central element in the discursive practice of extermination...", and the language of Social Darwinism, in its Nazi variant, helped to remove all restraint from the directors of the "terroristic and exterminatory" policies of the regime, by "persuading them that what they were doing was justified by history, science and nature". Fest considers that Hitler simplified de Gobineau's elaborate ideas of struggle for survival among the different races, from which the Aryan race, guided by providence, was supposed to be the torchbearers of civilization. In his rhetoric Hitler fed on the old accusation of Jewish deicide. It has been speculated that Christian anti-Judaism influenced Hitler's ideas, especially such works as Martin Luther's essay On the Jews and Their Lies and the writings of Paul de Lagarde. Others disagree with this view. Hitler biographer Toland writes that in 1941 Hitler was still "a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite his detestation of its hierarchy" and adhered to "its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of Godso long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty." In the aftermath of World War II, a Soviet major who asserted Hitler's survival speculated that "It is possible that the man wishes to surround himself with the legend of Jesus Christ," implying that the escaped dictator would ape a main tenet of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus. Hitler's policies towards religion Smaller religious minorities faced harsher repression, with the Jews of Germany expelled for extermination on the grounds of Nazi racial theories. Jehovah's Witnesses were ruthlessly persecuted for refusing both military service and allegiance to Hitler's movement. Role of religion in the Nazi state Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. It desired the subordination of church to state. Nevertheless, Nazi Germany was not formally atheist, and other than for Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses, religious observance was permitted. Julian Baggini wrote that Hitler's Germany was not a "straightforwardly atheist state", but one which "sacralized" notions of blood and nation. Hitler feared the results of overt attacks on the deep-rooted German churches, as around two thirds of Germans were Protestant and most of the rest were Roman Catholic. German conservative elements, such as the officer corps of the army, opposed Nazi efforts