# Was the Bible banned in Nazi Germany? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 8, 2000, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925 "2000-02-08T19:49:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/81 "2023-05-18T07:14:02Z")
As the Rockman famously said, “You see what you wanna see, and you hear what you wanna hear.” I think that’s what we’re dealing with here. Just because I’m curious: does anybody get the reference? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/82 "2023-05-18T10:30:21Z")
Thanks ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/83 "2023-05-18T10:55:43Z")
Making blanket statements about “Christians were persecuted by Nazis” is dangerous. It obscures the fact that most Nazis _were_ Christian, and a very significant number of German Christians (the majority?) were supporters of Hitler. I don’t have anecdotes about Youtube videos to support this claim, but I do have the US Holocaust Museum. > **[The German Churches and the Nazi State](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state)** > > How did Christians and their churches in Germany respond to the Nazi regime and its laws, particularly to the persecution of the Jews? Learn more. > **[The Role of Clergy and Church Leaders](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-role-of-clergy-and-church-leaders)** > > To implement their policies, the Nazis had help from individuals across Europe, including professionals in many fields. Learn about the role of German clergy and church leaders. > [@](#): > > Leaders and clergy of German Protestant and Roman Catholic churches were to a large degree complicit in the persecution of Jews. > > Most Christian leaders in Germany welcomed the rise of Nazism in 1933. > … > Support for the repression of communism and the need to restore Germany’s economy and status as a world power after World War I usually outweighed church leaders’ distaste for the racial, ethnically based nationalist, and pagan views many of them saw in Nazism. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/84 "2023-05-18T13:36:25Z")
> [@BeepKillBeep](#): > > I know I’m going to regret asking this but why would such a video, if it were a truthful and accurate depiction of historical events, be purged from the internet? > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Copyright would be my best guess. Thinking about it more, I’d be very surprised if the explanation isn’t either that someone complained about Nazi content in the video or the automated system detected the word “Nazi”, decided that it’s better safe than sorry, the video was disabled, and the person who had posted it many years earlier either didn’t notice or didn’t care enough to try and get it restored. But, @B.K.Neifert , I feel pretty confident that I can go onto YouTube and find content that is anti-Nazi, content that blames the Nazis for every crime under the sun, content that calls the Nazis atheists, and content that attaches every famous figure from Joe Biden to Joe Rogan to Donald Trump to the Nazis. Old videos get removed because of mistakes and random nonsense that aren’t worth dealing with. If you can find plenty of content saying that the Nazis are bad then, no, there’s no particular conspiracy on YouTube to defend the Nazis. That this one, particular, item has gone missing is unfortunate but reading a conspiracy into that is ridiculous. I can guarantee you that there’s no library, TV channel, or streaming service in the world that has every detail of every event in history. We have lost knowledge over the millennia due to purges and censorship but we’ve also lost knowledge because of fires, negligence, dogs chewing on things, kids drawing on things, mold, insects, and simply that no one wrote down what they knew. But probably one of the largest categories of loss is people chucking stuff out to free up space. YouTube loses money hosting all those videos. It costs them money to store them and money to transfer them to you. The company does not hold them precious. If they have an excuse to drop stuff, they’re not going to work so hard to prevent the loss. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/85 "2023-05-18T14:11:42Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > Just because I’m curious: does anybody get the reference? \< sings \> “Me and my Arrow…” ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/86 "2023-05-18T16:17:32Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Later writers try to deny that Marcion was a member of their team, and yet they also say that he was kicked out and would have been allowed back in had he not apologized. Sorry, this should say, “[he] would have been allowed back in to the mainline Roman church had he not died soon after apologizing.” ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/87 "2023-05-18T19:08:09Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > \< sings \> “Me and my Arrow…” Ah, you got the point. 😉 Correct, and well done! ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2023, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/88 "2023-05-19T01:44:52Z")
You would want to ask about the provenance of such a video. The only reasonable reason such a movie ever existed is as part of a propaganda movie for local (Nazi) consumption. Your local thugs are not going to be hanging about in a church whilst the locals get a movie camera ready to film them defacing the walls and pulling down crucifixes. This is the 1930’s, people didn’t carry video recorders in their pockets back then. The movie will have been planned and acted. As such one could be pretty certain film of these acts formed part of a wider propaganda effort. In that case it becomes easier to see how it might be taken down. Once there becomes a totalitarian regime, there is always an undercurrent of people using the regime to further their own ends and often get revenge on their neighbours, business rivals or even romantic rivals. Give the not so smart or losers in life a uniform and freedom to act against their fellow citizens with impunity and you are assured of lots of bad behaviour. The Nazis were hardly alone in this. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2023, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/89 "2023-05-19T11:59:57Z")
**Moderator Note** > [@DocCathode](#): > > I Googled BK Neifert and found his blog. I’m temporarily stunned- and not in a good way. I don’t know what to say or if I should quote the relevant passages. This is FQ. Stick to the facts, please. If something in the blog is directly and factually relevant to this discussion, then you can quote it here. Otherwise, all of this is pretty far out of bounds for FQ. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/90 "2023-05-20T01:41:49Z")
My friend responded and said she didn’t really know for certain and didn’t want to speculate with her professional reputation on the line as she’s more of an expert in the ancient Bible. I tried. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![B.K.Neifert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.k.neifert/32/14062_2.png) [@B.K.Neifert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.K.Neifert)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/91 "2023-05-22T00:37:15Z")
You can quote away. I don’t regret anything on my blog. I have been open and honest about who I am. You can see I have a conscience. And that I advocate free speech. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/92 "2023-05-22T00:41:47Z")
Do you have any evidence to support your assertion that the government of Nazi Germany actually banned the Bible, keeping in mind that the OP’s link only mentioned that a non-governmental source thought that it would be a good idea? ---
**Author:** ![B.K.Neifert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.k.neifert/32/14062_2.png) [@B.K.Neifert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.K.Neifert)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/93 "2023-05-22T01:23:14Z")
Also, if you do quote me, make sure it’s the whole poem. And source it with a citation in MLA and link to my blog. ---
**Author:** ![B.K.Neifert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.k.neifert/32/14062_2.png) [@B.K.Neifert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.K.Neifert)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/94 "2023-05-22T01:25:47Z")
You want me to source the Nazis about Nazi Germany? You find them more credible than the Western Allies who defeated them? Probably, a lot of Nazi documents were burned by the government at the end of the war. We just have little bits and pieces of the depths of it, which the OP’s quote is one of them. Don’t underestimate the evil of the Nazis. And also don’t conflate them with Christians, as they definitely weren’t. You’re just going to have to have faith that the United States were the good guys, and they faithfully preserved this stuff from Eyewitnesses. Because that’s what they did. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/95 "2023-05-22T01:35:08Z")
> [@B.K.Neifert](#): > > Don’t underestimate the evil of the Nazis. And also don’t conflate them with Christians, as they definitely weren’t. Can you tell me what the inscription on this German officer’s belt buckle says? [![](https://jfk.artifacts.archives.gov/internal/media/dispatcher/12304/preview) ](https://jfk.artifacts.archives.gov/internal/media/dispatcher/12304/preview) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/96 "2023-05-22T01:35:43Z")
[Moderating] And, we’re done here. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-bible-banned-in-nazi-germany/6925/97 "2023-05-22T01:36:05Z")
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