Protestant Social Thought and the Nazi State, 1933-1937

Abstract

Adolf Hitler's accession on 31 January 1933 meant a crisis for the Protestant churches of Germany. By spring of 1933, Hitler's Gleichschaltung attempted to bring even organized Christianity under Nazi control. Thus began the German church struggle, the Kirchenkampf, a painful conflict that would redefine the nature of German Christianity. Historians have described in great detail the political machinations surrounding the creation of the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche (DEK), a new united church that replaced the existing loose federation of virtually independent provincial churches. The foundation of the DEK was a victory for Hitler and the Deutsche Christen, the party of dogmatic Nazi pastors, for it was truly a national church founded to serve the state and express the will of the people. The intrusion of state policy into internal affairs of the church gave rise to a rival group of Protestants, the Confessing Christians, who dissented against Nazi church reforms. Most of the voluminous literature on the church struggle {Kirchenkampf) deals with this fascinating political, institutional conflict.1 The intellectual dimensions of the church struggle, although a primary concern of participants at the time, have been largely ignored by historians.2 German churchmen were, indeed, faced with a profound theological and ethical dilemma after 1933 that centered around a question that has plagued German Protestantism since Martin Luther: Does the church provide normative guidance for the state or must it merely obey and even actively support state policy? In addition, scholars have portrayed participants in the conflict as either protagonists or antagonists, firmly on the side of Hitler's