Introduction
The vast majority of Germans belonged to a Christian church during the Nazi era. In 1933 there were 40 million Protestants, 20 million Catholics, and small numbers of people adhering to other Christian traditions. The German Evangelical Church (the largest Protestant church) and the Roman Catholic church were pillars of German society and played an important role in shaping people’s attitudes and actions vis-à-vis National Socialism, including anti-communism, nationalism, traditional loyalty to governing authorities (particularly among Protestants), and the convergence of Nazi antisemitism with widespread and deep-seated anti-Jewish prejudice.
Within the German Evangelical Church the pro-Nazi “German Christian” (
Deutsche Christen) movement emerged in the early 1930s. It attempted to fuse Christianity and National Socialism and promoted a “racially-pure” church by attacking Jewish influences on Christianity. This attempt to nazify the primary Protestant chu