In League with the Divine: How Religion Influenced Nazi Perpetrators of the Holocaust

Abstract

Scholars of the Holocaust have, in recent decades, started to examine the factors that motivated seemingly “normal” people to become willing participants in the Nazis’ pogroms of extermination. Although many social, political, economic, and psychological influences have been analyzed, religion has often been overlooked. This study remedies that gap in the existing literature by examining the ways in which religion impacted the mindsets of those responsible for the Holocaust. First, it explores how the Nazis created a new political faith that indoctrinated average Germans with an unethical value system that validated persecution, violence, and murder. Second, this research evaluates how Holocaust perpetrators used existing religious doctrines—namely those of Christianity and paganism—to supplement their power over human life, cope with their internal psychological and moral conflicts, and justify their crimes of genocide.