid., Letters, October 28, 1933, and November 8, 1933.

136 Ibid., Letter, November 8, 1933. As reported, Wurm apparently saw no “contradiction of Protestant thinking” in the “close union of Protestant Christianity with National Socialist thought” that was sought by German Christians. See EGK, October 1933, 2.

137 Letter, November 28, 1933, File 4b, KBA (described as a “foreign infiltration”).

138 Ibid. On Jewish Christians in the Third Reich, see Büttner, Ursula and Greschat, Martin, Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche. Der Umgang mit Christen jüdischer Herkunft im “Dritten Reich” (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998)Google Scholar.

139 Hitler, Speeches, ed. Baynes, 17.

140 Letter, November 28, 1933, File 4b, KBA.

141 Letter, December 21, 1933, File 4b, KBA, using Rettertat Gottes.

142 For a succinct discussion, see Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 4–11Google Scholar. See also Kulka, Otto Dov, “The German Population and the Jews: State of Research and New Perspectives,” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, ed. Bankier, David (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999), 271–81Google Scholar, esp. 277.

143 Kulka, Otto Dov and Rodrigue, Aron, “The German Population and the Jews in the Third Reich,” Yad-Vashem Studies 16 (1984): 434–5Google Scholar.

144 Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, 7.

145 Though clearly K supported such measures.

146 Evans, Richard J., The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939 (London: Penguin, 2006), 16Google Scholar; Gellately, Robert, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 53–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sauder, Gerhard, Die Bücherverbrennung. Zum 10. Mai 1933, 2nd ed. (Munich: Hanser, 1983)Google Scholar.

147 On the question of a lack of contact with Jews, see Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, 4, 152–54; and Kulka and Rodrigue, “German Population and the Jews,” 430.

148 Büttner argued that from early on “The Jews could expect nothing from the Protestant Church.” Büttner, Ursula, “‘The Jewish Problem Becomes a Christian Problem’: German Protestants and the Persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich,” in Probing the Depths of Antisemitism, ed. Bankier, 431–59, here 441Google Scholar.

149 Letter, December 21, 1933, File 4b, KBA.

150 Though not stated in these terms, this approaches Ericksen's view of Althaus. See Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler, 115–19. Cf. Gailus, “The ‘Ideas of 1933,’” 483, 490.

151 Letter, December 21, 1933, File 4b, KBA.

152 Ibid.

153 Ibid.

154 Peukert, Detlev, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989), 72, 236Google Scholar.

155 Letter, December 21, 1933, File 4b, KBA.

156 Friedländer, Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 87Google Scholar; Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism (London: Pinter, 1991), 26, 44Google Scholar. Griffin has continued to argue the “mythic core” of fascism (including Nazism) is “a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.”

157 EGK, June 1933, 2.

158 See also Schreiner, Klaus, “Messianism in the Political Culture of the Weimar Republic,” in Towards the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, ed. Schäfer, Peter and Cohen, Mark (Boston: Brill, 1998), 311–62Google Scholar.

159 The quote on “dechristianizing culture” can be found in EGK, April 1931, 3.

160 EGK, April 1933, 1–2. Wurm located the “destructive and poisonous influences on culture” in “large cities”; 2. The immorality of cities was a theme in Protestant circles at the time. See EGK, January 1930, 1.

161 EGK, October 1933, 2.

162 EGK, April 1933, 2.

163 From Ernst Röhm's autobiography, The Story of a Traitor, translated in Mosse, George L., Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), 102Google Scholar. Hitler described the Nazis' principles as “national, sozial und antisemitisch” in speeches, August 13 and September 29, 1920. See Hitler, Adolf, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen. 1905–1924, ed. Jäckel, Eberhard and Kuhn, Axel (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980)Google Scholar, 201 and 242.

164 Wurm even claimed that Christian fortitude sustained German soldiers in World War I. See EGK, April 1933, 1.

165 Lehmann, “Germans as a Chosen People,” 261–73; Lehmann, “‘God Our Old Ally,’” 85–107.

166 Deutschland, Evangelische Kirche, Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1933–1944, ed. Beckmann, Joachim, vol. 60–71 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1948), 7Google Scholar.

167 Deutschland, Evangelische Kirche, Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelischen Landeskirchen Deutschlands, ed. Sasse, Hermann, vol. 61 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1934), 6Google Scholar. Copy in author's possession.

168 Ibid., 14. Though Sasse himself was certainly not immune from the nationalist enthusiasm and tended to limit himself to theological considerations.