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The Legacy of the Church Struggle 230 resist it with all earnestness where it makes itself felt, and to meet Jews and Jewish Christians in a spirit of fellowship.≤∏ Guilt was still formulated only as ‘‘complicity.’’ The Weissensee statement spoke of ‘‘persons from among our people’’ rather than of Christians who had become guilty. There was not yet enough insight into the roots of anti-Semitism to allow more than a mention of its symptoms. The church had not yet acknowledged the idea that the original roots of anti-Semitism were theological, not psychological or social. ≤≠ The Confessing Church’s Record under Nazism The complex history of the Kirchenkampf clearly illustrates the difficulty of speaking about ‘‘the’’ Confessing Church. It was decidedly heterogeneous . Its diversity provided great opportunities, since there was an abundance of creative thinkers who were prepared to resist; but it also included church leaders and laypeople who had no intention of opposing the Nazi state. Throughout the Third Reich, the German Evangelical Church struggled to avoid a schism. One source of this lack of unity was the different theological traditions in the various regional churches. In 1931, the Congregational Newspaper for the Israelite Congregations of Württemberg made an interesting comment on the dangers of the Evangelical Church’s lack of unity. Asked where the strongest resistance to National Socialism and anti-Semitism would develop, the editors announced they expected nothing from the political parties. They entertained certain hopes about Catholicism, which at that point appeared to have taken an early stand against National Socialism. On the other hand, not much could be expected from Protestantism, since its division into individual regional churches did not allow much hope for a unified ‘‘front.’’∞ The Württemberg paper’s insight had been proved correct. Now, before the Protestant Church could shape its postwar future, it had to examine its record and motives under National Socialism. Confessing pastor Wilhelm Jannasch reflected on the circumstances that had led to his church’s silence: ‘‘In the first place, from the very beginning, nowhere near all the leading men, even within the German The Confessing Church’s Record under Nazism 231 Confessing Church, saw through the nature of the new state and the intentions of the new rulers, but frequently allowed themselves to be blinded by their rhetoric.’’≤ ‘‘For reasons of loyalty,’’ even the critics had been willing to wait before they declared themselves for the one side or the other. Finally, the church had been so preoccupied with the issues of the Kirchenkampf that ‘‘little time and energy remained to observe and follow the general developments critically.’’≥ As early as 1936, Karl Barth had assessed the situation: ‘‘I think of the persecution of the Jews, I think of all the terrible things that are meant by the words ‘concentration camp.’ . . . This silence can be understood from the fact that in early 1933, when these evils were most flagrantly evident, the people who represent and sustain the cause of the Confessing Church today were deluded by the ideology of National Socialism. In 1933, whoever did not believe in Hitler’s mission was ostracized, even in the ranks of the Confessing Church.’’∂ The church—to borrow an image used by Karl Thieme—resembled a ‘‘caravan gone astray in the desert’’: ‘‘One sought an oasis, an intellectual-spiritual space where one could live amidst the new circumstances.’’∑ From the beginning to the end, great fortitude was required of those who avoided deferring to the tyrant . ‘‘The regime had calculated correctly when it concentrated upon forcing people to participate publicly; most people do not tolerate saying no in their hearts to that which they confess and do with their mouths and hands for very long.’’∏ The truth of Thieme’s observation was substantiated by the early statements that later haunted the church. In April 1933, several church leaders had announced: ‘‘A powerful national movement has seized and exalted our German Volk. . . . To this turning point in history, we speak a grateful Yes. God has granted this to us.’’π One day later, at a meeting of the Württemberg Pastors’ Association, Bishop Wurm had declared: ‘‘Our gratitude for a rescue from serious danger and our joy at the fact that the new state attacks problems regarding the health of the Volk . . . reconciles even our concern about whether the Gleichschaltung is occurring too rapidly.’’∫ But such support for the Nazi state had come not only from the church’s political ‘‘middle’’ but from the Confessing...

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