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Nazism, the Holocaust and the churches
1933–1945· Event· Bible story & events
Historical recordConfirmed by archaeology, outside sources or contemporary records.
Nazi Germany (1933–45) murdered about six million Jews; German churches largely accommodated the regime, while a minority of Christians resisted or rescued.
See it on the Bible & Christianity map →What it is
In 1933 the Vatican signed a concordat with Hitler's government, and the pro-Nazi 'German Christians' movement won control of much of the Protestant church. A minority formed the Confessing Church in 1934. Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge condemned Nazi violations of church rights. Some Christians hid Jews, such as the French Protestant village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, but most church leaders stayed silent. Centuries of Christian anti-Jewish teaching had helped prepare the ground.
Why it matters
It forced churches to confront their own anti-Judaism. Postwar statements, from Germany's 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt to Vatican II's Nostra Aetate (1965), changed Christian teaching about Jews.
Sources and history
Nazi and church archives, including Vatican files on Pius XII opened in 2020; survivor testimony; and Yad Vashem's list of over 28,000 'Righteous Among the Nations,' many of them Christians who rescued Jews.
Questions and debates
Pius XII's record is hotly debated: critics fault his public silence; defenders cite quiet diplomacy and rescue. Historians also debate how directly Christian anti-Judaism fed Nazi racial antisemitism.
Inside this (1)
Connections (2)
▸Second Vatican Council rejected blaming Jews for Jesus' death after Nazism, the Holocaust and the churchesHistorical record
The connection
In the Holocaust's shadow, Vatican II's declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) said Jesus' death 'cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today,' that Jews should not be presented 'as rejected or accursed by God,' and decried antisemitism. It ended centuries of teaching that blamed Jews collectively.
When and where
Jewish historian Jules Isaac, whose wife and daughter were murdered at Auschwitz, urged John XXIII in June 1960; Cardinal Bea drafted it; approved October 28, 1965, by 2,221 votes to 88.
Historical evidence
The text and vote records; Isaac's meeting with John XXIII is documented, and later Vatican documents such as 'We Remember' (1998) link the change to the Shoah.
Questions and debates
The text never names the Holocaust, and under political pressure the word 'deicide' was dropped. How much the change came from the Holocaust versus renewed theology is debated.
▸Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church resisted Nazism, the Holocaust and the churchesHistorical record
The connection
In April 1933 Bonhoeffer wrote that the church might have to 'jam a spoke in the wheel' of an unjust state. He opposed excluding Jewish-born Christians from the church, helped smuggle a group of Jews to Switzerland in 1942, and joined the military-intelligence conspiracy against Hitler, for which he was executed.
When and where
Berlin, April 1933 essay 'The Church and the Jewish Question'; the 'Operation 7' rescue, 1942; arrested April 5, 1943; hanged at Flossenbürg, April 9, 1945.
Historical evidence
His essays and letters, Gestapo interrogation records, and accounts by fellow conspirators and his biographer Eberhard Bethge.
Questions and debates
His 1933 essay still repeated traditional Christian anti-Jewish ideas, and scholars debate how central the fate of Jews was to his resistance.