The Nazis Were Christians and Adolf Hitler Was Not an Atheist

I have a two German Reichsmarks silver coin dated 1933, the first year of the Nazi regime in Germany. Curiously, the figure on the obverse (“heads”) side is not that of Adolf Hitler, but rather of Martin Luther. I mention this because, in a way, the coin segues to a difference of opinion that I have with the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Z’L), former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth and Member of the House of Lords, was one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the late-20th and early-2st centuries. His death in 2020 left a void, a particularly glaring one now after Oct. 7. I especially appreciated his non-judgmental approach to diverse views, whether within Judaism or without, and I will never forget his courageous remarks to the House of Lords on the evolution of antisemitism into anti-Zionism. Yet, one of the statements he made in his popular book “Not in God’s Name” (2015) has troubled me.

In the book, Rabbi Sacks uses biblical texts to expose the roots of religious violence and to outline how to confront it. He includes a remarkably comprehensive review of the antisemitism that Jews have experienced in both the Christian and Muslim worlds, from centuries past until the modern day. The troubling bit appears in the chapter titled “Sibling Rivalry” when he states “The Holocaust was not the result of Christianity; it is important to state this categorically.”

Citing the poet Heinrich Heine, Rabbi Sacks connects the Holocaust to Germany’s pagan roots, not Christianity. He refers to Christian opponents of the Nazi regime and he draws attention to the Christians who saved Jews, including the 25,000 righteous individuals of all nations recognized by Yad Vashem. Yes, there were Christians such as Martin Niemӧller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who opposed Hitler, but the rabbi’s statement ignores the millions who did nothing, or even worse. In fact, most Germans, including Hitler, never left the Church.

That the Nazis opposed Christianity, and that Nazi and Christian ideologies were antithetical to each other, was a widespread claim made after World War II. However, authors such as Richard Steigmann (“The Holy Reich,” 2003) emphasize that, in practice, a close, if ambiguous, relationship existed between Nazism and Christianity. Holocaust scholar Doris Bergen, points out that a number of Nazi leaders, including those involved in mass murder, held important positions in the church. Moreover, the vast majority of Germans remained baptized members of the official churches throughout the Nazi period.

… a number of Nazi leaders, including those involved in mass murder, held important positions in the church.

In fact, Nazi propagandists made extensive use of the connection to Martin Luther, the German theologian and major proponent of the Protestant Reformation, more than four centuries ago. A poster of Luther published in 1933, the same year as my coin, states: “Hitler’s fight and Luther’s teaching are the best defense for the German people.” Indeed, in a recent article on Luther in The Jewish Chronicle, the writer and clergyman Michael Coren notes that the Nazis used Luther’s antisemitism to create a Nazi version of Christianity within the German Lutheran church. At his Nuremberg trial, Nazi master propagandist Julius-Streicher said, in his defense, that he was only repeating Luther’s 1543 writings from his antisemitic book “The Jews and Their Lies.”

Furthermore, the Nazi concept of racial purity, embodied in the definition of a Jew as anyone with a Jewish grandparent, had a Christian origin. It was the Spanish Inquisition, after all, that introduced the concept of Limpieza de Sangre (purity of blood) in the 15th century.

The Holocaust (or, as Winston Churchill initially called it, “a crime without a name”) was the result of a long history of antisemitism, during which the Christian church played a significant role, a role that should not be minimized.

I don’t know why Rabbi Sacks was intent on giving Christianity a pass with respect to the Holocaust. He does not shy away from describing Christian persecution of Jews elsewhere in his book. In fact, he himself mentions the Inquisition and Limpieza de Sangre at an earlier point. Nor does my bringing this up diminish my respect and appreciation of Rabbi Sacks. I was reassured to read in The Jerusalem Post that Israeli soldiers serving on the frontlines facing Gaza and Lebanon after Oct. 7 were issued a pamphlet with Rabbi Sacks’ writings, translated into Hebrew, in which the rabbi reflects on the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people. One soldier said that it felt as though Rabbi Sacks was with them, giving them support and blessings for the journey ahead.

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.