The German Genius

isolated or eccentric figures. They were probably typical of many others who held their tongues.
     
     
    Despite such eloquent and sophisticated ideas and rationalizations for Nazi practices from the Protestant theologians, assaults on Christianity grew in intensity as Nazi confidence solidified. 50 Having begun by insisting on religious instruction, attendance at school prayers was later made optional, and religion was dropped as a subject from school-leaving examinations. Then priests were forbidden to teach religious classes. In 1935, by Bryan Moynahan’s count, the Gestapo arrested 700 Protestant pastors for condemning Nazi neopaganism from the pulpit. In 1937 the Gestapo declared that the education of candidates for the ministry of the Confessing Church was illegal and Martin Niemöller, its leading light, was condemned to a concentration camp, refusing the offer of release because it required his collaboration. 51 (The medical orderly in Sachsenhausen found him to be “a man of iron.”) *
    In 1936 the assault on Catholic monasteries and convents was begun—they were accused of illegal currency trading and sexual offenses. In that year too, the Nuremberg rallies took on an aura of paganism, where the songs—or hymns—were redolent pastiches of traditional Christian worship:
    Führer my Führer
Thou hast rescued Germany from deepest distress
I thank thee for my daily bread
Abide thou long with me, forsake me not
Führer my Führer, my faith and light.
     
    This was built on by the Nazi-backed German Faith Movement, one of its aims being to “dechristianize” rituals and festivals. At weddings, for example, the bride and groom would be blessed by “Mother Earth, Father Sky and all the beneficent powers of the air,” with extracts from Nordic sagas being read out. The celebration of Christmas—the word itself being replaced by “Julfest,” yuletide—was exchanged for a “festival of the winter solstice” held on December 21. The cross was never abolished; attempts were made in 1937 to take it out of school classrooms, but the measure had to be rescinded (perhaps confirming Himmler’s view that Christianity was the only force powerful enough to threaten Nazi aims). The Vatican complained formally to Berlin on almost a monthly basis, but the regime took next to no notice.
    From Hitler’s point of view, probably his greatest achievement was in nullifying the oppositional potential that the church—had it so minded—could have mustered.

The Fruits, Failures, and Infamy of German Wartime Science
     
    S hortly after war broke out in September 1939, Paul Schmitthenner, the rector of the University of Heidelberg, announced that the university would become “der Waffenschmied der Wehrmacht des Reiches,” the armorer of the Reich’s army. His rhetoric was supported by the powers-that-be in that, throughout the war, academic research—and not just “hard” science—was well funded. The budget of the Education Ministry rose from 11 million Reichsmarks in 1935 to 97 million in 1942. The research budget of the Interior Ministry likewise rose from 43 million Reichsmarks in 1935 to 111 million in 1942, while the funding for the Kaiser Wilhelm Society jumped from 5.6 million Reichsmarks in 1933 to 14.3 million in 1944. 1
    The universities were temporarily closed toward the end of 1939 but Heidelberg was one of those allowed to reopen in January 1940, when courses picked up where they had left off, offering “ Frontkursen ” and research to support hostilities. The language and literature seminar was recast “to strengthen the nation’s intellectual and spiritual powers of resistance” and courses about Britain reworked to explain why she was “the great enemy.” In politics and history, courses were introduced that highlighted the links between geopolitics, war, and race, such as “East Asia as Living Space,” “Foreign People’s Economics,” and “The Nature of Journalism Abroad.” Not to be left out, the theology faculty offered “War and Religion in the History of Germany Piety.” 2 In early 1940, Paul Ritterbusch, the rector of the University of Kiel, masterminded a series of sixty-seven publications on war-related issues, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Titles included Great Britain: Hinter-land of World Jewry and Economic Liberalism as a System of the British Worldview . In a sense this was a re-run of some of the arguments broached in World War I, that Britain