Lesson video

Hello, welcome to History here at Oak National Academy.

My name's Mr. Newton, and I'll be your teacher today guiding you through the entire lesson.

Right, let's get started.

In these lessons, we have been studying how Hitler established a dictatorship in Germany, and today, this provokes a question, can a regime that demands total loyalty coexist with religion, which calls people to a higher moral law? Today we will discover the struggle over belief that took place in Nazi Germany.

How did Hitler try to control the church, and how did the church respond when faith and fear collided? Let's explore how two powerful forces, Nazi ideology and Christian belief, clashed in a quiet but dangerous war for the soul of a nation.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to describe Nazi policies towards the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany.

Before we begin, there are a few key words that we need to understand.

Reich meaning empire.

Under the Nazis, it referred to the Third Reich, their name for Hitler's regime, which they saw as the third great German Empire after the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire.

And the Vatican is the centre of the Roman Catholic Church based in Vatican City, an independent state in Rome.

It is led by the Pope and acts as the church's spiritual and diplomatic authority.

And a concordat is a formal agreement between the Vatican and the government, usually about the rights of the church within that country.

And nazification is the process of bringing institutions and daily life under Nazi control, influencing schools, churches, and local organisations.

And it's part of a wide Nazi policy known as Gleichschaltung which is German for coordination.

Okay, today's lesson is titled The Nazi Party and Religion, and it splits into two parts.

First, we'll look at Nazi control and the Catholic Church, we'll examine how Hitler tried to manage and manipulate and eventually suppress Catholic influence in Germany.

Then we'll move on to Protestantism and the Nazi plan for a Reich Church.

Unlike Catholicism, Protestant churches in Germany were fragmented, and we'll explore how the Nazis tried to unify them under one national Reich Church and how some Protestant leaders pushed back.

Right, let's begin by looking at Nazi control and the Catholic Church.

When Adolf Hitler took control of Germany in 1933, his ambitions extended far beyond the Reich stag, the police and the courts.

He wanted to control the minds and the hearts of the German people, and that meant bringing religion under his command.

Germany was a deeply religious country, and the Nazis saw this as a source of opposition.

In the illustration on the left, you can see it shows townspeople gathered outside a 19th century German cathedral with a clergyman offering words of comfort.

This illustrates the fact that Germany had deep Christian roots and religion remained a central pillar of daily life.

This meant that the church carried spiritual authority and many Germans looked to it and to God for moral guidance.

Approximately two thirds of Germans were Protestant and one third were Roman Catholic.

Both institutions wielded powerful influence over education, morality, and culture, but Hitler saw himself as the ultimate authority over the German people, and his vision of the Third Reich left little room for divided loyalties.

Religion with its own doctrines, leaders, and allegiance to something beyond the state posed a threat to Nazi dictatorship.

To consolidate his rule, both the Catholic and Protestant churches had to choose, serve the state, or be silenced.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Why did Hitler want to bring religion under state control in 1933? A, he wanted to create a new German religion.

B, it's posed a challenge to his authority over the German people.

C, religion encouraged violence against the state.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, great, welcome back, and well done if you knew that Hitler wanted to bring religion under state control was because B, it posed a challenge to his authority over the German people.

Okay, let's continue.

So Hitler viewed the Catholic Church with a mix of admiration and mistrust.

He respected its discipline, its global network, and the deep loyalty of its members, but he also saw it as a rival power.

Could a dictatorship which demanded total loyalty tolerate a faith whose highest allegiance was not to Berlin, but to a pope in Rome.

The Vatican watched Hitler's rise with growing unease and searched for a way to protect the church's position in Germany.

In 1933, Hitler and the Vatican signed a concordat.

If you have a look at the image on the left, it's a photo of Nazi officials, including Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, sitting alongside high ranking Catholic cardinals representing the Vatican.

The concordat was a treaty that promised to protect the church's rights if the church agreed to stay out of politics.

For the church, it has a way to defend its institutions and secure religious freedom in a rapidly changing and threatening environment.

For Hitler, the concordat made his new government look more respectable to the outside world, and it helped weaken political opposition from Germany's large and influential Catholic community.

But the ink had barely dried before the Nazis began to break its terms. Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What I want you to do here is complete this sentence with the correct missing words.

In July, 1933, the Vatican signed a blank with Nazi Germany, agreeing to stay outta politics in exchange for protection of blank rights.

It made Hitler's new government appear more respectable to other countries and helped reduce blank from Germany's powerful blank population.

Pause the video, fill in the blanks, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and let's see how that sentence should have read.

In July, 1933, the Vatican signed a concordat with Nazi Germany agreeing to stay out of politics in exchange for protection of Catholic rights.

It made Hitler's new government appear more respectable to other countries and helped reduce opposition from Germany's powerful Catholic population.

The Catholic Church soon found itself under pressure from all sides.

Catholic schools were shut down.

Catholic schools were widespread and respected educational institutions, but now they were gradually shut down or converted to state run community schools.

Teachers were pressured to promote Nazi ideology.

Religious education was stripped from the curriculum, and crucifixes were quietly vanished from classroom walls.

By 1939, nearly all Catholic schools in Germany were gone.

Furthermore, Catholic youth organisations were banned.

If they weren't outright banned, they were often absorbed into Nazi youth movements such as the Hitler Youth.

You can see on the photo on the left.

Furthermore, clergy were arrested and discredited.

Even bishops and priests were placed under surveillance, arrested or publicly shamed in carefully staged trials.

Nazi propaganda accused clergy of corruption and sexual misconduct to erode public trust, and high profile Catholics were assassinated.

In 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives, Nazi assassins gunned down prominence Catholic figures, including Erich Klausener and Adalbert Probst, sending a chilling message to church leaders, no one was untouchable.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which of the following were ways the Nazis targeted the Catholic Church in the 1930s? Select three correct answers.

A, Catholic schools were replaced with community schools.

B, Catholic youth groups were banned or absorbed.

C, clergy were arrested or even killed.

D, crucifixes were added to classroom walls.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew the correct three answers were A, Catholic schools were replaced with community schools.

B, Catholic youth groups were banned or absorbed, and C, clergy were arrested or even killed.

Despite this Nazi pressure, public resistance still simmered.

One of the most defiant voices was Bishop Clemens von Galen of Munster, nicknamed the Lion of Munster, who we can see on the photo on the left.

Bishop von Galen's bold sermons against Nazi policies captured the quiet defiance of the Catholic Church.

Outspoken and fearless Galen used his sermons to denounce Nazi attacks on Christian beliefs and morality.

His words became a rallying cry for those resisting Nazi policies.

The bishop's courage revealed the growing tension between Nazi authority and the church's sense of right and wrong.

Hitler hesitated to take action against him fearing that punishing such a popular church leader might turn public opinion against the government.

Yet defiance had its limits.

Many church leaders hoped that the show of loyalty might by some measure of peace.

Some bishops even publicly praised the regime hoping to protect their institutions from further harm.

Despite everything, the Catholic Church remained a stubborn presence.

It did not openly oppose the regime on most political issues, but neither did it fully submit.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

How did the Catholic Church respond to Nazi rule? A, church leaders took turns leading violent protests against the Nazis.

B, some church leaders resisted while others cooperated in order to protect the church.

C, the church and all of its leaders fully resisted Nazi control at all levels.

D, the church welcomed Nazi control as a way to grow its influence.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answer was B, some church leaders resisted while others cooperated in order to protect the church.

Okay, great, let's move on task A.

So what I want you to do here is working with your partner, discuss reasons why Hitler saw religion as a threat to Nazi control.

So you can hold this as a discussion or drop down some ideas on a piece of paper.

Pause the video, have a go at the task and then come right back.

Okay, great, welcome back.

So hopefully you had some great discussions there.

So you may have discussed that religion influenced people's beliefs and behaviour, and it was a central pillar of daily life shaping how people thought.

Given that Hitler wants control over Germany, religion's influenced means that people might now have divided loyalties.

For example, who do they give their allegiance to? Should people give it to the Pope, or a priest, or to Hitler? You (indistinct) something like the church held spiritual and moral authority and many Germans looked to the church and to God for guidance, therefore not to the Nazi Party or Hitler, which challenged Hitler's authority.

And you could've said that both the Catholic and Protestant churches had a strong presence in education, culture, and morality giving them significant power in society.

You could have also said that religion can encourage loyalty to higher power beyond the state, which clashed with Hitler's demand for total obedience, and that the church's own leaders and global connections, especially in the case of the Catholic Church, made its competing authority to Hitler's Third Reich.

Okay, great, let's move on to the second part of task A.

What do you think the source suggests about Nazi control in Catholic areas? Okay, let's read this source together.

It's from a police report in a southern region of Germany, 1938, "The Catholic Church continues to hold strong sway over the local population.

The people here are far more influenced by the sermons of their priests than by anything our Nazi officials say.

The message of national socialism struggles to gain ground where the church still dominates hearts and minds." So when thinking about what the source suggests about Nazi controlling Catholic areas, your answer should do the following.

It needs to identify an aspect of the source and then explain the historical context it's referring to.

So pick out a point or a feature from the source that you want to talk about, and then write about the background story it's referring to based on the historical knowledge that you've gained from today's lesson.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, great, welcome back.

So there's many ways that you could have answered that question, but compare your answers with the one I have here.

The source suggests that the Nazi message was not as powerful in Catholic areas where the church still had strong influence over people's beliefs and values.

So there we can see the first sentence identifies an aspect from the source.

Now the rest of the paragraph will go on to explain the historical context that's referring to.

This reflects the wider struggle the Nazis faced in trying to dominate the minds and loyalties of the German people.

Hitler saw the church, particularly the Catholic Church as a rival because it demanded spiritual loyalty to the Pope rather than to the Nazi state.

Even after signing a concordat with the Vatican in 1933, the Nazis faced continued resistance in Catholic communities where priests were seen as trusted moral guides, and many people remained more loyal to Christian values than Nazi ideology.

Great, now that we've explored how the Nazi regime tried to control the Catholic Church using both promises and pressure, we can turn our attention to Protestantism.

Unlike the Catholic Church, Protestantism in Germany was far more divided, making it both a challenge and an opportunity for the Nazis.

Let's (indistinct) with the second part of the lesson, Protestantism and a Nazi plan for a Reich Church.

The fragmented structure of Germany's Protestant Church stood in sharp contrast to Catholic unity and posed a challenge to Nazi effort at religious control.

Have a look at the diagram.

On the right, we can see a globe with a crucifix stretching across the earth, and this symbol represents the Catholic Church, which was a unified global institution governed by a single hierarchy.

This was the opposite of Germany's Protestant Church.

On the left of the diagram, we can see a map of Germany, which has been divided into 28 regions, and this represents the Protestant Church in Germany, which was composed of 28 separate local churches.

Many of these churches were also splits between different Protestant traditions and lacked a central authority, unlike the Catholic Church which had the Pope in the Vatican.

The Nazis loathed the Protestant divisions as it made it harder to enforce centralised control over the church.

For example, when dealing with the Catholic Church, Hitler only had to make a deal, the concordat with a single leadership, the Vatican.

The Nazis sought to unify Germany's fragmented Protestant churches under a single state controlled Reich Church.

In the Nazi's vision of a unified nation, it would be far better to merge all Protestant churches into a single national church.

At first, the Protestant Church seemed like the perfect candidate.

Its longstanding tradition of loyalty to the German state made it an easy target for nazification as part of the regime's wider strategy known as Gleichschaltung, coordination.

And unlike Catholicism, it's had no foreign pope to interfere.

In 1933, the Nazis established a Reich Church, a state controlled Protestant body designed to align Christian faith with Nazi ideology.

Its appointed leader, Ludwig Mueller wasn't a respected religious thinker, but he was a loyal supporter of Hitler.

Under his leadership swastikas appeared on church altars and mine camp.

Hitler's autobiography was placed alongside the Bible.

The goal was to forge a positive Christianity that glorified Nazi policies over Christian humility and compassion.

We can see the extent of nazification on the Protestant Church in this photo, which shows a newly wedded couple outside of church with children performing the Nazi salutes.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which of the following were actions taken by the Nazis to control the Protestant Church? Select two correct answers.

A, appointed Ludwig Muller as church leader.

B, created the Nazi controlled Reich Church.

C, forced churches to report directly to the Pope.

D, used nazification to force the adoption of Lutheran ideas.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the actions taken by the Nazis to control the Protestant Church were A, they appointed Ludwig Muller as church leader, and B, they created the Nazi controlled Reich Church.

Okay, let's continue, so some Protestant pastors pushed back against Nazi control of the church only to face censorship arrests and imprisonments.

A group of Protestant pastors led by Martin Niemoller resisted the nazification of their church.

And on the left you can see a photo of Niemoller in 1952.

Niemoller had initially supported Hitler.

Like many Germans, he longed for national renewal after the chaos of the Weimar era.

But when he realised that Hitler wanted total control over religion, he came to regret his earlier support and became a powerful voice of opposition, reminding people that Christ, not Hitler, was the true head of the church.

The Nazis responded with intimidation.

Brown shirts began appearing in churches, pastors were banned from speaking or teaching, arrested for reading out declarations and sometimes imprisoned in concentration camps.

By the end of 1937, over 700 Protestant pastors had been jailed, Niemoller was among them.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What I want you to do here is complete this sentence with the correct missing word.

Martin blank was a Protestant pastor who initially supported Hitler, but later resisted Nazi control of the church.

Pause a video, fill in the blank, and then come right back.

Okay, great, welcome back, and well done if you knew the sentence should have read like this.

Martin Niemoller was a Protestant pastor who initially supported Hitler, but later resisted Nazi control of the church.

True or false, the Nazis sending brown shirts into churches was the only method they used to intimidate Protestant pastors.

Is that true or false? Pause the video, have a think and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew that that was false, but why was that false? I want you to justify your answer and explain further why that statement is false.

Pause the video, have a think and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the reason was that the Nazis also arrested them for reading declarations and sent many of them to concentration camps.

While many religious leaders were silenced or compromised, the Nazis never fully controlled religion.

The Nazis had believed that with time they could erase religion's influence altogether.

Hitler himself once said, "One is either a Christian or a German, you can't be both." But the churches though battered and subdued, proved more resilient than the regime had expected.

Many religious leaders resisted.

Some spoke cautiously during services, others were more direct challenging the regime in front of their congregations.

In the end, the Nazis failed to bring the Protestant Church fully under control, and Hitler abandoned his dream of a unified state's church choosing instead to watch and punished from the shadows.

Religion in Nazi Germany became a battleground of ideas where the cross and the swastika stood in uneasy opposition.

The Nazi police state demanded total obedience, but faith in Germany deeply rooted and fiercely defended remained one of the few places where conscience could still whisper, this is not right.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What was the long-term outcome of Nazi attempts to control religion? A, the church was completely eliminated from German life.

B, the Nazis failed fully control religion and some faith-based resistance remained.

C, the Nazis successfully replaced Christianity with Nazi ideology.

Pause the video, have a think and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answer was that the Nazis failed to fully control religion and some faith-based resistance remained.

Okay, great, let's move on to task B.

And I have a statement here for you.

The Nazis were successful in controlling the church.

How far do you agree with this statement? And of course, anytime you see that how far phrasing this usually means that you can agree to this statement to a certain extent, but that you could also disagree.

So therefore, I want you to write one paragraph which agrees with this statement, and one paragraph which disagrees.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, great, welcome back.

So there's many ways that you could have written your paragraphs, but compare your answers with the ones I have here.

So for your agree paragraph, you may have included, the Nazis were partly successful in controlling the church, especially in the Protestant Church through the creation of the Reich Church in 1933.

This was part of the nazification strategy, Gleichschaltung and aimed to unify Germany's 28 local Protestant churches into one national church, loyal to Nazi ideas.

They appointed Ludwig Mueller, a loyal Nazi to lead it, introduced Nazi symbols into worship and promoted a version of Christianity that supported Nazi ideas.

They also used repression, jailing over 700 Protestant pastors by 1937, including Martin Niemoller.

In the Catholic Church, they shut down schools, banned youth groups, and targeted clergy through propaganda and surveillance.

These actions show the Nazis were able to weaken religious influence in public life and education.

And then for your disagree paragraph, you may have included the following, however, the Nazis failed to gain full control of the church.

The fragmentation of Protestantism made it hard to fully centralise, and many pastors quietly or openly resisted Nazi influence.

Niemoller's opposition showed that some Protestants refused to accept Hitler as the spiritual head of their faith.

In the Catholic Church, figures like Bishop von Galen denounced Nazi attacks on Christian values and retained strong public support.

Despite pressure, the church remained an independent moral force.

So while Nazi efforts weakened religious institutions, they did not fully control the church.

Okay, let's summarise today's lesson, the Nazi party and religion.

Religion was central to German life and challenged Nazi control.

Both Catholic and Protestant churches influenced education, morality, and loyalty.

Hitler saw this as a threat to the Reich.

The Catholic Church loyal to the Vatican, signed a concordat with the Nazis in 1933, but it was soon broken.

Catholic schools were shut, youth groups banned and priests targeted.

However, leaders like Bishop von Galen resisted.

The Nazis, tried to nazify Protestantism by creating the Reich Church, aiming to unify 28 Protestant churches.

Led by Nazi supporter Ludwig Mueller, it promoted Nazi beliefs, but many pastors, including Martin Niemoller opposed it.

Though the Nazis weakened church influence, they never achieved full control over German religious life.

Well done everyone, and today we've explored how the Nazis try to dominate not just politics and society, but belief itself.

And we saw how both Catholic and Protestant churches were pressured to serve the state and how individuals within those churches face difficult choices between silence, survival, and resistance.

In this, we can clearly see the totalitarian nature of the dictatorship established by Hitler, one that demanded complete control over every part of life, including personal faith and conscience.

See you in the next lesson.