Deutsche Christen: German Christianity and The Third Reich

 

German Christianity was, like all other areas of German life, exploited by the Nazis to further their agenda of hatred..

In 1933 Berlin Bishop Joachim Hossenfelder proclaimed the popular, pro-Nazi "German Christian" movement the "Storm Troopers of Christ." Hossenfelder led the early phase of a movement that still echoes through the church today, even though the world has tried to forget. This film looks at the people who lived through the movement: Ludwig Mueller, the bishop of the Third Reich, Martin Niemoeller, the first to resist the Nazification of the church, Karl Themel, a pastor who used baptismal certificates to send "Jewish Christians" to the concentration camps, Werner Syltan, a pastor who died at Dachau because of his work on behalf of persons of Jewish descent amd Walter Grundmann, a reknown Biblical scholar and architect of the "Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life."