He termed it a “mistake” to “defend the authenticity and infallibility of the Bible.”[1] In 1933, when a professor of theology at the University of Erlangen, and probably the leading Luther authority of his day, he welcomed the emergence to power of Adolf Hitler - "Our Protestant churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God".
Having welcomed the National Socialist rise to power as a 'divine gift and miracle' in 1933, he nonetheless served after the end of the Second World War as the inaugural head of the internal university denazification commission.
[3] However, on 31 January 1947, after his involvement in National Socialism became public, he was removed from his post by the American military government in the course of its own denazification process.
Althaus' view of the people (das Volk) as an order of creation led to his contentious declarations about National Socialism and Judaism.
Already in Althaus' writings before 1933, however, there were antisemitic views such as the idea of 'the people' (das Volk) as one of the orders of creation (in Luther's sense).
In 1933 Althaus and his colleague Werner Elert drafted a report for the Erlangen Faculty of Theology on a planned 'Aryan paragraph' for the Protestant Reich Church (Reichskirche).
It is awarded 'as a mark of respectful and grateful recognition for outstanding contributions to the Free State of Bavaria and the Bavarian people'.