Harassed by the Gestapo and repudiated by most Protestant leaders, the Confessing Church led a perilous existence. In 1935 no fewer than seven hundred Confessing Church pastors were arrested. The movement’s presence was an embarrassment to the Nazis, and its witness to Christ’s lordship over the world implicitly challenged Hitler’s totalitarianism.
When it was obvious that Hitler’s friend Ludwig Müller had failed to unite the Protestant churches, the Führer turned more and more to his anti-Christian Nazis, who claimed that Nazism represented the true fulfillment of Christianity. In 1935 the Nazis created their own Ministry of Church Affairs under a Nazi lawyer, Hanns Kerrl. When Kerrl met resistance from churchmen, he declared, “National Socialism is the doing of God’s will. God’s will reveals itself in German blood. True Christianity is represented by the party.”