Prayer to Hitler
Führer, mein Führer, von Gott mir gegeben, beschütz und erhalte noch lange mein
Leben
Du hast Deutschland errettet aus tiefster Not, Dir verdank ich mein tägliches
Brot
Führer, mein Führer, mein Glaube, mein Licht
Führer mein Führer, verlasse mich nicht
This translates roughly as:
Leader, my Leader, given to me by God, protect me and sustain my life for a
long time
you have rescued Germany out of deepest misery, to you I owe my daily bread
Leader, my Leader, my belief, my light
Leader my Leader, do not abandon me
The German census of May 1939 indicates that 54 percent of Germans
considered themselves Protestant and 40 percent considered themselves
Catholic, with only 3.5 percent claiming to be neo-pagan "believers in
God," and 1.5 percent nonbelievers. This census came more than six years into
the Hitler era
Christianity in Germany has, since the Protestant Reformation, been divided
into Catholicism and Protestantism. As a specific outcome
of the Reformation in Germany, the large Protestant denominations are
organized into Landeskirchen (roughly: Federal Churches). The German word for
denomination is Konfession, however, this translation has been considered
misleading, since it
might suggest that the context of religion in Germany could be described with
the common parabola of the religious marketplace, which is not the case.[3] In
Germany, "to this day religion nominally remains a state affair."[3] For the
large churches in Germany (Catholic and evangelisch) the German government
collects the church tax, which is then given to the Churches. For this reason,
membership in the Catholic or Protestant (evangelische) Church is officially
registered. It is important to keep this official aspect in mind when turning
to such questions as the religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels.
Both men had ceased to attend Catholic mass or to go to Confession long before
1933, but neither had officially left the Church or refused to pay its church
taxes.[3] For this reason, historian Richard Steigmann-Gall argues that
"nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this
context"[4] and determining ones actual
religious convictions should be based on other criteria.
Historians have taken a look at the numbers of people who left the
church in Germany 1933-45. The option to be taken off the church rolls
(Kirchenaustritt) has existed in Germany since 1873, when Otto von Bismarck had
introduced it as part of the Kulturkampf aimed against Catholicism.[5] For
parity this was made possible for Protestants, too, and for the next 40 years
it was mostly they who took advantage of it.[5] Statistics exist since 1884 for
the Protestant churches and since 1917 for the Catholic Church.[5]
An analysis of this data for the time of the Nazi rule is available
in a paper by Sven Granzow et al., published in a collection edited by Götz
Aly. Altogether more Protestants than Catholics left their church, however,
overall Protestants and Catholics decided similarly.[6] The number of
Kirchenaustritte reached its "historical high"[7] in 1939 when it peaked at
480,000. Granzow et al. see the numbers not only in relation to the Nazi policy
towards the churches,[8] (which changed drastically from 1935 onwards) but also
as indicator of the trust in the Führer and the Nazi leadership. The decline in
the number of people who left
the church after 1942 is explained as resulting from a loss of
confidence in the future of Nazi Germany. People tended to keep their ties to
the church, because they feared an uncertain future.[7]
The German Christians (Deutsche Christen) constituted the strongest
Protestant movement in Germany after the 1932 Church elections, with the aim of
synthesising Christianity with the ideology of National
Socialism. There were various groups within the German Evangelical Church
including the Deutsche Christen and opposition factions that later split under
the name Confessing Church. The Deutsche Christen factions were united in the
goal of establishing a national socialist Protestantism [16] Deutsche Christen
abolished what they considered to be Jewish traditions in Christianity, and
some but not all rejected the Old Testament altogether. They rejected academic
theology as sterile and not populist enough and were often anti-Catholic. On
November 1933, A Protestant mass rally of the Deutsche Christen, which
brought together a record 20,000 people, passed three resolutions:
* Adolf Hitler is the completion of the Reformation,
* Baptized Jews are to be dismissed from the Church
* The Old Testament is to be excluded from Sacred Scriptures.[17]
A claim exists that Adolf Hitler converted to Protestantism and
joined the German Christians, according to the National Secretary Klundt on
April 25, 1933, in Königsberg, Eastern Prussia.[18] An official confirmation or
denial was not issued by the Chancellor.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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