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5 Socio-political aspects of the ideology of the "new religion" of Nazi Germany full article
doi.org/10.31073/istnauka201904-05
Utkin О.
Pages: 82–97
Summary

The paper analyzes the activities of Nazi Germany’s leaders to create a new church of so-called «positive Christianity» that would fully support the internal and external policies of the Third Reich, led by Hitler. The Nazis planned to liquidate the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches in Germany and in the occupied countries including Ukraine, replacing them with «positive Christianity» communities.

It is proved that the persons who played the main role in the formation of Nazi church policy, its social issues – A. Hitler and A. Rosenberg – envisaged achieving their goal by repressing, criticizing and defaming ideology and cult practice, sought to show Christianity as the worst a phenomenon of the past, a hard blow to humanity, since the creators of the Christian ideology – the Jews – introduced a conscious lie into religious doctrine. A. Hitler further elaborated on the same idea, saying that Christianity was the first creed in the world that promotes intolerance, the destruction of its opponents in the name of love.

It was found that, evaluating the activity of church structures and highlighting the evil in them, which absorbs vital centers, A. Hitler reduced it to the liturgical practice of priests of the Catholic and German Evangelical Lutheran churches. The implementation of these aspects of Nazi church policy was to some extent hindered by the defeat of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

It was established that, based on the provision on the impossibility of the coexistence of National Socialism and religion with its system of socio-political values, the Nazi leadership revealed an important direction of the state's activity on the ideal solution of the church issue. Its essence was to provide religion with the possibility of self-liquidation without persecution. In Nazi Germany, the defamation of the theory and practice of Christian groups was complemented by repressive actions by the police and the Gestapo. In order not to aggravate the relationship between the church and the state to the extreme, the authorities announced a temporary ban on anti-church actions during the war, although it was not implemented. Church churches and monasteries were closed and handed over to the state for military needs, repression against the clergy and believers continued.

Keywords
Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, «positive Christianity», the ideological foundations of the «New Church of the Nazis», nazism, religion
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