Shortly after Hitler assumed power, he struck a deal with the Catholic Church in Germany allowing their schools to remain open. On May Day, 1937, he ified the agreement, saying:
We made a start with the nation’s youth. They shall not escape us. We will take them when they are 10 years-old and bring them up in the spirit of the community…
Catholics and Nazis (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) Read More »
Remembered as the poetic soul who penned the famous Holocaust verse, First they came for…, Martin Niemöller (Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller 1892 – 1984) is characterized in this 1935 article as a remarkably brave theologian who was challenging the Nazi Reichsbishop Ludwig Mueller and Dr. Alfred Rosenberg for their assault on the Protestant Churches in Germany:
Now Niemöller is resisting the attack of the German Christian Party, a neopaganistic movement, on the old Protestant faith, in fact. He was not molested when he read to his congregation the manifesto of the Confessional Synod’ Brotherhood Council.All most know that there is a bitter propaganda campaign against the Church under way. We must fight against this and for active, not passive, Christianity.
Martin Niemöller (Literary Digest, 1935) Read More »
Remembered as the poetic soul who penned the famous Holocaust verse, First they came for…, Martin Niemöller (Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller 1892 – 1984) is characterized in this 1935 article as a remarkably brave theologian who was challenging the Nazi Reichsbishop Ludwig Mueller and Dr. Alfred Rosenberg for their assault on the Protestant Churches in Germany:
Now Niemöller is resisting the attack of the German Christian Party, a neopaganistic movement, on the old Protestant faith, in fact. He was not molested when he read to his congregation the manifesto of the Confessional Synod’ Brotherhood Council.All most know that there is a bitter propaganda campaign against the Church under way. We must fight against this and for active, not passive, Christianity.
Martin Niemöller (Literary Digest, 1935) Read More »
Remembered as the poetic soul who penned the famous Holocaust verse, First they came for…, Martin Niemöller (Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller 1892 – 1984) is characterized in this 1935 article as a remarkably brave theologian who was challenging the Nazi Reichsbishop Ludwig Mueller and Dr. Alfred Rosenberg for their assault on the Protestant Churches in Germany:
Now Niemöller is resisting the attack of the German Christian Party, a neopaganistic movement, on the old Protestant faith, in fact. He was not molested when he read to his congregation the manifesto of the Confessional Synod’ Brotherhood Council.All most know that there is a bitter propaganda campaign against the Church under way. We must fight against this and for active, not passive, Christianity.
Martin Niemöller (Literary Digest, 1935) Read More »
Remembered as the poetic soul who penned the famous Holocaust verse, First they came for…, Martin Niemöller (Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller 1892 – 1984) is characterized in this 1935 article as a remarkably brave theologian who was challenging the Nazi Reichsbishop Ludwig Mueller and Dr. Alfred Rosenberg for their assault on the Protestant Churches in Germany:
Now Niemöller is resisting the attack of the German Christian Party, a neopaganistic movement, on the old Protestant faith, in fact. He was not molested when he read to his congregation the manifesto of the Confessional Synod’ Brotherhood Council.All most know that there is a bitter propaganda campaign against the Church under way. We must fight against this and for active, not passive, Christianity.
Martin Niemöller (Literary Digest, 1935) Read More »
With every organization in Germany gobbled up, the Evangelical and Roman Catholic churches continue their valiant, tortured struggle against absorption in the totalitarian state.
Last week Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (1869 – 1952), Archbishop of Munich, mounted the pulpit of old St. Michael’s and basted Nazi violations of the Concordat, the 1933 treaty between the Reich and the Vatican under which Catholics agreed to a ban on the political activities clergy and lay leaders, in exchange for religious liberty in their churches and schools.
Catholic Hierarchy Pressured in 1930s Germany (Literary Digest, 1937) Read More »
During the summer of 1941, the Nazis closed all nine of the Christian Science churches in the city of Berlin.
Christian Science Churches Closed (Newsweek Magazine, 1941) Read More »
With the 1938 merging of Austria with Hitler’s Germany came the Nazi coercion of Austrian Christianity. One of the first clerics to rebel against their repression was Cardinal Theodor Innitzer (1875 – 1955) of Vienna who made clear his outrage in a series of open letters criticizing the various Nazi restrictions involving marriage and the removal of nuns and priests from various schools and hospitals.
Cardinal Innitzer Stands Up (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938) Read More »
Here is a small article that appeared during the middle of the war saying that there were German parishioners within both Protestant and Catholic churches who offered food and shelter to the various assorted minorities (primarily Jews) who were persecuted by the Nazis.
The Holocaust Rescuers (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943) Read More »
Hitler wasted little time in securing control over the Christian churches in Germany: within six months of taking power he began to put the screws to the Protestant churches. This article devotes much column space to the pastors who had no problem with any of Hitler’s commands.
The issue, then, is broader than the Reich. Jews, Protestants and Catholics the world over have seen another scrap of paper torn up in Hitler’s repudiation of his pledge on taking office that the Nazi regime would respect the freedom and legal rights of German churches… Hitler modified an order requiring all Protestant pastors on a recent Sunday to display Nazi banners from their church spires…. The Nazis have also suppressed the German branch of International Bible Students’ Society, outlawed the Boy Scouts, and, to make their program more effective – given a Nazi cast to the Lord’s Prayer.
Protestant Churches Forced into Submission (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
