Nazi Party
"Deutsche Gemeinschaft" was a branch of the Nazi Party founded in 1919, created for Germans with "Volksdeutsche" status. It is not to be confused with the post-war right-wing "", which was founded in 1949.
Religion in Nazi Germany
During the First and Second World Wars, German Protestant leaders used the writings of Luther to support the cause of German nationalism. On the 450th anniversary of Luther's birth, which fell only a few months after the Nazi Party began its seizure of power in 1933, celebrations were conducted on a large scale by both the Protestant Churches and the Nazi Party. At a celebration in Königsberg, Erich Koch, at that time the Gauleiter of East Prussia, made a speech in which he, among other things, compared Adolf Hitler with Martin Luther and claimed that the Nazis fought with Luther's spirit. Such a speech might be dismissed as mere propaganda, but, as Steigmann-Gall points out: "Contemporaries regarded Koch as a bona fide Christian who had attained his position [as the elected president of a provincial Church synod] through a genuine commitment to Protestantism and its institutions." Even so, Steigmann-Gall states that the Nazis were not a Christian movement.