Mormon basketball team giving the Nazi Sieg Heil salute.
Note the reference to banned sects in the paragraph above:
Since the National Socialist party have come to power a few sects have been prohibited or restricted, but activities in the “Mormon” church have been carried on about the same as before. As a matter of fact, a number of interesting parallels can be seen between the church and some of the ideas and policies of the National Socialists.
At least one of the banned sects was the JWs. While the Witnesses were getting a purple triangle, the Mormons were finding common ground with the Nazis.
The Nazis eventually became suspicious of the Mormons, but along the way, the church and the National Socialists worked together. For instance, members of the Mormon basketball team, formed to proselytize, found favor in the eyes of the Nazis who called upon them to help with the German national team.
LDS Scholars Alan Keele and Douglas Tobler documented the Mormon tolerance of the Nazis in a 1980 article titled The Fuhrer’s New Clothes. In it, the scholars note that the Mormon leadership as well as individual Mormons tolerated and in some cases embraced the Nazis. In 1939, a LDS official penned another article in praise of the Nazis. According to Keele and Tobler:
In their eagerness to coexist with the [Nazi] government, American officials of the German Church resorted to public relation efforts . . . Probably the clearest example of this tendency is an article by West German Mission President Alfred C. Rees entitled ‘In the Land of the Mormons.’ The article appeared in a special issue of the Nazi Party organ Der Volkische Beobachter dated April 14 1937. In the Editor’s Preface to the article, President Rees is called ‘the representative of the Church in Germany,’ who ‘paints for our readers a portrait of Mormonism today, a church which views the New Germany with sympathy and friendship.’ (p. 27, Fuhrer’s New Clothes).
Keele and Tobler also describe the fate of a young Mormon boy, Helmuth Hubener, who was executed by the Nazis for anti-government activities. The Mormon church excommunicated him after his martyrdom arrest. (Additional note: The original article said he was excommunicated after his death. Instead the church action was taken after his arrest. After the war, in actions taken between 1946 and 1948, the church reversed the excommunication. I am sorry for the original error.)
Glenn Beck told Liberty University that the Bible was the enemy of fascists. However, his own church was not the enemy of Nazi fascists. They did not wear the purple triangle. Without the whole story, it is unseemly for Beck to hold it up as a badge now.
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