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Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich
How did Germany's Christians respond to Nazism? In Twisted Cross, Doris Bergen addresses one important element of this response by focusing on the 600,000 self-described 'German Christians,' who sought to expunge all Jewish elements from the Christian church. In a process that became more daring as Nazi plans for genocide unfolded, this group of Protestant lay people and clergy rejected the Old Testament, ousted people defined as non-Aryans from their congregations, denied the Jewish ancestry of Jesus, and removed Hebrew words like 'Hallelujah' from hymns. Bergen refutes the notion that the German Christians were a marginal group and demonstrates that members occupied key positions within the Protestant church even after their agenda was rejected by the Nazi leadership. Extending her analysis into the postwar period, Bergen shows how the German Christians were relatively easily reincorporated into mainstream church life after 1945. Throughout Twisted Cross, Bergen reveals the important role played by women and by the ideology of spiritual motherhood amid the German Christians' glorification of a 'manly' church.
357 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 1996
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About the author
Doris L. Bergen
14 books10 followersProfessor of Holocaust Studies
For the Professor of Educational Psychology see Doris Bergen
For the Professor of Educational Psychology see Doris Bergen
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 26, 2022
Historians tend to lump the nationalist, anti-Jewish, manliness-obsessed German Christian movement in with Nazis.
[me: because they were pretty much Nazis, makes sense]
Bergen: Actually all Christians are equally culpable for Nazism.
[me: some Christians did oppose--]
Bergen: Their opposition failed, therefore their resistance was valueless.
[me: I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on how moral culpability works]
I wonder if this study might be more interesting or sympathetic to me in light of current American "Christian" politics, but I think I sold it after the course finished.
[me: because they were pretty much Nazis, makes sense]
Bergen: Actually all Christians are equally culpable for Nazism.
[me: some Christians did oppose--]
Bergen: Their opposition failed, therefore their resistance was valueless.
[me: I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on how moral culpability works]
I wonder if this study might be more interesting or sympathetic to me in light of current American "Christian" politics, but I think I sold it after the course finished.
November 23, 2016
Twisted Cross delivers a good topical overview of the German Christian movement. Instead of providing a chronological or narrative history of the movement, Doris Bergen looks at three basic aspects of German Christianity: its anti-Semitism, its perspective on gender, and its approach to Christian traditions and doctrine. Bergen provides few original insights that can't be gleaned from other works, but she does do a very good job of incorporating primary sources from the movement to give the reader a good sense of how German Christians actually thought. Twisted Cross is also a very accessible introduction to the GC movement. Prior to reading this work, I had limited knowledge of Nazi ideology and almost no knowledge of this particular movement, but I never felt lost while reading. My only complaints with this book are that I wish Bergen had included more empirical evidence to indicate the size and strength of the movement at various times in its history, and I don't think she adequately supports a couple of claims she implies throughout the book (namely, that the GC movement discriminated against women and implicitly supported the Holocaust).
December 27, 2015
So, I have a theory, which is that the Treaty of Versailles caused a psychotic break in almost the entirety of the "Aryan" population of Germany. Given how egregiously they were being gaslighted by the leaders of the German armed forces, it's not entirely surprising. The Nazis didn't cause the psychosis; they were a manifestation of the psychosis--as were the German Christians, the subject of this book. But this psychotic moral reversal, having been encouraged for at least half a century beforehand (Bergen describes one example, the Protestant League, founded in 1887, as "foster[ing] a climate of hatred within German Protestant circles that both encouraged and legitimized collective resentments" (114)), was endemic to "Aryan" German culture in the twenties and thirties. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, although problematic, I think makes, and hammers home, the point that the dominant culture of Germany was ready to hear what Hitler had to say, because all the pieces of Hitler's ideology were already available to them.
(Hitler was stunningly unoriginal; he basically just assembled all the unconnected pieces of hatred, entitlement, and bigotry lying around in "Aryan" German culture in the twenties into something that could be focused, aimed, and deployed for maximum destruction.)
In this context "German Christian" ("Deutsche Christen") means a specific movement in the Protestant German church, as opposed to, say, "Christian Germans," meaning everyone of Christian faith living in Germany--or Christians outside Germany who claimed or were claimed to be "ethnically German." (Bergen is one of the few writers on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust that I've read who recognizes how dangerous and slippery using the Nazi terminology of race is: "Labels are always tricky, but students of Nazi Germany face particular challenges. To describe National Socialism, we depend on the same words and phrases that Nazi propaganda appropriated and infused with particular meanings: words like race, blood, Aryan, German, and Jew" (4). It is vanishingly rare to find a historian who acknowledges this problem, and I appreciate it in Bergen as much as I appreciate her careful attention to nuances of meaning in over-determined German words (i.e., Volk).) The German Christians, who described themselves as "storm troopers of Christ," are pretty much exactly what you would imagine if you set out to imagine a way of reconciling Christianity and Nazism. They were anti-doctrinal, anti-clerical, anti-theological, anti-Semitic, misogynist, repellently proud of their own ignorance, and capable of some of the most incredibly clusterfucked logical fallacies I have had the dubious pleasure of reading. I shall quote an example:
Most frequently, German Christians based negation of Jesus's Jewishness on their presumption of his antisemitism. Jesus, they asserted, could not have been a Jew because he opposed the Jews. . . . In late 1933 one German Christian offered citations from the Gospels that, he claimed, revealed Jesus' attitude toward Judaism . . . In places, he admitted, the Gospels seemed to suggest the opposite. But those were not the words of Christ, he contended; they were "lies," "Jewishness," the "voice of the Old Testament." (156)
The German Christians were fanatically devoted to the idea of making the Protestant Church palatable to National Socialism. They were utterly, utterly doomed to failure, since the Nazi high command was pretty much equally committed to the idea of eradicating Christianity from Germany, which makes Bergen's account of their gyrations and contortions pathetic as well as infuriating. But Bergen's research makes it clear that they also represent a inchoate, badly articulated desire prevalent among many more Germans than those who joined the movement, to have their cake and eat it, too: to have the comforting, familiar trappings of the Church, the ritual and sense of community, without any of the uncomfortable rules and restrictions and moral accountability for one's actions. This same desire is visible in many other aspects of interbellum "Aryan" German culture; Bergen has found an articulation of it that is mind-boggling in its on-the-nose, epic failure of self-awareness:
In a 1934 declaration, the Protestant faculty of theology in Breslau denounced emphasis on sin as inimical to the needs of the people's church. Blasting Barthian theology, Judaism, and foreign foes in one rancorous breath, the Breslau group announced that Germans could not tolerate a religion based on the concept of sin. "A people," the statement argued, "who, like our own, has a war behind them that they did not want, that they lost, and for which they were declared guilty, cannot bear it, when their sinfulness is constantly pointed out to them in an exaggerated way." The Treaty of Versailles, the Breslauers maintained, made an emphasis on sin untenable. "Our people has suffered so much under the lie of war guilt that it is the task and duty of the church and of theology to use Christianity to give courage to our people, and not to pull them down into political humiliation. (158)
The German Christians were prepared to mutilate Christianity, its sacred texts, and everything that makes it a coherent body of thought, in order to make it what they declared the German people wanted.
The German Christians are as horrifying and fascinating as the Nazis themselves, and they follow very much the same trajectory, even extending to the aftermath of World War II, in which, just as "de-Nazification" is highly problematic, the German Christian movement, being disbanded, became a convenient scapegoat for the rest of the Christian Germans (the better to distract attention from their own participation in Germany's psychotic break), but the vast majority of individual German Christians, particularly the rank and file, escaped without being held accountable, without any alteration in their thinking, and without remorse.
(Hitler was stunningly unoriginal; he basically just assembled all the unconnected pieces of hatred, entitlement, and bigotry lying around in "Aryan" German culture in the twenties into something that could be focused, aimed, and deployed for maximum destruction.)
In this context "German Christian" ("Deutsche Christen") means a specific movement in the Protestant German church, as opposed to, say, "Christian Germans," meaning everyone of Christian faith living in Germany--or Christians outside Germany who claimed or were claimed to be "ethnically German." (Bergen is one of the few writers on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust that I've read who recognizes how dangerous and slippery using the Nazi terminology of race is: "Labels are always tricky, but students of Nazi Germany face particular challenges. To describe National Socialism, we depend on the same words and phrases that Nazi propaganda appropriated and infused with particular meanings: words like race, blood, Aryan, German, and Jew" (4). It is vanishingly rare to find a historian who acknowledges this problem, and I appreciate it in Bergen as much as I appreciate her careful attention to nuances of meaning in over-determined German words (i.e., Volk).) The German Christians, who described themselves as "storm troopers of Christ," are pretty much exactly what you would imagine if you set out to imagine a way of reconciling Christianity and Nazism. They were anti-doctrinal, anti-clerical, anti-theological, anti-Semitic, misogynist, repellently proud of their own ignorance, and capable of some of the most incredibly clusterfucked logical fallacies I have had the dubious pleasure of reading. I shall quote an example:
Most frequently, German Christians based negation of Jesus's Jewishness on their presumption of his antisemitism. Jesus, they asserted, could not have been a Jew because he opposed the Jews. . . . In late 1933 one German Christian offered citations from the Gospels that, he claimed, revealed Jesus' attitude toward Judaism . . . In places, he admitted, the Gospels seemed to suggest the opposite. But those were not the words of Christ, he contended; they were "lies," "Jewishness," the "voice of the Old Testament." (156)
The German Christians were fanatically devoted to the idea of making the Protestant Church palatable to National Socialism. They were utterly, utterly doomed to failure, since the Nazi high command was pretty much equally committed to the idea of eradicating Christianity from Germany, which makes Bergen's account of their gyrations and contortions pathetic as well as infuriating. But Bergen's research makes it clear that they also represent a inchoate, badly articulated desire prevalent among many more Germans than those who joined the movement, to have their cake and eat it, too: to have the comforting, familiar trappings of the Church, the ritual and sense of community, without any of the uncomfortable rules and restrictions and moral accountability for one's actions. This same desire is visible in many other aspects of interbellum "Aryan" German culture; Bergen has found an articulation of it that is mind-boggling in its on-the-nose, epic failure of self-awareness:
In a 1934 declaration, the Protestant faculty of theology in Breslau denounced emphasis on sin as inimical to the needs of the people's church. Blasting Barthian theology, Judaism, and foreign foes in one rancorous breath, the Breslau group announced that Germans could not tolerate a religion based on the concept of sin. "A people," the statement argued, "who, like our own, has a war behind them that they did not want, that they lost, and for which they were declared guilty, cannot bear it, when their sinfulness is constantly pointed out to them in an exaggerated way." The Treaty of Versailles, the Breslauers maintained, made an emphasis on sin untenable. "Our people has suffered so much under the lie of war guilt that it is the task and duty of the church and of theology to use Christianity to give courage to our people, and not to pull them down into political humiliation. (158)
The German Christians were prepared to mutilate Christianity, its sacred texts, and everything that makes it a coherent body of thought, in order to make it what they declared the German people wanted.
The German Christians are as horrifying and fascinating as the Nazis themselves, and they follow very much the same trajectory, even extending to the aftermath of World War II, in which, just as "de-Nazification" is highly problematic, the German Christian movement, being disbanded, became a convenient scapegoat for the rest of the Christian Germans (the better to distract attention from their own participation in Germany's psychotic break), but the vast majority of individual German Christians, particularly the rank and file, escaped without being held accountable, without any alteration in their thinking, and without remorse.
October 20, 2022
If you ever wondered how German Christians responded to Hitler and the Nazi movement, this book provides many answers. Bergen provides a well documented look at how the majority of German Christians sought to create a Christianity which fit the ideology of the Nazis. They accomplished this by trying to remove Jewish elements from the Bible, Christianity and even the person of Jesus. Instead they focused on developing a christianity for the the German Volk, and in the process contradicting the central tenants of orthodox Christianity. One wonders why so many pastors, theologians and church goers would participate in and support such a movement but then I read about those proposing American Exceptionalism, Christian Nationalism and the Dominion movement and its not so hard to understand. Unfortunately I'm afraid the Christian church in the United States will give an even worse account of itself.
November 10, 2020
Probably the definitive study on the German Christian movement in English. Bergen clearly outlines the development of the German Christians, their main teachings, as well as the relation to nazism over all. All of this is very interesting and Bergen presents many contradictions. How the German Christians wanted to align with the nazi party, but how the party rejected them after 1934. They preached a manly and youthful church, but in their gatherings there were mostly older women and men. The movement wasn't big in some sense, but on the other hand, it seems that the protestants Christians over all leaned more towards them than the Confessing church.
January 13, 2021
The part that is most alarming to me is that many Deutsche Christen were able to integrate back into the German Protestant church, with virtually no challenge to their doctrinal beliefs that lead them to remove "Jewish" influence on Christianity and continued adherence to völkisch justifications. Luther's antisemitism is ugly and attempting to base a "German" Christianity within that furthers this ugly legacy.
December 15, 2018
This book is incredibly dry, it bounces back and forth between dates and ideas, and it honestly makes little to no sense considering many of the people mentioned are protected so you can’t actually know their name or much about who they were. This book seemed like a pointless endeavor based on this aspect alone.
January 21, 2025
An important study of the relationship between the church and the state in Nazi Germany
December 8, 2011
Fascinating book. Better than Steigmann-Gall's in my opinion. I disagree with some of the conclusions that are drawn (mainly how serious to take "German Christianity" in the scope of Church history) but this is definitely an eye opener and fascinating peek into a very, very strange time in the history of the Church.
September 4, 2015
A quality, comprehensive look at the German Christian Movement during the Third Reich and why studying it is important, lest we repeat tragic history.
March 3, 2016
Very well done. Bergen is missing a few things in terms of key theologians. Overall a really great book.
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December 19, 2017Need to read again..read as part of tutoring for a girl in 2012...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews