The Church and Naziism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The church building and Naziism - Essay lessonThe movement of Deutsche Christen (German Christians) was undoubtedly the one most directly tied to Nazi regime. Having rejected the Judaical part of the Christian tradition and embraced the fanatical version of anti-Semitism, the German Christians composed the most influential groups of German Lutheran Protestants. Their movement was officially established in November 1933, when the record mass rally of German Lutherans substantiate the continuation between the teachings of Martin Luther and Adolph Hitler, the dismissal of Baptized Jews from the Church and the (partial) rejection of the Old Testament. The German Christians justified the absolute bond to the State authority by the claims on the primacy of temporal power that were found in some of Luthers writings. German Mller, the Reichsbischof of the German evangelistic Church, established in July 1933, was the supreme leader of this movement. Although the German Christians numbered to a greater extent than 600,000 in the mid 1930s, Mllers aim of unification of Catholic and Protestant churches of Germany under his personalised control was never attained, and he committed suicide in May 1945, when the news of Hitlers death reached him.Even though the German Christians were effectively supported by the Nazi government, the internal opposition to the Nazification and Aryanization of the Evangelical (Protestant) Churches emerged. The attempts by the German Christians to enforce an Aryan Paragraph, which would de-frock all priests of Jewish drop as hale as those who were married to non-Germans, aroused an outcry among more liberal members of the Protestant churches who founded the Confessing Church. Under the leadership of Martin Niemller, the Confessing Church fiercely opposed the attempts of the state authorities to enforce the Aryan Paragraph and expel the pastors of Jewish descent from the Protestant churches. Later on, the Confessing Church