Hitler’s View on Christianity: Insights from Conway’s Analysis of Nazi Totalitarianism

“John Seymour Conway (December 31, 1929 – June 23, 2017) was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of British Columbia, where he taught for almost 40 years. His work focused on the role of the Vatican and German churches during the Holocaust; on 20th-century Christian–Jewish relations; and on the Holocaust in Hungary and Slovakia” (Wikipedia). In Michael Berenbaum’s book, A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, Conway contributes to the topic of victims in “Chapter 17: Between Cross and Swastika: The Position of German Catholicism.” John S. Conway’s assertion is that the Catholic leadership during the Third Reich was complacent and manipulated by the Nazi regime. The chapter highlights Hitler’s view of Christianity as an obstacle to his ideologies, and how Nazism sought to replace religion with faith in the government. The Catholic Church’s response to Nazi governance was criticized for being narrow and ineffective in protecting its members from atrocities. The totalitarian nature of the Nazi regime demanded blind obedience that left little room for conventional religion. Instead, the Nazis intended to replace the Abrahamic faiths with a state religion, with the Führer as its prophet.

The Church has historically felt a need to defend its position or lack of action during the Third Reich. Conway asserts and provides evidence that the Catholic leadership was willingly complacent and manipulated during the Nazi era. There has been a controversy over whether the Nazis supported or opposed Christianity. Some believe that Hitler supported the faith but objected to the leadership and the bureaucracy. While others have made the claim that the Nazis were an extension of the Church from their antisemitic policies. Both of those views are inherently incorrect. Conway quotes directly from Hitler’s Table Talk:

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. To eliminate the total Judeo-Christian heritage was to be the prime duty of the new ‘scientific’ Weltanschauung based on the Nazi doctrines of racial purity and German power. It was part of the Führer’s determination to rid Germany of all ‘Jewish’ filth and priestly twaddle. The war will be over one day. I shall then consider that my life’s final task will be to solve the religious problem. Only then will the life of the German native be guaranteed once and for all.

(Conway, 180-1).

The Nationalist Socialist platform that the Nazis governed from was a totalitarian style of governance in every way. The total aspect of the government eluded the Church because the religious leadership was accustomed to the modern separation of government and religion. It is known that religion has a history of influencing government, but the Nazi obsession for power created an ahistorical moment, at least for Germans in the twentieth century, that the government would impose on religion. In many ways, Nazism was a state religion and it demanded more than just taxes and an oath of allegiance from the citizens; the Nazis demanded the German faith. Like the Abrahamic religions, there were commandments and a messianic figure; Hitler was to be recognized as more than a politician, he was their savior. Despite the obvious contradictions, the bishops continued to support the Nazi regime and by doing so, the pious Catholics followed their example. The Catholic rationalization for their inaction has been and continues to be the excuse that their role was to preserve the traditions within Catholicism. Which may in fact be true, that might be their role, however, there is evidence that the Catholic leadership has not been apolitical. The Church has an extensive history of supporting and condemning political movements. The Church only intervened when basic tenets of faith were being openly violated. When the Nazis forcibly removed crucifixes from Catholic schools and when the thinly veiled secrets of euthanasia became commonly known, then the Church spoke up. When the Church did speak up, the leaders were unharmed. “No German Catholic bishop, not even the outspoken bishop Munster, Count Galen, was imprisoned or tortured” (Conway, 183).

By allowing Bishops like Count Galen to object without reprisal, an artificial sense of civility was created. The people were able to see that the accusations of totalitarianism were false, because if people and institutions could object to the government, then clearly it was not an all-encompassing machine that stole people’s freedoms and objectified the public. It also created a space for dialogue among the people. A space in which people were able to debate which institution was better, the Nazi government or the Catholic Church. By creating such a space, Hitler was fulfilling one of his many objectives; to disillusion people’s conception of the Church and to replace their faith in God with faith in himself and his government. “Now was the time to promote anti-Catholic feelings. And the recently published final volume of Goebbels’ diary for the war years shows unequivocally that the Nazi determination to gain total ideological mastery of the German people remained unchanged” (Conway, 183). Hitler saw the Church as a force that has misled the Germans. It was through the Church that Enlightenment was permitted in the first place. With the Enlightenment came an era of Liberalism that impacted most of Europe for centuries, including Hitler’s beloved Germany. The Liberalism that came from the Enlightenment gave the Jews a series of tolerances that led to emancipation. From then on, in Hitler’s view, the Jews were given license to abscond with the fruits of the industrious and victimized Germans. In short, the Church not only allowed the Jews to seize the means of production from the people, but they also encouraged it. The Church recognized Communism as an enemy of Christianity because of its rhetoric and policy which was openly anti-religious. With the Communists as a clearly identified enemy, the Church saw the Nazis as an ally because they claimed to be the opposite of the Communists. However, the mechanisms that emboldened the Nazis’ style of governance were almost identical in nature. Both the Communists and the National Socialists were totalitarian in nature. They both demanded a sort of faith from their subjects. Their demands for obedience were all-encompassing, leaving little to no space for conventional religion.

The Protestants found themselves at odds with the Catholic leadership. They assert that the Catholics should have done more in response to the totalitarian nature of governance which swept Germany and later, most of Europe. It is believed that the narrow response from the Catholics was criticized because they did not intervene until their values were infringed upon. With such criticism comes the age-old argument between the Protestants and Catholics, the Protestant’s claim has been that the Catholic Church is not an institution that serves the people, rather it serves itself. In isolation, the Catholic response to the Third Reich was ineffective at protecting the members of the faith from the atrocities committed by the Nazis. To expand on this criticism, Conway states, “On the one hand, there is the undeniable fact of the readiness of the Catholic church to give enthusiastic endorsements to so many parts of the Nazi program. On the other hand, the churches continued. be the source of an alternative system of values to the incessantly propagated Nazi racial ideology” (Conway, 185). Through this line of thinking, the Catholics not only failed to protect the people from the Nazi agenda, but they supported the totalitarian regime in more ways than they objected.

It is important to remember that the Church was one of many institutions that failed the people during the Nazi era. The government, the Church, the international community, and even the family failed the people during the Third Reich. The nature of totalitarianism is that the government seizes everything from the people. Their hearts, minds, wallets, their political affiliations, their speech, their belief systems; everything! For that reason, some lenience should be permitted when discussing failures during such a period. “At a time of unprecedented and menacing challenge, the experience of German Catholicism during the Nazi era provides an instructive case study, not only of institutional supineness and human fallibility, but also, on occasion, of personal heroism and authentic religious obedience” (Conway, 185). The unprecedented nature of the National Socialist government and the totalitarianism that came with it should serve as a watershed moment in how people recognize authority. It is easy to assert that the people of that era were wrong and that they should have known better, however, the allure of fascism and totalitarianism did not die with the Nazis. The desire for a powerful man or government to solve everyone’s problems remains to this day. For that reason, education is paramount, we cannot afford the price that comes with authoritarianism.

Bibliography

Berenbaum, Michael, and John S Conway. “Chapter 17: Between Cross and Swastika: The Position of German Catholicism.” Essay. In A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, 179–87. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1990.

“John S. Conway (Historian).” Wikipedia, July 11, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Conway_(historian).