Over the next few weeks or so, I intend to translate a few snippets of Prof. Dr. Berndt Hamm’s important paper, “Werner Elert as War Theologian.” In this section, Dr. Hamm writes about a number of sermons Erlangen (Germany) theologian Werner Elert gave during WWII. This seems especially important, since most English-language material treating Elert’s connection to antisemitism and National Socialism deals chiefly with Elert’s published views in the 1930′s and documents Elert submitted to American authorities following the war. Here’s Dr. Hamm:
In this non-sentimental but theologically-programmatic way, Elert experienced and interpreted the German army’s winning campaign against Poland as God’s violent act of war against Germany’s enemies. If our fathers, he asked in February 1940, had once judged correctly about the defeat of Napoleon and his army—“With man and horse and cart, God has defeated them!”—is that not valid today?
“May and must we not also judge so today, if not otherwise by chance, that God Himself is seated in the regiment? Does it not truly give God glory if the leader of the people (Führer des Volkes; Adolf Hitler) has so pronounced what everyone feels, including Christians?”
Here Elert invokes Hitler’s speech, delivered on September 19, 1939 in Danzig (Gdansk), in which [Hitler] utilized the old national-religious verse of the Napoleonic era, “Mit Mann und Ross und Wagen hat sie der Herr geschlagen.“
Berndt Hamm. “Werner Elert als Kriegstheologe.” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. 11(1998):213.
