Candidate Number : 01477-0174

To what extent was the Church involved in the resistance to fascist rule during World War 2 in Germany?

Bhavna Singh

Candidate Number: 001477-0174

Session: May 2018

International Baccalaureate Historical Investigation

Word Count:1976

Identification and Evaluation of Sources:

The focus of this investigation is "To what extent was the Church involved in the resistance to fascist rule during World War 2 in Germany?", focussing on how the Church resisted and supported certain aspects of fascist rule under Hitler as well as how they were inactive in response to some aspects of the fascist regime. Christianity has been one of the most prominent religions throughout the years and so it is inevitable for there to have been a reaction from them in response to fascism. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965 by Michael Phayer is useful to the investigation as it focuses on the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust. Christian Complicity? Changing Views on German Churches and the Holocaust by Robert P. Ericksen is also beneficial to the investigation as it explores how the Church supported Hitler and his regime.

Source: The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 by Michael Phayer 2000

Published in 2000 by historian and Professor Emeritus at Marquette University Michael Phayer, the text's origin is valuable as the author has had decades of experience and time to research and write the book and the fact that he is the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar of Holocaust Studies at Stockton University, adds credibility to his work. Moreso the publishing date of 2000 allows the historian hindsight on the events mentioned in the text.

However, there is the limitation that any church that supported the Holocaust might not have been forthcoming with that information in an effort to make themselves look better. Furthermore, the purpose of the book is valuable as it aims to inform people about the role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust and is therefore important to my investigation as my investigation has to do with the role of the Church in resistance to Nazi rule in Germany.

Source: Christian Complicity? Changing Views on German Churches and the Holocaustby Robert P. Ericksen 2009

The paper is sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and although the museum clearly states that any assertions, opinions, and conclusions found in the paper are not reflected by the museum they still sponsored and published it, therefore adding credibility to the paper. The author is also a historian of the Holocaust working as a professor of history at Pacific Lutheran University indicating to us that the author has had years of study focussing on the Holocaust and can therefore be considered a credible source for information regarding the holocaust. In contrast there are limitations in regards to the purpose, since it aims to expose the complicity involving German churches and Nazis, people are less likely to believe it as people view religion as a peaceful aspect of humanity.

Word Count: 435

Investigation:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30-31 The verse has been interpreted to mean that loving 'God', yourself, and others is of the utmost importance, above all including the commandments that condemn others and is one of the more popular bible verses even to those not of the Christian religion. The verse is pertinent to the investigation as the the purpose of the investigation is to explore the extent to which the Church was involved in the resistance to fascist rule in Germany and having an understanding of the religion itself is important in trying to understand the Church's actions in the war and everyone is the Church's neighbor. So did they stay true to their commandments or did they go against what they hold so precious in the face of World War 2, a war that is made up Christian dominated countries ?

One way of interpreting the Church's actions in Germany is how they were supporting the Nazi's. "He[Gerhard Kittel] fully accepted the idea of a 'Jewish problem' even though Jews made up less than 1% of the German population". This Gerhard Kittel was an important figure in German Protestant theology and therefore held a great deal of influence in Germany. Kittel's cruelty towards the Jews only worsened after 1933. After that he spent a decade working in 'Walter Frank's Institute for the History of the New Germany', a Nazi facility for propaganda, and he was an important contributor to the 'Research Section on the Jewish Question' in the Institute. Not only that but the Nazi's set up the Reich Church which meant that there had to be Ayan representatives in the Church's hierarchy and they wanted to eliminate the Old Testament from what the Church studied. It is said that after thousands of years of hostility towards the Jews the Christians would be incapable to deny it and the contributions that Germany has made to Christianity, including Martin Luther and what he brought to advance the development of Protestantism. The Church also denied much of what was going on at the time "1942 the Holy See, or spokesmen for the pope in the office of secretary of state, said that rumors about mass murder could not be verified." Though later, when the Holocaust was evident to the rest of the world, Vatican personnel not the Pope said that "the crimes of one World War II combatant could not be condemned without condemning the crimes of another". The statement was released by Vatican personnel but not the Pope , which makes historians think about how the silence from the Pope and the ambiguity of Vatican personnel disconcerting to the majority of Christian devotees as they proceed to not reveal any of the reason for the Pope's silence. Consequently theological researcher Gregory Paul speaks of how the main reason that traditional Christian clergymen often cooperated with Hitler was because they were being bribed. He cites that 10% of taxes paid by German Catholics went towards the Church, which accrued the equivalence of $1 billion through the beginning of the Third Reich's relationship with the Church until their fall. Demonstrating how detrimental the Church was to those negatively affected by the war.

Another way to describe the Church's actions in the war is inactive, meaning that they may not have acted on certain aspects of Nazism at all. Information about mobile killing squads and death camps was collected piece by piece, in the Vatican and outside of it. At the time it could have only been labelled as a genocide if the information was all together By drawing accounts together from its diplomats stationed throughout Europe, the Holy See could have released the information and helped spread it but instead chose to slow down the spread of this knowledge as the Vatican had "no wish to give publicity to the issue." Thus showing that the Church had knowledge of such actions but chose not to act upon them. Though it can be argued that since they decelerated the spread of knowledge they were more active in supporting the Nazis than inactive towards the situations they were faced with. An example of withheld information includes the Holy See letting no one know that an Archbishop had dared to speak out against racism and genocide and whether it approved of his actions. This type of inaction was not just a singular instance it happened not just in Germany but in Croatia and Slovakia as well.

Finally on the point that the Church was very active in resistance to Nazi rule. For example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who ran the Confessing Church's preaching seminars in Zingst and Fürstenwal was a well known figure. Despite being banned from teach, writing anything for public consumption becoming forbidden for him as well as public speaking and seeing that the Confessing Church was weakened because of mass arrests, Bonhoeffer continued his resistance activity underground. Still making underground speeches to those who followed his sermons, Bonhoeffer was targeted by the German government and was eventually killed by the end of World War 2. Not only that during the German occupation of Poland, despite some of their anti-semitic values Christian Poles were horrified by the treatment of the Jews and were known to have helped them escape capture from the Nazi's. The irony of this astounds many in regards to the nature of those Poles as they preferred to prevent the suffering of their despised neighbors in contrast to encouraging it. Furthermore in regards to the Vatican one can say that when the Pope was dealing with the murdering of Jews in a diplomatic manner instead of a moral pronouncement such as an encyclical, a letter written by the pope that is sent to all th3e Bishops of the Catholic Church. Meaning that even when the Church was going against the Nazi's they were doing it is an underhanded manner possibly so as to not get caught going against Nazi ideology, but that would highly unlikely as the Church has immense power at an international level thus they are not likely to be intimidated by Germany. Therefore showing the Church's activity in Germany during World War 2.

The Church response to aspects of the Second World War can be seen as proactive in regards to the atrocities of the war but one has to take into account the inactivity towards other aspects and situations as well as detrimental to the resistance through their support of the Nazi regime. Despite the naive beliefs of the majority of Christians the Church did have a role in persecuting others during the Holocaust and even going so far as to deny it as it was happening, however there were aspects in which the Church resisted the Holocaust. Though the question is whether the Church's efforts to resist outweigh that of their efforts to help Nazi Germany and what would history have been like if the amount of activity varied from what it really was.

Reflection:

As I conducted my investigation of the subject of the extent to which the Church resisted the Nazi regime I was challenged with many methods and challenges having to do with history research. The bias towards the Church made it hard to find evidence of inactivity and cooperation with the Nazi's as there have been many instances of the Church's denial towards the atrocities of World War 2 as shown in my investigation. Some of my sources involved accounts of the actions of the Church and its representatives that may have been unreliable as the people interviewed about those accounts would have made certain aspects of their account make themselves out to be better people. Though, the book The Catholic Church and the Holocaust helped immensely as the sources associated with the book led me to more research that furthered my investigation. Furthermore in order to gain a basic understanding I consulted the most popular holy book associated with the religion, the Bible, as I had a limited understanding on the religion, being a person not of the Christian religion.

However the development of an actual research method for this topic was difficult since I was incapable of going to a college library for a time, I resorted to using college and library databases for sources having to do with my topic and accesses online versions of the books I needed for the investigation during that time. Also looking through college syllabi having to do with World War 2 was helpful in researching books that were pertinent to my subject did help me find some reliable sources for my investigation in their online forms, therefore allowing me to conduct the investigation.

Bibliography

Bray, Gerald. Bible Interpretations: Past and Present. Cambridge. James Clark and Co., 1990.

Ericksen, Robert P. Christian complicity?: changing views on German churches and the Holocaust.

Washington, D.C. (100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington, D.C. 20024-2126):

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies,

2009.

Jeremy Noakes, ed., Nazism, 1919-1945, Vol. 4: The German Home Front in World War II.

Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998, pp. 594-96.

Paul, Gregory S. "The Great Scandal: Christianity's Role in the Rise of the Nazi's." Free Inquiry.

Phayer, Michael. Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965. Indiana U.P., 2001.

Phayer, Michael. Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press., 2008

The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of the original tongues and

with the former translations diligently compared & revised. New York: American Bible

Society, 1986.