The Grey Book | Page 3

the Churches to express their protest against Nazism,
and also against the persecution of the Jews, in the above Pastoral of
the year 1943:
"And there is now a return to the worship of life and power by
accepting and exalting the old Adam as the original and eternal MAN.
There is an attempt at self-salvation - the old Adam is not crucified
with Christ (Rom. 6. 6) but by his very own inmost strength achieves a
new life and a heightened vitality..." [5]
Similarly, the theological concepts of sin and redemption were
transferred to a legal category of administrative regulations that
demanded outer conformity and inner obedience. The traditional
conception of sin and redemption that was common to all currents of
Christian thought held that man's redemption, and hence eschatological
existence, depends on his faith: "the righteousness of God through faith
in Jesus Christ... since all have sinned and... they are justified by grace...
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus..."(Rom. 3. 22-24). In
the totalitarian Nazi regime the concepts sin and redemption were used
as means by the State or the Party to convert man into a loyal subject
whose allegiance is assured by his constant fear not only of violating
some concrete ordinance or governmental decree but simply of just
deviating from the official ideology. The Christian belief that man
could be saved through faith in the forgiveness of Jesus who died for
his sins, "so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no
longer be enslaved to sin" (Rom. 6.6), was transferred from the
theological to the secular, political plane. Even the comforting
assurance of the believer that his sins shall be forgiven and that he shall
be found worthy of the purifying influences of grace could now be
gained only by the individual's complete identification with the State,
the Party and the superior Aryan race. An instructive illustration of this
shift from theology to ideology is to be found in the circular letters

(Rundschreiben) and in the speeches of the Reichsorganisationsleiter
Dr. Robert Ley, for example in his words of 26. June 1935:
"Strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) is the embodiment of
National Socialism. Over against sin we put discipline, over
against penitence pride! Over against the weak and their infirmities we
put strength... " [6]
This doctrine was not mere Aryan propaganda; it became an integral
part of school studies and was systematically inculcated into the minds
of the young. The following is an example of a dictation given in 1934
to the third grade of an elementary school:
"Just as Jesus redeemed mankind from sin and hell, so did Hitler rescue
the German people from destruction. Jesus and Hitler were persecuted;
but whereas Jesus was crucified, Hitler rose to be Chancellor... Jesus
worked for heaven, Hitler for the German soil..." [7]
This same pattern of reversing meanings was also applied by the
totalitarian Nazi regime to the basic concepts of western culture.
Nationalism as an historical phenomenon of a people with a common
language and culture and with the consciousness of a common destiny
was raised to a mythical, meta-historical plane. The essence of national
unity was discovered to reside in race and soil; the cultural and spiritual
creations of the nation were attributed to man's biological resources.
Similarly, the State became an end in itself, an ideal meta-historical
entity that was identical with the national spirit. [8] This view was
critically described by the Dutch Church as follows:
"... The whole cult of National Socialism finds its most powerful
manifestation in a State which claims to support, lead and fill in the
material and spiritual, educational, cultural and religious spheres, the
whole life of its subjects. Not only does the State order the life of the
individual, but it takes a creative part in it. It becomes the founder of
the true religion and the dispenser of the true philosophy; it furnishes
the data for knowledge..." [9] Mythical nationality in the
totalitarian regime thus developed a monolithic structure which
functioned as the only ontological framework in which the individual

may acquire his own identity, his selfknowledge and understanding.
While in a different, non-totalitarian civilization man establishes his
inner freedom by means of intellectual autonomy, the Nazi regime
made the actual biological belonging to the Aryan race into the ultimate
condition for the self-realization of Man. Hence one who could not
belong to the Aryan race, the prototype of whom was the Jew, was
doomed to be completely alienated, deprived not only of all rights, but
of the very justification to exist. It was this reversal of the status of the
individual which prepared the ground for subsequent developments
against which the Church protested, such as forced labour, the
repression of independent thought, the indoctrination of the young