Question inspired by this creepy slide show…
There is a long running debate as to how “Christian” Hitler was, which I don’t want to get into. What about the other Nazis? Which is the most senior Nazi who was unarguably, a church-going, practicing Christian?
Hm, not certain.
I would like to make the observation that has happened with me before - looking at the picture of the lower level officers in the general mass of people dining how many of them were dead within the next 5 years. I get that feeling looking at most German military pictures of the WW2 and just a few years prior to 1940 [especially submarine pictures, who had a heck of a mortality rate.]
Me. Wait, did I say that out loud? CRAP! 67 years and I accidentally blow my cover over a stupid message board post! Dammit, now I have to go change my identity. SIgh You know how hard it is to fake a past in this day and age? It sure was a lot easier post WWII.
Grumble 
Were ANY ranking members of the Nazi party openly practicing Christians? I may be a little shaky on the point, but Hitler was as anti-Xian as he was anti- so many other things. I would think it unsafe to be a good Lutheran in an SS officer’s getup.
There was a Nazi church you could happily be a member of however.
**I am not aware of any leading Nazis who were also practising Christians. Those who were probably tried to keep it private. If you were to join the SS, you were encouraged to formally leave the Church (which in Germany was and to some degree still is a major step). SS leader Heinrich Himmler considered Christianity a mental disease.
However, atheism at the time was also associated with communism. That’s why they invented a new term for those who left the Church and thus organized religion, but who were also reluctant to completely break with tradition and declare themselves “atheist”: gottgläubig (literally: believing in God).
Was the “Gott mit uns” belt buckle etc. more a WWI element than later?
Much older than WWI:
Thanks. What I was thinking of was the use by soldiers, and it appears that it was both: troops in WWI (who wrote it on their helmets) and then the slogan of the WWII Wehrmacht (belt buckles).
Interesting that it would have survived the purge of Christianity, even with the more general “god-believing” pronouncement. I guess even a Hitler can’t erase all cultural elements.
Also, it doesn’t say *which *god.
Debate about Hitler being a Christian? Somehow, I rather doubt a real case could be made that he had committed to Christ any more than Mao or Kim Il Sung.
Closer to mental than godly by a mile.
I thought folks were going to ask who was the highest Nazi ignorant of the holocaust. Who was it?
Gott mit uns was still in use after WWII, the post-war Germany army used it as late as the 1960s, IIRC.
BTW, the vast majority of Germans in the 1930s and 40s still were Christians, either Protestant or Catholic. Consequently, most members of the Nazi party also happened to be Church members. The Nazis did not prosecute Christians, they just made sure that the Churches weren’t a political force.
However, being a practising, “pious” Christian and being a committed Nazi were almost mutually exclusive.