The
churches
opposition
born of belief?
Hitler always
knew he needed a workforce, but was his attitude so clear-cut towards the
Protestant and Catholic
churches? In Mein Kampf he said that he was not interested in ‘a religious
reformation’ but in a ‘political
reorganisation’ of Germany (quoted in Zipfel, 1965, pp.. 11-22). In a
speech to the Reichstag on 1 February
1933, he specified that the churches were to be integral parts of national
life, just a month later, however,
talking in private in the Reich Chancellery, he contradicted himself.
Document 3.1 Hitler’s Private View
All of the confessions [i.e., all of the churches] are
the same. Which ever one you choose, it will not have a future. Not for the
Germans anyway. [Italian] fascism may, in the name of God, make its
peace with the Church. I will do that too. Why not! It won’t stop me
eradicating Christianity from Germany root and branch. You are
either a Christian or a German. You can’t be both.
Source: F.Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933–45, 1965, p. 9
Historians
J.S.Conway and F.Zipfel have both concluded that even though Hitler may have
been fundamentally
hostile to the Christian churches by 1933, he had no definite idea of how to proceed
against them (Zipfel, 1965, p. 8; Conway, 1968, p. 1). In 1933, 62.7 per cent
of the population
(i.e., over 40 million people) belonged to one of the country ’s twenty-eight independent
Protestant churches, and 32.4 per cent of Germans (almost 22 million people)
were Catholic
(Hehl, 1980, p. 63). If anything, Catholicism was the better organised. While
700,000 individuals
were affiliated to a multitude of Protestant youth groups, Catholic Youth alone
had 1.5
million members. Catholic sentiment was expressed politically through both the
Centre Party and the
Bavarian People’s Party. Together they accounted for about a third of the votes
cast in
Reichstag
elections. Even though these parties were dissolved in early July 1933, the
Catholic Church
itself remained the largest single social institution in the Third Reich
independent of direct
Nazi control.
If
Hitler was unsure of how to deal with such well-established institutions, from
even the
earliest days of the Third Reich there was no shortage of National Socialist
acolytes willing
to take up the challenge. The first significant Nazi crusade in this connection
was led by
the German Christians against Protestantism. In general terms, German
Christians believed
they could unify Germany ’s various Protestant churches and, in so doing, merge Protestantism
with National Socialism to create a new, racially attuned brand of
Christianity.
A new
post of Reich Bishop was created, behind which all Protestant churches were to
be unified.
On 27 September 1933 the German Christian Ludwig Müller was elected to the post.
From then on there was a concerted effort to raise the profile of racism in
religion.
The
German Christians of Bremen met and demanded that the Bible be expunged of all Jewish
elements.
Naturally
there were objections. In response to this growing ‘Nazification’ of
Protestantism, on 21
September, pastor Martin Niemöller set up the Pastornotbund (the Emergency
Association for
Pastors). A total of 1,300 clergymen joined at once; 6,000 had done so by the
end of the year.
This organisation later formed the basis for the Confessing Church—an
outspokenly anti-Nazi
organisation. There was no doubting the bravery of at least Niemöller when he, together
with a number of sympathisers, met to discuss religious affairs with Hitler and
Müller in
January 1934. An extract from Niemöller’s biography captures the drama of the
event.
Document 3.2 Niemφller meets Hitler
The clergy were ushered into Hitler’s study where they
found him seated at his desk, behind him, motionless as an idol, the
Reich Bishop, Ludwig Mόller. One by one, Frick, the Minister of the Interior,
introduced the visitors and Hitler went forward to greet them. He had
resumed his seat and was about to open the discussion, when Goering
burst into the room, clicked his heels, gave a Nazi salute and said
excitedly:
‘Herr Reichskanzler! An hour ago Pastor Niemφller held a
conversation closely connected with the subject of
this conference. I ask
leave to read out to you what he said.’
Hitler nodded assent. It was impossible to tell from
his expression
whether this interlude had been planned or not, and in
any case,
Niemφller was at a loss at first to place the conversation
that Goering
recited. Then he remembered. Of course! The telephone
call of that
morning! [During the call Niemφller had made a light hearted comment
about Hitler’s government]….
‘Mein Fόhrer!’ he [Goering] declaimed. ‘These
people are trying to
drive a wedge between yourself and the Reich
President!’ This touched
Hitler on a sensitive spot, as Goering knew it would,
and immediately he
flushed with anger and started loading his guests with
reproaches,
treating them more like an unruly mob of children than
responsible
leaders of the Church. They misunderstood him, said
Hitler, and
misrepresented his intentions. Peace, that was what he
wanted—peace
between Church and State! Yet they obstructed him,
sabotaged his
efforts to achieve it!
During this outburst Niemφller had come forward so as to be ready
to
speak as soon as he got a chance. He now tried to
explain the incident,
telling Hitler that the telephone conversation had
been a private one and
that the expressions used should not be given undue
weight…. Finally,
said Niemφller, his own work had no other object
than the welfare of the
Church, the State and the German people.
Hitler had been listening in silence. Now he said
brusquely: ‘You
confine yourself to the Church. I’ll take care of the
German people!’…
When it was all over, Hitler once more shook hands
with the clergy.
When it came to his turn, Niemφller realized that this was a chance
for plain speaking which might never return. Carefully
choosing his
words, he said:
‘Herr Reichskanzler, you said just now: ‘I will take
care of the German
people.’ But we too, as Christians and churchmen, have
a responsibility
towards the German people. That responsibility was
entrusted to us by
God, and neither you nor anyone in the world has the
power to take it
from us.’
For a moment Hitler stared. Then as he realized the
implications of
Niemφller’s warning, he turned his back on him without
another word.
Source: D.Schmidt, Pastor Niemφller., 1959, pp. 90–5
The
breach between the two men was as irreparable as it was personal. When
Niemöller was finally
arrested
in 1937, it was on Hitler’s specific orders. Meanwhile, representatives of the
Emergency
Association
met at Barmen between 29 and 31 May 1934 to discuss where they stood in the
Third
Reich.
The result was the Barmen Declaration.
Document 3.3 Barmen Declaration
In view of the destructive errors of the German
Christians and the
present national church government, we pledge
ourselves to the
following evangelical truths:
1 ‘I am the way and the truth and the life: no man
cometh unto the
Father but by me’ (John 14.6)….
Jesus Christ, as he testified to us in the Holy
Scripture, is the one
Word of God, which we are to hear, which we are to
trust and obey in
life and in death.
We repudiate the false teaching that the Church can
and must recognise
yet other happenings and powers, personalities and
truths as divine
revelation alongside this one Word of God, as a source
of her preaching.
2 ‘But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is
made unto us wisdom,
and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption’
(I Corinthians 1.30).
The
churches 49
Just as Jesus Christ is the pledge of the forgiveness
of all our sins, just
so—and with the same earnestness—is he also God’s
mighty claim on our
whole life; in him we encounter a joyous liberation
from the godless claims
of this world to free and thankful service to his
creatures.
We repudiate the false teaching that there are areas
of our life in which we
belong not to Jesus Christ but another lord, areas in
which we do not need
justification and sanctification through him.
3 ‘But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into
him in all things, which
is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body
(is) fitly joined
together and compacted…’ (Ephesians 4.15–16).
The Christian Church is the community of brethren, in
which Jesus
Christ presently works in the word and sacraments
through the Holy Spirit.
With her faith as well as her obedience, with her
message as well as her
ordinances, she has to witness in the midst of the
world of sin as the Church
of forgiven sinners that she is his alone, that she
lives and wishes to live only
by his comfort and his counsel in expectation of his
appearance.
We repudiate the false teaching that the Church can
turn over the form of
the message and ordinances at will or according to
some dominant
ideological and political convictions.
4 ‘Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise
dominion over them,
and they that are great exercise authority upon them.
But it shall not be so
among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let
him be your
minister’ (Matthew 20.25–6).
The various offices in the Church establish no rule of
one over the other
but the exercise of the service entrusted and
commanded to the whole
congregation.
We repudiate the false teaching that the Church can
and may, apart from
this ministry, set up or accept special leaders (Fόhrer) equipped with powers
to rule.
5 ‘Fear God, honour the king!’ (I Peter 2.17)….
We repudiate the false teaching that the State can and
should expand
beyond its special responsibility to become the single
and total order of
human life, and also thereby fulfil the commission of
the Church.
We repudiate the false teaching that the Church can
and should expand
beyond its special responsibility to take on the
characteristics, functions and
dignities of the State, and thereby become itself an
organ of the State.
6 ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world’ (Matthew
28.20). ‘The word of God is not bound’ (II Timothy
2.9)….
We repudiate the false teaching that the Church, in
human self-esteem,
can put the word and work of the Lord in the service
of some wishes,
purposes and plans or other, chosen according to
desire.
Source: E.H.Robertson, Christians against Hitler, 1962, pp. 48–52
If the
language was tortuous the message was not. Taking a text from the Bible to
substantiate each point,
these
churchmen stated openly that no matter what Reich Bishop Müller might say, no
matter what Hitler
might
demand, no matter what social position the Third Reich might accord to
Protestantism, they
remained
completely loyal to the scriptures and to their one true leader, Jesus Christ.
The
scene was set for a showdown between Protestants and German Christians. Later
in
the
summer of 1934 Reich Bishop Müller’s ‘second in command’, August Jäger, tried
to
shore up
control of Protestant churches by introducing an oath for all pastors that
included
a
statement of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. The contradiction to the Barmen Declaration
was
obvious.
Many Protestants, especially in Hannover, Bavaria and Württemberg, were
outraged.
Bishops
Würm of Württemberg and Meiser of Bavaria opposed the statement publicly and
were
placed under house arrest. Popular unrest accelerated to such an extent that
both had
to be
released and, together with Bishop Marahrens of Hannover, were granted a
personal
interview
with Hitler. As a result of the débâcle, Jäger lost his job.
The
position of Catholicism during the early years of the Third Reich was more
problematic
than that of Protestantism. On 20 July 1933 the Pope had agreed the Concordat
with
Hitler. In return for guarantees of complete religious freedom for Catholics in
Germany,
the Pope
ordered his bishops to swear loyalty to the state, agreed to the dismantling of
the
Catholic
trades unions, accepted the dissolution of the Centre Party and agreed to
prohibit
the
clergy from political activity. In practice Hitler ’s promises proved worthless
and, for
example,
Hitler Youth groups were soon pressing their Catholic Youth counterparts to
close
down.
Inevitably signs emerged that many Catholics were trying to safeguard their
right to
independent
religious expression. For example, the Good Friday procession in Cologne in
1934
drew 25 per cent more participants than the previous year and was described in
a
section
of a police report.
Document 3.4 Catholic Procession
During the night of 17 March, as in the previous year,
the night-time
procession of the Catholic men of Cologne took place
in that city to
the holy statue of the Mother of God in Cologne-Kalk.
Pilgrims from
the Cologne diocese and parishes flocked together from
both near and
far to the meeting point at the Hay Market. When the
last participant
on the pilgrimage had reached the meeting point, at
22.50 the
departure from the Hay Market began and went on until
shortly after
midnight. The procession made its way through the
streets of Cologne
in groups of up to about a quarter of its size. It is
estimated that
25,000 men and young men participated in the
pilgrimage. The
number of 38,000 participants which has appeared in
the daily press
may be a considerable over-estimate.
Each parish group carried a large cross in front of
it. Flags and
banners were not carried in the procession. From the
Holy picture of
the Mother of God, the pilgrimage made its way back to
the cathedral,
The
churches 51
where after a short prayer and final devotion made by
Archbishop
Schulte, [the procession] was concluded.
A member of the SA and of the Hitler Youth took part
in the
pilgrimage wearing their uniforms. An intelligence
officer of the
NSDAP established who they were.
There were no cases of unrest during the pilgrimage
which took place in
the most perfect order and discipline. Politically it
is noteworthy and
illuminating that the Catholic population of Cologne,
especially the men, in
recent times have banded together strongly. They are
taking part in church
celebrations and events in numbers of such a size that
have hardly been seen
in previous years. Even the night-time pilgrimage to
Cologne-Kalk showed
an extraordinarily increased number of participants
relative to previous years.
The reason is that people who disapprove of the
measures taken against
Catholic organisations want to make a show in public
that they are loyal to
the Catholic Church. Seen from this point of view, the
pilgrimage to
Cologne-Kalk comes under the character of a political
demonstration….
Source: Extract from a police report from Cologne
dated 27 March 1934,
Federal Archive, Koblenz, 403/16844
The
sentiment expressed in Cologne was not unique. In 1937, 60,000 people
participated in Bamberg’s 700-
year-old
Domweihe festival, and 800,000 Catholics from around the Reich travelled to
Aachen for the
Heiligturmfest
(Hehl, 1980, p. 75).. What is more, the following extract from an official
report concerning the
Saarland
shows what could happen when local Nazi authorities tried to remove crucifixes
from schools.
Document 3.5 The Crucifix
The fact is that 30 to 40 villagers got into the
unlocked school on the night
of 6 January 1937 to hang the crucifix back in its old
place. Against the
explicit advice of the witness R. that the crucifix
had been taken down by
order of the government and that the break in would
constitute a breach of
the peace if they contravened this order, the accused
BA (with the help of a
ladder which he fetched), hung the crucifix right up
beside the picture of the
Fόhrer, which had been put in this newly assigned place.
Everyone then left
the school.
The court of Rhaunen, on 9 January 1937, ordered a
custodial sentence
against BA.
Source: Report of an Oberstaatsanwalt from Trier, January 1937, quoted in
H.Focke and U.Reimer, Alltag unterm Hakenkreuz, 1989, pp. 111–12
Similar
scenes, together with more public protests, accompanied the removal of
crucifixes in other Catholic
areas.
In Bavaria, especially, local Catholic priests led their congregations in minor
expressions of dissent
52 Resistance and conformity
over
this and related matters. They often greeted people using the traditional,
southern German ‘Grüß
Gott!’
rather than the officially approved ‘Heil Hitler!’ On feast days, they flew the
regional flag of blue
and
white as opposed to the swastika.
By 1937
the anti-Catholic character of Hitler’s government had become as plain to Pope
Pius XI
as to
any German. He wrote a statement of his worries called ‘Mit brennender Sorge’ (‘With
burning
anxiety’).
It was issued from the Vatican on 14 March 1937 and read by priests to their
congregations
throughout
Germany on 21 March, Palm Sunday.
Document 3.6 ‘Mit brennender Sorge’
With burning anxiety and mounting unease We have
observed for some time
the way of suffering of the Church, the growing
harassment of the
confessors who stay true to it in spirit and act in
the midst of the land and of
the people to whom St Boniface first brought the offer
of light and peace
from Christ and from the Kingdom of God….
He who singles out race, the people of the state, the
form of state, the
bearers of state power or another basic element of
human social organisation—
elements that hold an essential place in the worldly
order which is
worthy of respect—he who singles out such elements
from this worldly
scale of values and sets them up as the highest norm
over all, including
over religious values, and reverences them with
idolatry, he distorts and
falsifies the God-created, God-demanded order of
things. Such a person
is far from real belief in God and from a conception
of life that
corresponds to such a belief. Only superficial spirits
can fall victim to the
false doctrine of a national God, or a national
religion.
Source: ‘Mit brennender Sorge’, issued from Rome 14
March 1937,
reproduced in G.Denzler and V.Fabricus, Christen und
Nationalsozialisten, 1993
The
language was almost as awkward as that of the Barmen Declaration. Just as
unmistakably,
however,
the Pope was taking issue with the way National Socialism was both persecuting
the
Catholic
Church and placing political ideology ahead of Christian doctrine.
Would it
be justified to conclude that both the Protestant and Catholic churches, as
institutions
and from a relatively early point in the Third Reich, were actually taking up
deepseated
opposition
to Hitler’s government? Unfortunately, the Emergency Association and the
Confessing
Church which grew from it, even the popular support accorded to this movement
in
Hannover,
Württemberg and Bavaria, do not tell the story of German Protestantism as a
whole.
By
tradition, many Protestants were nationalistic and had sympathised with ‘right
of centre’
parties
such as the German National People’s Party during the Weimar years. It was the
predominantly
Protestant areas such as eastern Prussia which actually turned into the
backbone
of
Hitler’s electoral successes. No small number of educated Protestants found at
least the
idea of
the Third Reich worthy (Erickson, 1990, p. 119). What is more, the ranks of the
Protestants
actually gave rise to the very German Christianity movement which later tried
to
absorb
their churches. As early as 1932, one-third of all members of the Prussian
synod (which
included
both churchmen and laity) were supporters of that movement In August 1933,
twothirds
of the
members turned up to its meeting wearing National Socialist uniforms (Zipfel,
1965,
pp. 36–7). It was not by pure chance that no pastors denounced the Reichstag
Fire Law,
the
Enabling Law or even the violent persecution of the Communists. Throughout the
life of
the
Third Reich, and notwithstanding the initial expansion of the Emergency
Association, out
of
17,000 pastors across Germany, just fifty actually received substantial prison
sentences for
opposing
the government (Conway, 1968, p. 175).
Even
Martin Niemöller was not a completely clear-cut protest figure. This First
World War
U-boat
commander had himself at first sympathised with National Socialism. His own
church
was
decorated with swastikas and the Nazi salute was often given there (Conway,
1968, p.
85).
Later he personally recognised that the bases of his opposition to the Third
Reich had
been
strictly limited. In prison, with reference to the persecution of Germany’s
Jews, he showed
how
little he had appreciated the true character of what was happening in his
country.
Document 3.7 Hindsight
At the time I did not realise that we [Christians]
would have to pay for
these restrictions [on the Jews] with our own liberty.
I did not fully take
into account that equality had been given to the Jews
during our own
epoch of political liberalism, and that any
restriction imposed on them
now would mean the end of that epoch and possibly the
end of
individual liberty, including the right of worship. In
other words, to
deprive Jews of political equality would mean turning
back the wheel of
history.
Source: Quoted in S.Baranowski, ‘Consent and Dissent’,
1987, pp. 53–78
Interested
first and foremost in the spiritual rather than earthly realm, Niemöller had
drawn back from
exploring
the full oppositional consequences of Christian beliefs. As he also admitted
after the Second
World
War, the Confessing Church never, ‘neither in the Hitler Reich nor later,
placed value on being a
“resistance
movement”’. It wanted ‘to testify to the word of God in our world and time’
(Niemöller, 1946,
p. 396).
Obviously there was a basic failure of understanding here. Niemöller and his
followers believed
that an
accommodation between an independent church and the state was actually
possible, that religious
freedom
could be squared with commitment to the Third Reich, that Hitler ultimately
could accept loyalty
to two
masters—to himself and Christ. Hitler knew that there was no such possibility;
Niemöller and
those
who relied on him realised it too late.
Accepting
that between one-third and one-half of all Catholic clergy were persecuted in
some way
during the Third Reich, we must still acknowledge that the record of the
Catholic
Church,
and in particular of its senior clergy, was far from beyond reproach. The
Concordat
was the
very first international treaty signed by Hitler’s government and conferred a
certain
respectability
upon it. The Pope’s purpose was to protect Catholics in Germany, but the
agreement
imposed obligations—especially on churchmen who held positions of
responsibility.
One
result is expressed in a circular from Bishop Gröber of Freiberg to his junior
clergy: ‘I ask
and warn
the clergy time and time again…[to]…adapt and not damage the affairs of the
Church
through a lack of personal wisdom’ (quoted in Denzler and Fabricus, 1993, p.
87). If
the Pope
would not criticise Hitler, it made it difficult for other, and especially
senior, churchmen
to do
so. During the whole of the Third Reich, only one Catholic bishop was expelled
from his
diocese
and only one was sentenced to a lengthy period of imprisonment for opposing the
government
(Conway, 1968, p. 175).
Our
understanding of the Catholic congregations, including those who participated
in the
mass
processions and crucifix protests, must also be fully rounded, as historian
Ulrich Hehl
explains.
Document 3.8 The Catholic Dilemma
Even though the believers wanted to identify
unequivocally with the
demands of the Church, they were indeed at the same
time loyal citizens
of the state and as such were influenced ‘by the great
national currents’
and feelings of the time. In this respect even the
specifically Catholic
solidarity effect which had been let loose sixty years
beforehand as a
result of the Kulturkampf [persecution of the Catholics by Bismarck],
did not apply….
No one understood how to use this dilemma for his own
purposes
better than Adolf Hitler. He could suppose that, in
spite of all the
discontent with church policy as carried out by the
regime, the mass of
the people still stood behind him, even if not behind
National Socialism.
The cult of the leader which prevailed generally, of
course, had its
essential origins in Hitler’s great [foreign] policy
successes. The
reincorporation of say the Saarland, or the ‘Anschluί’ of Austria secured
for the ‘Fόhrer’ a popularity that could hardly be
surpassed even among
the Catholic section of the population.
Source: U.Hehl, ‘Das Kirchenvolk im Dritten Reich’,
1980, pp. 78–9
Just as
the average German worker had a mixed experience of National Socialism, so did
the
average
German Catholic. Some aspects of the Third Reich appealed, others did not.
Senior
clergy
themselves were aware of the related dilemmas and avoided pushing their
congregations
to make
a fundamental choice between church and state for fear of losing members (Gotto
et al.,
1983,
pp. 662–3).
Given
the ambiguity of the situation, when National Socialist authorities made their
minds
up to
enforce anti-church policies, more often than not they proved successful. For
example,
from
1936 National Socialist offices began a persecution of denominational, which
meant mostly
Catholic,
schools. People employed by the state began to be harassed, as the following
letter
between
local National Socialist leaders shows.
Document 3.9 Schools Initiative
Please find enclosed a list of those children who
attend the Order of
Ursula School [a Catholic order named after Holy
Ursula—it was
founded in 1535 and was exclusively female]. As you
will see from the
list, there is a whole series of civil servants among
the parents. You
should circulate to the civil servant parents a
questionnaire that says the
following:
‘We have established that your daughter Elfriede
attends the local Order
of Ursula School. Since a state school for girls still
exists here in Trier, we
would like you to tell us why your daughter is not
attending the state
school.’
This questionnaire should mean that at least the civil
servants send their
children to the state schools since at least they get
their pay from state funds.
If quite a few civil servants do not reply to the
letter, after eight days send
them a reminder.
Source: Letter of the Kreisleiter of Trier to the Ortsgruppenleiter of the
NSDAP, 6 February 1936, quoted in A.Doll (ed.), Nationalsozialismus im
Alltag, 1983, pp. 216–17
The
pressure proved catastrophic for church schools. Whereas in 1935 65 per cent of
children attended
them, by
1937 only 5 per cent did so. By the end of 1939, just about all denominational
schools had
vanished
(Conway, 1968, p. 182).
At the
most general level, between 1933 and 1939 the attitudes of both Protestants and
Catholics
were
simply too ambiguous to provide the sort of popular mobilisation to trouble the
regime even
when it
was in a potentially vulnerable position. Popular fear of war was genuine
during the Sudeten
Crisis
of September 1938. The following police report highlights the profound short-comings
of the
churches’
activism at this time.
Document 3.10 Conformity in a Crisis
In the fatefully difficult days of September, when the
Fόhrer
and the
German Volk fought over the rights of the Sudeten Germans, the
Church
of Rome and the Confessing Church were silent. They
have left
unexploited a rarely favourable opportunity to help ‘the
justice of God’ to
victory….
After the end of negotiations in Munich, the Fόhrer received the
following from Cardinal Bertram, in the form of an
almost smug telegram:
‘The great act of securing international peace gives
the German
episcopacy cause to offer the most worthy
congratulations and thanks and
to order the celebratory ringing of church bells on
Sunday. In commission
of the Archbishop Cardinal Bertram.’
56 Resistance and conformity
The council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Churches of
Germany sent the
following telegram to the Fόhrer:
‘Thanks be to God, who, through the Fόhrer has guaranteed honourable
peace for our people. Along with our brothers who have
been freed we beg
holy victory for the auspicious work of peace. Heil to
the Fόhrer.’
Source: Police report of 15 October 1938, reproduced
in K.Zipfel,
Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933–45, 1965, pp. 452–5
In 1939,
95 per cent of Germans still said they were Protestant or Catholic. Whether
laymen or
senior
clergy, we may wonder what precisely they understood by their belief.
With the
outbreak of war, there was a quantum leap in the nature of the attacks by
National
Socialism on the churches. In his territory of Wartheland, newly constituted
from
part of
what used to be Poland, Gauleiter Greiser introduced the following rules
governing
the
churches and defining their social position.
Document 3.11 Greiser and the Churches
1 There are no longer any churches in the
[traditional] state sense, only
religious church societies in the sense of clubs.
2 The leadership does not lie in the hands of
authorities, but rather
there are only club committees.
3 For this reason, there are no longer any laws,
orders or decrees in this area.
4 There are no longer any connections to groups
outside of the Gau
[party organisational area], not even any legal,
financial or official
connections to the Reich Church.
5 Adults can only become members through an
explanatory written
application. They are no longer born into [the church]
but must
explain their entry only when they become adults.
There are no
regional, national or territorial churches. Whoever
comes to the
Warthegau from the Reich for the first time must also
initially apply in
writing.
6 All religious sub-groups just like organisations
(youth groups) are
cancelled and banned.
7 Germans and Poles may no longer be together in one
church
(Nationality principle). This comes into power for
National Socialism
for the first time.
8 No confirmation lessons can be held in schools any
longer.
9 Apart from the club fee, no financial allowances may
be supplied….
10 The clubs may have no property such as buildings,
houses, fields,
cemeteries, apart from their cult room.
11 Furthermore they may not be active in welfare work.
This is the job
of the NSV [National Socialist welfare organisation]
and of that alone.
The
churches 57
12 All charities and monasteries are dissolved, since
these do not
correspond to German morality and to the politics of
the population.
13 Only priests from the Warthegau may be active in
the clubs. These
are not full-time priests, but must also have a
profession.
Source: Ordinance of Gauleiter Walther Greiser for the
churches in
Warthegau, 14 March 1940, quoted in G.Denzler and
V.Fabricus,
Christen und Nationalsozialisten, 1993, pp. 311–12
In
Wartheland, the churches had become member-only clubs which could neither own
property nor take
collections.
In June 1941, on the eve of Germany’s attack on the USSR, Reichsleiter Martin
Bormann
issued a
circular stating with renewed clarity the incompatibility of National Socialist
and Christian views.
The
former were characterised as produced through scientific knowledge (which
inevitably involved race),
the
latter as originating in soothsaying and Judaism. Only when the power of the
churches would be
broken
once and for all could the National Socialist leadership of Germany be ensured
and the nation’s
future
guaranteed (Zipfel, 1965, pp. 512–16).
This
radically anti-Christian mood was associated with a variety of policy
initiatives
offensive
to Catholics in particular. A policy of euthanasia, the compulsory killing of
mentally
ill and
handicapped Germans, began on Hitler’s personal order in the days immediately
following
the attack on Poland. Between October 1939 and August 1941 (when the action
ceased)
around 80,000 people were killed. It was supposed to have remained a secret. In
reality,
so many people could not be killed without some repercussions. The religious
and
moral
outrage which accompanied popular suspicions is reflected in the following
extract
from a
letter sent by Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg to Reich justice Minister Gürtner on
13
August
1941.
Document 3.12 Murder in Hadamar
Perhaps 8 km from Limburg, on a hill directly above
the little town of
Hadamar, there is an institution which used to serve a
variety of
purposes. Most recently it was a religious and nursing
institution. It has
been converted and kitted out as a place in which
(according to
popular opinion) …euthanasia has been carried out
systematically for
months—since around Februar y 1941. The fact is well
known
throughout the government district of Wiesbaden,
because death
certificates are sent from a registry in Hadamar-Mφnchberg to the
home districts concerned. (This institution is called
Mφnchberg
because until its secularisation in 1803 it was a
Franciscan monastery.)
Buses with an increasing number of victims arrive in Hadamar
several times per week. School children in the area
know these vehicles
and say: ‘Here comes the murder-box again.’ After the
vehicles have
arrived, the people of Hadamar watch the smoke rising
from the
chimney and are upset by the constant thought of the
poor victims.
This is especially so whenever they are troubled by
the unpleasant
smells after the wind changes direction.
The effect of the principles being carried out here
[are as follows]:
children taunt each other with the words—‘You’re not
very clever,
you’ll end up in the Hadamar baking ovens’; those who
don’t want to
get married or don’t have the chance [say]—‘Get
married, never! Bring
children into the world just to be put down!’ You hear
from old
people—‘I won’t go into any state hospital! After the
weak-minded, the
old will be the next into the ranks of the useless
eaters!’
All God-fearing people feel this extermination of the
helpless is an
almighty crime. And if this is the same as saying that
Germany cannot
win the war if there is still a just God, then these
statements are not
caused by a lack of love for the Fatherland, but
rather from a deeply
concerned frame of mind about our Volk. The population just cannot
understand that systematic actions are being carried
out which,
according to section 211 of the statutory law book,
are punishable by
death. The authority of the government as a moral
concept is
suffering a dreadful trauma because of these events.
The official news
that N.N. has died from an infectious disease and that
as a result the
corpse has had to be burned is no longer credible [a
reference to the
official ‘cover story’]. The ethical value of the
concept of authority is
still more adversely affected by such official reports
which are no
longer believed.
Officials of the Gestapo are trying, as one hears, to
suppress talk about
what is going on at Hadamar with severe threats. It
might be with good
intention for the benefit of public peace, but it
doesn’t alter the
knowledge, conviction and indignation of the
population. The
conviction is multiplied by the bitter knowledge that
talk is banned by
threat, but that the actions themselves are not
prosecuted under the law.
The facts speak for themselves.
Source: Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1947, document 615-PS
Ten days
earlier Bishop von Galen of Münster had preached a public sermon in which he
identified
specific victims of euthanasia and prophesied doom if the German people
tolerated
the
transgression of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’. In the same month, the
euthanasia
action was stopped, apparently just as it had been started—on Hitler’s personal
command.
Although euthanasia drew the most obvious attention of senior Catholic
churchmen,
there were other, even other racial, themes which had an impact at the
local
level. The spectacular defeat of Poland in autumn 1939 led to the introduction
of
millions of Poles, most of whom were Catholic, into Germany as industrial and
agricultural
slave labour. While the government expected the labourers to remain as
separate
as possible from the German population, some local Catholic churchmen
tried to
place common religion above nationality. The following example shows what
happened
when one local Nazi official found out about this Christian charity.
Document 3.13 The Poles
On Sunday 18 Feb 1940 in his church the Catholic
priest of
Schallodenbach, Chaplain Seitz, told the parents of
the village to
stop their children doing things to these Volksdeutsche!! [ethnic
Germans] from Poland—that is to say swearing at them.
The
mother of the priest after the service gathered these
Poles around
her in front of the church and chatted with them—as
much as was
possible. They then took the Poles into the priest’s
house where
they served the Poles coffee according to their own
admission.
Only in the evening did the Poles return to their
bosses….
I request that this matter be followed up.
Source: Ortsgruppenleiter of Schallodenbach to the Kreisleiter of
Kaiserslautern, 23 February 1940, quoted in A.Doll
(ed.),
Nationalsozialismus im Alltag, 1983, pp. 194ff.
The
result was a Gestapo interrogation in which the priest continued to maintain he
had
believed
the workers had been ethnic Germans from Poland. With this, Himmler himself
entered
the
affair.
Document 3.14 Arrest
Concerning locum priest Friedrich Seitz, born 28
January 1905 in
Mayen.
The Reichsfόhrer-SS [Himmler] has ordered that
locum priest
Friedrich Seitz be taken into protective custody. I request
that…[illegible]…news of the internment be relayed.
Source: Gestapo telex to Gestapo office, Neustadt,
from Berlin, 19
April 1940, quoted in A.Doll (ed.), Nationalsozialismus im Alltag,
1983, p. 199
Whatever
local churchmen may have felt, and irrespective of whether a genuine
misunderstanding
underlay the case, the Nazi authorities were resolute that nothing would
undermine
their racial stereotyping.
By the
war years, then, the issue was the very survival of Christianity in Germany.
Under
the
circumstances, any concerted action aiming at a reassertion of Christian
identity
amounted
to opposition. In the context of a society which experienced a total war effort
against
the USSR and the buckling of the military front in the East, Catholicism tried
to
exploit
for its own purposes the nation’s inevitable anxieties and losses. The
following police
report
from March 1943 shows how religious services were tailored to the popular psychology
of the
time.
Document 3.15 Religion and Ritual
The Catholic Church…is developing an extraordinary
phantasy in the way
funerals are arranged—so say the reports from the
Catholic areas
unanimously. Consequently it is exercising a deep and
lasting influence on
the relatives [of the dead] and the local population.
The focus of these events in honour of the dead are
memorial services
or masses for the fallen soldier:
1 The memorial sarcophagus [Tumba] is decked in black and decorated
with flowers. Numerous candles burn at its side, a
steel helmet and
crossed side arms lie on it.
2 Or instead of this, a symbolic soldier’s grave is
set up in the church and
is richly covered with flowers, a birch cross and a
steel helmet or an Iron
Cross.
3 The cultish proceedings make special use of choirs
and orchestral
pieces, processions of children and poetry readings.
4 Occasionally a side altar is transformed into an
altar to the fallen
soldier. Under flowers and burning candles, pictures
of the fallen
together with their names and their military
decorations are set up.
Relatives and the population [in general] can bury
themselves in the
memory of the fallen at any hour of the day.
Source: Police report, 1 March 1943, Federal Archive,
Koblenz, R 58/181
The
Catholic message received a welcome reception among the population. Police
reports from August
1942 and
April 1943 give the following anecdotes: civil servants and SA men who had left
the church
for
careerist reasons were returning in numbers, there were stories of soldiers who
had left the church
returning
for Communion before going to fight and during home leave, there were tales of
dying SA
men
requesting absolution, and rumours of escapes from death on the battlefield
which could only be
explained
by divine intervention (Boberach, 1971, pp. 718–20 and 810–19). This trade on
human
vulnerability
did enable Catholicism to fight National Socialism effectively in people’s
minds.
By
comparison to Catholicism, Protestantism was remarkably silent. Certainly
individuals
did act
against the government. For example, pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was actively
associated
with the
group which tried to blow up Hitler in July 1944. None the less, it took until
October
1943 for
the Old Prussian Union to speak out against what had long been going on.
Document 3.16 Words That Came Too Late
14 The sword is not given to the state to be used for
killing beyond that
of the criminal and the enemy in war. Whatever else it
does, is done
The
churches 61
arbitrarily and to [the state’s] own detriment. If
life is taken for any
reasons other than the appointed ones, then the trust
between people is
subverted and then the community of the nation is
destroyed. Concepts
such as ‘elimination’, ‘liquidation’ and ‘worthless
life’ are not known to
God’s order. The annihilation of people, just because
they are relatives of
a criminal, old or sick, or because they belong to a
different race, is no
leadership of the sword as ordained by the rule of
God.
Source: Statement of the Old, Prussian Union, 17
October 1943, quoted in
G.Denzler and V.Fabricus, Christen und Nationalsozialisten, 1993, p. 318
In other
words, as far as the Protestant churches were concerned, even if euthanasia and
racial
extermination
were beyond the pale, capital punishment and killing at war were perfectly
acceptable
morally—even when on behalf of Hitler’s ideology.
This
depressing sidestep of clear thinking highlights the fact that while both
churches
did try
to assert themselves in some ways and to some extent over different issues
during
the
Second World War, it is still hard to identify a coherent Christian force
likely to threaten
the very
life of the regime. Dissent and dissatisfaction could even be undermined by an
acceptance
of other characteristics of the Third Reich which should have been deplored.
For
example,
the Protestant churches never condemned the war (Denzler and Fabricus, 1993,
p. 189).
At its start, pastor Klinger, an elected representative of 16,000 other
pastors,
declared
that ‘Greater Germany ’ was calling everyone to serve on the battlefield and
that
God
would bless them to ‘battle for our German Volk and Fatherland’ (Denzler and
Fabricus,
1993, p.
191). Catholic leaders also failed to denounce either the invasion of Poland or
the
atrocious
methods used during the campaign. In fact one researcher found that for the
duration
of the war, out of a Catholic male population that was 15.5 million strong,
only
seven
individuals actually refused military service (Zahn, 1963, p. 79). This in a
church
whose
peace movement had been 40,000 strong immediately after the First World War! At
no time,
regardless of the revelations of the crimes which the National Socialist
government
had
committed during the war, was there any likelihood of either the Catholic
Church in
Germany
or the Papacy publicly withdrawing its support from the German government. More
typical
sentiments are shown in a sermon given in 1944 by the same Bishop von Galen
who,
three
years before, had condemned euthanasia.
Document 3.17 The Anti-Communist
In this hour I must direct a word of greeting and
acknowledgement to
our soldiers. I wish to express our gratitude to them
for the loyal
protection they have furnished the Fatherland and its
borders at the
price of unspeakable strains and sheer superhuman
effort. In particular
for the defence against the assaults of godless
Bolshevism! And a word
of deep-felt remembrance for those who, in the
performance of their
duty, have offered their lives and their last drop of
blood for their
brothers. May these all-sacrificing efforts succeed in
winning for us an
honourable and victorious peace!
Source: Bishop von Galen, sermon of September 1944,
quoted in
G.C.Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s War, 1963, pp. 137–8
Catholics
were encouraged to meet their military duties in part on the assumption that
Bolshevism
was actually a greater threat to Germany and Christianity than National
Socialism.
Christians
went along with more than the war effort. Both individuals and institutions
to
varying extents fell into line with even the Third Reich’s racialism. It was
both sad and
ironic
that, notwithstanding the complaints of the likes of the Bishop of Limburg
(document
3.12,
pp. 57–8), the euthanasia project was often carried out by welfare institutions
backed
by Christian charities, indeed which were staffed by Christian nurses.
Interviewed
in 1961
by the police, a Protestant nurse involved in 210 euthanasia killings tried to
square
her beliefs with her actions. She had already explained that she felt that in
some
cases
euthanasia was justified by the severity of the victim’s handicap and
suffering, but
that in
others it was not
Document 3.18 A Christian Killing
Answer:…. I certainly subscribe to the Commandment ‘Thou shalt
not kill.’
If I did carry out killings with my own hands then I
have to admit that
I broke this Commandment. As I explained in my
[previous] interviews,
however, I did not overlook this Commandment lightly,
but rather I only
carried out the orders after severe inner conflicts.
Question: When you speak of severe inner conflicts, your
argument
only seems justified in those cases where it was a
matter of (to use your
own words and opinions) ‘justified cases’. On the
other hand it is hard to
follow your thinking about what you regarded as ‘unjustified
cases’ [for
euthanasia].
Answer: As regards the cases which I believed to be
unjustified, my
thoughts, which I described as severe mental [or
spiritual] conflicts, were
particularly profound. I had to take into
consideration that the doctor,
who in the end was only a person too, could make a
mistake in the
diagnosis and prognosis. So it was clear to me that in
cooperating in the
killing I was offending seriously against the law of
God and morality. My
blame could only be alleviated by the fact that I
strongly believed that the
doctor would not make a mistake. But since I could not
rule out entirely
the possibility of him making a mistake, I prayed to
God that he would
forgive me in such a case. Incidentally, as regards
the severely ill people
who were tracked down by the doctors and transferred
to us for killing, I
had to assume that it was a question of such people
who were so sick that
even if the doctor had made a mistake, I still had to
regard it as a welcome
release.
I regard it as important to say that the attitude of a
person to life and
death is dependent on the situation in which the
person finds herself. I
spent my whole life in nursing and so have experienced
life and death more
than most people. By that I don’t mean that I became
hardened by
experiencing suffering, but only that my standpoint
and perspective on
these human problems was different. It was clear to me
in each case that a
person was killed, but I didn’t see this killing as
murder, but rather as a
release.
Source: A.Ebbinghaus (ed.), Opfer und Tδterinnen, 1987, pp. 234–6
Comparable
interviews with Catholic nurses underline the message that Christian belief did
not stand
in the
way of compulsory euthanasia. A nurse involved in 150 cases also justified the
policy to herself
as
providing a merciful release. Then she added the following.
Document 3.19 Blessed Release
We endeavoured to make the final journey of the
selected patients as easy as
possible. In this connection it occurs to me that one
female patient was
strongly Catholic and on the last day she asked if she
could be given the last
rites by a Catholic priest before [being killed]. I
can still remember clearly
and can say with absolute certainly that the Catholic
priest was informed
before the killing and that the patient, who at least
on this day was perfectly
rational, was given the last rites by the priest.
Source: A.Ebbinghaus (ed.), Opfer und Tδterinnen, 1987, pp. 237–8
The very
fact that Catholic services were meaningful to the victim makes us wonder how
bad her condition
really
was.
Whatever
the rationalisations and justifications for participating in licensed murder,
the
nurses
knew they were doing something wrong. As a result, it is doubly regrettable
that senior
church
figures did not speak out at an earlier point to condemn the killing process.
The likes
of these
nurses were ripe for persuading. Perhaps lives could have been saved. Although
Bishops
von
Galen and Hilfrich did complain during the summer of 1941, it is by no means
clear that
the
euthanasia project was wound up because of their protests. At the time he
commissioned
the
euthanasia action, Hitler suggested that 65,000 to 70,000 people would be
killed (Denzler
and
Fabricus, 1993, pp. 132–33)).. BBy the summer of 1941 that figure had been
surpassed. The
euthanasia
project may have been stopped simply because it had run its course.
So what
of the relationship between the Protestant and Catholic churches and the
wartime
persecution
of the Jews? Certainly individuals spoke out against anti-Semitism. Father
Lichtenberg,
a Catholic priest from Berlin, led his congregation in prayer for Germany ’s
Jews
and
openly condemned anti-Semitic propaganda. He was arrested in summer 1941 and
died
64 Resistance and conformity
in
prison two years later. Bishop Preysing even approached the Pope in spring 1943
to make
a public
declaration on the Jewish Question. Unfortunately Pius XII replied simply that
he had
said all
that he had to say on the matter already (Denzler and Fabricus, 1993, p. 171).
Quiet
condemnation
of anti-Jewish persecutions, but reluctance to take a really meaningful stand
against
them, seemed pretty typical. As a result, some church organisations even became
compromised
by anti-Semitic policy. Consider the following circular taken from the Lutheran
Church
in Eutin.
Document 3.20 Information
By order of the Minister for Church Affairs, you
should report how
many Jews have been admitted to the Protestant Church
between 1934
and 1940 by baptism. The numbers are to be given
separately by years.
Reports should be made by 15 Feb of this year. A
notification of missing
information is also necessary.
Source: Protestant-Lutheran Landeskirche Eutin to all
parish councils, 27
January 1941, quoted in L.D.Stokes, Kleinstadt und Nationalsozialismus,
1984, p. 672
Should
church authorities really have had anything at all to do with gathering
information about
people
who were clearly stigmatised for racial persecution? Even more disappointingly,
and as two
historians
explain below, Protestant congregations actually helped to have Jews deported—albeit
from the
‘best’ of motives.
Document 3.21 Helping Hands
[A] large Jewish family which had converted to the
Protestant faith
belonged to the community of Alt-Stephani-Sud and had
found a new
spiritual homeland there. The Abrahams were…perfectly
integrated into
the communities and took an equal part in community
life. The testing
time came when in October 1941 the imminent
transportation of
Bremen’s Jews to the East was made known. Many parish
members
brought the Abrahams family warm clothing for the cold
Polish winter—
people really didn’t know what was waiting for the
Jews. Greiffenhagen
[an influential member of the religious community],
who had been
called up to the army in 1939, but who was on home
leave in his
community, held a service, in which after the Holy
Communion he
particularly blessed them and spoke of their courage.
Source: I.Marίolek and R.Ott, Bremen im Dritten Reich, 1986, p. 298
Certainly
this Protestant congregation was interested in alleviating the suffering of
this ‘Jewish’
family
as they were deported—hence the service in their honour and the collection of
warm
clothing—none
the less, its energies would have been better spent opposing the very
deportation
of the
Abrahams in the first place!
So
during the years of the Third Reich, the churches did promote the flame of
humane
values
in a number of ways, and yet somehow Christian morality was far from achieving
all
we might
have expected. Typically, its opposition was ‘issue driven’ (that is to say
involving
piecemeal
reactions to individual, concrete actions such as the withdrawal of crucifixes
from
schools,
the appointment of a German Christian as Reich Bishop or euthanasia) rather
than
rooted
in a coherent, politically active anti-Nazi morality. The churches and their
followers
generally
were more interested in defending their religious ‘space’ and surviving attack
than
in
becoming society ’s moral guardians. They wanted to write themselves into the
overall
trajectory
of the Third Reich rather than alter its direction per se. A Christian crusade,
a ‘caring’
type of
euthanasia, deportations so long as the Jews did not suffer too much—the
evidence
suggests
that an uncomfortable number of clergy and churchgoers alike would not object
so
long as
they could understand the Third Reich in these ways. As a result, under
conditions of
crisis
and war, far too many churchmen and Christians adopted positions of basic
conformity
with the
government. It was the extensiveness of Hitler’s vision (namely to destroy
Christianity
and
claim the individual for National Socialism alone), more than the inviolability
of Christian
principles,
which made an ultimate compromise between the churches and the state
impossible.
Why wasn’t
church-based opposition in Germany more ambitious and outward looking?
Fear,
patriotism and misconceived church leadership all played a part, but an
additional insight
lies in
the way people understood and interpreted their Christian beliefs. Christa
Bielmann
was a
young member of a broadly oppositional Catholic discussion group during the
1930s.
With
disarming honesty she has tried to explore her reasons for failing to do more
against the
Third
Reich. In her memoirs she characterised the limitations of her earlier beliefs.
Document 3.22 The Limits of Beilmann’s Catholicism
‘Seize the day, which God is giving you, firmly in
your hands, and in
your heart the names of those whom you love. And do
not ask questions.
In this way you will live better through the time and
save strength.’ We
believed this and lived accordingly. Do not ask.
Despite the facts which
confronted us, there was no rebellion. Not once did we
argue with God,
who sent it all and let it all happen; we did not
mistrust his creation in
which his people could cause such mischief.
To get no answer to the question about the meaning of
everything
only suited heathens. We were surrounded by answers.
At the time we
did not see that they were a cage. Our capacity to
question as a rule was
suffocated before it could develop; suffocated by a
set of meanings with a
complete question and answer system in which no
question was left over.
We were secure in this Catholic Cosmos. That
everything has its
meaning in God’s order—this belief supported us so
much that we lived
through the war and National Socialism relatively
regardless. Lived
through, but overcame?
Why didn’t we question? Was it self-protection? Could
one question
that which underpinned everything else? Was it worry
at seeing the world
as it really is, to be exposed to the things of this
world? Guardini said:
‘Things are not harmonious, only beliefs are.’ We did
not come across
the idea of questioning whether belief in the order in
which everything
has its meaning, is, perhaps, to be doubted. But doubt
as a word did not
occur to us once….
A decisive element in this whole…is the will of God.
We had to live
according to this will, [and] we did live [according
to it].
It was our task to praise this sense of the whole, to
glorify [it] through
a holy life, to serve it, to make sacrifices to it, to
be true to it, to profess
it. It was necessary to listen to the voice of God, to
obey the will of God.
We learned to meditate on and inquire after [what
existed already].
We did not learn: to think, to question, to test, to
investigate, to
contest, to discuss, to debate, to decide, to put in
order, to arrange, to
exercise power, to put right and to protect—in short,
these activities of a
free, responsible person were not our affair. We were
not practised in the
ability of altering anything, rather we were
predestined to preserve what
was given. We did not discuss, whether anything could
be changed. We
were reason-able: ‘We cannot change it, we will endure
it—for the
greater glory of God!’ Whatever was declared the will
of God—and often
it happened very quickly (even without the assistance
of priests)—
whatever was sanctioned, was to be accepted….
We knew, and a few even saw, that people with whom up
until then we
had lived peacefully were being transported away—although
we had had
prejudgements (‘dirty Jews, sharks; red-blue Polish
woman, Polish
economy; the gypsies are coming, get the children
inside’). They had
gone, disappeared from sight.
We didn’t know anything about the death factories in
the
concentration camps. We had no real idea at all about
the crimes
against people practised ‘normally’ in the
concentration camps. We
experienced nothing of the unimaginable mass murders. But what
would have happened if we had known about it? What would have
changed? Nothing! We would have let these crimes
happen too: the
industrialised deaths of millions of Jews, Poles,
Russians, gypsies, those
of different political opinions.
The knowledge takes your breath away. I cannot
understand how it
could have been done in the middle of a population
which really was
civilised, which ate and drank and slept and went on
the same as ever.
The wall, which was around us, it did not let us see
it! I cannot get my
head around it, I cannot grasp that this wall existed,
and that we had not
broken through it. We were guilty by virtue of our
deficient
consciousness of ourselves, of our historical
political situation. The
cheerful certainty, not to have been to blame, is a
part of this blame.
Continuous pain and sorrow remain.
Source: C.Beilmann, ‘Eine Jugend im katholischen
Milieu’, 1991, pp. 58–9, 71–2
Beilmann’s
Catholicism was a prison. Her sentence was to endure, not to think and to
change. Activism just
was not
an option. Something comparable constrained the euthanasia nurse who did not
refuse to kill but
prayed
for forgiveness instead (document 3.18, pp. 62–3). Maybe Martin Niemöller was
similarly afflicted
when he
failed to see that an attack on Germany’s Jews constituted an attack on the
very foundations of
all he
held dear (document 3.7, p. 53). On this evidence, Christ’s ultimate
commandment to ‘love thy
neighbour
as thy self’ somehow had been either confused or forgotten. Christianity had
become
something
for individuals to apply in their own minds as a means to coming to terms with
an unjust world,
even as
a means to accommodating their conformity to its ‘sinful’ demands. It was not a
moral stance from
which to
criticise and shape reality; it was not an ethical foundation on which to build
a just reality. Part of
our
conclusion has to be that churchgoers only opposed the Third Reich within
limits because their
interpretation
of Christianity did not prepare them for anything more. In this sense, and sad to say,
the
failure of the churches involved a failure of belief.
Η Πόλη θα μπορούσε να είχε πέσει στα χέρια των Τούρκων πολύ νωρίτερα. «Ο λόγος που δεν έγινε αυτό και ανάσανε για πενήντα χρόνια ήταν ότι ο Βαγιαζίτ έπεσε στα χέρια των Μογγόλων» λέει η Ελένη Γλύκατζη-Αρβελέρ. «Η Βυζαντινή Αυτοκρατορία δεν μπορούσε να σταθεί μόνη της όρθια. Ο Μανουήλ έτρεχε να δει τους Καρόλους, ο Ιωάννης πήγε στη Φερράρα. Είναι η εποχή των επαιτών αυτοκρατόρων. Πήγαιναν επαίτες στη Δύση, έστω και αν τους δέχονταν εκεί με τιμές και δόξες. Κάτι που συνήθως οι Ελληνες δεν δέχονται είναι ότι ο Πάπας προσπάθησε να βοηθήσει. Διέθεσε τις ιντουλγκέντσιες -τα επί πληρωμή συγχωροχάρτια- του 1450, που ως ιντουλγκέντσιες Ιωβηλαίου ήταν πιο προσοδοφόρες, στον πόλεμο κατά των Τούρκων. Αλλο αν αυτό δεν ήταν αποτελεσματικό, αφού έδωσε τα χρήματα στους Αραγωνέζους που τα χρησιμοποίησαν για δικούς τους σκοπούς.
Το Ρούμελι Χισάρ, το κάστρο που έχτισε ο Μωάμεθ το 1452 για να ελέγχει το πέρασμα ανάμεσα στη Μαύρη Θάλασσα και τη Θάλασσα του Μαρμαρά, διαδραμάτισε σημαντικό ρόλο στην έκβαση της πολιορκίας, λέει η Ελένη Γλύκατζη- Αρβελέρ. «Διούλκησε και τον στόλο περνώντας τα πλοία του στον Κεράτιο. Από την άλλη πλευρά, μόνο 3-4 πλοία γενοβέζικα πέρασαν και αυτά για να φέρουν τροφή στους πολιορκημένους». Βέβαια, δεν ήταν μόνο αυτή η αιτία της ήττας των Βυζαντινών. «Ο Μωάμεθ είχε μαζέψει Σέρβους, Αλβανούς, Τούρκους. Απέναντι στους τουλάχιστον 100.000 άντρες του- μερικοί μιλούν για 120.000, άλλοι τους ανεβάζουν σε 200.000- αντιπαρατάσσονταν περίπου 4.500 άνθρωποι το πολύ, μαζί με τους ξένους. Και πολλοί ήταν παιδιά και γυναίκες που πολεμούσαν με αγκωνάρια. Μεγάλη ήταν η βοήθεια των Γενοβέζων, αλλά όταν σκοτώθηκε ο Τζουστινιάνι έχασαν το ηθικό τους και υποχώρησαν. Οσοι πολέμησαν, πάντως, πολέμησαν ηρωικά. Οταν ο Μωάμεθ έστειλε αποκρισάριο στον Παλαιολόγο ζητώντας του να παραδώσει την Πόλη, πήρε την απάντηση ότι η Πόλη δεν είναι δικό του πράγμα και πως “με τη δική μας θέληση αποφασίσαμε να πεθάνουμε”. Ακόμη και ο περίφημος Νοταράς που είχε τρεις υπηκοότητες και όλη του την περιουσία στο εξωτερικό, και που είπε ότι είναι καλύτερο το τουρκικό καφτάνι από τη λατινική τιάρα, πολέμησε και εν τέλει εκτελέστηκε από τους Τούρκους. Χαρακτηριστικό του ηρωισμού είναι ότι όταν στην Πύλη του Ρωμανού οι Τούρκοι άρχισαν να ανεβαίνουν πάνω και πέρασαν μέσα, έψαχναν τους αντίπαλους πολεμιστές και δεν πίστευαν ότι ήταν τόσοι λίγοι. Και πρέπει να πούμε και για τον Μωάμεθ, που συνηθίζουμε να τον ταυτίζουμε με τη βαρβαρότητα, ότι δεν ήταν βάρβαρος ή δεν ήταν μόνο βάρβαρος. Ηταν από τους μεγαλύτερους μεταρρυθμιστές της Τουρκίας. Ηξερε τι ήθελε και πώς να το κάνει». Οσο για την Κερκόπορτα... «Ανοιγμένη ή ξεχασμένη. Αστεία πράγματα. Ηταν χιλιάδες έξω, τα καράβια τους στον Κεράτιο, οι Γενοβέζοι έφευγαν. Τι να πεις για την Κερκόπορτα; Σε συμβολικό επίπεδο μόνο μπορείς κάτι να πεις. Αλλά είναι σαν να λέμε ότι αντί να σκοτώνονταν τρεις Τούρκοι κατά την είσοδό τους στην Πόλη, θα σκοτώνονταν δέκα αν η πόρτα ήταν κλειστή. Και λοιπόν; Αφού είχαν ανεβάσει σκάλες και έμπαιναν από όπου ήθελαν».
