Catholic Priests and Seminarians As German Soldiers, 1935-1945

Negotiating the Cross and the Swastika: Catholic Priests and Seminarians as German Soldiers, 1935-1945

** approval of semi-final version

By Lauren N. Faulkner B.A., Simon Fraser University, 2001 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2003 A.M., Brown University, 2004

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island May 2009

© 2009 by Lauren N. Faulkner

This dissertation by Lauren N. Faulkner is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date______Omer Bartov, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate School Council

Date______Deborah A. Cohen, Reader

Date______Abbott Gleason, Reader

Date______Doris L. Bergen, Reader

Approved by the Graduate School Council

Date______Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School

iii Curriculum Vitae

Lauren Faulkner was born on May 2, 1979, in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. She earned a B.A. at Simon Fraser University in 2001, an M.A. from Simon Fraser University in 2003 under the supervision of Martin Kitchen, and an A.M. from Brown University in 2004. She has a forthcoming article in Contemporary European History entitled “Catholic Priests as German Soldiers: Georg Werthmann and the Military Chaplaincy under the Third Reich.” She has taught an array of classes, including her own European History survey class at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 and a seminar on Holocaust narratives. She was also involved for two years as a research assistant with the multidisciplinary and international project Borderlands: Ethnicity, Identity, and Violence in the Shatter-Zone of Empires Since 1848, co-directed by Omer Bartov at the Watson Institute for International Studies. She has been awarded a Humboldt University (Berlin) Exchange Fellowship, a Brown University Research Travel Fellowship, and a Brown University Dissertation Fellowship. In August 2009 she will begin her position as assistant professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.

iv Acknowledgments

In the course of eight years of graduate work, the first two done at Simon Fraser University and the last six completed at Brown University, I have accrued many debts to many people. Their help was instrumental in the completion of my dissertation; any faults therein are entirely my own. My advisor, Omer Bartov, has been ever ready to respond to emails and requests to read yet another draft; whether it was a minor detail or a major conundrum, he engaged my work and my ideas with empathy and fervor. His guidance has been an essential element to the final product on these pages. Tom Gleason and I slogged through some of the deeper moral dilemmas of my work over many a Kartabar lunch; he is much more than a reader, he is my dear friend. My long-distance readers, Deborah Cohen and Doris Bergen, provided me with wonderful critical feedback and unstinting support, even before they read my work. They are both models of inspiration for me. My professors at Brown have taught me rigor, grace, and the determination to strive always for the best of which I am capable. Many have gone out of their way to be of assistance, sometimes on short notice. I would like to extend an enormous thank you to the faculty at the University of Notre Dame who read drafts of my work; their feedback and enthusiasm was incredibly valuable. Special thanks are due to Gary Chamberlain, C.S.C., Kevin Spicer, C.S.C., and Brad Gregory. I have formed several friendships at Brown that I know will last a lifetime: thank you for your patience and your love, your willingness to laugh with me, your generosity with your time, and the constant spirit of camaraderie, without which these years would have been much more difficult. My family, especially my brother, my sister, and my parents, have lived with this dissertation as long as I have, and have engaged in my struggles with me, equipped with fortitude and an endless supply of encouragement and love. I dedicate my work to each of them, and to Jean-François, my conscience, my other half: I would not have made it without you.

v Table of Contents

Signature Page……………………………………………………………………………iii

Curriculum Vitae…………………………………………………………………………iv

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..v

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………vi

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1

1. Negotiating Identity: German Catholics Between Nationalism and Religion………...14

2. Putting Volk and Fatherland First: The Party, the Army High Command, and the Catholic Church,1933-1945………………………………………………….76

3. Georg Werthmann and Pastoral Care in the Wehrmacht…………………………….134

4. Men of God Among Army Soldiers………………………………………………….187

5. Men of God As Army Soldiers………………………………………………………250

Conclusion: A Question of (Catholic) Souls…………………………………………...296

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………320

vi Introduction

At the end of April 1945, an American infantry division apprehended three

Germans wearing Wehrmacht uniforms in a monastery near Deggendorf, in eastern

Bavaria. When the lieutenant-colonel dutifully filed his report on the incident, he explained that the three men in question were not officers, as he had initially presumed, but in fact clergymen – the acting Catholic field bishop Georg Werthmann, the head of the Catholic chaplaincy, and the two leading Protestant spiritual authorities in the military.1 The Americans kept them interned for the next several weeks at the monastery where they found them. Not surprisingly, given the fact that Germany had just lost the war and the full extent of the regime’s crimes was becoming known, Werthmann professed to have been a long-term, staunch opponent of National Socialist ideology and

Hitler. When pressed as to why he had served in the army, Werthmann answered with conviction: “We felt that we could be of greater service if we remained outside [the] concentration camp [system]. But we never compromised our principles, or our souls. We have been persecuted ever since the Nazis came to power... And I know personally that if

Germany had won this war there would have been no more clergy in Germany.” He seemed certain of this last potentiality, exclaiming, “the entire Church in Germany would have been dissolved… and that all clergymen, both Catholic and Protestant, would have been liquidated.”2

1 From the document collection “Sammlung Werthmann” in the Archiv des Katholisches Militärbischofsamtes Berlin (henceforth referred to as KMBA SW), 1009/VII (Nr. 1), copy of official report filed by John Cotter, 1 May 1945. 2 AKMB SW 1009/VII (Nr. 1), copy of Gregor Zimmer interview (English version); undated.

1 Such was the immediate post-war image of the Catholic Church’s relationship with National Socialism in Werthmann’s mind, an image of hardship and oppression about which he would never change his opinion. He was remarkably well placed to be able to tender such views on the subject: in 1936, he became second-in-command of the

Wehrmacht chaplaincy when the Catholic field bishop appointed him field vicar-general; he was thirty-seven years old, and had been a priest for a mere twelve years. The ways in which he fulfilled his responsibility as one of the leaders of the Catholic chaplaincy required that he make sense of, negotiate with, and reconcile political realities of the time

– in particular Nazi ideology – and the military circumstances of a brutal war with his own understanding of how his faith aided him in his work. The ways that he managed these three spheres (the temporal political and military spheres, and the spiritual sphere) had considerable influence in determining his outlook on the war and what his own experience meant. Most priest and seminarians who found themselves wearing army uniforms between 1939 and 1945 shared some version of this process of negotiation. It is one of the contentions of this dissertation that Werthmann was, in many ways, representative of the more than 17,000 German Catholic priests, theology students, and seminarians at different levels of study who were conscripted over the course of the war, and who engaged consistently in attempting not only to understand their wartime service, but to justify it fully.

This kind of service, and the ways in which these men made sense of it, pose a series of questions about the nature of the relationship between Catholicism and Nazism, about pastoral care within and beyond the chaplaincy in a time of war, and about the justifications for such service. How did Germany’s Catholic priests and seminarians

2 make sense of Nazism before and after its rise to power in 1933? How did they negotiate their national and religious identities during the Third Reich? Were the two ever in conflict, and how were such conflicts resolved? To what extent was this negotiation influenced, molded, or guided by secular, military, or religious authorities, namely, the

Nazi Party, the army high command, and the leadership of the Catholic Church in

Germany? How did those priests and seminarians understand their role in the armed forces during the Second World War? What defined their experiences? How did other soldiers and their officers view them? Did the conditions of their wartime service affect their chosen vocation, their faith in God, or their general religious beliefs? How did they describe their service in the post-war period? To what extent did they condemn their own behavior or the behavior of fellow soldiers, or justify it?

Such a topic reveals a significant gap in existing historiography – about the impact of Catholic priests and seminarians on the German war effort – and also brings together a number of themes in modern German history. Recent historians have only begun to develop the extant narrow field of work on German military chaplains during the Second World War. German historian Manfred Messerschmidt was the first to address Catholic and Protestant chaplaincies in the Wehrmacht at the end of the 1960s in essays that discussed the higher levels of pastoral leadership in the military and its political implications; Heinrich Missalla, Thomas Breuer and Johannes Güsgen continued this work with critical studies focused on the Catholic chaplaincy.3 Little attention was

3 Manfred Messerschmidt, “Aspekte der Militärseelsorgepolitik in nationalsozialistischer Zeit” in Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 (1968), 63-105; Messerschmidt, “Zur Militärseelsorgepolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg” in Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 (1969), 37-85; Heinrich Missalla, Für Volk und Vaterland: die kirchliche Kriegshilfe im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Königstein/Ts: Athenäum Verlag, 1978); Missalla, Für Gott, Führer und Vaterland: die Verstrickung der katholischen Seelsorge in Hitlers Krieg (München: Kösel, 1999); Missalla, Wie der Krieg zur Schule Gottes wurde: Hitlers Feldbischof Rarkowski: eine notwendie Erinnerung (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1997); Thomas Breuer, Dem Führer gehorsam: wie

3 similarly accorded to Protestant chaplains, and much of this has emerged only within the last fifteen years.4 The Catholic Military Bishop’s Archive in Berlin has also produced several volumes, although their impact has not been as far-reaching, because the volumes are mostly collections of testimony with important but limited accompanying historical analysis.5 English-language works on German chaplains are much fewer and scattered across several decades; often, historians that have acknowledged their presence tend to subsume the chaplaincy within the larger historical context of either the German Catholic

Church or the war experience.6

die deutschen Katholiken von ihrer Kirche zum Kriegsdienst verpflichtet wurde: Dokumente (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1989); Johannes Güsgen, Die katholische Militärseelsorge in Deutschland zwischen 1920 und 1945: ihre Praxis und Entwicklung in der Reichswehr der Weimarer Republik und der Wehrmacht des nationalsozialistischen Deutschlands unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer Rolle bei den Reichskonkordatsverhandlungen (Köln: Böhlau, 1989); Güsgen, “Die Bedeutung der Katholischen Militärseelsorge in Deutschland von 1933 bis-1945” in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, edited by Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 503-24. See also an updated and considerably lengthened and broadened version of Breuer’s earlier work: Dem Führer gehorsam: die Verstrickung der beiden Kirchen in den NS-Staat und den Zweiten Weltkrieg; Studie und Dokumentation, edited by Hans Prolingheuer and Thomas Breuer (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 2005). 4 Dieter Beese, Seelsorger in Uniform: evanglische Militärseelsorge im Zwiten Weltkrieg: Aufgabe, Leitung, Predigt (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1995); Doris L. Bergen, “‘Germany is Our Mission, Christ is Our Strength!’: The Wehrmacht Chaplaincy and the German Christian Movement” in Church History 66, 3 (Sept. 1997), 522-36; Bergen, “German Military Chaplains in World War II and the Dilemmas of Legitimacy” in Church History 70, 2 (2001), 232-47; Bergen, “Between God and Hitler: German Military Chaplains and the Crimes of the Third Reich” in In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, edited by Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001); Franz Dohrmann and Hermann Kunst, Gott läßt sich nicht spotten: Franz Dohrmann, Feldbischof unter Hitler (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1983). 5 Biographisches Lexikon der katholischen Militärseelsorge Deutschlands 1848 bis 1945, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt, Peter Häger, Karl Hengst, and the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002); Christen im Krieg: katholische Soldaten, Ärtze, und Krankenschwstern im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by Brandt und Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (München: Pattloch, 2001); Priester in Uniform: Seelsorger, Ordensleute und Theologen als Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by Brandt und the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt, (Augsburg: Pattloch, 1994); Mensch, was wollt ihr denen sagen?: katholische Feldseelsorge im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt, (Augsburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1991). See also Monica Sinderhauf, “Katholische Militärseelsorge im Krieg. Quellen und Forschungen zu Franz Justus Rarkowski und Georg Werthmann” in Kirchen im Krieg: Europa 1939-1945, edited by Karl Joseph Hummel and Christoph Kösters (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007). 6 Doris Bergen’s works on chaplains are integral in this respect, as they cumulatively stand alone as the most thorough and detailed analysis in English of German chaplains; see above, n. 4. The Catholic chaplaincy, or rather its leadership, Catholic Field Bishop Franz Justus Rarkowski, is discussed by both Guenter Lewy and Gordon C. Zahn, but neither discusses the work of chaplains. See Lewy, The Catholic

4 My dissertation joins these two significant fields in German history, and both figure prominently in terms of defining the world through which these men moved between 1933 and 1945. The first, the history of the Catholic Church in modern

Germany, has slowly been integrated into mainstream historiography, moving away from the traditional separation of religious (or Church) and secular history; this began with

Thomas Nipperdey, whose explicit aim was “to offer a perspective on general history,

[inserting] religion as a part of the culture of interpretation that constitutes the reality of the life-world [Lebenswelt], that shapes human relations and their life-horizons, their interpretations of life, social structures and processes, and even politics.”7 This integration of religion into the political, cultural, social, and even military narratives of

German history has generated a plethora of important historical works, much of it in

English, which examine the interaction of religion with these other elements of identity.8

Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), 236-42, and Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), Ch. 10 (143-72). 7 Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch: Deutschland 1870-1918 (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1988), 7. 8 This is an ever-expanding literature that could not fit into a single footnote here. The following works were vital to the genesis of this work: Margaret L. Anderson, Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Anderson, “The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History” in Central European History 19, 1 (March 1986); Anderson, “Interdenominationalism, Clericalism, Pluralism: The Zentrumsstreit and the Dilemma of Political Catholicism in Wilhelmine Germany” in Central European History 21, 4 (December 1988); Anderson, “Voter, Junker, Landrat, Priest: The Old Authorities and the New Franchise in Imperial Germany” in American Historical Review 98, 5 (December 1993); Anderson, “The Limits of Secularization: On the Problem of the Catholic Revival in Nineteenth-Century Germany” in The Historical Journal 38, 3 (September 1995); David Blackbourn, Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: the Center Party in Württemburg before 1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (New York: Knopf, 1994); Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemburg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Michael B. Gross, The War Against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth Century Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004); Oded Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside: A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998); Olaf Blaschke, Katholizismus und Antisemitismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997); Dagmar Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Wilfried Loth, Katholiken im Kaiserreich: der politische Katholizismus in der Krise des wilhelminischen Deutschlands (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1984); Ronald J. Ross, The Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf: Catholicism and State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871-1887 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998); Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

5 The bulk of the work of these scholars focuses on nineteenth-century history, asking probing questions about the extent and influence of the Catholic revival, the nature of the relationship between Catholics and liberals, the role of clergy in the process of democratization as well as the ways that Catholics – both lay and clergy – responded to state-led attacks during the Kulturkampf era, and the attempts of a significant religious minority to prove themselves equal to their Protestant co-nationals without conceding the principles of their own faith.

Arguably, Catholics and Protestants achieved true parity in Germany only with the ascension of the Nazi movement, which ignored distinctions of confession and instead classified society in terms of race. How did Catholics react to Nazism? To what extent can their behavior be categorized as resistance, and as collaboration? What example did Church leaders, namely the bishops but also the lower clergy, set? Historians initially pursued these questions in the 1960s, stimulating a rich literature on the relationship between two totalizing ideologies – Catholicism and Nazism – and how the

Germans caught between them were largely able to adapt to both. This historiography has produced fierce divisions, between those who are critical of the bishops’ failure to speak out unanimously, the pope’s “silence,” and the general acquiescence (and occasional enthusiastically open support) of Germany’s Catholics to Hitler’s regime, and those who have tried to understand the motivations behind such compromises without falling into apologism.9 While there have been some seminal studies focusing on the impact of

1984); Helmut Walser-Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995); Jeffrey T. Zalar, Knowledge and Nationalism in Imperial Germany: A Cultural History of the Association of Saint Charles Borromeo, 1890- 1914 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown, 2002). 9 Again, this literature is too broad to fit into a single footnote. The more critical inquiries that I have utilized are: Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany; Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars; Daniel J. Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its

6 Nazism on German Catholics’ everyday life, a sort of Alltagsgeschichte with a confessional focus, until recently there has been little attention accorded to the actions and decisions taken by priests and other clergymen, both those who stood by the Nazi

Party and those who rejected it. In this area, German historian Ulrich von Hehl and

American historian Kevin Spicer have made significant contributions.10 The conviction of individual priests and seminarians that they ought either to promote the aims of

Nazism or condemn them was not determined necessarily by their vocation; for every individual clergyman who openly resisted – the Jesuits Rupert Mayer and Alfred Delp, or

Cardinal August von Galen, bishop of Münster – there was a “brown priest” who touted

Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); Beth Griech-Polelle, Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Other important histories that are less hostile to the Church but not necessarily less critical are: Georg Denzler, Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort: Katholische Priester, Bischöfe und Theologen im Dritten Reich (Zürich: Pendo, 2003); Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Dieter Albrecht, Katholische Kirche im Dritten Reich: eine Aufsatzsammlung (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1976); John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches (New York: Basic Books, 1968); Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Volumes I and II, translated by John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); Klaus Gotto and Konrad Repgen, Kirche, Katholiken und Nationalsozialismus (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1980); Robert A. Krieg, Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany (New York: Continuum, 2004); Das Reichskonkordat 1933: Forschungsstand, Kontroversen, Dokumente, edited by Thomas Brechenmacher (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007); Kirchen im Krieg: Europa 1939-1945, edited by Karl Joseph Hummel and Christoph Kösters (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007); Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933: von den Ansätzen in der Weimarer Republik bis zur Ratifizierung am 10. September 1933 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1972; Antonia Leugers, Gegen eine Mauer bischöflichen Schweigens: der Ausschuss für Ordensangelegenheiten und seine Widerstandskonzeption 1941 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag J. Knecht, 1996); Michael Burleigh, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics from the Great War to the War on Terror (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). 10 On a Catholic-centered Alltagsgeschichte, see Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside; Donald J. Dietrich, Catholic Citizens in the Third Reich: Psycho-Social Principles and Moral Reasoning (New Brunswick, U.S.A.: Transaction Books, 1988). A study that attempts to describe how German Catholics, particularly those in leadership positions, navigated the tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich is Heinz Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken 1918-1945 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1992). A seminal work focusing on youth groups is Lawrence D. Walker, Hitler Youth and Catholic Youth, 1933-1936: A Study in Totalitarian Conquest (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1971). The most important studies of Catholic clergy under Nazism are Thomas Breuer, Verordneter Wandel?: der Widerstreit zwischen nationalsozialistischem Herrschaftsanspruch und traditionaler Lebenswelt im Erzbistum Bamberg (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1992); Ulrich von Hehl, Priester Unter Hitlers Terror: eine biographische und statistische Erhebung (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1996); Kevin P. Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004); Spicer, Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008).

7 Nazi ideology; most fell between these two poles, choosing to work within the political climate.

The second field, a combination of military and social history, focuses on the

Second World War as a brutalizing, ideological conflict that resulted in widespread devastation, mass slaughter, and genocide, and it also has a lengthy and rich historiography. German military history under the Nazi period has moved considerably away from a focus on commanders, logistics, and strategy and includes studies of the impact of Nazi ideology on German soldiers, in particular the propaganda proclaiming continuously that the Jewish-Bolshevik enemy constituted a lethal threat to German civilization, as well as the lived experience of the war on various fronts and complications of categories like resistance and collaboration. It also now encompasses the social and cultural elements of the war and their implications.11 While many of these historians have made strong arguments about the power of Nazi ideology and its permeation of the rank-and-file in the Wehrmacht along with the impact of being engaged in a war of such sheer brutality and dehumanization, very few have considered seriously the question of religion, and the extent to which expressions of traditional beliefs and spirituality – namely, Christianity – may have contributed to the morale and

11 Among the most essential works for my study are: Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998); Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: R.v.Decker, 1969); Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Lawrence, Kans: University of Kansas Press, 2003); Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen,1941-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1978).

8 strength of the fighting soldiers. Chaplains very rarely appear in these works, and priests and seminarians in uniform even less often.12

This study proposes to use the examples of clergy and seminarians to investigate the negotiation of religious and national identity in a wartime setting. I seek to address some of the more difficult questions raised by the participation of Catholic priests and seminarians in Hitler’s army: why did they willingly participate in a criminal and genocidal military undertaking? In what ways did they contribute to the war effort? And how were they able to justify this service well into the post-war period, when the fullest extent of the Wehrmacht’s crimes had become widely recognized? Recently, historians have argued that the decisions made by priests and chaplains to collaborate with Nazism

– or, to phrase it differently, their decisions not to dissent or resist – aided and abetted

Nazi wartime goals, whether it was by providing a “spiritual relief, a moral numbing”13 at the front in the form of a “salve for Catholic consciences,”14 or by administering a “self- deluding opium” to soldiers with the belief that the courage and self-sacrifice demanded of them during the war came from God.15 There is no other conclusion to draw based on the men who form the subject of my dissertation.

In supporting this conclusion, the goals of my work are to explore and analyze the experiences of these men, which have yet to be included in the historical record and, most importantly, to discuss why they acted as they did, and how they reconciled their actions during the war with their vocation and their religious principles. As such, this project is

12 English- and German-language military histories of the Third Reich tend to elide or ignore the work of chaplains; an example of this is Müller and Volkmann’s massive Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, cited above (see n. 3 above), which devotes only two out of sixty-four chapters to pastoral care in the military (one for each confessional chaplaincy). 13 Bergen, “Between God and Hitler,” 134. 14 Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 72. 15 Missalla, Für Gott, Führer, und Vaterland, 209.

9 important for its contribution both to military and to social history; by treating these two fields together and by discussing the role of religion as a factor of central importance to the men involved, I hope to expand on the current understanding of both the unstable and contentious interplay between the Nazi regime and the Catholic Church as well as the motivations for religious men not only to participate in a war led by Hitler, but even to endorse it. The regime and the Church had much in common, and this above all enabled

German Catholics to embrace the war.

I have chosen to focus exclusively on Catholic priests, both within and outside of the chaplaincy, and seminarians for two reasons. The first is the unique nature of this large group of men, which derives partly from their military status. Theology students and seminarians who had not been ordained to the sub-deacon level upon conscription were liable for military service, but authorities accorded men who had been ordained beyond this point - as well as conscripted Catholic priests - special status: they did not have to bear weapons.16 The secret appendix to the 1933 concordat, signed between the

Holy See as represented by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and

Hitler’s young government, revealed this condition. These priests who did not serve in the chaplaincy were usually assigned to the medical service, where they worked as doctors’ assistants in field hospitals or stretcher-bearers. Their Protestant counterparts were not accorded similar status and were liable for full military service.

The second reason for focusing exclusively on Catholic clergy and seminarians is a largely a matter of sources and, more specifically, one man who left a wealth of observations about his service in the army and his understanding of the overall situation.

16 Both the subdiaconate and the terms of the secret appendix will be explored at greater length in Chapter Two. For an explanation of subdiaconate, see Ch. 2, p. 84, n. 16.

10 Georg Werthmann spent his internment and many years afterwards making copious notes about his experiences during the Third Reich, in preparation for what was to become a mammoth history of the Catholic pastoral care system in the armed forces of Nazi

Germany.17 It was a project that was never realized, but the voluminous notes for it have survived, mostly intact and newly re-organized, in the Catholic Military Bishop’s Office in Berlin.18 Historians have under-utilized these notes, which embrace topics as diverse as military reports, personal observations on individuals’ personalities, official letters and memoranda, and reflections about Nazism and its impact on Germans. Historical literature on the chaplaincy rarely makes mention of Werthmann himself, and almost always in passing;19 his personality, which shines through unmistakeably in these documents, and his importance as the leader of Catholic pastoral care in the military under the Third Reich, entitles him to a more prominent role in the historiography, which my work seeks to accord him.

This study unfolds in five chapters. The first chapter is an enterprise in contextualization, returning to the late nineteenth century and the Bismarckian state’s persecution of Catholic clergy during the Kulturkampf era and continuing up to the Third

Reich, with the signing of the Reichskonkordat in 1933 and its impact on Catholic public life in Hitler’s Germany. In order to understand why priests and seminarians were ready,

17 It was tentatively titled “The History of Pastoral Care” (Die Geschichte der Feldseelsorge). 18 The Office and its archive were located in Bonn until 2000. 19 There exists only one – unpublished – biography of Werthmann, found at the KMBA. It remains unpublished because of discrepancies in some of the factual details of the manuscript that were never revised. See Klaus-Bernward Springer, “ein guter und getreuer Knecht”: Georg Werthmann (1898-1980): Generalvikar der Militärseelsorge im Dritten Reich und in der Bundeswehr (Bonn, 1999). Werthmann is mentioned briefly in other works, including those referenced above by Breuer, Güsgen, Messerschmidt, Missalla, and Zahn. Sinderhauf’s unpublished article on the resources of the archive where she works also provides important details about Werthmann’s career. Finally, Werthmann is fairly prominent in Georg May’s work on pastoral care. See May, Interkonfessionalismus in der deutschen Militärseelsorge von 1933 bis 1945 (Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner, 1978).

11 even eager, to accept the conscription order given by the Nazi regime, one must return to these earlier decades, a time characterized by confessional tension (and even occasional violence) and the consistent desire among German Catholics to maintain their religious faith while proving their deep attachment to the new German nation. Bishops and priests shared this desire with the same intensity as their flocks, and it would play an important part in encouraging clergy to set the example after 1933 and come to terms with the Nazi movement. The second chapter moves on to scrutinize the three spheres mentioned above, that delimited the world in which Catholic priests and seminarians found themselves during the war: the Catholic Church (particularly the bishops), the army high command, and the Nazi Party. The ways in which these three distinct and often competing authorities interacted with each other profoundly shaped the manner in which chaplains as well as priests and seminarians outside the chaplaincy engaged with the aims of the war and the Party.

The third chapter introduces the character and personality of Georg Werthmann and outlines the function and purpose of the chaplaincy that he helped to construct: from official guidelines set down in 1935 by the Vatican Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli, to the 1942 moratorium on the further recruitment of priests for the chaplaincy, to the late-

1944 attempts of the Party to rid the army entirely of priests, this chapter details the struggles that Werthmann and the chaplains faced from different hostile agencies

(including the armed forces high command and the Party chancellery), and the hard reality that so many able priests in the army were not allowed to administer as priests because they were not part of the chaplaincy. The final two chapters turn fully to the priests and seminarians who form the epicenter of my work, and follow their experiences

12 of the war and the different activities in which they engaged, and the action – and, for the few who admitted it, the brutality and atrocity – that they witnessed. These chapters depict the grim reality of the war and try to enter the mentality of these men in an attempt to understand, as much as possible, how they made sense of this reality and their place in it.

This study ends with concluding remarks about the impact of these priests and seminarians and the ways they found to justify their service. The problematic nature of much of the sources used – post-war written testimony and notes, invoking questions about memory, accuracy, and reliability – are touched on throughout the work but are also confronted more directly in the conclusion.

13 1. Negotiating Identity: German Catholics Between Nationalism and Religion

Between 1939 and 1944, Catholic priests and seminarians who found themselves wearing a German army uniform endeavored to make sense of the world around them, including the ideology of Nazism, the war being waged, and their own responses to both.

They did so through the use of several prisms. By nature of their vocation, they were actively religious, and important figures in the spiritual lives of the communities within which they lived. Thus, their Catholic faith was an integral lens through which they saw the world. By virtue of their birth, these men identified as Germans. They were sensitive to nationalist sentiment and pursued an identification with their fellow German citizens; this desire to belong to a community, imagined or otherwise, was very real and motivated their decisions and actions as much as their religion did. Their families, friends, and authority figures, from fellow cleric to pope, also influenced them. One of the primary goals of this chapter is to reach an understanding of various German Catholic worldviews, or Weltanschauungen, between 1871 and the 1930s, through an examination of the extent to which the surfaces of these prisms overlapped each other, and the nature of the influence that each element exerted.

Generally, German Catholic priests accommodated themselves to the Nazi state after 1933. The reaction of the clergy and seminarians to the ascendancy of Hitler’s blatantly anti-Christian movement in 1933 is to some extent inseparable from the bishops and the pope in Rome – the Church authorities – as well as the Catholic laity in Germany.

The priests and seminarians who were plunged into military uniforms at the outbreak of the Second World War made sense of what was happening both as Catholics and as

14 Germans. For Germany’s Catholics in general but especially for its leadership, the basis of this religious group identity stretched back into the nineteenth century. The Catholic clerical experience during the first decade of the Second Reich came to be known as the

Kulturkampf, or clash of cultures; the struggle, lasting from 1871 to about 1878, were years marked uniquely by protest against the state, political resistance and agitation, arrest and exile, and a continuous negotiation of both religious and political identity as

German Catholics. Nowhere else in Europe at that time did the priests of a significant religious minority fight to retain their spiritual – Catholic – particularity while simultaneously attempting to prove that they were as loyal citizens as their Protestant counterparts. Nowhere else did a political party emerge with close ties to the priesthood and a primary interest in defending the rights of the Catholic minority, and become a significant player in the national politics of the country for the next six decades.

This religious identification connected to nationalist sentiment, which ran as high among Catholics as among non-Catholics in Germany by the end of the nineteenth century. Rather than working to counter each other, these elements proved seamless well into the Nazi years, even when persecution attempted to sunder the two. Their nationalism as much as their faith determined the decisions of these priests to acquiesce to the Nazi Party and its dictates, from the terms of the unprecedented 1933

Reichskonkordat (as discussed below) to the internalization of the rhetoric about the necessity of war. Any study of their experiences, including motivations, behavior, and decision-making, must account for this remarkably fluid relationship between nationalism and religion.

15 It would be self-evident to state that German Catholic priests were never a monolithic group, whether responding to the pressures of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, the impact of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, or the Nazi consolidation of power after Hitler came to power in 1933. They were subject to regional pressures and differentiation, the partitions of social level and class, political affiliation and, in some cases, dogmatic variation.1 German Catholicism itself is not a self-evident term, meant to encompass such a broad range of experiences, attitudes and assumptions that one would have to supply a succinct definition each time it is employed. So it is difficult to speak of German Catholic clergy, its political aspects, or the episcopate at any given moment without encountering the danger of gross generalization.

One element of German Catholic identity that did prove both constant and widespread, however, was the interplay of religion and nationalism, especially after a unified Germany emerged in 1871, and it is this interplay on which the chapter shall focus. These aspects of identity – loyalty to both the tenets of the Catholic Church and its leaders as well as to Volk and Fatherland – occasionally conflicted, but more often than not mutually reinforced each other, even when their non-Catholic co-nationals put

German Catholic priests on the defensive because of their religious beliefs. In viewing the trajectory of German Catholic identity between 1871 and 1945, it becomes quickly apparent that the unity such an identity offered was felt on widespread levels only when an external threat materialized that threatened Catholic life within Germany. The most

1 The pluralistic nature of German Catholicism at this time is exemplified by, but not limited to, the splinter-group of “Old Catholics,” a movement that declared Rome in schism following the promulgation of papal infallibility in 1870 and officially separated from the Church. See Ronald J. Ross, The Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf: Catholicism and State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871-1887 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press of America, 1998), 36-52, in which he deals significantly with Old Catholics. See also Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 125-27, and Thomas Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch: Deutschland 1870-1918 (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1988), 13.

16 obvious event that illustrates this contention during the period in question is the

Kulturkampf, which bridged the divisions running through German Catholicism until the state-led persecution died down in the 1880s and 1890s.

Attacks on Germany’s Catholics as a religious group had begun as early as the years immediately following the Reformation, when Protestants and Catholics were divided along confessional lines within German-speaking territory. Two significant treaties and three centuries later had done little to bridge that gap.2 The nineteenth century brought new levels of hostility between the denominations as Germany moved towards unification. In spite of, or perhaps because of, this hostility, which state authorities sanctioned after 1871, Catholics made significant advances in social and political affairs, especially during the Wilhelminian era, that simultaneously demonstrated their patriotic allegiance to the fledgling nation as well as reinforced a sense of Catholic community, and in particular a desire for social improvement as

Catholics, within a predominantly Protestant nation.3 This rich, troubling, and often volatile experience, particularly the widespread persecution of the clergy during the

Kulturkampf, became “seared into the collective consciousness of Roman Catholics and the fear of its recrudescence exerted considerable influence on their subsequent political

2 In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg gave German princes the right to determine their land’s religion according to the principle cuius regio, eius religio, and guaranteed the co-existence of Christian religions for the sake of political cohesion; in 1648 the Peace of Westphalia re-confirmed this confessional parity. Throughout my work, I will be using the word denomination as the translation for Konfession, to refer to the different autonomous branches of the Christian Church in Germany, namely the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant (Evangelische) Church. The word confessional will be more sparingly used, to indicate doctrinal differences between the two. 3 This is the compelling argument made in Jeffrey Zalar’s as-yet unpublished doctoral dissertation, Knowledge and Nationalism in Imperial Germany: A Cultural History of the Association of Saint Charles Borromeo, 1890-1914 (Georgetown University, 2002), particularly Chapter Three.

17 behavior” into the twentieth century.4 It continued to influence the Catholic identity of older generations when Nazism came to power, including those priests and bishops who, as youths in the 1880s and 90s, were nevertheless old enough to have personal memories of Bismarck and Windthorst, the former who sanctioned the Kulturkampf persecutions, the latter the first great Catholic parliamentarian, and the iron chancellor’s most formidable opponent, of united Germany.

Opponents of Catholicism under Bismarck, who viewed the Church as a lethal threat to the young nation’s unity, attacked the institution and its leaders in different ways. Secular Protestant politicians and conservative nationalists viewed the German

Catholic priesthood with suspicion for its allegedly unswerving allegiance to Rome and its connections to Catholic Austria; liberals saw the clergy as staunchly anti-modern and anti-liberal. Nor was it coincidental that anti-Catholic legislation began almost immediately after the introduction of universal manhood suffrage in the Reichstag; one historian has argued eloquently that attempts to delimit Church influence in Germany in

1871 stemmed precisely from elite fears that mass politics might destroy the old order.5

The legislation compelled Germany’s Catholic priests and their flocks to go on the defensive, clinging to their traditional religious beliefs; they found strength in the formation of a resilient socio-religious community whose foundations, particularly in terms of political expression, were inadvertently laid by the experience of persecution, the bulk of which was directed at parish clergy. Whether the Kulturkampf should be understood as a period of blatant anti-Catholicism whose goal was to eradicate public,

4 Ronald J. Ross, Beleaguered Tower: The Dilemma of Political Catholicism in Wilhelmine Germany (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 16. 5 Margaret L. Anderson, “The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History” in Central European History 19 (2), 1986, 89-91.

18 political Catholicism, or as an example of strategic nation-building through the creation of a universal national culture that bridged Protestantism and Catholicism, its roots as well as its ramifications are undeniable: the deep division of Germany along denominational lines.

Unification itself reinforced this division, because Bismarck utilized the kleindeutsch model of a unified German state – that is, one excluding Austria – in order to assure Prussian hegemony.6 After 1871, the Protestant-Catholic ratio settled at three to one and would remain there even after the German territorial losses following World War

I.7 Moreover, Austria’s expulsion stained the image of those Catholics remaining within the boundaries of the new empire from the viewpoint of their Protestant neighbors; their wartime pro-Austrian sympathies labeled them “potential subversives of the new state, even including, by association, those large number of educated Catholics who had supported liberal candidates in elections.”8 The victory of Prussia over Austria was also widely hailed as one of Protestantism over Catholicism, a final and overdue completion of what had begun with the Reformation’s demand that Catholics be “Protestantized as well as Prussianized.”9

Nevertheless, it did not take long for German Catholics to find the roots of nationalist sentiment, even if on the federal level Protestants dominated the nation to

6 The grossdeutsch-kleindeutsch debate had raged in pro-unification circles in German-speaking lands throughout much of the nineteenth century and eventually became a question of domination between Hohenzollern-ruled Prussia, whose leading politicians generally favored the kleindeutsch model, and Habsburg-ruled Austria, whose imperial Catholic family desired a grossdeutsch nation with Austria at its helm. War decided the debate in 1866, when Bismarck’s forces defeated the Austrians in the Battle of Königgratz, the second of the three wars of unification. 7 Margaret Stieg Dalton, Catholicism, Popular Culture and the Arts in Germany 1880-1933 (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 23; Wolfgang Altgeld, “Religion, Denomination and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Germany” in Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800-1914, edited by Helmut Walser-Smith (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001), 51. 8 Ellen Lovell Evans, The German Center Party, 1870-1933: A Study in Political Catholicism (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 21. 9 Evans, German Center Party, 26.

19 which they had formed an attachment. The period from 1869 to 1871 for Catholics was one “not of protest, but rather of the beginning of integration in the emerging kleindeutsch nation-state.”10 The war with France in 1870 was popular with Catholics in

Germany, who could identify with the recall of the “German” provinces of Alsace and

Lorraine over whatever kinship shared religion might have produced. Once the new nation of Germany existed, Catholics within its boundaries committed themselves to its reality, and rarely questioned its legitimacy. The predominantly Catholic states in the south and west became voluntary, if reluctant, members of the German Reich, and

Catholic minorities in other states also found ways to adapt.11 They worked to integrate themselves into the new nation and concerned themselves with demonstrating their loyalty to it, even if their understanding of what it was to be German differed greatly from the dominant Protestant view.12 Catholics may have accepted the kleindeutsch

Germany after 1871 and worked to uphold the foundations of the new state, but this basic rupture between the two denominations would remain present for decades, even if it manifested itself only sporadically. This ensured that despite long moments of relative calm, the deep divisions that marked German nationhood – economic, social, religious –

10 Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 48. Nipperdey was one of the first historians to write Church history and secular history together, rather than treat the former as a separate sphere. Other historians, notably Helmur Walser Smith, locate the change in Catholic attitudes towards the nation-state later, in the 1880s, when Germany’s colonial drive began in earnest. See Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870 – 1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 75-6. 11 One such example explored at length by Alon Confino is Württemburg; see Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany and National Memory, 1871 – 1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 12 The popular liberal definition of a “true German,” at least in the case of Württemberg, was someone who celebrated Sedan Day (commemorating Prussia’s 1870 victory over France), and was “an ardent supporter of the empire, an anti-Catholic, antiparticularist, and antisocialist, an admirer of the emperor and Bismarck, and a Protestant.” One could also add “male” to the list. See Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor, 60.

20 endured until well into the twentieth century, when the totalizing Nazi movement overrode these divisions with its own racial-biologically based system of classifications.13

The Center Party emerged as the obvious political party of choice for most

German Catholics as the German states united. Its advocates conceived of it as a defensive bloc whose delegates would fight to protect the interests of Germany’s

Catholics in relation to their denigrators, and both supporters and opponents portrayed it as an unabashedly denominational party during its initial years of existence in spite of its first leader’s desires to refrain from embracing an explicitly denominational label.14

Moreover, the Center made an easy target for its anti-clerical opponents; nineteen of fifty signers of the Soest Program, the party’s founding platform, were clergymen, and by

1903, twenty percent of Center deputies to the Reichstag were ordained priests.15 For some, this introduced “an unnatural element into the parliamentary arena,”16 where traditionally class or economic interests formed the factors that attracted voters. The

Center attracted voters from all walks of life and was meant to reflect a variety of causes, all of which united to oppose the dominance of Prussia in the fledging German state. The only common denominator of those who voted Centrist in these early years was that they were all practicing Catholics.17 Although this wide voting spectrum cautions against making broad assumptions about the motivations for voting Center before the turn of the

13 This argument by Helmut Walser Smith maintains that German Catholic identity was fundamentally rooted in a different history and different traditions and memories than Protestantism, and that this ensured that nationalism remained as much a divisive as a unifying force. See Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, especially Chapter Two. 14 During the Party’s formative stages, Windthorst had pressed for the Center to remain “open to anyone who stood for freedom of religion and the independence of the churches,” anxious to avoid being limited by confessional interests and desirous to depict himself as committed to national causes. Anderson, Windthorst, 138-45. 15 Evans, German Center Party, 111. 16 Evans, German Center Party, ix. 17 Evans, German Center Party, 108.

21 century, it is clear that one’s identity as a Catholic played a major, if not vital, role. In

1871, sixty-three Centrists were elected to the Reichstag, achieving a modest 18.7 percent of the total vote.18 By 1898, the Center was the largest political party in the Reichstag, holding 102 of the 397 eligible seats.19 The singular event that raised profound awareness of the Center’s role among Catholics across Germany, acting as a catalyzing unifier that strengthened the Center as a political movement in the intervening three decades, was the

Bismarckian-led Kulturkampf .

Historians have long argued over the roots of this “clash of cultures,” between the

Catholic Church and the imperial state in Germany, which manifested itself primarily in legislation passed between November 1871 and May 1875. At issue was Protestant

Germany’s ingrained distrust of the pope, exacerbated by the promulgation of two new canons from the Vatican: the Syllabus of Errors in 1864, which condemned freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, and the doctrine of papal infallibility in

1870. The rise of the Center Party in the Reichstag, preceded and accompanied by a noticeable religious revival that some date back to 1848, also produced anxiety and apprehension, particularly in government circles.20 Bismarck’s awareness of the fragility of the young empire added to his fears, a fragility made even more vulnerable by the induction of the masses into politics, and his firm conviction that the Center was a

18 Johannes Schauff, Die deutschen Katholiken und die Zentrumspartei (Köln: Verlag J.P. Bachem HmbH, 1928), 17. 19 Schauff, Die deutschen Katholiken, 11. 20 The authoritative text on the mid-century religious revival is Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Margaret L. Anderson discusses in detail the impact of his arguments and offers her own conclusions about the meaning of the religious revival in the German political context, as well as its timing, in “Piety and Politics: Recent Work on German Catholicism” in Journal of Modern History 63/4 (December 1991), 681-716. Michael B. Gross also offers a detailed study of the mid-century Catholic revival, focusing on the context of Catholic leaders’ hostility to liberalism and the work of the missions, in The War Against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004), 29-73.

22 subversive element with its defense of two of Germany’s most prominent minorities,

Catholics and Poles.21 He believed that the clergy was deliberately using its influence to prevent the Catholic Polish population in the eastern parts of Prussia from fully assimilating into the Reich, to which can be added the general Protestant fear that the

Catholic predisposition to traditional values would stunt whatever economic or social modernization the young nation tried to effect.

These feelings of fear and distrust became political action when the chancellor launched an “‘internal preventive war’ against what he perceived to be the revolutionary potential of Catholics, Poles and Socialists who threatened the consolidation of the newly unified German Reich.”22 Bismarck wanted to ensure that the young nation he had created could withstand whatever trials it might face by eradicating any potential disunity from within. The Kulturkampf, therefore, was geared towards the establishment of “a unified, leveled and almost total nation whose members were to know no other authority or higher morality than the national, and therefore the national-religious,” in which all alleged Reichsfeinde would necessarily be eliminated.23

21 Anderson, Windthorst, 145. She also emphasizes the emergence of mass politics in Germany and the subsequent fears of German elites who reacted to “the congruence of confessional and socioeconomic cleavages,” particularly in the west. This puts less emphasis on the calculations of Bismarck and hysterical anti-Catholicism, and more on general shifts in demographics and the denominational balance in politics during Germany’s first period of experimentation with democracy. See Anderson, “The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History”, 95. 22 Ross, Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, 5. Of course, just as the Kulturkampf provided an external enemy against which Germany’s Catholics could unite, the specter of a lethal foe in the shape of Germany’s Catholics gave a foundation upon which Bismarck built his alliance with the Liberals, who were also traditional enemies of Catholicism. Liberal support in the Reichstag for Kulturkampf legislation enabled Bismarck to proceed against German Catholics as he did, and when his alliance with the Liberals fell apart towards the end of the 1870s, the Kulturkampf wound down. Liberals and liberalism, though, remained deadly enemies in the minds of Catholics (and vice versa) for decades. On the breakdown of Bismarck’s alliance with the Liberals, see James J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 137-40; on its relation to Bismarck’s battle with Catholicism and the subsequent “sterility of Germany’s parliamentary development,” see Anderson, Windthorst, 192-200. 23 Wolfgang Altgeld, “Religion, Denomination and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” 58.

23 The statistical results of the series of Bismarckian laws that constitute the

Kulturkampf are staggering: by 1875, the year that marks the high point of the struggle,

241 priests had been arrested, as well as 136 editors and 210 Center Party delegates; twenty newspapers had been shut down; seventy-four houses were searched. 103 people were expelled from the country or interned, including several bishops, and nearly 1,000 parishes stood without priests.24 That these policies effectively created two Germanys instead of achieving their goal of uniting all Germans into one nation has been traditionally linked to the state’s divided antagonism towards Catholics and Socialists or the effectiveness of Catholic political opposition. But one historian has recently offered two additional explanations.25 The first is that Bismarck’s purportedly authoritarian-style rule in the 1870s was rather less so in terms of implementing regulations. The Catholic population’s ability to resist the coercive and discriminatory measures passed against them underscores the very real limits on Bismarck’s power and the inability of the imperial state to enforce its own laws. A unified Germany did not automatically entail a strong state; rather, “the Reich remained a patchwork both in its external form and its internal administrative capacity.”26

Another factor was that German Catholics, when facing pressure from without, were able to consolidate an identity and sense of community that ensured their survival.

They perceived the decrees of the Kulturkampf not merely as an affront to their constitutional freedoms, but as a threat to their very way of life. The promulgations may

24 Statistics taken from Evans, German Center Party, 76; Anderson, Windthorst, 178. 25 The literature on the Kulturkampf is overwhelming in its expanse. For the most authoritative accounts, see Evans, German Center Party; Anderson, Windthorst; Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch; Ross, Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkamp; Gross, The War Against Catholicism. 26 Ross, Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, 187. Ross makes this argument persuasively, insisting that the Kulturkampf failed not so much because of Catholic resistance but because the Bismarckian state was incomplete and occasionally ineffective, and Bismarck’s own authority “did not extend everywhere, and his power could not be invoked for every purpose.” (14)

24 have been directed primarily at the clergy and not German Catholics as a whole, but many Catholics understood the threat that this posed to them: a parish without its priest was an ineffective, sacramentally lifeless parish. In this way, the state was targeting the nerve center of Catholic public life in Germany, and the population responded by identifying with the targeted priests.27 In this way, the Kulturkampf bound clergy and laity even more closely together, a bond that would resurface in a remarkable way under the Third Reich.

This sense of community, and its closeness and exclusivity, is what enabled

Catholics to resist the state so well. And resist they did, effectively, indefinitely, and not necessarily with violence. This second explanation for a divided Germany underscores both the success of German Catholics and their priests in coming together to defend themselves as well as their refusal to abdicate their own German sense of identity and belonging, even when faced with potential civil war. Instead of being intimidated, lay

Catholics found many ways to fight back: they aided fugitive priests and harassed clerics who cooperated with government policy, they circulated petitions of protest, they participated in clandestine religious ceremonies and rituals, they fired signal guns and displayed flags and lights in honor of their church leaders, they used vandalism and boycotted patriotic celebrations and national holidays.28 It was an extraordinary period of resistance to the state, at once concerted and spontaneous, with the conscious aim of defending Catholic identity against a hostile Protestant majority. As one historian has noted, “so dramatic in fact was the agitation of the Catholic population that it was not

27 Gross, War Against Catholicism, 280. 28 Ross, Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, 136 – 142. Vandalism included the destruction of fences, walls and trees, the tearing up of gardens, and the smearing of excrement on house walls. All are related in Ross, Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, in addition to further details about passive resistance.

25 until the outright revolution of 1918 that imperial Germany would again see such levels of collective action against state authority.”29

By the end of the 1870s, new developments began to dismantle the Kulturkampf.

A more conciliatory Leo XIII succeeded Pius IX as pope, who had drafted the controversial doctrines in 1864 and 1870 and who had been an intransigent opponent of all Kulturkampf-related decrees out of Prussia, heralding a new era of papal diplomacy.

The electoral successes of the Social Democrats (SPD) had begun increasingly to occupy

Bismarck. The Center’s political relations with Rome, though never excessively warm, were definitely cooling after the party failed to heed Vatican suggestions concerning collaboration with the SPD.30 In 1879, the government adopted a series of “modification laws” [Milderungsgesetzen] that revised the May Laws, and by 1887 the pope himself declared the Kulturkampf to be finished.31 For all the ferocity of anti-Catholic legislation and the equally vehement Catholic reaction to it, the Kulturkampf did not last very long.

But its implications were widespread and felt deeply enough to endure for generations.

One of the most obvious consequences of the Kulturkampf was a reinforcement of the confessional divide across Germany. Though German nationalism at this time was deeply rooted in both Protestant and Catholic communities, fostering a sense of

Germanness that at times superceded religious differences, there remained deep divisions

29 Gross, War Against Catholicism, 222. 30 Margaret L. Anderson alludes to the exceptionally difficult relationship between Center and Vatican after the Kulturkampf subsided in terms of juggling the party’s political independence with the pope’s authority in ecclesiastical matters. Starting with Windthorst and continuing for decades, this was a relationship that “was in the interests of all sides to leave as obscure as possible.” See “Interdenominationalism, Clericalism, Pluralism: The Zentrumsstreit and the Dilemma of Catholicism in Wilhelmine Germany” in Central European History 21 (4), 1988, 366-69. 31 Evans, German Center Party, 92. The May Laws were not officially repealed for decades, though.

26 between the two world-views.32 For many Protestants, their faith was the epicenter of

German national identity as well as emerging national narratives because of its post-

Reformation significance. They could cite important figures from Schiller to Goethe to

Frederick the Great to Helmuth von Moltke, not to mention Martin Luther, for whom religious affiliation had been central, not incidental, and who had played integral roles in the development of German Kultur and political prestige. Catholic foils, however, were more difficult to find.33 Additionally, a basic apprehension lingered about the Catholic connection to the Vatican. The Evangelical League, one of the most vociferous

Wilhelminian-era Protestant institutions, was founded in 1886 with the explicit goal of defending “German Protestant interests” against “false parity and tolerance concepts” and to bring “more light into the Roman darkness which still lies over fully a third of our people.”34

That some Catholics, particularly those looking for opportunities for social advancement, had internalized the prevalent Protestant rhetoric of Catholic

“backwardness” and “difference” and worked consciously to combat it is supported by the fact that such differences became less perceptible during the years that passed between the Kulturkampf’s end and the advent of war in 1914. Protestants and Catholics became increasingly intermingled through education and marriage. Clergy embraced nationalist discourse more openly, and Catholic support for imperialist expansion was

32 Zalar references Nipperdey in pointing out that inter-confessional animosity was “one of the fundamental every day and vital facts” of life in Imperial Germany, as important “as gender and class.” Zalar, Knowledge and Nationalism, 103-04. 33 As Smith states, “German Catholics could feel themselves both German and Catholic, but their Catholicism – despite the best efforts of Catholic polemicists – did not make them somehow more German.” See German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 68. 34 Evans, German Center Party, 93. Nipperdey describes it as an organization of the masses, particularly the middle strata, with members totaling 60,000 in 1891, 295,000 in 1905 and 470,000 in 1911. Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 81. Today, it remains one of Germany’s largest and most prominent Protestant organizations.

27 evident, satisfying at once both proselytizing drives through the construction of missions as well as nationalist enthusiasm.35

But the differences did not disappear entirely, and new divisions manifested themselves as well. External attacks on Catholics had provided enough commonality between radically different social, economic, and even ethnic groups in the 1870s that religious identity was generally underscored at the expense of other community-forming factors. When the external threat was removed and German Catholicism became more or less tolerated, these alternative methods of self-identification, based on economic conditions, social status, ethnicity, or political affiliation, manifested themselves with more vigor, revealing deep fault lines within German Catholicism that kept it from becoming the basis for a truly monolithic religious group within the German Reich.

The discord within the Center Party after 1890 is one example frequently cited in historiography to demonstrate the deepening rifts among politically active Catholics before the First World War.36 But it also serves to illustrate the point that religion was never the sole element of identification for German Catholics, including priests; distinctions of class, geography, gender, and social position, in addition to the rise of nationalism and the progressively more powerful SPD, played increasingly determinant roles, especially for political orientation. It cannot be overemphasized that most Germans who voted for the Center, particularly during the 1870s and first half of the 1880s, did so for religious reasons. This was “the single factor uniting the leadership and the voters,

35 Zalar, Knowledge and Nationalism, 109-17. 36 Two excellent sources on this are Ross, Beleaguered Tower, and Wilfried Loth, Katholiken im Kaiserreich: Der politische Katholizismus in der Krise des wilhelminischen Deutschlands (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1984). Ross tends to attribute the discord in political Catholicism to regional variations, as the rivalry between Cologne and Berlin became more contentious in the two decades prior to World War I; Loth, on the other hand, locates the tension primarily in a plurality of interests caused by a plethora of diverse social groups. Both historians tend to concentrate on the upper levels of political Catholicism, namely the Center’s leadership and Church authorities.

28 who were otherwise extremely diverse.”37 It would explain why, after less than sixty percent of eligible Catholic voters chose the Center in 1871, three years later over eighty percent cast their votes in favor of the self-proclaimed denominational party.38

Yet even at this time, the divide between the leadership of the party and those who voted for it was apparent. The former was comprised of landowners, or individuals who otherwise belonged largely to the middle or upper classes and were employed in the civil service or professions. The latter was comprised of industrial workers, small farmers, winegrowers, artisans and shopkeepers.39 There were increasing gaps, too, between a priest and his parishioners, though this is more difficult to measure; while the majority of nineteenth-century priests may have come from a rural background, priestly training and education introduced elements of difference, as did celibacy and even physical appearance, such as distinctive Roman Catholic clerical attire and hair cuts.40

There were also important class divisions among the electorate, especially as the working-class movement began to gain momentum and Catholic workers were as likely to find adequate representation of their interests with the SPD as they were with the

Center. Awareness of serious social inequity – the disparity between laymen and clerics, for example – began to dominate politics in areas where the majority of the Catholic population was notably working-class, only marginally educated, and living at or below the poverty level. This tension, which emerged strongly in Wilhelminian Germany in the

Saar and the Black Forest, contributed significantly to a waning of the Center’s appeal in

37 Evans, German Center Party, 108. 38 Schauff, Die deutschen Katholiken, 77. 39 Evans, German Center Party, 112. 40 Margaret L. Anderson, “The Limits of Secularization: On the Problem of the Catholic Revival in Nineteenth-Century Germany” in The Historical Journal 38, 3 (September 1995), 661-63.

29 these areas.41 Ethnic strains were also becoming more evident in areas like Upper Silesia, where the population, almost entirely Roman Catholic, was an ethnic mix of Germans and Poles.42 So long as the religious issue dominated the political scene, these differences were downplayed or overlooked, with the population acting as willing accomplices of the leadership. Without the presence of unifying religious concerns, however, class and social interests began to take over Center Party politics, with the result that the Center vote slowly declined even as the total number of voting Catholics increased.43 The party’s political structure and modus operandi were not designed to bridge this diversity indefinitely.

If the Kulturkampf can be considered the unifying event for post-unification

German Catholics, the First World War is sometimes characterized as the unifying event for post-unification Germans. The declaration of war in 1914 “was greeted by immense enthusiasm throughout Germany,” and the lack of protest from leftist parties, in particular from the SPD, led the Kaiser to declare that there were “no more political divisions, ‘only

Germans.’”44 To put it more poetically, “August 1914 was the last great national incarnation of the ‘people’ as a unified moral entity.”45 Recent historiography of the social and cultural contexts of the war has tried to complicate the image of an unabashed war enthusiasm that erupted in 1914 by emphasizing the propagandistic purposes of

41 For more information on the Saar, see Ross, Beleaguered Tower, 74-77; for the Black Forest, see Oded Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside: A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), particularly Part I. 42 Ross, Beleaguered Tower, 68-74. 43 Schauff’s statistics show that between 1898 and 1912, the Catholic vote in Germany rose from 28.1% to 30.6% of the voting population; in contrast, those Catholics who voted for the Center fell from 68.3% in 1903 to 54.6% in 1912. Schauff, Die deutschen Katholiken, 74. Nipperdey estimates that the Center enjoyed the support of about 90% of practicing Catholics at the peak of its popularity, in the mid-1870s, and somewhere around 60% at its nadir in 1912. Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 23. 44 Volker R. Berghahn, Modern Germany: Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century, 2nd edition (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 38, 42. 45 Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 30.

30 wartime narratives as well as the different ideological constructions used to promulgate the myth of “the spirit of 1914.” Not everyone was blindly enthusiastic, and Germans who lived through the initial weeks of the war interpreted it “according to their class, gender, age, location, and disposition.”46 None of the historiography that argues either for or against preliminary war enthusiasm makes mention of the confessional divide in 1914.

In fact, if any pre-existing friction within German society was successfully eased, it was the religious: “When war broke out… Catholics responded as Protestants: with relief, with enthusiasm, with a call to arms.”47 Catholics across Germany “shared in the national upsurge of patriotic feeling and, as the war continued, came to believe that its requirements would bring opportunities for the full integration of Catholics into German society.”48

Such fervor from Catholics can be seen as opportunistic – those who served, whether in a military capacity or in government, would have increased chances of advancement through either the officer corps or the civil service, and some were able to take full advantage of this opportunity – but more importantly, it serves as a testament to the successful nationalization of Germany’s Catholics. The Great War at last brought a commonality between Catholic and Protestant in Germany.49 They both embraced their duty as soldiers to defend their nation, and priests of both denominations volunteered to serve as chaplains. The war produced the necessity of the foundation for a structured

Catholic military chaplaincy, taking into account the needs of soldiers for spiritual care,

46 Jeff Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 232. 47 Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 165. 48 Evans, German Center Party, 203. 49 The obvious example is Count Georg von Hertling, Roman Catholic and Center delegate, who became the first Catholic German chancellor in November 1917. See Ross, Beleaguered Tower, 133.

31 changing military relations and requirements and the expansion and continuing mechanization of the German army in the age of industrialization and global tension.50

These foundations would persist through the Weimar era into the Third Reich, and would be used to resurrect an effective military chaplaincy in 1935.

The war’s end threatened the rapprochement between Protestants and Catholics, at least in the political context. It did not go unnoticed by those interwar rightwing circles that popularized the Dolchstoßlegende that the armistice had been signed by a member of the Center, in league with Socialists and liberals, and that the Center was pivotal in accepting the terms of the humiliating peace treaty at Versailles two years later. In addition to bitter wartime defeat, a revolution and the splitting from the Center of a circle of south German politicians to create the Bavarian People’s Party would deal some heavy blows to the Center’s reputation as the main arbiter of political Catholicism. The Center may have become a sort of “parliamentary center of gravity”51 in the Reichstag, maintaining a consistent number of seats that involved it in the series of coalition governments that characterized the Weimar Republic, but the legacy of the war and the chaos of Weimar ensured that Catholic politicians and spiritual leaders, as much as

Socialists, would remain on the defensive no matter how invested they appeared to be in the reconstruction of Germany.

50 Statistics reflect this unprecedented Catholic participation in the military efforts of the nation: over the course of the war, 788 priests and nuns belonging to various orders administered to some 14,000 hospital beds, or at one of 100 front-line altars; 227 served as chaplains at the front (Feldgeistliche), and another 243 as hospital chaplains (Lazarettseelsorge). See Biographisches Lexikon der katholischen Militärseelsorge Deutschlands 1848-1945, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt, Peter Häger, Karl Hengst, and the Catholic Military Bishop’s Office (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002), lxii-iv. 51 Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, 2nd edition (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001) 75. Eric D. Weitz makes a similar argument, referring to the Center and its frequent coalition partners, the Social Democrats and the liberal German People’s Party (DDP), as the parties “most committed to turning Germany into a democratic order.” See Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 31 and 84.

32 For Germans at large, the period between 1918 and 1933 was marked largely by turmoil and doubt, as the country struggled to rebuild itself on unfamiliar parliamentary- democratic foundations complicated by the punitive measures of the Versailles Treaty.

Partly as a backlash against the triumphant coalition of the SPD, the Center and left- leaning liberals, who benefited the most politically from the new Weimar government, radical nationalist groups surged. The programs of dozens of extra-parliamentary organizations and smaller political interest groups, including the National Socialist

German Workers Party formed in 1919, manifested anti-republican ideologies and, like many other völkisch-nationalist groups, incorporated a heavy dose of antisemitism in its platform. German culture may have flourished during these years, but the economy remained unstable until it collapsed during the Great Depression, and the Reichstag never realized its full democratic potential, epitomized by the fact that there were twenty cabinet changes and twelve different chancellors in the decade and a half of the republic’s existence.52 Though the Center played an eponymous role during this period, being involved in several of these coalition governments, it is not clear what impact the party had on the political consciousness of German Catholics. The Center continued to recruit the vast majority of its supporters from the Catholic population, but the world within which it operated was turbulent and uncertain, and this took a toll on its electorate.

Even if the absolute number of votes had not changed dramatically, defection could still be found in various groups among voting Catholics, including a number of priests who left the party to become either apolitical or more zealously nationalist, as well as a significant portion of academics and professionals, and, after 1920, the Bavarians, who flocked to the banner of the more conservative BVP (Bayerische Volkspartei), an

52 Heinz Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 1918-1945 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1992), 88.

33 offshoot of the Center.53 This was a source of concern for a party that had long regarded itself as the exclusive voice of political Catholicism. In addition, new Catholic societies and associations proliferated, which set off internal rivalries among the lay population and its priests and served to demonstrate the Center’s increasing lack of control. The strongest society before World War I was the People’s Association for Catholic Germany

(Volksverein für das katholische Deutschland), founded in 1890 by Windthorst.54 The society and the party had preserved their close ties, and by 1914 the People’s Association boasted 805,000 members, with an additional 15,000 honorary members. During and after the war, membership fell and remained unstable. It peaked briefly in 1922 with

686,000 memberships, but by 1933 this number had been nearly cut in half.55 It was inevitable that its dominance would be challenged, given the diversification of social and economic issues plaguing the interwar years, the prevalence of new societies designed to appeal to these divided interests, and the appearance of religious societies more distanced from explicit party or clerical influence. This definitively demonstrates that the network of Catholic organizations “had become at once more impervious and more stable” than the simple explanation of “association-fatigue” [Vereinsmüdigkeit] often put forward at the time and by later historians. The possibilities open to Catholics for socialization on a religious level had also increased. But there can be no doubt that this represented a substantial junction of popular Catholicism and political Catholicism, as represented by

53 Evans, German Center Party, 246, 264. 54 The authoritative study of the Association is Gotthard Klein, Der Volksverein für das katholische Deutschland 1890-1933: Geschichte, Bedeutung, Untergang (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1996). 55 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 119-21.

34 the Center.56 In other words, the Center no longer held all the answers for voting

Catholics.

This chapter began by setting out to detail why Catholic priests in Germany acquiesced to working with the Nazi Party after 1933. The late nineteenth century setting, punctuated by the Kulturkampf and the rise of political Catholicism, is crucial to grasping the spiritual, political, and national development of German Catholics and their clergy as part of a united Germany, but the final and most important factors that aided in their turn toward Nazism were the Reichskonkordat of 1933, and the German bishops’ responses to it.57 A series of legislative changes took place within the boundaries of Germany after its defeat in the Great War that led to the steady decline of the Center’s political significance before its final dissolution in 1933, and that had a direct and dramatic effect on the signing of an eventual concordat with the Holy See in July of that year.

Traditionally, the episcopate had tried to maintain a policy of political neutrality: they were Roman Catholics who recognized the authority of the pope, but they also lived in German-speaking lands and considered themselves German nationals. Usually this ensured that they did not become overtly involved in any political decision-making, which is not to say that their behavior did not become on occasion consciously politicized.58 However, the episcopate had struggled not only against political antagonists

56 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 121,130. 57 I will refer to the 1933 concordat from this point on as the Reichskonkordat to distinguish it from earlier concordats. 58 For example, German bishops helped to spearhead the revival of popular Catholicism in the middle of the nineteenth century, during which “a systematic and dramatic” campaign was unleashed “to restore faith, obedience and order among Catholics” through the use of Volksmissionen, or missions for the people. As historians of this period remark, the campaign was hugely successful, continuing over the course of two decades and without doubt contributing to Protestant fears in general, and Bismarck’s paranoia in particular, to the effect that Catholics were backward, superstitious Reichsfeinde, as they were depicted during the Kulturkampf. See Gross, War Against Catholicism, 32. Sperber’s account of the revival places less emphasis on the bishops as leaders, but their influence was nevertheless remarkable, particularly on the

35 like Bismarck during the Kulturkampf, but also against the pope in Rome. As a group, the bishops were severely sensitive to the Syllabus of Errors (issued 1864), which condemned freedom of religion and declared liberalism and Catholicism to be incompatible, and the doctrine of papal infallibility (issued 1870), which declared the pope incapable of error in matters of faith and morals when speaking ex cathedra. Their essential disagreements were based on the fact that Catholic leaders in Germany, both secular and religious, “had campaigned for Catholic rights under the liberal banner of religious freedom.”59 The decrees from Rome must have seemed like a backhanded slap, and they galvanized the bishops into cooperating with Center leaders in opposing the intervention of the Holy See, which strained relations between the episcopate and the

Vatican into the next century.60

Not even the ravages of the Kulturkampf could fully heal this breach; the temporary unity it produced between laity, clergy and pope evaporated when the

Kulturkampf began to wind down. The bishops sided with Windthorst against the papal push for a permanent representative in Berlin and refused to cooperate in the pope’s attempts in the 1880s to influence the course of post-Kulturkampf politics.61 Overall, the activities of the episcopate before the Great War were often overshadowed in terms of popularity, notoriety, and influence by the political Catholic (lay) leadership. The names

clergy, and became increasingly political during the 1860s. See Sperber, Popular Catholicism, especially Chapter 2. In another example, German bishops as well as priests also fought the notorious Pulpit Decree of 1871, the epitome of Kulturkampf legislation, which tried to restrict the clergy’s political activities by threatening imprisonment for any priest who made state affairs the topic of discussion with his flock. The decree proved to be a failure because charges were usually difficult to verify. See Ross, Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, 96. 59 Gross, War Against Catholicism, 118. 60 No less a respected and admired figure than Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, bishop of Mainz, joined Windthorst in voicing opposition, particularly to papal infallibility. The archbishop of Cologne and the bishop of Osnabrück supported them. See Anderson, Windthorst, 121, 127. 61 Anderson, Windthorst, 219-20, 335-58.

36 of Windthorst, the Bachem brothers, Mallinckrodt, and Erzberger were more easily recognized and identified as powerful Catholics than those of any contemporary bishops.

While the bishops’ autonomy demonstrated a willful independence and a certain amount of fearlessness, this tendentious relationship within the religious hierarchy resurfaced during the Third Reich with significant ramifications. The Vatican’s unwillingness to commit to an open condemnation of Hitler and the episcopate’s inability to reach consensus how to confront Nazism left lower-level clergy, and Germany’s Catholics, to cope without the benefit of clear moral guidance, as shall be explored in the following chapters.

The Reichskonkordat would have enormous consequences for Catholics in

Germany and for German clergy in particular. It was one of the first international treaties signed with the new – and openly racist – Nazi regime, and as such was an act of recognition of the Nazi regime by the Vatican that Church leaders and priests in Germany accepted.62 But the Reichskonkordat must be understood as a process that unfolded over more than a decade, and not merely as a single event at a point in time. It involved several separate German states and the efforts of key individuals determined to bring about an official agreement between the government and the Church, as well as the sincere intentions of Pope Pius IX and his Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope

Pius XII) to reach an accommodation with a German government that would safeguard the rights of Catholics within its boundaries. What is surprising is that the Center as a

62 Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York and Toronto: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1964), 93. It is often incorrectly claimed that the 1933 Reichskonkordat was the first international recognition given to Hitler’s government by the signing of a treaty. In fact, two agreements preceded it that are often overlooked because of their relatively modest impact on international affairs: the renewal of the German-Soviet “Friendship Treaty” in May 1933 (initially signed in 1926), and the Four- Power pact signed with Great Britain, France and Italy on 15 June 1933. See Dieter Albrecht, “Der Heilige Stuhl und das Dritte Reich” in Kirche, Katholiken, und Nationalsozialismus, edited by Klaus Gotto and Konrad Repgen (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1980), 36.

37 political player had a smaller role than might be expected in the process that led to the

Reichskonkordat; the clergy’s role was also minimal, and the faithful themselves even less.

The evolution of the concordat between the Nazi regime and the Vatican can be fully grasped only within the context of church-state compromises that evolved over centuries. Concordats were diplomatic tools utilized by various popes to obtain guarantees from a ruler or state regarding the rights of its Catholic subjects. The first such agreements had been signed in the twelfth century, when Pope Gregory VII and his successors confronted the Holy Roman emperors regarding the appointment of bishops and lesser church officials.63 Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte signed the first concordat of the modern era, three years before Napoleon crowned himself emperor; it ended the revolutionary chaos and horrific persecution that had characterized the life of the Church in France since 1789. The 1801 Concordat legalized the Church in France, recognized the authority of the pope, and disavowed the divisive Civil Constitution of the

Clergy. While the pope had to make some concessions to achieve these gains, he secured the Church’s future in France, and although Napoleon would later misinterpret and misapply some of the concordat’s revisions, a Catholic revival in France had begun that led to a strengthening of the Church’s position there throughout the nineteenth century.

63 See John Zeender, “Introduction,” in Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler, edited by Frank J. Coppa (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 1999). These early concordats are often grouped separately from post-Reformation concordats because the former emerged in a radically different political context – the pope was a political player of considerable power. After the Reformation and the impact of the Enlightenment, the papacy used concordats to secure religious rights and guarantees from the state or ruler for its Catholic subjects, suggesting that the concordats themselves came to symbolize some of the political power that the Church had lost.

38 The concordat, furthermore, became a model for several subsequent concordats, all of which served to regulate Church-state relations.64

Of course, the most immediate precursor to the Reichskonkordat was the Lateran

Accord of 1929, the first major concordat of the twentieth century, signed between Pope

Pius XI and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. This vital treaty had its roots in Italian unification, during which the Papal States had been seized and incorporated into what emerged as modern Italy; the pope at the time, Pius IX, had retreated to the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner. His successors attempted unsuccessfully to seek redress from different Italian governments until Mussolini took power and, in an about-face not entirely unlike what would occur in Nazi Germany, appeared to abandon his vociferous anti-Catholic stance and exhibit a desire for reconciliation. This he did largely out of the same motivations that would steer Hitler towards accommodation with the Vatican in

1933: both dictators recognized the potential support to be gained from traditional, conservative segments of the population. The Conciliazone, as the Lateran Agreements came to be called, officially settled the old “Roman question” by guaranteeing sovereignty of the pope in Vatican City in return for papal recognition of an independent

Italy. It also paved the way for broad popular support for the Fascist movement and – again, drawing comparison to Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1933 – legitimacy for Mussolini as the leader of Italy.65

After the war, the new German government and the Vatican resumed diplomatic relations with the exchange of ambassadors. The man chosen to act as the first papal

64 As related in William Roberts, “Napoleon, the 1801 Concordat, and Its Consequences” in Controversial Concordats. The other concordats include agreements with Switzerland (1845), Spain (1851), Austria (1855), Portugal (1866), and Colombia (1918). 65 Peter C. Kent, The Pope and the Duce: The International Impact of the Lateran Agreements (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 1-10.

39 ambassador to Germany had been nuncio to Bavaria since 1917; Eugenio Pacelli was appointed to his new post on 30 June 1920.66 Crudely put, his overriding goal was to achieve a “super concordat that would impose the full force of canon law equally on all

Catholics in Germany,” although it might also be argued that Pacelli simply took the available opportunity to press for an official guarantee of Catholic rights in Germany, an opportunity that had not emerged for more than fifty years.67 Nor was Pacelli acting independently. With the overthrow of the Reich and the establishment of a republic, several Catholic politicians and heads of churches recognized the need for a formal revision of church-state relations and saw an opening through which to accomplish this.

The newly-minted Weimar Constitution, signed in August 1919, guaranteed to all citizens that the state would regard ideological constructs (which presumably included religion) with neutrality, in addition to guaranteeing the freedoms of belief and conscience and the unimpeded practice of religion.68 These guarantees seemed to invite a new concordat, which in the Church’s eyes would effectively bind the state to upholding such constitutional guarantees. It would, moreover, bring to an end the considerable history of attempts to achieve a nation-wide agreement between the Vatican and the

66 Hereafter referred to as nuncio, using the ecclesiastical title by which papal ambassadors installed in countries with formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican are addressed. 67 Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933: Von den Ansätzen in der Weimarer Republik bis zur Ratifizierung am 10. September 1933 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1972), 1-2. Volk emphasizes the enforcement aspect of a concordat for canon law because the Codex Iuris Canonici had been published in 1917. This was the first time that all the canon laws of the Roman Catholic Church had been gathered and published in a single volume (in Latin), and the Vatican was obviously anxious to see it disseminated and imposed. John Cornwell also discusses it in Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking, 1999), 85. However, Cornwell’s text should be read with caution; its polemical goal is to “expose” Pius XII’s so-called hidden racist and highly antisemitic agendas. His account of Pacelli situates him at the epicenter of all ecclesiastical-diplomatic wrangling involving concordats between 1920 and 1933, suggesting an exaggerated “great man” approach to history that obscures the roles played by other individuals and parties. 68 Georg Denzler and Volker Fabricius, Christen und Nationalsozialisten: Darstellung und Dokumente: mit einem Exkurs, Kirche im Sozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993), 29. This is the one-volume edition.

40 German state, the former wanting to protect the rights and way of life of Germany’s

Catholics by securing control of religious education and the right to self-financing, the latter anxious to emphasize the separation of church and state and perhaps to limit as much as possible the Church’s impact on political affairs.

On a federal level, this proved impossible. Given the instability of the Reichstag during the republic, caused partly by the number of different political parties and their inability to form cohesive and lasting coalitions, the option of a concordat was reduced during the Weimar era to a question entertained at the state level. Pacelli was responsible for directing the Vatican’s attention to Bavaria in 1920, where he had already served as nuncio; he was familiar with the political balance in parliament, and felt that it would be a wiser choice to “first guide the concordat with Bavaria to its end, for a favorable agreement [supporting a concordat] is to be expected sooner … since a majority for it will be found more easily in the state legislature. This Bavarian concordat could then serve as a model for the other German states as well and as an example of precedence.”69

Five years later, the Bavarian parliament voted seventy-three to fifty-two in favor of a concordat, which was signed without official Reichstag approval but with informal assurances that it did not violate the constitution.70 Bavaria was a predominantly Catholic state; until 1932, when the Nazis made their dramatic gains, the strongest party in its parliament was always the BVP. Furthermore, Bavaria had the precedent of a concordat signed in 1824. It was logical for Pacelli to attempt to gain a concordat here first.

69 Letter from Pacelli to Archbishop Cardinal Bertram, July 30, 1920, as quoted in Volk, Das Reichskonkordat, 7. 70 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 101; Evans, German Center Party, 317.

41 The second concordat was “a tenaciously negotiated agreement,”71 achieved at the end of a more vigorous battle, and therefore seemed all the more meaningful, signed as it was between Prussia and the Vatican. Unlike Bavaria, where the domination of an openly

Catholic party was clear, in the Prussian parliament the party had to contend with the powerful forces of the Social Democrats and the German National People’s Party

(DNVP), a rightwing conservative party. The SPD never looked amicably on the Center’s push for a concordat, and Centrists were concerned throughout the 1920s that agitating too hard for one might provoke conditions reminiscent of the 1870s. But the success of a concordat in Bavaria, and the signing of a 1925 Vatican concordat with Poland, which affected formerly Prussian areas of Germany that had become part of Poland, persuaded pro-concordat delegates to try. It prodded the Center to make the concordat issue a question of coalition: “if the SPD did not want to lose their most important and reliable partner, and thereby the prerequisite of their ruling power spanning several years, they had to embrace [nähertreten] the problem.”72 After a bitter battle in parliament, which included the decisive sacrifice of any mention of the education system within its text, the state parliament the concordat in July 1929.

The third and final provincial concordat was signed with Baden. As in Prussia, those seeking an official agreement had to make the same large concessions in order to achieve it, namely the exclusion of any mention of education. The Center in particular was reluctant to allow this, because the regulation of denominational schools and the role of religion in the education system had been one of its top priorities since even before the war. However, conditions seemed close to optimal for a concordat in August 1932, when

71 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 108. 72 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 105.

42 the SPD, the Center’s traditional coalition partner in the state, agreed to a draft that was then forwarded to Pacelli, now working in Rome as Cardinal Secretary of State, and his successor as nuncio in Germany, Cesare Orsenigo. After a flurry of unexpected political activity, which saw the SPD abandon the project, the concordat was passed in October of that year by a mere two votes.73 The parliament ratified it in March 1933 and signed by the state president mere hours before the Nazis removed him from office as part of the sweeping seizure of power.

The Catholic population at large had little to do with the attainment of the three state-level concordats. What these concordats emphasize is the relationships between the different figures that would play a part in bringing about the desired 1933

Reichskonkordat; the process also underscores the relative powerlessness of traditional religious authority, the bishops and priests in Germany, which set an alarming precedent for the rest of the Third Reich era. The Center Party’s presence was undeniably a requirement, since “the Catholic party in the state parliament possessed either a dominant position as in Bavaria, a decisive position as in Baden, or at least an influential position as in Prussia.”74 Where it played a decisive role at the state level, though, the Party would take a back seat at the federal level, and a single delegate, Ludwig Kaas, an ordained priest and former Center Party chairman, exerted more direct influence on the process.

Pacelli was also a seminal influence on all three state concordats, working tirelessly to produce drafts and taking advantage of every opportunity that emerged. The German episcopate was not dominant, but the bishops of two of the states in question –

Archbishop Cardinal von Faulhaber in Munich and Freising, and Archbishops Fritz and

73 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 110. 74 Volk, Das Reichskonkordat, 57.

43 Gröber in Freiburg – did carry some weight, especially in their relationships with

Pacelli.75 Archbishop Carl Fritz of Freiburg was “always openly cool” toward Pacelli’s aims, which kept the latter from making any kind of significant headway with the Center

Party until the bishop died at the end of 1931 and was replaced by Bishop Konrad

Gröber, popular in Baden and also on better terms with Pacelli.76

Von Faulhaber saw the Bavarian concordat as something of a defeat, as it had to be “bought” with concessions to the Protestant churches. He was also irritated that the agreement had not successfully abolished state interference in the appointment of priests to parishes, and on this issue he was not alone; his “colleagues were also less than happy.” Nevertheless he appreciated Pacelli’s “towering spirit and endless patience” that clinched the concordat despite some resistance.77 These men would all have further dealings with Pacelli, first in the attainment of the Reichskonkordat, and later when

Pacelli became pope in 1939.

The Reichskonkordat would emerge within a context reminiscent of all three state concordats: that of a diplomatic power play between a handful of men, allegedly acting in the best interests of German Catholics without necessarily involving them at all in the process. Center Party, episcopate, and the majority of both clergy and laity were held at arms’ length during the 1933 negotiating process. The handful of individuals who composed the concordat did not invite the German bishops as a group to contribute to the concordat’s drafting; its existence was the subject of excited and agitated, though mostly

75 Bishop Schreiber in Berlin was ill for most of this period; Konrad von Preysing would take over as bishop of the Berlin diocese in 1935. My thanks to Kevin Spicer for pointing this out. 76 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 125-26. 77 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 103.

44 unconfirmed, rumors. The bishops finally saw a draft treaty circulated at the annual Fulda

Bishops Conference in May 1933, mere weeks before the final version was signed.78

Through the decade and a half that the Weimar Republic endured, there were too many political differences in the Reichstag to attain any kind of approval for the larger

Reichskonkordat project, even if four of Weimar’s twelve chancellors were Centrists who headed nine of twenty cabinets.79 Moreover, the history of concordats in general has shown that it was easier for the Vatican to pursue such contracts with authoritarian regimes than with democratic governments, the latter of which tended to be characterized by anti-clericalism and political diversity that made treating with the pope, let alone arriving at a consensus, nearly impossible.80 Still, hope was never entirely abandoned;

Center delegates, the bishops, and Pacelli’s indefatigable efforts continued to push for it, and saw the successful state-level concordats as necessary steps in the right direction. But by the time of the signing of the Bavarian concordat, there was a new, albeit radical player trying to make an entrance in the political scene. In the mid-1920s, Hitler may have been sitting in Landsberg prison for his failed putsch attempt, but Nazism had already attracted the attention of the German bishops, who were drawn to the movement’s anti-Bolshevik agitation but increasingly concerned with its anti-Christian and racist overtones.81 It is thus ironic that the ascendancy of the Nazis, an openly anti-

Christian Party, in the Reichstag in 1933 enabled the realization of a Reichskonkordat.

78 Volk, Das Reichskonkordat, 95-116. 79 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 88. 80 Frank J. Coppa, “Mussolini and the Concordat of 1929” in Controversial Concordats, 81-84. 81 This is exemplified by their eventual condemnation of the ideas presented in Alfred Rosenberg’s text, Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Published in 1930, the book was written by the Party’s self-appointed ideologue, and rejected traditional Christianity in favor of a paganistic, highly racialized “positive Christianity.” Dominick Burkard, Häresie und Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Rosenbergs nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung vor dem Tribunal der Römischen Inquisition (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005), esp. 41-52.

45 Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party and architect of its ideology, did not represent

Catholics as enemies of the German nation to the same extent as Jews and Bolsheviks, but he initially made little secret of his antipathy for Catholicism, telling a visitor during his jail term that it would now be necessary to “hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies” in order to achieve power.82 Though the unofficial anti-Catholicism of the Party did not weaken as its membership grew, its leaders were careful not to instigate unrestrained and direct attacks on the churches, restricting polemics to attacks on “‘ultramontanism’ and ‘political Catholicism,’” and it attracted an increasing number of Catholics, even priests.83

This should not be surprising: Catholics could identity with the anti-Communist, anti-liberal, anti-modern attitude of the NSDAP, as well as Hitler’s promises to do away with the ignominious Versailles Treaty and restore Germany to her former glory.

According to some estimates, the number of Catholics voting for the Nazi Party may have peaked in 1932 at two million.84 On the other hand, the bishops of Mainz, Bavaria,

Paderborn, and the Upper Rhenish provinces were concerned enough, particularly over the Party’s use of racial language and the promotion of a religion of “positive

Christianity,” to issue warnings between 1930 and 1931 in their own dioceses, and in

82 J. Noakes and G. Pridham, editors, Nazism 1919 – 1945, Volume I: The Rise to Power 1919 – 1934 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), 23. 83 Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 115; See also Kevin Spicer, Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press), for a fascinating analysis of priests who were staunch supporters of Nazism. 84 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 19. The overall number of voters did climb in the September 1930 (82% eligible turned out) and May 1932 elections (84.1%), dropped in November 1932 (80.6%), then rocketed in March 1933 to its highest ever, at 88.8% (though the government was no longer democratic for this last election). In these same elections, the Center and BVP votes rested at approximately the same level (Center: 9.6%, 10.4%, 9.5%; BVP: 2.5%, 3.1%, 2.7%), underscoring the relative stability of the Catholic voting bloc. The Nazis may have attracted Catholic voters away from their traditional parties, but not in high enough numbers to impact the Center vote substantially. See Falter, “Social Bases of Political Cleavages,” in Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change, 378.

46 some cases proclaimed bans on Nazi Party membership for clergy (Bavaria) or even lay

Catholics (Paderborn) and proscription of the sacraments for those who chose to join the

Party.85 But these proscriptions were relatively weak. The episcopate as a whole failed to come to a unanimous agreement condemning Nazism, limiting itself to the above- referenced denunciations of racist language and positive Christianity as well as vague statements about the threat of radical nationalism.

Although Hitler’s movement made no overtly hostile moves against the Church before 1933, its jump in popularity in the 1932 Reichstag elections pushed Center leaders and Pacelli to resume efforts to secure a concordat, both fearing for the rights of the

Church in Germany as well as a continued loss of Catholics to an anti-Christian ideology.

In the Reichstag, a complex play of power unfolded when Franz von Papen was appointed chancellor in July. Von Papen served as the middleman between the new Nazi government of January 1933, which was open to the idea of a concordat after Hitler was named chancellor, and the Vatican, represented by Pacelli. The man with whom he worked most closely was Kaas, who had worked with Pacelli to attain the Bavarian and

Prussian concordats.86 More than any other German Catholics, these two men were responsible for re-opening concordat negotiations.

85 Individual bishops took stringent steps against Nazism, forbidding priests to participate in any way with the Party in Bavaria, forbidding Catholics to acknowledge adherence to its anti-Catholic rhetoric in the Upper Rhenish provinces, even forbidding Catholics to become members in Paderborn. See Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, edited by Hans Müller (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1965), 40-58. See also Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 9-11. 86 The initial encounter between Kaas and von Papen evidently took place on a train from Munich to Rome in April 1933, leaving a great deal of mystery and supposition surrounding what might have actually taken place, though historians tend to agree that the initiative to reopen negotiations came from the German government, through von Papen. Lewy and Volk both offer reconstructions of the timeline from March to April 1933, suggesting that von Papen approached the chancellor shortly after the Enabling Act passed; Kaas, who was residing in both Germany and Rome at that time, proved to be the vital go-between that succeeded in engaging the German government (von Papen and Hitler) and the Vatican (Pacelli). Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 63-71; Volk, Das Reichskonkordat, 90-104; Evans, German Center Party, 394; Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 233-34.

47 The conclusion of an official Reichskonkordat was as much the fulfillment of a decades-long desire for guaranteed ecclesiastical rights vis à vis the state as it was a defensive maneuver spearheaded by those who had led the smaller concordats to conclusion. Designed to relieve the concerns of German Catholics anxious about preserving public Church life under the Third Reich, the concordat was agreed to by the

German bishops with some reluctance, and its adoption brought a complex blend of relief and consternation from a population that had largely followed them in their ambivalence towards the new government. The concordat’s greatest impact was on the lower clergy, who were simultaneously barred from participating in politics and made eligible for conscription if there was a general European war.

For the bishops, the concordat was an agreement that had come into existence over their heads and largely without their input. Officially they echoed the public praise and gratitude of the Fulda Bishop’s Conference chairman, Archbishop Cardinal Adolf

Bertram, when he exclaimed in a thank-you letter to Hitler, “What the old parliaments and parties could not achieve in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has realized on a world-historical level in six months.”87 No doubt some supported it opportunistically; many others likely felt pressed to demonstrate their loyalty to their church’s decision, even if they harbored misgivings about the way it had been accomplished. They were all aware that Hitler himself had had very little to do with the evolution of the

Reichskonkordat; but his assumption of the chancellery – and the dismantling of democracy in favor of authoritarian rule – opened doors that had remained shut throughout the Weimar era. And the bishops could not afford to be ignorant of the concordat’s advantageous points, several of which German Catholic lay and spiritual

87 Bertram, as quoted in Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 246.

48 leaders had struggled to obtain for decades. These included the guarantee of religious freedom and the right of the church to manage its own affairs (Article 1); the right to free communication between the Holy See and the Catholic bishops, clergy, and populace of

Germany (Article 4); clarification of the legal status of the clergy (Articles 5 through 10); guarantees over property and juridical rights, religious orders, and finances tied to the state (Articles 15 through 18); pastoral care for the army, prisons, and hospitals (Articles

27 and 28); and the two most important issues, guarantees concerning religious education

(Articles 19 through 25) and the right to organize and maintain Catholic lay organizations

(Article 31).88 These articles clarified what had been left ambiguous in the Weimar constitution, and expanded on the contents of the concordats already signed in Bavaria,

Prussia, and Baden. Some concluded that an inappropriate compromise, or a

“dishonorable ‘horse trade,’” had been made, in view of the fact that the dissolution of the Center and, indeed, democratic practices in the Reichstag in general took place almost simultaneously with the signing of the concordat; but most saw the agreement as a victory for German Catholics.89

It might have seemed briefly that the concessions made by the Church to secure the Reichskonkordat had softened the Nazis about Catholic participation in public life, such that the German Catholic population, or at least its leaders, could live without fear of encountering more active persecution directed by the one-party state. Hitler’s government was now legally bound to respect the rights of Catholics; organizations and

88 Volk, full copy of the Reichskonkordat including supplements and the secret appendix concerning the conscription of priests, in Das Reichskonkordat, 234-44. 89 Evans describes the theory of the “horse trade” quite thoroughly in German Center Party, 392-94. The signing of the concordat on 20 July had followed the formal dissolution of the Center by sixteen days. In her discussion of relevant literature, Evans concedes that it is unclear to what extent the vital Center vote for the Enabling Act in March 1933 and its “voluntary” dissolution played a role in the government’s acceptance of the concordat.

49 religious education would be left alone, and the Church’s authority would not be questioned in its own affairs. Moreover, in the days following the ratification, Hitler declared that the dissolution of Catholic organizations that had already been carried out would be cancelled; he suspended ongoing coercive measures against priests; and he declared that he would cease the persecution of Catholic leaders.90 Bishops and priests offered masses of Thanksgiving,91 Catholic theologians stepped forward to proclaim their cooperation, and new pro-Nazi Catholic periodicals and organizations sprang into being, reflecting a remarkable, if limited, ideological Gleichschaltung that was not entirely driven by the Nazis.92

Of course, the pretext of having long desired a federal concordat was as convenient for Church authorities as it was genuine; they knew that a concordat would keep the Nazis from attacking the Church too openly, if not because the Party would honor the terms, then because Hitler was still sensitive to the international community. In a much-cited report to the Foreign Office, Ivone Kirkpatrick, the British chargé-d’affaires in the Vatican, related a conversation he had with Pacelli, in which the future pope insisted that the Church had no political agenda. Rather, “the spiritual welfare of 20 million Catholic souls in Germany was at stake” and if the Nazis chose to violate the agreement, “and they were certain to do so,” the Church had a legal foundation upon which to base a protest.93 Pacelli continued to speak in these terms after the war, long

90 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 241. 91 Joseph A. Biesinger outlines a point of contention between two authoritative historians about the celebration of thanksgiving services in the aftermath of the concordat’s ratification: according to Lewy, all dioceses offered one, but Volk insists that only the nuncio, Orsenigo, and the archbishop of Bamberg, Jakobus von Hauck, did. Other bishops and priests offered a “Te Deum,” a hymn traditionally used in thanksgiving for a special blessing. See Biesinger, “The Reich Concordat of 1933: The Church Struggle Against Nazi Germany” in Controversial Concordats, 142 n. 68. 92 This is the image conveyed by Lewy in Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 100-12. 93 Volk, Das Reichskonkordat, 250-51.

50 after he had become Pope Pius XII. Addressing the College of Cardinals 1945, he chose not to address the Church’s considerable initiative in pursuing a concordat with the Nazis and explained that

the stimulus came from the side of National Socialism itself, so that in the case of a rejection, the entire responsibility for its consequences would fall on the Holy See. At the time, to be sure, the Church itself was not deluded or misled about the true lessons and goals of National Socialism. However, through the existing Reichskonkordat, all kinds of mischief could, at least in the first years after 1933, be prevented.94

This line of argument underemphasizes Pacelli’s own role as a highly adept political player in the securing of the agreement, but it also highlights the difficulties within which the Church was operating – and chose to operate. This would not be the only unfortunate example of myopia displayed by spiritual leaders when it came to the welfare of German

Catholic souls. Nor would it be the only example of claims to neutrality or apolitical thinking that would be belied by subsequent behavior and actions.

Ultimately, though, the Vatican, Pacelli, the former Centrist leaders, and the wider

Catholic population of Germany could not ignore what two pro-Nazi papers exclaimed at the time. The first, the Nationalsozialistische Parteikorrespondenz, printed a commentary that read, “The fact that the Vatican has closed a deal with the new Germany signifies the recognition of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This agreement makes it clear and beyond doubt to the whole world, that the assumption that Nazism is an enemy of religion is a lie which was devised for the purpose of political agitation.” The second pronouncement came from the Nazi Party’s chief organ, the Völkische

Beobachter, and was more succinct but no less powerful: “National Socialism in

Germany has been acknowledged by the Catholic Church in the most solemn way

94 KMBA SW/1008 VII (1), speech, June 2, 1945.

51 possible.”95 Very few in 1933 understood the lengths to which the Nazi Party would go to realize its Weltanschauung; those who compromised with dictatorship and racism in the early part of the Third Reich did so for a variety of reasons, thinking they could get what they needed and control Hitler while doing it. Only in the course of the following years were they to learn how mistaken they were. The Church’s leadership was no exception.

It is difficult for the historian to paint any definitive picture of how the German

Catholic population in general reacted to this agreement, and how they understood the altered world within which they were to operate for the next six years. Decades earlier, the Kulturkampf had provided an external threat against which to form a cohesive self- defense. After formal discrimination ceased, divisions along social and economic lines fractured that unity. The 1933 concordat dissolved, seemingly, any threat that might have prompted Catholics to come together again. Nazism was now acceptable, so much so that when the Nazis began to undermine, subtly but diligently, the provisions of the

Reichskonkordat one by one, few Catholics were impelled to complain loudly. The majority of German Catholics seemed unconcerned and unaffected, preferring to adjust to the changes, not fight them. This included the clergy.

More than twenty million Catholics made up thirty-two percent of the 1933 population of Germany.96 Approximately 20,000 priests administered across nineteen dioceses and six archdioceses. Catholic organizations were flourishing, especially the youth organizations; the Catholic Youth of Germany [Katholische Jugend Deutschlands] boasted 1,500,000 members and included thirty-three subsidiaries. Only the sport youth

95 Both quoted in Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 245. 96 P. Anselm Reichhold OSB, Die deutsche katholische Kirche zur Zeit des Nationalsozializmus (1933- 1945) (Erzabtei St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1992), 21.

52 groups had more members.97 More than four hundred Catholic daily newspapers circulated across the country, complemented by a variety of weeklies and periodicals.98 A host of Catholic intellectuals came of age during the Weimar era who remained publicly influential under the Nazis: Romano Guardini, Josef Pieper, Karl Adam, Max Scheler,

Josef Wittig, Walter Dirks, and Felix Messerschmid were only a few of the names whose writings were widely circulated and read. Their Catholic beliefs posed no obstacle when it came to working within the highly politicized, anti-Christian landscape of the Third

Reich; religion and nationalism again proved seamless. Indeed, German Catholic priests and bishops mirrored the reaction of the larger German population, some of whom found ways to cooperate with Nazism and reasons to justify it, others of whom continued to keep themselves aloof from Nazism. Very few treated the Party as an enemy that needed to be resisted.

Those Catholics brave enough to condemn the activities or ideology of National

Socialism publicly did so very carefully, and often very narrowly, between 1933 and

1939. Historians have traditionally interpreted this resistance as a kind of offense built on defense or, to use another phrase, an “institutional protectionism.”99 The Church as a body had signed onto the Reichskonkordat; even if they anticipated as early as 1933 that the Nazi government was not going to honor it, the bishops intended to stay out of politics as instructed by the treaty, which included any public condemnation of decrees or decisions that did not directly infringe on the Church’s authority, doctrine or teachings, or its pastoral mission to the Catholic flock in Germany. The historians who adhere to the

97 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 4; Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 128. 98 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 133. 99 For comments on this theory, see Kevin P. Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 7.

53 institutional protectionism theory stress the sincerity of the Church’s belief that this was the best way to protect the remaining rights that Catholics had in Nazi Germany: leave alone, and hope to be left alone. This is borne out in literature of the time that dealt with issues of authority and obedience, summed up in the oft-repeated phrase from the Gospel of Matthew, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”.100 Pope Pius XI emphasized this distinction at an assembly of Catholic youth groups, introducing a chord to which spiritual authorities in Germany would later return:

One has to avoid misunderstandings that can emerge if We, the episcopate, drive the clergy and secular Catholics to certain points of view with regard to politics, when in actuality we merely protect beliefs and fulfill their prescriptions. If we stand up for the freedom of the Church, if we fight for the sanctity of the schools and the family, if we demand the sanctification of Sundays and holy days, we exercise nothing more and nothing less than religious vocation and the safeguarding of religion. In these and similar cases, we exercise no politics [wir treiben keine Politik]….

The same 1932 article, entitled “State and Church” and edited by Cardinal Dr. August

Hlond, Primate of Poland, upheld the idea of total submission in the final paragraph, suggesting that the Church adhere to this no matter what the cost by insisting, “the

Church will support the state in each case, and defend its authority. Even then, when the

Church defends its rights against the state. Even then, when the state suppresses the

Church.” 101

There were other motivations that factored into the disinterest of Catholics in speaking out against Nazism and certain of its policies. The Nazis treated those who did much the same as Socialists and communists, and threw them into jail or worse, into a

100 Matthew 22:21 101 EAM 8015 (1), Kardinal-Faulhaber Archiv. Pius XI, allocution to Catholic Youth Congress, September 19, 1925, reprinted in Allgemeine Rundschau: Wochenschrift für Politik und Kultur (München), October 22, 1932.

54 concentration camp. By the end of June, they had arrested in excess of 2,000 members of the Bavarian People’s Party, including 150 Catholic priests. Some of these were released when Cardinal von Faulhaber secured a discharge, but at the end of 1933, records indicate that 16,409 German citizens had experienced “protective custody” [Schutzhaft],

3,855 of whom remained jailed into 1934.102 Priests and bishops faced ridicule in the pro-

Nazi press and harassment from the Gestapo. The Gestapo raided the office of Cardinal von Faulhaber, one of the more vociferous opponents of Nazism, so often that he and his assistants regularly culled his personal correspondence and destroyed any letters that could potentially bring trouble.103 Newspapers such as the Völkische Beobachter, the official Nazi Party organ, and Das Schwarze Korps, the SS circular, waged a determined fight against the Catholic Church and its practices in their pages, taking aim in particular at the hierarchy in Germany and the pope in Rome. Das Schwarze Korps attacked von

Faulhaber himself in more than one scathing commentary.104

The Nazis did not take long to prove what Pacelli had already surmised during the negotiation of the concordat; almost as soon as the agreement was ratified, the regime worked to discover ways to undermine the Church’s position, conducting attacks that brought a chorus of protests from bishops and priests, but little more. Despite the increasing infractions, they feared provoking the government into stripping Catholics

102 Statistics taken from Reichhold, Die deutsche katholische Kirche, 40. It is unclear if the larger statistics are confined to Bavaria alone or to the whole of Germany. 103 Conversation with Dr. Susan Kornacker, archivist, EAM. Cardinal von Faulhaber was a complicated individual who both displayed elements of traditional anti-Jewish thinking – his famous 1933 sermon about the importance of the Old Testament also made clear that he was not interested in defending contemporary Jews, who were “restless wanderers over the earth” – as well as a certain fearlessness in challenging the regime on other points of its ideology, especially its racism. I feel that it is too simple to classify him as antisemitic, though. One cannot ignore the anti-Jewishness of certain of his statements, but one equally cannot ignore the warm, concerned correspondence he maintained with Jewish leaders both during and after the war, as found in his papers in the Munich diocesan archive 104 For example, see EAM 3055 (1), “Wer lügt, Herr Kardinal?” in Das Schwarze Korps, 20 February 1936.

55 completely of their right to religious practice. Hitler’s government took the first step with the decree against double membership, or Doppelmitgliedschaft, which asserted that

Catholics could not belong to a Catholic association and the Nazi Party at the same time.

The Hitler Youth organization adopted the same resolution, prohibiting simultaneous membership in a Catholic youth organization and the Hitlerjugend, and eventually decreed that “all activity which is not of a purely ecclesiastical or religious nature, in particular political and various sport activities, is forbidden to denominational Youth associations even if formed for the occasion.”105 This was in July 1935; the youth groups had managed to last two more years before being effectively shut down. Raids on offices of the sort that von Faulhaber experienced in Munich were not anomalous; Nazi agents, including the police and the Gestapo, entered diocesan administrations across Germany forcibly and turned them upside down. They attacked denominational schools at all levels and on multiple fronts: the government suddenly dismissed their professors and teachers and denied them their promised subsidies, and rigged local elections. After the

Anschluss, the Nazi regime closed theological faculties in Austria, and left posts both there and in Germany vacant when it refused to approve the proposed candidates. The regime curtailed state subsidies for churches as early as 1935; it severely challenged the circulation of pastoral letters written by the bishops and the encyclicals of the pope; it reduced the Catholic press steadily, which declined from 435 periodicals in 1934 to just seven in 1943 – all in direct violation of the concordat.106

105 As quoted in The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich: Facts and Documents Translated from the German (London: The Catholic Book Club, 1942), 89. 106 The tale of the regime’s gradual dismantlement of the concordat is told in great detail in Persecution of the Catholic Church, particularly part II. It relies chiefly on official decrees and laws, newspaper accounts, and the sermons of bishops. Statistics regarding periodicals are taken from Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 148.

56 As will be discussed below, some members of the Church fought these measures with furious letter-writing and sermonizing, official complaints from clergy and laity, and no doubt feelings of resentment and betrayal, but at no time did anyone who might have had some influence attempt serious, sustained, and stubborn resistance that might have accomplished what letter-writing could not. In fact, despite the increasing hostility of the

Party and its organizations for institutionalized religion, the Church, from its leadership down, did not break ranks to confront it. In what has been called a “lopsided, unrequited love affair,” the majority of Catholics in leadership positions (both secular and ecclesiastical) found ways to acclimatize to the new regime.107 For many, this was not difficult: Hitler’s movement had paraded itself as the guardian of conservative and anti- modern values, opposing liberalism and communism, advocating a return to order in the streets (with considerable violence, which did not seem to provoke objections from

Catholic onlookers) and a reassertion of traditional ideals, emphasizing family, discipline, and strong authority: all virtues that Catholics could appreciate.108 Even during events with which one might expect the Church leaders to have taken offence for infringing upon their authority – the highly racial 1935 Berlin exhibit Das Wunder des Lebens (The

Miracle of Life), which promoted non-marital sex along the lines that “immaculate and holy is the conception out of worthy love—immaculate and holy is the birth of life of a healthy type” – the only objection that authorities seem to have raised was that the exhibit omitted references to God as the originator of life.109

107 Dagmar Herzog, “Theology of Betrayal” in Tikkun 16, 3 (May/June 2001), 70. 108 Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, “Introduction” in Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, edited by Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 9-12. 109 Dagmar Herzog, Sex After Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 46.

57 In some cases, ideological accommodation became enthusiastic collaboration.

Recent historiography suggests that a minority of German Catholics moved beyond mere acquiescence with the Party and actively, enthusiastically embraced what the movement stood for: its anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-capitalist, and antisemitic platform.

Catholicism proved to be more durably resistant to the penetration of Nazism than

Protestantism, but newer studies have shown that some regions of Catholic Germany supported the Party, especially after 1930. Due to the minimal impact of the Kulturkampf in the area, a heightened fear of the “Red Peril” after 1930, and the negative consequences of industrialization and modernization, the Center’s politics no longer satisfied significant sections of the working class and rural society and parts of the bourgeoisie in the Black Forest of south Germany, who turned towards a more radical alternative, the NSDAP.110 There is similar evidence of ardent pro-Nazi sympathy among

Catholic workers’ associations in Bavaria, where the Party “was seen as tapping into the desire of many German Catholics to be seen as patriotic Germans, to preserve the traditional patriarchal family, and to oppose the threat of communism, where they believed the next Kulturkampf would come from.”111 Here the workers’ associations found a common language on many points with Nazism and, disappointed with the string of failed economic and social promises made by the Center, tried to adapt more to the extreme right approach represented by Hitler’s party, in spite of the loud warnings of their bishops.

110 Oded Heilbronner, Catholicism, especially tables on 72, 74. 111 Douglas J. Cremer, “‘To Avoid a New Kulturkampf’: The Catholic Workers’ Associations and National Socialism in Weimar-Era Bavaria” in Journal of Church & State 1999, Vol. 41/4, 743.

58 Sympathies for Nazism could also be found among theologians, priests, and some of the bishops, men who were variously drawn to the movement for the reasons outlined above and bent their considerable intelligence to justifying it. Karl Eschweiler, a theologian and priest, was one of the more enthusiastic proponents, drawn by the similarities of the two Weltanschauungen and the restoration of civil authority and strong political leadership represented by the Nazis. When he died in 1936, he was buried in a

Nazi uniform, with both a Nazi service and funeral mass. Karl Adam viewed Hitler in messianic terms and was convinced that he would bring about the renewal of Catholicism in Germany, advocating as he did a rejection of the evils of modernity and the need for a new social and political order. Occasionally critical of National Socialism, he never abandoned it during its reign, and he welcomed the idea of conscripting priests during the war, insisting that it was a “rich experiential success” for future seminarians. Joseph

Lortz was also a staunch believer in the “new epoch” into which Hitler was leading the nation, and outlined the fundamental kinship between Nazism and Catholicism in five ways: both opposed Bolshevism, liberalism, and relativism; both opposed atheism; both affirmed the natural order of creation and the complementarity of nature and grace, which would lead Germans back to their cultural origins that would allow them to prosper; both held that society was a social unity in which individuals participated; and both aimed to overthrow modernity’s “spiritless intellectualism.” Lortz appeared to undergo a change of heart in 1937 and tried to withdraw from the Party (he was told that no one was allowed to withdraw), but intellectually he remained essentially defined by the strains of thinking

– a kind of idealism divorced from reality – that had led him in the first place to his fascination with Nazism.112

112 For more on these theologians and others, see Robert A. Krieg, Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany

59 Recent research has unearthed a list of 138 Catholic priests who openly supported

Nazism, sometimes well before 1933. Ranging from the “brown bishop,” Konrad Gröber in Freiburg im Breisgau, to Father Dr. Philipp Häuser, these priests aligned themselves enthusiastically with Nazism out of the conviction that the Party’s Weltanschauung complemented and even supported elements of Catholic teaching and dogma. Two of the most important aspects of Nazism – ultra-nationalism and antisemitism – were fundamental in drawing their support, which in most cases was unwavering and total.

Some were even subject to trials in the post-war period, with Häuser, for example, classified as a Group 1 offender (alongside Gestapo agents and SS members) and sentenced to time in a work camp.113

It was not only nationalism and antisemitism that moved clergy to work with the

Nazi movement. The importance of the threat of Bolshevism felt at this time cannot be overstressed. The depth of the danger that the Western world but particularly Catholics saw in it is difficult to imagine today. This fear of Bolshevism persuaded many devout

Catholics and their leaders to put their faith in Nazism, and may help us understand why bishops and priests felt it necessary to maintain silence when concentration camps were opened in 1933. The Vatican had watched with horror how quickly Russia, an orthodox

Christian country, had succumbed to the openly anti-Christian ideology of communism in the wake of the 1917 revolutions, and for the next two decades rarely acted without

(New York: Continuum, 2004); Michael B. Lukens, “Joseph Lortz and a Catholic Accomodation with National Socialism” in Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, edited by Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 149-68; Robert A. Krieg, Karl Adam: Catholicism in German Culture (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992); Spicer, Hitler’s Priests. For an authoritative overview of comparable Protestant theologians, see Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985). 113 Spicer’s breakthrough work on this topic can be found in “Working for the Führer: Father Dr. Philipp Häuser and the Third Reich” in Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust, edited by Kevin P. Spicer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) and in Spicer, Hitler’s Priests.

60 considering the threat of Bolshevism in Europe. Even those wary of Nazism from the beginning tended to treat it as the lesser evil – at least Nazis were not torturing priests, burning churches, and otherwise eradicating the religious beliefs of the people. The

Bavarian bishops had warned the clergy of their diocese in 1931 that, “should National

Socialism develop the methods of Bolshevism, which we hope it will not, then admittedly a bona fide attitude toward individual cases [as the attitude of the church in Bavaria was at that time] could no longer be acceptable.”114

This attitude of caution remained in evidence immediately after Hitler’s coming to power but was tempered with a recognition of the new situation. When Cardinal von

Faulhaber addressed his clergy in 1933, he reminded them of their debt to the earlier

Bavarian parliament, “which in the last decade barred the threats of communism and

Bolshevism from our homeland and who stood up for the religious-moral as well as the socio-economic recovery of our people. However, we must also accept the basic laws of

Christian political science with regard to the new government and perform civil obedience to the lawful authorities.”115 The first pastoral letter of the collective German episcopate, in June 1933, sounded an even more optimistic note:

To our great happiness, the leading figures of the new state have expressly declared that they and their movement stand on the foundation of Christianity alone…. No more, therefore, shall the unbeliever and the immorality unleashed by him poison the marrow of the German people, no more shall the murderous Bolshevism with its satanic hatred of God threaten and devastate the soul of the German people.116

114 “Anweisung der bayerischen Bischöfe an den Klerus über seine Haltung zum Nationalsozialismus,” 10 February 1931, as published in Hubert Gruber, Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus 1930-1945: Ein Bericht in Quellen (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 8. 115 “Anweisung des Erzbischofs von München und Freising, Michael Kardinal v. Faulhaber, an den Klerus seiner Erzdiözese über das Verhalten zum Nationalsozialismus (Auszug),” April 5, 1933 in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 50. 116 “Hirtenbrief der deutsche Bischöfe (Auszug),” June 3, 1933 in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 83.

61 Pope Pius XI labeled communism “the first, greatest and universal danger” because it threatened “personal dignity, the sanctity of the family, the order and security of civil life, and above all… and in particular the Catholic religion and the Catholic Church.”117 Lortz may have summarized it best for the leadership of the Church when he declared that

Nazism represented an unflinching opponent of Bolshevism, liberalism and materialism, and that “in the important things” it aspired very much to accomplish the same goals as the Church: a stronger condemnation of communism and “classical” social democracy.118

On one subject the leadership of the Church maintained a consistent public silence: the persecution of Germany’s Jews. Their excuse was not ignorance; from the boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933 to the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in

September 1935 to the wartime deportation of German Jews, the regime’s antisemitic activities were too blatant for the bishops to remain unaware. And while one man, writing in exile in 1935, had the temerity to publish his views on what Nuremberg meant – “The laws in Nuremberg appear to be a mere step along the way to the complete physical destruction of the Jews”119 – the lack of response from the bishops might best be presented by quoting Cardinal von Faulhaber. In 1933, he answered a priest who had attempted without success to publish a newspaper article taking a stand against the boycott of Jewish businesses with the following, manifesting an antisemitic attitude that was a familiar chorus in the Church at the time:

These proceedings against the Jews are un-Christian such that every Christian, not merely every priest, must act against them [dagegen auftreten]. [But] there are far

117 EAM 3055 (1), Pope Pius XI, from a speech at the opening of the Vatican world exhibition, as quoted in Dr. Edmund Freiherr Raitz v. Frentz, “Vatikan und kommunistische Weltgefah” in Die Schönere Zeit, XI. Jahrgang, June 21, 1934 (original undated). Emphasis in original. 118 Joseph Lortz, “Katholischer Zugang zum Nationalsozialismus,” end of June 1933, in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 93. 119 Waldemar Gurian, “Deutsche Briefe 52 (27 September 1935),” in Deutsche Briefe: ein Blatt der katholischen Emigration (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1969), 593.

62 more important present-day problems for the ecclesiastical authorities; because the schools, the continued existence of the Catholic associations, sterilization are indeed more important for Christianity in our Heimat, above all one may assume– [as we’ve] already seen to some extent– that the Jews are able to take care of themselves, that therefore we have no reason to give the regime a cause to turn the anti-Jewish agitation into an anti-Jesuit agitation.120

The bishops condemned neither the concentration camp system nor the Nuremberg Laws, and even during the war were silent, like the pope, about reports of atrocity and murder on the Eastern front.

Even when the regime began to violate the concordat more frequently, causing increasing concern among the bishops and clergy about the Church’s official relationship with Nazism, Catholic leaders in Germany clung firmly to the attitude that Hitler’s movement was necessary to combat the greater evil of communism. The Münchener

Beobachter was adamant that “we were and even now are always prepared to work together with state authorities in the struggle against Bolshevism and still repudiate decisively all muscovite ingratiation [Anbiederungsversuche].”121 The outbreak of the

Spanish Civil War in 1936, and Germany’s alliance with the nationalists, gave the

German bishops an opportunity to stress their loyalty to the state and their antipathy for communism, even as pro-Nazi papers mounted an attack on that loyalty.122 They issued

120 Letter from von Faulhaber to Alois Wurm, April 8, 1933, as printed in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 55. Emphasis added. 121 EAM 3055 (1): Dr. Weißthanner, erzbisch. Sekretär, “Das Bündnisangebot der Kommunisten an dem Katholizismus” in Münchener Beobachter, July 31, 1935. 122 In September 1936, Gustav Staebe, an ardent pro-Nazi and Hitler Youth leader, published “Große Sorgen in Fulda,” attacking the pope and the German bishops for their supposed silence and willful distraction in the face of atrocities perpetrated by communists in Spain. The German bishops countered in October 1936 with a pastoral response, pointing out their strong condemnation of Russian Bolshevism and the Spanish massacres months earlier, as well as the Holy Father’s call to the world to defend the victims of Bolshevism in Spain. See EAM 3055 (1): Gustav Staebe, “Große Sorgen in Fulda” in Mainfränkische Zeitung, September 26/27, 1936; “Hirtenwort betr. Pressangriffe” in Würzburger Diözesan-Blatt, October 14, 1936. Staebe had kept an eye on relations between Catholic clergy and the Nazi movement since at least 1933, when he had encouraged priests who supported Hitler to submit their names to his newspaper, the southern edition of the Völkischer Beoabchter. He was “pleasantly surprised” by the number of submissions he received, though Spicer does not detail how many this was. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, 29-30.

63 pastoral letters addressing the German Church’s stance on Bolshevism and Nazism. In

August, the bishops commented on the nonsensical idea of replacing the Christian God with a racial “German god,” and though they conceded that they owed obedience to the state according to the fourth commandment, it was prudent to recall the supplement added by St. Paul: “Man must obey God more than men.” But the same letter also stressed the plight of Spanish Catholics in their fight against “the Bolshevik anti-Christ,” and the conscientious fulfillment by so many German Catholics of “their duties as citizens and soldiers” with reference to the unjust, anti-Catholic accusations made by

“our rivals” (the Nazi government is never explicitly named).123

Another letter issued shortly before Christmas complained about Nazi concordat violations, including the attacks on denominational schools and youth groups, but nevertheless urged German Catholics “to support unstintingly the head of the German

Reich in the defensive struggle against Bolshevism.” Religious freedom had to be guaranteed, it went on, and made no pretense that the infringements on the 1933 agreement were acceptable, but “we Catholics will be ready, in spite of the distrust with which we are confronted, to give to the state what belongs to the state, and to support the

Führer in the repelling of Bolshevism and [his] other tasks.”124 The bishops set the example for their flocks: equivocation was justifiable, even if the regime could not be entirely trusted, because the larger threat was the godlessness of communism. Nazism would gradually reveal its own anti-Christian facets, but not enough to inspire the same

123 See “Hirtenwort des deutschen Episkopats,” Fulda, August 19, 1936 in Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche: 1933-1945, volume 4: 1936-39, edited by Bernhard Stasiewski and Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1981), 555-564. Biblical reference from Acts of the Apostles 5:29. 124 Reichhold, Die deutsche Katholische Kirche, 92, 94. Pastoral letter, December 24, 1936. Emphasis added.

64 kind of terror in the hearts of Catholics as what Bolshevism inspired, and not enough to motivate church leaders to divorce themselves from the movement.

Not all Catholics readily acquiesced in the argument of compatibility and compromise, but they remained a small minority. Two German Catholics who went into voluntary exile in 1933 began to circulate a serial entitled Deutsche Briefe the following year out of Lucerne, Switzerland, that criticized bluntly the willingness of Catholics to collaborate, for whatever reasons, with a regime that they recognized from the beginning as anti-Christian and evil. Deutsche Briefe recognized Bolshevism as a threat to

Catholicism, but differentiated Christian concerns with communist ideology from Hitler’s anti-Bolshevik stance, underscoring their convictions that the alliance between the

Church and state based on this perceived common enemy was faulty and dangerous. In

1936, they described “a sharp battle against Christian belief and the Catholic Church” being waged in Germany, a battle not unlike that being waged against Bolshevism. The anti-Bolshevism of Hitler was not only quite different from that of Christianity, but

Nazism and Bolshevism had certain aspects in common, not the least of which was faithlessness. Every form of Bolshevism as well as the Nazi-promoted “positive

Christianity, both of which sought to discredit and villainize the Church, threatened its members. In sum, “red and brown Bolshevism are worthy of each other: for both, the here and now [das Diesseits] is decisive.”125 The paper’s financiers, Waldemar Gurian and Otto Knab, understood from the beginning that Nazism had to be opposed unwaveringly on religious and moral grounds.

Another individual who grasped the true nature of Nazism much sooner than most other German Catholics was Dietrich von Hildebrand, an eminent theologian who fled

125 EAM 3055 (2), out of Deutsche Briefe 102 (September 4, 1936).

65 Germany to Vienna in 1933. Various popes throughout the nineteenth century had branded liberalism as one of the great evils of the modern era in its rejection of religion and God, and its proponents depicted as traditional political enemies of German

Catholicism (liberals, after all, had been Bismarck’s staunchest allies during the

Kulturkampf);126 all three – Nazism, Bolshevism, and liberalism – were deadly enemies of Christianity. Hildebrand was among the first to view liberalism as the root cause of both Nazism and Bolshevism, in an article for a periodical in 1936.127 To make his point, he returned to the liberal epoch of the preceding century, which, for all its flaws and weaknesses, had at least adhered to a kind of reverence for the truth and its pursuit. In contrast, “Bolshevism and above all National Socialism have completely jettisoned this reverence. The question that stirs emotions in the Third Reich is no longer whether

Christianity is true or false, but rather whether Christianity correlates or not with the

Germanic feeling of race.” Hildebrand’s public career was centrally devoted to questions

126 The literature on the Catholic Church’s official stance towards modernism and liberalism – and its changes over time – is extensive. I have relied chiefly on relevant papal encyclicals and the Syllabus of Errors that define and describe both and exhort Church leaders to “defend the faithful which are entrusted to you from the insidious contagion of these sects.” Taken from Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, paragraph 80 (1864), available in Philippe Levillain, general editor, The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, Volume 3 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1472-75. See also the following encyclicals: Pius IX, Quanta Cura (Condemning Modern Errors), December 8, 1864, in Papal Encyclicals 1740-1878 (Vol. 1), edited by Claudia Carlen (Raleigh: McGrath Publishing Co., 1981), 381-86; see also Pius X, Lamentabili Sane (Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists), July 3, 1907. James J. Sheehan’s detailed examination of German liberalism and its strained relations in the nineteenth century with Catholicism remains the authority on the subject: German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978). Dagmar Herzog presents a fascinating study of liberal and Catholic political development in pre-revolutionary Baden that is also useful on the subject: Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Finally, an engaging study of the Catholic Church’s reaction to modernity and the Modernism reform movement at the turn of the century can be found in Catholicism Contending With Modernity: Roman Catholic Modernism and Anti-Modernism in Historical Context, edited by Darrell Jodock (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 127 Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Die geistige Krise der Gegenwart im Lichte der katholischen Weltanschauung” in Der Christliche Ständestaat (Wien) 41, October 11, 1936, as printed in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 282-84.

66 of truth and falsity, and this may explain why he categorized Nazism in such a way at this time, rejecting any notion of compromise. In his opposition, he was unequivocal:

Only if we preserve ourselves completely from every infection carried by the great and terrible errors of our time, Bolshevism and Nazism, can we speak the redeeming Word to the world, that will lead us out through the present chaos and veraciously initiate a new era. For there is only one antithesis to all the various and contrary errors – the godly truth of Christ. Only this can effectively overcome Bolshevism, Nazism and liberalism.128

Hildebrand was not shy about communicating his attitude, even if the majority of his fellow German Catholics did not share it. He fled Vienna for France in 1938, and when

France fell to Germany in 1940, he succeeded in escaping to New York.

There is an abundance of evidence that Catholic leaders, political and spiritual, as well as educators harbored tremendous feelings of attachment to and pride in Volk and

Fatherland for which they sought expression during the Weimar years and the Third

Reich. Even the most adamantly anti-Nazi bishops openly embraced national pride as

Hitler seemingly worked to restore Germany to its former glory. Nationalism played an increasingly prominent role in politics at the end of the republic, and Catholics were not – had never been – immune to its charms. Their readiness to act on these sentiments, even if they tried to define a “Catholic way” of doing so, not only failed to “take the wind out of the sails of the extreme right,” but rather “the constant stress on devotion to the fatherland helped make nationalism more respectable.”129

Catholic bishops, clergy, and lay organizations spent a great deal of time and energy defining what German nationalism and concepts such as Heimat, Volk, and love of the Fatherland meant to them. Before the regime whittled down the Catholic press to a mere seven periodicals in 1943, it used its reach and influence to broadcast the hundreds

128 Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Die geistige Krise der Gegenwart”, 282-84. 129 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 15.

67 of exposés and articles dealing with nationalism and its attendant elements in the form of journals, newspapers, pamphlets, and circulars.130 Windthorst’s People’s Association explained in a 1931 article referring repeatedly to “love of the Fatherland” and “love of

Heimat” that “a level-headed national pride that guards itself against pathological exaggeration is justifiable and good.”131 The article went on to reveal a deep-seated conviction that the health of the German nation was inextricably intertwined with

Christian moral and religious traditions. Modernity had altered the relationship between man and homeland [Heimat], and industrialization and internationalization had dislocated workers, radically transformed the German landscape, and left them bereft of a place to call home, in direct contradiction to Christian values. In contrast to this critique of the modern, artificial world, the good Catholic German “loves his German homeland with his entire heart, the towering, majestic beauty of German mountains or the quiet, dreamy beauty of German valleys and lakes, his forests and moorlands. He will love his German mother-tongue and the history of his home and all of its old, beautiful customs and traditions….”132 Catholics were not an international group totally dependent on Rome; they put attainment of their “heavenly Fatherland” above all else, but still harbored a profound and genuine love for their “earthly Fatherland.” Moreover, Christian duty demanded “the elevation and support of the religious and moral life of the Volk, the nation. For the power and strength and blossoms of the Volk grow only out of deep religious and moral values.”133 The article ended with a reminder that all Catholics must perform obedience to the state and its constitution according to conscience, even should

130 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 148. 131 KMBA 1113, “Heimat und Vaterland im kath. Religionsunterricht der höheren Schule” by Rector Joseph Schmitz in Zeitschrift für den katholischen Religions-Unterricht an höheren Lehranstalten, 1929. 132 KMBA 1113/XVI (11), “Vaterland” by Der Volksvereine für das katholische Deutschland, 1931. 133 KMBA 1113/XVI (11), “Vaterland” (1931). Emphasis in original.

68 the state become un-Christian and regardless of the form the state takes. The only exception to this exhortation was the case when the laws of a state came into direct contradiction with God’s laws.

Youth group monthlies were similarly attentive to the cultivation of a “proper,” meaning Christian-based, nationalism among its members. The New German Youth described the foundations of the new Nazi state as built “on a historical Christian basis on the one hand and on vital cultural traditions on the other.” This new national feeling was distinguished from the old liberal nationalism under Bismarck, in that its Christian principles would drive it to lead a re-organization of occidental Europe to achieve the unity of Christian Europe: “the will of the new state to be a Christian and historical state, and the notion of a corporate configuration that rules the internal structure of our new empire, also has a deep significance for the encounter between the [German] people and those in Europe.”134 German nationhood and Christian religious traditions were inseparable, and this dual identity primed Germany to lead the re-Christianization of all of Europe, a reference that young Germans would have understood in the 1930s as directed at Bolshevik Russia.

There is evidence that some appreciated how different the Nazi conceptions of nationalism and Fatherland were from theirs, rooted as the former were in a racial- biological rather than Christian-historical understanding. The bishops had long been aware of the racial aspect of the nationalism disseminated by Nazi propaganda, and had regarded it with opprobrium because it was a direct challenge to the Church’s message of

134 Max Müller, “Neudeutsche Jugend und neuer Staat”, Zeitschriftenaufsatz, September 1933, in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 118-20.

69 universality and equality. As early as 1931, the Bavarians bishops circulated a statement to priests that declared,

Leading representatives of National Socialism assign more value to race than to religion. They reject the revelations of the Old Testament as well as the Mosaic Ten Commandments. They don’t accept the primacy of the Pope in Rome because his authority isn’t German [eine außerdeutsche Stelle sei], and they play around with the idea of a German national church that has no dogma. According to point twenty-four of their program, the eternally valid Christian moral law shall be verified by the moral sense of the Germanic race… Based on enunciations made by the Party and its leaders, it can be declared that what National Socialism calls Christianity is no longer the Christianity of Christ.135

After 1933, particularly after Hitler’s rise to power, Catholic authorities tried to re-interpret the topic of racism in order to make it acceptable for Christians. A pamphlet entitled “Catholicism and Fatherland,” written by a Franciscan priest, declared that since

“God has endowed each people with the drive to expand; each people searches to become greater, more influential, more powerful. This drive is not evil and must not be evil. But as per today’s situation, it no longer consists merely of a single people occupying a contested land, but rather that each people has the right and the duty to expand.”136

Bishop Berning of Osnabrück, who later became one of the biggest advocates of Church- state cooperation in the Third Reich, broached the topic of racism more directly in a 1933 article for the Austrian Catholic journal Die Schönere Zukunft, disagreeing with the basic

Nazi hypothesis about the German “race,” but using racial language to do so. He argued,

“the German people represents no unified race, but rather a mixed race, which can be traced back mostly to the Nordic and Mediterranean, the Dinaric, Alpine and Phalian races. Thus the German people cannot be easily equated with the Nordic race.” He went on to deny that love for one’s own race had to lead necessarily to hatred for other races or

135 “Anweisung der bayerischen Bischöfe an den Klerus über seine Haltung zum Nationalsozialismus, 10 Februar 1931” in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 6. 136 KMBA 1113, P. Erhard Schlund, OFM, “Catholicism and Fatherland,” undated but likely summer 1933.

70 peoples, and contradicted the assertion that attending to race [Rassenpflege] was incompatible with Christianity. Instead of posing as antitheses to each other, race and

Christianity belonged to different systems, and the Christian belief in the redemption of all races through the death and resurrection of Christ created a balance in the tensions among races. He cited Hitler’s contention that, as Germans are attached through love and loyalty to their own people, so they respected the national rights of other peoples “and wish to live with them in the most profound peace and harmony.”137

Two years later, a Jesuit who would survive Dachau used similar language to describe the connection between the Catholic Church and German national traditions by stressing that the underlying commonalities of national groups formed a bond built on

“blood (race) and earth, the state, language and culture; this bond regulates the heart and the essence of the community of the people, the national culture.”138 The soul of this national culture was composed of art, knowledge, morality and religion, which it was the domain of the Church to uphold and protect. The Church confirmed, developed and refined the identity of a people, as contained in its traditional culture; it prevented it from overextension and excessive increase. Therefore, “‘German’ traditional culture and the

‘Roman’ Church belong together. Their essence and their history bear witness to this.”139

German Catholicism had come full circle in these kinds of arguments: Bismarck’s policies had tried to divorce Catholics from the German Empire because of their allegiance to Rome, but Catholic theologians and priests under Hitler tried to salvage

137 KMBA 1113, Bishop Dr. Wilhlem Berning, “Traditional Culture and Church” in Die Schönere Zukunft 19, X. Jahrgang, February 3, 1933. Emphasis in original. 138 KMBA 1113, Ludger Born SJ, “Deutsches Volkstum und Römische Kirche” in Zeitfragen 121, February 6, 1935. “Das Volkstum” has no direct English translation and can be understood as “folklore,” “national tradition,” and “national identity.” For the sake of consistency, and to best capture the way it was used by Catholic priests and bishops, I will be translating Volkstum throughout as “national culture.” 139 KMBA 1113, Born, “Deutsches Volkstum und Römische Kirche.” Emphasis in original.

71 German nationalism by unearthing its foundations in Christianity, specifically the

Catholic variety. In doing so, they assimilated some of the highly racialized rhetoric of

Nazism, which in earlier years had made Church leaders so uncomfortable.

Nationalism was an integral element of German identity, especially for Catholics, who remained committed citizens of the Second Empire, and later the Weimar Republic and Third Reich, who ignored or adapted to the anti-Catholic directives first of Bismarck, and later of the Nazis, and made considerable gains in several arenas, most visibly in politics. The achievement of the Reichskonkordat suggested that the Church had warded off the potential for a second Kulturkampf spearheaded by the Nazis. It had taken some significant compromises, most notably the barring of the clergy, who had been major political actors for decades, from political participation, but generally Catholics in

Germany heralded it as a victory for the Church. Older generations of Catholics remembered the effects of the Kulturkampf and were reluctant to exacerbate the state again; the world of Catholics too young to remember the Kulturkampf was shaped by the

Great War and the upheavals of shaky parliamentarianism under the Weimar Republic, the failure of the Center Party and the concomitant rise of the Nazi Party, with its emphasis on national renewal and regeneration.

Few Catholics identified Nazism as an evil in the 1930s. Perceived threats to religion and to Catholicism motivated those who did, men such as von Hildebrand,

Gurian, and Bishop von Preysing in Berlin.140 Nazism was not yet understood, within

140 In August 1935, Gurian was already speaking (in exile) of a “Kulturkampf” in Hitler’s Germany. See “Deutsche Brief 45 (9 August 1935),” in Gurian, Deutsche Briefe. Von Preysing used both private letters and memoranda as well as sermons to identify threats to the Church and its members, speaking against the 1937 morality trials targeting clergymen, the anti-Catholic actions of the SS and the Party, and the increasingly hopeless situation of Berlin’s Jews during the war. See Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche: 1933-1945, edited by Bernhard Stasiewki and Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias- Grünewald-Verlag, 1981), various: Vol. I, “Hirtenwort Preysings,” May 7, 1937, 227-29; Vol. IV,

72 Germany’s borders or without, as a universal threat capable of engaging in mass murder to achieve its goals. As two distinct worldviews, Nazism and Catholicism had much in common, after all: neither had any love for the chaos of democratic republicanism, which had paralyzed German political life and fanned social divisions to the point of civil war.

Both categorized liberalism and socialism as fundamental threats to German Kultur, or civilization. Both desired a strong, centralized, even authoritarian-style leadership that would seek to amend the indignities Germany had suffered in 1918 and 1919. Moreover,

Hitler’s ascent to power had enabled the signing of the Reichskonkordat, something that the Church had pursued for years but that was frustrated by the inadequacies of and fissures in the Weimar system. Church leaders regarded Hitler’s movement warily, but he was the lesser evil if it came to a choice between Nazism and Bolshevism, and in any case, they put their faith in the text of the concordat and Hitler’s word that he would cease and desist informal attacks on German Catholicism. Taken together, these rationalizations may have justified in the minds of bishops and priests the Church’s failure to protest the moral crimes of the regime more vigorously between 1933 and

1939, specifically the discrimination against Jews and eugenic policies. And of course, it did nothing to discourage some clerics from engaging in anti-Judaic and antisemitic rhetoric of their own.141

“Denkschrift Preysings,” October 17, 1937, 356-61; Vol. V, “Gutachten Preysings,” before March 16, 1941, 333-35; and also a revealing letter from Pius XII to von Preysing, April 30, 1943, in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 484-89. 141 Father Dr. Philipp Häuser, mentioned above, was one of the foremost examples of priests who trumpeted his support for Nazism publicly and consistently, who offered comparisons of Hitler and Christ and tirades against “the Jew, [who] is now definitely master of the world [and who] through his cleverness, his ruthless, his – almost exemplary – determination and tenacity has bound almost all nations and governments to slavish obedience.” As quoted in Spicer, “Working for the Führer” in Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence and the Holocaust, 110-14.

73 The regime violated the concordat repeatedly during the six years between its signing and the outbreak of the war; the bishops reacted repeatedly with protests and letter writing and little else. The palpable tension between secular and religious authorities, reminiscent of what had occurred more than fifty years earlier, when

Bismarckian Germany had ascribed ulterior and treasonous activities to Catholics, left

German Catholics in an uncomfortable situation that would color the years preceding

World War II: on the one hand, the regime guaranteed them certain fundamental rights in the realm of religious practice, on a level which no other group in Germany achieved under the Nazis; on the other hand, their traditional political affiliations, their ultimate subservience to the pope in Rome as head of the Catholic Church, and their “inferiority complex”, an inheritance from the Kulturkampf, pressured many German Catholics to continuously prove that they were loyal Germans, even as the Nazi movement moved vigorously against the agreements and their guarantees contained in the concordat. This constant and occasionally bloody struggle between Nazism and Catholicism would be interrupted only by the outbreak of war. Even then the antagonism did not end; it merely transformed itself according to the new situation, and introduced a third player into the struggle for supremacy in the minds and hearts of German Catholic priests and seminarians: the army. The development of the three-way relationship between the

Church, the Nazi Party, and the armed forces was uneven and complex, since all three represented important authoritative bodies constantly threatening to contradict each other.

Though the Party was the strongest of the three thanks to Hitler’s decision-making powers, the interconnectedness of these groups cannot be understood as simple adaptation, reconciliation, or animosity. Their competitiveness and their dependency on

74 each other kept this relationship in a constant state of flux, which in turn had dramatic effects on German Catholics at war, in particular those priests and seminarians who were conscripted. It is with this trifoliate leadership of the German Catholic experience throughout the Third Reich that the next chapter concerns itself.

75 2. Putting Volk and Fatherland First: The Party, The Army High Command, and the Catholic Church, 1933-1945

The priests and seminarians who found themselves wearing the uniform of a

German soldier during the Second World War lived in a world defined by three authorities: the Nazi Party, the Army High Command (OKH), and the Catholic Church.1

As soldiers, these men were subject to the rules and regulations that governed the OKH in times of war; as priests and seminarians, their allegiance belonged to their Church, whose leadership was ostensibly manifested by the Catholic Reich Field Bishop. As soldiers, their loyalty was bound inextricably to the Führer, exemplified by the wording of the oath that all men in uniform had to take; because of this, Hitler’s Weltanschauung remained a discernable presence at the front in the form of ideology and the Party’s influence on

OKH decrees.2 These three powers exercised considerable pressure at different times and in different ways on the chaplains, seminarians, and those priests who were conscripted but did not become part of the military chaplaincy.3 How did these institutions interact

1 As a rule, priests did not serve in the Luftwaffe, and few served in the navy. See BA-MA RH 15/282, “Wesen und Aufgabe der Feldseelsorge,” no date or signature but drafted by Amtsgruppenchef Edelmann, likely in 1941. Hereafter the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres) will be referred to as OKH, and the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) will be referred to as OKW. 2 The wording of the army oath, instituted on August 2, 1934, is as follows: “I swear by God this holy oath, that I render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German Reich and people and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and as a brave soldier I am prepared at any time to risk my life for this oath.” 3 The term Priestersoldat is used by Hans Jürgen Brandt in his introduction to Priester in Uniform: Seelsorger, Ordensleute und Theologen als Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by Brandt and the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Ausgburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1994), 7. He, in turn, took it from Georg Wagner, Priestersoldaten in Hitlers Wehrmacht und Stalins Roter Armee in Theologie und Glaube 75 (1985), 1-50. I have chosen not to use the term because, problematically, Brandt designates advanced seminarians – those men ordained as subdeacons, but not as priests – as “Priestersoldaten,” even if they were not fully-ordained priests. He does this because it was not uncommon during the war for seminarians to be ordained during front leave, and then return to their same unit. This issue will be discussed at greater length in Chapter Four. The subdiaconate was a rank for men studying for the priesthood, who transitioned through it from minor to major cleric (the other levels following it, ascending in order, are deacon, priest, and bishop). Once ordained a deacon, the Church considered the individual bound to his vocation, and

76 with each other, both before and during the war? To what extent were they able to act independently of each other? Which of these authorities played the most crucial role in shaping the Catholic comprehension of the Third Reich, particularly the build-up to war and the justifications for its outbreak and continuation?

It is the contention of this chapter that the Church, exemplified here by its leaders in the military, namely the Catholic military bishop and his second-in-command, was ultimately subsumed by the struggle between the Party and the army for supremacy both before and during the war. Other levels of Church leadership – the popes in Rome and the

German bishops on the home front – were peripheral to the clergy serving in the army; priests in uniform were more directly affected, as I will show, by various OKH decrees than by the sermons of the bishop (later cardinal) of Münster Clemens August Graf von

Galen, which condemned the euthanasia program, or the Vatican’s calls for peace.

Church leaders within the army viewed this subservience – whether it was coerced or voluntary – as a means by which to protect the Church’s sphere of independence, even if secular authorities increasingly infringed upon this sphere. This decision to “render unto

Caesar what is Caesar’s” ultimately discouraged any serious resistance, either against

Nazi ideology or against army orders and prohibitions.4 In fact, it was solid, if implicit, support for clergy responding affirmatively to conscription that the preferred reaction to

Party and military was accommodation and cooperation, and regardless of the immorality of the Weltanschauung with which these priests chose to work.

made it extremely difficult for them to reverse their decision and leave. The Church generally ceased to use the subdiaconate level in 1970, after much debate. According to the Reichskonkordat, anyone not ordained to the level of subdeacon was eligible for full military service. My thanks to Fr. Gary Chamberlain, C.S.C., for answering my questions about the status of priests and the order of priestly vows. 4 Matthew 22:21.

77 Between 1933 and 1945, the highest authority in Germany was the Führer, Adolf

Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party. Correspondingly, any study of the relationship between the Party, the OKH, and the Church must start with a recognition that the Party trumped the OKH by virtue of its political power in the one-party state; the Church was subservient to both.5 Hitler had worked swiftly to ensure this superiority after his election to power, achieving through legal means dictatorial powers with the passage of the

Enabling Act in March 1933. A negative reaction to this event from either the armed forces or the Church would have caused a great stir in political circles and could have made it more difficult for Hitler to assume power as quickly as he did, but both institutions remained silent.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Church had been striving for years to reach an official accommodation with the German state. When the opportunity presented itself to achieve the concordat in 1933, even if it meant co-signing with a government that ultimately could not be trusted, the leaders of the Church preferred this to lingering in political limbo, uncertain about the future care of German Catholic souls. Despite the fact that the concordat did not terminate Nazism’s propensity for anti-Christian activity (see

Chapter One),there was much about Nazism that Church leaders found reassuring.

Bishops and priests were susceptible to the Nazi Party’s unflinchingly anti-communist and anti-Bolshevik ideology. They also warmed to the idea of a strongly centralized, even authoritarian-style government, which in the wake of the Weimar era was an immensely

5 Hitler himself formulated a “two-pillar theory” by which the German state rested on the twin pillars of ideology, represented by the Nazi movement, and military power, represented by the Reichswehr. Deist, Wehrmacht and German Rearmament, 33. Klaus-Jürgen Müller best unfolds the theory in General Ludwig Beck: Studien und Dokumente zur politisch-militärischen Vorstellungswelt und Tätigkeit des Generalstabschefs des deutschen Heeres 1933-1938 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag), Chapter 2, especially 77-81.

78 preferable alternative to the atheistic liberalism and chaotic parliamentarianism that had reigned after the First World War. The regime’s employment of antisemitic rhetoric was not necessarily unappealing; the Church was no stranger to anti-Jewish sentiments, and as evidence will show, the only time that clerics felt pressed to defend Jews from the regime was when those Jews happened to have converted to Catholicism. In the grip of these vital motives, Church authorities were willing to turn a blind eye to some of the Party’s concordat breaches. They maintained this position even when the breaches became increasingly belligerent, for reasons discussed below.

The army, like the Church, had spent most of the Weimar period pursuing its own needs, which amounted above all to two: preserving its role as a political player in the decision-making of a republic which it detested as much as the Church did, and returning

Germany to the status of a great power in Europe. This second aim required a return to

Germany’s former military strength, and subsequently entailed the abolition of the 1919

Treaty of Versailles, which had limited the army to 100,000 men, severely reduced the navy, and entirely eliminated the air force, General Staff, War Academy and cadet schools.6 The officer corps may have become much smaller, a mere 4,000 men according to the treaty, but in its make-up and structure it otherwise did not change; it remained conservative in outlook and a ready defender of monarchist, or at least anti-republican ideals.7 Nor was it made to accept responsibility for defeat in war; conservative groups and old elites, including the former military leadership, instead shifted that blame onto the civilians who had signed the armistice (the fact that Groener had urged the conservative elements in the government to accept the terms of Versailles was

6 See Gordon Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 367. 7 Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, 367.

79 conveniently forgotten). By the mid-1920s, German military leaders were already thinking about how to survive a possible war with one or several neighbors. As the republic unraveled, the leaders of the Reichswehr, like individual Catholics, became increasingly involved in major political decisions.

Because of its considerable influence in the political arena, the Reichswehr was a force with which Hitler had to reckon on his rise to power. Without at least its passive consent, he could not have maneuvered himself into a position to take the chancellorship in 1933. Moreover, his long-term designs, which outstripped the more modest aims of the

Reichswehr to return Germany to great power status and sought to make Germany the dominant power in Europe, necessitated having the army leadership on his side, at least in the initial stages of his rule. The strength and radicalism of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, under Ernst Röhm caused some alarm, since it embodied a direct and very threatening competitor to the Reichswehr in terms of weapons-bearing strength, and from 1931 army leaders worked actively to have it dissolved. But like the prelates of the Church, who at this time were watching Hitler’s rise in popularity with mixed feelings, the German generals fundamentally misunderstood the true ambition and intentions of Hitler. They viewed him as someone to be used and managed; such a tactic was in any case better than their alternative in 1933, which was to name a Catholic (von Papen) as chancellor and resist Nazism openly, risking a Nazi- or Communist-led revolt and the loss of political advantages they had gained up to that point.8

8 John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1964), 284-85; Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism, translated by Jean Steinberg (New York and Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 194-95; Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, 467.

80 In early 1933, then, when Hindenberg appointed Hitler chancellor, the two institutions that might have blocked Hitler’s ascent to power – the Church in terms of moral authority, and the Reichswehr as a player in the political arena – had an interest in

Nazism’s success as a political party, if for no other reason than to arrest the advance of communism. Hitler’s position was still somewhat precarious; he was dependent upon those who had helped him to power, and though the Nazis had made unmistakable and impressive gains in popularity among the voting public up to November 1932, they were not yet the only and uncontested authority in Germany.9 Therefore, he could not afford to alienate the generals, and he needed to avoid any outright confrontation with the churches, particularly the Catholic bishops, who as a group were largely ambivalent before 1933 about embracing Nazi ideology openly. The policies that Hitler adopted up to 1934 showed this basic deference to the two groups, first by quickly concluding the

Reichskonkordat to satisfy (and hamstring) the Church, and by accepting Werner von

Blomberg as his minister of defense and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. That his appointment was legally doubtful (it was unconstitutional to appoint an active-service general to the post of Defense Minister) demonstrates both the unease of von Hindenburg and his cohorts with Hitler as chancellor, and Hitler’s own limitations, since von

Blomberg’s appointment had been initiated by authorities outside the Party.10

9 In the last democratic elections of Weimar Germany, in November 1932, the Nazis actually lost close to two million votes, and their share of the vote slipped by four percent. Volker R. Berghahn, Modern Germany: Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century, 2nd edition (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 123, and Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 211. 10 Hans-Erich Volkmann, “Von Blomberg zu Keitel – Die Wehrmachtführung und die Demontage des Rechtsstaates” in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, edited by Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans Erich Volkmann (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 50. Some suggest that von Blomberg, appointed to the new cabinet the day before Hitler became chancellor, and sworn in mere hours before Hitler, would have been Hitler’s choice in any case, given that he had already exhibited pro-Nazi sympathies. See Samuel W.

81 What followed over the course of the next year was a series of decisions and actions aimed at abolishing the democratic system of the Weimar Republic and replacing it with a one-party state, with Nazism at its core. Through it all, Hitler was anxious to retain the cooperation of the army, if not the loyalty of its generals. In February 1933, before the assembled Reichswehr generals, Hitler indicated that a re-introduction of universal conscription was a self-evident goal aimed at transforming the armed forces into the most important institution in the new state, and the move towards rapid rearmament began.11 By December 1933, Hitler envisioned a 300,000-strong peacetime army with twenty-one divisions to be in place by 1938.12 This was a considerable departure from Groener’s earlier strategy, which had been to rebuild and remilitarize within the framework of European collective security.

At the same time that he was slowly winning over the Reichswehr leadership with his rearmament policy, Hitler courted the churches with professions of respect for

Christianity and promises of cooperation. In March 1933, in what was no doubt partly an appeal to the Center to vote for the Enabling Law, the chancellor declared,

The National Government sees in both Christian denominations the most important factors for the maintenance of our society. It will respect the agreements concluded between them and the states; their rights will not be touched. It expects, however, that its task of the national and moral renewal of our

Mitcham, Jr., “Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg” in Hitlers militärische Elite, Vol. 1: Von den Anfängen des Regimes bis Kriegsbeginn, edited by Gerd R. Ueberschär (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1998), 29-31. 11 Wilhelm Deist, “The Road to Ideological War: Germany 1918-1945” in The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and Wars, edited by Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 372. 12 Wilhelm Deist, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft: Studien zur preußisch-deutschen Militärgeschichte (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1991), 306. See also Deist, Wehrmacht and German Rearmament, 29- 31. This was a considerable change from the spring-1932 planned “new peacetime army,” which envisioned a 144,000-strong army. Deist, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft, 299.

82 people will meet with similar appreciation from their side…. [The government’s] concern will be for the sincere cooperation of Church and State.13

Though not all of its delegates were supportive of it, as a party the Center voted for the

Law, and its subsequent passage gave Hitler the dictatorial powers he had long sought.

Hitler’s declarations also mollified enough of the bishops that they reversed their earlier prohibitions and warnings regarding National Socialism on the basis that “the highest representative of the Reich Government, who is simultaneously the authoritarian leader of that movement… acknowledge[s] the inviolability of the teachings of the Catholic

Faith and the immutable tasks and rights of the Church.”14 A clear change in attitude was exhibited by this proclamation from the Fulda Conference of Bishops at the end of March

1933, underscoring the Church’s readiness to accept virtual dictatorship so long as the government left unmolested its own rights and beliefs.

Why the Church hierarchy modified its attitude can be easily deduced. Among the bishops, there was the apprehension about being excluded from the emerging

Volksgemeinschaft, championed by the Nazis and trumpeted across Germany as the foundation of the new nation. Continued grumbling from the bishops regarding Nazi racial ideology and its incompatibility with Christian tenets could have led to a renewed

Kulturkampf, something they were keen to avoid. Church leaders did not anticipate at this point in time that it would later lead to constant and occasionally violent persecution of individual Catholics. The accomplishment of the Reichskonkordat, which came

“surprisingly quickly” and for which “republic coalitions had striven in vain, appeared to justify the objectives of the ‘bridge-builders’ between the Church and the National

13 Nazism 1919-1945 Volume I: The Rise to Power 1919-1934, edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), 157. 14 Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. I, 159.

83 Socialist state.”15 The signing of the concordat and the dissolution of the Center ensured that Catholicism in its religious and social functions would remain relatively intact and at least for the moment free from the process of ‘coordination’ endured by other groups in

Germany. But it also meant that political Catholicism in Germany was effectively dead.

At the time of the concordat’s conclusion, few people outside of the Party and

Church leadership knew of an appendix, meant to be kept secret until the situation it addressed – total war – arose and demanding the appendix’s implementation. This appendix laid out in detail how members of the clergy, including students in seminaries and those studying philosophy and theology, would be affected in the event of universal conscription. The only clergy that the regulations exempted from automatic enlistment were ordinaries and the heads of monasteries, seminaries, and others in leadership positions, and those employed in diocesan administrations or who were otherwise engaged with diocesan work. Students engaged in studying philosophy and theology in seminaries were eligible for armed duty; priests not employed in diocesan positions were

“to dedicate themselves to the pastoral care of the troops under the ecclesial jurisdiction of the field bishop, if they are not drafted into the medical service.” Any remaining clerics who had not been ordained were to be allocated to the medical service, as were those who had yet to advance beyond the level of subdeacon.16

15 Rudolf Morsey, “Die katholische Volksminderheit und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus 1930-1933” in Kirche, Katholiken und Nationalsozialismus, edited by Klaus Gotto and Konrad Repgen (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1980), 21-22. 16 In formal Church terminology at the time, a cleric was any individual who received tonsure (the act of shaving part of the top of the head), indicating his intention to enter the priesthood. This included both seminarians as well as students of theology, who could have taken this step toward the priesthood even in high school. One was a minor cleric until he completed the requisite studies – which usually took four years and involved philosophy and theology – and became a subdeacon, considered a transitional stage into the diaconate. At this point, as a deacon, one became a major cleric, though still not a fully ordained priest. In sum, the stages of ordination from tonsure to priesthood were: student of theology or seminarian (including the minor orders of porter, exorcist, acolyte and lector), subdeacon, deacon (now a major order), priest.

84 What is interesting about the appendix is the very fact of its existence. This evidence suggests that Hitler was preparing for the eventuality of war as early as July

1933 and was anxious to utilize every available source of manpower, including those to be found behind seminary walls and wearing Roman collars. Equally telling was the

Church’s – or at least the Vatican’s – ready compliance with these conditions. Perhaps

Pacelli did not fear the threat of war at this point, or perhaps those involved felt that they were justified in demanding that men involved in religious studies be on the same footing as others of their age when it came to conscription. Whatever the case, there is no evidence of protest or resistance to the ramifications of the appendix, at least not before the war.

The consequences of the Reichskonkordat were evident almost before the ink was dry. The Church took for granted that the Nazi regime would hold its guarantees as inviolable; the regime, however, had quite the opposite idea. The government began to move against its regulations in August 1933, asking church groups to limit their activities to those taking place within church buildings, in contravention of Article 31. It became obvious before too long that the Party was going to take every opportunity to circumvent the guarantees of the concordat, so much so that Pacelli himself spoke of a new

Kulturkampf in 1934, acknowledging that what the Nazis really wanted was submission, not compliance.17 Few priests or bishops spoke out aggressively against these violations; on the contrary, the majority seemed willing to sacrifice whatever political influence they might have retained in order to safeguard what they regarded as their spiritual influence

Many thanks to Fr. Gary Chamberlain, C.S.C., for explaining this process. For a complete copy of the secret appendix to the Reichskonkordat, see Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1972), 244. 17 John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 79, 115.

85 and continue administering the sacraments to their flocks.18 In this sense, the concordat was a decisive turning point in the regime’s quest to neutralize potential adversaries; the

Church leadership played no part in any sustained resistance to Nazism after it pledged itself to the treaty.

A year later, another decisive turning point occurred for the Party, when Hitler turned on Röhm’s SA, a constant problem for the Reichswehr since the former’s inception in the 1920s. During the Weimar years and through the Nazi rise to power, the

SA, Hitler’s own personal army, had waged war in the streets against political opponents and other “threats” to Nazism, targeting primarily communists and Socialists. In the autumn of 1933, this force consisted of approximately two million men, far outnumbering the Reichswehr.19 It was not an easy thing for the Reichswehr generals to ignore the fact that the SA leadership at this point enjoyed a closer relationship to the Nazi Party than they did. Hitler had to this point not consistently opposed the idea that the SA was a viable alternative to the Reichswehr.20 Röhm’s increasing determination to dominate the

18 There are some exceptions. As discussed in Chapter One, Cardinal von Faulhaber’s record is spotty, but he willfully disagreed with the regime in more than one area and was a frequent target of Das Schwarze Korps. Cardinal von Galen, in Münster, is well known for his series of sermons in August 1941 explicitly attacked the Nazi euthanasia program. Konrad von Preysing, bishop of Berlin after 1935, was the most vociferous of the anti-Nazi bishops, and at one point threatened to resign his seat in protest; he was persuaded to stay by the pope, then Pius XII (see below, p. 50). The Gestapo arrested Rupert Mayer, a priest in Munich, and took him into “protective custody” for half a year, after which he ended up in Sachenhausen concentration camp. He was released in 1938 (and instead interned in a monastery in Ettal, Bavaria) only because the Nazis feared that his death would lead to him becoming a public martyr; he had spoken out actively against the anti-Church policies of the regime. For more information, see Otto Gritschneder, Ich predige weiter: Pater Rupert Mayer und das Dritte Reich: eine Dokumentation (Rosenheim: Rosenheimer Verlagshaus, 1987). See also a powerful sermon delivered by his archbishop, Cardinal von Faulhaber, in the wake of his arrest, July 4, 1937, as printed in Hubert Gruber, Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, 1930-1945: ein Bericht in Quellen (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 348-53. 19 Deist explains that part of the reason for this swell in numbers (in 1933 it ballooned from about 400,000 men to the approximate two million cited here) was the gradual integration of the Stahlhelm, another paramilitary organization with anti-republic and pro-monarchist views. It was one of the largest such organizations in Germany at the time it was incorporated into the SA. See Deist, Wehrmacht and German Rearmament, 27. 20 Deist, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft, 305.

86 Reichswehr ultimately convinced the Nazi leadership that the SA was more of a liability than an asset.

In October 1933, the Ministry of the Interior was worried enough about the illegality of the actions of Röhm’s men to send out a circular, condemning “above all

[the] SA leaders and SA men [who] have independently carried out police actions for which they had no authority whatever, or which they carried out in a way that cannot be reconciled with the existing laws and regulations” of the Nazi government.21 Against this stood the political influence of the army, the one institution that could block the rearmament program and all Nazi foreign policy ambitions. It was an institution that the

Party needed as an ally. When Hitler was sure of his ability to rely on the loyalty of the

Reichswehr leaders, proven by the generals’ demonstrations of commitment to the rearmament program, their silence in the face of the concentration camps erected in the spring of 1933, and the abrupt dismissal of Jewish officers in April 1933, he acted swiftly and decisively.

The Night of the Long Knives revealed the murderous lengths to which Hitler would go to consolidate his hold on supreme authority. At least one hundred people were killed in the guise of quashing an attempt to overthrow Hitler and rooting out the depraved morality of certain SA figures before it could spread.22 Though it abolished the

SA as an effective competitor for power within the emerging Nazi state, the purge was undoubtedly criminal despite its later retroactive legalization by the Cabinet. Moreover, the purge revealed to what extent the armed forces and the Church accepted the new leadership of the state, as both turned a blind eye to the blatantly illegal activities of the

21 Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. I, 172. 22 Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Armee und Drittes Reich 1933-1939: Darstellung und Dokumentation (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1987), 68.

87 Schutzstaffel, or SS, who carried out the purge.23 Hitler’s open and insistent plans for rearmament (the entirety of his foreign policy depended on this) became the common ground between the Party and the army. This induced the generals to “look the other way” when Hitler used murder to eliminate the army’s rivals. And since the generals pursued rearmament energetically, as the “indispensable nucleus” of German war policy,

Hitler did not intervene directly in the affairs of the armed forces, at least before 1938.24

The Church, too, remained silent in the face of the illegal and murderous activities of the SS. Part of the reason for this could have been fear of repercussions had anyone explicitly condemned the action; a number of prominent Catholics were among the dead, including the leader of Catholic Action, Erich Klausener (in a clumsy cover-up, the Party alleged that he had committed suicide), Edgar Jung, who was a speech writer for von

Papen, and others whose murders seemed a pre-emptive strike against any potential animosity towards the Nazi movement from leading Catholics.25 Presumably the bishops did not wish to risk further casualties by criticizing the government openly. Furthermore, negotiations had been underway between the episcopate, the Reich Ministry of the

Interior, the Hitler Youth, the German Labor Front, and others to settle the implications of Article 31 of the concordat, which governed the maintenance of Catholic lay

23 The significance of SS participation in the Röhm putsch is described by Hans Buchheim, “Die SS – das Herrschaftsinstrument” in Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Helmut Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates, Bd. 1 (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984), 160-63. Bernd Wegner also offers a succinct argument about the putsch’s relevance in the development of the Waffen-SS in Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933-1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1982), 84-6. 24 Deist, Wehrmacht and German Rearmament, 108. This attitude of conciliation is evident in the immediate aftermath of the SA purge, when von Blomberg blocked investigations into the murders of von Schleicher and his aide, von Bredow, stating, “the personal honor of the two officers was not affected by the purely political power struggles in which they were involved. However, they followed paths which were regarded as hostile to the Government and which, therefore, led to the fatal consequences.” Kurt von Schleicher, former chancellor and former minister of defense, and Major-General Ferdinand von Bredow, Schleicher’s associate and former deputy-defense minister, were the highest-ranking Reichswehr casualties of the purge. See Nazism 1919-1945 Volume III, 635. 25 Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 92-93.

88 organizations. Though the pope was more strident in his aversion to the murderers and suspended these negotiations in the wake of the putsch, the Church in Germany interpreted the event as purely political, and not suitable for Church involvement. Some bishops even urged the resumption of negotiations, concerned as they were by subsequent events in the summer of 1934 – the death of von Hindenburg and the realization of dictatorship under Hitler – that the Church would lose all ground vis à vis the state if matters were not clarified.26

The seizure of power that unfolded over these months left no doubt as to the primacy of political leadership in the quest for dominance. As early as September 1933, the American military attaché in Berlin described Germany as “being welded physically and mentally into a single, self-contained, carefully articulated military unit.”27 This kind of system, with its “intensive observation of a hierarchically-structured organization of armed forces built on the concepts of command and obedience, and the ubiquitous impression of a nation [that] followed its dictator unconditionally, gave to foreign officials the impression of a near-monolithic union of the Führer and his following, in which serious dissonance was hardly conceivable.”28

Relations between the army leaders and the Party, on the one hand, and between

Church leaders and the Party, on the other hand, remained more or less sedate on the surface, aided by assurances of mutual respect, but turbulent underneath. In June 1934, a scant few days before the SA purge, Hitler and the bishop of Osnabrück, Wilhelm

Berning, met and discussed the anti-religious tendencies of some of the subordinate

26 Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich Volume II: The Year of Disillusionment: 1934, Barmen and Rome, translated by John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988) 201-03. 27 As quoted in Deist, Militär, Staat, und Gesellschaft, 345. 28 Deist, Militär, Staat, und Gesellschaft, 346.

89 circles of the Party. Hitler declared that he expected the Church to refrain from any critique of the state and the Party, and to remove itself from the political arena; in turn, he would protect the Church “by all means in its realm of activities.”29 Six months later, however, after the January 1935 plebiscite in the Saarland, which saw ninety percent of a majority-Catholic population vote in favor of rejoining Germany, the attitude of compromise on the Party’s side began to sour radically. The Gestapo attacked the lower clergy with particular animosity, because of their influence from the pulpit and their involvement with Catholic lay organizations, perhaps recalling for some of the older generations of Germans the discrimination endured during the Kulturkampf. Individual priests defied the Gestapo and read forbidden pastoral letters from the pulpit; the Gestapo responded by taking them into protective custody and threatening them with detention in a concentration camp if the priests dared commit a second infringement.30

Nor did the Nazis limit themselves to attacking the traditional churches of

Germany.31 Although past historiography has depicted the movement as primarily pagan

29 As quoted in Anselm Reichhold, Die deutsche katholische Kirche zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, 1933-1945, (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1992), 55. 30 Reichhold, Deutsche katholische Kirche, 53. See also Hans Günter Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse gegen katholische Ordensangehörige und Priester 1936/1937 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1971). 31 The Protestant churches were also subject to harassment from the Gestapo and party officials throughout the Third Reich, particularly members of the openly anti-Nazi Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche). For the most authoritative accounts of the Protestant Church and its relationship to the Nazi regime, see Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches; Ernst Christian Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979); Shelley Baranowski, The Confessing Church, Conservative Elites, and the Nazi State (Lewiston/Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986); Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Robert P. Ericksen, Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999); Jack Forstman, Christian Faith in Dark Times: Theological Conflicts in the Shadow of Hitler (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992); Wolfgang Gerlach and Victoria Barnett, And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); Manfred Gailus, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Durchdringung des protestantischen Sozialmilieus in Berlin (Köln: Böhlau, 2001); Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Kurt Meier, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz: die evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1992); Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, in 2 volumes, translated by John Bowden.

90 or unchristian, new research has produced evidence that several groups within the Third

Reich were keen to see a pro-Christian arm of Nazism develop and eventually eradicate the other forms of Christianity in Germany. From the German Christian Movement to elite Party members such as Joseph Goebbels, these groups promoted a racialized variant of Christianity meant to be more palatable to the Nazi movement. Most successful in terms of allying officially with Nazism were those who advocated “positive Christianity,” a “syncretic mix of the social and the economic tenets of confessional Lutheranism and the doctrine and ecclesiology of liberal Protestantism.” It was a religious response to the challenge represented by “secular modernity and the perceived danger of the acculturated and assimilated German Jew.”32 Early ideologues such as Dietrich Eckart and Artur

Dinter conceived of a nationalist religion that was later elaborated by Goebbels, Walter

Buch and Hans Schemm, stressing a determination to end sectarianism and bring about a new religion that would end the German confessional divide. Rooted in the National

Socialist ethic that stressed nationalism and anti-Marxism, proponents of positive

Christianity meant it to aid in the elimination of class strife and the construction of an organic, harmonious Volksgemeinschaft.

Hitler, himself a baptized Catholic, ultimately determined the direction taken by the Party in the matter of religion as in other areas. The Nazis always held the German

Christian Movement at a distance and sometimes publicly attacked it despite its wholehearted yearning to be accepted as the religion of Nazism; the movement boasted

600,000 pro-Nazi members by the mid-1930s who declared themselves the

32 Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 262-63.

91 “Stormtroopers of Christ.”33 Leading Nazis rebuffed their attempts to make Nazism into a religious movement, with Hitler in the role of a messianic prophet, for the Führer

“unequivocally wished to cast Nazism as religious politics rather than a political religion.”34 The Party also held the positive Christians tightly in check, and even advocates of paganism, promoting the wholesale rejection of Christianity and a new beginning based in a Nordic mysticism, were hard-pressed to find genuine allies among the Nazi elite. The Party was not averse to preserving certain elements of Christianity, an admission that the German Volk and Christian culture intertwined in some ways; even

Heinrich Himmler, one of the most rabid anti-Catholics close to Hitler, respected the

Christian viewpoints among his SS men, for a figure as influential on German culture as

Jesus Christ “could not be saddled with the curse of Jewishness.”35 But it was clear from the beginning that such religious elements would always be subordinate to the movement’s strategic political and ideological goals.

After the pacification of the Catholic Church with the concordat and the purge of the SA, Hitler accelerated the drive for rearmament, particularly following the death of

President von Hindenburg in August 1934 and the fusion of the offices of chancellor and president. The regime introduced a new oath and required that all soldiers take it, reflecting Hitler’s official prominence. By February 1935, however, recruitment had

33 See Doris L. Bergen, “Storm Troopers of Christ: The German Christian Movement and the Ecclesiastical Final Solution” in Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, edited by Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), and Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 34 Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, 61. Scholder points to the fact that Hitler had decided as early as the writing of Mein Kampf to separate the religious and political spheres in Nazism in order to avoid unnecessary conflict with the Catholic Church: “… the task of the [Nazi] movement ‘is not a religious reformation, but a political reorganization of our people.” Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich Vol. I, 89 (quote cited from Mein Kampf [ET London, 1972], 313n). 35 Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, 133. These preserved elements of Christianity, particularly in the SS, will be explored in further chapters.

92 begun its breakneck pace, reaching a strength of 280,000 men.36 By autumn 1936, that number had grown to 520,000 uniformed men, divided among thirty-six infantry divisions.37 Along with the change in name from Reichswehr to Wehrmacht, as the armed forces of the Third Reich were henceforth called, universal military conscription was formally reintroduced in March 1935, a day after Hitler announced the existence of an air force. By this point military conscription was already well underway. This was effectively the last step of Germany’s long journey toward the eradication of the Treaty of Versailles, for Britain and France barely whimpered in protest against this blatant violation of the agreement.38

Nor was the concordat the final word about guidelines regulating relations between the Party and the Church in Germany. In the purely secular realm, the state created the Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs in the late summer of 1935 under the leadership of Hans Kerrl, an “Old-fighter” Nazi (that is, someone who joined the Party before the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch) who contemporaries described derisively as “the master of eternity and space” (der Herr der Ewigkeit und des Raumes).39 He attempted to use the ministry both to reconcile and control the various factions within the Protestant

Church, and to ensure that the Catholic Church maintained its position of submission.

Kerrl would be the only Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs during the Third Reich, and though he worked hard to accomplish the ambitious goals he set for himself, the nature of

36 Deist, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft, 299-308. 37 Deist, Wehrmacht and German Rearmament, 44. 38 Wheeler-Bennett, Nemesis of Power, 337-42; Bracher, German Dictatorship, 296; Müller, Das Heer und Hitler, 170-77, 208-14; Robert John O’Neill, The German Army and Nazi Party 1933-1939 (New York: J.H. Heineman, 1967), 87-90. 39 Heike Kreutzer explains that Kerrl earned the sobriquet from a French Catholic daily newspaper, and that it referred to the heterogeneous structure of the ministry he built, which sought to consolidate land use regulations (Raumordnung) and ecclesiastical affairs. See Kreutzer, Das Reichskirchenministerium im Gefüge der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 2000), 100-30.

93 the Nazi system of rule frequently hindered his efforts, with its endemic rivalries between offices and increasing difficulties for even ministers such as Kerrl to speak personally with Hitler for purposes of clarification.40 The ministry remained a vehicle for the promulgation of decrees and regulations limiting the churches’ influence in public life, and a continuous nuisance for bishops and clergy, but the real threats to their mission – the secret police, for instance – came from beyond Kerrl’s jurisdiction.

As the Catholic bishops and clergy continued to struggle with the Party over matters of religion and indoctrination, and to wage an increasingly public battle with

Gestapo agents for independence in those realms guaranteed by the concordat, rearmament and conscription continued unabated. Hitler had not intended to leave the armed forces without recourse to spiritual care. As early as April 1933 Hitler said to a

German Catholic bishop, “Trouble with Poland is on the horizon. We need soldiers, devout soldiers. Devout soldiers are the most valuable. They put in everything [they have].”41 This remark was offered in the context of the debate over confessional schools, a debate that shaped a significant portion of the finalized concordat, and one could argue that he was applying the word “soldiers” to German society as a whole, or to men of faith, and not just that section valuable for the military. Still, it is clear that Hitler, in the early part of his dictatorship, recognized the importance that faith could play in the

40 Kreutzer, Das Reichskirchenministerium, especially 75-98, 194-206; Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 207-15, 253. Himmler and Heydrich in particular had little interest in bending to Kerrl’s ministry, absorbed as they were in their own campaign of anti-Christian agitation, and Rosenberg, whose Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts had incensed the Catholic hierarchy with its racial theories, saw Kerrl as an active threat to his ideological work. Caught up in these intrigues, Kerrl never quite managed to establish his legitimacy, and eventually lost even Hitler’s support. Steigmann-Gall gives a thorough description of the interdepartmental wrangling in the Nazi state apparatus, including the Himmler-Kerrl- Rosenberg competition. See Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, particularly 218-60. 41 “Aus dem Protokoll der Konferenz der Diözesanvertreter in Berlin vom 25. und 26. April 1933,” in Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, edited by Hans Müller (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1965), 130. Bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabrück, who had visited Hitler on the afternoon of April 26, reported on the conversation with observations of Hitler’s reactions. He noted that the discussion was “cordial and to-the-point.” (127)

94 development and training of steadfast, reliable Germans for the army. A few years later he would remark to Cardinal von Faulhaber in another rare meeting with a member of the

German episcopate that “the soldier who for three or four days lies under intense bombardment needs a religious prop,”42 affirming the Führer’s belief in the importance of religion for men at war.

It is therefore not surprising that an entire article of the concordat dealt with the necessity of spiritual guidance for Catholics serving in the armed forces. Article 27 guaranteed pastoral care to all Catholic officers, personnel and other officials serving in the German armed forces, as well as their families. The leadership of this care was to be incumbent upon the Reich Field Bishop, whose appointment fell under the jurisdiction of the Holy See, “after the latter has contacted the Reich government, in order to appoint, in agreement with the government, a suitable candidate.”43 The position required in this sense a double approval, one from the pope and the other from the German secular government (ultimately Hitler). The language of the article also underscores the equal importance of two potentially contradictory authorities whom the field bishop was to serve, although Franz Justus Rarkowski, the man who eventually won the nomination of both authorities and would become the Third Reich’s first and only Catholic field bishop, was never put in a position of having to choose one over the other.

Rarkowski was born in 1873 and, after being ordained in 1898, was employed in various positions, including as a hospital chaplain and a curate. He joined the ranks of the military chaplaincy in Berlin in 1914 and quickly found a place as secretary to the army provost (the head of the chaplaincy), Bishop Dr. Heinrich Joeppen. Upon Germany’s

42 As quoted in Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 236. 43 Volk, Das Reichskonkordat, 240.

95 defeat and the subsequent downsizing of the Reichswehr, he remained devoted to serving in his capacity as chaplain.44 Because of his history of dedication to the military chaplaincy, as well as family connections (his father, a landowner from Allenstein and representative for the Center Party, was a friend of von Hindenburg’s),45 the Nazi government put Rarkowski’s name forward as early as 1933 as its candidate for the leadership of an exempt military chaplaincy in the Wehrmacht – that is, a chaplaincy that would operate under the guidance of a field bishop appointed for that specific task, rather than under a civilian bishop.46 He appeared to be a logical choice for the position. He had been functioning as leader of the chaplaincy since 1929, when he assumed control of all official functions relating to the office of the provost, as well as being commissioned to re-organize pastoral care for the army.47 However, the episcopate reacted with a storm of protests rooted in strong objections to Rarkowski’s personality and education, as well as general problems with the proposed construction of the new military system of pastoral care and the field bishop’s role therein.

44 KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), from Werthmann’s notes, June 7, 1946. See also Biographisches Lexikon der Katholischen Militärseelsorge Deutschlands 1848-1945, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt, Peter Häger, Karl Hengst and the Catholic Military Bishop’s Office (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002), 637. Heinrich Missalla produced a short analytical biography of Rarkowski that included the texts of many of his pastoral letters and circulars. See Missalla, Wie der Krieg zur Schule Gottes wurde: Hitlers Feldbishof Rarkowski: eine notwendige Erinnerung (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1997). 45 Information taken from an unpublished biographical sketch of Prälat Georg Werthmann, to be found in the KMBA in Berlin. See Klaus-Bernward Springer, “ein guter und getreuer Knecht”: Georg Werthmann (1898-1980), Generalvikar der Militärseelsorge im Dritten Reich und in der Bundeswehr (1999), 52. Gordon C. Zahn suggests that this family connection was integral to his later appointment as field bishop, which occurred “over the objections of the majority of the German hierarchy.” See Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), 149. 46 The “exemption” status indicates that a person or institution is withdrawn from the jurisdiction of an inferior ecclesiastical authority and placed under that of a higher power. In the case of the German military chaplaincy, its members were directly responsible to the field bishop who, in turn, was directly responsible to the pope (otherwise bishops are responsible to the metropolitan archbishop). Because of the exempt position of the field bishop (he was not an ecclesiastical authority), the chaplaincy automatically carried exempt status as well. Exemption is historically common for military chaplaincies and their religious leaders in order to place them within the jurisdiction of the pope and to acknowledge secular jurisdiction (in the cases of Prussia and Austria, the respective emperors; with Nazi Germany, the government). See the New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edition, Vol. 5, 529-30. 47 KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), from Werthmann’s notes, June 7, 1946.

96 The bishops believed that Rarkowski was, on nearly every level, unsuitable for the job, a conviction that would later largely be affirmed by both military chaplains and

Rarkowski’s own vicar-general. Concerning his religious education, “it was known that

Rarkowski had managed to be admitted to the study of theology without graduation from high school, that he had studied for the priesthood in Switzerland rather than in Germany, had left a religious order and was generally considered by the bishops to be an upstart without the requisite educational background.”48 It is doubtful that Rarkowski ever attempted to hide his lack of the German equivalent of the high school diploma, but his religious training was marked by indecision. After nine years in a Gymnasium, he received a dimissorial letter from his bishop in Ermland, which gave him permission to study in England, and the Marists accepted him as a novice.49 That this commitment was not firm can be seen from his alleged – and failed – attempt for admission in the Trappist monastery at La Chartreuse in France; he also spent several months with the Carthusian monks in Düsseldorf before returning once more to the Marists. Again this commitment appears hasty, as he subsequently attempted to gain entrance to the Benedictine order, which rejected him for reasons of health, before he finally requested permission to be released from his order-vows in 1901. He then returned to Ermland and became the

48 Lewy, Catholic Church, 237. Manfred Messerschmidt relates similar details in “Aspekte der Militärseelsorgepolitik in nationalsozialistischer Zeit” in Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 (1968), 81. 49 The Marist Fathers, or Society of Mary (Societas Mariae), are a clerical congregation founded in 1816 by Jean Claude Courveille and Jean Claude Colin in Lyon, France, and recognized by the pope in 1836. Their self-appointed primary task is comprehensive pastoral work; their daily routine and spirituality is modeled on the Blessed Virgin Mary, from whom the congregation takes its name. Not to be confused with the Marianists, who carry the same post-nominals (S.M.), a slightly bigger congregation founded in 1817 by William Joseph Chaminade. See entries on “Marist Fathers” and “Marianists” in Catholic University of America, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edition (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), Vol 9., 160-62 and 176.

97 personal chaplain for students of a housekeeping school, then chaplain at a local hospital.

He also served in the same manner in an epilepsy institute.50

In addition to questioning his religious training, the German bishops also expressed serious reservations regarding his personality, provoked partly by discrepancies between Rarkowski’s official personnel file and material evidence. One priest was concerned enough in 1933 about the possibility of Rarkowski heading the pastoral care of the armed forces to write a letter to a ministerial council pointing out these discrepancies, which underscored Rarkowski’s foreign training (in Britain) and his apparent failure to take the entrance exams [“das Pfarrexamen” – sic] for the priesthood.

Furthermore, Rarkowski evidently could not even remember which bishop had ordained him in 1898, since he had written in his file, “ordained to the priesthood by the bishop of

Ermland” when in fact it had been the bishop of Brixen. The complaining priest, Dr.

Schwamborn, asserted with some asperity, “I believe that it is a unique case in which a

Catholic priest doesn’t know which bishop ordained him to the priesthood.”51 Even more damning, Schwamborn suggested that Rarkowski had deserted his post in August of

1914, and fled from Lötzen to Berlin. A second letter revealed that another priest, Dr.

Mühlenbein, had brought charges against Rarkowski that included the use of false titles during his service as a chaplain in the Great War.52

Closer scrutiny later revealed that the majority of these personal accusations were either misunderstandings or simply false. The bishop of Brixen had indeed ordained

Rarkowski, but on behalf of the authority of the bishop of Ermland, and for that diocese.

50 Biographical information taken from Biographisches Lexikon, Franz Justus Rarkowski, 637. 51 KMBA SW 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Letter from Schwamborn, August 11, 1933. 52 KMBA SW 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Letter from Semler (no other identifying information given), August 17, 1933.

98 Rarkowski gave information that was inaccurate but not untrue. In the case of his leaving

Lötzen in 1914, Rarkowski was able to resolve it in his favor. While he was attending someone on a sick visit, military authorities evacuated the city. The commander of the nearby fortress of Boyen offered him the choice of staying at the fortress, but Rarkowski elected not to, as his own military authorities had not confirmed that he remain, so he had joined a column of refugees heading for Königsberg, unsure of what else to do.53 His use of false titles was owing to the fact that he had been incorrectly instructed to do so by his superior54 – who was, ironically, the same Dr. Schwamborn who later turned against him.

Schwamborn seems to have had a falling-out with Rarkowski between 1929 and 1933, the reason for which is not to be found in Rarkowski’s file in Berlin.55 Rarkowski himself pointed out, as he defended himself against Schwamborn’s accusations, that the man had previously been enthusiastically supportive of his career, and that Rarkowski had expressed his own reservations that his education and religious training might eventually pose problems. Schwamborn had admitted that “that could be the case, and he encouraged me to accept the appointment [as his successor to the post of Field Vicar-

General of the Reichswehr].”56 Furthermore, several of Rarkowski’s military superiors from the war praised his abilities highly, citing his “affectionate good will,” his

“readiness to help” and calling him a man who “is tirelessly active in his calling,” who

“fulfills fully his obligations” and was “not only extraordinarily beloved as a priest, but

53 KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Letter from Rarkowski, August 16, 1933. He explained that he eventually ended up in Berlin and immediately applied to the leaer of the Catholic chaplaincy, Field Provost Dr. Joeppen, to be sent back into the field. 54 KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Letter from Reichswehrminister Groener, April 29, 1930. 55 In the copy of a letter written in Rarkowski’s defense in 1933, it is revealed by its writer, Semler, that Schwamborn had been “for decades” [seit Jahrzehnten] a stark opponent of Rarkowski but does not say why, though it also mentions the fact that Rarkowski “didn’t complete the Abitur, but has been lawfully dispensated by the Prussian minister of education from the preparatory training requirements stipulated for tenure in a spiritual office.” See KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Letter from Semler, August 17, 1933. 56 KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Letter from Rarkowski, August 16, 1933.

99 also as a man and companion.” Rarkowski was “a distinguished personality with a strong character suffused with the most ideal disposition and highest patriotic spirit…. He has earned for himself in a short period of time the deepest trust of the soldiers placed in his care, has been zealously and successfully trying to give them his best.”57

Given such high acclaim, it becomes more difficult to understand what the

German bishops had against Rarkowski’s appointment to the position of field bishop.

They might have been put off by his connections to the Nazi movement; perhaps they viewed him as a social inferior; certainly they were uncomfortable with the Party’s vigorous promotion of his candidacy. He was unabashedly nationalistic, sometimes radically so, citing Mein Kampf in his effusive enthusiasm for military education: “In the school of the army, the boy will become a man; in this school he should learn not only to obey, but also thereby to acquire those preconditions necessary to prepare him for later orders.”58 He went on to describe the Führer in his first wartime pastoral letter as the

“luminous model of a true warrior… of the first and bravest soldier of the greater German

Reich, who from now on resides with you at the battle front.”59 He never offered a word, explicit or implicit, that could be construed as criticism of the regime. He did not officially belong to the Nazi Party, although he was a member of the National Socialist

People’s Welfare [NSV], the Nazi welfare organization, as well as the Reich Air Defense

Organization.60 One historian has claimed that the reason for the bishops’ antipathy

“stemmed from [their] feeling that he was their intellectual inferior and a threat to their

57 KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Letter from Groener, 29 April 1930. 58 KMBA 1008/VII (Nr. 1), Pastoral letter, Easter 1937. The passage to which he is obviously referring from Mein Kampf reads, “But in the forefront of military training will stand what has to be regarded as the highest merit of the old army: in this school the boy must be transformed into a man; in this school he must not only learn to obey, but must thereby acquire a basis for commanding later.” Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim, reprinted edition (London: Pimlico, 1998), 376. 59 KMBA 1009/VII (Nr. 1), Pastoral letter, September 1939. 60 Biographisches Lexikon, 637-38.

100 status rather than from the unacceptability of his political ideas.”61 But other evidence provides an alternate explanation, bound up with the legal status of pastoral care for the armed forces and the role of the field bishop.

As stipulated above, one of the determining factors in the signing of the 1933 concordat was the acquiescence of the Church (meaning here both the German bishops and the Vatican) in an exempt chaplaincy for the armed forces. The field bishop would be appointed by the Reich government in agreement with the Vatican, and would be responsible directly to the Holy See and to the government (Hitler). Thus, the field bishop had nothing to do with the hierarchy of the German episcopate. He did not even participate in the annual Fulda conference, to which all German bishops belonged and in which they annually participated. In spite of grave misgivings about the autonomy and power of such a position in a significant realm of spiritual care, a position that was decisively separated from the rest of the Church in Germany, the Church conceded this point in the concordat in order to retain assurances of protection and autonomy on other levels, namely religious education and Catholic youth groups in Germany.62

This meant essentially that the Catholic field bishop was the highest level of spiritual leadership for Catholic soldiers serving in the Wehrmacht; once they were in uniform, soldiers were no longer part of their home dioceses, and communication with

61 Lewy, Catholic Church, 237. 62 Volk, Das Reichskonkordat, 44-58 but particularly 48. The official title was Reichsfeldbischof, which is sometimes translated as “military bishop.” In German, however, there is a qualitative distinction between a “Militärbishof” – military bishop – and a Feldbischof. The Feldbischof, or field bishop, more strongly emphasizes that the man will physically lead the military chaplaincy in a time of war; he will be present in the theatres of war [Kriegsschauplätze] in order to guide his men. A military bishop may perform the same role for an army, but may not necessarily be employed at the battlefront. Such is currently the case in the German Bundeswehr, an army envisioned since 1956 as a defensive unit, that employs a military (as opposed to a field) bishop. My thanks to Dr. Monica Sinderhauf, director of the archive of the Catholic Military Bishop in Berlin, for underscoring this difference. The next chapter will present a detailed study of the set-up of the Wehrmacht’s chaplaincy.

101 their home bishops and parishes priests was made difficult, if not virtually impossible by censors.63 Perhaps the bishops felt comfortable ceding to the government’s request for an exempt military chaplaincy because they were assured that they would have at least some say in the choice of field bishop. They responded negatively, and volubly, to the nomination of Rarkowski not merely because the regime supported his candidacy. To be sure, Rarkowski’s education and training could be considered inferior to that of the other bishops, all of whom had gained distinction during their seminary days, many of whom had gone on to study advanced theology in Rome, and most of whom had worked as university professors or directors of seminaries before becoming bishops.64

Understandably, the bishops would have viewed Rarkowski as an upstart by comparison

– dispensation aside, the man did not even have a high school diploma. More than this, though, and more significant in terms of the Holy See’s resistance to Rarkowski’s appointment, was that he was most decidedly not part of the German episcopate. The pope elevated him to the rank of titular bishop of Hierocaesarea only in 1938, and only as a matter of technicality (the field bishop, being still a bishop, required a diocese to merit the title).65 Such anti-Nazi bishops as Bishop (later Cardinal) Clemens von Galen from

Münster and Bishop (later Cardinal) Konrad von Preysing from Berlin co-officiated at his

63 BA-MA RH 12 II/5, Nr. 503/36, copy without author or date, though likely pre-1939 and drafted by Rarkowski, entitled “Katholische militärkirchliche Dienstordnung für die Wehrmacht.” Cutting off all contact between military chaplains and civilian church authorities was one of Martin Bormann’s primary goals in the first half of the war, which later spread through most of the upper Party apparatus. According to one historian, Bormann was the churches’ most dedicated and persistent opponent throughout the duration of the war. Manfred Messerschmidt, “Zur Militärseelsorgepolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg” in Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 (1969), 50-56. 64 Lewy, Catholic Church, 12. 65 This was (and still is) a title given to bishops who did not have residential sees – titular sees were those dioceses of the ancient church which later fell into “infidel” (i.e. Moslem) hands, most of which are located in modern Africa and the Middle East.

102 ordination, performed in January 1938 by the nuncio Orsenigo, but they did not see him as an equal, and it is unclear whether he ever met with either Popes Pius XI or Pius XII.

The Party seemed to have gained the upper hand with Rarkowski’s appointment, though it did not take long for the Church to recover some measure of control. This they did through Rarkowski’s appointment of prelate Georg Werthmann as Field Vicar-

General, the second-in-command of armed forces pastoral care under Rarkowski, and

“his nearest coworker and permanent representative.”66 Rarkowski himself thought highly of Werthmann, and the two enjoyed an efficient, if formal, working relationship until Rarkowski retired for health reasons in January 1945.67 Werthmann proved much less open to direct Party influence than his superior and worked tirelessly to protect chaplains and other spiritual men wearing German army uniforms from the malevolence of Party higher-ups and OKW personnel during the war. For this reason he became in the eyes of many – priest, bishop, minister, even general – the true leader of military pastoral care. His singular impact on shaping the chaplaincy, and the voluminous written documentation he left behind, I will investigate in the following chapter.

From 1935 to 1939, the Nazi Party spearheaded two different campaigns, both of which gained momentum. The first, and politically and militarily the most important, was the rapid build-up of the armed forces. In 1936, the total army strength stood at approximately 793,000 men, including non-weapons-bearing personnel, with a total of

66 Georg May, Interkonfessionalismus in der deutschen Militärseelsorge von 1933 bis 1945 (Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner, 1978), 77. 67 Springer, “ein guter und getreuer Knecht”, 63-4. Rarkowski described Werthmann as “a very erudite priest, gifted with writing skills, outstanding pulpit orator. His performance is absolutely first-class.” As quoted in Monica Sinderhauf, “Katholische Wehrmachtseelsorge im Krieg. Quellen und Forschungen zu Franz Justus Rarkowski und Georg Werthmann” in Kirchen im Krieg: Europa 1939-1945, edited by Karl Joseph Hummel and Christoph Kösters (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007), 283, n. 82.

103 thirty-six infantry divisions and just under 34,000 officers.68 By the end of 1936, rearmament had evolved from its primarily defense-based nature and had become offensive, due to its scope and magnitude.

But there were those who were not willing to sacrifice everything for a breakneck-speed rearmament, and here Hitler experienced serious opposition for the first time from individual members of his administration. Hjalmar Schacht, Minister of

Economics since 1934 who was largely responsible for engineering Germany’s recovery from agrarian crises and unemployment, was one of the first to express doubts about the effects an economy geared toward production of raw materials would have in the long- term; this led to his resignation from the Economics Ministry in 1937. A number of generals in the OKH, most notably Ludwig Beck, Chief of the General Staff of the Army, began to see more clearly that the army would either have to be put to use somehow, or risk a general crisis in demobilization. Moreover, the pace of rearmament had not maintained the same speed as recruitment. By 1937, there was already a shortage of raw materials, rising demands on foreign exchange, and looming problems with underemployment. Financial straits exacerbated by the absence of long-term planning compounded the chaos.69

In the eyes of these generals, what was even more alarming in terms of logistics was the series of military adventures into which Hitler plunged his armies between 1936 and the war’s eventual outbreak in 1939. As a group, they hesitated when given orders to remilitarize the Rhineland in 1936, which effectively destroyed Hitler’s faith that they

68 Deist, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft, 320, 326. 69 This very brief and general summary is unfolded in more detail by Müller, Army, Politics and Society, Müller, General Ludwig Beck (particularly 225-72), and by Wilhelm Deist in “The Road to Ideological War” in The Making of Strategy.

104 had confidence in his decisions. Von Blomberg and von Fritsch, traditionally opposed to each other over von Blomberg’s obvious Nazi proclivities, found themselves united in their opposition to Hitler’s foreign-policy plans, which he announced during a meeting in

November 1937. Their disagreements stemmed from the shared desire to avoid a major war provoked by Germany, and neither had any hesitation about standing up to Hitler; as

Hossbach recalled later, “At times the discussion became quite heated, above all between

Blomberg and Fritsch on the one hand and Göring on the other… the behavior of

Blomberg and Fritsch must have made it clear to the Führer that his political ideas had simply produced sober and objective counter-arguments instead of applause and approval.”70 Unfortunately their intransigence resulted in the speedy “retirement” of both officers, von Blomberg in January 1938 after a scandal involving his new wife, and von

Fritsch not long after as a result of false homosexuality charges engineered by Himmler and Heydrich. The whole affair forced sixteen other high-ranking generals into retirement, including men with such reputations as Rundstedt, Leeb, and Kluge. Forty- four others were transferred to new duties.71 In the greatest of the pre-war army purges,

Hitler abolished the war ministry and replaced it with the OKW, which became effectively Hitler’s personal staff in military affairs, and replaced von Fritsch with

Walther von Brauchitsch as commander-in-chief of the army. 72

70 Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. III, 688. 71 Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, 495. 72 The Blomberg-Fritsch affair is related in detail in Müller, Das Heer und Hitler, 255-99. Von Blomberg had married a young typist in early January 1938, who Göring then charged with having a “history,” who moreover had been arrested for “immoral conduct” (implying that she was a prostitute). Hitler’s henchmen ordered von Blomberg to annul the marriage in order to avoid scandal or resign; he chose resignation. The Gestapo charged Fritsch, a bachelor, with engaging in homosexual activity. He later cleared his name, but he was never reinstated, and his reputation never recovered. He resumed command of his former division for the invasion of Poland, where he was killed in September 1939. From this point on, Hitler increasingly took military power into his own hands, though the OKH, the core of the army’s strength, had more influence and reach than the OKW throughout the war. On this point see Messerschmidt, Wehrmacht im

105 This reshuffling of the higher echelons of the army was demonstrable proof of the generals’ complete inability to understand the primacy of ideology in Hitler’s Third

Reich until it was too late. The successful penetration of Nazi ideology was also evident in the officer corps, whose numbers simply exploded during the recruitment phase and led inevitably to the dissolution of internal integrity and homogeneity. Many of the new officers were youths whose time in the Hitler Youth as well as in school familiarized them with the Nazi Weltanschauung; they affiliated therefore more openly with the Nazi cause than did the older generation of Prussian officers. The attempts of von Fritsch,

Beck, and other generals to remain “above politics” did not constitute a winning strategy, especially as Himmler’s SS proved a much more capable and a dangerous military rival than the SA had been.

In March 1938, Hitler silenced nearly all his critics with the bloodless Anschluss with Catholic Austria, a move popular with both the Church and the army that, along with a large part of German society, viewed the union of the two German-speaking countries as something desirable. With war avoided, the warnings of Beck and von

Brauchitsch about allied interference proved mistaken, and Hitler was triumphant.73 A determined push to avoid war over Hitler’s next demand, the German-speaking

Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, came both from the governments of France and Britain as well as Beck and other generals, and led to a Great Power conference in Munich in

September 1938, in which Germany annexed the Sudetenland, again without violence.

Beck, who had offered to resign several times over the previous months due to Hitler’s increasingly unchecked control of military affairs and his apprehension that German

NS-Staat, 210-26; Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Armee, Politik und Gesellschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945 (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Schöningh, 1979), 39-47. 73 O’Neill, German Army and the Nazi Party, 151-52.

106 foreign policy would lead to war, retired in August 1938, leaving Hitler free rein to occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, a move which brought grumbling but little else from the remaining army generals.74

The second campaign ignited by the Nazi Party provoked tensions between the state and the churches, particularly the Catholic Church. The state brought to bear increasing pressure on Catholics to join Nazi organizations, and the Hitler Youth pressured Catholic youths in like manner, until service for all boys became compulsory at the end of 1936.75 Steadily from 1936, the regime saw to it that Catholic lay organizations disbanded; it had destroyed the once-vast network completely by the onset of the war. It had also seriously diminished the Catholic press, as outlined in the first chapter. In May 1936, the regime’s attacks on religious orders mounted with the commencement of the immorality trials, avidly followed by the Nazi press, which alleged that “Catholic monasteries were… breeding places of filth and vice.”76 When civil war

74 Beck had urged the generals to resign with him en masse in a display of protest against Hitler’s dangerous foreign policy decisions, but the generals proved reluctant to follow his example. In a moving but futile note to von Brauchitsch, Beck argued, “The fate of the nation is at stake with these decisions. History will burden these leaders with blood-guilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialized political knowledge and with their conscience. Their military obedience has a limit where their knowledge, their conscience and their sense of responsibility forbid the execution of a command. If their warnings and counsel meet with no hearing in such a situation, then they have the right and the duty, in the face of their people and in the face of history, to resign from their offices. If they act cohesively, the execution of a policy of war is impossible. By this they will have saved their country from the worst – from ruin…. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures!” Müller, General Ludwig Beck, 305-11. Excerpt quoted here is reprinted in the book’s appendix, 552, “Vortragsnotiz Becks über mögliche innen- und außenpolitische Entwicklungen, insbesondere über das Verhalten der obersten militärischen Führung angesichts der Gefahr eines Krieges mit der Tschechoslowakei,” July 16, 1938. See also Correlli Barnett, Hitler’s Generals, 1st American edition (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), especially 36-7. 75 This was through an official Nazi decree on December 1, 1936, which made the Hitler Youth an official organization sponsored by the state. See Lewy, Catholic Church, 130-31. 76 Lewy, Catholic Church, 156; Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 159. The first trials that are considered by Hockerts to be part of the assault on the morality of priests – referred to in German as the Sittlichkeitsprozesse, or “morality trials” – began in 1935, when two Franciscan friars were accused of homosexual acts independently of one another (although both were in the Rhineland). The majority of the trials occurred between May and August 1936 in Koblenz, and April to July 1937 in Koblenz and Bonn; they targeted all manner of clergymen, from friars to priests of various orders. See Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse, 4, 34-5.

107 broke out in Spain between right-wing nationalists and various leftist forces, including communists, the Church followed the pope’s example and dutifully condemned the atrocities perpetrated by “Bolsheviks.” Pope Pius XI even devoted an entire encyclical to

“the scourge of Communism” taking hold in Spain, entitled On Atheistic Communism and released in March 1937.77 According to some circles of Nazi society, however, the

Church was nowhere near strident enough in its condemnation. Rumors provoked von

Faulhaber to meet with Hitler in November 1936 in order to reaffirm the Church’s stance against communism and to protest against the damaging lies that had been spread, particularly about the pope. Von Faulhaber wrote a memorandum the next day, detailing the exchange with the German leader and recalled arguing that

in his speeches of February 1930 and of this year, given before Spanish refugees, Pope Pius XI labeled Bolshevism the deadly enemy of every Christian culture, and at Fulda, the German bishops expressed themselves identically in this year’s pastoral letter and in earlier proclamations… You can imagine, Herr Reich Chancellor, how painful it had to be for us Catholics to hear and read the untruth that is still spread in today’s German newspapers and educational addresses: the pope stands silently in league with Moscow, he thinks ever on closing a concordat with Moscow, and for this reason he was silent at the beginning about the atrocities in Spain, and hopes more and more that Bolshevism will destroy the Third Reich.78

As outlined in the first chapter, attacks on the pope and the Church in Germany by pro-

Nazi papers and journalists continued throughout the Spanish Civil War, unmitigated by the bishops’ protests that they had always displayed a deep-seated antipathy for all things communist.

Strikingly, the bishops showed even less resistance than the generals to Hitler and his objectives, both military and ideological (in fact, these two were becoming rapidly

77 The Vatican issued this encyclical, Divini Redemptoris, on March 19, 1937. For the full English text, see The Papal Encyclicals 1903-1939 (Vol. 3), edited by Claudia Carlen IHM (Raleigh: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981), 537-54. 78 Reichhold, Die deutsche katholische Kirche, 83-87.

108 inextricable in the lead-up to war). At this point, the army leadership was still attempting to retain its independence, to keep itself separated from Hitler and the Party at least to the extent to which decisions of strategy and logistics might remain in its exclusive sphere of authority. The generals failed to do this; by 1938, Hitler had taken over as supreme commander of the armed forces, trumping their authority. The bishops, on the other hand, had the concordat, whose existence precisely was to guarantee that the Church in

Germany retained its sovereignty in matters of education and religious practice. They fought desperately to retain its structures, even as the Party moved continuously against its provisions. Moreover, while some German clergy had reason to regard the regime with mounting wariness, not only because of its obvious disdain for the concordat but also for its continuous targeting of monasteries and friaries during the morality trials, generally Catholics still felt comfortable with Nazism. Church leaders may have refrained from more vocal protests at this point out of consideration for the potential backlash against their flocks in Germany.

The Church did not remain silent forever, however. In March 1937, the Vatican unleashed a second encyclical, the German-language Mit brennender Sorge (“With Deep

Anxiety”), a powerful missive condemning Nazism’s habitual breach of the 1933 concordat and its unrelenting attacks on the Church in Germany. The encyclical began with an explanation of what had motivated the Vatican to sign the concordat, moved on to point out the violations made by the Nazi Party, and then denounced in no uncertain terms the exaltation of race and the German state, the center of Nazi ideology, which directly contradicted the Christian belief in equality and, more importantly as we will see below, the possibility of redemption for anyone who became baptized. Though it did not

109 mention specifically the anti-Jewish legislation and discrimination that had been methodically unfolding in Germany since 1933, it did underscore the equality of all human beings before God and rejected the misappropriation of religious terminology and imagery for the purpose of creating a national religion, as well as the Nazi drive to eliminate the “Jewish” Old Testament from the Bible. The encyclical outlined in detail the various infringements of the concordat, including the closing of confessional schools, the harassment of clergy in pursuit of their vocation, and the dissolution of lay religious organizations. In a section directed to Catholic parents, the Vatican acknowledged that it knew of a bitter campaign over their rights as religious educators “that could hardly be considered more fateful [schicksalsvoll],” describing religious lessons held by unauthorized teachers in the framework of a school that worked systematically and hatefully against religion. In its concluding sections, it encouraged German Catholics to remain faithful to God and the message of Christ, and to persevere in the present atmosphere of “interior catharsis” and suffering.79

The encyclical was officially attributed to Pius XI, but at the time he was gravely ill with diabetes and heart disease. In January 1937, he granted an audience to no fewer than five German bishops (three of them cardinals) – Cardinal Bertram, archbishop of

Breslau and head of the Fulda Conference of Bishops; Cardinal von Faulhaber, archbishop of Munich and Freising; von Schulte, archbishop of Cologne; von Galen, bishop of Münster; and von Preysing, the relatively new bishop of Berlin – to hear their grievances about the concordat violations. As a result of their lengthy conversation, von

Faulhaber wrote a first draft of what would become the encyclical, which Pacelli then

79 For the original German version of the encyclical, see Acta Apostolicae Sedis 39 (1937), 145-67. All translations are my own. For the English-language version, see Papal Encyclicals 1903-39, 525-35.

110 modified before submitting it for the pope’s signature. They arranged for it to be smuggled into Germany, printed by twelve different presses, and delivered by courier so that it could be read from every pulpit on Palm Sunday, 21 March.80 And priests and bishops did read it, everywhere in Germany, in stark defiance of the Gestapo agents who were surveilling individual parishes.

Much like the earlier Reichskonkordat, Mit brennender Sorge attracted worldwide attention and controversy. It could hardly be mistaken for anything other than a rebuke of

Nazi policy vis à vis the Church in Germany. Though the encyclical mentions neither

Hitler nor the Nazi Party by name, its subtitle addresses the situation of the Catholic

Church in the German Reich. Nor could there be any confusion over whom the message was blaming for the injustices and indignities the German Church was suffering, when the sixth section pointed out how “the reinterpretation, circumvention, erosion, and finally the more or less open violation of the concordat by the treaty’s other signer has become the unwritten rule of thumb.”81 It did not condemn explicitly the persecution of

German Jews, which the Nuremberg Laws legalized in September 1935; the absence of any mention of the plight of the “Reichsfeinde,” including Jews, Socialists, communists, and other political and racial undesirables languishing in concentration camps, is striking.

But it did address the racial overtones of Nazi ideology and upheld the Christian dogma that God’s laws “are effective independent of time and space, land and race…. His law

80 The logistics of delivering the encyclical to each parish were complicated by the fact that, among the concordat breaches, Nazi agents had been hindering official communication between Rome and the German churches. As a result, the encyclical was delivered by courier boys on foot and bicycle, who often crossed through fields and forests rather than take public roads. This information is relayed by Jesuit Father Peter Gumpel, who was one of the couriers, via John Cornwell in Hitler’s Pope, 182. 81 Mit brennender Sorge, section 6.

111 knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and ruled, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor, high and low are subject in equal measure to His word.”82

Many in Europe hailed the encyclical as a welcome protest, the strongest official reproach that the Vatican would deliver to the Nazi regime during its tenure. Hindsight has not been so enthusiastic. Some historians continue to praise it as the only way in which the Vatican could react negatively to Nazi policy, and that the German bishops, through the pope, pushed as far as they dared without endangering their increasingly limited autonomy within Germany. To go further – to identify Hitler by name, or to discuss in greater detail different aspects of his ideology – would be to invite irrevocable damage, such as the official cancellation of the Reichskonkordat. For other historians, the encyclical did not go nearly far enough. These historians dismiss Mit brennender Sorge, invariably classified as apologetic, conciliatory, and circumlocutory, as a half-measure that failed to highlight the serious dangers of the Nazi Weltanschauung, that continued to ignore the plight of Germany’s Jews, and that achieved little more than growls of consternation from uncompromising anti-Catholic Nazis.83

What the encyclical incontrovertibly did do was ignite the fury of the Nazi Party, which regarded Mit brennender Sorge as a deeply subversive, offensive, even treacherous text. If official Nazi reaction can be used as a way to judge how damaging the Party deemed it, then those historians who argue that it had little import are clearly underestimating its impact. The regime quickly closed the German printing houses that

82 Mit brennender Sorge, section 14. 83 Among those who defend the encyclical are Dieter Albrecht, “Das Heilige Stuhl und das Dritte Reich” in Gotto and Repgen, Kirche, Katholiken und Nationalsozialismus, 42-3; Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 371- 79; and Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 18, who labels the encyclical as “anti-racist.” Those who have labeled it apologetic or ineffective are Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 183-83; Daniel J. Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 46-7; Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 158-59.

112 had abetted the document’s publication, and renewed the immorality trials, briefly suspended for the duration of the 1936 Olympic Games, with considerable vigor.84 The

Gestapo dedicated itself to the full-time harassment of the clergy; its agents curtailed pastoral letters in the weeklies in which they were distributed and subjected those

Catholic presses remaining open to censure. The Gestapo and other Nazi agents also oversaw the amalgamation of lay organizations and youth groups with their Nazi counterparts, which occurred with alarming rapidity; Catholic professors and teachers found themselves dismissed from their posts; Church-sponsored educational courses on themes such as marriage and childcare were prohibited. Furthermore, the regime placed limits on parades, processions, retreats, pilgrimages, camps, confirmation classes, and day hikes. When the bishops protested these moves, they found no support from Kerrl in the Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs, and Hitler entertained the idea of doing away completely with the concordat. Although in the end he did not, persuaded by others that it would not be wise to retaliate and risk exacerbating tensions within German society in view of his foreign policy plans, he did pointedly avoid meeting with the pope when he visited Rome in May 1938.85

Hitler gave free rein to the activities of Himmler’s SS in its array of anti-Catholic activities in the period following the encyclical. Nor were the bishops blind as to who was responsible. In October 1937, von Preysing prepared a private memorandum for the

84 Numbers varied as to how many clergy members were implicated in these trials, largely because Nazi propaganda considerably inflated the numbers. Statistics offered by Kerrl at the end of November 1937 placed the number of condemned priests at 242, with another 955 cases pending, and that furthermore some 7,000 convictions had been handed down against Catholic clergy since 1933. The bishops had long disputed these numbers and cited in June 1937 that only twenty-one diocesan priests and one order-priest had been convicted out of fifty-seven total brought to trial, rendering a ratio of clergy affected by the trials to be about one priest per 500 in Germany. See Persecution of the Catholic Church, 304-07; Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse, 167. 85 Kreutzer, Das Reichskirchenministerium, 230-34; Conway, Nazi Persecution, 166-72; Lewy, Catholic Church, 158.

113 episcopate, in which he left no doubt as to who was leading the charge against

Catholicism:

The SS leads the sharpest and most ruthless battle against the Church. The Reichsführer-SS [Himmler] views 99% of ministers as swine, as he expressed it to one of his adjutants…. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the most radical wing of the Party, under the leadership of the SS, will take every opportunity to drive the battle of annihilation [Vernichtungskampf] against the Church to its finish.86

Nor did von Preysing have to exaggerate to depict events as an open battle against the

Church in Germany; the continual arrests, dismissals, harassment, and other forms of discrimination that specifically targeted parish priests, who were often crucial for holding together spiritual communities at the local level, demonstrated this. Reports at the end of

1937 focused on reaction to the resumption of the immorality trials, and reveal the regime’s depth of concern about Catholic reaction. A local SD office in Koblenz reported that in “some areas of the Reich, in strongly believing Catholic circles, signatures were being collected for a statement which asserted that the immorality trials against priests and other clergy were led by the German government in order to destroy religion.”87 The statements would eventually be presented to the pope, which stimulated the SS-

Hauptsturmführer (equivalent of a captain) to urge his men to find these lists, or at least obtain a photocopy. Six months later, the same SD office reported that the Catholic

Church was building a priest-combatant organization [Priesterfrontkämpferorganisation] to challenge the Nazi-run War Victims Provisions (NSKOV) as well as to ingratiate themselves with the officer corps of the armed forces, and that the organization, led by

General Vicar Dr. von Meurers in Trier and Father Konrad Engel, would be kept under

86 “Denkschrift Preysings” in Akten Deutscher Bischöfe Über die Lage der Kirche: 1933-1945, Volume IV (1936-1939), edited by Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1981), 356-61. 87 NARA T-175, roll 577, frame 951, report, August 2, 1937.

114 close surveillance.88 Even criticism that seemed safely hidden in sermons in small towns was liable to be reported to the local Gestapo office, as Father Bungarten in Bad

Neuenahr, near Koblenz, discovered in November 1938. He was the subject of several SS and Hitler Youth reports because he dared to express in his Sunday sermon that “many today are being persecuted for the sake of their beliefs, in Spain, Russia, and even in our

Fatherland.”89

Simultaneously, as Hitler’s confidence in the loyalty of his army wavered in the wake of the generals’ reluctance to pursue his foreign policy aims enthusiastically, and even as he purged those elements he deemed most threatening, he gradually promoted the development of the SS as a weapon-bearing force to be directly competitive with the army.90 In the wake of the SA purge, the SS began to build up its own paramilitary force, the SS-Verfügungstruppe, or SS-VT. A combat-ready, military-trained force that was unveiled publicly in 1935, the SS-VT was under direct control of Hitler and the Party and was initially to be used only for domestic purposes. In the case of general conscription, it was subject to the rules and conditions that governed the OKH but was still politically classified as a Party organization. In peacetime within Germany, the SS-VT fell under the jurisdiction of Himmler as Reichsführer-SS and leader of the German police.91 These

88 NARA T-175, roll 1612, frames 165-66. The surveillance was constant, indeed: the Gestapo arrested Engel in September 1935 and held him in detention until February 1936, when his trial began; the court sentenced him to six months in prison for slandering the state (breaking the Heimtückegesetz). The Regierungspräsidenten imposed a prohibition on him from 1939 to 1945, with the result that he earned no salary [Gehaltssperre]. Less is known for sure about Dr. von Meuers, although the Gestapo did search both his office and his home in November 1938 and April 1943, and in June 1943 interrogated him. See Priester unter Hitlers Terror: Eine biographische und statistische Erhebung, edited by Ulrich von Hehl, 2nd edition (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1985), 1302-03 for Engel and 1353-54 for von Meuers. 89 NARA T-175, roll 410, frames 2933987-88, reports dated 30 October and 15 November 1938. Emphasis in original. Franz Bungarten endured more than thirty complaints, reports, interrogations, and warnings from the Gestapo during the Third Reich, which he would outlive. See Priester unter Hitlers Terror, 1291. 90 May, Interkonfessionalismus, 70. 91 NARA T-77, roll 1424, frames 728-29. See also Buchheim, “Die SS – das Herrschaftsinstrument” in Anatomie des SS-Staates, 13-211, and Bernd Wegner, “Anmerkungen zur Geschichte der Waffen-SS aus

115 troops trained with the army and participated in the annexations of Austria and

Czechoslovakia, and shortly before the invasion of Poland, von Brauchitsch reiterated that the cooperation between army soldiers and SS-VT was to be deepened as extensively as possible “through close official and extra-official connections.”92 As the war lengthened, the ranks of the Waffen-SS (Armed-SS) emerged from the SS-VT; these were elite troop formations, administratively part of the SS but operationally and logistically controlled by the OKH, which fought on all major fronts but were not part of the army, and played a considerable role in the perpetration of genocide.

More telling about the attitudes of the army and the Church towards the SS, however, was each group’s reaction to the events of 9-10 November 1938, the first and only large-scale pogrom in Germany, which later came to be called Kristallnacht, or the

Night of Broken Glass. Engineered by Goebbels in response to the assassination of a minor German diplomat in Paris by a Polish Jew, and carried out largely by SA men dressed in plainclothes with some help from the SS, the pogrom unleashed a wave of lethal activity in cities across the country, resulting in ninety-one Jews killed, more than

20,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps, and the destruction of more than 800 shops and nearly 200 synagogues.93 The gratuitous violence was highly visible, in fact

organisations- und funktionsgeschichtlicher Sicht” in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, edited by Rolf- Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 408-09. 92 Document reprinted in appendix of Müller, Das Heer und Hitler, 666-67. Letter from June 20, 1939. For more information on the make-up, background, and operational activities of various wartime SS formations, see: for the Waffen-SS, Bernd Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933-1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1982); for the SS Death’s Head Divisions (SS-Totenkopfdivisionen), Charles S. Sydnor, Jr., Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death’s Head Division, 1933-1945 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977); for the SS police divisions and various other units that formed the Einsatzgruppen, who were heavily involved in the mass slaughters on the Eastern front, Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938-1942 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982). 93 All numbers taken from Nazism 1919-1945 Vol. II, 554-58. For an account of Goebbel’s role and the opportunistic participation of the SS, see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews Volume I, 3rd edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 37-39. For an expansive collection of

116 was designed to be so by Goebbels, who wanted to orchestrate the pogrom to appear as a spontaneous uprising of the German people against their eternal enemy, the Jews.

Consequently, there were a number of unimpeachable eyewitnesses, and no opportunity for the Party or those involved to later deny what had happened. Neither the army hierarchy nor the Church could afford to ignore the blood in the streets, the smashed windows, the fact that people had been killed and thousands more wrongfully imprisoned, all at the hands of Party organizations acting on orders from Hitler’s inner circle, even if the Führer himself had given no orders for a pogrom. Yet both were silent in the face of it.

As far as the Church was concerned, some historians point to the fact that Pius XI intended to issue an encyclical in 1939 that would directly address Nazi racism and antisemitism, contesting the idea that the Vatican’s attitude towards these ideologies was unwavering silence during the Third Reich.94 The encyclical, however, disappeared shortly after Pius XI’s death in February 1939, and his successor, Pacelli, who took the name Pius XII, chose not to pursue an open condemnation of antisemitism and racism in

Europe. Pius XI commissioned this “lost” or “hidden” encyclical, entitled Humani

Generis Unitas (On the Unity of the Human Race), in August 1938, and three Jesuits drafted it: American John LaFarge, known for his activities against racism in the United

eyewitness accounts, see Herbert Schultheis, Die Reichskristallnacht in Deutschland nach Augenzeugenberichten (Bad Neustadt a.d. Saale: Rötter Druck und Verlag, 1985). 94 Only in the last dozen years has the content of the encyclical come to light, published first in French and then in English. It is mentioned in Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 189-92; in Phayer, Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 3-4; in Georg Denzler, Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort (Zurich: Pendo, 2003), 40; and in Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), 250-52. It is dealt with extensively in Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, L’encyclique cachée de Pie XI: une occasion manquée de L’Église face à l’antisémitisme (Paris: La Decouverte, 1995), and in the following articles: Jean-Marie Mayer, “L’encyclique cachée de Pie XI” (Review) in Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, Nr. 52 (Numéro spécial, Oct-Dec 1996), 148-50; Frank J. Coppa, “Pope Pius XI’s ‘Encyclical’ Humani Generis Unitas Against Racism and Antisemitism and the ‘Silence’ of Pope Pius XII in Journal of Church and State 40 Issue 4 (Autumn 1998), 775-96.

117 States; French Gustave Desbuquois, who worked with L’Action populaire on a project condemning racism and antisemitism; and German Gustav Gundlach, an eminent Rome- based theologian who had collaborated with Pius XI on earlier encyclicals. They finished a draft in Latin and delivered it to the superior of the Society of Jesus, Vladimir

Ledochowski, but apparently it did not reach Pius XI’s desk until sometime in 1939, shortly before his death. Likely the dying pontiff never read it. This was the closest the

Vatican would come to making a public statement against Nazism.

The German bishops, like the Catholics they led and Germans in general, also chose to remain mute in the face of the violence. Von Faulhaber provided a truck for

Munich’s chief rabbi so that he could save the religious objects in his synagogue before it was destroyed;95 the aging provost of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin, Bernhard

Lichtenberg, prayed on 10 November 1938 “for those priests in concentration camps, for the Jews, for the non-Aryans” and added, “we know what was yesterday. We don’t know what tomorrow will be, but what happened today, we have experienced. Outside the synagogues are burning; that is also a house of God.”96 He paid the ultimate price, too: he was arrested for abuse of the pulpit in 1941, and after serving his term, the Gestapo seized him again in October 1943 and shipped him to Dachau; he died en route.97 Beyond the actions of a few individuals – a theology professor in Graz sent a strongly-worded, angry letter to the regional Gauleiter; rabbis in Münster and Zülpich (North Rhine-

95 Related in Martin Gilbert, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 143- 44. 96 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 434. 97 Kevin P. Spicer, “The Unique Path of Bernhard Lichtenberg” in Resisting the Third Reich, 160-82.

118 Westphalia) remembering going to the Catholic bishops of the area for emotional support

– protests and active resistance from Catholics were few and far between.98

The army generals’ reaction to war’s sudden outbreak was significantly greater than what met the November 1938 pogrom, though initial consternation quickly gave way to acceptance. Hitler and many of the Party leaders were not necessarily enthusiastic supporters of the pogrom, sensitive to the “‘demonstrations’ [that did] damage to the

German economy,” though Hitler used the occasion as an excuse to accelerate anti-

Jewish measures.99 Reaction from the generals was brief and barely discernable. No doubt events in Czechoslovakia had riveted the army’s attention, as the Sudetenland was bloodlessly annexed despite protests from the Allies, proving the generals’ worries of war groundless. Beck resigned shortly after, and Hitler’s distrust of the OKH, which had fought him on the decision to invade the Sudetenland, continued to mount.100 A pogrom in Germany may have concerned individual generals privately, and certainly they regarded the negative attention the country received from the international community as highly undesirable, but given the army’s total lack of involvement, it was hardly an affair the generals would have been pressed to comment on publicly.

98 Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 434-39. One of the motivations for the lack of resistance that Hürten discusses is that the apparently widely held opinion that, after the Nazis finished with the Jews, the Catholics would be next: “This was so self-evident for many contemporaries that they spoke quite simply of the ‘persecution of Jews and Christians.’” Polish Catholics expressed similar sentiments, though after the outbreak of the war they were treated much more harshly than their German brethren (for racial, not necessarily religious, reasons). Of course, this could also be incentive for action, depending on one’s perspective. Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken, 436. A notable exception was in Berlin, where Bishop von Preysing had organized an aid-network for Catholic “non-Aryans,” in other words, converted Jews who were being threatened by Nazi racial laws. Among other things, this network helped Catholic Jews emigrate. See Jana Leichsenring, Die katholische Kirche und “ihre Juden”: das “Hilfswerk beim Bischöflichen Ordinariat Berlin,” 1938-1945 (Berlin: Metropol, 2007). 99 Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936-45: Nemesis (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2000), 136-48. Quote taken from 144. 100 O’Neill, German Army and the Nazi Party, 166.

119 War was an entirely different matter. In May 1939, at a meeting with several army generals as well as Raeder, commander of the navy, and Göring, head of the Luftwaffe,

Hitler underscored his decision to attack Poland and stressed that Germany could not

“expect a repetition of Czechia [Czechoslovakia]”: war was to be expected. In late

August 1939, Hitler gathered the commanders of his armed forces and their general staffs, as well as leading officers of the OKW, and informed them of the imminent non- aggression pact with the Soviet Union that would permit Germany to attack Poland without fear of arousing the ire of Stalin in the east. Though the generals of the OKH reacted with considerable less enthusiasm than Hitler may have wanted – Rundstedt confided to his aide, “This fool wants war!” and Reichenau remarked to an OKW officer that “the man [Hitler] is grossly mistaken if he believes that the war will be ended in six weeks; this will be a war of six years”101 – there was no resistance to Operation White, the plan that envisioned the opening offensive against Poland on the first day of

September. Indeed, the energy with which the OKH had committed to Hitler’s plans for rearmament and war cannot be better demonstrated than by the number of soldiers in uniform on September 1, 1939: the total manpower of the Wehrmacht stood at 2.8 million men.102

The Church in Germany greeted the war with cautious approval, though, like society at large, not with particular enthusiasm. The bishops as a group (including the bishops in Austria and the Sudetenland, now all members of the Greater German Reich) issued a pastoral letter shortly after the invasion of Poland, admonishing Catholics to perform their duty to Führer and state and appealing to their flocks “to join in ardent

101 Müller, Das Heer und Hitler, 409-12. 102 Karl-Heinz Janßen, “Politische und militärische Zielvorstellungen der Wehrmachtführung” in Müller and Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht, 76.

120 prayers that God’s providence may lead this war to blessed success and peace for fatherland and people.”103 Rarkowski also issued his first wartime pastoral letter, addressed to all Catholics in the armed forces. As in his pre-war letters, he was adamantly nationalistic and cast Hitler as the brave, stalwart leader, whose love and care shone on

Germany, but especially for German soldiers. He described the war as defensive and mirrored National Socialist language when he proclaimed, “When the front and the homeland [Heimat] compose an indestructible unity, then will Germany’s battle for its right to live be blessed by the Almighty, who may be shelter and shield for all of you brave soldiers in the coming days and weeks.”104 Neither the bishops nor Rarkowski – nor Pope Pius XII, in his October encyclical – made any mention of German aggression or provocation, or acknowledged the plight of the Polish Catholic clergy during and immediately after the invasion. As Rarkowski was penning a letter to the German episcopate delineating their respective spheres of authority over chaplains and priests in the army, the SS was arresting and murdering Polish priests without mercy, part of the implementation of the Führer’s order that targeted Poland’s intelligentsia. By the end of

1939, they had executed more than 200 priests, and imprisoned approximately 1,000 more.105 In fact, the anti-Church policies in Poland were so relentless even after the initial occupation that two years later, a report out of the diocese of Posen-Gnesen declared that only thirty churches out of an original 431 remained actively open.106

In spite of such blatant anti-Catholic activity in Poland, German Catholics were duty-bound to serve the state in times of war, and the vast majority of bishops and priests,

103 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 226. 104 KMBA 1009/VII (Nr. 1), Pastoral letter, September 1939. Emphasis added. 105 Rarkowski’s letter, September 18, 1939, can be found in Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume IV, 717-19. Statistics about Polish clergy taken from Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 227. 106 Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. III, 956.

121 just as non-Catholic Germans, regardless of their personal views on the Nazi government, felt equally obligated to support their country. It is striking how this division – the state, led by Hitler and his movement, on the one hand; the Fatherland, Germany, Heimat, notions all larger than Nazism, on the other – was so deeply and effectively ingrained even in Church leaders, who one might expect to have more hesitation about supporting a war effort led by a regime they viewed at least with mistrust, if not outright suspicion.

Attacks on the Church via its clergy, its organizations, and its property may have temporarily lessened for the sake of political and military interests (it obviously would not do to continue harassing the churches when their work would be needed for the war effort),107 but not even the pope’s condemnation of aggression against Poland in October

1939, nor his letters of condolence in May 1940 to the nations of Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium, persuaded the bishops to change their policy of cooperation, though they should by no means be considered monolithic in this.108 Most of them continued to pray for victory, for the fighting men, and for their Führer, but isolated instances reveal a broad spectrum of difference in terms of acceptable behavior with the Nazi Party.

Cardinal Bertram, for example, took it upon himself to send birthday greetings on behalf of his colleagues to Hitler in April 1940. Hitler’s response, of gratitude and assurances that the regime appreciated the efforts made by the Church, which in hindsight reads as

107 Manfred Messerschmidt speaks of this wartime “Burgfrieden” called for by Hitler as something not entirely serious, which in any case changed nothing: officially the existence and rights of the churches were confirmed, but in the various provinces the “small war [Kleinkrieg] against priests, church organizations and the ecclesial press progressed speedily.” Messerschmidt, “Zur Militärseelsorgepolitik,” 49-50. 108 Pius XII’s remarks about the war in Europe in October 1939 are contained in the encyclical Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society), the first encyclical of his papacy. Notably, the text makes no mention specifically of Germany or Nazism. Though he did not apologize formally to the Poles, he spoke briefly towards the end of the encyclical about “the blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants,” being shed in Poland. See paragraph 106 in Papal Encyclicals 1939-58 (Vol. 4), edited by Claudia Carlen IHM, 5-22.

122 insincere, considering the continued hostility of the Party towards the Church, is worth noting:

Your belief, that the aspiration of the Catholic Church to maintain the Christian character of the German people does not stand in contradiction to the National Socialist program, fills me with special gratification. No one welcomes it with more warmth than I, that the spiritual activity of the Church stands in unison with the greater ethnic [völkisch] and political movement in our Fatherland and with the tasks of the German state leadership, which for its part will always respect the tasks of the Church.109

Bertram had presumed to speak in the name of his fellow bishops when, in fact, he had not shared his intentions to write such a letter. Von Preysing, notable opponent of

Nazism, reacted with such indignation that only the pope’s refusal to accept his resignation kept him in office. Unfortunately, though his attitude found sympathy from other bishops, among them his cousin von Galen and von Faulhaber, his expression of it did little more than further divide them internally; Bertram remained head of the Fulda

Conference of Bishops, and there was no formal discussion of the incident.110

It is understandable, when expressed in terms of patriotic duty and national sentiment, why priests and seminarians supported a war formally even if they disagreed with the forces behind it, and willfully misunderstood or ignored some of the goals it sought. That they did so became starkly obvious with the events of June 1941, which saw the dramatic escalation of the war effort when Germany invaded Soviet Russia. Even as the regime resumed its pains to limit the wartime ministry of the Church – in 1941, a

109 KMBA 997/VI, Letter from Adolf Hitler to Cardinal Bertram, head of the Fulda Conference of Bishops, April 29, 1940. 110 Antonia Leugers, Gegen ein Mauer bischöflichen Schweigens: Der Ausschuß für Ordensangelegenheiten und seine Widerstandskonzeption 1941 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Josef Knecht, 1996), 84-102. Von Preysing, bishop of Berlin after 1935, was the most openly anti-Nazi of all bishops, and often found himself in the thankless position of attempting to persuade his fellow Church leaders to adopt a harder oppositional line with the regime, attempts that remained fruitless. He was also the only bishop to refrain from any form of “propagandistic collaboration,” as Leugers’ work shows, and as Messerchmidt previously acknowledged in “Zur Militärseelsorge,” 46-7.

123 decree from the OKW summarily discharged all Jesuits who until then had been conscripted or were serving in the army111 – the bishops rallied to present the escalated military actions in the best possible light, this time by introducing the concept of a crusade against the evil forces of Bolshevism. Rarkowski, mincing no words when he cited the “bitterest experiences of internal strife as a result of the corrosive consequences of Bolshevik doctrine,” argued that many European states knew that the war against

Russia was a “European crusade.”112 By summer 1942, the souls of German soldiers had

“been wrenched with giant fists into the battle on the Eastern front in particular and into confrontation with the Bolshevik subhumans.”113 The German episcopate was also anxious to underscore the imperative for Christian Germans, both soldiers on the Eastern front and civilians back home, to stand firmly against the advance of Bolshevism, “of which we German bishops have warned German Catholics, and called them to vigilance in countless pastoral letters between 1921 and 1936.”114

Nor did reports of atrocities or mass slaughter deter the army and the Church from their involvement in the war effort. As has been outlined in detail by other historians over the last twenty years, the army found itself complicit in war crimes and genocide, working side by side with the SS and special units put together specifically for the task of

111 See KMBA 1051/IX, copy of manuscript by Rudolf Absolon, “Wehrgesetz und Wehrdienst 1935-1945: Das Personalwesen in der Wehrmacht,” as published by Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1960. The decree is Nr. 5135, from October 22, 1941. 112 KMBA Verordnungsblätter Rarkowski, Hirtenbrief, July 29, 1941. 113 KMBA Verordnungsblätter Rarkowski, Hirtenbrief, Maria Himmelfährt (August) 1942. A more thorough analysis of Rarkowski’s various wartime pastoral letters can be found in Gordon C. Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control (New York: Sheen and Ward, Inc., 1962), 151-60; many of his texts are reprinted in Missalla, Wie der Krieg zur Schule Gottes wurde, 20-112. 114 KMBA 997/VII, excerpt from memorandum of the German bishops concerning the situation of the Catholic Church in Germany, December 10, 1941.

124 exterminating Europe’s Jews.115 Von Brauchitsch resigned in December 1941 for reasons of ill health, and Hitler himself replaced him. And while several commanding officers disagreed with the timing of the Russian offensive in June 1941, the OKH nevertheless drew up a plan of invasion, and fully accepted and disseminated the criminal orders were issued simultaneously; furthermore, it worked to ensure that the soldiers knew how to behave in accordance with those orders by issuing “a row of decrees which infringed upon the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law [Kriegsvölkerrecht], and which in their clarity were without equal in the history of the German army.”116

The motivations that led the German army, from its leaders to the most junior officer serving at the front, to comply with a program of genocide – moral weakness, opportunism, a growing affinity among officers and men for Nazi ideology, fear of the consequences if orders from the Führer were not obeyed – are too complex and varied to be given adequate treatment here. But certainly it demonstrates that race-based thinking regarding the inhabitants of the East, which had first taken root in the German army during its experiences on the eastern front in the First World War, had permeated the rank and file of the Wehrmacht, making it easier for the soldiers to accept that what were

115 See Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: R.v.Decker, 1969); Müller and Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht; Karl Heinrich Pohl, Wehrmacht und Vernichtungspolitik: Militär im nationalsozialistischen Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999); Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1989); Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1978); Wolfram Wette, The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006); Hannes Heer und Klaus Naumann, editors, Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995). 116 Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1978), 28.

125 undoubtedly criminal measures were necessary to combat the threat presented by the

Russian “subhumans” against whom they were fighting.117

Similar reports, though from different sources, also began to reach the bishops.

The documents make it very clear that from a very early date, they had a good idea about what was going on in the east, though there is some doubt as to what they deemed to be truth, and what rumor. As the following chapters will demonstrate, Rarkowski,

Werthmann and those priests and seminarians serving in the military grappled most directly with the atrocities being perpetrated by the army, and responded variously. For their part, the home-front bishops labeled such activities, including “the ‘killing of hostages and unarmed POWs’…[the] unfortunate side-effects” of a brutal war.118 Some among them conjectured that German war plans called for the extermination of Jews in the east, but whether or not they discerned that “the destruction of millions of men was being undertaken industrially” is not evident from historical records.119 From 1942, their various pastoral letters emphasized the immorality of killing innocent men, echoing the sentiments of the pope. Unfortunately, these ambiguous references to the slaughter of civilians and the existence of extermination camps remained, in the words of one historian, “cautious and abstract,” designed to avoid provocation.120

117 See Messerschmidt, “The Wehrmacht and the Volksgemeinschaft” in Journal of Contemporary History 18/4 (1983) as well as Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Aaron Ascher Books, 1992), for a detailed examination of the various motivations for perpetrating genocide. For a discussion of the success of Nazi racial indoctrination in the Wehrmacht, see Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 106-78. For a discussion about the German army in the East in World War I, see Vegas G. Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 118 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 234. 119 Burkhard van Schewick, “Katholische Kirche und nationalsozialistische Rassenpolitik” in Gotto and Repgen, Kirche, Katholiken und Nationalsozialismus, 97. 120 Schewick in Gotto and Repgen, editors, Kirche, Katholiken und Nationalsozialismus, 98.

126 What is more apparent is their concern with protecting Jews who had converted to

Catholicism – formerly Jewish members of their dioceses – from legal discrimination and, after the war’s outbreak, deportation. Cardinal von Faulhaber worked tirelessly on behalf of Christian “non-Aryans,” as shown in voluminous correspondence during the early years of the war. In November 1941, he drafted a letter to Bertram, urging him to take a harder stance against anti-Jewish discrimination and deportations occurring in

Germany. He described the initial transports from Munich, depicting them as scenes of utmost brutality and inhumanity “that will be placed in the chronicle of history in parallel with the transports of African slave traders.” He underscored the obligation of the bishops to protect those Jews who had become Catholic through conversion, citing dogma to reinforce that, just as the Church did not distinguish between Greek and Jew after baptism, so must the German bishops recognize and welcome all baptized Jews into the

Church, for whom the bishops were spiritual fathers, whether the conversion had taken place before or after the Nuremberg Laws. The letter ended with an appeal to solidarity, urging Bertram to sign an unambiguous declaration in the name of the Fulda Conference of Bishops, so that Bertram would not have to carry full responsibility for the suggestions within the declaration.121 No reply from Bertram is contained in the file, and the German bishops made no official promulgation condemning the deportations. Discouraged but undeterred, von Faulhaber drafted more letters, one of which was sent to one of the bishops in his diocese during the Easter season of 1943, in which he pointed out that every “‘non-Aryan’ in Germany today has been set upon by murderers [unter die Mörder

Gefallene], and we are asked whether we face him as a priest and Levite, or as the

121 EAM 8431, copy of letter written by von Faulhaber, November 13, 1941.

127 Samaritan. No ‘Jewish question’ can relieve us of this decision.”122 Though the response he received to this letter is unknown, von Faulhaber quietly continued to exhort his colleagues in written letters to consider their spiritual duty to stand up for those being persecuted by the Nazis.

Even with evidence of grave moral breaches being committed by German soldiers, figures of resistance were few and far between within the army and the Church.

Army generals who had resisted Hitler’s tactical plans before and throughout the war – von Blomberg, von Fritsch, Beck, von Brauchitsch – found themselves dismissed or forced to resign, but the majority of these resisted out of strategic considerations, and offered little or no evidence that they disagreed with the fundamental pillars of the Nazi world-view. The most famous circle of resistance within the army, whose members would perpetrate the failed July 1944 bomb plot, did so because they viewed Hitler as a catastrophic war leader, and not because of significant disagreement with his ideology.

That they resisted to the extent they did is remarkable and stands alone as virtually the only coherent, organized resistance in the upper echelons of the Nazi movement. They gradually came to be revered as heroes who gave their lives for their country, even though more definitive biographical sketches suggest that their rejection of the regime on moral or ethical grounds did not necessarily have political consequences, or would have led to an automatic improvement in political life.123

122 EAM 8431, draft of letter unsigned but included in sheath of drafts of letters written by von Faulhaber, Easter 1943. 123 Müller, Army, Politics, and Society, 115. Peter Hoffmann points out that many of those involved in the Resistance espoused ideals that in some ways were similar to Nazism, but that also stressed a return to rule of law and justice. In this sense, they advocated a more participatory form of government, a less arbitrary criminal justice system, and the abrogation of the foundation of the Nazi regime, biological racism. However, some of these same men also advocated a ruling system that underscored strong central authority, a powerful military, and a hierarchical social order. See Hoffmann, German Resistance to Hitler (London and Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 64-70.

128 In spite of the steadfast demonstration by the Church hierarchy of support for the regime’s war efforts, the Gestapo and even the OKW continuously occupied themselves with proving that the Church was in league with Moscow agents. In a secret report in

November 1941, Heydrich wrote to the OKH about the “Russia actions” of the Catholic

Church. With some trepidation, he outlined the pressure brought to bear on the German government by certain Catholic circles in Germany to permit the Russian Orthodox population to receive Christian care from chaplains stationed with invading German and

Italian troops. These circles were acting on behalf of the Vatican, which had already been working “for several years” with various commissions and institutions to secure the legal ability to administer spiritual care in Bolshevik Russia. Though Heydrich uncharacteristically refrained from making explicitly hostile remarks about the Vatican, the tone of the report was not one of enthusiasm regarding these ecclesiastical affairs.124

Catholics as well as individual members of the Confessing Church were later heavily implicated in the 1944 bomb plot, although the military largely planned and carried it out.

The Gestapo arrested and executed Alfred Delp and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the former a

Catholic priest and the latter one of the firmest anti-Nazi Protestant pastors in Germany, for their indirect involvement.

During the war, however, the Church was still too important an ally to be directly confronted by the Party. Hitler himself decreed that the final confrontation would have to come only after the war was decided, stating in 1942 that until then, “all provocative steps had to be avoided.”125 Hitler had to rein in some of his more fanatical underlings during the war, particularly Bormann, who wanted to continue vigorous measures against

124 KMBA 111/III Nr 3, Letter, November 1, 1941. 125 Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 253.

129 the Church; but many German Catholics feared that they would suffer the same end as the Jews once Germany won the war.126 Even if the ultimate battle had to be delayed and, consequently, anti-Church measures during the war decreased, there was overwhelming evidence that the regime had become anti-institutional: there were attempted expulsions of those clergy who were Nazi Party members, as well as a mass exodus of people from both Catholic and Protestant churches, that point to a fundamental rupture in church-

Party relations, instigated by the Party, that was never resolved.127 Yet none of these attacks was sufficient to persuade the bishops en masse – or their flocks – to abandon their position of support for their Fatherland. The timelessness of the Church as institution, its higher goal of protecting and caring for the souls of German Catholics above and beyond temporal politics, led them to believe that the Nazi regime had to be survived; they never encouraged active opposition.

Though the army’s integrity, its image as a heroic institution that stood apart from the crimes of the regime, has been consistently challenged since Christian Streit’s provocative Keine Kameraden,128 controversy still rages about the extent to which the

Church’s silence, spotty protests, and lack of resistance in the face of overt racism,

126 This is Georg May’s interpretation in Interkonfessionalismus, 12. Heinz Hürten shares this interpretation in “‘Endlösung’ für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber die Kirche” in Stimmen der Zeit 203 (1985), 534-46. Both take a largely apologist stance in view of the Catholic Church under Nazi Germany. 127 Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, 259. From Steigmann-Gall’s work, it is not clear how many, if any, clerical Nazi Party members were expelled, or even how many there were at the time. Spicer’s work numbers 138 “brown priests” in total, with fifty-three becoming card-carrying members of the Party. He lists three priests as having withdrawn from the Party after joining it (one changed his mind and returned to the Party); a fourth, Werner Kreth, was expelled, perhaps due to homosexual activity, and later sentenced to twelve years in prison. A far higher number of priests ended up leaving the Church (and their vocations), rather than abandon Nazism. See Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, 239-300 (Appendix 2). 128 Published in 1978; as of 2009, there is still no English translation. Streit’s work was amplified and expounded upon by such seminal works as Bartov’s Hitler’s Army, as well as an exhibit of photographs documenting the Wehrmacht’s participation in mass murder in the mid- and late-1990s. See The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944, edited by the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (New York: New Press, 1999).

130 human rights violations and genocide contributed to their occurrence, and how or if more active opposition might have altered the course of Nazi war crimes and their genocidal actions. Pope Pius XII presents the most distinct target for critics of the Church during the Third Reich, both because of his status and position at the time and perhaps because, in hindsight, a single individual can be more easily blamed than a large group of people.

Those seeking to defend the episcopate’s actions in Germany usually resort to highlighting the actions of one or two bishops– von Galen’s 1941 sermons against euthanasia foremost among them – if they do not jump straight to Pius XII’s defense. As a group, however, the bishops are difficult to defend. This chapter has sketched their inability to come to a unanimous decision about how to respond to the regime and its policies; their consistent defense of the terms of the Reichskonkordat, even as it became increasingly apparent that the Nazis had no intention of honoring the agreement to the same extent; their praise for Hitler’s staunch anti-Bolshevik rhetoric and action; and their failure to defend – or even protest on behalf of – those non-Catholics who found their lives at stake thanks to the regime’s racial policies.

As an institution, the Church’s failure to condemn openly the immorality of the

Nazi Weltanschauung, including its consistent persecution of racial “subhumans,” targeting specifically Europe’s Jews, is inexcusable; it was the moral authority in Europe, if not the world, and though scholars and Church representatives have tendered reasons to explain this silence, the fact remains that it did not speak out. At the same time, as are all institutions, the Church was composed of individual members, each acting with different motivations, that made unanimous approval or disapproval nearly impossible, particularly over something that could be as divisive as nationalist politics in Nazi Germany. Some

131 acted heroically; others succumbed to pressures of various kinds and complied more or less without coercion, reminding us that men of the Church are scarcely immune to temporal compulsions, opportunism, fear, prejudice, bigotry, and antisemitism.

Leading up to the war, the Party, the Church, and the army worked as a tri-partite authority in Germany, dependent on each other to achieve their individual goals. The

Party required the Church to remain cooperative or risk censure, harassment, even arrest and imprisonment. The Party also needed the support of the armed forces to carry out its plans to abolish the allegedly humiliating peace terms from the end of the Great War and to remake Germany into a world power. Both the army and the Church depended on tacit approval from the regime – or at least its commitment to leave them their autonomous spheres – to continue to act in their capacity as leaders in the realm of rearmament and military policy, on the one hand, and spiritual care on the other. The authority of the army and the Church inevitably became conjoined in the sphere of Wehrmachtseelsorge, or pastoral care for the armed forces, which will be dealt with in the following chapter.

Before the start of the war, the two seldom interacted in any official capacity.

From this top-down look at the power and influence wielded by these three authorities, it is not immediately apparent who had the most reach when it came to shaping the views of the fighting men, including those priests and seminarians who served in the army. What does become clear is that Hitler and his circle assumed control of all matters that had any impact on the way the waging of the war. Under Hitler’s direction, the regime purged the army generals and curtailed the activities of the Church on the home front. Later, in 1944, the OKW introduced specially trained officers in order to indoctrinate soldiers with the Nazi Weltanschauung, and made attempts to eliminate

132 the military chaplaincy from the army, to the consternation of chaplains and army officers alike. Aside from the unsuccessful bomb plot of July 1944, no one challenged Hitler’s immunity from accountability or the measures affecting the military chaplaincy, more from the conviction that a united front needed to be preserved in a time of war than from any genuine attachment to or belief in Hitler’s motivations and ideology. The extent to which these conflicted feelings permeated the rank-and-file of priests wearing the army uniform will be addressed next, beginning with an investigation of the build-up of the military chaplaincy under Georg Werthmann and an extensive exploration of the war as seen by priests who found themselves on all fronts between 1939 and 1945.

133 3. Georg Werthmann and Pastoral Care in the Wehrmacht

Franz Justus Rarkowski, Catholic Field Bishop of the Wehrmacht, may have governed the military chaplaincy under the Third Reich but the man behind its development, maintenance, and post-war legacy was Georg Werthmann, the second-in- command to Rarkowski. Werthmann would assume control of the chaplaincy only for the last five months of the war, when he was named provisional field bishop after Rarkowski retired. The chaplaincy Werthmann created was, to a large extent, based on the foundations of earlier systems of pastoral care in Germany, most notably that which had functioned for the Kaiser’s armies during the First World War. But Werthmann’s chaplaincy was subject to new situations and pressures, was part of a new behemoth of war, and had a new set of rules and regulations to which it was more or less strictly held.

And unlike its predecessors, the German army during World War II was fully complicit in the atrocities and crimes being perpetrated – the slaughter of Jews, as well as Roma and Sinti and Soviet POWs, and the persecution of countless other “racial undesirables” – behavior and actions with which priests in the Wehrmacht uniform had to cope.

Werthmann offered a particular example of working within the parameters of a world in which the army and, ultimately, the Nazi Weltanschauung, determined its contours and borders. He did so in order to achieve his own goal, that of caring for the religious needs of men in the army, and believed that this removed him from more temporal – political – concerns. He was a man of extraordinary energy and intelligence, but he failed to see how his willingness to adjust and adapt to a new environment was tantamount to collaboration with an enemy he claimed to loathe. By answering the call to serve,

134 Werthmann and other priests and seminarians who responded similarly compromised themselves with a regime that embodied those values that the Christian religion abhorred.

Although Rarkowski officially took up his post only in 1938, the military chaplaincy had operated fairly continuously since before the First World War. Prior to

1914, German soldiers had been tended by priests and volunteer laymen and women of both major Christian denominations, and its spiritual leaders had taken good care of the minority Catholic faith in times of war. The prestigious Order of Malta directed volunteer hospitals and chaplains from 1864 in the German states.1 During the first of Germany’s wars of unification, 157 order-sisters and -brothers along with fifty-six priests worked in fourteen hospitals, performing nursing and other forms of pastoral care. By the end of the

1870-71 war with France, the Rhineland-Westphalian Order of Malta listed sixty-seven deputies, 565 nursing sisters, 206 brothers, and eight chaplains, in addition to the eight doctors, thirty-two stretcher-bearers, and other personnel who served as volunteers.2

This was a solid basis upon which the Catholic military chaplaincy evolved during the First World War. The numbers alone demonstrate how much it had grown, even if the sheer scope of the war exceeded the supply: 788 order-sisters and -brothers,

227 chaplains in the field, 100 altars erected at the front for divine worship, 243 hospital

1 The Order of Malta – sometimes called the Knights of Malta – was given ecclesiastical recognition as the Knights Hospitallers by a papal bull in 1113 that gave them exempt status: they could elect their own superiors without interference from religious or secular authorities. They were charged with caring for pilgrims in the Holy Land regardless of religion or race. They served in the Crusades, caring for the sick and wounded, until they were forced to flee, first to Rhodes in 1310, then to Malta in 1530, and finally settled in Rome after being forced to leave Malta by Napoleon’s armies in 1798. After 1530, the Order pledged to remain neutral in any war between Christian nations. Information taken from the Order’s official website, www.orderofmalta.org. See also H.J.A. Sire, The Knights of Malta (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994). 2 Biographisches Lexikon der Katholischen Militärseelsorge Deutschlands 1848-1945, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt, Peter Häger, Karl Hengst and the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002), lvii – lxi.

135 chaplains serving a total of 14,000 beds.3 Soldiers had their wounds looked after in hospitals run by priests and nuns; priests carried their letters from the front to the army post, to be borne home to loved ones; chaplains accompanied them when requested in their hours spent sick or near death. And because they were Catholic, soldiers could also attend mass, receive communion, have their confessions heard, even be granted general absolution in extraordinary circumstances.

The terms of the Versailles Treaty in 1919 heavily affected the chaplaincy, as they did all military institutions, when the manpower strength of the Reichswehr was whittled down to 100,000 men divided among seven infantry and three cavalry divisions, and a navy of only 15,000 men.4 Unlike the air force, though, the chaplaincy escaped total elimination and operated for the duration of the Weimar Republic, albeit as a much smaller institution. Military chaplains – that is, priests whose primary function was to cater to Catholic men and their families employed in the Reichswehr –were the main practitioners of pastoral care; contracted priests aided them, and all of them served under the field provost. None was considered a military official, but rather was classified as a

“public servant in the army administration.” Although the chaplaincy continued to exist, the number of priests who served as chaplains was minimal, such that each of the seven infantry districts possessed basically one budgeted chaplain; the entire army district of

Bavaria, for example, employed a single Catholic chaplain.5

3 Biographisches Lexikon, lxiv. 4 Georg May, Interkonfessionalismus in der deutschen Militärseelsorge von 1933 bis 1945 (Amsterdam: Verlag B.R. Grüner, 1978), 62. 5 May, Interkonfessionalismus, 72-73. Others off the estimation of 30,000 Catholic members of the Reichswehr in 1929, which would suggest that the Catholic chaplaincy was, indeed, miniscule in comparison to those whom they served. Biographisches Lexikon, 637.

136 This situation changed dramatically with the ascent of National Socialism in

1933. The Reichskonkordat officially laid the basis for this change when the bishops agreed to the construction of an exempt chaplaincy, that is, a chaplaincy that would be governed by a bishop independent of the German Catholic hierarchy, directly responsible to the government and to the pope (see Chapter Two). The same document appended details concerning the conscription of priests, seminarians, and theologians in times of war, another indication that the National Socialist regime had a very different attitude from Weimar-era politicians and Kaiserreich practices about the uses of priests and seminarians – ordained and not ordained – in the armed forces. In March 1934, the spiritual leaders of each denomination’s chaplaincy enjoyed more distinguished titles; no longer field provosts, they became the Protestant and Catholic Field Bishops of the

Armed Forces, and nominations for each post were put forward.6 One year later, the regime announced compulsory military service, and the slow build-up of the chaplaincy followed. Rarkowski had been acting field provost since 1929 in addition to holding duties as chaplain in Army District III, Berlin; following the lengthy debates surrounding his nomination for field bishop, the regime and the Holy See jointly agreed to appoint him provisional field bishop in 1936, and they fully recognized him as such in 1938.7 He selected as his vicar-general Georg Werthmann, who had succeeded Rarkowski as district chaplain in Berlin. Both men were responsible for making the pastoral care system of the armed forces under the Third Reich into an efficient, responsible part of the military;

Werthmann in particular worked exhaustively to sustain it in the face of hostility from unrestrained anti-Catholics in the Party such as Bormann and Himmler. Both his

6 May, Interkonfessionalismus, 75. 7 Biographisches Lexikon, 637-38.

137 contemporaries as well as historians have depicted Werthmann as the true leader of the

Catholic military chaplaincy during the Second World War.8 His attitude toward serving in the armed forces, as well as his belief about the necessity of pastoral care for Christian soldiers, exemplify the justifications that most priests used when they chose to don the

Wehrmacht uniform and serve in “Hitler’s army.”9 This was a world in which Catholic men oscillated between the demands of politics and the dictates of religion, between the moral code entrenched in the religious culture in which they had been trained and the decidedly un-Christian morality of Nazi ideology, often without realizing that the former had actually become engulfed by the latter.

It may not be immediately comprehensible why Werthmann – or any Catholic priest, for that matter – chose to become involved in an army that served a racist and antisemitic regime like that run by Hitler. This was not necessarily how they viewed the situation when they volunteered or, as in the majority of cases, were conscripted. For most, devout Catholics gave little consideration to the difficulties they might have had with the Nazi movement when it became a question of serving in the military. As one chaplain-veteran later put it, “Because the men and young boys of our parishes were forced to go to the front, so we went with them as spiritual aids, according to the

8 Several chaplain-veterans of World War II were privately interviewed in 1990 by the KMBA in preparation for the volume that came to be called Mensch, was wollt ihr denen sagen? Katholische Feldseelsorge im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Augsburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1991). Among those who spoke of their experiences during the war were personal observations of Rarkowski’s character and reputation: “Let’s say he had no great charisma,” recalled Otto Fangohr (KMBA SW/III 310, interview, April 25, 1990); Kunibert Pabstmann remembered that he was less well-spoken than Protestant Field Bishop Dohrmann, both of whom he saw in Paris during the war (KMBA SW/III 627, interview undated); Egon Schmitt said, “From the outset he made an outstanding impression neither in what he said nor in what he presented. He was an amiable man, but he had no leadership qualities, no authority” (KMBA SW/III 750, interview undated); Martin Zeil described him as “a weak man; today one doesn’t really know at all how he became field bishop” (KMBA SW 947/III, interview, June 14, 1990). See also Manfred Messerschmidt, “Aspekte der Militärseelsorgepolitik in nationalsozialistischer Zeit” in Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 (1968), 82. 9 The term is Omer Bartov’s, from Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

138 postulate, ‘Soldiers have a right to religion.’”10 In the tradition of separating spiritual care and religion during times of war from national politics and intrigue (which in Christian history dates back to at least the Crusades11), priests willingly donned the Wehrmacht uniform not to proclaim their support for or acceptance of the dictates of Nazism, according to their own testimonies, but rather to provide fellow Christian Germans with solace and some sense of comfort and familiarity when they were far from home and risking their lives. Their predecessors had not given any thought to the politics of the army in which they served (though, as already stated, previous German armies had not participated in genocide); German priests continued in this tradition and did not consider their presence as morally suspect, or that it provided “a kind of spiritual relief [from the lunacy and criminality of war], a moral numbing… a haven of normalcy that harked back to the religious practices of childhood.”12 The disintegration of the moral code was not something they were willing to accept as reason enough to discontinue their service, which was tantamount, in their eyes, to denying Christian soldiers a basic right.

Do soldiers have a right to religion? Do soldiers have rights, in the liberal,

Enlightenment sense of the word, at all? Under the Third Reich, the only “right” that soldiers had in the sense of a moral or legal entitlement was the right to live and die for the Führer. Christian soldiers, and Christian priests who were conscripted, were no exception. They could retain their religious beliefs, and for the duration of the war, chaplains helped them meet their spiritual needs, but not because the regime necessarily

10 Biographisches Lexikon, xvi. It is not clear from where the postulate is taken. 11 Ralph W. Mathisen, “Emperors, Priests and Bishops: Military Chaplains in the Roman Empire” and Michael McCormick, “The Liturgy of War from Antiquity to the Crusades,” both in The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Doris L. Bergen (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004). 12 Doris L. Bergen, “Between God and Hitler: German Military Chaplains and the Crimes of the Third Reich” in In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, edited by Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 134.

139 was seeing to their rights. Werthmann related a brief history of pastoral care for German- speaking armies in relating the tradition to which he belonged,13 but the Nazi Party allowed the existence of a chaplaincy for political reasons: they could not afford to alienate German Christians and their churches during the war, especially the early years.

There were also ideological considerations, as Hitler knew, as the priests did, that war and religion were mutually beneficial: soldiers clung to religion in the face of death, and religious beliefs could bolster morale and fighting strength when other motivations failed.

There is the fundamental contradiction inherent in the military chaplaincy of the

Wehrmacht, a contradiction that manifests itself in Werthmann’s own notes. He, like the priests on whose behalf he worked, engaged unflinchingly, enthusiastically even, as a

German in a battle of civilizations between National Socialism and Bolshevism, adding his voice without hesitation to the chorus of anti-Bolshevik rhetoric that had been rampant in both Nazi and Catholic (Vatican) circles before 1939. And he answered the call to serve by espousing the need to take care of fellow Germans in time of need. But in seeking to act as agents and representatives of a Catholic religion of love and tolerance, to maintain some sense of Christian ethics among fighting men, and to provide a bulwark of faith and hope on the battlefront, these men also contributed, by their very presence, to the preservation of an anti-Catholic regime and a decidedly un-Christian war effort. One cannot doubt the sincerity or devotion of Werthmann to his vocation, or that he was deeply committed to his country and to his God. But he failed to see the double-edge of his wartime service in this light, and the language he used to describe the workings of the

13 KMBA SW 1008/VI, July 12, 1945. Werthmann begins with remarking on the “Kultus,” or cult, of each Roman legion that accompanied imperial armies into battle, and traces their development through the Carolingian era under St. Boniface (the contemporary patron saint of Germany), through the Middle Ages, up to the emergence of standing armies in the nineteenth century.

140 military chaplaincy between 1935 and 1945 illuminated precisely why he never considered it a contradiction.

Though Werthmann lacked the kind of family connections that Rarkowski enjoyed, his youth was not that dissimilar from the field bishop’s in one fundamental aspect: he heeded the call to serve one’s country in the Great War, though he served as soldier, not chaplain. Born in 1898, he was a Gymnasium student when he volunteered for duty in 1916, whereupon he served in various infantry regiments and, towards the end of the conflict, received steady promotion.14 In December 1917 his superiors awarded him the Iron Cross, second class, and in August 1918 he became an NCO [Unteroffizier].

In September 1918 he was badly wounded and taken prisoner by the French; after the war ended, he moved about between various camps and served as an interpreter before being released in January 1920. One unpublished biography speculates that Werthmann’s decision to become a priest stemmed from his experiences in the Great War, particularly his time in French captivity15; certainly it familiarized him with an institution - the

German military –which he would spend the greater part of his life serving.

He was not formally involved with the Reichswehr or its chaplaincy during the

Weimar Republic. Instead he studied for the priesthood and was ordained in July 1924 in the cathedral at Bamberg by Archbishop Jakobus von Hauck. He held various positions in and around Bamberg for the next several years before he served as a chaplain for the

Order of the Brethren from the Hospital of the Virgin Mary – more commonly known as

14 All biographical information of Werthmann is taken from Biographisches Lexikon, 896-98, unless otherwise noted. 15 Klaus-Bernward Springer, “Ein guter und getreuer Knecht”: Georg Werthmann (1898-1980) Generalvikar der Militärseelsorge im Dritten Reich und in der Bundeswehr (Bonn 1999), unpublished manuscript, available at KMBA.

141 the Teutonic Knights – in 1931.16 For a short period of time, he was a member of the

Bayerische Volkspartei (BVP – Bavarian People’s Party, an offshoot of the Center Party during the interwar period), and in January 1935 he joined the Nazi Civil Servants Union

[NS-Beamtenbund] and, like Rarkowski, the Nazi Social Services [NS-Volkswohlfahrt] and the Reichsluftschutzbund. At the request of his diocesan superior, the archbishop of

Bamberg, he reported for service in the military chaplaincy in the spring of 1935, and by

June he was a full-time contracted chaplain.17 In September 1936 he became chaplain of

Army District III, Berlin, and one month later, on October 21st, Rarkowski appointed him field vicar-general.18 He was now the second most-powerful man in the Catholic leadership of the Wehrmacht’s infant chaplaincy, based permanently in Berlin.

He did not, however, remained tethered to his desk behind the battle lines; he saw active service during the war, and traveled extensively. He was based from June to

October 1941 at the 15th army headquarters near Lille. In December 1941, he received the

War Merit Cross, second-class with swords; six months later the Holy See awarded him an honorary papal title.19 In June 1943 he journeyed to Riga, in March 1944 to Krakow, in April 1944 to Prague and Holoubkov (Hloubka, Czech Republic), and in June 1944 to

Orscha (Orsza, Belarus) and Biala Podlaska (Poland), and made extensive reports to

16 See Monica Sinderhauf, “Katholische Wehrmachtseelsorge in Krieg. Quellen und Forschungen zu Franz Justus Rarkowski und Georg Werthmann” in Kirchen im Krieg: Europa 1939-1945, edited by Karl Joseph Hummel and Christoph Kösters (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007), 278-81. 17 Springer suggests that Archbishop von Hauck did this to protect Werthmann from the Gestapo, who had searched Werthmann’s apartment “because of his attitude towards National Socialism.” Transferring him into the Wehrmacht chaplaincy presented an opportunity for the archbishop to take him out of the Gestapo’s firing line [aus der Schlußlinie nehmen]. Springer, “ein guter und getreuer Knecht,” 45-6. 18 May, Interkonfessionalismus, 132. According to one source, Werthmann was not expecting such an appointment, and was “completely astonished” by it. Springer, “ein guter und getreuer Knecht,” 63. 19 The title was Päpstlicher Hausprälat, which is now referred to as Päpstlicher Ehrenkaplan, or chaplain of honor.

142 Rarkowski about the experiences, as discussed below.20 In January 1945, because of

Rarkowski’s failing health, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel informed Werthmann that he was being temporarily put in charge of the offices of the Catholic Field Bishop, though he was given strict orders to distinguish that temporariness by appending it to every signature.21 In March he fled Berlin, moving south and west until he was intercepted by the invading Allies. He spent his internment under the supervision of the American 26th

Infantry Division at the Benedictine monastery in Niederalteich, in eastern Bavaria, from the end of April until 27 July 1945, along with Protestant Field Bishop Franz Dohrmann and his Field Vicar-General, Friedrich Münchmeyer.22

Werthmann depicted his working relationship with Rarkowski as an efficient and amicable one. Both had served in the First World War, and both were predisposed to be nationalistically motivated to aid their country again twenty years later. Although temperamentally the two were very different – Rarkowski exhibited an alarming, uncritical approval of the war and the regime, whereas Werthmann was much less explicitly patriotic, and certainly felt more reserve vis à vis National Socialism – they were able to work together smoothly to build up a functional chaplaincy and to complement each other’s strengths in terms of carrying out their respective offices.

Rarkowski outlined the duties of the field bishop in response to a series of questions sent by the OKH in January 1937. As the ecclesiastical legislator for the military diocese, he decreed ecclesiastical laws and decided both the form and content of their promulgation. It was his exclusive responsibility to nurture the religious beliefs of

20 Werthmann’s reports are found at BA-MA RH 15 Nr. 280, dated July 9, 1943, March 27, 1944, May 5, 1944 and June 25, 1944 respectively. 21 KMBA SW 1009/VII Nr.1, letter, January 29, 1945. 22 KMBA SW 1009/VII Nr. 1, copy of report from HQ, 26th Infantry Division, May 1, 1945.

143 the men in his care, to grant chaplains leave, to distribute and preserve military hymnals, and to make all final decisions regarding the appointment and transfer of chaplains within the military’s system of pastoral care. He stressed his authority in situations where “a priest is strongly requested by the military authorities, but is unsatisfactory in his religious conviction or in his priestly comportment vis à vis the specifications of the code of canon law, according to the opinion of the [field bishop]” – in such cases, the employment of the priest in question lay with the field bishop, and not with the military.23

No one contested his authority in these matters until the war was well underway, and even then, as shall be discussed, new regulations from the OKW regarding the conscription of priests circumvented him indirectly. There were no decrees that explicitly attempted to limit his sphere of responsibility.

The field vicar-general, appointed by and ultimately responsible to the field bishop, was meant to act as an aide to the field bishop and supplement his activities.

Werthmann’s responsibilities, therefore, overlapped to some extent with Rarkowski’s.

His office was in charge of the cultivation of and support for chaplains; their assignment and transfer, which depended on the rapidity with which the war developed on its various fronts; the training of chaplains through appropriate seminars to deal with soldiers and specific wartime situations; the execution of other organizational necessities down to the acquisition as well as supplementation of mess kits or necessary vestments and other liturgical materials, including purificators, altar-stones, and antimensia, for the chaplains; the establishment of “sexton positions” as Wehrmacht officials, and their transfer and

23 BA-MA 12 II/5, Nr 503/36, letter, January 5, 1937, as well as copy of pamphlet entitled “Ausführungsbestimmungen zur Katholischen militärkirchlichen Dienstordnung für die Wehrmacht,” unsigned and undated, but likely pre-1939 and distributed by the OKH in conjunction with the Field Bishop’s Office.

144 promotion; and the printing and distribution of field hymnals and religious writings, rosaries, and other devotional objects.24 In addition to these prosaic duties, Werthmann occupied himself with correspondence of both an administrative and personal nature, from writing to Karl Edelmann, Department Chief for Replacement and Military Affairs in the OKH, who handled the majority of correspondence between the Field Bishop’s

Office and the OKH, to responding to private letters from various chaplains and priests conscripted to the medical service.

According to Werthmann’s notes, no major difficulties arose during the course of his cooperation with Rarkowski, but his immediate post-war correspondence hints that the relationship was not always easy, and that Rarkowski’s deficiencies could be hard to overcome. His unswerving pro-Nazi promulgations aside, Rarkowski suffered in the judgment of even his contemporaries, who felt he did not merit comparison with his Protestant counterpart, Franz Dohrmann. Bonifaz Pfister OSB, a conscripted seminarian who served as a medical orderly and sexton from 1940 to 1945, informed Werthmann that various chaplains “sharply criticized” Rarkowski; they “reproached him above all for a lack of decisiveness, as well as the nonchalance with which he represented the interests of the army chaplaincy vis

à vis higher-ranking posts.”25 Werthmann’s own judgment of Rarkowski, written in his first weeks of internment at Niederalteich – the first opportunity in which he might have dared to criticize his former superior, when the war had been lost and the chaplaincy effectively dissolved – carried a sense of having been held back for too long, bursting forth at articulate length. He tried to present a balanced evaluation,

24 As summarized in Springer, “ein guter und getreuer Knecht,” 105. A purificator is a small piece of blessed cloth that a priest uses to wipe his fingers and mouth after receiving communion, as well as to wipe the paten (the plate that holds the consecrated host) and dry the chalice. Altar-stones were slabs of stone consecrated by bishops and meant to provide a suitable surface upon which to perform the Mass in the absence of a conventional altar (i.e. in the field). Because altar-stones proved to be particularly susceptible to damage during battle, they were gradually replaced with the antimensium, a consecrated piece of rectangular cloth that served the same purpose. The stone was traditionally used throughout the Latin (Roman) rite, the antimensium in the Greek (Orthodox) rite. Mass cannot be held in either rite without one or the other if there is no consecrated altar. 25 KMBA SW 1008/VII Nr. 1, written observations made by Werthmann, July 2, 1945. Pfister’s biographical information taken from Priester in Uniform: Seelsorger, Ordensleute und Theologen als Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt and the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Augsburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1994), 133. Pfister likely relayed the information to Werthmann in a conversation at the end of June 1945, during which time he had returned to his monastery at Niederalteich – the same one where Werthmann was interned.

145 beginning with the admission that Rarkowski was “friendly in intercourse with his brethren, [and] he knew how to encourage in his own kindly manner, and to lead those who erred back to the way of truth.” In addition, however, he occasionally displayed an asperity that was “almost volcanic in character that was insurmountable.” 26

Rarkowski lacked the sober objectivity that bishops required. Cheap flattery easily won him over, which led to the loss of respect from chaplains whom he had worked hard to place. Rarkowski seemed aware of these faults, remarking to Werthmann at one point conversationally that “he simply couldn’t understand how I completely disengaged myself from subjective, personal experiences with the individual involved when it came to judgment.” He also suffered considerably from a lack of self-confidence, and lived in constant fear of disgrace and dismissal, or worse, arrest and confinement to a concentration camp, which could go some way to explain his eagerness to speak publicly in defense of National Socialism.

Werthmann surmised in conclusion that this “helplessness” and “unreliability,” which those around him could often easily perceive, were rooted in “pathological disorders,” and suggested that, coupled with the bishop’s frail health in 1944 and 1945, this indicated the onset of senility.27

According to his own testimony, Rarkowski brushing against the very edge of unjustifiability if it meant avoiding the greater evil. No one can question his dedication to his country or to the chaplaincy, but he was never the authority figure that others expected him to be, and he was more anxious to please his political superiors than to question the anti-Catholic threads of Nazism or advocate actively for the rights of the men he was supposed to guide – as one historian has pointed out, “any soldier so troubled who turned to the Military Bishop and his published pronouncements would find his

26 KMBA SW 1008/VII, Nr. 1, written observations entitled “Katholische Feldbischof der Wehrmacht Rarkowski,” May 14, 1945. 27 As the years passed and Werthmann became involved with setting up a chaplaincy for the newly- established Bundeswehr in West Germany, his criticism of Rarkowski became even more pointed: “Rarkowski had too little spiritual capacity, too little nerve, too little genuine experience, too little activity, and too much fragility,” and “The Catholic field bishop Rarkowski thought much too patriotically in the traditional sense, was far too much convinced of the necessary cooperation of ‘two authorities,’ the temporal and the spiritual, to be able to consider whether the defeat of the ‘Third Reich’ would not indeed be the only way… to return to Germans their freedom.” First remark dated April 10, 1952; second dated July 31, 1968; both from KMBA SW 1008/VII, Nr 1.

146 problem swept away in a torrent of nationalistic outpourings.”28 Virtually all of the postwar scholarship in which he is featured has depicted Rarkowski as a weak, ineffective leader of the military chaplaincy.29 The most generous judgment of him was given by German historian Hans Jürgen Brandt, who remarked, “Perhaps Rarkowski esteemed precisely those qualities in Werthmann that he himself lacked: the ease and pleasure of communication, rapid comprehension, the firm ability to make judgments and decisions in the face of all hardship.”30 It has even been suggested that Rarkowski felt so strongly that Werthmann had leadership qualities suitable for the office of the field bishop that he proposed him in 1936 for the position. Despite this strong recommendation from the acting field bishop himself, Werthmann was only thirty-seven years old. Von

Blomberg set him on a path of gradual promotion, and he was instead appointed Field

Vicar-General, a post that would give him the experience he would need to become field bishop.31

Like his superior, Werthmann demonstrated an ease with working with the regime and avoiding explicit condemnations of Nazi policy, but his personality was much

28 Gordon C. Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962, 145. 29 In early historiography on the subject, see Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), 236-42; Manfred Messerschmidt, “Aspekte der Militärseelsorge,” 81-2; Zahn, German Catholics, 143-72; Breuer, Dem Führer gehorsam: wie die deutschen Katholiken von ihrer Kirche zum Kriegsdienst verpflichtet wurde: Dokumente (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1989), 7; Heinrich Missalla, Für Volk und Vaterland: die kirchliche Kriegshilfe im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Königstein/Ts: Athenäum Verlag, 1978), 73-82, and Missalla, Wie der krieg zur Schule Gottes wurde; Hitlers Feldbischof Rarwkoski: eine notwendige Erinnerung (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1997), both of which include lengthy excerpts of Rarkowski’s pastoral letters. For a more recent, but no less critical assessment, see Johannes Güsgen, “Die Bedeutung der Katholischen Militärseelsorge in Deutschland von 1933-1945” in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, edited by Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 512-17. 30 Hans Jürgen Brandt, “Introduction,” in Mensch, was wollt Ihr denen sagen?: Katholische Feldseelsorge im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Augsburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1991), 15. 31 Hans Jürgen Brandt, “Prälat George Werthmann (1898-1980): Biographische Skizze und Würdigung” in …und auch Soldaten fragten, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1992), 58-9.

147 stronger and more imposing than his superior’s. Chaplains who had worked under him remembered the former vicar-general of the Wehrmacht fondly in private interviews years later. Fangohr stated that the chaplains had little contact with Rarkowski, who was an “unobtrusive man,” in contrast to Werthmann, “who really had an active personality.”32 Richard Shell added to this, remembering that “one got a bigger impression, a better impression, from Vicar-General Werthmann. One noticed immediately that he had things in hand, he led the department, he did the work.”33 Egon

Schmitt described Werthmann as “a rational, objective man and no doubt the actual leader of the shop [Leiter des Ladens].”34 Josef Perau met Werthmann during his training to be a chaplain in 1941, recalling that the vicar-general “really radiated something and impressed me very much.”35 And in the scant postwar historiography in which he appears, Werthmann is portrayed as a hard-working, intelligent man who maneuvered his way between the demands of the Party, the OKH, and sometimes even the bishops in order to protect his chaplains and other Catholic priests and seminarians in the

Wehrmacht.36 He was empathetic with priests and seminarians in the military, and showed a conciliatory capacity to negotiate with military personnel, even those with whom he did not agree. He emanated energy, resolution, and a distinct theological attitude towards matters, which more than once exposed him to hostility and attacks from

Nazis, though this was hardly a deterrent; his willingness to adapt to the situation and

32 KMBA SW 310/III, Otto Fangohr, interview, April 25, 1990. 33 KMBA SW 723/III, Richard Shell, interview, March 21, 1990. 34 KMBA SW 750/III, Egon Schmitt, undated interview. 35 KMBA SW 635/III, Joseph Perau, Nr. 12, Bd. 1, undated notes. 36 Springer’s project is the only – unpublished – biography of Werthmann, and can be found at the KMBA. It remains unpublished because of discrepancies in some of the factual details of the manuscript that were never revised. See Springer, “ein guter und getreuer Knecht.” Werthmann is mentioned briefly in works by Breuer, Güsgen, Messerschmidt, Missalla, May, and Zahn. For full citations, see the introduction, in which the works are discussed at greater length.

148 make use of whatever he could to achieve what he wanted has been summarized by one historian with the following line, which Werthmann wrote to a colleague in January

1943: “the world wants to be deceived, so let’s get on with it.”37

Both Rarkowski and Werthmann lack definitive biographies, though for

Werthmann, it is not due to deficient resources. The former vicar-general wrote extensively about his experiences during the Third Reich, beginning as early as his internment at Niederalteich in the spring of 1945 and continuing into the decade before his death, in 1980. These observations, jotted down or type-written as short remarks or personal reflections, were meant to aid him in the ambitious project of writing a history of the military chaplaincy between 1935 and 1945, which he called “Geschichte der

Feldseelsorge” (History of the Military Chaplaincy). He put it aside because of his extensive responsibilities in helping the Bundeswehr build up a new military chaplaincy in the 1950s, and then abandoned it completely when he felt himself too old to write it.38

Though he had his personal journal from the Nazi period destroyed upon his death – one can only imagine what insights into his personality and his own understanding of the situation this would have offered – the extensive and thorough notes he made for

“Geschichte der Feldseelsorge” have survived intact. Using this trove of information, one can gleam something of Werthmann’s hopes and ideas, struggles and triumphs; they form a sort of autobiographical sketch of a man who was obviously deeply emotionally involved in his own work.

37 As quoted in Johannes Güsgen, “Die Bedeutung der Katholischen Militärseelsorge in Deutschland von 1933-1945” in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, edited by Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 518. 38 Thanks to Dr. Monica Sinderhauf at the KMBA for bringing this to my attention.

149 Of course, what is problematic is that these observations were made post facto – he began writing as an internee, a prisoner of the Allied forces, with the full knowledge that the thousand-year Reich was disintegrating along with, literally, entire German cities.

There can be little doubt that this affected his outlook on his own role and experiences from the previous twelve years; it explains certain, though infrequent, passages of uncharacteristic melancholia in his writings about the future of Germany. But we cannot say to what extent this affected him, or how exactly it may have influenced his retrospective views of Nazism, the Wehrmacht, or the shape the chaplaincy took between

1935 and 1945. Regardless, his reflections should be inserted into the historical record; they are simply too valuable a source of information to ignore.

In the years before the outbreak of war, Rarkowski and Werthmann focused on getting the chaplaincy up and running. In September 1935, Pope Pius XI released a list of statutes for Nazi Germany’s fledgling military chaplaincy in the official gazette of the

Holy See, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which included details concerning the jurisdiction and duties of the field bishop, the legal status of chaplains, and instructions for the effective execution of pastoral care.39 The field bishop appointed all chaplains, in consultation with relevant secular and ecclesiastical authorities (see below), which involved permission from the individual priest’s diocesan bishop before admission to the chaplaincy could occur. Priests who were to become chaplains needed both an ecclesiastical nomination

(from their diocesan bishop) as well as an official state briefing, in the sense of an

39 “Approved Regulations, Which Pertain to the Spiritual Care of Catholic Soldiers in the German Army,” published September 15, 1935 in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 27 (1935), 367-73. Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli signed the regulations and, given his involvement with the concordat of 1933, he likely played a significant role in their construction. The preamble to the regulations explained that the German government accepted the rules that followed. The “Sacred Congregation,” also known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, recognized them as well, though there is no indication if that office played a supervisory or a more active role (i.e. had a direct hand) in their construction. My thanks to Thomas Devaney for the translation from Latin.

150 examination. The latter was essentially a thorough background check, with questions about possible membership in former political parties or Freemason lodges, a signed declaration ascertaining that the individual was of Aryan descent, and an investigation by the Gestapo to determine whether the individual had ever conducted espionage activities or demonstrated inappropriate political (anti-Nazi) behavior. This briefing would become even more complicated for chaplains recruited between 1940 and 1942; in addition to the above, each priest had to provide a detailed personal history, declarations concerning their membership in any religious societies or clubs, a declaration of citizenship, and certificate of good conduct issued by the police.40 Like all army recruits, chaplains had to take the army oath, swearing allegiance to Hitler. Chaplains may not have had to demonstrate unswerving and open support for the Nazi movement, but they certainly had to meet its ideological requirements.

The authority of the field bishop and the duties of the priests involved in military pastoral care continued to evolve and be nuanced in the years leading up to the war in ways that Werthmann documented extensively. His notes as well as surviving memos and records suggest that the need for clarification came from both within the chaplaincy and from military authorities, and that the two offices did not always work smoothly together even in the initial stages. In response to a series of questions sent from the OKH,

Rarkowski wrote a detailed list of rules and regulations in January 1937.41 He reported that, according to the Code of Canon Law (established 1917), civilian bishops could determine if new pastoral care positions needed to be established in certain areas, but that the field bishop retained the final decision. He defended the decision to make the

40 See, as an example, KMBA SW 797/III, Akten Bernhard Schwarz. 41 BA-MA RH 12 II/5, Nr. 503/36, Letter to OKH, January 5, 1937.

151 chaplaincy exempt – that is, independent of the authority of the diocesan bishops in

Germany – arguing that as a system, it worked more efficiently and effectively without their interference, though he did not elaborate on this. He went on to delineate a series of

“specific obstructions” with which the chaplaincy was struggling, including “endeavors of a negative kind in religious areas that have not stopped…. To give one example, brochures were distributed unimpeded throughout the armed forces in which not only

Christianity as such, but also the religious tradition of the German army was attacked, and the Christian heroic deaths of German soldiers were vilified.” This, it turned out, was in a brochure entitled Soldier, War, and Death, and published by none other than the

Ludendorff Verlag.

Rarkowski then addressed his understanding of the military chaplain’s importance, situating him within the turbulence of the Nazi period. The chaplain “stands at the focal point of massive contention that has broken out in all areas of German life.

He stands before a young man who has experienced the stirring emotional agitation of our time more strongly than any other generation.” In order to be something of a role model for these youths at a time of upheaval and change, or at least a credible advisor, a chaplain needed a “lively inner connection to the … historical situation, to the spiritual structure of the young soldiers of our time, as well as to today’s soldierly way of life, which encourages and nurtures new ideology and ambition ahead of tradition.” In order to convey religious and ethical values to his charges properly, the chaplain required basic and consistent education that included a familiarity with military lifestyle (“the young soldier wants to experience a piety in the attitude and proclamations of his priest that corresponds to his own disposition, which is oriented towards the most soldierly way of

152 life”); ideological training42 (“personally the chaplain has no political mission, but the young men for whom he works have gone through ideological training and live in a defined realm of perception of a political-ideological kind, which must be recognized in order to make religious value effective in the consolidation of soldierly thinking and desire”); religious pedagogical education; and a familiarity with the most important military provisions and administrative regulations of the Wehrmacht. For this purpose and to ensure that proper training was conducted, Rarkowski called for training courses to be given at regularly planned intervals; this would ensure uniformity in terms of outlook, but would also encourage a sense of community and support among the chaplains themselves before they were dispersed to their respective units.

Toward the end of his letter, Rarkowski displayed a concern that the chaplains to be conscripted would prove to be somehow unsuitable for their tasks because, unlike their

Protestant counterparts, the terms of the concordat excused Catholic chaplains from active military service (the bearing of weapons). He based his presumption on his experiences in the First World War, remembering that it “led to very deplorable occurrences which damaged pastoral care, insofar as extremely competent priests were used merely as hospital help, while priests who were less stalwart were called up as divisional chaplains.” A possible resolution would be a sort of early pre-training for priests who came recommended by their spiritual superiors to the field bishop as potentially effective chaplains; they would be invited to perform exercises that would prepare them for their later appointment – drills that would not constitute armed service,

42 The original German here is “staatpolitische Schulung.” Staatpolitisch, translated literally as “state- political,” can mean either national or ideological. Under the Third Reich these two terms became virtually interchangeable. I have chosen to use “ideological” throughout this work to reflect more accurately the type of training that both soldiers and Nazis experienced, training that propagated various elements of the Nazi world-view.

153 and would give the field bishop’s office an opportunity to explore the potential supply of military chaplains and how best to prepare them for their official training. Such concerns highlight the complete fusion of the military and the religious in Rarkowski’s mind: the two were inseparable, and carried equal weight in his judgment.

Simultaneously, the OKH and the Field Bishop’s Office distributed official regulations regarding military-ecclesiastical matters for Catholics in the Wehrmacht in pamphlet form.43 This would be the first of several lists of regulations, and attempted to encompass all aspects of religious life in the military. The first section delineated the membership, duties and rights of the military congregations of the armed forces. The second section outlined the authority of the field bishop, emphasizing his independence from the other German bishops and his executive power as head of the military chaplaincy. The field vicar-general would automatically replace the field bishop if the office were to become vacant, though it was to be a temporary assignment and on the condition that the provisory field-bishop would introduce no new regulations.

A second brochure expanded on these themes, suggesting that the initial pamphlet had raised further issues for clarification; probably distributed by the OKH, it cited the principle that, irrespective of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, new rules could and had to be delineated by a (secular) judiciary in order to guarantee the effective performance of pastoral care within the armed forces.44 These rules provided further details about military congregations for short- and long-term tours of duty; the availability of naval chaplains for Catholic soldiers without an army chaplain, as there were fewer chaplains

43 BA-MA 12 II/5, Nr 503/36, “Katholische militärkirchliche Dienstordnung für die Wehrmacht vom… (no date or signature, but the responsibility likely lies with both army leaderships and the heads of the chaplaincy, according to the content and the language employed). 44 BA-MA 12 II/5, Nr 503/36, “Ausführungsbestimmungen zur Katholischen militärkirchlichen Dienstordnung für die Wehrmacht” (no date or signature).

154 stationed with naval units; and the availability of army chaplains for Catholic members of the Luftwaffe, since, as per Göring’s pre-war ruling, there were no chaplains within the ranks of the air force.

But the first detailed list of rules and regulations from the OKH relating to

“Feldseelsorge,” or pastoral care in the field, came in August 1939, just days before the announcement of the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union and less than two weeks before the invasion of Poland, with the distribution of the “Bulletin Concerning

Pastoral Care in the Field.”45 Army Command distributed a total of 15,000 copies to all

Army Group and General Headquarters, cavalry, artillery, and tank officers, engineer corps and intelligence units, the OKH Staff Departments, and rail engineers, in addition to all army district chaplains and both field bishops – in short, any unit that could be stationed with chaplains in the case of mobilization.

We do not know Rarkowski’s reaction, but in spite of the OKH’s official recognition of the significance of pastoral care during the war, Werthmann looked down on the bulletin, describing it as “one of many items that were part of the hapless experimentation of the military leadership” on the military chaplaincy.46 It is not difficult to see why he reacted this way. It was a lengthy and detailed treatment of religious affairs in military life, and was a bold attempt by the OKH to at least complement, if not offer an alternative to, the authority of the field bishop in preparation for the coming war. The regulations described pastoral care in terms of military strength, as “an important means for the fortification of the army’s vigor” that would serve “to maintain and nurture the

45KMBA SW 1006/VI, AHA/Ag/S, Nr 2838/39, “Merkblatt über die Feldseelsorge,” August 21, 1939. 46 Güsgen, “Die Bedeutung der katholischen Militärseelsorge,” 519.

155 inner fighting strength of German soldiers.”47 Duty and devotion to the Fatherland was a mandate from God. The terms exhorted the chaplain to put himself always to the best use of his services, neglecting neither the fighting troops nor the sick and wounded in base hospitals [Hauptverbandplätze]. Divine worship was to be offered as often as possible in the field, forming as it was the “cornerstone” of spiritual work; Protestant and Catholic chaplains were to work together harmoniously, reflecting the similarity of tasks that superceded denominational differentiation, and opportunity was “always to be given to soldiers to participate voluntarily in denomination-specific ceremonies such as confession, communion, etc.,” though the OKH ordered that, “as a rule, mass was to be held for the entire unit, and not divided according to denomination, in order to correspond to the inner uniformity of the troops.” It was a subtle de-emphasis of religious identity in favor of national identity: one could be Catholic or Protestant, but all soldiers were

German, and accordingly, a unitary, and therefore unifying, religious service was heavily favored by the military leadership. In addition, civilian churches in Germany or in allied countries (i.e. Italy) could be used with the permission of its proprietor; in enemy territories, and here presumably Catholic Poland was in mind, suitable churches could be seized by troops for their ecumenical use.48

47 KMBA SW 1006/VI, “Merkblatt über die Feldseelsorge,” August 21, 1939. All the following direct quotes are taken from here. 48 Regulations pertaining to the use of foreign churches by chaplains in times of war fluctuate. During World War I, for example, British and Canadian non-Catholic chaplains could not use local Catholic churches because German troops had desecrated them in 1914. It is unclear if these rules also pertained to Catholic chaplains, though this seems likely. See Duff Crerar, Padres in No Man’s Land: Canadian Chaplains and the Great War (Montreal and Kingston, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 139. American chaplains who served in the Navy, administering to Marines, during the Vietnam War also seemed not to have used civilian churches for celebrating mass, preferring either to build their own chapels or to stay outdoors. However, they did help rebuild and restore various houses of worship destroyed during the operations; they divided the funds they had between Catholic, Protestant, and Buddhist projects. See H.L. Bergsma, Chaplains with Marines in Vietnam 1962-1971 (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1985).

156 Directives were also issued pertaining to the relationship between chaplains and military leaders. Troop commanders, from the large army groups to the smallest units, were to view the chaplains as helpers: “a leader concerned with the spiritual comportment of his troops will notify the chaplain of every opportunity to serve, and will apprise him of observations pertaining to the mindset of the troops, of previous experiences, and of upcoming orders.” The higher commanders and the chaplains were to work together to ascertain and preserve the spiritual strength of their units. In certain circumstances, these higher commanders could apply for an exchange or discharge of chaplains following their assessment of the individual’s “particular abilities and disposition.”49 The chaplaincy, then, was not strictly about the religious needs of the fighting men; it was a military department to be administered like any other, and it was to be utilized as an instrument to supervise the fighting spirit and morale of soldiers.50

In order to adjust regulations to reflect the experiences of occupation in Poland, and to prepare the army for its upcoming war in Western Europe, Edelmann released another series of directives on behalf of the OKH, labeled “secret,” in February 1940, meant to supplement the initial 1939 Bulletin.51 Aside from elaboration on points left ambiguous – attendance of divine worship was to be voluntary, not ordered by troop commanders; chaplains were to hold supradenominational masses (interkonfessionellen

Gottesdienste) and be recognizable by details on their uniforms; assisting in the burial of

49 KMBA SW 1006/VI, “Merkblatt über die Feldseelsorge,” August 21, 1939 50 This is specific neither to the time period nor to Germany. Gordon C. Zahn, a sociologist, conducted interviews with former and active RAF chaplains in the 1960s that determined that the chaplains’ roles as officer and as priest were well balanced, and that if there was ever tension between the two, the tension was resolved often in favor of the military (officer) role. See Zahn, The Military Chaplaincy: A Study of Role Tension in the Royal Air Force (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 32. Crerar’s history of the Canadian military chaplaincy and its pre-1914 evolution also points to the fact that the chaplaincy was treated, and viewed itself, as a military department. This was one of the motivations for keeping military and civilian church services separate. Crerar, Padres in No Man’s Land, 16-18. 51 KMBA SW 1006/VI, 31 v/mob. AHA/Ag/S (I), Nr 51/40 g, February 13, 1940.

157 a Christian soldier was always to be the chaplain’s first priority – there were also orders indicating that certain liberties had been taken that the OKH was keen to eliminate before habits could become entrenched. The first was an emphasis on the fact that only chaplains were to undertake pastoral care within the army: administration of a spiritual nature performed by “priests serving as soldiers should occur only in exceptional circumstances, with the approval of the unit commanders.” These exceptional circumstances included death, a solemn feast day, and at the special request of soldiers before or after battle, and only if the chaplain was unavailable. This effectively prohibited these priests who were not part of the chaplaincy, who by far outnumbered official chaplains, from administering to others, since the logistics of battle made it unlikely that he would attain permission from his commander in time to minister the last sacraments to someone dying, or to hear confessions or grant absolution to soldiers about to engage in battle.

It is difficult to arrive at a precise estimation of how many chaplains had been stationed within the army by the spring of 1940. Werthmann, in his postwar notes, indicated that, according to regulations, there was to be one supervisory chaplain per army group, and one per each army within that army group; one chaplain per division; and eight chaplains per field hospital. Werthmann was unable to give the total number of chaplains active over the course of the war even after 1945. In 1952, he estimated that it was 545, a number that includes those who fell or went missing, those who became prisoners of war, and those who were dismissed for various reasons. The highest number at any one time, he reported, was 390, in the summer of 1941.52 On the other hand, for

52 KMBA SW 84/I 14, April 22, 1952. One year later, in a more formal report, Werthmann gave slightly higher figures: 561 Catholic chaplains served during the war, with the highest number at one time reached

158 war’s outbreak in 1939, the OKW mobilized 103 divisions. The year 1940/41 alone saw the addition of seventy-two infantry divisions, three tank divisions, and twenty-one militia divisions, as well as a number of new brigades.53 These numbers do not include field hospitals; there was at least one field hospital per division. Chaplains were stretched very thin from the very beginning of the war, and not uncommonly, divisions sometimes lacked chaplains for years. This chronic shortage was common enough reason for priests who were not chaplains to administer to their soldiers in time of need, with or without permission, as will be shown. The speedy and unmistakable prohibition above indicates that the OKH was both aware of the shortage and unwilling to offer any compromise.

Werthmann was well aware of the shortage, too, but reflected bitterly and at length that it was a deliberately maintained shortage, with the OKW, the OKH, or the

Party (or all three, in conjunction) laying out numerous obstacles and hindrances to the conscription of higher numbers of chaplains. He pointed to the presence of the priests outside the chaplaincy who, under OKH regulations, could not administer to others as such: “So ensued such nonsense as, for example, an infantry division having, with their

12,000 to 15,000 soldiers, basically only a single Catholic chaplain, whereas in the same division, twenty to thirty Catholic priests could also be found as medical orderlies, who often performed the lowliest of services and who were forbidden to exercise pastoral care

in the summer of 1942, with 410. Seventy-two chaplains were active at the outbreak of the war, and sixty- four were killed in action. KMBA SW 997/VI, July 5, 1953. These are numbers contradicted by Georg May, whose work on interdenominational cooperation in the military chaplaincy during the Third Reich offers the following figures, which for the Catholic side seem inflated: 673 Catholic chaplains active between 1935 and 1945, and 428 Protestant chaplains active during the war years (1939-45). He claimed to be using “research completed up to 15 February 1964” conducted at the Catholic Military Bishop’s Archive (KMBA), which at that time was in Bonn and lacked most of Werthmann’s personal documents. See May, Interkonfessionalismus, 495. 53 Numbers taken from Deist, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft, 326-33, and Jost Dülffer, “Vom Bündnispartner zum Erfüllungsgehilfen im totalen Krieg: Militär und Gesellschaft in Deutschland, 1933- 1945” in Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Analysen, Grundzüge, Forschungsbilanz, edited by Wolfgang Michalka (München und Zürich: Piper, 1989), 289.

159 for their comrades, with the exception of very particular circumstances.”54 According to the terms of the Reichskonkordat’s secret appendix, these priests were stationed with the field hospitals or other medical services because they were excused from having to bear weapons. Many of these priests acted against the official prohibition and administered to others as priests when necessary, a condition of which Werthmann had full knowledge, gratefully documenting “the true collaboration of our medical orderlies, who themselves were priests, in the pastoral care of our wounded and dying…. They performed their medical and pastoral duties ceaselessly day and night from the beginning of their enlistment; they often could barely stand at the operation table because of exhaustion.”55

Werthmann was willing to break the rules if it meant saving a (German) soul; but still, one can sense his frustration that this enormous group of men were legally prevented from acting in any official capacity as priests for their units and divisions, which more often than not lacked the presence of a chaplain.

There is also some indication that chaplains, and not just priest-soldiers, were stepping beyond their prescribed sphere of duties and influencing areas that the OKH felt was its own exclusive jurisdiction. Chaplains could not disseminate religious information of any kind (whether it was personal writings or printed texts) that was not first approved by the military and religious authorities, the latter being the department of the field bishop. The fact that this was happening to the point that an order was required to curb it reflected the considerable dearth of written material of a religious nature at the front, as

54 KMBA SW 148/III (Nr. 5), January 19, 1952. 55 KMBA SW 1052/IX, series of reflections from 1 June 1945. Hans Jürgen Brandt, a German historian who has compiled a book of testimonies from former priests who served outside the chaplaincy estimates that “about 20,000” German Catholic priests, theologians, and seminarians were conscripted between 1939 and 1945, the vast majority of whom would have fallen, precisely, into this “group apart” – neither an ordinary soldier nor an official chaplain. See Priester in Uniform. This number, and who it included, will be explained in more detail in Chapter Four.

160 well as the demand for it; what existed consisted mostly of hymnals or official pastoral letters from the field bishop.56 In addition, it was explicitly decreed that the armed forces chaplaincy “has a religious duty whose resolution is to be incorporated as much as possible into the patriotic exigencies of the war. The military authorities alone are entitled to the political training of soldiers.” If there was any lingering doubt about the relationship between politics and religion in the military, and whether one outweighed the other, this would seem to prove that, at least in the view of the OKH, the alluded-to

“patriotic exigencies” – political indoctrination and the ideology of the Nazi movement – was to subordinate religion. Furthermore, the training seminars and exercises of chaplains could not include questions of a general political or even ecclesiastical nature; the goal of these sessions was spiritual instruction and the exchange of experiences within the military through oral discussion. This order is not difficult to understand: such seminars would be attended exclusively by chaplains, without the presence of a supervisory military authority. The OKH wanted to control as much as possible the topics of discussion among priests who were going to be crucial in the maintenance of troop morale.

It was another two years before the Party intervened to make known its own wishes vis à vis religion in the army. According to Werthmann’s notes, the “Guidelines for the Performance of Pastoral Care in the Field,” issued by OKW-Inland in the late spring of 1942, was an attempt to conciliate the wishes of the Party chancellery regarding the military chaplaincy with those of the army.57 It was meant to replace the Bulletin as

56 For a detailed account of Catholic religious materials available to soldiers during the war, see Missalla, Für Volk und Vaterland, esp. 103-89. 57 KMBA SW 1006/VI, “Richtlinien für die Durchführung der Feldseelsorge,” OKW Az v AWA/J (Ia) Nr 4100/42, from May 24, 1942. All the following direct quotations are taken from here.

161 the official list of rules and regulations, and reflected the growing hostility of the Party for the Christian traditions within the army as well as heightened concerns from Party and

OKW leaders about the direction of the war.58 That it was the first direct intrusion of the

Party in the affairs of the wartime chaplaincy, seemingly circumventing the OKH in the process, also underscores Hitler’s decision to take over command of the army in

December 1941, after the failure to find a decisive conclusion to the assault on the Soviet

Union. It also emphasizes timing with the Soviet counter-offensive, and the deep crisis of the German army in the throes of a harsh Russian winter during 1941-42. There is no mistaking its more obviously militant tone, its emphasis on the authority of military leaders, and the subservience of religious issues to national, political, and ideological ones.

In one sense, the guidelines tread little new ground; most of what was laid down had already been elaborated in the 1939 Bulletin and its 1940 supplement. Participation in spiritual activities was to be strictly voluntary, never required or enforced; the individual soldier’s choice, either to participate or not to participate, was to incur no particular disadvantage from a military superior or, presumably, a chaplain. The chaplain was to cater to Christian soldiers who had the desire for pastoral care (it was not to be given when not requested); the regulations ordered, in all cases, the elision of denominational differences, and the smooth collaboration of Protestant and Catholic chaplains, whose duties were essentially the same. Only written material approved by the

OKW could be distributed to soldiers. They also emphasized the responsibilities of the military commanders to educate and maintain morale and positive attitudes towards the

58 For Werthmann’s reflections, see KMBA SW 1006/VI, dated June 1, June 28, and July 17, 1945.

162 war effort – the chaplain was to limit himself to handling questions and concerns of a strictly religious nature.

Propagandistic overtones were more obvious in the new guidelines. At the height of fighting in Europe, and just as the “final solution to the Jewish question” began to operate at full strength, OKW-Inland wrote about how “the victorious outcome of the

National Socialist struggle for freedom [Freiheitskampfes]” was “decisive for the future of the German Volksgemeinschaft, and with it for every individual German.”59 Pastoral care was to take this unequivocally into account. The guidelines also further underscored the separation of religious from military matters and forbid processions outside the church. Chaplains could not perform religious ceremonies together with military activities. Moreover, the guidelines also delivered a more stringent attitude with regards to the civilian population and its churches in occupied territory: religious activities or writing of any kind (including propagandistic materials) for these populations was classified as illegal, and soldiers could not participate in civilian church services in occupied areas. In some cases in enemy territory and occupied areas, “appropriate churches or accommodations can be seized for the particular use of troops. These buildings as well as the religious sentiments of the populations are to be spared when possible.” It was clear, though, that the prohibition on the sharing of churches as well as joint services with the civilian populations of occupied territories was strict.

On one point there was no room for flexibility: churches in eastern occupied areas, i.e. the Soviet Union, were not to be used for pastoral activities of any kind.60 The

OKW was unsympathetic when both field bishops wrote in the fall of 1941, pleading the

59 KMBA SW 1006/VI, “Richtlinien für die Durchführung der Feldseelsorge” from May 24, 1942. 60 See KMBA 77/I 12, OKW decree, August 6, 1941.

163 lack of alternatives and increasingly cold weather as reasons to allow their men to use abandoned churches in occupied Russian territory. They received a terse, inexorable response: “The attitude of the armed forces on religious questions in newly-occupied eastern territories has been unambiguously laid out in the regulations of the Führer.

Applications for alteration at this time promise no success.”61 While there is no written explanation from the OKW as to why Polish churches could be used but not Soviet ones, the unfolding of the war might have had some influence.62 In Poland, the war had ended quickly and German occupational forces rapidly entrenched themselves; they dealt with what little open resistance flared up quickly and brutally. In October 1941, the war had not been won in Soviet territory, and in fact was going to take longer than expected, and desired, to decide. Especially at this early stage, the German leaders of the war effort might have wanted to avoid driving the indigenous populations fully into a mode of resistance by seizing their churches.

Military considerations may not have been the only ones at stake; Werthmann was also inclined to suspect that ideological rivalry between the Nazi movement and the

Vatican may have had something to do with the regulation. Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Central Security Office (RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt) and chief of the

Gestapo and Criminal Police under Himmler (SIPO), had long obsessed about the

Catholic Church’s subversive power in Europe; the Vatican’s intentions in Russia concerned him enough that he wrote to the OKH in November 1941, outlining his suspicions and situating the field bishop’s desire to use houses of worship in Soviet

61 KMBA SW 84/I 14, Rarkowski’s letter , October 7, 1941, the General Staff’s response, October 24, 1941. Both reference the following decree: OKW Nr 4798/41 und 4798/41 II.Ang., from September 10, 1941. 62 This is a suggestion proffered by Omer Bartov.

164 territory to further the “Russia-mission of the Catholic Church.”63 Heydrich outlined an extensive list of various “institutes and commissions,” including a “special assignment of members of the Benedictine order” and “the ecclesiastical Oriental Institute in Rome with the definitive involvement of the Jesuits,” all of which were working to “mount the

Russia-mission and open possibilities [for themselves] with the deployment of legions, by bringing trained missionaries into the conquered areas of the East even before the conclusion of a possible accommodation with the German regime.” He underscored as proof various reports in Italian Catholic papers that reported that Italian troops and members of the Italian Expeditionary Corps actively distributed holy cards and restored churches that had been profaned. While he did not explicitly mention German Catholics in the report, it is not difficult to imagine that Heydrich meant to warn the OKH that they might attempt something similar. He ended by stating sternly that “these plans contradicted the instructions of the Führer.”

In his post-war musings, Werthmann’s judgment of these regulations is ambivalent. He did not see it as a direct threat specifically to Catholic spiritual care within the army, but rather that it made Protestant pastoral activities more difficult, though he did not elaborate on why he felt this way. He located the Party’s motivation for releasing the new guidelines in its hostility for the supradenominational service, instigated by the OKH, that the Bulletin promoted: “the so-called supradenominational divine service was not, as was often assumed, a form of divine service pushed by the

Nazis, [designed] to wear out both denominations and to establish a ‘religion of unity’….

63 A copy of this communication from the head of the secret police to the OKH is contained in the same file as the exchange of letters about the prohibition on using churches in Russian territory. Werthmann had preserved both, and it is telling that Heydrich’s message is dated November 1, 1941, a mere week after the General Staff’s last response to the field bishops. Further quotations in this paragraph are taken from KMBA SW 111/III, copy of letter (secret) to OKH, signed by Heydrich.

165 In contrast, the Nazis acted very early on as decisive opponents of the supradenominational divine service and attempted to eliminate it.” He explained that political circles – presumably Party higher-ups hostile to institutional religion – interpreted the supradenominational service as “an attempt to sabotage and circumvent voluntary participation in divine service,” and that these circles hoped to prove, with its elimination, that soldiers had little interest in religion and thereby demonstrate that there the need for spiritual care of any kind within the army was superfluous – at least, the need for spiritual care as offered by the churches.64 It was evidence of the Party’s continued distrust of institutional religion; the Party higher-ups still viewed the Church as a powerful rival in terms of a competing ideology, and its desire to eradicate its potentially harmful effects on the fighting men of Germany.65

Werthmann saw the guidelines in this light as well. Perhaps they were not a direct attack on Catholics in the army, but they were an unambiguous move towards eliminating

Christian culture and tradition within its ranks by making it increasingly difficult for priests to perform their duties. Attempting to bring the army more in line with the Party’s own attitude in the matter of pastoral care could only occur at the expense of the army’s autonomy, which was clinging “more and more to the Christian tradition.”66 The 1939

Bulletin was backwards, according to the Party, and moreover it was dangerous because the issue of “absolutely voluntary participation” in activities such as divine services was

64 KMBA SW 1006/VI, June 1, 1945. 65 This was also true for the home front, where other historians have shown that the Nazis held religion at a distance, even when different groups – the Deutsche Christen, for example – agitated for a closer relationship with the Nazi movement. See in particular Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), and Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 (Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 66 KMBA SW 1006/VI, July 17, 1945.

166 not being properly preserved, at least “not in the Nazi sense.”67 The supplement to the

Bulletin indicates that officers must have, on occasion, ordered their soldiers to attend masses, though it is hard to determine how widespread this was, and Werthmann indicates elsewhere that the field bishops made absolutely clear that attending mass was always to be voluntary.68 So there is some basis for the Party’s concern with preserving the voluntary aspect of religious worship. Werthmann’s comments suggest, however, that it went further than this. The army needed to be converted to the Party’s comportment vis

à vis Christianity, which at this point was manifesting itself with increasing rigidity as reserve [Zurückhaltung]; anything less was unacceptable. In the process of wartime

Gleichschaltung of the army with the Party, the Church had no room to maneuver and no sphere of autonomy to retain. Correspondingly, the OKW abolished supradenominational services, and chaplains and other priests and seminarians within the ranks of the

Wehrmacht came increasingly under attack. Werthmann particularly bridled at the restrictions placed on pastoral care in POW camps, restrictions that the OKW tightened severely in 1942; through the “clout” that these new guidelines represented, “all German military and non-military priests working in prisoner-of-war camps were taken out, and all further activity on their part made impossible.”69

Unfortunately, it was only the beginning of the OKW’s gradual removal of priests both from their administrative positions within the chaplaincy, as well as from their broader roles as spiritual examples in the army. In October 1942, in a secret decree, the

OKW informed the field bishops that it would no longer be conscripting priests for the

67 KMBA SW 1006/VI, June 28, 1945. 68 One report of the infraction was given by a chaplain stationed in France; see KMBA SW 743/III, Tätigkeitsbericht, December 1942. 69 KMBA SW 1006/VI, May 30, 1945.

167 chaplaincy, and the offices of fallen chaplains would not be filled.70 The field bishops reacted with letters of shock and concern, pleading that the positions of chaplains who had fallen at Stalingrad at least be filled; they were met with unsympathetic rejection.71

This was a matter that not only concerned the members of the chaplaincy, however. In a report that Werthmann sent to the OKH in July 1943 regarding his activities, he made it a point of mentioning that “it came up again and again in conversations with individual officers and soldiers,” and that a person as prestigious as a field marshal (Küchler) was convinced that both the commanders and the troops could not do without pastoral care, a situation which overall was “becoming much more difficult” after the October 1942 decree.72 In March 1944, the Chief-of-Staff of Army Group South, Major-General

Haselhoff, told Werthmann that the necessity of pastoral care for his soldiers was beyond question; the General Staff doctor in the same area, Passauer, echoed the general’s sentiments and insisted that priests were an essential part of hospital work.73 That

Germany was losing major battles at this point, and that it was becoming more evident that ultimate victory was slipping away, could very well have led soldiers to cling to traditional religious attitudes, and the attempt to eliminate that outlet could have met with significant consternation. But Werthmann’s notes indicate that only (widespread) grumbling took place, no outright protest. For the final two and a half years of war, chaplains who fell in battle or went missing were not replaced.

70 KMBA SW 997/VI, OKH decree (secret), October 10, 1942. 71 See KMBA 1002/VI, letter signed by both Dohrmann and Rarkowski, March 9, 1943. Nineteen Catholic chaplains and fifteen Protestant chaplains were lost at Stalingrad, either through death or imprisonment, when the Sixth Army surrendered. 72 BA-MA 15 280, July 9, 1943. 73 BA-MA 15 280, report, March 27, 1944.

168 The image given by these regulations and much of Werthmann’s notes indicates that the chaplaincy, and by extension all Catholic priests in the army, whether they were chaplains or not, came under attack on all sides frequently during the war years, and had relatively few defenders. Werthmann addressed individuals who led the attacks and defended chaplains and priests from them. He singled out two figures in particular whom he viewed as unfalteringly anti-Catholic and against pastoral care from the beginning of the war effort. He called Wilhelm Keitel, head of the OKW, and Hermann Reinecke, the chief of the General Office of the Armed Forces (OKW/AWA), “satellites of National

Socialism” because both attempted “to bring to fruition the wishes of the Party [against the chaplaincy] through obsequious compliance, and were never satisfied with measures against chaplains of both denominations.” He singled out Reinecke as virulently anti-

Christian, whose widely known statements concerning Wehrmacht chaplains documented

“a blind will to destruction,” of what exactly Werthmann does not specify.74 He was unsparing in his criticism, labeling him “an aspiring careerist and a kind of business trooper” who lunged at “anything brought to him – grievances about chaplains and the chancellery’s plans for the down-sizing [of the chaplaincy] – with the fire of zealous and obnoxious impracticality.”75

After late 1943, Werthmann had even more reason to dislike Reinecke; the latter was charged with the task of heading the new National Socialist Leadership Staff

(Nationalsozialistische Führungsstab – NSFS), whose officers were to be disseminated throughout the ranks of the army to the division level beginning in 1944 and given the task of maintaining and nurturing Nazi ideology in the hearts and minds of the soldiers.

74 KMBA SW 1003/VI, July 3, 1945. 75 KMBA SW 1002/VI, May 28, 1945.

169 Reinecke evidently told his propaganda officers that they should not be “something of a rival with priests [because] there is very little in common between the tasks of the officer and those of the priest. The objective of our education within the troop is, on the one hand, to make soldiers fanatical bearers of faith [Glaubensträger] and, on the other hand, to inculcate him with hatred against our enemy.”76 But such an “official” attitude of trying to avoid conflict with chaplains appears superficial at the very least, because the language that was used would have appeared to most chaplains as a challenge to their role within the armed forces. Officially, their fundamental tasks included the “political- ideological leadership and education” and “care for the troops (spiritual care and organization of free time),” even if the same regulations insisted that “the NSFO is not to undertake any activity that lies beyond the sphere of political-ideological leadership,”77 and that he had a “soldierly, but not a pastoral [seelsorgerisch] mission to fulfill.”78 One month earlier, an artillery general in the 16th Army had referred to the “mobilization of internal readiness for battle and mental strength to persevere” as the command of the hour, and that the NSFO “has merely to take the reins in hand and show that he, too, bears responsibility in the area of spiritual and theoretical [gedanklichen] leadership.”79

The kind of “faith” the NSFOs were meant to be distilling was the “Nazi” faith, in direct contradiction to Christian beliefs. This was how many chaplains understood it, as the next chapter will show.

76 BA-MA RW 6/587, “Tagung unter Leitung des Chefs des NSF/OKW, Gen.d.Inf. Reinecke,” no date but likely early 1944. From now on, these propaganda officers will be referred to by their more common German acronym, NSFO (Nationalsozialistische Führungsoffizier). 77 NARA T312, roll 630, fr 8257066, March 28, 1944. 78 NARA T312, roll 630, fr 8257068, March 28, 1944. 79 NARA T312, roll 630, fr 8257081, February 28, 1944.

170 Werthmann conceded that there was no proof that the primary goal of the NSFOs was to observe chaplains of both denominations working in the army, although

“chaplains disclosed many times that this surveillance was performed.” Werthmann and these men both insisted that “it was evident that the NSFO had the assignment to take over, slowly, the task of the priests, and – if not directly, then indirectly – to supplant and disengage the chaplain.”80 Even if chaplains were able to find ways to circumvent and thereby limit the influence of the NSFO, as will be discussed in the following chapters,

Werthmann still described the NSFOs in a tone both resentful and pitying:

His [the NSFO’s] task was really a preoccupation with Nazi propaganda and training of the soldiers. Whole mountains of printed materials were made available for this. Even various articles for sale, writing paper, shoe polish, toothpaste and toothbrushes, soap, etc., were relinquished in great quantities to the NSFO for free distribution, in order to come across as “more persuasive” with it…. He was meant to and had to deliver his findings for promotion. He watched over virtually all the officers; even generals were not excluded. It was self-evident that he surveilled the activities of us chaplains…. The belief in victory was convulsively adhered to in all imaginable ways. Lies? Truth? Neither whatsoever [Keinerlei]! I will never forget, a high-ranking general who traveled from village to village in the French back area [Etappe]. He did not depict the situation as rosy, but in the end, he professed a belief in the coming miracle. Novel General Staff statistics. A high-ranking General posturing as an NSFO!...81

The OKW issued several more restrictions in the summer of 1944, as the Allied armies made inroads after the successful Normandy invasion and the Red Army continued to advance on the Eastern front. These latest decrees occurred simultaneously with the dispersion of the NSFOs through the ranks of the armed forces. That the use of NSFOs peaked with the new limitations on priests could not have been coincidence, and

80 KMBA 148/III 5, June 9, 1945. 81 KMBA 148/III 5, 28 September 1945. Werthmann’s suspicions about the NSFO is confirmed by scholarship on its purpose and activities. See Volker R. Berghahn, “NSDAP und ‘Geistige Führung’ der Wehrmacht” in Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 17 (1969), 7-71; Robert L. Quinnett, “The German Army Confronts the NSFO” in the Journal of Contemporary History 13/1 (January 1978), 53-64; Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army; and Arne W.G. Zoepf, Wehrmacht zwischen Tradition und Ideologie: der NS- Führungsoffiziere im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt am Main and New York: P. Lang, 1988).

171 Werthmann’s musings reflect this. The first decree, dated to June 1944, discharged the

Catholic priests, deacons, and seminarians from the officer reserve corps.82 It is unclear how many men this might have affected – priests were supposed to be, according to OKH stipulations, either chaplains or serving as medical orderlies, neither of which carried officer rankings, although the reality was that several priests, perhaps more, had ended up in full military service.83 Werthmann remembered that this newest decree was not received well even by the OKW, which had previously had no problems passing all manner of anti-Christian regulations. But this latest actually hurt the army more than it helped, because it was seen widely, by commanders and soldiers, as an abnegation of

“valuable military material,” something badly needed in the summer of 1944.84 The decision to release these men from officer ranks preceded two additional OKW decrees, the first of which stated that clerics who held ecclesiastical offices were no longer subject to conscription, the second of which declared that any priest who had quit his studies before his theological exams could not be conscripted. With this, Werthmann notes, “the further conscription of priests was, in practice, completely suspended. Even for work service or service in the Volkssturm, priests were no longer expressly used.”85

82 KMBA SW 1052/IX, OKH secret decree, August 25, 1944, referencing an earlier decree from June 11, 1944. 83 This happened according to the terms of the Reichskonkordat’s appendix, which states that all students studying philosophy and theology, and all seminarians, were free from military service and its attendant exercises except in the case of general mobilization. In October 1939, not long after the fall of Poland, the OKW clarified that all seminarians and students of theology preparing for the priesthood who had not yet been ordained to the level of sub-deacon [i.e. those considered to be minor clerics] were eligible for full military service “if they cannot be used in the medical service.” See KMBA SW 1052/IX, copy of copy, OKW Berlin, Bericht betr. Heranziehung von römisch-katholischen Geistlichen und Theologiestudierenden zum aktiven Wehrdienst (geheim; nur zum vertraulichen Gebrauch), October 14, 1939. Also included in Priester in Uniform, 16-19. The subdeacon level is explained in Chapter 2, pg 1, n. 3. 84 KMBA SW 1006/VI, July 3, 1945. 85 KMBA SW 1052/IX, no date given. The Volkssturm was a kind of home guard, or people’s militia, formed within Germany in the last months of the war for the purpose of defending the Reich against invading armies.

172 Werthmann speculated on this at length, because for all intents and purposes, the decrees went counter to the country’s need of bodies at the front – a need that, precisely, had driven the regime earlier to insist on the ability to conscript priests and seminarians.

What had precipitated the about-face, and so late in the war? He speculated sardonically that it could have been “courtesy,” or maybe simply desire that priests be shut out of assignments having any bearing on “Volk and Fatherland.” He admitted that there was the perception in religious circles at home, evidently supported by the Party, that the terror and chaos caused by the continual air raids necessitated the presence of priests, with their calming influence as stalwart spiritual pillars and clerics – by providing for the needs of civilians, the Party realized, it could simultaneously keep priests out of the army.

A sympathetic OKH officer, Alfred Weidemann, Edelmann’s successor (Edelmann had been transferred to the front in October 1943), revealed the likely motivation for the Party to Werthmann. Weidemann confided that he had connections to the resistance circles that planned the July 1944 bomb plot.86 Weidemann explained that the Party designed the decrees to be a “heavy blow against the hated priestlings. In a letter from the Party chancellery to the OKW, it was stated that priests of both denominations had forfeited the right, through their behavior during the war, to participate in the decisive existential battle for the German Volk.” Werthmann remembered that Weidemann “was appalled by this kind of proceeding.”87 What precisely their behavior had been to merit the punishment was not specified, though one may presume two potential and interconnected clarifications: the OKW viewed priests in uniform as untrustworthy, given the continual

86 This fascinating bit of information was revealed by Weidemann in conversation with Werthmann on July 25, 1944, a mere five days after the attempted assassination of Hitler, when Weidemann’s life was in great danger; Werthmann evidently told no one of his involvement at the time. See KMBA SW 1019 SW/VII, notes. 87 KMBA SW 1052/IX, no date. Emphasis added.

173 breaches in regulations because of the diminishing number of chaplains, and the OKW felt that priests were not patriotic enough. Weidemann’s shock can be attributed to the decision to forego entirely the use of these men; Werthmann’s reaction, not that dissimilar, is more ambivalent. His indignation that the chaplains and other priests and seminarians were somehow less than loyal to Germany reveals a fierce nationalism that underscores a devotion to his country, a devotion that blinded him to what was being done in its name.

Moreover, in the same set of notes, Werthmann contended that the Party attempted an even more thoroughgoing removal of priests in the Wehrmacht when they tried to transfer forcibly those priests who had already been conscripted into reserve units. This would have removed them from all active fronts and placed them firmly in combatant units not yet called into action. One could speculate about the motivation for such a move using the same arguments advanced for the other 1944 decrees, ranging from a feeling that priests would be more useful for the war-stricken home front to the determination to rid army units of men who might have been advancing a subversive, anti-Nazi ideology that was contributing to the collapse of morale. Whatever the reason,

Werthmann explained that the plan ultimately failed “in the face of passive resistance from the OKW, which could not accept it [as a responsible plan] to send this cadre of valuable manpower back home, in view of the tense overall situation and the sheer mass of men involved.”88 Again, such passive resistance from a group of men who had accepted Hitler’s strategy without questioning it for most of the war would have been almost unheard of at an earlier point in time. Although Werthmann did not substantiate his claim with evidence in the form of a letter or a name, he himself felt that such passive

88 KMBA SW 1052/IX, no date.

174 resistance thwarted the Party’s attempt (likely driven by Bormann), which otherwise might have led to the presence of priests and seminarians in uniform decreasing much more quickly than it did during the last year of fighting.

Werthmann does mention an exception to the military’s hostility towards Catholic priests that he felt was, even if dormant, still ever-present. Karl Edelmann, the

Department Chief in the OKH, was “a true friend of the Wehrmacht chaplaincy.” He was responsible for developing the system of pastoral care in ways that “only he could,” presumably due to his position within the OKH, and he “gave a shape to the chaplaincy that held amazingly well in the years of harder tribulation after 1942.”89 Having held a relatively minor position within the OKH, Edelmann is a difficult figure to follow through any historiography outside of those few texts dealing with the history of the military chaplaincy. In September 1943 he was transferred from his position within the

OKH, and by October he led an infantry division in Norway. In one of the few surviving reflections written during the war, Werthmann was uncharacteristically emotional about

Edelmann’s transfer, revealing the depth of their relationship as well as the degree of trust and (mutual?) dependency between the two: “Major-General Edelmann gave his farewell address today [1 October 1943]…. The father, organizer, and custodian of our armed forces chaplaincy for the last three and a half years is leaving us. There is no one who can replace him in the sense of his campaigning on behalf of the chaplaincy. He established and strengthened it.”90

One can only guess at Edelmann’s motives for committing himself so tirelessly to the interests of both chaplaincies, for he defended the interests of the Protestant chaplains

89 KMBA SW 1002/VI, June 1, 1945. 90 KMBA SW 1019/VII, October 1, 1943 (copy).

175 as well as the Catholics91. But that he was committed to its existence is unquestionable.

He was instrumental, according to Werthmann, in establishing the supradenominational services discussed above as well as in securing permission for chaplains to conduct front- line seminars during the first two years of the war. These Frontlehrgänge, most of which occurred between 1941 and 1943, were meant primarily to be training seminars for incoming chaplains, although it also was an obvious opportunity for chaplains already serving in the army to meet for the space of two days and exchange stories about their experiences – an OKH decree from February 1942 described the seminars explicitly in this way.92 Each seminar would be led by more advanced chaplains, and would be conducted according to denomination. Their occurrence slowed significantly after 1942 much to the consternation of the chaplains themselves, when the lack of incoming chaplains coupled with mounting military losses made the situation too precarious for such seminars to continue occurring with any regulation.93 But before that point, they were hugely successful, and took place on all fronts that engaged German soldiers: from

France to the Soviet Union, from Norway to Greece.

The chaplaincy structured the seminars in such a way that they unfolded like a two-day religious retreat or conference, with their division of time and suggested curriculum indicative of military (OKH) influence and efficiency. Each seminar was to address the significance of pastoral care and elaborate on the most important elements of such care, share ideas about giving sermons and how to approach supradenominational

91 May, Interkonfessionalismus, 179, 260, 343. Edelmann was himself Protestant. 92 KMBA 152/III 8, OKH decree, February 1942. 93 Werthmann cites the October 1942 decree, that announced the termination of new chaplains in the army, as also putting to an end plans for the continuation of seminars on a broad scale past 1942. See KMBA SW 958/III, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, June 20, 1945. Chaplains’ and other soldiers’ reactions to these Frontlehrgänge will be discussed in the following chapter.

176 services, and include various addresses about experiences including service in field hospitals, relationships between chaplains and military officers and superiors, the

“patriotic” activities of pastoral care, and the distribution of religious writings. The OKH suggested the allocation of forty-five minutes to answer the question, “What do the troops expect from pastoral care?”, to be engaged by “an appropriate officer.”94

Rarkowski and Werthmann attended some of the seminars, the former present for one in East Prussia in March 1942, the latter attending Eastern-front seminars in the spring of 1944. Minutes were kept for each seminar, copies of which the supervisory chaplain of the division received, as did the field bishop’s office. Werthmann made notes about his personal experiences at seminars held over a week in Biala Podlaska and

Orscha in June 1944, remarking that a soccer game had begun between the 4th Army and the 3rd (Panzer) Army in the area, and soldiers had warmly welcomed the participation of chaplains. Officers in his presence had praised the chaplains of their units, and he commented that the activities of the chaplain and those of the NSFO were

“unambiguously demarcated,” and that in practice there were “no difficulties” between the two.95 Werthmann declared that his meeting with the chaplains who attended these seminars in 1944 gave him renewed energy to continue with his duties, for “when I had these brave priests before my eyes, who have come away from the battles in the East, away from encounters… with Bolshevism, I know that my job in Berlin, which is often difficult, has meaning and sense. For it makes me happy to have committed myself to this with life and limb. I vow to go on, even into a dark, perhaps very difficult future.”96

94 KMBA 152/III 8, February 1942. 95 BA-MA RH 15/280, p. 219, report, June 25, 1944. 96 KMBA 152/III 8, handwritten reflection by Werthmann, June 15, 1944.

177 Edelmann also played a central role in the drawing up of the various regulations for chaplains and priests wearing the army uniform: both the original Bulletin and its addendum were issued through his office. He drew up a list of pastoral duties, undated and seemingly attached to the Bulletin’s 1941 addendum, and without making a final, official copy; most of the points are original and do not seem to have been integrated into any other official regulations. He addressed specifically those chaplains with supervisory authority - those chaplains of higher rank - and the lack of date plus the informal format of the notes suggest that he probably delivered his remarks orally, likely to chaplains attending a front-line seminar, and probably to both denominations. The broad array of factors that he included in his remarks reveal a real dedication to and concern for furthering the position of the chaplain within the army, stating close to the beginning that

“even in this war, pastoral care is an essential aid to military leadership, to educate men to be enthusiastic to the end, even to the point of surrendering one’s own life… and so to contribute to the strengthening of spiritual deportment among German soldiers at the front.”97 Once again, Edelmann’s notes demonstrate that religious sentiment was to be co-opted and utilized to bolster the morale of soldiers at the front, an obvious concession to the power of spirituality, and the men who represented it, during times of war.

His concern for the chaplain was not based purely on religious considerations.

Pastoral care, according to Edelmann, was a necessity for men at war. Reflecting his commitment to this basic tenet, he dedicated a lot of space to delineating ways to make pastoral care more meaningful, both for the priests involved but especially for soldiers.

97 BA-MA RH 15/282, “Wesen und Aufgabe der Feldseelsorge,” signed by Edelmann, undated (likely written sometime in mid-1941, given the date references within the text and the lack of any direct mention of or allusion to the war in the east, with the Soviet Union). All the following direct quotes from Edelmann are taken from this document.

178 Catering to soldiers’ spiritual needs was not simply about satisfying their desire for religious meaning; it was about providing them with the mental support to continue in the task at hand, which was fighting a war on behalf of German civilization. The most effective way to accomplish this was for the chaplain to develop “a soldierly, militant personality, passionately devoted to his task and ready for any situation with inexhaustible commitment from his entire person, even to the end.” Even more succinctly, the chaplain’s political loyalties were to be beyond reproach: “that the chaplain possess boundless love for the Fatherland and accepts the current state and

National Socialism without any inner reservation is a self-evident requirement.” In this sense, Edelmann promoted the Nazi cause, integrating the chaplaincy seamlessly into the exercise of maintaining morale.

It was furthermore the chaplain’s responsibility to draw the soldiers to divine services, and here the layman was full of advice on how priests were to conduct themselves, stating that their purpose would only be achieved if they abandoned orthodox preaching and stood “as comrade[s] and counselor[s] at the side of [their] comrades.”

Mass was to be neither too long nor too informal, and ideally not simply inserted into the soldiers’ free time. If masses were poorly attended, it was the priest’s fault, and he needed to work to remedy it. Edelmann even had guidance to share about sermonizing, with the expected emphasis on a divinely sanctioned war and a Führer sent from on high:

Every sermon must preserve close contact with the troops, it must be popularly [volkstümlich] tailored to the men and must preserve the soldierly character absolutely. Religious lectureship, a dogmatic reading-aloud of a text, and sermons given in outdated doctrinal style will always be rejected by the troops. Every sermon must be adapted to the outlook of the group of soldiers and attuned to the practical life of a front-soldier. It must sermonize the soldierly virtues of courage, bravery, and readiness for action as desired by the divine world order. It must

179 situate this war over German living space and the rewarding struggle as sanctioned by God. It must depict the Führer as a man blessed by God.

Edelmann’s notes demonstrate a firm commitment to the ideology espoused by the

National Socialists, and how deeply it had permeated the OKH. The religious language and imagery, and to the way he described the goals of the regime as ordained by God, testify to the ease with which Germans in the army reconciled events within the military sphere of operations with religious sentiment. As the following chapters demonstrate,

Catholic (Christian) priests and soldiers performed this negotiation, too, perhaps even unconsciously, as “‘belief’ in Hitler, in an increasingly religious, metaphysical sense,” seemed to rival directly, if not replace, the individual’s belief in God.98

Edelmann wrote at length about the attitudes of soldiers towards religion, the situation of the Luftwaffe vis à vis the chaplaincy, and the use of supradenominational services at the front. He divided army soldiers into three types: the small number of those who rejected pastoral care completely; the slightly larger number of “positive believers” who sought it out, and who were more often Catholic than Protestant; and the greatest number, those who were “disinterested in the face of” pastoral care. This last group displayed a mostly positive attitude towards participating in divine services, but “required a certain animus and incentive” to do so, an incentive to be provided by the chaplain.

Edelmann also reminded priests, perhaps as a warning, that “the contemporary soldier has gone through the Hitler Youth, the SA, and the labor service, and is no longer uncritical

98 This is very apparent in earlier historiography, too; in Bartov’s Hitler’s Army, many of the soldiers’ letters directly quoted in the text include the use of religious and political (Nazi) rhetoric, often side by side: “May God allow the German people to find now the peace of mind and strength which would make it into the instrument needed by the Führer to protect the West from ruin, for what the Asiatic hordes will not destroy, will be annihilated by Jewish hatred and revenge” (169); “The Lord must see and help us once more out of this predicament” (written in August 1944; 170); “A thousand-year Reich is going to the grave… God will help us… No one in the world is more blessed than our Volk, which even today sends its roots deep into the earth” (this last from a theologian; 174).

180 and without certain prejudices towards priests.” It was the closest that anyone in the OKH came to recognizing the latent hostility of some of the younger soldiers for institutionalized religion, an indirect acknowledgement that Nazi indoctrination both at home and on the frontline was effective. Concerning the Luftwaffe, Edelmann encouraged supervisory chaplains to ensure that divine services were available to those members stationed in their army districts, and that this did not contradict the November

1939 decree, which had abolished pastoral care within the ranks of the Luftwaffe.

Edelmann heavily promoted supradenominational services, which is not surprising since he had a direct involvement in gaining permission for their use in the first place, in January 1941.99 He stressed that such masses “have found special approval among the troops,” and that the commander-in-chief (which at this time would have been von Brauchitsch), declared that the “cornerstone of pastoral service in the field will always be the celebration of mass, which corresponds to the inner unity of the troops who, as a rule, are not separated according to confession. Rather, the service is held for the entire community.” According to Edelmann’s statements, troops gravitated naturally, even enthusiastically, to supradenominational services. Through these kinds of group activities, the cohesion and “inner peace” among the soldiers would be best preserved.

Whether it was before, during, or after a battle, “the troop belongs together… without distinction of denomination. Just as the troop steps into battle, so they will step before

God, also…. The interest of the troops in these supradenominational services is unquestionably greater than those of purely denominational devotions.” The supradenominational service was the best way to approach soldiers as well, because it was this activity best achieved “the most cohesive participation of the group.” And while

99 May accounts for his involvement in the process. See Interkonfessonalismus, esp. 153, 260.

181 Edelmann and, by extension, the OKH may have been interested in using such services for military reasons – it is undeniable that such participation in an activity at the front would have presented an atmosphere that bolstered morale and solidarity, and given soldiers another foundation upon which to foment a hatred for Bolshevism – for men like

Werthmann, desperate to safeguard the influence of priests in the army and guarantee religious outlets for Catholic soldiers, such motivations, while relevant, were ultimately secondary. Bolshevism was to be fought at all costs, of course, but in the final reckoning, what mattered was that the outlet was there at all, in order to preserve souls for God.

Is it surprising that Werthmann, who offered opinions about the OKW, OKH,

NSFOs and leaders like Keitel, Reinecke and Edelmann, did not dwell on his own personal opinions of the Führer, nor on specific elements of Nazi ideology? He had worked within its scope for ten years by the time he found himself interned in 1945; he may have been saving such reflections for a later period of time (and there are some scant reflections from the 1950s and ‘60s to support this), or he may have been protecting himself from incrimination. He did, however, make three observations in May and June

1945 about the connection between Nazism and Christianity and the former’s remarkable and, in some ways, inevitable breakdown. The first came in mid-May:

A people can certainly improvise a lot and our own people is richer than many others in the ability to improvise. But the spiritual formation of a people cannot be improvised. In my opinion, National Socialism broke down here because it attempted to annul the essential, valuable elements of its own historically established spiritual formation. With this, National Socialism obliterated the noblest element of the Volk and dug its own grave.100

The second took up the same themes a few weeks later: “Germany is – from a historical viewpoint – a Christian nation. The renunciation of God… was a grievous catastrophe for

100 KMBA SW 997/VI, May 15, 1945.

182 our people. For us Germans, whose historical development is formed significantly on

Christianity, this de-Christianization signifies the dissolution of the basis of our existence and the destruction of our being.”101 And at the end of June, Werthmann reflected,

Why did Nazism struggle repeatedly against the Church with every available means? It [Nazism] did appear to be anchored in the entire Volk and certainly didn’t fear for itself in the face of the small gaggle that avowed itself to Christ. The answer to this question can only run as follows: it is the malediction and the fate of the blasphemous spirit, that it must resort repeatedly to violence and persecution, almost against its own intelligent will; within itself, it is too weak to battle its opponent with spiritual weapons, and so it is compelled again and again to make ready its opponent for the Cross and to thrust him into the grave – a grave that will always be glorious.102

Each of the three quotes is layered with judgment and condemnation; this was not a man who sat by idly and refused to think about or engage with Nazism, or ignored it by burying himself in his work. Each quote also evidences Werthmann’s own understanding of how he reconciled being German and being Catholic, and what had led ultimately to

Nazism’s collapse.

It should come as no surprise that Werthmann, a man of God, perceived that the essence of the conflict between Nazism and Catholicism was one of control: in his mind as well as in the minds of his religious peers, the attempt by Nazism to rip Christianity out of the German people was what led to the former’s downfall, for part of the German identity was being Christian, a sentiment that, likely, many of his Protestant counterparts would share. What is less clear is the extent to which the leading members of the Nazi

Party who exhibited anti-Christian tendencies succeeded in rooting Christianity out of

Germany. It is a common chorus among the spiritual leadership that Nazism targeted and persecuted institutionalized religion. There is a lengthy historiography on the subject that

101 KMBA SW 997/VI, May 31, 1945. 102 KMBA SW 997/VI, June 30, 1945.

183 proves that the Party never trusted the churches, and at times it arrested individual members and made examples of them – primarily as resisters, though, not as men of the

Church.103 The Party clearly did not classify the churches as ideal allies, even when the churches indicated that they would raise no objections to the most significant element of the Nazi Weltanschauung, antisemitism, and the concurrent discrimination against and later murder of the Jews. Nazism, for Werthmann, was essentially anti-Catholic; but its anti-Catholicism was hardly the core of Nazi ideology in the way that Werthmann describes. The racist elements of its rhetoric, the social Darwinist theories and ideas of

Lebensraum, and the murder of Jews, Werthmann subsumed these elements beneath, on the one hand, Nazism’s fight against the great enemy of the Church, Bolshevism, and, on the other hand, the regime’s increasingly obvious hostility for institutional religion during the war. Upon the subjects of biological-racist ideology, imperialist conquest, murderous economic exploitation of conquered territories, and the extermination of “undesirables,”

Werthmann was absolutely silent. This is a silence that was shared by the majority of his colleagues, both military and secular, Protestant and Catholic.

Historians have tried to explain this silence, especially that of the Vatican’s, in both apologetic and pejorative tones. For some, the silence was an indication of acquiescence, or at least passive toleration; for others, it was cautious self-defense and self-preservation while more clandestine attempts were made to aid and protect Jews, and other victims of Nazi racial policy, from annihilation at the hands of the Nazis. But I feel the answer lies in the wording, and deeper meaning, of Werthmann’s third reflection,

103 These include the Bavarian Jesuit priest Rupert Mayer, who was one of the few who spoke loudly and clearly against Nazism from the beginning; the well-known Protestant theologians Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who was hanged for his role in the July 1944 assassination attempt); and seven Austrian priests who refused to be conscripted, six of whom were executed as a consequence.

184 which did not address the silences of the Church, but rather Nazism’s seemingly inexhaustible enmity for Christianity. By focusing on the problem from this angle, he did not discuss the Church’s active role in appeasing the Nazi Party, which began with the signing of the Concordat in 1933; instead, he discussed constant Nazi hostility and located this in the movement’s rejection of God, a rejection that inevitably led to violence as a means of both conviction and defense.

In all likelihood, Werthmann’s obstinate expression in early May 1945 during an interview, that “if Germany had won this war, the entire Church in Germany would have been dissolved… and that all clergymen, both Catholic and Protestant, would have been liquidated,” would have come to pass in some form.104 Most would have accepted

Nazism, even if only superficially; the few who held out would have been executed. The twelve-year Third Reich exhibited an inability to compromise with any institution that it could not pull entirely into its own movement – other political parties, the legal and education systems, the medical profession, youth groups, even the army were all ultimately subjected to either dissolution or the process of “coordination,” or

Gleichschaltung. The churches would have been no exception. But such statements obscure the more fundamental fact, that intelligent and devoted men like Werthmann chose to compromise with this regime for the sake of the souls of people who were in need of spiritual care. It was less important to make a moral stand against demonstrated criminality and increasing discrimination and murder during the war than it was to keep one’s head down and continue to serve daily in whatever capacity was available. In this way, Werthmann and his chaplains constructed and maintained a functional military

104 The interview was conducted with Werthmann, Dohrmann and Münchmeyer together, by one Gregor Zimmer, presumably with the American infantery division that interned them in Niederalteich. Copies were made in both English and German. See KMBA SW 1009/VII (Nr. 1), no date given.

185 chaplaincy during the Third Reich, despite increasingly severe limitations on its activities.

186 4. Men of God Among Army Soldiers

On the last day of August 1939, Karl Goldmann was one of approximately 200 seminarians who reported for duty in the barracks at Fulda, close to his seminary, along with thousands of other recruits. He recalled that the officers and NCOs who trained them took whatever opportunities that presented themselves over the next several weeks to harass the seminarians in their care, ranging from the minor unpleasantness of being given the most temperamental horses to ride, to the major spiritual obstacle of having duties and drills to perform every Sunday morning that effectively kept them from attending mass at a local church. At the end of his training, which lasted approximately seven weeks, Goldmann and eleven other seminarians volunteered for active combat on the Eastern front, preferring battlefield conditions to continued harassment with their unit.1

They were stationed not far from Hochwalde (today Wysoka, Poland), with several different groups of Germans: according to Goldmann’s problematic autobiography, other army soldiers as well as SS and Waffen-SS units.2 When he and his fellow seminarians refused to take the oath of loyalty administered to all soldiers because,

1 Pater Gereon Goldmann OFM, Tödliche Schatten – Tröstendes Licht (Bergisch Gladback, ND- Freundeskreis Pater Gereon, 1990), 20-1. All information from Goldmann’s biography will be taken from this original German version unless otherwise indicated. 2 Much of Goldmann’s story remains incredible to the point of impossible, but this is among the most troubling points. According to Bernd Wegner, the first SS unit to see the battlefield was a VT-Division (Verfügungstruppe – see Chapter Two, 40-1), which was put into action in October 1939. Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933-1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1982),126-7. Three Totenkopf divisions under Theodor Eicke were also deployed as Einsatzgruppen behind the German 10th Army, in Upper Silesia, as early as 7 September 1939. These Totenkopf divisions later became the dreaded Waffen-SS Totenkopfdivisionen, or Death’s Head divisions, responsible for a great part of the slaughter of Jews on the Eastern front. See Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death’s Head Division, 1933-1945 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977), 37. The Waffen-SS was not yet an independent military organization in the way that Goldmann’s memoirs suggest; the name itself did not come into usage until sometime in November or December 1939. Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten, 127-29.

187 he recalled, it made no reference to God, an SS officer intervened and transferred them into a SS police division, using the proper oath of loyalty – that is, one that referenced

God. Here the seminarians operated as radio dispatchers (Funker), which Goldmann describes as “a much more pleasant and easy duty than [combat] with the company” without a trace of irony.3 Not surprisingly, the harassment continued in the ranks of the

SS, culminating on Christmas Eve when an SS-major read a Christmas order from

Himmler to the assembled unit. The order instructed members of the SS, “the elite company [die Elite-truppe]”, to perform their duty to Führer and Fatherland by begetting children, in order to renew and increase “the flow of [German] blood.” The order assured the listening men that eager maidens awaited them, that the state would assume all costs of resultant pregnancies, and that those men who became fathers would be given a reward for each child.4

When the major had read the order, he asked for the opinions of the seminarians in the room, confident that their responses to such a command would be negative and reveal them as disloyal to and unfit for the SS uniform. Goldmann, who had become the

3 Goldmann, Tödliche Schatten, 28-9. Again, this is a significant point of contention with Goldmann’s memory: the oaths used by both the army and the SS made explicit reference to God; what oath he claims to have been given, which he refused because it swore “on the honor of German blood,” is not clear. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that he would have been transferred as “punishment” from the army into the SS, as the translated edition of his autobiography describes. See Goldmann, The Shadow of His Wings, translated by Benedict Leutenegger (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 37-8. The original German tradition leaves this event very ambiguous, noting simply that a commander intervened after his refusal of the army oath and said that he was “free to remain in this SS unit or to transfer back to the army.” Moreover, the commander assured him and his fellow seminarians that “as member of the SS police division” they would be free to continue their religious duties. The SS police divisions, the “Einsatz- gruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD,” drew its members from the Gestapo, the Criminal Police, and the Security Service of the SS. Its first units to see action during the war crossed the Polish border on September 11, 1939; they joined ranks with the SS VT-troops. Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938-1942 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), 14, 33-36. 4 Goldmann, Tödliche Schatten, 30-31. This “Christmas order” was infamous within the ranks of the army by November of that year, arousing “odium and indignation” and endless protests with which the OKH then had to deal. The affair is related in Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Das Heer und Hitler: Armee und nationalsozialistische Regime 1933-40 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1969), 459-62.

188 unofficial leader of the group due to his outspoken manner and quick thinking, responded with something like a sermon, quoting first Tacitus in Latin, moving through Caesar and the Middle Ages, and ending with the contemporary situation:

And now today there are those who designate themselves as elite and as “true Germans,” who command us to sire children for which we are awarded a premium, and by doing so debase us to the level of breeding cattle. Never in the history of the German people has something so egregious been expected of the young maids of our country!5

Following his heated speech, he recalled that

such a riot broke out among the men that the major and his adjutant left the hall without a word…. We seminarians prepared ourselves to walk the seven kilometers to the nearby village of Jordan [Jordanow, Poland] for Christmas midnight services. With us walked some dozen soldiers through the snowy paths and bitter cold. The loveable old priest was initially aghast to see his church full of SS uniforms. When he heard the particulars, he was tickled pink [hocherfreut].6

Goldmann’s wartime experience in its entirety is an anomalous case, often implausible and incredible – from the personal assurances of Himmler himself that he would be free to fulfill his religious obligations, to arranging a brief meeting with Pope

Pius XII in January 1944 in order to receive special permission to be ordained ahead of schedule – but the above incident shares something with the some 17,000 priests and seminarians like him who were pulled from their seminaries, classrooms, or orders and plunked into an army uniform: they were not accepted by their comrades and the officers above them as “normal” German soldiers. The 550 Catholic priests who served as chaplains were not soldiers in the same sense, either; as chaplains, a several different sets of rules governed them, delineating their prescribed sphere of duties as well as long lists of regulations pertaining to what they could not do, as described in the previous chapter.

But both within and without the chaplaincy, priests and seminarians who served in the

5 Goldmann, Tödliche Schatten, 32. 6 Goldmann, Tödliche Schatten, 32.

189 German army during World War II shared the experience of wearing the uniform for

Volk and Fatherland – and Führer. These men self-identified as devout Catholics who had chosen the priesthood; some were already ordained, others were at various stages of preparing for ordination. All were liable for conscription under the terms of the

Reichskonkordat of 1933, though it came as a surprise to many at the time.7 And because, according to the terms of the concordat, they were generally stationed within the medical service, a weapon was not part of their uniform, and authorities did not consider them for promotion through the military hierarchy. This distinguished them even more from their

Protestant counterparts, who could and did bear weapons and work their way up the ranks.8

They were also in this unique position for other reasons. Like other devout

Christian soldiers, they found themselves having to serve two masters, God and Caesar.

Hitler was not the first Caesar that would estrange the members of the Catholic Church with his anti-Catholic behavior, but Catholics, including priests, nevertheless rendered obedience to him as the lawful head of state. As chaplains, their uniforms were slightly altered to maintain a physical differentiation. As men who had become accustomed to having religious service and activity form a major part of their daily routine, their determination to attend or celebrate masses whenever possible set them apart from soldiers disinclined to practice religion, particularly away from the frontlines. They rarely concealed, therefore, their identities as priests, and they served both as targets for those soldiers who were openly anti-Catholic or anti-clerical, and as beacons of consolation of

7 This is an indication that the “secret appendix” detailing general mobilization and its effects for priests was, in fact, kept secret fairly well until 1939. See KMBA SW 632 – 633/III, Nachlass Rudolf Peifer, undated interview. 8 See Priester in Uniform: Seelsorger, Ordensleute, und Theologen als Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt (Augsburg: Pattloch, 1994), 9.

190 which fighting men made use during the brutal fighting and when they were sick or dying. Because of their spiritual vocation, those around them expected them to hold themselves to higher moral standards, as can be seen by the above episode with

Goldmann and the SS major; their fellow soldiers as well as families back home used them as pillars of support and guidance.9

But as much as this substantial group should be considered special for these reasons, priests and seminarians who served also shared, in nearly every sense of the word, the experiences of a horrific, vicious, and criminal war with the men of their units.

They slept and ate with soldiers, they trained with soldiers, they marched with soldiers, and they experienced heady victory and abject defeat. They aided the sick and the dying, they wrote letters home to their loved ones, and corresponded with families of fallen comrades. Some even found themselves bearing weapons and involved in fighting on the

Eastern front. Some witnessed atrocities or heard of them firsthand (none owned to having participated in them); a few acknowledged after the war, or in diaries, that they knew about deportations and concentration camps, though most cited Dachau, the

German concentration camp that opened in 1933. That those who heard confessions might have learned more about the crimes of German soldiers during the war will never be known; even if the power of the seal of the confessional were not in place, it can hardly be expected that these men would admit to knowing of crimes whose perpetrators they appeared to excuse.

How did these men relate to and live with the soldiers around them? How did they interact with civilian populations, non-Christians, and non-Germans? What role did

9 According to Goldmann’s memoirs, he was not punished for his lecturing of the SS major, though he was eventually transferred back to the army when he explained very clearly in a written statement that he would not give up his religious faith. The event will be addressed below, p. 21.

191 religion play in their daily lives as men in uniform? How did they confront the anti-

Christian SS and the NSFOs meant to rival the work of chaplains? What were their experiences of war on the various fronts? In answering these questions, the ability of

Catholic priests and seminarians to engage with and understand the men of Hitler’s army becomes clearly unique. Their pre-war education, often rigorous and more extensive than that of the average German Landser, and their ability to reconcile faith with national duty equipped them with frameworks and tools to confront and deal with the war’s horror in exceptional ways. The following chapter will dissect and analyze how this experience affected the beliefs and values of these men: how they understood the war and their roles in it, how they reconciled Nazism and Christianity, how and to what extent their conception of morality changed. This chapter will focus more exclusively on how these chaplains, other priests working outside the chaplaincy, and seminarians interacted with others, both military and civilian, German and non-German, Catholic and non-Catholic.

Using letters, journals, official chaplains’ reports, evaluations by military and religious superiors, and postwar memoirs and interviews, the experiences of these men and the world in which they lived will be reconstructed as fully as possible to show that, although soldiers and officers consistently saw chaplains, priests and seminarians as a “group apart,” they were integral to the war effort because they influenced and supported the morale of the men around them, both actively and passively. They served with as much enthusiasm and determination in the Wehrmacht as non-religious German soldiers, even citing as motivation some of the same ideological goals as the regime they later claimed to have abhorred. Moreover, while their particular religious vocation kept them from being accepted as normal soldiers, this same vocation did not help them to withstand

192 certain elements of the Nazi Weltanschauung, and ultimately they reacted like other soldiers to the hard reality around them: with indifference, with reluctance, with resignation, but rarely with protest such as what Goldmann offered, and never with sustained, open resistance. Rather, their dedication to serving the Christian German men provided them with an excuse to serve that blinded them, for the most part, to what that service really signified.

On April 15, 1942, Pallottine priest Franz Reinisch reported for duty one day later than his mobilization papers had ordered.10 The staff sergeant who received him noted that his behavior indicated that he attached no importance to being a soldier, to which

Reinisch responded, “I would attach importance to it if I were serving another regime.”11

The sergeant promptly had him arrested and taken to Berlin to stand trial, where he refused pointblank to recognize the authority of the Nazi regime and, consequently, would not perform the oath of loyalty. The court sentenced him to death, and he was decapitated on August 21, 1942. The death notice that his family and friends circulated in

Germany declared defiantly, “He fell in the battle against the anti-Christian power of our time! May his sacrifice be a wake-up call to the renewal and internalization in Catholic

10 The Pallottines were founded as Societas Apostolatus Catholici by Roman priest Vincent Pallotti in 1835, and are an important part of the Union of Catholic Apostolate (also founded by Pallotti). Their mission is to increase collaboration among diocesan priests, male and female religious, and laity in order to fulfill more efficiently the apostolic tasks, in particular the expansion of Christianity. See Catholic University of America, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edition (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), Vol. 10, 808-10. 11 KMBA SW 1050/IX, Todesanzeige (death notice), no date but probably printed 1942, received by archive July 21, 1946. More information about Reinisch, including a biography and information about his arrest and execution, can be found in Heinrich Kreutzberg, Franz Reinisch: Ein Martyrer unserer Zeit (Limburg: Lahn Verlag, 1952). For an interesting theological-philosophical dissection of Reinisch’s motivations in rejecting the oath, see Wojciech Kordas, Mut zum Widerstand: Die Verweigerung des Fahneneids von P. Franz Reinisch als prophetischer Protest (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2002).

193 Germany!” Pope Pius XII himself reportedly said (presumably in private), “I don’t know whether I should mourn the death of this man or salute the courage of this hero.”12

Reinisch offers the contrast to the example of Goldmann, the latter who was far more representative of priests and seminarians when it came to conscription (though his case overall was not typical in the sense that he was consistently confrontational when faced with what he perceived to be challenges to his faith): by far, most of these men chose to work with the new system, not reject it entirely. Reinisch was one of an extremely small number of Catholics who refused to recognize the authority of the regime and serve in its army.13 Certainly the low number of conscientious objectors can be attributed partly to the regime’s vigorous persecution of those who dared to refuse the conscription order; it became evident very quickly that resisting one’s national duty to defend the Fatherland would be met with the harshest of disciplinary measures.14 But it is equally evident that priests and seminarians were no more likely, maybe even less likely, to object to serving in an army for religious reasons than were laymen; less likely because they had a personal investment in caring for the Christian souls engaged in battle, even

12 As quoted in a sermon given for the homecoming of the urn containing Father Reinisch’s remains, KMBA SW 1050/IX, May 1, 1946. 13 Gordon C. Zahn conducted a study more than forty years ago that found only seven Catholics in the Greater German Reich who could be considered as conscientious objectors – these were Reinisch; Josef Fleischer; Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in June 2007; Josef Mayr-Nusser, the Catholic Action leader of Austria; and three men associated with the religious community Christkönigsgesellschaft: Max Josef Metzger, Brother Maurus, and Brother Michael. See Gordon C. Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control (New York: Sheen and Ward, 1962), 55 n. Heinrich Missalla contradicts some of these names, pointing to unresolved discrepancies in more recent German-language historiography. Other names that he cites from Albrecht and Heidi Hartmann, Thomas Breuer, and Jakob Knab concerning Catholic conscientious objectors include Michael Lerpscher, Josef Ruf, Ernst Volkmann, and Richard Reitsamer. On one thing they all seem to agree: Josef Fleischer, from Freiburg, was the only survivor. Missalla, Für Gott, Führer, und Vaterland: Die Verstrickung der katholischen Seelsorge in Hitlers Krieg (München: Kösel, 1999), p. 228, n. 41. 14 See Manfred Messerschmidt and Wolfram Wette, Was damals Recht war: NS-Militär- und Strafjustiz im Vernichtungskrieg (Essen: Klartext, 1996). Messerschmidt and Wette found that roughly 300 “conscientious objectors” were executed during the war by military tribunals, almost the same number as those executed for the same crime, civilian and military, between 1907 and 1932. See p. 76.

194 unto death. Catholic priests and seminarians received their orders and reported for duty along with thousands of other Germans, with none but Reinisch daring to speak out against the criminal regime those orders served.

Most settled into their new situations as well as they could and hit their strides quickly, whether they were among the few inducted into the chaplaincy, or the masses who became part of the medical service. The distinction here is important. As Chapter

Three delineated, the OKW was concerned throughout the duration of the war to keep the number of active chaplains to an extreme minimum. Consequently, most priests and seminarians at advanced levels of study – 17,776 men, according to Werthmann’s own wartime statistics15 – served in the medical service as stretcher bearers, doctors’ assistants, and orderlies, and as such were forbidden by decree to minister to others as priests. The only exceptional circumstances were the approach of death, a special request from soldiers directly before or after an engagement, and other such unusual cases. Even here, a priest required permission to administer as such from the commander of the regiment, who gave his approval generally only if no other chaplain was available.16

Consequently, it was more difficult for them to continue their daily routine of celebrating or attending mass, given their rigorous training schedules, and they, more than chaplains, toiled side by side with the fighting soldiers on all fronts; they were “like missionaries, influencing their environment. These men went with their comrades into the horror of

15 KMBA SW 1052/IX, “Übersicht,” consisting of notes on loose paper made by Werthmann, April 1944. The number breaks down as follows: 6,218 priests (3,909 diocesan priests and 2,309 order priests); 6,439 students studying theology, including clerics (i.e. those who had received tonsure but had not yet been fully ordained; presumably this includes seminarians); 4,237 lay brothers; and 872 order novices. The lay brothers and novices were eligible for full military service, as were any theology students and seminarians who were not ordained to the level of subdeacon before the date of their conscription. See also Chapter Three, pg 39, n. 85. 16 See KMBA SW 1055/IX 4, Abschrift (geheim) der Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres, February 13, 1940, third provision, and KMBA SW 1055/IX 4, “Heranziehung von Soldaten zur Feldseelsorge,” excerpt from April 1, 1943.

195 battle, into the hopelessness of captivity, and into death.”17 Goldmann was the perfect example of those who cut corners when they could to maintain the deeply spiritual aspects of their civilian lives. Unlike Goldmann, most would remain in the soldier’s uniform until war’s end, or until they fell in battle. Very few transitioned into the chaplaincy.

It would be easy to assume that those priests who ended up outside the chaplaincy would have done everything possible to gain access to a position within the army that allowed them officially to minister to others as priests. And many did. Johann Georg

Schmutz, chaplain, corresponded with priests as well as seminarians who found themselves conscripted into medical companies or hospitals. He received several requests for aid in either finding a more permanent chaplain for individual units, or in gaining permission for another priest who had been conscripted to become a chaplain: “I have written many times to the field bishop already and received no answer… so I would like to ask you today, dear Father, if I might have some information: is it possible for me to pledge myself in order to be active in the army’s pastoral care system?” The same young man renewed his request a few months later, at the beginning of Advent.18 Another priest outside the chaplaincy wrote Schmutz, “I have now been with the army since June 1940, participated in the campaigns in France, Greece and Crete, and I believe I am equal to the task of serving as a chaplain. Is it possible to become a chaplain? Is there no possibility for you [to do something]? I would be so happy to hear from you about this matter.”19 A third, who was also writing on behalf of a friend, asked quite plainly, “Could you tell me

17 KMBA 1052/IX, draft entitled “Stellungnahme zu der Frage der Militärpflicht der Kleriker” by Georg Werthmann, January 19, 1952. 18 KMBA SW 767/III 12 (Bd 9), Akten Johann Georg Schmutz, handwritten letters from Rudolf Leeb (Loeb?), August 26, 1941 and 3rd Sunday of Advent (mid- to late-December) 1941. 19 KMBA SW 767/III 12 (Bd 9), Akten Schmutz, handwritten letter from B. Hebel, October 10, 1941.

196 what conditions and requirements govern one’s employment in the chaplaincy?... We are both of us now two years in military service, and I was ordained a priest in 1935, active in pastoral care until I was conscripted….”20

The value of these men as such, though, did not go unnoticed or was underestimated even if they remained active outside the chaplaincy, and military officers worked closely with chaplains to help find spiritual outlets for their soldiers. In an activity report detailing the year 1942, Egon Schmitt wrote, “with the permission of the general of the division, medical soldiers [who were priests] were occasionally allowed to help with pastoral care. The masses that were said by these medical soldiers in this region were not included [in official reports].”21 Dietrich von Hülsen, chaplain for the navy, wrote in a 1944 report that, “The perpetually growing number of wounded… keeps a lone priest completely occupied. Hence it is not possible at this time to conform to all the requirements. The only alleviation is the presence of two priests in the medical service, who in most cases give spiritual guidance and support to the dying.”22 This was a common problem; as Chapter Three suggested, there was a constant shortage of chaplains, and therefore of available priests who might have ministered to the soldiers, whereas in any given unit there could have been a number of priests forbidden to serve as priests.

The shortage was apparent as early as 1941, but by the end of the war, it was dire.

Chaplain Ludwig Wellmann was exasperated enough to mention in his last report before the war’s end, “Because the 211th infantry division was transformed into a

20 KMBA SW 767/III 12 (Bd 9), Akten Schmutz, handwritten letter from Huber Barthl, June 18, 1942. 21 KMBA SW 750/III, Akte Egon Schmitt, Tätigkeitsbericht, March 17, 1941. 22 KMBA SW 447/III, Akte Dietrich von Hülsen, Tätigkeitsbericht covering the period January 1 – March 31, 1944, undated.

197 Volksgrenadierdivision in November 1944, my position as division chaplain was cancelled. This decree from the Reichsführer-SS was strongly criticized by the soldiers.

The division commander and almost all of the officers strenuously deplored the breakdown of the chaplaincy.” He was able to stay and work with his division until

February 1945, when, despite the attempts of one of the staff officers to secure permission for him to stay with them, the decrees forced Wellmann to leave.23

Other chaplains who began their war experience as medical orderlies, like Hubert

Leuchter, recalled that there was no time to practice pastoral care, prohibition or no, and cited this as the reason for their desire to transfer: “As an orderly I stood in front of the operating table the entire day and night, for one had to care for the sick. There was simply no time for pastoral care. If someone asked for it, then naturally I granted his request, but one hardly ever asked. How was I supposed to function spiritually when I was assisting with an operation? Not possible.”24 Joseph Hoser also admitted to having no time to spare, particularly during so-called “battle periods” [Kampfzeiten], although he still was able to officiate at burials and, directly before action, say mass.25

23 KMBA SW 1006/VI, Seelsorgebericht covering the period January 1 – June 30, 1945, undated. As per the order above (see Ch. 3, pg. 31, fn. 62), which stated that no new chaplains would be placed within the ranks of the armed forces, Volksgrenadierdivisions were created in 1944 and consequently not provided with chaplains. 24 KMBA SW 543/III, Akte Hubert Leuchter, undated postwar interview. Martin G. Peschke conducted the interviews during the early summer of 1990 with able and willing veteran chaplains and priests who had been conscripted, in preparation for a collection of testimonies co-edited by the Catholic Military Bishop’s Office and Hans Jürgen Brandt, Mensch, was wollt ihr denen sagen?: katholische Feldseelsorge im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Augsburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1991). He interviewed a total of twenty-eight men, of which twenty-six were included in the published text. Some interviews also augmented the volume co-edited by the Catholic Military Bishop’s Office and Brandt, Priester in Uniform as well as the volume Christen im Krieg: Katholische Soldaten, Ärzte, und Krankenschwestern im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Ausburg: Pattloch, 2001). The interviews form the basis of the publications, but occasionally the editors reworded part of individual interviews, and at other times left out parts altogether, during the transcription from audiotape to written text, for the sake of space and time. Therefore, wherever transcripts of the original interview survive, I have used them, and indicate explicitly when I rely on the published texts. For more information on these interviews see, Peschke, “Nachwort” in Christen im Krieg, 360-70. 25 KMBA SW 441/III, Akte Joseph Hoser, postwar interview, June 22, 1990.

198 In spite of the willingness of some military authorities to bend the rules governing the use of priests who were not chaplains, many of these clerics and seminarians ordained to the subdeacon level who found themselves operating as stretcher bearers or doctors’ assistants preferred to remain where authorities assigned them for the duration of the war because they felt closer to the men there. In fact, even some who became chaplains recalled that their former positions had allowed them more intimacy with other soldiers.

Peifer was initially conscripted as a medical orderly, along with five other priests. When his division chaplain suggested that he attend a seminar to become a full chaplain, his answer was no, “because I meant to stay side by side with simple soldiers, and fulfill my priestly duty in this way.”26 Later, shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union, he attended the seminar anyway. He did not clarify whether his division chaplain had suggested him against his will. Authorities informed Wilhelm Großkortenhaus shortly after his training was complete that he would be assigned to a medical unit in the

Luftwaffe, from which he always refused transfers into the chaplaincy: “I lay in the mud with soldiers and shared their experiences. In this way I rubbed shoulders with people with whom I otherwise would never have met.”27 Several veterans interviewed in the

1990s stated that they had preferred their time as conscripted men, and that as chaplains they were somewhat removed from the experiences of the fighting men.28

Both chaplains and priests outside the chaplaincy as well as seminarians experienced a broad variety of reactions from the men with whom they served, Christian and non-Christian, observant and not. Some, like Goldmann, remembered facing

26 KMBA SW 632, 633/III, Akten Peifer, manuscript, 105-06. This was later published as Den Menschen ein Angebot: Erinnerungen eines Seelsorges (Köln: Styria, 1993). All subsequent quotes will reference the manuscript contained in the Nachlass. 27 Priester in Uniform, 80, 82. 28 Priester in Uniform, various.

199 difficulties from soldiers who ridiculed or harassed them. Franz Maria Eich, who served as a chaplain in the navy, collected an array of anti-Christian sentiments from young soldiers in his care and reported them to his commander, accusing eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, including those from Münster, Bavaria, and other Catholic regions of

Germany, of referring to chaplains as “the priestlings in the confessional [die Pfaffen in den Beichstuhl].”29 Werthmann recalled that the commander of Wilhelm Forster, who was stationed with a mountain division, had attempted without authorization to constrict the activities of both the Protestant and Catholic chaplains among his men, though he did not elaborate, and that Forster “had weathered it well.” Werthmann added cryptically that

“the resistance of the chaplains” augmented the difficulties the commander laid for them, and that a transfer to another division – often the remedy when a conflict arose between an officer and the chaplain in his unit – was not possible, but that Forster “obeyed as a matter of course” and eventually “was very thankful that he was commanded to stay.”30

Wilhelm Goderski, a priest serving as a medical orderly, complained that a master- sergeant informed him that he could not go to church every Sunday because he had to be on duty. This duty consisted of “an hour of singing and one and a half hours of sport….

The master-sergeant [Spiess] is making it hard for us because we’re supposed to be on duty every Sunday, though sport and singing is half as important [as getting to church].”31

In just over a month, the problematic master-sergeant was transferred, and under the new master-sergeant, “everything is in order,” and he was able to get to church more easily.32

29 KMBA SW 293/III, Akte Eich, interview, July 2, 1990. “Pfaffe” is a German term that was originally designed to differentiate between priest and monk (“Monch”). Since the Reformation, it has been regarded as a pejorative term, especially in spoken language. 30 KMBA SW 324/III, Akte Forster, evaluation, August 20, 1945. 31 KMBA SW 1050/IX, letter, October 13, 1943. 32 KMBA SW 1050/IX, letter, November 21, 1943.

200 Bartholomäus Hebel, who spent six and a half years as an NCO in the medical service, remembered after the war the very close comradeship forged along endless marches and through bloody operations, which was partly responsible at times for enabling him to attend mass: “we were forbidden to leave the barracks in the early morning to attend mass, but sometimes we succeeded in disappearing through the back door of an adjoining chapel in the nursing home [in which they were stationed], whereupon a buddy had to play the ‘ostensible look-out [vorgeschobenen Beobachter]’ to report on whether the coast was clear.”33 Another priest who was not part of the chaplaincy, but who kept in contact with one of the chaplains, lamented the lack of fellow priests in his unit and yearned for an opportunity to go to mass; he had been only three times in the space of about four months. But he added, “Even if I’m at a disadvantage, other points do work for me. I must say first of all that my superiors are well disposed toward me and they have never… treated me differently from the others. With the soldiers of the company, too, I’m on good terms, and even if there are many other world- views, we remain good comrades and never reproach each other.”34

Priests and seminarians sometimes made easy targets, and this proved dangerous for those unlucky enough to rise to the bait. Anton Hamm was one such example, whose temperament contemporaries blamed as part of what made him vulnerable to denunciation. Werthmann met him in June 1943 at a front-line seminar near Riga, and the chaplain’s evident fixation on “sexual matters” among the inmates of the hospital in which he worked unsettled the field vicar-general: “He spoke out exhaustively about women coming and going in the hospital… and expressed his outrage about the

33 KMBA SW 1050/XI, “Besser in Tuchfühlung bleiben,” newspaper excerpt, printed sometime in the early 1960s. 34 KMBA SW 767/III 12 (Bd. 9), Akten Schmutz, letter, October 16, 1941.

201 situation…. I’m almost convinced that a sexual complex presents itself in Hamm, which determines his totally erroneous and partial judgment of such problems.”35 Werthmann’s made these comments in connection to a court-martial involving Hamm and allegations of subversion of military morale. Ultimately the court sentenced him to “protective custody”; he was taken to Dachau, where, according to a letter to Werthmann in 1945, he was supposed to serve his sentence working in the medicinal herb garden of the concentration camp. What exactly plunged Hamm into trouble can be deduced from notes taken from his wartime journal, as well as excerpts from letters he wrote to Werthmann.

Sometime in the first half of 1943, as Hamm was transferred from Orel (Russia) to Riga, he encountered an intelligence officer who decided to provoke the chaplain. Hamm recalled in notes he made from his journal entry,

The lieutenant attacked the stance of the Catholic priesthood on celibacy with broad and derogatory words. I answered initially only to his attack, which really deserved no answer: “I am the eighth child of my mother; if every family in Germany had enough children, then Germany could leave the celibate priesthood in peace.” To which the lieutenant about-faced and described the Führer as the highest example for Catholic priests. I denied this eccentricity, because it stood beneath the dignity of the priesthood. By this I was alluding to the notorious lifestyle of the Führer, made known to me by an[other] officer, and to the difference between religious celibacy and mere natural celibacy.36

One could guess what exactly Hamm knew of Hitler’s “notorious lifestyle,” and why he objected to this and not to the larger crimes of discrimination and murder engineered by

Hitler and his minions. But the result would have doubtless been the same: a double- charge of public defamation of the “majesty of the Führer” [Beleidigung der Majestät des

35 KMBA SW 386/III, Akte Johann Anton Hamm, Werthmann’s reflections, February 29, 1944. 36 KMBA SW 386/III, Akte Hamm, letter to Werthmann from Hamm, January 15, 1954, as well as undated notes entitled “Verhaftung und Haft als Kriegspfarrer,” by Pfarrer Dr. Hamm.

202 Führers] and continuous subversion of the Wehrmacht.37 Hamm had no less than ten officers write letters on his behalf to his military counsel, including a Protestant colleague and the major-general of his division at the time, Freiherr von Bechtolsheim. They defended his character and asserted that the incident had to have been a misunderstanding, that physically he was suffering from wet pleurisy and was in no condition mentally to discipline himself: “because he served his church [so] enthusiastically, he was temperamental in his devotion, and nothing could get him carried away like an expression directed against his establishment or his doctrine.”38 But their pleas for mercy or leniency went unheard, and the court determined that Hamm be discharged from the chaplaincy. He spent the rest of the war in Dachau.

Father Erich Buchta, a divisional Catholic chaplain, also ran into problems on account of certain actions he took, though his case ended quite differently from Hamm’s.

In a report submitted by the 18th Army regarding his disciplinary punishment, reports twice accused Buchta of having removed an image of Hitler from the wall of a room that he used to have meetings with the priests and seminarians of his division, as well as celebrate mass with them. Some interpreted this action, he claimed, as a suggestion that

“during mass, there is no place for the Führer among the participants.” Setting aside the question of whether Hitler would have cared about attending Catholic services, the removal of the image was tantamount to a “public slandering,” and Buchta was disciplined.39 But the issue did not stop there. The OKH took the occasion to forbid chaplains to organize other priests and seminarians together in any official way.

37 The wording of the charges is Hamm’s own description, given retrospectively. See KMBA SW 386/III, letter to Werthmann from Hamm, January 15, 1954. 38 KMBA SW 386/III, Akte Hamm, letter from Adalbert Dähn, paymaster and Chief of Office, May 5, 1944. The other letters are contained in this file, as well. 39 KMBA SW 1053/IX 2, report, August 25, 1943.

203 Werthmann responded craftily: “I held it as my duty to interpret this decree at the front- line seminars [that I attended] to the effect that… no misgivings existed about voluntary gatherings of priests or seminarians under the guidance of a chaplain.” He added that he had no doubt, had he inquired in the OKH about the status of such private gatherings, that they would have been prohibited. Werthmann simply did not ask.40

Others, though, experienced little or no difficulty from those with whom they served; soldiers even received some with enthusiasm and gratitude. Pius Fischer, a priest serving in the medical units who corresponded with Werthmann throughout the war, wrote to him in 1944 that “everyone is very friendly to me personally, and I can celebrate mass daily and help out more often around our stationed area.”41 Later he appeared to have some problems with a new commanding officer, who “is no friend to priests,” and who “wants to unhook [loshaken] the two of us,” speaking presumably about another priest stationed in the same unit. The officer was unsuccessful and eventually replaced, and by the end of 1944, the new commander had granted Fischer to give sermons. He reported that “daily, my chapel is full, and on Sundays, people stand outside the door.”42

In a much rarer occurrence, another priest, a private in the medical service, wrote

Werthmann in late 1943 asking for an extra mess kit because his commander had requested him to celebrate masses for the Catholic English prisoners of war.43 In his unpublished memoirs, written from the notes made in his wartime journal, Rudolf Unger remembered a friend named Zimmerer, a gunner [Oberkanonier] with whom he spoke for hours about “mutual suffering, about the fate of our land, which Adolf Hitler had plunged

40 KMBA SW 236/III, Akte Erich Buchta, Werthmann’s notes, August 25, 1943. 41 KMBA SW 1050/IX, postcard, January 20, 1944. 42 KMBA SW 1050/IX, letter, November 9, 1944. 43 KMBA SW 1050/IX, letter, October 15, 1943, written by a Sanitätgefreiter Moser. No other information given.

204 into such misery.” Although he was not a chaplain, the company commander invited him on Christmas Eve 1941 to say mass, who was “a really dignified Catholic.”44 Otto

Fangohr went even further, and characterized the Wehrmacht, “with exceptions among the political officers and until the emergence of Volk-divisions [sic], as politically rather free from the Nazi spirit.” The generals were good Christians and exemplary soldiers in whom chaplains, such as Fangohr, placed great confidence, and who used their authority to protect their religious activities. Moreover, he remembered that the 1941 Führer decree that demobilized Jesuits in the armed forces was very unpopular, because “Priests in general and these young order-priests in particular were greatly esteemed by their superior officers, and much beloved by their comrades.”45 Fangohr’s memory may have been faulty, or perhaps he was very lucky in that the soldiers whose paths he crossed were well disposed towards priests. It could also mean that the soldiers with whom he interacted presented the “good Christian” front to a priest, deliberately toning down Nazi rhetoric and avoiding any mention of criminal undertakings when required. Like

Fangohr, they might not have been inclined to think beyond the consequences of their own immediate actions.

Gustav Heinrich Raab, one of the nineteen Catholic chaplains to fall at Stalingrad, wrote home two months before his death in a letter that exhibited a staunch faith and unflinching commitment to his fellow soldiers in the midst of great horror:

I speak from the hearts of all the men here, aged youth who have grown gray in the midst of senseless murder and inhumanity. The pen is reluctant to describe it, the most unspeakable thing, that which I have experienced here…. And I am

44 KMBA SW 1050/IX, “Meine Kriegserlebnisse,” Rudolf Unger, January 22, 1968. Unger dedicated these unpublished memoirs to Georg Werthmann. 45 KMBA SW 310/III, Akte Otto Fangohr, interview, July 3, 1979. It is clear that he was speaking about Volksgrenadier-divisionen, not Volksdivisionen, which emerged in 1944, in response to the attempt on Hitler’s life and to the Allied invasion at Normandy.

205 proud to live through these times with these men. My people are proud that their priest also endured with them here. An iron camaraderie emerges, which helps lift us away until a happy hour tolls for us once more.46

His last Christmas was a profoundly moving experience for him because of the soldiers to whom he ministered. He recounted how he had crawled from one position to another, where men were in the midst of battle:

The shells and flares were the Christmas tree candles…. The joy and gratitude of the men, who at this time were not expecting a priest, remained for them and for me unforgettable. They sobbed like children, and shook my hand in thanks…. I moved through the night from bunker to bunker, from post to post, always accompanied by enemy fire….47

Martin Zeil also served briefly in the Soviet Union, though he escaped the cauldron of

Stalingrad, and corroborated what Raab’s testimony suggests: religion, and the men who represented it, were very dear to the men fighting there, and consequently priests experienced warmth, acceptance, friendship, and appreciation. He remembered in a post- war interview, “Visits from chaplains were always well-received…. this attitude was never so palpable as in Russia. There the visits of chaplains to hospitals – this I experienced – were naturally, in general, treasured.”48

Goldmann was not an anomaly insofar as he had contact with the SS, though he was one of the few who found himself wearing the black uniform. This is what makes his testimony initially so incredible. The Schutzstaffeln, which by 1939 had become a “quasi- governmental conglomerate”49 that was meant to be both police force and elite troop, generally reflected the extreme anti-Catholic sentiments of its leader, Heinrich Himmler, who confided to a subordinate in 1937 that “the predominant element of the priesthood

46 KMBA SW 1050/IX, letter, December 3, 1942. 47 EAM, Kardinal-Faulhaber Archiv, 6796/2, letter, December 26, 1942. 48 KMBA SW 947/III, Akte Martin Zeil, interview, June 14, 1990. 49 Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 35. See also Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie (München: Siedler, 2008).

206 was a homosexual association serving a form of Bolshevism that was two thousand years old.”50 That Himmler would not only vouch for a Catholic seminarian serving in its ranks, but moreover guarantee that he would be free to pursue his religious obligations, was an extremely unusual reaction for the Reichsführer-SS, born of either a grudging respect for Goldmann’s honesty and intelligence, or, more likely, a perverse desire to see how far a devout Catholic could advance within the SS’s ranks. In any case, Goldmann claimed to have remained in the SS for two years, at which point his superior offered him and the other seminarians he was serving with promotion into the officer corps on the condition that they leave the Church. When he refused, the officer informed them that a soldier “who has the capability to become an officer, and refuses to do so, is a traitor to the German people.”51 Goldmann submitted a written complaint to his commander, the result of which was a letter from Himmler demanding that Goldmann put forward, in writing, his personal Weltanschauung. When he obeyed and declared that he rejected the

Weltanschauung of the SS and of the Nazi Party, he was immediately expelled from the

SS as unworthy and returned to the army. Himmler’s fascination evidently had reached its limits.

Although the SS as an organization was generally hostile toward the churches, there were exceptions. These individuals, a stark minority at the beginning of the war, increased in number towards the war’s end, when even Himmler’s elite organization was forced to conscript replacement soldiers outside of its strict requirements. Chaplain Georg

50 Breitman, Architect of Genocide, 15. One needs look no further than the pages of the popular SS circular, Das Schwarze Korps, which ran frequent articles slandering the pope, individual German bishops, particularly Cardinal von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, and the Church in general. See, for example, EAM Kardinal-Faulhaber Archiv, 3055/I and II, “Wer lügt, Herr Kardinal?”, Das Schwarze Korps, February 20, 1936, “Und dazu schweigt der Papst!”, Das Schwarze Korps, August 13, 1936, “Schwarzer Dolchstoß,” Das Schwarze Korps, February 25, 1937. 51 Goldmann, Tödliche Schatten, 53-8; quote from 55. The other seminarians with whom he had been transferred to the SS chose to remain; nearly all of them died at Leningrad.

207 Paulus remembered in a post-war interview, “a lot of SS people were lying [injured] in hospitals, and many other soldiers dreaded to reveal themselves as religious. But I witnessed members of the SS appear in their hospital gowns and receive the sacraments.”52 His immediate religious superior asked chaplain Egon Schmitt to hold

Christmas masses for Luftwaffe and navy units stationed in his region in Yugoslavia, since they had no chaplains of their own, and he reported that members from an SS-

Totenkopfdivision showed up.53 Chaplain Erich Bartsch, stationed with Army

Headquarters Fifteen (A.O.K. 15), actively pursued attempts to say mass for units of the

Waffen-SS stationed around the area of Tourcoing, in northern France. Werthmann reported that Bartsch encountered no great difficulties from the commanders of the individual units, whom he had to approach for permission, although they hardly went out of their way to help him; they treated him with “non-committal commitment

[unverbindlicher Verbindlichkeit]. It was forbidden to write the time of the services on the notice board, so that attendance, aside from some ethnic German SS men, was not observed.”54 Wilhelm Forster ended up in April 1945 serving in a camp for SS men, in which he chose to remain even after the number of prisoners sank from 5,000 to 300.55 In his wartime journal, Theodor Loevenich remarked in an undated entry, likely in 1943, that he administered the sacraments to a dying SS man. The man knew that the chaplain

“could give him no redemption or healing for his ruined body, but rather redemption from guilt and sin! He confessed – took communion – received extreme unction.”56 The

52 KMBA SW 631/III, Akte Georg Paulus, interview, May 15, 1990. 53 KMBA SW 750/III, Akte Egon Schmitt, Tätigkeitsbericht, March 17, 1941. 54 KMBA SW 192/III, Akte Erich Bartsch, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge (Werthmann), June 25, 1945. 55 KMBA SW 324/III, Akte Wilhelm Forster, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge (Werthmann), September 6, 1945. 56 KMBA SW 551/III, Akte Theodor Loevenich, unpublished Tagebuch.

208 chaplain forgave whatever sins the SS man had repented, and assuaged his spiritual (and moral) guilt.

Chaplain Josef Seitz had a similar experience during his retreat from the Balkans in November 1944, when his medical company found itself sharing territory with army and SS units. The rumor that a priest was present had barely begun to spread when

a panic [Panik] took possession of the both the wounded and the healthy. Without decree, instruction, or authorization from the SS leaders, the lightly-wounded men cleared a small room. It happened so quickly and decisively that no time remained for Father Seitz to ask permission for the exercise of his office; the soldiers had placed before him a fait accompli… Finally he asked if anyone wanted to confess or take communion. Almost every arm was raised, even those who wore the SS runes (because many had been forced into the SS [that is, conscripted])…. In a small window stood an SS officer who had followed the holy event without much expressive sympathy. After the closing song had faded… he began a conversation with an aide of Father Seitz’s. He drew his attention to the small window, where outside the medical orderlies were laying the dead side by side again. ‘I am,’ he began, ‘Catholic, thirty-three years old, and since I was thirteen, I haven’t been to church. I believed that the SS was a religion and I was an enthusiastic champion of it. But I’ve realized that I have served Satan. I beg you, man, speak with the chaplain, ask him if he wants to listen to me.’

Seitz met with him, heard his confession, and gave him communion, signifying that he had been absolved of whatever crimes he had confessed. The man was killed that same day in an attack.57 This must have been a near-daily occurrence. If any priest withheld confession or felt taxed or torn about giving absolution, it was nowhere indicated. Was it possible that men who came back from having participated in mass slaughter found relief and spiritual solace, even moral support, waiting for them with the priests who were endlessly ready to hear them confess? Other historians have suggested as much, and the priests themselves indicate it in their written records.58

57 KMBA SW 810/III, Akte Josef Seitz, photocopy of letter written by Martin Maller regarding Seitz’s wartime activities, sent to the archives following his death in 1964. Undated. 58 See Doris L. Bergen, “Between God and Hitler: German Military Chaplains and the Crimes of the Third Reich,” in In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (New York and Oxford:

209 Joseph Hoser initially served as a medical orderly, then was moved into the chaplaincy and transferred to Finland. Upon arriving at his appointed station, he could find no room, not even a bed to claim for himself and his sexton. The cellar was full of

Waffen-SS officers who greeted them rudely when they saw their crosses. Later he received a cake from his family through the post, which he immediately shared with his roommates. He recalled, “In a heartbeat, the whole mood changed.” Wine was produced, and he was invited to sit and drink with them, one of whom lamented, “If only all priests were like you.”59 What differentiated him from other priests was not expressed; one might presume that other clerics had avoided company with SS officers at all costs, and

Hoser’s courage and generosity had impressed them. Even more astonishing, Hoser later ran into one of the SS officers, whom he initially did not recognize. He sat himself in a different corner of the train car, keeping as far as he could from the “decorated SS-man” who outranked him, reflecting most priests’ instinctive avoidance of an organization harboring known hostility towards the Catholic Church. He struck up a conversation with the Wehrmacht paymaster sitting next to him when the SS officer approached and spoke, revealing himself as one of the cellar men with whom Hoser had shared his cake: “I’m now commissioned with the SS troops to southern Norway for training. It would be a great joy to me if you would come visit my men.”60

Nor was it only SS soldiers themselves who approached priests in search of relief and the consolation of the sacraments. Martin Seitz received a letter from the parents of

Berghahn Books, 2001); Missalla, Für Gott, Führer, und Vaterland, 209. Both Missalla and Thomas Breuer are strongly critical of the leadership of the bishops and Rarkowski, who they view as instrumental in inducing priests and seminarians to embrace their service to the regime. For Breuer, see Dem Führer gehorsam. Wie die deutschen Katholiken von ihrer Kirche zum Kriegsdienst verpflichtet wurden: Dokumente, edited by Breuer (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1989), 3-7. 59 KMBA SW 441/III, Akte Joseph Hoser, interview, June 22, 1990. 60 KMBA SW 441/III, Akte Hoser, interview, June 22, 1990.

210 fallen SS lance corporal Benedikt Zimmerman, who had left the church before the war.

They wrote, “It would be a great solace if Benedict had given some sign of religious disposition during his stay at the named hospital, namely between the 9th and the 26th of

May 1942. If you personally have no knowledge of this, perhaps you could inquire among the hospital personnel…”61 Catholic families who had lost sons or husbands in the war made liberal use of chaplains and other priests who might have known the fallen soldier in question, usually asking for assurance that the soldier’s spiritual needs had been met before death. As will be shown below, priests and seminarians in uniform became an essential link in this way between the homeland and the front lines.

Catholic priests and seminarians found support and sympathy from other unexpected quarters, as well. Hermann Reinecke, chief of the General Office of the

Armed Forces, selected, trained, and dispersed the National Socialist Leadership Officers

(NSFOs) throughout the army for the express purpose of bolstering morale through indoctrinating young German soldiers with Nazi propaganda (see Chapter Three); according to chaplains’ reports, they generally caused few problems for the priests next to whom they worked. Wilhelm Wöste recalled in an interview that “I had good relations with them [the NSFOs],” and that he never felt pressured during his time in the army to accept Nazi ideals.62 Martin Zeil declared, “they played no role. There was a first lieutenant with us as an NSFO, who was a lecturer from Stettin… Maybe he was in the

Party… [but] the NSFO played absolutely no role in our division.”63 Werthmann learned during an official trip to Prague and Hlbouka in 1944 that an NSFO had addressed an assembly of chaplains regarding his activities and “established clear borders between

61 KMBA SW 811, 812/III, Akten Martin Seitz, letter, June 15, 1942. 62 KMBA SW 944/III, Akte Wilhelm Wöste, interview, June 20, 1990. 63 KMBA SW 947/III, Akte Martin Zeil, interview, June 14, 1990.

211 Nazi Leadership priorities and those of the Wehrmacht chaplaincy.”64 Others reported that, in contrast to their leaders’ unspoken intentions to eliminate chaplains by replacing them, the NSFO had been actively supportive of the chaplains. Johann Evangelist Kaspar declared, “… we had one [NSFO] once, he was a good Catholic, a teacher, [this] Nazi officer, who even went to church. From this side we never had difficulties.”65 In the 35th

Infantry Division in 1943 [sic], Joseph Ohseforth remembered in the 1970s, the NSFO

“supported the chaplains as an active Catholic in every conceivable way. There were neither difficulties nor even any serious quarrels, most certainly conditioned by the positive attitude of the commanders.”66 Nor were they figures of rigid authority, always toeing the Party line: “the NSFO wasn’t so sure anymore, and in order to avoid bearing witness against us, preferred to give us a bit of the cold shoulder,” Richard Schell recalled retrospectively. “The closer we came to the end of the war, the more he sought contact with us [chaplains].”67 Alois Krautwurst spoke of them as “boys” who were positioned in every hospital, around whom the chaplains were very careful when it came to listening to news: “When we listened to the news, when we realized he was coming, then we always immediately turned it off. But in and of himself, he was harmless, he was not malicious.”68 Josef Perau went so far as to call them “piteous” figures who went around distributing combs and mirrors, who were ultimately ineffectual: “The men didn’t want to know anything about Nazi propaganda. The closer one got to the front, the less

64 BA-MA RH 15 280, Georg Werthmann, “Bericht über die Dienstreise nach Prag und Holoubkau,” May 5, 1944. 65 KMBA SW 465/III, Akte Johann Evangelist Kaspar, interview undated. 66 KMBA SW 621/III, Akte Joseph Ohseforth, report to the Military Vicar-General, June 7, 1979. The year in the report is listed as 1943, although NSFOs were not introduced until 1944; the order for the creation of the National Socialist Leadership Office went through in December 1943. Given the length of time that had passed since the war, it is possible that Ohseforth had incorrectly remembered the year. 67 KMBA SW 723/III, Akten Richard Schell, interview, part I, March 21, 1990. 68 KMBA SW 510/III, Akte Alois Krautwurst, interview, June 1, 1990.

212 one heard ‘Heil Hitler.’”69 However much the Party strove to empty the army of religious influence, the soldiers themselves, including those meant to aid the Party, seemed more comfortable tolerating old traditions, if not actively assisting them. This evidence suggested that, during the darkest years of war, as defeat loomed, soldiers appeared to find more spiritual assistance in the faith of their parents and grandparents than in the ideology that had been hammered into them since 1933.

In addition to describing relations between themselves and those military officers and leaders who were expected to give – or, indeed, gave – these men trouble, the chaplains, priests, and seminarians also wrote about and spoke of various aspects of the experience of war. The most formal way in which they did this was through two different kinds of reports detailing their routine activities as chaplains. They sent their

Tätigkeitsberichte, or activity reports, directly to Field Bishop Rarkowski through various supervisory chaplains, with copies forwarded to the relevant military commanders, and generally completed them every two to three months. They did not usually send the

Seelsorgeberichte, or pastoral care reports, to military superiors, and completed them much less frequently.70 Sometimes, for reasons of expediency, they fused the two reports into a single Erfahrungsbericht, with copies forwarded to both religious and military superiors.71 Within these reports, chaplains discussed the routine of serving as chaplains and remarked on unusual or worrisome experiences with soldiers. Outside of these reports, priests wrote continuously and surprisingly openly about uncommon occurrences in the line of duty, such as the bearing of weapons and interactions with foreign civilians

69 KMBA SW 635/III, Akten Josef Perau, undated postwar dictation. 70 My thanks for Dr. Monica Sinderhauf for refining this distinction for me. 71 As detailed in NARA T312 roll 118 frame 7648807, Erfahrungsbericht, A.O.K. 4, signed by Chaplain Kauder, October 25, 1940.

213 wherever they were stationed – from France to Russia, and Norway to North Africa. They gave sermons and wrote letters to the family members of men who had died; some chaplains wrote to priests and seminarians their units, or to Werthmann or Rarkowski.

They were all very much part of a war machine, and there is no evidence that they resisted, either collectively or individually, their role within it. On the contrary, they understood consciously that the performance of their duties was essential to the war effort, and most threw themselves wholeheartedly into the project, as the following chapter will suggest. As the regulations for their service had prescribed, they found themselves attending to duties not unlike those of the military commanders with whom they worked, or later, like the NSFOs with whom they were stationed. Their primary concern was the men in their care, particularly ensuring that they remained fit and able to fight.

The formal reports contain a wealth of information about the lived experiences of these men and what occupied them most as chaplains. It is also within these reports that their double duty, as caretakers of Christian souls as well as boosters of morale, becomes clear. As outlined in Chapter Three, most military authorities placed an obvious and overriding emphasis on the necessity of a functional chaplaincy in the armed forces, often working together with chaplains to maintain soldiers’ moods and gauge their fighting spirit, and were increasingly unhappy as the number of available chaplains decreased in the later years of the war. The chaplains’ own concerns with the spirit of the troops are evident; most made explicit mention of morale somewhere in their reports. Egon Schmitt, a chaplain who moved around considerably between France and Yugoslavia from 1940 to

1943 – mirroring the wartime experience of most chaplains who, because of the systemic

214 shortage, were repeatedly transferred – commented frequently on soldiers’ fighting spirits. In late 1940, he found the general attitude of the troops to be optimistic because of their relative proximity to Germany, meaning that the mail was reliable and consistent.

He complained about the poor example set by the officers for their men when it came to

“sexual difficulties,” and reported that the soldiers and their superiors lamented the prohibition on celebrating mass together with civilian populations as an “unhealthy exclusion and unfounded mistrust of the Catholic soldiers.”72 Towards the end of 1941, after Schmitt was transferred east, his reports became more strained, explaining that “the hardness of battle in the Russian winter, and the egregious demands on the physical and spiritual energy of the men, have made them especially ready for religious values…

Comrades were often 90-100% in attendance [at holy mass], and their attitude was absolutely good and serious, better than I had expected given the conditions.”73 Schmitt continued to be surprised by the good morale that held through into 1943, and attributed it to being “shaped by relations with the home front,” indicating that the mail was still working well. Generally, however, proximity cut two ways. Bad home-front news such as the bombing of certain cities could lead to a perceptible, and understandable, downswing in the morale of soldiers.

Another discernable negative influence on morale occurred as German defeat in the war became increasingly inevitable; at the same time, proximity to fighting and death led to an increasing religiosity among the soldiers. Chaplain Meinq reported that soldiers attended masses in high numbers because devout Christians found them to be “a piece of home [Heimat]. Due to the long-lasting war and the difficult operational relations, the

72 KMBA SW 750/III, Akte Egon Schmitt, Tätigkeitsbericht, December 2, 1940. 73 KMBA SW 750/III, Akte Egon Schmitt, Seelsorgebericht, January 29, 1942.

215 need for religion is growing.”74 Chaplain Rincke wrote, “the religious predisposition of the fighting men, particularly those just returning from active engagement, was very pleasant [erfreulich] and displayed itself in the large numbers of men who attended mass… the spirit of the troops was most apparent in individual conversations with soldiers, healthy and wounded alike. Some officers and simple soldiers came to me during mass or social evening, or in otherwise quiet hours….”75 Rincke clearly understood the deep need of the actively fighting men for spiritual relief, though he gave no indication as to what subjects he touched upon in conversation, or specific individual concerns. Richard Schell described the link between soldiers’ feeling of spirituality and their proximity to battle: “Pastoral care is more fruitful and reaches further in some things in more dangerous regions, for here the soldiers feel the necessity of religious activity with more urgency.”76 His reports became considerably more depressed through 1944, because

the psychological state of the men stands at a critical low, especially during disengagements [Absetzbewegungen]. Entire groups surge backwards, apathetic and despondent…. Looting and wanton destruction were unleashed with the justification that one was not permitted to fall into enemy hands; bold acts of rape were justified by the view that a region and its people won’t be seen again after its evacuation; and in the rubble of Monte Cassino and the main chapels of Italian villas, the sacrilege of using crucifixes as targets to shoot at happened because of mounting irreverence [Ehrfurchtlosigkeit] … The increase in venereal disease proves to be a great moral instability.77

74 NARA T312 roll 419, frame 7995362, Tätigkeitsbericht, April 12, 1942. Another chaplain, Leopold Ellner, wrote virtually the same thing: “I try to bring to soldiers the most beautiful piece of home [Heimat] through divine services. We always think about how, in the same hour each Sunday, our loved ones at home are standing around the altar like we are, and that we are all deeply bound together through God.” EAM, Faulhaber Archiv 6796/1, letter to von Faulhaber from Ellner, July 14, 1942. 75 NARA T312 roll 177 frames 7715690 and 7715695, Tätigkeitsbericht, 4. Armee, October 9, 1942, signed by Rincke. 76 KMBA SW 724/III, Akten Richard Schell, Seelsorgebericht, October 6, 1942. 77 KMBA SW 724/III, Akten Schell, Seelsorgebericht, July 3, 1944.

216 Even in late 1944, such a feeling of hopelessness could be reversed by temporary victory, though the length of the war, the increasing experience of enemy superiority, and the destruction of Germany proper weighed more and more heavily on the soldiers.78

Johannes Ferber concerned himself explicitly with the declining sense of

Christian ethics that he perceived among the men with whom he served, and he blamed it on the “corrupt environment.”79 In January 1942 he wrote, “Suicide and attempts at suicide have become more common. Sexual debauchery increases daily… these and many other delinquencies have their roots in the recessions of Christian ethics and the anesthetizing [Einschläferung] of a religious sense of responsibility.”80 The situation steadily deteriorated. In July 1942, Ferber drafted a laundry list of problems among his soldiers upon which army and regime leaders would also have frowned, once more revealing the overlap between these two secular bodies and the nationalist drives within

Christian Germans: “Property offenses, leave without permission, dodging duties, watch delinquency, suicide, and others have certainly not become more rare. At any rate, the collapse of the comrades cannot be attributed systematically to instability. The demonic influences of this environment often… cause them to break down….”81 By 1944, Ferber concluded,

one must be blind if one thinks that war has made men better. Even in the area of religion, general apathy and dourness has crept in. It is distressing to see the stark re-evaluation that ethical concepts have undergone. We live in a time of ethical inflation, to put it extremely mildly. The ultimate causal background is not the war, but rather, the roots of this ethical inflation can be found in materialism.82

78 KMBA SW 724/III, Akten Schell, Seelsorgebericht, January 5, 1945. 79 KMBA SW 317/III, Akte Johannes Ferber, Seelsorgebericht, April 5, 1942. 80 KMBA SW 317/III, Akte Ferber, Seelsorgebericht, January 8, 1942. 81 KMBA SW 317/III, Akte Ferber, Seelsorgebericht, July 3, 1942. 82 KMBA SW 317/III, Akte Ferber, Seelsorgebericht, September 31, 1944. Materialism can have a double meaning: the Nazi sense of the word, equated with Bolshevism, capitalism, and Jews; and the conservative Catholic sense of the word, which earlier popes had condemned as one of the chief errors of modernity.

217 His solution, like his conclusion, missed the mark: he urged that the men attend mass more frequently, and chaplains be permitted to perform more masses. The impact of the

Eastern front’s “demonic influences,”, which may have been an allusion to the kind of

“fighting” in which the soldiers were engaged – war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as the sheer brutalization that engagement with the Russians had become – and the erosion of ethics required more than prayer to stop. Most certainly, these influences also included Bolshevism, perhaps the Judeo-Bolshevism that other letters references, as well as the “godlessness” of Nazism. But at no time did it occur to chaplains, priests, or even seminarians that a shift in their own responses and reaction may have done more than the spiritual remedies (prayer and confession) that tradition dictated.

Siegfried Döring was a priest whose major-general gave him permission to take over temporarily the chaplain’s duties for his division when it found itself without one while stationed on Crete. He reported that the soldiers welcomed him everywhere he visited, because they were glad to know that there was a priest on the island, even if officially he was a mere NCO, and that they could once more go to mass. The morale, though, was characterized by “tension and agitation. Apart from thoughts on the progression of the war, the soldiers think more and more of their own fate here on the island and overall in the southeast. In addition, it will soon be three months since communication with the home front was cut off.”83 When morale dipped, the chaplain’s response, generally, was to try to focus them on God’s intervention and concern, though his success was not noted.

Other chaplains reported minor irregularities. Alfred Schmidt reported in

December 1942 that some commanders had ordered the soldiers in the batteries he visited

83 KMBA SW 1055/IX, Seelsorgebericht, Uffz. Siegfried Döring, 1944 [3rd quarter].

218 for Christmas mass to attend divine services, in direct contradiction to the “Guidelines” laid down by the OKH.84 But usually, breaches in regulations came up in the context of using priests in situations that may or may not have been the “emergency” that regulations required. The inclusion of these incidents was in some instances less a desire to inform on rule-breakers than to persuade their superiors that additional chaplains were badly needed. Dietrich von Hülsen used priests serving as medical orderlies for help in caring for the dying because there were simply too many to take care of on his own.85

Karl Rincke related that commanders of some units appreciated the unique situation of the priests outside the chaplaincy, and permitted some of them to celebrate masses after notifying the necessary chaplain.86 These reports underscore the pressure put on chaplains to be everywhere at once. Werthmann, who undertook an official trip to the eastern front in 1944, wrote from Cracow, “In a 142,000 square-kilometer area, there are ten chaplains to care for 200,000 soldiers and 80,000 casualties (sick and wounded).”87 Nor was this serious lack of chaplains confined to reports from the later years of the war. Already at the end of 1941, the Catholic chaplain stationed with the 11th Army, near the Sea of

Azov, wrote, “Certainly the fact that individual units have only been to mass once or twice per month can be comprehended by the numerically deficient operation of chaplains here.”88

Despite the terms of the 1933 concordat prohibiting priests and seminarians at advanced levels of study from being conscripted into weapons-bearing units, Werthmann

84 KMBA SW 743/III, Akte Alfred Schmidt, Tätigkeitsbericht, December 1942. 85 KMBA SW 447/III, Akte Dietrich von Hülsen, Tätigkeitsbericht for first quarter of 1944. 86 NARA T312 roll 177 frame 7715692, Tätigkeitsbericht, October 9, 1942. 87 BA-MA RH 15 280, “Bericht über die Dienstreise nach Krakau, March 15 – 17, 1944” (dated March 27, 1944). 88 NARA T312 roll 419 frame 7995346-49, Tätigkeitsbericht, January 20, 1942.

219 was fully aware that it did happen, and not infrequently. He explained that those clerics who had not been ordained when they were conscripted could be put into armed service.89 They then returned home during leave and completed special semesters that advanced them to different levels of ordination, becoming either deacons or full priests.

But “for these new priests, a transfer from armed service into the medical corps on the grounds of new circumstances was not possible…. So it happened that even priests found themselves bearing weapons.”90 Furthermore, during the worst fighting of the war, when men found themselves serving on the Eastern front, everyone generally carried a weapon on the front lines, even chaplains. Hubert Leuchter’s commander gave him a weapon in

Riga because of partisan activity, and “I fired this service pistol only one time: it was terrible for me to have to release a poor, sick kitten from its suffering. I then traded this weapon for a wooden gun.”91 Wilhelm Ritthaler procured a pistol under similar circumstances, as did Egon Schmitt, who remembered that it was the only protection they had as they moved, sometimes for hours at a time, through the dangerous forests in

Soviet territory.92 The need to carry a weapon particularly affected Franz Maria Eich when it became a “regulation in this terrible period”; he was quick to assert that he had never used it, and was “never trained to use it, but I had to carry this damn thing around. I found it horrible to be a priest with a murderous weapon.”93

Others found themselves in slightly different situations. Rudolf Peifer, one of a few veterans who used his wartime journals to write memoirs after the war, was a

89 See Chapter Three, pg. 39, fn. 85. 90 KMBA SW 1052/IX, remarks on the Reichskonkordat appendix by Georg Werthmann, June 1, 1945. 91 KMBA SW 543/III, Akte Hubert Leuchter, undated postwar interview. 92 KMBA SW 688/III, Akte Wilhelm Ritthaler, undated postwar interview, and 750/III, Akte Egon Schmitt, undated postwar interview. 93 KMBA SW 293/III, Akte Franz Maria Eich, postwar interview, July 2, 1990.

220 stretcher-bearer together with five other priests in a medical company. Their station did not require them to retain weapons, but they did practice shooting with their pistols.

In our unit there was a so-called “shooting club”… This “shooting club” was particularly intimidating. In the first four weeks, I had made many good friends among the NCOs, and one of them asked me to one of these shooting try-outs: “Shoot once, for fun, so to speak, to see whether you can make the score.” I protested that I didn’t deal with guns, I had never picked up a gun, but to no avail. I had to try, at least! I couldn’t be ordered to do it, but the soldiers asked me so amiably and with frank curiosity [neugierig] that I finally buckled. I asked for advice about the necessary grip for the weapon, the alignment of rear and front sights, and then I lay down 100 meters from the target and shot a gun for the first time in my life – thank God the “adversary” was a mush target and not a man. I achieved the necessary score with three shots. The jubilation of my comrades was enormous. Unfortunately I hadn’t reckoned on what came next: the raucous laughter that burst from the “shooting club,” directed at those who had not made the required score despite longer periods of practice than I.94

While he may have caved to the jovial peer pressure of his comrades, Peifer’s narrative suggests that he would not have been as easily persuaded to participate in battle. Other priests were not as reluctant. This seemed to have concerned Werthmann, who reflected from his internment in Niederalteich that the Field Bishop’s Office had repeatedly stressed to the chaplains that “in no way was the intervention in military actions by chaplains justified as part of the exercise of their service.”95 He then named three chaplains who had ignored this prohibition. The first was Alphons Satzger, who took a wrong turn in the thick of battle, during which he had been evacuating wounded

Germans, and ended up storming an enemy bunker. Armed with only his pistol, he took no less than sixteen Russian soldiers captive.96 The second was a priest revealed only as

94 KMBA SW 632, 633/III, Akten Rudolf Peifer, manuscript. 95 KMBA SW 518/III, Akte Karl Ernst Kuhn, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge (Werthmann), June 9, 1945. 96 NARA T312 roll 419, frames 7995355-56, “Bericht über Kampfhandlung,” addressed to Rarkowski, 9 January 1942. Satzger led a colorful life during the Third Reich: beginning in 1935 and until he was conscripted, Satzger served as diocesan youth chaplain in Kaufbeuren, in southern Bavaria, where he was interrogated thirty times, given fifteen warnings, and subjected to eight house raids by the Gestapo. It is unclear how he managed to clear the thorough screening that all candidates for the chaplaincy were put through, which was meant to weed out potentially unreliable priests, that is, those priests who might not

221 Wolff, who partook in an engagement in a tank. The third was Karl Ernst Kuhn, who participated in nightly patrols with his unit. Satzger and Wolff did not seem to merit further attention from Werthmann, but he made further remarks about Kuhn elsewhere, indicating that his actions or his personality – or both – had made an impression on

Werthmann. He was laconically designated an “aristocrat” by another priest with whom he had served in North Africa, and his “enthusiastically martial comportment, which very much resembled that of an officer,” put him on good terms with the English soldiers who captured them at the end of the war.97 On the other hand, Kuhn “came off as vain and overbearing to other priests,” and Werthmann ended his reflections about him sardonically by observing that “the true greatness of man lays not in an exaggerated self- confidence, but rather in modest reserve.”98 Not surprisingly, Kuhn’s divisional commander had very different feelings about the chaplain who cared for his men, whom he had recommended for an iron cross:

In the performance of his pastoral duties, Chaplain Kuhn stood repeatedly in strong enemy fire. He had the opportunity to take part in the ambush [Vorbrechen] of enemy reconnaissance patrols and stood under strong artillery fire… always ready to see to the wounded, he demonstrated that he was not only a chaplain, but a soldier through and through. His attitude even in the most difficult situations was always exemplary.99

Almost three years later, Kuhn was still impressing his military superiors, who evaluated him as a “straight, open character, modest, made of the hard stuff [von verbindlichem

Wesen], physically and mentally fresh, who has dedicated himself zealously to the

have exhibited total commitment to the regime and its wartime goals. See Biographisches Lexikon der katholischen Militärseelsorge Deutschlands 1848 bis 1945, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt, Peter Häger, Karl Hengst, and Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002), “Satzger, Alphons,” 685. 97 KMBA SW 518/III, Akte Kuhn, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge (Werthmann), August 13, 1945. The priest who relayed the information about Kuhn to Werthmann was one Metzner, who also served in the 384th infantry division in North Africa. 98 KMBA SW 518/III, Akte Kuhn, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge (Werthmann), July 5, 1945. 99 KMBA SW 518/III, Akte Kuhn, report from 258th Division (signed name illegible), September 12, 1940.

222 pastoral care of the troops and has earned their complete trust.”100 Unlike Werthmann, who found Kuhn’s fervent militarism a betrayal of his vocation and who was perhaps difficult to control, Kuhn’s superiors praised his ability to fit in so seamlessly with his comrades, even to the point of joining them in battle.

Priests and seminarians made inroads with their comrades in more spiritual ways as well. Most, if not all, chaplains, and a great number of priests and seminarians, took the opportunity to correspond with the families of fallen soldiers, the latter in spite of a number of prohibitions: the OKW made it perfectly clear that priests and seminarians in the medical service – that is, outside the chaplaincy – were not to communicate with families back home as priests. The decree forbidding it, which came fairly late in the war, seemed concerned that “such letters, which have been increasingly reported to various local Party offices by the families involved, have an overwhelmingly religious content and thereby serve consistently to have a spiritual influence on the civilian population

[back home].”101 The decree raises a number of troubling questions: were families really forwarding letters from priests at war to local Gestapo or police offices? Was the content of the letter not so much religious as it was subversive, and if so, why would these men not be punished for it? Why would the OKW be so concerned with the spiritual influence exercised by priests, and give little attention to the permissible communications being sent by chaplains, who presumably would also use religious language to convey their condolences to grieving families? Whatever the reasons behind the decree, it indicates that such behavior had occurred often enough to merit official attention.

100 KMBA SW 518/III, Akte Kuhn, report from 258th Division, February 20, 1943. 101 KMBA SW 1055/IX 4, OKW decree (copy), August 10, 1944.

223 Chaplains made good use of the opportunity to correspond both with soldiers serving with them and the families of those who were wounded or had fallen. The letters that survive in archives reveal a real need – of soldiers, their families, and priests themselves – for these men to serve as bridges between the world at war and the world at home, where anxious families awaited word of what had happened to husbands, sons, and brothers. In the worst cases, when a soldier had fallen, the chaplains often continued corresponding with individual family members after the initial condolence letter, sometimes for several years. Judging from the sheer number of letters in the dossiers of some chaplains, one wonders how they might have had time to do anything else. Often, the family indicated that the priest’s letter had given them solace despite the bad news it had relayed, and that such solace stemmed directly from spiritual considerations. Stefanie

Oesterle wrote to Chaplain Heinrich Müller in September 1943, “I also thank you on behalf of our extended family for the offering of a mass for my dear husband and his comrades. It is a great consolation to me to be able at least to see the memorial for my husband and his comrades, since a final resting-place was not granted to him in this terrible war.”102 A young mother wrote to Martin Seitz, “Your dear lines were a great solace to me in my grievous suffering. I can’t thank you enough for the great love that you had for my husband. I am now far more content for I know that my husband did indeed receive the holy sacrament [most likely viaticum, which would have included both confession and communion].”103

Others were grateful for the news and asked for information about the circumstances of death, often in detail, revealing that communications from military

102 KMBA SW 597/III, Akte Heinrich Müller, letter, September 19, 1943. 103 KMBA SW 811, 812/III, Akten Martin Seitz, letter from Amalie Moser, February 15, 1942.

224 authorities, already containing the most feared of all news, were often devastatingly unsatisfying. One widow, well acquainted with the suffering of war, wrote to Rudolf

Peifer,

First, I thank you for your consoling letter. It was a hard blow for me, for I have lost two sons in fourteen days…. at least with Karl [who P. had buried], I have the certainty that he’s been buried…. Now I must withstand a difficult lesson. My husband served in the Great War from beginning to end, in August 1918 he fell into [?] captivity, where he wasn’t freed until 14 November. In November 1931 he died as a consequence of his war wounds…. Our God will strengthen my faith so that I can take on this suit of suffering, for my younger children [she had nine total] still need me. Dear Father, can you find a soldier who could photograph the grave of my son, Karl, and you need only tell me what it costs, I’ll gladly send it to you.104

Another widow eloquently expressed her gratitude that Peifer had attended her husband in his final hours, but pressed for more information: “If it’s possible, please write me a bit more about our dearly departed… Were you there when he died? Why didn’t anyone give him his rosary, which arrived home in a case today? Please give me some answers, but only if it’s no great difficulty for you.”105 Still others, in their grief, became more aggressive in their search for the knowledge that would soothe them. Frau Krunz sent

Josef Perau several letters asking for the whereabouts of her son, who was badly wounded somewhere in western Russia and whom Perau had briefly looked after. She declared unflinchingly after the opening salutations,

You wrote to us, dear Father, that you know nothing more of our dear son, Alfred. This I cannot believe, dear Father. Indeed, you were with him, and know precisely whether he was lightly or badly wounded. Only you don’t want to write it to us. We know well enough that our dear Alfred’s badly wounded, otherwise he would have written. Tomorrow will mark ten weeks with no letters from him.

She ended her letter imploring him to “write us the truth” about the gravity of his injury.

Evidently whatever answer he sent was unsatisfactory, for her determined questions

104 KMBA SW 632, 633/III, Akten Peifer, letter from Agnes Tauber Fürth, September 1, 1941. 105 KMBA SW 632, 633/III, Akten Peifer, letter from Anna Feck, October 21, 1941.

225 continued until her final letter, when she intimated that she believed her son to be in captivity somewhere, and that Perau “alone was my only hope.”106

Chaplains tended not merely to the sick and those who fell in battle; they also accompanied soldiers condemned to death by military authorities for breaches in discipline to the place of execution. In this war, the number of German soldiers killed by their own army was unprecedented: between 13,000 and 15,000 German soldiers were executed as the war became increasingly brutal and the men more prone to unchecked violence.107 The authorities allowed these soldiers spiritual consolation, and assigned the nearest stationed chaplain – and occasionally a priest, if there was no chaplain –to the task. As with nearly every activity that the chaplain undertook, the OKH carefully regulated the task of administering to men facing death.108 Georg Fulge was in France in

1941, after a successful transfer into the chaplaincy, and his commander gave him the immediate duty to care for approximately 200 German soldiers imprisoned in Fresnes, a large prison in the outskirts of Paris, who were charged with desertion, and awaiting execution. He corresponded with the families on their loved one’s behalf, and the hard, poignant, at times angry letters demonstrate both the frank gratitude that families had for

Fulge, as well as the difficulties they encountered as they came to terms with the manner of their loved one’s death. In many cases, they exchanged more than one letter, as the

106 KMBA SW 635/III, Akten Perau, letters from Frau Krunz begin March 5, 1943 and end December 19, 1943. 107 Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 95-6. Bartov argues that the soldiers became more violent but that this violence was not the reason for increased executions; harsher disciplinary measures were taken in order to hold together an army that was disintegrating because of the violence implicitly involved in the criminal orders being handed down. 108 As contained in KMBA “Zusammenfassung der allen im Felde stehenden Wehrmachtgeistlichen und Kriegspfarrern zu Beginn und während des Krieges erteilten besonderen kirchlichen Vollmachten unter Berücksichtigung der hierzu gegebenen kirchenrechtlichen, moraltheologischen und pastoralen Weisungen.” This essential collection of rules was simply referred to as “the Compendium” [die Zusammenfassung] by Werthmann and Rarkowski, and was released in three editions (1941, 1942 and 1944), updating the changes in OKW regulations.

226 courts processed the case of the soldier in question and handed down the conviction.

Some asked for advice on how to request a pardon; others expressed grief and rage over the circumstances; more than one was a tearstained letter from a widow concerning her only son.109

Fresnes was the location for several other noteworthy German priests who took risks and communicated with the families of those condemned to die – and not just with

German families. Authorities in Paris nominated Abbé Franz Stock, likely the most renowned, to head pastoral care in Fresnes for the duration of the German occupation of

France; he and those under him cared for approximately 2,000 French members of the

Résistance and other “political prisoners”. In 1945, he fell into Allied captivity and was responsible for the foundation and maintenance of a “barbed-wire” theological school

(officially called the “Stacheldraht Seminary”) for German seminarians serving sentences in the POW camp where he was stationed. The cumulative experiences were enough to shatter his health; he died alone in a Parisian hospital in 1948.110 His two aides, Theodor

Loevenich and Paul Steinert, were not as well-known after the war, but in some ways took more chances than Stock was able to: while Stock generally obeyed regulations, his two assistants both ignored the regulation that forbade communication with the families of the inmates under German rule. Both brought the inmates bibles, cigarettes, food and clothes. Steinert accompanied two Jewish youths to their deaths when they asked him to.

In retaliation, authorities transferred both by the beginning of 1942 to the frontlines,

109 EAB V/69-6, Nachlass Georg Fulge, various letters. 110 Biographisches Lexikon, “Stock, Franz,” 808. See also Ludovic Lécuru, L’abbé Stock: sentinelle de la paix (Paris: Técqui, 2003), and Erich Kock, Abbé Franz Stock: Priester zwischen den Fronten (Mainz: M. Grünewald Verlag, 1996).

227 Loevenich explicitly as a punishment for writing to the relatives of the inmates. No one replaced them, so that from 1942, Stock alone administered to the prisoners of Fresnes.111

There were also occurrences that distanced priests and seminarians from their fellow soldiers. For instance, priests in uniform seemed more comfortable interacting with foreign civilians, whether in Belgium, Greece, or the Soviet Union, even if regulations officially forbid such contact. Chaplain Anton Ullrich, a veteran of the Great

War who had been involved with the chaplaincy since the mid-1930s and who had been in trouble with the Gestapo at one point, wrote about what he had witnessed during the invasion of the Soviet Union:

In occupied Poland, the Bolsheviks left the churches alone and permitted masses to be said. But the houses of God in Russia proper appear bleak. They still stand, but have been transformed into warehouses, cinemas, sawmills, and other similar buildings. Glorious churches in all their beauty have been completely destroyed. In the city where we’re stationed, the house of God was converted into a profane museum. We threw out all the showroom’s objects and burned them in a public courtyard. The populace participated eagerly in this. Old people trampled on images of Lenin and Stalin. The following Sunday we met up with our army chaplain Walter to celebrate the first mass for the army in this church. After long years of Bolshevik rule, the holy mass in this city. In tears, the populace brought flowers and decorated church and altar. The older people wept with joy. Many brought crucifixes and prayer books that they had kept hidden from the red menace for years, that they had taken care of surreptitiously like an invaluable treasure. A great mass of them collected in front of the church. After the service for the army, another mass was said for the populace. The crush of people was so great that they squeezed themselves nearly to death at the doors. In an instant, the entire church was full up to the last seat. Even young people entered awestruck.112

Ullrich was not the only one to witness the extraordinary desire of Russians and other

East Europeans previously under Soviet rule for religious care. An unsigned letter sent from Russia in June 1942 to the director of a seminary in Freising read, “Bolshevism has

111 For Loevenich: KMBA SW 551/III, Akte Loevenich, “Erinnerungen des Grauens” by Hermann Josef Riesop in Frechener (postwar; undated), and Loevenich’s “Erzählung vor der Kamera in Köln” (transcript), March 24, 1962. For Paul Steinert: KMBA SW 883/III, Akte Steinert, “Franziskus von Fresnes,” Hessische Jugend 6/7 (Juni/Juli 1954). 112 KMBA SW 767/III 12 (Bd. 9), Akte Anton Ullrich, circular attached to letter, October 17, 1941.

228 not been able, in spite of terror and death, to extirpate religion in the people here. On the contrary! The hunger of the Russian people for what has so long been withheld is great.”113 Chaplain Rincke echoed this finding in one of his reports, and revealed that he was not the only one impressed by such displays: “I could ascertain over and over that, for officers as well as for individual soldiers, the religious poise of the Russian civilian population is deeply awe-inspiring, particularly as it demonstrates itself with the opening of Russian churches.”114 Russians evidently attended mass even when they could not participate in it or receive communion – in one instance, an entire company of German soldiers, Catholic and non-Catholic, voluntarily attended a mass held in a church for which the nearby Russian community was also present. It was likely very early during the invasion of the Soviet Union, because the mood was pleasant enough between the soldiers and the civilian populace so that “after the mass, the people erected a dance platform, and on this platform Russian girls and women danced with German soldiers.

They celebrated the service like a country fair.”115 This display of religiosity fueled the beliefs of these men that their mission – their crusade – into Soviet Russia was not only justifiable but God-given, echoing very closely the propaganda line about the necessity to battle Bolshevism to the death in order to save Russia; other propagandistic claims, about

Untermenschen, or subhumans, and the mass dying of Soviet POWs, did not seem to factor into the situation.

The encounters with civilian populations fueled some of the most vivid memories these chaplains and priests retained in the postwar years. In journals, memoirs, and interviews, they recounted in detail some of the interactions from which most soldiers

113 EAM (Kardinal-Faulhaber Archive), 6796/1, June 1942. 114 NARA T312 roll 177 frame 7715690, Tätigkeitsbericht, 4. Armee, October 9, 1942, signed by Rincke. 115 KMBA SW 627/III, Akte Kunibert Pabstmann, undated postwar interview.

229 stayed aloof, particularly in the east. Franz Maria Eich stated simply, “It was official [that we had no contact to other Christians], but I say all the same, I was in the navy and the navy always had contact with civilians.”116 Otto Fangohr was stationed with a Ukrainian family during his time in Melitopol, and though he obeyed the dictates of the OKH and kept interactions to a minimum, he described relations between the Ukrainian populace and the army as peaceful until SS units moved into the area.117 This was not particular to the Ukraine, either; a priest in Greece recalled the same: “So long as the German troops behaved well, the Greeks were full of praise for Germany and her soldiers… unfortunately, the day arrived when the SS spirit was felt more and more across the island, which until then had been well-disposed to us. Raids were held… the agitation of the people grew and slowly became hatred.”118 The Poles in the East also originally feted the Germans as liberators, and feverishly welcomed the priests after two years of anti- church persecution by the Soviet regime. Rudolf Peifer wrote of the event several decades later, still able to recall how

different the religious comportment of the Poles was, how ebullient they were in their gratitude, how almost idolatrous in their veneration of priests! They wanted to kiss my hands, to kneel before me, to send me eggs, butter, even chickens. [What became of them], those whom I baptized, those whom I married?... It was inconceivable to us, how many remained believers under the Soviet regime!119

Peifer was not the only man of God to push against the fine line between what was allowed and what was prohibited. Others remembered throwing caution to the wind and administering to foreign populations because there was no priest present. Rudolf

116 KMBA SW 293/III, Akte Eich, interview, July 2, 1990. 117 KMBA SW 310/III, Akte Fangohr, interview, July 3, 1990. 118 KMBA SW 1050/IX, Unger, “Meine Kriegserlebnisse,” 18. 119 KMBA SW 632, 633/III, Akte Peifer, manuscript, 130-31. Peifer reveals in the same passage that he administered as a priest to Polish civilians with full awareness that what he was doing was prohibited and carried consequences. He remained undiscovered.

230 Ritzer wrote in his diary in November 1944, when he was in Widrinnen (now Widryny,

Poland): “At midday mass. Some civilians. Beautiful little church. The populace very religious. The teacher and the young missus very religious too,” intimating that they may have attended the masses he celebrated.120 He was also risking a great deal because he was not a formal chaplain; he served six and a half years as a medical orderly. Josef

Vennemann also found himself in a situation where civilians pleaded for his help.

Stationed in Shitomir (Zhytomyr, Ukraine) during 1942, he witnessed the Wehrmacht help the Polish Catholics of the area to rebuild “their beautiful cathedral, in which solemn

Latin masses could be celebrated.”121 Shortly thereafter, the Polish priests disappeared,

“arrested by the Nazis or fled,” he surmised, or more likely, executed along with several thousand other members of the Polish intelligentsia. He did not connect this disappearance with the German army’s deliberate killing of Polish elites, which included priests, or the persecution of the Jews in the German Reich and in Poland.122 When the feast of the Assumption, a major solemnity in the Catholic Church and a particularly important day for Poles, approached in August, German-speaking Poles asked him to perform a mass for them. They told him, “It’s a high feast-day for us, for we honor the

Madonna here as ‘Regina Polorum,’ queen of Poland.” Vennemann was reluctant to break Wehrmacht regulations, but equally disinclined to refuse to help Catholics who beseeched him. He was able to devise a sneaky solution using an ambulance and a

120 Rudolf Ritzer, Priesterrock und Uniform: 2,028 Tage als Sanitäter im II. Weltkrieg unter dem Schutz der Vorsehung. Tagesbuchaufzeichnungen vom 5.12.1939 bis 24.6.1945. Privately published manuscript taken directly from his wartime journals, with no publication date (but after 1987). 121 AMKB SW 881/III, Akten Josef Vennemann, “Dokumentation zur Militärseelsorge im 2. Weltkrieg,” 7- 8. 122 Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology and Atrocity (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2003), especially Chapter One. Rossino clearly establishes the fact that the SS frequently targeted Polish priests and clerics for execution during the invasion of Poland. See also Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg: die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2006).

231 disguise to smuggle himself into and out of the cathedral. The risk paid off; no one caught him, and the experience was powerfully moving: “Then I entered the church. A sea of jubilation, flowers, candles, songs – everything surrounded me.”123

Alois Krautwurst and Friedrich Dörr both baptized children during the invasion of the Soviet Union. As Dörr explained, “What became of it [the child], I don’t know, but the people knew at least that the child was baptized. It was already forbidden to us [to do this], so [what we did] was already too much.”124 But they did it anyway. Such unexpected interactions on religious grounds worked both ways, too. As often as civilians asked favors and made requests of priests moving with German armies, individual priests also approached civilians in different areas with pleas for aid. Richard Unger, desperate to perform a mass, found himself in Belgrade and visited the nearest Catholic church. He knew no Serbian and was sure that whoever answered the door would be unable to communicate in German, so he fell back on his Latin: “A Serbian acolyte who didn’t understand me and whom I didn’t understand knelt at the foot of the altar and ministrated and prayed the Latin tracts with a voice as clear as our [own] altar boys… it must be said in addition that at the time in Serbia, particularly in Belgrade, every German soldier was hated, not well accepted at all. No German soldier could walk around in the streets without being obviously armed.” He was able to do the same thing in Vucova, Romania, at a Franciscan monastery, as was Wilhelm Leuchter in Riga (Latvia).125

Many of the details of the priests’ experiences during the war could only be told in the post-war period. They largely confined the letters they wrote and journals they kept

123 KMBA SW 881/III, Akten Vennemann, “Dokumentation zur Militärseelsorge im 2. Weltkrieg,” 7-8. 124 KMBA SW 280, Akte Dörr, and 510/III, Akte Krautwurst, interviews, June 5, 1990 and June 1, 1990 respectively. 125 KMBA SW 1050/IX, Unger, “Meine Kriegserlebnisse,” 6, 29, also KMBA SW 543/III, Akte Leuchter, postwar interview, undated.

232 to a dry list of activities performed for that day. Sometimes, if a chaplain was writing, there might be statistics about how many soldiers attended mass and how many received communion. There was no mention of proper names, often no indication of place (though sometimes this was because the author was not exactly sure where he was), and, not surprisingly, very little discussion of atrocities committed by Germans or even of the presence of Jews. It is a gaping hole in light of the fact that many of these men were on the Eastern front between 1941 and 1944, at precisely the same time that the mass murder of Jews and brutal treatment of civilian populations was taking place. Certainly part of this silence in the written record can be attributed to fear. Friedrich Dörr kept journals of his activities as a chaplain, but “it says so little, so little and only briefly what I did: sick visits, hospital visits, etc., but nothing at all in detail. One couldn’t write down the important things, only a skeleton of activity.”126 Part of it may have been the power of the inviolable seal of the confessional: whatever soldiers revealed to priests in confession, the role of confessor bound the priest incontrovertibly to silence. The most he might have chosen to do, if he felt that the case of a crime warranted secular justice, was to withhold absolution until the penitent had turned himself in. There is no evidence that such pressure was ever applied, either by chaplains or other priests who heard confessions. It is possible that whatever men confessed during the war was classified by priests as an effect of war, and not in and of itself a crime requiring the intervention of military authorities.127

126 KMBA SW 280/III, Akte Dörr, interview, June 5, 1990. 127 In any case, such intervention would have resulted in the arrest of the confessing soldier, not because he had committed certain actions, but because he had reported them to someone else. My thanks to Omer Bartov for pointing this out.

233 There were a few exceptions. Joseph Wassong, an older chaplain and veteran of the Great War, remarked on April 20, 1941, “I heard that a Jew in Kielce (Poland) passed by a soldier without greeting him and received a slap in the face. The Jew greeted the next soldier with particular care, but was slapped by him as well because he believed the

Jew was ridiculing him. Is this true?”128 After this entry, there is no more talk of Jews or their persecution. His seeming disbelief that a soldier would mistreat a Jew in Poland in this way indicates a profound ignorance, willing or otherwise, about the state of the

German occupation of Poland.

Josef Menke also recorded a somewhat more complex experience in his journal that he had in Italy. In November 1944, he learned that German authorities were going to transport an Italian nun, a Sister Cressin, to an “extermination camp by our SS” because she was of Jewish descent. He wrote that she “came as a child of two years old with her

Jewish parents from the Ukraine, was naturalized in Italy, and became, as far as I can recall, a music teacher. Converted and entered an order… but her Jewish descent was enough to place her on the death list.”129 Working with the German consul, Köster, and

Monsignor Urbani, who would become the patriarch of Venice and a cardinal of the

Church after the war, he undertook to save her. On the morning of her deportation, the SS stopped at the cloister to pick her up. There they discovered that she was no longer there;

Menke reported that “only the patriarch [of Venice] knows where she is, and he certainly will keep the knowledge of her hiding place to himself.” He learned soon after that the SS

128 KMBA SW 901/III, Akte Wassong, Tagebuch, Band II. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was also Hitler’s birthday. 129 KMBA SW 580/III, Akte Menke, Kriegstagebuch, entry for November 11, 1944. It should be noted that the diary in this file was not the original, but a copy created mostly likely after the war, hand-written by Menke himself. It is not clear how much, if anything, he altered.

234 had abandoned their search for her.130 He made no mention of the 7,000 Italian Jews who had not converted and were included in the round-ups and killed in the extermination camps.131

Others acknowledged the atrocities they witnessed, against Jews and non-Jews, only years after the war, when they wrote memoirs or engaged in interviews. Despite the intervening space of some decades, the veterans – all of them still priests, though some were retired – communicated what they had known about the crimes being perpetrated, both on German soil and in the east. Not surprisingly, more than a few declared that they knew nothing. “I was never a witness to any atrocities or massacres,” insisted Karl

Schraaf, “nor knew anything of deportations of Jews or concentration camps. Only after the war did I learn of them. Soldiers hardly spoke of such things, they probably didn’t know much about it. I only heard about the priests in Dachau after the war, too, but very soon after.”132 Franz Maria Eich likewise said, “I knew nothing of the Jews, absolutely nothing. But there was Dachau, that I knew about, and I knew that there were priests in there… But of the stories of the Jews [Judengeschichten] I knew nothing.”133 Other priests admitted to having heard something, but they were unsure at the time what was truth and what was rumor, and tended to treat isolated instances as anomalies, refusing to believe that something more systematic was going on just beyond their own eyes. Alois

Krautwurst had learned of “this thing in Katin [sic],” he said when asked if he had

130 KMBA SW 580/III, Akte Menke, Kriegstagebuch, entry for November 17, 1944. In an addendum dated 1966, Menke remarked that during a 1961 visit to Venice, he learned from the former monsignor, now Patriarch Urbani, that Sister Cressin was still alive. 131 Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 561. Raul Hilberg gives the higher number of 9,000 Italian Jews killed during the Holocaust: Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd edition, Volume III (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 1321. 132 KMBA SW 784/III, Akte Schraaf, undated interview. 133 KMBA SW 293/III, Akte Eich, interview, July 2, 1990.

235 witnessed any massacres, referring to the massacre of Polish officers by Soviet soldiers,134 “but in Stalino [Donetsk, Ukraine] they had done away with the Jews there.

There we were even more outdoors, for there was an old mine. And there, allegedly, the

Jews were all shot and thrown into the pit. So, that was the only thing that I picked up on… [about concentration camps and persecution of the Jews] we hardly heard anything.”135

Josef Perau, who would go on in the post-war period to publish his wartime journals as a fairly successful book detailing his experiences as a medical orderly and, later, chaplain, explained, “At the time I was in a small Polish city that was full of Jews, all of whom wore the Jewish [yellow] star. But the systematic extermination had not yet begun… I never witnessed atrocities against Jews or civilian populations. I only heard about it after the war.” He recalled, “Someone explained to me that SS troops had thrown

Jewish children into the air and picked them off. But those were stories – I never witnessed it. I didn’t know if it was true.”136 But in his remarkable and provocative published journal, he mentioned several times seeing Jews wearing the yellow star in the streets, and being packed into ghettos; he must have applied at least some truth to the

“rumors” because in 1943, when stationed in Krasny, not far from the site of the Katyn massacre, he wrote in quiet despair, “What gruesome secrets are hidden in Russia’s silent expanse! I think of the mass grave at Roslawl [Russia], the droves of Jews that we’ve

134 See Gerd Kaiser, Katyn: Das Staatsverbrechen – Das Staatsgeheimnis (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002), esp. 156-82. 135 KMBA SW 510/III, Akte Krautwurst, interview, June 1, 1990. 136 KMBA SW 635/III, Akten Perau, undated dictation, 3.

236 seen in the Polish cities and who in the meantime have been killed. What should we expect when the blood of an Abel screams loudly from the earth?”137

Others witnessed the ghettoes but were unsure what to make of them. As

Christians, they claim to have recoiled, but as part of the German army, no individual priest issued a formal protest. Joseph Hoser never saw Jews murdered, but witnessed “a horrific suffering when I twice crossed through the Warsaw ghetto. There I saw suffering.

That affected one at the most profound inner level. I was speechless that such a thing could be possible. We also once drove past a smaller ghetto in Poland, and we stood at the fences there… the bodies already ravenous and emaciated.”138 He alluded to having helped the inhabitants clandestinely whenever possible, but evidently never spoke of it to others or questioned his superiors. Did he understand it as an unfortunate consequence of the war? As something completely disconnected from the persecutions of German Jews before 1939, or the antisemitic propaganda of the Nazi Party since 1933? Again, the disconnect in the minds of these priests and seminarians between what they were witnessing and what was actually happening, willful or otherwise, seems shocking and disturbing, though hardly anomalous. On this basic level, priests were inclined to react as many soldiers did: evasively, with astonishment, with disapproval, with apathy, but not with revulsion, or reproach, or indignation about the treatment of another human being.

There is no evidence that they greeted the crimes with enthusiasm, or that they participated in them directly.

137 KMBA SW 635/III. Akten Perau, I used an early manuscript (not the final version) of the published book. Entry for September 5, 1943, 132. The book is published as Perau, Priester im Heere Hitlers: Erinnerungen, 1940-1945 (Essen: Ludgerus-Verlag, 1962). 138 KMBA SW 441/III, Akte Hoser, interview, June 22, 1990.

237 Other testimonies suggest that there was too much rumor going around during the war, however, for contemporaries to be able to ignore it completely. Several priests learned second-hand, that is, from eyewitnesses to the atrocities, of what was happening.

Otto Fangohr, a chaplain who was stationed with units working not far from the SS and

“Gestapo-people… who were killing Jews,” remembered that one man “really said to me,

‘Father, do you know, what we’re doing here is the greatest obscenity [Schweinerei] in the world. Once the war is over, may God grant that it ends, then they’ll hang all of us.’

He said that, verbatim.”139 Franz Maria Eich, who had claimed to know only of Dachau’s horrors before the war ended, admitted hearing troubling news out of Holland, where he had been stationed up to the end of 1940 before being transferred to northern Germany and Scandinavia. While in the Hague he met both Edith Stein, a German-Jewish convert, philosopher and Carmelite nun, as well as Archbishop Jan de Jong. Only after 1944, when “everything was at an end for Holland,” did he hear about the pastoral letter circulated by de Jong and the other Dutch bishops “for the benefit of the Jews, and then on the next day all the Jews [of Holland] had been immediately rounded up, among them

Edith Stein.”140 Martin Zeil also received disturbing information in August 1944, this from a Polish priest whom he visited in Galicia: “he then explained to us about

Auschwitz…. Before this I knew nothing…. He said, ‘When the war is over, we’ll go on a pilgrimage and mourn our dead.’ He gave no information how many, or anything. But he said it, and I took notice. During transport we went by it… there were large fields and

139 KMBA SW 310/III, Ake Fangohr, interview, April 25, 1990 (first part). 140 KMBA SW 293/III, Akte Eich, interview, July 2, 1990. Edith Stein was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1998 as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, which was her monastic name, but she’s commonly referred to as Saint Edith Stein. For more information on this fascinating individual, who worked under Edmund Husserl as a student and was only the second woman in German history to earn a doctorate in philosophy, the comprehensive collection of essays edited by Joyce Avrech Berkman is indispensable: Contemplating Edith Stein (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).

238 people working in them. It must have been in the vicinity of Auschwitz.”141 He was no more explicit about the priest or what he had intimated, or about the workers he had seen, and he offered no commentary on why a Catholic priest considered Auschwitz the death site of “our dead,” in light of the fact that the majority of its victims were Jewish.142 But he clearly pinpointed the experience as the first he learned of the extermination camp and its victims.

A few priests had more direct experiences than merely hearing rumors, though these were a minority. The events remained obviously disturbing for them decades later, but at the time they were not traumatic enough to merit the interference with or the questioning of orders. The details given are evidence that these men came across the massacres immediately after they had occurred, if they were not direct eyewitnesses.

Wilhelm Ritthaler was in the Crimea, “where there were 6,000 Jews. They had been shot into an anti-tank ditch, children had also been seized by the legs and struck dead with stones. They were Jews.”143 Later, a Jewish doctor who had been temporarily spared approached him, “perhaps because she was needed. She said to me, ‘I know that I’ll get it soon, a curse hangs over our people, its blood is over us and over our children.’ She was recaptured at Jalta and shot.”144 Ritthaler offered no elucidation as to how he had learned of her fate. He explained in the interview that he approached a commander of his medical transport unit and told him that he was scared, that they had to atone for what they were doing, and that the officer was “nice” and “likeable.” This seems to be the extent of

141 KMBA SW 947/III, Akte Zeil, interview, June 14, 1990. 142 Jonathan Huener discusses the Polish tendency to view Auschwitz as “their” camp. See Huener, Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945-1979 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003). 143 KMBA SW 688/III, Akte Ritthaler, interview undated. 144 KMBA SW 688/III, Akte Ritthaler, interview undated.

239 Ritthaler’s reaction. While stationed in Thessalonica, Lorenz Wolf lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building that, in the front, housed German officers and in the back was home to a Jewish family. On the morning that the Jews of the city began to be deported, a young woman of the Jewish family asked him to attempt to have her grandmother, who had bad asthma, spared from the orders. It was unclear how he responded, but he recalled seeing them “suddenly in the city with their bed sheets and all of their worldly goods, now removed [from their home]… and [when] I returned, the apartment was empty. They were gone. What could one do? Nothing! One was powerless.”145 In garbled post-war testimony, Kunibert Pabstmann claimed to have been in Rutnia [sic – Ruthenia?] when he

was near a shooting [war ich lediglich einmal bei einer Erschießung dabei], completely voluntary… [the SS, who were already in the area] shot Jews. There was a collection point, and the Jews there had grown lousy, and in fact [it had happened in spite of] the typhus inoculation and others… Then the SS came, and outside was an anti-tank ditch, and there they were taken out and were shot. I went out as well, in order to see more closely…. it was ghastly, this I can say, these shootings… they shot the people, first they had to strip and they collected the fabric for [re-]use… and I saw young girls who hugged each other, and were shot embracing each other. And on another day, there were trails of blood in the snow from those who had been only half-shot, and who had crawled out again and got maybe 500 meters and then froze and bled to death. They had simply been shot [into the ditch] and left lying in there, half-living, half-dead. And those who were not yet dead were then smothered by those lying on top of them. This was the shooting of Jews that I experienced by the SS [die ich da mitgemacht habe bei der SS].146

Like Wolf and countless others, Pabstmann did not find it necessary to confront those doing the shooting; they remained nameless in his account except for allusions to the SS.

The most extensive diary entries made during the war about Jews and their murder came from Chaplain Johannes Stelzenberger, another veteran of the First World

145 KMBA SW 943/III, Akte Lorenz Wolf, interview, August 24, 1990. 146 KMBA SW 627/III, Akte Pabstmann, interview undated.

240 War who would survive to teach moral theology in Tübingen after 1945. His entries, though few, were the richest in terms of detail and emotional reaction. In October 1941, he was in Smolensk and witnessed the terrible treatment of prisoners, some of whom were so exhausted that they collapsed in the street, unable to continue. Those still standing “tussled with each other for the shoes and clothes! Men have become animals here. On the highway, 30,000 prisoners went past, a train of wretchedness…. they estimate that they haven’t eaten for six days. They bawled. Whoever left the line was shot. The tramping, wailing, and shooting ululated through the night. It was a night of horror.”147 On the way to Vilnius, he wrote,

Everywhere Jewish women and children work in the streets. They are concentrated in work details. An abominable disgrace to culture! Our caretaker in Molodetschno [Molotschna, Ukraine] reported that he was supposed to provide asylum for German soldiers. In addition he had 300 workers, mostly Jews. This morning, they didn’t come. From his wife he received the information that ninety of them, mostly craftsmen, were shot. Reason: a supplies warehouse had allegedly been set on fire in Minsk.148

Not much later, he wrote,

Molodetschno… 8.30am departure, arrival in Vilna at noon. A very beautiful, generally very interesting and rich city. Mostly Catholic populace… every day here, thousands of Jews were shot. Of 40,000 Jews in Vilna, now only 6,000 are still alive. How terrible is that! One is mortified that any such deed was perpetrated by German people. Food no longer tastes of anything. At any time, Jews will be picked up: men, women, and children. They are led out by the Lithuanian militia, supervised by German police, must dig their own graves, are rabidly beaten and then shot. The next row must first lay the dead in the holes, fill them up, then will themselves be shot! Blood! Blood!149

147 KMBA SW 840/III, Akte Stelzenberger, October 19, 1941, 97-8. It’s possible the date is not accurate, since the following two excerpts followed this in sequence but are dated earlier. 148 KMBA SW 840/III, Akte Stelzenberger, Kriegstagebuch, entry for October 17, 1941, 100. Diary has been re-copied posthumously with notes made by another unnamed priest, who took care to keep his contextual remarks separate from the narrative of the diaries. 149 KMBA SW 840/III, Akte Stelzenberger, Kriegstagebuch, entry for October 17, 1941, 100-01.

241 The nightmare landscape continued as he moved south from Vilnius to Tarnopol, close to the town of Zloczow, in Galicia. He may no longer have enjoyed eating, an indication of physical, mental, or spiritual stress (or all three), but he still noticed the weather, “much snow,” and the people shoveling it, “prisoners, Jews, inhabitants of the village.” He arrived at Proskurow (Proskurov, Ukraine) in the evening and wrote, “earlier 48,000, now

16,000 inhabitants, 3,000 of them Jews. Stationed in a soldier’s shelter. The sister there complained a lot about German soldiers, the Hungarians were nicer. They didn’t put their guns on the table in order to get beer…”150 Stelzenberger was another of the chaplains lost at Stalingrad, but unlike Raab, he became a prisoner-of-war, and was involved with the organization of pastoral care for German POWs in Soviet captivity. He survived to return to Germany in 1949.151

The only evidence that priests might have tried to intervene was unearthed some years ago by historians who discovered the experience of a pair of chaplains, one

Protestant and one Catholic, who came across a group of Jewish children near Belaya

Tserkov, in the Ukraine, in August 1941.152 SS and German soldiers had already slaughtered their parents, but there was some question about what to do with the children.

Soldiers who heard the children crying alerted the chaplains to their presence, and Ernst

Tewes, the Catholic chaplain, and his colleague went to investigate for themselves: “We found about ninety young Jewish children, among them some tiny babies, in a pitiless situation: penned up, moaning, crying, hungry and thirsty in the great midday heat. Some

150 KMBA SW 840/III, Akte Stelzenberger, Kriegstagebuch, entry for February 13, 1942, 107. 151 Biographical information taken from Biographisches Lexikon, 804-05. 152 Doris L. Bergen and Saul Friedländer wrote about the case independently and almost simultaneously. See Friedländer, “The Wehrmacht, German Society, and Knowledge of the Mass Extermination of the Jews” in Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, edited by Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann and Mary Nolan (New York: New Press, 2002), 17-30; Bergen, “Between God and Hitler,” 123-38.

242 of their parents had been shot; the mothers of others were imprisoned in a neighboring room, from which they had to see the misery of their children without being able to do anything about it.”153 They were able to convince an army officer to find out what was going to happen and, if possible, to save the children. But in the end, policy prevailed, and an SS unit took the children from the school and shot them.154 Tewes’s role in the tragic event became known only in 1968, the same year that he was consecrated auxiliary bishop of Munich and Freising, when he testified at the trial of former members of an SS-

Einsatzgruppe unit in Darmstadt.155 Werthmann’s post-war notes praised Tewes’s strength as a chaplain who cared tirelessly for the sick and the wounded, but made no mention of the incident involving the Jewish children. It is possible that Werthmann did not even know, especially if Tewes did not involve him in the “rescue attempt.”

While many priests insisted that nothing could be known for sure of Auschwitz, extermination camps, or massacres of Jews, there were some who contradicted that assertion. Alfons Mende’s post-war testimony furnishes evidence that, for many Germans on the Eastern front, the “rumors” were not rumors at all, even as he tried to stress to his interviewer that certainty was not part of life in battle. “Our train stopped somewhere for a long spell, this was already 1942 or 1943,” he remembered.

153 Ernst Tewes, “Seelsorger bei den Soldaten 1940-1945. Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen,” in Das Erzbistum München und Freising in der Zeit der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft, ed. Georg Schwaiger, vol. 2 (Munich: Schnell und Steiner, 1984), 251. 154 See “Statement by C.-in-C. Sixth Army, Field Marshal von Reichenau, 26 August 1941” in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Riess, “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders (New York: Free Press, 1991), 152-53. Von Reichenau confirmed that he “ascertained in principle that once begun, the action was conducted in an appropriate manner,” which can mean only one thing, that the women and children were killed. 155 For general information about Tewes’s postwar activities, see KMBA SW 863/III, “Korrespondentenbericht 303,” in Katholische Nachrichten Agentur, December 4, 1993 p. 2; Werthmann’s comments are included in the same file, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge (Werthmann), June 13, 1946. The 1968 trial in question is Landgericht Darmstadt, which prosecuted former members of Einsatzkommando 4a (part of Einsatzgruppe C), a unit involved in the Babi Yar massacre of 1941.

243 There were freight cars standing there, and we heard over and over, “bread, bread!” and such things. So then we stepped outside. The whole length of train was full of prisoners. What that was, we knew… [but] we couldn’t see, and they begged for bread. They were going to Auschwitz, we heard. When we returned, we immediately told others. “Man, they’re killing them….” But it was always a rumor. One never knew for sure… But we witnessed it. The whole freight train full of people…. And the [unnamed] general, too, “yes,” he said, “that’s right [that they will be killed and not simply taken to work camps].” “But they are rumors, one can hardly imagine it!” “No, no, it’s no rumor… you’ve seen it now yourself.”156

But whether they witnessed the massacres firsthand or heard only “rumors” of shootings and Auschwitz, neither chaplain nor priest nor seminarian pushed himself to condemn the treatment of Jews by his fellow soldiers and officers in the Wehrmacht, by SS-

Einsatzgruppen and other paramilitary organizations, or by other auxiliary units in the

Baltic states or eastern Europe who participated in the operation of extermination. None went out of his way to attempt to learn more about these “rumors.” With the exception of

Tewes and his Protestant colleague, there is no record of any having questioned orders or interfering with the treatment of Jewish civilians.

In September 1944, an unarmed German medical company wound its way slowly back towards Germany through the woods of eastern France when Allied air bombers

French partisans suddenly and almost simultaneously attacked them – in spite of their prominently displayed Red Cross flag. Among them were some sixteen priests, including

Heinrich Niewind, an ordained priest and NCO. The attacks wounded four of the company, who fell eventually into the hands of the partisans; a fifth was killed in the air attack. Niewind oversaw the burial in the nearest village, Velesmes, with help from the local French priest, after which he and one lance corporal elected to stay behind and warn

156 KMBA 578/III, Akte Alfons Mende, interview, June 2, 1990.

244 German soldiers passing through of the danger around the village. The Allies renewed the air raids overnight, and more Germans attached to medical units in the area died. In the morning, German military police arrived with orders to carry out reprisals by destroying

Velesmes. Trucks full of troops, weapons and explosives began to roll into the village, whose anxious inhabitants watched nervously as Niewind and his lance corporal, Stamm, engaged in conversation with the German commander. Long hours passed before

Niewind managed to persuade him to abandon the murderous event, which the commander finally cancelled when a member of the military police confirmed that the village was not connected in any way to the partisan activity. Had the measures been carried out, Velesmes would surely have been compared to similar actions executed in

Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944 and Lidice in 1942. The Germans moved on from Velesmes, and the French villagers went to mass, offered in thanksgiving for the fallen German orderly who had brought Niewind into Velesmes. Four days later, the Allies captured

Niewind. His role as “the savior of Velesmes” would not come to light for another twenty years.157

What determined a priest’s decision to object strenuously to wartime actions either in the process of unfolding or about to unfold? What moved Niewind to put his life in danger for the French villagers by staying behind to argue with an officer bent on revenge, while other priests merely recorded the fact that truckloads of Jews had passed them on their way to Auschwitz, where, they were told, they would be killed? Why were

157 For Heinrich Niewind’s remarkable story, see the following from KMBA SW 1050/IX: “Der Retter Velesmes,” Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur 7, January 11, 1965; “Er will kein Held sein,” Bildgott (?),January 17, 1965; “Französisches Dorf ehrt deutschen Priester,” Die Welt – Ausgabe B (Berlin, Westsektor) September 1965; untitled article from Bremer Nachrichten, September 28, 1965; untitled article from Rheinischer Merkur, October 8, 1965. See also KMBA SW 1054/IX, “Retter eines französischen Dorfes ermittelt,” Militärseelsorge VII (Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur), undated.

245 priests comfortable risking their lives by breaking Wehrmacht regulations to baptize the children of Russian civilians, or by communicating with the families of French

Résistance prisoners and communists executed by the German military, but seemingly could not find a way to protest the misery of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, or the shootings of unarmed civilians on the Eastern front? Antisemitism almost certainly played a role; the Church as an institution was no stranger to antisemitic language and discrimination, and as Chapter Two showed, German Catholics, including their spiritual leadership, were not moved to protest the persecution and deportation of Jews in Germany. Priests and seminarians serving in the armed forces might have used this antisemitism and especially the example of their authorities, consciously or otherwise, to justify to themselves the actions that were taken in the name of the German people, particularly on the eastern front.

It could have been any number of the factors that are often cited to explain why more failed to stand against the crimes of the Wehrmacht and the political party that directed it: cowardice, the desire to conform, an inclination to trust in, or at least accept, orders handed down from higher authorities. To some extent, the qualified explanations offered by Browning may be invoked: wartime brutalization, racism, routinization of the task, careerism, indoctrination.158 Browning’s seminal text was about what made ordinary men become killers, though. The question of what drove priests and seminarians – well- educated, religious men – to tolerate criminal, immoral activities is of a different order and requires an answer that somehow addresses what displaced these priests’ devotion to universal Christian principles.

158 Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battatlion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998), especially Ch. 18.

246 The answer once more underscores that fact that these men, despite the higher expectations heaped on them both by their contemporaries and in hindsight, were as prone to moral collaboration as any layman. What drove them in their fervent, nigh unbreakable dedication to the army into which they were sent, often straight out of seminary classrooms, was their desire to help the men – Christian, and German – with whom they served. Even deep into the postwar period, veterans cited this as the reason that they responded willingly to conscription, remembered their period of service with pride, and declared without hesitation that they would serve in the same way again, if it were necessary. In their own words, this solidarity with their fellow soldiers is why they chose to stay. And while staying in the army and failing to protest the army’s crimes should be seen as two distinct actions, in the case of the chaplains and other priests, generally, they were intimately connected. As shall be shown in the next chapter, these men by and large had no difficulty separating their comrades and military superiors from the darker aspects of Nazism; as priests, they were taking care of and providing spiritual solace to the good Christian men who found themselves dragged into a horrific war in defense of German civilization and culture. Moreover, the enemy was Bolshevism, an evil almost universally acknowledged by German Catholics, taking their lead from the

Vatican and from their bishops.159

Like their lay counterparts, most Catholic priests and seminarians gave little or no consideration to the confrontation they might have – should have – had with the Nazi movement when it became a question of serving in the military. As one chaplain-veteran later put it, “Because the men and young boys of our parishes were forced to go to the

159 See Chapter One for an examination of the Catholic Church’s reaction to Bolshevism through the 1920s and 1930s.

247 front, so we went with them as spiritual aids, according to the postulate, ‘Soldiers have a right to religion.’”160 In the tradition of separating spiritual care and religion during times of war from national politics and intrigue (which in Christian history dates back to at least the Crusades161), priests willingly donned the Wehrmacht uniform, not to proclaim their support for or acceptance of the dictates of Nazism, but rather to provide for the spiritual needs of their fellow Christian men, and to give solace and some sense of comfort and familiarity when they were far from home and risking their lives.

Werthmann himself backed this view in 1945, defending his decision to compromise by stating, “We felt that we could be of greater service if we remained outside concentration camp [sic],”162 that is, if he kept his head down and remained as unobtrusive as possible.

One can debate the morality of such a decision, but this aim was definitely subverted during the war. The preservation of moral codes formed by boys in peace-time proved particularly difficult in wartime conditions, and particularly when those moral codes had been turned inside out by OKH decrees commanding soldiers to shoot civilians on sight. Those looking for guidance or leadership from the religious men among them would have found it in the comfort of tradition and the solace of the confessional, where no sin goes unforgiven if genuine repentance is shown. The inversion of the moral code went almost unnoticed and unchallenged in a war that was “perceived as a struggle of all- or-nothing [that] called for complete spiritual commitment, absolute obedience,

160 Biographisches Lexikon, xvi. 161 Ralph W. Mathisen, “Emperors, Priests and Bishops: Military Chaplains in the Roman Empire” and Michael McCormick, “The Liturgy of War from Antiquity to the Crusades,” both in The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Doris L. Bergen (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004). 162 KMBA SW 1009/VII (Nr. 1), copy of Gregor Zimmer interview (English version); undated.

248 unremitting destruction of the enemy.”163 Seminarians, priests, and chaplains recorded extraordinary experiences as soldiers in the Wehrmacht, and as a group, they developed unique relationships and led unique activities – working with officers, performing mass, hearing confessions, caring for the sick and dying, ministering to prisoners and soldiers condemned to death for breaches of discipline – that kept them separate from other soldiers and their officers. Recognized as priests, treated with hostility or admiration, other soldiers treated them as a “group apart” who served an integral role in the machinery of war. They felt themselves to be required and invaluable, and so persisted in their dedication to the men who needed them, whose souls they were saving.

Unfortunately such determination and devotion blinded them to the fact that, in doing so, they sacrificed their own moral superiority and, likes the Nazis, engaged in the practice of classifying lives – and souls – as some more worth saving than others, while some were worthless.

163 Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 182.

249 5. Men of God As Army Soldiers

In February 1944, Chaplain Heinrich Müller wrote a report to his immediate religious superior, Chaplain Kauder, relating the details of the suicide of a private in the medical company of his division. Other soldiers reported that the man in question had been very depressed in the days preceding the event and “had inveighed to the point that one comrade tried to console him. On Sunday on the phone, he was asked how things were going, and he answered well and good. Then Monday, this action! And in such a way!”1 After months of trying to find the energy and determination to continue – he had gone to mass and spoken with various chaplains – Josef Herden hanged himself, joining the ranks of thousands of other German soldiers who preferred to take their own lives rather than continue in a war or risk execution through desertion.2 What made Herden different was the fact that he was an ordained Catholic priest. He had been conscripted out of the archdiocese of Prague shortly after his ordination in 1940, and became one of the thousands of clerics serving as a medic. For any soldier but especially for a priest, suicide was the most extreme kind of last resort, one that ultimately signified a loss of faith on a most fundamental level, for the Church had long held that the taking of one’s own life would lead to eternal damnation.

Herden proved to be an exception in terms of how priests and seminarians responded to the pressures of brutal war and constant violence and death. As Chapter

Four related, most priests and seminarians who were conscripted went to war, not

1 KMBA SW 1050/IX, report from Müller to Kauder, February 25, 1944. 2 Maria Fritsche cites statistics that place the number of Wehrmacht soldiers who committed suicide during the war at approximately 25,000. These are recorded as “Selbstmordfälle,” in contrast to those soldiers who deliberately wounded themselves in an attempt to secure their discharge from service (Selbstverstümmel- ungen, Selbstversetzungen); Fritsche estimates the number of this second category more conservatively at about 3,000. Fritsche, Entziehungen: Österreichische Deserteure und Selbstverstümmler in der Deutschen Wehrmacht (Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2004), 60-69.

250 necessarily because they supported the aims of the Nazi Party, but because they saw it as a duty to care for the Christian German souls who would be doing the fighting, and they felt a sense of duty to defend their country. In doing so, they found ways to justify their participation in a war that was ultimately not only immoral and infringed upon many of their own religious principles, but also criminal, and led by a criminal regime. Most lacked genuine enthusiasm, mirroring the larger German population, but they also went with the determination to do some good, or make a difference for the soldiers with whom they would live for the next six years. In written testimony, particularly post-war, they consistently divorced the war, the army leadership, and the average soldier from the ideology of Nazism. Priests and seminarians, just like laymen, were susceptible to different motivations when it came not only to serving, but to serving enthusiastically: nationalism, anti-Bolshevism, peer pressure, and other factors made the commitments of these men to the army “ordinary” in every sense. There was even a kind of spiritual opportunism at work, which manifested itself in the conviction that theirs was a particular spiritual burden that only they could bear. To decline such a duty – to neglect to look after the Catholics in the armed forces and tend to their souls like the shepherds they were meant to be – was judged, by members of the Church as well as themselves, as shirking one’s vocation.

If these men were prey to the same considerations and motivations as laymen were during their wartime service, it seems that they no longer constituted a “group apart,” that nothing distinguished them from their fellow soldiers. In fact, this chapter will show that they continued to be a distinct group precisely because of their vocation, grounded in a rich education and often very deep faith that evidenced itself repeatedly in

251 their written words and post-war reflections. The men with whom they served sought them out for spiritual support and counsel, even if they were not part of the chaplaincy.

This combination of education, faith, and being needed invited them to overlook the compromising element of their service – in saying “yes” to the regime, they accepted its goals, with all their racial-biological and murderous facets. Essentially, the support they gave outweighed all other considerations of political and ideological alignment, revealing a dangerous myopia: only Christian German souls counted, as the previous chapter underscored. It also shows an astounding ignorance, mirrored to some extent by the

Catholic Church writ large at this time in Europe, in that they believed their actions could not be interpreted politically because they were working strictly for the spiritual benefit of their comrades. Finally, such support provides an unusual and fascinating lens through which to explore how German Catholics resolved the discrepancies and contradictions between their national and religious identities, and in particular how they squared their own finely tuned sense of morality with the ideology of the Nazi Party, which was not without its own aberrant moral foundations. On some points, most obviously on the interpretation of Bolshevism, Catholicism and Nazism shared an affinity that priests and seminarians in the army used to explain the ferocious battles, particularly in the east; on other points, it is not so obvious how this reconciliation played out.

This chapter investigates the ways in which the experience of brutal and brutalizing war affirmed the beliefs and values of Catholic priests and seminarians in the armed forces, with very few exceptions. Wartime correspondence and reports as well as post-war testimonies from interviews and memoirs, depicts the world-view of these men in the language they themselves employed to describe their war service and Nazism, and

252 in the subjects they chose to address and reflect upon – and those about which they were silent. Their views of themselves as chaplains or medical soldiers, as well as their understanding of faith and ideology and their subsequent transformations under conditions that drove some to suicide, are an integral part of grasping the basis on which these men committed themselves so thoroughly to the war, and why most found their religious convictions strengthened through their service.

Most remarkably of all, priests and seminarians serving in the Wehrmacht were incredibly loyal to many of the aims of the war as touted by the Nazi regime – the defense of German (read: Christian) civilization and the eradication of Bolshevism being two of the most obvious – and they ground this loyalty the religious fervor that had motivated them to serve willingly in the first place. At the same time, such a deeply spiritual commitment failed spectacularly to safeguard these men from the moral perversion that was widespread, especially on the Eastern front, as well as to incite them to defend those human lives most in need of defense – namely, Europe’s Jews. Ultimately their examples prove what has been the contention of this dissertation since the first chapter: that Nazism and Catholicism, despite struggling against each other for the total devotion of their followers, were in the end highly compatible, especially for priests and seminarians.

A minority of conscripted priests and seminarians were unable to muster the courage to stay the course without significantly altering their daily routine. One response to the dehumanizing effects of war, as outlined above, was suicide or attempted suicide, to which some priests were no more immune than the common soldier – even devout men

253 could be prone to demoralization at the front. In spite of their commitment to a life of religious service based on fairly stringent morals, other priests found solace in alcohol.

Of course, battle has naturally paired with alcohol since well before the Second World

War. Nor was this something that soldiers kept hidden from the German army authorities; certainly in some instances, military commanders encouraged moderate alcohol consumption as a way for soldiers to vent their emotions before or after having participated in brutal battle or mass slaughter.3 That priests resorted to intoxication is probably not surprising, but it did pose special problems for religious authorities like

Werthmann, who wrote apologetically, “Unfortunately it must be said that some confreres, whose grievous crimes lay within the scope of perverse fornication and defeatist expressions, were under the influence of alcohol when they exercised their misdeeds… this put them in the situation in which they were no longer masters of their own senses.”4 He did not offer details about which confreres he was describing and what they did, and he was careful to qualify the statement; not all priests who gave in to sexual deviance or defeatism could plead the excuse of intoxication.

Elsewhere, though, Werthmann related the adventures of one chaplain, Franz

Schmitz, who spent some time with the interned former vicar-general at the Benedictine monastery in Niederalteich in May 1945. A religious superior’s assessment of Schmitz described him as a chaplain who “loved his duty, and also alcohol,” but who was still

3 Omer Bartov talks about the rise in drunkenness among army soldiers and officers, even before the critical invasion of the Soviet Union. See Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), esp. Chapter Three. It seems that ultimately, alcohol was more or less permitted as an anesthetic for those involved in mass killing operations on the Eastern front. Commanders also distributed it as the reward for a “job well done.” Christopher Browning discusses the use of alcohol by Reserve Police Battalion 101 throughout their killing campaign in the East in Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1998). 4 KMBA SW 154/III, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, June 22, 1945.

254 able to function as “an enthusiastic Catholic priest… [whose] men treasure him.”5

Werthmann’s view on the connection between alcohol and fornication did not apply here;

Schmitz’s most serious infraction was his struggle with alcoholism. Related to this, he experienced problems towards the end of the war, which he may well have personally related to Werthmann in Niederalteich. Authorities had imprisoned Schmitz in Vienna after making defeatist remarks, and from there he was displaced in the confusion of converging Russian and American armies. Werthmann wrote, “it’s regrettable that this reliable and efficient chaplain made his defeatist remarks against the state in a condition of considerable drunkenness. Schmitz is by nature sober, but the difficult battles he’s been in since the evacuation of Bessarabia were probably crucial in determining his addiction to alcohol at the time.”6 It is unclear whether Schmitz continued drinking after his escape, as he made his way back towards German soil. During his flight from the

Russians, for example, who had taken all of his clothes, he stumbled, literally, into the SS

Totenkopf division (SS-Division Theodor Eicke), who almost shot him under suspicion that he was an enemy.7

Some others responded to the brutalizing situation either by converting to a different denomination, or by leaving the priesthood altogether. Werthmann remembered the description of Johannes Friedrich, chaplain, as a “little conman [Hochstapler],” who confided to a Protestant chaplain that he wanted to become Protestant. Moreover, he associated openly with French civilians, and at some point in early 1944 had become involved, presumably sexually, with a young German woman. By late summer 1944,

5 KMBA SW 756/III, Akte Franz Schmitz, “Beurteiling durch Wehrmachtoberpfarrer Kuhn,” A.O.K. 6, October 30, 1945. 6 KMBA SW 756/III, Akte Schmitz, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, May 12, 1945. Unfortunately, Werthmann does not include Schmitz’s “defeatist” remarks. 7 KMBA SW 756/III, Akte Schmitz, all related in Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, May 12, 1945.

255 military authorities in conjunction with the Field Bishop’s Office released him from the chaplaincy and placed him in his earlier position, as a corporal in the medical service; he was killed in March 1945.8 Franz Knauer, another chaplain, became so ill in October

1942 that he lost forty pounds and requested sick leave. His case is more difficult to follow; in a brief post-war note, Werthmann remarked that Knauer was attempting to leave the priesthood. While it cannot be said definitively that these men, and others like them, became disillusioned with their vocation as a direct result of their wartime experiences, it is difficult to believe that what they lived through played no role at all.

They were in the thick of fighting, they comforted the sick and the dying, and they were eyewitnesses to particularly brutal warfare on the eastern front.

Other priests proved to be spectacularly incapable of handling the stress of their new situation, close to or at the front lines of the war. Their inability to perform their duties properly reflected this, an inability that superiors most often another chaplain or the staff doctor of the relevant hospital, subsequently reported in routine evaluations. One young chaplain, Franz Erasmi, was able to please neither. His religious superior wrote, “I have known Erasmi since 1942 and was never satisfied with his work. In the summer of

1943, the chief doctor who worked with him at the time complained that he could not even fulfill his modest obligations at the hospital. Exhortations, expositions, even brotherly attempts on my part have had no luck in inspiring him to do his work.”9 The doctor with whom Erasmi was working also wrote, “He never concerned himself of his own volition with the housing, provisioning and care of the numerous wounded. He was completely unmoved by the miserable looks of the starving, suffering, wounded soldiers,

8 All information taken from KMBA SW 329/III, Akte Johannes Friedrich, reports dated June 15, 1944, July 14, 1944, August 10, 1944. It is not clear from the documentation why he was called a conman. 9 KMBA SW 304/III, Ake Franz Erasmi, report from Wehrmachtdekan Kostorz, May 1, 1944.

256 who wanted only some support. He didn’t lift a finger, as each of us did day and night…”10 In 1944, he was transferred no less than six times, and he finished the war in

Soviet captivity, which he survived.11 Ludwig Ebbing’s religious superior also rendered harsh judgment, labeling him a “salon priest in that he eschews his duty to the fighting soldiers. Loves ‘beautiful’ masses in rear positions and favors spending time in the casino. Pretentious [anspruchsvoll].”12 Did Ebbing shirk the task of providing spiritual and moral support to the soldiers because he found it too difficult, or felt himself inadequate, or was he simply a priest who would have been more concerned with the material trappings of religion even in peacetime? There is no answer to this question, because there is no testimony from Ebbing, but reports judged him as lacking decisively in chaplain skills and, therefore, unfit for a service where the men were required to be mentally and spiritually as toughened as the soldiers engaged in physical battle.

Werthmann evidently used reports like this about various chaplains to pass his own judgments, keeping these notes together to detail both the good and the bad for his projected chaplaincy history. That he was especially hard on his own men was likely due to his own obsession with duty – he took his job seriously and expected those under him to do the same. About Leonhard Hochreiter, stationed with the Second Mountain

Division, he wrote, “His geniality was not always sincere. His gestures were not always natural… Others complained that he didn’t say mass for Easter 1945 [April 1], when the

10 KMBA SW 304/III, Akte Erasmi, report from Stabsarzt Hornekamp, April 21, 1944. 11 Biographisches Lexikon der katholischen Militärseelsorge Deutschlands 1848 bis 1945, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt, Peter Häger, Karl Hengst, and Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002), “Erasmi,” 182. 12 KMBA SW 287/III, Akte Ludwig Ebbing, report from Wehrmachtpfarrer Weis, 376th infantry division, undated.

257 division was deployed to Heilbronn.”13 What emerges clearly from these notes is that, while he was prepared to accept some ideological collaboration by his men with the regime – this was the example that he himself set for them – he was not willing to tolerate full-scale acceptance of the Nazi Weltanschauung. One chaplain, Paul Drossert, presented so many ideological problems as a priest – he had the backing of the Nazi

Party, since he had emerged as an open supporter of Hitler as early as 1932; the Party more or less forced the bishop of Berlin to accept him into his diocese, just as it later forced the field bishop to accept him in the chaplaincy – that his early retirement in 1943 for health reasons came as a blessing for Werthmann. That was not the end, though; the chaplain “was suspended again after one year’s pension because of the angry hate mail he addressed to Hitler and to General Reinecke. He was uninhibited in the letters and accused the bishop as well as the OKH of sabotaging the work of the Führer.”14 Despite his demonstrated loyalty to the Party – earning him the label “brown priest” by a later historian, numbered among the minority clerics who ardently and consistently promoted

Nazi ideals – whoever read his letters evidently did not take him seriously. The suspension entailed a transfer into the OKH-Reserves, within which he survived the war.15

Another priest presented Werthmann with even more of a challenge when it came to ideological influence. Ordained in 1925, Joseph Thomann was involved with the

Reichswehr chaplaincy that transitioned into the Wehrmacht in 1935, and became an

13 KMBA SW 430/III, Akte Leonhard Hochreiter, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, March 4, 1946 and June 27, 1945. 14 KMBA SW 283/III, Akte Paul Drossert, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, July 1, 1945. 15 Kevin P. Spicer lists Drossert in his appendix as one of the brown priests. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), 246. Additional biographical information taken from Biographisches Lexikon, 160.

258 army group chaplain by 1942. Werthmann recalled that Thomann had had a breakdown while stationed in Vienna in 1938, and that instead of limiting himself to his own immediate spiritual duties, he had spent his time turning Austrian chaplains against each other and using his pulpit to attack both the Austrian and German bishops for their anti-

Nazi stance. The apostolic nuncio in Germany, Cesare Orsenigo, ordered Field Bishop

Rarkowski, Thomann’s superior, to prohibit Thomann from engaging in polemics and to confine himself to the pertinent pastoral tasks of an army chaplain. Rarkowski “did not have the courage” to approach him, so Werthmann was charged with the task of confronting Thomann, “who reacted to my remonstrance in a way that reflected his dubiety and his complete lack of self-awareness: he reproached me for refusing to give the ‘German greeting’ [‘Deutschen Grüßens’ – the Heil Hitler] and attempted to use it against me. It’s entirely possible that he denounced me at the time.”16 Nothing happened to Werthmann, and Thomann continued to serve in the army, though the field vicar- general always categorized him as an exponent of Nazi ideology. It is difficult to avoid sharing his conclusions; a pre-war composition that Thomann wrote regarding the reorganization of pastoral care in the armed forces and its impact on chaplains included phrases such as “Christianity is no opponent of Nazism; the voice of God in Christianity does not contradict His voice in our blood” and

We hear this natural revelation of God today in what we call “the voice of blood” [die Stimme des Blutes]. The natural disposition of our people and our race is a gift of the Creator, and it imports not only gift but also duty. God has placed this knowledge before our eyes even more clearly today, in NS… this is the command of the hour for the genuinely devout man: to follow the will of God.17

16 KMBA SW 154/III (10), undated post-war notes made by Werthmann, likely for his Geschichte der Feldseelsorge. 17 KMBA SW 154/III (10), Wehrmachtdekan Thomann, “Die organistorische Neuordnung der Wehrmachtseelsorge in ihrer Bedeutung für den Wehrmachtpfarrer,” undated but written between July and

259

Thomann represented a very small number of priests – one can number Rarkowski among them – who gave themselves over to Nazi racial ideology, fusing it with the

Catholic faith of their vocation.18 Although his pamphlet caught the concerned attention of Werthmann, he did not have much success in transforming chaplains into ardent advocates of Nazism. He survived the war and returned to Germany in 1947 after two years in French captivity.

By and large, Werthmann conceived of the priests above as a disappointment or failure either because they strayed too far from the convictions of their vocation, replacing their trust in Providence with addictions such as alcoholism, or they embraced

Nazism too explicitly, trading subservience to religious authority (not just God, but also the Field Bishop’s office) for acclamation of the Führer and his movement. Overall, though, they constitute a minority of priests who failed to meet the basic requirements for serving as a chaplain, as laid out both officially, by OKH regulations, and unofficially, in the high expectations of supervisory chaplains, hospital doctors, and unit commanders, as well as Werthmann. Werthmann claimed as early as June 1945 that “the number of confreres who collapsed in the course of their service or who failed in their priestly conduct, and through this damaged the reputation of the Catholic Church, is infinitesimal in comparison with those hundreds of chaplains who embraced their duty.”19 Other chaplains and priests who found themselves serving in medical companies and hospitals summoned enough motivation and endurance to perform their services and perform them

August 1938, pg. 5, 7-8. (the only period of time during which Thomann held the position of Wehrmachtdekan). Biographical information taken from Biographisches Lexikon, 834. 18 See Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, for an invaluable examination of these men. Rarkowski is included in the book’s appendix; Thomann is not. 19 KMBA SW 152/III, letter from Werthmann addressed to all archbishoprics and bishoprics of Germany, June 1945. Werthmann was still interned at this point at the monastery in Niederalteich.

260 well, even when they were given to doubt – moments that occurred not infrequently, according to their wartime journals and post-war reminiscences. Expressions of outright defeatism were obviously rare, given the murderous discipline that military commanders used to combat such sentiment.20 Perhaps the closest from a chaplain came in a diary kept by Bernhard Schmidt, who wrote sometime in early 1942, “The war has become a giant process of self-destruction [after the invasion of the Soviet Union and the involvement of the U.S. in December 1941].”21 He went on in later writings to indicate that Stalingrad was the point at which all confidence in a final victory was broken, and all who “had their eyes and ears open knew it was the beginning of the end, though they didn’t yet dare to speak aloud of it.” At Stalingrad, he wrote, “238,000 German soldiers [were] killed through unimaginable martyrdom… [and the mere name of the city] not only alarmed soldiers along the entire front, but even plunged them into a state of permanent angst over the possibility of a similar fate.”22

Seminarians in the medical service, who were often younger than priests called into the chaplaincy, sometimes by several years, were more prone to spells of defeatism and managed to express themselves in this way in letters they wrote home that escaped the censors. Moreover, their former teachers, or regens, expected seminarians conscripted out of their classrooms to correspond regularly while serving in the army, an opportunity that provided them with time and space to vent some of their deeper frustrations.23 Many

20 See Chapter Four, for illustrations of what happened to some chaplains accused of defeatism. See also Bartov, Hitler’s Army, Chapter Three. 21 KMBA SW 744/III, Akte Bernhard Schmidt, copy of war diary forwarded to archives in 1978, passage undated. 22 KMBA SW 744/III, Akte Schmidt, entry made between July 5 and October 18, 1943. 23 Thanks to Frau Susanne Kornacker, licentiate in theology at the Erzbistumsarchiv München, for delineating the position of regens and his wartime relationship with his conscripted students. A regens, a somewhat obsolete title, is often used interchangeably with prefect or rector, and refers to the director of a seminary.

261 wrote frequently and at length. The earlier letters of Fritz Bauer, drafted out of the seminary in Freising, displayed a deep spirituality and patience, though as the war continued with no end in sight, his mood noticeably changed. He began to give in to pessimism and blamed lack of transparency for his agitation: “I have gone in circles, restlessly searching for clarity, but unable to find any. Often, if I ponder the two ways of understanding and look for the right one, in all honesty, I still can’t situate myself. So then I decide randomly to go with one or the other. That it’s such guesswork agitates me in the swelling hopelessness of our own situation: what will become of us?”24 A fellow seminarian was even more dejected, relaying that “the disorientation [Verwirrung] of the spirit, and the hatred of the people, appears to grow stronger from day to day…. These days stimulate only death and corruption.”25 Fatalism was not specific to the more devout soldiers of the Wehrmacht, but they did appear vulnerable to it because of their beliefs, especially when events began to turn against Germany. Not only was their country suffering defeat after disastrous defeat, but the God in whom they had placed their trust had apparently abandoned them, leaving them to wallow in the filth and misery of the various fronts. Shortly before the Normandy invasion, Alois Fuchs wrote to his regens,

“Fatalism is a stench that permeates the spirit of the time. The world’s piety can probably hold its own in an atmosphere of affluence. But in the mud and nearness of death, in the trenches here, such piety becomes ludicrous and senseless.”26 In these cases, which represented a minority among seminarians from Freising, religious faith was clearly not

24 EAM Faulhaber-Archiv, Priesterseminar Freising, 1939-1945, Box I: Fritz Bauer, letter, Königsberg, December 10, 1943. The Freising seminary is one of the largest and most famous in Germany, lying just outside Munich, in the heart of Catholic Bavaria. It is also, incidentally, the seminary that Pope Benedict XVI, then Joseph Ratzinger, attended, beginning immediately after the war. 25 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Adelbert Albrecht, letter, December 19, 1942. 26 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Alois Fuchs, letter, April 16, 1944.

262 helpful in their struggle to maintain optimism. Those who were aware of the struggle may have tried to fight it actively, like Bernhard Egger, who confessed,

I often feel very downtrodden, depressed, and apathetic… an indomitable nostalgia [Heimweh der Vergangenheit] is made all the more stronger in that it pervades me, not merely from outside, but fills me up inside, surging into my heart. I don’t want, even once, to fall victim to the general dourness that finds its repose in eating, drinking, sleeping, like an animated corpse.27

No doubt others - with Herden an extreme example - simply succumbed to their depression.

But more often, priests and seminarians, not unlike lay soldiers, turned to religion as a way to combat such crippling terror, and used spiritual beliefs as a means to bolster their own courage and that of the soldiers around them. In a letter written to Werthmann during Easter season, a year before the war ended, a cleric in the medical corps, Paul

Kaminski, confided to him, “It’s clear that we have more than a soldierly duty here. What the world thinks of us, lies on us here. The young soldiers are thankful for every word that brings them closer to clarity. Even the youngest soldier has not yet forgotten to pray.”28 It is not surprising that men living in constant proximity to death would turn to religion; but here it is equally telling that priests and seminarians found strength and inspiration from the soldiers around them who retained their religious faith and hungered for support. This, more than anything, convinced them that the service they provided was justifiable and indispensable. Chaplain Gustav Raab felt this, in the final weeks and days before his death at Stalingrad. He confided to his family, “The more horrible it is, the deeper and firmer grows my trust in God. I believe, until the last instant, that God

27 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Bernhard Egger, letter, Halle, June 22, 1940. Emphasis in original. 28 KMBA SW 1050/IX, letter, April 30, 1944.

263 sustains my life.”29 One day later, he reflected on the grim thoughts that united him with the combat soldiers: “It cannot be that I will not see my home again. This thought occupies us hourly, daily. Every other need, deprivation, or exertion is secondary. It’s a question of all or nothing. I order myself into God’s hands and pray daily the last prayer of my life, in order to be ready at any instant. My last movement goes to God, that is certain.”30

Religion did more for priests than simply give them an added strength to serve the soldiers of the army. For some priests, their faith enabled them to overcome the contradictions of serving a regime hostile to Christianity, in a war defined by immoral and criminal behavior, and reaffirmed their own religious beliefs. Some of these men spoke of the profound doubts and struggles with depression that probably affected most soldiers at one point or another, and identified their faith in God as the source that kept them from giving in. Richard Unger remembered in his post-war memoirs, based on his wartime diary, that he was particularly melancholic on All Souls’ Day (November 2), while in Croatia, because he knew that priests in Germany would be performing three masses in honor of the solemn feast day. Unger, however, “wore the gray uniform, and was a soldier in a great war, as were millions of others. I could no longer exercise any priestly function, not even say a mass.” He felt himself terribly alone and could only console himself with the thought that “my God lives, and this God is with me and in me… with this preparation, I fulfilled my duty, as hard and difficult as it sometimes was.”31 Many priests and seminarians were able to continue in the army, were able even to justify their lack of resistance to Nazism and their failure to condemn the immoral

29 KMBA SW 670/III, Akte Gustav Raab, letter, January 18, 1943. 30 KMBA SW 670/III, Akte Raab, letter, January 19, 1943. 31 KMBA SW 1050/IX, copy, “Meine Kriegserlebnisse,” Richard Unger, January 22, 1968.

264 actions of others, by citing this faith in God. For some seminarians, it deepened their conviction that a vocational life was their destiny: “I have learned so much…. the love for my calling [to the priesthood] has grown clear only in these years. I have seen why the world today needs priests and I am ready to accept that, right now, I have to be a soldier and I have to wait….”32 In this sense, the war, and their participation in it, was a very real blessing for them.

Andreas Hillreiner, another seminarian from Freising, also discovered that his service in the army was leading to a much more intimate connection to his religious life because he was able to present such faith as an anchor for the soldiers around him. He was “almost convinced that, by being cast as a living example of ‘Gaudete in Domino,’ many comrades have been brought closer to the Christian religion than by countless words. My desire to study further, to prepare myself… to become a priest, is stronger than ever and grows each day, especially here in the army.”33 Chaplain Wilhelm Klose shared a similar kind of strength in a sermon to his men short months before his own death: “Something resonates here, that grips those whose faith has suffered some trepidation in the hardness of the war and the battle for life. Now we know, comrades, what the Exemplar wants… ‘His heart presides over every battle, to wrest your souls from death and nurture you in your hunger.’”34 Klose tempered the passage to appropriate it more closely for men in battle – the original biblical verse is addressed to the just, and there is no direct reference to battle – but he took enough comfort from the readings to

32 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Anton Burger, letter, Straßburg, November 16, 1944. 33 EAM-FA, Priesterserminar Freising, Box II: Andreas Hillreiner, letter, North Europe, April 28, 1943. “Gaudete in Domino” translates literally to the imperative, “rejoice in the Lord,” and is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, 3:1. The paragraph is an appeal to all-encompassing confidence in Christ. 34 KMBA SW 489/III, Akte Wilhelm Klose, sermon, June 18, 1944. The biblical quote is the introit (opening passage of a mass) for the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The full quotation is: “The thoughts of His Heart are from generation to generation: to deliver their souls from death, and feed them in famine.” Psalms 32: 1, 11.

265 use them as a tool to share with his men. Chaplain Heinrich Müller was also conscious of the way his example lent the soldiers guidance and support, citing reflections he took from a bishop’s sermon: “Each chaplain must ponder how he will find all of his spiritual energy, for such energy is vital for believers at this point in time. It is the most difficult and the highest example to so anchor the spirits, hearts, and wills of the faithful in the kingdom of God, with the help of God-given grace, so that they are not wrenched from this spiritual community.”35

Such newfound spiritual strength and attachment to the religious life was evident to observers, as well. Werthmann drew a positive outcome from the experiences of young seminarians and priests being forced to participate in war by emphasizing the maturity that it gave them, “the mild, benevolent maturity of a fruitful harvest… Your maturity is not the decay of the smug, super-saturated, disappointed, broken man, not the fatigue of the truly exhausted. A firm calmness stands behind your countenance. The steadfastness of a complete, aware man is within you, a man who is certain and secure, who possesses eternity.”36 In this way, the war could be understood as a positive tool to prepare young men for their futures; its bleaker aspects, and the reality that not all returning priest- soldiers would be so tranquil about the war’s impact, was conveniently overlooked.

Sermons could help pick up the flagging spirits of the troops; priests laid much emphasis, especially at front-line seminars where the topic was often broached, on finding the length, pitch, and subjects for sermons that would best meet the goal of propping morale. Josef Perau’s Christmastime sermon is one such example. He did not list the year, but he delivered it after the invasion of the Soviet Union, and probably

35 KMBA SW 597/III, Akte Heinrich Müller, letter, February 17, 1943. Müller was likely quoting Joseph Damian Schmitt, bishop of Fulda, Müller’s home diocese. 36 KMBA SW 150/III, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, June 27, 1945.

266 before the Wehrmacht began to suffer major defeats. Perau delivered a talk both acknowledging the grim world around them and offering a solace that, if grasped, would outlast any material or temporal consolation. He began rhetorically,

Does God take the suffering away from the earth this night, douse the fires of war, will he guide those at the front back to their loved ones waiting at home, will he give redemption to the dishonored, health to the wounded, will he send us victory and peace? No, comrades, none of this will happen. The holy night is no fairy tale, no magical night; in this night, hard reality remains…

Those who felt the most lost in the war were those who had lost their spiritual refuge by abandoning belief in God, and in doing so had lost a kind of permanent foothold in the world. In such cases, it was not simple homesickness that caused morale to plummet; it was a “homesickness for God.” How was one to solve it? Perau admitted that the solution was no easy task, that it was a question of honest, genuinely felt and lived faith:

The smell of pine blows away, the lights go out, and you view tomorrow as doubly bleak. But he who celebrates this hour in the deepest, truest belief in Christmas, he takes with him a treasure, for the Christ-child will surely go with him. Wherever this Child lies within us, there lies a light, too, and when all other lights go out, there is yet peace in this bellicose world.37

It is equally evident that sermons had their limits; for chaplains in the employ of an army, their target audience would always be their own men, and of them, only those who chose to attend divine services. They spared little, if any, thought for the treatment of foreign civilians, and prisoners of war entered their vision only peripherally unless one was a chaplain stationed at a prison.38 There was very little time for philosophizing about the

37 KMBA SW 635/III, Akten Josef Perau, Christmas sermon, undated. Emphasis in original. 38 Chaplains could be assigned to care for prisoners held in western and southern occupied territories, such as Abbé Stock and his helpers who worked in Fresnes, just outside of Paris (see Chapter Four, 226-28). Chaplains were also assigned to care for German soldiers to be executed for breaches of discipline; this included visiting the condemned regularly, administering the sacraments, accompanying them to the site of execution, and in many cases corresponding with the family after military authorities had alerted them to their loved one’s death. Of course, regulations were handed down pertaining to how such care could be carried out. See KMBA SW 145, Zusammenfassung (2nd edition), 53-55. One chaplain who cared for more than 200 German soldiers executed for breaches of discipline on the Eastern front in 1941 was Georg

267 deeper meaning of the war. Here, military command and spiritual authority could meet over a common goal: support the morale of the troops by any means necessary.

There is little direct evidence that priests – chaplains or otherwise – spent extended amounts of time debating the justness of the war during the war itself. One priest has already stressed how dangerous it was to write anything down in diaries, let alone speak to others; Johann Evangelist Kaspar insisted that, for philosophizing about bigger questions, “you didn’t have much time, and you always had to be careful, because you never knew what the other men stood for.”39 Lorenz Wolf echoed this, relating that discussions of the justness of war simply were not possible.40 While commanders directed the NSFOs who were present in various divisions beginning in 1944 not to compete actively with chaplains, as related in Chapter Three, they nonetheless made priests very cautious about what they said. Wilhelm Wöste recalled that he entertained questions of a just war “with [only] this one priest, Tölner, with whom I could say anything. But on the whole, one really had to watch out. It was Christmas, the last year, and an NSFO came to our division… and he spoke with such polish that no one knew whether he was for Hitler or against him.”41 In fact, it is only in a series of post-war interviews conducted with various surviving chaplain-veterans that they entertained willingly the question of bellum iustum, or the justness of the war in which they were involved.

The theory of just war, or the right to war (ius ad bellum) and its parallel principle, just conduct in war (ius in bello), occupies an integral part of military ethics,

Fulge; he wrote extensively to the families and many of these letters survive. See EAB V69/2, Nachlass Fulge. I found no evidence of chaplains administering to foreign POWs on the Eastern front. 39 KMBA SW 465/III, Akte Johann Evangelist Kaspar, undated postwar interview. 40 KMBA SW 943/III, Akte Lorenz Wolf, interview, August 24, 1990. 41 KMBA SW 944/III, Akte Wilhelm Wöste, interview, June 20, 1990.

268 and the Christian churches have been deeply involved in its development since the fourth century AD Church father, Augustine of Hippo.42 Augustine, who built on earlier theories of war advocated by Cicero and the neo-Platonists, offered a conception of war intimately tied to divine command and the authority of the state. A just war was a defensive war in which violence was a last resort, aimed at avenging injuries or regaining what was wrongfully taken, whose ultimate aim was lasting peace. In other words, war was justly waged “when doing so constitute[d] the best available remedy for righting injustices.”43

Augustine also addressed the moral status of soldiers, the agents of the state who carried out its will, and on this matter he was unequivocal: “in killing the enemy, the soldier is an agent of the law; thus he merely fulfills a duty.”44 Even if the sovereign of the state giving the order is not in the right, or the state itself is not a just state, the soldier is excused from moral responsibility because, by definition, a soldier must obey.

Augustine’s theories about just war are clearly Christian-centered, and for contemporary readers offer ambiguous explanations and problematic reasoning. Just wars, by definition, are waged by virtuous men, that is, men who had a close and loving relationship with God. This automatically infers that wars waged by non-believers would be inherently unjust, no matter the extent to which they honored the principles of just war

42 Much of Augustine’s just war theories were outlined in his Reply to Faustus the Manichaean and in The City of God. For modern reflection on Augustine’s theories, see John Mark Mattox, Saint Augustine and the Theory of Just War (London and New York: Continuum, 2006); The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, edited by Terry Nardin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Henrik Syse and Gregory M. Reichberg (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 2007); Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd edition (New York: Basic Books, 2006). 43 Mattox, Saint Augustine, 51. 44 Mattox, Saint Augustine, 61.

269 in other ways.45 Moreover, Augustine’s argument also leads to the discomfiting conclusion that all wars on earth are providentially just because God has allowed them to occur, even if the manner in which they unfold – waged as they are by imperfect humans

– becomes unjust. Augustine argued, “For God’s providence constantly uses war to correct and chasten the corrupt morals of mankind, as it also uses such afflictions to train men in a righteous and laudable way of life.”46 Was this the criterion used by priests and seminarians when they considered the justness of the cause for which they fought, and the battles in which they had engaged? Or did they prefer to take the easier route and consign such questions to the realm of the unknowable, trusting that a higher authority had control of the situation?

It is unclear from their written testimony how much these priests had been educated beforehand about Church doctrine on the subject; most hinted at a basic familiarity with it, but they seemed to speak more from their personal experience and reflections, and their individual understanding (perhaps gained only with hindsight) of

Nazism. That all of those who addressed the question in post-war interviews or memoirs condemned the war as unjust, or at least unjustifiable, is not surprising, though many qualified their condemnation. Martin Zeil chose his words cautiously, and avoided saying explicitly that the war had not been just. Instead he stated that “we found the war to be needless, there was no existing basis for it. Whether I went so far at the time as to say so, that the war into which we were driven was criminal… I didn’t go so far as to say that.

45 See Henrik Syse, “Augustine and Just War: Between Virtues and Duties” in Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War. 46 As quoted by Gerson Moreno-Riaño, “Reflections on Medieval Just War Theories” in Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War, 134.

270 But [it was] a terrible, wicked thing that simply shouldn’t have been.”47 Even forty-five years after the fact, he did not go so far as to claim the war had been criminal. Josef Perau was more comfortable with directness: “To me it was clear from the beginning that the war was not a just war, for at the time I immersed myself in the schemes that Hitler machinated for war. And this bosh [Gefasel] about Lebensraum, brought about by the constrictions of the Versailles Treaty, I couldn’t use it as an excuse to justify the war.”48

With similar conviction, Richard Schell rendered his final judgment of the war in notes he made for a post-war interview. He borrowed “the prophetic words” of a comrade for the effect, who declared, “This war was unjust from the beginning, it is calamity, and in the end it will bring downfall.”49 Alfons Mende was unequivocal as well, saying, “It was completely clear [that it was not a just war], it was clear from the outset. I was an opponent, though I never expressed myself. Everything was silent.”50 Some found silence to be sufficient, as though by somehow declining to proclaim their support openly, they indicated rejection: “In my sermons, I was merely silent about the regime. That was plain enough.”51

Georg Paulus shared these conclusions about the unjustness, but admitted that he said nothing about it at the time: “I never had the slightest illusion about it, this was an unjust war, and this point of view only got stronger over the course of my time in the army. But what use would it have been for me to be provocative about it? The most insignificant remark could cost one’s life.”52 Friedrich Dörr echoed these feelings of

47 KMBA SW 947/III, Akte Martin Zeil, interview, June 14, 1990. 48 KMBA SW 635/III, Akte Perau, undated post-war dictation. 49 KMBA SW 723/III, Akte Schell, “Konzept für ein Interview,” January 26, 1990. 50 KMBA SW 578/III, Akte Mende, interview, June 2, 1990. 51 KMBA SW 784/III, Akte Karl Schraaf, post-war interview, undated. 52 KMBA SW 631/III, Akten Georg Paulus, interview, May 15, 1990.

271 helplessness and futility, not to mention fear; he declared that it was a question that he had asked himself constantly as a means to justify his service. He also felt that the

“simple soldier” was not qualified enough to decide the justness of a war, after which he became ambivalent about the issue. He compared the Second World War with the Great

War, both of which had “many roots,” and after naming Hitler as chief aggressor

[Hauptmissetäter], he argued that all of the war’s participants were equally guilty: “Who can say: who is guilty in war? In the end? Totally guilty? For there was the thing about the Versailles Treaty. That was a great injustice to the German people. [Using] that,

Hitler regained some justice and courage for the Germans. Unfortunately in a bad way…”53 That priests made these statements could be considered shocking, or at least bewildering, because one might expect them to condemn the war in its totality, especially several decades after its end, when the vicious crimes perpetrated in the name of the

German people had been revealed. However, these responses – the excuses of futility in the face of criminality and of the impossibility of assigning guilt in times of war – are unique neither to German priests nor to war, and on this level it serves to collapse the distinction between Catholic chaplains, priests, and seminarians, and other soldiers. All of them self-identified as German, and not just Catholics, or priests. What they often considered the crucial reasons for going to war, and what some priests alluded to interviews, persisted in their own minds as viable explanations and justifications in the post-war world.

None of these men justified the war. But none of them refused to serve. How, then, did priests come to serve, and willingly, even enthusiastically, in an army that was perpetrating an unjust war? At first glance, the problem seems paradoxical. The post-war

53 KMBA SW 280/III, Akte Dörr, interview, June 5, 1990.

272 interviews occurred several decades after the end of the war; this was more than enough time for anyone who had harbored Nazi sympathies to change his mind about those sentiments. Priests in particular would have been in sensitive situations, as figures of post-war moral authority expected to see clearly the evil that Nazism represented, and to denounce decisively the war as unjust, especially in the turbulent wake of the debate on the “clean” image of the Wehrmacht in German historiography.54 But the paradox is not so easily solved, because these men, both during the war and in post-war interviews, spoke explicitly about why they served. According to these explications, they saw no contradiction in terms between acknowledging an unjust war and arguing for the necessity of the service they provided within that war.

Rudolf Peifer most fully embodies this paradox in his wartime journals, which he later revised into a manuscript that was published. As the catastrophe at Stalingrad was unfolding for the German armies, he wrote that soldiers constantly blamed God, at which he bridled with indignation and retorted that God had nothing to do with it; the inferno there had been created by men. In almost the same breath, he was able to condemn the men accountable for the losses at Stalingrad for their criminality and irresponsibility, and excuse those who fought their wars: “The keywords of the politicians are multifarious: freedom, living space, Party; but it’s always about power. Thus people go astray in the insanity of war. Our men at the front stopped fighting long ago for Hitler and the Nazis; rather, they carried the conviction that they could protect their Heimat, their families, by

54 The seminal texts that successfully overwrote the idea of a “clean” Wehrmacht, delineating its complicity in the Eastern front atrocities, include Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: R.v. Decker, 1969); Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1978); Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); and The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944, edited by the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (New York: New Press, 1999).

273 what they were doing.”55 “Our men,” the simple Landsern, had no evil in their heart. In fighting for their families and their homeland, Peifer suggested, they exculpated themselves from the moral and political ramifications of their actions.

Such exculpation worked the same way for priests when they talked about themselves. Martin Seitz knew that “through our activity in this strange place, we can give to the soldiers a piece of Heimat.”56 Heimat, and the feeling of an unbreakable bond with families back home, was a recurrent theme for chaplains, and an emotion-inducing tool to which soldiers and priests alike responded readily regardless of how far physically they were separated from Germany. To preserve this bond, they were willing to break all sorts of rules. Josef Perau responded affirmatively when a post-war interviewer suggested that chaplains, both Catholic and Protestant, served as a kind of hinge [Scharnier] between homeland and soldiers:

An effusive thanks was present in almost every letter [we received from civilians back home]. And again and again: we’re praying for you and we’ll send you packages. A giant congregation [Gemeinde] formed across the entire Reich. A congregation of men with whom one was connected intimately out of common concern for the young lads, out of common suffering. And for the Party, that was obviously anything but endearing. So then came new regulations: the chaplain can have nothing to do with family members [of soldiers], it’s not part of his duties. But I continued anyway, and it went well.57

Werthmann was inclined to thinking in similar terms about the meaning of the war and his role in it. Such reflections are indicative simultaneously of a faith deeply rooted in the

Catholic understanding of suffering – even the most terrible suffering has meaning – and of a terrible self-centeredness, as though their authors were determined to fix some meaning to the war’s devastation, no matter what it cost or who it neglected:

55 KMBA SW 633/III, Akte Peifer, manuscript, 173-4. 56 KMBA SW 811/III, Akte Martin Seitz, Seelsorgebericht, October 1, 1941. 57 KMBA SW 635/III, Akten Perau, interview with Perau in Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur, September 1, 1989.

274 The war was a terrible burden, but it came from without like a thunderstorm and lashed us in the face. On this point, the suffering was liberating, uplifting, refreshing, and purifying, and through its bitterness it retrieved something of that great and deep and glorifying happiness that we see so often unassuming in the men who were severely tested and devastated and who carry on calmly and bravely.58

Werthmann also cited the “great Christian legacy” that the Catholic chaplains preserved through their participation in the war. Such a legacy was a counterpoint to “the proclaimed eloquence of the Party, embodied by the NSFO, and… the seductive power of ideological [weltanschaulicher] postulations.”59 A seminarian wrote to Cardinal von

Faulhaber in Munich that the war experience had benefited him tremendously: “From this experience here, we theologians have only drawn closer to our vocation. For this we can’t thank God enough. So something good has come, even out of the horrible events of the war.”60 Again, by focusing on the apparent enmity exhibited by Nazism towards

Catholicism, or on withstanding the pressures and strains of war both physically and spiritually, Werthmann and the chaplains who followed his logic displayed an extraordinary narrow-mindedness, as if the only two contestants on the battlefield were

Party and Church.

Karl Schraaf, who described his wartime silence as his own kind of protest against the regime, elaborated that “Certainly I prayed for Volk, Führer and Fatherland every now and then, using our military hymnals – that was relatively bearable. But I couldn’t risk any reproach because of my activities as a chaplain.”61 While “Führer” may not have been a term that resonated emotionally for most priests and seminarians, “Volk” and

58 KMBA SW 1053/IX, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, June 26, 1945. One might also notice how similar to fascist and Nazi language this is, that temporary suffering and misery was necessary for the realization of an eternal, purified existence. 59 KMBA SW 150/III, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, July 19, 1945. 60 EAM-FA 6797, Letters to von Faulhaber, this from Thomas Gobitz-Pfeifer, January 4, 1944. 61 KMBA SW 784/III, Akte Schraaf, post-war interview, undated.

275 “Vaterland” did as much as the concept of “Heimat”; it should come as no surprise that many of them were as deeply patriotic as they were dedicated to their decision to become priests.62 Of course, one did not have to be a Nazi to feel the stirrings of nationalistic sentiment. The kinds of behavior highlighted in Chapter Four illustrate this twofold motivation, revealing an intersection at which for the vast majority there was no contradiction or discrepancy. They felt their obligation to defend their Heimat, Volk, and

Vaterland with their lives just as urgently as their spiritual duty to the soldiers in the

Wehrmacht. Priests identified as Germans as well as Catholics, and the willingness of most to keep separate the Nazi Party and its regime from the army and the war itself is apparent in the numerous references they made to the nationalism that motivated them. It may even have made the positive response to conscription easier to give, if one viewed his service as to his country, and not to the government that ran it. Richard Schell explained in a post-war interview,

Somehow or other, ‘Fatherland’ is a value that’s worth fighting for. ‘Fatherland’ was not understood to be the same as the Party, the two terms were distanced from each other. One could differentiate between them. And one could act on behalf of the Fatherland. It was a more encompassing concept, because by this word, you meant your home, your own family, your kinfolk, your livelihood, and everything like that [und was alles].63

Even if the religious principles of these men made them strive to keep their distance from

Nazism, their thinking and reasoning could be astonishingly Nazi-like, right down to the ultimate values of blood, sacrifice, and greatness: “The future of our beloved Volk and

Fatherland must be secured through the blood of so many young warriors…. only that

62 This is an overextension in Missalla’s argument as presented in Für Gott, Führer und Vaterland: die Verstrickung der katholischen Seelsorge in Hitlers Krieg (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1999); his contention that priests acted equally for Hitler as they did for other Germans and the Fatherland is not proven by the documents I discuss here. 63 KMBA SW 723/III, Akte Schell, post-war interview, 1st part, March 21, 1990.

276 which is eked out through blood is truly valuable and augurs enduring prosperity. Maybe our people is destined yet for some kind of total greatness?”64 Religious training or instruction did not hinder nationalistic pride; it even encouraged it.

Others saw the defense of home and Fatherland as an active battle to preserve

Christianity, exhibited by thinking that fused nationalism and religious sentiment into a single world-view that saw Germandom and Christianity as inseparable. This deduction is not difficult to understand, given the educational backgrounds of these men and their predilection to conceive of their service as a kind of crusade:

Our history is intimately tied to Christianity, more than any other country or culture… One can thus regard a self-evident duty in the ‘yes’ that’s said to serving the German Fatherland, a holy duty at that, because this ‘yes’ conforms to a genuine mission [Sendungsauftrag] in the realm of culture as well as in the realm of higher nature [Übernatur]…. There will always remain the possibility for goodness, even if the tribulation beneath which we all bend [beugen] must be completed.65

One frontline seminar in the East encouraged its attending priests to equate the fight for a terrestrial homeland with attempts to qualify for the eternal homeland of God, in a lecture that came the closest to granting the Nazi slogan of Lebensraum a religious connotation; another presented the fight for the Fatherland as a fight for Christ.66 In a seminar lecture given in Warsaw, the supervisory chaplain paraphrased General von Rabenau and underscored that soldiers needed an active relationship with God above all, otherwise the war would lose its moral justifiability, and that “without thinking towards the beyond

[Jenseitsgedanken], the soldier who stands daily in the face of death will not be able to

64 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box II, Adolf Miller, August 16, 1941. 65 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Alois Fuchs, August 21, 1943. Übernatur could refer to both the supernatural – that which exists outside the laws of nature – and to the realm of human beings itself, which is sometimes referred to as the crown of nature (immediately above nature). 66 KMBA SW 152/III (8), Frontlehrgänge in Charkow, April 16-17, 1942, and Deutsch-Brod (now Havlickuv, Czech Republic), September 22, 1944.

277 cope.”67 A seminarian found confirmation of this kind of crusading aspect of the war before the Germans even invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. He wrote his regens from

France in September 1940,

I know that nowhere in the world are cathedrals and brothels standing so close together, that nowhere else are the gaps between classes so dire, that the most Christian country of all, France, has no grounds upon which to designate itself as the preserver of Christian culture. If somebody has to defend Christian culture, well, we’re already doing that. German soldiers speak less about Christianity, but display more of it. We found smutty literature in the knapsacks of French soldiers, which really puts them in a bad light. Marshall Pétain himself appears to understand the roots of the French downfall: Peu d’enfants [Few children]!68

That same regens wrote to another seminarian two years later, in response to a letter from his pupil, that he was “personally very nationalistically tuned, and oriented towards the

Fatherland, and I am proud that so many of our students are taking an active part in the decisive battle for the Fatherland.”69

Not all priests and seminarians understood their duty as a religious mission, or found motivation by imbuing their time in the Wehrmacht with spiritual meaning. Others felt that their work was made vital by the soldiers themselves, and cited the camaraderie, sometimes deeply intimate, that emerged with men whom they otherwise might never

67 KMBA SW 152/III (8), Erfahrungsbericht in Warsaw, April 14-15, 1942. Friedrich von Rabenau was an ardent anti-Nazi Protestant who was a General of the Artillery until 1942, when he was forced into premature retirement. Though he never official joined the resistance, he did have connections to the Kreisau Circle (Goerdeler), and he was arrested in the aftermath of the July 1944 assassination attempt. He was one of the last inmates of the Flossenburg concentration camp to be hung, without being charged or tried, in April 1945. Von Rabenau surfaces briefly in the following texts: Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: R.v. Decker Verlag, 1969), 281; Shelley Baranowski, The Confessing Church, Conservative Elites, and the Nazi State (Lewiston and Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 38-9. 68 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box III, Hans Reiter, France, September 8, 1940. Reiter is clearly referring to Pétain’s famous radio appeal to the French from June 20, 1940, shortly before the French- German armistice was signed, in which he announced France’s defeat by declaring, “We are less strong than we were twenty-two years ago, and we also had fewer friends. Too few children, too few weapons, too few allies: these are the causes of our defeat.” Philippe Pétain, Discours aux Français, 17 juin 1940 – 20 août 1944, edited by Jean-Claude Barbas (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1989), 60. 69 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Regens Johann Westermayer’s response to Michael Fuchs, September 29, 1942.

278 have known. Martin Zeil explained that he never regretted his service as a chaplain for several reasons: “I learned how to approach different people in more sensitive ways, from simple soldiers up to officers. I learned to work closely together with Protestant colleagues. I became acquainted with other countries and peoples and men, and only thenceforth did I value much of what I brought with me from home. Which for me before then hadn’t become clear at all.”70 Like most clerics, Josef Kaul disclaimed any military motivations, and emphasized the fact that he had been conscripted as a medical orderly.

He welcomed his promotion into the chaplaincy, because there “at least I could offer the soldiers something on the basis of my vocation. I could write a book on my encounters with the wounded alone….”71 And while other priests remembered the necessity of caution when it came to talking with other soldiers, as related in Chapter Four, Friedrich

Dörr recalled that, despite having to be careful, the chaplain was in a natural position to be “a good conversationalist, with whom one could speak about the difficulties of the military situation or Hitler’s regime…. If soldiers had revealed everything that their chaplain had said, I would have been hung dozens of times over. But they kept mum.”72

Seminarians and priests contested the extent to which Nazism penetrated the rank- and-file of the Wehrmacht when asked about the influence of Nazi ideology and propaganda as they experienced it. Their willingness to address the subject emerged only in postwar interviews; of all the letters and reports perused for this dissertation, only two of them remark on Nazism during the war itself. One was a seminarian, Thomas Gobitz-

70 KMBA SW 947/III, Akte Zeil, interview, June 14, 1990. 71 KMBA SW 467/III, Akte Kaul, copy of written post-war notes, undated. 72 Dörr, “Wenn ich gehe, wird mein Platz nicht mehr besetzt” in Mensch, was wollt Ihr denen sagen? Katholische Feldseelsorger im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by the Katholisches Militärbischofsamt (Augsburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1991), 154.

279 Pfeifer, who was brave enough to allude, with a subtlety that renders his language a bit convoluted, to the Nazi world-view in late 1944:

Even now, many comrades are having their eyes opened, and they perceive that [this war] has nothing to do with eternal paradise that was simulated for them in better [pre-war] days, [but] that Christ’s cross is more present in the sufferings of this time than the throbbing of innate strength and a muddled myth of blood and race.73

To what Gobitz-Pfeifer was referring exactly remains unclear – his letter addressed a speculation that some soldiers who had abandoned the Church in earlier years were now wanting to return to the faith of their childhood, which “was once dear and valuable” – but his feelings about Nazism come through. A chaplain made more indirect mention in a wartime journal, which he later published to some acclaim. He could have added the incident when he was editing his book for publication, but its timing suggests that he might have felt safe enough to record it right after it happened. He recalled being in Kiel on the fateful day of May 1, 1945, when news of Hitler’s suicide began to sweep through the ranks: “A young lieutenant sprang up and declared, ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for!’ We quickly pushed him back because such expressions are still quite dangerous.”74

In post-war interviews, veterans who were chaplains were remarkably, but perhaps not surprisingly, defensive about the army of which they were part, and strove to keep it separate from the regime, the Party ideology, and politics in general, even after historiography had revealed the extent to which the Wehrmacht was complicit in the ideological schemes and crimes of the Nazis. According to their testimony, the

73 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Thomas Gobitz-Pfeifer, letter, far north, November 20, 1944. The original reads: “Viele Kameraden sind eben jetzt die Augen aufgegangen und sie merken, dass es nichts ist mit dem Paradies auf Eden, das man ihnen in besseren Tagen vorgegaukelt hatte und dass das Kreuz Christi den Leiden dieser Zeit näherliegt als das Pochen auf die eigene Kraft und ein verschwammener Mythos und Blut und Rasse.” 74 Perau, Priester im Heere Hitlers, May 1, 1945, 48.

280 Wehrmacht was “a world apart. It was shaped by old traditions and soldierly reasoning, it was apolitical,” and National Socialist tendencies had no effect.75 Kunibert Pabstmann declared, “I have to say, our Wehrmacht, or at least the division I was in, was anything but Nazi.” When his interviewer responded with “I hear this repeatedly,” he reiterated,

“Anything but Nazi.”76 Otto Fangohr explained the lack of resistance within the army as an aspect of the “soldierly sphere,” and that “it was abhorrent to us, to defect, to desert.”

He decisively condemned Nazism – “the Nazi world-view, just like the communist one, is repugnant to me” and “we served an unethical regime, that was clear to everyone, the

Nazis were criminals” – but he also adamantly maintained, “I’ve already said, I was gladly a soldier, but we were never Nazis.”77 Josef Buslay even targeted the stories and historiography of the 1980s and 1990s that challenged the image of an apolitical, “clean”

Wehrmacht: “That was no Nazi Wehrmacht. Today things are simply warped and given an undifferentiated presentation. The majority of men wanted nothing to do with Hitler,

Goebbels, Göring, and the rest of them. Most were also – at least I can say this about the

Catholics – cemented in their beliefs.”78 In their minds, perhaps it was enough to deny

Hitler and the higher-ups; they did not entertain the idea that one might have participated, inadvertently or otherwise, in war crimes without identifying as a committed Nazi.

Rupert Ritzer represented both the naïveté of this point of view, about a

Wehrmacht dissociated from Nazism, as well as the complications in asserting that the

Wehrmacht was either Nazified or innocent. In December 1941, while preparing an old schoolroom in which to hold Christmas services, he discovered a giant swastika that he

75 Fangohr, “Herr Pfarrer, die kriegen mich nicht tot!” in Mensch, was wollt Ihr denen sagen?, 91. 76 KMBA SW 627/III, Akte Pabstmann, interview, undated. 77 KMBA SW 310/III, Akte Fangohr, interview, April 25, 1990 (Part II). 78 Buslay, “Au revoir, mes garçons, au revoir” in Mensch, was wollt Ihr denen sagen?, 49.

281 quickly removed “so that our crucifix wasn’t in accordance with the swastika.” In

January 1942, his next diary entry, he reported, “Guard Paul S. reported me to the company leader for removing the swastika in the school. [I was r]eported [then] to company chief, who is well disposed towards me, so I got away with a warning. In normal cases, court martial with death sentence.”79 Ritzer encountered both the hard line to which many soldiers held when it came to political allegiance – if not loyalty to Führer and Nazism, then loyalty to Volk and Fatherland – as well as considerable leniency when a higher-up decided to overlook his misstep. Ritzer recognized how rare this reaction was, marveling to himself that he had narrowly escaped execution. It is difficult to ascertain if he knew before his actions of the likelihood of his being reported and understood what he risked. In any case, it is the only time he mentioned in his journal that he dared to act against regulations.

Very few priests were willing to accept the idea that the army in which they worked was complicit with all aspects of the Nazi regime, especially the darkest, the crimes perpetrated on the Eastern front. Acknowledging this might have challenged them to reconsider their justifications for serving, for it would be tacit admission that they had also served Hitler and his Party, however unwillingly. Perau was the only one who wrote during the war about the collusion of the Wehrmacht in war crimes and atrocities. He deserves to be quoted at length. Stationed in March 1944 in Rudobelka (Oktyabrsky,

Belarus), he wrote,

When one approaches the camp, one is presented with an image of horror. The entire field is saturated with the belongings of these people, which they can no longer carry. I was completely unprepared to face such terrible things. Through a

79 Rupert Ritzer, Priesterrock und Uniform: 2,028 Tage als Sanitäter im II. Weltkrieg unter em Schutz der Gottlichen Vorsehung, manuscript privately published after 1987, entries for December 20, 1941 and January 5, 1942, while Ritzer was stationed in Russia.

282 fine drizzle I was returning, unsuspecting, to the main hospital as night fell. At first I felt the change in a peculiarly nauseating sound that I couldn’t more closely identify until, at some distance, I detected the camp. The uninterrupted, muted keening of many voices rose from it to heaven. And then I saw, the body of an old man right in front of me, being towed off like a piece of meat. A cord had been tied around his legs. An old woman lay dead in the lane, fresh bullet hole in the forehead. I was instructed to continue by a member of the military police, who pointed out a pair of bundles covered in mud: dead children, over whom he had laid a pillow. Women, unable to carry their children further, had left them behind. But they were shot, as absolutely everyone here is “knocked off” [“umgelegt”], because of sickness… A medical officer to whom I feverishly wanted to report [the inhuman treatment and murder of foreign civilians] sent me away, saying, “Father, leave that to us. I myself shot a pair of helpless children for mercy’s sake. Germany will become a civilized nation [Kulturvolk] again when the war is won.” Very few talk like this in the regular armed forces. The soldiers who don’t oppose these things on ethical grounds think, what will happen to us when we fall into captivity? What will happen to Germany if the war is lost? It’s said that the SD carried out these actions, but the troops are at least marginally involved. Divine service in Portschje [sic?] had to be cancelled because the troops were occupied with “evacuating” civilians…. From some distance today I saw a general riding alongside the field of misery. In light of this, what’s going on in higher military circles? In the blink of an eye I thought, I should step up to him and demand an accounting for it, in the name of God. But spirit alone wasn’t sufficient, so I merely proclaimed my disgust openly in conversations… This war is a horrific catastrophe for self-governed humanism [autonomen Humanismus].80

What he witnessed obviously disturbed Perau: civilians, noncombatants, being killed and being forced to live in conditions designed to bring about their deaths. But though he was willing to condemn these actions in what were probably private conversations with individuals he trusted, he never complained to anyone beyond the lowly medical officer he approached, and the horror, in addition to the knowledge that the army was “at least marginally” complicit, was not enough to induce him to stop serving or to register a formal protest with a superior officer.

Another person who disagreed with the view of a “clean” Wehrmacht, and who was perhaps better positioned to understand the army as a single unit, was Georg

80 Perau, Priester im Heeres Hitlers, March 15, 1944, 159-61. It is unclear to which camp he is referring, and he does not elaborate with whom he was speaking when he declared his disgust about the activities he witnessed.

283 Werthmann. Whatever else he failed to acknowledge during his internment in

Niederalteich – the persecution of the European Jews, the role of the German army in that persecution, the failure of the Catholic Church to speak out against it, and to what extent the chaplaincy had participated in it – he wrote explicitly about the ties between

Wehrmacht and regime: “Nazi schooling and [later] Nazi political officers (NSFOs) were the alpha and the omega of the Wehrmacht. The German army, whose task and pride it was to always defend the homeland and serve the people, was dead. The Wehrmacht was constructed as a Nazi organization, nothing more than a Party organization….”81 He cited the actions of well-intentioned officers who “spoke out and exerted themselves repeatedly, in word and deed”, for the chaplains of the army, which even gave him initial hope that Nazism might be overthrown by some kind of military coup. Whether he knew before July 1944 about the attempted assassination of Hitler engineered by Claus von

Stauffenberg and Henning von Tresckow is unclear; Alfred Weidemann, the Department

Chief of the OKH who replaced Edelmann, certainly informed him of it soon after.82

Ultimately, though, “the opportunity to make a career, with side glances at the shoulder pieces and the iron cross around one’s throat, blurred the perception of the real worth of the Fatherland. Most officers later succumbed to this temptation.”83 So, unlike many of the priests who, in later years, refused to accept that the army had had an intimate connection with Nazism, Werthmann at least perceived the total cooperation between the two organizations, even as he persisted in believing in the necessity of working with both.

81 KMBA SW 1002/IX, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, August 20, 1945. 82 See Chapter Three, pg 173-74, n 86. For more on Operation Valkyrie and the military officers involved, see Hoffman, History of the German Resistance. 83 KMBA SW 1006/IX, Geschichte der Feldseelsorge, September 28, 1945.

284 For many of these priests, there was another reason to respond to conscription, if not enthusiastically, then at least willingly. Since the Russian Revolution, the Catholic

Church across Europe had reacted to the threat of communism and its Russian variant,

Bolshevism, with fear and aggressive vigilance. The ideology’s deep and open hostility to religion had been no secret since the mid-nineteenth century, when Marx wrote, “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”84 Lenin’s attack on religion in

Russia, unleashed after Russia had withdrawn from World War I, was motivated in part by the Orthodox church’s close ties to the tsarist regime, and in part by the specific brand of Marxist revolution to which he was committed, which necessitated the destruction of institutionalized religion. In short order, the physical structures of the church were appropriated by the government and either destroyed or put to secular use, and members of the clergy were imprisoned, exiled, or simply shot. Religiosity itself could not be eradicated, but it “disappear[ed] underground, or [was] diverted into shallower affective channels, and focused on false gods, the mightiest of whom gave socialism one omnipresent, pock-marked, smiling face.”85 No wonder, then, that Russians were so overjoyed to meet Catholic priests, albeit in German army uniforms, during the Second

World War.

84 Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” as reprinted in On Religion, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (initially printed in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 1844), introduction by Reinhold Niebuhr (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1964), 42. Emphasis in original. Early papal responses to the doctrines of socialism and communism, notably from Pius IX (r. 1846-78), condemned the ideologies for their “misuse” of words like liberty and equality, and shared the horror of the conservatives of how the ideologies affected the working masses (namely, in urging them to violent revolution), leading potentially to loss of property and status. 85 Michael Burleigh, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 40-41.

285 The Catholic Church in Germany was in a particularly vulnerable position due to the twofold problem of the country’s proximity to the Soviet Union and the strength of the German interwar Socialist (SPD, USPD) and communist (KPD) parties. Church authorities responded quickly and vigorously with a broad campaign of denunciation and calls to resist the ideology. This definitive anti-Bolshevik attitude shared common ground with the Nazis, a party that had its own agenda concerning institutionalized religion but with whom the church, from the Vatican down, was happy to cooperate as the lesser of two evils. A pastoral letter released by the German bishops on June 26, 1941, a mere four days after the invasion of the Soviet Union, relayed blessings and gratitude to fighting men of Catholic Germany, “our soldiers, your husbands, sons, and brothers in the field, who are performing unforgettable feats of heroic bravery and enduring profound stress.

The war demands exertion and sacrifice from you all.”86 There is no explicit reference to

Bolshevism, but the context of war is as clear as the firm conviction that service be given to it in various traditional ways. Again in December, after the Wehrmacht failed to claim decisive victory in the East and after the furor unleashed by Cardinal von Galen’s denunciation of the T-4 euthanasia program in Germany had died down, the bishops reaffirmed their stance on the war with the Soviet Union in a memorandum that read,

With gratification we follow the battle against the power of Bolshevism, about which we German bishops have warned German Catholics and called them to alertness in numerous pastoral letters between 1921 and 1936. The regime knows this. Because of her categorical rejection of it, the Church is still the strongest spiritual force with which to combat Bolshevism, and the entire body of spiritual guidance exercised by her priests is the most effective defense in the battle against the teachings, principles and goals of Bolshevism.87

86 Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche 1933-1945, Bd. V, edited by Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1968-85), “Hirtenwort des deutschen Episkopats,” Fulda, June 26, 1941, 463. 87 KMBA SW 997/VI, copy of “Denkschrift der deutschen Bischöfe,” December 10, 1941. See also Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Bd. V, “Denkschrift der deutchen Bischöfe an die Reichsregierung,” (Breslau) December 10, 1941, 651-58.

286

The Church in Germany had had its share of problems with the Nazi regime, but up to the end of 1941, at least, its leaders remained committed to putting up with Hitler’s government on the home front – a toleration that amounted to support, in some instances

– and displayed no reticence about assisting Hitler’s armies actively in the fight against the much larger threat, Bolshevism.

Strikingly, the seminarians were one group that feverishly advocated the idea that

Bolshevism needed to be crushed using any means necessary. These young, impressionable men were well educated, not necessarily to see Nazism as a danger to the

Catholic Church, but to identify the strain of communism in the Soviet Union as an enemy that would destroy Christian – and German – culture if it was not first destroyed.

Using language that once more reveals the extent to which Germany and Christianity were in the minds of these men a single vital object worth dying for, one seminarian wrote, “As long as holy love glows within us, Bolshevism will never violate the soil of our homeland, and no one will discover us weak. Above all, our dead admonish us ceaselessly to never tire in the battle for Christ and homeland.”88 It was in the context of

Bolshevism, and among seminarians, that the war in the East between Germany and the

Soviet Union was most frequently identified as a crusade, sometimes explicitly. The words they chose to describe it revealed the extent to which anti-Bolshevik propaganda, both Christian and Nazi, had permeated the seminary, as well as how closely it was entwined with antisemitism: “Hopefully this bloody battle will soon find a good end, and with it, Bolshevism will be extirpated once and for all. Otherwise, the many victims of this crusade against the world enemy would have died in vain. Indeed, it would be the

88 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Hans Anneser, January 4, 1944.

287 greatest tragedy if, simultaneously, the godlessness of the East led us to battle at the same time that religion was proscribed at home.”89 Leo Sutor wrote from Melitopol in 1942 that “two world-views will slug it out here in a battle of civilization; the civilization of the Christian world against the Judeo-Bolshevik will to destruction, the battle of the individual against collectivization.”90 Franz Kurz, not a seminarian but rather a devout soldier who wrote to Cardinal von Faulhaber about his experiences, described the conviction at which he arrived during the Russian campaign:

The longer one is in Russia, the more one adopts the conviction that, in this place, one battles Satan and his helpers in this world, and that this power must not only be fought, but totally destroyed. If the sacrifices are difficult to make and moroseness besets us, the idea remains that here we are charged with a holy task, with the preservation of the kingdom of Christ and occidental culture…91

Another seminarian lamented that the war was not over, but insisted with his next breath that “we are ready to make any sacrifice that is required of us. Bolshevism will be broken into pieces, and that is the only possibility! Only the war can overthrow this system…”92 To them as well as to the soldiers with whom they marched, the material conditions they encountered as they made their way into Russian territory proved the idea that Bolshevism was the most destructive force in existence, because “the impoverishment, the depletion is terrible… every village has a church [in Polish territory], but here [in Russia], such cannot be found anywhere, for even in our own quarters, it exists only as a ruin.”93 Devout soldiers were prone to approaching the war in the Soviet Union in this way, as well, propelled to do so by the three-pronged influence of Nazi propaganda, Church antipathy, and priests and seminarians in uniform with

89 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box I: Georg Gratz, Strassröd, July 28, 1941. 90 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box IV: Leo Sutor, Melitopol, February 7, 1942. 91 EAM-FA 6796/3, letter (copy) from Franz Kurz, March 3, 1942 92 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box III: Hans Reiter, Soviet Russia, July 5, 1941. 93 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box II: Jakob Mürbock, July 23, 1941.

288 whom they served. One soldier wrote to Cardinal von Faulhaber from the East in 1942,

“There’s no church here. That’s the tragic lot of these people. God has been torn from their hearts. This is why so many German soldiers must lay down their lives, in order to help justice triumph.”94

One seminarian regretted that he was unable to better gauge Bolshevism’s effects on the Russian themselves. Like other invading German soldiers, much of his experience of the Soviet Union was limited to the open fields and evacuated villages, bereft of inhabitants, in which they took cover. Those civilians he did meet presented a perplexing and complex blend of elements that astonished him: “Its faith is as enigmatic as its land and its people…. New, childlike beliefs co-exist with fanatical, passionate faith, and honest will and severe ethical principles co-exist with bestial sadism…. What is contrary to us is nothing of the kind for them, because they live their lives in the depths, where antitheses unite everything.”95 Others saw the Russians in a more propagandistic light, literally as human personifications of an ideology bent on destroying the Christian faith.

Johann Lechner wrote from the Eastern front,

World without God, world without morality, world of vengeance and avarice brings me ever nearer to God, in Whose love order has its origins… Now, saved from the Soviet hell, we must fight on against a netherworld of brutish men who are possessed with the goal of tearing belief in God out of the hearts of men. But they will be completely destroyed. May the love of God always inspire me to remain a true, brave, and courageous fighter true, true to the oath to battle for Führer, Volk and Fatherland.96

Not everyone witnessed such chaos and emptiness. Chapter Four recounted some men’s interactions with Russian civilians and their shock and admiration upon discovering that religion had been preserved. Hans Öttl was among them, writing to his regens that “I’ve

94 EAM-FA 6796/3, letter (copy), April 15, 1942. 95 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box II: Werner Miller, July 2, 1944. 96 EAM 6796/3, letter (copy) from Lechner to Cardinal von Faulhaber, January 17, 1942.

289 found again and again holy cards and images of Christ in houses, and even on prisoners,

I’ve found religious cards that were undoubtedly of Russian origin. The religiosity of this people has not been completely eradicated.”97 Russia, then, proved to be a complex entity that confirmed some stereotypes and contradicted others, but one thing remained clear:

Bolshevism was a force that needed to be destroyed before it could destroy faith in God, and the German armies had come to do precisely that. In the hearts and minds of these young seminarians, and no doubt many priests as well, other considerations were secondary. In this sense, they might have reasoned, the invasion of the Soviet Union was an Augustinian defensive war, and therefore just.

When pressed whether he had served the regime or the church, Martin Zeil answered, “I wanted always to serve the church. I believe that my service went in this direction.”98 A seminarian in the medical corps wrote to Werthmann in 1943, “You become better acquainted with a country and its people and individual men than in peacetime. Then we aren’t so packed in with each other, a motley group forced together.

And you get further when you join in, even to the smallest degree.”99 Egon Schmitt explained that pastoral care was an integral part of any army, and that he never regretted his service in the Wehrmacht. It was not for the sake of the regime that priests went to war, he argued, but for the men in uniform, the soldiers who would be putting their lives in danger. As Josef Hoser claimed and most chaplains would have agreed, “I never served the regime, only my Church, and even more so the men [in uniform].”100 In this

97 EAM-FA, Priesterseminar Freising, Box III: Hans Öttl, southeast, August 11, 1941. 98 KMBA SW 947/III, Akte Zeil, interview, June 14, 1990. 99 KMBA SW 1050/IX, letter to Werthmann from Xaver Haimerl, October 25, 1943. 100 Hoser, “Ich habe mir nie den Sieg gewünscht” in Mensch, was wollt Ihr denen sagen?, 166.

290 sense, chaplains would always be essential to armed forces, “for the military will always be a group that stands for itself, that has difficult tasks and therefore requires guidance for its conscience.”101 Hoser insisted that he went for the sake of the men, to attend them in their final hours, to help them with their struggles and stand by them in death, or, when nothing else could be done, “to be able to bend the rules for him [oder ihm dann auch nur die Augen zudrücken kann].”102

Friedrich Dörr’s answer acknowledged the complexities inherent in saying yes to wartime service: “This was of course in certain ways a service to Adolf Hitler, but for our part, we didn’t think of it this way. The men should [be allowed to] maintain their faith in

God, and despite all the difficulties through which they were living, find a foothold and remain unwavering [on their path].”103 Wilhelm Wöste also went further with his reflections about the nature of his service and its meaning and import:

I served the Church. A side effect of this was, in effect, to render a service to the state, but I must hazard the consequences. I believe fundamentally in helping soldiers, in serving them, in preserving the Church and to that final end serving the glory of God, and I believe that this was a serious matter. The other part of it included a cooperation that one simply couldn’t repudiate. Incidentally, the same problem exists regarding the [denazification] advisory offices. I don’t know if you know about this? It’s also said that, because this advisory body issues clean bills of health, it is possibly guilty. But how far does the guilt extend…? That, then, is the question.104

101 KMBA SW 750/III, Akte Schmitt, post-war interview, undated. 102 KMBA SW 441/III, Akte Hoser, post-war interview, June 22, 1990. The German expression also carries the meaning “to turn a blind eye,” which Hoser might have used cryptically to refer to excusing crimes that he felt powerless to stop, or afraid to stand up to. In the context of the paragraph, though, I have interpreted it as rule-bending. 103 Dörr, “Wenn ich gehe, wird mein Platz nicht mehr besetzt” in Mensch, was wollt Ihr denen sagen?, 153. 104 KMBA SW 944/III, Akte Wöste, interview, June 20, 1990. The passage in its original German was vague, so I include here the last three sentences: “Es ist übrigens das selbe Problem, was heute ansteht mit den Beratungsstellen. Ich weiß nicht, ob Sie das wissen? Da wird auch gesagt, weil diese Beratungsstelle so einen Schein ausstellt, deswegen ist sie unter Umständen schuldig. Aber wieviel ist sie schuldig?” The “Schein” in question seems to be a reference to the Persilschein, or certificate of denazification, that was used to rehabilitate former Nazis or Nazi collaborators after 1945.

291 Wöste clearly had no answers to his own question, or was not willing to push himself to consider them. With the analogy he brought up, that of the advisory bodies that issued certificates of denazification allowing for individuals to be rehabilitated, he intended to point out the difficulties inherent in the situation, a real dilemma over which he reflected, maybe even agonized. Ultimately, he came to an understanding of the consequences of his actions, however far short it falls for the reader. But of the many priests who looked back decades later on their wartime service, he was one of the few willing to acknowledge that, as a group, the actions of priests in the Wehrmacht somehow had an effect on the overall war effort.

Most, like Lorenz Wolf, tried to avoid the question altogether by claiming the obvious:

I must say, these questions [about whether I served the church or the state], actually they’ve emerged in post-war discussions…. The theory of criticism came out first with Adorno’s Frankfurt School, before it didn’t exist. Before it was more a mindset, which wasn’t really theoretically reflective…. So, have you served more the state or… that is really a reflective conceptual language [Begriffssprache].105

Wolf’s response evades the problematics of serving in a war perpetrated by a criminal regime; he, and most other priests who offered testimony in the post-war period, refused to participate in actively reflecting upon the nature of their service and how it contributed to the larger war effort outside of the spiritual support they knew it gave the men around them. Or, in a different kind of response, some veterans declared that there was only one right thing to do, and that was to sacrifice one’s moral and political qualms with respect to Nazism and work solely for the men: “The [importance of the] work with badly wounded men became unquestionably clear to me, we had to use this freedom, this

105 KMBA SW 943/III, Akte Wolf, interview, August 24, 1990.

292 opportunity, that was given to us. If we had rejected the opportunity to be in Hitler’s army, then we would have consigned countless Christian soldiers to a desolate death…. I have no doubt; that, for me, this was the right thing to do.”106 When pressed as to whether politics played a role in making this decision, the priest insisted, “No, never. Everyone knew that. [Being political] made no sense, it would have unnecessarily endangered us….

For us, a Europe ruled by Hitler was a horrific vision…. One could only wish that the end might come soon, eventually through a putsch carried out by higher military men, and the damage contained as much as possible.”107 Such reasoning led priests like Perau to believe that abandoning Christian soldiers to brutal war because one disagreed with the regime perpetrating the war (the regime understood distinctly from the soldiers committing the actual atrocities) was contrary to their calling; if they claimed refuge in apolitical statements or declarations of steadfast rejection – “We never agreed with Hitler or the Nazis” – then participating in the war that these powers waged was somehow sanctioned.

One veteran chaplain proved unable to accept this kind of thinking, and his response delineates the essential dilemma on which most priests and seminarians were anxious to avoid conscious reflection, and which this chapter has been attempting to expose: “Naturally, one wondered repeatedly if this was a just war… on the one hand, as a Christian, one couldn’t endorse the regime, couldn’t support it, but on the other hand, we did this indirectly, by emboldening the soldiers. Doubt often came over me: should I continue doing this or not? And if I thought about the soldiers themselves, I could do

106 KMBA SW 643/III, Akten Perau, interview with Perau in Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur, from the series “Wehrmachtseelsorge im II. Weltkrieg,” September 1, 1989. 107 KMBA SW 643/III, Akten Perau, interview with Perau in Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur, September 1, 1989.

293 nothing but continue.”108 Dörr may have been one of the few who verbalized the dilemma that others shared, but he undoubtedly is representative of the choice that they all made: they could not abandon their men, even if that meant aiding and abetting a war about which many had reservations, even if that meant enabling the mistreatment and murder of innocent civilians, which those who witnessed such acts recoiled from in shock and horror.

Without a doubt, the war, particularly on the Eastern front, had a tremendous impact on how priests and seminarians viewed their vocation, their responsibilities as soldiers and as spiritual guides, and the role of religion in their lives. Most men found ways to interpret this impact so as to salvage something positive: noble self-sacrifice, a strengthening of vocational conviction, the satisfaction of having been called to an unpleasant, arduous task that they saw through to the bitter end. Countless other soldiers surely followed the same path, preferring to categorize military service between 1939 and

1945 as a defense of Heimat and Fatherland, not entirely unlike the First World War.

Nazi ideology was hardly an inspiration for most of these men at the beginning of the war, and certainly in the last years, as the armies suffered defeat after disastrous defeat, the homeland was physically devastated, and the fate of the Jews, Soviet POWs, and countless civilians moved from rumor to fact, faith in a higher, moral, and immortal authority was infinitely more consoling.

Perhaps the alternatives to such a justification – to acknowledge that the crimes committed under the guise of war, by the very soldiers who they felt so strongly had need of them, had been facilitated by their presence; or to admit that the only option to responding to conscription was true martyrdom, a speedy trial ending in execution for

108 Dörr, “Wenn ich gehe, wird mein Platz nicht mehr besetzt” in Mensch, was wollt Ihr denen sagen?, 157.

294 refusing to serve, in the example of Franz Reinisch – proved too overwhelming to accept.

They believed as Werthmann believed, who quoted a speech delivered to German youth in 1945, after the final defeat:

Maybe it was a false offering for which [the soldiers] presented themselves, a false obedience, but their hearts were pure… Many believe that it was for the Fatherland, and they didn’t know that it was for the Party. But many didn’t even believe this. Many knew that it was about something unjust and they hated that they were sent. But they believed in the soldierly duty to obey, and they obeyed.109

The intentions regarding pastoral care were good, but the consequences of focusing on this so exclusively constituted a betrayal of one of Christianity’s most famous imperatives, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Their general failure to act on behalf of their

Jewish, Polish, Russian, or non-Catholic neighbors can be explained by different motivations – naiveté, indifference, prejudice, fear – that many lay German soldiers shared. That these men were priests, however, or training to be priests, introduces a higher standard of judgment and, consequently, a deeper feeling of horror and disappointment that they did not meet this standard. These were priests and seminarians living in dark times, in extreme situations, and despite their vocation they proved as human, and fallible, as the next man. But the persistent post-war silence that the vast majority shared, and their unflappable conviction that their service neither supported the regime nor enabled its crimes, their inability – or refusal – to understand the full ramifications of this service, is inexcusable.

109 KMBA SW 1053/IX, excerpt from speech given in 1945 by Ernst Wischert in Georg Werthmann, notes, “Fronterlebnis und Reichsgottesarbeit: Der Inhalt des Fronterlebnisses,” June 26, 1946. According to the same set of notes by Werthmann, Wischert was interned in Buchenwald, where he lost his faith in God. In spite of this, “what he has written about the German soldiers is remarkable.”

295 Conclusion A Question of (Catholic) Souls

Between 1939 and 1945, nearly 20,000 Catholic priests and seminarians were conscripted into the German armed forces, coerced into fighting a war for a regime for which few of them showed sympathy. Very few of them dissented and refused to join; the authorities executed most of these.1 The rest consented, with a few expressing zeal but most displaying varying degrees of resignation and dedication to serving one’s country and fellow Germans. These priests and seminarians, the vast majority of whom kept intact the fervor for their chosen vocation or found renewed enthusiasm for it in the midst of horrific war, displayed a jarring inability to comprehend to what exactly they acquiesced when they said “yes” to conscription. The penalty for refusal was death, but it is not clear that this factored into their decisions to go; in fact, the evidence indicates that most saw it as their duty, as Germans and as Catholic priests, to accompany men to war, and did not consider not going. Moreover, most German citizens in the time between

Hitler’s rise to power and the outbreak of war also gave the same affirmation; very few grasped the true meaning of Nazism in the early years of the “thousand year Reich”, or could predict that it would end twelve years later in genocide and ignoble defeat.

But these men and the choices they made, particularly while in the German army uniform, introduce complicated questions about the nature of acquiescence and resistance, acceptance and protest. As priests and seminarians, they purposefully offered themselves as moral guides to their flocks. Was this vocation not an explicit commitment to the Christian way of life, which was antithetical to everything the Nazi regime stood

1 See Chapter 4, p. 194, n. 14, for an overview of the historiographical discrepancies regarding the number of Catholic conscientious objectors during World War II.

296 for? Did those who left written testimony not claim that they willingly took on the army uniform in order to be close to the men, and share their burden, and be a spiritual solace for them? Should they not have been expected to react to crimes with dissent, at the very least, if not loud protest, even if the penalty was death?

Priests and seminarians who served in the Wehrmacht did so with few qualms that they openly expressed at the time. This is not altogether surprising, because they were, after all, Germans; on this level, they responded to a call to defend their home in ways that other Germans, lay as well as a-religious, did. Why these priests and seminarians did so, the ways in which they justified their response to the regime, and how they understood the impact of their service present a microcosmic image of the unpredictable and complex relationship between Nazism and Christianity, especially the Catholic

Church. They also provide a case through which to investigate the negotiation of national belonging and religious identity. This was a process faced by many Germans who were active Christians at the dawn of the Second World War, when the call to fight for Volk and Fatherland overwhelmed any lingering feelings of ambivalence towards the regime.

But a unique situation confronted the Catholic clergy, who had their own history of struggle within the German nation as well as a Church history of persistent attempts to come to terms with post-1918 Germany.

The Catholic Church as a political institution has a history of conservative authoritarianism, both in terms of how it has run itself (hierarchical power that is staunchly defended against outsiders and reformers) and the states with which it has traditionally allied itself before the twentieth century.2 Particularly after the impact of the

2 See Chapter One for a description of the history of concordats before 1900. See also Frank J. Coppa, Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (Washington,

297 Reformation, the popes had taken great care to choose political partners who were going to defend the Church’s interests. The tradition of using concordats to secure rights for

Catholics within nation-states is evidence of this. In this regard, the Church perceived of

Hitler as the latest in a long line of dictators, stretching back to Napoleon, who challenged the Church’s sphere of authority, but who seemed willing to work with the

Church in return for concessions. Did the Vatican understand Hitler and his intentions in its pursuit of a treaty – that is, did the pope anticipate that the Nazis would turn against the terms of the agreement as soon as it was convenient to do so – and sign anyway?

Some sources indicate yes; Eugenio Pacelli, one of the primary movers behind the 1933

Reichskonkordat who would later have to deal with Hitler’s regime and its war as a pope, confided to the British ambassador as early as the summer of 1933 that he fully expected the Nazi Party to violate the concordat’s terms, but hopefully not all at once.3 Should the

Church’s higher statesmen, notably Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and Ludwig Kaas, be condemned for acting in the interests of preserving German Catholics’ rights, and compromising with a power that was not only blatantly anti-Christian in word and deed, but that also showed a determined refusal to honor its contract with the Holy See? If they should, then one must fault the Church’s tradition of seeking to protect its flock from the potential harm of non-Catholic rulers, as well as the Church’s failure (a failure shared by other major political players both inside Germany and in the international community) to realize that Hitler presented an exception to the rule. Indeed, the question becomes exponentially larger and addresses the Church’s role as a political player; by the time that

D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), for more detailed case studies involving the three rulers. 3 Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1972), 250- 51.

298 popes had to reckon with fascist movements, their influence as independent political actors had become severely restricted, giving them even more motivation to pursue concordats that might serve in place of the power they lacked.

Many Catholics across Europe, both clergy and laity, followed the pope’s lead and identified communism as the chief enemy of the Church in the 1920s; this was especially true in Germany, a country with a historically strong socialist movement, in which communist revolution was a continuous threat throughout that decade. Those with the strongest reservations about the Nazi demagogue understood Hitler, though fascist and anti-Christian, to be the lesser evil, an attitude shared by the larger international community. Hitler could not necessarily be trusted, but he might be tolerated in order for the Church to achieve its own ends, namely, protection of Catholic rights within the

German state.

Still, German Catholics proved remarkably resilient before 1933 when it came to being swayed by Hitler’s promises and ideology. As an electoral bloc they remained politically estranged from him, preferring to vote for other conservative parties in the

Reichstag, notably the Center and the Bavarian People’s Party.4 But once Nazism came to power, staunch opposition was no longer a viable method of displaying disagreement with the ruling party; those who chose to agitate against Nazism ended up in “protective custody,” with lengthy jail or concentration camp terms, if they were not killed outright.5

The lifting of restrictions relating to the Nazi Party by various bishops between March

4 Jürgen W. Falter, Hitlers Wähler (München: Beck, 1991), 169-75. 5 The so-called Röhm putsch, or Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, is one example of how lethal Nazi measures could be against real and perceived opponents; as discussed in Chapter Two, two army generals as well as important Catholic lay leaders were among those assassinated. Additionally, numerous political “dissidents,” namely communists and socialists but also Catholic priests, Jews, and others had experienced imprisonment in Dachau concentration camp, which was opened a little more than a month after Hitler came to power in 1933. It was only one of several in operation throughout the Third Reich.

299 and July 1933 suggests that the official Church stance was becoming more lenient, and the announcement of a concordat between the Vatican and the state that summer must have made Catholics feel more secure about their rights, even as the about-face by their leaders left many perplexed. The Waldemar Gurians and Dietrich von Hildebrands proved to be a very small minority of Catholics who preferred exile to cooperation with

Hitler’s Germany.6

One explanation for this readiness to conciliate among German Catholics is that nationalism and religion proved seamless within German society, even under the Third

Reich. For Germany’s Protestants this was especially true. Although the Protestant

Church splintered beneath the weight of its members’ contrasting reactions to Nazism, generally the Protestant clergy and their leaders proved amenable very early on to working with Nazism.7 But German Catholics also identified freely and proudly as both, as they had since the Kulturkampf era, when Bismarck’s anti-Catholic policies had tried to divide those two poles of identity. And despite the obvious anti-Christian elements of

National Socialist ideology, they by and large either tolerated Hitler’s regime from its initial months in power to its final days, or in some cases even actively and openly supported it, pointing to their affinities with its anti-modern, anti-liberal, conservative,

6 Gurian fled to Switzerland in 1934, then to the U.S.A. in 1937; von Hildebrand to Austria in 1933, and eventually to the U.S.A. in 1940 by way of Switzerland, France, and Portugal. 7 See especially Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, translated by John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), Volume One, Part III; Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985); Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Kurt Meier, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz: die evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1992); Ernst Christian Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979).

300 and anti-Jewish aspects.8 These Catholic followers trumpeted the good that they perceived it was doing – establishing stability and social order, eradicating communism in Germany, defending German culture from the “red menace” in the East – and few protested or resisted it in public spaces. When they did, they limited their protest to a particular issue, which their leaders almost always connected to a breach of the concordat, and generally quieted when specific needs were met. They preferred (and their priests and bishops encouraged them, for the most part) to cling to their patriotic sentiments rather than to risk censure or jail time by championing Catholic beliefs more stridently.9

The core element of Nazi ideology, antisemitism, did not apparently bother the clergy and bishops in Germany. The majority of German Catholics followed their example, who again mirrored German society, ranging from apathy and indifference to opportunistic participation to (the very few) enthusiastic collaboration in enforcing antisemitic legislation and using antisemitic language. More problematic were the stridently racist overtones of Nazi ideology, with which some bishops found fault, perhaps taking their cue from Pope Pius XI (d. 1939).10 On this point more than any

8 The best and most recent account of these pro-Nazi clergymen is Kevin P. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). 9 Beth A. Griech-Polelle is one of the more recent historians who has argued that, had the bishops and clergy led their flocks into more open resistance, much might have been achieved. See Griech-Polelle, Bishop Von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Scholars who advance such arguments often point to two instances when Catholic resistance “cowed” the regime into backing down: the first was Cardinal von Galen’s sermons against the euthanasia program in August 1941, which succeeded in temporarily halting the T-4 agenda, forcing it underground and out of Germany; and the second was the attempt to remove crucifixes from classrooms in Oldenburg in 1936, which led to such fierce opposition that the regime backed down and reinstated them. It bears pointing out that both of these cases were about Germans: the first centered on the mercy-killing of handicapped German citizens, the second dealt squarely with issues of religion and education in German schools. Catholics were ready to resist only when the regime threatened their rights, and the right of others, as German Catholics. 10 Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, translated by Steven Rendall (New York, San Diego and London: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997), 110-23.

301 other, Church leaders in Germany showed consistent unease and disagreement with official Nazi policy, though they did not always clearly and openly express it. Once the deportation of German Jews began under the guise of war, some bishops, priests, and laypeople worked to protect “non-Aryan Catholics” from being included in round-ups, although there was no unanimous condemnation of the actions.11 Their attempts to circumvent the regime in this matter is solid evidence that Church and Party came into open conflict over racial policy vis à vis the Jews. For the Nazis, Jewishness was an immutable fact, a race that could not be washed away with baptismal waters; for the

Church, conversion offered the way to redemption and salvation. The Nazi movement classified “non-Aryan Catholics” as Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws, but to the bishops and priests who tried to save them, they struggled on behalf of Catholics. Their attempts were futile, and there is no evidence that these clergymen interested themselves in Jews who had not converted.12

Catholic Germans were no more enthusiastic about war than non-Catholic

Germans; its outbreak in September 1939 notably lacked the frenetic excitement and energy of 1914. But as in 1914, Catholic Germans knew their patriotic duty, and little

11 Cardinal von Faulhaber, archbishop of Munich, wrote at least one exhortation to Cardinal Adolf Bertram, Archbishop of Breslau and head of the Fulda Conference of Bishops, asking him to make a public stand against the deportations of Catholic “non-Aryans.” EAM 8431, letter, 13 November 1941. Bertram made no such statement. Konrad von Preysing, bishop of Berlin, arguably the staunchest anti-Nazi Catholic bishop, wrote Pope Pius XII about the deportation of “non-Aryans” from Berlin. The pope responded at length and warmly, but without any willingness to change his public stance. See Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, 1930-1945: ein Bericht in Quellen, edited by Hubert Gruber (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006), 484-89. The original letter from von Preysing, like most of his correspondence with the Vatican during the war years, has never been found and may have been destroyed, or so Donald J. Dietrich speculates: “Antisemitism and the Institutional Catholic Church” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, 3 (Winter 2002), 416. 12 Saul Friedländer and Kevin P. Spicer make this point, too, outlining the extent to which members of the Church would resist. Not even von Preysing, an otherwise vociferous opponent of Nazi policies, used the word “Jews” in sermons about human rights abuses, nor urged his parishioners to outright resistance. See Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 298-302; Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 69-71.

302 thought was given to the idea of not serving. They understood the war not as a defense of

Nazism but as a defense of Volk and Fatherland, terms that predated Nazism (though the regime made ready and frequent use of them), and clergy, both bishops and priests, referenced them frequently in sermons and circulars. No more than their parishioners were priests prepared to resist that call to duty. When the regime revealed contents of the

Reichskonkordat’s secret appendix as war broke out in 1939, detailing at length which clergymen and seminary students were subject to conscription, those who expressed opinions about the requirement to serve were in favor.

But surely, priests and perhaps even seminarians deserve to be held to a higher moral standard than their parishioners. As men whose vocation entailed an extensive education and a more intimate consideration of the impact of faith and morals on daily life and its decisions (they were, after all, meant to shepherd their flocks closer to living a life in accordance with Christian virtues), should they not have realized, at some point, that they precisely had compromised for the sake of the “lesser evil,” but gotten stuck with the greater? What compelled them to remain silent in the face of wartime atrocities?

How did they so effectively displace their sense of right and wrong? Did their vocation fail them as completely as did the conscience of most German soldiers, weakened and desensitized by the brutality and dehumanization of war-torn Europe? In this sense, a consciously-fostered notion of belonging with and support for “the men,” regardless of the immediate wartime context, was much more powerful than the need to combat injustice and wrongdoing, both of which came to define the very nature of the world in which they found themselves on the eastern front.

303 Priests in particular had special motivation for responding positively to conscription, and found justification for their actions in terms of their vocation: their spiritual obligation required them to look after those members of the flock who found themselves wearing army uniforms. However, this vocation failed to provide any kind of defense against or shield from nationalist sentiment, anti-Bolshevik agitation, and the slow grind of brutalization and indifference in time of war. Their responsibility was to their Christian German brethren, who formed a new kind of parish with strictly delineated boundaries, to whom they devoted all of their energy. Foreign civilians, including

Catholic Poles, Russians, prisoners-of-war, and Jews, were a distant second priority, if they were noticed at all.

While in uniform, conscripted clergy and those who had been ordained to the diaconate level proved in many ways to be a “group apart”: they had different sets of regulations under which they labored (beginning with the secret appendix, delineating who would and would not serve as army soldiers, and in what capacity, as well as by the fact that the majority of them were given non-weapon-bearing positions), and they identified themselves continuously as priests or priests-in-training, even if they could not act as such. These were explicit interdictions that the Reich Field Bishop’s Office supported superficially, and they carried heavy penalties for infractions. For the individual priest, being conscripted into the chaplaincy was a challenge in and of itself, given the regime’s antipathy for pastoral care from even the earliest years of the war, and an impossibility after 1942, when the OKW no longer recruited chaplains from either denomination. No priest could administer to others as a clergyman, except in cases of

304 emergency.13 In fact, there is extensive evidence that many disobeyed these prohibitions, sometimes with the full knowledge and consent of the soldiers around them as well as their superior officers. Furthermore, the regime identified them, as well as Catholic theology students and seminarians, as “other” in terms of soldiers, and after 1942 made increasingly concerted efforts to reduce their influence in the army (or, in the case of chaplains, eliminate them altogether).

In June 1944, priests and seminarians were no longer eligible for conscription into the reserves; the same regulations discharged those actively serving as reserve officers.

This in and of itself is an interesting development: while the regime was keen to utilize every source of manpower for its war machine – hence the secret appendix in 1933 – at the height of the war, and even after Germany started suffering major defeats, the higher- ups in the Party felt it necessary to root out all Catholic/institutional religious influence from the officer ranks of the army, a decision that upset even the higher-ups in the OKW, which had shown itself consistently to be no friend of Catholic priests throughout the war.14

This active antipathy can be explained with separate hypotheses. The first, that

Catholics in uniform may not have been as subservient and cooperative as they professed to have been, is inadequate. Chaplains, priests, and seminarians by their own admission, borne out in army reports and letters, wanted to retain their posts with the soldiers, and even when they broke the rules delimiting their priestly functions, they did so cautiously

13 Even then, they still needed permission to act. See KMBA SW 1055/IX, excerpt from “Heranziehung von Soldaten zur Feldseelsorge” (April 1, 1943). 14 This information is relayed post-war by Werthmann, who identified his source concerning OKW discontent only as “a cognizant head-of-division in the General Army Office [von dem zuständigen Referenten bei AHA/E Tr].” KMBA SW 1052/IX, “Anhang zum Reichskonkordat,” written between May 31 and September 28, 1945. This appears to be part of his larger Geschichte der Feldseelsorge. Some religious orders, notably the Jesuits, were never accepted as suitable military material and were subsequently exempt from conscription altogether.

305 and took pains to hide what they had done. Their interests lay in preserving their position however they could. Werthmann’s methods of negotiating between the demands of the army and the needs of his priests reflects this willingness to work with the system and is best described as collaboration, not dissent or resistance. For example, as discussed in previous chapters, he knew that rules forbade the priests who were not chaplains to act as priests unless in dire circumstances, but he was fully aware that they did so, and even clandestinely encouraged it. He also knew that these regulations prohibited priests outside the chaplaincy as well as seminarians from gathering formally to discuss the war or their role in it, but he deliberately interpreted the decree at the seminars he attended to exclude voluntary gatherings, inviting the priests and seminarians to continue with their assembles in a more informal way. In both cases, Werthmann understood the regulations that he was bending, and bent them anyway without pushing far enough to merit retaliation from his superiors.15

The second, that Hitler and his henchmen would not tolerate a significant rival for men’s souls, especially as the war turned increasingly bad, is more plausible. As defeat became an increasingly likely end to war, soldiers appeared to find more solace in traditional religion than in the Nazi movement. In the prewar years, some Catholics believed that more radical elements of the Party fully intended to drive to its end “a battle of destruction against the Church.”16 While one can speculate about the extent to which the Nazis would have pursued total annihilation of the institutional churches after a

15 See Chapter Four, 204. 16 See, for example, a memorandum from Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Berlin, October 17, 1937, in Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche, 1933-1945, Vol. IV, edited by Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1981), 356-61; Heinz Hürten also advances this issue in “‘Endlösung’ für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche” in Stimmen der Zeit 203 (1985), 534-46.

306 wartime victory, there is evidence that Hitler was prepared to endure them as semi- independent institutions only as long as he needed their aid to help achieve his final goals, especially during the war. He had no interest in preserving the terms of the concordat, proven as early as the autumn months of 1933, when the Catholic Teachers’

Association “voluntarily” disbanded and its members joined the Nazi Teachers’ League, or when hostile local Hitler Youth branches accused Catholic youth groups and their defenders of “an obstinate denominationalism” and being “out to sabotage the work of our Government.”17 The pope issued the 1937 encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, as a reproach to the Nazis about the treatment of the Church in Germany, and the regime understood it as a breach of the concordat; this nearly led to the latter’s complete abrogation. Important figures like Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and one of Hitler’s closest confidants, and Martin Bormann, head of the Party chancellery from 1941, spoke openly of the destruction of the Church in the post-war period, after Nazism’s victory.

The beginnings of this process began with the discontinuation of recruiting and training army chaplains, whose ranks the OKW did not re-fill after 1942 when individuals were lost in battle, and continued with the introduction of National Socialist Leadership officers (NSFOs), whose directives told them explicitly not to compete with the chaplains, but whose tasks in every conceivable way rivaled the work of spiritual solace by offering a clear ideological alternative.

A third explanation, similar to the second above, argues that the regime was remarkably consistent in its attitude towards Catholic clergy, both in the army uniform and back home in Germany: it tolerated priests and seminarians when they had their uses,

17 See The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich: Facts and Documents (1942), 82-91; Lewy, Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 116-33.

307 but otherwise treated them with suspicion, and almost always viewed them as rivals.

Regardless of the extent to which the Catholic Church in Germany accommodated the regime, the leading echelons of the Party never understood the Church as anything less than a contender for the hearts and souls of Germans. Different historians have argued in support of this that Hitler’s intention by signing a concordat with the Vatican was to defang it; the Church would confine itself to those areas guaranteed by the treaty and remove itself entirely from politics within Germany.18 In this way, the pope and bishops, the authority to whom priests and their flocks initially looked for guidance, faced difficulties in protesting any of his policies, so long as Hitler did not infringe too quickly or blatantly on the concordat.

Other historiography has debated at length the question of whether the bishops and priests in Germany should have continued to cooperate with a regime that broke the concordat with increasing brazenness; in more recent decades this literature has also addressed the role of the wartime pope, Pius XII, and his “silence” in the face of atrocity and genocide. Some historians argue that that there was no excuse for collaboration with a worldview such as Nazism, especially when such a desperate alliance bought nothing but a bit of time. The Vatican or the bishops should have lived their faith more effectively, and spoken out against known evil regardless of the potential cost. Historians more sensitive to precedent and context but careful to avoid the charge of apologism cite the dangerous consequences to which such an open breach, precipitated by the Church, would have led; it is not difficult to imagine that the regime, led by its anti-institutionalist henchmen like Bormann and Himmler, would have attacked the Church and its defenders

18 See Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 138; Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, 381.

308 without restraint, with the result that Catholicism could have become as violently anathematized in the Third Reich as Orthodoxy in Soviet Russia.19

Resistance was not always a clear alternative to accommodation for German

Catholics, and the word itself conjures a wide variety of behavior and actions, ranging from bold and direct opposition such as Operation Valkyrie or the White Rose to more passive forms, such as simply refusing to give the “Heil Hitler” greeting. Most forms of opposition to the government would have seemed like treason, even if Catholics had qualms about the men in charge. Because the Party made itself into the embodiment of the state, Germans – Catholic and non-Catholic – did not always draw a clear distinction between the Fatherland and the regime. This was especially true when the war broke out:

Hitler’s Nazis were not beloved in many German Catholic circles leading up to 1939; the regime had severely limited Catholic public life, closing Catholic presses, disbanding lay associations, prohibiting youth groups, even making attempts to remove crosses from school buildings. Therefore, Catholics did not necessarily go to war because they were attached to Hitler and his regime (though certainly some were). But Germans recognized their duty to the Fatherland, and Nazi propaganda encouraged them to think that this was a defensive war, aimed at the preservation of German civilization.20 Furthermore, the form that potential resistance could have taken is not clear: the regime did not tolerate open resistance, as seen by the examples of conscientious objectors or, later, the White

19 On the Soviet struggle to eliminate religion in Russia, see Dimitry Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982 (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984); William B. Husband, “Godless Communists”: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). 20 Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 143-45.

309 Rose resistance in Munich, to name only two.21 Protest from the pulpits could work, as

Cardinal von Galen demonstrated, but he also had enough popular support in Westphalia that it may have ultimately saved him from arrest and execution.22 And while his sermons did achieve a temporary cessation of the euthanasia program, it recommenced clandestinely and continued until the end of the war.

The clergy and seminarians who served in the Wehrmacht did so with remarkably little resistance, much as their secular brethren accepted their roles in the war. Moreover, they found ways to justify their ready response to the conscription order, their decision to continue serving even after having witnessed atrocity and crime, and their dedication to their fellow soldiers in both victory and defeat. On this point, nationalism and religion worked together to provide a solid foundation. For priests, their country demanded the particular contribution that priests could give: the sustenance and consolation derived from pastoral care, to which they believed their soldiers had a right.23 Declining to serve was obviously not an option without lethal consequences, but it was also seen as shirking one’s duty: Christian soldiers needed a shepherd, especially in a battle against an enemy out to destroy the Church itself. This was how the popes and German bishops had portrayed Bolshevism since the early 1920s, and there was nothing to suggest that the red menace had changed its goals. Thus, both God and Germany required their service, and chaplains, other priests, and seminarians answered enthusiastically.

21 On conscientious objectors, see Manfred Messerschmidt and Wolfram Wette, Was damals recht war: NS-Militär- und Strafjustiz im Vernichtungskrieg (Essen: Klartext, 1996); on the White Rose resistance group, see Herbert Steiner, “Acts of Resistance: The White Rose in the Light of New Archival Evidence” in Resistance Against the Third Reich, 1933-1990, edited by Michael Geyer and John Boyer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 22 Beth Griech-Polelle, Bishop von Galen, 93. 23 As quoted in Hans Jürgen Brandt, “Introduction” in Biographisches Lexikon der katholischen Militärseelsorge Deutschlands 1848 bis 1945, edited by Brandt, Peter Häger, Karl Hengst and the Catholic Military Bishop’s Office (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002).

310 They fulfilled their service in a variety of ways, ensuring that, although they did not as a rule bear weapons, they shared the experience of war with the soldiers they served.24 They saw action on all fronts through the six-and-a-half year duration of the war. Because of this, they witnessed wartime death and destruction, and atrocity. Almost all of them served at some point on the Eastern Front, and many recalled interactions with

Waffen-SS and police battalions working just behind the army advance. Though few of them admitted to having seen firsthand the crimes committed by army soldiers and their

SS equivalents – the starvation, deportation, and massacre of POWs and civilians, particularly Jews – most acknowledged that they heard rumors, and some acknowledged what they had seen, in the aftermath of slaughters, or heard from those who had participated in the killings. Very seldom did they intervene in any way. One priest spoke to a commanding officer but did not press his protests. Another chaplain, along with his

Protestant colleague, tried to save a group of Jewish orphans from almost-certain death, but accepted Himmler’s eventual, and fatal, resolution. Another, a priest stationed with a medical company, persuaded an SS division leader to abandon his plans to liquidate a

French village as retribution for partisan activity in the area. But these men were exceptions, not the general rule. Most kept their heads down and followed the example set by Werthmann, telling themselves that they would be more useful outside of the concentration camp.25

The ways in which these men proved useful are ambivalent. The priests themselves, when asked years or even decades later how they understood their role in the

24 This was laid down in a secret memorandum from the OKW in October 1939. See KMBA SW 1052/IX (copy), October 14, 1939. It is also reprinted in its entirety in Priester in Uniform: Seelsorger, Ordensleute und Theologen als Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt (Augsburg: Pattloch Verlag, 1994), 18-19. 25 KMBA SW 1009/VII (Nr. 1), copy of Gregor Zimmer interview (English version); undated.

311 war and if they had any regrets about their experience, insisted repeatedly in interviews, articles, and prefaces to memoirs that they served the men with whom they fought, and that all other considerations were a distant second priority. These other considerations are rarely enumerated, but they would presumably include political and moral reservations about Hitler, the Party, the army high command, the Nazi movement, and the aims of the war, to list only a few. Some of the priests distanced themselves explicitly from Nazism and its leaders and described their wartime ordeal as a trial by fire that strengthened their commitment to their vocation. None claimed to have gained a new appreciation for

Führer or Party. They defined the alpha and the omega of their service as caring for the souls of the German Catholics and Christians with whom they were stationed, and this they did, as the previous chapters have documented.

But the effects of their presence extended far beyond their ministering to their flocks. The regime (including Party authorities), superior officers, and fellow soldiers invariably looked upon these men, fully ordained priests, students studying theology, and seminarians intending to become priests, as moral guideposts who may or may not have been supportive of the Party’s interpretation of the war. While higher-ups within the

Party remained suspicious of, if not openly hostile to, their allegiances (particularly to

Rome) and did everything in their power to curtail their influence within the armed forces, the common Landser and their officers proved more likely to accept the lack of clear political engagement of the priests among them and make use of them however they could.26 At the very least, these men could provide comfort and succor, and see the soldiers through their most difficult missions. To be sure, many soldiers disdained the aid

26 This is evident in different ways. One is in the reaction of some generals and higher army officers to the decree that chaplains would no longer be conscripted after 1942. Another is the reaction of the OKW to the discharge of Catholic priests, deacons, and seminarians from their positions in officers of the reserve.

312 of traditional religion and held priests at arm’s length, but countless others accepted their offer of spiritual support and relief, even after an initial period of hostility.27 The chaplains, priests, and seminarians interpreted this response as proof that their wartime service had purpose and understood their position as apolitical; they wore the uniform and fought in the war, but neither openly supported nor disapproved of the war’s methods and goals. Most declared (after the war) that they were contemptuous of Hitler’s regime, and instead had fought for the men, whom they kept mentally separated from Nazism.

With few exceptions, none addressed the ramifications of their presence beyond what they could provide, so they did not consider themselves as having contributed to the

“moral numbing” of soldiers.28 And while they may have agreed that they were instrumental in providing soldiers with the strength to continue fighting, they would not have accepted the idea that they were pivotal in prolonging a criminal war.

Yet this is precisely one of the most important effects of their wartime service, and one that must be considered in any study of their role and influence. It is why the army embraced their presence when the Party did not, with some officers risking the wrath of the OKW and Party leaders by arguing explicitly that they needed chaplains and priests.29 It explains why the Party and the OKW did not pursue more aggressively the expulsion of priests from the army ranks after 1942, when it decreed that no more chaplains would be called up; aside from the need for manpower, many officers,

27 The example of Joseph Hoser discussed in Chapter Four fits here: he interacted with Waffen-SS soldiers who were initially hostile but who ultimately came to view him as an asset. See Chapter Four, 210-11. 28 Bergen, “German Military Chaplains in the Third Reich,” 134. 29 Georg May gives a detailed, if short, list of both Catholic and Protestant officers, including field marshals and generals, who showed themselves enthusiastically disposed towards spiritual care for soldiers. These include the Protestants Grand Admiral Erich Raedar, Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, and General Heinz Guderian (I would add Friedrich von Rabenau here); and Catholics Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb and General of the Artillery Anton Freiherr von Bechtolsheim. Georg May, Interkonfessionalismus in der deutschen Militärseelsorge von 1933 bis 1945 (Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner, 1978), 224-28.

313 including generals, understood that priests of both denominations made important contributions to the war effort by bolstering morale among the men.30 Bergen’s conclusions about the presence of chaplains are irrefutable, to the effect that their behavior not only failed to protect the victims of Nazism’s ideological war, but also contributed to the actions of the perpetrators, “condoning and blessing their crimes through words, actions, and silence.”31 In this, the priests were no different from chaplains. Whether giving general absolution, which occurred immediately before divisions marched into battle and sheer numbers made individual confession impossible, or conversing privately with soldiers about the meaning of battle, or witnessing the impact of the German armies on the peoples and landscape on the Eastern front, priests in uniform sacrificed their personal qualms over the war in order to help fellow Germans survive the experience. In doing so, they compromised their own moral worldview, aiding an army (by enabling its men) in its devastating and murderous path across

Europe.

That these priests refused to see their service in this light can be explained in different ways. They were highly educated, a condition of their training for the priesthood, so ignorance is not an adequate conclusion for their inability to comprehend the influence they had. What some scholars might call willful delusion, others would categorize as misguided conviction, and both are more plausible rationalizations because they underscore the priests’ beliefs, regardless of what they were founded on, that their

30 KMBA SW 1052/IX, “Anhang zum Reichskonkordat,” June 1, 1945 (notes made by GW). See also May, Interkonfessionalismus, 220-28. 31 Bergen, “German Military Chaplains,” 134. Heinrich Missalla and Thomas Breuer make similar arguments in Für Gott, Führer und Vaterland: die Verstrickung der katholischen Seelsorge in Hitlers Krieg (München: Kösel, 1999) and Dem Führer gehorsam: wie die deutschen Katholiken von ihrer Kirche zum Kriegsdienst verpflichtet wurden (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 1989), as does Spicer with reference to the Church in Germany during the war, in Hitler’s Priests.

314 own finite sphere of authority delimited the impact they had on the larger context of the war. Such reasoning argues that they supported the soldiers with whom they had contact, and that they viewed these soldiers were neither as Nazis nor as murderers, but simply as boys and men who found themselves in unfortunate circumstances. Furthermore, their incapacity, or unwillingness, to connect the individual soldiers they knew to the larger group – the army and its crimes – was doubtless motivated by a desire to salvage something of the history of Germany under the Third Reich, in the idea of a “clean

Wehrmacht” that had stood apart from the crimes of the regime.

The second motivation, more self-exculpatory, is also not original: these men involved themselves intimately with the German army and, like the soldiers who survived, preferred to dwell on events and interactions that did not directly relate to its criminal activities, just as they avoided talking about (or remembering?) the more brutal aspects of being a soldier. For some, the claim to have known only “good” and “honest” soldiers came naturally, as they neither witnessed a crime nor interacted with anyone who had. However, the vast majority of the priests and seminarians conscripted saw action on various fronts, and many served for the full six-and-a-half years of the war; at some point they ended up in occupied Poland and the western territory of the Soviet empire, where it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to avoid evidence of atrocities and ill- treatment of civilians and POWs by the Wehrmacht. From the examples cited in the preceding chapters, there is strong evidence that many received confirmation at some point during the war that at least some parts of the army had committed crimes, either with regards to prisoners-of-war or Jews. This would be a memory upon which no one would be willing to dwell.

315 Memory and its attendant challenges were a significant factor, too, especially for those priests who discussed their experiences only well into the post-war period, meaning that numerous factors had time to intervene and shape the ways in which these men remembered the war. They witnessed the division and reunification of their country, growing public confrontation with Germany’s perpetration of the Holocaust beginning in the 1960s, and the debates about the reaction of the German Catholic Church as well as

Pope Pius XII. They lived through the impact of Vatican II and watched the shift in public conceptions of their “untainted” Wehrmacht. Until the end of the 1960s, academics did not seriously challenge this perception. A new and rich series of studies that spanned several decades dismantled this distortion, a process that would have impacted former chaplains as strongly as it did army veterans. And in spite of these critical studies, debates about the extent to which the army was complicit in wartime atrocities continued well into the 1990s, both in Germany and beyond its borders, serving to keep the controversy fresh in the minds of these priests as the Church also grappled with its record during the war.32

Like lay Germans, these veterans of the Wehrmacht had to come to terms with the

Nazi past as Germans, as Catholics, and as priests. While these elements of identity may have proven seamless during the war, the post-war period provoked different questions and challenges to each one. These questions fluctuated, influenced by political shifts, diplomatic exchanges, and social provocations, and spanned decades. National identity

32 See, for example, Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: R.v.Decker, 1969); Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1978); Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995); The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944, edited by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (New York: New Press, 1999).

316 fractured along with the country and public conceptions of the meaning and legacy of the

Third Reich, and the existence of East Germany and West Germany hindered the struggle to come to terms with that past.33 The Catholic Church was also slow to confront its history under the Third Reich, sliding with ease into the role of moral authority under

Allied occupation and only gradually orienting itself to acknowledge its errors, particularly its failure to confront and resist Nazism more directly and its perpetuation of anti-Jewish sentiment across the centuries. On the individual level, the men on whom I have focused in this study returned, in most cases, to their parishes or their orders or their seminaries and made sense of their wartime experience in the context of total defeat, working closely with their countrymen to rebuild and re-establish moral perimeters. Did they acknowledge the particulars of their military service, including the difficult moral dilemmas they had faced and the choices they had made? How did it enable them to craft survival narratives? How did it influence their relationship with their flocks?

The seminarians, priests, and chaplains studied in this dissertation chose, with few exceptions, to mirror the example set by their religious and political leaders between

1933 and 1945: they accommodated Nazism. They did so under compulsion, but also because they truly believed that giving themselves to their country and their soldiers was the morally responsible reaction to the situation. Decades of negotiation and collaboration between higher Church officials, both in the Vatican and in Germany, and politicians presented a model of acceptable behavior that they could cite. While the Church leadership recognized the strident racism of the regime as anti-Christian even before

Nazism came to power, and many expressed concern about the hostility of some of its

33 Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

317 members toward organized religion, as few as seven viewed these obstacles as significant enough to prohibit cooperation during the war; the rest fell somewhere between the poles of understanding Nazism as the lesser of two evils and understanding Nazism as essential for the defense of Christendom, and Germany, against communism. Nazi-led Germany in

1933 was infinitely preferable to a Communist victory in Europe.

Moreover, these priests and seminarians saw that the salvation of German

Catholic souls was far more important than taking a firm and open stand against the evils represented by the ruling party. Like the larger Church of which they were part, they tended to think about the temporal sphere in terms of the next life [das Jenseits] and how to ensure that the maximum number of Christians gained it. Not compromising with the

Nazis was tantamount to abandoning those Catholic souls when they most needed spiritual aid. Their compromise with Nazism was, therefore, essential. To demand otherwise would have been asking these priests and seminarians to move against their religious authorities and God; would have been asking Catholics to reject centuries of tradition; and would have been asking Germans to betray not only their government but their country.

Could this have been reasonably expected? Others could and did resist and paid for it with their lives, so it was possible. Choosing to collaborate with the lesser evil was still choosing evil, and any moral person could have seen it as such.34 Moreover, by focusing so exclusively on their religious brethren, these priests refused to aid those who arguably were most in need of help between 1933 and 1945, particularly the Jews.

Ingrained anti-Jewish sentiment, antisemitism, and feelings of fear, helplessness in the face of authority, and apathy no doubt constituted part of the reaction of clergy in army

34 Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship” in The Listener, 6 August 1964.

318 uniforms to Nazi ideology before and during the war, but this does not explain it entirely.

In the end, the problem was not a question of resisting evil or protesting wrongdoing, but a question of (Catholic) souls. Five decades later, those souls remain both the justification in the minds of priest-veterans for going to war, as well as their virtually total lack of regret about their experience. Such fierce dedication should be admirable in such extraordinary circumstances. But it is not what these men did and said that strikes most deeply into the reader’s consciousness; it is what they failed to do, neglected to say, and proved incapable of facing: that to accommodate or compromise with a racist, genocidal regime was antithetical to everything their faith stood for. The conundrums this behavior leaves, morally and politically, both for the individual as well as for the Church as a whole, generate a new series of challenges about the nature of collaboration and resistance, the construction of morals and their adaptation to different environments, and the role of faith and its caretakers, the clergy, under the Third Reich.

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