Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (review)

The polemics surrounding the relationship between Catholicism and Nazism have become so bitter in recent years that a book like this one is bound to be misunderstood. That is a pity, because Derek Hastings has written a nuanced, careful study of the role Catholics played in the National Socialist German Workers’ Party during the early 1920s. He challenges both those who wish to portray the Church as complicit in the rise of the radical right and those who wish to absolve Catholicism of any ties to racial antisemitism. As Hastings points out in his conclusion, much of the debate over these issues involves people speaking past each other. On the one hand, defenders of the Church point to a basic incompatibility between Christian universalism and racism; on the other hand, critics of the Church emphasize the collusion of a great many Catholics (and Protestants) in the radical right regimes that terrorized Europe in the mid-twentieth century. Hastings cuts through these arguments by distinguishing between a diverse and even contradictory Catholic “identity,” understood in historical context, and an ideal Christianity that never ceases to be relevant but also is never fully determinative. As he puts it, “At any given time, the authoritative teachings of the church may (or may not) be both clearly articulated and broadly perceived as such, but in analytical terms those teachings cannot be considered entirely coterminous with Catholic identity, which instead is forged in practice through a complex series of negotiations on both personal and collective levels” (p. 178).

The clash between Catholic teaching and Catholic identity was particularly evident during the early 1920s in Bavaria. The leaders of the Center Party (and its local affiliate, the Bayerische Volkspartei or BVP), which represented a long tradition of political Catholicism, endeavored to import the official teachings of the Church while working within the constraints of local political systems. The BVP hardly was immune to the antisemitic trends of the early twentieth century, but as Hastings demonstrates, the party generally opposed violence, racism, and völkisch radicalism. On both the national and local levels, the BVP leadership was willing to enter into tactical coalitions with democratic and even socialist parties, though it remained critical of both. A great many Catholics, meanwhile, considered such compromises scandalous. Priests and laypersons alike spoke out against what they labeled the “ultramontanism” of the BVP, advocating instead a distinctly German Catholicism that would better represent local values and priorities. Hastings does an excellent job highlighting the ironies of this debate. The critics of the Catholic establishment in Bavaria advocated ecclesiastical decentralization, less reliance on the Vatican, and more openness to the problems of the modern world—all positions that would be resurrected a half-century later during the Second Vatican Council. In some instances, German supporters of the aggiornamento of the 1960s cited these earlier authors, but in doing so they had to submerge one of the most important aspects of those early twentieth-century calls for reform: the claim that accommodating to the modern world meant accepting the “science” of racial difference and the politics of radical völkisch antisemitism.

Frustrated by the BVP and the moderation of the German bishops, dissenters nonetheless considered themselves devout members of the Church. Theirs was criticism from within the Church, not the sort that led to apostasy or excommunication. The fact that they were not expelled from the Church is quite significant, because the Vatican (particularly under Pius X) was more than willing to police its theological and ideological boundaries. It was from this group, Hastings argues, that Nazism emerged. He makes a point that is obvious but has nonetheless been under-emphasized in the vast literature on the history of Nazism: that the party was created and cultivated in the very heart of German Catholicism— Munich. Most of the early members were Catholic, and not just nominally so. Even Hitler, we learn, professed his faith on numerous occasions during...