Like the engineers of that proverbial railway bridge, the Nazis
 worked relentlessly to replace the nuts and bolts of traditional 
Christianity with a new political religion. The shrewdest way to accomplish 
this was to co-opt Christianity via the Gleichschaltung
 while at the same time shrinking traditional religion’s role in civil society. 
To this end, Hitler was downright Bismarckian. The German 
historian Götz Aly explains how Hitler purchased popularity with
 lavish social welfare programs and middle-class perks, often paid for
 with stolen Jewish wealth and high taxes on the rich. Hitler banned
 religious charity, crippling the churches’ role as a counterweight to
the state.