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Nazi persecution of the Jews grew steadily worse throughout era of the Third Reich. Hamerow wrote that during the prelude to the Holocaust between Kristallnacht in November 1938 and the 1941 invasion of Soviet Russia, the position of the Jews "deteriorated steadily from disenfranchisement to segregation, ghettoization and sporadic mass murder". [18]
] In the first chapter of The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, historian John S. Conway elaborates that Christian Churches had lost their appeal in Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic, and Hitler responded to it by offering "what appeared to be a vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of Christianity."
Catholic leaders attacked Nazi ideology during the 1920s and 1930s, and the main Christian opposition to Nazism in Germany came from the church. [45] German bishops warned Catholics against Nazi racism before Hitler's rise, and some dioceses forbade Nazi Party membership. [51] The Catholic press condemned Nazism. [51]
Among the Catholic clergy who died at Dachau were many of the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II. [77] Blessed Gerhard Hirschfelder died of hunger and illness in 1942. [78] Saint Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite, died of a lethal injection in 1942. Blessed Alojs Andritzki, a German priest, was given a lethal injection in 1943. [79]
Soon after the Nazi takeover, his three Advent sermons of 1933, entitled Judaism, Christianity, and Germany, affirmed the Jewish origins of the Christian religion, the continuity of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and the importance of the Christian tradition to Germany. [14]
During the period of the German Empire, before the Weimar Republic, the Protestant churches (Landeskirchen) in Germany were divided along state and provincial borders. Each state or provincial church was supported by and affiliated with the regnal house—if it was Protestant—in its particular region; the crown provided financial and institutional support to its church.
Kirchenkampf (German: [ˈkɪʁçn̩kampf], lit. 'church struggle') is a German term which pertains to the situation of the Christian churches in Germany during the Nazi period (1933–1945). Sometimes used ambiguously, the term may refer to one or more of the following different "church struggles":
The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the National Socialists becoming the main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible."