The Growth of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Christianity: Inside and Outside the Church

At the beginning of 1934, Nazi leaders like Paul Joseph Goebbels, Rosenberg, Hermann Wilhelm Goering, and Baldur Benedikt von Schirach began a public campaign expressing open hostility toward the church. The vast majority of Germans remained official members of the churches during the twelve years of Nazi tyranny. The church felt it was the only way to preserve the faith from Gleichschaltung or complete apostasy, but even if it found much justification for its action as the only possible recourse, the integrity of the institution as a beacon of divine truth in a dark world was compromised through this bargain with the devil. The impetus of modern anti-Semitism came mainly from sources outside the church. There were a number of anti-Semites who emphasized some aspect of Christianity and used it as a pretext for developing their bigotry, but they usually found their basic source of inspiration from some other source.