Over on the Axis side, one belligerent nation could most sincerely claim to have God on its side, for Japan was ruled by a living deity — a lineal descendant of the Sun Goddess. The Japanese believed that the reason why they had never been defeated in the 2,600 years existence of the Yamato race was that: "We are guarded by the god above." Of course, in a sophisticated modern society like Japan, the precise mix of Buddhism, Shinto and Confucius was highly individual, but one thing was not a matter for agnosticism. Hirohito was the focus for the kokutai, the unique virtues which bound Japanese society and which elevated the Japanese above all other races. This belief was central to the mentality of men who suffered the greatest proportionate casualties of the war, 1,600 bullets being required to kill each one of 10,000 Japanese defending Peleliu in September 1944, men who believed that as they died they became martyrs for their divine emperor. "I shall fall smiling and singing songs. Please visit and worship at Yasukuni Shrine this spring. There I shall be a cherry blossom, smiling with many other colleagues. I died smiling so please smile. Please do not cry. Make my death meaningful," wrote one 20-year-old kamikaze pilot before his premeditated suicide.  

Every German soldier (except for the SS) had "Gott mit uns" inscribed on his belt buckle. Himmler preferred his men to be God-believing for without belief there could be no fanaticism, while atheism would elide Nazism with communism in ways that were politically unhelpful. 

The regime grew out of a political movement which had significantly mobilised north German Protestants, despite its leader being an Austrian lapsed Catholic who had become a German citizen only in 1932. That is not to say there were not Catholic Nazis, but merely that the latter were more heavily invested in Weimar through the Centre Party, which was vital to all the Republic's coalitions. Popes Pius XI and XII deplored all forms of totalitarianism and practised neutrality in wartime, with a pronounced tilt to the Allied side as Nazi barbarity became unmistakable. 

Much of the Nazi movement's domestic political pitch derived from its claim to be remoralising German society after the decadent Weimar Republic. Hitler repeatedly claimed to be "doing the Lord's work" or to see God's Will in his own actions. In fact, like communists, the Nazis deified an historical mechanism, in their case pitiless racialism rather than dialectical materialism. This was camouflaged in a redemptive national myth, with Hitler, rather than a saviour social class, at the centre of an idolatrous Führer cult. Although the Nazis gave full vent to anticlericalism, they were also certain that sooner rather than later science would triumph and abstained from physically wiping the churches out. None of which should excuse clergy from both major German denominations for blessing, from afar or in the field, the invasion of the Soviet Union as a crusade against godless Bolshevism, a task made easier by Hitler's restoration of religious institutions in the occupied territories.