A Three-Pronged Attack on Freedom

Long before the Hitler’s National Socialists (‘Nazis’) seized power in 1933, they had made it clear that they knew which obstacles would stand in the way of their plans for war, imperialism, and genocide. When they finally took power, they began to eliminate those obstacles before they began their horrific actions.

One source of resistance to National Socialist plans was the Christian faith in its various forms. In Germany at that time, the people who followed Jesus were distributed among Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Reformed churches.

While these competing churches disagreed with each other in some beliefs, the believers in them were clearly united in their opposition to Hitler. Likewise, the National Socialists were united in their determination to eliminate Christianity in Germany.

The effort to eradicate the Christian faith was sometimes direct and blatant, but more often devious. Rather than simply shut church buildings or destroy them, the buildings were left standing, and used for events which seemed like Christian worship services, but were not.

In these fake churches, the Cross was often replaced by the swastika. The Bible (as the word ‘Bible’ is historically understood) was replaced by quotations from Hitler and Nazi propaganda.

The people could still gather there on Sunday mornings, and there was music and candles were lit, but the substance was gone, and National Socialism prevailed. Bit by bit, churches were eliminated throughout Germany and replaced by weekly pro-Nazi events.

Indeed, if people weren't watching and listening carefully, they were fooled, and did not realize that the church had been replaced by a Nazi propaganda event which look similar. Some church leaders were corrupted by the Nazis into aided them in creating this counterfeit church.

But what would replace Christianity? If the National Socialists had their way, and succeeded in extinguishing Christianity, what belief system would inform the spiritual worldview of the new empire which they hoped to establish?

They needed to eliminate the central historical role of Jesus in religious life, because Jesus was a Jew and because Jesus introduced and advocated views including a moderate form of pacifism and a recognition of the fundamental sanctity and value of every human life.

Hitler’s National Socialists also needed to remove Jesus from the public consciousness because Jesus had voluntarily endured a humiliating death in order to serve and liberate others. The Nazi image of heroism did not include such humility.

They had a threefold effort to replace the historic faith in Jesus.

First, some of the Nazis embraced and promoted a hard-nosed and intolerant atheism. Second, some of them wanted to revive the pre-Christian Norse mythology, a merciless form of religion which had ruled northern Europe prior to the introduction of Christianity, which had featured human sacrifice, and which had treated women as property. Third, another group of Nazis continued the fake version of Christianity and operated groups which seemed to be churches in the buildings which formerly had been churches.

One historian, Eric Kurlander, quoting Wolfgang Kaufmann, reports that “virtually ‘all leading ideologues’ in the Nazi movement ‘rejected Christianity.’” They “shared the firm conviction that” Christianity had “to be replaced.”

It is clear that “the Nazis rejected Christianity.” The only difference among various groups within National Socialism was “the various spiritual and ideological elements than many Nazis sought in (re) constructing a religious alternative to Christianity.”

In order to survive, the remaining followers of Jesus had to go underground, meeting in secret. They formed a network, and included a number of people who became famous for their sincere faith: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Max Kolbe, Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and others.

These daring individuals worked simultaneously to help Jews escape from Nazi territories and to actively resist Nazi efforts. Resistance ranged from slowing the transportation of war materials to several attempts directly to assassinate Hitler himself.

Because the National Socialists were not successful in completely erasing Christianity in Germany, a resistance effort was able to save the lives of Jews and slow the Nazi war effort.

Lessons from Buchenwald: Concentration Camp Horrors Outlive the Holocaust

The reader will be familiar with the history of the Holocaust: how Hitler harbored anti-Jewish hatred even before seizing power in 1933; how his National-Socialist party immediately began discriminating against Jews when it took control of the country; how sustained violence against Jews erupted in November 1938; how a system of work camps arose and grew; how the ‘Final Solution’ policy was adopted at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942; and how a system of death camps then arose.

The first Konzentrationslager (‘concentration camps’) were started by the National Socialists in 1933. At first, they housed primarily political prisoners: those who opposed Hitler. Later, after 1938, they housed more and more Jews. The German abbreviation KZ is used to refer to concentration camps, which included both work camps and extermination camps (death camps).

There are many other details in the history of Holocaust. When it was over, millions of Jewish Germans, Jewish Poles, Jewish Czechs, Jewish Austrians, and others, had been murdered.

Specific data about one camp in particular, Buchenwald, give a picture of what happened at the end of the Holocaust. On April 11, 1945, the last Nazi guards and officers abandoned the camp. The inmates took over. (The word ‘Nazi’ is an abbreviation for ‘National Socialist’.)

On April 13, U.S. Army soldiers arrived at the camp, and immediately began giving food and medical help to the inmates.

During May and June, the U.S. Army escorted groups of German civilians from nearby town through the camps. The goals of this action were to ensure that the Germans learned in detail and without ambiguity what had happened, and to create such a large number of eyewitnesses that no serious doubt about the reality of the Holocaust could arise.

In July 1945, the U.S. Army left the region - western Thüringen - which it had liberated from the Nazis. The Soviet Socialist army moved in and occupied the area.

Even though the Americans had freed the Germans of Thüringen from the Nazi oppressors, the four Allied Powers (England, France, the U.S., and the USSR) had previously agreed at the Potsdam Conference that Thüringen would be placed under the control of the Soviet Socialists.

The Soviet Socialists used their secret police and espionage agencies to stop any potential disagreements or complaints from the Germans in Thüringen. The agencies were known as the NKVD and the MVD, among others. (The German abbreviations are NKWD and MWD.)

Life for the ordinary people in the region was difficult: they had been oppressed by the National Socialists, and now they were oppressed by the Soviet Socialists. The Soviet activities regarding the KZ Buchenwald were particularly shocking, as historian Gerhard Finn writes:

Häftlinge („Internierte“) der sowjetischen Geheimpolizei MWD aus den Haftanstalten Erfurt, Weimar, Arnstadt, und Jena werden in das Lager gebracht und beginnen mit Instandsetzungsarbeiten.
Das Lager wird offiziell „Speziallager des MWD Nr. 2“ genannt.

Using prisoners as unpaid forced labor, the Soviet began renovating the concentration camp and restoring it to working order. This happened with other concentration camps in the regions controlled by the Soviets.

Areas controlled by the British, French, and American forces had monuments at the locations of concentration camps. The western Allies wanted to make a public statement against the use of such camps.

The Soviets, however, simply picked up where the Nazis left off, and repaired the camps and started using them again. In a cruel gesture, Gerhard Finn notes about the date December 25, 1945, the first holiday after the war’s end, that

Den Häftlingen wird an diesem Tag die Brotration gestrichen.

The USSR continued to operate the concentration camp Buchenwald, known under the Soviet Socialists as “Special Camp # 2,” until February 1950. Thousands of people were rounded up by the Soviet secret police and imprisoned there. Thousands of them died there.

Although the Holocaust ended in May 1945, and the Nazis were removed from power, the Soviet Socialists were eager to use the concentration camps which the Nazis had left behind. The Soviets repaired whatever had been broken in the camps, and made both life and death miserable for prisoners.