via Jesus Politics:

This is a real sore spot when brought up in debates. Understandable, since practically anything appears ethical by comparison with the human tragedy and unspeakable evil that Hitler wrought.

But what goes missing in this understandable resistance to compare anything to Nazi Germany and Hitler, is the lessons from that history, and how such a thing could happen, and be allowed to happen. Not insiginificant in this story is the support garnered from the German Churches for the Third Reich. This study, by a Tennessee pastor, studies the theologians who supported Hitler, and the arguments they used to “evangelize” on behalf of the Reich.

This film, based upon groundbreaking research, introduces the viewer to three of the greatest Christian scholars of the twentieth century: Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Gerhard Kittel, men who were also outspoken supporters of Hitler and the Nazi party. In 1933 Althaus spoke of Hitler’s rise as “a gift and miracle of God.” Hirsch saw 1933 as a “sunrise of divine goodness.” And Kittel, the editor of the standard reference work on the Jewish background of the New Testament, began working for the Nazis to find a “moral” rationale for the destruction of European Jewry.