On November 9, 1938, Nazi forces smashed windows and set fire to 1,400 synagogues all across Germany and Austria and destroyed thousands of Torah scrolls. Many of the acts demolishing the scrolls were deliberately made a public spectacle. In one small town, the scrolls were sent rolling down a street as Hitler Youth on bicycles rode over them. In Berlin, the scrolls were burned in a major public square. As Torah scrolls burned in a synagogue's yard in Düsseldorf, German men, some wearing the robes of the rabbis and cantors, danced around the fire. It became known as the "Night of Broken Glass," or Kristillnacht in German.

The passionate hatred was intense and pervasive. But for the Nazis, it was also purposeful. In his book, A World Without Jews, professor Alon Confino argues that in order for the Nazi imagination to flourish they had to cut themselves off from everything Jewish, including the Hebrew Scriptures. The symbolic, very public act of burning the Old Testament scrolls would liberate Germany from the constraints of Judeo-Christian morals, ethics, and beliefs.

Dr. Confino writes, "[Burning the Hebrew Bible scrolls] … was a project to construct a new German Christianity that would owe nothing to the Jews and to other Christian Europeans. The enslavement of Europeans [to the Nazi's worldview] … depended on the destruction of the Jews first." On February 3, 1944, the Reich Press Office announced "the Jewish question is the key to world history."

Possible Preaching Angles: Bible; Old Testament; Scripture; Ten Commandments—The Nazis actually had the correct strategy for their goal. In others words, in order to re-imagine life without Christian roots, they had to start by getting rid of the Old Testament. As Christians, we will also cut ourselves off from our roots if we don't start with the Old Testament.