German Catholics and Hitler's Wars: A Study in Social Control

Preface

IN 1962 WHEN THE first edition of this book appeared, the research it reported had already been the center of furious controversy for two years and more. A paper presented at the 1959 convention of the American Catholic Sociological Society—a paper prepared after this monograph was completed, based on leftover data relating specifically to the wartime German Catholic press—had unleashed a storm of protest in Germany. Before that controversy ran its course it would involve some very high ranking prelates at the Vatican as interested parties. So intense was the opposition that publication of the book, which had been accepted months before, underwent a series of delayed release dates until, finally, the publisher felt obliged to withdraw and turned the manuscript over to Sheed and Ward. The protests, now redirected to them, were effective enough to convince Frank Sheed a personal reading of the galleys was required before the book could be permitted to go to press. The review, I am happy to say, convinced him of its importance and he approved going forward despite whatever risks or protests doing so might entail.

Excerpts from a letter to Dorothy Day, written by a German monsignor who, it was reliably reported, had been specifically commissioned by the hierarchy to protest and rebut my findings, will illustrate the tone of this opposition. The January 1960 issue of The Catholic Worker had included what the monsignor described as an endorsement of my monstrous thesis submitted by some fanatical adepts parrot[ing] the voice of their deceitful master. The convention paper, he insisted, had been written in defiance of basic rules of his [the deceitful master’s, that is] profession and in disregard of the historic facts as well as of the simplest laws of honest logic and method. … That was bad enough, but the generalizations published in the Worker—he graciously assumed while Dorothy was away from New York—were even more disgusting than the arrogant distortions of the original paper. (The paper itself, incidentally, was subsequently published in a slightly expanded version in Cross Currents.)

The book, when it finally appeared, had a more mixed but generally positive reception. Both favorable and unfavorable reviews, to say the least, were decidedly emphatic. Commonweal’s reviewer assured prospective readers that [D]iscussions of the problem of the just war will henceforth begin with this book, while Father Robert Graham, S. J., writing in America, described it as an amalgam of strained sociology, seriously defective theological argumentation and pacifist special pleading. The peak of adverse enthusiasm, however, was scaled by The Wanderer in a three-part unsigned diatribe that was subsequently published and given broader circulation as a pamphlet.

So here we are, more than thirty years later, marking the publication of a new edition. It is unlikely in the extreme that there will be a repetition of the controversy stirred by the original. Why then? Bitter though some of the attacks may have been, malice can be dismissed as a dominant factor. In the cold war atmosphere of the late 1950s and early 60s, divided Germany saw itself, with justice, as a contested battleground between the victors. The Eastern zone (today the DDR) was firmly locked into the Soviet sphere, and the territory occupied by the Western powers had become a stronghold of support for U.S. policy and strategy. In the Adenauer years especially, the Catholic Church in Germany was a political force to be reckoned with, totally committed to the new Bonn government. The combination of these two factors assured that anything which threatened to lessen the Church’s influence was likely to be regarded as providing aid and comfort to its enemies—and the enemy both State and Church had in mind was Communism.

One of German Catholicism’s most cherished assets in the postwar years was its record of opposition to Nazism. The claim, let it be said at once, was valid: whatever else may be said about that record, there had been opposition and, given the nature of Adolf Hitler’s totalitarian state, any opposition required an element of heroism that should not be ignored or denied. Granting this as a fact, however, should not justify exaggerating its extent. For the most part open and official opposition was limited to direct and public violations of Church teachings (denunciations of euthanasia, for example) or direct interference with rights granted the Church under the terms of the 1933 Concordat (closing of seminaries and convents, banning of religious processions, removal of crucifixes from schoolrooms, etc.).

Thus opposition did not extend to equally public protests against Hitler’s infamous Final Solution. Here official silence reigned, though many individual Catholics engaged in secret underground efforts to save Jews by spiriting them out of the country and some of these efforts were given deniable support by prominent churchmen like Cardinal Faulhaber. When it came to Nazi Germany’s wars of aggression, however, the pattern was one of loyal participation supported and encouraged by episcopal reminders to the Catholic faithful of their duty to serve Folk and Fatherland. These reminders were given added emphasis in the ritual honors dedicated to those who gave their lives in the fulfillment of that duty. That is what this book is about.

If much of the opposition stirred by the questions addressed by my research can be explained in terms of predictable resentment over the destruction of a deeply cherished myth of total opposition, this reaction was intensified by the added element of urgency arising from the political situation at the time. The rearming of the new West German Republic, strongly promoted by its American sponsors, was in full swing, and a crucial part of that program was the proposed restoration of universal military conscription. Many Germans (not to mention its most recent victims) saw this as a threatening reversion to the nation’s traditional militarism.

To quiet such fears and placate the opposition, the proposed legislation included a generous provision for recognition of conscientious objection. To Germany’s Catholics, however, this presented a new problem. The Catholics of the Left (already suspect in the eyes of Church leaders) pressed for the extension of this right to Catholics; to those leaders, supported by prominent theologians, this represented a dangerous deviation from traditional Church teaching. Before it was over the heated debate stirred echoes in Rome when Pope Pius XII, reportedly under the influence of a close German advisor, included what many accepted as a formal condemnation of conscientious objection in his 1956 Christmas message. (Even if that was his intent, the condemnation has since been superceded by later and more official actions taken by Vatican II and his successors.)

Be that as it may, it is easy to understand why a book which, if only by implication, suggested that German Catholics should have refused to serve (and, even worse, that the ecclesiastical leaders who called upon them to serve had somehow failed in their moral responsibilities) would prove controversial. Even some informants who had provided data upon which my findings were based expressed disappointment over my misinterpretation of the situation in which they and their fellow Catholics had found themselves.

What they saw as misinterpretation is better explained as an inability or forgivable reluctance to reflect upon the behavioral implications of what they had told me. Many, perhaps the majority, never considered it even possible for a Catholic to legitimately refuse military service, so the idea of not doing one’s duty when ordered was almost beyond their comprehension. I had encountered this reaction in a number of interviews. Catholics and mainline Protestants as well were inclined to associate such refusals with the more radical, even heretical, sects (Anabaptists, the Bibelforscher [Jehovah’s Witnesses], and the like). Among my informants were men who prided themselves on having been opponents of Hitler’s wars and boasted of never having fired a shot (or intentionally firing over the heads of enemy soldiers) to illustrate their resistance to the war; but they obviously had no retroactive qualms about having been in uniform. Indeed, one veteran drew a fine distinction between joining the Luftwaffe (as he had) and supporting the Hitler war effort as a soldier!

Few, it was clear, had given any thought to refusing service altogether-and for what they saw (and, I’m sure, most of us would have agreed) as a perfectly good reason. Those who did, with but one exception known to me, paid with their lives for doing so. Informants who knew of such cases were generous in praising their martyrdom, but they did not accept that as the course they would have, or even should have, followed. The duty to obey the call to arms was taken so much for granted that, even in retrospect, they felt my raising the question was pointless.

American Catholics—indeed Catholics of any national identity—would almost certainly have shared that outlook had the question been posed to them. This was, after all, the state of theological teachings related to the morality of war and the expected role of the individual at the time this book first appeared. Even those who did get the point I was making drew back from accepting its logical conclusions.

Consider, if you will, so distinguished a Catholic layman as Dr. George N. Shuster. In a letter apparently solicited by the editors of America (but not published) he provided a fairly accurate summary of my research rationale: Dr. Zahn’s thesis appears to be that Catholics are forbidden to support an unjust war, and that therefore it was the duty of the German bishops and the diocesan press under their control to proclaim clearly that the conflict unleashed by the Nazis was morally indefensible. He thereupon finds that they failed to do so. Then he went on to observe, I shall not comment on the implications of the thesis except to say that up to the present time it has played no part in the history of war. The emphasis, of course, is mine.

As Hamlet would say, there’s the rub!

Father Graham’s review made a similar point, but he went further to dismiss any expectation that bishops (or popes, for that matter) would, or should, take the traditional just war teachings seriously enough to pass judgment on actual wars in progress and advise the faithful accordingly as something bordering on theological absurdity.

If this new edition is unlikely to reopen the old controversy, it is because the situation has changed significantly for the better. In our own recent history, though their intervention came late and stopped short of explicitly declaring the Vietnam war immoral, the American bishops implied such application and conclusion. By noting that the war had reached the point of violating the principle of proportionality, one of the conditions of the just war, it can be held they were saying, in effect if not in so many words, that it was unjust and not deserving of further support. More recent still, one of the significant contributions of the 1983 peace pastoral was the care taken to set forth the full list of required conditions for the moral guidance of men and women in the pews. The regrettable fact that this gain was nullified a short time later by the invasion of Grenada, which clearly violated several of those conditions—violations which, sad to say, met with only scattered protests from a few individual bishops—diminishes but does not destroy the significance of the effort.

Today, too, the Church recognizes that the refusal to serve in a war which one believes in good conscience to be unjust is both legitimate and deserving of praise and support. If, as many have been kind enough to suggest, this book (and its controversial reception!) contributed to this change, that may be taken as justification enough for its reappearance at this time. It raised an important issue in a concrete form and, by doing so, forced serious reconsideration of the just war teachings themselves and their relevance, if any, to modern-and now nuclear—war.

Daniel Berrigan has written that this disturbing and seminal writing, its careful scholarship, its appeal to reason and faith in an irrational and faithless era had a major influence on him and his brother Philip in the formation of our will to resist the legitimized murder of twentieth-century war. Bishops, too, have given the book credit for convincing them of the need to devote more study and action to the things that make for peace and offer more effective resistance to war and the evils it brings.

Of course, whatever role it might have played in bringing these changes about was slight when compared with other factors that contributed to the reawakening of the Catholic Church to the pacifist implications of Christianity. Much more credit is due the sheer presence and inspired writings of Pope John XXIII and the pilgrimages for peace undertaken by his successor, Paul VI, and continued today by John Paul II. The Fathers of Vatican II formalized these contributions in its call for an entirely new attitude toward war and its explicit legitimation of conscientious objection. Finally, and most compelling of all, have been the advances in the murderous strategies and technology of warfare itself.

Why, then, a new edition? The original goals have been achieved for the most part. The failure of the traditional just war teachings to provide the guidance Christians need if they are to fulfill their moral responsibilities in time of war was clearly demonstrated by German Catholic support for the Hitler war effort. This sad history, once forced to attention, has served to alert other Catholics to their obligation at least to consider refusing to take an active part in any war of dubious justice (or, as in this case, manifest injustice). Conscientious objection has become not only legitimate and respectable, but it has been described as a sign of maturity by no less an authority than John Paul II.

Now that the heat of controversy has died down, it should be clear to all that the German Catholics and their bishops were never the target, that as a number of non-Catholic reviewers recognized the issue went far deeper. Frederick Wentz, writing in The Lutheran, commended another author and publisher for the candor and concern with which this volume presents the facts and poses the issues. Are there many Protestants who would be equally frank in printing self-criticism? But it took the renowned social psychologist Gordon W. Allport to catch the full implications in the Unitarian Universalist: The burning issue of this thoughtful, well-documented study lies between the lines; what has happened to the edge of the Christian conscience? How has it become so badly blunted since the age of the early martyrs, many of whom embraced death rather than place one pinch of incense upon a pagan altar?

Again, why a new edition now? It will be good to have the book available for those scholars and others who have found it impossible to locate copies over the years it has been out of print. But as author I see another and more pressing reason. Its message is still needed; indeed, the need for that cutting edge of the Christian conscience may be greater today than at the time the book first appeared. The challenge facing us today goes beyond affirming the right to refuse to obey. Given the nature of nuclear war, it has expanded into the need to define the limits of obedience, to consider instead the need to recognize an obligation to disobey.

This time, though, American Catholics and their bishops, not their German counterparts, will be facing the crucial test. We responsible citizens of a nation inflexibly committed to nuclear deterrence and a security based on maintaining the capacity and the readiness to commit acts of war already defined by Vatican II as crimes against God and man himself meriting unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation must decide how far we can go in our compliance. How long can we support leaders and policies which insist upon retaining the option of first use of the weapons designed to commit such crimes and continue to squander unlimited resources, human as well as material, to further development and manufacture of these weapons?

To their credit, our bishops have spoken—but, to this point at least, they have stopped short of drawing what should be fairly obvious conclusions. Sooner rather than later they must answer the question: How long can strictly limited moral acceptance be extended when those strict limits are ignored and openly rejected by those responsible for making and executing the policy?

Should war come, the war Thomas Merton warned would be a moral evil second only to the Crucifixion, what then? Caught in the horrible dilemma faced by the bishops in Hitler’s Germany, will they be ready to call upon the faithful to refuse to participate in or support a patently immoral war?

The pastoral and other episcopal statements are a promising beginning, but much more must be done to prepare the faithful to receive and accept such moral guidance if and when it must be given. There is little cause for confidence that our bishops will do better than the German bishops faced with the immorality of Hitler’s wars. Our armed forces are engaged right now in the preparations for the kind of war that is forbidden. Whether it be on the Trident submarines of the Navy, in the long-range bombers and missile silos of the Air Force and Army, or in the chemical and bacteriological weapons depots of the more exotic branches, men and women are being trained to commit the acts of war condemned by Vatican II—and almost a third of them are Catholics. Some of them were introduced to the careers in which they will be expected to issue or obey orders to commit crimes against God and man himself as a part of their educational program in Catholic high schools, colleges, and universities.

On balance, our bishops have done well to this point. The 1983 pastoral, whatever its shortcomings, has defined the issues and provided the moral guidance and some of the leadership we will need if the failure of the German Church under Hitler is not to be repeated. Almost a third of the hierarchy have associated themselves with Pax Christi USA, a fact which other sections of that international Catholic peace movement find astounding. Some have participated in peace vigils and demonstrations, and a few have even subjected themselves to arrest for civil disobedience.

True, they have the luxury of knowing that their statements and protests will not bring down upon them and their flocks the reprisals the German bishops had sound reasons to anticipate. In providing moral guidance they can draw upon the legacy of Vatican II and the entirely new attitude toward war exhibited by the successors to Pius XII. And they have the German experience to look back on as a tragic warning of the price to be paid for not putting national policy to the test of moral principle in time of war.

And, more to the point, facing today’s challenge is not the task of the bishops alone. Since Vatican II we have learned that the responsiblity for bringing Christ’s message to the world and fulfilling the mission he left to His Church is shared by all who claim to be His followers. The challenge facing the Christian today is even greater than the one our German brethren failed to recognize and meet. If we fail too, that failure could have infinitely more tragic consequences. This book may not give the answers we will need to meet that challenge, but at least it presents some of the questions we must not evade.

Part 1

CHAPTER 1

History and Methodology of the Study

WHEN THE WRITER left for Germany it was his intention to discover, if possible, what had happened to the German Catholic peace movement and its participants during the years of Nazi domination and, of course, during World War II. Such a movement had been formed shortly after the conclusion of the First World War and by the time Hitler came to power had achieved a remarkable degree of strength and standing. Under the leadership of the Friedensbund deutscher Katholiken (German Catholic Peace Union) and its principal founder and theorist, Franziskus Stratmann, O.P., the movement’s impact led Catholics in other nations as well to begin giving new and serious consideration to the pacifist implications of their Faith. True, the German movement was not the sole source of such interest and concern; the horrors of World War I and its aftermath of almost complete disillusionment had inspired many similar movements, non-Catholic as well as Catholic, in other European nations. But few could claim the membership attained by the Friedensbund or the official tone given to it by its participation in the annual Katholikentag gatherings.

In a letter to the writer, Father Stratmann recalled that the Friedensbund had 40,000 members at one point in its history. This figure approximates the 41,000 quoted in the 1932 volume of a liberal Catholic periodical, vom frohen Leben. Both estimates included as corporate members the membership of Kolping Society groups which had affiliated with the Friedensbund.*

Of greater importance than its actual membership totals is the standing of the movement as reflected in the official encouragement and support it received from prominent members of the German Catholic hierarchy. Here, too, exact figures are not available; but one informant claimed that thirteen bishops were active members of the Friedensbund or had associated themselves with its program. A Berlin pastor, another of the organization’s founders, named Cardinals Bertram (Breslau) and Faulhaber (Munich) and Bishops Schreiber (Berlin) and Sproll (Rottenburg) as prominent patrons. The writer’s own research added Bishop Gröber (then of Meissen) to his list and sample.

The existence of so strong and respected a Catholic peace movement led to the formulation of the original research problem, which can be expressed in two questions: Was it possible for the movement to continue its work for peace after Hitler came to power? Was it, or were its adherents, able to keep alive any remnant of its pacifist and war-resisting activities once Nazi Germany embarked upon its military adventures?

As was expected, both questions were answered in the negative. But the negative was so complete and so immediately accomplished that it was obviously quite pointless to continue the type of research inquiry originally planned. In point of fact, the Friedensbund earned the distinction of being one of the very first organizations singled out to suffer the full brunt of Nazi oppression.** Several of the former Friedensbund leaders furnished the writer with the story of the dramatic events of those days. The organization was officially dissolved by the Nazis on July 1, 1933, and one informant described how 36 men suddenly descended upon the Frankfurt central office of the Friedensbund and carried off great packing cases filled with records and other materials. Another informant told of a frantic afternoon spent in burning all possibly incriminating Friedensbund literature and letters in his possession. Several of the leaders were arrested and later subjected to showcase trials (on charges of profiteering in international currency transactions, a favorite charge employed by the Nazis against the Catholic Church and its affiliated organizations). Many, including its cofounder and spiritual leader, Father Stratmann, spent part or all of the Nazi war years in exile or in hiding. At any rate, with its leadership scattered or imprisoned, its records confiscated or destroyed, the movement disappeared leaving no traces other than those recorded in the memories of individuals who had been associated with it. Yet the very fact of its total disappearance raised the new and even more challenging sociological problem: How could a movement be so strong and boast of such extensive and respected support one year, only to be effectively annihilated the next? Still more, how can we explain the fact that its dedicated opposition to war on grounds of Christian morality could be so completely stilled that even its leaders were unable to report any definite instances known to them of members openly refusing to serve in Hitler’s wars of aggression?

Ideally, of course, this new problem should have been limited to those individuals who had formally associated themselves with the Catholic peace movement; but the destruction of all membership records (not to mention the technical impossibility of interviewing a sufficient sample of such members had the records been available) eliminated this as a research approach. It was necessary, therefore, to broaden the scope of analysis in order to consider the behavior of German Catholics in general and the evidence that their almost total conformity to the war demands of the Nazi regime gave of an effectively operating system of social controls, and of the selection between the competing values of Catholicism and Nazism. And, although the value-selection dimension loses some of its clarity in the more general application to the Catholic population, it assumes heightened significance when the traditional Catholic teachings concerning the just war are considered in the specific context of the wars initiated by the Third Reich.

At this point it is advisable to describe some of the methodological procedures employed and the problems encountered in this study so that the reader may make his own evaluation of the sources used and the manner in which they were used.

In the original phase of the research project—that is, while the post-1933 history of the Catholic peace movement was still the contemplated focus