# Twisted Cross  ## Metadata - Author: [[Doris L. Bergen]] - Full Title: Twisted Cross - Category: #books ## Highlights - To me, the German Christian movement embodies a moral and spiritual dilemma I associate with my own religious questions: What is the value of religion, and in particular of Christianity, if it provides no defense against brutality and can even become a willing participant in genocide? ([Location 61](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=61)) - In my initial reading about Protestants in Nazi Germany, I was struck by what seemed contorted efforts to fuse Christianity with Germanness and purge it of Jewish influence. I wanted to explore how members of the German Christian movement synthesized Christianity and National Socialism, two systems of belief most people would regard as fundamentally irreconcilable. This book is the result. ([Location 64](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=64)) - Most Christians in Germany did not share Bonhoeffer’s conviction about the fundamental opposition between those two worldviews, but hard-core Nazi leaders did. Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler, as well as Adolf Hitler himself, considered Nazism and Christianity irreconcilable antagonists. ([Location 98](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=98)) - Adherents of the German Christian movement (Glaubensbewegung “Deutsche Christen”), most of them Protestant lay people and clergy, regarded the Nazi revolution that began in 1933 as a golden opportunity for Christianity. ([Location 100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=100)) - The movement’s quest to fuse Christianity and National Socialism reflected the desire of many Germans to retain their religious traditions while supporting the Nazi fatherland. ([Location 117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=117)) - They sang hymns to Jesus but also to Hitler. ([Location 120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=120)) - After the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, instead of being ostracized in their congregations and shut out of ecclesiastical posts, German Christians, lay and clergy, found it relatively easy to reintegrate into Protestant church life. ([Location 122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=122)) - What beliefs bound the German Christian movement together? How did adherents act out their synthesis of Nazism and Christianity and deal with the glaring contradictions within it? This book explores those questions and offers answers that challenge some standard interpretations. ([Location 123](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=123)) - German Christians built on theological as well as political foundations, drawing on a legacy of Christian antisemitism and a proclivity to disregard Scripture. ([Location 126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=126)) - Nazi leaders frequently denounced the movement and resented its attempt to complete National Socialism by combining it with Christianity. ([Location 128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=128)) - After the early days of 1933, it could even have adverse effects. Those whose only interest was to gain the favor of the Nazi leadership generally found it more expeditious to ignore or leave the church rather than try to change it from within. ([Location 132](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=132)) - Nazi and neopagan critics in Germany reviled Christianity for its Jewish roots, doctrinal rigidity, and enervating, womanish qualities. ([Location 138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=138)) - The German Christians, in turn, focused their efforts on proclaiming an anti-Jewish, antidoctrinal, manly Christianity. ([Location 139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=139)) - This book will suggest that such was the case with German Christianity and National Socialism. The German Christian movement was not just a product of Nazi orders or a response to neopagan charges against Christianity. Rather, parallels between German Christian thought and Nazi criticisms of it reflect the fact that both grew out of German culture of the post-World War I period. Shared ideas and obsessions about religion, race, and gender linked German Christianity and National Socialism and connected both to broader trends in the society. ([Location 141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=141)) - If the German Christians were not pawns of National Socialism, craven opportunists, or would-be saviors of Christianity, what were they? I will argue that they were above all church people with their own agenda for transforming Christianity. ([Location 144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=144)) - To describe National Socialism we depend on the same words and phrases that Nazi propaganda appropriated and infused with particular meanings: words like race, blood, Aryan, German, and Jew. ([Location 152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=152)) - In this book, the phrase German Christians refers only to adherents of the German Christian movement in the 1930s and 1940s, not to any German nationals who professed Christianity. ([Location 157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=157)) - Special problems of terminology arise in dealing with the group of people German Christians described either as “non-Aryan Christians,” “Jewish Christians,” or “baptized Jews.” All three terms referred to converts from Judaism to Christianity or the children, and in some cases grandchildren, of such converts. ([Location 161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=161)) - will use the phrase non-Aryan Christian to describe people who, in Nazi Germany, might also have been called Jewish Christians or baptized Jews. ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=164)) - Finally, my use of the word Protestant requires clarification. In German, evangelisch is a general label that includes the Lutheran, Reformed, and united churches. Because the English evangelical has very different connotations from the German evangelisch, I have translated evangelisch in its broad usage as Protestant.4 ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=167)) - Three main impulses converged to produce the German Christian movement in the early 1930s. ([Location 170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=170)) - two energetic young pastors in Thuringia, Siegfried Leffler and Julius Leutheuser, had been preaching religious renewal along nationalist, völkisch lines.5 Both members of the Nazi party, they called themselves and their followers German Christians. ([Location 171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=171)) - second group, consisting of politicians, pastors, and lay people, met in Berlin to discuss how to capture the energies of Germany’s Protestant churches for the National Socialist cause. ([Location 173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=173)) - Wilhelm Kube, Gauleiter of Brandenburg and chairman of the National Socialist group in the Prussian Landtag, initiated this effort. ([Location 174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=174)) - Kube’s circle planned to call themselves the Protestant National Socialists, but according to insiders’ accounts, Hitler vetoed that label and suggested “German Christians ([Location 175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=175)) - A third set of developments fed into the German Christian movement as well. In the 1920s numerous Protestant associations has arisen, dedicated to reviving church life through increased emphasis on German culture and ethnicity. Some of those groups merged with the German Christians; others remained separate but lost members to the new movement or cooperated with it on specific projects.8 That the German Christians did not break away from the established Protestant church eased such interchange. ([Location 179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=179)) - Adherents of the movement, their opponents in the church, and Nazi authorities generally accepted the figure of six hundred thousand as a reasonable estimate of the group’s numerical strength in the mid-1930s, arguably its weakest phase. ([Location 201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=201)) - Many local pastors remained opposed to the movement, but none could refuse to address its charge that the church risked oblivion if it turned its back on the Nazi revolution. ([Location 218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=218)) - “The culture that made the death camps possible,” Rubenstein insists, “was not only indigenous to the West but was an outcome, albeit unforeseen and unintended, of its fundamental religious traditions. ([Location 232](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=232)) - When Christians in Germany encountered Jews, their perceptions were shaped by images and associations acquired through formal and informal religious education.22 Even Nazi law, with all its claims about scientific racism, distinguished between so-called Aryans and Jews on the basis of religion, not biology. ([Location 246](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=246)) - Christianity permeated Nazi society. Nazi iconography is replete with Christian notions of sacrifice and redemption. Even committed National Socialists like the members of the German Christian movement clung fiercely to cultural manifestations of their religious tradition–the celebration of Christmas, favorite hymns, the symbol of the cross. ([Location 249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=249)) - The history of the German Christian movement serves to remind us that for many Germans religious, national, and personal identities reinforced each other in deadly ways. ([Location 257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=257)) - The German Christian movement is particularly instructive because it reveals which aspects of Christianity even ardent pro-Nazis held dear. ([Location 263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=263)) - One such element was the church. ([Location 264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=264)) - This book is organized along thematic lines. The goal is to present the major ideas and consequences of the German Christian movement rather than to detail the group’s organizational evolution. ([Location 364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=364)) - For members of the movement, the euphoria of ascent proved shortlived. Withdrawal of party support, symbolized in the declaration of neutrality in church affairs by Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess on 13 October 1933, engendered a crisis of identity within German Christian ranks.47 ([Location 394](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=394)) - Sports Palace rally on 13 November 1933, an event that ushered in the second phase of the movement’s development: fragmentation. ([Location 397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=397)) - Sometimes in the history of an organization, one incident brings to a head existing concerns and anticipates future directions in uncanny ways. For the German Christians, the Sports Palace rally was such a milestone. Until that time, the movement’s successes had concealed internal differences and masked uncertainties about its mission. At the Sports Palace rally, the key speaker, Reinhold Krause, blasted those issues into the open. Krause, a high school teacher and leader of German Christians in Berlin, had not enjoyed a particularly high profile in the movement, but his 13 November performance catapulted him into the spotlight. ([Location 398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=398)) - Kerrl’s interest in Christianity seems to have stemmed from his devotion to Nazism. When he first experienced National Socialism, he once commented, he understood how “faith makes someone into a new person.”56 ([Location 435](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=435)) - Chapters 2, 3, and 4 explore the bases of the German Christian view of the people’s church as anti-Jewish, antidoctrinal, and manly. ([Location 472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=472)) - How did members of the movement deal with Germans whose very existence countered their vision of a people’s church? ([Location 473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=473)) - Chapters 5, 6, and 7 examine that question by focusing on converts from Judaism to Christianity, Catholics, and women. How could German Christianity, a form of religion rife with contradictions, persist throughout the Nazi era? ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=474)) - We must emphasize with all decisiveness that Christianity did not grow out of Judaism but developed in opposition to Judaism. When we speak of Christianity and Judaism today, the two in their most fundamental essence stand in glaring contrast to one another. There is no bond between them, rather the sharpest opposition. —Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, 1934 ([Location 479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=479)) - Protest against the German Christian heresy cannot simply begin with the Aryan Paragraph, nor with their rejection of the Old Testament, the Arianism of their Christology, the naturalism and pelagianism of their teachings of justification and sanctification, nor the idolization of the state that characterizes German Christian ethics. Rather our protest must be directed fundamentally at the source of all those individual heresies: at the fact that, next to the holy scripture as the sole revelation of God, the German Christians claim German Volkstum, its past and its political present, as a second revelation. We thereby recognize them as believers in “another God. —Karl Barth, 1933 ([Location 482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=482)) - To the theologian Karl Barth, the essence of the German Christian heresy was obvious. By elevating Volkstum—race—the level of God’s revelation, German Christians opened the floodgates to a torrent of non-Christian and anti-Christian beliefs, attitudes, and activities. ([Location 487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=487)) - anti-Jewishness. ([Location 491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=491)) - On this point, Reich Bishop Müller’s description of German Christianity proved more accurate. Blurring racial and religious categories, the German Christians defined their people’s church as essentially and primarily anti-Jewish; their identity depended on the contrasts they established between themselves and Jews. ([Location 492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=492)) - “The Pastors’ Emergency League ([Location 499](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=499)) - That pastor’s message demonstrated how the exclusive and inclusive facets of the German Christian agenda were linked. ([Location 501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=501)) - The German Christian theory of race depended on a particular vocabulary. German Christians made heavy use of the words Volk, Volkstum, and völkisch. These terms are difficult to translate into English because they combine aspects of ethnicity, race, and culture. ([Location 504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=504)) - Völkisch is an historically bound word; it reflects a way of thinking that emphasizes the ethnic, racial group—the Volk—and is obsessed with its preservation and advancement. German Christians also used the words Rasse (race) and Blut (blood). Various forms of the German Art (nature, type, or breed) appear as well. The problem of translating these terms highlights the alien nature of German Christian thought outside the context of Nazi Germany. We cannot recapture in another language, another time, and another setting all of the messages intrinsic in German Christian utterances on race. Still, we can learn a great deal about the movement by using the language of race as a window on the group’s beliefs. ([Location 508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=508)) - Even before the Nazis took power, the German Christians had concretized their views of race and its place in the church. ([Location 528](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=528)) - the Institute for Research into and Elimination of Jewish Influence in German Church Life (Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses im deutschen kirchlichen Leben).9 ([Location 552](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=552)) - Through their anti-Jewish people’s church, the German Christians endorsed the crimes of the thousand-year Reich. ([Location 586](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=586)) - A 1944 proclamation in a German Christian newsletter indicated how thoroughly members identified their anti-Jewish people’s church with the genocidal German nation: “There is no other solution to the Jewish problem than this: that one day the whole world will rise up and decide either for or against Judaism, and will keep on struggling with each other until the world is totally judaized or completely purged of Judaism. ([Location 593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=593)) - We can say with an honest, pure conscience that we did not want this war and did not start this war. But we can proudly profess before all the world—the world of today as well as of tomorrow—that we took up the gauntlet with the firm resolve to solve the Jewish question for ever.”16 With that declaration, German Christians echoed the threat Hitler had voiced in January 1939. ([Location 596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=596)) - By 1939, a German Christian confirmation examination asked candidates, “Who is the new temple of the Holy Spirit?” The ritual response placed race squarely in the midst of the articles of faith: “The Volk is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification takes place in the communal life of the Volk.”21 ([Location 614](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=614)) - Adherents of the movement also found authorities in this world to legitimize their cause. They especially liked to cite Martin Luther as a precursor of their attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. ([Location 623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=623)) - With glee they quoted his essay “Against the Jews and Their Lies” and presented him as a champion of antisemitism. ([Location 624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=624)) - A religious instruction book of 1940 quoted Luther’s instructions to “set their synagogues and schools on fire, and whatever will not burn, heap dirt upon and cover so that no human ever again will see a stone or a cinder of it.”23 A German Christian publication from 1943 urged its readers to be hard like Luther in their attitudes toward the Jews.24 ([Location 625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=625)) - For example, a German Church League publication of 1927 described Jesus as “the transfiguration of the Siegfried idea,” who could “break the neck of the Jewish-Satanic snake with his iron fist. ([Location 639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=639)) - German Christian mission superintendent recounted the controversy surrounding a black pastor from Togo named Kwami and his speaking tour through Germany. Kwami was slated to speak in Oldenburg, but a group of people protested. They claimed it would be “cultural infamy” (Kulturschande) for him to lead the worship service; they called it a “provocation” that anyone would allow “a Negro, of all people, to preach salvation to the splendid, blond farmers of east Friesland. ([Location 664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=664)) - Attacks against Kwami, he contended, would have been understandable if the man were presented for a position in a German parish: “That would be just as unbearable as when Jewish pastors work in German congregations.” Kwami, however, was merely planning to report on the fruits of German mission work. ([Location 668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=668)) - Other models of racism also formed part of the legacy reflected in the German Christian movement. The panicked response of many Germans to black French troops during the occupation after World War I is well known. ([Location 672](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=672)) - By linking the two themes, organizers conveyed the message that Jews were as racially “other” as Africans or Asians. ([Location 692](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=692)) - “What God has put asunder let no man join together.”41 ([Location 698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=698)) - By using the term Jewish as a means of attack in such different ways, German Christians consolidated their definitions of Jewishness and its opposite, Germanness, and brought new associations into the racial glossary. ([Location 758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009RUQU9E&location=758))