Nazism and religion

Catholic clergy and Nazi officials - Joseph Goebbels (right) and Wilhelm Frik (left).

In Germany, the Catholic Church , at least until 1933, sharply criticized the NSDAP for the religious views expressed by some of its representatives, especially Alfred Rosenberg , but in order to provide German Catholics with the opportunity to carry out religious activities in the context of the dissolution of a number of Catholic parties and organizations, July 20, 1933 of the year , a concordat was concluded between the Vatican and the Third Reich ^[1]

At first, the National Socialists were tolerant of the growth of Catholic societies in 1933 and 1934 and even contributed to an increase in the number of believers and the opening of Catholic church schools. But since 1935, the NSDAP increasingly sought to limit the influence of Catholic youth societies, and then began to dissolve them and include them in the Hitler Youth . In the course they took to weaken religious beliefs, the National Socialists intensified their campaign against religious schools and against the Catholic press, until in 1941 the remaining episcopal ballots ceased to appear. Moreover, a propaganda campaign was launched against members of Catholic orders who were blamed for moral defects and violations of currency legislation. The Bormann memorandum, sent in December 1941 to all Gauleiter and sent out by the SS, summarizes the essence of the Nazi attitude towards Christianity:

National Socialist and Christian ideas are incompatible ... If, therefore, in the future, our youth will not know anything about Christianity, whose doctrines are largely inferior to ours, Christianity will disappear by itself. All influences that can weaken or damage the people's leadership, which is carried out by the Fuhrer with the help of the NSDAP, should be eliminated: the people should be more and more separated from the church and its speaker — pastors ^[2] .

In 1937, Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (with great concern), in which he stated that the conditions of the concordat were violated by the Nazis. The encyclical was read in all the Catholic churches in Germany and contained a criticism of Nazi ideology and pointed to the incompatibility of Nazism with Christian principles:

The assessment of the activities of the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII during World War II remains controversial. On the one hand, the Catholic Church saved thousands of Jews who took refuge in monasteries from death. In the Vatican itself during the German occupation of Rome in 1944, hundreds of Jews found refuge who were threatened with deportation to Auschwitz and other death camps ^{[4] [5]} . On the other hand, the pope is criticized for "silence" during the war, when, observing neutrality , refrained from publicly criticizing Nazi crimes ^[4] .

The German Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen openly condemned the policies of the Nazi regime. A large number of Catholic priests and monks were tortured to death in Nazi camps. In Poland, over 2.5 thousand priests and monks died in concentration camps ^[6] . In the Dachau concentration camp there were “priest huts”, through which about 2,600 Catholic priests passed, many of whom died ^{[7] [8]} . Some of the tortured priests and monks were subsequently canonized ( Maximilian Kolbe , Titus Brandsma , Edith Stein and others). The property of more than 300 Catholic institutions and monasteries was expropriated ^[9] . At the same time, some Catholics (1,075 prisoners of war and 4,829 civilians worked in 800 Catholic institutions — hospitals, apartment buildings and monastery gardens) and Protestant organizations in Germany used forced prisoner labor during the war ^[9] .

According to the testimony of a former U.S. Army intelligence officer William Gowen in a federal court in San Francisco, Vatican officials were harboring Nazi war criminals and collaborators from arrest and trial. They also helped harbor and legalize property taken from Nazi victims, including Jews. Thus, assistance was provided to Klaus Barbie (the “Lyon butcher”), Adolf Eichmann , Dr. Mengele and Franz Stengel - the head of the Treblink death camp ^[10] .

In Italy, with the advent of local fascism to power, the Catholic Church received even more power and influence than before ( Lateran Treaty , concluded in February 1929 ). Along with significant state subsidies, she secured to herself far-reaching rights of intervention and control in the field of education and family life. Since 1929, insulting the Pope has become a felony. ^[11]

“In a fascist state, religion is regarded as one of the most profound manifestations of the spirit, and therefore it is not only revered, but also protected and patronized,” Benito Mussolini. The doctrine of fascism. 1932

The close connection between the fascist regime and the church was characteristic of Romania, Hungary and Spain. The Monument to the Valley of the Fallen , built by order of Generalissimo Franco, combines both religious and fascist symbols. In any case, religious thought and religious life in a fascist state is strictly censored and controlled by the state system due to its totalitarian nature.

The Nazi Ustasha movement in Croatia proclaimed support for the Catholic Church, and in turn was supported by a number of senior Catholic clergy. On April 28, 1941, Archbishop Stepinac called in his encyclical to support the Ustasha regime, however, after they developed terror against national minorities, he protested against crimes ^{[12] [13]} . Many Catholic priests participated in the forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism ^[10] .

The regime of Dolphus and von Schuschnigg in Austria was often considered " clerical-fascist " because of the strong support given to him - at least until the Anschluss - by the Catholic Church.

Representatives of the evangelical ( Lutheran ) church, split into 28 churches of separate lands, although they rejected the pagan views of people like Rosenberg, at the same time more or less openly sympathized with the nationalist, anti-socialist, anti-capitalist, as well as anti-Semitic goals of national socialism. In the church elections, organized on July 23 and supported by the entire propaganda apparatus of the NSDAP, the national-socialist movement “ German Christians ” founded in 1932 received significantly more than 60% of the votes cast. The “German Christians” (who often called themselves “stormtroopers of Jesus Christ”) now had the majority of votes in the church leadership of almost all German communities.

At the same time, Lutheran priests Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Nimeller openly condemned the policies of the Nazi regime. Dietrich Bonhoeffer then established ties with conspirators in the army and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . In 1933, the Nazi regime forced the Protestant churches of Germany to merge into one Protestant Church of the Reich, which was supposed to support Nazi ideology. At the head of the new church education were activists of the movement "German Christians". The church opposition was forced to go underground, and in September of the same year created the Pastoral Union ( German Pfarrernotbund ) to coordinate its actions. This union ratified the Barman Declaration in 1934, the main author of which was Karl Barth . The main idea of ​​the declaration was that the Church in Germany is not a means of carrying out Nazi ideas, but exists only for the preaching of Christ. Thus was created the so-called Confessional Church .

From the very beginning, the Lapua movement pursued extremely anti-communist attitudes with nationalistic and religious colors.

National Socialism and the Activities of Orthodox Churches

The first contacts of Russian emigration with Hitler date back to the early 1920s. For many emigrants, the Third Reich seemed to be the only real force capable of crushing the Soviet regime. At the same time, a number of researchers ^{[14] [15] [16]} agree that “German fascism was no less hostile to Christianity and especially the Russian Orthodox Church than Soviet communism. Nevertheless, their clash, which led to the occupation by the German army of a significant part of the territory of the USSR with approximately one third of the country's population, created special conditions that played a decisive role in the fate of the Russian Orthodox Church ” ^[17] .

Orthodoxy was considered by the National Socialists as an important tool to fight against their political opponents and to increase their authority in countries with a predominantly Orthodox religion ( USSR , Romania , Bulgaria , Greece ). In turn, the militant anti-Bolshevism of the Nazis was positively perceived by a number of Orthodox hierarchs of the white emigrant environment ^[18] .

During the 1920s and 30s, the National Socialists took a number of measures to draw closer to Orthodoxy in Germany. The Reichsministery of Religious Cults supported the German Diocese of the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR), which was in opposition to the Moscow Patriarchate , and granted it the status of a “public law corporation”, which only Lutherans and Catholics had. In 1938, the Nazis financed the construction in Berlin of a new cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ of the ROCA at Hohenzollerndamm , as well as the overhaul of 19 Orthodox churches. At the same time, churches of another Russian Orthodox jurisdiction - the West European exarchate of Russian parishes - were confiscated and transferred to ROCOR ^[18] .

The ROCOR’s First Hierarch, Metropolitan Anastasius (Gribanovsky) , wrote in a letter of thanks to Minister Hans Curl: “At a time when the Orthodox Church in our Motherland is being subjected to unprecedented persecution, we are especially touched by the attention of the German Government and yours, who awakens us with a deep gratitude to the German people and their people to the glorious leader Adolf Hitler and encourages us to heartfelt prayer for his and the German people’s health, well-being and for Divine Help in all their affairs ” ^[19] . At the same time, there was also friction in the relations between the Nazis and the Orthodox Church: for example, in 1938, the Germans demanded that the ROCOR Synod recall the Berlin Archbishop Tikhon (Lyashchenko) on charges of sympathy for the Jews.

After the outbreak of World War II and the occupation of Poland, the German authorities transferred to the Polish Orthodox Church church property previously selected by the Polish authorities, and also supported the opening of an Orthodox theological institute in Breslau ^[18] .

After the first successes during World War II, the Hitlerite leadership, hoping for a quick victory, curtailed the support of Orthodox churches in Europe. During the occupation of Yugoslavia and the attack on the USSR in 1941, the leadership of the ROCA, led by Metropolitan Anastasiy, based in Serbia, was persecuted and searched. During the Germans' seizure of Belgium in the spring of 1940, the Brussels Archbishop Alexander (Nemolovsky) was arrested by the Gestapo and was "bailed" only to the German Archbishop Seraphim (Lyade) . The highest hierarchs of the Serbian Church (including Patriarch Gabriel) were also subjected to repression ^[20] .

At the beginning of the war, many Russian emigrants considered the Third Reich a lesser evil than the Stalinist regime, and welcomed the outbreak of war between the USSR and Germany ^[20] . Archpriest Alexander Kiselev (future confessor of General Vlasov and his entourage), recalling 1941, wrote: “ How many new sufferings this war will bring ... and as the oncoming wave of my consciousness: but only with this blood can liberation from that sea of ​​blood and torment come, which our people underwent under the godless communist power of Yu ” ^[21] . However, the leadership of the ROCA was not unanimous in this matter. Metropolitan Anastasius, who, in some cases, expressed support for the German government along with other ROCOR representatives ^{[18] [22]} , refrained from proposing any message in connection with the German attack on the USSR (see more ). Shortly after the war ended, Metropolitan Anastasius declared that the ROCOR Synod of Bishops “never prescribed prayers for“ Hitler’s victories ”and even forbade them, demanding that Russian people pray only for the salvation of Russia at that time” ^[23] .

The leadership of the ROCA wanted to use the ongoing war with the USSR to revive church life in Russia. Beginning June 26, 1941, Metropolitan Anastasius repeatedly appealed to Berlin with proposals to establish his church administration in the occupied territory of the USSR, but did not find support from the German leadership because of opposition from the Ministry of the Eastern Territories , headed by Alfred Rosenberg ^[20] . Germany’s invasion of the USSR was welcomed by the ROCOR’s Paris hierarch, Metropolitan Serafim (Lukyanov): “ May the Most High bless the great Leader of the German people, who raised his sword against the enemies of God himself ... May the Masonic star, sickle and hammer disappear from the face of the earth ” ^[18] .

In the occupied territories

In the position of the German authorities in the occupied territories of the USSR, mutually exclusive approaches were combined. On the one hand, Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg sought to revive religious territories, including Orthodoxy, in German-controlled territories by creating autonomous and unaccountable church structures, excluding the possibility of a single powerful church organization ^[24] . Rosenberg in June 1942 drafted an edict on tolerance, which defined German church policy in the occupied regions. Due to the intervention of Martin Bormann, this edict never came out in Russia, and Koch (Ukraine) and Lohse (Baltic) published abridged versions of it. The published orders proclaimed religious freedom and the right of believers to organize religious associations. But at the same time, as in Soviet law, it was emphasized that individual religious associations were autonomous, which limited the administrative power of bishops ^[25] .

Hitler is credited with the following opinion:

We must avoid one church meeting the religious needs of large areas, and each village should be turned into an independent sect. If some ... want to practice black magic ... we shouldn't do anything to stop them. ... our policy in wide spaces should be to encourage any and every form of separation and division ^[26]

On the other hand, the Nazi leadership and generals of the Wehrmacht in the occupied territories preferred the existence of a single Orthodox Church, at least in each of the regions (Baltic, Ukraine). Moreover, at a meeting in the Reichsministery of the Eastern Lands on June 20, 1942, it was decided that it would be beneficial for the occupation authorities to unite all the Orthodox around the Moscow exarch to evict them after the war to the Moscow Reich Commissariat ^[18] .

In the occupied territories, on the initiative of the population and often with the support of the German command, thousands of parish and monastic communities returned to the church service, who went underground in Soviet times ^[27] . The once closed churches were restored and crowded with worshipers for the first time in many years. At one time, there were more active churches in the occupied territories than in the rest of Soviet Russia ^{[28] [29]} , which in many respects contributed to a change in the attitude of the Soviet government to the Russian Church, which from being persecuted by the middle of the war turned into a resurgent one.

The Nazis demanded that every newspaper or magazine in the occupied territory have a religious section. To make the propaganda more persuasive and more effective, materials about the “religious revival in Russia liberated by Germany” were often accompanied by a series of photographs. The opening of churches, religious ceremonies, photos of priests were widely published not only in the occupied territories, but also in the Third Reich itself. From the pages of the press, priests who collaborated with the invaders repeatedly appealed to the population about the need to fully assist the German authorities. For example, in 1943, several leaflets were sent to the partisans signed by the Smolensk bishop Stephen. In them he called on the people's avengers to lay down their arms and go over to the side of the invaders, otherwise, it was written in a leaflet, “ God's punishment, which will soon befall you, will be scary ” ^[30] .

Very often, the propaganda of Christian ideas in newspapers came close to the propaganda of anti-Semitism, it was recalled that Bolshevism was an invention of the Jews.

At the same time, in the Baltic states, the territory of the Russian Orthodox Church expanded and the power of Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky) was strengthened. Attempts by the hierarchs of Latvia and Estonia to create autonomous churches were thwarted by the Nazi leadership. The occupation authorities allowed Metropolitan Sergius to maintain a canonical relationship with the Patriarchate, which consisted in the offering of the name of Locum Tenens at the service.

Since the summer of 1942, in the occupied regions of central Russia, the Germans began to use Russian priests in prisoner of war camps. After the prayer, the priest always preached, saying that this war was sent by God as a punishment for the militant atheism of the Bolsheviks. Prisoners of the Red Army were called to pray "for the speedy end of the war, the defeat of the Jewish Bolshevism and the speedy return home" ^[31] .

In Belarus, the German authorities relied on the creation of a national Belarusian autocephalous church, relying here on Belarusian nationalists who came here from the Czech Republic and Poland. Despite this, in March 1942, Archbishop Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky) was elected Metropolitan of Minsk and Belarus, who was able to maintain the formal canonical subordination of most of the Belarusian Orthodox to Moscow. After the liberation of Belarus by Soviet troops, Belarusian bishops, led by Panteleimon, left for Germany, where they joined the ROCOR.

As for Ukraine, here the National Socialists maneuvered on the confrontation of several Orthodox churches: Autonomous, based on its decisions, the head is Met. Alexy (Gromadsky), and Autocephalous, breaking with the Russian Church, the head - Metr. Polycarpus (Sikorsky). During the German occupation, 5400 churches and 36 monasteries were opened on the territory of Ukraine, pastoral courses were organized.

The Orthodox Church was active in the occupied territories of the RSFSR. Only in the Smolensk region were opened 60 churches, in Bryansk and Belgorod at least 300, Kursk - 332, Oryol - 108, Voronezh - 116. Significant activity was shown by the Pskov mission ^[18] .

In just three years of occupation, more than 40% of the pre-revolutionary number of churches was restored. Soviet literature speaks of 10 thousand temples. In addition, about 60 monasteries were recreated - 45 in Ukraine, 6 in Belarus and 8-9 in the RSFSR ^[14] . Almost all the churches opened in 1941-1943 by the invaders continued to function until the beginning of the sixties, until the next persecution of the church.

Pskov Orthodox Mission

The Pskov Orthodox mission operated during the Great Patriotic War on the territory of the North-Western Dioceses of Russia occupied by German troops: St. Petersburg, Pskov and Novgorod, as well as the Baltic states. The initiator of the creation of the Mission was Metropolitan Sergius of Vilensky and Lithuania (Voskresensky) . Under the German occupation, he managed to maintain the canonical unity of the Baltic dioceses with the Russian Orthodox Church. The basis of the Pskov mission was Russian priests from the Riga and Narva dioceses ^{[33] [34] [35]} . On August 18, 1941, the first 14 priest missionaries arrived in this city, among whom were both graduates of the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris and figures of the Russian Christian Union ^[24] . Archpriest Sergiy Efimov became the first head of the Pskov Orthodox mission, in October 1941 he was replaced by Protopriest Nikolai Koliversky, after whose death in October 1942 Protopresbyter Kirill Zayts was appointed new chief.

In the newly opened churches, Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky) of Leningrad was commemorated for services, in whose diocese missionaries served, emphasizing that the mission is part of the Russian Church. But when anti-fascist leaflets signed by Alexy (Simansky) began to be scattered from Soviet planes, the occupation authorities banned any mention of his name in temples ^[36] .

On September 12, 1941, Exarch Sergius turned to the German authorities with a memorandum asking for assistance in church life, in which he proved to the invaders that the Moscow Patriarchate never reconciled with the godless authority, obeying it only externally, and that therefore, he, Sergius, has moral right call on the Russian people to fight against Bolshevism ^[37] .

A significant church event of that time was the transfer of the Church of the Tikhvin Icon to the Mother of God . The icon was saved from the burning temple in Tikhvin with the participation of German soldiers and transferred to the Church by the Germans on March 22, 1942.

The German authorities sought to maximize the use of the mission for their propaganda purposes ^[38] . Propaganda was actively conducted through newspapers and magazines published in Russian by the mission. In particular, the Orthodox Christian magazine, which began to appear in June 1942, played a large role in this. All issues of this magazine were previously censored by German propaganda services, and if they contained “too much Orthodoxy and too few anti-Bolshevik materials”, their release was not allowed ^[39] .

On June 22, the Day of the Liberation of the Russian People was celebrated in all churches. Prayers for the victory of Germany over Bolshevism were served.

^[39] . Priests were also instructed to identify unreliable persons hostile to the German army and German authorities, as well as partisans and those who sympathize with them; their responsibility also included collecting information on the yield of a particular region, the amount of grain, vegetables, and livestock ^{[40] [41]} .

The missionaries later explained that they had to cooperate with the Germans. One of the missionaries, Protopresbyter Alexy Ionov , Dean of the Ostrovsky District in 1941–43, wrote many years later in his memoirs:

Missionary priests paid special attention to spiritual help to prisoners of war - in a number of camps, churches were opened ^[35] . Also, for prisoners of war donations were collected, clothes. The mission also cared for orphans. Through the efforts of the parishioners, a children's shelter was created at the church of St. Dimitry Solunsky in Pskov for 137 boys and girls aged 6 to 15 years. For the sake of the revival of religious life in the region, the priesthood began to appear on the air: weekly programs went from Pskov ^[24] .

The mission issued a number of circulars on the need to select and verify all applicants for the clergy of newly opened churches. Such a policy can be explained not only by the mission’s fears that among the ministers of the church may be sympathizers of the Soviet state, but also by the large number of impostors who, in the conditions of the mass opening of churches, pretended to be priests. So, the dean of the Gatchina district, the impostor Ivan Vasilyevich Amozov , a former communist, was able to successfully impersonate a priest with the help of his certificate of release from prison, however, in 1936 he turned out to be not “persecuted for faith”, but for bribery and bigamy ^{[ 40]}

^[43] .

Parish life passed under double control. On the one hand, the actions of missionary priests were supervised by the occupation authorities, and on the other, by Soviet partisans. A report by the chief of mission, Kirill Zayts, to the German leadership noted the inconsistency of the available information: “According to some, partisans consider priests to be enemies of the people they seek to deal with. According to others, the partisans are trying to emphasize a tolerant, and even benevolent, attitude towards the Church and, in particular, to priests. ” The German administration was particularly interested in whether the people believed in campaign messages about a change in church policy and how they react to these messages. Written messages began to arrive at the Office of the Mission regularly. Their content was diverse ^[24] .

Soon after Moscow signed an agreement between Stalin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1943, the German leadership convened a meeting of the Orthodox bishops of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. The meeting was attended by Sergius, Metropolitan of Lithuania, Exarch of Latvia and Estonia, Archbishop Jacob Jelgava, Paul, Bishop of Narva and Daniil, Bishop of Coven. The meeting participants declared Bolshevik fake the appeal of Metropolitan Sergius of Stragorodsky and other bishops to resist the Germans ^[44] .

Major complications with the occupation authorities began at the Exarch in the fall of 1943: the Germans insisted on not recognizing the canonicality of the election of the Bishop's Council in Moscow in September 1943 by Sergius (Stragorodsky) Patriarch. The occupation authorities insisted on holding a conference with a binding resolution against the Patriarch. But the Exarch in the draft resolution did not even mention the name of the High Hierarch, not to mention the dissociation from the Moscow Patriarchate ^[24] . But the mention of the name of Sergius as a patriarch at the service was forbidden by the Germans ^[36] .

On April 28, 1944, the exarch Metropolitan Sergius was killed. The car in which he drove on the way from Vilnius to Riga was shot on the highway near Kovno by people in German military uniforms. His driver and two accompanying people were killed with him.

In the fall of 1944, the restoration of Soviet power in the Baltic states began. At the end of 1943 about. Cyril Zaitz signed a circular so that when the Germans retreat, all church valuables should be removed from the temples and evacuated to Pskov. Then they were loaded into cars and sent to Riga. Among them was the icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God, which later ended up in the United States ^[40] . Some priests also left for Riga, and from there they were transported by boat to Gdansk, and then to Czechoslovakia. All members of the mission, except those who left for the West, were arrested by the NKVD . He was charged with cooperation with the occupation authorities. Many of them were sent to labor camps; most of those who survived the release returned to their native places, where they resumed their ministry ^[35] .

In 2010, Vladimir Khotinenko shot the feature film " Pop ", which tells the story of the priest of the Pskov mission, though his hero, unlike prototypes, was not a staunch opponent of the Soviet state.

Red Army Support

At the same time, in the territories controlled by the USSR, the Russian Orthodox Church supported the Red Army (an appeal to the faithful of the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius of June 22, 1941 was distributed in churches from the first days of the war ^[45] (although it could appear in the press only in 1943 , when the Russian Orthodox Church allowed restore edition of its single organ - the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate , closed in 1935 ^[46] )), including during the siege of Leningrad ^{[45] [47] [48]} , has organized a number of actions in the fight against the Nazi army (transfer de ezhnyh funds in the Defense and the Red Cross funds, collecting clothes and food in the parishes, to raise funds for the construction of the tank column of the Dmitry Donskoi ^[49] ). The hierarchs and the priesthood resisted German policy regarding the Orthodox Church ^{[16] [24] [26] [50]} . The Metropolitan of Kyiv Nikolai Yarushevich was included in the Commission for the Investigation of Fascist Crimes formed in November 1941.

Church Condemnation of Collaborationism

September 8, 1943 Met. Sergius (Stragorodsky) , Met. Alexy (Simansky) , met. Nikolay (Yarushevich) , archbishop. St. Luke (Voyno-Yasenetsky) and 15 other bishops signed a decree condemning the laity and members of the clergy, welcoming the invaders cordially, transferring to their service and betraying their brothers to the Nazis, including partisans and other defenders of the Motherland. Collaborators were compared to Judas Iscariot . The bishops recalled God's judgment on the traitors, proclaimed the eruption of the clergy who had betrayed the Church, and the excommunication of the laity. ^[51]

Prohibition of local churches

In some cases, German occupation authorities prohibited local churches. So, on September 27, 1942, in connection with the assassination of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich , the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia was banned (Orthodox priests shelter a group of Czech agents abandoned from Great Britain and shot Heydrich in the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius ^[52] .). Its Primate Bishop Gorazd and several priests were shot, Church property was confiscated, churches were closed, clergy were arrested and imprisoned, laymen were sent to forced labor in Germany.

Disagreements Regarding General Vlasov

In early September 2009, the ROCOR Synod issued a statement in which it disagreed with those who consider General Vlasov a traitor to Russia. This was a positive response to the book of Archpriest George Mitrofanov, “The Tragedy of Russia. “Forbidden” themes of the history of the 20th century ” ^[53] . The Moscow Patriarchate noted that "part of the old Russian emigration traditionally shares sympathy for Vlasov, and this document of the Synod of Bishops was obviously taken into account in relation to its position." Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the synodal department for relations between the Church and society, said that “there are different assessments of the personality of General Andrei Vlasov, but this should not separate believers” ^[54] .

Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov , chairman of the synodal department for interaction with the Armed Forces, said that "the same thing happened to General Vlasov as the Apostle Judas " ^[55] . The priest emphasized that “if we study the biography of Lieutenant General Vlasov, we will see that these textbook roots of betrayal are completely present there.”

A number of prominent figures of the Russian Orthodox Church (including Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) ^[56] and Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev ^[57] ) condemned the attempts to rehabilitate Vlasov. Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexey Svetozarsky called the book of Archpriest George Mitrofanov “provocative and ideological” ^[58] .

Fascism and the Old Believers

The Old Believers did not accept fascism in any form. The Primate of the Old Orthodox Church of Christ, Archbishop Irinarch, on June 22, 1941, in his address to the faithful, directly called the Nazis invaders, and before that, in 1936, Bishop Savva expressed "heartfelt sympathy" to the people of Spain, who fought against fascism. The vocation of the bishops found the liveliest response among the flock: thousands of Old Believers fought in the ranks of the Red Army and partisans, selflessly worked in the rear. In the occupied territories, priests of the Novozybkovsky diocese were important participants in the resistance. Trying to draw this branch of the Old Believers to their side, the Germans allowed in 1943 to open the cathedral in Novozybkov, but the very first service in it was "for the glory of Russian weapons." In the Baltic States and Karelia, the bespopovtsy of the Old Orthodox Pomeranian Church showed strong resistance to the invaders. In response, the Germans launched mass terror against the Old Believers, the most famous act of which was the destruction of the Old Believer village of Audrini in Latvia on January 2-4, 1942. The Old Believers émigrés also provided serious assistance in the fight against fascism (they sent money to the USSR Defense Fund, joined the armed forces of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, and participated in the Resistance Movement). In 1942, a small letter arrived from Canada along with money from an unknown Old Believer, expressing the entire ideology of the Old Believers in World War II.

Together with you, I cry with bloody tears. Accept help from Russian to Russian in difficult times

The Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church in Romania found itself in the most difficult situation, but it also resisted fascism, disrupting conscription into the Romanian army, conducting anti-fascist propaganda, sheltering Jews and Gypsies from reprisal. For national legionnaires, such an activity became a convenient occasion for the final reprisal against the Old Believers, who were now legally tortured and imprisoned in the concentration camps, from where they promised to release under the condition of "complete loyalty of Romania" (none of the Old Believers took advantage of this right). After the liberation of Romania in 1944, local Old Believers were given the opportunity of legal existence, which is now not interrupted.

During the Nazi rule in Germany, Hitler completely banned the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses. Thousands of representatives of this religion went through concentration camps and prisons, where many of them died. About 200 young people who refused to fight in the Nazi army were executed.

Adolf Hitler actively collaborated with some Muslim religious leaders. From 1941 to 1945, the Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husseini lived in Berlin as an honored guest of Nazi Germany ^[59] .

As reported in a news report from Berlin, "the Fuhrer welcomed the Great Mufti of Jerusalem, one of the most prominent representatives of the Arab national movement." During the meeting, al-Husseini called Hitler “the defender of Islam, ” and he, in turn, promised the Mufti to ban and destroy Jewish elements in the Middle East ^[60] .

In 1938-1939, an expedition to Tibet was carried out by German scientists led by SS Sturmbannführer Ernst Schäfer and under the auspices of Anenerbe . On the basis of anthropometric measurements among Tibetans, “scientific” evidence was found that Tibetans belonged to the ancient Aryans. In addition, the mystic Karl Wiligut , authoritative in the Third Reich , who considered the ancient Germanic epic to be the true German religion, “believed that Balder , who had survived from death, was hiding in the East and founded the Indo-Aryan cult there. Subsequently, which influenced the emergence of Buddhism ” ^[61] . But it was not so simple: Hitler was supported by the so-called. the "red caps" Buddhists of the Nyigma, Kagyu and Sakya schools, while the Gelug Buddhists recognized Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as their leader (mahatma) and actively supported the communists. Although the Galugs do not have many followers, they include Buddhists of the Soviet Union (Buryats, Kalmyks, Tuvans since 1944), as well as Mongols. Therefore, all attempts by the Germans to provoke anti-Soviet uprisings in Buryatia, Kalmykia and Mongolia ended in complete failure, and during the invasion of Kalmykia in 1942, they did not receive mass support from the population and they had to collect absolutely antisocial elements (criminals, former kulaks, as well as the Komsomol and party workers who crossed over during the invasion), whose stamina and combat effectiveness left much to be desired, while Buddhists who fought in the ranks of the Workers' and Peasants th Red Army and the People's Revolutionary Army of Mongolia, became an example of courage and selfless fidelity to duty. Approximately in 1942, the “Red-caps” departed from the support of Nazism, the reason for which was the reprisal against the Buddhist lamas who were sent to Elbrus for meditation, during which they received a revelation that Hitler would be defeated and inevitable punishment for atrocities, for which they were immediately shot . In 1945, by the personal order of Stalin, the Buryats returned the Aginsky and Ivolginsky datsans, the persecution of Buddhism in Mongolia was completely stopped, and the Kalmyks living in the special settlement received wide benefits.

Immediately after coming to power, Hitler banned organizations supporting religious freedom (such as the German League of Freethinkers) ^[49] and organized a “movement against the atheists”. In 1933, he declared: "We started the struggle against the atheistic movement, and it was not limited to a few theoretical declarations: we eradicated it."