God to save the Volk, as a relatively moderate Lutheran thinker, Paul Althaus, wrote in 1937.
Catholic doctrine was made in Rome, and thus did not bend as easily to Nazism. But, without papal leadership, German Catholics also succumbed to the national- ist disease. Like the Protestants, they ac- cepted Hitler's depiction of the Jews as en- emies of the Volk, responsible for Germany's humiliating surrender in 19 18. The Christians "preserved a frigid and uni- versal silence" when Hitler...