Nazi views on Catholicism

Catholic Bavaria resented rule from Protestant Berlin, and Hitler at first saw revolution in Bavaria as a means to power - but an early attempt proved fruitless, and he was imprisoned after the 1923 Munich Beerhall Putsch. He used the time to produce Mein Kampf, in which he argued that the effeminate Jewish-Christian ethic was enfeebling Europe, and that Germany needed a man of iron to restore itself and build an empire.[17] He decided on the tactic of pursuing power through "legal" means.[18]

Hitler combined elements of autobiography with an exposition of his racist political ideology in Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), published between 1925 and 1927.[19] Laurence Rees wrote that emphasis on Christianity is missing from Mein Kampf, and described the thrust of the work as "bleak nihilism" revealing a cold universe with no moral structure other than the fight between different people for supremacy.[20] Paul Berben wrote that insofar as the Christian denominations were concerned, Hitler declared himself to be neutral in Mein Kampf - but argued for clear separation between church and state, and for the church not to concern itself with the earthly life of the people, which must be the domain of the state.[21] According to William Shirer, Hitler "inveighed against political Catholicism in Mein Kampf and attacked both of the Christian Churches for their failure to recognise the racial problem...", while also warning that no political party could succeed in "producing a religious reformation".[22] The 1920 Nazi Party Platform had promised to support freedom of religions with the caveat: "insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the moral sentiments of the Germanic race". It further proposed a definition of a "positive Christianity" which could combat the "Jewish-materialistic spirit".[13] The attitude of the Nazi party membership to the Catholic Church ranged from tolerance to near total renunciation.[23][24]

Otto von Bismarck became Chancellor of Germany in 1871 and launched the Kulturkampf Culture Struggle against the Roman Catholic Church in Germany.

A threatening, though initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover.[25] The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity, interfering with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies.[26] "By the latter part of the decade of the Thirties", wrote Phayer, "church officials were well aware that the ultimate aim of Hitler and other Nazis was the total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion. Since the overwhelming majority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant this goal had to be a long-term rather than a short-term Nazi objective".[27]

Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism.[14] The dissolution of the Centre Party, a former bulwark of the Weimar Republic left modern Germany without a Catholic Party for the first time.[14] Vice Chancellor Papen meanwhile negotiated a Reich concordat with the Vatican, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics.[28] Kershaw wrote that the Vatican was anxious to reach agreement with the new government, despite "continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and other outrages committed by Nazi radicals against the Church and its organisations".[29] Hitler, nevertheless, had a "blatant disregard" for the Concordat, wrote Paul O'Shea, and its signing was to him merely a first step in the "gradual suppression of the Catholic Church in Germany".[30] Anton Gill wrote that "with his usual irresistible, bullying technique, Hitler then proceeded to take a mile where he had been given an inch" and closed all Catholic institutions whose functions weren't strictly religious:[31]

It quickly became clear that [Hitler] intended to imprison the Catholics, as it were, in their own churches. They could celebrate mass and retain their rituals as much as they liked, but they could have nothing at all to do with German society otherwise. Catholic schools and newspapers were closed, and a propaganda campaign against the Catholics was launched.

— Extract from An Honourable Defeat by Anton Gill

Richard J. Evans wrote that Hitler believed that in the long run National Socialism and religion would not be able to co-exist, and stressed repeatedly that Nazism was a secular ideology, founded on modern science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition". Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks'".[32] He believed in a world Jewish conspiracy operating through social democracy, Marxism and Christianity.[33]

Hitler called a truce in the Church conflict with the outbreak of war, wanting to back away from policies likely to cause internal friction in Germany. He decreed at the outset of war that "no further action should be taken against the Evangelical and Catholic Churches for the duration of the war". According to John Conway, "The Nazis had to reckon with the fact that, despite all Rosenberg's efforts, only 5 per cent of the population registered themselves at the 1930 census as no longer connected with Christian Churches."[57] The support of millions of German Christians was needed in order for Hitler's plans to come to fruition. It was Hitler's belief that if religion is a help, "it can only be an advantage". Most of the 3 million Nazi Party members "still paid the Church taxes" and considered themselves Christians.[58] Regardless, a number of Nazi radicals in the hierarchy determined that the Church Struggle should be continued.[59] Following victory in Poland, the repression of the Churches was extended, despite their early protestations of loyalty to the cause.[60]

Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda issued threats and applied intense pressure on the Churches to voice support for the war, and the Gestapo banned Church meetings for a few weeks. In the first few months of the war, the German Churches complied.[61] The Catholic bishops asked their followers to support the war effort.[62] But the Nazis strongly disapproved of the sentiments against war expressed by the Pope through his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus and his 1939 Christmas message, and were angry at his support for Poland and the "provocative" use of Vatican Radio by Cardinal Hlond of Poland. Distribution of the encyclical was banned.[63]

Conway wrote that anti-church radical Reinhard Heydrich estimated in a report to Hitler of October 1939, that the majority of Church people were supporting the war effort - though a few "well known agitators among the pastors needed to be dealt with".[59] Heydrich determined that support from church leaders could not be expected because of the nature of their doctrines and internationalism, so he devised measures to restrict the operation of the Churches under cover of war time exigencies, such as reducing resources available to Church presses on the basis of rationing, and prohibiting pilgrimages and large church gatherings on the basis of transportation difficulties. Churches were closed for being "too far from bomb shelters". Bells were melted down. Presses were closed.[60] With the expansion of the war in the East from 1941, there came also an expansion of the regime's attack on the churches. Monasteries and convents were targeted and expropriation of Church properties surged.[64]

Clergy in the German Resistance had some independence from the state apparatus, and could thus criticise it, while not being close enough to the centre of power to take steps to overthrow it.[65] Mary Fulbrook wrote that when politics encroached on the church, Catholics were prepared to resist, but that the record was otherwise patchy and uneven, and that, with notable exceptions, "it seems that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian faith proved compatible with at least passive acquiescence in, if not active support for, the Nazi dictatorship".[66] A senior cleric could rely on a degree of popular support from the faithful, and thus the regime had to consider the possibility of nationwide protests if such figures were arrested.[67] While hundreds of ordinary priests and members of monastic orders were sent to concentration camps throughout the Nazi period, just one German Catholic bishop was briefly imprisoned in a concentration camp, and just one other expelled from his diocese.[68] This reflected also the cautious approach adopted by the hierarchy, who felt secure only in commenting on matters which transgressed on the ecclesiastical sphere.[69]

The bishop of Münster, Clemens August von Galen, had rallied to the nationalist cause at the outbreak of war in 1939, but by 1941, his leadership of Catholic opposition to Nazi euthanasia had led to "the strongest, most explicit and most widespread protest movement against any policy since the beginning of the Third Reich."[70] The speeches angered Hitler. In a 1942 Table Talk he said: "The fact that I remain silent in public over Church affairs is not in the least misunderstood by the sly foxes of the Catholic Church, and I am quite sure that a man like Bishop von Galen knows full well that after the war I shall extract retribution to the last farthing".[71] Hitler wanted to have Galen removed, but Goebbels told him this would result in the loss of the loyalty of Westphalia.[72] The regional Nazi leader, and Hitler's deputy Martin Bormann called for Galen to be hanged, but Hitler and Goebbels urged a delay in retribution till war's end.[73]