Was the Catholic Church involved with the Nazis?

[rose_kelly]

And of course you are totally aware of the political situation the Vatican was prior to the signing of the Lateran Treaty!
When we deal with politics unfortunately not every thing is black and white. The Church has to deal with the world and at every age there are new challenges.
Some people make bad decisions and some make the ultimate sacrifice. In the end however the Church will remain and will overcome as she has always done for 2000 years. You know why?

Because JESUS whom this Church belongs to so promised.

---

 

[Duane1966]

And again, a rather interesting “coincidence” is that fascist movements arose independently in all Catholic countries in Europe except for Poland, while no protestant country developed a fascist regime. Clearly, there is something about Catholic theology which can be, and has been, exploited by right-wing groups.

In the 1930’s Germany was 67% protestant. So there goes that theory.

In 1931 Pope Pius XI released an encyclical condemning fascism.

As I posted earlier, in many parts of Germany to belong in the 1930’s to the Nazi party meant automatic excommunication from Catholic Church.

 

[weller2]

In the 1930’s Germany was 67% protestant. So there goes that theory.

Not really. Hitler was Austrian and the rest of the gang was from Southern Germany, mainly Bavaria – that’s the Catholic part.

That said, support for NSDAP in elections was lower in Catholic lands – not by much, but the trend was statistically significant.

As I posted earlier, in many parts of Germany to belong in the 1930’s to the Nazi party meant automatic excommunication from Catholic Church.

Meanwhile in Spain, Slovakia and Croatia…

 

[Kaninchen]

In the 1930’s Germany was 67% protestant. So there goes that theory.

That observation is true, of course, and the NSDAP was particularly successful in Protestant agricultural areas (Catholic and predominantly working class cities were relatively immune) but it doesn’t entirely rebut the point that was made - consider in what part of Germany the NSDAP had its origins and the enormous popular reaction in Austria to the Anschluß.

The question of how people reacted to the remarkable circumstances existing between 1918 and 1945 is quite complex.

As I posted earlier, in many parts of Germany to belong in the 1930’s to the Nazi party meant automatic excommunication from Catholic Church.

The Church is against contraception and abortion, meanwhile . . . .

 

[Thorolfr]

the Lateran Treaty was not a collaboration between the Pope and Fascists. the Lateran Treaty was due to the King of Italy seizing the Papal States in the 19th century. The church disputed the right of the King to take territory that didn’t belong to him. The treaty settled the matter by the legal government of Italy, now led by Mussolini, agreeing to total independence of the Vatican City State and paid reparations for the property that the Italian government confiscated.

the negotiations had been going on for decades but with the world wide depression the Church decided it was best to settle things and take what they could get.

There is actually quite a lot of evidence that the Catholic Church supported Mussolini for a long time and was instrumental in allowing him to hang on to power in Italy at one time. See, for example, the recent Pulitzer Prize winning book by David Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (New York: Random House, 2014)

 

[Duane1966]

Not really. Hitler was Austrian and the rest of the gang was from Southern Germany, mainly Bavaria – that’s the Catholic part.

That said, support for NSDAP in elections was lower in Catholic lands – not by much, but the trend was statistically significant.

Meanwhile in Spain, Slovakia and Croatia…

From the following website:www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206

PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN NAZI GERMANY

The largest Protestant church in Germany in the 1930s was the German Evangelical Church, comprised of 28 regional churches or Landeskirchen that included the three major theological traditions that had emerged from the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed, and United. Most of Germany’s 40 million Protestants were members of this church, although there were smaller so-called “free” Protestant churches, such as Methodist and Baptist churches.

Historically the German Evangelical Church viewed itself as one of the pillars of German culture and society, with a theologically grounded tradition of loyalty to the state. During the 1920s, a movement emerged within the German Evangelical Church called the Deutsche Christen, or “German Christians.” The “German Christians” embraced many of the nationalistic and racial aspects of Nazi ideology. Once the Nazis came to power, this group sought the creation of a national “Reich Church” and supported a “nazified” version of Christianity.

The Bekennende Kirche—the “Confessing Church”—emerged in opposition to the “German Christians.” Its founding document, the Barmen Confession of Faith, declared that the church’s allegiance was to God and scripture, not a worldly Führer. Both the Confessing Church and the “German Christians” remained part of the German Evangelical Church, and the result was a Kirchenkampf, or “church struggle” within German Protestantism—an ongoing debate and struggle for control between those who sought a “nazified” church, those who opposed it, and the so-called “neutral” church leaders whose priority was the avoidance both of church schism and any kind of conflict with the Nazi state.

The most famous members of the Confessing Church were the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed for his role in the conspiracy to overthrow the regime, and Pastor Martin Niemöller, who spent seven years in concentration camps for his criticisms of Hitler. Yet these clergymen were not typical of the Confessing Church; despite their examples, the Protestant Kirchenkampf was mostly an internal church matter, not a fight against National Socialism. Even in the Confessing Church, most church leaders were primarily concerned with blocking state and ideological interference in church affairs. Yet there were certainly members of the clergy and laity who opposed and resisted the regime, including some who aided and hid Jews.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NAZI GERMANY

The Catholic Church was not as sharply divided by different ideological factions as the Protestant church, and it never underwent an internal Kirchenkampf between these different factions. Catholic leaders were initially more suspicious of National Socialism than their Protestant counterparts. Nationalism was not as deeply embedded in the German Catholic Church, and the rabid anti-Catholicism of figures such as Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi ideologue during the Nazi rise to power, raised early concerns among Catholic leaders in Germany and at the Vatican. In addition, the Catholic Centre Party had been a key coalition governmental partner in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and was aligned with both the Social Democrats and leftist German Democratic Party, pitting it politically against right-wing parties like the Nazis.

Before 1933, in fact, some bishops prohibited Catholics in their dioceses from joining the Nazi Party. This ban was dropped after Hitler’s March 23, 1933, speech to the Reichstag in which he described Christianity as the “foundation” for German values. The Centre Party was dissolved as part of the signing of a 1933 Concordat between the Vatican and Nazi governmental representatives, and several of its leaders were murdered in the Röhm Purge in July 1934]

 

[Duane1966]

The Church is against contraception and abortion, meanwhile . . . .

And the ten commandments say murder and adultery are wrong, meanwhile in the Old Testament I read…

 

[Estevao]

There is actually quite a lot of evidence that the Catholic Church supported Mussolini for a long time and was instrumental in allowing him to hang on to power in Italy at one time. See, for example, the recent Pulitzer Prize winning book by David Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (New York: Random House, 2014)

David Kertzer has been exposed as a charlatan who twists facts by scholar Justus George Lawer in his book Were the Popes Against the Jews?: Tracking the Myths, Confronting the Ideologues (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2012)

It received this review from eminent historian Michael Burleigh:

Michael Burleigh
– Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Author of Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II
“In The New York Review of Books Owen Chadwick, the distinguished historian of modern Christianity, wrote that David I. Kertzer’s The Popes Against the Jews ‘makes a case that calls for an answer.’ Until the publication of the present book that case had not been made, even though issues regarding the papacy and the Holocaust have in the past decade become more heated than ever before. In this carefully argued and brilliantly written work, Justus George Lawler provides that answer – with a vengeance. He exposes the jumbled chronology, the doctored texts, and the rigged translations that constitute the shoddy underpinnings of the work of Kertzer and of his supportive admirers who are endeavoring to replace an authentic historical narrative with an ideologically driven polemic.”

 

[Peter_Plato]

And again, a rather interesting “coincidence” is that fascist movements arose independently in all Catholic countries in Europe except for Poland, while no protestant country developed a fascist regime. Clearly, there is something about Catholic theology which can be, and has been, exploited by right-wing groups.

This is a somewhat one-sided claim. Fascism movements arose in many countries – not only in Europe, but in Asia and South America. If you’d like a list of non-Catholic countries that actually had fascist governments – not merely “movements” – prior to 1945, I have taken the liberty to add the Roman Catholic numbers (as a % of the total population) or the predominant religious affiliation where RC numbers were miniscule. I have also included the date of ascendency to power by the fascist regime.

Albania - 1939 (10% RC)
Bulgaria - 1930 (83 % Orthodox)
Germany - 1918 (34% RC)
Greece - 1922 (98% Orthodox)
Japan - 1940 (84% Buddhist/Shinto)
Norway - 1933 (1% RC)
Romania - 1927 (4.7% RC)
South Africa - 1914 (7.1% RC)

Also consider that in a number of European countries with a large proportion of Catholics in the population, fascist governments were never elected.

Switzerland (41.8% RC)
Poland (89.8% RC)
Malta (90 % RC)
Luxemberg (87% RC)
Liechtenstein (76.2% RC)
Ireland (87.4% RC)
France (83% RC)
Belgium (75 % RC)

This is to say nothing of the 20 or so other countries in other parts of the world which have predominantly Catholic populations which never hosted a fascist polity.

 

[Kaninchen]

And the ten commandments say murder and adultery are wrong, meanwhile in the Old Testament I read…

Yes, my comment was a bit gnomic (to say the least).

What I should have said is that many Catholics seem quite open to the problems of cognitive dissonance - holding two contradictory views at the same time, being ‘good’ Catholics and using birth control, for example. This facility many Catholics have to hold two contradictory views at the same time is something that they share with everybody else, of course.

So, revering a Pope who moaned about excessive nationalism in the Italian Fascist Party while greatly admiring Il Duce and his works would not have been that big a problem - just as revering a Pope who doesn’t agree with Same Sex Marriage while voting for it in an Irish referendum wasn’t too much of a problem for many Irish Catholics.

The point is that in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, France (where the Vichy regime was rather popular and the heir to large pre-War Fascist-type movements), when faced with what might be described as existential situations, large numbers of Catholics behaved in a particular way.

This does not mean that all Catholics did, or that only Catholics did, or that the Pope told them to do it, or anything like that. It doesn’t mean there were not virtuous Catholics, there were many millions of virtuous Catholics, it doesn’t mean that were not virtuous clergy, there were many, many thousands of virtuous clergy.

When faced with a huge threat to the traditions and society they deeply believed in, however, many Catholics made decisions that were to end up being disastrous.

 

[rcwitness]

This article is really actually incredible!

michaeljournal.org/piusXII.htm

A couple excerpts…

The great Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein, who himself barely escaped annihilation at Nazi hands, stated in Time Magazine (December 23, 1940): “Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi Revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers… they too were mute. Only the Church,” Einstein concluded, “stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth… I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration… and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly.”

Israele Anton Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome during the German occupation, wrote: “Volumes could be written on the multiform works of Pius XII, and the countless priests, religious and laity who stood with him throughout the world during the war.”
“No hero,” he said, “in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity… and thus on behalf of all the suffering children of God. What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts… Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism.”
Zolli was so moved by the Pope’s efforts that he became a devoted friend of Pius XII. He eventually converted to the Catholic Faith, and took for his baptismal name, in 1945, Eugenio, in honor of Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII). Rabbi Zolli’s daughter, the psychiatrist Myriam Zolli, has issued a strong defense of Pius XII. She said the Pope was in steady contact with her father, and he worked diligently to save Jews from persecution. In an interview in the Italian daily Il Giornale, she recalled her father’s prediction that Pope Pius XII would become a scapegoat for the West’s silence in the face of the Holocaust. She concluded that “the world’s Jewish community owes him a great debt.”

There can definitely be clergy that can be singled out who acted in opposition to Pope Pius. Even groups of Catholics! This happens in every age. But we follow the Lord and Holy Spirit as individuals. He will guide us into full Communion with the Church and her official stance on issues. Our supreme Bishop is a source of divine Confirmation, and we have an obligation to know, to the best of our ability, if our Priests and Bishops are in Communion with the Pope.

 

[Kaninchen]

Zolli was so moved by the Pope’s efforts that he became a devoted friend of Pius XII. He eventually converted to the Catholic Faith

At least then he would have been able to find somebody to talk to.

 

[rose_kelly]

Israele Anton Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome during the German occupation, wrote: “Volumes could be written on the multiform works of Pius XII, and the countless priests, religious and laity who stood with him throughout the world during the war.”
“No hero,” he said, “in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity… and thus on behalf of all the suffering children of God. What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts… Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism.”
Zolli was so moved by the Pope’s efforts that he became a devoted friend of Pius XII. He eventually converted to the Catholic Faith, and took for his baptismal name, in 1945, Eugenio, in honor of Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII). Rabbi Zolli’s daughter, the psychiatrist Myriam Zolli, has issued a strong defense of Pius XII. She said the Pope was in steady contact with her father, and he worked diligently to save Jews from persecution. In an interview in the Italian daily Il Giornale, she recalled her father’s prediction that Pope Pius XII would become a scapegoat for the West’s silence in the face of the Holocaust. She concluded that “the world’s Jewish community owes him a great debt.”

There can definitely be clergy that can be singled out who acted in opposition to Pope Pius. Even groups of Catholics! This happens in every age. But we follow the Lord and Holy Spirit as individuals. He will guide us into full Communion with the Church and her official stance on issues. Our supreme Bishop is a source of divine Confirmation, and we have an obligation to know, to the best of our ability, if our Priests and Bishops are in Communion with the Pope.

Very Interesting, I hadn’t heard about that.
I had previously read somewhere that Pope Pius had Jewish Italian scholars working at the Vatican, they had been given appointments after being dismissed from university positions just for being Jewish.

Pope Pius X11 seems to have been very misunderstood, so much had to be done in secret to avoid endangering more people, resulting in further loss of lives.
theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/09/hitlers-pope-pius-xii-holocaust

 

[Thorolfr]

David Kertzer has been exposed as a charlatan who twists facts by scholar Justus George Lawer in his book Were the Popes Against the Jews?: Tracking the Myths, Confronting the Ideologues (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2012)

It received this review from eminent historian Michael Burleigh:

Here is some of what they have to say about Kertzer’s new book in the New York Review of Books:

When Mussolini seized power in his so-called March on Rome in October 1922, Achille Ratti, a scholarly librarian and former archbishop of Milan, had only recently become Pope Pius XI. The Catholic Church had not been particularly supportive of fascism during its rise. Mussolini, after all, had started out his career as an outspoken atheist and anticlerical firebrand. The Church supported its own specifically Catholic party, the Partito Popolare, or Popular Party, which competed with both the Socialists and the Fascists.

To the pope’s surprise, on taking power Mussolini immediately began a concerted campaign to win the Church’s support. He used his first speech to Parliament to articulate his vision of a Fascist society that placed the Church at the center of Italian life: the Fascist Party would be the unquestioned authority in political life and the Church would be restored to its primacy over the spiritual life of the nation. Mussolini followed up his speech with a series of concrete actions: crucifixes were placed in every public school classroom, courtroom, and hospital room; insulting a priest or disparaging the Catholic religion was made a criminal offense; Catholicism became a required subject in public schools; and considerable state funds were spent on priests’ salaries, as well as Church-run schools overseas.

This represented a remarkable departure—not just for Mussolini but for Italy. The battle to create a united Italian state had been fought, in part, at the expense of Church power, and resulted in the end of the pope’s temporal rule over Rome and much of central Italy. It took the popes decades to realize that Italy was a permanent reality that they needed to accept. Mussolini offered them the possibility of doing so on highly favorable terms. Almost immediately he began secret negotiations for a treaty between the Vatican and the Italian state. This concordat, known as the Lateran Treaty, was signed in 1929; it made Catholicism Italy’s state religion and compensated the Church for its lost territories with a generous financial settlement. Pius XI was so pleased with the treaty that he referred to Mussolini as the “man sent by providence.”

The general outlines of this story have always been matters of public record, but Kertzer’s book deepens and alters our understanding considerably. The portrait that emerges from it suggests a much more organic and symbiotic relationship between the Church and fascism. Rather than seeing the Church as having passively accepted fascism as a fait accompli, Kertzer sees it as having provided fundamental support to Mussolini in his consolidation of power and the establishment of dictatorship in Italy.

The Vatican’s first and perhaps most important contribution was the dismantling of the Popular Party, which in the first years of fascism remained one of the greatest obstacles to dictatorial rule. As Mussolini began to negotiate the Lateran Treaty, he made it clear that he considered it an intolerable contradiction for the Church to enter into a partnership with his regime while at the same time fielding an opposition party that criticized it. Just eight months after the March on Rome, Pius XI forced Father Luigi Sturzo, the founder of the Popular Party, to resign as party secretary.

Kertzer writes that Pius XI may have had a crucial part in supporting Mussolini at a moment when he might well have fallen from power. In 1924, Italy held elections that were badly marred by violence, intimidation, and fraud. Not surprisingly, the Fascists obtained a majority, but the Popular Party and the Socialists, braving impossible conditions, held on to significant minorities. When the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti denounced the conduct and outcome of the elections, he was kidnapped and murdered in downtown Rome. The Matteotti killing shocked the Italian middle and upper-middle classes, who suddenly began to rethink their support of fascism. As the investigation unfolded, the opposition suddenly regained vigor. Mussolini went into a kind of personal crisis, seeming to regard his own resignation as inevitable. Even pillars of the Italian establishment like the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera now called on him to step down. What was left of the Popular Party, the Catholic party, was also calling for a new government. This would almost certainly have required a coalition between the Catholics and the Socialists.

The Vatican, instead, decided to support Mussolini. An internal political briefing from this period stated:

Catholics could only think with terror of what might happen in Italy if the Honorable Mussolini’s government were to fall perhaps to an insurrection by subversive forces and so they have every interest in supporting it.

Pius XI, through his personal emissary, Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, sent Mussolini a private message of encouragement and solidarity. On a more concrete level, the pope also silenced Father Sturzo, who although no longer the head of the Popular Party remained a prominent public figure denouncing fascism. Sturzo was ordered to stop publishing his views and reluctantly agreed to leave Italy.

 

[Duane1966]

Yes, my comment was a bit gnomic (to say the least).

What I should have said is that many Catholics seem quite open to the problems of cognitive dissonance - holding two contradictory views at the same time, being ‘good’ Catholics and using birth control, for example. This facility many Catholics have to hold two contradictory views at the same time is something that they share with everybody else, of course.

So, revering a Pope who moaned about excessive nationalism in the Italian Fascist Party while greatly admiring Il Duce and his works would not have been that big a problem - just as revering a Pope who doesn’t agree with Same Sex Marriage while voting for it in an Irish referendum wasn’t too much of a problem for many Irish Catholics.

The point is that in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, France (where the Vichy regime was rather popular and the heir to large pre-War Fascist-type movements), when faced with what might be described as existential situations, large numbers of Catholics behaved in a particular way.

This does not mean that all Catholics did, or that only Catholics did, or that the Pope told them to do it, or anything like that. It doesn’t mean there were not virtuous Catholics, there were many millions of virtuous Catholics, it doesn’t mean that were not virtuous clergy, there were many, many thousands of virtuous clergy.

When faced with a huge threat to the traditions and society they deeply believed in, however, many Catholics made decisions that were to end up being disastrous.

I know people who call themselves good Catholics who have not been to church in years, and never believed in just about anything that the Church teaches. I know people who call themselves good Americans who have not voted in over thirty years. I know men who call themselves good dads who have not been involved in their children’s lives since they left when the kids were small, but they have mailed the child support on time. We all suffer from cognitive dissonance in some area or areas of our lives, not just Catholics, some of just realize it sooner or later and try to do something about it. Most people do not ever think they are bad, many hardened criminals have said they were just “misunderstood.”

 

[gracepoole]

I share this largely because I think it’s wise to have a comprehensive understanding of how members of various Christian faiths responded to the Third Reich – an overly apologetic or rose-colored view distorts the historical record.

Shaken by military defeat and economic depression after War World I, Germans sought to restore their nation’s dignity and power. In this context the National Socialist Party, with its promise of a revivified Germany, drew supporters. Among the most zealous were a number of Catholic clergymen, known as “brown priests,” who volunteered as Nazi propagandists. In this insightful study, Spicer unearths a dark subchapter in Roman Catholic history, introduces the principal clergymen who participated in the Nazi movement, examines their motives, details their advocacy of National Socialism, and explores the consequences of their political activism.

Some brown priests, particularly war veterans, advocated National Socialism because it appealed to their patriotic ardor. Others had less laudatory motives: disaffection with clerical life, conflicts with Church superiors, or ambition for personal power and fame. Whatever their individual motives, they employed their skills as orators, writers, and teachers to proclaim the message of Nazism. Especially during the early 1930s, when the Church forbade membership in the party, these clergymen strove to prove that Catholicism was compatible with National Socialism, thereby justifying their support of Nazi ideology. Father Dr. Philipp Haeuser, a scholar and pastor, went so far as to promote antisemitism while deifying Adolf Hitler. The Führer’s antisemitism, Spicer argues, did not deter clergymen such as Haeuser because, although the Church officially rejected the Nazis’ extreme racism, Catholic teachings tolerated hostility toward Jews by blaming them for Christ’s crucifixion.

While a handful of brown priests enjoyed the forbearance of their bishops, others endured reprimand or even dismissal; a few found new vocations with the Third Reich. After the fall of the Reich, the most visible brown priests faced trial for their part in the crimes of National Socialism, a movement they had once so earnestly supported.

The USHMM’s review of Kevin Spicer’s Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism. ushmm.org/research/publications/academic-publications/full-list-of-academic-publications/hitlers-priests-catholic-clergy-and-national-socialism

 

[rcwitness]

I certainly don’t want to deny the reality that a certain amount of priests AND even some Bishops had various involvement in the Nazi movement.

The issue, for Catholicism, is what was the official position of the Church regarding the Nazi motive and agenda.

Within this, there is a lot of complexity! Mainly that there was levels of the Nazi actually revealing their agenda and prerogatives. Also there was carefully calculated resistance that required discreet and delicate handling.

One very important Catholic principal is for all (especially Bishops then priests) to confirm their spiritual direction through the Pope. This is why it is important to establish Pius XII’s actual Teachings (his own agenda and motives).

What this story in history reminds us Catholics, is that we need to act as one body who follow our Catholic faith and NOT a political party.

I happen to believe that Pius XII had genuine motives and made complex decisions because he was faced with complex situations. There were probably many Bishops, Priests and lay Catholics who did resist the Nazi Order when they realized it’s true nature and/or were aware of the official Church’s position (being the pope’s guidance).

But I do like to learn about the facts of this history. A lot of it is not pleasant, but some of it shows heroism of the faithfull.

 

[GKC]

David Kertzer has been exposed as a charlatan who twists facts by scholar Justus George Lawer in his book Were the Popes Against the Jews?: Tracking the Myths, Confronting the Ideologues (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2012)

It received this review from eminent historian Michael Burleigh:

I’ve read Kertzer, and a portion of Lawler. The rest will have to wait until I order it, it is difficult to follow him on line. But both both Kertzer and Lawler have received negative reviews, Kertzer primarily in Catholic venues. I am interested in seeing if Lawler’s writing clears up, as the book proceeds. And so far, he is agreeing with much of Kretzer’s basic thesis. That I know gets more complicated and critical, as he continues. But the man is certainly in love with the sound of his keyboard. Overwritten.

 

[GKC]

I share this largely because I think it’s wise to have a comprehensive understanding of how members of various Christian faiths responded to the Third Reich – an overly apologetic or rose-colored view distorts the historical record.

The USHMM’s review of Kevin Spicer’s Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism. ushmm.org/research/publications/academic-publications/full-list-of-academic-publications/hitlers-priests-catholic-clergy-and-national-socialism

And Spicer did a negative review of Lawler’s WERE THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS, mentioned above.

As I often say, you learn history in the round, by reading every side of an issue you can find. Gives you perspective. History is complex. This issue, generally, is a minor one for me. I don’t own more than about 12-15 books on it. Lawler’s will be next.

 

[edwest2]

I share this largely because I think it’s wise to have a comprehensive understanding of how members of various Christian faiths responded to the Third Reich – an overly apologetic or rose-colored view distorts the historical record.

The USHMM’s review of Kevin Spicer’s Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism. ushmm.org/research/publications/academic-publications/full-list-of-academic-publications/hitlers-priests-catholic-clergy-and-national-socialism

I do not find the above credible. As a student of World War II history, I’ve seen the distortions creep in. First, Hitler’s Pope, which was discredited. Now, Hitler’s Priests. The Pope received reports from a number of sources about the goings-on in the countries that were occupied or annexed by the Greater Reich. He spoke perfect German and called in a high German official to answer questions regarding what he was hearing.

On the belt buckles of German soldiers were the words “Gott mit uns” or God with us. I viewed a period poster in German that showed Christ on the Cross, with the words “They [the Bolsheviks] don’t believe in this.”

The Church was involved to ensure the rights of Catholics in Germany and to watch for humanitarian abuses of Catholics and non-Catholics elsewhere.

Ed