Nazism is not just a political movement, but kind of a religion, thus there would always be conflict with traditional christianity.

Superficially Nazism looks similar to a religion:

• • It has a "messiah" in Hitler

  • A bible in Mein Kampf

  • Iconography in the swastika, the flags and isignias

  • Intolerant dogma and preachers

  • and presents an answer to the issues about life.

Hitler had a choice. He could either see the churches as a threat and destroy them or an extension of propaganda and use them.

In 1935, Müller’s Reich Church was replaced when Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Church Affairs to be headed by Hans Kerrl.

His Ministry closed down church schools by 1939 and attempted to confine Germany’s young people into Nazi youth clubs rather than church ones.

Under the Reich Ministry of Church Affairs:

1. • • Churches and shrines were also targeted for vandalism and crucifixes were removed from schools, much to the annoyance of local Christians

     • The Nazis attempted to replace Christianity with their own quasi-religious faith. One example of this was the German Faith Movement, which promoted Hitler as a God-like figure and featured modern pagan ceremonies

     • Nazi rites of passage were conceived to replace Christian ones for birth, death and marriage.

     • The calendar of religious holidays was altered, so that traditional holidays were either abolished or imbued with Nazi ideals, or all new Nazi ones were added, such as the ‘Day of the Seizure of Power’ and the ‘Commemoration of the Movement’s Fallen’.

Issues of race and Ayran superiority underpinned everything that the Nazis hoped to achieve. The Volksgemeinschaft could only be achieved if:

• Germans were no longer working class or middle class;

• they were no longer Bavarians or Prussians; and

• they were no longer Catholics or Protestants.

Outside of Germany, where the aim was Lebensraum the racially based new empire would be:

• Racially pure and will rule for a 1000 years

• built by a slave population of the inferior Slavs of Eastern Europe

The Nazis specifically persecuted the Jews, however, they also persecuted Homosexuals, Gypsies, Disabled people, Communists and Jehovah's Witnesses.

They were targeted because they either didn't fit the Nazi's ideal version of humanity or didn't accept the Nazi's emphasis on military service.

Some were just racially inferior or could potentially pollute the racial stock

During the 1930s the Jewish population in Germany amounted to less than 1 per cent (500 000) of the total population, and the majority of Jewish people had assimilated into German culture.

Despite them only being a tiny percentage of the country, Hitler used the Jewish population as a scapegoat for all that was evil in the world; Jews were linked to communism and the Jewish influence could be blamed for all of Germany’s problems.

In Hitler’s view, Jews were the Volksfeind (public enemy) who wanted to undermine and destroy traditional German culture and values.

Between 1933 and 1939, Nazi anti-Semitism evolved from discrimination that aimed to encourage Jews to emigrate to more sinister measures.

On 1 April 1933, the Nazis organised a national boycott of Jewish businesses and Jews were gradually excluded from the civil service, medicine, law, arts, culture and the armed forces.

In 1935, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour commonly referred to as the Nuremberg Laws, defined exactly who was Jewish, deprived them of citizenship and banned sexual relations – Rassenschande (race defilement) – and marriages between Jews and Germans.

These laws affected everyone because they highlighted the importance of being able to prove one’s Aryan ancestry. These laws were also significant in that they laid the foundation for further persecution.

Early policies against the Jews were often quite general in nature:

• Nazi propaganda constantly targeted the Jews and made them scapegoats for all of Germany's past and present ills including defeat in 1918, the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression;

• Jews could be physically attacked and no action would be taken against those carrying out the attacks

• Petty regulations were introduced such as:

  • excluding Jews from using public buses, parks and swimming pools;

  • putting up signs which indicated that certain entrances and areas were not available for Jewish people;

  • Jewish school students were ridiculed and humiliated as their racial inferiority was explained for the benefit of their Aryan peers

Formal legislation had succeeded in excluding Jewish people from a range of activities by mid-1935, and included:

• mass sackings of Jews from the Civil Service following the Law for Restoration of the Civil Service in April 1933;

  • • university restrictions were placed on Jews;

    • being formally denied marriage loans in July 1933;

    • being denied entry into the legal system in September 1933; and

    • being effectively excluded from the media and the arts by October 1934

Homosexuals were prime targets of a regime which was insistent on increasing the German population as it was illegal in Germany since 1871.

In 1935, the Nazis included ‘acts likely to offend public morality’ in their definition of criminal behaviour, resulting in approximately 15 000 homosexuals being sent to concentration camps during the period 1933 to 1945.

The Nazis firmly believed in the practice of eugenics in their quest to preserve the Aryan race, with the Reichstag passing the Law for the Prevention of Diseased Progeny on 14 July 1933, resulting in the involuntary sterilisation of more than 300000 Germans with hereditary diseases or mental disabilities, all in the name of eradicating inferior blood. These conditions could include alcoholism, ‘social feeblemindedness’, deafness and blindness. Homosexuals, the homeless and Gypsies were also involuntarily sterilised by the regime.

The Nazis also planned and carried out a secret euthanasia program from 9 October 1939, which aimed to eliminate the weakest individuals in order to increase the collective strength of the nation.

The Nazis originally targeted children with birth abnormalities and the chronically ill, but extended the program after war broke out to include psychiatric patients, the elderly, the homeless, the chronically unemployed and those suffering depression.

Also targeted for persecution, incarceration and potential sterilisation were career criminals, vagrants, beggars and anyone identified as being ‘antisocial’.

The Freemasons and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also targets of Nazi harassment and persecution.