ABSTRACT
Adolf Hitler’s was the seducer’s gradual method. It took six months for him to become an effective dictator; it took years for his power to become totalitarian. The German Churches, like the army, were citadels, and the Nazis had to capture or neutralize them if they were to have absolute power. A strong and militant Church might have fought successfully against the formidable battery of Nazi-controlled mass media, because it was itself one of the mass media. Ironically the gradualness of the growth of Hitler’s power, and of his capacity for inhumanity, helped take Germans further into a moral void. When the saviour has power, the way has usually led, to resort to the whip, the sword, the stake or the execution-axe, and to the search for sanctity in the torture-chamber, the concentration camp, the mass-grave, or the gas-oven.
