Religion and Resistance: An Analysis on the Influence of Christianity on the White Rose Resistance Movement

Abstract

Because religion often leads people to do seemingly irrational things, understanding a person’s religion is essential to understand his/her actions. This was especially true in Nazi Germany when religious conviction led some people to risk their lives to do what they believed was right, others allowed their religion to be transformed and co-opted by the Nazis to fit a political agenda while meeting spiritual needs, and still others simply tried to ignore the cognitive dissonance of obeying an authority that was acting in direct contradiction to a spiritual one. This paper will examine the role of Christianity in resistance movements against the Nazis with a focus on the White Rose in an attempt to explain how members of the same religion could have had such drastically different responses to the National Socialists.