frogprince:

Unfortunately, the politicians understand and will use your "my religion's not like them" bit, against you and all the rest of us.

The religious fundamentalists that the Natzis recruited were Vatican Rome. Look up "The Concordat of 1933" on the web. It was the first international treaty recognizing the new German government, and it was essential in establishing "credibility" of the new government in international politics. It also established the Vatican version of Catholicism as the official state religion in Germany.

Nominally, the Church appears to have believed that they were only "restoring God" to a devout people, but their fundie pograms were used by the Natzi regime to break down civil liberties, destroy the courts, suspend laws, and launch the Reich. The somewhat more liberal German Catholic Church, prior to 1933, was one of the few more or less organized groups able to speak out against new political actions, and it was obliterated by the "Vatican Fundies," in a single stroke, by the treaty.

Incidentally, from the Rolling Stones article on Brownback:

"When he ran for the House he was a Methodist. By the time he ran for the Senate he was an evangelical. Now he has become a Catholic."

John