Nazi and the Churches
Cards (10)
- Hitler signed a Concordat with the Catholic Church in 1933Hitler agreed to leave the Catholic Church alone and allowed it to keep control of its schoolsIn return the Church agreed to stay out of politics
- Hitler tried to get all Protestant Churches under an official Reich ChurchReich Church was headed by the Protestant Bishop Ludwig MüllerGermans loyalties lay with their original Churches rather than with the state approved Churches
- Hitler encouraged an alternative religion to the Churches (the pagan German Faith Movement)
- Catholic Bishop (Galen)Criticised the Nazis throughout the 1930sIn 1941, he led a popular protest against the Nazi policies of killing mentally ill and physically disabled people, forcing Nazis to temporarily stopHad such strong supporters that the Nazi decided it was too risky to try to silence him because they did not want trouble while Germany was at war
- Pastor Martin NiemöllerHigh profile critics of the regime in the 1930s
- Dietrich BonhoefferFormed an alternative Protestant Church to the official Reich Church
- These Church leaders suffered a similar fate to Hitler’s camp for resisting the NazisDietrich Bonhoeffer preached against the Nazis until the Gestapo stopped him in 1937
- Most Germans were Christian in the 1930s~1/3 were Catholic and ~2/3s were Protestant
- Nazis took control after 1933 the Protestant Church split into 2 distinct groupsThe German Christians under Müller were prepared to swear loyalty to Hitler and promote Nazi racial ideasThe Confessing Church, which included Niemöller and Bonhoeffer, resisted the German Christian movement and opposed the Nazification of religion
- German Faith Movement, emerged as an alternative religion tried to tempt Germans away from Christianity and towards an older, pagan form of worshipEmphasised worship of the sun, loyalty to Hitler and the peasant farmer ‘blood and soil’ philosophyOnly managed to attract 200,000 followers or 0.3% of the total population