Tag Archives: William Skiles

Review of William Skiles, Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 4 (Winter 2024)

Review of William Skiles, Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church (Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023). 293 Pp. ISBN: 9781978700635.

By Jonathan Huener, University of Vermont

Historians of the churches under National Socialism have long been preoccupied by opposition and conformity among pastors and theologians who identified with the Confessing Church. While much of the scholarship has focused on the actions and public statements of Confessing Church leaders in the public arena, William Skiles’ highly readable new monograph is concerned with the ministry of pastors at the parish level. Analyzing more than 900 sermons delivered by ninety-five pastors, Skiles sheds new light on how clergy of the Confessing Church responded to the National Socialist ideology and the regime’s persecutory policies toward its opponents, toward the churches, and toward Jews. While this study conforms to the broader historiographical consensus that the German Protestant churches failed to mount effective opposition or resistance to National Socialism, it also emphasizes that Confessing Church pastors did succeed in articulating, if in non-explicit ways, nonconformity and opposition by characterizing National Socialism as a false and fundamentally anti-Christian ideology, by criticizing the Nazi regime’s persecution of Christians and the German churches, and by challenging Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and policy.

After setting his agenda in the introductory chapter, Skiles outlines in Chapter 2 the religious conflicts under National Socialism, and more specifically, the division in German Protestantism between the German Christian movement, which sought to align Protestant theology and praxis with Nazi ideology, and the Confessing Church. For Skiles, at the foundation of that conflict was “a profound disagreement about the nature of divine revelation,” (p. 28) with the German Christians claiming to find divine revelation in history, national identity, and racial “science.” By contrast, the Confessing Church, in the spirit of the Reformation, held to the doctrine that knowledge of God is to be found in scripture alone. This chapter provides important context as it guides the reader through some of the early milestones in the regime’s conflict with the Confessing Church: the controversy over the “Aryan Paragraph” of 1933, which excluded clergy of alleged Jewish heritage from the pastorate; the subsequent formation of the Pastors’ Emergency League, which formed the basis for the Confessing Church; and the issuing of the Barmen Declaration in 1934. Skiles also effectively challenges in this chapter two common and simplified interpretations: that the Confessing Church was an anti-Nazi resistance group, and that the Confessing Church’s conflict with the regime was essentially about ecclesiastical freedom.

Chapter 3 accounts for the “historic unmooring” (p. 64) of the Gospel from the scriptures under the influence of the German Christians. For Skiles, the antecedents for this are to be found in the development and traditions of liberal Protestant theology in the nineteenth century. This provides the foundation for Chapter 4, an analysis of the “new school” of homiletics emerging in the early twentieth century. Led by the theologians Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others, this trend elevated the importance of preaching, emphasized the authority of scripture, linked homiletics to the sacraments, and affirmed the indispensability and relevance of the Hebrew scriptures. Focusing especially on the writings of Barth, Skiles contends in this chapter that “while the German Christians wished to use the gospel to advance the National Socialist ideology for national and spiritual renewal, Confessing Christians wished to unleash the gospel as a power unto itself [emphasis in original] to achieve spiritual regeneration” (p. 97). While Skiles’ reading of this theological reorientation may be sound, his argument that it “gave Confessing pastors a foothold to express non-conformity and opposition to the German Christian movement and the Nazi regime” (p. 86) remains unconvincing.

Forming the core of Skiles’ study, the next four chapters examine the ways in which Confessing Church pastors voiced in their sermons dissent and opposition to the Nazi regime by challenging its ideology (Chapter 5), its persecution of the churches (Chapter 6), and its antisemitism and persecution of Jews (Chapters 7 and 8). The author is quick to emphasize in Chapter 5 the latitude available to pastors in their preaching, even as he acknowledges that the voicing of dissent or opposition was infrequent and, when it did occur, often implicit and issued “from a posture of obedience to the state” (p. 118). Criticism of the regime was often veiled in the use or aversion of certain words or phrases (e.g., “Bürger” as opposed to “Volksgenosse“), and at times decried National Socialism’s elevation of the “false idols” (p. 129) of nation, race, or Hitler. Skiles also cautions against uncritical acceptance of Dean Stroud’s claim that faithful preaching of the Gospel was, in the context of Nazi Germany, in and of itself an act of resistance,[1] for in this claim Stroud makes a theological assertion rather than posing a sufficient and effective historical argument based on analysis of sources.

As one would expect, pastors and theologians of the Confessing Church also voiced criticism of the Nazi regime’s persecution of Christians and the churches, but again in limited and often implicit ways. They did so by, for example, emphasizing God’s love and justice (in contrast to the obvious injustices of the Nazi state), by relating information about the persecuted (this often accomplished via intercessory prayers), and by invoking God’s judgement on evildoers. It is striking, however, that of the more than 900 sermons analyzed, only thirty-seven condemned the persecution of the churches; and of the ninety-five clergy in Skiles’ sample, only twelve voiced such criticisms, and in so doing only a few were willing to identify the regime in clear terms. Skiles’ numbers regarding Confessing pastors’ criticisms of Nazi policy against Jews, although perhaps not surprising, are equally remarkable: of some 900 sermons analyzed, only sixteen contained criticisms of the persecution of Jews. Skiles considers in Chapter 8 some of the reasons behind this disturbing reality, including Nazi propaganda, concern about the war, a sense of powerlessness vis-a-vis the regime, moral desensitization, antisemitism, and what Peter Fritzsche has described as “general silence” reflecting the German people’s “limits on empathy” (p. 228). The author confronts Confessing pastors’ antisemitism in the preceding chapter, in which he considers the symbiosis between racial prejudice and Christian hostility toward Judaism. Thirty-five of the 900 sermons analyzed contained expressions of anti-Jewish prejudice, and Skiles’ reading reveals that pastors, paradoxically, also made use of conventional anti-Jewish themes and tropes (e.g., the Jews as tribal, the Jews as God-forsaken and cursed, the Jews as idolatrous) to condemn the Nazis and their ideology.

The ninth chapter of this study addresses the efforts of the Nazi Secret State Police (Gestapo) and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) to monitor what was said within the walls of churches led by Confessing pastors. The reports of these organizations confirm that pastors did on occasion preach in ways that undermined Nazi ideology and policy, and they reveal the regime’s concern over these sermons. The reports, however, also invite consideration of a broader issue that Skiles raises in this chapter: the problem of reception. How did parishioners apprehend and respond to the rare expressions of dissent or opposition from the pulpit? We lack the sources to respond effectively to that question, and while Skiles’ acknowledges this challenge, he also takes an interpretive leap in asserting that “[c]lergymen’s sermons contributed to a public conversation about the moral nature and truth claims of National Socialism” (p. 242). We do not know how extensive that conversation was; nor is it clear that such a conversation was inspired or influenced by what average Germans experienced in church.

In engaging the theological realm and giving the reader a glimpse into what forms of dissent and opposition occurred within the walls of the church, Skiles accomplishes much in this monograph. Yet questions remain. The author’s source base initially appears extensive, but the number and provenance of the sermons analyzed are not effectively problematized, leaving the reader questioning if some 900 sermons are, in fact, sufficiently representative to support his conclusions. When one considers that some 6,000 pastors were affiliated with the Confessing Church in the early years of the regime, his sample of ninety-five pastors remains troublingly small. Skiles also sets out “to demonstrate the extraordinary possibilities for oppositional preaching in Nazi Germany” (p. 15) via sermons that, he concludes, were “a prominent means by which Confessing Church pastors criticized the regime and its ideology and sought to reorient the perspectives and values of their congregants” (p. 255). But how prominent were the means, and how successfully did pastors reorient the perspectives and values of parishioners? And if the possibilities for oppositional preaching were indeed extraordinary, why did so few pastors avail themselves of such opportunities? Skiles concedes that the vast majority of sermons did not voice opposition, and when they did so, criticism of the regime was seldom explicit. His elevation of the importance of the Confessing Church sermon appears, then, based in hope as much as evidence, for this is as much the story of what was not said from the pulpit, as it is the story of what was.

Notes:

[1] Dean Stroud, ed., Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2013).

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

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2024)

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

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

[3] Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 488.

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

[5] Ibid., 54.

[6] Ibid., 60-62.

New Research on Nazism and Christianity: William Skiles

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 20, Number 1 (March 2014)

New Research on Nazism: William Skiles

By William Skiles, University of California, San Diego

William Skiles is a Ph.D Candidate in the History Department at the University of California, San Diego. Here is a brief description of his dissertation research. Mr. Skiles can be reached at wskiles@ucsd.edu.

Historians of the Church Struggle in Nazi Germany have closely examined the establishment of the oppositional Confessing Church (die Bekennende Kirche) in 1934, as well as the institutional conflicts between factions and figures within the movement and also with the regime and its supporters. Yet the approach of most historians has focused on the institution, its leaders, and its persecution by the Nazi regime, leaving essentially unexamined the most elemental task of the pastor – that is, preaching. My research explores the Confessing Church through the sermons its pastors preached Sunday after Sunday, for holidays and weddings and funerals, and even in the dark corners of concentration camps.

I am concerned with finding answers to a few key questions. First, do the sermons of the Confessing Church reveal expressions of condemnation or support for National Socialism or Adolf Hitler? In other words, did the pastors enter into a public debate about the Nazi regime from their position of influence behind the pulpit? Second, how do these sermons express views either in support or antagonistic towards Jews and Judaism? How often do we see cases of anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism preached, or conversely, how often do we see the Jews encouraged or esteemed as religious cousins in Nazi Germany? And lastly, just how often do we see Confessing Church sermons offer dissent, opposition, or even resistance to the Nazi regime. Given their unique role in Nazi Germany as professionals who had the opportunity to speak to the German population about Jews and their tradition, what did they say and how did they say it? And in answering these questions, I aim to understand how these sermons may have contributed to the social and religious milieu of the Protestant Church and, in a wider scope, Nazi Germany.

Of course, one of the most difficult problems is determining what constitutes opposition or resistance. I have examined over 900 sermons to find any expressions about Nazism or Hitler, and also about Jews and Judaism. Categorizing comments about Adolf Hitler and National Socialism is much more straight-forward, as political comments in a sermons stand out as unusual and purposeful in a sermon. For example, a pastor might condemn National Socialism as a false ideology or an ideology in direct opposition to Christianity; or a pastor would criticize Hitler as a false messiah or leader, or condemn other Nazi leaders for their persecution of the German churches.

On the other hand, analyzing comments about Jews and Judaism is more complicated. Naturally, we expect Christian pastors to preach on the Old Testament, to tell the stories contained in this book. Often the pastors’ presentations of these stories is without implication for the support or prejudice of Jews in Nazi Germany, they are simply re-iterations of old stories for a new audience. Therefore, I pay particular attention to comments that reflect views of Jews and Judaism relevant to the current situation in Nazi Germany. I did not catalogue more mundane examples of pastors discussing the traditions of the Jewish people, such as reiterations of the story of Jonah and the whale, for example. Nevertheless, the fact that these Confessing Church pastors preached on the Old Testament and held up Hebrew and Jewish figures as heroes or moral and spiritual examples demonstrates not only their appreciation of the Old Testament as a sacred text, but differentiates them from the pro-Nazi Protestant German Christian movement (Glaubensbewegung “Deutsche Christen”).

This research is an original contribution to the historiography because for the first time we will have an in-depth analysis of a variety of messages delivered by Confessing Church pastors in their sermons to their communities of faith. This will give us greater insight into the nature and the degree of dissent, opposition, and resistance in the everyday ministry of the church, and also provide some insight about public opinion expressed from the pulpit from week to week, whether explicitly or cryptically. In addition, I am interested in how the Nazi regime perceived these sermons and dealt with pastors who were deemed too vocal – the Gestapo repots are superb documents in this regard. Lastly, my research will advance our understanding of the social world of Germans in the Nazi dictatorship, particularly the values and priorities of their communities of faith, and how sermons may have informed political, social, and theological perspectives. In the end, we may better be able to answer to what extent Confessing Church pastors spoke out for the Jews or against the Nazi regime, or as was too often the case, simply kept silent.