Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort: Katholische Priester, Bischofe und Theologen im Dritten Reich (review)

The theme of this book is summed up in a quotation from Karl Rahner in the final chapter: "Church officeholders, and the clergy in general, suffer from ecclesial introspection. They think of the church, not of people. They want freedom for the church, not for people. This explains why, for example, during the Nazi period, we were far more concerned about ourselves, about the survival of the church and its institutions, than about the fate of the Jews. That may be understandable. But it is neither Christian nor churchly, if we really understand what the church is all about."

Despite his criticism of the Church's response to Hitler, Denzler is no ally of Daniel J. Goldhagen. "It is impossible to deal in a scholarly way with his book, A Moral Reckoning," Denzler writes in an Afterword, "since the author offers no evidence for the work's many half-truths, abbreviations, inaccuracies, and generalizations, many of them presented in an insinuating manner." And in his book's concluding sentence Denzler applies to Goldhagen's work the latter's assessment of another Holocaust book: "An artificial construction of half-truths assembled to support an ideology. It is replete with such an extraordinary number of factual errors as to make it a model of falsification and distortion."

As the book's title indicates, Denzler does not believe that the Church's response to Hitler constituted "resistance." He prefers the term "partial divergence." There was on the one hand "agreement with some of the goals of Nazi rule, as long as these were purely political." On the other hand there was repudiation of the regime's goals "when they conflicted with church interests."

The best parts of Denzler's book are those which recount the story of those clear-sighted enough to see the true nature of Nazism from the start. One was the Jesuit Rupert Mayer (since beatified), who lost a leg in World War I, was decorated with the Iron Cross, and boasted after Germany's defeat in 1945 that "this one-legged Jesuit has outlasted Hitler's thousand-year Reich." A frequent observer at Nazi rallies before 1933, Mayer wrote Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich in September, 1930, more than two years before Hitler came to power: "The extent to which Hitler's hoax has gained acceptance, even among Catholics, is incredible but true."

Equally clear-sighted was Konrad von Preysing, bishop first in Eichstätt and from 1935 in Berlin, who told intimates shortly after Hitler came to power: "We are in the hands of criminals and fools." In May, 1933, von Preysing pleaded with his fellow bishops for a clear statement of opposition to the new regime. "We owe it to our Catholic people to open their eyes to the dangers of the Nazi ideology for faith and morals." His plea went unheeded.

The reason was clear: Hitler's pledge in the Reichstag on March 23 to make the two churches, Catholic and Protestant, the foundation of his work of national renewal. Addressing Catholics, Hitler had said on that occasion: "The government, which views Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the ethical and moral life of our people, attaches the greatest importance to cultivating and deepening friendly relations with the Holy See."

In the face of promises so sweeping, what were the bishops to do? To have responded that such promises were worthless since they would be broken at the first opportunity, would have given Hitler the opportunity to declare: "I offered them co-operation. They chose confrontation. Now they shall have it." Moreover, German Catholics, like their American fellow believers of that era, had long suffered under the charge that their first loyalty was not to their country's rulers but to the Roman pontiff...