The Lutheran Hermann Sasse’s Critique

Editor of the Kirchliches Jahrbuch, Hermann Sasse furnished theological reasons for the irreconcilability of Christianity and National Socialism in the 1932 issue. Point 24 of the NSDAP’s platform would make any discussion with a church impossible because the doctrine of original sin and the Lutheran doctrine of justification were irreconcilable with the traditional and moral sensitivities of the Germanic race. As a Protestant theologian, he considered all other points of the party platform, even those on the Jewish Question and racial theory, to be worthy of discussion.

On the other hand, Sasse sharply criticized the conception of the state revealed in prominent Nazi figures’ statements, which demanded the omnipotent state’s right, even over the souls of its citizens. The NSDAP supported a concept of a state of a revolutionary Caesarism. According to the Lutheran Sasse, Protestant theologians failed to take Point 24 seriously however and recognize the peril of a total state because they labored under an idealistic concept of the state.