Nazi foreign policy was hampered from the start by a hostile foreign press that carried alarming reports, not only of atrocities and persecution of the political opposition and of Jews, but also of a persecution of Christians in Germany. Protestant Christians abroad were increasingly outraged by the so-called “German Christians” who, with the support of the government, gained control of the administration of the Evangelical state churches and set about to fashion a centralized Nazi church based on principles of race, blood, and soil. The militant attack by “German Christians” on Christian, as opposed to Germanic, traditions and values led to the birth of a Confessing Church, whose leaders fought to remain true to the Gospel, often at the risk of imprisonment. Such persecution resulted in calls from abroad for boycott and intervention, particularly in Britain and the United States, and threatened to complicate foreign relations for the Nazi regime at a time when Hitler was still highly vulnerable. In order to win the support of the German people and to consolidate the Nazi grip on German society, Hitler needed accomplishments in foreign policy and solutions to the German economic crisis. Both were possible only with the indulgence of foreign powers.

Our understanding of the types and meaningful levels of resistance to Hitler's rule has broadened as more complex and reflective studies have unremittingly exposed the political, social, and cultural dynamics supporting the Holocaust and its significance for our culture. Analyses of how and why the Holocaust erupted in Nazi-controlled Europe have elicited studies on the tools and methods of terror in the Third Reich. The works of both Eric Johnson and Robert Gellately, for example, have helped crystallize our understanding of the phenomenon that individual Germans living out their hopes, fears, and, frequently, petty jealousies made operant the ideological and physical terror that empowered the Nazi oppression. The Gestapo and courts, of course, formally carried out the brutalization of society, but they were assisted by countless Germans in fulfilling the Nazi agenda.

In his memoir, German chaplain Hans Leonhard describes a visit to a military hospital during World War II. Leonhard entered a ward full of men with sexually transmitted diseases. “So you're a pastor?” one patient jeered. “We don't need one of them. You just want to tell us those stories about cattle breeders and pimps.” The phrasecame from the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. In The Myth of the Twentieth Century, he dubbed the Old Testament a collection of “stories of pimps and cattle traders.” Members of the pro-Nazi “German Christian” movement popularized Rosenberg's phrase in church circles. Leonhard, accustomed to hostile reactions, answered the taunt with a challenge: “Tell me just one such story,” he said to the man. “If you can tell me even one, I'll leave the room immediately and never bother you again.” All the patients looked at their comrade. “I can't think of any right now,” he finally said. The others laughed, but he did not give up. “You probably want to tell us something about praying,” he accused Leonhard. “Well, a real man doesn” The chaplain countered with another question: “Were you at the front?” he wanted to know. There was a pause before the man muttered, “We from the reserves have done our duty, too.” According to Leonhard, that admission ended the exchange. The chaplain sat down with the rest of the men and talked about the Old Testament and about prayer.

Among the priests of the diocese of Berlin who lived and served as parish ministers during the Third Reich, one individual stands out for his courage and willingness to risk his life and speak the Christian truth in a world often devoid of any gospel values. Monsignor Bernhard Lichtenberg (1875–1943) surpassed the other clergy of his diocese in his conscious efforts to challenge the perverse policies of the state in a consistent, profound manner. To defend the faith against encroachment by the state, Lichtenberg not only exhibited Resistenz by creating defensive barriers through his own ministry, but also publicly protested, in a rigorous manner, state actions that he deemed immoral and contradictory to Catholic values.

Hitler's wars for living space sent millions of Germans abroad and aggravated a severe labor shortage at home. German authorities recruited or forcibly transported up to seven million foreign workers to the Reich from 1939 to 1945. A great many of these civilian workers, POWs, and slave laborers came from Poland, the Ukraine, and western areas of the Soviet Union, that is, homelands the Nazi regime stigmatized as particularly “inferior.” Nazi racial thinking and wartime security concerns produced an extensive set of discriminatory measures aimed at the subjugation and strict control of Slavs. Nazi edicts required Poles and so-called Eastern Workers (Ostarbeiter) to wear a purple “P” or “Ost” badge on their outer clothing. Restrictive measures limited allowable movement to their immediate area of residence and work. The regime also imposed a system akin to apartheid. Racial law thus prohibited unnecessary social contact between members of the so-called master race and their “racial inferiors.”

The Protestant historiography of the German Church Struggle has been shaped largely by its attention to two fundamental issues. The first has been the intrachurch struggle dominated by two churchpolitical factions: the Faith Movement of the German Christians and the Confessing Church. German Christians whole-heartedly endorsed the government of Adolf Hitler, campaigned to align the organization, theology, and practice of the twenty-eight German Protestant Land Churches with the racial and authoritarian values of the National Socialist regime and worked to create a centralized Reich church under a powerful Reich bishop. The Confessing Church stood for theological orthodoxy and ecclesiastical independence, rejected the authority of the Land Church governments that had fallen under the control of German Christians, and asserted itself as the uniquely legitimate church government in Germany.

After the war was over leading Catholic laity and the lower clergy pointed their finger at their bishops, faulting them for not having the backbone and willpower to stand up to Hitler. Was this fair? Bishops said they tempered their criticism of Nazism because Hitler punished their priests rather than them. Were the bishops being candid and forthright with this statement? If so, was this the right strategy? Jesuits urged the bishops to become active in the Kreisau Circle of resistance. They did not. Should they have? Pope Pius XII gave the German bishops freedom to do as they saw fit regarding speaking out about the Holocaust. They spoke only guardedly. Should they have said more? The Concordat, the agreement between the Vatican and the German government, surprised German Catholics who had been warned again and again about Nazism. Was the Concordat a mistake? Once signed, should the church have stuck to it once Nazi racial policy had become manifest? There was an active Catholic resistance circle in Berlin. Were there others? If not, why not? Questions about Catholic resistance run on and on. Are they worth probing, trying to answer? In the end no matter what is said about Catholic resistance, the six million will have perished. And, in the end, no German managed to put an end to Hitler, although the Swabian Catholic, Klaus von Stauffenberg, came close. Is a discussion about Catholic resistance an exercise in futility?