After the first few years of Hitler’s rule the Gestapo and the Nazi Party singled out the clergy for heavy doses of repression to guarantee their silence and their parishioners’ obedience. Thousands of clergymen, both Catholic and Protestant, endured house searches, surveillance, Gestapo interrogations, jail and prison terms, fines, and Worse.
Hitler’s killing machine murdered about a total of 6 million Jews, and over 5 million Christians, which was a major focus of Hitler’s war against religion.72 Many of the Christians murdered were Polish clergy and intellectuals, or were part of the resistance movement. This little known fact caused Jewish historian Max Dimont to declare that “the world blinded itself to the murder of Christians” by Nazi Germany.73 In Poland Alone, 88i Catholic priests were annihilated.74 In addition, so many priests ended up in concentration camps that, if possible, they were often housed together to avoid converting the other inmates.
Dachau concentration camp held the largest number of Catholic priests—over 2,400—in the Nazi camp system. They came from about 24 nations, and included parish priests and prelates, monks and friars, teachers and missionaries. Over one third of the priests in Dachau alone died.75 Dachau survivor, Father Johannes Lenz, who documented the martyrdom and the physical and mental agony that Dachau inmates experienced, claimed that the Catholic Church was the only steadfast fighter against the Nazis. Christian clergy and lay persons were murdered by the thousands in Dachau, and those who survived were considered “missionaries in Hell.” This conforms to official Nazi writings, which espoused both anti-Semitic and anti-Christian ideas that “had a single purpose. Hitler’s aim was to eradicate all religious organizations within the state and to foster a return to paganism.”76
Hitler was able to act on Catholics with more aggression earlier than other Christians because, especially since 1871, Catholics had already suffered much discrimination in predominately Protestant, specifically Lutheran, Germany—as a minority they were viewed as outsiders.77 The many documents that prove the Nazis plan to “eliminate Christianity and Convert its followers to an Aryan philosophy” are now on the online version of Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion.78 As institutional religion declined, Nazism was seen by Hitler as its rightful replacement.79
World History
