Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustration
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Note on Translation and Citations
- Introduction
- 1 Positive Christianity
- 2 Above the Confessions
- 3 Blood and Soil
- 4 National Renewal
- 5 Completing the Reformation
- 6 Public Need before Private Greed
- 7 Gottgläubig
- 8 The Holy Reich
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Index
5 - Completing the Reformation
The Protestant Reich Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustration
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Note on Translation and Citations
- Introduction
- 1 Positive Christianity
- 2 Above the Confessions
- 3 Blood and Soil
- 4 National Renewal
- 5 Completing the Reformation
- 6 Public Need before Private Greed
- 7 Gottgläubig
- 8 The Holy Reich
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Index
Summary
Through me the Protestant Church could become the established church, as in England.
Adolf HitlerNazis expressed various degrees of anticlericalism. Although this was often articulated in an undifferentiated manner, it was not applied uniformly to both confessions. Whereas the Catholic Church continued to be attacked for its “internationalism” and doctrinal stand against racialist categories, the Protestant Church was generally treated much more favorably. Particularly revealing in this regard was the plan to unite the twenty-eight Protestant state churches of Germany into one national church – a Reich Church. Conventional historiography regards the Nazi interest in institutional Protestantism as duplicitous. For instance, John Conway believes that the Nazi endorsement of a Reichskirche in no sense implied pro-Protestant sentiment. In his view, the Nazis' aim in uniting the state churches was to render Protestantism innocuous, to make the Protestant church “an instrument subservient to the Nazi State…. The Church was a pillar of the old order, whose standing, though it might be exploited as a temporary measure, was fundamentally resented by the leading members of the Party.” In this chapter, we shall see that the Nazis in fact hoped for a lasting relationship with the Protestant Church, at least until 1937, when the stance of Niemöller and his allies led them to conclude that the church could not be relied on. After this break, actions against Protestant clergymen grew in number, although never becoming comparable in frequency or harshness with the measures that had already been leveled against Catholic clergy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Holy ReichNazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945, pp. 155 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003