Hubert Gruber. Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus 1930-1945: Ein Bericht in Quellen. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2005. 534 S. EUR 48.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-506-73443-3.
Reviewed by John S. Conway (Department of History, University of British Columbia)
Published on H-German (September, 2007)
A Partial Coming to Terms with the Catholic Past
For the past sixty years German Catholics have sought to come to terms with their church's record during the Nazi years. Numerous apologetic histories, hagiographical biographies of Catholics persecuted or murdered for their faith, and large collections of documents from Catholic archives have provided a wealth of information and shed light on the factors and dilemmas affecting the conduct of bishops and laity alike. Yet the undeniable fact is that the most German Catholics loyally supported Hitler's regime. To be sure, the early enthusiasm of 1933 came to be diluted after the Nazis' sinister intentions towards the churches were little by little recognized. But the majority continued to believe they could be good Catholics and good Nazis at the same time. In 1945, Catholic bishops were to stress the severity of Nazi depredations, confiscations, and harassment, and claim that they had been victims all along. Catholics therefore did not need to make confessions of guilt, as the German Protestants did. But the evidence of Catholics' complicity with the regime, especially through their deeply rooted antisemitism, their overt anti-communism, and their readiness to welcome and participate in the Nazis' national and military policies, remains incontrovertible. Hence the subject cannot as yet be relegated to the history books.
Hubert Gruber, a school teacher in Saxony, recognized that a younger generation needs to find its way through the mass of sources and evidence produced with German thoroughness over the past sixty years. At the same time, he believes that exposure to original documents is a necessity to avoid the pitfalls of historical or theological partisanship. His aim has therefore been to edit a selection of documents from the major sources with only the briefest of introductions. Today's students can thus be given a survey account that outlines the main issues at stake. Predictably, but perhaps unfortunately, his diligence has resulted in a large tome. How many students will want to make use of this extensive compilation, even if compressed into one hefty volume, remains to be seen. Scholars already familiar with the massive collections of archival documents and the accompanying monographs, like those produced by the Catholic Commission for Contemporary History (the Blue Series), will not find anything new in Gruber's book, since the documents are almost all drawn from Catholic sources and have appeared in print before.
Gruber's approach is traditional; he selected documents to show how aggressive the Nazis were in attacking Catholic institutions, such as the press, schools, clubs, associations, and monasteries, and how active Catholic leaders were in protesting such attacks and in seeking to uphold the terms of the 1933 Concordat. But he cannot avoid also printing compromising documents, such as the congratulations showered on Hitler by Catholic bishops on his birthdays, on his victories, or on his escape from death on July 20, 1944. The postwar image of the Catholic Church as being constantly victimized by the fanatical hatred and excesses of the Nazi Party is only half the truth.
Furthermore, all the documents selected by Gruber were written by leading officials either of the Church or the party. They give us no insight as to what the ordinary Catholic was thinking. But we can infer from other evidence that they held ambivalent, even contradictory views. So long as the Church's own autonomy was not affected, they gave their wholehearted support to the regime. And even when vocal protests against certain aspects of its policies were made, for example by Bishop Galen of Münster against the so-called euthanasia of the mentally ill, there was no sign of any attempt to organize an overthrow of the regime, or to mobilize the public against other aspects of its totalitarian rule, however atrocious, such as the mass murder of the Jews.
The final document printed by Gruber is a report submitted in May 1945 to the Allied Military Government, claiming that the majority of Catholics never supported National Socialist ideas. This assertion is too self-serving to be believed, but was adopted as the "politically correct" line at that time and has been maintained by apologists such as Gruber ever since. It can only be hoped that he also provides his students with other pieces of evidence that reveal the compromising responses of Catholics to the seductive appeals of National Socialism, their hero worship of the Führer, their support of his racial and national goals, and their willingness to serve him to the end.
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Citation:
John S. Conway. Review of Gruber, Hubert, Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus 1930-1945: Ein Bericht in Quellen.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13608
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