The Teutonic Knights is a Roman Catholic military order . In 1929 , that branch of the Teutonic knights was converted to a purely spiritual Roman Catholic religious order and renamed the Deutscher Orden ( `` German Order '' ) . After Austria 's annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938 , the Teutonic Order was suppressed throughout the GroÃ deutsches Reich until defeat of that regime , although the Nazis used imagery of the medieval Teutonic knights for propagandistic purposes .