German Catholics and Hitler's Wars

A Study in Social Control

Gordon C. Zahn

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 1988
• ISBN:
  9780268161705
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, nearly forty thousand German Catholics were involved in the German Catholic Peace League, a movement that caused many people in various countries to seriously reconsider the dimension of pacifism in their faith. During the course of the War, however, many of these same German Catholics raised no serious objection to serving in Germany's armies or swearing allegiance to Adolph Hitler.

First published in 1962, German Catholics and Hitler's Wars created a furor, ultimately causing a serious reevaluation of church-state relationships and, in particular, of the morality of war. This work began as an attempt to understand the demise of the German Catholic Peace League. But because of various factors, including the destruction of vital records, Gordon C. Zahn began to consider the behavior of German Catholics in general and the evidence of their almost total conformity to the war demands of the Nazi regime. Using sociological analysis, he argues convincingly for the existence of a super-effective system of social controls, and of a selection between the competing values of Catholicism and nationalism. Although Zahn never speculates, conclusions are inescapable, chief among them that the traditional Catholic doctrine of the "just war" has ceased to be operative for Catholics in the modern world.

Part 1

CHAPTER 1

History and Methodology of the Study

WHEN THE WRITER left for Germany it was his intention to discover, if possible, what had happened to the German Catholic peace movement and its participants during the years of Nazi domination and, of course, during World War II. Such a movement had been formed shortly after the conclusion of the First World War and by the time Hitler came to power had achieved a remarkable degree of strength and standing. Under the leadership of the Friedensbund deutscher Katholiken (German Catholic Peace Union) and its principal founder and theorist, Franziskus Stratmann, O.P., the movement’s impact led Catholics in other nations as well to begin giving new and serious consideration to the pacifist implications of their Faith. True, the German movement was not the sole source of such interest and concern; the horrors of World War I and its aftermath of almost complete disillusionment had inspired many similar movements, non-Catholic as well as Catholic, in other European nations. But few could claim the membership attained by the Friedensbund or the “official” tone given to it by its participation in the annual Katholikentag gatherings.

In a letter to the writer, Father Stratmann recalled that the Friedensbund had 40,000 members at one point in its history. This figure approximates the 41,000 quoted in the 1932 volume of a liberal Catholic periodical, vom frohen Leben. Both estimates included as “corporate members” the membership of Kolping Society groups which had affiliated with the Friedensbund.*

Of greater importance than its actual membership totals is the standing of the movement as reflected in the official encouragement and support it received from prominent members of the German Catholic hierarchy. Here, too, exact figures are not available; but one informant claimed that thirteen bishops were active members of the Friedensbund or had associated themselves with its program. A Berlin pastor, another of the organization’s founders, named Cardinals Bertram (Breslau) and Faulhaber (Munich) and Bishops Schreiber (Berlin) and Sproll (Rottenburg) as prominent patrons. The writer’s own research added Bishop Gröber (then of Meissen) to his list and sample.

The existence of so strong and respected a Catholic peace movement led to the formulation of the original research problem, which can be expressed in two questions: Was it possible for the movement to continue its work for peace after Hitler came to power? Was it, or were its adherents, able to keep alive any remnant of its pacifist and war-resisting activities once Nazi Germany embarked upon its military adventures?

As was expected, both questions were answered in the negative. But the negative was so complete and so immediately accomplished that it was obviously quite pointless to continue the type of research inquiry originally planned. In point of fact, the Friedensbund earned the distinction of being one of the very first organizations singled out to suffer the full brunt of Nazi oppression.** Several of the former Friedensbund leaders furnished the writer with the story of the dramatic events of those days. The organization was officially dissolved by the Nazis on July 1, 1933, and one informant described how 36 men suddenly descended upon the Frankfurt central office of the Friedensbund and carried off great packing cases filled with records and other materials. Another informant told of a frantic afternoon spent in burning all possibly incriminating Friedensbund literature and letters in his possession. Several of the leaders were arrested and later subjected to showcase trials (on charges of profiteering in international currency transactions, a favorite charge employed by the Nazis against the Catholic Church and its affiliated organizations). Many, including its cofounder and spiritual leader, Father Stratmann, spent part or all of the Nazi war years in exile or in hiding. At any rate, with its leadership scattered or imprisoned, its records confiscated or destroyed, the movement disappeared leaving no traces other than those recorded in the memories of individuals who had been associated with it. Yet the very fact of its total disappearance raised the new and even more challenging sociological problem: How could a movement be so strong and boast of such extensive and respected support one year, only to be effectively annihilated the next? Still more, how can we explain the fact that its dedicated opposition to war on grounds of Christian morality could be so completely stilled that even its leaders were unable to report any definite instances known to them of members openly refusing to serve in Hitler’s wars of aggression?

Ideally, of course, this new problem should have been limited to those individuals who had formally associated themselves with the Catholic peace movement; but the destruction of all membership records (not to mention the technical impossibility of interviewing a sufficient sample of such members had the records been available) eliminated this as a research approach. It was necessary, therefore, to broaden the scope of analysis in order to consider the behavior of German Catholics in general and the evidence that their almost total conformity to the war demands of the Nazi regime gave of an effectively operating system of social controls, and of the selection between the competing values of Catholicism and Nazism. And, although the value-selection dimension loses some of its clarity in the more general application to the Catholic population, it assumes heightened significance when the traditional Catholic teachings concerning the “just war” are considered in the specific context of the wars initiated by the Third Reich.

At this point it is advisable to describe some of the methodological procedures employed and the problems encountered in this study so that the reader may make his own evaluation of the sources used and the manner in which they were used.

In the original phase of the research project—that is, while the post-1933 history of the Catholic peace movement was still the contemplated focus of study—the approach to the problem depended mainly upon interviews with individuals who had been associated with the Friedensbund deutscher Katholiken or who were likely to possess some significant information concerning that organization, its membership, and its activities. In all, approximately one hundred persons in various parts of West Germany (including Berlin) were interviewed, and these included pacifists and nonpacifists from many walks of life—government officials and political leaders; professors and research scientists; bishops, theologians, and pastors; journalists, editors and publishers; social workers and many others. The interview usually took the form of a social visit preceded by a written request in which the purpose of the study was outlined in most general terms. The social aspect of the visit was achieved at the expense of surrendering any attempt to structure the interview, although a few set questions touching upon the extent of support a would-be Catholic conscientious objector to military service in the German army might have expected from his spiritual leaders and fellow communicants were included along with specific requests for the names and other information concerning Catholics who might actually have taken such a stand. For the most part, however, the principal purpose behind even such set questions was to provide an initial area of discussion upon which the informant could then focus his personal reminiscences and projections.*

The selection of people to be interviewed was based, for the most part, upon direct requests for suggestions and the probing of leads presented in the course of the earlier interviews. American friends who had had some previous familiarity with the movement had furnished the researcher with a preliminary list of former Friedensbund members and officials, and the selection of informants spread out from this central core. An illustration of how this worked in actual practice is offered by one of the most profitable interview-sequences to develop during the months of research. The first informant, a former Friedensbund official, gave the researcher the name and address of Josef Fleischer, the only known conscientious objector to survive the war, as well as some of this man’s published writings. One of Fleischer’s articles contained charges that a high-ranking official of the Catholic chaplains’ corps of the new German army had attempted to force him to drop his refusal to serve in the military forces of the Third Reich. These charges prompted the researcher to visit and interview the priest in question who, after categorically denying the charges, suggested that another priest in a nearby town would be a valuable informant because he had been the prison chaplain who had personally attended two Austrian Catholics before their execution for refusing to serve in the German army during the war. Actually, this officer of the Friedensbund furnished information and suggestions which opened the way for seven subsequent interviews leading to highly important information about three men (none of whom, incidentally, had been Friedensbund members) who had been conscientious objectors.

Such a pattern of accidental sampling leaves much to be desired; on the other hand, given the nature of the research problem, it is doubtful if any other sampling technique was possible. Every interview conducted in this admittedly insufficiently controlled fashion did provide some valuable and significant insights bearing upon the two dimensions mentioned above. Though the writer frankly admits that the unsystematic manner of selection and the unstructured form of the interview itself preclude any claim of random representativeness or statistical significance, he would insist that the insights gained from the admittedly impressionistic quality of the responses and the understanding of the situation such impressions offer the sensitive hearer and reader are more than sufficient justification for the research project.

In a sense, the standards and measurements more suited to the advocate of pure empiricism in sociological research are excluded by the very nature of the topic chosen. The story of any form of opposition to the Nazi Third Reich must necessarily be a construct of just such “scientifically inadequate” material as described above. This may even apply, more than is generally recognized, to other aspects of German history of the period covered here. Official documentation is not often complete and it is much too often unreliable—a result in part of the loss of records through the war’s devastation, in part of intentional destruction by the last custodians of the Nazi state, and in part of the fact that many actions of crucial significance were undertaken in unrecorded secrecy or camouflaged by the responsible officials. The same considerations apply with even greater force to the representatives of what has been called “the other Germany”; anyone who would oppose either the Hitler regime or World War II found it necessary to operate in strictest secrecy and with a minimum of potentially incriminating records. This means that the social historian or sociologist who wishes to study this critical aspect of life under Hitler, and hopes to do so on the firm basis of a systematic analysis of empirical data and contemporary documentation, is doomed to much disappointment. The principal source of information for any such study is to be found in the usually inconsistent and often conflicting personal recollections of the individuals who lived through those trying years—distorted as those recollections undoubtedly are by such psychological states as emotional involvement in a time of terror, wishful reconstruction and unconscious selection of facts to suit the informant’s ego needs, or nothing more sinister than the passage of time and the fallibility of human memory in its efforts to reach back across the span of a quarter century. The social scientist in particular can never be fully satisfied by such data; he will always be teased by the intriguing, but unanswerable, question of how these same events might have been “remembered” by his informants had they been looking back upon a German victory instead of the total defeat of the Third Reich.

As the interviews progressed, however, one significant note did recur with remarkable consistency. This was the flat assurance voiced by almost every informant that any Catholic who decided to refuse military service would have received no support whatsoever from his spiritual leaders. Of informants who were in favor of or who were sympathetic toward the peace movement, some tended to state this opinion in a tone of disappointment or even bitter disillusionment, while others accused these religious leaders of having failed in their responsibility. Informants not so emotionally involved usually coupled these opinions with the explanation that prudence demanded such a course, since any purported conscientious objector might, in reality, prove to be a Gestapo agent seeking to trap the unwary priest or bishop into a punishable act of “treason” or “defeatism” and thereby open the way to new assaults upon the Catholic Church in Germany.

It was just such a trick which did lead to the arrest and ultimately to the execution of Father Metzger (see below, pp. 55 n., 134 ff.). A Gestapo agent won his confidence and promised to deliver Metzger’s personal appeal for moderate peace terms, following the anticipated defeat of Germany, to the Scandinavian prelate for whom it had been intended. Several of the priest-informants stressed the fact that not even the confessional was safe in this respect: Gestapo spies, they reminded me, might have appealed for counsel relative to anti-Nazi feelings or activities, or possible opposition to the war effort, only to arrest the confessor were he to give even the slightest indication of sympathy for such sentiments.

So broad an area of agreement—and on an issue so crucial to the research problem—led the researcher to seek more specific validation. An effort was made to locate and check whatever published sources might be available to serve as a documentary record of the official stand taken by the Church with regard to Germany’s involvement in World War II. Such a source was found in the Catholic periodicals of general circulation and in official diocesan journals containing the texts of episcopal statements and pastoral letters. Once again, however, the survey of Catholic periodicals was necessarily somewhat incomplete, since it depended upon the availability of such materials in university, or, occasionally, chancery libraries. Some of the collections were incomplete, lacking occasional issues or even whole volumes. The absence of individual issues was frequently explained as the result of official suppression; the missing volumes, more often, as the result of destruction through aerial bombardment.

In working with the publications which did come into his hands, the researcher did not attempt any detailed analysis of the total contents. Only statements bearing directly upon the issue of support for the war were recorded, and, again, no effort was made to apply the quantitative or proportional measurement techniques used for more systematic content analysis. This reflects a methodological value judgment on the writer’s part which holds that any statement by a Catholic spokesman in support of the German war effort (and this is especially true if that spokesman were a bishop) * constituted in itself significant evidence in deciding whether there was in fact a Church-mediated social control operating to induce the individual German Catholic to conform to the nation’s demands. In any event, every such statement is to be viewed as at least a partial explanation of why German Catholics found it possible to give their support to Hitler’s wars. In examining the material found in the publications, a sharp eye was maintained for any content which would have encouraged or even supported a refusal to help in waging the war. No such content was encountered—a fact which testifies to the validity of the judgment expressed by the writer’s informants.

One thing more should be said lest this summary of the methodology employed in this study seem to strike too apologetic a note. Occasionally one encounters problems in social science which require a level of methodological improvisation not entirely suited to the neat formulations and procedures available to more carefully circumscribed areas of research. The only alternative to such improvisation is the abandonment of the attempt to analyze or understand the problem itself. The nature of Hitler’s wars and the extent of the support they received from German Catholics is such a problem. This problem and its implications are much too serious and far-reaching to justify its abandonment under any circumstances.

* It is interesting to note that the journal of the Kolping Society reported as early as 1940 that one third of its readers were under arms and that 32 members of the Society had already lost their lives in battle. (Münchener Katholische Kirchenzeitung, Jan. 14, 1940, p. 8.)

** Even after its suppression, the Catholic peace movement remained on the list of recognized enemies of the Third Reich. Applicants for government jobs were required to sign statements certifying nonmembership in Masonic lodges, organizations similar to such lodges, or membership in ersatz organizations like the Schlaraffia or the Friedensbund deutscher Katholiken! The fact that this organization was considered worthy of being one of the two specifically named “subversive” groups may be taken as a tribute to its energetic work for peace in the pre-Hitler years.

* For obvious reasons—including the social nature of the visit, the informality of the questioning and discussion, and the range and frankness of some of the opinions and evaluations expressed by the informants—the writer will refrain from identifying his informants lest they be subjected to some embarrassment by the potentially controversial character of some of his findings. Some oblique identification has been introduced where it promises to have a direct bearing upon the significance of the material treated; but, here too, a sincere attempt has been made to protect the anonymity of the informant.

* A discussion of this point is to be found in the writer’s article, “The German Catholic Press and Hitler’s Wars,” Cross Currents, Vol. X, No. 4 (Fall 1960), pp. 337-51.

CHAPTER 2

The Social-Control Dimension

THE SOCIOLOGIST must always be prepared to encounter some resistance when he begins to talk in terms of a “social-control” dimension to human behavior. There is a tendency to regard such a concept as somehow deflating or demeaning human dignity by making man a less “free” or “deliberate” or “responsible” being. But one need not deny that man is a free being, that he has the power to deliberate and to make responsible decisions concerning alternative possibilities of action—or choose not to act at all—if we nevertheless recognize that the decision ...