Review of “Theologians Under Hitler” and “Storm Troopers of Christ” by John Conway, Association of Contemporary Church Historians:
Two new hour-long documentary films now available on DVD, and produced by Steve Martin of Vital Visuals Inc of Oak Ridge Tennessee, depict in an excellently scholarly mannner the more regrettable side of the Protestant church in Germany during the Nazi regime. Theologians under Hitler is virtually an illustrated version of the book with the same title written by Robert Ericksen of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Ericksen himself introduces the film and is assisted by an expert team of scholars, both German and American. He describes the careers of three of Germany’s most illustrious theologians, Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch and Gerhard Kittel. Photographs from the archives are melded in with the campus scenery, along with commentary on their writings by today’s church historians.
These men backed the Nazi cause as the answer to Germany’s political problems in an effort to restore the national self-confidence after the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty.. Hitler’s energetic leadership appeared to them. the long-sought-after remedy. At the same time they urged German Protestants to abandon their engrained pietistic distaste for politics and to become relevant to the vibrant national community being forged by the Nazis. These views undoubtedly gave support to the Nazi cause, including its racial antisemitism. None of these men were to express remorse in the post-war situation or to have changed their views. The commentators naturally deplore this scandalous heresy. They share a presentist view which points out the dangers of theologians providing justifications for nationalist or imperialist aggressions. They likewise warn against the intolerance displayed by these German Christians towards members of other faiths, especially Jews. They call for the lessons of the Church Struggle in Nazi Germany to be learnt by today’s Christians, especially in the United States.
“Hearts Divided*” records an even sadder chapter of the Protestant experience in the Nazi era. Its subject is the betrayal of true Christian values by the so-called “German Christians” and particularly their attempt to root out all Jewish influences and elements from the church. These pro-Nazi forces, led by their Reich Bishop Ludwig Mueller and by such theologians as Walter Grundmann, argued that only a Germanized Christianity could attract their fellow Germans back to the churches, and restore the church’s credibility by following Hitler’s political lead against the pernicious effects of Jewry. Church archives were therefore diligently searched to discover long-lost Jewish ancestors and to treat these Jewish-Christians as second class, expel them from leadership roles, or even turn them over to the Gestapo. Only a few brave souls stood out against this heretical tendency. Among them was Pastor Martin Niemöller who early on recognized the centrality of the issue of baptism. If the church capitulated to Nazi demands and excluded baptized Jews, then the Gospel’s validity would be destroyed. But the majority of German Protestants placed their national loyalties above sympathy with their fellow Christians of Jewish origins. The film’s commentators are undertandably indignant at this lamentable capitulation to Nazi pressures, which they rightly see as a deplorable breach of faith and a warning to others.
*formerly “Storm Troopers of Christ”