The Stab-in-the-Back Myth & Christian Anti-Semitism

By Olivia Pierson 
First published on the Good Oil 17th March, 2025

When it comes to the Holocaust, my contention remains that the world has not really come to terms with it. In the online world of pointed insults one can deploy against another person, “Nazi” is still the most venomous. Despite the enormous body of knowledge surrounding the Holocaust, there’s a persistent and lingering ignorance, and a failure to fully confront how such dehumanising horror and cruelty were even made possible.


One of the most disturbing aspects of the Nazi rise to power was the ease with which the stab-in-the-back myth took hold – a truly toxic narrative that falsely blamed Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I. This myth, while politically useful – especially to veterans and Prussian warmongers – was amplified by a foul alliance between Nazi ideology and Christian theology, which helped justify the genocide of six million Jews in Christian Europe during the mid 20th Century.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler capitalised on a country already in horrific turmoil by its own design. Germany, ravaged by the Great War and then rightly held accountable by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, was desperate for its honour to be rescued. Of the 60 million-odd Germans at that time, Jews made up less than one per cent yet, after the war, they became the scapegoats for Germany’s defeat. The stab-in-the-back myth held that Germany’s military leaders had not lost the war on the battlefield, but were betrayed by civilians, particularly Jews, who had undermined the war effort from within and signed the harsh Treaty.

The terms of the Versailles Treaty were actually far less severe than what Germany had in mind to impose upon its enemies had it won the war. One only need to read the memorandum known as the Septemberprogramm, written by Kurt Riezler, secretary to Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, for a rundown of Germany’s war aims.

The myth found fertile ground in a nation where Christianity was deeply ingrained in the cultural and social fabric. For centuries, antisemitism had been woven into Christian doctrine, with Jews depicted as the killers of Christ (or killers of God), which is peculiar considering the Romans actually crucified him.

The Jewish Sanhedrin of that time were forbidden under Roman law to use capital punishment at all. The role they did play was to hand Jesus over to Pilate, Judea’s governor. Yet, if anyone reads the synoptic gospels concerning Jesus’ anguish in Gethsemane, he prays in pure distress for “the cup of suffering to be removed” from him, as he was intelligent and obviously read the room: upstart Jews were a threat to the peace – and Rome crucified ‘revolutionaries’ of every stripe, especially if they had a populist/religious following. But he was delivered up to the Romans and did not put up a fight, unlike his disciple Peter, whom Jesus rebuked after Peter cut off a soldier’s ear in resistance. This tells me that Christ went willingly to his death as a matter of personal resolve and conviction; something I do not pretend to understand.


This narrative of Jewish betrayal, based on centuries-old religious prejudices, was heightened in the Nazi era and was fused with political and racial ideology. Christian leaders, both Catholic and Protestant, did not just passively accept this new antisemitism – they supported it.

In Nazi Germany, despite the brave protestations of some Christian leaders, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others, the Christian church’s role in antisemitism became undeniable. The Lutheran church, in particular, was complicit in helping to legitimise the Nazi regime’s persecution of Jews.

Martin Luther, the 16th century monk of the Augustinian Order and founder of Protestantism, had made infamous statements about Jews in his later years, advocating for their expulsion, and so did John Calvin, founder of Calvinism, the Reformation faith. These ideas were preached from the pulpit by many in the church during the Nazi period. Catholic leaders such as Pope Pius XII, while less openly vocal, failed to outrightly condemn the Nazis and their brutal evacuations of Jews from Italy, steadily playing a role of political ‘neutrality’ according to the Reichskonkordat agreement between the Holy See and the German Reich. This amalgam of religious authority and state power helped create a cultural climate where the genocide of Jews could be enacted.

For many Germans, it was easy to reconcile their Christian faith with the Nazi ideology of racial purity and hatred. Christianity’s historical role in promoting Jewish exclusion was a convenient foundation for the Nazis to build upon. The stab-in-the-back myth fed into this, presenting Jews not just as political traitors but as an existential threat to the nation’s religious and cultural identity. The idea that Jews were responsible for the collapse of pre-World War I Christian Germany became an effective tool for stirring up hatred, and many Christian Germans were either complicit in, or passive towards, the horrors that followed.

Today, this uncomfortable truth remains hard for many to reconcile. How could a Christian nation, a people so deeply rooted in the teachings of compassion and love, justify the systematic extermination of millions of Jews? The question remains, and we must confront it head on. It’s a moral reckoning that hasn’t been fully addressed, even decades after the war.

Modern-day antisemitism, much like the stab-in-the-back myth, still echoes in some halls of Christianity today. The resurgence of antisemitism, particularly online, is augmented by the same prejudices that were present in the early 20th century. New convert to Catholicism, Candace Owens, is a stark exemplar of this despicable trend. She tweets out “Christ is King” every five minutes, yet proudly accepts her “antisemite of the year” award, as she continues to rag on “the Joos, the Joos,” whenever a microphone happens to be in front of her sorry arse.


While the explicit support of genocide is not prominent (outside of Islam), the roots of Christian antisemitism chillingly continue to influence modern discourse, particularly in circles where the demonisation of Jews takes center stage, as Israel conducts a retaliatory war to conquer rabid jihadists intent on murdering, raping and butchering Jews, again, of any age or status, as we have recently seen with the little Bibas brothers. The likes of Candace Owens are silent on that horrific and dehumanising atrocity.

The Holocaust didn’t emerge in a vacuum, and the myths and ideologies that supported it are far from erased. The role of Christianity in perpetuating these ideas remains a very difficult and uncomfortable truth – and I say that as a Christian. But by acknowledging our own murky history, we may begin to smash the verbal power-plays which allow undue hate to grow and flourish.