Hitler's Priests

Catholic Clergy and National Socialism

Kevin Spicer

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780875807881
• eBook ISBN: 9781609092429
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: German History

Shaken by military defeat and economic depression after War World I, Germans sought to restore their nation's dignity and power. In this context the National Socialist Party, with its promise of a revivified Germany, drew supporters. Among the most zealous were a number of Catholic clergymen known as "brown priests" who volunteered as Nazi propagandists. In this insightful study, Spicer unearths a dark subchapter in Roman Catholic history, introduces the principal clergymen who participated in the Nazi movement, examines their motives, details their advocacy of National Socialism, and explores the consequences of their political activism.

Some brown priests, particularly war veterans, advocated National Socialism because it appealed to their patriotic ardor. Others had less laudatory motives: disaffection with clerical life, conflicts with Church superiors, or ambition for personal power and fame. Whatever their individual motives, they employed their skills as orators, writers, and teachers to proclaim the message of Nazism. Especially during the early 1930s, when the Church forbade membership in the party, these clergymen strove to prove that Catholicism was compatible with National Socialism, thereby justifying their support of Nazi ideology. Father Dr. Philipp Haeuser, a scholar and pastor, went so far as to promote antisemitism while deifying Adolf Hitler. The Führer's antisemitism, Spicer argues, did not deter clergymen such as Haeuser because, although the Church officially rejected the Nazis' extreme racism, Catholic teachings tolerated hostility toward Jews by blaming them for Christ's crucifixion.

While a handful of brown priests enjoyed the forbearance of their bishops, others endured reprimand or even dismissal; a few found new vocations with the Third Reich. After the fall of the Reich, the most visible brown priests faced trial for their part in the crimes of National Socialism, a movement they had once so earnestly supported.

In addition to this intriguing history about clergymen trying to reconcile faith and politics, Spicer provides a master list—verified by extensive research in Church and government archives—of Catholic clergy who publicly supported National Socialism.

1—Adapting Catholic Teaching to Nazi Ideology

At the end of the Second World War, a report from the American Third Army stated, “The question who is a Nazi is often a dark riddle. . . . The question what is a Nazi is also not easy to answer.” Despite these challenges, the Allied Powers (France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States) individually created a complex denazification system with tribunals to determine who had been an ardent supporter of National Socialism. In its occupied zones (Hesse, northern half of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and southern part of Greater Berlin), the United States developed a detailed Fragebogen (questionnaire) that asked German citizens to state if they had ever been a member of the NSDAP or of any of its related organizations. In turn, the Americans had access to the party’s membership card catalogue in order to verify the respondents’ answers.¹ Even with these resources, the occupying powers faced a mammoth task that often relied on the willingness of individuals to incriminate themselves or others.

Many members of the German clergy shared their bishops’ negative appraisal of denazification. In particular, Father Hermann Schmidt of the Fulda diocese considered denazification so full of biases that he lodged a formal complaint with the American army. Schmidt’s objection concerned the mandatory removal of anyone from his or her place of employment, especially if the person had joined the NSDAP prior to May 1, 1937—the date when all state employees (excluding priests) had either to join the party or relinquish their positions. Schmidt held that many individuals who had joined the party were initially misled by its promises. This fact, he said, was “understandable and forgivable.” According to him, “only a few of them were politically so well trained that they could foresee the true backgrounds of the diabolically refined camouflage of the [Nazi] system.” However, once the NSDAP leadership revealed its true intentions, he believed many of the members changed their outlook and became “embittered opponents of the party.” This unsubstantiated claim has little basis in truth. Nevertheless, Schmidt explained his position further by arguing that the NSDAP had legitimately assumed power. “Foreign governments recognized it without reservation . . . and allowed their flags to fly next to the swastika during the Olympics.” Germans only acted in the same fashion. Additional factors also encouraged many Germans to turn toward National Socialism. In particular, the “hopeless economic situation” at the end of the Weimar Republic drove many Germans into Hitler’s arms. “Millions were unemployed. Dreaded Communism with its history of organized bloodshed in Russia threatened to bring about a violent coup that would wipe out the intelligentsia and the middle class. Since the party system of the Weimar Republic, because of its hopeless fragmentation, no longer offered any protection against Bolshevism, many saw in the powerful NSDAP the one hope of rescue from the chaos.” In Schmidt’s opinion, Hitler and his party accepted this challenge and worked tirelessly to come up with a kind of German New Deal to restore order and German honor. With these successes in mind, Schmidt listed what he believed to be the Hitler regime’s achievements that had won over Catholics as well as millions of other Germans. For him, these included: “The swift reduction in unemployment, the many social and hygienic measures for the Volk, the initial fight against immorality in literature and in the streets, the conquest of the former conflict within the Volk, the signing of the Reich-Vatican Concordat, and the silencing of all religious polemics, the initial claimed desire for peace, the banished threat of Bolshevism!” These swift “actions,” Schmidt argued, created “a wave of trust” in Hitler and the new government “by the Volk.” Schmidt admitted that even Catholic clergy found themselves caught in this rush of support for National Socialism. According to him, “many priests and some bishops were themselves at first swayed from their former stance of opposition, and indeed not at all out of opportunism. It seemed as though National Socialism had been misjudged. . . . Thus, the other former objections—that the NSDAP was the party of the brutal fighters in streets and halls of war agitators, and of enemies of religion seemed to be invalid.”²

In his analysis Schmidt revealed many of the determinant factors that drew Germans, Catholics and Protestants alike, to National Socialism. Similarly, he correctly observed that many Catholics who supported the NSDAP initially, gradually changed their stance over time, particularly when the policing agents of the state and party began to encroach on Church freedoms. This is much less true, of course, of those Catholics who became registered members of the NSDAP. Nevertheless, problems arise from Schmidt’s reasoning primarily because he offered his views devoid of any consideration of antisemitism and its lethal effect on his fellow German-Jewish citizens under National Socialism. Similarly, Schmidt’s tone and phraseology, which suggest his frustration with denazification, also reveal his desire to limit its scope. In turn, it is possible to assume that Schmidt supported the arrest and prosecution of only the most ardent Nazis. The rest he was ready to forgive because, in his own mind, they had only joined the majority of Germans who also initially shared a similar trust in Hitler and the NSDAP.

Indeed, after the bishops lifted their prohibitions against National Socialism, many of the Catholic clergy like Schmidt joined their fellow citizens and welcomed the first efforts of the new German government. This is not to say that priests were not involved with the party prior to March 1933. Certain members of the clergy, for example, agitated openly on behalf of the NSDAP throughout the 1920s. In addition, there were priests who welcomed Hitler and joined their more right-wing-oriented parishioners in a united effort to place pressure on the German hierarchy to rescind its prohibition barring Catholics from joining the Nazi Party. The task now is to distinguish between those priests who were outwardly nationalistic (associating the party with their aspirations for national recovery) and those who were ardent supporters of the NSDAP and its Weltanschauung. As I will show, the line between these two categories vacillates, especially in the years immediately following Hitler’s appointment as Reich chancellor, making it difficult for some priests to sustain a sufficiently consistent identity as nonpartisan priests.

After March 1933 Catholics often received mixed messages from their bishops and priests concerning their participation in the state. Prominent Catholic priests and scholars, including the Münster systematic theologian Michael Schmaus and the Braunsberg church historian Joseph Lortz, produced a series of persuasive studies entitled, “Reich and Church,” which promoted reconciliation between National Socialism and Catholicism.³ Similarly, the Tübingen systematic theologian Karl Adam wrote “German Ethnicity and Catholic Christianity,” in which he appropriated the vocabulary of Nazism such as Blut (blood), Boden (soil), and Volkstum (ethnicity) to discuss the question of race and, more specifically, address the relationship of National Socialism to German nationalism and Christianity.⁴ Wilhelm Berning, bishop of Osnabrück, concretized these theological “clarifications” further when Hermann Göring, minister president of Prussia, appointed him Staatsrat (councilor of state)—a title he used repeatedly in his correspondence.⁵ Although this position had become relatively ceremonial in the Third Reich, Berning helped legitimize the new government by accepting a position in it. Moreover, in April 1934, Berning published Catholic Church and German Ethnicity, in which he attempted to critically reinterpret National Socialism’s Weltanschauung through a Christian prism. Despite his best efforts, his words, at times, betrayed his sympathy for the Hitler movement. Likewise, in his conclusion, he lessened the impact of his earlier criticism by praising the German government for its effort to address societal concerns and by expressing a desire for more cooperation between the government and the Church.⁶ By contrast, seven months later, in a Hannover lecture, Berning spoke more critically about National Socialism, especially its racial teaching.⁷ Despite the bishop’s change in tone, SD (Sicherheitsdienst, security service) leader Reinhard Heydrich still presented the possibility of Berning becoming the next bishop of Berlin on account of “his alleged sympathies for National Socialism.” Ever skeptical of clerical motivations, Heydrich also added that the bishop’s ambitiousness would drive him to seek “the Cardinal’s hat” and “in this way then work for Rome against Germany, like every other bishop.”⁸

By repealing their prohibitions against the NSDAP, the German bishops placed themselves in an awkward situation, rendering their about-face open to quirky interpretations. Was their change brought about for diplomatic or nationalistic reasons, or both? Were they attempting to cover themselves in one place of negotiation, only to open themselves up in another place? Or were they pragmatically responding to the reality of a new government and simply trying to make the best out of a challenging situation? Since the Church had not gone underground during the Third Reich, it had to operate in the public arena. Its civic posture therefore had to be reckoned with and accounted for. In addition, the July 1933 Concordat had solidified the public existence of the Catholic Church in Germany in such a way that, as an institution, it had to take on the dual role of being both advocate and vigilant onlooker of the new government. The Church’s twofold role would play itself out over the coming years. From the state propagandists’ perspective, the repeal of the prohibition simply revealed the Church’s outright acceptance of the government and its policies for the sake of the public good. Thus, when a new Catholic bishop followed the tenets of the Concordat and took his oath to the state, such an oath not only strengthened and confirmed the Weimar Constitution’s Article 137, which called for such a pledge, but also reaffirmed the idea of a close church-state relationship in the minds of Catholics.⁹ In addition, the 1934 German Leadership Lexicon, which contained pictures and brief biographies of all public leaders in the Reich, only confirmed this church-state connection by including entries on each of the bishops, which they either personally wrote or approved. In his entry, Bishop Berning made sure to include his Staatsrat title.¹⁰

Naturally not all the bishops were as enthusiastic toward the state. One such prelate at the time was Konrad von Preysing, bishop of Eichstätt, who, on May 31, 1933, warned his fellow bishops not to adopt the regime’s language such as “new order” or “new state” in reference to the government. According to Preysing, any acceptance of the Nazi Weltanschauung, which he believed was inconsistent with the Catholic faith and moral life, would only assist state Nazi leaders in their attempt to identify the NSDAP with the state.¹¹ Unfortunately, few of the bishops shared Preysing’s views fully. Instead, a wide range of individual responses followed. The rejoinders of most bishops fell in the middle and followed the pattern of Johannes Baptista Sproll, bishop of Rottenburg, who, in a January 1934 speech before a gathering of his clergy, specifically spelled out the actions of the state that Catholics should be ready to support. Sproll declared emphatically, “We take a positive view of the new state. We are gladly ready to recognize what the new state strives for and has achieved in various areas.” He then went on to give thanks to the state “for the defeat of Bolshevism, . . . the rejection of many liberal ideas, the aspiration to a true Volksgemeinschaft, the articulation of a leadership principle, . . . the struggle for just treatment of Germany by other nations, . . . the strengthening of the moral force of the Volk, the battle against filth and rubbish, the ousting of prostitution from the streets, the protection of family values, and the purposeful population policy. In all these points we happily support the efforts of the government. We will also gladly work together in the struggle for the elevation of the status of farmers, against unemployment, and against hunger and cold.” Despite this positive outlook, Sproll still concluded his talk with this caveat, “However, we must take a position against laws that go against our conscience as it is said in Scripture: ‘One must obey God more than man.’”¹²

Probably the bishop most open to the state was Conrad Gröber of Freiburg, who, during the early years of the Third Reich, was often referred to as the “brown bishop.” Gröber had such high hopes for cooperation among the state, party, and Church officials that he became a “supporting member of the SS,” an infamous fact that a lawyer defending the SS in the Nuremberg trials forced him to confess.¹³ Gröber also gave his blessings to the Working Group of Catholic Germans (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Katholischer Deutscher, AKD), a laity-run organization founded in the fall of 1933 by Franz von Papen, Reich vice-chancellor, and approved by the NSDAP to promote cooperation among the party, state, and Church.¹⁴ The group’s leadership had turned to Gröber for support after Cardinal Adolf Bertram, archbishop of Breslau and senior prelate among the German bishops, had turned down its request for the German Catholic hierarchy’s official recognition. Bertram specifically objected to the group’s bid to assist the Church in church-state conflicts and its desire “to strengthen the German national consciousness” among Catholics. In the former proposal Bertram feared a possible conflict with the authority of the hierarchy, while in the latter he feared it sounded more as if “only the Catholics” were “lacking love for Germanness, nation, fatherland, and loyalty.”¹⁵

In 1933 Gröber made it clear that he supported close church-state relations. In April he became the first German bishop to stand publicly behind the government. The Kölnische Volkszeitung reported that, during a speech, Gröber “did not allow the least doubt that Catholics should not reject the new state, but have a positive outlook toward it and must single-mindedly work with it, but with dignity and with seriousness and without provocation and useless martyrdom.”¹⁶ On June 28, 1933, on the eve of the signing of the Reich-Vatican Concordat, Gröber strengthened his stance by exhorting his priests “to avoid anything in sermons, Christian teaching and religious instruction, as well as in association activity and private discussions, which could be interpreted as criticism of the leading personalities in the state and community or of the state-political views that they advocate.”¹⁷ By making such statements the archbishop muted any impetus among his clergy to resist the government. Gröber, however, was not alone, because many of his fellow bishops issued similar statements, primarily to prevent any last-minute problems before the Concordat was signed.¹⁸ Nevertheless, Gröber’s public support of the state always went a step further. For example, in October 1933, in a speech delivered in Karlsruhe, Gröber not only thanked the government representatives who were present, but also announced that he stood “completely behind the new government and the new Reich.” He continued, “Why should I not do this? We know what the new government strives after. It has concluded a treaty with the Holy See, which exists not merely on paper but is intended to be a vital life of German Catholics. One of the first statements of the Führer was Christian. He has raised his hand against all those who came charging against the cross. We know that the Volk’s well-being and the Volk’s greatness are only achievable from the roots that are the same as the roots of the cross.”¹⁹ Though Gröber made it clear at the time of his speech that he supported the Hitler government only because of its overtures to Christianity, he still at the same time left little room for Catholics laboring to oppose it.

By 1935 Gröber revealed a gradual shift away from the regime, especially after various ministries of the state had encroached on Church-related areas and arrested clergymen for statements or actions perceived as hostile to state interests.²⁰ Yet, as late as 1937 Gröber still showed his public allegiance to the state when he unequivocally permitted his diocesan priests who taught religion in state schools to offer the newly required oath of allegiance to Hitler. Gröber gave this permission despite resistance to this measure in other German dioceses and among his own clergymen.²¹ In addition, in the same year, the SS ironically asked Gröber along with other diocesan officials to withdraw their memberships from its supporting organization. Though most officials complied, Gröber refused to voluntarily withdraw his name and thereby forced the SS to expel him.²²

During the early 1930s not only did some of the German bishops strongly encourage Catholics to support the Hitler government, but leading members of the clergy also took up this call. In particular, Father Marianus Vetter, a Dominican and the preacher at St. Hedwig, the cathedral of the Berlin diocese, walked a precarious line between nationalism and promotion of National Socialism. At first, it appeared as if Vetter had co-opted the language of National Socialism in his sermons to help Catholics to focus more on their faith and less on the purely ideological rhetoric of the party and state. Such an effort took place on June 25, 1933, when he preached before a crowd of over forty-five thousand Catholics at the thirty-first Katholikentag (National Catholic Convention) held at the Berlin-Grunewald stadium. Greeted by a large choir from forty-one parishes, Vetter preached about preparation for the kingdom of God. In his sermon Vetter addressed Pope Pius XI as the “Führer of Christianity” and added that the divine Führer was “one who clearly” grasped the “new world view in himself” and delivered it to humanity with “prophetic strength.” This person, according to Vetter, was Christ, “who must again become King in all areas of life.” If this were to be accomplished, the “people of the earth shall again become a true, holy Reich, a kingdom of Christ.” In order to bring this about...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1—Adapting Catholic Teaching to Nazi Ideology
• 2—In the Trenches for Hitler
• 3—The Old Fighters under Hitler’s Rule
• 4—Antisemitism and the Warrior Priest
• 5—From Nationalism to National Socialism
• 6—Germanizing Catholicism
• 7—Judgment Day—Brown Priests on Trial?
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1—German Catholic Ecclesiastical Structure
• Appendix 2—The Brown Priests—Biographical Data
• Notes
• Sources Cited
• Index