It was on this day, March 23, 1933, that Adolph Hitler stood poised to seize power with the passage of the Enabling Act with these words:
The national Government sees in both Christian denominations the most important factor for the maintenance of our society.....The national Government will allow and confirm to the Christian denominations the enjoyment of their due influence in schools and education........And it will be concerned for the sincere cooperation between Church and State.
How did it come to this? Why was Hitler relying on Christians to put him in the driver's seat?
For a decade, the Nazis had pandered heavily to Christians, both Protestant and and Catholic, while trying to absorb small political parties like the antisemitic Christian Social Party.
Now Hitler was prepared to force a vote on a constitutional amendment, the Enabling Act, to create a legal dictatorship by stripping parliament of its authority and allowing his cabinet to issue laws by decree, with the short term goals of outlawing other political parties and trade unions.
Hitler was turning his back on the politics of the Weimar Republic, a mildly socialist parliamentary secular government.
At the beginning of National Socialism....there was no effort to draw people away from the Church. Just the opposite. The Weimar Republic had separated Church and State, just as it is in America...and the pastors, most of them, supported the Nazis in the hope of reuniting the (Church and State).
- Miton Mayer (1955) "The Thought They Were Free: the Germans 1933-45"
Hitler's speech on the eve of the vote on the Enabling Act promised a major role for religion.
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By its decision to carry out the political and moral cleansing of our public life, the Government is creating and securing the conditions for a really deep and inner religious life.
The advantages for the individual which may be derived from compromises with atheistic organizations do not compare in any way with the consequences which are visible in the destruction of our common religious and ethical values......
The national Government sees in both Christian denominations the most important factor for the maintenance of our society......
. ......The national Government will allow and confirm to the Christian denominations the enjoyment of their due influence in schools and education........And it will be concerned for the sincere cooperation between Church and State.
The struggle against the materialistic ideology and for the erection of a true people's community (Volksgemeinschaft) serves as much the interests of the German nation as of our Christian faith. ...
The national Government, seeing in Christianity the unshakable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people, attaches utmost importance to the cultivation and maintenance of the friendliest relations with the Holy See. ...The rights of the churches will not be curtailed; their position in relation to the State will not be changed.
Hitler's religious pandering was meant to get the vote of the Centre Party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communists (KPD) were expected to vote against the Act. The government had already arrested all Communist and some Social Democrat deputies under the Reichstag Fire Decree. The Nazis expected the parties representing the middle class, the Junkers and business interests to vote for the measure, as they had grown weary of the instability of the Weimar Republic and would not dare to resist...
And in a stunningly eerie parallel to Wisconsin, the Social Democrats boycotted the vote
Meanwhile, the Social Democrats initially planned to hinder the passage of the Act by boycotting the Reichstag session, rendering that body short of the quorum (two thirds) needed to vote on a constitutional amendment. The Reichstag, however, led by its President, Hermann Goering, changed its rules of procedure, allowing the President to declare that any deputy who was "absent without excuse" was to be considered as present, in order to overcome obstructions. Because of this procedural change, the Social Democrats were obliged to attend the session, and committed to voting against the Act.
But Hitler had been cutting deals with the Centre Party
....Hitler believed that with the Centre Party members' votes, he would get the necessary two-thirds majority. Hitler negotiated with the Centre Party's chairman, Ludwig Kaas, a Catholic priest, finalizing an agreement by March 22. Kaas agreed to support the Act in exchange for assurances of the Centre Party's continued existence, the protection of Catholics' civil and religious liberties, religious schools and the retention of civil servants affiliated with the Centre Party.
The day after after passage of the Enabling Act, "(Father) Kaas went to Rome in order to, in his own words, "investigate the possibilities for a comprehensive understanding between church and state"."
These negotiation will soon lead to the notorious Nazi-Vatican Concordant (Reichskonkordat) signed on July 20, 1933. Not that the document itself was shocking, but Hitler had already swiftly applied his dictatorial powers in suppressing the unions and Communists, and the Church would be seen as approving Hitler's mounting reign of terror.
During these months of negotiation, Hitler's religious pandering continued
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ...we need believing people.
- Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933
This era of good feelings between the Nazis and religion is something that our modern conservatives like to gloss over entirely. They like to say that Christians can't be Fascists, merely because Hitler was mean to Christians. It is true that the Nazi party started to split with Christianity, but this was not until after Hitler had exterminated all political opponents on June 30, 1934. When the antiJewish Nuremberg Laws were decreed in 1935, there was some confusion about the legal definition of Jews, Christians, and Aryans. This led to friction as the Nazis decreed that many Christians were legally Jews, and the churches resented demands that even members of the clergy with Jewish ancestors be dismissed.
On the surface, the Church-State fight began with the "Jewish Question," but it it important to remember that the fight did not begin for two or three years...the Church did not take a stand against anti-Semitism...Once the fight (about the definition of a Christian) began, the Church leaders blamed the party for luring people away. Finally that was actually the case, but that was after the trouble began(M. Mayer p. 220)......After the Church-Party split began to develop, in 1936, the Party service became more ritualistic, more specifically a substitute for the Church.
Also in 1936 and 1937, local police were assigned to monitor the political loyalties and sermons of local clergy (M. Mayer p 218 ) And by 1938 the Nazis were starting to conduct services of the pagan German Faith Movement (M. Mayer p 211 ). The Nazi party was pressuring members to join the German Faith Movement, and to depend on the movement for rites such as weddings and funerals. But, in fact, most Germans did not leave their church. And some Germans who left their church over political disagreements did not join the German Faith Movement either (M. Mayer p. 233)
How did the Nazis take power? By pandering to Christians for over a decade. Although Hitler would later have a falling out with Christian churches, persecution of Christians was not an essential part of Nazism. The governments of Fascist Spain, Fascist Italy, and Fascist Croatia remained officially Catholic for the duration of the war.