Religion in Nazi Germany - Religious Aspects of Nazism

Religious Aspects of Nazism

Several elements of Nazism were quasi-religious in nature. The cult around Hitler as the Führer, the "huge congregations, banners, sacred flames, processions, a style of popular and radical preachings, prayers-and-responses, memorials and funeral marches" have been described by historian of Esotericism Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as "essential props for the cult of race and nation, the mission of Aryan Germany and victory over her enemies." These kinds of religious aspects of Nazism have led some scholars to consider Nazism, like communism, a kind of political religion.

Hitler's plans, for example, to erect a magnificent new capital at Berlin (Welthauptstadt Germania), has been described as attempting to build a version of the New Jerusalem. Since Fritz Stern's classical study The Politics of Cultural Despair, most historians have viewed the relation of Nazism and religion in this way. Some historians see the Nazi movement and Adolf Hitler as fundamentally hostile to Christianity, though not irreligious. In the first chapter of The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, historian John S. Conway elaborates that Christian Churches in Germany had lost their appeal in the time of the Weimar Republic, and that Hitler offered "what appeared to be a vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of Christianity."