To What Extent Was The Church Responsible For The Holocaust

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About six million Jews and some five million prisoners of war were killed in the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the mass murder of Jews and other minorities that the Nazi regime considered “lesser breeds.” Adolf Hitler, the Führer of Germany in this period, was the main perpetrator behind all the destruction of the country and the millions of lives lost by it. He came to power and had the motive of killing these innocent people just because of their ethnicity. But it wasn’t him who had the blood on his hands. Besides Adolf Hitler, the Nazi soldiers and the SS officers were to blame for the Holocaust because the SS officers carried out the extermination and killings with no hesitation, and the Nazi soldiers obeyed Hitler and his commands and participated …show more content…
Some would say that the churches were most responsible for the Holocaust. Although it is true that some religious institutions and individuals did not take a strong public stance against the Nazi regime and its atrocities, it is important to note the many dangers there were in doing such a thing. It is also an oversimplification to give these churches all the responsibility when they weren’t even the ones who perpetrated the crimes done to these helpless people, as doing this fails to consider some very important factors. Firstly, the churches could have been severely punished for even mentioning going against the regime. In the article “The German Churches and the Nazi State”, it was mentioned that “when a protest statement was read from the pulpits of confessing churches in March 1935, for example, Nazi authorities reacted forcefully by briefly arresting over 700 pastors.” This explains that while these institutions could speak out, they could face prosecution, or even death in some cases, depending on the
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