Germany, under the Nazi regime, was an overwhelmingly Christian country. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi eraJohnson, Eric (2000). Nazi terror: the Gestapo, Jews, and ordinary Germans New York: Basic Books, p. 10. and a year following the annexations of Austria and CzechoslovakiaIn 1930, Czechia had 8.3 million inhabitants: 78.5% Catholics, 10% Protestants (Hussites and Czech Brethren) and 7.8% irreligious or undeclared citizens. into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig (), and 1.5% as "atheist". Protestants were over-represented in the Nazi Party's membership and electorate, and Catholics were under-represented.Multiple sources:
Smaller religious minorities such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Baháʼí Faith were banned in Germany, while the eradication of Judaism was attempted along with the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust. The Salvation Army became an adjunct of the NSV, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church was banned for a short time, but due to capitulation from church authorities, was later reinstated. Some religious minority groups had a more complicated relationship with the new state, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which withdrew its missionaries from Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1938. German LDS church branches were permitted to continue to operate throughout the war, but were forced to make some changes in their structure and teachings. The Nazi Party was frequently at odds with the Pope, who denounced the party by claiming that it had an anti-Catholic veneer.
There were differing views among the Nazi leaders as to the future of religion in Germany. Anti-Church radicals included Hitler's personal secretary Martin Bormann, the propagandist Alfred Rosenberg, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Some Nazis, such as Hans Kerrl, who served as Hitler's Minister for Church Affairs, advocated "Positive Christianity", a uniquely Nazi form of Christianity that rejected Christianity's Jewish origins and the Old Testament, and portrayed "true" Christianity as a fight against Jews, with Jesus depicted as an Aryan.
Nazism wanted to transform the subjective consciousness of the German peopleits attitudes, values and mentalitiesinto a single-minded, obedient "national community". The Nazis believed that they would therefore have to replace class, religious and regional allegiances.Ian Kershaw; The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation; 4th ed.; Oxford University Press; New York; 2000; pp. 173–74 Under the Gleichschaltung (Nazification) process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany's 28 existing Protestant churches. The plan failed, and was resisted by the Confessing Church. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate political Catholicism. Amid harassment of the Church, the Reich concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, and promised to respect Church autonomy. Hitler routinely disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious. Clergy, nuns, and lay leaders were targeted, with thousands of arrests over the ensuing years. The Catholic Church accused the regime of "fundamental hostility to Christ and his Church".Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence and the Holocaust, p. xx Indiana University Press Multiple historians believe that the Nazis intended to eradicate traditional forms of Christianity in Germany after victory in the war. Sharkey, Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity , The New York Times, 13 January 2002 The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches , Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Winter 2001, publishing evidence compiled by the O.S.S. for the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of 1945 and 1946 Griffin, Roger Fascism's relation to religion in Blamires, Cyprian, World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1, p. 10, ABC-CLIO, 2006: “There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it.” Mosse, George Lachmann, Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich, p. 240, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2003: "Had the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical policies would have gone beyond those of the German Christians, to the utter destruction of both the Protestant and the Catholic Church." Shirer, William L., Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, pp. 240, Simon and Schuster, 1990: “And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.” Fischel, Jack R., Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust, p. 161, Rowman & Littlefield, 2020: “The objective was to either destroy Christianity and restore the German gods of antiquity or to turn Jesus into an Aryan.” Dill, Marshall, Germany: a modern history, p. 365, University of Michigan Press, 1970: “It seems no exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at least to subjugate it to their general world outlook.” Wheaton, Eliot Barculo The Nazi revolution, 1933–1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era, pp. 290, 363, Doubleday 1968: The Nazis sought "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch." Bendersky, Joseph W., A concise history of Nazi Germany, p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: “Consequently, it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire.”
Background
Christianity has ancient roots among Germanic peoples dating to the missionary work of Columbanus and St. Boniface in the 6th–8th centuries. The Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, divided the German population between a two-thirds majority of Protestants and a one-third minority of Roman Catholics. The south and west remained mainly Catholic, while north and east became mainly Protestant.Encyclopædia Britannica Online – Germany : Religion ; web 23 May 2013 The Catholic Church enjoyed a degree of privilege in the Bavarian region, the Rhineland and Westphalia as well as parts in south-west Germany, while in the Protestant north, Catholics suffered some discrimination.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, @ushmm.org See Churches in Nazi GermanyLewy, Gunther, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 1964, First Da Capo Press, pp. 342–345
Bismarck's Kulturkampf ("Culture Struggle") of 1871–1878 had seen an attempt to assert a Protestant vision of German nationalism over Germany, and fused anticlericalism and suspicion of the Catholic population, whose loyalty was presumed to lie with Austria and France, rather than the new German Empire. The Centre Party had formed in 1870, initially to represent the religious interests of Catholics and Protestants, but was transformed by the Kulturkampf into the "political voice of Catholics".Shelley Baranowski; Nazi Empire - German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler; Cambridge University Press; 2011; pp. 18–19 Bismarck's "Culture Struggle" failed in its attempt to eliminate Catholic institutions in Germany, or their strong connections outside of Germany, particularly various international missions and Rome.Encyclopædia Britannica Online: Blessed Clemens August, Graf von Galen; web Apr 2013.
In the course of the 19th century, both the rise of historical-critical scholarship of the Bible and Jesus by David Strauss, Ernest Renan and others, progress in the natural sciences, especially the field of evolutionary biology by Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel and others, and opposition to oppressive socioeconomic circumstances by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, and a rise in more liberal and progressive churches, resulted in increasing criticism of the traditional churches' dogmas, and moved numerous German citizens into rejecting traditional theological concepts and either following liberal forms of religion or discarded it altogether. By 1859, they had established the (literally "Union of Free Religious Communities of Germany"), an association of persons who consider themselves to be religious without adhering to any established and institutionalized church or sacerdotal cult. In 1881 in Frankfurt am Main, Ludwig Büchner established the German Freethinkers League (Deutscher Freidenkerbund) as the first German organisation for atheists and agnostics. In 1892 the Freidenker-Gesellschaft and in 1906 the were formed.
In 1933, 5 years prior to the annexation of Austria into Germany, the population of Germany was approximately 67% Protestant and 33% Catholic, while the Jewish population was less than 1%. + Religious statistics of Germany, 1910–1939 Year Total population Protestant Roman Catholic Others (including Jews) Jewish 1910a 64,926,000 39,991,000 (61.6%) 23,821,000 (36.7%) 1,113,000 (1.7%) 615,000 (1.0%) 1925b 62,411,000 40,015,000 (64.1%) 20,193,000 (32.4%) 2,203,000 (3.5%) 564,000 (0.9%) 1933b 65,218,000 40,865,000 (62.7%) 21,172,000 (32.5%) 3,181,000 (4.8%) 500,000 (0.8%) 1933b 65,218,000 43,696,060 (67.0%) 21,521,940 (33.0%) - (<1%) – (<1%) 1939b 69,314,000 42,103,000 (60.8%) 23,024,000 (33.2%) 4,188,000 (6.0%) 222,000 (0.3%) 1939c 79,375,281 42,862,652 (54.0%) 31,750,112 (40.0%) 4,762,517 (6.0%)d - a. German Empire borders. b. Weimar Republic borders, i.e. German state borders of 31 December 1937. c. Nazi Germany borders in May 1939. Official census data. d. Including gottgläubig at 3.5%, irreligious people at 1.5%, and other faiths at 1.0%.
Denominational trends during the Nazi period + Numbers leaving the Church 1932–1944In full thousand, rounded down. Numbers for Protestantism and Catholicism are approximates. Source: Granzow et al. 2006: 40, 207 Year Catholic Protestant Total 1932 52,000 225,000 277,000 1933 34,000 57,000 91,000 1934 27,000 29,000 56,000 1935 34,000 53,000 87,000 1936 46,000 98,000 144,000 1937 104,000 338,000 442,000 1938 97,000 343,000 430,000 1939 95,000 395,000 480,000 1940 52,000 160,000 212,000 1941 52,000 195,000 247,000 1942 37,000 105,000 142,000 1943 12,000 35,000 49,000 1944 6,000 17,000 23,000