It was a war between the Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire from 1618-1648. The Hapsburgs wanted to enforce Catholicism as the prevailing religion throughout Germany, leading to conflict. France chose to support the Protestants at first, fearing that the Hapsburgs would gain too much power if they were successful. Due to the Protestant army’s struggles, France had to enter the war directly to prevent the Hapsburgs from gaining control of Germany. Since rulers wanted their religion to be the sole religion in their country, they forced their own people to convert but that usually led to conflict since other countries were of a different religion (Hansen 365-367). If religion was not included in the governing of a country, hopefully some of this trouble could be avoided. Once again, however, a religious issue led to trouble that typically would start some sort of war, like the Thirty Years’ War, for …show more content…
It should definitely be a help to leaders by making it a bit easier to lead a country without having to factor religion in. In Europe, many wars stemmed from religious issues and ended up costing the countries money, people, and resources. If religion was not a factor in government, then hopefully countries would have less problems to deal with, because religion is no longer an influence.
The USSR had tried to institute an anti-religious campaign in multiple phases. The first phase was from 1921 to 1928, 1928 to 1941, 1958 to 1964, and 1970s-1987 (Shepler 3). In order to totally transform the country, major changes were made, including the rejection of religion. Looking back, it failed for the most part simply because they could never completely abolish the influence that religion had. It had helped to discredit religion and slowly the interest in some sort of religion had started to decline (Shepler