There was no explicit
order from Adolf Hitler that provided for the persecution of the
church. No persons ‒ ecclesiastic, religious, or lay ‒ were killed
simply because they openly confessed or practiced Catholicism
(unlike in the cases of the French Revolution and the Spanish Civil
War). A concordat between the Third Reich and the Vatican in 1933
even assured “the uninhibited freedom of action for all Catholic
religious, cultural and educational organizations, associations and
federations.”
Hitler himself declared at a party congress in Nuremberg in 1935 the
resolution of the National Socialist Party (Nazis) to maintain a
healthy relationship with the Christian churches of Germany: “The
party never had the intention, either formerly or today, to wage any
kind of a struggle with Christianity in Germany. . . We will never
fight this battle (against the politicization of churches) as a
battle against Christianity or even just against one of the
confessions.”
Notwithstanding this
modus vivendi, the
peaceful relationship between the German church and the regime was
seemingly valid only on paper. In practice, all Christian churches
under Hitler’s grasp were consistently harassed by the Gestapo and
other fanatical henchmen of Nazism. In 1935, the German episcopate
deplored the defamations hurled against Christianity and the church
which was tolerated and even supported by the regime. The bishops
also spoke out against the Nazi restrictions on Catholic youth
organizations to pave the way for the consolidation of all young
Germans into the Hitler Youth, and the confiscation of several
monasteries. There was also no doubt that the state warranted
propagandas to defame the church like the
morality trials which
sought to divulge the sexual delinquencies of members of the clergy,
and the publicized trials against Catholic clergymen accused of
violating the currency regulations that made the sending of funds to
foreign missions extremely bureaucratized.
The removal of crucifixes from schools, the desecration of roadside
crosses and statues, and the laicization of schools were other
antichurch tactics employed by the Nazis.
Was this development a
prelude to a more systematic suppression of the church in Nazi
Germany? The Nazis had complained about the inability of the
Catholic Church to understand the requirements of national
socialism. Many of them, including Hitler, had been especially
irritated by the pronouncements of [Bd.] Clemens August von Galen,
bishop of Münster, against practices tolerated by the state that
went against Catholic principles (like euthanasia and confiscation
of church properties). As early as 1936, Hitler had already made a
threat on the church: «So long as they concern themselves
about religious problems, the state will not concern itself about
them. When they attempt by any other means ‒ writing, encyclicals,
etc. ‒ to assure themselves rights which belong only to the state,
we will push them back into their proper spiritual activity and the
care of the souls.»
During the Second World
War, the German hierarchy and laity supported the war efforts of
their country, and yet were very circumspect when it came to
supporting Nazi ideology. Catholics in all occupied territories,
meanwhile, were not harmed because of their faith. But those with
Jewish roots, whether they were religious or lay, were treated in
the same way as full Jews, most being exterminated in concentration
camps. The Catholics of Poland were also treated savagely because,
for the Nazis, all Poles were “vermins” who “have no historical
mission whatever in . . . the world.”
Immediately after the occupation of Poland in October 1939, Hitler
ordered the elimination of the country’s intelligentsia, which
numbered priests and well-educated lay Catholics.
The suffering of the church in Poland made the Vatican and all
episcopates under Nazi domain extremely cautious. If they had been
outspoken before, most chose to just cooperate with the evil regime
with a heavy heart and to mute their protests in the face of a
million unjust deaths. . . the price of self-preservation. Yet there
was no doubt that the Nazis would have undertaken a
Kulturkampf against all
Christian churches had they been victorious in the Second World War.
Still, there were many
heroic Catholics who refused to be cowed by the Nazis. For their
defiance, the Nazis found various accusations to level against them:
of involvement in treasonable activities (according to the Reich’s
definition of treason), of engaging in enterprises harmful to the
security of the regime, of speaking ill of the Führer, etc. All of
them were imprisoned, some enduring the harsh inhumanity of
concentration camps for years. The great majority were executed or
wasted away due to sickness or malnutrition; a few saw the
liberation of their camps, but died as a consequence of the
maltreatment they endured for months or years. If the institutional
church, for the sake of “prudence,”
could not be a prophet for that time, these Catholics made a
conscious and individual or communal choice to risk and forfeit
their lives rather than keep silent or betray the dictates of their
conscience.
Among these nonconformist
martyrs against the tyranny of Nazism were priests, religious men
and women, and lay people. Most were not German and counted just a
few ranking prelates. The priests included [Ven] Titus Brandsma,
[Bd] Bernhard Lichtenberg, [Bd] Engelmar Unzeitig, [Bd]
Giuseppe Girotti, and [SoG] Lucien Bunel who spoke up against and
defied anti-Semitism. The super
erudite Carmelite nun [St] Edith Stein suffered intensely because of
the persecution of her people, the Jews; she died with them in the
gas chambers of Auschwitz as a result of a Nazi reprisal against the
Dutch hierarchy which rebuked their anti-Semitic policies.
There were also the Pallotine priest [SoG] Franz Reinisch and the
celebrated layman [Bd] Franz Jägerstätter, both Austrians and
conscientious objectors who chose imprisonment and execution rather
than be conscripted into the army of the Third Reich. Eleven Sisters
of the Holy Family of Nazareth were mowed down by the Nazis for
their ministry which had become the source of religious and national
renewal for the Polish and Catholic population of the town of
Navahrudak (then part of Poland, but now in Belarus).
And then there was the youthful [Bd] Marcel Callo, a member of the
Young Catholic Workers (Jocists), deported to the labor camp of
Mauthausen for “being too Catholic” and conducting religious
activities that were “harmful to the Nazi regime and to the
well-being of the German people.”
