German Christian demonstration in the Sports Palace in Berlin, August 15, 1935.

THE GERMAN CHRISTIAN CHALLENGE: On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler took power as Germany’s new chancellor. The Nazis immediately began to take measures to conform all aspects of German society to the Nazi world-view. Not even the church could be permitted to disturb the lock-step uniformity demanded by Hitler. The Nazi platform claimed to support a “positive Christianity,” and a picture of Hitler reverently leaving a church figured prominently in Nazi propaganda. Such images made it easier for church people to believe that support of the Nazi revolution, far from being contrary to Christian convictions, was the only way to restore morality and decency in Germany following the economic and political chaos and perceived moral decay of the Weimar period. Nazi enthusiasts in the Protestant churches, under the banner of the so-called “German Christian” movement, pressed for the formation of a single Protestant church in Germany that would acknowledge the German Volk and its “Führer” as the primary revelation of the will of God for Christians who were Germans. A central characteristic of this allegiance to the Volk was hatred of the Jews, Germany’s “misfortune.”