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Against the Third Reich: Paul Tillich's Wartime Radio Broadcasts into Nazi Germany
Paul Tillich, one of the greatest Protestant theologians of modern times, wrote more than one hundred radio addresses that were braodcast into Nazi Germany from March 1942 through May 1944. The broadcasts were passionate and political--urging Germans to recognize the horror of Hitler and to reject a morally and spiritually bankrupt government. Laregly unknown in the United States, the broadcasts have been translated into English for the first time, and approximately half of them are presented in this book.
284 pages, Paperback
First published May 30, 1998
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About the author
Paul Tillich
280 books426 followersPaul Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was – along with his contemporaries Rudolf Bultmann (Germany), Karl Barth (Switzerland), and Reinhold Niebuhr (United States) – one of the four most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century. Among the general populace, he is best known for his works The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957), which introduced issues of theology and modern culture to a general readership. Theologically, he is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology (1951–63), in which he developed his "method of correlation": an approach of exploring the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by contemporary existential philosophical analysis.
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February 14, 2026
Tillich was a native to German culture but did not firsthand experience the temptations and tensions of life under National Socialist rule. He was removed from his position in Frankfurt in 1933, after which he immigrated to the United States to work at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was an early detractor of the Nazi regime and its pagan swastika symbol, lambasting the notion that one could be both Christian and a Nazi. Between 1942 and 1944, he disseminated radio messages from the United States to the German people whom listened at risk
of execution. Those broadcasts are the stuff of this book.
In them, he criticizes the Nazi regime for its worship of power, and for the German people’s acquiescence to and support of this idolatry, which had made them “barbarians.” The Nazi regime abhorred the “forgiving love” of the cross, which it had “fought against with the deepest passion. The German people, meanwhile, had bought the Nazi lie that they were in a fight for their very existence. This was a “false fear-phantom” according to Tillich—the Nazis were in a campaign for the survival of their own regime, not the survival of Germany, and they had intoxicated and blinded the nation to their true aims and purposes.
As a result of the Germans falling prey to the lies of this regime, God’s judgement would be enacted upon them. In fact, it already was. After the devastating Allied bombing of Hamburg, in which nearly 60% of the homes in were destroyed and nearly 40,000 people killed, Tillich’s answer to the question, “Why us, why Germany?” was that all of Germany lay guilty. No one was innocent. The ruins of Germany are the atonement for the ruins Germans had caused elsewhere, a product of the collective guilt of the German people. For this strong word against the cult of innocence of the German people to come in response to such a horrific experience of devastation and destruction against the German nation is a powerful testament to Tillich’s willingness to call the German people to repentance.
For Tillich, this judgement was a kind of baptism, a repentance leading to resurrection. In believing the lie that they had never lost WWI, in refusing the necessary encounter with the grief of their guilt and an attendant changing of ways, Germans had skipped over their Good Friday and as a result had never arrived at Easter Sunday to be risen from the dead. The resurrection that Germany needed now was dependent “on whether the German nation becomes a new nation, a people that loves justice and not power, that loves truth and not deceit.” In order to do this, Germans had to recognize their collective guilt. “Jesus has truly been crucified again in Germany,” Tillich remarks, even if the German people were also victims of the Nazi regime.
Across his broadcasts, Tillich argues in a complicated, nuanced way that while the German people must own their complicity and recognize the ways in which they have participated in the crucifying of the Nazi regime, they can also recognize that this crucifying has been turned back on them. The fruit of destruction is self-destruction. According to Tillich, they must bear this suffering with dignity and acceptance, noting the “German people must take the path of the passion”; their “innocence” as he claims, must stand alongside their guilt. Only this kind of suffering can enable the true “reconciliation” and resurrection. Without this kind of acceptance, this kind of repentance, Germans will “amass bitterness, hatred, and a desire for retribution.” Instead, while maintaining the responsibility and repentance required of Germany to emerge from this nightmare, he admonishes the German people in his final message not to fear this emergence: “Wake up out of the intoxicant of fear of what will come after war. Proceed toward it soberly, with clarity and bravery. It is the German future.”
Tillich’s witness from the US stands as a powerful reminder that there were German theologians willing to offer a robust picture of repentance for the German church. One might argue it was his dislocation from the site of conflict that gave him the prophetic vision to diagnose the problem. Nevertheless, he was wholly committed to the German people to such a degree that he was even blacklisted by the US government for being “pro-German.” And his broadcasts reveal a struggle with the tension between guilt and innocence, recognizing the limited power that an average German held, or at least perceived that they held, in Germany throughout those years. Regardless of his courageous articulation of repentance, his vision was not one that would feed the repentance of the German church on the other side of war. That would be left to the remainder of the Confessing Church.
of execution. Those broadcasts are the stuff of this book.
In them, he criticizes the Nazi regime for its worship of power, and for the German people’s acquiescence to and support of this idolatry, which had made them “barbarians.” The Nazi regime abhorred the “forgiving love” of the cross, which it had “fought against with the deepest passion. The German people, meanwhile, had bought the Nazi lie that they were in a fight for their very existence. This was a “false fear-phantom” according to Tillich—the Nazis were in a campaign for the survival of their own regime, not the survival of Germany, and they had intoxicated and blinded the nation to their true aims and purposes.
As a result of the Germans falling prey to the lies of this regime, God’s judgement would be enacted upon them. In fact, it already was. After the devastating Allied bombing of Hamburg, in which nearly 60% of the homes in were destroyed and nearly 40,000 people killed, Tillich’s answer to the question, “Why us, why Germany?” was that all of Germany lay guilty. No one was innocent. The ruins of Germany are the atonement for the ruins Germans had caused elsewhere, a product of the collective guilt of the German people. For this strong word against the cult of innocence of the German people to come in response to such a horrific experience of devastation and destruction against the German nation is a powerful testament to Tillich’s willingness to call the German people to repentance.
For Tillich, this judgement was a kind of baptism, a repentance leading to resurrection. In believing the lie that they had never lost WWI, in refusing the necessary encounter with the grief of their guilt and an attendant changing of ways, Germans had skipped over their Good Friday and as a result had never arrived at Easter Sunday to be risen from the dead. The resurrection that Germany needed now was dependent “on whether the German nation becomes a new nation, a people that loves justice and not power, that loves truth and not deceit.” In order to do this, Germans had to recognize their collective guilt. “Jesus has truly been crucified again in Germany,” Tillich remarks, even if the German people were also victims of the Nazi regime.
Across his broadcasts, Tillich argues in a complicated, nuanced way that while the German people must own their complicity and recognize the ways in which they have participated in the crucifying of the Nazi regime, they can also recognize that this crucifying has been turned back on them. The fruit of destruction is self-destruction. According to Tillich, they must bear this suffering with dignity and acceptance, noting the “German people must take the path of the passion”; their “innocence” as he claims, must stand alongside their guilt. Only this kind of suffering can enable the true “reconciliation” and resurrection. Without this kind of acceptance, this kind of repentance, Germans will “amass bitterness, hatred, and a desire for retribution.” Instead, while maintaining the responsibility and repentance required of Germany to emerge from this nightmare, he admonishes the German people in his final message not to fear this emergence: “Wake up out of the intoxicant of fear of what will come after war. Proceed toward it soberly, with clarity and bravery. It is the German future.”
Tillich’s witness from the US stands as a powerful reminder that there were German theologians willing to offer a robust picture of repentance for the German church. One might argue it was his dislocation from the site of conflict that gave him the prophetic vision to diagnose the problem. Nevertheless, he was wholly committed to the German people to such a degree that he was even blacklisted by the US government for being “pro-German.” And his broadcasts reveal a struggle with the tension between guilt and innocence, recognizing the limited power that an average German held, or at least perceived that they held, in Germany throughout those years. Regardless of his courageous articulation of repentance, his vision was not one that would feed the repentance of the German church on the other side of war. That would be left to the remainder of the Confessing Church.
September 12, 2018
Tillich calls on Germans to break with the spirit of National Socialism in his wartime radio broadcasts. A portal into his theology, abstract ideas about the Christian call become rooted within a complex and current narrative addressed through his speeches. At times repetitive, at most times poignant, this book tackles an unfolding narrative with prophetic prose.
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May 8, 2013Read this in two days. The fastest Tillich read ever due to simplicity of language and repetition of themes. Very prescient man in terms of the fate of Germany after the war. I didn't realize he had broadcast to the Germans on Voice of America until I came across this book in my university library.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews