Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-lvwk9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-06T09:11:06.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Totalitarianism: Questions about Catholic Resistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Michael Phayer
Michael Phayer
Affiliation:
A professor in the history department at Marquette University.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

After the war was over leading Catholic laity and the lower clergy pointed their finger at their bishops, faulting them for not having the backbone and willpower to stand up to Hitler. Was this fair? Bishops said they tempered their criticism of Nazism because Hitler punished their priests rather than them. Were the bishops being candid and forthright with this statement? If so, was this the right strategy? Jesuits urged the bishops to become active in the Kreisau Circle of resistance. They did not. Should they have? Pope Pius XII gave the German bishops freedom to do as they saw fit regarding speaking out about the Holocaust. They spoke only guardedly. Should they have said more? The Concordat, the agreement between the Vatican and the German government, surprised German Catholics who had been warned again and again about Nazism. Was the Concordat a mistake? Once signed, should the church have stuck to it once Nazi racial policy had become manifest? There was an active Catholic resistance circle in Berlin. Were there others? If not, why not? Questions about Catholic resistance run on and on. Are they worth probing, trying to answer? In the end no matter what is said about Catholic resistance, the six million will have perished. And, in the end, no German managed to put an end to Hitler, although the Swabian Catholic, Klaus von Stauffenberg, came close. Is a discussion about Catholic resistance an exercise in futility?

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , June 2001 , pp. 328 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Dirks papers; 1960 R-Z.Google Scholar

2. Marquette University Archives, Riedl Papers, Box 2, Catholic Church and Nazism File. John Riedl, a Marquette University professor, held the position of Director of Internal Affairs and Communications in the Allied Religious Affairs Committee division of OMGUS.Google Scholar

3. Brecher, August, Die katholishe Kirchenzeitung för das Bistum Aachen im Dritten Reich (Aachen: Einhard, 1988), 107. The office was called the Informationsstelle för die kirchliche Presse.Google Scholar

4. Brecher, 109.Google Scholar

5. Brecher, 104.Google Scholar

6. Lemhöfer, Ludwig, “Zur tapferen Pflichterfüllung Gerufen. Die Katholiken in Adolf Hitler Krieg,” in Katholische Kirche und NS-Staat, eds. Kringels-Kemen, Monika and Lemhöfer, Ludwig (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1981), 87.Google Scholar

7. Bundesarchiv Abteilung Potsdam, Reichsministerium für den kirchlichen Angelegenheiten 21793 Bischofskonferenzen. This report was filed by a Gestapo agent who paraphrased the bishop's words; thus, it is not a direct quote.Google Scholar

8. Corsten, Wilhelm, ed., Kölner Aktenstücke zur Lage der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland, 1933–1945 (Koln: J. P. Bachem, 1949), 255.Google Scholar See also, Hamerow, Theodore S., On the Road to the Wolfs Lair: German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 305.Google Scholar

9. Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, 38, 218–20. For the full text, see my article on “Nazism and Some German Bishops,” Continuum 1 (1990): 150.Google Scholar

10. Friedlander, Saul, Pius XII and the Third Reich (New York: Knopf, 1966);Google Scholarsee the pope's letter to Cardinal Preysing, 135–45.Google Scholar

11. Hürtgen, Robert, “Untergang und Neubeginn, Köln in den Jahren 1942–1946,” in Kardwal Frings, ed. Froitzheim, Dieter (Köln: Wienand, 1980), 238ff.Google Scholar

12. Kranz, Gisbert, Eine katholische jugend im Dritten Reich. Erinnerungen, 1921–1947 (Freiburg: Herder, 1990).Google Scholar See my fuller discussion of this in Phayer, Michael, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2000), chap. 5.Google Scholar

13. Beilmann, Christel, “Eine Jugend im katholischen Milieu. Zum Verhältnis von Glaube und Widerstand,” in Piraten, Swings und Junge Garde, ed. Breyvogel, Wilfried (Bonn: Dietz, 1991), 57–73.Google Scholar

14. Repgen, Konrad, “Kardinal Frings im Rückblick-Zeitgeschichtliche Kontroverspunkte einer könftigen Biographie,” Historisches Jahrbuch 100 (1980): 309.Google Scholar

15. Repgen, Konrad, “Das Wesen des christlichen Widerstandes,” 13–20 of Christliches Exil und christlicher Widerstand, eds. Frühwald, W. and Hürten, H. (Regensburg: Pustet, 1987), 16.Google Scholar

16. This resulted from a conscious decision the bishops made in 1937 to administer the sacraments and preach the word, but let lay people engage in resistance if they wished. See Konrad Repgen, “Das Wesen des christlichen Widerstandes,” 16.Google Scholar

17. This would mean that the bishops could only speak out about Catholic “Jews,” converts. Since the Nazis did not recognize that conversion altered Jews racially, they would not have entertained protests on this score.Google Scholar

18. For more information on this topic see my article, “The Catholic Resistance Circle in Berlin and German Catholic Bishops during the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7 (1993): 216–29;CrossRefGoogle ScholarI also have chapters on each woman in the book that Eva Fleischner and I authored, Cries in the Night: Women Who Challenged the Holocaust (Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1997), chaps. 2 and 7;Google Scholarsee also, chap. 7 of Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust.Google Scholar

19. Klemperer, Victor, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of Nazi Years, 2 vols., trans. Chalmers, Martin (New York: Random House, 1998 and 2000).Google Scholar

20. Deutschercaritasverband house archives (henceforth, DCV) R 611 II; report on Luckner's 1950 visit to England.Google Scholar

21. London Jewish Chronicle, 13 01 1950.Google Scholar

22. Much of the material on Luckner in this essay comes from an interview of her and Marie Schiffer by Dietrich and Ursula Goldschmidt, Barbara Schieb, and Elizabeth von Thadden on 27 10 1988 in Berlin. I am indebted to Dietrich Goldschmidt for lending me the written transcript of the interview.Google Scholar

23. Myszor, Jerzy, Stosunki Kosciol-Panstwo Okupacyjne W Diecezji Katowkkiej, 1939–1945 (unpublished manuscript: Katowice, 1992), 266.Google Scholar

24. It is difficult to deduce from the 1988 interview of Luckner exactly when she knew that Jews were being murdered in Poland. In the interview she says that she finally knew for certain only after her own incarceration at Ravensbrück in 1943. But other passages in the interview suggest earlier knowledge. It seems likely that after more than forty years Luckner's memory no longer retained chronological details accurately.Google Scholar

25. For a more detailed discussion of Sommer, see Phayer and Fleischner, Cries in the Night, chap. 2.Google Scholar

26. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness.Google Scholar

27. See the case of Werner and Stella Borcher in Phayer and Fleischner, Cries in the Night, 28.Google Scholar

28. Globke, a Catholic, may have been suffering from a bad conscience. He was responsible for writing many of the manuals that instructed Germans and then other Europeans what measures could be legally undertaken against Jews. Sommer did not exonerate his work just because he divulged genocide secrets to her, but she admitted that he did play a dangerous double game. See the Sommer file, I/1–103, in the Berlin diocesan archives.Google Scholar

29. Baron, Lawrence, “The Historical Context of Rescue,” The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, eds. P, Samuel. and Oliner, Pearl M. (New York: Free, 1988), 24.Google Scholar

30. Bleistein, Roman, , S.J., Alfred Delp (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1989), 261.Google Scholar

31. Rösch, Augustin, Kampf Gegen den Nationalsozialismus, ed. Bleistein, Roman (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1985), 206.Google Scholar

32. Bleistein, Roman, , S.J., “Lothar Koenig,” Stimmen der Zeit 204 (1986): 321.Google Scholar

33. Bleistein, “Koenig,” 320.Google Scholar

34. Lewy, Guenter, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 307.Google Scholar

35. Bucker, Vera, Die Schulddiskussion im deutschen Katholizismus nach 1945 (Bochum: Studienverlag Brockmeyer, 1989), 166.Google Scholar

36. Bleistein, Delp, 281.Google Scholar

37. Roon, Ger van, Neuordnung im Widerstand (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1967), 241.Google Scholar

38. Interview of Gertrud Luckner and Marie Schiffer. Page 98 of the written transcript.Google Scholar

39. Bleistein, Delp, 278.Google Scholar

40. Bleistein, Delp, 257.Google Scholar

41. Bleistein, Delp, 288.Google Scholar

42. Bleistein, Delp, 284.Google Scholar

43. Frankfurter Hefte 1/8 (1946): 715–33.Google Scholar

44. Bishop Muench, who certainly did not agree with these comments, noted them in his diary; see Catholic University Archives, 37/1–4, Muench's Diary from 10 04 1947, to 12 November 1947.Google Scholar

45. Adenauer to Bernard Custodis; 23 February 1946, quoted Mensing, Hans Peter, ed., Konrad Adenauer Briefe Über Deutschland, 1945–1951 (n.p.: Corso, 1983), 32ff.Google Scholar

46. See chap. 6 of Phayer, Catholic Church and the Holocaust.Google Scholar

47. Bleistein, Delp, 289.Google Scholar