I had always understood that during the time when the Nazis were in control of Germany the Christian Churches were lonely bastions of sanity, defending human rights against the evil Nazis and only accommodating to the Nazis insofar as was absolutely necessary for the survival of the Churches. This very scholarly book tells a very different story, and I am very glad I read it, although, since the book reads very much like a thesis, it is not at all a book for the popular press.
The Germans had lost the First World War, and there were many elements within Germany who blamed the Jews for the outcome. The Nazis came to power on a platform of saving Germany and making Germany great again by eliminating non-Aryans, especially those non-Aryans who were Jewish (and who thus were determined to destroy Germany). Meanwhile, the Christian Churches (almost entirely Lutheran) had a turf war, between those who felt that the Old Testament should be retained and those who felt that the Old Testament should be thrown out as being too Jewish. At this same time, theologians, working with the pervasive anti-Semitism within the church, worked to determine that Jesus was not Jewish, and that it was his opposition to the Jews that got him crucified. In 1939 theologians opened the Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des J’udischen Einflusses auf das Deutsche Kirchliche Leben (Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life), which worked closely with the government and the University of Jena in producing papers, conferences, and a New Testament that were shorn of Jewish content, in accordance with Nazi racism.
Essentially, the entire German people were subject to a pervasive anti-Semitism in favor of what was truly German. (We in America have no grounds to be smug; racism against people of color was simply accepted as the prevailing way of life until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960′s.) The Nazis essentially took this anti-Semitism to a whole new level, pledging to make Germany great by removing all Jews and Jewish influence on German life, and the churches had no problem at all with this policy. As Jesus had fought valiantly against the Jews, so Hitler was fighting valiantly against the same Jews who wished to destroy Germany.
This is a very complex book, with a horrifying subject; I had no clue that organized religion worked so closely with the Nazis, although organized religion did not want to know the details of just how the Jews were being “removed” from German life. But I feel better for having learned about this subject (forewarned is forearmed), and I would recommend this book to anyone who is willing to wade through the forest of details contained in this book.
