Category Archives: Volume 30 Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Letter from the Editors (Fall 2024)

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Letter from the Editors (Fall 2024)

By Lauren Faulkner Rossi, Simon Fraser University

Dear Friends,

Bells collected from Westphalia in 1943. Image from Stiftung Kloster Dalheim, LWL-Landesmuseum für Klosterkultur, ed., _Und vergib uns unsere Schuld? Kirchen und Klöster im Nationalsozialismus._ See Kevin Spicer’s review of the book in this issue.

As we near the end of September, I am again tardy in posting our latest issue. My apologies for the unforeseen delays, but I hope it’s worth the wait.

First, I am excited to announce once more that we have grown our editorial board! Please join me in welcoming Maria Mitchell, from Franklin & Marshall College; Michael E. O’Sullivan, from Marist College; and Blake McKinney, from Texas Baptist College. I think I speak on behalf of all of our editors when I say how pleased I am that we’ve been able to grow our ranks as we have this year. This trio brings with them significant contributions in research and writing to central European history, the history of gender and sexuality, international Protestantism, and postwar reconciliation.

This issue features a bevy of reviews. For our book reviews we have a double contribution from Martin Menke, writing on Johannes Sachslehner’s biography of controversial Bishop Alois Hudal as well as on Giuliana Chamedes’ study of the Vatican response to communism and fascism. Dirk Schuster offers an examination of Oliver Arnhold’s examination of the Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life. Beth Griech-Polelle writes an overview of Klara Kardos’s Auschwitz journal. We have two article notes: Rebecca Carter-Chand relates Bastiaan Bouwman’s recent analysis of the World Council of Churches during the Cold War, and Kyle Jantzen surveys Franz Hildebrandt’s broadcasts into Nazi Germany via the BBC, as reviewed by William Skiles. Finally, Kevin P. Spicer gives us a glimpse into an exhibition on church and monastery life during the Third Reich, currently on display at Dalheim Monastery.

Next month, members of our editorial board will be meeting with editors of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (KZG) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. I am excited at the prospect of seeing familiar faces and meeting new ones, and I look forward to sharing a full report on the meeting in our December issue.

Our December issue promises to be the fullest of 2024. It will include multiple book and article reviews as well as reports from major academic conference, including the GSA and Lessons & Legacies. I invite you, as the reader, to let us know about any major conferences, exhibitions, websites, or films that we should know about to review, by contacting me directly.

On behalf of my associate editors and the editorial board,

Lauren Faulkner Rossi, Simon Fraser University

Kindly note: the editorial board of the CCHQ reserves the right to consider requests for translations of articles by contributors. Please direct your request to Lauren Faulkner Rossi at lnf@sfu.ca.

Review of Giuliana Chamedes, A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Review of Giuliana Chamedes, A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019). ISBN 978-0-674-98342-7.

By Martin Menke, Rivier University

In this useful volume, Giuliana Chamedes describes the Catholic Church’s efforts to resist what it considered the dangerous ideologies of the modern world. She presents not only communism and National Socialism as the enemies of faith, but in the most crucial contribution of the work, she demonstrates that the Church resisted and rejected what it perceived to be American liberalism and materialism. She argues that, to oppose liberalism and especially communism, the Church made common cause with fascist regimes. She describes these efforts as a crusade, which is an unusual choice of word, laden with historical and also contradictory meaning. Using the term “crusade” to refer to the attempted conquests of the Holy Land several centuries ago is problematic. The term is more appropriate if one defines a crusade as an organized effort by the Church to regain influence on the European continent. Chamades’ interpretation of the Vatican’s efforts to combat modern ideologies ever since Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum as part of an organized campaign to regain political and moral influence justifies the term “crusade.” Chamades, however, goes beyond the broad term “crusade” to argue for the existence of a Catholic “International,” a term suggesting a centrally-organized, conscious effort with national and regional branches. Instead, the sources indicate an effort that might better be described as a theme or leitmotif rather than an organized campaign. Thus, while Chamades demonstrates consistent anti-communist efforts by various Vatican offices, these efforts fall short of an institutionalized and centrally organized campaign. There is no evidence of an organized or institutionalized Catholic “International.” Nonetheless, the work has some interesting points to offer.

Chamedes summarizes the existing scholarship concerning the Church’s fight against communism and its willingness to collaborate with fascism. However, her insights about the fear of Western liberalism and materialism are novel and worth exploring further. For example, she cites Vatican archival records in which editor of the Code of Canon Law Eugenio Pacelli, future nuncio to Germany, Cardinal Secretary of State, and Pope, stated his fear that the U.S. entry into World War I was part of the campaign to secularize Europe. [2] The author argues that the Church perceived President Woodrow Wilson as determined to destroy the Church. As Chamades shows, the Church’s fear of liberalism lasted well beyond World War II. After World War I, the Church saw itself engaged in an existential struggle with liberalism, which explains its willingness to work with fascist regimes that opposed both liberalism as well as socialism.

The author suggests that the papal peace plan of 1917 and the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law that same year constituted efforts to gain influence in international relations by reviving papal diplomacy. The Church sought to promote its values by integrating provisions of the new Code of Canon Law into concordats to curb the influences of socialism and liberalism. The church sought to retain legal control over marriages and education. Chamedes shows that this new papal diplomacy by concordat succeeded only when the country in question also considered such agreements advantageous. For example, the Baltic Republics and Poland believed the concordats affirmed their national sovereignty. The Church also usually conceded to the state some influence over appointing influential national church leaders. [44] When in 1925, the Vatican established a Polish metropolitan see at Vilnius, however, Lithuania broke off concordat negotiations before an authoritarian regime concluded a concordat in 1927. [62-63]

Chamedes discusses scholarly literature and sources referring to the “Catholic International” compared to the Communist International and similar organizations, but she does not fully define the term, nor does she provide evidence of a Catholic International. [6, 86] While the term “Catholic internationalism” describes the Church’s universalist claims well, the term “International,” especially when capitalized, suggests something much more formal and suggests a structure comparable to the Communist “International.” That idea suggests more centralized power over national churches than the papacy ever possessed. Also, the fascist regimes with which the Church cooperated – never unconditionally and rarely wholeheartedly – rejected internationalism, a contradiction that Chamedes does not address. In fact, in its propaganda, the National Socialist regime told a tale of secret Catholic ambitions to control the world. The closest the Church came to an open claim to world leadership was its vehement rejection of the League of Nations, another Wilsonian idea. Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, declared the League superfluous since the Church was the one true global league. [55] With some justification, other Church officials denounced the League as a tool of the war’s victors to control international affairs.

Between the end of World War I and the early Cold War, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli played an essential role in Vatican diplomacy, first as one of the editors of the Code of Canon Law, then as nuncio to Bavaria and Germany, then as Cardinal Secretary of State, and finally as Pope Pius XII. Chamades accurately narrates Pacelli’s turn to a fiercely anti-communist and more antisemitic position based on his experiences as nuncio in Munich during the revolutionary period 1918-1919. (80) Chamades suggests Pacelli embraced the popular notion of Judeo-Bolshevism and encouraged the Bavarian People’s Party, which had broken away from the (Catholic) German Center Party, to establish Bavaria as a base against the perils of communism [90]. Chamades stresses that Pacelli adopted this stance well before the Vatican relinquished hopes of achieving a modus operandi with the Soviet government in the later 1920s. Chamades argues that Pacelli urged his predecessor as Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Gasparri, to pursue an aggressive anti-communist agenda. [104]

While increasingly the Church focused on anti-communism, anti-liberalism remained a common denominator between the Church and fascist regimes. Chamades explains how Italian fascism, initially anti-clerical, changed course out of consideration that the Church was an enemy of communism. [96] Chamades emphasizes Mussolini’s early anti-liberal turn, which the anti-communist campaign later superseded. According to Chamades, the Church responded to communism and liberalism by promoting its model of an ideal civil society, organized around “Catholic Action,” a renewed attempt to tie Catholics to civic organizations arranged within a parochial, diocesan, and universal Catholic hierarchy. [112] Of all the early twentieth-century Vatican initiatives, Catholic Action was the most organized and institutional, though still largely ineffective in rallying the faithful. Catholic Action’s aims to organize all Catholics led to the Church’s first open conflict with Italian fascism, a conflict then repeated with all other authoritarian regimes.

Intending to resolve such differences, the Vatican began negotiating a concordat with fascist Italy. Pope and Duce each intended the subsequent Lateran Agreements of 1929, ostensibly concluded to resolve their conflicts, to advance their own interests, which led to continued tension. [117] Concordats were no longer measures to impose Catholic Canon Law and Catholic moral teaching on the state, but rather defensive agreements to secure existing rights. The Lateran Agreements gravely disappointed anti-fascist Catholic politicians such as Luigi Sturzo and Alcide de Gasperi. Chamades demonstrates that the financial terms of the Lateran Agreements, primarily their financial and bond payments by Italy to the Holy See, exposed the Vatican to global economic turmoil in new and devastating ways. [122] To put the Catholic social teaching of Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum in the context of the post-war world and the Great Depression, Pope Pius XI again related liberalism and socialism to one another as erroneous ideologies destined to lead the faithful astray. Discussing the aftermath of Quadragesimo Anno, Chamades again refers to a Vatican anti-communist “campaign.” The term “campaign” denotes organized and coordinated efforts. While Chamades cites the most relevant scholarly works before the establishment of the Secretariat for Atheism in the later 1930s, the argument lacks a smoking gun. She does not mention a meeting, correspondence, or institution that launched such a campaign. Yes, the Vatican’s efforts after Quadragesimo Anno no longer sought any accommodation with communist regimes, but there is no evidence of a campaign against communism. Instead, it seems as if an anti-communist Zeitgeist might be a better term than “campaign.” According to Vatican archival documents cited by Chamades, by 1931, Pope Pius XI determined that communism was the most dangerous enemy of the hour, but he did not launch an anti-communist campaign. [125] Chamades points out that Pacelli was the driving force behind the pope’s anti-communism, which by April 1932 had come to dominate the Holy See’s ideological concerns. [134] According to Chamades, a 1932 circular by Pacelli, now Cardinal Secretary of State, “proposed to launch an anticommunist campaign.” [125] Since the document is crucial to Chamades’ arguments, one wishes she had discussed it in more detail, especially regarding its consequences. What did Pacelli mean by the term “anti-communist campaign?” Again, a campaign requires organization and leadership. Did this ever come to be? Did Pacelli intend something like the creation of the Secretariat of Atheism? A later discussion of the “anti-communist campaign” provides no further explanation except to equate Catholic internationalism with the media “campaigns” of the 1930s. Missing is proof of any organized campaign. (132)

While Chamades correctly identifies anti-communism as the European hierarchy’s primary concern, she underestimates the Church’s continuing wariness of fascism, as for example with the German episcopate’s 1931 condemnation of fascism, to which she does not give sufficient attention. (138) Until the late 1920s, the Vatican had sought some accommodation with the Soviet regime and had devoted charitable aid to the regions stricken by the Russian Civil War. It is essential, however, to consider the Church’s growing anti-communism in connection with the Vatican’s increasing concern with Mussolini’s fascism and German National Socialism. Neither ideology developed in ways compatible with Catholic teaching. Furthermore, concerning the National Socialist rise to power, Chamades follows a familiar but deeply flawed argument when she claims it was an easy path from the March 1933 Enabling Act to the Concordat signed that July. All evidence, much of it available since the 1960s, proves how tortuous the negotiations were, and how the Vatican sought to gain every possible advantage. Chamades herself relies heavily on Vatican records, but not on all of them. Her use of the Vatican correspondence with papal nuncio in Berlin Cesare Orsenigo and the correspondence between Jesuit Superior General Wlodimir Ledochowski and the Vatican is beneficial. Still, she ignores other Vatican archival records relating to such processes as the Reich concordat negotiations. In particular, it would have been useful had she used the documents published by Father Ludwig Volk, SJ, and Alfons Kuppers. (Ludwig Volk, Kirchliche Akten über die Reichskonkordatsverhandlungen 1933. Mainz: Mathias-Grunewald-Verlag, 1969. Alfons Kupper, Staatliche Akten über die Reichskonkordatsverhandlungen 1933. Mainz: Mathias-Grunewald-Verlag, 1969).

While the fascist governments in Berlin and Rome violated the concordats as much as they observed them, Chamades shows that forces in the Vatican now called for a single-minded focus on anti-communism. In late 1933, Jesuit Superior General Wlodimir Ledochowski convinced Pius XI to establish a “Secretariat on Atheism.” [146] Chamades explains the considerable public relations activity of the Secretariat across Europe; one wonders how effective the Secretariat was in influencing not only members of the hierarchy but also the faithful. How much was the average Catholic aware of this centrally coordinated campaign? Furthermore, while Chamades convincingly shows the extent of the Vatican’s anti-communist “campaign” across the continent, one has to wonder how much fascist regimes desired to encourage widespread media work by the Church. Furthermore, the question again arises of how organized and centralized efforts must be to qualify as a campaign. It seems as if different Vatican offices pursued anti-communist efforts because they knew these were in line with the leitmotif of anti-communism, not because someone centrally coordinated their efforts.

While one might think that the establishment of the Secretariat marked the end of anti-fascist concerns, Chamades acknowledges that the Church in the early 1930s was preparing a new Syllabus of Errors to condemn both communism as well as fascism. The Church abandoned this thrust not only because of the opposition of Ledochowski, but also under the influence of the Popular Front victory in Spanish elections. [172-173] Alongside many scholars, Chamades criticizes the relatively weak language in the 1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge and notes, in contrast, that in the anti-communist encyclical Divini Redemptoris released five days later, the Vatican pulled no punches. Following the condemnation of communism in Mexico in Firmissimam Constantiam, these three encyclicals made clear that the Church now considered communism, not totalitarianism, to be the greatest threat of the twentieth century. While much of the narrative recounted here is well known, Chamades provides a useful summary and some helpful distinctions. Her global perspective is helpful.

Once the newly elected Pius XII and those around him suppressed the draft of Pius XI’s encyclical condemning racism outright and when, a year later, World War Two broke out, the Church seemed firmly on the side of all anti-communist forces. Comparing the Church’s position in World War II to that in World War I, Chamades notes that the Church had virtually no allies in the second war and that the Vatican developed no significant diplomatic activity, an assessment surprising to any historian familiar with the Vatican during that time. Faced with Pius XII’s supposed inaction, Chamades argues an internal opposition arose within the Church. When Cardinal Pacelli became Pope Pius XII, however, the Vatican reaffirmed its centralizing and hierarchical approach to church leadership, in which there was little room for dissent. The outbreak of war, however, limited the ability to engage in any efforts to combat communism and subjected the Church to an increasingly assault by National Socialism. Both to those hoping for a pontiff more critical of fascism as well as for the Catholic leaders of newly invaded Poland, the first encyclical of Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, proved a disappointment because it lacked a clear condemnation of the German invasion and its consequences. Those Catholics whom the Vatican’s inaction disappointed began to demand greater Catholic engagement for peace. Men like Don Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and Henri de Lubac forcefully made their case in whatever press would publish their work. Additional efforts by Sturzo and Maritain, whom Chamades calls Catholic internationalists, to convince Pius XII to take a more active stand failed. This inspired a new type of Catholic activist, those committed to a peace based on Christian democracy.

Chamades demonstrates that Vatican attitudes shifted after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the U.S. entry into the war. [220-222] The pope did not endorse the German invasion. Furthermore, he agreed to urge the American bishops to support the lend-lease agreement. Her discussion of the papacy’s response to the Shoah is limited to a few pages in which she notes that bishops informed the Vatican of the deportations of Jews and that the Vatican could have done far more to help Jews. On the one hand, this brevity is a wise choice, given the vast and contradictory scholarly literature on the subject. Chamades could have developed the complexity of her argument. Does she consider national socialist antisemitism an instance of concurrence between longstanding Catholic antisemitism and a modern ideology? On the other hand, given the German promotion of a “crusade against Bolshevism” and the thesis she is trying to prove, a more detailed discussion of the Catholic response to the Shoah would have been helpful. Chamades points out, that the Vatican did not welcome the public appeals for an outspoken condemnation of National Socialist atrocities. [228] Nonetheless, Catholic dissidents, as Chamades calls them, continued to speak up and began to organize to create a post-war world based on Christian principles, especially on a commitment to freedom and peace. Eventually, these would become the post-war Christian Democrats. She points out that “after the war, the papacy also agreed to work with Europe’s new Christian Democratic parties” [236] and even endorsed the United Nations, part of the Vatican’s general shift to greater cooperation and engagement with other civil society organizations. And yet, the Vatican’s new understanding of democracy was not one of total liberty but of freedom based on Catholic moral teaching. A more probing analysis of how, why, and with what consequences the war transformed the Vatican’s values would have enriched the work.

Beginning in 1945, the Vatican feared that the Western allies were too accommodating of the Soviet Union and were willing to hand over Eastern Europe. Chamades points out that, in contrast to the Church’s wartime failure to share information about atrocities in Eastern Europe, it now broadly shared all news of communist persecution of the Church and the faithful. [245] Furthermore, Pope Pius XII sought the aid of the United States to combat the growth of communist parties in Western Europe, which represented an abandonment of the Church’s interwar anti-liberal criticism of the United States. Despite these tactical changes, the Church envisioned a Europe formed of Christian states. It became suspicious of Christian Democratic movements when these, building on the wartime criticism within the Church, insisted on their independence from the Catholic hierarchy. [250] Chamades might have noted that the interwar Catholic parties also jealously guarded their independence from the Vatican. She claims that a new Christian Democratic International arose from the discussions of post-war Christian Democratic groups, but again, there was no such organization.

Chamades shows that, in the postwar era, the Vatican could not exercise the influence which it had expected in a post-war world. A brief period of goodwill towards the United States and the new Christian Democrats soon gave way to criticism and mistrust of both as too independent in the case of the Christian Democrats and too rooted in anti-Catholicism in the case of the United States. As Chamedes herself shows, the Vatican feared that Christian Democracy was insufficiently immune to communist. Also, Christian Democratic political parties and actors proved increasingly independent of the Vatican. The Vatican again became critical of the United States. [282] According to Chamedes, the resurgence of American Protestant anti-Catholicism and the break in U.S. diplomatic representation to the Vatican contributed to a revival of Vatican anti-Americanism, expressed as fears of American hegemony and materialism. This seemingly left the Vatican without political allies.

In the 1950s, new criticisms arose against the Vatican. The Church’s failure to side with anti-imperialist movements in the developing world led to further alienation. [286] Another challenge to Church authority and legitimacy arose via the accusations by journalists, scholars, and others of Church complicity with the National Socialist regime. In many ways, the 1950s marked the nadir of Church influence in Europe. Chamades argues that the Second Vatican Council represented Pope John XXIII’s recognition that the influence of the Vatican and of the broader over the faithful in private and public life was waning, and that the policies of his predecessors had led the Church to a dead-end.

Consequently, as Chamades convincingly explains, the Second Vatican Council overthrew much of what the Vatican leadership had considered self-evident about Church-state relations and about Church power and authority. She argues that the new Apostolic Constitutions, such as Lumen Gentium and Dignitatis Humanae, on the one hand, attempted to meet the expectations of many who demanded change in the post-war Church while at the same time proving unable to relinquish dogmatic claims to represent the one true path to salvation. Chamedes argues that Gaudium et Spes, the constitution explaining how Catholics and their Church should function in a modern, pluralistic society, constituted a rejection of the concordat strategy employed during the first half of the twentieth century. [301] Instead, the Second Vatican Council suggested a way forward in cooperation with other faiths and other ideologies as long as they authentically promoted human welfare.

In the conclusion, Chamedes argues that the Vatican’s policies of the 1930s sowed the seeds for the demand for reform that became vocal after 1945. The Church’s reform efforts of the 1960s came too late; too many Catholics were already heading out the door. [312] Chamades argues that Humanae Vitae accelerated the exodus. In contrast, Pope John Paul II promoted Church leaders who were critical of the Second Vatican Council and more comfortable with cold-war anti-communism. Despite this decline in Vatican authority over the faithful, Chamedes argues that the Church remains a powerful actor on the world stage thanks to its moral pulpit.

Review of Oliver Arnhold, “Entjudung” von Theologie und Kirche: Das Eisenacher “Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben” 1939–1945

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Review of Oliver Arnhold, “Entjudung” von Theologie und Kirche: Das Eisenacher “Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben” 1939–1945 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2020). ISBN: 9783374066223; 245 Pp.

Dirk Schuster, University of Vienna

If you have a look at church history during the Third Reich, you will quickly come across the “Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life” (Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben). Susannah Heschel began to work on the history of this “De-Judaization Institute” with her first contributions in the 1990s. In 2008, she published The Aryan Jesus, the first monograph to focus on the “Eisenach Institute” and its key protagonists.[1] Just two years later, Oliver Arnhold published his doctoral thesis on the “De-Judaization Institute”, which, in two volumes of over 900 pages, provides a detailed description of its origins, structure, publications and staff.[2]

Ten years later, Arnhold has published a condensed version of his doctoral thesis. In 245 pages, he tells the history of the establishment of the largest research institute in the Third Reich that dealt with the so-called “Jewish question”. Promoted by the Thuringian German Christian Church Movement (Kirchenbewegung Deutsche Christen), the institute was opened at Wartburg Castle in Eisenach – one of the most important places for Protestants –in May 1939 with the intention of tracing and eliminating all Jewish influences within (Protestant) Christianity. The aim was to prove – on its own initiative, without state influence, supported by various Protestant regional churches and with the collaboration of renowned professors – that Jesus of Nazareth, and with him Christianity as a whole, had always stood in extreme contrast to Judaism. Jews, however, had distorted the true message of Jesus, which the Eisenach Institute was to bring to light again. Accordingly, some of the staff also saw themselves as completing Luther’s Reformation. Luther had liberated Christianity from the papacy in the sixteenth century. Now, under the rule of the “God-sent Führer” Adolf Hitler, the time had come to accomplish in full Luther’s Reformation and remove all alleged Jewish influences from Christianity. The message of Jesus and, indeed, his entire person were to be “de-Judaized” (entjudet) – nothing more and nothing less.

In the first part of the book, Arnhold devotes himself to the institute’s prehistory, i.e. how the Eisenach Institute came to be founded in the first place. The German Christians are discussed, and Arnhold devotes a separate chapter to Walter Grundmann, the scientific director and spiritus rector of the institute, as well as the infamous Godesberg Declaration. At this meeting in March 1939, attended by leading church representatives from most German Protestant regional churches, Christianity was defined as the greatest possible opposition to Judaism and the founding of the “De-Judaization Institute” was decided.

In the second part of the book, Arnhold focuses on the opening of the institute at Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, the place where Martin Luther had translated the Bible into German. Individual chapters are devoted to the structure, thematic research topics inside the working groups like the origin of Jesus and German piety, the “de-Judaization” of the New Testament and the Protestant hymnal, the relationship with the state and the Nazi Party, and the dissolution of the institute in 1945. The respective careers of institute employees after 1945, which Arnhold describes on eleven pages, are always shocking. There were very few postwar professional restrictions for former employees, despite their antisemitic writings up until 1945.

Anyone familiar with the subject of the Eisenach Institute will not find anything new in this book. However, this is not the author’s intention so much as he wishes to present a compact overview of the German Christian Church Movement and the Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life. He has succeeded well in summarizing his doctoral thesis on which this book is based. For those readers who are not yet familiar with the history of the Eisenach Institute, the book offers a quick and easy-to-understand insight into the subject.

Notes:

[1] Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008).

[2] Oliver Arnhold, Kirche im Abgrund. Vol. 1: Die Thüringer Kirchenbewegung Deutsche Christen 1928–1939; Vol. 2: Das »Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben« 1939–1945 (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 2010).

Review of Stiftung Kloster Dalheim, LWL-Landesmuseum für Klosterkultur, eds., Und vergib uns unsere Schuld? Kirchen und Klöster im Nationalsozialismus

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Review of Stiftung Kloster Dalheim, LWL-Landesmuseum für Klosterkultur, eds., Und vergib uns unsere Schuld? Kirchen und Klöster im Nationalsozialismus (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2024).

By Kevin P. Spicer, Stonehill College

The exhibition “And forgive us our sins? Churches and Monasteries under National Socialism” runs from May 17, 2024, to May 18, 2025, at the Stiftung Kloster Dalheim in Lichtenau near Paderborn. Founded by Augustinian canons in the fifteenth century, the Dalheim monastery was a victim of early nineteenth-century secularization and was used for regional agricultural purposes afterward. In 2002, the Westfalen-Lippe Regional Authority (LWL) transformed the ruins and grounds of the former Augustinian monastery into a state museum and created a permanent exhibition on monastic life and culture in 2007. Further renovations and provisions from 2008 to 2010 enabled the housing of additional exhibits, including “Churches and Monasteries under National Socialism.” I visited the exhibition in mid-July 2024, reaching it by rental car as public transportation was limited. This review will combine my experience of the exhibition and a review of the essays in its companion volume.

The exhibition is well-crafted, offering a thorough and balanced introduction to the history of the Christian churches under National Socialism. At its entrance, a placard lists the curators under the leadership of the Stiftung Kloster Dalheim’s director, Ingo Grabowsky, and the scholarly advisors, Oliver Arnhold of the University of Paderborn; Olaf Blaschke and Hubert Wolf of the University of Münster; Gisela Fleckenstein and Hermann Großevollmer of the Paderborn Archdiocese’s Commission for Contemporary History; Kirsten John-Stucke of the Büren-Wewelsburg District Museum; and Kathrin Pieren of the Westfalen Jewish Museum. As our readers know, Blaschke and Wolf have written extensively about the churches under Nazism. The placard also contains an impressive and extensive list of archives, museums, and libraries, encompassing cities, towns, and institutions across Germany that contributed to the exhibit. Interestingly, there is no mention of Bonn’s influential Commission for Contemporary History or the participation of any of its academic board members.

The curators have organized the exhibit around ten questions. The companion volume follows this format and summarizes the exhibit’s content in an introduction and ten brief, well-cited essays. The companion volume is not a catalog, as it does not contain photos and descriptions of all the exhibit’s photos and items. Instead, it includes select images, vividly reproduced in considerable size, some covering two pages.

In the volume’s forward, Georg Lunemann, the chair of the Stiftung’s board of trustees and director of LWL, and Barbara Röschoff-Parzinger, chair of the Stiftung’s executive board and director of LWL’s cultural affairs, ask the question, “Is Christian faith and belief in National Socialism mutually exclusive?” According to them, the exhibit seeks to help its viewers answer this question by examining the interaction of both lay and ordained church members with the German state. They quote noted German historian Joachim Fest’s father, who originally wrote in Latin, “Even if everyone does it, I do not,” echoing Matthew 26:33. These words remind the visitor and reader of Fest’s resistance under National Socialism and “serve as a reminder and orientation for all of us not to become indifferent, but to face the challenges of our time with courage and knowledge of the past” (7). Indeed, the exhibition’s content endeavors to face the churches’ history under National Socialism with candor.

The Stiftung’s director, Ingo Grabowsky, authors the introductory essay, previewing and contextualizing the exhibit’s content. He points out that the exhibit seeks to aid a visitor to form an opinion about the churches under National Socialism but not to impose one. For him, the situation of the churches was “complex and ambiguous,” inviting the visitor and reader to realize that “we cannot use generalities to characterize the period.” He continues, “Few topics in contemporary history are so emotionally charged and simultaneously so controversial within a discipline. Few evoke such reflexive, morally weighted discussion compared to classical historiography, which first seeks to reconstruct historical events and then to fathom their causes” (10).

While the exhibition presents the history of both Christian traditions, even in the introduction, the curators portray Protestantism as more susceptible to National Socialism. Citing Hubert Wolf, Grabowsky explains that the Roman Catholic Church was the only institution under Nazi Germany that evaded Gleichschaltung (coordination) by which institutions collapsed together and Nazified. This exception allowed Catholicism to challenge the state from a unique position. The number of arrests or fines of members from the two traditions illustrates this point. Under National Socialism, we are told, nine hundred Protestant pastors and laity faced disciplinary action or arrest for faith-based activities compared to approximately 22,700 Catholic priests who endured the same fate. Still, the exhibit’s narrative and Grabowsky’s essay make us aware that reality is more complex than these numbers and, therefore, needs to be deeply studied. Ultimately, he reminds us that there is no unanimous historical opinion about the churches under National Socialism. Instead, we are invited to form views from the evidence presented.

A Stiftung researcher and staff member, Carolin Mischer, authored the first essay, “What was the situation in Germany before 1933?” Both the exhibit and Mischer’s essay well recall the Weimar Republic’s impactful events, such as the Versailles Treaty, reparations, the Weimar constitution, the Ruhr occupation, hyperinflation, the 1923 currency reform, the Golden ‘20s, the 1929 stock market crash, the government’s so-called presidential cabinets, the 1930 election with the NSDAP Reichstag representative increase, and Fritz von Papen’s machinations to promote Hitler. Numerous items representing the material culture of Weimar Germany accompany the exhibit. Most notable is an Electrola recording of Fritzi Massary singing “Jede Frau hat irgendeine Sehnsucht” (Every woman has a longing of some kind). Massary was an actress and singer who, in 1917, converted from Judaism to Protestantism. In 1932, because of antisemitism’s ascendency, she and her husband, the actor Max Pallenberg, left Germany for England, eventually moving to the United States. Her story reinforces the effect of the impact of Nazism’s blood-racial ideology – whereby conversion to Christianity did not alter an individual’s Jewish identity – on German society even before Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

An SS Julleuchter, a candle holder used in Winter Solstice festivals resplacing Christmas (p. 31).

Kirsten John-Stucke next asks, “What position did National Socialism take with Christianity?”, emphasizing that this relationship fluctuated over time as individual Nazis approached the churches differently, spanning the spectrum from collaborating with the churches to seeking to replace or destroy them. Hitler, she pointed out, wanted to coordinate the twenty-eight Protestant state churches under a central bishop. This internal effort ultimately failed under Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller. Next, attempting an external approach, in 1934 Hitler appointed Hanns Kerrl as Reich Church Minister for Church Affairs. He, too, was unsuccessful in unifying the various elements of Protestantism, which generally remained at odds with each other until 1945. Overall, the presentation on the state and Protestantism is convincing. However, the essay and the exhibit might have dug deeper to unpack the diversity among the personalities of the Confessing Church membership and the roles that nationalism and antisemitism played among them. Regarding the state and Catholicism, this exhibit’s section and John-Stucke’s essay primarily examine state-church interactions during seminal events such as the passing of the Concordat, the Oldenburg crucifix affair of November 1936, and the promulgation of the 1937 Vatican encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge. They also examine Martin Bormann’s June 1941 memo, which predicted a doomed vision of Christianity’s future in Germany, in which the churches were repressed, extinguished, and replaced by National Socialism. Both conclude with a fascinating examination of items related to National Socialism’s replacement rites and accompanying “sacramentals,” including a Julleuchter (Yule or Winter Candle) meant to be used in an ersatz Christmas celebration. The one on display and pictured in the companion volume was discovered in the house of a former Waffen-SS soldier. It was well used, complete with hardened wax droppings.

Adolf Hitler and Paul von Hindenberg, Day of Potsdam (p. 35).

Oliver Arnhold then asks the question, “Did Protestant Germany support National Socialism?” by centrally focusing on the infamous 1933 postcard depicting Chancellor Hitler in civilian attire bowing to President Paul von Hindenburg in a medal-covered military uniform. This portrait signified a hope to return to former values, restoring the throne and altar and the preeminence of Protestantism within the German state. Protestants accepted Hitler’s March 23, 1933, promise to make Christianity the foundation of his state. They did not protest the establishment of concentration camps or the gradual exclusion of Jews from German society. Arnhold clarified the complexity of Confessing Church members’ relationship to the state better than the previous essays, pointing out that, although they were opposed to the infiltration of the church by the state, most members did not oppose everything in National Socialism. Overall, Arnhold argues that most Protestants came to terms with National Socialism, and their Church institutionally never issued a public word against the state’s annihilative policies. Instead, in May 1939, their radicals founded the Eisenbach Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on Church Life.

Carolin Mischer makes a second contribution with the essay, “Was the Catholic Church an opponent or a partner of National Socialism?” To frame this question, she presents a chronological threefold model. At first, the Catholic hierarchy rejected National Socialism following the Mainz diocese’s 1930 decision to prohibit Catholics from being Nazi Party members. However, neither Misher nor the exhibit details the bishop’s varied stances on National Socialism. After 1933, the Church came to an arrangement with National Socialism following Hitler’s March 1933 promise to uphold Germany’s Christian nature and the 1933 Concordat’s signing. Misher and the exhibit emphasize that bridge-builders like the theologian Michael Schamus and church historian Joseph Lortz were in the minority. Both highlight the well-known controversy between historians Klaus Scholder and Konrad Repgen regarding the Concordat’s origins. Arrangement eventually led to defense as the state consistently infringed upon the Concordat’s demands, eventually leading to Mit brennender Sorge’s promulgation. Unfortunately, the exhibit and essay frame the encyclical as making more of a critique of the National Socialist racial ideology than it actually did historically. Likewise, both present Bishop Clemens von Galen as an opponent of euthanasia and entirely ignore his nationalistic and antisemitic worldview. Notwithstanding, both emphasize that the bishops, through their pastoral letters, supported the war and encouraged the Catholic faithful in their pastoral letters to be “loyal and obedient to the Führer” while never publicly protesting the persecution and systematic murder of Europe’s Jews. Misher concludes that “resistance to the National Socialist system was left to a brave few” (46).

Hubert Wolf covers the topic, “Did the pope remain silent?”, a theme he has been researching and writing extensively about. Both Wolf’s essay and the exhibit focus on Pius XII’s 1942 Christmas Address, which defenders point to as evidence of the Pope’s protesting the treatment of Jews. Wolf reveals that much of the speech, now missing from the Vatican Archives, was written by Gustav Gundlach, SJ. Nevertheless, most people did not interpret the pope’s words as condemning the systematic murder of Jews. Wolf concludes that the pope was ever so cautious, never even speaking out against the murder of millions of Poles, the majority of whom were Catholic. How, then, does anyone believe that he would condemn what has come to be known as the Shoah when he never bothered to condemn the mass killing of his own flock? Yet Wolf emphasizes that the pope was well informed about the treatment of Jews by nuncios, diplomats, bishops, and laity, Christian and non-Christian, and overwhelmingly through the thousands of letters he received asking for material assistance or emigration support. Wolf and his research team are currently engaged in research in the Vatican archives, organizing and digitizing these letters for an online database project. Overall, the pope remained neutral, writing in a February 20, 1941 letter to Matthias Ehrenfried, the bishop of Würzburg, “Unfortunately, where the Pope wants to speak out loudly, he must remain silent and wait; where he wants to act and help, he must wait patiently” (55). While the exhibit closely follows Wolf’s essay, some of its material culture seems misplaced for a historical exhibit, such as the inclusion of the graphic novel by Bernhard Lecomte, Un pape dans l’historie. Pie XII face au nazisme, vol. I (2020). Likewise, when the display asks, “Was the Pope silent?”, it refers visitors to the translated works of Saul Friedländer, John S. Conway, and Walter Laqueur, who examined this question long before the Vatican archives of this period were opened.

Sonja Rakocyz, a Stiftung researcher, next asks, “Were the churches and monasteries also victims of the regime?” Centering on the totalitarian claim of the German Führer state under National Socialism, both the essay and exhibit examine the areas in which the state directly attacked the churches. Both point to the currency and morality trials instigated by Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels and the confiscation of monasteries and church bells; the latter were melted down and turned into ammunition and other war-waging materials. Most important is the recollection of the often-forgotten story of Dominican Sister Brigitte Hilberling’s condemnation of the murder of Jews in occupied Poland, for which she was denounced and suffered months-long incarceration. Rakocyz concludes her essay by stating that the “churches and monasteries were victims of the National Socialist regime.” In particular, she views religious orders and monasteries as the regime’s “forgotten victims” (64).

The most critical essay, “Reflectance, Contradiction, Resistance?”, by Olaf Blaschke, questions the continued use of Kirchenkampf (church struggle) and Widerstand (resistance), explaining, “There was certainly not a Kirchenkampf, not a struggle of the National Socialist regime against the churches, and not a struggle of the churches against the National Socialist regime. Rather, there were only individual political measures and individual ecclesiastical countermeasures; by and large, there was a high degree of adaptation” (68). For Blaschke, viewing the churches as institutionally engaged in active resistance is incorrect. He is also not keen on using Martin Broszat’s term Resistenz, which denotes standing in the way, often unconsciously, of the total claims and machinery of National Socialism. Blaschke presents Klaus Gott and Hans Günther Hockerts’s fourfold resistance model, from “selective dissatisfaction” to “active resistance,” finding it unhelpful as 95% of Christians did not engage in resistance. Instead, he suggests a fourfold collaboration model, from “selective satisfaction” to “active collaboration.” Blaschke and the exhibit conclude that it was “characteristic of the period from 1933 to 1945 to be able to live both in consensus and contradiction” (74).

An image of ornamental tiles in the Martin Luther Memorial Church, Berlin (p. 77).

Sonja Rakoczy contributes a second essay, “Consensus, Cooperation, Complicity?”, by first highlighting the incorporation of Nazi symbols in church architecture under National Socialism, pointing to the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin Mariendorf, nicknamed the “Nazi-Church.” The essay and exhibit use case studies of specific individuals to illustrate collaboration and complicity, including the Protestant, Abbess Emilie von Möller of Küne Abbey, and the Catholics, Abbot Ildefons Herwegen, OSB of Maria Laach; Father Johannes Strehl of St. Peter and Paul Parish in Potsdam; Father Lorenz Pieper; and Abbott Alban Schachleiter, OSB. Among the collaborators, both include the 1,300-plus military chaplains who supported the war effort by strengthening the soldiers’ morale and the parishes and congregations that benefited from slave labor. Most interesting is the case of the Kaufbeuren-Irsee sanitarium and nursing home staffed by the Mercy Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, who fulfilled the demands of the euthanasia program by feeding their patients a low-nutrition diet to prepare them for transport to murder facilities. After seeking guidance on their participation in such unethical and deadly activity, they received assurance from the pro-Nazi auxiliary bishop Franz X. Eberle of Augsburg to continue the preparations for deportation, encouraging them to see them as a “charitable labor of love” (80). The exhibit reproduces Eberle’s letter in its entirety. Rakoczy concludes that there was a mixture of individual and selective institutional cooperation and participation among members of both Christian churches in the annihilative mechanisms of National Socialism.

At the root of National Socialist ideology was the ostracization and vilification of Jews. To this end, Andreas Joch, a Stiftung researcher, examines “How Christian is antisemitism?” His essay opens with a 1927 quote from Otto Dibelius, the General Superintendent of Kurmark within the Protestant Old Prussian Union, stating, “The Jewish Question is in the first place not a religious but a racial question. The portion of Jewish blood running through the body of our Volk is much higher than the religious statistics indicate” (84). Joch is determined to detach Christian anti-Judaism from antisemitism, writing, “This classification is crucial, as the antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries consciously distanced itself from older, religiously motivated forms of hostility towards Jews supported by the Christian church, which are summarized by the term anti-Judaism. Antisemitism no longer regarded Judaism as a religion but as a race. Christian beliefs were no longer to play a role in their rejection of Judaism” (84). While this may be the case, one must admit that there would be no antisemitism if Christianity had not first demonized Jews biblically and theologically. Joch never acknowledges this truth. For him, “antisemitism is an era-specific phenomenon” (89). Despite this stance, both Joch and the exhibit amply document the progression of anti-Jewish rhetoric and depiction over the centuries in a brief amount of space. In the end, Joch concludes, “It can therefore no more be assumed that Christian anti-Judaism continued to have an ‘unbroken effect’ than that antisemitism was eternal. However, this statement is by no means suitable for exonerating the Christian churches concerning their role in the National Socialist era” (89).

Sonja Rakoczy’s final essay, “Forgive and Forget?” examines the role of the churches in denazification and the ratlines, which facilitated the escape of wanted Nazi criminals. The exhibit presents various examples of Persilscheine, letters attesting to a clean political and social bill of health for individuals during the denazification processes. Persil was (and still is) a brand of laundry detergent, hence the snide whitewashing reference. Likewise, both her essay and the exhibit discuss the various efforts by church leaders to come to terms with the National Socialist past.

Despite my few critical observations above, the exhibition and companion volume successfully introduce the public to the question of the churches under National Socialism using a critical and well-argued approach. No one will leave the exhibition viewing the churches and their members as resisters who only battled the Nazi state. That myth is upended by the evidence presented. Instead, a visitor should understand the churches’ history under National Socialism through shades of grey, both good and evil as well as everything in between.

As is common among German-language works on the churches, no non-translated works by English authors are among the cited works. Perhaps this was done deliberately. The exhibit and companion volume do not include translations, though the museum provides visitors with a brief English-language handout. Both are meant for a German-speaking audience, inviting them to come to terms with Christianity’s choices and activities under National Socialism. Critics could easily dismiss any evidence referencing an English-language work as fundamentally biased and unfair. Instead, this exhibition created by and for Germans invites Germans to examine their churches’ past.

On the Sunday afternoon I viewed the exhibit, the audience consisted of individuals in their fifties and over – at least by appearance! I genuinely hope that all generations of Germans can see it.

Review of Johannes Sachslehner, Hitlers Mann im Vatikan: Bischof Alois Hudal: ein dunkles Kapitel in der Geschichte der Kirche

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Review of Johannes Sachslehner, Hitlers Mann im Vatikan: Bischof Alois Hudal: ein dunkles Kapitel in der Geschichte der Kirche (Graz: Molden Verlag, 2019). ISBN 978-3-222-15040-1.

By Martin Menke, Rivier University

In this work, Johannes Sachslehner, an Austrian historian and prolific author, offers a biography of the Austrian bishop Alois Hudal, notorious for his complicated relationship with National Socialist ideology and for his involvement in the postwar effort to enable refugees and war criminals to escape to South America. The author’s attention to Hudal’s entire lifespan — not only his years at the Pontifical Institute of Santa Maria dell’Anima, better known as “the Anima,” but especially to his formative years in Graz — might have rendered this work a useful contribution to the scholarly literature. Instead, the reader faces a fatally flawed book.

Sachslehner’s emphasis on Hudal’s early ambition, constant desire for recognition, and embarrassment over his heritage helps to explain both his career as well as his extreme commitment to German nationalism. Hudal’s contemporaries soon recognized his ambitions and accused him of sycophancy. Sachslehner suggests that this need for recognition contributed to Hudal’s völkisch and pro-National Socialist positions as well as his later commitment to a free Austria, even as he helped hunted war criminals to escape. Hudal grew up near Graz. Proving himself intelligent, he won scholarships to obtain a Catholic education, leading to his ordination in 1908 and to a doctoral degree in Old Testament Scripture in 1911. In 1914, the bishop of Graz sent Hudal to the Anima in Rome to continue his studies. Such appointments were considered a stepping stone to higher office in the Austrian church. Hudal helped to ensure that the leadership of the parish and the institute remained in Austrian hands despite German diplomatic efforts to change that. At the time, Hudal believed his only suitable further promotion was to the episcopal seat at Graz, whereas his bishop believed a university post in Graz was a sufficiently dignified position.

During World War One, Hudal served as a military chaplain in the Habsburg army. He gave rousing sermons in German, Italian, and Slovenian. Soon after the collapse of Austria-Hungary following the war, Hudal began promoting Germany’s cultural mission in Europe and the political hegemony arising from that mission. In 1919, Hudal became a professor of Old Testament Scripture at Graz University and achieved tenure in 1923. The same year, he was appointed coadjutor at the Anima (he took a leave from Graz to pursue this) and became its rector in 1937. In 1934, Hudal seized the opportunity to promote himself by producing a draft concordat with Austria long before either the Austrian government or the Holy See considered such a treaty. Hudal’s contributions to the concordat won him the favor of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the Cardinal Secretary of State and later Pope Pius XII, at least for a time. His role in placing Alfred Rosenberg’s Mythos des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts on the index of forbidden books in 1934 also enhanced his standing in the Vatican. Furthermore, it showed how opposed Hudal initially was to National Socialist ideology.

As Sachslehner shows, Hudal suffered humiliating career reversals during his early years. Hudal repeatedly attempted to rewrite his biography to erase his working-class roots and Slovenian paternity. In 1923, Cologne’s Archbishop Cardinal Karl-Joseph Schulte, who wanted to end Austrian leadership of the German-speaking community in Rome, strongly opposed Hudal’s appointment as Coadjutor of the Collegio Teutonico di Santa Maria dell’Anima, the German seminary in Rome. Fully expecting to be ordained Archbishop of Vienna upon the death of Cardinal Friedrich Gustav Piffl in 1932, Hudal ordered a bishop’s crozier. Ultimately, he had to wait a year before his ordination as titular bishop of Aela without a proper diocese. Furthermore, as World War Two ended, Hudal began emphasizing his Austrian heritage and his critiques of National Socialism. He sought good relations with the Allies in Rome and elsewhere. Sachslehner also shows Hudal’s exaggerated self-importance, shown when he sent memoranda to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin on a possible post-war Danubian confederation.

Later, Hudal nurtured plans for a new university chair in Vienna dedicated to the study of the Eastern churches, which he intended to fill himself. This also did not come to pass. These details confirm what other scholars have written about Hudal’s most active years, and Sachslehner puts these activities within the broader contexts of Hudal’s life.

Once Hudal became rector of the Anima, in spite of the opposition of Cardinal Schulte and with the support of the Austrian government, he tried to emphasize the Anima’s all-German identity. Like many Germans and Austrians, Hudal rejected the outcome of World War One. Hudal did not seek, however, the restoration of the Austro-Hungarian multi-ethnic empire, nor did he seek, at the time, the Anschluss (the unification of Austria and Germany). He imagined Austria’s future as a strong, independent state. Furthermore, Sachslehner shows that, throughout his life, Hudal still ranked commitment to the church and faith above his commitment to the German nation. As others have shown, Hudal’s views on National Socialism changed over time. Sachslehner contributes a differentiated view of these changes. Hudal rejected National Socialism’s desire to replace faith in Christianity with racial faith, but he embraced antisemitism and ethnic prejudice. His antisemitism stemmed from his formative years in Graz. In 1919, he blamed Austria-Hungary’s defeat on the “Jewish Bolshevik [Karl] Kautsky.” Hudal always associated communism with Judaism. Sachslehner argues that Hudal’s desire for recognition fed his increasingly close ties to National Socialism. In 1937, the same year he became rector of the Anima, he published Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, seeking to build a bridge between the Church and National Socialism. He argued that only German culture could guarantee the continuation of Christian values in Europe. The work showed that Hudal completely misunderstood the National Socialists’ intentions and overestimated his own importance. The changes in National Socialist ideology that Hudal considered necessary and possible were, in fact, unimaginable. The Grundlagen sapped much of Hudal’s support in the Vatican curia, and after the 1938 Anschluss, which Hudal had promoted, he lost all favor with Pacelli (the future Pius XII). Pacelli forbade Hudal from celebrating a Te Deum thanksgiving service for the Anschluss. While many historians have focused on Hudal’s work enabling hunted war criminals to escape, Sachslehner shows that these pre-war events marked the beginning of Hudal’s downfall.

The story of Hudal’s wartime and post-war activities is well known. Working with archival records from the Anima made available in 2006, Sachslehner offers some useful corrections to the most extreme accusations leveled against Hudal. For example, during the German occupation of Rome, Hudal hid both hunted Germans and Austrians (such as conservatives who had been safe in fascist Italy, such as the German army officer Bernhard Schilling [161]) and Allied soldiers in the Anima. During the 1943 raids against Roman Jews, German diplomats asked Hudal to send a letter to the German Commandant of Rome, Major General Rainer Stahel. Written at the clandestine prompting of German embassy officials, it was intended to hasten end of the raids. (159) Because of bureaucratic delays, the letter reached Berlin when the raids had all but ended. It should be noted here that, while Sachslehner cites his source, Rom 1943-1944 by Robert Katz, the citation is incomplete (the complete title is Rom, 1943-1944: Besatzer, Befreier, Partisanen und der Papst [Essen, 2006]), and Sachslehner does not list this volume in the bibliography. Sachslehner notes that Hudal was “not particularly proud” of the letter and quotes Hudal’s secretary, Joseph Prader, who claimed, “Hudal absolutely hated Jews.” (159) Sachslehner points out that, after the war, he did help known war criminals escape but was not responsible for the escape of Adolf Eichmann. Hudal abused his ties to Austria in order to provide false documents for these criminals. Hudal seemed to see no contradiction between hiding anti-fascists during the war and helping fascists escape after the war. To him, they were all persecuted Christian victims deserving of Christian charity. In Rome, Hudal sought to maintain control of the Austrian community. Suddenly, he supported Austrian independence and claimed to represent Austrian interests when dealing with Allied officials in Rome. There is some evidence that Hudal acted as a paid informant for U.S. military counterintelligence services. As in so many cases from this period, a strident anti-Communism made up for Hudal’s previous fascist leanings.

Sachslehner again points to Hudal’s need for recognition as a driving force for his post-war actions, which occurred after he had lost Vatican support and his academic position at Graz, for which he had been paid during his entire lengthy absence. By the early 1950s, his continued presence at the Anima proved an embarrassment to Church officials, who forced him from office, which left him embittered.

Sachslehner provided no evidence that Hudal ever admitted the contradictions in his life, even to himself.

Sachslehner’s argument about and analysis of Hudal’s early life are persuasive. Some scholarly concerns about the work remain. The citations of archival materials lack detail. In some cases, only box numbers are mentioned. In others, even box numbers are missing. Sachslehner includes some questionable works among his cited sources, such as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s The Catholic Church and the Holocaust and the judgment of a German neo-Nazi. Even if he critiques their judgment, why include them at all in his review of the literature? Hudal’s views and actions justly led to his condemnation by less controversial scholars. Even so, Sachslehner’s contribution to scholarship on this subject might have been his emphasis on what one might consider Hudal’s inferiority complex about his origins and certainly on his ambition and need for recognition as motives for his views and actions. But do they change the field’s judgment of Hudal’s role in this dark chapter of history? Not significantly. Worse, there is good reason to believe that academic dishonesty undermines any value of this work.

Given the problematic use of the Katz volume mentioned above, it is not surprising that other reviewers have found additional scholarly problems. A fellow editor directed this reviewer to a lengthy review of Sachslehner’s work by Austrian historian Dirk Schuster[i], who found a number of problematic passages. Conducting further research, Schuster found an uncanny resemblance between passages in Sachslehner’s volume and the unpublished dissertation of Markus Langer, entitled “Alois Hudal: Zwischen Kreuz und Hakenkreuz: Versuch einer Biographie,” submitted in 1995.[ii] First, the chapter and sub-chapter titles in Sachslehner vary very little from those of Langer.[iii] Second, according to Schuster, there are passages in Sachslehner’s work that are simple paraphrases of Langer’s work.[iv] While Sachslehner mentions some of Langer’s work in the endnotes (for example, endnote 148), he omits the title and any additional information, and he omits Langer’s work entirely from the bibliography.

In the case of another scholar’s work, Schuster accuses Sachslehner of plagiarism. Schuster shows that Sachslehner copied verbatim several text passages from the work of Hansjakob Stehle in Die Zeit.[v] While Sachslehner mentions several works by Stehle in his endnotes and bibliography, he does not identify them as quotations. Schuster also mentions other problems concerning inaccurate citations. Simply put, with his name on the book, Sachslehner claims credit for scholarly research that he never conducted. This renders the work unreliable and the author’s conduct unethical.

Thus, we will continue to wait for an authoritative biography of Alois Hudal to appear. As Thomas Brechenmacher points out, Hudal offers much more scope for research than what has been published up to this point.[vi]

Notes:

[i] Dirk Schuster, “Sachslehner, Johannes: Bischof Alois Hudal. Hitlers Mann im Vatikan. Ein dunkles Kapitel in der Geschichte der Kirche “ In Religion in Austria 6 (2021), 395-411.

[ii] Schuster, 396.

[iii] Schuster, 400.

[iv] Schuster, 402.

[v] Hansjakob Stehle, “Pässe vom Papst? Aus neuentdeckten Dokumenten: Warum alle Wege der Ex-Nazis über Rom nach Südamerika führten.” Die Zeit, 4 May 1984, 9-12, discussed in Schuster, 403-407.

[vi] Thomas Brechenmacher Alois Hudal – der „braune Bischof“? In: Freiburger Rundbrief. Nr. 2 14, 2007, ISSN 0344-1385, S. 130–132.

Review of Klara Kardos, The Auschwitz Journal: A Catholic Story from the Camps

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Review of Klara Kardos, The Auschwitz Journal: A Catholic Story from the Camps, trans. Fr. Julius D. Leloczky, O.Cist. (Paraclete Press, 2020). 144 Pp.

By Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Pacific Lutheran University

In June 1944, a young Hungarian woman, born in 1920, received the order that she had to vacate her apartment, taking with her only the things she could carry. She noted in her account, “My packing was very simple indeed: just the bare minimum of the most needed items. As we were leaving, the apartments were sealed… And in our room was hanging on the wall – I left it there deliberately – the crucifix.” (33-34) Until the last portion of the sentence is reached, the reader might assume this is going to be an account of one of the millions of Jewish victims of Nazi horrors. Indeed, the young Hungarian woman, Klara Kardos, was born into a Jewish family although her mother had converted to Catholicism before Klara was born, Klara’s parents were divorced, and Klara had been baptized as an infant into the Catholic faith. For many non-experts, Klara’s deportation to a ghetto in Szeged, then her internment in Auschwitz concentration camp, where her forearm received the tattoo, might come as a shock. How could Klara, who identified wholeheartedly with her Catholic identity, end up in a Nazi death camp as a Jew? Of course, for the experts this is perhaps not as puzzling, as Klara and her extended family fell under the Nazi racial classification system as racially Jewish. But Klara’s account of her experiences during the Holocaust are not the usual recounting. To Klara, her suffering (of which she speaks very little) was part of her Catholic faith. She understood, as a well-educated young woman, that she was persecuted for an identity to which she did not ascribe, and that many of the Jewish inmates did not feel a connection to her since she had never been a practicing Jew. The entire, relatively short account that Klara provides for her readers is focused, not on the countless indignities and the unimaginable horrors recounted by Holocaust survivors such as Primo Levi, but instead on how her memories of she fought to preserve and persevere in her faith. For some readers, this account might be somewhat disappointing. It does not seek to dwell on the nightmarish world created by the Nazis. Instead, she wants her readers to focus on how she relied on her Catholic faith as a way to sustain the human spirit in the midst of untold tragedies.

Much like Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, in which Frankl made a conscious decision to fight to retain his humanity against all odds, Klara Kardos’ story features a similar decision. In Kardos’ case, though, her prayer life and her way of framing her persecution allowed her to detach herself from the day-to-day horrors she was experiencing. When Kardos was deported from the Szeged ghetto to Auschwitz, her spiritual director (a priest not named in full in the account) wrote of her walking to the deportation train as a “deportee of heroic spirit… with a triumphant smile on her face for the road of sufferings. Will she ever return to Szeged? Only God can say. We can only hope. But her heroic spirit that was shining from her soul showed the world that the soul, even in a body trampled underfoot, in the midst of ignominy, can be victorious over her oppressors…” (42). Kardos humbly remarks that the priest’s words were very idealistic, but she also confirms that the essence of his words describing her departure were true.

The train journey to Auschwitz took three long, excruciatingly hot days in June 1944. Kardos describes the fear, the rumors, and the “absurd” (44) movement of people in her train carriage, putting on all of their best clothes. Not knowing where they were being taken to, many hoped that, if they dressed up in their best outfits, they would make a strong impression. In contrast to their actions, Kardos relates how she took out the pictures of her parents and younger sister and ripped the photos up, letting them out slip through the train carriage’s ventilation slit. She explains that she did not want “sacrilegious” hands to touch her family photos. Once she had disposed of her precious family photos, she placed her rosary around her neck and waited for what might happen next. (45-46)

She arrived at Auschwitz on 28 June 1944. Kardos rejects delving into the details of de-training, not because she does not recall the bad memories, but because, she says, “I do not consider it worth doing.” (49) Like Frankl’s earlier work, Kardos asserts that she is most interested in writing how “we tried to remain human in the midst of inhuman circumstances.” (51) She chooses to focus on the unexpected times she encountered expressions of love, although that does not prevent her from also detailing at least some of the dehumanizing procedures experienced by those selected for work in the camp. She also writes of the hastily prepared barracks for the Hungarian deportees, the last large Jewish community in Europe to be deported. Kardos describes the summer thunderstorms with rain pouring in through the roof, soaking everyone inside. No beds, cots, or planks to sleep on were available there. During one particular drenching nighttime rainstorm, Kardos recalled how several of the women took their shared blanket, made a tent over their heads and stood reciting the rosary prayer in the wet darkness. Kardos recalls how more women joined in. On the first Sunday in Auschwitz, Kardos relates how, as a young child, she had memorized the Latin text of the ordinary mass, and the Christian women in the barracks held a version of the mass. The end of the service concluded with the recitation of religious Hungarian poems with Kardos writing, “That’s the way the Christian community of Auschwitz celebrates the Lord’s Day…” (72) Of course, readers should remind themselves of two important pieces of context: the first, that Catholic masses at this time were always said in Latin, and the Hungarian-language poems were an expression of a specific community; the second, that, to the Nazi regime and its collaborators, Klara Kardos was not considered to be a Christian at all. Hence, she is in Auschwitz because she has been placed into the racial category of being Jewish, not because of her Catholic faith.

Kardos writes of the changes that she experienced in her spiritual life at Auschwitz. She used to meditate on texts of the Holy Mass during the long, drawn-out Appels (roll calls). She talks about “spiritual Communion”, meaning that spending time counseling other camp inmates, reciting poems by Catholic Hungarian authors, and participating in “cultural events” when inmates were restricted to their barracks was her way of practicing her faith in the absence of priests and the sacrament of the Eucharist. She also notes that she spent time trying to get to know the “real” Jews (79), although she recognizes that there was a wide abyss between those who were imprisoned in Auschwitz as “real” Jews versus “non-Aryan Christians.” No matter the divide, the Nazi regime worked to control all of the camp population. By July 1944, Kardos was selected along with ninety-nine other women to be moved to the “Czech camp”, Camp B2. While in Camp B2, Klara forms friendships with three other women, and she comments on how the barracks had furniture to sleep on and even water. Despite these “improved” conditions, starvation began to take its toll of most of the women, although Kardos would not indulge in fantasies about food with other inmates. Instead, she would separate from those conversations, stating that “the spirit, not the body, should enforce its rights!” (92) She reiterates this emphasis on the spiritual over physical reality when she describes how, at one point in the camp, sitting alone on her camp bunk, she experienced a visitation of her loved ones in her mind. (98) To Kardos, this experience was so intense that it served to confirm her core belief that the spirit can triumph over the limitations of physical reality. But physical reality was always lurking in the background, and Kardos contracted scarlet fever, landing her in the camp infirmary for a time.

Kardos used her time in the infirmary to increase her spiritual devotions, converting another ill inmate to Catholicism while interned there. After three months in Auschwitz, Kardos was once again selected to leave that particular Hell. Her first stop after Auschwitz was Bergen-Belsen, and after a few weeks in Bergen-Belsen, she was sent to work in an ammunition factory. In the factory, she mentions the 12-to-15 hour shifts that the inmates were forced to work. Despite the freezing cold and difficult circumstances, Kardos writes, “Trust in God and sheer willpower: they were our saviors. For the sake of God’s love, I just should not become sick! … This inner power of resistance was decisive. Whoever lost that also lost herself. But whoever clung to God possessed the greatest inner strength.” (117-118) Kardos worked in the ammunition factory from October 1944 to April 1945. Throughout the whirring machinery of the factory and the potentially dangerous conditions of working with explosives, Kardos reiterates her theme throughout the work: “To put it simply: we kept struggling to remain human!” (121)

Finally, on 14 April 1945, the first American troops entered the ammunition factory grounds. Kardos and one of her friends, Franci, walked to the nearby city to find a Catholic Church so that they could confess in order to attend Sunday mass and receive the Eucharist. Kardos was ill with a high fever at this time and, after finally getting to attend mass, she fainted. She was transported to the city hospital where Catholic nurses took care of her. While recovering her strength in the hospital, one of the nurses gave her a journal and a pen. Her first entry in the journal, which she kept with her for the rest of her life, read, “April 18, 1945, Wednesday. Magnificat! May this be the first word that I write down. …I have a Bible! I have a journal!—I have everything! With this I begin my little spiritual exercise in the sanatorium, if God helps me!” (137) Her journal recorded the suicide of Hitler, the death of Mussolini, and finally, her ability to make the journey back to Hungary. There Kardos worked through the slow and difficult process of reacclimatizing to middle-class standards of life. In her final pages of the book, Kardos reminds her readers that people kept asking for her personal story and she hoped that people who read the work would come to some degree of understanding of the “unbelievable, sweet paradox: the bliss, the happiness of suffering.” (143) Although most readers might never associate the words “bliss” or “happiness” with Auschwitz, to Kardos she firmly believed the her suffering was sanctified according to the principles of her Catholic faith.

Kardos’ account of her experiences provide insight into the life of a very religious and spiritual person who was constantly striving to understand what God wanted her to experience and how she might interpret those experiences. Her faith that her suffering served a larger purpose kept her mentally strong during unimaginable trials. Her faith eventually led her away from Communist Hungary to Austria and she passed the rest of her life translating religious works for the Catholic Church. Though a short account, it emanates with the power of Kardos’ religious fervor and opens up our world to an examination of how “non-Aryan Catholics” experienced the horrors of the Holocaust.

Article Note: William Skiles, “Franz Hildebrandt on the BBC: Wartime Broadcasting to Nazi Germany”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Article Note: William Skiles, “Franz Hildebrandt on the BBC: Wartime Broadcasting to Nazi Germany,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 74, no. 1 (January 2023): 90-115.

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

In this article, William Skiles analyzes thirteen wartime sermons of Franz Hildebrandt, the prominent German-Jewish pastor who emigrated to England in 1937 to minister and teach at Cambridge. As the author explains, Hildebrandt studied theology in Berlin and ministered in the Lutheran Church, working alongside Martin Niemöller in Berlin-Dahlem. Also a friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hildebrandt joined the Pastors’ Emergency League and Confessing Church, contributed substantially to the 1936 Confessing Church memorandum to Hitler, and was arrested and detained for four weeks in 1937 for illegally collecting funds for the Confessing Church. Upon his release, he moved to England. Briefly interned as an “enemy alien” in 1939, Hildebrandt ended up working for the BBC Overseas Service, writing and preaching German-language sermons as part of the secret Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, a section within the British Ministry of Information. Skiles explains that these sermons were part of a “white” or open propaganda campaign and “developed as a way for the British to demonstrate love and care for the spiritual needs of their brothers and sisters in Nazi Germany” (96) through the provision of German-language church services over the radio.

In his analysis, Skiles identifies various themes running through Hildebrandt’s thirteen wartime propaganda sermons broadcast into Germany by the BBC. First was the idea that British and German Christians were more unified by their shared faith than divided by national rivalries, and that this unity compelled Christians from other countries to support their German counterparts who were suffering under Nazi persecution.

Second, Hildebrandt preached against Nazism, describing it as a false ideology. In doing so, he also argued that the German churches were betraying Christ by collaborating with Nazism. Another aspect of this was Hildebrandt’s criticism of Nazi racial superiority. Only God’s grace accepted by faith would save the German people. A life of service to others would be the outcome.

Third, Skiles argues that Hildebrandt’s sermons called Germans to reassess their loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state. Christians in Germany should honour their government leaders, but only insofar as those leaders led their people to honour God. For reasons which remain unclear, Hildebrandt seems to have preached little about the plight of the Jews, even though he was well-connected and knew about the mass murder of Jews in Europe through his work in the BBC.

There are two aspects of Hildebrandt and his propaganda sermons about which I would like to know more.

First, what role did Hildebrandt’s status as a “non-Aryan” Christian play in his work? Skiles notes that Hildebrandt was one of 117 “non-Aryan” pastors he has found within the German Protestant clergy of the 1930s[1] and adds that “National Socialist supporters in the German Churches challenged their Christian identity, imposed a Jewish identity upon them and ultimately sought their exclusion from German public life” (93). That said, though Skiles states that Hildebrandt’s Jewish ancestry played a role in his arrest, imprisonment, and exile (90-91), it would be helpful to know more about how that unfolded, since so much of Hildebrandt’s energy and passion revolved around his commitment to Scripture and doctrine and his intensive work in the Pastors’ Emergency League and Confessing Church. As Hildebrandt’s biographer Holger Roggelin put it, it was Niemöller’s arrest that confirmed Hildebrandt’s decision to leave Germany for good. Hildebrandt’s final sermon before his 1937 arrest—on the day he had planned to leave the country—was an exposition of the Acts 4 text of the arrest of the apostles for preaching about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As he stated, the Church’s weapon was “to speak with all boldness [Christ’s] Word and the confession: There is salvation in none other!”[2] It’s not clear that his German-Jewish identity had much to do with these theological convictions, though at one point Hildebrandt did speak up against the Confessing Church’s weakness with respect to Nazi Jewish policy.[3]

Second, to what extent did the propaganda aims of the BBC shape Hildebrandt’s sermons? Skiles argues that Hildebrandt had “considerable freedom” in his radio preaching, noting that Hildebrandt was appointed to an advisory committee and asked for more sermons than he could deliver. On the other hand, though, all his sermons and prayers had to be submitted to the BBC censor for approval (100). Did he choose his own scriptural texts, or simply follow a lectionary? To what extent was he offering spiritual care, or was he more focused on subtly undermining Nazi ideology? To understand the extent to which Hildebrandt’s sermons were shaped by his own concerns, it would be helpful to have more historical background on this aspect of British wartime propaganda, and the wider role of the Sonderberichte or German news talks, which included not only Religious Broadcasts but also Talks for Workers, Naval Programmes, and Forces Programmes.[4] As Vike Martina Plock argues, the BBC European Services determined that Nazi propaganda was monochromatic—focused on the two themes of war and Hitler and directed to the collective of the German nation without distinction. “To develop effective counterpropaganda the BBC had to find ways to dissolve these crowds of synchronised automata by designing programmes that reinstated individuality and strengthened listeners’ sense of personal responsibility.”[5] Religious broadcasts were part of this initiative to target specific audiences, though there were disputes within the Ministry of Information and the Political Warfare Executive about whether exploiting religious broadcasts for political propaganda purposes would backfire. Some of the early religious broadcasts used text from Karl Barth’s books which were critical of Hitler and Nazism, and there was some question about whether Barth himself would be asked to deliver broadcasts. (He wasn’t.) BBC officials walked a fine line not only with the content of these broadcasts but also in the way they pitched them to the theologians who delivered them, suggesting that the broadcasts were primarily meant to offer messages of hope and to help ensure that there would be a remnant of faithful Christians in Germany after the end of Nazism. Eventually, as the German Religious Advisory Committee was formed (which, as Skiles notes, included Hildebrandt), Protestant broadcasts were transmitted every Wednesday morning at 10:15, beginning in November 1942. From March 1943, regular Catholic services were broadcast on Sundays and Thursdays at 10:00 am.[6]

Franz Hildebrandt is someone about whom many of us who study the history of the German Church Struggle should know more. It is surprising to me that so little has been written about him. William Skiles’ assessment of Hildebrandt’s wartime propaganda sermons hints to us of the potential for more study on this interesting figure.

Notes:

[1] For more details, see William Skiles, “Preaching to Nazi Germany: the Confessing Church on National

Socialism, the Jews, and the question of opposition,” PhD diss. (University of California, San Diego, 2016), 403-408, which includes the author’s list of the 117 pastors of Jewish descent.

[2] Holger Roggelin, Franz Hildebrandt: Ein lutherischer Dissenter im Kirchenkampf und Exil (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 122. See also the many references to Hildebrandt’s collaboration with Bonhoeffer and Niemöller in Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. and ed. Victoria J. Barnett (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), as well as Franz Hildebrandt, “Barmen: What to Learn and What Not to Learn,” in The Barmen Confession: Papers from the Seattle Assembly, ed. Hubert G. Locke (Lewiston/Queenston: Edwin Mellon, 1986), 285-302.

[3] Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 488.

[4] See Vike Martina Plock, The BBC German Service during the Second World War: Broadcasting to the Enemy (Cham, Switz.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), especially chapter 3.

[5] Ibid., 54.

[6] Ibid., 60-62.

Article Note: Bastiaan Bouwman, “Between Dialogue and Denunciation: The World Council of Churches, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights during the Cold War”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

Article Note: Bastiaan Bouwman, “Between Dialogue and Denunciation: The World Council of Churches, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights during the Cold War,” Contemporary European History 31 (2022): 15-30.

Rebecca Carter-Chand, USHMM*

* The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In this article, and the dissertation from which it emerged, Dutch historian Bastiaan Bouwman traces the evolution of the World Council of Churches (WCC) during the Cold War, in light of shifting concepts of religious freedom and human rights. Bouwman shows how the World Council of Churches’ early embrace of religious freedom, diplomacy, and dialogue increasingly became at odds with the organization’s reorientation to the Global South and the recasting of human rights as a language of public denunciation. At the center of this story is the WCC’s relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, which was granted WCC membership in 1961. Aware of the Orthodox Church’s limitations and precarious position in a communist state, the WCC pursued a policy of ecumenical engagement with church leaders in a genuine attempt to help the Church sustain itself. Western representatives within the WCC were careful to avoid jeopardizing the Russian Orthodox Church’s position through overt criticism of the state.

Throughout the 1960s it became increasingly clear that this policy was out of step with the intensifying religious and political dissidence in the Soviet Union. After Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sent a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1972, criticizing the Church hierarchy for submitting to the state, a debate emerged about how and to what extent the Church ought to push for religious freedom. The WCC largely sided with the Church hierarchy, which argued that the Church ought to accept its circumstances and work within the system. Bouwman contextualizes this debate within international politics in these same years, which embraced dissidents and placed them at the center of human rights language. Moreover, diverse religious voices began to engage the language of human rights to criticize religious repression in the Eastern Bloc, from American evangelicals to Pope John Paul II.

At the same time, the World Council of Churches itself was undergoing a major reorientation to the Global South, as decolonization, liberation theology, and social justice became important themes. In this context, the WCC’s policy toward the Soviet Union and the Russian Orthodox Church seemed incongruent with its willingness to speak out against human rights violations in other parts of the world. Bouwman concludes that the WCC’s decision not to support Soviet dissidents “damaged its credibility as a truly global voice for human rights.” (p.30) The organization also faced internal and external tensions related to decolonization and late-Cold War geopolitics. In this way, the trajectory of the WCC highlights broader tensions between anticommunism strands of human rights advocacy and the activism of postcolonialism and social justice in the last decades of the twentieth century.