Chaplains in Nazi Germany

  • Thread starter Thread starter KidShellen
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
K

KidShellen

Guest
Armies often have chaplains to cater to the religious needs of troops

We all know what just and unjust wars are right?

Nazi Germany was clearly fighting an unjust war

There are many Catholic Germans so obviously Catholic chaplains were needed to serve the German army.

But the Church is obviously against unjust wars, so weren’t the Catholic chaplains in the German army participating and supporting an unjust war by aiding German troops?

Sorry if this question seems stupid and unclear. It’s kind of a late hour right now as I’m typing this
 
Like the fighting men, the chaplains were conscripted into military service. They had no choice. I imagine they did their best to serve God and Church amidst the brutality they witnessed. I do recall reading that many Catholic priests were in the death camps and work camps, and that Jesuit chaplains were kicked out of chaplain service.

Why don’t you do an Internet search on “military chaplains in Nazi Germany”?
 
In case you did not know St. Padre Pio of Pietralcina was conscripted into the Italian army during WW I not even as a chaplain.
It did not matter to them that he was a monk, priest etc.

They “the army” needed body counts, you where of age and able (you had 2 arms and 2 legs) that’s all it counted.

As for the nazis, yeah, they sent priests to the concentration camps together with the jews :eek:

Chaplains:rolleyes: give me a break!
 
KidShellen said:
Armies often have chaplains to cater to the religious needs of troops

We all know what just and unjust wars are right?

Nazi Germany was clearly fighting an unjust war

There are many Catholic Germans so obviously Catholic chaplains were needed to serve the German army.

But the Church is obviously against unjust wars, so weren’t the Catholic chaplains in the German army participating and supporting an unjust war by aiding German troops?

Sorry if this question seems stupid and unclear. It’s kind of a late hour right now as I’m typing this
Click to expand...
Read some history. When Hitler came to power during the First Great Depression, he promised people work and warned against the Russians or Bolsheviks. The German population was outgrowing its current ‘living space’ and he looked to the East for this. Historical evidence now shows that the Russians were planning to attack Western Europe but Germany attacked first.

Germany was also suffering from the heavy payments being sent to the French after the end of World War One as war reparations as dictated by the Treaty of Versailles. After the Fall of France, German and French authorities signed surrender papers and those payments ended with the occupation. The British came to the aid of the French but were kicked off the continent at Dunkirk. Germany then began to annex other areas. The German people had work, and the national goal of becoming the greatest power in Western Europe and toppling the Russian government in the process.

There were priests and funerals, and military chaplains. I have seen many crosses on the graves of German soldiers in original photos from the period. Pope Pius XII knew what was going on and issued statements denouncing various aspects of the Nazi regime. The Fatherland was united, and our former Ally, the Russians, became our enemy long before the last shots of World War II were fired.

Peace,
Ed
 
Why would there be any catholic chaplains in the german army when the war was a bad one?
Shouldn’t they have refused to be chaplains for a wrong cause? Is there something not apparent here?

Just a thought.
 
KidShellen said:
But the Church is obviously against unjust wars, so weren’t the Catholic chaplains in the German army participating and supporting an unjust war by aiding German troops?
Click to expand...
I look at it this way:

Armies have chaplains because soldiers, given that their job often involves killing people, are especially in need of a priest.

In case of them fighting for an unjust cause, they’re yet more in need of such!

So it was especially mandated, if you ask me. (Besides, military chaplains also minister to enemy POWs).

BTW, the Servant of God Abbé Franz Stock was in a subsidiary office German military chaplain in Paris. In that function, he was the one who ministered to thousands of French résistance fighters to the point of execution. (And later on, he also ministered to wounded British and American POWs).

He’s considered the patron of Franco-Germany friendship and revered both in France and Germany. The French have called him the “minister in hell” or “archangel in hell”. In time, he may be beatified and then, God willing, canonised.

And yes, we’re talking here of a German military chaplain during WWII. A possible future saint. One who had already been cited together with other saints by JPII.

"“Franz Stock lived his vocation to follow Jesus Christ fearlessly and bravely, with patience and without weariness. He was a faithful witness for Jesus Christ who came into the world to guide to God people of all nations, races and languages. Abbé Franz Stock was a physician of the mind and a true minister who sacrificed himself without regarding his own needs and his own strength.”

— Archbishop Hans-Josef Becker

For more on the beatification process, see:

franz-stock.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=543:proceedings-of-beatification-of-franz-stock-opened&catid=87&Itemid=199&lang=en
 
fred_conty said:
Why would there be any catholic chaplains in the german army when the war was a bad one?
Shouldn’t they have refused to be chaplains for a wrong cause? Is there something not apparent here?

Just a thought.
Click to expand...
They gave no direct support to the unjust war effort. Besides, it is not the job of clerics to pronounce judgement on the justness of particular wars, actions within the wars yes, but not the wars themselves.
 
As an analogy, the police are opposed to drug trafficking, yet they would stop a person from murdering a drug dealer.
 
KidShellen said:
But the Church is obviously against unjust wars, so weren’t the Catholic chaplains in the German army participating and supporting an unjust war by aiding German troops?
Click to expand...
The only place that I see the concept of “just/unjust” war discussed is on this forum. Why is that?

I remember during the first Persian Gulf War Pope John Paul saying that we are not privy to the intelligence and information that the warring governments have so we have to just assume that they are doing the right thing.

This fanaticism with labelling wars as “just” or “unjust” only exists here and, as far as I know, has never been a top priority for the Holy See. If one reads enough history, then you may be shocked at the number of “unjust” wars that were supported and encouraged by the popes.
 
fred_conty said:
Why would there be any catholic chaplains in the german army when the war was a bad one?
Shouldn’t they have refused to be chaplains for a wrong cause? Is there something not apparent here?

Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Why was the war “a bad one”? Again, look to history. Hitler was the spokesman. Powerful financial interests were paying for everything and powerful industries we going to make a lot of money. The people were given jobs, young men and young women belonged to a united Germany and became part of various labor and social groups to improve roads, clear forests and revive German identity. The German people were very afraid of the Russians.

One of the mottos at the time was “Strength through Joy.” The war was marketed to the people as something that would help them. Germany was to become the superpower of Western and Eastern Europe. The fight against atheist Communism was viewed as a good. I would hear the phrase “Godless Communism” in the 1960s from our government.

Peace,
Ed
 
Priests, like physicians, have an obligation to serve those in need of them. Certainly many Catholic soldiers in Nazi Germany, conscripted against their will, were in need of spiritual care.
 
For starters, “revive German identity”? Really?

They tore down German culture. Barbarians laying waste the “land of poets and thinkers”.

You must have a pretty dark view of “German identity” if you consider what the Nazis did in the 1930s (and I’m not even taling of 1939 onwards) akin to reviving it. I especially resent the therein slur regarding the 1920s, which I regard as an era of flourishing German culture.

The “reviving German identity” meme is right out of the Nazi apologist playbook. That is what I strongly object to. As a German.
 
Moabiter said:
For starters, “revive German identity”? Really?

They tore down German culture. Barbarians laying waste the “land of poets and thinkers”.

You must have a pretty dark view of “German identity” if you consider what the Nazis did in the 1930s (and I’m not even taling of 1939 onwards) akin to reviving it. I especially resent the therein slur regarding the 1920s, which I regard as an era of flourishing German culture.

The “reviving German identity” meme is right out of the Nazi apologist playbook. That is what I strongly object to. As a German.
Click to expand...
You’ll have to provide evidence for that. During my studies in English and German language sources, one thing is clear: the war was not started by Hitler.

amazon.com/books/dp/0945001533

Krupp
Thyssen
Vereinigte Stahlwerke (formed from parts of Siemens-Rheinelbe-Schuchert)
I.G. Farben (the 4th largest company in the world at the time and a transnational corporation and the world’s largest chemical concern)
Siemens, Siemens-Halske, Siemens-Schuchert
Rheinmetall-Borsig
Messerschmitt
Junkers
Focke-Wulf
Heinkel
Fieseler (developer of the V-1 cruise missile)
Dornier
Zeiss

amazon.com/General-Motors-Nazis-Struggle-Carmaker/dp/0300106343

Who elected Hitler? Who brought the Party to power? Certainly not the people, right? And the great resentment over the Versaille Diktat and the crippling reparations? What was unemployment like before the Nazis came to power? And after?

We are talking about a war based on an ideology that told the German people, you, the Aryans, were the master race. I saw a newsreel from the time period that showed Nazi scientists using calipers to measure the skull and facial features of an Untermensch. Eugenics had been greatly admired by the Nazis and was brought over from America after the Supreme Court ordered the forced sterilization of those deemed unfit to reproduce.

This is not a discussion of poets and thinkers but war and its causes. In this particular case, “living room” and enormous profits, which meant the eventual elimination of inferior peoples or the banning of sexual relations between Germans of pure blood and the “inferior” racial/ethnic/cultural groups.

And the various groups that were started:

RAD
DAK
BDM
DFO

And speaking of culture, Hitler did not ban the Bayreuther Festspiele. He loved Wagner.

I resent being called an apologist. My parents spent the entire war in Germany as forced laborers. Their country no longer existed. It was now part of the Greater Reich.

Peace,
Ed
 
quiet52 said:
Like the fighting men, the chaplains were conscripted into military service. They had no choice. I imagine they did their best to serve God and Church amidst the brutality they witnessed. I do recall reading that many Catholic priests were in the death camps and work camps, and that Jesuit chaplains were kicked out of chaplain service.

Why don’t you do an Internet search on “military chaplains in Nazi Germany”?
Click to expand...
Obviously a tough position, but wouldn’t it be better to refuse to submit to a false idol (the nazi party was a quasi religion) than contribute to the unjust slaughtering of millions? Why not just flat out refuse? If all the Nazis conscripted into service did that - there would’ve been no army to fight the war.
 
In the beginning, many german people saw hitler as a saviour of their economy. And I have no problem with this. He did a lot of good at the start.

But then, he started his aggressive move both inside of his country against the Jews, and outside by annexing two other countries, going on to invade Poland and then France.

During this time of aggression, many priests went to concentration camps for standing up and taking a stand. Lots of nuns as well. If they stood up, then why didn’t the chaplains?

Just a thought.
 
fred_conty said:
In the beginning, many german people saw hitler as a saviour of their economy. And I have no problem with this. He did a lot of good at the start.

But then, he started his aggressive move both inside of his country against the Jews, and outside by annexing two other countries, going on to invade Poland and then France.

During this time of aggression, many priests went to concentration camps for standing up and taking a stand. Lots of nuns as well. If they stood up, then why didn’t the chaplains?

Just a thought.
Click to expand...
You’ll have to provide a reference for this. The issue is complex. First, the Vatican signed a Reichskonkordat in 1933 in order to protect the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. Under this agreement, Franz Justus Rarkowski, S.M., was the Catholic military Bishop of Nazi Germany. He had been acting head of the chaplaincy since 1929. In 1938, he was given the title, Field Bishop of the German Army. There were 560 chaplains at the beginning of the war. Only the Air Force under Hermann Göring forbade chaplains.

Also in 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Chancellor Hitler and signed the Munich Agreement even though Hitler had seized a portion of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland. Both France and Britain wanted to avoid war at all costs and the British Prime Minister felt that by giving Hitler what he did, he declared “Peace for our time” was the result.

You really have to understand the thinking of the time, not the years after.

Who did Time magazine name Man of the Year in 1938?

time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html

How about Time’s cover for one issue in 1936?

time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19360413,00.html

Peace,
Ed
 
Just because the war was unjust, doesn’t mean the poor Catholics conscripted to fight didn’t have a right to the Sacraments.

If the chaplain joined to fight for Nazi Germany…then yes he supported an unjust war. If however he served to bring Christ to the troops…how can he be guilty of supporting an evil war?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top