00:00 // Introduction: Godwin’s Law and the Secular Definition of Evil
01:53 // Christianity’s Failure to Confront Nazism
03:13 // Nazi Beliefs: Religion, Race, and "Positive Christianity"
05:48 // Centuries of Christian Anti-Judaism
07:12 // Modern Anti-Semitism in Protestant Thought
09:29 // German Protestantism After WWI
10:52 // Hitler’s Rise and Early Christian Reactions
13:02 // The Two Kingdoms Doctrine and Political Submission
15:13 // Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Early Resistance
18:29 // Church Fear, Hope, and Complicity
21:02 // Rise of the German Christians Movement
24:00 // Theology of Race and Nazi Christianity
26:41 // Rejection and Decline of the German Christians
29:41 // The Empty Shell of a Nazified Christianity
33:00 // The Confessing Church: Limited but Real Resistance
35:52 // Compromise, Anti-Semitism, and Niemöller’s Contradictions
39:59 // Carl Barth and Theological Critique from Abroad
42:26 // Small Acts of Resistance and the Jehovah’s Witnesses
44:55 // The Church’s Missed Opportunity to Influence Morality
46:44 // The Aktion T4 Program and Early Opposition
48:44 // Bishop von Galen’s Pivotal Sermon
50:48 // Could the Churches Have Done More?
52:00 // Final Reflections: Complicity, Resistance, and Moral Clarity
Nazism was not a Christian movement in any meaningful sense.
German Protestants of the 1920s and 1930s shared many Nazi assumptions and voted disproportionately for the Nazi party, partly in the hope that they might use it for their own ends. One result was the German Christian movement, which tried to create a dejudaised Christianity which the Nazi state would accept with a place in the coming Aryan utopia. Many moderate, sensible Christians in Germany, even in the supposedly anti-Nazi 'Confessing Church', collaborated with the regime in other ways. This lecture will explore how so many Christians came to support Nazism, and how some managed to oppose it.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/two-kingdoms-in-the-third-reich
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