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Conference Report: “Nazi Germany, International Protestantism, and the German Churches”

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 4 (December 2021)

Conference Report: “Nazi Germany, International Protestantism, and the German Churches,” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN and virtual, October 1, 2021.

By Blake McKinney, Texas Baptist College

After a yearlong delay, five scholars of German and religious history virtually convened a panel entitled, “Nazi Germany, International Protestantism, and the German Churches” at the German Studies Association Annual Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. This panel featured papers by Rebecca Carter-Chand (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), Kyle Jantzen (Ambrose University), and Blake McKinney (Texas Baptist College). Maria Mitchell (Franklin & Marshall College) cheerfully served as moderator and Stewart Anderson (Brigham Young University) provided helpful commentary that flowed into a collegial conversation among the panelists and attendees.

Religion in the Third Reich remains a dynamic field. Long gone are the simple characterizations of godless National Socialists persecuting the good Christians of Germany. Over the past fifty years, historians of religion in the National Socialist era have added to a complex understanding of the social, political, theological, and ethno-national facets of Christian experiences in Germany. This panel represents the growing influence of transnational analysis in the robust field of religion in the Third Reich, especially in relation to German Protestantism. German Protestants simultaneously viewed themselves as members of the church universal and as Christian Germans. The panel papers considered the complex roles of transnational confessional identification, internationalism and ecumenicism, the interconnectedness of foreign and domestic concerns within National Socialist Germany, and eschatological interpretations of geo-political developments. The panel presented a multi-faceted approach to transnational analysis of religion in the Third Reich, examined often overlooked Christian groups within Germany and North America, and showed points of connection between German domestic church politics and Christian international relations.

Rebecca Carter-Chand opened the presentations with her paper, “Navigating International Relationships in Nazi Germany: Anglo-American Religious Communities in 1930s Germany.” This paper comes from her work in the forthcoming volume co-edited with Kevin Spicer entitled Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars (McGill-Queen’s University Press, January 2022). In her paper, Carter-Chand offered a comparative examination of many small churches and religious communities in Germany with Anglo-American roots. She noted that relatively few of these groups were banned in the Nazi era, and she explored the challenges and opportunities presented to these groups by their marginal status in Germany and their international connections. She discussed how different groups approached the coordinating efforts of the early years of the Nazi regime, and how they negotiated their place in Germany. Furthermore, she explored different groups’ shifts in international relationships with their co-religionists in the pre-war years. Carter-Chand’s analysis of a broad collection of these groups (e.g., Adventists, Baptists, Quakers, Salvation Army, etc.) demonstrated “that many of these religious groups were not only allowed to continue operating in the Nazi period but also found their place in the Volksgemeinschaft and participated in various aspects of Nazi society.” Carter-Chand concluded that for many of these groups, “national, international, and religious identities were not mutually exclusive.”

Kyle Jantzen followed with his paper, “From Aryan Messiah to Jacob’s Trouble: Nazis and Jews in Fundamentalist Christian Eschatology.” This paper comes from Jantzen’s current book project considering the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s eschatological interpretations of National Socialist antisemitic policies. His paper drew on a rich (and previously untapped) source base. He analyzed the complex of attitudes, theologies, and convictions that shaped North American fundamentalist Christian perspective on Hitler, Nazism, Jewish persecution, and the Holocaust. Jantzen offered a helpful overview of premillennial dispensational eschatology, which he argued provided the key to understanding Christian and Missionary Alliance interpretations of National Socialism and its treatment of Jews. He contrasted the critiques of National Socialism by North American liberal Protestants based on humanitarian concerns and critiques by fundamentalist Protestants (represented by the Christian and Missionary Alliance) who interpreted Nazism eschatologically. Jantzen argued that the dispensationalist eschatology of Christian and Missionary Alliance writers served as a “social imaginary” both guiding and limiting interpretations of—and responses to—National Socialist actions against Jews. Jantzen concluded by arguing for the contextualization of Christian responses to Nazism and the Holocaust, stating that these responses must not be seen “as isolated sentiments but as facets of wider sets of beliefs and practices about Christians, Jews, world events, and eschatology.”

Blake McKinney finished the paper presentations with his, “Are There Free Churches in Germany? International Responses to German Protestantism and the Universal Council of Life and Work – Oxford 1937.” This paper originated from the final chapter of his dissertation, which examines the impact of international Protestantism on German Protestant church politics from 1933-1937. His paper concentrated on the Life and Work World Conference on Church, Community, and State held in Oxford July 1937 as a focal point of the intersection of German Protestant interactions with the Nazi state and world Protestantism. In the weeks immediately preceding the Oxford Conference, many Confessing Church leaders had their passports revoked or suffered arrest. The lone German representatives at the largest ecumenical gathering since 1925 were leaders of German Baptist, Methodist, and Old Catholic churches. McKinney argued that the events of the summer of 1937 demonstrated the completion of a transformation in the Nazi state’s policies towards German Protestant engagement with international ecumenicism. Whereas, in 1933-34 the Nazi state sought positive propaganda to international Protestant audiences, “by the summer of 1937 opposition to international Protestant interventions in German church politics paid richer dividends for German Protestants than ecumenical cooperation.”

Stewart Anderson provided commentary on the three papers and posed questions that invited the panelists to converse on the use of “Protestantism” to describe these varied movements, the transatlantic flow of information and news regarding German church events, and the relevance of these studies to historical scholarship beyond “Church History.” Anderson commended the panelists for exploring how various Protestant groups “in multiple geographic and cultural contexts had to come to terms with the implications of National Socialism’s triumph.” A fruitful discussion followed with expressions of eager anticipation for the publication of new works examining international aspects of the history of Christianity in Nazi Germany.

Webinar Announcement: The Holocaust-Era Archives of Pope Pius XII: The State of the Question

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 3 (September 2021)

Webinar Announcement: The Holocaust-Era Archives of Pope Pius XII: The State of the Question

The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust are co-presenting a webinar entitled “The Holocaust-Era Archives of Pope Pius XII: The State of the Question.”

This event will take place on October 17, 2021, from 2:00-3:30 EDT (19;00-20:30 UTC).

The webinar will consider the significance of the archives and of the scholarship on this topic for Jewish-Christian relations. Speakers include Drs. Suzanne Brown-Fleming, David Kertzer, and Robert Ventresca.

On its website, the USHMM states, “For decades, the USHMM and many others have called for the opening of the wartime Vatican archives—16 million pages that could shed light on the actions of Pope Pius XII and his fellow church leaders as millions of Jews and other victims were being murdered across Europe. At last, in 2019, Pope Francis announced they would open in 2020, stating ‘The Church is not afraid of history.'”

For more information, and to register, visit https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/mchvearchvs1021.

Webinar Note: The Opening of the Pius XII Archives and Holocaust Research

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 2 (June 2021)

Webinar Note: The Opening of the Pius XII Archives and Holocaust Research

By Suzanne Brown-Fleming, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

On March 2, 2020, the multiple archives relating to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) opened. Important but incomplete documentation has been available since the publication of the series Acts and Documents of the Holy See Relative to the Second World War (beginning in 1965).[1] Scholars have also had access to the 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 are now accessible in multiple locations across Vatican City. The global reaction to the papal announcement invites us to reflect on the connections between history, memory, archives and public opinion.

On March 10, 2021, the American Catholic Historical Association held a webinar entitled “The Opening of the Pius XI Archive and Holocaust Research.” Presenters included 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 view the video of the webinar, please visit https://achahistory.org/webinar/.

Notes:

[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.

Webinar Note: Christian Nationalism – A Conversation

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 2 (June 2021)

Webinar Note: Christian Nationalism – A Conversation

By Björn Krondorfer, Northern Arizona University

At the time of this writing, the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville is battling for its soul: Should they adhere to their conservative interpretations of biblical values to fight back against the perceived evils of secular modernity? Or should they confirm a politicized evangelicalism that is deeply rooted in southern white culture and epitomized by a categorical support of Trumpism? Put differently, will southern Baptists continue to battle their century-old “culture wars” for the sake of individual salvation, or define themselves as fighting a “political war” for the soul of the nation?

While, for decades, scholars and observers have read the anti-modernist, anti-humanist, and scripturalist impulse of American Christianity as an expression of religious fundamentalism, the analytical (and popular) literature has recently shifted its discourse to speak about Christian nationalism: the idea that it is more important to defend a particular—and, no doubt, mythologized—version of America as a divinely-ordained nation than limiting one’s mission to the preaching of a biblical-ordained lifestyle. As Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry put it in their study, Taking America Back For God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (2020), “The ‘Christianity’ of Christian nationalism represents something more than religion, [such as] assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.”

Because of the relevance of this topic—and propelled by the insurrectionist violence we witnessed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6—the Martin-Springer Institute* put together a 4-part Zoom conversation series on Christian nationalism in April 2021. Titled Unholy Alliance: Nationalism and Christianity, the series took a comparative approach by bringing in voices from different national contexts: Victoria Barnett on “Protestants and Ethno-Nationalism in Nazi Germany”; Sarah Posner on “The Rise of Christian Nationalism Among American White Evangelicals”; Annamaria Orla-Bukowska on “Roman Catholicism, the Church, and Polishness in Contemporary Poland”; and Katya Tolstaya on “Post-Soviet Patriotism, Nationalism, and Russian Orthodoxy.”

Though the focus of the series was not to directly address the links between religiously inspired anti-democratic groups across different nations, it is important to note that such transatlantic networks exist between American ultra-conservative evangelicals and their Orthodox and Catholic counterparts in Eastern Europe. We could call this cooperation a new kind of ecumenical alliance that seeks common ground on anti-abortion, anti-LGTBQ, anti-woman health, and anti-democratic platforms; their leaders believe that strong, autocratically-ruled states will promote their religious values, such as in Putin’s Russia, Orban’s Hungary, and Poland’s Law and Justice party. In the U.S, the Institute for Cultural Conservatism or the World Congress of Families, founded and promoted by people like Paul Weyrich, William Lind, and Brian Brown, have embraced the authoritarian style of Putin and Orban as models for a renewed America.

Victoria Barnett, former director of the USHMM’s Program on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, started the series with an analysis of the Protestant churches during the Third Reich, geared toward an audience of non-specialists. Given the historical proclivity of German Protestants to identify with a German nation-state, it was not surprising that many Germans—after the defeat in 1918 and the perceived national humiliation of the Versailles Treaty—had high hopes that Hitler would restore Germany to its rightful (and superior) place among nations. In 1933, when Hitler took power, there was little opposition by the churches, until the moment when some theologians and clergy began to fear the Nazi encroachment on church autonomy. Those familiar with this history would quickly recognize the distinctions Barnett drew between the three evolving movements: the Deutsche Christen (German Christians), the Confessing Church, and the patriotic middle (the so-called “intact churches”). The Deutsche Christen, Barnett explained, was a “Christian nationalist, pro-Nazi group within the German Protestant church.” Its “politically nationalistic, right-wing” supporters “developed an understanding of Protestantism that was strongly ethnicized.” They emphasized “the Germanic nature of their faith [and] affirmed much of the Nazi platform.” When asked about lessons learned for today, Barnett pointed to the failure of the church to find a strong oppositional voice to Nazism. She mentioned the tragedy of becoming bystanders—of what Bonhoeffer bemoaned as the “silent witnesses of evil deeds.” Her presentation can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=msc6ZV4eT94&list=PLvTDA4SpA8Z408WLA4D68ZXlzrY3z5aM-

Our second speaker, Sarah Posner, author of Unholy Alliance: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump (2020), introduced our Zoom audience to the development of American fundamentalist evangelicals and their battles since the 1950s. She asked how a religious movement that presented itself originally as a defender of religion and family values turned into a political force. “The conceptualization of America as a Christian nation that is under threat by secularism,” she argued, “accelerated in the second half of the twentieth century.” She concluded by pointing out the danger of anti-democratic convictions among white evangelicals who deploy religion for their own political agendas. Given these developments, she cautioned that “complacency is not an option.” Her presentation can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCUvl3EkoZU&list=PLvTDA4SpA8Z408WLA4D68ZXlzrY3z5aM-&index=2&t=3775s

“Out of the frying pan into the fire” (literally, “from the rain into the eaves”), this cartoon critically depicts Poland’s transition from communist to Catholic (state) ideology.

Anna Maria Orla-Bukoswka from Jagiellonian University in Krakow introduced our audience to the contemporary landscape of Polish Catholicism, with its split between, what she called, the “open and closed” church. Whereas the former promotes openness to dialogue with civil society and embraces diversity (including Catholic-Jewish relations), the closed church refers to the clerical hierarchy working in tandem with nationalist themes promoted by the Law and Justice party. Referencing the “founding myth of Polish history as the Chrzest polski, the Baptism of Poland in 966,” she presented a more complex history of the slow Christianization of Poland with its multicultural and ethnically diverse population. Only as a result of the Holocaust and the redrawing of borders after 1945 did Poland become a majority Catholic population, though religion remained repressed under Communism. “The entire modern Polish history,” she argued, “has taught Poles not to trust the State but the Church.” As a result, Roman Catholicism and Polish nationalism became entangled entities, which led to the current marriage between church and state authorities pursuing an illiberal agenda and discriminating against minority groups. Her presentation can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=21V-gVCRkyc&list=PLvTDA4SpA8Z408WLA4D68ZXlzrY3z5aM-&index=3&t=18s

Katya Tolstaya, Professor of Religion and Theology in Post-Trauma Society at the Vrije University of Amsterdam, introduced current themes of nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy in post-Soviet Russia. Briefly delineating some key differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and Protestantism (such as the central role of icons and martyrs), she traced the alliance of Russian patriotism and Orthodoxy to Dostoyevsky who had stated that “to be Russian is to be Orthodox”—a phrase, according to Tolstaya, that is often quoted by extreme Russian nationalists today. Despite religious and ethnic diversity in post-Soviet society, “Orthodoxy has become the national church in Russia.” Orthodoxy is not only a powerful force shaping society but is also deployed to legitimate national expansion into other regions today, such as Ukraine. Tolstaya lamented the lack of transparency regarding suspected collaboration between the KGB and the church in the Soviet Union, the lack of a “civil society” in Russia today, and the participation of theologians in “operationalizing sacred liturgical texts” for xenophobic and nationalist purposes. Her presentation can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYrDTHP9NWk&list=PLvTDA4SpA8Z408WLA4D68ZXlzrY3z5aM-&index=4&t=25s

Though in no way exhaustive, this series brought attention to the fact that religion—which in the second half of the twentieth century was seen as a waning force—has resurfaced as a main player in society and politics, often supporting illiberal and nationalist visions of governance and policies.

* The Martin-Springer Institute attends to the experiences of the Holocaust in order to relate them to today’s concerns, crises, and conflicts. Our programs promote the values of moral courage, tolerance, empathy, reconciliation, and justice. Founded by Doris, who survived the Holocaust, and her husband Ralph Martin, the Institute fosters dialogue on local, national, and international levels. http://nau.edu/martin-springer

Conference Report: Martin Niemöller und seine internationale Rezeption – Martin Niemöller and his international reception

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 2 (June 2021)

Conference Report: Martin Niemöller und seine internationale Rezeption – Martin Niemöller and his international reception, Frankfurt/Main, Germany, April 27-28, 2021

By Michael Heymel, Independent Scholar and Central Archives of the Protestant Church in Hessen and Nassau (retired)

On this topic an international conference took place on April 27-28, 2021, at the Evangelische Akademie Frankfurt. The conference was conceived by Lukas Bormann, professor for New Testament research at Philipps-Universität Marburg, together with practical theologian Michael Heymel, and was conducted in collaboration with study director Eberhard Pausch. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was held as a videoconference.

Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) is one of the most internationally known German Protestant church leaders and theologians of the 20th century. For some years he has been back in the discussion through the biographies of Heymel (2017), Hockenos (2018), Ziemann (2019) and Rognon (2020). Historian Benjamin Ziemann takes a particular position. He emphasizes Niemöller’s temporary closeness to German national (völkische) movements and problematizes his attitude toward Judaism and Jewish people, the attribution of his activities from 1933 on as resistance against the Nazi regime, his criticism of the Lutheran regional churches, and his contribution to the ecclesiastical discourse on guilt to 1948.

The conference, supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for the Promotion of Science and the EKHN Foundation, took up these topics in the new Niemöller debate. It presented contributions on basic questions of Niemöller research and on the reception of Martin Niemöller in five European countries and the USA, which were discussed in an interdisciplinary and multinational exchange. This was done in order to arrive at a historically and theologically reflected re-evaluation of Niemöller’s work in international perspective.

Section I dealt with the particularly controversial topics of anti-Semitism and resistance. Benjamin Ziemann (Sheffield) emphasized Niemöller’s racial antisemitism as seen in his connection to the Deutsch–Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund after the First World War. This völkisch antisemitism remained in place through the balance of the Weimar era. Beginning in 1931-1932, Niemöller embarked on a theological interpretation of Jewry and Judaism but continued to struggle with antisemitism even into the postwar era.*

When asked if Niemöller had been a man of resistance against the Nazi regime, Victoria Barnett (Washington) answered with a “cautious no.” She indicated that resistance was a complicated matter. Personality and a common language played an important role. As a “good German,” Niemöller had seen himself in opposition to the ‘German Christians’ (Deutsche Christen), similar to other nationalist Germans. Others, especially women, had been clearer in their opposition. The Nazi policy against the church had touched him as a pastor and in his loyalty to the fatherland and challenged him as a fighter, which he had been by nature. He had been seen as a successor to Luther who became a preacher of resistance. With regard to Niemöller’s conflict between nationalistic loyalty and Nazi church policy, Barnett brought his attitude to the concept of a “loyal resister”.

Malte Dücker (Frankfurt) suggested that Niemöller should be viewed from the perspective of cultural studies as a figure of memory. He distinguished phases of reception, which were characterized by companions of the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche, or BK), church-historical heroization, and the deconstruction of Niemöller legends in response to them. Niemöller was portrayed as a Christian who confronted the rulers like Luther in Worms, or as a socio-political Protestant who appeared like a biblical prophet (i.e. Jeremiah). He was perceived as an authentic personality. In contrast, narrative contextualization of today’s post-heroic society shows him as an ambivalent hero with fractures and contradictions. An artistic form (musical, drama, film) could be suitable for this.

The lectures in Section II were devoted to Niemöller’s reception in European Protestantism and dealt especially with the period after 1945. Frédéric Rognon (Strasbourg), who presented the first French biography on Niemöller in 2020, made clear that his name is generally unknown in France today. Before 2020, only one book about him and one by him had been published: in 1938 an anonymous, hagiographically colored writing about the everyday life of the Dahlem pastor, in 1946 a brochure with four texts about German guilt, which hardly allowed French readers to understand Niemöller’s special situation. To this day, he is not recognized in France because he was German and a pastor, and especially in secular France there is a strong distrust of religious people. Moreover, for the Protestant minority, he is overshadowed by Bonhoeffer. But it is precisely the paradoxical character of his life and thought that encourages people to identify with Niemöller.

Stephen Plant (Cambridge) outlined how the relationship between Niemöller and Karl Barth changed from casual allies in the 1930s to respectful friends after 1945. For both, he said, the Lutheran churches offered a common front. Barth had seen in Niemöller “too good a German” and “too good a Lutheran.” After the end of the war, he honored him as a symbol of resistance and reaffirmed his full confidence in Niemöller when it came to the future path of the church in Germany and a confession of guilt. He also noted Niemöller’s “blind spot for church diplomacy” and admonished him in 1951 to concentrate his energies. The confessional synod in Barmen (1934) had made Barth and Niemöller colleagues, the church conference in Treysa (1945) friends.

Wilken Veen (Amsterdam) spoke about the reception of Niemöller’s appearances and speeches in the Netherlands. There he is one of the ten best-known Germans. Niemöller was very popular as a resistance fighter after 1945; he was identified with the Confessing Church and was acclaimed like a movie star during his first visit in 1946. Franz Hildebrandt’s anonymous writing of 1938 had been translated immediately. Although a nationalist, Niemöller had preached biblical sermons. His sermons in the Netherlands had been evangelistic and missionary, and only in his speeches had he expressed himself politically.

Peter Morée (Prague) illuminated Niemöller’s relationship with Josef L. Hromádka against the backdrop of the special situation of the Czech Protestant Church as a minority church in an Eastern Bloc state. Church and state were ecumenically isolated here after 1945. Hromádka had contacts with Karl Barth and the Confessing Church. Without him there would have been no ecumenical relations. Niemöller came to Prague in 1954; his visit had been in the interest of the Politburo of the Communist Party since 1951. He and Hromádka would have known that their friendship was determined by the political agenda. The Christian Peace Conference (CFK) had been founded in 1958 together with representatives of the BK (including Iwand, Vogel and Gollwitzer) in response to the refusal of the World Council of Churches (WCC) to cooperate with the World Peace Council (WFR), which had existed since 1950.

Section III focused on Niemöller as a preacher and theologian. Alf Christophersen (Wuppertal) problematized Niemöller’s position between Lutheranism and Catholicism. In his notes of 1939, there was only one church for Niemöller; his exclusive model only allowed being Catholic or Protestant. From his point of view, Luther’s mistake had been that there was no longer any magisterial authority; the confessional writings could not be updated. Niemöller had formed an ideal image of Catholicism. Later, he did not see a plural Protestantism, but polarized it through his declamatory preaching.

Michael Heymel (Limburg/Lahn) presented Niemöller in three ecclesiastical fields of work—as preacher, theologian, and ecumenist. Niemöller’s sermons from 1945 to 1981, unlike those of the Dahlem period, have not yet been critically edited, and comparative studies are lacking. Niemöller had always wanted to preach Jesus Christ as the only Lord and to reach people in the reality of their lives. As a Bible-oriented theologian, influenced by Luther and Prussian Pietism, and one who was concerned with faith and the church as a Christocratic brotherhood, he criticized an academic theology without reference to the congregation. As an ecumenist, he said, he worked for communion with Christ in all churches and the “brotherhood of all people” and adhered to the WCC’s programmatic objectives. “The time of the white man is over,” he declared, adding that one must adjust to an ecumenism not dominated by the West.

Lukas Bormann (Marburg) devoted himself to Niemöller’s approach to the Bible in the Dahlem sermons, first emphasizing the importance of scriptural interpretation in the sermon and the service in a cognitive science perspective as a religious ritual. As a preacher in 1933-1937, Niemöller stood in a unique way for the religious distinctiveness of Protestantism. In his sermons on Volkstrauertag, or Heldengedenktag from 1934 on, there was no enthusiasm for war and no heroic pathos, but rather an increasing distancing from the National Socialist instrumentalization of “heroic remembrance.” The preacher addressed a “we” beyond the National Socialist state, created solidarity among those who positioned themselves beyond National Socialism, and strengthened the individual. Admittedly, an ethical orientation in the sense of a ‘church for others’ (Kirche für andere) was missing.

Matthias Ehmann (Ewersbach) pointed to a forward-looking theological contribution of Niemöller to the transnational responsibility of the churches. At the WCC World Conference on Migration in June 1961, Niemöller, at the beginning of his term as one of the presidents of the WCC, called on the churches to show solidarity with non-Christian migrants. He referred to the image of the Good Samaritan and stressed that mission to people in need took precedence over church structures. An increase in churches founded by migrants was to be expected, he said. Ehmann praised Niemöller’s speech as a differentiated contribution to interreligious dialogue that took into account the growing diversity of the churches.

Section IV turned to the leading figure of the Pfarrernotbund and later church president. Thomas Martin Schneider (Koblenz-Landau) characterized the Barmen Theological Declaration (BTD) as a church-political and theological consensus paper and confession of basic Reformation truths, which was received differently in the two wings of the Confessing Church. The BTD did not contain a political program, but after 1945 it was claimed politically for different goals. It had been called the “sum” of Niemöller’s theology, although as late as 1934 he referred to theological teachers such as Wehrung and Althaus who were in tension with the BTD. He was concerned with the one ecclesiastical office of preaching, whereas the fourth Barmen thesis speaks of ministries of equal rank. Niemöller had no understanding for Lutheran concerns—the experience of Barmen was more important to him than the theology of the BTD. All in all, he only took up the Christocentrism of the first thesis, but showed hardly any interest in the other theses.

Gisa Bauer (Karlsruhe) looked at the relationship between Niemöller and the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau (EKHN) from the perspective of the history of perception. In the official self-representation of the EKHN, Niemöller stood for a political church. The radical wing of the EKHN had voted for him as church president. Pastors of this direction had been strongly positioned in Hesse; the regional council of brethren had elected him as chairman in 1946. Niemöller helped to shape the first thrusts of the politicization of the EKHN, after which he became its symbol. The commemorative publication of 1982 and funeral and memorial speeches of 1984 elevated him to the pantheon of the political church. It is difficult to separate the symbolic and the historical person, Bauer pointed out.

Jolanda Gräßel-Farnbauer (Marburg) showed how Niemöller positioned himself in the process towards equality for women in church positions. While he was initially ambiguous in the church synod and in 1955 still argued from the basis of creation-related biological differences between men and women, in 1958-1959 he argued for a law on women pastors, which paved the way for equality. In 1969, he even proposed Marianne Queckbörner, then only 37 years old, to the synod as church president, but Helmut Hild was elected. The EKHN still does not have a woman as church president at its head. How it would have developed if Niemöller’s suggestion had been followed stimulates the historical imagination considerably. Niemöller had taken a positive attitude towards women vicars in the church struggle. He did not share the anti-feminism of some representatives of the Confessing Church, who denied women the administration of the sacraments.

Finally, Section V focused on Barmen and the legacy of the Confessing Church, with two lectures examining Niemöller in the light of his relationship with two fellow Confessing Church members in the postwar period. Gerard C. den Hertog (Amsterdam) spoke about Niemöller’s and Hans Joachim Iwand’s common path from national Protestantism to the ecumenical peace movement. Iwand came from eastern Germany, was a soldier and became involved in the Freikorps in 1921. As a theologian, he presented a polemical Luther. Niemöller had known Iwand since September 1934 and had received his Luther studies, which advocated the doctrine of justification, in the concentration camp. As a Dortmund pastor, Iwand was committed to Jews; there was no anti-Semitism in him. Niemöller had been “the closest of friends” with him and had written to him: “We understand each other before we talk to each other.”

On the other hand, Hannah M. Kreß (Münster) made clear how the relationship between Niemöller and Hans Asmussen changed between 1945 and 1948. The latter had been involved in the Reich Church since 1933, was active at the Church College in Berlin and supported Else Niemöller during her husband’s imprisonment. Conflicts broke out in Treysa, where Asmussen became the head of the Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands (EKD) church chancellery. He was concerned that the brethren councils might gain too much influence among the Lutherans. In a letter to him in 1946, Niemöller had reckoned with the founding of the EKD. It lacked the connection to Barmen. He feared an understanding of ministry in the EKD that he considered to be hierarchical in the style of Catholicism. Asmussen had come into conflict with the Council of the EKD and left office in 1948. In that year, Niemöller had broken off his friendship with him. An important role in the alienation process was played by the disagreement over the church’s participation in public political activities.

Arno Helwig (Berlin) reported on remembrance work at the Martin Niemöller House in Berlin-Dahlem, which served as a peace center in the intellectual environment of Gollwitzer and Marquardt from 1980 to 2007 and was shaped as such by Pastor Claus-Dieter Schulze. After 2007, it became a memory and learning space. The former pastor in Dahlem, Marion Gardei, is now the commissioner for remembrance culture in the Evangelische Kirche Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische Oberlausitz (EKBO). In 2018-2019, the house was reopened with a permanent exhibition covering the topics of Jews, human rights, social responsibility and resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. Niemöller’s work after 1945, however, is almost completely missing.

What remains of the Confessing Church? Who carries on the memory of it? Harry Oelke (Munich) took up these questions about the significance of the legacy of Barmen for today’s Protestantism, limiting himself to the German Protestantism of the regional churches. Four phases of the culture of remembrance of the Confessing Church can be distinguished: (1) a contemporary witness-supported communicative memory formation (1945-1970), in which church history was written by and about participants and, with the exception of Niemöller’s call to repentance, no self-critical remembrance was practiced (“Confessing Church myth”); (2) a politicization, polarization, and pluralization of Christian value concepts (1970-1989); (3) a canonization (1990-2005), in which the Confessing Church had become a part of Protestant identity. (4) The present perspectives (since 2005) have been characterized by the loss of contemporary witnesses, the end of the culture of excitement, an objectification of the culture of historical scholarship and, in some tension with this, a tendency towards moral evaluation.

The final discussion circled around open questions and tasks of further research. 75 years after the end of the war, there is a danger that the Protestant Church will shirk its responsibility for the legacy of the Confessing Church, especially since the EKD is planning a considerable reduction in funding for the Institute for Contemporary Church History. Who would be the bearer of the memory of the Confessing Church in the future was up in the air. Benjamin Ziemann made it clear that he was against renaming institutions that bear Niemöller’s name. It remains to be considered how Niemöller could be present in a contemporary form in the practical culture of remembrance. Dahlem, with its new exhibition, stands as an example of how the memory of Niemöller is possible in a post-migrant society.

Research will focus on clarifying open questions about Niemöller’s understanding of preaching after 1945, his ecumenical commitment against colonialism and racism, and his attitude toward the state of Israel. For this purpose, further sources have to be opened up for scholarship, such as Niemöller’s unedited sermons after 1945, the sources on his activities as president of the World Council of Churches or also as head of the administrative council of the Palestine Association. Terms such as ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘resistance’ need to be further differentiated and clarified in relation to Niemöller. When it comes to the Confessing Church, the concept of resistance should in any case not be too narrowly defined. Finally, theological and non-theological perspectives of the perception of the life and work of Martin Niemöller must be combined.

A conference volume is to be published in the series “Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte” (AKIZ.B) by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen.

* This paragraph was edited for clarity after publication.

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

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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.

[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.