MS-603: Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum Collection, 1945-1992. Series C: lnterreligious Activities. 1952-1992 Box 13, Folder 18, Catholics and Nazis, 1961-1 '964. 3101 Clifton Ave, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220 (513) 221-1875 phone, (513) 221-7812 fax americanjewisharchives.org who live in deteriorating buildings can finally be de­ not to explode; and if there continue to be no signs of cently housed-and not in segregated enclaves. There a broad national coalition, that intensity is going to be are generalized references t9 all these· essentials in their poured into various forms of black nationalism. A New pronouncements, but there are no comprehensive pro­ York woman who was demonstrating at the World's grams nor· is there nearly enough emphasis on the Fair this spring said, "I have a little baby. I would co-ordinated political action required to elect legislators rather it were dead than nave to go through what my to bring these concepts into being. husband went through." Most basically, the '"establishment" has not clearly A Southern Regional Council· report on "the Easter enough joined with Bayard Rustin and similarly ori­ Week outbreak in Jacksonville of racial viole~ce, pre­ ented strategists to call ~or more planning of the econ­ dominantly from Negro sources" describes "the hope­ omy (without which structural unemployment will lessness that is compounded out of the thudding impact worsen) and for a change in the definition of work in upon the human consciousness of being poor, and being an economy being increasingly reshaped by automa­ blocked by the very conditions of tltis. poverty and by tion. Their goals have been too narrow, and. if theY. the weight of discrimination from any possible escape. continue to emphasiZe civil rights With only vague at­ This is hopelessness deepened by the new knowledge tention to economics and politics, the thrust of new . that the old dream of escape to the North is .false­ black leadership will make greater inroads on their that up. there it's just more of the dreary old same. forces, actual and potential. 'Our young,' say Negroes in Jacksonville and elsewhere So far, none in the new wave-including Malcom X over the South in 1964, 'don't care any more whether -have themselves been clear enough in presenting pro­ ·they die if they've got to go on living like we have grams 'aimed at attacking the root causes of inequality; to now.'" but because they do make fiercer sounds and because What do Wilkins, Farmer, King and Young have to the masses will become even more frustrated if all they say to the young in Jacksonville and to the woman at get are civil rights bills, more Negro support is bound the World's Fair beyond civil rights? Civil rights are to go to those who propose increasingly forceful action, essential, but they are only the beginning; and if the whatever that action is. For all that has been written present Negro leadership does not act more urgently about the rage and despair among Negroes, whites and specifically in political and economic tenµs, they generally have yet to fully realize ~at eventually all will have fewer and fewer Negroes to lead because this intensity has to be channeled somewhere if it is they have sq far not shown where it is they're going. Guenter Lewy's New Book The Church Under Hitler GORDON C. ZAHN IN ONE sense it might be said that the Church has com~ publicized, though perhaps least meritorious in terms of upon unfriendly ti.mes. Despite all the favorable attention scholarship, bas been the contribution of Rolf Hochhuth earned by the irrepressible humanity brought to it by a and the worldwide controversy it has stirred. He, it will John XX~II. despite the exciting revitalization under way be remembered, did not content himself with chron­ at Vatican II, it finds itself the o.bject of a continliing icling the sad failure of German Catholicism to recog­ (and increasingly critical) review which has at times nize a gross moral evil and oppose it effectively and in verged upon . an outright indictment for complicity-at ti.me; instead, he chose to indict the leader of the univer:­ least by silence-in the criminal acts of Adolf Hitler and sal Church with a personal, and major, share of respon- his Third Reich. sibility for the atrocity of the "Final Solution." . A new breed of German historians and journalists, in­ Now we have yet another treatment of this general cluding some outs'tanding Catholics, have played a theme, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, writ­ significant part in this revisionist study. The most widely ten by Guenter Lewy (McGraw-Hill. $7.50). It is un- . doubtedly the best Professor Lewy's analysis is different GORDON c. ZARN is the author of Getman Catholics and Hitler's from the others in the range of issues it covers, in the Wars and the forthcoming book, In Solitary Witness: The Liie and Death of Franz Jaegerstaett~r (Holt, Rinehart~ Winston). probing thoroughness of its analysis, and in the author- JULY 3, .1964 445 itative quality of his sources. It is unlikely that its pre­ moral principle to individual moral obligation might eminence will be challenged until (if even then?) the have provoked! · Vatican archives for this tragic period are finally made Other troubling :6.ndings concern the endemic strains available to scholars for free and independent research. f anti-Semitism in German Catholic thought and prac­ One suspects that the materials made available to this tice and the implications they obviously held for the author . in the various diocesan archives he visited in bsence of effective opposition to even the earliest stages Ge,many are a reliable foreshadowing of what the Vati­ ~of Hitler's persecution of the Jews. Similarly, the dis­ can deposits will reveal. cussion of the attitudes concerning support for, or partic- It .will be interesting to· see bow this work will be re­ ipation in, the Resistance movement forces the reader to ceived by that ·hardy band of apologists who regard it question the official praise and honor that has since been as their sacred duty to denounce anyone who would dare lavished upon the Delps, the Rupert Mayrs, the Lichten- voice even the slightest hint of criticism concerning the - ~, and all the others who did "redeem the day" by Catholic record in Nazi Germany. Lewy has closed most, · g some kind of stand in opposition to an evil regime if not all, doors of escape for them. On the one hand, he and its immor:µ policies. It is quite clear that they took presents evidence that is so brutally clear and shocking that stand alone and with no significant encouragement that one wonders how it has been overlooked until now. from their spiritual superiors. At the same time, be presents it in a tone of restrained The book concludes with Lewy's rather brief statement scholarly detachment that makes it possible for him to and discussion of what he, a political scientist, sees as so control bis personal disapproval of the story he tells the three "basic dimensions of "Catholic political ideol­ that his work never, crosses the line separating scholarly ogy." So strong is the impact of the .facts presented in analysis from indictment. the earlier sections that one is tempted to skip over what The first section sets the stage by reviewing the "pre­ the author clearly intends to be the crowning accomplish­ history" of the· encounter between the Catholic Church ment of his whole effort. And, indeed, there is much here and National Socialism. It begins with a survey of the that shouldiengage the Catholic reader's mind long after . early pattern of firm and open opposition and ends with the finished book has been set a.side. ·( the "great reconciliation" which took place once what The criticisms are not new. Once again the point is bad been an objectionable political movement became made that the Church has only recently, and with some "legitimate authority." The negotiations which brought reluctance, come to recognize the virtues of democracy; the surprisingly speedy conclusion of a Concordat in 1933 that the frequently proclaimed indifference to the various are discussed in careful detail with the result that the forms of government, coupled with its own authoritarian author's interpretation, placing a greater measure of and autocratic structure, has rendered its members too responsibilty for this development upon the Catholic susceptible to the appeals of totalitarianism; that it is parties than is usually the case, becomes quite convincing. perhaps too reticent about stressing socio-political ap­ plications of moral principles when doing so would seem THE HEART of the work, however, is the extensive re­ to present some threat to institutional security. What is view Of the "modus vivendi issuing from that Concordat. new is the terribly compelling force these familiar criti­ Whether be surveys the suppression of Catholic organ­ cisms gain in the COJ;itext of this most tragic historical ex­ izations and press, the harassment of confes.sional schools, ample of the failure these tendencies can produce. or the areas of Church support for Nazi foreign policies There are so many :important lessons to be drawn from and the war to which these led, the pattern held. None of a book like this that one despairs of making an adequate the repeated violations of the Concordat on the part of choice. Ther~ is, first of all, what one might term the the State, none of the offenses against human values "boomerang effect" of the myth of total Church opposi­ initiated by the Nazi leaders, were ever allowed to pro­ tion to Nazism that was so carefully created after the voke a final break or even the sexjous 'threat of such a war and is, even today, so fervently (if hopelessly) main­ break as far as the official Catholic leadership was con­ tained in some quarters.