Editing Martin Bormann (section)

===Role in ''Kirchenkampf''===
While Article 24 of the [[National Socialist Program]] called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and a ''[[Reichskonkordat]]'' (Reich Concordat) treaty with the [[Holy See|Vatican]] was signed in 1933, purporting to guarantee religious freedom for Catholics, many Nazis believed that Christianity was fundamentally incompatible with Nazism. Bormann, who was strongly anti-Christian, agreed; he stated publicly in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=253}}{{sfn|Shirer|1960|pp=234, 240}} Historian [[Alan Bullock]] comments that out of political expediency, Hitler intended to postpone the elimination of the Christian churches until after the war,{{sfn|Bullock|1999|p=389}} but his repeated hostile statements against the church indicated to his subordinates that a continuation of the ''[[Kirchenkampf]]'' (church struggle) would be tolerated and even encouraged.{{sfn|Kershaw|2008|p=382}} [[Richard Steigmann-Gall]] disagrees with this view.{{sfn|Steigmann-Gall|2003|p=188}}

Bormann was one of the leading proponents of the ongoing persecution of the Christian churches.{{sfn|Speer|1971|p=175}} In February 1937, he decreed that members of the clergy should not be admitted to the Nazi Party. The following year he ruled that any members of the clergy who were holding party offices should be dismissed, and that any party member who was considering entering the clergy had to give up his party membership.{{sfn|Lang|1979|pp=149–150}} While Bormann's push to force the closure of theological departments at Reich universities was unsuccessful, he was able to reduce the amount of religious instruction provided in public schools to two hours per week and mandated the removal of crucifixes from classrooms.{{sfn|Lang|1979|pp=152–154}}{{efn|Hitler later removed the restriction on crucifixes because it was damaging people's morale.{{sfn|Rees|2012}} }} Speer notes in his memoirs that while drafting plans for ''[[Welthauptstadt Germania]]'', the planned rebuilding of Berlin, he was told by Bormann that churches were not to be allocated any building sites.{{sfn|Speer|1971|p=242}}

As part of the campaign against the [[Catholic Church]], hundreds of monasteries in Germany and Austria were confiscated by the Gestapo and their occupants were expelled.{{sfn|Lang|1979|p=221}} In 1941 the Catholic Bishop of Münster, [[Clemens August Graf von Galen]], publicly protested against this persecution and against [[Action T4]], the Nazi [[involuntary euthanasia]] programme under which the mentally ill, physically deformed, and incurably sick were to be killed. In a series of sermons that received international attention, he criticised the programme as illegal and immoral. His sermons led to a widespread [[Nazi euthanasia and the Catholic Church|protest movement among church leaders]], the strongest protest against a Nazi policy up until that point. Bormann and others called for Galen to be hanged, but Hitler and Goebbels concluded that Galen's death would only be viewed as a martyrdom and lead to further unrest. Hitler decided to deal with the issue when the war was over.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=97–99}}

[[George Mosse]] wrote of Bormann's beliefs:
{{block quote|[He believed that] God is present, but as a world-force which presides over the laws of life which the Nazis alone have understood. This non-Christian theism, tied to Nordic blood, was current in Germany long before Bormann wrote down his own thoughts on the matter. It must now be restored, and the catastrophic mistakes of the past centuries, which had put the power of the state into the hands of the Church, must be avoided. The Gauleiters are advised to conquer the influence of the Christian Churches by keeping them divided, encouraging particularism among them...{{sfn|Mosse|2003|p=240}} }}

[[Richard Overy]] describes Bormann as an atheist.{{sfn|Overy|2005|p=465}}