Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust

6. The Impact of the Spanish Civil War upon Roman Catholic Clergy in Nazi Germany

The Impact of the Spanish Civil War upon Roman Catholic Clergy in Nazi Germany 6 Beth A. Griech-Polelle On the night of July 17, 1936, civil war broke out in Spain. Soon, many interpreted the events in Spain as an ongoing struggle of the forces of democracy versus the forces of fascism; for others the war represented a struggle between Western Christian civilization and the Bolshevik East. As one historian commented, ‘‘Beyond Iberia the civil war embodied and symbolized the conflict between fascism and democracy that ran across the face of Europe.’’1 In 1936, Europe was a land of upheaval and displacement, grappling with the economic depression and a fear of fleeing foreigners. Many Germans, Austrians, and Italians fled Hitler and Mussolini, Romanians hid from the Iron Guard, Poles feared their military dictator, General Pilsudski, and Hungarians su√ered under Admiral Horthy’s oppressive rule. To many of those who fled their native countries, Spain seemed like the ideal spot to take a stand and fight fascism,2 while to others Spain seemed to be fertile ground for spreading Bolshevism. In 1936 the Soviet Union doubled its military budget, France ratified an alliance with the Soviet Union, and the populace elected a Popular Front government in Spain.3 Amid this atmosphere, the events in Spain gripped the imaginations of many people uncertain of their future. This essay examines the question of how the German government presented the Spanish Civil War to its citizens. I pay particular attention to the Roman Catholic episcopacy’s reaction to the portrayal of events in Spain and what impact that portrayal had on the relationship between the Nazi State and the Catholic Church. In the years of 1936–1938, the 122 Beth A. Griech-Polelle Spanish Civil War presented a moment of opportunity whereby German Catholic Church leaders could align themselves more closely to the Nazi State. As part of this alignment, many Church leaders implicitly embraced the idea that behind the Republican forces stood a vast ‘‘JudeoBolshevik conspiracy’’ intent on destroying Christian civilization. Spanish Civil War The anticlerical fury unleashed by the Republican forces was unavoidable. In the opening months of the Spanish Civil War, these forces murdered more Catholic priests—approximately seven thousand would be dead by 1939—than ever before in modern history. The attacks on clergy, on churches, and on Church-related institutions led the Jesuit superior general in Rome, Wladimir Ledochowski, to advise Pope Pius XI that the Spanish Civil War was ‘‘in fact inspired by Soviet Russia as part of a plan to destroy religion everywhere.’’4 As leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pius XI saw that the majority of the Spanish ruling hierarchy had sided with the Nationalists. He also saw that they were calling for a new crusade to defend Christianity. Pius XI gave his blessing ‘‘to those who have assumed the di≈cult and dangerous task of defending and restoring the rights and honor of God and of religion.’’5 Catholics throughout Europe distributed copies of Pius’s first papal statement from September 14, 1936, delivered after a meeting with five hundred Spanish pilgrims at Castel Gandolfo, in which the ponti√ sympathized with the su√ering clergy by using phrases such as ‘‘martyrdom in the full . . . satanic preparation similar in kind to those in Russia, China, South America and Mexico.’’6 By 1937, Pius drew a distinction between a just and an unjust war by arguing that those who had rebelled were not intrinsically evil. In his encyclical Divini Redemptoris , Pius mentioned the Spanish Civil War in only one paragraph, but in that paragraph he wrote, ‘‘Communist fury had destroyed churches and clergy, killing people in Spain because they [were] good Christians or at least opposed to atheistic Communism.’’7 By May 1938, Pius had formally recognized the Nationalist regime in Spain. The Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment directed by Joseph Goebbels served as the main source of German domestic coverage of the Spanish Civil War. Between July 17 and December 31, 1936, Goebbels recorded in his diary at least seventy entries on the events in Spain. These entries repeatedly mentioned an obsession Goebbels shared with Hitler: the so-called link between ‘‘Jewishness’’ and communism.8 The Impact of the Spanish Civil War upon Roman Catholic Clergy 123 In July 1936, the opening salvo began when Goebbels’s propaganda ministry issued detailed instructions on how the German press should...