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Between ‘National Community’ and ‘Milieu’: German Catholics at War, 1939–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2017

THOMAS BRODIE
THOMAS BRODIE*
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Turl Street, Oxford, OX1 3DW, UK; [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines German Catholics’ sense of community and identity during the Second World War. It analyses how far they were able to reconcile their religious faith with support for Nazism and the German war effort and questions the extent to which Catholicism in the Rhineland and Westphalia represented either a sealed confessional subculture or a homogenising Nazified ‘national community’ (Volksgemeinschaft). The article argues that, in their pure forms, neither of these analytical paradigms accounts for the complexities of German Catholics’ attitudes during this period, which were far more contested and diverse than outlined by much existing historiography. Religious socialisation, Nazi propaganda and older nationalist traditions shaped Catholics’ mentalities during the Third Reich, creating a spectrum of opinion concerning the appropriate relationship between these influences and loyalties. At the level of lived experience, Catholics’ memberships of religious and national communities revealed themselves to be highly compatible, a tendency which in turn exerted a restraining influence on church–state conflict in wartime Germany.

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Articles
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Contemporary European History , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 421 - 440
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

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4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., 4. For an enlightening discussion of the Song of the Good Comrade’s popularity on the nationalist right prior to 1933, its place within the Nazi movement and its on-going presence in West Germany during the 1950s, see Gregor, Neil, Haunted City: Nuremberg and the Nazi Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 165–6Google Scholar.

8 Report, 16 Jan. 1943, Stadtarchiv Münster, Stadt DOK Nr 55.1.

9 Ibid. By 1943 the Cheka had been renamed the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs: NKVD.

10 http://www.muenster.de/stadt/kriegschronik/chronist.html (last accessed on 1 Aug. 2016). Note that Wiemers was a member of the NSDAP, NSV and DAF, and a former Freikorps volunteer.

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31 Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abteilung Westfalen, Gauleitung Westfalen-Nord, Hauptleitung, 21, report of 14 Sept. 1939 by Düsseldorf SD Inspector.

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43 AEK, K.A, 1941–1943 (Z 80 82–3), 15 May 1943, 79.

44 AEK, DA Lenné 164, Hirtenwort zum Herz-Jesu-Zeit; Löffler, Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen, II, 1086.

45 Löffler, ed., Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen, II, 907.

46 LNRW. ARH, RW 35/09, 80–82, report of 16 September 1942, LNRW.AW, Gauleitung Westfalen-Nord, Hauptleitung, letter to Berlin, 14 Sept. 1939 (Morale report No. 11).

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59 For example, LNRW. ARH, RW35/09, 29, report of 3 April 1942.

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75 LNRW. AW, Gauleitung Westfalen-Nord, Hauptleitung, 29, report of 19 Sept. 1939.

76 Ibid., 13, report for June 1940, 38.

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80 LNRW. ARH, RW 58, 3741, 25–6.

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83 LNRW. ARH, RW 35/09, 69, report of 2 September 1942.

84 Ibid., 49, report of 8 July 1942.

85 Ibid., 185, report of 6 July 1943.

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105 LNRW. ARH, RW 34/02, 9, report of 17 April 1942.

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114 Süß, Tod aus der Luft, 313–4; Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, Vol. 15, report of 11 Nov. 1943, 5988.

115 Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, Vol. 15, report of 18 Oct.1943, 5886.

116 BA. LCH, NS 15/396, SD Report of 6 September 1943, 201–2.

117 Schmitz, Markus and Haunfelder, Bernd, eds., Humanität und Diplomatie: Die Schweiz in Köln 1940–1949 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2001), 116, 211–2; Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, Vol. 15, 5886Google Scholar.

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121 LNRW. ARH, RW34/03, 17, report of 7 July 1943, for popular knowledge of the Holocaust, Stargardt, ‘Rumours of Revenge’, 377–9.

122 Süß, Tod aus der Luft, 312.

123 Stadtarchiv Münster, Stadt Dok Nr 52, report of 7 Feb. 1943.

124 Ibid.

125 Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, Vol. 14, report of 8 July 1943, 5449.

126 Ibid., 5449.

127 Quoted in Longerich, Peter, “Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!”: Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945 (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2006), 283 Google Scholar.

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129 Süß, ‘Antagonistische Kooperationen’.

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