Karl-Theo Schleicher, Heinrich Walle. Aus Feldpostbriefen junger Christen 1939-1945: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Katholischen Jugend im Felde. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005. 413 Seiten. Euro 32.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-515-08759-9.
Reviewed by Karla Poewe (University of Calgary)
Published on H-German (July, 2006)
Letters from the Front of Young Christians, 1939-1945
This book is a collection of letters from the front sent by Catholic soldiers involved in World War II who belonged to Catholic youth groups. Such groups had been persecuted by the Nazi regime since 1936 and prohibited since 1938. The editors regard the letters as testaments to the rejection of what Catholics called the Trinitarian Dogma of the Nazi regime, namely: the National Socialist Party, the Third Reich and the German Volk. The authors of these letters apparently understood well the basic teaching of the Catholic resistance fighter, Alfred Delp. He argued that a soldier should honor his duty to the fatherland (a matter of natural inclination), but question--even resist, as Delp did--demands for loyalty to the current state leadership (a matter of historical fortuity). Catholics could therefore argue that although Catholic soldiers acted patriotically, they could not identify with the criminal goals of the regime.
Research for this book was carried out in several archives. The findings were discussed with witnesses and a manuscript was proposed. This manuscript was then further reviewed by ten leaders of the youth group association, as well as witnesses and experts. These participants in turn agreed that a book on this topic required an essay that discussed the development and situation of the Catholic Youth in the Third Reich. For this task, editor Karl-Theodor Schleicher won the cooperation of the military historian Heinrich Walle who, as student, had also been a member of the Catholic Youth Group of Cologne (Bund Neudeutschland-Köln), to which authors of these letters belonged.
Although a military commander and historian, Walle also studied Catholic theology. His explanatory introduction, which discusses the National Socialist period, the Catholic position within it, Catholic Youth groups and their ideals, the content and quality of the letters, and what could and could not be said is exemplary. While the letters are subjective documents, they are fascinating because of their nearness to the actual experiences of an ever-hardening war. Most of these soldiers who found themselves in the continual presence of death tried to reach one goal: to be ready when it came. One wrote, "finally I reached the place where I could say: Lord, your will alone!" And he continued: "I believe in a kind of collective guilt of the Volk. And thus, by God, it is better that one upright man die than that dozens be massacred" (p. 19).
Letters from the front were censored. Any hint of doubt about final victory, comment about the senselessness of war or critique of the National Socialist regime and its representatives was considered under military law to be an act eroding the power of defense and was punishable by death. The law was known to both writers and recipients of these letters.
Nonetheless, Walle argues, these letters give an insider view of the German military. While scholars have reached a consensus that, from the beginning, the German military was drawn into the National Socialist enslavement and elimination program, Walle argues that such a picture represents an external perspective. Since only a small sample, a mere splinter, of the thirty to forty million front letters has been analyzed, Walle argues that quantitative conclusions about the moral position of "the" German soldier of World War II is hardly possible. Lumping these men together as champions of National Socialism would constitute an ex post facto confirmation of Nazi propaganda. Many a soldier at the front found himself in the tragic condition, furthermore, of having to realize that the goal of the enemy was in no sense the liberation of Germany from National Socialism, but rather the total destruction of the fatherland. The conduct of war today, as we witness it daily through the media, would lead one to affirm Walle's insider assessment of the war then. The most current German scholarship in this area similarly stand out for their differentiation of who committed what deeds, thus providing new insights into the horrors of the regime, the war and the Holocaust.[1]
With one exception, the choice of material is excellent. Particularly useful is the inclusion in the appendix of a confidential letter dated October 28, 1936, from the Reich's Youth Leadership. It makes for harrowing reading in its revelation of how systematic and calculated the persecution of Catholic youth was. It shows a general tendency in Nazi persecution: use the enemy's own methods to agitate against him. In this case, this meant using Catholic religious forms and rites to indoctrinate the masses with National Socialist ideas. A surprising choice of material is the May 8, 1945, pastoral letter from Conrad Gröber, archbishop of Freiburg. From this letter, it is clear that Gröber understood the National Socialist worldview all too well: the letter reveals his awareness of its rejection of Christianity as a Jewish religion; the regime's use of the Concordat as political seduction; and its notion that the Volk was the measure of all things, which had the consequence of destroying all normative ethics. Unfortunately, for a number of years, Gröber was enthusiastic about the Nazi regime.
Note
[1]. Among other works, see especially Georg Denzler, Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort (Zurich: Pendo Verlag, 2003); Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul, eds., Karrieren der Gewalt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004); Willy Peter Reese, Mir selber seltsam fremd, ed. Stefan Schmitz (Berlin: Claassen Verlag, 2005) or my own book, New Religions and the Nazis (London: Routledge, 2006).
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Citation:
Karla Poewe. Review of Schleicher, Karl-Theo; Walle, Heinrich, Aus Feldpostbriefen junger Christen 1939-1945: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Katholischen Jugend im Felde.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12000
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