Himmler's daughter Gudrun was born in 1929, when Himmler still nominally a 'Protestant' (leaving aside what exactly that meant to him at the time and how observant he was). Historians and humorists alike counter-point Himmler's radical shift from chicken farmer to architect of SS and concentration camps as an example of the dramatic transformation of both Himmler and Germany - it is true that in the 1920's he lead a fairly traditional domestic life, his family's Protestantism would have been imbedded in that. Although certainly we can now see that seeds were there for Himmler's anti-Christian stance in the 1920's, it wasn't until the early 1930's, particularly after the Nazis assumed power, that Himmler began crystallizing in theory and action his 'Germanic' or 'Teutonic' ideology which formalized an anti-Christian position.

In popular consciousness the 'Nazi ideology' is seen as a fixed belief system born whole in Hitler's Mein Kampf, in fact it changed and developed over time and found different expressions in the various leaders of the Nazi regime. Ideology is not a book one takes from the shelf and deploys in life - it is lived and influenced by social conditions. For example, as Himmler gathered together academics under his 'research institute' the Ahnenerbe his theories of race and history began not only to concretize, but also what must be done to the enemies of those beliefs, or those he felt stood in the way, developed and changed. By the late 1930's he would speak of liquidating the Protestant church.