Conference Paper: “Martin Niemöller in America, 1946-1947: ‘A Hero with Limitations’”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Conference Paper: “Martin Niemöller in America, 1946-1947: ‘A Hero with Limitations’”

Plenary Session: Disputed Memories of Complicity and Righteousness, 42^nd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, May 12-14, 2012.

By Matthew D. Hockenos, Skidmore College

From the mid-1930s to the early 1980s Martin Niemöller was a cause célèbre in the United States. He is best known in America as the pugnacious Prussian minister who Hitler imprisoned in a concentration camp for eight years and after his liberation made the famous postwar confession:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.^{^[1]}

From 1946 until his death in 1984 Niemöller visited the United States regularly. None of his visits was as wrought with controversy as his very first. Niemöller first set foot in the U.S. in late 1946 to embark on a speaking tour sponsored by the Federal Council of Churches (FCC). For the next five months his every move was followed closely in the local and national media including the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time magazine as well as in religious publications like The Christian Century. The average American was more likely to know more about Martin Niemöller than about any other German living in the immediate postwar era. When Hitler locked him up in the notorious Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938 as his own private prisoner, churches across America and the world prayed for his release. When he toured the United States after gaining his freedom, many American Protestants greeted him like a rock star. Tens of thousands of enraptured fans attended his addresses and listen to him on the radio. But many other Americans, including some very prominent ones, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Rabbi Stephen Wise, called into question Niemöller’s resistance credentials and voiced their adamant opposition to his visit.

In the1930s Niemöller became a hero in the U.S. almost overnight as word spread about his leadership of the Confessing Church and his defiance of Hitler. Under sensational headlines declaring “Protestants Push Fight Upon the Nazis” and “Insurgent Pastors Disobey the Reich Bishop’s Orders” the print media followed the dramatic events of the German Church Struggle and its increasingly famous personality. Although much of the early reporting was misinformed and often hagiographic, Americans were inundated with news about Niemöller’s plight and the Church’s “resistance.”

On July 1, 1937 the Gestapo arrested Niemöller and held him for eight months in Moabit prison. He was tried in early 1938 for “causing unrest among the people” among other things. Although exonerated of the charges later that month, Hitler ordered him re-arrested in March 1938 and imprisoned him in Sachsenhausen as his own private prisoner. The Federal Council of Churches of Christ reacted to Niemöller’s imprisonment by calling on the churches of America to hold special prayer vigils and ring the church bells. Throughout his years of captivity American Protestants commemorated various Niemöller anniversaries: his birthday, the original date of his arrest, the day Hitler declared that Niemöller was his private prisoner, etc. Henry Smith Leiper, executive secretary for church relations in the FCC, exhorted Protestant ministers to “preach sermons on the modern Luther.”^{^[2]} On Sunday March 5, 1939, the second anniversary of Niemöller’s imprisonment in Sachsenhausen, Presbyterian Rev. John Paul Jones of the Union Church in Bay Ridge Brooklyn took it one step further by re-enacting Niemöller’s arrest. When pastor Jones mounted his pulpit that Sunday morning he appeared to be seized and dragged away by two men wearing Nazi uniforms. He then proceeded to give his sermon from behind a replica of a prison door with a barred window and “Sachsenhausen” inscribed over the door.^{^[3]}

Although there seemed to be no limit to the exaltation bestowed on Niemöller’s acts of defiance, there were, to be sure, some critics who pointed to his ardent love for his Fatherland and his enthusiastic participation in the unrestricted submarine warfare in World War One, for which he received an Iron Cross. Samuel Volkman, a rabbi in Chicago, however, took aim at Niemöller’s antisemitism, a topic rarely discussed in the American press. In a letter to The Christian Century Rabbi Volkman wrote:

I note from your issue of March 1, 1939, that the Federal Council of Churches is inviting the churches across America to give special recognition to Pastor Martin Niemöller and the cause for which he stands. As a rabbi, nothing would give the writer greater pleasure than to join Christian brethren in honoring one of the few exemplars of true religious heroism in our day. But in thumbing through the sermons of Niemöller [collected in the book Here I Stand], I came upon this passage “We speak of the ‘eternal Jew’ and conjure up the picture of a restless wanderer who has no home and can find no peace. We find a highly gifted people which produces idea after idea for the benefit of the world, but whatever it takes up becomes poisoned, and all that it ever reaps is contempt and hatred because ever and anon the world notices the deception and avenges itself in its own way.” (Here I Stand, p. 195) . . . [Rabbi Volkman then goes on to ask] Is the spiritual heritage of Israel a well of poison? . . . Who but the bigot will deny that [this] is as malevolent as it is unjust? Nor is this the only passage of its kind in the book. It is hoped that when the churches of America unite to do honor to the spirit of Niemöller, they will dissociate themselves from what can be regarded as nothing less than a particularly obnoxious kind of sanctimonious froth.^{^[4]}

What many Americans found more distressing than Niemöller’s antisemitism was his decision at the outbreak of the Second World War to volunteer his services to the German Navy to fight for his Fatherland. The editors of The Christian Century and Karl Barth in The Watchman Examiner tried to explain to their readers that Niemöller was, in fact, not an out-and-out anti-Nazi but rather a critic of Hitler’s church policy and that his offer to enlist in the Navy was simply proof of this.

If the American public was troubled by Niemöller’s “latest adventure,” as Karl Barth put it, it didn’t seem to dampen their overall enthusiasm for him. On December 23, 1940, Niemöller’s image appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the headline: “Martyr of 1940: In Germany only the cross has not bowed to the swastika.” The accompanying article quoted Niemöller’s famous challenge to Hitler, ”Not you, Herr Hitler, but God is my Führer.”

A flurry of books on Niemöller appeared in U.S. bookstores in the early 1940s. Popular biographies such as Basil Miller’s Martin Niemoeller: Hero of the Concentration Camp (1942) and Leo Stein’s fabrication I Was in Hell with Martin Niemoeller (1942) exalted his piety and courage. “Hitler may break his body, but never his soul,” Miller proclaimed to her enthusiastic readers. Ads appeared in newspapers proclaiming: “He Wouldn’t ‘Heil Hitler’ so Rev. Martin Niemoller begins his 7^th year in a German Prison Camp – Remember Martin Niemoller!!” Films, such as Pastor Hall, and plays, such as God is my Fuehrer depicted his heroic struggle.

Churches across America breathed a collective sigh of relief when they learned that Niemöller had survived Dachau and had been taken into American custody after nearly being executed by the SS in northern Italy. The Washington Post reported that “When Americans read that their own troops . . . had found the celebrated Pastor Martin Niemöller, it was as though a grave had opened.” The Post predicted Niemöller would become “the advocate of his people in their hour of disillusion and despair, a witness to the world that, if German human nature is capable of the most bestial evil, it is also capable of great moral heroism.”^{^[5]}

On June 5, 1945 Niemöller granted an interview to dozens of British and American war correspondents gathered at a hotel in Naples, Italy, where Niemöller was awaiting authorization by the Americans to return to his family in Germany. In the interview he acknowledged that prior to the Nazis coming to power he “had nourished the hope that National Socialism, if it had gone the right way, might have developed into a system for creating good for the German people.”^{^[6]} He told the reporters that Hitler had deceived him. He insisted that most Germans, including himself, were ignorant of the scale of the atrocities that the Nazis had carried out and shocked by what they saw when the Allies liberated the camps. And because most Germans were ignorant of the atrocities, Niemöller explained, they don’t feel guilty. He declared that his own objections to Nazism were religious and not political. He claimed that he was not interested in politics but opposed the state’s encroachment in the affairs of the church. He admitted that from his cell in Dachau he offered his services to the German Navy when the war began. “If there is a war,” Niemöller declared, “a German doesn’t ask is it just or unjust, but he feels bound to join the ranks.” He claimed that the German people were ill suited to live under a Western form of democracy and even suggested that Germans preferred authoritarian rule. And finally, he said that what Germans needed now was help, not punishment, and that he hoped to visit England and the United States to enlist Brits and Americans in his efforts to secure food and proper clothing for Germans. He concluded, “The world will be astonished when it sees how many good people are left in Germany.”^{^[7]}

Although many of Niemöller’s devotees remained faithful to him despite the interview, the new Niemöller had his share of critics now, and some in very influential positions. Marshall Knappen, Director of the Education & Religious Affairs Branch of the American Occupation Forces, had a sit down with Niemöller on June 18 and concluded that “Niemöller, the religious leader and Confessional martyr is to be clearly distinguished from Niemöller the politically-minded retired naval officer. The one is to be accorded the freedom and respect which is due. The other . . . is to be watched carefully.”^{^[8]} Sylvester C. Michelfelder, President of the Council of Lutheran Churches in the United States, recorded in his diary on July 26, 1945, “Niemöller has come into disfavor pretty much because of his unfortunate interview with the Press in Italy. There he said, ‘My Soul belongs to God but my body to the State.’ This in America and Britain has caused much offense.”^{^[9]} General Lucius Clay, the American military governor, expressed reservations in September 1945 about Niemöller’s politics, stating: “While permitting Niemöller to take active leadership in religious affairs, we have not felt it is advisable to utilize his services in other fields as yet. While his anti-Nazi stand was demonstrated fully by his own actions, it is still too early to predict as to his wholehearted rejection of the militaristic and nationalistic concepts of the former German state.”^{^[10]}

Ewart E. Turner, an American Methodist pastor who had served as minister of the American Church in Berlin from 1930-34, visited the Niemöllers in Germany after the interview and found him to be deeply depressed. His wife, Else, said that “He sees everything black.”^{^[11]} There were several reasons for his despair, including the harsh treatment of the U.S. Occupational Forces, the unrepentant nature of the clergy and the German population in general, the death of one son and the unknown status of another in a Soviet POW camp.

The reaction of the American was scathing. The debacle of Naples interview severely tarnished Niemöller’s reputation and led some to conclude, along with the New York Times, that he was not suited “to be a leader in the moral reconstruction of his country.”^{^[12]} His assertion that Germany was unsuited for democracy caused the greatest concern. “If a democratic system cannot be erected in Germany Europe will be right back where it started from, and Germany must be continuously policed or periodically chastened by war.”^{^[13]} He was, as the New York Times article concluded, a hero but “a hero with limitations.”^{^[14]} Time magazine opened its article on the interview with the following: “Pastor Martin Niemöller, the one German whom Christians everywhere had respected, shocked a lot of people last week” (emphasis added). The editors of the San Jose News concluded, “We think that Rev. Niemöller is correct in saying that the Germans are not repentant and have learned little or nothing from their defeat. He may be correct in saying they are incapable of democracy. If they are thus unrepentant and incapable of democracy, then it is up to the Allies to provide them for a long time with the authority and leadership for which Rev. Niemöller says they yearn-an authority and leadership that will keep them out of further mischief.”^{^[15]} Niemöller’s disastrous interview led many Americans to conclude that if Niemöller was the best that Germany had to offer then a long and severe occupation of the country would be necessary.

Eleanor Roosevelt went so far as to describe Niemöller’s statements as “almost like a speech by Mr. Hitler.” And she went on to say, “Pastor Niemöller sounds to me like a gentleman who believes in the German doctrine of the superiority of race.”^{^[16]}

Amid the controversy over the interview, Niemöller and his wife accepted an invitation to visit the United States in late 1946 and early 1947 under the auspices of the Federal Council of Churches. During the lecture tour the Niemöllers spoke to enraptured church groups in more than a dozen states from the Northwest to the Southeast. Ewart E. Turner accompanied the Niemöllers on their American tour and described the Niemöller’s visit as “a spiritual atomic eruption.” Turner advised local church leaders scheduled to host a Niemöller visit, “Don’t let this spirit of Pentecost take you by surprise. Prepare for it with all the traditional ingenuity and foresight of American church life at its best.”^{^[17]}

Although the Federal Council of Churches received hundreds of requests for Niemöller to speak in various cities and churches across the United States, the visit was laden with controversy. Even before he arrived, opinion about his impending visit was polarized. Despite the flood of protests received by the Secretary of State, the Niemöllers were the first German civilians to be allowed entrance into the U.S. under auspices other than U.S. Armed Forces. Niemöller came to the United States as the vice-president of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and the head of its department for relations with foreign churches. The stated purpose was to thank American churches for their support and assistance during Hitler’s reign and in the immediate postwar years. But attacks by such prominent figures as Eleanor Roosevelt resulted in a widely publicized debate over Niemöller and the purpose of his trip. On the day of Niemöller’s first public address in the U.S. Mrs. Roosevelt again raised her voice in protest. “One may applaud his bravery and his devotion to his church, but one can hardly applaud his attitude on the Nazi politics, and I cannot quite see why we should be asked to listen to his lectures. I am sure he is a good man according to his lights, but his lights are not those of the people of the United States who did not like the Hitler political doctrines.”^{^[18]}

Abundantly aware of the need to win over the American people, Niemöller did his best to avoid the mistakes he made in Naples. First, he refused to partake in any impromptu interviews where he might go off message. Second, all of his lectures and sermons were written down in advance and read virtually verbatim rather than ad-libbed. And finally, in the dozens of lectures, speeches, and sermons he gave in cities across the United States he continually returned to several themes that American churchgoers would likely find reassuring. That is not to say that his addresses lacked any fire or controversy, but rather that he tried to steer clear of any overtly political message that might offend his audience.

So what did Niemöller say to his American audiences? From his very first address at the biennial meeting of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America in early December 1946 to his last in May 1947, he typically began by thanking Americans for their prayers of support during his period of imprisonment and thanking the FCC for inviting him to United States. He emphasized that it was a combination of the prayers from abroad and his faith in God that sustained him during his years of imprisonment. He described how Hitler’s persecution of the German churches sparked an opposition movement within the churches and a new sense of faith in the Word of God. He highlighted the resistance mounted by the Confessing Church against the Nazi state while acknowledging that it was a minority of pastors and congregations that took part in the opposition; he drew attention to the 1934 Barmen Declaration and its proclamation of the absolute sovereignty of Christ as the backbone of the Confessing Church. He often told audiences of his own personal acts of defiance like preaching the Word of God to fellow inmates in the concentration camps or how he directly confronted Hitler at a 1934 meeting, telling him, “Mr. Chancellor, God himself has entrusted us with the responsibility for our nation, and no power and no authority in the world is entitled to take it from us.”^{^[19]} To his audience in Davenport Iowa he declared that despite Hitler’s attempt to destroy the churches, “the Word of God can’t be bound and can’t be murdered.”^{^[20]}

Although he devoted greater space to the Church opposition than to its complicity in Nazism, he frequently acknowledged his share of guilt and the guilt of his church and the German nation for the devastation in Europe; he pointed to the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt of October 1945 as evidence that the leaders of the Protestant Church recognized their share of guilt. He emphasized the importance of reconciliation between God and man, between nations that had recently been at war, and between German and foreign churches. One important reason for his trip to the United States was to demonstrate that “God’s plan for Christian brotherhood doesn’t stop short at the boundaries of nations nor at the borders of continents.”^{^[21]} In addition to the ecumenical vitality of the universal church, he commended the non-denominational character of the Confessing Church and criticized the barriers set up that divide denominations.

When he met with groups of pastors or other churchmen and women, a prominent message was the need for the church to play a role in public affairs. Over and over he lamented that since the French Revolution religion had become a private affair resulting in an absence of moral and ethical responsibility in public matters. The absence of the commandments in public life, Niemöller explained, left people without any sense of direction leading them to embrace demagogues, who seemed to have all the answers. In his address to pastors in Rochester, N.Y. on February 25, 1947, he exclaimed that, “Because the commandments, the moral commandments and ethical commandments of God, were no longer acknowledged as valid for public life, humanity tried in a last decisive step to establish a new moral basis for public life in installing one person, Adolph Hitler.” The church, he went on, was particularly to blame for allowing this state of affairs to develop. Christianity, he insisted, was responsible for the disaster in central Europe because it did not carry out its duties to remind the world about the commandments.^{^[22]}

Niemöller tried to reassure his audiences that the German churches – at least those associated with the Confessing Church – had learned this lesson but he was worried about whether or not the average German was really learning any lessons from the past. The reason for this concern was that Germans were suffering horribly and that the danger existed that in their wretchedness they might easily fall pray to this or that ideology or person who claimed to have easy solutions to their problems. Or they may simply lose all hope and fall into despair. They wanted food on their plates and coal to heat their apartment. The church, however, could not offer easy solutions to their empty cupboards and unheated homes and so he worried about the appeal of the churches over time. He urged his American audiences to help mitigate this situation and to show Germans that Christians abroad cared about their plight by sending relief packages. And he urged American pastors to consider travelling to Germany to see for themselves the situation and to preach in a German church.^{^[23]}

On some occasions Niemöller would briefly address Nazi racial persecution and the state sponsored mass murder of Jews. He usually presented the church (and sometimes the German people) as opposed to the Nazis’ racial program. For instance, in a radio address over WMCA in New York in January 1947, he said, “When Hitler tried to extinguish the Jews, the Church had to pronounce and proclaim, ‘Thou shalt not Kill.’” In a speech delivered in New York, Niemöller reassured his audience that antisemitism was at its end in Germany and would never recur. On another occasion he described German suffering in the immediate postwar years as revenge for Jewish suffering. In his address to the FCC he exclaimed, “We saw guilt accumulate through twelve years [of Nazi rule] and culminate in the planned murder of millions of Jews – a guilt now being revenged according to the rule of human punishment “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”

So how did Americans, especially his critics, respond to his speaking tour and his multi-faceted message? The outgoing president of the FCC, Bishop Oxnam, with the unanimous and enthusiastic support of the FCC, sent a telegram to Mrs. Roosevelt the day after Niemöller’s first address. The telegram stated that the FCC deeply regretted her remarks that Niemöller’s opposition to the Nazis was not political. “The record clearly shows,” the telegram read, “that he repeatedly spoke against political aims of the Nazis as early as 1933. He was forbidden to preach as [a] result of his speaking against Hitler’s racialistic program.”^{^[24]} The FCC went on to urge Mrs. Roosevelt to correct the erroneous impression of Niemöller she had created. The telegram as well as a subsequent letter from Bishop Oxnam did not sway Mrs. Roosevelt. She wrote back that bringing Niemöller to the United States and allowing him to speak to huge audiences would only create sympathy for Germany and mask the threat that Germany poses to world peace. She concluded her letter to Oxnam stating, “I want us to be vividly aware of the fact that the German people are to blame, that they committed horrible crimes. Therefore, I think you are doing something which is stupid beyond words in bringing this gentleman here and having him touring the country, no matter how much you like him.”^{^[25]}

Mrs. Roosevelt was not alone in holding these views. Several prominent rabbis voiced similar concerns. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of The Temple in Cleveland, Ohio, and a key figure in the mobilization of American support for the founding of the State of Israel, called Niemöller unfit to lead postwar Germany because he did not oppose Nazi racism but only the Nazi persecution of the church. He agreed with Mrs. Roosevelt that Niemöller’s speaking tour “may be used to allay the fears held by many American people that Germany will be rebuilt without a real moral regeneration of the German people.”^{^[26]}

Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, told the FCC that he deplored its sponsorship of Niemöller’s speaking tour and considered it a great disservice to the country. Rabbi Wise criticized Niemöller’s “lamentable past of unequivocal support of Hitler until his own church was hurt. … The record is that neither before nor during his incarceration in a concentration camp did Niemöller speak one word of protest against one of the foulest crimes in history.” He expressed concern that Niemöller’s visit would only lead to a further softening of American occupation policy and that Germans would regard this as a sign of forgiveness and acceptance of their anti-democratic and antisemitic outlook.^{^[27]}

Responses to these and similar criticisms by leading representatives of the FCC such as Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, Dr. Henry Smith Leiper, Bishop Oxnam and others did not always fall on deaf ears. Estelle Sternberger, a well-known radio commentator in NYC and outspoken critic of the Niemöller visit, changed her mind about Niemöller after she was inundated with materials from the FCC providing “proof” of Niemöller’s anti-Nazi credentials. She went on the airwaves to tell her listeners about the abundant evidence “that the German pastor did do whatever he could to mobilize public opinion against the racial policies of the Nazis.”^{^[28]}

Although there most certainly were others like Sternberger who changed their minds, Niemöller’s visit seems to have done very little to overcome the disputed memories of complicity and righteousness. Both sides in this dispute inflated and distorted their evidence. Niemöller’s support for the Nazis in the 1924 and 1933 elections was inflated by his critics to the accusation that he had been a member of the Nazi Party and an unequivocal supporter of Hitler and his racial policy. Likewise, that Niemöller defied Hitler, opposed the introduction of the Aryan paragraph into the Church, and was imprisoned by Hitler was inflated by his supporters to suggest that Niemöller opposed not just Hitler’s church policy but also his political and racial policies from day one. These misconceptions and misrepresentations of Niemöller can be traced to the dual lgacy of the Church Struggle – a legacy that included both courageous opposition to the Nazi assault on the churches and the attempt to Nazify all facets of German society, and at the same time an acceptance of aspects of the Nazi political and racial program.

Niemöller’s subsequent visits to the United States were less fraught with controversy. But Niemöller still managed to stimulate lively debate through his criticisms of American occupation policy in Germany and the rearmament of West Germany under the pro-American Adenauer government. Charges and counter-charges were made that he was an unrepentant ultra-nationalist on the one hand and a communist sympathizer on the other. His advocacy of a “third way” during the Cold War led the U.S. State Department to consider him a man to be watched. Later he would support the civil rights movement in the U.S. and would meet with Ho Chi Mihn in North Vietnam to express his opposition to the war and Western imperialism. In the 1970s and 80s he was a leading voice in the nuclear disarmament movement. Long after Niemöller died, his name and, in particular, his poetic confession “First they came for” has been appropriated by American activists of every political persuasion for just about every political cause.

[1] This is the version insisted upon by Sybil Niemöller von Sell, Martin Niemöller’s wife.

[2] “Niemoeller of I,” Time (July 10, 1939).

[3] “For Niemoller,” Time (March 20, 1939).

[4] “Letters,” The Christian Century (March 15, 1939), 355.

[5] “Niemoeller,” The Washington Post (May 13, 1945), B4.

[6] George Palmer, “Niemoeller Tried to Join the Navy in 1939,” The Lewiston Daily Sun (June 6, 1945), 9.

[7] “For What I am,” Time (June 18, 1945).

[8] Clemens Vollnhals, Die evangelische Kirche nach dem Zusammenbruch: Berichte ausländischer Beobachter aus dem Jahre 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 21.

[9] Vollnhals, XXV.

[10] Vollnhals, XXVI.

[11] Ewart Turner, Christian Century (April 25, 1984), 445.

[12] “A Hero with Limitations,” New York Times (June 7, 1945), 18.

[13] “A Hero with Limitations,” New York Times (June 7, 1945), 18.

[14] “A Hero with Limitations,” New York Times (June 7, 1945), 18.

[15] San Jose Times (June 11, 1945), 12.

[16] Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day” (August 7, 1945).

[17] Ewart Turner, WCC Archives WWII Era.

[18] Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day” (December 4, 1946).

[19] Martin Niemöller, radio address, Seattle, (Dec. 5, 1946) WCC Archives WWII Era.

[20] Martin Niemöller, address in Davenport, Iowa, (Dec. 22, 1946) WCC Archives WWII Era.

[21] Martin Niemöller, address to FCC in Seattle (Dec. 5, 1946) WCC Archives WWII Era.

[22] Martin Niemöller, address in Rochester (Feb. 25, 1947) WCC Archives WWII Era.

[23] Martin Niemöller, address in Rochester (Feb. 25, 1947) WCC Archives WWII Era.

[24] “Message Sent on Niemoeller,” New York Times (Dec. 6, 1946).

[25] Eleanor Roosevelt to Bishop Oxnam in The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers edited by Allida M. Black (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006), 419.

[26] “Niemoeller Called ‘Unfit’ as a Leader,” New York Times (Feb, 3, 1947).

[27] “Rabbi Wise Deplores Niemoeller Favor,” New York Post (Jan. 25, 1947).

[28] “Sternberger Reverses Position on Niemoeller in Light of Evidence” in WCC Archives WWII Era.

Conference Report: 42nd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, May 12-14, 2012

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Conference Report: 42^nd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, May 12-14, 2012.

By Matthew D. Hockenos, Skidmore College

The 42^nd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches (ASC) was held in Rochester, NY, this year on the beautiful campus of Monroe Community College (MCC) from May 12-14. The ASC is an interfaith, interdisciplinary, and international organization founded by Franklin Littell and Hubert Locke, both professors and clergymen, in 1970. Littell, who died in 2009, founded the first doctoral studies program on the Holocaust in 1976 at Temple University, where he taught for many years and where his extensive papers, correspondence, and books are now housed in Paley Library. His wife, Professor Marcia Sachs Littell, a Holocaust scholar at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and the Executive Director Emerita of ASC, was present at the conference and chaired a thought-provoking panel on “Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women in the Holocaust.” Hubert Locke, Professor and Dean Emeritus of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, opened the conference with a greeting and encouraged participants and Holocaust scholars to think more broadly about the role of racial, religious, and national intolerance and prejudice.

Professor of Psychology Charles Clarke, the 2012 ASC Conference Chair and Director of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Project at MCC, did a superlative job organizing this year’s conference, which consisted of nearly 20 panels of scholars.

In line with this year’s conference theme, “70 Years Later: The Lingering Shadow of Wannsee,” the first plenary session included a presentation by Dr. Wolf Kaiser, Deputy-Director of The House of the Wannsee Conference, as well as a breakout session on “Genocidal Decision-Making and its Implications for Contemporary Genocide.” In addition to the panels on the churches and religion, there were a number of excellent presentations on Holocaust education, arts and literature, reparations, antisemitism, torture, and genocide.

The panels that addressed the churches and religion included a fascinating and troubling set of papers by John Pawlikowski of Catholic Theological University and Marvin Wilson of Gordon College, on the challenge of intractable supersessionary thinking. Willi Graf’s resistance and Emanuel Hirsch’s complicity were the topic of two papers by Stephani Richards-Wilson of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Jeremy Koop of York University respectively. There was a panel devoted entirely to Catholics and the Shoah with two papers addressing Pius XII and one by Joseph G. Kelly, professor emeritus of Nazareth College, on the Rochester Agreement, a joint Catholic-Jewish statement issued in 1996 that encouraged dialogue, respect, and combating religious intolerance. And finally, a plenary session, chaired by Hubert Locke, on “Disputed Memories of Complicity and Righteousness,” which included papers on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller, and Rolf Hochhuth by Vicki Barnett, Matthew Hockenos, and Mark Ruff respectively.

The conference closed with a tribute to Richard Rubenstein, a long-time participant in the ASC and acclaimed author and theologian, and a keynote address, “Is the Shoah the Perfect Storm of Genocide?,” by Michael Berenbaum, director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University.

Memorial Speech: Friedrich Weissler (1891-1937) and the Confessing Church. Remembrance and Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Death of Friedrich Weissler. Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, February 19, 2012

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Memorial Speech: Friedrich Weissler (1891-1937) and the Confessing Church. Remembrance and Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Death of Friedrich Weissler. Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, February 19, 2012.

By Manfred Gailus, Technische Universität, Berlin

Seventy-five years ago, in February 1937, Freidrich Weissler died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a result of mistreatment by the prison guards. He is widely regarded as the first Confessing Church member to be murdered as a victim of the Nazi persecution of the churches. Recently, at a commemorative ceremony held in the camp, Professor Manfred Gailus of Berlin’s Technical University honoured him with a fine tribute, which is here translated in abbreviated form by John S. Conway.

Friedrich Weissler came of a Jewish family, but, as a child, was baptized into the Protestant Church. He completed his studies in law just before the outbreak of war in 1914, when he served his country loyally and with true German patriotism. In the 1920s he resumed his legal career and by 1932 had been appointed a judge in Magdeburg. However, the rise of the National Socialists to power rapidly brought his career to an end. Already in April 1933 he was one of the 600 so-called “non-aryan” judges suspended from office, and in July he was dismissed. Despite his war service and distinguished record, the Nazis regarded him as “politically unreliable”. Thereafter there was little or no likelihood of his being employed in any branch of the public service.

Later he moved to Berlin and began to look for work in the private sphere. Due to his connections with the Protestant Church, he obtained a post as legal advisor to the incipient Confessing Church, first under Bishop Marahrens of Hannover, but subsequently with the more uncompromising wing led by Martin Niemöller and Martin Albertz. These men gave a strong lead to the Confessing Church’s rebuttal of the so-called “German Christians” efforts to infiltrate Nazi ideologies and practices into church life But there were also divisions in the Confessing Church’s ranks. The more moderate members were prepared to compromise on some issues, while the more radical wing, led by Niemöller, refused any such accommodations. They courageously adhered to the views outlined in the 1934 Barmen Declaration and resisted all attempts to limit or weaken the Church’s autonomy. Weissler joined this latter was a dangerous step, all the more because he had been branded since 1933 as a “non-aryan”. But he maintained his beliefs and served as a legal advisor for this wing of the Confessing Church.

In 1936, the increasing harassment of individual Confessing Church pastors and laity led this group’s leaders to draw up a petition calling for an end to such stressful persecution by the Gestapo or local Nazi agencies. Politely but unflinchingly the memorandum opposed the regime’s on-going attempts to “de-Christianize” Germany. The Nazi interpretation of “positive Christianity” was criticized. The document also called for an end to the measures limiting the church’s outreach in the schools, the press or public media. Finally the church leaders roundly declared their opposition to the Nazi antisemitic campaign, since such an ideology was against the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbour. Weissler was closely associated in drawing up this document to ensure that it was fully in compliance with the existing law. This forceful protest was to be presented in June 1936 to Hitler personally and in private, in the hope that he would then issue restraining orders to his underlings. But it was a sign of the Confessing Church’s political naivety that they entirely miscalculated the Nazis’ response. The scandal was made worse by the fact that somehow or other a copy was made available to the foreign press, where it was hailed as a significant challenge to Hitler’s regime. (Later researches have never been able to discover exactly how this happened.) The Gestapo immediately launched investigations into this act of national treason, and suspicion fell on Weissler – as a “Jew” – as well on two young curates, Werner Koch and Ernst Tillich. The Confessing Church leaders hastily sought to dissociate themselves from any accusation of political treachery and left Weissler to his fate. In October 1936 he was arrested and in February 1937 taken off to Sachsenhausen. Within a few days he was brutally done to death. The fact that Weissler was left in the lurch by his former employers and by the anti-Nazi champions in the Confessing Church was long suppressed. Only recently have attempts been made for some form of appropriate recognition. In Magdeburg a street has been named after him, and since 2008 one of the law courts bears his name. In 2005 the then chairman of the Evangelical Church’s Governing Council, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, said this: “We in the Evangelical Church have to acknowledge our guilt in not standing up for our co-worker Friedrich Weissler. Our history is not always one of heroic resistance to tyranny.” It is to be hoped that in the near future a suitable church building in Berlin will carry his name, as a token of remembrance of this intrepid Confessing Church member during those dark times.

Conference Report: Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, April 15-16, 2012

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Conference Report: Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, April 15-16, 2012.

By Bernard M. Levinson, University of Minnesota, and Melissa Kelley, University of Minnesota

On April 15-16, 2012, the University of Minnesota hosted “Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich,” a multi-discipline symposium organized by Bernard M. Levinson, Berman Family Chair of Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible, and Bruno Chaouat, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The symposium examined transformations in the academy and disciplines of the humanities during and after the Third Reich inGermany,ItalyandNorth America. The symposium consisted of three main sessions, “Nazi Germany and the Humanities in International Perspective,” “Disciplinary History,” and “Broader Implications.”

Alan Steinweis, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont, opened the symposium with a talk entitled “New Perspectives on the Third Reich and Its Impact on the Humanities.” Steinweis provided a chronological overview of scholarly attempts to investigate the relationship between faculties within the arts and humanities and the Nazi regime. Steinweis also posed questions that proved key throughout the symposium: was there a fundamental incompatibility between the largely conservative professoriate and the Nazi state in 1933? What were “academic values” in the early 20^th century, and were those values “betrayed”?

Stephen H. Norwood, Professor of History at Louisiana State University, then turned attention to the United States with “Appeasing Nazis: American Universities and the Hitler Regime, 1933-1939.” Detailing examples of tacit and direct support of Nazi policies and officials at elite academic institutions in theU.S.(including the Seven Sisters andColumbiaUniversity),Norwoodemphasized the often-sharp distinction between what might be deemed the more “grassroots” elements of the university community and administrations. Many students and community members protested the invitation of Nazi officials and sympathizers to campus.

Anti-Nazi demonstrations outside the academy, too, suggested a high level of knowledge about the extent of anti-Semitic measures in the Third Reich within and around university settings. Bringing the focus back to Germany, Robert Ericksen, the Kurt Meyer Chair of Holocaust Studies at Pacific Lutheran University, provided a case study of a specific university: “Göttingen: A ‘Political University’ in the Mirror of Denazification.” Ericksen demonstrated that, while the process of Entnazifierung [denazification] at Göttingen failed to rid the university of Nazi collaborators, it nonetheless provided later scholars with essential documentation on the politicization of the university during and after the Nazi regime. Professors claiming to take on the appearance of being a Nazi or a Nazi collaborator in order to “work from the inside” is one dynamic Ericksen has found in his work.

The next session on “Disciplinary History” examined individual fields of study and emphasized again the international context of the academy under National Socialism. Johannes Renger, Professor Emeritus of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the Freie Universität Berlin, in “German Assyriology 1933-1945: A Discipline in Troubled Waters between Emigration and Compliance with the Regime,” discussed the effects of the Nazi regime on the field of Assyriology, focusing on the loss of scholars due to Nazi pressures. The following talk from Anders Germar, Associate Professor of Theology at Uppsala University, entited “Theology in German Academia under the Swastika – the Case of Tübingen” showed how the confluence of a particular social milieu, the cultural and political environment, and an established research tradition made Tübingen’s theology faculty the site of a scholarly justification of antisemitism. Fascination with the ancient world was the subject of Suzanne L. Marchand’s talk, entitled “On Nazism and the Ancient World.” Professor of History at LouisianaStateUniversity, Marchand argued that scholars have underestimated how important the classical and biblical worlds were to historical and self-understandings in the 1920s and 1930s. Notions of the “ancient” were bound up in debates about what and who was “German.” Despite Nazi interest in so-called “German antiquity,” however, the field of German Altertumswisschenschaft did not make much headway within the academy. Eric Weitz, Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, in “The Complicity of the Academic Professions with the Third Reich,” emphasized the atmosphere of “crisis” within the universities preceding the Nazi seizure of power. A lack of jobs and mobility for those trained for the academic professions made Nazi supported programs such as Ostforschung compelling to those in the “crisis generation.” The session concluded with Franklin Adler, G. Theodore Mitau Professor of Political Science at Macalester College, who presented “The Italian Fascist Racial Laws of 1938 and the Expulsion of Jewish Professors,” an examination of the treatment of Jewish scholars in fascist Italy. The day closed with a public lecture given by Alvin Rosenfeld, Professor of Jewish Studies and English and Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University, entitled “Is There an Anti-Jewish Bias in Today’s University?”

The second day of the symposium was devoted to a session on “Broader Implications.” It opened with Michael Cherlin, Professor of Music at theUniversityofMinnesota, speaking on “Schoenberg, Creation and Catastrophe.” Cherlin presented Schoenberg’s distinctive musical creativity as drawing extensively upon the significance of catastrophe and exile in the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. Emmanuel Faye, Associate Professor of Philosophy at theUniversityofRouen, in “National Socialism and Totalitarianism in the Interpretations of Hannah Arendt and Aurel Kolnai,” connected Hannah Arendt’s defense of Martin Heidegger’s Nazism to her similar use of Nazi thinkers, such as Carl Schmitt, in her approach to totalitarianism. Faye maintained that Arendt whitewashed Schmitt and others by using them as sources rather than objects of critique. In the final presentation, “Hitler’s Willing Lawyers,” Oren Gross, Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, examined the “philosophical cloak for the Nazis’ arbitrary acts and crimes” provided by Carl Schmitt.

A session with all the participants closed the symposium. The discussion highlighted the benefits of interdisciplinary inquiry on the concepts of “betrayal,” “the humanities,” the Humboldtian Bildung ideal of the university, and “academic freedom.” An edited volume is in preparation to continue this exploration of the mutation of academic disciplines under National Socialism. Further information on the symposium is available at the website: https://sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/both/

Article Note: Manuel Borutta, “Genealogie der Säkularisierungstheorie. Zur Historisierung einer großen Erzählung der Moderne,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36 (2010): 347-76

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Article Note: Manuel Borutta, “Genealogie der Säkularisierungstheorie. Zur Historisierung einer großen Erzählung der Moderne,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36 (2010): 347-76.

By Heath Spencer, Seattle University

Many assume that secularization is a fundamental aspect of modernity and that religion is – or at least should be – a private matter, best kept separate from other spheres like politics, economics, and scientific inquiry. Manuel Borutta is among a growing number of scholars who raise questions about such assumptions and explore their origins. Borutta, of Ruhr-Universität Bochum, specializes in anti-Catholicism, culture wars, and secularization theory and is the author of Antikatholizismus. Deutschland und Italien im Zeitalter der Europäischen Kulturkämpfe (2010) and Religion und Zivilgesellschaft. Zur Theorie und Geschichte ihrer Beziehung (2005). His recent article in Geschichte und Gesellschaft historicizes secularization theory, arguing that it was invented by European liberals in the midst of the culture wars of the nineteenth-century. Liberals of this era demanded “eine Differenzierung von Politik und Religion, eine Privatisierung der Religion, eine Unterordnung der Kirche unter den Staat” (351), and they asserted that their own vision of the proper role of religion in society was nothing less than a fundamental law of modernity.

Borutta analyzes the writings of politicians and academics like Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Heinrich von Sybel, and Heinrich von Treitschke as well as images and articles in Berliner Wespen, Kladderadatsch, and Die Gartenlaube. In these sources, religious institutions and expressions of popular piety (especially Catholic) were often represented as relics of an age that had passed, or as brief flare-ups of medievalism in the midst of otherwise modern cultures. Anything that elevated faith above science or challenged the notion of autonomous spheres for religion and civil society was incompatible with the modern world and therefore illegitimate. Borutta also draws attention to the gendering of church and state that was common in liberal discourse. It was essential for the state to be “Herr im eigenen Hause” (359). However, rather than a separation of church and state, most liberals imagined a properly ordered marriage of church and state, one that was both complementary and hierarchical. The church (feminine, nurturing, emotional, partial) was to be confined to the private, domestic sphere, whereas the state (masculine, rational, scientific, universal) would oversee both the public and private spheres. In the end, liberal culture-warriors fashioned a master narrative in which modernity conformed to their own ideals. Beginning with Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, this model was institutionalized in the sociology of religion, and only recently has it faced serious challenge.

Although Borutta takes note of the transnational and transconfessional character of Europe’s culture wars, most of his examples are drawn from Germany and Switzerland. However, within this limited scope, his article raises awareness of the extent to which current conceptions of ‘modern Western society’ draw their inspiration from the conflicts of this era. It also makes an important contribution to recent scholarship that explores how narratives about religion and even definitions of ‘religion’ can privilege certain cultural preferences and configurations of power, as in works like William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (2009).

Call for Papers: Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 2012 Volume

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Call for Papers: Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 2012 Volume.

The editorial board of Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, a peer-reviewed electronic journal, invites submissions for its 2012 volume. SCJR publishes scholarship on the history, theology, and contemporary realities of Jewish-Christian relations and reviews new materials in the field, providing a vehicle for exchange of information, cooperation, and mutual enrichment in the field of Christian-Jewish studies and relations.

Interested authors are encouraged to contact the editors in advance. For publication in the 2012 volume, papers should be submitted by September 1, 2012 through the journal’s website. Papers submitted after September 1, 2012 may be considered for publication in a future volume. All papers will be subject to peer-review before acceptance for publication.

Ruth Langer, Co-Editor of SCJR, Professor of Jewish Studies and Associate Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, Boston College

Kevin Spicer, CSC, Co-Editor of SCJR, Professor of History, Stonehill College

For more information, please see www.bc.edu/scjr .

Letter from the Editors: March 2012

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Letter from the Editors: March 2012

Dear Friends,

This issue of our quarterly journal marks the beginning of its third year in its new format. As an independent venture, not funded by anybody, our aim is to provide you, our readers, with evaluations of new publications in the field of contemporary church history, i.e. from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Our aim is to do this as soon after publication as possible in order to assist your teaching and research. Our team of a dozen editors is drawn from both Europe and North America. Our mandate is to be both ecumenical and international. Because most of us began with an interest in Germany, the affairs of the German churches are frequently examined. But, at least in some sense, this is not fortuitous. For the German churches, Catholic, Protestant and Free Churches, provided striking examples of the perils and dangers for Christian witness during Germany’s subjection to two rival totalitarian systems in the past century. That is why we welcome our Berlin colleague, Manfred Gailus’ review of Martin Greschat’s survey of Protestantism in the Cold War, and Mark Ruff’s comment on the recent article by Olaf Blaschke on the Roman Catholic Kommission für Zeitgeschichte (Commission for Contemporary History). At the same time we ask you to note the positive steps taken to improve Catholic-Jewish relations, as recorded in the collected speeches of Pope John Paul II. We also bring you notice of some other aspects of Vatican diplomacy.

To be sure, looking back over the past century must give us pause for reflection. Vigorous debates, often reflected in the books here reviewed, still rage about how far the obvious and disturbing decline in Christianity’s support and credibility in Europe is the result of the churches’ failures to live up to their professed moral standards, or to the repressive features of many political regimes. It is our hope that this journal will continue to keep you posted about these and other controversies in the field of contemporary church history.

We offer you our best wishes for this Lenten season.

On behalf of all of the ACCH Quarterly editors,

John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Mark Edward Ruff, St. Louis University

Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University

From the Editors

Letter from the Editors – John S. Conway

Reviews

Review of Manfred Gailus and Armin Nolzen, eds., Zerstrittene Volksgemeinschaft: Glaube, Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus – Robert P. Ericksen

Review of Martin Greschat, Protestantismus im Kalten Krieg. Kirche, Politik und Gesellschaft im geteilten Deutschland 1945-1963 – Manfred Gailus

Review of Friedrich Winter, Friedrich Schauer (1891-1958): Seelsorger – Bekenner – Christ im Widerstand – John S. Conway

Review of S. J. D. Green, The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change, c.1920-1960 – Andrew Chandler

Review of Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Kleinicki, eds., The Saint for Shalom: How Pope John Paul II Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations: The Complete Texts 1979-2005 – John S. Conway

News and Notices

Article Note: New Research on Cold War Catholicism – William Doino

Book Note: A. D. McVay and L. Y. Luciuk, eds., The Holy See and the Holodomor. Documents from the Vatican Secret Archives on the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine – John S. Conway

Article Note: Olaf Blaschke, “Geschichtsdeutung und Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Kommission für Zeitgeschichte und das Netzwerk kirchenloyaler Katholizismusforscher, 1945-2000,” in Thomas Pittrof and Walter Schmitz, eds., Freie Anerkennung übergeschichtlicher Bindungen. Katholische Geschichtswahrnehmung im deutschsprachigen Raum des 20. Jahrhunderts – Mark Edward Ruff

Journal Issue Note: Crisis and Credibility in the Jewish-Christian World: Remembering Franklin Littel. The Fortieth Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. Special issue of Journal of Ecumenical Studies 46, no. 4 (Fall 2011) – John S. Conway

Review of Manfred Gailus and Armin Nolzen, eds., Zerstrittene “Volksgemeinschaft”: Glaube, Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Review of Manfred Gailus and Armin Nolzen, eds., Zerstrittene “Volksgemeinschaft”: Glaube, Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2011).

By Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University

“Woran glaubten die Menschen im ‘Dritten Reich?’” Gailus and Nolzen open their book with this question, arguing that it has received surprisingly little attention within the massive historiography devoted to the Nazi period. This work represents an attempt to evaluate the state of current research on Protestants and Catholics in Nazi Germany. It also includes a chapter by Merit Petersen on two smaller groups, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses; a chapter by Horst Junginger on German paganism (the German Faith Movement); and a chapter by Beth Griech-Polelle on National Socialism as a “political religion.” Two themes emerge in this volume. One is a refutation of the postwar charge that the Nazi era represented a period of intense secularization. In fact, Gailus and Nolzen argue, the Nazi period was intensely religious. Along with the early postwar era, it marked a break in the twentieth-century secularization that preceded and followed this middle period of nearly three decades. Secondly, the editors argue for increased attention to religion under the Nazis, especially by scholars not defending a piece of the religious turf. Such work should acknowledge regional differences as well as the complex and overlapping varieties of religious faith to be found.

Olaf Blaschke’s contribution picks up on an issue highlighted in Doris Bergen’s Twisted Cross (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), i.e., the importance of gender in understanding the pro-Nazi “German Christians.” Blaschke begins with the nineteenth century, arguing that Protestants in Bismarck’s Germany, epitomized by Heinrich von Treitschke, considered themselves the masculine Christians, with an emphasis on courage, strength, and the use of reason. Catholics were thought to be feminine, with more emotion, more sensitivity, and more resort to the superstitious side of religious belief (38). Protestants too, however, could be considered feminized, given the “soft” side of Christian beliefs and the percentage of women in the pews. By World War I, both religious faiths worked to “masculinize” their image and their message. Bergen points out the hyper-masculine nature of “German Christian” identity. Blaschke then describes “remasculination” efforts among Catholic theologians, including their hope to save piety from its soft, feminine image and remake it into an image of courage and strength. Blaschke argues throughout that these gender issues, largely ignored by historians, should have a significant place in our understanding of religion in the modern world, especially in the hyper-masculine world espoused by Nazi ideology.

Manfred Gailus offers a chapter on Protestants in which the title, “Keine gute Performance,” quite clearly indicates the message to be found. Noting that it took several decades for a critical and honest postwar assessment to develop, he describes the first generation to write the history with these words, “Die Erlebnisgeneration selbst erinnerte sich. Und natürlich legitimierte sie sich durch die Art ihrer Erinnerung” (98). Now we know better, in Gailus’s view. “Gegen langlebige Widerstands- und Kirchenkampflegenden ist zu betonen: Es bedurfte 1933 überhaupt keines Zwangs, keines gewaltsamen Angriffs von aussen—der Protestantismus öffnete dem anschwellenden Nationalsozialismus bereitwillig, vielfach fasziniert seine Türen, um die ‘Ideen von 1933’ einströmen zu lassen” (102). As for the question of Christians and Jews, “Protestanten haben im Kontext der so genannten Judenfrage nicht nur nicht genug für die Verfolgten getan, sondern zu nicht geringen Teilen haben sie selbst aktiv verachtet, ausgegrenzt, denunziert, verfolgt. Protestantismugeschichte ist an dieser Stelle zu erheblichen Anteilen auch Täter- und Mittätergeschichte” (111). Gailus acknowledges many differences to be found throughout the regional churches in Germany. He encourages historians to fill in these regional gaps, and also to write biographies of the broad range of church figures still without serious historical treatment. He also notes that some of the intensified religious commitment in the period turned toward the political religion of Nazism, with its opposition to the Enlightenment, to the “ideas of 1789,” and to the liberalism and democracy to be found in the West. He sees the Nazi period as intensely religious, but now with a three-part competition between Protestants, Catholics, and those who made a religion of National Socialism.

The second editor of this book, Armin Nolzen, attempts in his chapter the sort of statistical analysis rarely undertaken. What percentage of Nazi leaders, functionaries, and party members belonged to the Protestant or Catholic Church? He notes the difficulty of finding statistics. For example, according to the “positive Christianity” espoused in the Party Program in 1920, no one would be expected to have a particular faith. Thus no questions about one’s religious faith appeared on the membership application. A statistical record created in 1939, however, allowed party members to check a box for religion. This shows that 70 to 75 percent of party members checked either Protestant or Catholic, with 20-25 percent checking “gottglaubig.” Protestants were over-represented in comparison to their numbers in a given region, Catholics were under-represented, and “gottgläubig” were over-represented by a factor of four to five (158-59). The latter figure reflects the attempt within the Nazi Party to discourage church membership, as well as to separate church and state. Despite this, however, up to three-quarters of party members retained contact with their church. Even in the Allgemeine SS, reputedly the most anti-Christian organization in Nazi Germany, of nearly 250,000 members in December 1938, 51 percent were Protestant and 23 percent were Catholic (171). These figures match other indicators to suggest that three of four people inside the Nazi movement resisted pressure to leave their church. Furthermore, during World War II the number of party members laid to rest in church burials increased (170). At the same time, the total number of party members incorporated more and more of the German population, increasing from 4.8 million in 1938 to over 9 million by May 1945 (156). Finally, as Nolzen argues, an enormous number of Germans belonged to one of the many supporting organizations of the Nazi Party, if not to the Party itself. That figure was two-thirds of all Germans in May 1939, and Nolzen claims that it grew continually during six years of war (171). This leads to his conclusion: “Die meisten Deutschen konnten jedenfalls beides mit ihrem Gewissen vereinbaren: Ihren Glauben an den ‘Führer’ und den Nationalsozialismus sowie ihren Glauben an Gott und die Zugehörigket zu einer christlichen Kirche” (172).

This book includes much more of interest, including Kevin Spicer’s assessment of the Catholic Church under Nazism and Matthew Hockenos’s description of the churches after 1945. Many readers of this journal will be familiar with their books on these subjects. Beth Griech-Polelle gives a very useful overview and analysis of “political religion” and its place in the Nazi state. Dietmar Süss writes about religion on the home front during World War II, especially as the air war brought terror to those far behind the front lines. Dagmar Pöpping writes about the role of military chaplains, especially on the brutal eastern front from 1941-45. As a whole, the book highlights our present understanding of the role of religion in Nazi Germany and it calls upon scholars to work toward filling the gaps that remain. Gailus and Nolzen show that many varying claims were made upon “Volksgemeinschaft” in Nazi Germany. That complex story continues to unfold.

Review of Martin Greschat, Protestantismus im Kalten Krieg. Kirche, Politik und Gesellschaft im geteilten Deutschland 1945-1963

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Review of Martin Greschat, Protestantismus im Kalten Krieg. Kirche, Politik und Gesellschaft im geteilten Deutschland 1945-1963 (Paderborn: Schöningh Verlag, 2010), 450 Pp., ISBN 978-3-506-76806-3.

By Manfred Gailus, Technische Universität, Berlin

This review was first published in theologie.geschichte – Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kulturgeschichte (Universität Saarbrücken) Band 6 (2011). Translation courtesy of John S. Conway.

This book is the first overview of the history of German Protestantism in the early post-1945 period up to the year 1963. (Why the author chose to end there is not explained). His study begins with a broad survey of international relations and personalities, such as the Great Power rivalries between the USA and the USSR, the Korean War, Stalin and his diplomacy, Konrad Adenauer and Walter Ulbricht. This makes for an extremely lengthy introduction of nearly two hundred pages before the main topic is reached. But the author sees these events, as described in his Chapter 1, as important historical preconditions for the division of Germany The second chapter describes the establishment of the two German states. On the one hand, West Germany adopted a course of integration with the West and of rearmament, despite much internal opposition. On the other hand, the German Democratic Republic under Ulbricht underwent a similar process of integration into the Soviet sphere of influence. The third chapter briefly describes the turbulent years of the 1950s with the Geneva Conference of 1955, the uprisings in the Soviet bloc in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956, the 20th Party Congress of the Soviet Communists in 1956, Khruschchev’s ultimatum over Berlin, and the Cuban crisis. Finally, in chapter 4, Greschat arrives at his main theme, namely the developments in the Protestant churches. He deals first with the situation in the German Democratic Republic, in a far too detailed and hence rather wearying fashion, in my view. He then turns to West Germany. Despite the fact that both Protestant communities were decisively in favour of upholding the notion of German national unity, they slowly drifted apart from one another. In the following chapter 5, developments in the life and witness of the Protestant churches in the 1950s are analyzed These years saw the erosion of the traditional pietistic forms of worship, heated theological debates over Rudolf Bultmann’s “demythologizing” contentions, institutional innovations such as the Church Rallies, and the notable establishment of the Evangelical Academies, which did so much to foster the Protestant churches’ life and their involvement in the wider international and ecumenical discourse of the World Council of Churches and similar bodies.

This is indeed a vast undertaking. The reader will undoubtedly gain much on these various topics. But there are problems. For one thing, the author gives us several chronological accounts, first for the international scene, then for the national political level, and thirdly for the churches’ own historical developments—and in this case, twice over, one for the west, one for the east. This leads to numerous repetitions, to frequent recapitulations of items already covered (“as already mentioned”), or to redundant digressions.

Furthermore, the author does not tackle the problematical issue of how best such a history of recent German Protestantism should be written. Since 1945, despite the strong fixation on tradition, the evident trend has been to create a constellation of about two dozen separate provincial churches, each with its own theological, ecclesial and church-political character. Greschat’s concentration on the top-level deliberations of the Evangelical Church leadership, and on the significant political disputes of two divergent groups, one around Ehlers, Dibelius and Lilje and the other around Niemoller, Heinemann and Gollwitzer, hardly does justice to the diversity of the situation. Another more serious defect is the astonishing decision to omit any discussion of Germany’s recent past, which the historian Friedrich Meinecke so rightly called “The German Catastrophe”. In fact, this was also the catastrophe of German Protestants who constituted a two-thirds majority in the “Third Reich”. Greschat’s discussion of the internal and highly divisive disputes in the post-war period are really inexplicable without reference to the Nazi period, or to the Church Struggle against Nazism. In this regard Matthew Hockenos’ A Church Divided. German Protestants confront the Nazi Past (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004) is a model study. Unfortunately Greschat doesn’t even mention it.

Many sections of German Protestantism incurred a heavy burden of guilt for their highly regrettable behaviour during the Nazi period. But their stance is hardly mentioned in Greschat’s 450 pages. Likewise, no attention is given to the process of de-nazification, or what in the church was the wholly inadequate process of “self-cleansing”. Christian anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism or the Holocaust as such are not mentioned. And even the timorous Protestant attempts to begin to come to terms with a scholarly examination of the recent past, as in the Evangelical Association of Contemporary Church History after 1955, are not thoroughly discussed. The book by Bjorn Krondorfer, Katharina von Kellenbach and Norbert Reck, Mit Blick auf die Täter. Fragen an die deutsche Theologie nach 1945 (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2006), with its pertinent and often biting criticisms is not taken into account.

The outbreak of the Korean War, or more widely the Cold War, appears to have engrossed the attitudes of most contemporary Germans, and thus covered over that unspeakable darkness which burdened them, and in some cases still does. And so, one might suggest, it was highly convenient that the Cold War diverted attention away from those other more fateful events, about which they were unwilling to speak. But are these considerations still valid for scholarly accounts today? It is incomprehensible why this book omits mentioning the widespread silence, or more particularly the active evasiveness, the frequently well-rehearsed tissue of lies or alibis, or the habit of sweeping such unwelcome matters under the carpet, as engaged in by many Protestants.

Of course there may have been numerous understandable reasons why contemporaries in the 1950s wanted to suppress their personal pasts. But to continue suppressing such lamentable episodes in the Protestant collective past seems wholly reprehensible. Any history of German Protestantism in the 1950s needs to be written, not from the perspective of “Korea”, but from the viewpoint of the participants themselves. Herein lies what would appear to be an inexplicable omission in an otherwise significant study. As a first attempt to provide an overall account of post-war German Protestantism, this study needs to be substantially enhanced and improved.

Review of Friedrich Winter, Friedrich Schauer 1891-1958. Seelsorger – Bekenner – Christ im Widerstand

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Review of Friedrich Winter, Friedrich Schauer 1891-1958. Seelsorger – Bekenner – Christ im Widerstand (Berlin: Wichern Verlag, 2011), 215 Pp., ISBN 978-3-85981-326-8.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Friedrich Schauer was one of the cohort of German Evangelical pastors caught up in the religious, political and military disasters which engulfed Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. This short sympathetic account, written by a former church leader in Berlin, successfully describes the conflicts of loyalties in which these pastors were embroiled, and which in many cases strikingly affected their careers. Schauer was not a leading figure, but, for that reason, his biography can be seen as typical of many of his colleagues.

He had just completed his training when the First World War broke out. Within weeks, he was badly wounded in battle and lost the sight of his left eye. Nevertheless he was able after the war to take up parish work, first in East Prussia and then in Pomerania. Due to his conservative background and his military training, he early on opposed the more radical wing of the so-called “German Christians” who called for the adoption of Nazi ideas and practices in the church. Consequently he was a strong supporter of doctrinal orthodoxy, as expressed in the famous Barmen Declaration of 1934. But later he was disillusioned by the rigid dogmatism of those who followed Niemoeller and Bonhoeffer and refused any obedience to the established church authorities. Schauer wanted to maintain a more moderate position, rejecting extremism on either side. He became involved with the Brotherhood of Michael, a group of clergy who laid emphasis on a more liturgical church life, but avoided political engagement. One of the leading figures in this movement was Theodor Steltzer, who had been Schauer’s commanding officer in the First World War, and was to become the same in the Second.

In 1939 Schauer was again called up as a transportation officer, and served under Steltzer first in France and then for more than four years in Norway. Here he was able to establish friendly relations with some Norwegian clerics and sought to mitigate the effects of the German occupation. At this point Steltzer became increasingly critical of the Nazi leadership, and indeed became associated with the Kreisau Circle led by Graf Helmuth von Moltke. But it is not clear to what extent Schauer shared these opinions.

Following the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot, Steltzer was arrested and arraigned for high treason. (Fortunately, he survived.) Schauer, still in Oslo, must have taken all steps to destroy any evidence of his real sympathies. Only one paper survives in which he outlined his views on the future of Europe and the role of the church, along the conservative even authoritarian lines adopted by the Brotherhood of Michael. Such a stance was enough for him to be ordered dismissed from military service. But at the beginning of April 1945, instead of returning to Germany in disgrace, he fled to Sweden and sought asylum there. Luckily his friends in ecumenical circles supported him there for eighteen months until he was finally allowed to rejoin his family in West Germany.

Schauer’s post-war career was unpropitious. It seems his theological and political views found little favour in the reconstituted German Evangelical Church. Ill-health, caused by his war wounds and compounded by the loss of two of his sons on the Eastern Front in 1943, obliged him to take early retirement. He died shortly afterwards. This informative memoir is therefore rather a tragic story, but reflects the fateful experiences and the ambivalent stances of so many of these now forgotten pastors.

Review of S. J. D. Green, The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change, c. 1920-1960

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Review of S. J. D. Green, The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change, c. 1920-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 333 Pp., ISBN 978-0-521-83977-8.

By Andrew Chandler, George Bell Institute, University of Chichester

Very possibly what has brought many historians to consider seriously twentieth century religion is not its significance in politics, intellectual and cultural life or social existence, but the idea of its decline and even extinction. At all events, secularisation has by now become an academic realm in its own right, with its prophetic presences, its own points of reference, its particular questions (and answers) and its earnest debates about conceptual approaches and forms of analysis. Every scholar of contemporary society knows that in a western European country the statistics of adherence have crumbled, values and attitudes have altered and church buildings have emptied, shut and disappeared. Something vast has occurred—and we remain caught up in it. Whatever it may be, the term ‘secularisation’ still does very adequately in framing it.

S. J. D.Dixonis based at that most privileged of Oxbridge bastions, All Soul’s College. Certainly he works with a very well-stocked library on his doorstep: his references are copious at every turn and, although there is little archival research going on here, there is a committed and valuable exploration of published primary material. The book represents not so much a coherent argument as a succession of specific explorations of the waning of a Protestant inheritance, most of it effectively Victorian. It is a gathered contribution, a garnering of past articles published by earlier collections. But it professes an overall argument, too.

Green is cagey with his terms at the outset—he refuses to define ‘religious phenomena’, and accepts that his book is, ‘unashamedly’, a study of the specifics of denominational practice and popular belief (3). His chronological frame is chosen with a purpose and to effect: for some time scholars of secularisation have insisted that what happened after 1960 marked the crucial sea-change in the fortunes of public religion. He is firmly conscious of the difficulties in persisting in the idea of something distinctively ‘English’, but resolute in keeping out the Scots and the Welsh. Part I presents an ‘outline of the problem’ combining dense historiography with a bash at narrative; Part II picks up some case studies, inspecting the world of Dean Inge, the ‘strange death of puritan England’ and the ‘discovery of a “post-Protestant” people’ by Seebohm Rowntree; Part III adopts the pleasantly alliterative form of ‘Resistance, revival and resignation’, examining the church-state debates over the 1944 Education Act, asking if there really was much of a religious revival in the 1950s and then ‘slouching towards a secular society’ in the early 1960s. All of this is characterised by tremendous confidence, subtlety and fluency in the mobilization of terms and interpretive frameworks. Does the whole odyssey cohere? Just about, probably. Every reader will have their own questions. Is there too little sense of the deliberately constructed denominationalism on which so many Christians placed their hopes in this period? Very possibly. (Incidentally, principled Baptists might not much enjoy finding themselves a part of some conglomerate called here, a little casually, ‘theBaptistChurch’.) Might far more be said about the fate of all kinds of Christian social and educational institutions in these years? Surely. Does Dean Inge really deserve so much house space? Could there have been more about someone like Ernest Barker who wrote so thoughtfully and extensively about comparable themes? It is too easy to regret what has been left to one side—and, perhaps, irrelevant, because much of the value of the book lies in its capacity to provoke the mind to think of other avenues.

A plaudit on the cover observes the author’s pessimism while a second congratulates him for being so very ‘sensible’. Green would surely know how to value both attributes. Almost at the last gasp he writes, ‘Religion will not disappear, not even inEngland. But the social significance of religion will go on declining.’ (316) How we grasp quite what that leaves behind would make an interesting chapter in itself. At all events, it would take a rash scholar indeed to deny the force of such a judgement today.

Review of Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Kleinicki, eds., The Saint for Shalom: How Pope John Paul II Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations: The Complete Texts 1979-2005

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Review of Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Kleinicki, eds., The Saint for Shalom: How Pope John Paul II Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations: The Complete Texts 1979-2005. A Publication of the Anti-Defamation League (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2011), 363 Pp., ISBN 0-8245-1544-7.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The striking changes in Christian-Jewish relations in recent years have been described as the most significant theological development of the past century. The abandonment of age-old Christian hostilities and prejudices and their replacement by a positive and productive dialogue between partners now marks the altered pattern of relationships. This unprecedented step has been most notably pursued by the Roman Catholic authorities, ever since the historic pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. This new stance became consolidated as part of Catholic teaching and practice particularly during the lengthy 26-year reign of Pope John Paul II (1978-2005). It is therefore a welcome step that we now have in English translation a complete edition of the texts of this Pope’s speeches and writings on the subject of Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel. (Previous but incomplete editions were issued in 1987 and 1995.)

As Eugene Fisher notes in his valuable introductory commentary, John Paul II’s views on these topics were conditioned by two seminal events of the mid-twentieth century: the Nazi mass murder of millions of Jews and the subsequent re-establishment of the State of Israel. The theological repercussions of these developments for all Christians became a constantly repeated theme of the Pope’s discourses. The re-creation of Israel in 1948 overthrew one of Christianity’s oldest slanders against the Jews, namely that they were destined to be a wandering people, exiled from their Promised Land, because of their rejection and execution of their Messiah, Jesus. The theological shock of seeing a new and vibrant Jewish state resulted in a radically altered and much more positive view which John Paul embraced throughout his reign. This was a tangible sign of the wider positive relationship with the whole Jewish people throughout the world, based on the recognition that Jews and Christians were spiritual partners. This new stance excluded all previously-held notions of Christian triumphalism, which had for so long regarded Judaism and the Old Testament as being superseded by the more enlightened Christian witness. Instead John Paul repeatedly stressed the common bonds with “our dearly beloved elder brothers”, as exemplified in his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 2000, his visit to the Jewish memorial at Yad Vashem, and his prayer at the Western Wall, which are here reported in full.

No less urgent was the Pope’s repeated emphasis on the need to examine and rectify the calamitous indifference displayed by the Christian community when the Nazis attacked and persecuted the Jewish people. Having himself witnessed these crimes in his native Poland, John Paul could not fail to be aware of the vocal criticisms about the earlier silence of the churches and their leaders, including his own predecessors. He was therefore wholly convinced of the heavy burden of Christian guilt and of the need for gestures of repentance and solidarity. Vatican loyalties here competed with a genuine desire to express remorse and to build a new relationship through discussion and dialogue. These affirmations were to be matched by recurrent pronouncements about the need for Catholics to combat every vestige of anti-Semitism and to oppose all forms of racial intolerance. In Pope John Paul’s view, the painful legacies of earlier centuries were to be replaced by a repeated stress on the common spiritual patrimony shared by Jews and Christians.

As the documents in this collection show, Pope John Paul II’s striking and continued commitment to the cause of reconciliation has meant that these teachings have now become the new orthodoxy. It is indeed inconceivable that any future Catholic leaders could disavow John Paul’s advocacy and tireless endeavours. He has thus earned the sobriquet “The Saint for Shalom”.

Nevertheless, as Fisher admits, controversies still remain. Many Jews still have their doubts about the genuineness of this new Christian attitude after so many centuries of hostility and the world-wide phenomenon of religiously-based anti-Semitism. Many still voice criticisms about the policies of the war-time Pope Pius XII. The convoluted politics of the Middle East and the Pope’s evident sympathy for the plight of Christian Palestinians still continue to muddy the waters of Christian-Jewish relations. Yet these documents provide the evidence for John Paul’s courage in being the first Pope to profess his admiration for the Jewish people’s valiant adherence to their faith, and to affirm energetically the common commitment of both Christians and Jews to pursue justice and peace in the world.

Article Note: New Research on Cold War Catholicism

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Article Note: New Research on Cold War Catholicism

Karim Schelkens, “Vatican Diplomacy after the Cuban Missile Crisis: New Light on the Release of Josyf Slipyj,” The Catholic Historical Review 97, no. 4 (October 2011): 679-712.

Marie Gayte, “The Vatican and the Reagan Administration: A Cold War Alliance?” The Catholic Historical Review 97, no. 4 (October 2011): 713-736.

By William Doino Jr., Contributing Editor, Inside the Vatican magazine

Few conflicts have been more intense, or protracted, than the Roman Catholic Church’s battle with Communism. Two years before Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto (1848), Pope Pius IX referred to “that infamous doctrine of so-called Communism which is absolutely contrary to the Natural Law” and which “would utterly destroy the rights, property and possessions of all men.”

That is still, essentially, the Church’s teaching, though how it’s been expressed and applied over the years has varied, depending on historical circumstances, and the approaches of different popes.

Two articles on what might be called “Cold War Catholicism”covering the immediate post-war era to the collapse of the Soviet Union have recently appeared in The Catholic Historical Review (October, 2011) and are worthy of note.

The first is “Vatican Diplomacy after the Cuban Missile Crisis: New Light on the Release of Josyf Slipyj,” by Karim Schelkens, Secretary of the Center for the Study of Vatican II at the Catholic University of Leuven.

The author draws on notes, diaries and specialized archives to describe the dramatic events leading up to the February 1963 release of Josyf Slipyj, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop who had been imprisoned by the Soviet Communists for almost twenty years.

Schelkens helpfully provides the historical background. In communion with the Holy See since the Union of Brest in 1595-96, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) had long been in tension with the Russian Orthodox Church, especially after the Communists took power and made the latter a virtual instrument of the state. That conflict—held at bay during the Second World War, when a temporary unity prevailed against the Germans—re-emerged with a vengeance as the war came to a close. Schelkens writes:

On April 11, 1945, the Ukrainian Catholic bishops, including Slipyj, were arrested. Most of them were accused of collaboration with Nazi rule and sentenced to forced labor and exile. These draconic measures prompted a strong reaction from Pius XII, expressed in his encyclical Orientales Omnes of December 23, 1945. In it, the Vatican did not only condemn Communism but also openly and specifically attacked Moscow Patriarch Alexis. The situation worsened when on March 8-10, 1946, some 200 Greek Catholic priests were forced to revoke formally their Union with Rome, declare the Brest Union annulled, and convert to Russian Orthodoxy in a sobor set up by the Kremlinall without any say from the Ukrainian Catholic bishops. These dramatic events set the tone for decades to come, and the UGCC would become a “Church of Silence.”

The Church of “Silence” soon became a Church of Martyrs, as many Ukrainian Catholics who were interned by the Communists perished, if they were not tortured and killed beforehand. The full story of this brutal persecution has yet to be told, but to the extent it is remembered, Archbishop Slipyj is a large reason why.

Successor to the legendary Metropolitan Andrey Sheptystky, and a towering figure in his own right, Josyf Slipyj was the soul of the underground Ukrainian Catholic Church, even as he languished in the Siberian Gulag. News of his courageous witness spread, especially after his prison writings managed to circulate. But when the Communist authorities found out, they cracked down even harder, re-sentencing him again.

The death of Stalin in 1953 did not ease the lot of Slipyj or the suppressed UGCC; nor even did Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschkev’s famous “de-Stalinizination” speech of 1956. A fortuitous combination of events, however, led to Slipyj’s release, and it is in recounting this that Schelken excels.

In October of 1962, Pope John XXIII, successor to Pius XII, opened the Second Vatican Council, and with it a new approach toward the world (“aggiornamento”). This included searching new avenues to ease the suffering of Christians under Communist rule, without withdrawing any of the Church’s warnings about Marxist-Leninist ideology. The new approach was described by Msgr. Igino Cardinale, chief of protocol at the Secretariat of the Holy See, as being “ready to engage in relations with any state,” as long as there was a reliable assurance that “freedom for the church and the sanctity of the moral and spiritual interests of its citizens” were respected. Given the deceptions and crimes of the Communists, that was asking a lot, but the Vatican was willing to take risks, in hopes of achieving a greater good.

It didn’t take long to test the new policy. Just a few days after Vatican II opened, the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out and the mediation of the Church was sought. President Kennedy—pulling out all stops to avert a catastrophe—contacted his friend, the author Norman Cousins, who believed the greatest independent force in the world was the papacy. Cousins in turn reached out to his friend, Belgian priest Father Felix Morlion, O.P., who contacted the Holy See, and was assured of the Pope’s willingness to help. The next day, October 24, 1962, John XXIII issued a dramatic appeal to the relevant leaders not to remain deaf to “the cry of humanity.” On October 28, Khrushchev told President Kennedy that the missiles would be withdrawn. Many historians believe Pope John’s public appeal provided Khrushchev with a face-saving way to change course, depicting himself as a savior of world peace, rather than an outfoxed aggressor who blinked. Kennedy explicitly thanked John XXIII for his help.

Many of these same players, as Schelkens reveals, also worked together to obtain the release of Archbishop Slipyj. Thanks to a private intervention by Fr. Morlion with Russian representatives, the indefatigable Cousins was able to interview Khrushchev directly, and serve as an intermediary for the Holy See on behalf of world peace, religious freedom, and Archbishop Slipyj. Dutch Monsignor Johannes Willebrands also took parallel measures with other key diplomatic and religious figures, and the Soviets were surprisingly—though note entirely—cooperative. By early 1963, a decision had been made to release Slipyj on the condition that he would remain in exile and that his freedom would not be exploited by the Church for “anti-Soviet” purposes. In fact, as Schelkens reveals, “the Soviets thought it crucial that it was not to be considered a rehabilitation…. The release was to be regarded as an amnesty and that Slipyj was still considered an enemy of the Soviet government.” The Holy See agreed not to exploit the matter but made no promises about restricting its admonitions against Communism. Willebrands traveled to Russia to receive the Ukrainian archbishop and accompanied him back to Rome, where he was able to participate in the Council. Slipyj’s long-won freedom was further complicated by the fact that Russian Orthodox observers had been invited to attend the Council, as an ecumenical gesture, and accepted. Their presence “deeply shocked” the Ukrainian diaspora bishops who thought that the Holy See had conceded far too much to prelates they considered accessories to the Soviet suppression of the UGCC. But in the large picture, and whatever internal debates remained, the Holy See believed that its strategy had succeeded in accomplishing its ecumenical and political goals, without sacrificing any of its genuine principles.

Schelken’s article is complemented by another essay, “The Vatican and the Reagan Administration: A Cold War Alliance?” by Dr. Marie Gayte, professor of U.S. history at Université du Sud Toulon-Var in France. Here, she examines relations between the Holy See and the United States in the post-war era, culminating with the friendly and often productive but not always unified dealings with the Reagan administration.

At the end of World War II, Gayte relates, there was a convergence of interests between Pope Pius XII and President Harry Truman. The pontiff “well understood the intensity of suffering and persecution inflicted on Catholics under the Soviet regime,” while the President “became convinced of the expansionist aspiration of Stalin’s regime.” Thus, in spite of certain reservations about dividing the world into two blocs, Pius XII “welcomed American aid to Turkey and Greece, as well as the Marshall Plan, granting numerous audiences to congressional representatives. According to J. Graham Parson, who was assistant to Myron Taylor, Truman’s personal representative to Pius XII, ‘it [was not] too far to go in saying that most probably all the top people in the Vatican saw the United States as the only possible salvation of the values which they fundamentally stood for.”

But while Pius XII welcomed American support for shared interests, a careful reading of his pronouncements reveals an independent voice, one that could challenge the assumptions of America’s policymakers. An example of this was Pius XII’s strong warnings against the arms race, and the grave evils that would ensue should war break out between the two superpowers (a theme that would be developed and promulgated at Vatican II, after Pius XII’s passing). Pius was a strenuous opponent of the Soviet empire, and thus longed for its ideological collapse; but he was not (as he has sometimes been portrayed) a reckless anti-Communist who believed in “brinksmanship.”

Neither, for that matter, did his successors, John XXIII and Paul VI. As the international situation grew more intense—with nuclear arms proliferating and Cold War conflicts erupting in the Third World—both maintained that dialogue, rather than warfare, was the best means for obtaining a sound peace and social justice. What emerges clearly from Gayte’s essay is the apprehension papal pronouncements like the encyclicals Pacem in Terris (John XXIII) and Populorum Progressio (Paul VI) caused a succession of American administrations. The tension reached its height during the Vietnam War, which the Holy See did not condemn outright but clearly wanted ended. “The United States,’ writes Gayte, “seems to have been keen to avoid a Vatican portrayal of the United States as morally equivalent to the other belligerents, lest such a representation benefit its opponents in the war and its critics at home. This led to U.S. efforts to influence Vatican pronouncements on several occasions, something of which there is ample evidence in the archives of the Johnson and Nixon administrations.”

When the Vietnam War finally did end, it was not on terms favorable to anyone—except, perhaps, the Communist despots who took over. Even those who strongly opposed the war, in conscience, and saw it as an immoral act of American imperialism, were forced to concede that America’s opponents were hardly the meek, agrarian reformers depicted in some dubious quarters. They were, in fact, ruthless totalitarians who silenced their opponents, often by mass murder. The result was not peace with honor, but “peace with horror,” as one author acidly remarked.

Communism’s brutal record in Southeast Asia created a new sobriety within the Vatican, about the limits of the Christian-Marxist dialogue, and this, in turn, set the stage for the rise of Communism’s ultimate spiritual nemesis, Pope John Paul II. Having lived in Poland under both the Nazis and Communists, he understood the totalitarian mind better than many world leaders, and demonstrated that knowledge in his successful combat with them. He was fortunate to have as an ally Ronald Reagan, whose conservative American presidency has grown more impressive (and popular) over the years. Gayte describes the many areas the two leaders saw eye to eye on—for example, the dangers of a Marxist-driven “liberation theology” and the naïvete of certain peace activists about unilateral disarmament. John Paul told Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, “you know we are for peace, of course, but we are not for pacifists—unilateral pacifists. We know that is not the way to keep the peace.” Such Christian realism was welcomed by the Reaganites.

At the same time, Gayte properly rejects the simplistic notion of a “holy alliance” conjured up by some journalists. Appreciative as he was toward President Reagan, John Paul II did not hesitate, anymore than previous popes, to distance himself from certain American attitudes and policies the Church found objectionable, particularly the frightful idea that a nuclear war could be fought and won. “Although the pope unambiguously opposed Communism,” writes Gayte, “his pontificate also was one of continuity with his predecessors as far as defense of the third world, peace and social justice were concerned.”

To the extent disagreements did arise, it was because of erroneous American ideas about the Holy See. To their credit, officials in the Reagan administration did eventually learn this, with one candidly admitting, “The Vatican has its own agenda which leads it to statements and actions not always compatible with our policies. …the Vatican’s activities are understandable and follow naturally from the position of the pope as the spiritual leader of the Catholic world. Automatic assumptions in Washington that the Vatican is always on our side are misplaced.” That said, there can be no doubt that the relationship, at its best, did much to bring the Cold War to a largely positive conclusion, even as other dangers have arisen in its wake.

One principle that John Paul II and Ronald Reagan did share was a resounding belief in religious liberty, and the rights of individual conscience—attacks against which continue to arise. Today, as we witness the persecution of minorities in many regions of the world, and see attempts to intimidate religious leaders even in self-proclaimed “free” democracies, a renewed spiritual and political witness in defense of both is needed, now more than ever.

Book Note: A. D. McVay and L. Y. Luciuk, eds., The Holy See and the Holodomor. Documents from the Vatican Secret Archives on the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Book Note: A. D. McVay and L. Y. Luciuk, eds., The Holy See and the Holodomor. Documents from the Vatican Secret Archives on the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto and Kashtan Press, 2011), 99 Pp., ISBN 978-1-896354-37-8.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

In 1933-1934 the Soviet government embarked on a ruthless programme of collectivization of the Ukrainian peasantry, confiscation of much of their harvests to feed urban workers, and sales of grain abroad to gain hard currency with which to pay for the ambitious industrialization projects. The result was widespread famine and starvation amongst the Ukrainian villagers. Several million victims died—at a conservative estimate—in what is now commonly known as the Holodomor. There were even reports of cannibalism. Despite Soviet denials and censorship, news of the increasing rural destitution and hunger leaked out. Appeals for help were sent to various western agencies, including the Vatican. The Pontifical Commission Pro Russia, under its president Bishop d’Herbigny, obtained permission from the Pope Pius XI to use the Vatican’s newspapers to publish the appalling sufferings of the Ukrainians. But d’Herbigny’s subsequent campaign to have the Vatican sponsor a famine relief mission was never approved. The Secretariat of State, under Cardinal Pacelli—the later Pope Pius XII—turned down the suggestion on prudential grounds. The Vatican had no official contacts with the Soviet regime. Since the latter refused to acknowledge the disaster, any attempt to intervene with a relief mission would only be rebuffed and might have punitive consequences for the few Catholics in the area. Discretion was called for, all the more since the Vatican had no means of ensuring that any relief it might offer would in fact reach the famine’s victims. In addition, caution dictated that the Vatican would be wiser not to take any lead, though limited financial assistance could be offered through indirect channels.

The background for this abortive effort is given in the sixty brief documents from the Vatican’s files printed here, excellently translated into English, and by the valuable introduction and afterword provided by the Ukrainian Canadian editors. In their view, the Vatican’s stance was strongly influenced by the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany in early 1933, whose anti-Soviet propaganda took every advantage of the famine to condemn Stalin and the Communist policies of repression. But Pacelli’s priorities at that moment were to secure the Nazi government’s agreement to a Reich Concordat, finally concluded in July 1933. Any steps which appeared to be assisting the Soviet Union or its peoples might therefore have fateful consequences. This stance naturally disappointed all those who expected the Vatican to live up to its moral professions to help humanity in crisis. The resulting paralysis and lack of action set a precedent for the even more agonizing dilemmas which the Vatican had to face in the course of the Second World War a few years later. It was an unenviable position, easily criticized in retrospect, but far less easily managed at the time.

Article Note: Olaf Blaschke, “Geschichtsdeutung und Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Kommission für Zeitgeschichte und das Netzwerk kirchenloyaler Katholizismusforscher, 1945-2000”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Article Note: Olaf Blaschke, “Geschichtsdeutung und Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Kommission für Zeitgeschichte und das Netzwerk kirchenloyaler Katholizismusforscher, 1945-2000,” in Thomas Pittrof and Walter Schmitz, eds., Freie Anerkennung übergeschichtlicher Bindungen. Katholische Geschichtswahrnehmung im deutschsprachigen Raum des 20. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg: Rombach Verlag, 2009), 479-521.

By Mark Edward Ruff, Saint Louis University

In this massive forty-two page article, the German historian, Olaf Blaschke, sets his sights on the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte (Commission for Contemporary History). This Roman Catholic historical association founded in the fall of 1962 and now based in Bonn is perhaps best known in historical circles for having produced the so-called “Blue Series,” more than 175 documentary volumes and monographs on the history of German Catholicism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has served as a nexus for historical research, bringing together historians for research on many projects including many pertaining to the history of the Roman Catholic Church during the Nazi era. The Commission has also emerged as a public relations outpost, dispatching its team of historical experts or the names of trusted colleagues to the press when pressing questions about the church’s past arrived in the headlines.

For Blaschke, the Commission provides the ideal example of a network that for decades succeeded in determining how the church’s past would be viewed. Or in his words, this is the account of “how a well positioned group stabilized a social network of support and succeeded in establishing hegemony over a specific discourse and partially maintaining this until today.” Its approach, he argues, was “apologetic.” By this term, Blaschke means that the historians writing about the church’s past during these terrible years tended to underscore the church’s positive achievements rather than to focus on its failings, omissions and missteps. They were also more likely to underscore resistance rather than collaboration and to put the church on the side of the victims and martyrs rather than the oppressors. And hence his goal: reconstructing the inner workings of the network at the heart of the Commission.

This task leads him to pore over lists of the Commission’s board members put together by one of the Commission’s founders, Rudolf Morsey, in 2004. Blaschke draws three diagrams for the intervals 1965-1976, 1977-1988, and 1989-2000, showing the frequency with which network members thanked each other in the introductions and forewords to their works. He notes constants and changes over nearly fifty years. The proportion of churchmen and politicians shrank over the decades, while the ranks of professional academics, mostly but not exclusively historians, accordingly rose. Two founders remained fixtures: the historians Konrad Repgen and Rudolf Morsey, who helped direct the institute itself and oversaw many of its publications. Other men played central roles: Dieter Albrecht, Ludwig Volk, SJ, Klaus Gotto and Ulrich von Hehl. Blaschke hones in on the network’s mechanisms of exclusion. The board was the terrain of men. Only one woman took part (whom he does not name), and her role was peripheral. Voices particularly critical of the church’s past were not permitted entry. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, whose critical article about German Catholicism in 1933 published in Hochland sparked something of a firestorm, was not invited to a conference held in Würzburg in May 1961 that provided momentum for the Commission’s founding. Indeed, he did not receive an acknowledgment of thanks in a volume from the Blue Series until 1998.

Written from the hand of an outsider, Blaschke’s analysis represents an admirable first stab into the mechanics of this network, even if an aggrieved tone reveals something of the author’s motives. Blaschke correctly anchors the founding of this network in the political and ideological currents of the 1950s—in the spat over the validity of the Reichskonkordat which culminated in a widely-publicized and massive hearing before Germany’s Constitutional Court in June, 1956, into the rediscovery of the Nazi past from the second half of the 1950s and in attempts to overcome educational deficits amongst German Catholics.

Blaschke’s foray into the politics of history nonetheless has to rely predominantly on published sources. He repeatedly turns to Rudolf Morsey’s insider account of the Commission’s founding, the forwards to the volumes in the Blue Series and other retrospective glimpses offered by Commission members. More meticulous archival research into his topic, however, makes clear that the Commission, all outward appearances notwithstanding, was actually less homogeneous and united than portrayed here. Strategies and tactics varied. Personalities clashed. As Blaschke himself observes, founding members like Morsey and Repgen had to fight their own battles of sorts against the politicians of past and present like Heinrich Krone of the CDU in their effort to bring “truth to light.” Volk’s papers in the Jesuit Archives in Munich leave little doubt that his connections to the other Commission members were less substantial than a reading of acknowledgments might reveal. Though a tireless researcher, the more solitary Volk moved in intellectual and social circles that did not always overlap with those of other prominent members of this network.

Its many noteworthy volumes notwithstanding, the Commission also did not succeed in painting the definite discourse on the church’s role in the Third Reich—neither in the academy nor in the mainstream press. In the sweeping surveys of the Third Reich, its research was often eclipsed by the findings of church critics, its documentary editions less frequently consulted. Against the critical writings of the Hochhuths, Cornwalls and Lewys, its fervent protests had a lesser impact, undoubtedly because the mechanisms of the international press rarely intersected with this network formally anchored in the church. The mainstream news media, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, tended to bypass the findings of the Commission and to give print and air time instead to the exposes of church critics. Language was one obvious barrier. The works of the Commission have not been translated into English. But the Commission’s dense monograph and documentary editions have proven nearly impossible to distill into easily digestible nuggets. In hindsight, the outcome of battles between critical sound-bytes and dense works of scholarship was never in dispute.

Further limiting the Commission’s impact on the mainstream historical profession was the fact that its members were exclusively Roman Catholic. Most of its authors sought to write “objective” history in a Rankean sense by letting the sources speak for themselves in a strict reconstruction of the past. To no great surprise, the Commission’s publications were not absorbed into the great initial waves of social and cultural history that began sweeping through the German historical landscapes in the 1970s and 1990s respectively. By the 1990s, however, social history became part of the Commission’s corpus of literature, as evidenced by volumes produced by Antonius Liedhegener on Protestants and Catholics in Bochum and Münster or by Christoph Kösters on youth organizations in the 1920s and 1930s. These volumes, along with others from the 1990s and 2000s, were heavily informed by the model of the “Catholic milieu.” Inspired by the work of the sociologist, M. Rainer Lepsius, this model was first used by historians to explain the history of the German Empire (1871-1914). But only in 2006 did the Commission publish its first volume of cultural history, an account of Catholic students in the postwar era by Christian Schmidtmann.

These volumes notwithstanding, many of the earlier volumes of the Commission, particularly those pertaining to the late Weimar and National Socialist eras were most likely to be cited by fellow network members. But this was true, as Blaschke notes, of the other side as well. Operating with an equal degree of methodological insularity, the advocates of social and cultural history emerging from bastions like Bielefeld preferred the output of their friends, colleagues and mentors as models of inspiration and citation. Blaschke’s essay thus opens the door for an analysis of the mechanics behind other historical networks including the Bielefelders or the Protestant Commission for the History of the Church Struggle during the Nazi Era. Were they also male-dominated? Did they foster ties to politicians and the media? And was their work an offshoot of larger ideological and political struggles?

Blaschke ultimately paints a picture of a parallel universe, even while acknowledging that the bunker mentality of the past is history. New networks like the Schwerter Arbeitskreis für Katholizismusforschung, he points out, have emerged to supplant the Commission’s research monopoly, and leaders of the Commission have joined in the discussions that they have launched. Blaschke is right in calling for those in the field to bury the hatchets from the past. The battles from the 1950s through the 1990s need to be historicized and given their proper place in history. But will the ongoing controversies over the Roman Catholic past and the divergent moral lessons so many have drawn from these harrowing years allow this to happen?

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012