Theologians Under Hitler

The documentary film, "Theologians Under Hitler," examines post-war Allied revisionism and the portrait of a German church unified, defiant against Nazism. Historical research uncovers a very different story.
The film, scheduled for PBS nationwide release beginning in November (check local listings), is an effort by producer Steven D. Martin and his company; Vital Visuals, Inc. ( www.vitalvisuals.com ) to ask what this history teaches us about religious faith, institutions, ourselves and evil.
Based upon the research of Robert Erickson, Ph.D. (Pacific Lutheran University), the film introduces the viewer to three of the greatest Christian scholars of the twentieth century: Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Gerhard Kittel, men who were also outspoken supporters of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In 1933 Althaus spoke of Hitler's rise as "a gift and miracle of God." Hirsch saw 1933 as a "sunrise of divine goodness." And Kittel, the editor of the standard reference work on the Jewish Background of the New Testament, began working for the Nazis to find a "moral" rationale for the destruction of European Jewry.