book review:: Catholics & Nazis

[pynchonoid]

[...]  There is therefore a need to
tread a fine line between a critical approach based on
today's
values and a more defensive tone based on the values
prevalent at
the time of the narrative. How to gain a sufficient
empathy with
past events and personalities without falling into an
apologetic
stance, or how to shape a critical position without
adopting
anachronistic or over-idealized criteria, is a
demanding feature of
the historian's task.  And the greater the distance in
space and
time between the author and the subject, the more this
dilemma
necessitates a careful balance. 

[...]  The conservative
leadership of such men as von Galen lamented the
unraveling of the
feudal-aristocratic structure of society, as well as
the loss of the
First World War, and the rise of Communism. The advent
of Nazism was
at first greeted as promising a restoration of
Germany's national
greatness.  But von Galen, like others, was soon
disillusioned and
retreated to the Catholic bastion to defend his
heritage.

Beth Griech-Polelle has little sympathy for this
position.  Instead,
she believes that the Catholic leadership was to blame
for its
readiness to come to terms with the Nazi state in the
1933
Concordat, and for its failure to take a more militant
defence of
the Nazis' victims, especially Jews.  In this view,
she follows a
number of earlier English-speaking historians, going
back to Gunter
Lewy in 1964.  Her indictment is therefore not new; 
it is argued
rather repetitively and with fervor, though it may be
unfamiliar to
a North American audience.

Von Galen, she believes, along with the rest of the
hierarchy, was
so hampered by the memory of the _Kulturkampf_ that he
failed to use
his moral authority to address issues beyond those
affecting
Catholics. In their desperate attempt to preserve
Catholic
organizations, while maintaining their loyalty to the
German state,
the bishops failed to defend the rights of all human
beings.  She
describes von Galen's desire to keep Catholic values
alive by
preserving Catholic institutions as a not very
ambitious or creative
goal.  Moreover, she sees his famous 1941 sermons as
self-centered
and limited protests, in the face of his continued
urging of overall
loyalty to the Fatherland and prayer for its victory
over Communism.
In fact, she claims, on the issue of euthanasia, von
Galen carefully
waited until the Protestant clergy had protested
first.

Such revisionist views about the man widely regarded
as the "Lion of
Muenster" and the foremost Catholic resister to Nazi
tyranny,
clearly place Griech-Polelle in the category of
prescriptive
critics. Her view of the Church, as well as its
political and moral
obligations, would seem to lack a comprehension of the
Catholic
milieu at the time, and to be drawn from a post-Second
Vatican
Council stance.  But such counter-factual history runs
the risk of
losing sight of the realities of the situation in Nazi
Germany,
where Catholic priests and laity were imprisoned, or
even executed,
on the flimsiest of pretexts.  The "smell of fear" was
something
none could escape.  Von Galen's courageous sermons,
delivered in the
expectation that he would be arrested immediately, may
with
hindsight seem insufficient. At the time, coming at
the very moment
of Hitler's greatest military victories, they were an
astounding act
of defiance; and they were seen as such by the Nazis.

In Griech-Polelle's view, however, such actions do not
compensate
for the Bishop's culpable silence on the fate of the
Jews, about
which he certainly knew.  Evidently he did not
consider them as
being within the circle of Catholic obligation.  So
too she is
critical of von Galen's traditional nationalism and
his refusal in
1945 to admit any German guilt for the atrocities
committed in the
East. Likewise she takes issue with the exaggerated
post-war
hagiography describing von Galen in super-heroic
terms.  In her
final chapter, the author extends her moralistic
criticisms to
include Pope Pius XII, joining the recent chorus of
those who
believe his silence essentially meant collaborating
with the Nazis
in order to preserve the Church's institutional
interests. But her
argument is seriously weakened by a mistranslation of
one of the
Pope's letters, and by her imputation that von Galen
was named a
Cardinal for following Pius' weak-kneed policies. Von
Galen, she
states, was not a real resister, but rather practiced
only a
selective opposition. In her opinion, his failure to
build
solidarity with other persecuted segments of society
left a
questionable moral legacy for Catholics. [...] 

from:

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German at h-net.msu.edu (April, 2003)

Beth A. Griech-Polelle. _Bishop von Galen: German
Catholicism and
National Socialism_. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press,
2002. 259 pp.  Index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-300-009223-7.

Reviewed for H-German by John S. Conway
<jconway at interchange.ubc.ca>, Department of History,
University of
British Columbia

<http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=77341053110831>

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