The complicated structure of the Protestant Church in Germany has often been difficult for British observers to understand. The movement, which had first attracted attention in October 1517 with Luther's outburst against abuses in the Catholic Church, had resulted in several different groups with varying theological emphases. When these groups had become allied with local structures of political authority, a patchwork of ‘state’ churches had developed across what was to become Germany. They were sometimes linked together under the title of ‘Evangelical Churches’. As Scholder has shown in his monumental work on the German churches in the inter-war period, these churches had found that the democratic arrangements of the post-1919 Weimar Republic required a new approach to the relationship of church and state. This had not been fully worked out when in 1933 Hitler staged his constitutional coup d’état, and another new set of circumstances had to be faced. The three main Protestant Church groupings, Lutheran, Reformed, and United, found themselves under pressure to reorganise into a centralised ‘German Church’. Whether this scheme might have succeeded under a different kind of regime is unknown. It would have had the advantage of creating a single body but would most likely have always been contested on theological and regional grounds. In the event, the opposition to the Nazi proposal was almost immediate and resulted in, amongst other things, what was essentially a ‘church within a church’, the grouping that became known in English as the ‘Confessing Church’.

As well as this complex relationship with the state there was also a relationship between clergy and people which needed to be understood. Most churches included at least an element of democratic selection for both local and central appointments. It was less easy – than for instance in the Catholic Church – for a local clergyman to be removed because of his previous political opinions. Such views might well have been shared with many in his congregation. Leaders were not simply centrally appointed and thus could not be removed arbitrarily without causing concerns about how the due processes within the church would be affected. Treatment of clergy with divergent views to that of the State had been a major issue for the Protestant Churches during the Nazi period. It was important that it did not become so again for the British administration.