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Catholic leaders attacked Nazi ideology during the 1920s and 1930s, and the main Christian opposition to Nazism in Germany came from the church. [44] German bishops warned Catholics against Nazi racism before Hitler's rise, and some dioceses forbade Nazi Party membership. [50] The Catholic press condemned Nazism. [50]
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]
Other historians have characterised Hitler's mature religious position as a form of deism.) "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one ...
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]
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":
In 1933, Germany's population of almost 60 million belonged to either the Catholic Church (20 million members) or the Protestant Church (40 million members). [2] Many Christians were initially drawn to supporting Nazism due to the emphasis on "positive Christianity," noted in Article 24 of the 1920 National Socialist Program. [2]
Catholic bishops in Nazi Germany differed in their responses to the rise of Nazi Germany, World War II, and the Holocaust during the years 1933–1945. In the 1930s, the Episcopate of the Catholic Church of Germany comprised 6 Archbishops and 19 bishops while German Catholics comprised around one third of the population of Germany served by ...