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Hitler aimed to establish in Germany a totalitarian dictatorship, one in which the state would control all aspects of people's lives. This involved making sure that people did not have loyalties that were stronger than their loyalties to the state. In a country that in many ways was still strongly Christian. It was important therefore for Hitler to do all he could to prevent the Christian Churches from becoming a source of opposition to his rule.
Hitler himself bad no time for Christianity and hoped eventually to do away with it altogether. In the short term, he did not make these views widely known, realising that they would lose him a lot of support. With the Lutheran or Protestant Church, to which most Germans belonged, Hitler's aim was to turn it into a branch of the Nazi State. To do this he made sure that a Nazi pastor was chosen as the bishop in charge of the new Reich Church that he hoped to set up after 1933.
... when God commands us to speak we are not prepared to remain silent just because men order us to do so... we must obey God rather than man.
The fate of Niemoeller and many other members of the Confessional Church was the same as that of other opponents of Hitler. In the late 1930s many of its leaders were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Niemoeiler was to remain in Dachau concentration camp until the end of the war in 1945.
Hitler had less success in gaining control over the Roman Catholic Church, though the agreement or concordat signed between the government and the Roman Catholic Church in 1933 pleased many Roman Catholics. Relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Nazis got worse later in the 1930s and though many Roman Catholics continued to go along with Hitler, others - priests, nuns and laymen - paid for their opposition with their lives.
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Most German Protestants, both pastors and ordinary people, seemed happy that their church should be associated with the Nazi regime. A minority, led by Pastor Martin Niemoeller, broke away and formed a separate Confessional Church. These Protestants condemned many aspects of Nazism as anti-Christian. In the last sermon that he was allowed to preach, Niemoeiler made clear their position: