Ideological Dissidence

Widely differing forms of challenges to the Nazi state’s claim to totality and explicit criticism of the Nazi regime’s interpretative authority from a Christian viewpoint are identifiable.

People landed in the Gestapo’s sights because public remarks and encounters and conversations with likeminded individuals were considered to be threats to the regime. Normally, such individuals’ “offences” were limited to having expressed their nonconformity by voicing their objection, evading orders or violating norms and contravening the regime’s calls for action.

Given their Christian views, they voiced convictions that challenged Nazi ideology and made clear their unwillingness to accept the primacy of Nazi ideology. Statements relativizing the slogans of final victory and insistence on a treatment of enemies imbued with Christian charity and anthropology proved to be especially risky.

More than a few were taken into custody and – for the most part, after suffering severely in Gestapo prisons – were sentenced to prison or even death for voicing their opposition to the ideology (dissidence). This fate befell Elisabeth von Thadden, Gerhard Krause and Georg Maus as well as Pastor Ludwig Steil.

Steil grew up in a Reformed parsonage and joined the German Christians during his days as an undergraduate studying theology. He became the pastor of the miners’ congregation in Holsterhausen, Westphalia in 1929 and took a clear stand against the German Christians in 1933. He was a member of the Pastors’ Emergency League and attended the Confessing Church’s four confessional synods.

When, in a lecture at an evangelization week, he repudiated Hitler’s statements on the necessity to exterminate so-called “life unworthy of living” by making referring to the fifth commandment “Thou shalt not kill”, he was arrested on November 11, 1944. After being held in custody in Dortmund and Bochum, he – already very weakened physically – was sent on a transport to Dachau concentration camp in December. He contracted typhoid and died there on January 17, 1945.