German Catholicism at War, 1939–1945 by Thomas Brodie (review)

What roles did Catholicism play in shaping Germans’ experiences and understandings of World War II? Such is the question that Thomas Brodie answers in this well-researched and well-written monograph, which focuses on the Rhineland and Westphalia. These two regions represented heartlands of German Catholicism and were homes to the archdiocese of Cologne as well as the dioceses of Aachen and Münster. They were also part of the Ruhr industrial belt, which was heavily bombed by the western Allies during the war.

During the 1930s, the Nazi regime pursued increasingly hostile policies towards the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, at the outbreak of the war in September, 1939, the Catholic hierarchy in western Germany urged the faithful to fulfill their patriotic duty, though with less rhetorical enthusiasm and nationalist fervor than their forebears had displayed in August, 1914. They also expressed their hope for a swift end to the hostilities. While Catholic bishops and theologians described the war as a divine punishment for a secular and sinful humanity, Protestants saw the war as an opportunity to redeem the national disgrace of November, 1918, and prove the nation worthy of divine favor. Between 1939 and 1941, this commitment to the national war effort on the part of German Catholics expressed itself in various ways: German bishops did not speak out against the atrocities perpetrated against Polish co-religionists and the Jews; most Catholics accepted the regime’s claim that the war was defensive in nature and rejoiced at the news of the fall of France in June 1940.

As the war on the Eastern front and Allied bombing raids on the German home front intensified between December, 1941, and June, 1944, Catholics responded to these developments in complex and diverse ways. On the one hand, bishops and priests appreciated the slackening of Nazi anti-clerical policy; on the other, though clerical and lay support for the war effort remained generally strong throughout 1942, the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in February 1943 and the subsequent advance of the Red Army placed real strains on the Catholic community’s cohesion. Criticism of the Nazi authorities increased, as a result of these military setbacks, and even Hitler’s own popularity showed signs of erosion. The final collapse of morale—defeatism—among Catholics occurred only from the summer of 1944 onwards.

From the early stages of the war, the Nazi authorities imposed various pressures on the Church’s resources, both in terms of personnel (extensively recruited to the armed forces) and infrastructure (in the wake of Allied bombing raids) that greatly hindered parish life. More specifically, did the war years invigorate religious life in German society? Brodie’s answer is that levels of religious engagement oscillated. Though the Neo-Scholastic language of episcopal pastoral letters did little to inspire the laity to greater devotional efforts, religion helped sustain Germans’ morale and their perception of the war’s legitimacy, with women and the elderly at the forefront of Catholic religious practice. In particular, as rituals of individual bereavement and communal solidarity, funerals and memorial services mobilized religious sentiments in large sections of the population. Brodie’s second thematic chapter (“The Catholic Diaspora—Experiences of Evacuation”) is arguably his most original. As Allied bombing of the German home front intensified from 1943 onwards, evacuation measures scattered Catholics throughout the Reich. Such wide geographic dispersal resulted in the dislocation of parish life and, simultaneously, the emergence of great pastoral challenges. Indeed, in these new surroundings, the makeshift living conditions experienced by many evacuated people, the widespread tensions with the local population, the demonstrations of confessional hostility from Protestants, the cultural divides between rural and urban areas, and the lack of priests—all had a negative impact on the levels of religious engagement, to the bitter disappointment of the clergy ministering in the diaspora.

Popular defeatism and alienation from the Nazi regime increased during the final—and so destructive...