Kristallnacht, or the ''Night of Broken Glass," started a pre-planned program of terror carried out on Jewish communities across Germany. It included the burning of synagogues, the destruction of any remaining Jewish businesses and homes, and the arresting of thousands of Jews, many who were killed or badly beaten. In fact various editorials in The Christian Century begin to question the plight of the Jews after Kristallnacht. In the issue of Nov. 23, 1938, phrases such as Jews "may be slaughtered," and if Nazis "should decide to massacre" are prophetically used ("Terror" 1422).

On December 7 of the same year, a report appears concerning the SS periodical Schwartz Korps: "This stage of development [of the situation of the Jews] will impose on us the vital necessity to exterminate this Jewish sub-humanity, as we exterminate all criminals in our ordered country: by the fire and the sword! The outcome will be the final catastrophe for Jewry in Germany, its total annihilation" (Friedlander, 312). Nothing more stood in the way of stopping the Nazis from going through with the plan for total annihilation of the Jews in their sphere of influence.

Although it was written at an earlier date, Reinhold Niebuhr offers some interesting insights on the dynamics of hope when war is engaged: It is just in the moments when the nation is engaged in aggression or defense (and it is always able to interpret the former in terms of the latter) that the reality of the nation's existence becomes so sharply outlined as to arouse the citizen to the most passionate and uncritical devotion toward it. But at such a time the nation's claim to uniqueness also comes in sharpest conflict with the generally accepted impression that the nation is the incarnation of universal values. This conflict can be resolved only by deception. In the imagination of the simple patriot the nation is not a society but Society. Though its values are relative they appear, from his naive perspective, to be absolute. The religious instinct for the absolute is no less potent in patriotic religion than in any other. The nation is always endowed with an aura of the sacred. which is one reason why religions, which claim universality, are so easily captured and tamed by national entiment, religion and patriotism merging in the process. The spirit of the nationally established churches and the cult of 'Christendum und Deutschtum' of pre-war Germany are interesting examples. (96-97)

The perception of the values of the culture as being absolute was aided by the racial and national hopes of the Protestant churches of the time. The dominant feature of the Kristallnacht massacre was the authority to follow through with policy and actions.

The capacity of the churches to adjust to the durable power of the Nazi regime required conformity to the policies which German-Christians had developed. Three key points of these policies were: defuring non-Aryans, excluding them from religious society, and allowing the use of force, characteristic of the Kristallnacht pogrom, to fulfill the first two points. Although regional churches might have only a small population of non. Aryan members, the message and the symbolic actions of exclusion undeniably advanced the support for force to rid the populace of non-Aryans (Bergen 98).

The outrageous behavior of Kristallnacht served not to hinder any further repression of Jews from the churches, instead the repression intensified. Martin Luther's admonitions from "Against the Jews and Their Lies," were employed as justification of the actions.

Bergen adds, "a religious instruction book of 1940, quoted Luther's instructions to, 'set their synagogues and schools on fire, and whatever win not burn, heap dirt upon and cover so that no human ever again will see a stone or a cinder of it.' A German Christian publication from 1943 urged its readers to be hard like Luther in their attitudes toward the Jews" (28). Many of the churches took the initiative in their aggressive actions against Jews in their communities and in their churches. Pastors and other church leaders turned in Jews who had converted to Christianity when the program of relocation and extermination began. They believed they were fulfilling the ultimate in Christian hope as they 'purified' themselves and their community for the greater good.

Many churches and Christians were not as proactive, but stood by silently while Jews were sent to their deaths. Barnett relates the peculiar dynamic involved in how bystanders function in a totalitarian regime: When no outcry emerges to offer differing opinions or protests to the policies of the central authority, the perception is reinforced that individuals are powerless.

This puts bystanders in a different position. since it creates the alibi for 'powerlessness.' Indeed, it does more, for their acceptance of their own 'powerlessness' (and of the legitimacy of state power) is precisely what enables them to lead 'normal' lives and remain 'upstanding' citizens. (Bystanders 87)

Whether acting proactively or passively, Protestant Christians who did not resist Nazi ideology and the perpetration of the Holocaust could make a similar argument. Because the ultimate attainment of their hope, as they understood it, was divinely inspired and to be carried out by ''true'' Germans, they could not tolerate any obstacle to that hope (the Jews), thereby placing themselves in jeopardy of being against divine will and further obstruct the fulfillment of their ultimate hope. The religious value of Christian hope was transmuted to serve the Nazi policy toward Jews in accomplishing the nationalistic goals  of the nation.

Those in the Protestant faith in the Nazi Empire were now poised to enter into the fullness of the church's anti-Semitic program, which would include the churches' participation in the "final solution" to the Jewish question as the norm within the structure of most churches. Bishop Melle of the German Methodists would actively cooperate with the Gestapo via the Reich Church Ministry office in trying to weed out Jewish members of his churches. He addressed the Methodist Annual Conference in 1941: "Methodists must be the most loyal members of the German community, people in whom the government can trust, willing to make sacrifices and always ready for action. The biblical position is clearly mapped out for us: for conscience's sake we have to be faithful to the Fuhrer and our nation" (qtd. in Railton 33-34). It became more important for a Christian to be a loyal German than it was to be concerned about the peril of another human being. "The biblical position is clearly mapped out for us," Melle had said.

 

The Godesberg Declaration

During the time following the Kristallnacht pogrom and leading up to the war, the German-Christians, with the backing of others in the church, produced the Godesberg Declaration on Apri1 4, 1939, endorsing the Nazi view of Christianity which advanced the work of Luther, defined Judaism as the opposite of Christianity and determined that internationalism degrades Christianity. The KDC led the way (Zabel 41). Friedlander adds:

A few weeks later, the signatories of the Godesberg Declaration met at the Wartburg near Eisenach, a site sacred to the memory of Luther and hallowed by its connection with the German student fraternities, to inaugurate the Institute for Research on Jewish Influence on the Life of the German Church. According to a historian of the German churches, “a surprisingly large number of academics put themselves at the disposal of the institute, which issued numerous thick volumes of proceedings and prepared a revised version of the New Testament (published in an edition of 200,000 copies in early 1941). It omitted terms such as “Jehovah,” “Israel,” “Zion,” and “Jerusalem” which were considered to be Jewish.” (Friedlander 326-327)

This led the Protestant church into full integration with the Nazi policy. What the Nazis were unable to accomplish in their first year regarding the Protestant churches came to pass five years later, almost by attrition. The Christian Century editorial in 1939 reports: Is it possible to imagine a Christian church which has so completely lost its sense of mission to the world that it formally declares that it will not receive converts from a certain race? Not long ago the Evangelical Church in Thuringia, the most docile of all the German churches in accepting dictation from the government, issued an order excluding baptized Jews from its membership and ministrations. A similar action has now been taken by the regional churches of Saxony, Mecklenburg, and Anhalt. (“German Churches” 531)

Barth also reports on the outcome of the Godesberg Declaration by surmising: The opposition party of the “German Christians,” who had gradually sunk, to a very unimportant factor in most districts, has surrendered to the leadership of its most radical wing, the Thuringian group (KDC), and now displays an extraordinary activity, even though it only represents a minority. Its preaching shows with greater clarity the partly sentimental, partly military, partly primeval, partly enlightening alien religion to which the Church in Germany (under the title of “German Faith”) would have fallen prey, and would have to fall prey now, if the “Church struggle” had not been waged or were not carried on today. (Barth 75)

The Godesberg Declaration would tragically provide the blueprint for Protestant church activity throughout the rest of the reign of the Third Reich. It claimed that “The Christian faith is the insurmountable religious antithesis of Judaism” (Gerlach 179). This would be elaborated later in a list of principles titled, “Basic Principles for a New Church Order in the German Evangelical Church Adequate to the Demands of the Present”

(Gerlach 181). Within the third principle, the following words define the determination of the Protestant church leaders in their efforts to link Jewish racial categories to their anti-Semitic understandings of their religious expression of hope: In the Sphere of faith, a sharp contrast exists between the message of Jesus Christ and His Apostles and the Jewish religion of legalism and political hope in the Messiah, which even in the Old Testament is fought emphatically. In the sphere of the life of the Volk, a serious and responsible racial policy is necessary for preserving the purity of our people. (qtd. In Gerlach 182)

The use of hope in connection with the negative aspect of “Jewish political hope in the Messiah,” emphasizes the positive hope that is inherent in the desire of church leaders to achieve purity of the Volk racially through the work of the church.

The Godesburg Declaration also established an institute to research ways that Christians could express their anti-Semitism as a way of fulfilling the hope they professed. This institute operated with no encouragement or funding from the Nazi Party. The Party position toward the churches was still to endorse no one particular group. Susannah Heschel has provided a revealing aspect of Protestant church life in her essay, “When Jesus was an Aryan,” which outlines the development and work of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life.

Formed in 1939, this group of theologians, many who studied under Gerhard Kittel, began rapidly to formulate ways to eliminate any references to the Jewish past of Christianity including those references to the person of Christ himself. Heschel points out that it was the Protestant theologians who were the experts in Judaism. This gave them the fast track to finding ways to Aryanize Jesus and dejudaize the church, its liturgy and the Bible. It is intriguing how the institute worked to discover and portray how Jesus was not a Jew but a Galilean Gentile who was always in opposition to the Jews. A revised catechism from the institute advocates that Jesus becomes for the German people a savior who can provide answers to life’s ultimate questions because of his struggle to the death with the Jews. (Heschel, S. 73) This view of Jesus provides a new view of Christian hope legitimized through the lens of the learned scholars of the institute.

The gradual increase of anti-Semitic activity, through the Nazi program of Gleichshalltung, had conditioned those who had benefited from Nazi rule to become desensitized to Jews and their humanity. Even though restrictive measures had been imposed on the churches by the Nazi party, none were severe enough to cause the churches to turn their allegiance away from their government. The historic anti-Semitic character of German Protestants was a sufficient driving force for them.

What was different after Kristallnacht was a realization that the Nazi Party’s program and activity was providing an open environment to exercise, and now even study at length, how the church could be more efficiently anti-Semitic. The theologians of the institute had been long convinced that Jews were their “misfortune” spiritually, just as Hitler had promoted that “Jews are our misfortune” to the German Volk. What the Nazi environment offered was a real chance to take their case against Jews to its ultimate conclusion.

Heschel provides a brief analysis of the Confessing Church’s opposition to the work of the institute that belies an undercurrent of anti-Semitism on their own part. The stance of the Confessing Church was not that the church needed to be purged of all things connected to Jews, but that there was a spirit of “Jewishness” that posed the real threat to Christianity. Ironically, the Confessing Church opposing argument toward the German Christians was they were becoming too “Jewish” because “Jewish” meant that they lacked spiritual understanding of the religion. (Heschel 85-86) Here, Christian hope as   expressed by the Confessing Church was to focus only on the souls of those who would confess Christ as savior without regard for those who remained in covenant with Yahweh. This provides insight into how the Confessing Church provided little or no help for the Jews in their plight as they stood in the cross-hairs of the Nazi program of extermination that followed the onset of war.

Once the war began, many Protestant pastors either joined the military or were drafted. As the war progressed, more than half were serving in the war effort. Protestant clergy were fighting and dying for the Third Reich (Helmreich 306-307). Some were commanders in the various branches of service. One Protestant clergyman, Ernst Biberstein, went on to lead a unit of the einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads responsible for rounding up and killing Jews behind the armies moving east toward Russia. Biberstein is said to have held reservations about killing Jews, but after his commander Reinhard Heydrich of the Gestapo was assassinated, he took command of the einsatzgruppen, and he was responsible for the killing of two to three thousand Jews.

Biberstein was tried at Nuremberg and received a death sentence, later commuted to life. (Ferencz I) This is only one example of a Protestant pastor taking part in the actual killing machine of the “final solution,” but with so many others enlisted in military service, it is likely that others took part as well.

Bergen summarizes the behavior of German Protestants this way: Few were pious, many were not observant, and some opted to abandon the Christian churches in favor of neopagan groups. But all of them were born into a predominantly Christian society and participated in its culture. Viewed in this light, German Christian efforts represent an explicit attempt to accomplish what most Germans did implicitly: reconcile their Christian tradition with National Socialist ideology. (10)

 

Recasting Christian Hope

German society after World War I defined a world outlook of despair at the prevailing social environment existing in the community. The Nazi regime's early successes attested to the refashioning of the society based on their use of that outlook in propaganda. In opposing the Jews, without question, the majority of Germans saw acceptance of the Nazi policies as a distinctive mark of faith and a sign of redemption of the society. Resistance to Anti-Semitic policies and practices of the Nazis was minimal, at best. Although the peasantry, some Catholics, and members of the Confessing Church disagreed with the Nazis, few openly questioned their policies. As Friedlander concludes, "The majority of Germans accepted the steps taken by the regime and...looked the other way" (324). Perhaps he is right in being satisfied that so many simply looked away. What seems apparent is that the Confessing Church never seemed to make the connection that the error in the Nazi policy of persecution toward the Jews and their protest against the totalitarian government were of the same breed. Both were based on a false sense of survival.

In 1934, at the Barmen Synod of the Confessing Church Movement, this dynamic was made apparent. Initially, some reflected a consciousness toward the Jewish question, such as Karl Barth, but others were preoccupied only with the issue of how the church would exist and function under the totalitarian state. In hindsight, Berthold Klappert states, "[T]he Jewish question was the basic element of the Nazi ideology and its totalitarian policy" (121). While some understood this relationship, it seems apparent that the majority did not. Even those who saw the connection chose not to pursue it to a positive resolution. The German Christian community regarded itself as the true carrier of the faith, and Nazism believed itself to be the agent to ensure the society's perception of truth. Any alternate community was, itself, a dangerous departure.

The Danish people, the Huguenot community of Le Chambon in France and perhaps a few individuals were the only Protestants who chose to stand with or for the Jews in their plight. But this was not a place German Protestants were willing to stand, because they were engaged in their own struggle for self-fulfillment.

As an illustration of how integrated the church, especially the laity, was becoming influenced into Nazi ways of thinking and believing, Friedlander relates: Gestapo surveillance of the churches reveals the same mixed attitudes. Thus, in January 1939, at a meeting of the Evangelical Church in Ansbach, one Knorr-Koslin, a physician, declared that in present-day Germany the sentence "all salvation comes from the Jews" should be deleted from the Bible; the report indicates that Knorr-Koslin's outburst caused a protest from the audience; the protest might have been only on purely religious grounds. When, on the other hand, Pastor Schilffarth of Streitberg declared that "after baptism, Jews become Christians," one of his young students retorted ("in a strong and well-deserved way," says the report), "But Pastor, even if you pour six pails of water on a Jew's head, he still remains a Jew." (Friedlander 323-324)

It was not as if the situation of the Jews was not known in the world outside the Nazi realm. It was often known only too well, sparking an ironic response in some cases.

The World-Jewish Congress declared in 1940, that "Thousands of Jews are being massacred; and tens of thousands are being sent out into the wilderness. Thousands of Jewish children run through the streets of Poland, looking for their parents." In response, the The Moody Monthly (from the  Moody Bible Institute) in America, said:

We are in the midst of a campaign to place the life-giving Word of God, in the form of attractive Testaments, in the hands of the Jews of Europe; and among the refugees and other Jews in Palestine, America, and other lands. Israel's extremity is our opportunity. Giving God's Word to Jews is the best way to lead them to a saving knowledge of Christ! It is surely God's appointed hour to place New Testaments in the hands of the Jews throughout the world! (491)

With regard to distributing New Testaments in Hebrew to Jews in Palestine, The Moody Monthly wrote: "May we ask you to pray for Palestine in this day of opportunity, while the doors are still wide open? We cannot tell how long the opportunity will last!" (491)

In this campaign there is a clear understanding of the urgency of the suffering that is taking place, yet the editors are blinded by passionate Christian hope. This prohibits them from seeing the real need to assist in the Jews escape from the furnace of "redemptive anti-Semitism," though they have the machinery to contact destitute European Jews. Redemptive Christian anti-Judaism meets redemptive anti-Semitism with horrific results for Europe's Jews in the years that would follow.
 

Bibliography and Works Cited

 

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