On the CMI website, Russell Grigg tries to set the record straight:

Elimination of the Jews in Nazi Germany was not confined to the Holocaust. It also took the form of rewriting the New Testament to ‘dejudaize’ it, i.e., to remove references to Judaism and to recast Jesus as an Aryan, generating what has been called the ‘Nazi Bible’. This has been the subject of some sensational and substantially erroneous claims, including that the project was Hitler’s brainchild.

In 1930s Germany, the ‘German Christians’ (Deutsche Christen) movement arose. These were theologically liberal Protestant churches and theologians who were enthusiastically pro-Nazi, calling Hitler the ‘Führer Jesus’ and ‘God’s agent in our day’. Politically ambitious and anti-Semitic, they wanted a faith without anything Jewish in the Bible, and without converted Jews in the Church. Their ultimate membership of 600,000 constituted about 30 percent of German Protestants.

In opposition to this, the so-called ‘Confessing Church’ (Bekennende Kirche) movement arose, ultimately attracting some 20 percent of Protestant pastors. It included notable opponents of Hitler such as Karl Barth, Martin Niemöller, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, some of its members were inclined to take other liberties with the plain meaning of the biblical text, and some were even ideologically anti-Semitic, despite wanting to retain Christian Jews in the church.

Adolf Hitler was responsible for many heinous things, but according to Grigg “there is no evidence (despite some sensationalized claims to the contrary) that Hitler ordered the ‘Nazi Bible’ project.”

And the project itself was a privately-funded affair:

Its goal was to redefine Christianity as a Germanic religion, whose founder, Jesus, was not just a non-Jew, but was an anti-Jew (a proto-Nazi) who had fought to destroy Judaism, dying as a victim in that struggle. According to [Walter] Grundmann [the project’s director], the Bible needed to be restored to its pristine condition—purged of its Jewishness which was due to the distortions of history. Protestants had to overcome Judaism, he declared, just as Luther had overcome Catholicism in the Reformation.

In this so-called ‘Nazi Bible’, of which 200,000 copies were produced but only two or three are known to exist:

Jewish references were retained only where they were deemed negative to Judaism. Omitted were the genealogies of Jesus linking him to the OT [Old Testament] patriarchs. The baby Jesus was brought to the temple to bring him to God, but was merely given a name, not circumcized. In the Sermon on the Mount, there was no blessing for the merciful. The Sabbath became ‘holiday’.

The text associated Jesus with Galilee. Liberal German theologians had taught since the early 1900s that Galilee was supposedly populated by racially Aryan Gentiles in the 8th century B.C. following the Assyrian conquest of Israel, thereby opposing Jesus’ identity as a Jew.

In a different publication from Grundmann’s institute, the Ten Commandments were rewritten and expanded to Twelve:

1.  Honor God and believe in him wholeheartedly.
2.  Seek out the peace of God.
3.  Avoid all hypocrisy.
4.  Holy is your health and life.
5.  Holy is your well-being and honor.
6.  Holy is your truth and fidelity.
7.  Honor your father and mother—your children are your aid and your example.
8.  Keep the blood pure and the marriage holy.
9.  Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers.
10.  Be ready to help and forgive.
11.  Honor your Führer and master.
12.  Joyously serve the people with work and sacrifice.

You might think the Nazis would be grateful to these anti-Semitic “Christians.” However:

The Institute’s perverse attempt to marry Christianity to Nazism was not reciprocated by the Nazis, who were deeply suspicious of all things Christian. They tolerated the Institute, but at times even mocked it, and kept it under secret surveillance by the intelligence arm of the SS. In March 1943, they confirmed their lack of sympathy for Grundmann by drafting him into military service on the dreaded Eastern (Russian) Front [which he survived to become a Communist spy in the 1950s].

More details can be found in Grigg’s article, “Did Hitler Rewrite the Bible?”.