Nia Foster

Mr. Hawkins
Modern World History P-4

Nazi racial ideology was creationist. Hitler considered that the different human
races had been created separately. The Aryan race was the master race, created as
Gods highest handiwork, the other races (Jewish, Black, Slav, etc) were literally subhuman. Hitler judged those by the color of their skin, to determine there beauty. This was not
something that just popped into head. Decimation has been around for a long time.
Hitler considered that allowing interbreeding between the separately created races would
destroy the Aryan race, and thus be a sin against God. He considered it a high imperative
to preserve the Aryan race in its primordial excellence.
He did this be eliminating everything not made in the image he wanted. Also by knocking
anything stepped in the visons way. The German people during the Third Reich were

overwhelmingly Christian, with among the highest church-attendance rates in Europe. In a

1939 Census 94% declared themselves Christian. Nearly all of those involved in the
Holocaust regarded themselves as Christian; the Auschwitz SS self-labelled as Catholic
(42.6%), Protestant (36.5%) or Gottglubig (20.1%; the word means God-believer or
devout, and was the term favoured by the German Christians); not one was recorded as
without faith (atheist). Indeed Himmler declared that: I have never tolerated an atheist
in the ranks of the SS. Every member has a deep faith in God. I believe they had taken an
atheistic or agnostic approach to religion (just like Communism. God only gets in the way of an absolute

dictator). Religion hindered the final solution. Some churches in Germany brown-nosed the Germans in
order to avoid persecution; any who stood against Hitler were sent with the others to the Camps.

The Nazis believed in Constructive Christianity and freedom for every religious
denomination (group). But in reality, the Nazis saw the Church and Christianity as a threat
to their policies. One-third of Germans were Catholics and two-thirds were Protestants.

Christians werent the only ones being persecuted by the Nazis. About one-third of Jehovah
Witnesses were killed in concentration camps as they werent willing to fight for any cause,
and therefore refused to serve in the army.

Around 400 priests were arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp.

A member of the Nazi party was elected Bishop of the Church. Non-Aryan ministers were
suspended. Church members called themselves German Christians, with "the Swastika on their
chest and the Cross in their heart."

In 1933 the Deutsche Christen (the German Church) declared its support for the unity of
cross and swastika. More ominously, 1941s joint declaration of German Protestant
Evangelical leaders urged that the severest measures against the Jews be adopted and that
they be banished from German lands.

Ironically, even the Nazi-led slaughter of Jews has a spiritual dimension: the term
Holocaust usually describes the burning of a religious sacrifice. While Nazism took
inspiration and succour from Church documents and protagonists, this article indicates
how Nazism can even be regarded as a racialised and deformed brand of Christianity.

Interestingly, Hitler even framed Jew-hatred in religious terms: This was the time of the
greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever gone through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed
cosmopolitan and become an anti-Semite.