Difficult life conditions coupled with certain cultural preconditions and social political organisation can combine to motivate people to act against others in destructive ways to protect themselves and their interests. The despair and anxiety produced by difficult life conditions can resurrect preexisting hatreds and prejudices toward a certain out-group, blaming the out-group for the difficult life conditions. An ideology forms that describes the out-group's inferiorities and malevolence and, in turn, elevates the in.

When the socialpolitical oreanisation is given sanction through its authority to act against the targeted group as a means to bring about relief from the difficult life conditions then the probability of mistreatment of the target group is highly elevated.

In fact this what one could call ‚a continuum of destruction‘ (a term first used by Staub 20-23), can lead to genocide as a tool to reach personal goals; the fulfillment of hope out of personal and communal despair.

In other words, when hope is cast in terms of divine fulfillment and sanctification and given concrete connection to temporal life, especially when it comes in a strongly charismatic program. then people can become vulnerable to new images of hope ftom other sources. This may utilize the language and imagery of former and culturally ingrained hopes.

If that which is old can be packaged as new, while that which is new can be clothed with past tradition the success of the myth selling job will be phenomenal - so long as the ideological mottoes represent highly charged themes that already exist in the cultural repository.

The Christian Scriptures provide ample material for the formulation of the attitudes of Protestants during the Nazi years as a means to restore and maintain Christian hope as they understood it. The Scriptures were dressed in new clothing and the new message of Hitler's Germany was laced with Biblical images and motifs.

For example Historian Doris Bergen provides a thorough examination of the movement called the German-Christians. This inter--denominational group proved to be an enduring and powerful Protestant organizations within the Third Reich. She says of the conditions that led to Protestant support of the Nazi ideology:

Abdication of the Kaiser and removal of the regional princes who bad served as summi episcopi - heads of the church -led many Protestants to fear complete separation of church and state. Such anxiety and their own efforts to distance themselves and their church organization from the democratic state led them to define the people's church in new ways, often emphasizing ties to German culture and ethnicity. (10)

The German Protestant understanding of church and state structure under the Weimar Government was a strong threat to the stability of their hope as they sought to revert to  the pre- Weimar relationships with church and state (we already covered a return of the 'old order' from the point of view of the German nobility). This psychological connection between the authority of the state and the authority of the church proved to be a powerful factor in how people looked to the future and how they sought stability in their temporal lives. Since the time of Martin Luther, the Germans saw God playing a big role in determining their political leaders, and they counted on their leaders to be guided by divine providence (Pulzer 264ft).

The stress connected to their understanding of churchstate relations increased their vulnerability to the hope outlined in the Nazi program. To them it appeared that the Nazis, with Hitler as the leader, would restore not only the nation but the church as a national body as well.

The dynamic of Hitler's Fuehrerprinzip, or leadership principle, asserts itself very strongly in the nationalistic aspect of our discussion of Christian hope. Many scholars see in this dynamic the key to how Hitler was able to influence so many to follow his plans for the restoration and expansion of Germany. Because Germans were so deeply engrained in looking to a single figurehead for guidance and governance, the leadership principle worked very effectively in rallying the masses for German renewal and for combating the "enemy" responsible for Germany's downfall. Christian hope is derived from the acts of one man, Jesus Christ, taking on the single enemy of the powers of hell brought on by death. Jesus provides hope because death is defeated through the sacrificial payment of himself for the sin of humanity. Hope is restored through God's forgiveness of sin through Christ's action bringing the possibility for abundant life on earth and for eternity after death. Because Hitler was able to manipulate his speeches to include the struggles of Jesus as similar to his own. he appeals to Christ-like powers to restore new life to Germany and rescue it from the powers of destruction that have weakened it and left it desolate. Christian hope in the Protestant tradition preaches that one must give one's life over to Jesus and leave nothing behind. Total commitment will be the only way in which a person can receive the benefits of salvation through God' s providential gifts given in Jesus Christ's sacrifice. Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it" (8:34-35).

The leadership principle provided a strong psychological connection between Hitler and the people of Germany who had suffered much under the Treaty of Versailles. The leadership principle provided a more familiar, more comfortable style of governance for the Germans, who experienced the pain and guilt of not only the terms of the treaty, but also that they had lost the war. The right leader, at the right time, will make all things right.

Remembering Stanley Milgram' s landmark study of obedience to authority we can begin to understand how people of faith grounded in Christian hope, with deeply engrained tendencies to respond to a strong authority figure, can be drawn into the whole scheme that Hitler and the Nazi Party proposed for the divine fulfillment and destiny of Germany. Milgram points out the most fundamental lesson of the study:

[O]rdinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. A variety of inhibitions against disobeying authority come into play and successfully keep the person in his (or her) place. (6)

The leadership principle became the vehicle by which these ordinary German Protestants could once again entrust their obedience to someone like Hitler who appeared to be the "right heroic person" to tackle the problems that plagued their society as a result of the democratic reforms placed on them through the Treaty of Versailles (Gonen 90).

Hitler spoke of providence as a key to the way in which he was being selected to be that right leader. This idea of providence carries with it the notion of divine participation. Concerning Hitler's view of the leadership principle, Gonen says, "Providence has no use for people unwilling to fight for their existence" (76). Hitler promises that he will take up this providential cross, and he implores all good Germans to follow, if they believe that providence has chosen for them to restore what was lost in World War I and to move on to a greater glory along the correct path toward the destined domination of the superior Aryan race.

James Zabel, in his analysis of several predecessor groups of the German Christians, has linked the leadership principle with the protestant movement Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen. Most telling are remarks made by the group's writers that juxtapose the leadership principle of the Nazi Party with the nature of the Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit become the best example of what a true supreme leader can be. Hitler is linked ‚with Jesus‘ portrayal as the good shepherd, not as some peaceful serene image, but as a shepherd who is engaged in the struggle of protecting the gullible sheep. The good shepherd is placed in opposition with those who are the hireling shepherds that will scatter when trouble arises. Hitler stays engaged with the people as Jesus stays engaged as the good shepherd regardless of the struggle (137-139).

Zabel also illustrates how the leadership principle is a welcome innovation for the leadership of the church. Just as the national government was formed in a democratic parliamentary fashion after Versailles, the church's administrative bodies were restructured into a more parliamentary model. To many people this was unsatisfactory, because it emphasized the power of the leadership and the expense of ministering to the Volk, the German people. Responsibility was being spread too thin for decision making

and the church was not acting as quickly as it could. The structural model for the Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen was opportunistically adopted from the Nazi model of the leadership principle centered around a single Bishop unifying all the Protestant Christian Churches into one unified church (140-142).

These aspects of the leadership principle reflect how Christian hope became so strongly linked with the political movement of the Nazi Party. Hitler made crafty use of the language and images of Christian hope. Church leaders sought to achieve their long standing goals of church unity. They also chaffed against the reforms of the Weimar Republic which they perceived were destined to d..astroy the church. German Protestants found themselves willing to turn their obedience to the authority of Adolf Hitler as the supreme commander.

As Victoria Barnett adds, "Shaped by a long tradition of obedience to state authorities, the German Evangelical Church viewed conformity and obedience to authority as virtues" (Bystanders 39). Most German Protestants were ripe to follow not only their Divine Lord Jesus, but they were ready to follow and even help raise up a divinely appointed authority to fulfill the desired hope. In the first letter of Peter 2:13-17 and in Paul's letter to the Romans 13: 1-7, Christians are urged to accept the authority of human institutions as God's instruments for punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous. These mandates, which were emphasized by Martin Luther, added a special emphasis to the German Protestant support of governmental authority in living out their Christian hope.

It is poignant that Reihold Niebuhr, writing on the eve of the rise of the Nazis to power, perceives that: Wherever religion concerns itself with the problems of society, it always gives birth to some kind of millennial hope, from the perspective of which present social realities are convicted of inadequacy, and courage is maintained to continue in the effort to redeem society of injustice. The courage is needed; for the task of building a just society seems always to be a hopeless one when only present realities and immediate possibilities are envisaged.(61)

The ultimate glories of Christian hope acted as blinders for most. of the Protestant Christians in Germany which helped to usher in the Nazi era. Even Martin Niemoeller voted for the Nazis before they came to power. The Nazi Party principle Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz (community needs before individual needs) often appeared with Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself (Railton 126). As religious leaders allied themselves with the Nazi party, formally or informally, the anticipation of hope to overcome what were perceived as the present evils of German socieiy grew to millennial proportions. Even Hitler characterized the Nazi party in religious terms. His use of religious language and imagery gave him an air of legitimacy and at the same time encouraged religious leaders to believe he was vested in the preservation of the values inherent in Christian hope.

Thus during the Weimar period, German Protestant Christians experienced difficult life conditions resulting from the burdens of the Versailles Treaty. The depression that grossly devalued the deutschmark and the "guilt" the German people were made to feel for their part in World War I combined to place deep psychological stress on them. The guilt they really felt was that they somehow lost the war when they were certain they were on the brink of winning it. Many began to speculate on what caused this failure and the consequent economic and administrative problems that followed the war. Adolf Hitler stepped into that void with the reason for the problem and the solution.

What is striking is that Hitler was not the originator of what has been called the Jewish question. However, he is most notorious for the scope of his proposed answer to the question. While Jews had lived an alien life in the Diaspora for centuries, their "emancipation" during the French revolution and subsequent movements through Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries opened new opportunities for Jews to become assimilated into the nations where they had settled. Jews were now free to move about in society and participate fully in the economics, academics and governments of their former host nations. Many groups which have been repressed by societies and which then experience emancipation, respond by advancing quickly within the new opportunities afforded (Foner 82ft). This was true for European Jews during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Hertzberg 28ft). Because of their active participation, there was a reaction to the influx of Jewish merchants, professors, and government officials. For centuries there was little to the Jewish question, because Jews were simply relegated to the lowest strata of society and marginalized to the edge of each community. Now that Jews were free to engage in all forms of community life, the question of controlling the flow of Jewish participation in European society emerged more prominently. In Germany, this process of emancipation was later (1867) than in most other European countries. Consequently, German politics became actively involved in an anti-Semitic response to this newly found freedom and Jews began to become the target for all that was wrong with the new liberalism that was sweeping the continent (Pulzer 8ft).

At the same time, Protestant churches found that they were in a position to welcome Jews who emancipated themselves from their religious identity as well as their socio-economic identity. German Jews gravitated toward the Protestant churches more than the Roman Catholic. Denominations were now faced with the possibility of evangelizing Jews in an entirely new way. Jewish mission agencies were formed to strategize the most effective ways to reach out to the newly emancipated Jewish population. With the growth of Christian millennialism in the "Fundamentalist movements, this new opportunity for Jewish recognition of Jesus as the Messiah was met with great enthusiasm“ (Glaser 402-403).

Just as the socio-economic emancipation of Jews resulted in a backlash of antiSemitic activity, questions developed in the churches because of the increase of Jewish conversions to the Protestant faiths. What was to be the relationship of these new converts to the gentile members? Should they have their own congregations that included their cultural heritage? What would be the relationship with Christian political movements that had anti-Semitic platforms and congregations that had converted Jews?

The groundwork for radical anti-Semitism was already laid out in spite of the emancipation decrees which prompted these questions in the new environment. The churches and their leaders continued to assert themselves against the new liberalism of the time through political expression. In 1878 Adolf Stoecker, a Lutheran Pastor, formed the Christian Social Workers Party which developed an anti-Semitic platform to turn back the social and political developments that brought emancipation to the Jews. He would later be remembered as "the second Luther" for his influence on the political scene (Pulzer 83 if.).

These events at the end of the nineteenth century persisted into the early twentieth century and gained new meaning for many German Protestants as the turn of the century brought with it a renewed sense of hope for German prominence in Europe. As the Dreyfus Affair unfolded, the attitudes toward Jews remained suspect regardless of what the facts were in the case. Jewish leaders stepped up the tempo of the Zionist movement for Jews to have a nation of their own to avoid anti-Semitic reprisals (Hertzberg 46ft).

The Protestant-Jewish mission's premise that Jews are in need of divine salvation had a double-edged reaction. On the one hand, Jews who converted were welcomed at least marginally in the congregations and viewed as examples of the power of Christian hope, while on the other-hand the majority of Jews who declined the appeal of the missioners were placed into that traditional role of "Christ-rejecters." In a nation seeking to reassert itself among an emerging modem Europe, but still steeped in its Lutheran traditions of Christian hope, the die was cast for anti-Semitic fervor to become entwined with German nationalism. Older traditions and deep underlying psychological responses of fear and hatred were brought together, challenging hope and leading to irrational actions (Zabel 5).

The double-edged Nazi racial program opposing the Jews and elevating the German Volk likewise resonated with the long-standing dissonance between Christians and Jews. The preconditions of suspicion and hatred of Jews fit both the Protestant images of Jews and the German cultural and political stereotypes of Jews. This targeting of Jews as enemies of the church and state reached new heights. The "Christian" political parties were the ones which often highlighted the burden Jews placed on the fulfillment of German Protestant ideals and values. Barnett writes, The anti-Semitism of Stoecker and other "Christian" anti-Semites did not focus explicitly on racial differences. The Protestant attitude toward the Jews, essentially, was to convert them. The only real contact the church had with the Jews was through the Judenmission, the mission to convert the Jews. There was even some respect among church leaders for traditional Judaism. Adolf Stoecker himself viewed orthodox Jews as ''people of the covenant," and in his late anti-Semitic speeches, he excluded the "just and modest Jews" from his attacks. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (father of the man who led Bethel during the 1930's) shared these sentiments. Christian wrath, as he wrote to Stoecker, should not be directed against observant Jews but "only against the Jews without religion, who. . . together with the lapsed Christians are one in their hatred of the cross, the throne, and the altar."

Von Bodelschwingh's words reveal the element in "Christian" anti-Semitism that subsequently made it so useful for other anti Semitic groups in Germany: the linking of the Jews with political enemies. The nationalism of Protestant pastors, their distrust of the Social Democrats, fear of communism, monarchism, and essential conservatism-these beliefs were, in their opinion, the direct opposite of the "secular" and "Jewish" forces threatening German culture and faith: liberalism, secularism, socialism, antimonarchism. (Soul 126)

The icons of the cross, the throne and the altar are powerful images for German Protestants that link religion and politics. What binds them is the mystical suffering and power represented in the cross of Jesus Christ. An assault on one of these three is experienced as an assault on all. While Hitler's obsession was the destruction of the Jews, each faithful German Protestant was a defender not only of the faith, but of the nation, and this was viewed it as a sacred call. This is why Hitler's nationalistic rhetoric, peppered with Protestant Christian imagery of hope, resonated so well with German Protestants. Oddly, these are the same values inherent in the Confessing Movement's opposition to Hitler. They viewed Hitler's totalitarianism as an affront to the future of Germany and to their church.The issue of Hitler's anti-Semitism was secondary, if not entirely irrelevant to their concern (Barnett, Soul 125).

Hitler's expressions of anti-Semitism early on were fraught with religious imagery. In Mein Kampf, influenced by Dietrich Eckart, Hitler connects his disdain for Jews with a Godly mission. Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander writes: At the end of the second chapter of Mein Kampf comes the notorious statement of faith: "Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." In Eckart, and in Hitler as he came to state his creed from 1924 on, redemptive anti-Semitism found its ultimate expression. (Friedlander 98)

This form of anti-Semitism relies on the close connection between a particular vision of German Christianity and a mystical, mythic form of racial sacredness of Aryan blood threatened with defilement by Jewish racial infiltration. (Friedlander, 86-87)

Friedlander describes this relationship: Redemptive anti-Semitism was born from the fear of racial degeneration and the religious belief in redemption. The main cause of degeneration was the penetration of the Jews into the German body politic, into German society, and into the German bloodstream. Germanhood and the Aryan world were on the path to perdition if the struggle against the Jews was not joined; this was to be a struggle to the death. Redemption would come as liberation from the Jews - as their expulsion, possibly their annihilation. (Friedlander 87)

His use of these images reminds one of the church's mystical union between Christ (the bridgegroom) and the Church (the bride). Likewise, Christ is said to redeem his bride and consummate the relationship to bring forth salvation.

Friedlander also points further to the depths of Hitler's vision of the Jew as diabolical foe. "The Jew was both a superhuman force driving the peoples of the world to perdition and a subhuman cause of infection, disintegration, and death" (100). This matches the description of evil as represented in the New Testament in apocalyptic terms: Supernatural power in the form of subhuman creatures and demons (Revelation 12:1-9).

This is the most potent form of dehumanization that can be expressed: It normally would remove the Jew out of the human realm and put the Jew on the supernatural plane of spiritual warfare between God and this supernatural evil. What Hitler did was bring this spiritual war back into the earthly plane on human terms where he will lead the fight as the messenger of God.

The excerpt from John's Gospel Chapter 10 cited above, which introduces the hope of living abundantly, is preceded by Jesus' words beginning at verse 8: "All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." Here the hope of having abundant life is tied to metaphorical thieves and bandits in the motif of stealing sheep. The thieves and bandits are all those who came before Jesus. It is a veiled reference to Jewish leaders from the past. The thief in the passage comes to steal, kill and destroy. It is not a great leap for Christians when

Hitler proposes that Jews are thieves who come to steal, kill and destroy. According to George Victor's, Hitler: The Pathology of Evil. Hitler's perception of Jews stemmed from an unsubstantiated understanding that his grandmother had been seduced by the Jewish man for whom she worked as a maid. The resulting pregnancy gave birth to his father (13-20). This "secret" would control events in Hitler's life all the way to his death. He felt robbed of his heritage. Jews would always be suspect in his mind and later became viewed in the same terms as the thieves and bandits of John's gospel with devastating results during World War II. In Mein Kampf. Hitler wrote, "For whatever culture the Jew appears to possess today is in the main the property of other peoples, which has become corrupted under his manipulation" (126). While he never calls them thieves, he clearly characterizes them as people who steal. It is a theft of culture which defines the Jews. He also calls them "parasites" which implies one who lives off the abundance of others (126).

Hitler also writes- "The loss of racial purity ruins the fortunes of a race forever; it continues to sink lower and lower and its consequences can never be expelled again from body and mind." (Mein Kampf 133). He is implying that the "Aryan" race, by becoming diluted with Jewish blood kills the race forever. In a September speech in Munich following the elections of 1930 Hitler says, First it (Jews as an alien dominant race) had killed the spirit; through this loss of spirit the German people had been reduced politically to serfdom; this political serfdom had been transformed into economic slavery which entailed the distress of millions of individual Germans. Out of this distress there had come the uprising, i.e., the people now begin to listen, and the spirit of opposition is the necessary consequence of the national collapse. (Speeches 187)

Jews would later be characterized as a disease or a cancer which would kill if not treated (Proctor 195). Hitler writes in Mein Kampf of the perceived proliferation of Jews in all walks of life, "When carefully cutting open such a growth, one could find a little Jew, blinded by the sudden light, like a maggot in a rotting corpse" (75). In a Speech at Wilhelmhaven on April 1, 1939, Hitler characterizes Jews as a "Jewish bacillus infecting the life of the peoples" (Speeches 743).

As for the Jews ability to destroy, Hitler writes, "By means of the trade-unions, which might have been the saving of the nation, the Jew actually destroys the bases of the nation's economics" (Mein Kampf 131). In Hitler's understanding, and apparently in the minds of millions of Germans, the Jews where '"their misfortune" because they were stealing, killing and destroying everything the Germans had and everything they were (Meltzer 36). As a result, German hope was being lost. Abundant life promised to the faithful was being taken away under the Weimar Republic and the Jews were characterized as the thieves, a characterization reinforced by the Christian Scriptures referring to hope in the promise of abundant life.

The German Protestant Church by no means was a monolithic structure. Because of the church's historical connection to the hundreds of principalities of previous centuries, there were still 28 regional groupings of churches within the Lutheran ranks alone. In the early nineteenth century, these regional groups were brought together into a federation called the German Evangelical Church. Each group maintained autonomy but the federation provided for greater communication among the various regions. An ecumenical spirit was sweeping across the globe during the 1920's in hopes of bringing about greater Christian unity. After World War I, the government no longer helped to administer the churches. There was a great deal of ambivalence about how to fill the leadership void. Protestants also lost their privileged standing in the civil society. As social unrest flourished and as political parties vied for power in the democratic experiment, many in the Protestant churches longed for the days now gone by. Many Protestants found favor in the growing party of Hitler and his focus on strong nationalism, anti-communism and anti-democracy. The communist threat was very real to the Christian churches. Atheistic Bolshevism would tear down what remained of the Protestant understanding of Gennan society (Barnett Soul 126). As Hitler gained more and more popularity, and more and more seats in the Reichstag, Protestants saw beyond the harsher tones of the "brown shirts" and hitched their wagons to the Nazi patty. When he came to power, the German-Christians cheered his ascension.

The German-Christians were an amalgamation of groups and parties, each of which forwarded a different agenda into the newly formed Reich. This blend of Protestants, who otherwise would not associate with one another, came together in such a way to give the Nazi party the victory for which they all strove. Primarily the German Christians were made up of three groups, thoroughly studied in James Zabel's, Nazism and the Pastors. The first consisted of a conservative based group, the Christlich Deutsche Bewegung (CDB), that was anti-democratic, anti- communist and connected to the DVNP (German National People's party). "The goal of the Christlich-Deutsche Bewegung was to show that it was impossible to think of German Volkstum without thinking of the Lutheran evangelical faith. . .. The Reformation was the way the Western peoples reached their own interpretation of the Christian message" (Zabel 81).

Second was the Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen (GDe), for a brief time, the umbrella organization for the German-Christians. This branch was the most blatantly anti-Semitic. It was also quite opportunistic. "The most insidious of the ideas of the GDC was its attempt to bolster cultural and political anti-Semitism with religious hatred of the Jews. The GDC appealed to those who were interested in political positions in the church, who wanted to justify Nazism on Christian grounds, and who focused their disappointments in hatred of the Jews" (Zabel 225). The third, a Pietist, revivalist group came primarily from the farming regions of Germany. They adopted the name Kirchenbewegung Deutsche Christen (KDC). They were avid Nazis who saw, in their close connection to the natural world, the fulfillment of Nazi ideals as sacred history revealed through Christianity (Zabel 226).

Another group, the German Evangelical Alliance, included members from virtually all denominations in the Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church. The Free churches (Baptists, Methodists, Moravians, Pentecostals, etc.) were often within this camp entirely. They defined themselves in very conservative terms like the CDB, yet had roots in Pietism like the KDC. Some members of this organization also belonged to the other three groups mentioned above.

With the growth and popularity of the pseudo-science of eugenics and its racial theories of inferiority and superiority, the Christian understanding of Jews as a race became more focused. The German Christians would raise this to an entirely different level as they incorporated aspects of Christian hope and fulfillment into the models of eugenics. Bergen informs us:

The German Christian believed that God revealed himself to humanity not only in Scripture and through Jesus but in nature and history . . .. By separating the earthly church from the universal community of believers, German Christians fioeed that church from any obligation to universality. By allowing for God's revelation through nature, they could claim race was sanctified, part of a divine plan for human life. Accordingly, they saw establishment of a purely "Aryan" people's church as a God.given task to be completed while the historical, political climate was favorable and before the supposed degeneration of the German race had progressed to the point of no return. None of those ideas was new. What was new was their fusion in a setting that seemed to make their realization a distinct possibility. (11)

What began as marginalization of the Jews, based on past animosities against them, became an elaborate vision of Christian fulfillment of hope based on the purity of one's createdness: one's blood and one's flesh. The concept of the Jews being the chosen people of God is turned on its ear and converted through this re-creation of the German Aryan Volk as the people of God's destiny. Here, the German-Christians recognized an opportunity to be seized, a mission to fulfill. If something or someone or some group

prevents them from fulfilling this mission, then individual and corporate antagonism toward the obstacle must be focused to remove it, by force if needed. Bergen continues:
If the church was to be a people's church and the people was defined by blood, then, according to German Christian logic, anyone outside the racial group not only could but must be excluded in the interest of purity. So their rejection of non-Aryan Christians was not simply an awkward compromise to make Christianity palatable to Nazi power but a fundamental part of their vision of the church as the spiritual expression of the racially pure Volk. (11)

The German Christians did not merely parrot Nazi racial ideology. They recognized their own theory of race as a legacy that bound them to traditions in the church and to intellectual and spiritual antecedents in the distant and not so distant past. For German Christians, race was a divine command that sanctified their causes. (27)

What is stunning in this evaluation of Protestant hope is that it often preceded or operated independently from the political hopes inspired by the German racial ideology. To be sure, the German-Christians sought to please the Nazi leadership to maintain their position, but they needed no assistance from the governing authorities to formulate their motives in establishing a purely German church.

Certain elements of Hitler's ideology (the leadership principle and the Jewish Question) appealed to and resonated with the values inherent in Christian hope in the German Protestant tradition. This empowered Protestant Christians, with hope for a greater Germany, to become involved in following Hitler and the Nazi party's program for revitalizing the German nation and the German Volk. We next turn in P.3, to how the same people continued to follow Hitler's plan as he took power in the emerging Third Reich, and how they increased their involvement in Hitler's program as well as how other nations and their Protestant faith communities responded to the unfolding plan.
 
 

Bibliography and Works Cited

 

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