"THE SECOND GO OF THE GERMAN SOUL": THE PROTESTANTS
Directives of the Church Movement German Christians (Movement for A National Church) in Thuringia (11 December 1933)
Source: J. Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years: A Documentary History, (Prentice - Hall, 1969), pp.95-97.
1.We German Christians believe in our Saviour Jesus Christ, in the power of His cross, and in His resurrection. The life and death of Jesus teach us that the way of struggle also is the way of love and of life. God's creation has placed us in the community of blood and fate of the German people, and as the bearers of that fate, we are responsible for the nation's future. Germany is our task, Christ is our strength.
2. The source and the confirmation of our faith is the divine revelation of scripture, and the witness born by the fathers. The New Testament, to us, is the sacred document of our Lord, the Saviour, and of His Father's kingdom. The Old Testament, to us, is an example of God's way of educating a people. In our faith it is of value to the extent that it opens our eyes to an understanding of the life, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of our Saviour.
3. As for any other nation, too, the eternal God created for our nation a law that is peculiar to its own kind. It took shape in the Leader Adolf Hitler, and in the National Socialist State created by him. This law speaks to us from the history of our people, a history grown of blood and soil. It is loyalty to this law, which demands of us the battle for honour and freedom.
4. The way to fulfil the German law is the faithful German congregation. In it, Jesus, the Lord reigns in grace and forgiveness. In it burns the fire of holy sacrifice. In it alone the Saviour confronts the German people, and gives it the strength of faith. From this community of German Christians there shall grow a "German National Church," embracing the entire people in the National Socialist State of Adolf Hitler. One Nation! One God! One Reich! One Church!
Joachim Beckmann, ed., Kirchliches Jahrbuch
fuer die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland,
1933-1944 (Guetersloh, 1948), pp. 32-33.
Vice-President Bishop Joachim Hossenfelder
Minister of the Peace Church Potsdam
Sans Souci Vicarage
"By the Green Trellis"
Telephone 6394
Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels
Potsdam, March 13, 1943
Reich Leader of SS Himmler
Berlin
My Reich Minister:
My Reich Leader: In view of the manner in which the religious issue has been developing, allow me, as one of the oldest of former advisers to the party on religious matters, to write these lines to you; men, both of you, specially called to lead the German state. ... The leadership of the state is responsible for religion. It has the requisite conscience before God. A political leadership, which remains neutral toward a religion either is not yet total, or has ceased to be total. If the political leadership, correctly recognising this fact, is not neutral, it has, when we consider our particular German situation, three roads open to it.
1. It can reject the Christian religion and destroy it with all the means at its disposal. This - no matter whether such a process should take decades or moments - would mean the destruction of the moral and spiritual fibre of our people. Seen historically, such a process took place in Russia. It could, because the Russian leadership used the services of Bolshevism, that is of a prophetic, [ ], philosophy, which is no longer interested in ordering mankind in individual nations.
2. The leadership can accept Christianity in the denominational, dogmatic form in which it is now organised. This, quite aside from the Jewish influence exercised through the old Testament, would mean the victory of Rome, that is to say the victory of that power which already dug the grave of the First and Second Reich of the Germans.
3. It can affirm the German Reformation of the Christian religion, which became visible in the years 1932 and 1933. This Reformation is the second go of the German soul at freeing itself, within the structure of the religion of our people, from Oriental, dogmatic and hierarchical influences. Like the Reformation of Luther, it, too, is on the right path. The objection that Luther's Reformation destroyed the spiritual unity of our nation is false. What was wrong was the failure of the political leadership at that time. To the degree that it turned away from the Reformation, it handed the leadership of the nation over to the North. The very essence of the German Reformation requires that it have the support of the state. That support, for love's sake, must show its worth in all fields, for with it, the love of a nation for its leadership grows and remains strong.
