Everything is due to God's blessing Nazi propaganda poster featuring a religious quote, a swastika, and barley

German poster with an image of barley stalks overlaid on a swastika, and a religious-themed message, “Everything is due to God's blessing”. By 1934, when this poster was distributed, Germany was struggling to cope with the consequences of the Great Depression. Six million Germans were unemployed and struggled to obtain food. Organized religion, specifically the Protestant Church, was one of the main pillars of German society. The country had approximately 45 million Protestant Christians, 22 million Catholic Christians, 500,000 Jews, and 25,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses. The quotation on the poster exemplifies Germany’s religious and cultural values, while the imagery of the growing barley overlaid on the swastika implies the coming abundance the Nazi government would provide. The religious quote combined with the large swastika may also be an attempt to imply that Nazi rule and power is derived from God, which would absolve the party leadership from adhering to any man-made authority. The relationship between the Nazi party and religion was complex. Initially, the Party was not openly hostile to the Protestant and Catholic Churches; however, the Party believed that Christianity and Nazism were ideologically incompatible. In 1933, the Reich Church was established to advocate a form of Nazi Christianity that excluded the Old Testament, which was considered a Jewish document. The Nazi government also signed a Concordat with the Vatican, stating it would recognize the Nazi regime, which would in turn would not interfere in the Catholic Church. However, the Concordat was broken by the Nazis in 1935, with the passage of anti-religious policies, to undermine the church’s influence.