Religion & the Third Reich

Catalog description

This course attempts to grapple with this complex and troubling chapter of Central Europe's history--one whose effects continue to be felt today and whose marks are visible in Berlin--by exploring the Nazi leadership's various attitudes and policies toward the Protestant and Catholic churches; the fascination on the part of some Nazis toward new religious movements anchored in occult practices, pseudo-scientific theories, and Nordic religious mythologies; the responses of religious actors and organizations to government attempts to coopt them via 'Gleichschaltung' (coordination)--ranging from reluctant accommodation to enthusiastic cooperation to resistance; the so-called 'Kirchenkampf' (church struggle) within the Protestant regional and national churches; the distinct response of German Roman Catholic bishops and the Pope (Pacelli) to National Socialism; the predicament and sometimes tragic decisions of Jewish Councils and other victims to manage the catastrophe; and the attempts of a handful of resistors, who out of religious conviction and/or reasons of conscience, attempted to 'drive a spoke into the wheel itself' of National Socialism. The course is designed to take maximum advantage of those sites and museums in Berlin that were a part of the history and people we will be studying.