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Research Report: Ben Goossen on Mennonites, Nazism, and the Holocaust

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 1 (March 2021)

Research Report: Ben Goossen on Mennonites, Nazism, and the Holocaust

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Since the publication of his widely acclaimed history of Mennonite identity, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), Ben Goossen has published a fascinating series of short articles on the collaborative blog “Anabaptist Historians.” Collectively, these posts offer a disturbing window into the complicity of Mennonites in the Nazi occupation of the East and the Holocaust in Ukraine and South Russia.

Most recently, in January 2021, Goossen posted “How a Nazi Death Squad Viewed Mennonites,” drawing on documentation from Einsatzgruppe C to describe how Nazi mobile killing units who engaged in the mass murder of Jews in Ukraine reacted when they came across welcoming Mennonites in the region which included the Chortitza settlement: “The murder team immediately began integrating these ethnic Germans into its operations, distributing Jewish plunder and placing trusted men in positions of local authority.” Goossen goes on to discuss the interpretation of Nazi documentation and also explores the case of Amalie Reimer, a Mennonite women who spied for the Soviets then appealed to the Nazis for protection–successfully, for a time. Finally, he turns to a consideration of the ways Mennonites were drawn into the Holocaust, using the slaughter of Jews in Zaporizhzhia, near Chortitza, as an example.

In “How to Catch a Mennonite Nazi” (October 2020), Goossen details his painstaking research into the backstory of Heinrich Hamm, a Mennonite refugee from Ukraine who ended up as an employee of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in a refugee camp in Germany. In his account of his experience of displacement and flight, written in 1947 when he was 54, Hamm portrays himself as a victim of Nazism, like many Mennonites did. Mennonites like Hamm were portrayed as “un-Nazi and un-nationalistic,” yet Goossen retraces his journey from Ukraine to the Baltic region, Denmark, and Germany, showing how he condemned “Jewish-Bolshevik rule” in Russia and praised the Nazi “liberation from the Jewish yoke of Bolshevism.” (This was written around the time Hamm lived in Dnepropetrovsk, within a month of the murder of ten thousand Jews there.) Goossen explains how Hamm misrepresented other aspects of his wartime experiences, downplaying his connections to Nazism and his involvement in the exploitation of Jewish forced labourers. Ultimately, he became “a paid employee and spokesperson” for the MCC in Germany.

In August 2020, Goossen posted “Himmler’s Mennonite Midwife,” using material from the newly published diaries of Heinrich Himmler, Reich Leader of the SS and Chief of German Police, to explore this leading Nazi’s connections to Mennonites. In his capacity as Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Ethnic Stock, Himmler was eager to work with Mennonites, who the Nazis considered especially racially pure. (Goossen writes extensively on this in Chosen Nation.) In “Himmler’s Mennonite Midwife,” Goossen explains how Himmler sought to meet with “the leading representative of Mennonites in the Third Reich, Benjamin Unruh.” In fall 1942, the two met, and Himmler passed on greetings to Unruh from a Frau Helene Berg, long “a pillar of the Molotschna Mennonite colony in southeastern Ukraine.” The post details the interest of Himmler in Mennonites as the foundation of German colonization in Ukraine, and the ways Mennonites benefitted from the Holocaust and Nazi imperialism.

In “Mennonite War Crimes Testimony at Nuremberg” (December 2019), Goossen explains that “Mennonite leaders and others affiliated with the church actively repressed evidence of Nazi collaboration and Holocaust participation,” demonstrating his case using the testimony of Benjamin Unruh and Franziska Reimers at trials of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg after the war:

Benjamin Unruh’s postwar claims of helping Jews and of opposing genocide are not supported by the extensive correspondence preserved in his personal papers, government archives, or other sources. In fact, he appears to have hastened the turn toward extreme antisemitism in Mennonite church organizations in the Third Reich. Unruh contributed financially to the SS already in 1933, and in the same year, he personally quashed a request by two Jewish physicians for Mennonite help in leaving Germany. During the Second World War, Unruh collaborated with various Nazi agencies to aid Mennonites while these same offices expropriated and murdered Jews and others.

As for Reimers, she vouched for the character of a member of Einsatzkommando 6–one of the the mobile killing units slaughtering Jews in Ukraine. She benefitted from the protection and aid of this unit, but pretended not to know much of the Holocaust that was unfolding around Kryvyi Rih and Chortitza, her home.

Another of Goossen’s fine posts is “Mennonites and the Waffen-SS” (June 2019), in which he explores the subject of Mennonite perpetration in the Holocaust, but examining Mennonites in the Waffen-SS (Armed-SS), and particularly a cavalry regiment of 700 men from the Halbstadt colony in Ukraine. Heinrich Himmler’s Special Commando R (“R” for Russia), drawn from Mennonites in Halbstadt, was tasked with offering welfare to ethnic Germans in the region, but also partnered with Einsatzkommandos and thus “participated in the mass murder of tens of thousands of Jews and other victims across Eastern Europe.” It was also engaged in partisan warfare in the region, and in other aspects of the war further afield. Goossen concludes:

The history of the Halbstadt cavalry regiment demonstrates the involvement of Ukraine’s Mennonites in the machinations of the Waffen-SS during the German occupation of Eastern Europe. Mennonites’ induction into this organization and their activities within it reflected the broader maneuverings of the Nazi war machine and the fate of the Eastern Front. Little of this context has survived in collective Mennonite memory. After the war, Mennonite refugees in war-torn Germany had strong incentives to deny involvement in war crimes, a process aided by church organizations. Most notably, the North America-based Mennonite Central Committee told tales of innocence while helping to transport refugees, including former Waffen-SS members, to Paraguay and Canada. Coming to terms with Mennonite participation in the Third Reich’s atrocities remains a task for the denomination.

“Hitler’s Mennonite Physicist” (March 2019) discusses the work of Abraham Esau, the Mennonite who “headed the Nazi nuclear program during much of the Second World War.” Goossen explains his journey into the Nazi Party and his rise to the top of nuclear physics. Captured by the Americans and then imprisoned in the Netherlands, Esau later took advantage of the willingness of MCC workers to believe a fellow Mennonite, and once released, received aid from the organization. Eventually, he took up a university position in Aachen, Germany, though not without controversy, since other leading scientists knew he was tainted by his Nazi past.

Finally, or perhaps I should say “first,” in December 2018, Goossen posted “The Kindergarten and the Holocaust,” in which he described a Mennonite Kindergarten in Einlage, Ukraine. This “Nazi showpiece” was refurbished by military engineers and SS agents, because of the high number of young Mennonite children in the area with “German blood.” Nazi papers profiled the Kindergarten, and Goossen demonstrates how these kinds of sources open a window into Mennonite daily life under Nazi occupation. As Goossen describes it:

The same agencies that liquidated Jews provided aid to Mennonites. Their backdrop was total war. Thousands starved across Ukraine, and the land was pocked with barely-covered mass graves. But Nazi administrators wanted “ethnic Germans” to live happy and whole. “Blossom-white are the dresses and the head coverings of the women and the girls,” remarked one visitor of a Sunday in Chortitza. Another crowed: “The simple church is no longer a movie theater as in Bolshevik times.” Both Chortitza and Halbstadt played host to triumphal delegations of the Third Reich’s leading Nazis, including enormous rallies for Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg.

He concludes, noting that–in contrast to the “blood-soaked pits virtually a stone’s throw away”–Nazi officials highlighted the Einlage Kindergarten in their propaganda, and intended it “to show Nazism’s radiant potential.”

These seven blog posts–short articles, really, for they are well-researched with copious citation–offer profound insights into the significant relationships between Mennonite individuals and communities and the Nazi forces which conquered and occupied Ukraine. Mennonites collaborated, benefitted, and then obfuscated their knowledge of and participation in the Holocaust.

Webinar Announcement: The Opening of the Pius XII Archive and Holocaust Research

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 1 (March 2021)

Webinar Announcement: The Opening of the Pius XII Archive and Holocaust Research

By Suzanne Brown-Fleming, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The American Catholic Historical Association is holding a webinar entitled “The Opening of the Pius XI Archive and Holocaust Research,” on March 10, 2021, at 7:00 pm ET. Presenters include Suzanne Brown-Fleming, US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Pacific Lutheran University; Claire Maligot, Ecole pratique des hautes études, Paris, and Institut d’études politiques, Strasbourg; Heath A. Spencer, Seattle University; and Robert A. Ventresca, King’s University College at Western University.

To register, visit achahistory.org/webinar.

Call for Editors

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 1 (March 2021)

Call for Editors

The editors of Contemporary Church History Quarterly would like to invite applications for up to five new positions on the editorial team. We would welcome scholars who specialize in our core mandate of reviewing literature and providing news and commentary on the history of the German churches in the Nazi era, as well as those whose interests would help us broaden our reach geographically into other parts of Europe and/or chronologically into the whole of the twentieth century. Scholars from all career stages are welcome to apply.

Editors are expected to review at least one book each year, and make other shorter contributions as well (article notes, conference reports, research updates, etc.). The journal’s language is English, but those who write in German will have their work translated. Editorial terms are three years, and renewable. Application is by letter, which may be sent to Kyle Jantzen at kjantzen@ambrose.edu by April 30, 2021. Please put “CCHQ editor application” in the subject line.

Article Note: Jörg L. Spenkuch and Philipp Tillmann, “Elite Influence? Religion and the Electoral Success of the Nazis”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 3 (September 2020)

Article Note: Jörg L. Spenkuch and Philipp Tillmann, “Elite Influence? Religion and the Electoral Success of the Nazis,” American Journal of Political Science 62:1 (January 2018): 19-36.

By Heath A. Spencer, Seattle University

Amid the current emphasis on Catholic complicity with Nazism, Jörg Spenkuch and Philipp Tillmann assess the Church’s ability to immunize its members against Nazism at the end of the Weimar era. Whereas researchers like Thomas Childers, Richard Hamilton, Jürgen Falter, and John O’Loughlin have already determined who voted for Hitler, Spenkuch and Tillmann address “the deeper question of why some groups radicalized while others did not” (20). They maintain that Catholic underrepresentation among Nazi voters was due primarily to the influence of the “Catholic Church and its dignitaries” rather than Catholic subculture or economic conditions in regions with a Catholic majority (22).

To make their case, they use a combination of county-level and municipal-level election results along with census data from 1925-1933. Controlling for other variables like demographic characteristics, unemployment rates according to occupation, workforce composition, and geographic differences, they find that “by itself, counties’ religious composition accounts for about 58% of the variation in the share of Nazi votes” (22). Using an Instrumental variables approach and ecological regression, they determine that “the ratio of Protestants to Catholics among NSDAP voters is about 8 to 1, relative to a population ratio of only 2 to 1” (27) and that “this difference cannot be attributed to systematic socioeconomic differences between both groups, as assumed in much of the prior literature” (28).

Having demonstrated the primacy of Catholic religious identity as an independent variable, the authors test their theory that elite influence shaped political choices by comparing the voting behavior of Catholics subject to the influence of pro-Nazi clerics with that of other Catholics.[1] They find that in such cases, the gap between Protestant and Catholic support for the NSDAP narrowed by 32-41%. In other words, “Catholics and Protestants voted considerably more alike in areas where the Catholic Church’s official warnings about the dangers of National Socialism were directly contradicted by the local clergy” (27).

The authors also address an anomaly that appears to undermine their claim of elite influence—the fact that Catholics were just as likely as Protestants to vote for the communist party despite the Church’s opposition. They attribute this asymmetry to the Catholic Center Party’s “ideological position” on the center-right of the political spectrum (31). While Protestant voters were free to choose the political party closest to their “ideal point,” Catholics faced sanctions if they supported the Nazis or the communists. However, Catholic voters who preferred the NSDAP found it easier than communist supporters to settle for the Center Party because it was closer to their “ideal point.”

Though Spenkuch and Tillmann are not the first to recognize the influence of the Catholic Church and its clergy on the political behavior of lay Catholics, their method quantifies and clarifies the nature of that influence in a discrete historical context. Applying their framework to “radicalized electorates” in the present, they posit that elite influence is most effective when warnings or penalties are accompanied by viable alternatives to extreme political movements: “Depending on the circumstances, a populist but influential elite may ultimately be preferable to a weak, principled one. Paradoxically, our work suggests that it may take a populist to save democracy from the fanatics” (35). They do not explain why populism is the only viable alternative, nor do they clarify the difference between populists and fanatics, but given the timing of their research and its publication, it is clear they have the United States and its religious and political landscapes in mind.

Notes:

[1] For their data set, they took the 138 priests identified by Kevin Spicer in Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (DeKalb, IL: University of Northern Illinois Press, 2008), geocoded their locations at the end of the Weimar Republic, and included all communities within a ten-mile radius.

Article Note: Amit Varshizky, ‘The Metaphysics of Race: Revisiting Nazism and Religion

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 3 (September 2020)

Article Note: Amit Varshizky, ‘The Metaphysics of Race: Revisiting Nazism and Religion,’ Central European History 52, no.2 (2019), 252–88; https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938919000189

By Samuel Koehne, Trinity Grammar School

In this article, Varshizky returns to the topic of Nazism and religion in order to consider the ways in which National Socialism and its core concepts of ‘race’ may be understood as not simply an amalgam of a fascination with genetics, racial science and ‘biological determinism’ but as a ‘new form of religiosity’ (252). In this sense, Varshizky draws on earlier works, such as Goodrick-Clarke and Mosse, as well as places his article very much in the current debate around whether Nazism had any core spiritual direction whatsoever.

Much of the paper considers intellectual trends within German society, and the ways in which debates in the fields of both philosophy and anthropology possibly underpinned concepts used by leading Nazis. Varshizky has previously written some very insightful work on Alfred Rosenberg, including his article on the Nazi ‘world-view’ (Weltanschauung) as a kind of ‘modern gnosis’ (Politics, Religion and Ideology 13, no.3 (2012), 311–31). The present article begins with a useful precis of the current debates on Nazism and religion, and Varshizky identifies three major schools of thought on Nazism and religion. These portray the Nazis as ‘secular and atheistic’ while making use of religious forms for a kind of ‘political religion,’ as ‘pagan’ and driven by an ‘anti-Christian impulse,’ or as identifying ‘ideological and institutional links between Nazism and Christianity (usually Protestantism)’ (254). However, Varshizky places his own paper solidly within a fourth historiographical ‘school’ that has emerged in recent years (Burrin, Koehne), which recognizes that Nazism could be all of these things at once and that ‘syncretism’ in the party was such that ‘[each] of these three narratives [political religion, paganism, Nazi Christianity] refers to a certain stream that existed within the Nazi ideological establishment’ (253–55).

For his part, Varshizky believes that the ‘most acceptable’ view on Nazism and religion is that of Wolfgang Bilias and Anson Rabinbach, that Nazi ideology was more of an ‘ethos or Gesinnung’ that was ‘vague and indistinct enough to embrace a variety of related perspectives’ (255). In common with other scholars in recent years, Varshizky therefore sees the Nazi aspect of ‘syncretism’ as a ‘racialized form of religiosity’ rather than necessarily an ideology that adhered to a ‘systematic or organized form of religion.’ Opposing the notion of a simplistic dichotomy in the field of Nazism and religion (such as ‘Christian/pagan’ or ‘atheist/religious’), Varshizky locates the origins of a blended Nazi scientific-religious approach in ‘vitalist biology’ in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, and traces the debates that existed in both theological circles and in anthropology in Germany from around 1900 (257–61; 261–68). In both cases, Varshizky argues that Nazism could form links to ‘paradigmatic transitions in philosophical and scientific thought’ in Germany including a growing use of ‘biocentric jargon’ in ‘life-philosophy (Lebensphilosophie)’ (257).

Varshizky points out that the theological and philosophical responses to secularization and modernity included debates that depicted ‘Judaism as the source of modernity and its crisis’ (258),’ which could form a nexus with both völkisch antisemitism and the antisemitism of ‘conservative revolutionary circles.’ (258). Varshizky places these in historical context, noting that such debates, combined with a sense of crisis in modernity and concepts of alienation, created a concept of ‘race’ that amounted to ‘a broad cultural and epistemological category’ rather than any narrowly defined or ‘scientific’ concept (261). Drawing on writers that were highly influential in the fields of genetics, anthropology and ‘racial science’– such as Walter Scheidt, Hans F.K. Günther, Fritz Lenz, Ernst Krieck – he also traces the idea of science performing the role of ‘instrument’ within a concept of race as a ‘faith’ or a ‘total reality, verified by its own factuality from its being-in-itself’ (266). This is a fascinating argument, and certainly draws on writers who heavily influenced the Nazis directly. It correlates with previous explications of Nazism and race, including leading Nazis’ obsession with salvational nationalism, but Varshizky here identifies the manner in which the Nazis might also be – in my view – rightly considered as a conspiracy group, adhering to a ‘total reality’ that dictated the manner in which they perceived the world. This had a direct impact under Nazi rule, as Varshizky notes that such an approach meant that the Nazi regime attempted to create a bewildering array of ‘Aryan’ sciences (‘Aryan physics,’ ‘Aryan mathematics,’ ‘Aryan biology’). Varshizky sees this as not only then being driven by a kind of metaphysical fascination with race, but as ultimately combining religious experience and science to some degree. The leitmotif in his consideration of Rosenberg and Gross, both of whom were leading Nazis who were deeply involved in the study of ‘racial values,’ is that their writings show the interweaving of ‘biological racism’ and ‘theological narratives employing vitalist language’ (273).

Some of the most valuable material in this paper appears in the section on Rosenberg and Bergmann (279–83), where Varshizky explores their writings in considerable depth, noting the philosophical approach that they adopt revolved around concepts of blood but also a kind of ‘pantheistic religiosity’ in which religion ‘had to be evaluated in accordance with [the Nazis’] “hyperracialized and antisemitic ideology.”’ (282). His work provides further evidence for the concept of ‘ethnotheism’ (Koehne) in the Nazi Party, as he concludes: ‘The demand to reconcile all religious views with the “moral feelings of the Germanic Race” [Point 24, Nazi Program]…resulted in a largely cohesive, if flexible, attitude toward religion,’ in which ‘all spiritual values were ultimately race-determined.’ In his view, such supposedly ‘biologically-based spirituality’ could provide an ‘all-encompassing’ world-view in a time of severe crisis during the Weimar Republic.

Indeed, it is perhaps the more pertinent to us now to return to these concepts, as many present-day crises have seen the rise of conspiracy theories and the amalgam of people’s concerns and fears with vast, fictional, but deeply held views in which a ‘total reality’ is stood against actual reality. In such crises, people are indeed turning to explanatory frameworks or a ‘conceptual grid’ that simplifies and ‘holistically’ explains the world in terms of some larger conspiracy or ‘cabal.’ While race may not necessarily be the core of such conspiracy groups today – although sadly antisemitism is often a core component – reading Varshizky’s article was a timely reminder that we perhaps have greater insight presently into the ways in which Nazi ideology worked: as a racial world-view that (to its adherents) revealed the ‘true’ nature of the world as one of ‘racial struggle.’

Article Note: Ionuṭ Biliuṭă, “Fascism, Race, and Religion in Interwar Transylvania: The Case of Father Liviu Stan (1910–1973)”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 3 (September 2020)

Article Note: Ionuṭ Biliuṭă, “Fascism, Race, and Religion in Interwar Transylvania: The Case of Father Liviu Stan (1910–1973),” Church History 89:1 (March 2020): 101-124.

By Heath A. Spencer, Seattle University

Ionuṭ Biliuṭă uses the case of Father Liviu Stan to confront the “collective ecclesiastical forgetting” in works that celebrate the scholarship of Romania’s interwar theologians while ignoring their collaboration with fascist and communist regimes (102). Reverence for Stan is particularly noteworthy given his virulent racism, membership in the Iron Guard, and service in government during the National Legionary State and the communist era. There is an inverse relationship between appreciation for Stan’s theology and interest in his biography.

As a university student in the early 1930s, Stan actively and at times violently supported nationalist and antisemitic agendas. By 1935, he had “converted” to fascism and equated “radical nationalist politics” with “religious salvation” (110). He officially joined the Iron Guard in 1937, the same year in which he was ordained and appointed to the faculty of the Academy of Orthodox Theology in Sibiu. Although he left the Iron Guard in 1938, his commitment to fascist ideals continued. In articles he wrote for the Legionary press, he promoted antisemitism and the exclusion of Roma from the national community. His book Race and Religion “advocated for the religious necessity of a racist outlook in accordance with the divine plan initiated by God’s creation of man” (122), and its publication in 1942 coincided with the war against the Soviet Union and Romania’s participation in the murder of European Jews.

As head of the Department of Religious Denominations in 1940, Stan was part of a failed attempt to reform the church’s institutional structure and relationship to the National Legionary State. In the early communist era, he held the same office and played a key role in the development of state religious policy, the canonization process, and ecumenical initiatives. Stan’s postwar reputation and position in government were predicated on his willingness to collaborate with the Securitate (secret police), and his new patrons discarded him once his usefulness was exhausted.

Some of Biliuṭă’s most intriguing claims remain undeveloped or at odds with one another. Were Stan and his fellow theologians conformists who cared only about their physical and professional survival, pragmatists who compromised with fascists and communists in order to pursue an independent agenda, or “true believers” who embraced fascism for a time and then abandoned it (at least outwardly) in the postwar era? Biliuṭă’s conclusion points toward the first two options, whereas the bulk of the article supports the third. The abstract refers to “interactions with various ideologies … ideological and professional reconversions, and … ability to survive when confronted with various totalitarian challenges” (101). Unfortunately, Biliuṭă’s close analysis does not continue beyond 1945, and we are left wondering about the nature of Stan’s own reconversion as well as the “agendas” that made Orthodox clergy “eager to collaborate with any political regime” (123).

Despite these unanswered questions, Biliuṭă’s article makes an important contribution to contemporary Romanian church history. Although it was the Securitate that initially “imposed a conspiracy of silence on the Fascist history of the Orthodox Church,” ecclesiastical historians of the post-communist era have perpetuated the cover-up (124). Biliuṭă intends to set the record straight, and in that respect he is successful.

Article Note: Thomas J. Kehoe, “The Reich Military Court and Its Values: Wehrmacht Treatment of Jehovah’s Witness Conscientious Objectors”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 3 (September 2020)

Article Note: Thomas J. Kehoe, “The Reich Military Court and Its Values: Wehrmacht Treatment of Jehovah’s Witness Conscientious Objectors,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 33, no 3 (2019): 351-371.

By Doris L. Bergen, University of Toronto

Thomas Kehoe’s article treats a long-neglected subject: the punishment of Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to serve in the German military during World War II. Using the records of the Reich military court, which only came to light in the early 1990s, Kehoe finds that 408 Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objectors were convicted of Wehrkraftzersetzung – subverting the war effort. Of those men, 258 were executed. Kehoe puts these numbers into perspective by pointing out that Jehovah’s Witnesses made up 96% of the men sentenced to death by the Reich military court, although they constituted only 14% of the cases of subversion. Why was the Reich military court extra punitive toward Jehovah’s Witnesses, Kehoe asks? And why did it, nonetheless, not impose a death sentence in every case? In fact, he shows, all 150 convicted Jehovah’s Witness men who recanted received lesser sentences from the court.

Kehoe’s explanation involves two related points. First, he emphasizes that the court was guided by military priorities and the “necessities of war.” Second, he maintains that the subordination of justice to the command structure had its roots not in Nazism but in Prussian military tradition. Kehoe rejects legal positivist claims that judges were forced or duped into toeing the Nazi line. To the contrary, he suggests the difference in treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses from others charged with the same offence shows that the military court had significant discretion. However, Kehoe also questions a simple argument of complicity: if members of the highest military court shared Nazi ideological goals across the board, why would they not have executed all of the Jehovah’s Witnesses convicted as conscientious objectors? Because their goal was to maximize Germany’s fighting force, Kehoe concludes, it made sense to come down hard on “intransigent” Jehovah’s Witnesses but to back off in cases where men agreed to recant.

Kehoe’s analysis is persuasive but could be deepened by paying more attention to the wider social, religious, and political contexts. For instance, how did military judges view Jehovah’s Witnesses? The court presumably intended its decisions to send a message not only to condemned men themselves but to all soldiers and members of their families and communities. Death sentences conveyed the regime’s zero tolerance for refusal to perform military service. Yet the National Socialist regime was acutely aware of public opinion and always hit the most vulnerable targets first. Murder of disabled people began with those who were already isolated and marginalized. Although sex between men was subject to severe penalties, including death sentences, the men who most heavily punished were invariably unpopular outsiders. Could a similar logic have been at play with Jehovah’s Witnesses, who could be held up as a negative example without authorities, including military officers, having to worry that there would be backlash?

In his conclusion, Kehoe calls for more comparative studies of military courts and their treatment of supposed internal enemies. This idea is to be welcomed. Even within the context of Nazi Germany, some intriguing comparisons come to mind. One might be to examine Jehovah’s Witnesses together with German Jewish men, who were excluded from military service in 1935. Another would be to compare Jehovah’s Witnesses with Mennonites, none of whom were executed as conscientious objectors in Nazi Germany, or with the handful of mainstream Christian conscientious objectors, the most famous of whom, Franz Jägerstätter, has meanwhile been beatified and is now the subject of an acclaimed movie directed by Terrence Malick (A Hidden Life, 2019). Kehoe deserves credit for starting the conversation and for bringing the names of some Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were killed for refusing to serve in the Wehrmacht, to the attention of people outside their immediate family and faith communities.

The German Bishops in the World War: The English Text

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 3 (September 2020)

The German Bishops in the World War: The English Text

In the March 2020 issue of Contemporary Church History Quarterly, we featured two analyses of the German Bishops Conference statement, “Deutsche Bischöfe im Weltkrieg. Wort zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs vor 75 Jahren,” by Olaf Blaschke and Mark Edward Ruff. In the meantime, the German Bishops Conference has published an official English translation of the statement, entitled The German Bishops in the World War: Statement on the end of the Second World War 75 years ago. For those who would like to read the statement in full, it is available here: https://dbk.de/fileadmin/redaktion/diverse_downloads/presse_2020/2020-04-29_DB_107_Englisch.pdf.

News Note: “Campaign posters in ‘Luther country’ raise specter of anti-Semitism”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 1/2 (June 2020)

News Note: “Campaign posters in ‘Luther country’ raise specter of anti-Semitism”

By Christopher Probst, Washington University in St. Louis, University College

Last September, religion scholar and journalist Ken Chitwood asked me to comment on an article he was writing about the use of Martin Luther’s image and legacy in campaign posters for a far-right party, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD) in Thuringia. As Chitwood notes in the article, “instead of ‘Here I stand,’ the rebel monk is depicted saying, ‘I would vote NPD, I cannot do otherwise,’ alongside the party’s slogan ‘defend the homeland.’”

Together with Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia formed the heartland of the German Protestant Reformation. Luther undertook his university studies at Erfurt and also became a monk in that city. While hiding out in Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, he accomplished one of his seminal achievements when he translated the New Testament into what became High German. In 2017, Germans commemorated the five-hundredth anniversary of the German Protestant Reformation. Luther sites across the country, including Erfurt and Eisenach, played host to numerous events celebrating the anniversary. Many Germans, and Thuringians in particular, take great pride in the place that their Heimat (homeland) played in the Reformation.

In Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany, I demonstrated that a large number of Protestant pastors, bishops, and theologians employed Luther’s writings about Jews and Judaism – which were littered with antisemitic and anti-Judaic rhetoric – to buttress the antisemitism already present in significant degrees in Protestant circles during the era of National Socialism. Some contemporary German church historians and theologians, while recognizing that Luther attacked Jews and Judaism in stark and unseemly ways, have downplayed the impact of the reformer’s Judenschriften (writings about Jews and Judaism) in subsequent German history, including the widespread apathy toward Nazi oppression and murder of Jews exhibited by many German Protestants. Others, like Hartmut Lehmann, have highlighted this darker aspect of German Protestant history in their scholarly work.

The NPD poster includes a variation on the famous phrase “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders” (Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise), which was uttered by Luther at the Diet of Worms in defense of his understanding of the Christian gospel. Yet, it also contains the slogan “Heimat verteidigen” (defend the homeland). During the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933, SA members stood menacingly in front of Jewish-owned storefronts holding signs that read “Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!” (Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!) The NPD posters no doubt resonate with some who both revere Luther and – unlike the great majority of Germans, including German Protestants – have no place for “foreigners” in their homeland.

The employment of Luther in NPD’s campaign did not bear fruitful results in Thuringia, as the party finished with less than 1% of the vote. Yet, in this same election, the larger far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) won roughly 23% of the vote, overtaking Angela Merkel’s CDU as the second-largest party in the regional assembly. Chitwood’s article highlights the unsettling reality that, in Germany (as in the United States), xenophobia and racism, far from being relics of the past, have penetrated the body politic in ways not seen in decades.

Research Note: Opening of the Vatican archives, 1939-1958 Period

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 4 (December 2019)

Research Note: Opening of the Vatican archives, 1939-1958 Period

By Suzanne Brown-Fleming, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum*

On March 2, 2020, one of the most important Holocaust-related archives in the world will open. I refer to the multiple archives relating to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939 to 1958, hereafter referred to as Pius XII archives). Important but incomplete documentation has been available beginning in 1965 as part of the published series Acts and Documents of the Holy See Relative to the Second World War.[1] Also already available are archives from the pontificate of Pius XI (1922-1939, since 2006) and those of the Vatican Office of Information for Prisoners of War (1939-1947, since 2004).[2]

Announced by Pope Francis on March 4, 2019 and marking 80 years since the election of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) to the office of pope, the Pius XII archives will be accessible in multiple locations across Vatican City, Each archive has its own regulations, registration system, indexes, and inventories. For scholars of World War II and the Holocaust, of especial interest are the following, described in more detail by H.E. Monsignor Sergio Pagano in L’Osservatore Romano:[3]

The Roman Curia:^[4] Select key archives opening in 2020

Vatican Apostolic Archive (former l’Archivio segreto vaticano or ASV)
Historical Archive of the Section of Relations with States, Secretariat of State (l’Archivio storico della Sezione dei Rapporti con gli Stati della Segreteria di Stato or AES orEE.SS.) Also called the Sacred Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs or 2^nd Section of the Secretariat of State.^[5]
Archive of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (l’Archivio storico della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede or ACDF)[6]
The Propaganda Fide Historical Archives of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (l’Archivio storico ‘de Propaganda Fide’ della Congregazione per l’evangelizzazione dei popoli)[7]
Historical Archive of the Congregation with the Oriental Churches (l’Archivio storico della Congregazione per le Chiese orientali)
Varied Historical Archives of Congregations, Dicasteries, Offices and Tribunals (archivi storici di congregazioni, dicasteri, uffici e tribunal)

When announcing the opening of these archives, His Holiness Pope Francis said, “the Church is not afraid of history; rather, she loves it, and would like to love it more and better, as God does! So, with the same trust of my predecessors, I open and entrust to researchers this documentary heritage.”[8] For historians of the churches during World War II, the Holocaust, and the postwar period, we are witnessing an exciting moment. Networks of scholars from Europe, Israel and the United States are already forming to be best prepared for these sizable archives and to share future findings.

[1] Actes et documents du Saint-Sìege relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale, ed. Pierre Blet, Robert A. Graham, Angelo Martini, Burkhardt Schneider. Vatican City: Libreria Vaticana, 1965-1981, 12 vols.

[2] Inter arma caritas: l’Ufficio informazioni vaticano per i prigionieri di guerra istituito da Pio XII, 1939-1947. 2 vols.

[3] H.E. Monsignor Sergio Pagano, “Dopo un lungo e paziente lavoro di preparazione,” L’Osservatore Romano, 4 March 2019.

[4] The entire group of organized bodies and their personnel assisting the Pope in the government and ministration of the Church, i.e. the congregations, tribunals and offices.

[5] The Secretariat of State is a dicastery of the Roman Curia. From 1908-1967 it was divided into three sections: 1^st Section – Ordinary Affairs, 2^nd Section – Extraordinary Affairs, and 3^rd Section, the Chancery of Apostolic Briefs. This set-up was reformulated in 1967 as part of Vatican II. See http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/sezione-rapporti-stati/archivio-storico/consultazione/consultazione_it.html, accessed 10/8/2019.

[6] For application process and holdings see http://www.acdf.va/content/dottrinadellafede/it/servizi/richiesta-di-accesso.html, accessed 10/8/2019. Currently, the website does not indicate a registration date for the 1939-1958 materials.

[7] For application process and holdings see http://www.archiviostoricopropaganda.va/content/archiviostoricopropagandafide/en/archivio-storico/fondi-archivistici.html, accessed 10/8/2019.

[8] Holy See Press Office, N. 190304d, Monday 04.03.2019. See https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2019/03/04/190304d.html, accessed 12/28/2019.

*The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or any other organization.

Conference Report: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Conference, Lund, Sweden, September 25-26, 2019

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 4 (December 2019)

Conference Report: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Conference, Lund, Sweden, September 25-26, 2019

By Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University (retired)

Professor Anders Jarlert of Lund University in Sweden hosted an international conference on September 25-26, 2019, under the title, “Life-Line or Collaboration? Active contacts with churches in totalitarian societies.” This conference also served as the annual meeting of the journal, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, and papers will be printed in a subsequent volume of that journal. Finally, this conference occurred as Jarlert began his final year before retirement as a professor in the Lund Theological Faculty, thus marking possibly the last opportunity for Professor Jarlert, one of the longest-serving and most active members of the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Editorial Board, to host an annual conference of this group. The dozen presentations and subsequent conversations presented a wealth of information spread across much of the twentieth century and a broad group of nations, all on this important topic, the role and behavior of Christian churches in relationship to totalitarian societies.

All papers dealt in some fashion with an overarching question: Did various organizations and national churches outside Germany during the Nazi era and outside the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War extend important assistance, a “life-line,” to churches within those systems, or did they act as collaborators in the subversion of Christian ideals and Christian behaviors under totalitarian rule? In several instances, papers assessed the same question in terms of churches within those systems. As readers might suspect, the papers and discussion produced no clear, simple and conclusive answer to this question about assistance vs. collaboration. However, the papers at the conference shed light on a multitude of lesser known circumstances and participating nations in the mid-twentieth century, as will their future appearance in Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte.

Gerhard Besier, founding editor of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, opened the conference with a consideration of ongoing difficulties among Germans trying to come to a comfortable stance on Christian behavior under the Nazi state. Under the theme of “holding the line,” he noted that “people tell each other stories conducive to their purposes.” That has relevance for institutions, of course, and not just people. Besier then added that this can be difficult, especially in our modern world with its unfiltered social media adding to the mix. I will cite two examples from his presentation, the first involving the 75^th anniversary of von Stauffenberg’s heroic attempt on Hitler’s life and his subsequent execution. Critics noted that von Stauffenberg had approved of National Socialism, showed no concern until his actual participation in the assassination plot, and expressed no moral reasons for his actions. Defenders of the heroic side of the story quickly responded with a claim like this, that “Klaus Schenk von Stauffenberg remains a hero and a role model,” etc. Martin Niemöller is a second example. Noting the recent biographies by Matthew Hockenos and by Benjamin Ziemann, there is a wealth of evidence both before and after 1945 that Niemöller did not always “get it right.” This includes a strongly patriotic (and militaristic) stance from his childhood, through his navy career, and in his politics up to 1933. It also includes various complicated political stances taken after 1945. Besier explored many additional complexities, including the role of Protestant pastors in the GDR. His conclusion? We are often given a narrow corridor in our lives. There is also a strong tendency to maintain the narrowness of that corridor, partially as we research and write about the past, and also as institutions try to protect the story they want told. Besier appeals for a broader opening of that conversation and a recognition of complex realities.

Many subsequent papers then illustrated the complexity to which he had alluded. For example, Valentin Jeutner of Lund described a German Protestant Church in Malmö, Sweden, serving the German population in Malmö while being administered by the German Protestant Church. Herbert Kühn, the pastor from Germany assigned in 1930, joined the NSDAP in 1935. He became an Ortsgruppenleiter among Nazis in Malmö. In 1942 he tried to volunteer for German military duty but was told his work in Malmö (on Germany’s behalf) was more important. After the war, the British produced a “list of obnoxious Germans” and urged Sweden to send them back to Germany. Kühn was sent to Lübeck. During his denazification proceedings in Germany, he lied about and hid his pro-Nazi activities, and both Martin Niemöller and Bishop Bell came to his defense. Many of the “obnoxious Germans” repatriated to Germany under British pressure simply went to Austria and then slipped back into Sweden. Kühn, however, possibly for family reasons, stayed in Germany.

Johan Sundeen of Lund then described a somewhat reverse image to Kühn, in this case, a Swedish pastor serving Swedes in Berlin, Birger Forell, As a legation pastor he had diplomatic protection, which he used in two important ways. One was to create hiding places and provide assistance to Jews in Berlin. Another was to write anonymous quarterly reports to a Swedish journal, thus telling Swedes and the outside world about horrors unfolding for Jews and other victims of the Nazi regime.

Anders Jarlert described another Swedish figure of the time, Erling Eidem, Bishop of Uppsala. He is less known than Bishop Bell of England. He is also less known than his predecessor as Bishop of Uppsala, Nathan Soderblöm, a vital figure in creating the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century and recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize. Jarlert, however, described subtle efforts by Eidem to speak to the politics of the Nazi regime and to the plight of Jews, especially with his use of a sermon text, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16, KJV). This was the text of a sermon he gave in Berlin in 1942 at the Gustavus Adolphus celebration that year. Jarlert pointed out that in German this text becomes plural, “Jews” and “Greeks,” and argued that Eidem was well aware of how powerful it would sound in Germany in 1942. Jarlert also cited other speeches and sermons with subtle political content, an emphasis in Oslo in 1940 of the close bond between Norwegians and Swedes. In both 1940 and 1943, he spoke about “our beloved Danes” while wishing God’s blessing upon them. Eidem also spoke on various occasions in Germany. Jarlert’s discussion of Eidem illustrates some of the complications implicit in this conference, suggesting that Bishop Eidem employed just enough collaboration to allow him also to give a “life-line” to his audience, whether in Norway, Denmark, or Germany itself.

Rebecca Carter-Chand, a member of our CCHQ Editorial Board, spoke at this Lund meeting, describing her work on the International Salvation Army in connection to the German Heilsarmee in the Nazi era. During World War I, the Heilsarmee had broken its connection to the international Salvation Army based in Britain. This connection was then reestablished after the war, and the Heilsarmee played a useful role during the years of need in the Weimar era. The rise of Hitler in 1933 created some talk of another break of the British connection. However, that moment passed. By October 1934, General Evangeline Booth wrote to Hitler of her “deepest appreciation” of the social improvements in Germany under his leadership. The 50^th Anniversary of the Salvation Army then coincided with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The Kriegsruf of the Heilsarmee in September 1936 reported the good news that slums no longer existed in Germany and referenced a “Prayer for the Führer, Volk, and Vaterland, and for world peace,” while including pictures of the Nazi flag and of men in uniform. In the summer of 1939 General Evangeline Booth spoke of “bonds between us that could not be broken,” as reported in an issue of Kriegsruf that appeared in September 1939 (!). Carter-Chand noted that Heilsarmee literature at the time made no reference to the November Pogrom of 1938 or the disappearance of Jews from 1941. Furthermore, these important issues received little or no reference in early memoirs, and they remain without critical reflection today.

I encourage CCHQ readers to pay attention to the future KZG issue which will print the presentations I have mentioned, plus the balance of other conference papers as well. This will include presentations by Andrea Strübind on the relationship of Baptists to various World Federations in the Nazi era; Mikael Hermansson on “the Soviet Union in British and Swedish religious propaganda” during World War II; Erik Andersson on Axel Svensson’s “meeting with Lutheran groups in Ethiopia and Eritrea under Italian occupation;” Gerhard Ringshausen on “George Bell’s Relation to the Confessing Church and the Problem of Information;” Anna-Maija Viljanen-Pihkala on “The Finnish-Hungarian Lutheran Relationship” during the fraught years of 1956-1958; Ville Jalovaara on a “Test of religious freedom—Richard Wurmbrand’s visits to Finland in the 1970s;” and Erik Sidenvall on a 1975-1989 connection between the Växjö diocese in Sweden and the Pomeranian Church in the GDR, a well-meaning effort at peace and détente on the Swedish side that gradually lost momentum in the mid-1980s and then suffered after November 1989 with word of the Stasi connections of the Bishop of Pomerania.

As readers will note, my already rather long report will be replaced by a much more extensive version of considerable interest when the papers appear in print in 2020.

Article Note: Rainer Decker, “Bischof Alois Hudal und die Judenrazzia in Rom am 16. Oktober 1943”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 4 (December 2019)

Article Note: Rainer Decker, “Bischof Alois Hudal und die Judenrazzia in Rom am 16. Oktober 1943,” Römische Quartalschrift für Christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte 113:3-4 (2018), 233-255.

By Suzanne Brown-Fleming, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum*

On Saturday, October 16, 1943, SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker ordered the roundup of Jews in Rome, arresting 363 men and 896 women and children. On October 18, Dannecker and his men deported 1,007 of those arrested to Auschwitz. Only 19 would survive. On the day the roundup started, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Luigi Maglione summoned German Ambassador to the Holy See Ernst von Weizsäcker to a meeting. Maglione’s partial notes from this meeting have been available to scholars since 1975. Maglione made the plea that has become a touchstone for the so-called “Pius Wars,” telling Weizsäcker “It is painful for the Holy Father, painful beyond words that here in Rome, under the eyes of the Common Father so many people are made to suffer simply because of their particular descent.”

When pushed by Weizsäcker as to whether the Holy See would “express its disapproval” or “leave [Weizsäcker] free not to report this official conversation,” Maglione “replied that I had begged him to intervene appealing to his sentiments of humanity. I was leaving it to his judgement whether or not to mention our conversation, that had been so friendly.” Later that day, the controversial Bishop Alois Hudal,[1] Rector of the German National Church in Rome, Santa Maria dell’Anima, sent a letter to German City Commander of Rome Major General Reiner Stahel criticizing the raid. The letter reads in part, “I [Hudal] earnestly request you to order the immediate cessation of these arrests in Rome and its environs. I fear that if this is not done the pope will make a public stand against it […].”[2]

On October 17, Weizsäcker sent a telegram to the German Foreign Office “confirm[ing] the reaction of the Vatican to the removal of Jews from Rome as given by Bishop Hudal and altered Maglione’s phrase “under the eyes of the Common Father” to “under the very windows of the pope.” However, Weizsäcker did not report his meeting with Maglione. Ultimately, the Holy See did not make an official diplomatic protest.[3] Until recently, scholars have worked from various versions of and excerpts from the Hudal letter to Stahel. One version has been preserved in the Hudal papers and in the archives of the Vatican Secretariat of State. Parts of the letter were incorporated in a telegram from Stahel’s new aide, Gerhard Gumpert, to the German Foreign Office in Berlin. For decades, there has been speculation that the letter was drafted by either Weizsäcker, Gumpert, or Weizsäcker’s aide Albrecht von Kessel, and only lightly edited and signed by Hudal. The role of Eugenio Pacelli in the letter, if the pope had one at all, is contested.

Decker’s contribution to this historical question is to publish the first “exact, complete wording of the Hudal letter;” offer more clarity regarding its origin and authorship; and to problematize our conclusions about its ultimate effects (Decker, 237).[4] In this thoughtful article, Decker lays out hypotheses for the slight differences in phrasing in the various versions and the motivations Weizsäcker, Hudal, Gumpert and others might have had in choosing the excerpts, phrasing, and interpretations of the letter during and after the war. Decker also brings to the fore the potentially important role of the letter carrier, Father Pancrazio Pfeiffer, superior general of the Order of the Salvatorians and Pacelli’s personal liaison with Stahel.

Klaus Kühlwein’s recent edition Pius XII und die Deportation der Juden Roms (2019) states the claim that Eugenio Pacelli sent his nephew Carlo to Bishop Hudal to launch a protest is incorrect (Decker, 233-236). Decker is less sure, noting that some phrases in the letter were very unlikely to have been influenced by Weizsäcker, Gumpert, or Kessel. Decker finds it plausible that Pacelli asked his nephew Carlo to intervene via Hudal and Pfeiffer, both of whom had excellent relations with Stahel, and also plausible that the letter expressed Pacelli’s sentiments as Hudal understood them, even if Pacelli had not spoken with his nephew Carlo (Decker, 244). Decker also finds it plausible that the Hudal-Stahel exchange reached Heinrich Himmler, a position refuted by Zuccotti and others (Decker, 247-249). Decker acknowledges that at this time, the sources to settle this issue are not available (Decker, 249).

Ultimately, concludes Decker, Himmler’s possible receipt of the Hudal-Stahel exchange had no influence over the fate of the arrested Jews. However, the pattern of future raids for the remainder of the German occupation of Rome may have been impacted, he argues. Decker acknowledges that more work needs to be done before we can be sure (Decker, 252). Decker also provides a helpful diagram of the various available versions (253) and the full text of the letter (254-255).

Decker’s article does not change current scholarly understanding that Pope Pius XII refrained from open, public protests of the October 16^th round-up “under his very windows.” Decker’s work fits with arguments that Pacelli and his aides chose back channels and unofficial messaging buried in diplomatic pleasantries. The full text of the Hudal letter is a great example of this tactic. That said, as Decker points out multiple times in his carefully crafted article, there are still missing sources that might better fill out this picture. Scholars will soon have access to the full set of materials relating to the papacy of Pius XII(1939-1958). The words exchanged within the walls of the Vatican, and directives given or not given on October 16-18, 1943, will finally become available to us.

*The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or any other organization.

Notes:

[1] See Uki Gõni, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina (London/New York: Granta Books, 2002) and Gerald Steinacher, Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice (Oxford University Press, 2011), among others.

[2] Stahel’s new aide, Gerhard Gumpert, forwarded the letter to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, where a copy was preserved. See also ADSS, Vol. IX, doc. 373, p.510. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 161-2 and Decker, 235.

[3] Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 159-160, citing Actes et documents du Saint-Sìege relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale [hereafter ADSS] ed. Pierre Blet, Robert A. Graham, Angelo Martini, Burkhardt Schneider. Vatican City: Libreria Vaticana, 1965-1981, 12 vols. Volume IX: Le Saint Siège et les victimes de la guerre, Janvier-Décembre 1943 (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1975); notes of Cardinal Maglione, October 16, 1943, pp. 505-506.

[4] Decker writes, “Im Folgenden wird erstmals der genaue, vollständige Wortlaut des Hudal-Briefes veröffentlicht.”

Conference Report: “Soldiers, Sex, Chaplains, and Horses: A Panel on the Wehrmacht in Honor of Gerhard L. Weinberg”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 4 (December 2019)

Conference Report: “Soldiers, Sex, Chaplains, and Horses: A Panel on the Wehrmacht in Honor of Gerhard L. Weinberg,” German Studies Association, Portland, OR, October 2019.

By Christina Matzen, University of Toronto

At the 2019 German Studies Association conference in Portland, OR, four scholars convened a panel in honor of esteemed military historian Gerhard Weinberg. Two of the three papers from former Weinberg students provided insights into the history of Christianity and the Second World War. Sandra Chaney’s paper, “Behind the Lines in the Ukraine and Caucasus, 1942-1943: The Wartime Diary and Photo Album of Senior Staff Veterinarian, Dr. Eugen Kohler,” offered a brief yet telling glimpse into the daily life and belief systems of Wehrmacht officials on the Eastern Front. Kohler was a devout Christian and attended worship services every Sunday while living in Donetsk. More Nazified Wehrmacht members tolerated Kohler’s religious practices and moderate political views because he was an occupation official in a specialized field. In “’For Members of the Wehrmacht Only’: Chaplains in German-Occupied Territories, 1942-1943,” Doris Bergen analyzed how military chaplains in occupied territories negotiated four key relationships: with the troops, with their superiors, with local populations, and with Germans at home. Each aspect of the chaplains’ work was enmeshed in the violent practices of occupation, including forced labor, theft, and killing. Bergen demonstrated that many of the chaplains’ duties served a dual role—providing spiritual support to individual soldiers while simultaneously performing institutional functions for the Wehrmacht. Taken together, Chaney and Bergen’s papers highlighted the fact that religion played an important role in the lives of many people across the various units of the Wehrmacht, and Christianity helped provide a sense of normalcy and relief—as well as opportunism—in the midst of war.

Call for Applications: Confronting Difficult Issues around Religion and the Holocaust

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 4 (December 2019)

Call for Applications: Confronting Difficult Issues around Religion and the Holocaust

June 15–19, 2020
Application deadline: February 14, 2020

The Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is pleased to announce its annual seminar for faculty and ABD doctoral candidates from all disciplines, including religious studies, history, literature, sociology, political science, gender studies, philosophy, and area studies.

This seminar will consider the complex roles of religion (specifically Judaism and Christianity) in the Holocaust by addressing five key themes: everyday religious life under persecution; religion and violence; rescue, conversion, and coercion; religious/ethnic/national identities; and religious freedom in authoritarian societies. We will examine each topic through primary sources and secondary literature related to the Holocaust as well as consider how similar issues play out in other cases of genocide or mass atrocity in order to explore how Genocide Studies might deepen our understanding of religion and the Holocaust. The seminar will emphasize practical approaches to integrating these topics in university and seminary courses, including syllabus development and discussing sensitive material in the classroom.

The seminar will be co-led by Drs. Doris Bergen and Rebecca Carter-Chand. Doris Bergen is Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author or editor of five books, including War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (3rd edition 2016); Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (1996); and The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century (2004). Rebecca Carter-Chand is the Acting Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the USHMM. She is currently working on a book manuscript, “The Limits of Christian Internationalism and the Salvation Army in Germany” and is co-editing a volume with Kevin Spicer, “Christianity, Antisemitism, and Ethnonationalism in the Era of the Two World Wars.”

Application Deadline: February 14, 2020.

For more information, please go to: https://www.ushmm.org/research/opportunities-for-academics/faculty-seminars/ethics-religion-holocaust/2020-annual-seminar-on-ethics-religion-and-the-holocaust.

“Victoria Barnett’s Retirement from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 3 (September 2019)

“Victoria Barnett’s Retirement from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum”

By Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University (retired)

Victoria Barnett is familiar to many or most readers of CCHQ, at least partly for her position on the board of editors of this journal and as a frequent contributor, but also for the three decades in which she has been an important scholar in our field. She is far from “retirement” in any meaningful sense of the term, since she has an agenda for ongoing research and future publications. However, she retired in August from her twenty-four-year career at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To honor this occasion, the Museum organized two events on August 1, 2019. The first was a public program in the Meyerhof Lecture Hall, from 2:00 to 3:30, and the second a private event primarily for Museum staff. In all cases, Vicki’s colleagues waxed enthusiastic about her insight, her skills, her contributions to Holocaust scholarship, and her career at the Museum.

I helped organize and moderated the public session on that day, a discussion under the title, “For the Soul of the People: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Religion and the Holocaust.” The session, which can be viewed online, was introduced by Sara Bloomfield, Director of the USHMM. Speakers included Doris Bergen (Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto) and Susannah Heschel (Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College), both well known to readers of this journal. Mary Boys (Vice-President of Academic Affairs and Dean at Union Theological Seminary as well as Skinner & McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology) also presented, as did Douglas Irvin-Erickson (Assistant Professor and Director of the Genocide Prevention Program in the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University).

The public session began with attention to Barnett’s first book, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (Oxford U Press, 1992). With this book, she became an important member of the generation of scholars who began to modify our historical view of the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany. Rather than repeat the exaggerated defense of churches common during the first several postwar decades, she helped us see the complications within a story in which not even all members of the Confessing Church contingent among Protestants were natural opponents of the Nazi regime or its harsh policies. Both Doris Bergen and Susannah Heschel emphasized the value of Barnett’s method, the extensive interviews she did with members of the Confessing Church, and especially her focus on the stories of women. These interviews contributed a new and significant insight into the Church Struggle, especially in terms of its complexity. Barnett then indicated that she has both transcripts and tapes of those interviews, extending far beyond what she has used herself, which will soon be available in the archives of the Holocaust Museum.

Mary Boys focused on Jewish-Christian relations, which have changed so considerably in the aftermath of the Holocaust, including changes in doctrine at Vatican II and the creation of Nostra Aetate. This topic of the Jewish-Christian relationship has involved important contributions from Barnett. For example, she translated and edited the English version of Wolfgang Gerlach’s important book, And the Witnesses were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews (U of Nebraska Press, 2000). When Barnett became Director of the Program on Church Relations at the USHMM in 2004, she paid close attention to these issues, working with Jewish members of the Church Relations Committee, offering annual summer seminars for Holocaust educators, and, in 2012, leading the important move to change the name from Church Relations Committee to the Committee on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust. She also has helped this program and this committee by adding Islam to the mix, so that now Jews, Muslims, and Christians sit on the committee and work within the program. It is also worth noting that a major focus in Barnett’s recent work involves investigations into ecumenical efforts during the 1930s in which an international group of Christian and Jewish leaders tried to investigate and mitigate the harsh measures unfolding within Germany.

Douglas Irvin-Erickson spoke about Barnett’s second major book, Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust (Greenwood, 1999), another important contribution to our understanding of the ethical intricacies exposed by an event so devastating as the Holocaust. This also gave Irvin-Erickson a chance to bring Dietrich Bonhoeffer into the conversation. Barnett, of course, is a major figure in Bonhoeffer studies, especially in the project to publish the sixteen volumes of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English. She translated and edited individual volumes, and, more importantly, she served as General Editor of the entire DBWE from 2004 until the index volume was completed in 2014.

From the podium, I described Barnett as one of the most important figures in international Bonhoeffer studies. Others insisted I should have called her the most important. I do think that her recent small book, “After Ten Years”: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Our Times (Fortress Press, 2017), based on Bonhoeffer’s Christmas 1942 letter to selected friends just months before his arrest and imprisonment, gives us a timely and important window into a crucial moment in his life and thought after ten years of living within Hitler’s Germany. I eagerly await the Bonhoeffer book I expect to appear as Barnett savors the more relaxed daily schedule that comes with retirement. Without doubt, her investment in the corpus of Bonhoeffer’s work—her role as translator and editor, her deep knowledge of the texts, her personal knowledge of many of the principals, her role in the International Bonhoeffer Society, her reviews of the books of others, and her work on churches in Nazi Germany since the late 1970s—gives us reason to look forward to the next works to spring from her laptop.

When members of the USHMM staff gathered after the public session for a retirement party, the program included comments from Sara Bloomfield, Director of the Museum, Robert Ehrenreich, Director of National Academic Programs, and Sarah Ogilvie, Chief Program Officer. The attendance at this event and the comments of these three individuals made it very clear that Barnett’s role at the Museum included not only her nurturing of a vibrant Program on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust, but also broader contributions to the Museum. For those of us who know her primarily as a scholar in our field, we should also know that she was widely admired and very good at her day job. She made a difference in the programs of the Museum and in the way that the Museum communicates the meaning and significance of the Holocaust to the outside world.

Vicki is known to those of us associated with the CCHQ as an important scholar of churches in Nazi Germany. She is also known as an expert and very important figure in international Bonhoeffer studies. Finally, she has had a long and important career at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. I am not sure how anyone can stand upon three such large pedestals, but she has done so with grace and impact.