Religious Policies

Nicole Dodd, Victoria Donath & Ins Vazquez Noya

Single Party States

Objective:
Impose ideology and philosophy Eliminate or subjugate organizations with rival ideologies, value systems, and rival power groups: Religion
.

Religion = Threat to single-party states Traditions Wealth International connections Support of powerful figures: Pope

CHURCH-STATE RELATIONSHIP
Nazi Germany the Churches reactions to Nazism were divided.

Similarities
Share similar ideals: traditional values Hostility to communism respect for nationalism importance of family life

Differences
Churches: Love Cooperation Nazism: Hate Struggle Set new assertive Aryan faith.

In order to remove the church, Hitlers approach would be to seek control of them through harmony and later reduce their influence to finally replace them.

Changes in the Church

Churches before 1933:
Catholic: Powerful, range of bodies. 1/5 votes in Weimar election Protestants: Over 40 million members. 28 state based churches

Religious organizations during the third Reich where:

The Reich Church: Coordinated religion German Christians: SA of the church

Confessional Church: Defended protestant church

German Faith Movement: Replace Christianity with new Nazi pagan faith

CONTROL
Protestant Churches:
Support German Christians to instill Nazism in Christianity Establish the Reich Church to combine all Protestants within one structure. Require pastors to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler. AS A RESULT: opposition raised by this effort to Nazify it organized in the Confessional Church dividing the Protestant community even more.

Catholic Church:
Set agreement to gain support: the Concordat. Papacy agreed to dissolve the Centre Party and cease to interfere in politics Nazis agreed that the Church could keep control of its education and youth institutions.

REDUCE INFLUENCE
Attacked and discredited church interference in politics.
Targeted the young, encouraged them to join the Hitler's youth and disbanded religious education from schools.

200 priests were accused of sexual misbehavior.

Encouraged Germans to abandon their churches launching a Church Secession Campaign. No clear strategy and measures taken were uneven Attacks were reduced as opposition rose from the Church.

THE GOVERNMENT INTENDED TO REPLACE CHRISTIANITY WITH THE NEW GERMAN MOVEMENT

REACTIONS
German people: Most of the population was Christian and supported Hitler. Many criticized government measures against the Churches and blamed the radicals around Hitler, not the great leader himself.

Churches: Protect their institutions and beliefs. The pope issued the With Burning Grief: encyclical that complained about the government not respecting the Concordat and other aspects their disliked about Nazism.

AFTERMATH
800 protestant pastors where arrested 50 were severely imprisoned Almost half of the Christian clergy where harassed in some way
The relationship between the State and the Church was a complex one that reflected the fear each side had of the other. Both the State and the Church felt they were threatened by the power of each other due to the influence they could exert on the German people.

A healthy, pure race would gain mastery in the struggle for survival in the world. Unhealthy genes weakened the race

Nazis ideals
Volksgemeinschaft healthy and Aryan community who worked for the good of the nation Gemeinschaftusgunfahig (opposite): Outsider had to be excluded from the community. Ideological (Communists) Biological (Jews & hereditary illnesses) Social (work-shy)

German View
Source 1: The Aryan race is tall, long legged, slim. The race is narrow-faced, with a narrow forehead, a narrow highbuilt nose and a lower jaw and prominent chin, the skin is rosy bright and the blood shines through .... the hair is smooth, straight or wavy possibly curly in childhood. The colour is blond
Description of a pure Aryan. From a leaflet The Nazi Race, 1929. A boy and a girl used in a Nazi poster.

Policies
Law allowing compulsory sterilization of the hereditary ill
350,000 were sterilized and 100 died.

Put to sleep policy: killing the incurably ill, including the; maniac depression, hereditary epilepsy, hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness and serious physical deformities. Asocial, homosexuals, religious sects and gypsies also suffered policies of the Nazi regime.

Anti-Semitic policies
Prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, and/or religion. The Night of the Broken Glass - Hitlers desire to eliminate completely the Jews from Germany Final Solution - Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II
5 million Jews were executed.

Bibliography
Elliot, B.J. Hitler and Germany, second edition. London: Modern Times, 1991. Hide, John and Hunton, Chris. Weimar & Nazi Germany. London: John Murray, 2000. Saver, John. Nazi Germay 1933-1945. London: Hodder & Stoughtone, 1995. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism