This article gives an overview about religion in Nazi Germany and the Nazis' complex and shifting policy towards religion. The German census of May 1939 indicates that 54 percent of Germans considered themselves Protestant and 40 percent considered themselves Catholic, with only 3.5 percent claiming to be neo-pagan "believers in God," and 1.5 percent unbelievers. This census came more than six years into the Hitler era.

Christianity in Germany has, since the Protestant Reformation, been divided into Catholicism and Protestantism. As a specific outcome of the Reformation in Germany, the large Protestant denominations are organized into Landeskirchen (roughly: Federal Churches). The German word for denomination is Konfession, however, this translation has been considered misleading, since it might suggest that the context of religion in Germany could be described with the common parabola of the religious marketplace, which is not the case. In Germany, "to this day religion nominally remains a state affair." For the large churches in Germany (Catholic and evangelisch) the German government collects the church tax, which is then given to the Churches. For this reason, membership in the Catholic or Protestant (evangelische) Church is officially registered. It is important to keep this official aspect in mind when turning to such questions as the religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels. Both men had ceased to attend Catholic mass or to go to Confession long before 1933, but neither had officially left the Church or refused to pay his church taxes. For this reason, historian Richard Steigmann-Gall argues that "nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context" and determining ones actual religious convictions should be based on other criteria.

The Third Reich, also Nazi Germany, is the common name for Germany when it was a totalitarian state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). On 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, quickly eliminating all opposition to rule as sole leader. The state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Historians have emphasized the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Kessel writes, "Overwhelmingly...Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal..." Under the "leader principle", the Führer's word was above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and curry favor with the Führer. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of the Autobahns. The return to prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity; the suppression of all opposition made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged.

Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.

A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.

Mark Edward Weber (b. Portland, Oregon, October 9, 1951) is the director of the Institute for Historical Review, an American Holocaust denial organization based in southern California.

Weber has been associated with the IHR since 1991 and has been the Institute Director since 1995. For nine years he was editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review.

Weber was born in Portland, Oregon in 1951. After graduating from Jesuit High School in 1969, he studied history in Chicago at the University of Illinois. He continued his studies for two semesters at the University of Munich, and, returning to Oregon, took a B.A. degree in history with high honors from Portland State University. In graduate school, he continued his study of history at Indiana University, receiving an M.A. degree in modern European history in 1977.

Claudia Ann Koonz is an American feminist historian of Nazi Germany. Her principal area of interest is the experience of women during the Nazi era.

Koonz first came to fame in 1969 with a dissertation on Walther Rathenau. She was awarded a PhD from Rutgers University in 1970. She has taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and at Duke University.

Koonz is best known for documenting the appeal of Nazism to German women, and that German women played an enthusiastic role in supporting the Nazi regime. Koonz has established that the leaders of German feminist groups were happy to go along with Gleichschaltung that coerced Germans into following Nazi policy. Koonz has noted that female supporters of the Nazis accepted the Nazi division of the sexes into a public sphere for men and a private sphere for women. Koonz has claimed that women involved in resistance activities were more likely to escape notice owing to the 'masculine' values of the Third Reich. Another notable claim made by Koonz is that women who most successfully asserted themselves in the Third Reich were also the women who violated the norms of civilized society such as Ilse Koch. Koonz maintains that only women who were opposed to Nazism 100% can be considered to be a resistance; those women who protested against sterilization and the Action T4 program, but who did not protest the deportation of Jews to death camps are not considered by Koonz to be part of the resistance. Koonz's views have often had her pitted against Gisela Bock in battle some have referred to as the Historikerinnenstreit (Women Historians' Dispute).