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The Portrayal of Christianity in the History Textbooks of Nazi Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Gilmer W. Blackburn
Gilmer W. Blackburn
Affiliation:
associate professor of history inGardner – Webb College, Boiling Springs, North Carolina
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Extract

The study of history in National Socialist Germany served a demolition function. Students were taught to recognize threats to their way of life, all of which were subsumed under Jewish internationalism and included Christianity, Marxism, democracy, liberalism and modernity. The history written by the Nazis undergirded an ersatz religion whose central theme was the German people's faltering attempts to obey the divine will of a racial deity. A major priority of Nazi educators was the liberation of the fierce Germanic instincts which more than a thousand years of foreign influence had repressed; and in their estimation, Christianity bore a major responsibility for blunting the expression of that Germanic spirit. The new German schools would help create a militarized society which would both purge the national spirit and promote the high-tension ethos which accepted war as a normal condition in a life of struggle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 433 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1980

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