The study of German Christian responses to the Nazis is undoubtedly a growing field of historical inquiry.Footnote 1 Within this topic much of the focus has been on larger church organizations, such as the Catholic Church or on those who were engaged in the “Church Struggle” (Kirchenkampf)––the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche, BK) or the German Christian Faith Movement (Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen, GDC).Footnote 2 There are numerous such works that form excellent studies of church organizations, as well as individual theologians.Footnote 3
My own interest lies far more with the question of ascertaining individual Christian responses––more particularly, Protestant responses. Hence, this essay is a response to Manfred Gailus's call for “micro-histories,” in acknowledgment of the “strictly particularist” tradition of Protestantism in Germany.Footnote 4 Gailus has described the first year of Nazi rule as a “Protestant experience,” with a focus on Berlin.Footnote 5 This essay sets out to examine whether the same can be said of Württemberg, through a two-level approach.Footnote 6 It focuses both on the depiction of events in 1933 in the theologically conservative Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt (Protestant Community Paper) and the more private discussions that occurred between pastors who were leaders within their own communities but who were not necessarily associated with either prominent party in the Church Struggle.Footnote 7
The key question is, how did the Gemeindeblatt and members of a “Pastors' Prayer Group” (Pfarrergebetsbund) view the Nazi regime in 1933? A crucial secondary question is, how did they respond to the Nazis' antisemitism?Footnote 8 This dual comparison is made the more relevant because most of the theologically conservative pastors from the prayer group were from Württemberg.Footnote 9 This essay argues that while 1933 was indeed portrayed as a time of national-religious revival, by the end of the year deep concerns had already arisen as to the situation of the church and the level of political incursion. At the same time, the notion of a national revival was still generally accepted and those in the church remained “actively passive” on the Nazis' antisemitism. It also argues that part of the power of the 1933 “experience” was that church members could draw on a preexisting myth of religious revival running concurrent to national renewal: the supposed “spirit of 1914.”Footnote 10 While this has principally been seen as the embodiment of “national faith,” it also incorporated concepts of church revival with the advent of World War I.
Hence while examining a “regional” response, this analysis also fits with those studies that consider the local level and the response taken within (for instance) individual parishes. The works of scholars such as Gailus and Kyle Jantzen feature prominently in this field, though those of Hartmut Lehmann and David Diephouse are of more specific relevance to these Pietist ministers in southern Germany.Footnote 11
The Sacred as Secular: Pietism and “Lived” Christianity
To understand the theological milieu of these pastors, it is necessary to explain a little of Pietism. Two of the main emphases of Pietist religious practices and belief were (and are) piety and community. In essence, Pietists are those who follow Philipp Spener's idea of Collegia Pietatis: that groups of Christians, by gathering together and focusing their attentions on Scripture, can lead more truly Christian lives, partly through a deeper and more regular experience of Christian teaching, and partly through providing each other with a self-reflective model for living. As such, an idea of “active” Christianity is important.Footnote 12 This adds further weight to the study of such groups in the Nazi period, given that their faith was meant to be expressed through their actions.
Indeed, the primary materials that I am relying on were found in research conducted on the Korntal Brethren, a prominent group within “Württemberg Pietism.”Footnote 13 There can be no doubt that this group was formed very much by convinced and prominent Pietists.Footnote 14 They believed that Christians must be awakened into a deep personal relationship with God, often through a particular experience in their lives. In original drafts for their community guidelines, only “a fundamental change in one's life through the spirit of God” made one a “true member” of the community.Footnote 15
I am using the Korntal edition of the Protestant Community Paper, the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt Korntal (EGK). The publication itself took the form of a syndicated paper, following the format of three pages of general church information and news, with only the back page devoted to specific items from the particular community. The Korntal minister was evidently also a member of the “Pastors' Prayer Group.”Footnote 16 This organization sent letters as circulars to its members. As such, the correspondence was both public and private. It was open to those who participated in the circle, but was also viewed as a private discussion among themselves.
There has been a great deal of interest in the question of Nazism as a “political religion.”Footnote 17 What is more relevant in studying such pastors, however, is not the possibility of the secular––politics––being sacralized, but the possibility of the sacred being viewed as secular, which is the essence of the “lived Christianity” of Pietist communities. The members of the Pastors' Prayer Group were serious about their faith, which means that we also have to take their faith seriously. This includes the application of their faith to political and secular events, which were often viewed through a religious lens. Indeed, an idea endemic to Württemberg Pietism was the interpretation of temporal events as manifestations of God's will.Footnote 18 As Hartmut Lehmann has noted, events such as the foundation of the German Reich, World War I, and the rise of the Nazis could be read as indicating divine will.Footnote 19
What is useful in the idea of a “political religion” is that essentially religious concepts such as faith could be used to justify the state; however, the difference in belief is demonstrated through the fact that church groups often advocated a Christian state.Footnote 20 Given that there is also a strong concept of obedience to the state in German Protestantism, this might be better expressed as a desire for a Christlichnation, or Christian nation. While there have been questions as to the religious nature of German nationalism, responses are also diverse. Any consideration of German nationalism in the nineteenth century also has to understand the strength of regional loyalties, which often included a strong sense of religious affiliation.Footnote 21
Hence, Thomas Nipperdey made the point that in 1866 most churches were “reserved” about nationalism, preferring to preserve regional versions of “throne and altar.” He argued, however, that from 1871 many Protestant leaders accepted a national German identity and began to conflate religious and national agendas such that the “foundation of the Reich” became the “completion of the Reformation.”Footnote 22 The year 1870 was not simply a victory over France, but of Wittenberg over the “Babylon of Paris, over atheism, Ultramontanism, and revolution.”
To use Friedrich Meinecke's concepts of the Kulturnation and Staatsnation, the “cultural nation” of the German state was supposed to be Christian, and it was believed the state apparatus of the “political nation” should support, protect, and promote this Christian nation. This conception was reflected in Johannes Schneider's formulation in 1921 in the prominent Protestant publication Kirchliches Jahrbuch (Church Yearbook). He argued that a “People's Church” (Volkskirche) would demonstrate “there is still a German-Protestant nation within the boundaries of the German state.”Footnote 23 To take the reverse perspective, such notions could also mean an exclusionary perception of the nation, which meant that those of another faith (such as Jews), those of no faith (the “godless”), or even fellow Christians (Catholics) might be viewed as not “truly” German. The strong desire for a “German Protestant nation” was crucial in 1933.
The “Protestant Experience” of 1933: Foundations and Impact
Within the “conservative-Protestant social milieu” there certainly were prominent notions of revivalism (both national and spiritual) that adhered to the first year of Nazi rule.Footnote 24 Jantzen's work, for instance, argued that across a range of parishes of diverse theological influence, support for the Nazis was built upon their anticommunist stance, “belief that the national renewal would bring . . . a moral renewal,” that Hitler had called the churches “into a partnership to transform Germany” on “theological predispositions toward obedience to the state” and the brief revival of “public interest in German Protestantism.”Footnote 25
Yet a significant reason for such beliefs was that the Weimar Republic seemed to many in the “Protestant milieu” to be a time when the nation was sliding into “the abyss,” and the perspective of those in Berlin was just as applicable to Württemberg:
idealization of a vanished Imperial Germany as a model “Christian state,” collective traumatization by the incomprehensible military defeat, terrifying revolution and the “Versailles” syndrome, rejection of the nondenominational republic as a “godless” state . . . and finally, waiting and hoping for a fundamentally new historical and political age that would turn from the “godless” democratic republic.Footnote 26
Certainly through 1930–1932, the loss of the war and the separation of church and state were described in the EGK as rooted in the more invidious problem of a spiritual-moral crisis or a “godlessness movement” (Gottlosenbewegung).Footnote 27 Very early in the regime, Hitler spoke clearly and directly to such notions. In speeches on February 1 and March 23, 1933, he expressed the idea of battling communism, tied his own regime to Imperial Germany, and promised to support Christianity and the family, fight immorality, and build a cohesive community.
Ian Kershaw has argued that the “effectiveness of [Nazi] propaganda . . . was heavily dependent upon its ability to build on an existing consensus, to confirm existing values, to bolster existing prejudices. Its success was guaranteed wherever it could identify Nazi aims with values that were unquestioned.”Footnote 28 Hitler's speeches seem to have achieved precisely this.Footnote 29 His speech on February 1 was “the first time a large segment of the German public outside the National Socialist movement heard and read one of Hitler's proclamations.”Footnote 30 As a result, Hitler used the opportunity to speak to national-conservative concerns, beginning with the idea that the Weimar Republic bore a terrible legacy from the lost war.Footnote 31 He eschewed antisemitism and spoke instead of fighting communism, making assurances that the “national parties and leagues” would struggle for Germany's survival under the leadership of Hindenburg to prevent the “red flag of destruction” from being hoisted.Footnote 32
Hitler argued the “first and foremost duty” was to “reestablish the unity of spirit and will of our Volk,” and went on to speak of protecting societal values:
[The government] will preserve and protect the foundations upon which the strength of our nation rests. It will extend its strong, protecting hand over Christianity as the basis of our entire morality and the family as the basic cell [Keimzelle] of the body of our Volk and state. It will reawaken in our Volk, beyond the borders of rank and class, its sense of national and political unity and its resultant duties.Footnote 33
Christianity was only being defended insofar as it was a support for the German nation, but the larger point for those who heard this speech was that Christianity was explicitly supported. Hitler's speech on March 23 only added to this.Footnote 34
He outlined a policy of support for the Catholic and Protestant churches, especially as moral agents within the state, and stated that none of their rights would be infringed.Footnote 35 Hitler was clear in his definition of the Nazi government as a “moral” political movement, “resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life.”Footnote 36 He went further, declaring they would create a state in which there could be “a really profound revival of religious life.”Footnote 37
What this means is not simply that there was a desire for Christian and church revival, but that Hitler (representing the new government) seemed to be promising precisely that. As early as 1934 Charles Macfarland reported that many churchmen accepted “Hitler's personal integrity and his belief in a moral character for the State.”Footnote 38 A revivalist theme can certainly be found within Württemberg's Protestant community in 1933, and an EGK article from June provides a snapshot of contemporary responses.
It listed messages from diverse Protestant communities in Württemberg, expressing “thanks to God for this salvation from great danger and preparedness to cooperate in the reformation of the life of the Volk.”Footnote 39 Though not exactly the “dual confession of faith” found in the German Christian movement, there was a national-religious conflation.Footnote 40 The message from Tübingen stated that National Socialism was not political but a movement that came from “the fatherland [and] the Volk that has found itself again . . . and Volk and fatherland have to be affirmed by every Christian.”Footnote 41 Most also made the same point as Böblingen, however, that the best thing the church could do was to “remain a church and fulfill still more faithfully than formerly its God-given commission, to renew people and thus to build community.”Footnote 42
Similar ideas were expressed in a statement by the German Protestant Church Committee (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenausschuß, DEKA) that stated that the church was called “to serve the entire nation, independent of changes in the political situation,” with a “right and duty” to care for all church members irrespective of the political party they belonged to.Footnote 43 There was clear patriotic fervor, and the statement concluded that the church would not only work toward helping one's neighbor, but also work selflessly for “that which stands above everything: for the entire German Volk, for the entire fatherland!”Footnote 44 The church was to set itself to this task “and to Christ and His cause.”Footnote 45
Such notions were further emphasized in a major article by Theophil Wurm, head of the Württemberg “state” or “regional” church (Landeskirche), that addressed the interconnections of “Church, Nationality, and the State.”Footnote 46 It provided a very public statement on the role of the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany.Footnote 47 Wurm quoted the DEKA statement and its introduction, that “The Protestant Church has always been bound in the innermost” with “German nationality.”Footnote 48 Yet its means of serving the Volk were “proclaiming the word of God” and working in “the service of love.”Footnote 49 Wurm cited the Minister for Defense, who stated that the armed forces had to remain “above the conflict of the parties,” because it was required “to serve the entire nation.” Wurm saw the church as such a Wehrmacht “that fights for good against evil for the well-being of the whole Volk.”Footnote 50
While stating that the Protestant Church could in all good conscience support “a freedom-oriented patriotic movement,” Wurm continually emphasized that the church was called upon to support all church members.Footnote 51 He found common ground with the Nazi government and seems to have relied on Hitler's statements in arguing the church was “prepared to collaborate in the purification and revival of the life of the Volk.” Yet it needed to remain separate and maintain a “distance from the purely political measures and methods of this movement and . . . government.”Footnote 52 The church was bound to Christ and “biblical exhortation,” acting in its relationship toward politics, Volkstum, and the state as the Red Cross did in war: “the church is not a soldier bearing arms, but rather a benevolent paramedic who helps everyone and ‘binds’ everyone in the double sense of the word.”Footnote 53 He accepted it as a fact “that [Germany's] leaders give honor to God.”Footnote 54
The negotiation of the relationship between the church and the new state formed the central point of another major article in June 1933 by the editors of the paper.Footnote 55 In entering a “Third Reich,” the EGK editors believed the “thoughts and feelings” of “by far the greatest majority of church people” were with the new government, giving “thanks to God for that which He has given us in the new regime: Germany again has a Führer, such as it has not had since Bismarck's time.”Footnote 56
Hitler was credited with saving Germany from a “horrific domination” and “the German churches from a bloody persecution,” referring to the “Marxist-free-thinking terror” believed to have influenced the German working class.Footnote 57 The EGK promoted the idea that “the public mockery of Christianity and the Church” was being halted and that the Nazis were ending corruption, class hatred, and unemployment.Footnote 58 Relying on Hitler's speech of March 23 and the “rush” of people into church services on May 1, 1933, they came to the conclusion that “Hitler and his regime have proclaimed the Christian State.”Footnote 59
The Myth of the Church Spirit of 1914 (and 1933)
The belief in a widespread spiritual “awakening” and its links to the Nazis were felt to be justified because there was a rise in church attendance with the advent of Nazi Germany.Footnote 60 This change was reminiscent of the increase in church attendance in 1914, when it appeared the war “united all classes and social strata of our people. . . . Even in those circles that were formerly indifferent or hostile to the church, and especially in the working-class world, it has led to a desire for the church, which has found expression in high attendance at all places of worship in Berlin.”Footnote 61 One EGK writer in 1916 had even described the war as having turned Germans into a “Community of Saints,” making them “churchly.”Footnote 62 Some Württemberg Pietists had viewed the war as a “spiritual springtime” (Geistesfrühling).Footnote 63
As Jeffrey Verhey notes, the “spirit of 1914” was a powerful one for the Nazis, who “described their accession to power as a recreation of the days of 1914.”Footnote 64 Yet it should be borne in mind that running parallel to this nationalist myth of the “experience” of 1914 was a spiritual myth, one both of “God is with us” (Gott mit uns) and of church revival.Footnote 65 As described as early as 1921, the general notion was that the “outbreak of the war was accompanied by a powerful religious-ecclesiastical wave” that had “strongly ebbed away” after 1918.Footnote 66 But by 1933 the tide was believed to be once more in. This also means that many in the churches seem to have felt this was a return to 1914 in both a nationalist and religious sense.Footnote 67
In Württemberg in 1933, reports from across the state described overfilled church services on new days of national celebration such as Labor Day (May 1) and Thanksgiving (October 1).Footnote 68 They included one record of Degerloch, where a loudspeaker needed to be set up in front of the church so that “two thousand people could take part” in the service. Such events were reported with delight, excitement, and a sense of disbelief at the apparently ever increasing religious enthusiasm. The new government seemed to bring with it a renewed interest in Christianity, and the filled services were held to be strong evidence of a church revival.
It is telling that both 1914 and 1933 were seen as “God's hour,” and both were interpreted (as Gailus put it) “as a reunion with God of a people who had strayed from the true faith, a change of direction toward re-Christianization.”Footnote 69 Paul Althaus, a prominent theologian at Erlangen University, summarized such notions in The German Hour of the Church. Originally published in October 1933, it was a work presumably written partly in response to the overfilled churches on May 1 and October 1. Althaus wrote, “Our Protestant Churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God.”Footnote 70 He emphasized a salvation “from the abyss” and believed that there was “religious significance” in the “events of 1933,” referring back to the similarly perceived religious significance of August 1914.Footnote 71
Growing Concerns in 1933
Intermingled with such excitement were concerns. By mid-year, articles appeared opposing the German Christian movement as an attempt to draw the Protestant Church into politics and amalgamate it completely with National Socialism and the state.Footnote 72 Against this, writers cited Hitler's assurances on March 23, though they were still concerned that the “Protestant Church could be impaired in the independence of its actions by the state.”Footnote 73 Such interference had already occurred, and the attempt by Premier Wilhelm Frick in Mecklenburg to place the Landeskirche directly under state control was cited.Footnote 74
During 1933 those reading the EGK were made well aware of such issues, particularly in Prussia, where August Jäger was appointed state commissioner over the churches.Footnote 75 Jäger was cited as saying the “new unity of state and Volk . . . must not be allowed to halt before the church,” and that changes in the Volk must also “bring with it for a living church a new formation of the forms of the church.”Footnote 76 Reports were published on the protests over this action and Hindenburg's direct interference in the affair.Footnote 77
In conjunction with this, the German Christian control of the newly formed German Protestant Church (Deutsche Evangelische Kirche, DEK) was reported, as was Hitler's July 22 speech supporting them. Delivered the night before national church elections, his radio broadcast assisted the GDC to victory.Footnote 78 As reported, this speech was taken to represent Hitler's view on “the relationship between church and state.”Footnote 79 As a political leader, he claimed he did not wish to deal with “questions of faith, of dogmatics or doctrine,” these being solely church matters.Footnote 80 He felt that he was called upon as the nation's leader, however, to deal with “völkisch or state interests” in their “relationship to the Confessions.”Footnote 81 He attempted reassurance, stating that “National Socialism always stressed that it is resolved to take the Christian Churches under state protection” so that they could fulfill their “religious mission.”Footnote 82
Hitler regarded the churches as “worthless” to the state if they did not in turn support the regime. He saw the two together as working for the “maintenance of the spiritual and physical health of people,” as their “destruction would mean both the end of the state and also the end of the church.” Though claiming he wished to protect the churches, Hitler did treat politics and religion as having an effect on one another. He cited the “gigantic political impact” that Christianity had in Germany in Roman times, as well as the impact of the Reformation, so that the “political-völkisch revolution” must also have an impact in the religious realm.
He viewed this as completely positive, raising the bogeyman of Bolshevism, which, in his opinion, was only able to be fought by a “concrete völkisch-political resistance.” He praised the GDC movement as the only one that was truly commensurate with the Nazi state, the only one that had “clearly and unambiguously committed itself to the national and cultural movement at a time when unfortunately, just as in the Roman church, numerous pastors and superintendents have taken a baseless position against the national uprising in the sharpest [manner], yes, often in a fanatical way.”Footnote 83
Hitler's position was essentially that the church should not interfere in politics, but that the state could interfere in the church––not to the extent of changing the faith, but in requiring it to support the political nation.Footnote 84 Hence, the state was rendering assistance to a group that would ensure the DEK operated in line with Nazism. Having interfered obviously and pointedly to ensure that the German population was aware of which church party he supported, Hitler attempted to draw a veil between this support and what it meant.
He stated that “the inner religious questions of the individual confessions” would not be touched, as it was not his place to take a position on such. This is despite the fact that the whole point of support for the GDC was so that they would be elected and bring the Protestant Church in line with National Socialism––taking extreme positions on religious questions in doing so.Footnote 85 Just how extreme these could be was clarified by the infamous “Krause controversy.”
Reinhold Krause was a German Christian leader based in Berlin, who delivered a speech on November 13, 1933, at the Berlin Sportspalast before an approving crowd of around 20,000 GDC supporters.Footnote 86 This speech was summarized in the EGK, his main points being the enactment of an “Aryan paragraph” in the church so that “Protestant Christians of foreign blood” would be “gathered in special Jewish Christian communities,” that the church would free itself of “everything un-German in the creed and religious service” (including the Old Testament) to proclaim “a heroic figure of Jesus as the basis of a racially appropriate Christianity in which the proud man takes the place of the shattered slave-soul.”Footnote 87 Further, the “only true service to God” was declared to be “that to nationality [Volkstum].”Footnote 88 It was an amalgamation of racial ideology with Christian faith.
At the time, there was an immediate response and Krause was forced to resign.Footnote 89 The EGK reported that three thousand pastors had read a declaration from their pulpits in which they confessed to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.Footnote 90 There was a belief that the change in Germany's leadership was “a call by God to the Church,” an “opportunity to influence the Volk with the strengths of the Gospel.”Footnote 91 Yet the sense in the Gemeindeblatt was that this was the time for a revival of orthodox Christian belief. Moreover the national revival was supposedly dependent on such Christian renewal, a point made during celebrations for the 450th anniversary of Luther's birth (November 10): “a Volk revival is only possible through the return of the Volk to the biblical Christianity of Martin Luther.”Footnote 92
By June 1933, evidence that this was a divine opportunity was found in the “many ways” that the “moral efforts of the current state and the cause of the church” lay parallel to one another.Footnote 93 Hence, the governmental measures that members of the church were happiest to support were those “that serve the moral development of the Volk.”Footnote 94 A supposed moral renewal under the Nazis was a strong point of attraction, and one that drew directly on Hitler's speeches. While noting that they could not help but be affected by the political changes in Germany, the EGK held that the Protestant Church had to ensure that “it surrenders nothing of its core, of the content, and of the power of the Gospel.”Footnote 95
The role that it was believed the church should play and that had been given to it by Hitler was as “the conscience of the Volk.”Footnote 96 The paper advised that “the new government has cleared some obstacles” from the path of spiritual revival, though the question remained whether the Volk would follow this road “under the admonitory and warning help of the church.”Footnote 97 What was essential was not the national “rebirth” but the spiritual one, so that “[t]he decisive question of the German Volk” was seen as “whether it will listen to the voice of the Word of God proclaimed by the church, which does not simply awaken the slumbering good in our Volk but also judges the evil.”
For many scholars, this judgment of evil forms the crux of the matter with respect to the German churches.Footnote 98 Clearly there were members of the Protestant Church who held that its role was also to point out abuses and evils within the German nation, but in practice there was very little active opposition to the Nazi persecution of the Jews or their persecution of political opponents. This is a key issue in the historiography, and the EGK of 1933 reflects what can only be called a great silence on the “Jewish Question,” especially when compared to the “noise” of the Church Struggle.Footnote 99
In conjunction with public church expressions, such as the outcry against Krause, there was very little discussion of the Nazis' antisemitic measures. For example, the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1 was not mentioned in the EGK. Yet a second point needs to be made here: a thorough reading of this paper shows that there were also no open statements of support for the Nazis' antisemitic policies. The first year of Nazi rule provided a forum for the outpouring of antisemitic sentiment, but there was none. Instead, the support was overwhelmingly for the supposed national rebirth under a Nazi-led government.
In fact, the only statement on the “Jewish Question” in this conservative Christian paper came in a speech by Joseph Goebbels in November 1933. Goebbels argued that “nothing lies further from National Socialism than to practice a cheap revenge” on Jews, promoting it as a virtue that the Nazis had the means to carry out a purge, but had not yet done so––assuredly of little comfort to German Jews.Footnote 100 Instead, he argued the Nazis sought “to find an actual and practical solution to the Jewish question.”
Though aware the new regime was antisemitic, the emphasis in the EGK was that the state was working toward national renewal, while the work of the church would be that of spiritual-moral revival.Footnote 101 This was a limited focus, but in their own conception it went to the heart of the matter, as it was believed that without a Christian foundation, the newly built state was a flimsy construction. Theophil Wurm addressed the idea that “true community” was to be found in “a Christian community,” with its “preparedness to help [and] feeling of solidarity.”Footnote 102
In other words, Nazi Germany was providing the framework necessary for spiritual renewal in four ways: in fighting immorality, in promoting what were viewed as essentially Christian concepts of community, in clearly stating its support for Christianity and the churches (relying on Hitler's speeches of February 1 and March 23), and not least in sparking off a remarkable enthusiasm within Germany, the “spring storm” of sentiment referred to by several writers.
Many held that this last aspect could be used, tapped into, and directed to spiritual matters. These were ideas similar to those of Christian revivalist movements.Footnote 103 One article in particular had the exhortation, “Use the hour!”Footnote 104 It advised that this was the hour given “to us and to our Volk from the Lord of history” and that they should work in it “so long as it is day, so that our church will once again be a people's church and able to participate in the construction of our Volk with the God-given strengths of the Gospel.”Footnote 105 It was a call to refound a Christian nation using state support.
Similarly, a “Call of the National Church Leadership to national mission” appeared in the EGK.Footnote 106 In fiery words, the newly formed DEK was urged to form the united church for the newly united Volk under Hitler, viewing the church as helping across all levels of society, assisting workers to make their tasks into “service to God,” women and mothers to fill their “house with a Christian spirit and educate their children . . . to be Christian people,” and to lead youth in “school and Labor Service, in SA and Hitler Youth . . . to manly piety.”
The call carried a sense of urgency that matched that of the Nazis, and fitted the idea that this was the “German hour of destiny,” “the decisive battle for the soul of the German people.”Footnote 107 It was an attempt to seize the moment, a moment of growing belief that arose from an overwhelming sense of destiny. This not only embodied a belief in national revival, but was also an attempt to use this to church ends. There was even a sense of infiltration, and it was hoped that the Nazi Party might be fruitful soil for mission work, as indicated in letters to the Protestant Young Mens' Association.Footnote 108 This included the idea that “young, inwardly strong people from [Protestant] circles” could take over Hitler Youth leadership in individual communities, and that members might “cross over to the NSDAP, primarily on missionary grounds.”Footnote 109 Yet all proselytization appeared to be occurring in the opposite direction after the German Christians gained power and began to promote Nazism within the church.
Though this was meant to be “God's hour,” the “godlessness movement” was a growing issue, and there were increasing concerns about neo-pagan religious groups such as the German Faith Movement.Footnote 110 As Latourette pointed out, the Nazi obsession with race provided impetus to such groups, giving their ideas greater legitimacy.Footnote 111 “Bolshevism” still remained a major concern.Footnote 112 But many lectures in church communities were delivered on topics such as “Völkisch religion or Christian faith?”Footnote 113 Along with a report on gratitude for the new Nazi state were notices on upcoming events that included courses on fighting the “German Faith.”Footnote 114 This was the “new opponent,” the Catholic Church being the “old” one.Footnote 115
Such issues had been raised prior to 1933, especially by Kurt Hutten, who had written of the dangers of a “racially appropriate religion.”Footnote 116 He wrote on the racial movement's growing influence in German life, dividing it into the drive to eugenics and “care for race” (Rassenpflege), both of which he related to the loss of life in World War I.Footnote 117 The first he described as containing concepts about people who were “less worthy” of life. Proponents of this idea advocated both the sterilization of the disabled and assistance to “healthy” families to encourage them to reproduce.Footnote 118
Hutten was definite that the idea of people of lesser value (Minderwertigen) was anathema to a faith that held that everyone was God's creation and worthy of salvation.Footnote 119 He connected Rasssenpflege to racial scientists such as Hans F. K. Günther, and warned that although Christians recognized races as part of God's creation, they rejected such theorists' “blood materialism.”Footnote 120 He believed that the danger was that “blood” came to be seen as defining the realm of the spiritual, becoming by itself the “secret of the spirit.”Footnote 121 The völkisch religious groups were believed to be advocating such “blood materialism.”
By December 1933, one of DEK's main functions was described as fighting neo-paganism. Now that “the time of terror against [the church] is past” because of the Nazis, the DEK would “manfully swing the sword of the spirit” against “godlessness and neo-paganism and un-Christian belief.”Footnote 122 This was linked to perceived Nazi support, to “the Führer calling for this service of the church in the Third Reich.” “Protestant men” of the SA, SS, Stahlhelm, and National Socialist youth were asked to answer Hitler's call.Footnote 123 The urgent language fitted with the other two main tasks of this church militant: reintroducing moral values into German society and national mission.
The DEK leadership was “using the hour” not only to attempt social change. There was also a desire for Christian values to permeate every level of society, and particularly Germany's cultural life, through legislated morality. It was operating as a pressure group, with its leadership pressing the government on censorship as well as for a “Christian German Sunday,” that is, for Sunday laws controlling activities on the day of worship. The demand was strong, that it “must again become a day for the German family and for the word of God in all communities.”Footnote 124 The idea of the renewed importance of the church and its determination to use such influence was summed up in the phrase, “The face of the new Germany shall be that of a Christian Volk!”Footnote 125
The Pastors' Prayer Group in 1933
It was in this context, then, that the members of the Pastors' Prayer Group began to consider their position on the Nazi regime. A letter from September 1933 was one of the first on this topic. Sent from Degerloch by J, it noted that they were all affected by the changes of the period.Footnote 126 He believed that they had to “recognize in Hitler a God-given ‘savior’ (2 Kings 13:5).” The passage referred to appears in the context of God's anger against Israel, with an eventual change: “The Lord provided a deliverer for Israel, and they escaped from the power of Aram. So the Israelites lived in their own homes as they had before.” What this meant was that Germans were compared to the people of Israel, and the Weimar Republic was seen as a period when “the Lord's anger” had “burned” against Germany (2 Kings 13:3).Footnote 127
J, however, viewed the “future of our church” with “great concern,” because the “faith movement” (presumably of the German Christians) wished also to create a totalitarian regime in the church.Footnote 128 At the same time, Wurm was concerned by the totalitarian claims of the state, arguing that the church needed to clarify its relationship to the Third Reich.Footnote 129 J was particularly worried that the “racial question” was being brought into the church, noting that it was against the articles of the Lutheran Church and would bring “great hardships.”
It was viewed as an extreme problem if the “Aryan question” should put “the roots of our Christian life in question.” Indeed, he felt that this was possibly a satanic device to prevent “a genuine awakening.”Footnote 130 This was demonstrative of a focus specifically on the “racial question” in the church, rather than in German society as a whole. It certainly showed a lack of understanding as to German Christian aims, given that J believed the disparate parties in the church could be welded together in opposing the “Aryan question.”
His letter dealt with a contemporaneous issue of great concern, the question of whether an “Aryan Paragraph” could or should be introduced into the DEK. The key point was whether this contradicted the church constitution, the “teachings of the Holy Scripture, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the lessons of the Apostles”––and it was a question asked of Protestant faculties at the universities of Erlangen and Marburg.Footnote 131 J's letter was written only shortly before the response from Marburg, issued September 20, 1933, which declared that the antisemitic clauses were “irreconcilable with the character of the Christian church as it is determined by the solely definitive authority of the Holy Scripture and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and as it is witnessed to by the confessions of the Reformation.”Footnote 132 It went on to reject the idea that Schöpfungsglaube (belief in creation) justified making such distinctions.Footnote 133
Ultimately, J believed that they could only continue in their “intercession for all of the men in authority in the state and the church.”Footnote 134 Others supported this perspective.Footnote 135 One writer from Siglingen, H, viewed it as both “distressing and oppressive” that the German Christians were attempting to seize “power in the church,” arguing that “this certainly has nothing to do with living faith and will not contribute to the promotion of church life and religious life.” He hoped that the German Christians would not topple Bishop Wurm, believing that perhaps Wurm had gone too far out of his way to accommodate them.Footnote 136
Very few wrote in support of antisemitic measures, though one pastor, K, saw the “great happenings that have gripped our hearts so deeply” as hitting especially hard in Frankfurt because they formed a “counterforce” to the “power of the Jews.”Footnote 137 He held this was a “reaction” to an overbearing “arrogance” or “presumption” on the part of some Jews. Even in this, the only openly antisemitic letter among the pastors, the writer did not understand the Nazis' racially determinist attitude. He thought that the severities visited upon “noble Jews and Jewish Christians” were to be deeply regretted.Footnote 138
His concern was primarily the blanket discrimination taken without consideration for the individual, as he clearly believed some such measures were necessary. Yet the fact that he even believed there were “noble Jews” ran counter to Nazism. Hitler had expressed himself very clearly on this, even in the early years of the Nazi Party. In his view, it was irrelevant whether the individual Jew was “decent”: “In himself he carries those characteristics that nature has given him, and he cannot ever rid himself of those characteristics.”Footnote 139
Probably writing from personal experience, K gave examples of the impact of antisemitism, viewing it as a “hard fate” that a Jewish missionary lost his position, or that a “Jewish Christian typesetter is unable to find work.” His solution was an odd one––he posited the possibility of the creation of a colony for converted Jews in Palestine. This was a conclusion drawn from his belief that Jewish converts to Christianity would continue to suffer in Germany, unable to find work with Jews because of their religious beliefs, rejected by Christians “because the racial difference stands in the way.”Footnote 140 It was a mix of support and opposition and demonstrated some assumption that Jews would not be closed out of German society, but that “Jewish Christians” might. K concluded, “If we think of the Russian brothers in their distress, then we will not wish to forget such brothers from Israel.”
A Clash of Conservatisms: Weighing up the Regime
By December, a Pastor G dealt more clearly with the simultaneous joy and concern in 1933. With regard to the political situation, he noted that “we wish to and should greet the new state with innermost joy and gratitude,” believing that even the actions of the regime that were “less pleasing” needed to be seen as part of the one “salvational act of God.”Footnote 141 This statement is a very telling one, and perhaps offers some insight into larger debates on German responses to the “Jewish Question.”
Different formulations have been used to describe the issue of public opinion in the Third Reich, with some debate between Ian Kershaw and Otto Dov Kulka as to whether Germans' views are better characterized as a “lethal” or “moral indifference” or “passive complicity.”Footnote 142 The phrase “passive complicity” captured the notion that the “general passivity of the population in the face of persecution of the Jews” meant an “ensuing objective complicity.”Footnote 143 Kershaw's notion was that “of shrugging one's shoulders or turning one's back on an evil in recognition that one can do nothing about it, and in the feeling that other concerns are more pressing or overwhelming.”Footnote 144
Obviously, the present study is dealing with a particular segment of the German population in 1933—whereas much of the debate focuses on “public opinion” in the war years. Neither of these statements fully encompasses the response of these ministers in their conscious decision making. What appears to be lacking is agency. There was tolerance of antisemitic policies because of the perceived benefits of the Nazi regime (“national redemption”), while support was given not for an antisemitic regime, but a salvational nationalist one.
On one level, the discussion in this Pastors' Prayer Group matches Kershaw's formulation. They were far more concerned with their own issues within the church than they were with issues such as those facing German Jews, and their perspective was (it appears) limited to German Christians, including converted Jews. A phrase that perhaps meets the requirements of both Kulka and Kershaw, and one that certainly seems applicable to the Pfarrergebetsbund is “actively passive.” What was illustrated through the pastors' discussion in 1933 is that they were not indifferent to racial ideology––they genuinely seem to have felt it challenged the foundations of the Protestant Church. But while opposing such notions in the church, in the political field they were (at the very least) willing to tolerate anti-Jewish racial policy.Footnote 145
They acknowledged antisemitism and “less pleasing” aspects of Nazi Germany, but made a conscious decision to accept them as part of a “salvational act of God.” G did not elaborate, though by this point there had not only been public acts of antisemitism such as the boycott on April 1 but also the burning of “un-German writings” on May 10 and the creation of a concentration camp for the Nazis' political opponents (at Heuberg) that was widely reported in the Württemberg press.Footnote 146
In point of fact, antisemitic measures may well have had little impact on these pastors or their congregations.Footnote 147 But a willingness to overlook antisemitic policy (or attacks on political opponents or any “less pleasing” action) because of other aspects of Nazism––such as the apparent salvation of the German nation––meant they were actively passive, having made a choice to remain passive, to abide.Footnote 148
At the same time there were clear signs that the “new Germany” was not the Christian state they sought, and G went on in this vein: “But alongside this, what deep pain and what serious concern about the unholy, confused situation of our church.”Footnote 149 This was a tremendous qualification for people whose lives were dictated by their religious faith. He epitomized the conflict that existed for these conservative pastors as a whole, what might be termed a clash of conservatisms: a national or political conservatism as against a religious and theological conservatism.Footnote 150
G saw a vast discrepancy between the Nazis' national revival and the spiritual awakening that should underpin it. He relied on Hitler's statements in arguing that “The work for the Volk is truly something very good: it is based on overpowering Bolshevism, which would have killed off all religious life; it is carried by the conviction of the Führer that our Volk also requires a religious revival.”Footnote 151 He had strong concerns, however, that such a religious revival had not come about. Although a national leader had been received in the “God-given Führer,” Germany still lacked a “spiritual leader” who could solve the spiritual confusion of the Protestant Church.Footnote 152
There was a political or national joy expressed, and that very enthusiastically, but the correlative of this was religious concern. G argued that all the pastors in the prayer group were one in the conviction that the Kingdom of God could only be promoted through “the working of the Holy Spirit, which awakens men's souls, renews, sanctifies,” but held that this was currently impossible because of the overwhelming politicization of life.Footnote 153 He astutely observed that there was a form of sensory overload in Germany, driven especially through media such as the radio, that did not allow time for reflection.
While he believed this hindered the kind of contemplation needed to find God, his observation captures more generally the Nazis' use of radio and festivals. Much of their propaganda effort aimed to maintain an unquestioning experiential enthusiasm, creating a kind of perpetual motion: a sense that the nation was constantly moving forward. This was a point that Detlev Peukert made in his work Inside Nazi Germany, describing an “empty but permanent activism” as driving much early participation in the SA, and arguing that the Nazi “vision” was a “perpetuum mobile of a utopian Volksgemeinschaft bent on struggle.”Footnote 154
According to G, this left no room for the religious realm. Asking how the prospects now appeared for a “spiritual springtime” that would drive “all church distress into the background,” he concluded that the outlook was not good: “Is it not so that the tremendously strong emphasis on the political, Volk-bound values in our time necessarily pushes religious interest and life into the background?”Footnote 155 Not only this, but völkisch ideas were invading the religious realm: “the Germanic wave in religion, so terribly up to date . . . [it] entices, encompasses, inundates––and it threatens to push back Christian values to a minimum, to put them in the shade.” By December 1933, these conservative pastors were not only concerned about a lack of religious revival, but that Christianity was under attack.
The problem that we face in dealing with such a group as these pastors is that of a very limited concern. They effectively saw their battle as lying within the church. The focus was on a supposed act of God, the “national rebirth” that Roger Griffin posited was at the heart of fascism, rather than the “redemptive anti-Semitism” that Saul Friedländer argued was at the heart of Nazism.Footnote 156 What this meant in turn is that the Nazi government's antisemitism was viewed as tolerable.
An “actively passive” response indicates two major points. First, members of the church (including very leading members) viewed their interest as largely limited to the ecclesiastical realm. Second, such a perspective meant that the apparently positive aspects of the new regime for the church overwhelmed the negative aspects. The idea that this was a “salvational act of God” drew on notions of a government that was not only reviving Germany as a nation, but that was also creating a “Christian state.” It also drew very powerfully and directly on the experience of overfilled churches in 1933, and preexisting notions of church revival in the “experience” of 1914.
This religious coloring to the year helps partly to explain the fact that the massive church attendance was reported, whereas the April boycott was not. There was a belief that on balance the “less pleasing” aspects could be borne, as long as they did not amount to an incursion into the church––as the response to the Krause controversy indicates. Though there was generally a celebratory mood in the Gemeindeblatt, concerns were expressed both in the paper and among the Pastors' Prayer Group as to what this all meant. Belief in a national revival under the Nazis still existed, as did a belief that Nazi Germany was a state in support of religion. But for these conservative Christians, at least, the year was no longer seen as a “spiritual springtime.”
Conclusion: Sailing into the Abyss
A notion from the EGK that sought to depict the experience of 1933 was that the history of the church seemed to occur in waves. While “[t]he church found itself in recent years in a valley, in spite of all its efforts for the soul of our Volk,” the Nazi “revolution” was described as having brought it to a peak again.Footnote 157 Like most Germans, those in Württemberg had been experiencing extraordinary peaks and valleys from before World War I. In terms of nationalism, this varied from the highs of the 1914 “August days” to the lows of a lost war and the despair for a divided and defeated nation.
The most apt descriptions of these waves of revival and collapse are those used at the time, from “God is with us” in World War I to “the abyss of the postwar period.”Footnote 158 The latter had been seen as a time of battle against the “godlessness movement” and “de-christianizing culture.”Footnote 159 The reports in the EGK indicate that these conservatives supported Wiedergeburt (rebirth) both as nationalists who pined for the Second Reich, and as Christians who abhorred the supposed immorality, divisiveness, and materialism of the Weimar Republic.
In 1933 Wurm retrospectively summarized these common themes. He wrote of the church as having fought the “danger of a Bolshevization of the German Volk,” drawing parallels between the church and NSDAP in “rightly recognizing that the downfall of Germany rested not simply on political and economic failures” but on excessive materialism.Footnote 160 He argued that the church had opposed the “war guilt lie” and “reparations madness” after World War I, seeking to save the “inner values” of the German nation.
In this way the church was presented as preserving the true nation and its values, including Christianity, from the chaos of the Weimar era. This concept was concerned with the question of legitimate authority in the state, and meant that the state was accepted as “God-given” only when such authority was wielded by a regime with which church organizations believed they found some common ground. It was on this basis that Wurm believed Protestant youth should be “Christian, national, social,” advocating a sense of national duty as being bound to Christianity.Footnote 161 Moreover, the Christian faith was viewed as forming a cohesive link across class boundaries.Footnote 162
The NSDAP saw race and nationalism as performing this function. Their slogan was “national, social, and antisemitic,” and they had always relied on the ideal of the “comradeship of the trenches” as their benchmark of national unity: “the way in which the hand of a soldier reaches out beyond all differences of class, rank, and political philosophy. Soldierly comradeship, cemented with blood . . . can never be torn out of the heart, it cannot be exterminated.”Footnote 163 By contrast, members of the Protestant Church believed that it served this unifying function.Footnote 164 Rather than a comradeship of the trenches, it was a perceived comradeship of the church.
What further complicated matters within the Pastors' Prayer Group was their prophetic tradition and the assumed interrelations between worldly events and spiritual faith. In such a view, failure and success were seen as expressing the will of God, a point they had in common with other German Protestants.Footnote 165 Hence, from a religious perspective, there had been the excitement of World War I as an “instrument of God,” followed by the Weimar Republic as a time of spiritual and moral crisis, itself followed by the excitement of the Third Reich as a time of religious revival. Yet for the members of the Pastors' Prayer Group, the year 1933 was itself both peak and valley. By December 1933, the “spiritual springtime” had passed; the “Germanic wave in religion” was rising.
At the time, prominent church critics pointed out the fallacy of such attempts to read the will of God. Although Joachim Beckmann believed that the last Church Yearbook was published in 1933, there was one printed in 1934, with a powerful introductory statement.Footnote 166 Hermann Sasse, as editor, believed that the epoch's waves were stormy:
The ship of the church sailed with a broken rudder and listed strongly in the storm of the time. The crew, however, saw only the splendid church-flag with the violet cross fluttering in the wind . . . so proud of their ship, so delighted with the ever faster journey––into the abyss.Footnote 167
By August 1934, Sasse also pointed out what he viewed as a fundamental error. Many Protestants believed that the history of the church should mirror that of the nation, so that a “high point in the political history of the Volk” should equate to one within the church.
He argued this was nonsensical. Many national or political “high points” were simultaneously the low points of church history. Hence, in his view, “it was the greatest error of the year 1933 that people thought that the great turnaround of the nationalist uprising ought now to have an analogous process in the church, a type of rebirth of the church.”Footnote 168 While this was clearly an attack on Althaus (his colleague at Erlangen), it recognized the larger issue: that the events of 1933 had been misread as a Protestant experience.
