Kirchenkampf

Kirchenkampf (bahasa Jerman: [ˈkɪʁçn̩kampf], "perjuangan gereja") adalah sebuah istilah Jerman terhadap keadaan gereja-gereja Kristen di Jerman pada zaman Nazi (1933–1945). Terkadang dipakai ambigu, istilah tersebut merujuk kepada salah satu "perjuangan gereja" berbeda atau lebih: persengketaan internal antar umat Kristen Jerman (Deutsche Christen) dan Gereja yang Mengaku (Bekennende Kirche) atas kontrol gereja-gereja Protestan; pertarungan antara rezim Nazi dan badan-badan gereja Protestan; dan pertarungan antara rezim Nazi dan Gereja Katolik Roma.. Sekitar dua per tiga orang Jerman adalah Protestan, dan sepertia Katolik saat Nazi berkuasa. Beberapa sejarawan menyatakan bahwa tujuan Hitler dalam Kirchenkampf tak hanya sekadar perjuangan ideologi, tetapi pengikisan gereja-gereja. Sejarawan lain tak menganggap rencana semacam itu ada.

Catatan

1. Frank J. Coppa Controversial Concordats, p. 124, CUA Press, 1999
2. Sharkey, Joe Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity, New York Times, January 13, 2002
3. The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches 2013-09-26 di Wayback Machine., Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Winter 2001, publishing evidence compiled by the O.S.S. for the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of 1945 and 1946
4. Griffin, Roger Fascism's relation to religion in Blamires, Cyprian, World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1, p. 10, ABC-CLIO, 2006: "There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it."
5. Mosse, George Lachmann, Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich, p. 240, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2003: "Had the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical policies would have gone beyond those of the German Christians, to the utter destruction of both the Protestant and the Catholic Church."
6. Bendersky, Joseph W., A concise history of Nazi Germany, p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: "Consequently, it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire."
7. Shirer, William L., Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, p. 240, Simon and Schuster, 1990: "And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists."
8. Fischel, Jack R., Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust, p. 123, Scarecrow Press, 2010: "The objective was to either destroy Christianity and restore the German gods of antiquity or to turn Jesus into an Aryan."
9. Dill, Marshall, Germany: a modern history, p. 365, University of Michigan Press, 1970: "It seems no exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at least to subjugate it to their general world outlook."
10. Wheaton, Eliot Barculo The Nazi revolution, 1933-1935: prelude to calamity:with a background survey of the Weimar era, p. 290, 363, Doubleday 1968: The Nazis sought "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch."
11. Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003)' The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 260.
12. Snyder, Louis L. (1981) Hitler's Third Reich: A Documentary History. New York: Nelson-Hall, p. 249.
13. Dutton, Donald G. (2007). The Psychology of Genocide, Massacres, and Extreme Violence. Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 41.
14. Heschel, Susannah (2008). The Aryan Jesus. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 23.