The Moral Imperative

New Essays On The Ethics Of Resistance In National Socialist Germany 19331945

Andrew Chandler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000303636
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book covers the history of the German resistance and explores a number of the moral codes which inspired, justified and sustained the resisting conscience in the Third Reich. It argues that the position of the churches was characterised by 'fluctuations, ambivalences, and contradictions'.

1
Introduction

Andrew Chandler

Historiography and Terminology

This book explores a number of the moral codes which inspired, justified and sustained the resisting conscience in the Third Reich. Six historians trace their expressions in a world of action and seek to relate them to the cultural and institutional realities of a totalitarian state. But it is necessary at the outset to sound a note of caution. Historians are now more than ever conscious that the subject of resistance in Hitler’s Germany presents a dense tapestry of diverse experiences which often leaves them grasping for a common language of analysis and interpretation, and which defies clear patterns or forms.¹ Fifty years ago the picture was more clearly defined. The 20 July 1944 conspiracy was seen to be the single calamitous statement of one identifiable ‘German resistance’. Early accounts, inaugurated in Germany by Marion Donhoff² and abroad by advocates like Bishop George Bell,³ did much to define the scope of the subject and to establish an interpretation of it. They were soon followed by the historians Gerhard Ritter⁴ and Hans Rothfels⁵ and, later, by Eberhard Zeller,⁶ each of whom emphasized that the resistance against Hitler was above all an act of conscience, legitimated by an appeal to morality, and animated by political values which still resonated after its destruction in the nations of western Europe. It had spoken of a true patriotism struggling against a regime which pushed Germany relentlessly towards destruction. Its members had sought order in the midst of disorder, justice in the face of tyranny, and human dignity in a state which debased humanity in policies of racial persecution and international aggression. Such arguments had a certain ardour, and that was very possibly because public opinion at large remained to be convinced. The need for Germans to justify to each other what was still controversial, and the demands of the new Cold War in which German support was vital to the old enemies of National Socialism, cast a long shadow.

In time a new generation of scholars began to search for what would seem stronger models of analysis. A suspicion now hung in the air that too heavy an emphasis on morality tended to cloud important issues. The world of resistance required subtler approaches, not least to clarify what at times appeared to be an inextricable relationship between assent and criticism, complicity and opposition. The work of Hans Mommsen placed a new stress on the political and constitutional designs of what was increasingly called the ‘conservative-national’ resistance. He found them to be sympathetic not to the values of liberal democracy—as defined in either the constitutions of Weimar or the later Federal Republic—but to the authoritarianism of Wilhelmine days. Moreover, their sense of Germany’s status in Europe looked uncomfortably hegemonic.⁷ This interpretation provoked a lively, even vehement debate. Mommsen’s critics asked if a movement of resistance that was essentially a statement of conscience should be measured by fragile political formulations, framed in the isolation of illegal opposition and far from the realities of power? Later, the research of Klaus-Jiirgen Muller reassessed the nature of resistance in the German army by demonstrating how much it owed not to abstract moral standards but military codes and interests. In Miiller’s important studies of Ludwig Beck, the subject emerged as a proponent of rearmament who later turned against a government which repudiated his vision of a Bismarckian partnership between the state and the army in the direction of national policy.⁸

As the interpretations of political historians shifted, the term ‘resistance’ itself fractured. In Germany the work of the Bayern-Projekt of Martin Brozsat in Munich began to explore a complex and subtle world of Resistenz. This encompassed the complaints, gossip, dissociations and obstructions of ordinary men and women.⁹ The moral character of resistenz was not so explicit. Pragmatism, self-interest, and even malice, inspired the dissenting act. Friendship—or hatred—was for many more important than the appeal to principle. Brozsat widened the boundaries of the subject, almost to the point whereby definition of any kind was difficult. The words Widerstand (resistance), Opposition or Widerspruch (opposition), Protest (protest), Dissens (dissent), Verweigerung (refusal to co-operate, and Umsturz (revolt) have all embraced, in the hands of different writers, a variety of responses to the Hitler state. Today there is little reason to think that a watertight system of definitions is feasible. The most that an individual historian can do is to construct a personal framework of terms to clarify and separate these different counter-movements and make possible a more self-aware analysis and debate.

Elsewhere, historians preoccupied themselves with the record of the churches. Once again, early studies of Christianity under National Socialism, begun by Johann Neuhausler as early as 1946, tended to be sympathetic to them.¹⁰ But in the 1960s a reaction took place. In North America Guenter Lewy wrote critically of the Catholic Church in Germany at a time when the wartime policies of the Vatican were also under close scrutiny¹¹, and John Conway argued that both the Protestant and Catholic churches failed to respond effectively to the challenge flung down by the Hitler regime.¹² Such studies focused upon the institutional structures of the churches, and on the words and acts of those who occupied responsible positions there. They presented a story of compromise, vacillation and betrayal. It was true that the churches were persecuted, and that they had struggled to oppose the policies of the state which threatened identifiable institutional interests. But they were led by a sense of Selbstbehauptung, a determination to maintain their own position and identity, that was, at most, a ‘reluctant resistance’—a phrase John Conway adopts here.¹³ Recently Gunther van Norden has adopted the word Widersetzlichkeit, a word which may rather baldly be translated as, merely, contrariness.¹⁴

Christianity in Germany

The Christian churches were a prominent and pervasive force in the life of Germany in the twentieth-century, and, although official statistics can offer only a fragile sense of public religiosity, they do something to outline that presence. In 1933 62.21 percent of the population were Protestants, 32.96 percent Catholics and 0.05 percent members of other Christian denominations. Germany’s Jews accounted for 0.76 percent of the population. This left only a small fraction—4.02 percent—defined as ‘others’.¹⁵ These figures disguise the fact that such religious loyalties were profoundly regional in what was still a new, and federal, nation. When Hitler came to power there were twenty-eight different Protestant churches, and they affirmed two distinct traditions, or confessions, of Lutheranism and Calvinism. Prussia, where Lutheranism and Calvinism had been amalgamated in 1817, was the very heart of German Protestantism; 63.57% of its people were affiliated to the churches of the Old Prussian Union. In Berlin public affiliation was as high as 71.05 percent. In other states the Protestant hegemony was still more powerful. In Saxony 87.03% of the population was Protestant; in Hamburg 78.16% and in Mecklenburg 94;98%. Catholics were only in the majority in Bavaria (69.92%) and Baden (58.37%). Germany’s Jews were most heavily concentrated in Berlin (3.78%), but elsewhere there were substantial communities in Hesse, Hamburg and Baden.¹⁶

This, then, was predominantly a Protestant nation. Martin Luther remained the icon of the Reformation and, for some, the prophet of a distinctive German identity. But the Reformation which his name represented had in fact left a complex legacy, comprising political, communal, theological, ecclesiastical and cultural elements. These were hard to simplify and fuse, and they remain difficult for the historian to disentangle.¹⁷ It was an act of erastianism; as much the work of secular authorities as it was of faithful Christian reformers. Luther himself had brought coherence and direction to what was a volatile equation of popular aspirations and new authorities by upholding the power of princes over the civic organizations of communities. He demanded that it be exercised ruthlessly against the revolts of subjects. Lutheranism became more committed to clericalism and hierarchical order than the Reformed tradition of Calvinism, which soon became popular amongst princes in the northern and western states, and which referred more fully to the congregation and the community. The role of the Church, codified in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, lay simply in the ministry of the sacraments and the preaching of the gospel. The prince was the summus episcopus, with power over the property, ecclesiastical jurisdiction and doctrine of the Church. Four hundred years later the public identity and allegiance of the church was still largely defined by the expression ‘throne and altar’. As van Norden remarks, such a world view rested on the assumption that an intimate connection existed between a political authority that was sympathetic to the church, and a church that was supportive of the state.¹⁸ Many critical observers found both Lutheranism and Calvinism to be the religious expressions of authority. The new Socialist and Communist movements of the nineteenth-century were openly anti-clerical. This, in turn, reinforced the conservative loyalties of Protestants who found no comfortable place in them.¹⁹

It may seem surprising that the Protestantism of the nineteenth century, which lent such weight to provincial identity, was by the twentieth century a prominent ally of the new German nationalism. But the Kaiserreich that was established by Bismarck’s three wars of unification was in fact a new Protestant state, and the Landeskirchen embraced it at once.²⁰ Its subsequent disintegration in the final stages of the Great War, and then the defeat of Germany itself in November 1918, provoked a crisis of identity in the Protestant churches. The princes disappeared along with the Kaiser. Anew republic arose. A church confederation arrived in May 1922 with a national assembly, a council and an executive committee. New constitutions appeared in twenty-six of the twenty-eight Landeskirchen by 1924, whereby the power of political authority was translated into the votes of provincial synods and exercised by the committees they elected. Seven of them appointed bishops. Some perceived that these movements represented a new independence, a new lease of life even. But many church leaders now viewed the Weimar Republic with distaste, and were offended not by persecution—for none arose—but by the determination of the new powers to detach the political argument from the religious theme in order to secure the toleration of all faiths. In response, churches which had gladly declared themselves for the old political truths now affirmed that they were ‘above parties’ in the new democratic state. At the same time they leaned obviously towards the parties of the authoritarian right and trembled at the threat of Bolshevism.²¹.

If the structures of German Protestantism remained provincial, and its values soundly national, the Catholic Church presented a different reality. Its internationalism was both a source of strength in an uneasy political environment and a liability in a world of nation states. Since the creation of the German Empire around the power of Protestant Prussia, Catholics had at times sensed that theirs was a precarious existence.²² In the 1870s Bismarck had launched an ill-conceived campaign, the so-called Kulturkampf against the church, alleging that its loyalties lay not with the new empire, but with its ‘infallible’ pope. The policy was widely judged a failure.²³ Many bishops of the German Church had since the seventeenth century viewed Rome with some ambivalence, and now they drew more closely towards it. The liberal aspects of German Catholicism, which had enjoyed some vitality in the nineteenth century, were eclipsed by conservative elements which were more than ever fearful of the modern age and its various claims.²⁴ ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Role of the Churches in the German Resistance Movement
• 3 Laity and Churches in the Third Reich
• 4 Church, Religion, and the German Resistance
• 5 Prussian Elements in the German Resistance
• 6 The Persecution of the Jews as a Motive for Resistance Against National Socialism
• 7 An Unknown Case of Resistance: The Rescue of Jews in Christian-Jewish Mixed Marriages
• About the Contributors
• Index