Kirchen im Krieg. Europa 1939–1945 (review)

These collected essays, edited by two notable German Catholic scholars, are the product of a 2004 conference and complement the 2005 volume Kirchliches Leben im Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by two Protestant scholars. While the latter's compass is restricted to Germany, the book under review has a more ambitious goal of covering Europe as a whole. It also contains contributions with a wider, ecumenical, and international perspective. Both volumes are indications of a new interest in the affairs of Europe's churches during the traumatic years of World War II.

Such collections are helpful in providing up-to-date summaries of previous detailed research (valuably listed in the numerous footnotes), as is the case with the initial and interesting essays on the position of the Vatican and of the Protestant World Council of Churches. On the other hand, some of these contributions are rather too narrowly focused. But that is par for the course.

Part 1 surveys aspects of church life in different European regions, such as excellent accounts of the Protestant churches in Scandinavia or the Catholic churches in France and the Low Countries. Most interesting, because less well known, is the survey of Catholic life in east-central Europe from Czechia and Slovakia—where the pro-Nazi state president was a Catholic priest—to Hungary and Poland. The fate of the Church in this last country, as described by Emilia Hrabovec, was particularly grim. Nazi occupation policy was implemented by the most radical anticlerical and antisemitic SS troops, determined to destroy Poland's national identity. Hundreds of clergy were murdered or sent to concentration camps. The result was that Polish Catholic life was driven to depend on the laity and to attempt to uphold the ideal of Polish nationalism at the local popular level.

These essays give an excellent picture of the diversity of wartime church circumstances. The Nazi occupation and control was exercised in markedly different ways in different countries. The churches' reactions also differed widely, due to their own varieties of theological and historical traditions, varying from open resistance to accommodating compromise. But there was rarely any common Christian stance, or indeed even ecumenical collaboration among the major churches.

Parts 2 and 3 return to Germany and provide detailed essays on various aspects of the churches' experience under the Nazi dictatorship. When war broke out, the leaders of both major churches adhered to traditional Christian views on the issue of war and military engagement, and justified their participation in defense of their people and nation. Despite the evidence of the Nazis' increasing radicalization and brutalization in the conduct of the war, especially in the east, the majority of churchmen, even after their defeat, still refused to admit that their theology was irrelevant and their guilt pervasive. Instead, churchmen concentrated on survival and emphasized their own sufferings rather than those of the Nazis' victims. Overall, the German churches put up no resistance to Nazi crimes, since loyalty to nation prevailed. Similarly, the evidence is clear that only a tiny handful of compassionate church people were prepared to take the risks of assisting the Jewish victims, while the prevalent antisemitism was shared by both Catholics and Protestants without demur.

On the other hand, the Nazi attempts to achieve totalitarian control and influence over the churches failed, prevented by the strongly conservative theological views held by both Protestants and Catholics. These ambivalences and tensions between the churches and the regime can best be described as "antagonistic cooperation," which may serve as a comprehensive verdict on this tortuous relationship.

The essays in part 4 concern the role of the few churchmen in the resistance movement. Were they Christian martyrs or political traitors? Were they motivated more by religious or political factors? And what is to be said about those who had earlier supported Nazism? Such questions are examined here with skepticism and placed in their historiographical context. In fact, the debates still continue. This...