Nazi Policies Towards the Churches (Edexcel IGCSE History: Paper 1: Depth Studies): Revision Note

Summary

• With a large proportion of the population being either Catholic or Protestant, the Nazis were worried about the ideas and beliefs being taught in Church schools

• Hitler first tried to win over the Churches, then moved against them step by step

• With the Catholic Church, Hitler signed the 1933 Concordat promising not to interfere in religious life

  • He then broke the Concordat almost immediately by attacking Catholic schools, youth groups and priests

• With the Protestant Church, the Nazis tried to take it over from within through a pro-Nazi Reich Church

  • However, a group of pastors broke away to form the rival Confessional Church

• By the end of the 1930s, neither Church had a significant public role

  • Church attendance remained surprisingly high, showing a real limit to Nazi control

Nazi policies towards the Catholic and Protestant Churches

Why was the Catholic Church dangerous to Hitler?

• Catholics represented several challenges for Hitler:

  • their first loyalty was to the Pope

  • they supported the Catholic Centre Party before the passing of the Enabling Act

  • they had their own Catholic schools, which taught different beliefs to Nazi schools

The Concordat

• Hitler signed an agreement known as a Concordat with the Pope in July 1933

  • It allowed Catholics to worship freely and to continue with Catholic schools

  • Catholic priests would stay out of politics, and Catholic bishops would swear loyalty to the German state

Why did the Concordat fail?

• Hitler immediately broke the Concordat

  • Priests who criticised the regime were arrested

    • By 1945, around 400 German priests had been sent to Dachau concentration camp

  • Catholic schools were controlled or closed

  • Crucifixes were removed from school classrooms and some Catholic churches

  • Youth groups like the Catholic Youth League were banned

  • Monasteries were closed down

• By 1937, it was clear the Concordat had failed

  • Pope Pius XI issued a statement, With Burning Anxiety, which was read out in Catholic churches and criticised the Nazi regime

    • It did not name Hitler, but many people read its reference to a “mad prophet” as an attack on him

• Despite this, the Catholic Church continued to function, and attendance remained high

The Protestant Church

• Many Protestants supported the Nazi Party by 1933

The Reich Church

• Ludwig Müller became Reich Bishop of a unified pro-Nazi Protestant church called the Reich Church (supported by the "German Christians")

  • Around 2,000 pastors joined

  • The swastika was displayed in some churches

  • Jewish people were not allowed to convert or be baptised in the Reich Church

Opposition from the Protestant Church

• The Pastors' Emergency League (PEL) was the main source of opposition from Protestants:

  • formed by Pastor Martin Niemöller

  • they opposed the formation of the Reich Church

  • they believed that Jewish people should be able to become Christians

• The PEL, along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, created the Confessional Church in 1934:

  • around 5,000 pastors joined, and only 2,000 pastors were part of the Reich Church

  • around 800 pastors were arrested in 1937, and Niemöller was sent to a concentration camp in 1938 along with hundreds of other clergy

• Bonhoeffer was hanged in 1945

How successful was Nazi policy towards the churches?

Evidence of success

• By the end of the 1930s, neither the Catholic nor the Protestant Church had a significant public role in German society

  • The Nazis took over the education of the youth and youth organisations

• By 1939, only around 5% of Germans described themselves as "God-believers", the category the Nazis preferred to "Christian"

  • This suggests only limited success, as the great majority still called themselves Christian

Evidence of limits

• Church attendance itself remained high throughout the 1930s, despite the Nazis' efforts to weaken the Churches' influence

  • Hitler never came close to replacing Christianity with Nazism as a genuine belief system

• The Confessional Church survived as an organised rival to the Nazi-controlled Reich Church throughout the period

• Hitler himself admitted, in a private conversation, that he could not "rid Christianity from Germany completely" without serious backlash

  • This shows he recognised the limits of his own policy

Conclusions

• Nazi policy was successful in removing the Churches as an independent political and social force in German life

• It failed in its deeper aim of replacing Christian belief itself with Nazi ideology

• Judged by its impact on ordinary Germans

  • The policy changed less than the Nazis hoped

  • Most people still went to church, even though the Churches lost their schools, youth groups and political voice