The Grey Book | Page 2

its youth. It became increasingly clear to these circles that the Nazi
racial doctrine - which Hitler and also the "Deutsche Christen" had
called positive Christianity in their first formulation as early as 5 May

1932 - constituted a kind of additional gospel of messianic redemption
that ostensibly strengthened Christianity as an institution and as a
religion of revelation. Secondly, this pseudo- messianic and
pseudo-religious authority that the Nazi regime arrogated to itself was
able by means of its repressive measures to curtail the influence of the
Church and even to reduce it to silence. This danger was perceived at
an early date by the "Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evangelischen
Kirche" in its Botschaft (
Part I, par 2, 5) adopted by the Conference
held in Berlin-
Dahlem 19-20 October 1934, which stated: "The National Church
that the Reich's bishop has in view under the slogan: One State - one
People - one Church, simply means that the Gospel is no longer valid
for the German Evangelical Church and that the mission of the Church
is delivered to the powers of this world.... The introduction of the
Fuehrer principle into the Church and the demand of unconditional
obedience based upon this principle are contrary to the Word of
Scripture and bind the officials of the Church to the Church regiment
instead of to Christ... [3]
Towards the end of the period that is dealt with in the sources collected
in this volume, in the year 1943, we also meet with a clear expression
of the Church's opposition to this pseudo-religious and
pseudo-messianic character of Nazism in the "Pastoral concerning
National Socialist Philosophy" that was sent in Holland:
... to parochial church councillors to give them the necessary basis for
their opposition in the struggle against National Socialist ideology, and
especially against the intangible, but all the more dangerous religious
ideas and expressions of National Socialism which will exercise an
influence even after the war."
In its penetrating analysis of the totalitarian character of Nazism this
Pastoral observes:

"...It is not surprising that National Socialism has the power to become
the religion of the masses, and its assemblies to take the form of a kind
of popular worship in which a great deal of latent religious emotion is
released.... In carrying out its ministry the Church must therefore make
its work in this connection even more definite in character, and must
tell its members very clearly and resolutely that what is at stake here is
the first commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods besides me...!"
[4] This pseudo-religious and pseudo-messianic character of
Nazism was by no means accidental or the product of mass hysteria
induced by some skilful propagandists. It was rather an ideological
structure that was consciously given definite patterns and developed
within a conceptual system in accordance with its own laws of logic. In
this development the traditional theological concepts of Christianity
were retained but given an altogether different meaning. Values that
had previously been regarded as relative in the culture of Christianity
and of the West now became absolute; and values that had formerly
been considered absolute, being interpreted as metaphorical or
visionary, became relative. Phenomena with an imminent historical
essence were lifted to a meta-historical plane. Means were converted to
ends, and ends were endowed with absolute authority in so far as they
sanctified the means. In this manner the fundamental concepts of
religion were not invalidated nor the integrative functions served by
these concepts impaired, such as those cohesive factors that hold
together the social structure and ensure its normal functioning. The
Nazis retained these concepts and their functions as a legitimate part of
their racial theory and, after depriving them of their authentic historical
content, turned them into political expedients to be used in their attack
against humanism, religion and Christian values. Basic theological
concepts such as God, redemption, sin and revelation were now used as
anthropological and political concepts. God became man, but not in the
theological Christian sense of the incarnation of the Word: "...and the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." (John 1. 14) or in the
Pauline conception of the incarnation of God in Christ in whom "the
whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2. 9). In the new
conception God becomes man in a political sense as a member of the
Aryan race whose highest representative on earth is the Fuehrer. This
change in the essential meaning of the concepts God-man is, from the

standpoint of cognition, effected by converting the relative into the
absolute and, from the standpoint of theology, by transferring the
Pauline conception (Ephesians 4. 24; Colossians 3. 10) from the plane
of metaphysics and eschatology to that of nationality rind politics.
It was this radical change from Christian doctrines to pagan
myths that aroused