How is the Church at all responsible for the Holocaust?

Question

Anti Christians like to say the Church did nothing to stop the Holocaust. What could they have done? "Excuse us, Mr Hitler, could you please not do that?" Does the Church have an army? Last I checked, it was Christian nations like the US and Britain that put an end to Hitler. And no, the Russians didn't beat Hitler, the Russian winter did, and they killed Jews at will. Russia got to the camps first, only because the main German forces were being annhililated by America after D-Day

Answer 1

There is a very good movie about this called "Amen" - about an ss officer called Kurt Gestel, tried to secretly contact the Pope to show him proof of the Holocaust, using a Jesuit contact. The Jesuit contact is fictional, but represents those priests who were desperate for the Pope to speak out.

The movie depicts the event as a failure in intelligence on the part of the Vatican, as though it was just stunned at everything that was happening and felt powerless to react.

But I think the Church did help in oposing the holocaust by trying to put morality into society.

It was always a voice for morality in people's conscience, and those who listened to it, were the ones to oppose what happened, in whatever way they could. The armies were acting in self-defense. The faithful who opposed the regime in secret, and there were many, were acting for the sake of morals.

What a crazy time it must have been.

Answer 2

The problem is that many churches in Germany, both Protestant and Catholic, endorsed Hitler's regime. Hitler was in fact rather against churches insofar as they represented threats to his totalitarian regime and against Christianity insofar as it accepted "Jewish" ideas, i.e. the Hebrew Bible. The result was that instead of protesting Hitler early on in his reign most churches (except for some noted and lauded exceptions such as the great moral theologian Bonhoeffer), and especially the Catholic church essentially made a deal with Hitler to not get in his way as long as he did not shut them down. Another factor that led many churches to support Hitler was fear of communist uprisings which many believed would mean the destruction of organized religion as occurred in Soviet Russia.

To answer your question, what could they have done? Well, the Pope certainly could have used his bully pulpit and condemned the slaughter of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. Protestant churches could have withheld their support. This is not to fault Christians in general, but clearly the anti-Semitic agenda of the Nazis was not taken all that seriously by many Christians. One could make the argument that many Christians in Germany as well as the U.S. and France tacitly endorsed the anti-semitism of Nazis. The holocaust is one of the greatest moral failings of the modern west because we should have known better.

Answer 3

Hitler was supported by the churches in his country. These same churches encouraged their followers to go and fight on behald of the "Fatherland" and thereby perpetuated the war. Yes, the church does have an army. Where do you think Hitler got his from? Jehovah's Witnesses refused to go to war for Hitler, and many died for it. If the other so-called Christian religions had done the same, the war would've been over before it began. Stop trying to defend what is clearly a corrupt church.

Answer 4

The holocaust could never have happened without the 2000 years of anti-semitism that the church promoted.

Further, the church helped the Nazi's distinguish Jew from Gentile by turning over their church records .

Answer 5

Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II's Pope Plus XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynical pact with a 20th-century devil.

Answer 6

Umm... the world stood idly by during the Holocaust. That's why Jews say 'never again'... except that it does happen, again and again and again.

"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."~ Martin Niemöller

No one did anything to stop the Holocaust- it was just a convenient side effect of winning WWII.

Answer 7

Hitler reached the power thanks to a catholic bishop and if the vatican with 1 billion people stand against that crime sure, hitler wouldn´t do so much harm.

Answer 8

I think the point was the church did not condemn him from the start. admittedly they could not have known how far he would go.