Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era

by Benjamin W. Goossen

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the global Mennonite church developed an uneasy relationship with Germany. Despite the religion's origins in the Swiss and Dutch Reformation, as well as its longstanding pacifism, tens of thousands of members embraced militarist German nationalism. Chosen Nation is a sweeping history of this encounter and the debates it sparked among parliaments, dictatorships, and congregations across Eurasia and the Americas.

Offering a multifaceted perspective on nationalism's emergence in Europe and around the world, Benjamin Goossen demonstrates how Mennonites' nationalization reflected and reshaped their faith convictions. While some church leaders modified German identity along Mennonite lines, others appropriated nationalism wholesale, advocating a specifically Mennonite version of nationhood. Examining sources from Poland to Paraguay, Goossen shows how patriotic loyalties rose and fell with religious affiliation. Individuals might claim to be German at one moment but Mennonite the next. Some external parties encouraged separatism, as when the Weimar Republic helped establish an autonomous "Mennonite State" in Latin America. Still others treated Mennonites as quintessentially German; under Hitler's Third Reich, entire colonies benefited from racial warfare and genocide in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Whether choosing Germany as a national homeland or identifying as a chosen people, called and elected by God, Mennonites committed to collective action in ways that were intricate, fluid, and always surprising.

The first book to place Christianity and diaspora at the heart of nationality studies, Chosen Nation illuminates the rising religious nationalism of our own age.

Genres: History, Religion

288 pages, Hardcover

Published May 9, 2017

About the author

Benjamin W. Goossen is a historian of modern Europe and the world. His work concerns the intersections of environmental history, global and international history, and science and technology studies. His first book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era, appeared with Princeton University Press in 2017.

Reviews

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a history of Mennonites in Germany with particular focus on their relationship with German nationalism. Mennonites originated as part of the sixteenth century Radical Reformation and the movement commonly known as Anabaptism. They were persecuted for their refusal of infant baptism by the state churches, and they generally took the unpopular position of pacifism thus refusing military and police service. They survived by migrating to countries and regions where they found some tolerance.

Prior to the formation of the German nation-state in 1871 it was a "patchwork of principalities, kingdoms, and coalitions" extending from the Netherlands to Russia. Mennonite congregations were located in the northwest, northeast, and south of this area, isolated from each other with differing cultures and versions of the German language.

The northwest was home to the wealthy city congregations. Established in the aftermath of the Reformation by refugees from the Low Country, they retained close personal and trade ties to the Netherlands. ...

Far to the east, ... Poland and Lithuania, lived the largest of the three communities. Known as the Mennonites of East and West Prussia, they had also arrived from the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. ... Employing Dutch-style windmills and canals, they drained the swamps of the Vistula Delta and cultivated the newly won land.

The third and final population ... lived in the south. Largely descendants of immigrants from Switzerland who had helped to repopulate the south German states after the Thirty Years' War, their small congregations faded in and out with related clusters across the Swiss and French borders. (p20-21)

After the German-state was formed in 1871 the process of developing an identity of common nationality was slow to develop and didn't really coalesce until World War I. The same is also true for the disparate Mennonite communities which were slow the join a union of Mennonite churches. However with time they became increasingly organizationally united.

Military service was a strong expectation of the Prussian militarists who were the driving force behind German unification. This clashed with the Mennonites' tradition of pacifism. Consequently, by the early twentieth century most Mennonites in Germany were forced to yield on their position of pacifism. The Mennonites who wished to avoid military service left the country, some going to Ukraine and others to North and South America.

The Mennonites who moved to the Ukraine were able to negotiate with Czarist Russian to perform alternative or non-combatant service in lieu of military service. However, that privilege came to an end with the Communist revolution and establishment of the Soviet state. Not only were Mennonites despised for being German speaking outsiders, they were relatively wealthy land owners. Consequently, the Mennonite communities were decimated by the Soviets and not allowed to function as organized churches.

Dubbing Mennonites a "kulak" community, Soviet officials had shipped thousands to Siberia, bundling their property into collective farms. Preachers were targeted and church buildings shuttered, sometimes to be repurposed as dance halls or cinemas. By 1938, nearly half of all Mennonite men in Ukraine had been arrested. If prisoners were not shot, they faced slave-like conditions in Stalin's gulags. Social turmoil and government mismanagement combined to catastrophic effect. Collectivization brought poor harvests, and poor harvests brought famine. Of approximately 11,000 Mennonites in the Chortitza colony in 1914, more than 20 percent were murdered, banned, starved to death, or deported by 1941. The number was far higher in other colonies. Molotschna, the largest and most famous settlement, was now only sparsely inhabited, farm machinery lay broken or unused, and livestock wandered ownerless in the fields. (p149-150)

Thus it is not surprising that when the German army invaded the Ukraine during Word War II that the Mennonites still living there received them as liberators. The invading Germans in turn gave special privileges to these German speakers considering them to be the quintessential “ethnic Germans” whose impeccable Aryan lineage made them ideal settlers of Hitler’s projected Lebensraum.

Most of the Ukrainian Mennonites accepted the privileges given by the Nazis as simple grateful civilians. However, there are several unsavory examples of active participation in the Holocaust by individuals of Mennonite ancestry.

Here's a LINK(1) to a report on recent public lectures on “Jews, Mennonites and the Holocaust” sponsored by the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.

Here's a LINK(2) to an 2016 article by Goossen that makes the case that Mennonite leaders supported genealogical research during the 1930s and 40s that fed into the Nazis' Aryan superiority theory. Much of this information is also contained in this book.

Needless to say that when the German army was forced to retreat from Ukraine, the Mennonites who were able retreated with them. After the war they were displaced persons, some of whom were sent back to the Soviet Union against their will. Many, with help from the Mennonite Central Committee, were settled in Paraguay, Canada, and USA. During their flight and resettlement Mennonites could, depending of circumstances, claim to be German, Dutch, Russian or stateless ethnic Mennonites. Which raises the question, is Mennonite a religious sect or ethnic group?

I find the cover of this book to be particularly shocking given that Mennonites are supposedly known for being pacifist.

Jacket photograph: Residents of the Molotschna Mennonite colony in southeastern Ukraine, including a cavalry squadron under the Waffen-SS, celebrate a visit from Heinrich Himmler, 1942. Here's a LINK to an article titled "Mennonites and the Holocaust" that includes a photograph of "Members of a Mennonite Waffen-SS squadron in Ukraine’s Molotschna colony, 1943." The article also includes a link to video footage of “Alfred Rosenberg’s visit to the Chortitza Mennonite colony in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, June 1942.”

Below is a link to the first 17 pages of this book:
https://www.academia.edu/31894042/Int...

[Shirley Showalter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carefully researched and well documented, this study of Mennonites before and during the Nazi era in Germany will disturb anyone with a romantic view of Mennonite history or of the "volk" in any culture. How is it that a small group so resistant to state authority in the 16th century that they were willing to die by the thousands rather than submit, became willing to support in the twentieth century one of the most authoritarian forms of the state ever -- facism? This book reveals degrees of compliance with and even support of Nazism that should cause deep self- and group-examination. The factors examined include the movement for a "union" of German identity, based on language, for Mennonites spread out across the world, the practice of endogamous marriage, which eventually created an almost pure Aryan ethnicity, vulnerable to the idea of racial superiority as propounded by the Nazis, and a deep aversion to communism based on the sufferings of (German-speaking) Mennonites in Russia during and after the Bolshevik revolution.

I would have liked to see more examination of the loss of pacifism as a key doctrine in the German Mennonite "Unionist" context in the late 19th century. One of the most important reasons for the Mennonite diaspora in the first place was the search for places that would not require military service. Often those who felt the desire to be nonresistant most forcefully left Germany. Those who remained found it easier and easier to justify militarism in the new modern kind of state.

Does pacifism protect a group from too close an alliance with any state and blindness to evil perpetrated by that state? When pacifism is tolerated (as in America today), do Mennonites become vulnerable to the same kinds of ideas (racism, facism) that blinded the German "volk"? Does the desire to assimilate eventually catch up with even the most radical Christian groups?

These are examples of the kinds of questions that will stay with me for a long time after reading this book. The conversation Ben Goossen has begun will be important for many years to come, as will this ground-breaking book.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for daring to finally document what German Mennonites were doing during WWII. 5 stars also for the larger scope, of what is Mennonites’ relationship to Germany. I would recommend this to anyone of Mennonite heritage. (And we should all be asking ourselves why this topic was first seeing the published light of day in 2017.)
Despite my 5 star rating, unabashed recommendation, and compliments above, I must admit that I struggled to finish this book. The organization of the writing was about as different from mine as you can get, and I felt like the scope of the book was way, way too broad. It was tough to read—but I’m glad I did!

[David Cattell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a painful reminder of how “Christian” nationalists collaborated with the Nazis and some actually participated in the holocaust. Tragically, some American evangelicals are headed in the same direction today, and unfortunately they will not likely read this book or anything outside their selfish narrow minded world view.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important book, though with flaws for this lay reader. I found chapter six on the "Mennonite Nation" and Mennonite Central Committee's role in promoting this "nation" in the immediate post-World War II era a compelling discussion. I look forward to the work of historians sorting out the role of MCC in relationship to Nazi Mennonite war criminals. It's a complex issue.

I found less compelling Goossen's occasional efforts to loop conservative Amish and "Swiss" Mennonite groups into his narrative. I felt this effort made his argument less compelling.

Goossen is by far strongest in his discussion of Mennonites in Germany. It sometimes felt that he needed to force arguments the further he got from that core.

The discussion is quite detailed, and well worth reading.

[marcus miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last two books I've read (this one and "The White Mosque:A Memoir" by Sofia Samatar) explore issues of Mennonite identity in different ways. Both ask important questions; what does it mean to be Mennonite? Is being Mennonite a matter of faith and religious belief? Or is being Mennonite an ethnicity? Specifically an ethnicity birthed in Europe and maintained by their white descendents in the United States, Canada, Paraguay and elsewhere.
Goossen explores these questions as he tells the story of Mennonites and their relationship to both the nation of Germany and the concept of Germanness. Instead of being Mennonites in Germany, they became German Mennonites, something people took with them as they moved into Poland and Russia.
The story Goossen recounts is fascinating and deeply troubling, especially as German Mennonites joined and supported the Nazi movement. The story becomes even worse when Germany attacks the Soviet Union and takes control of Ukraine and Mennonites respond positively to their liberators from Soviet communism. Goossen documents some Mennonites who participated in ethnic cleansing or who profited and took advantage of the Jewish population that was being decimated.
Goossen does a good job of telling the complicated story of what happened after World War II as many from German backgrounds sought refuge from the Soviets and communism. Was this group of German Mennonites living in Russia, German? Or were they Russian, or did “being Mennonite” set these people apart from the nationalities of both countries. Goossen describes how MCC and the German/Russian Mennonite refugees changed how they described themselves according to what seemed politically expedient.
As I read this it wasn’t difficult to think how ideas of Christian nationalism are percolating in the United States and influencing Mennonites, some of whom seem quite willing to forgo concepts like nonresistance as they seek to prove they are a patriotic people hoping to “make America great again.”
When Goossen writes, “Torn between the poles of nonresistant theology and nationalist ideology, Mennonite communities descended into chaos,”(46) it seems a bit too familiar.

[Brendan E-M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for people interested in contemplating how communities address historic harms. Not that Goossen's book provides any of the answers to that question, but his linear and well-researched work begs the question. Goossen carefully tracks the way Mennonites in Germany and across the world constructed, proclaimed, revised, and at times contradicted their assertion of a nationalist and racial identity, all to ensure the exclusive well-being of Mennonites in the tumultuous years between the Unification of Germany and refugee resettlement following WWII. It is disturbing to consider that this nationalistic exceptionalism still clings to elements of my North American Mennonite communities today.

At times, I had trouble understanding Goossen's broadly defined term "nationalism," although his report of post-war refugee resettlement for Mennonites from Ukraine helped to clarify the shift from fill-in-the-blank nationalism to Mennonite nationalism. Nevertheless, I have questions. Can a trans-national institution like the Mennonite Church claim a collective identity without succumbing to harmful/dishonest nationalistic language? In a global era, is a collective identity for such a culturally diverse religious group even possible to achieve without harming members within or outside of that group? For Mennonites whose direct ancestors were not in Europe in the 20th century, abdication of responsibility is certainly not constructive; how do these Mennonites accept responsibility for and seek to right wrongs from WWII without further contributing to the socially constructed narrative of Mennonite as a nationalistic identity?

[Phillip Mast · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is well known in the conservative Anabaptist world that Mennonites in Germany supported Hitler. The story is often told as a warning that we shouldn't get wrapped up in current political movements. While I believe this is good, I think there is a lot more to story that we should be learning from.
This book carefully documents the history of German Mennonite nationalism beginning in the late late 1800s and climaxing in ww2. More importantly, Goosen details the reasoning the Mennonites and others gave for promoting their militarism and extreme racism. Knowing the reasons for these extreme views makes them a little more understandable and it better equips us to avoid such ideologies in the present.
One drawback of this book is that some parts are a bit academic for my taste, especially the introduction and conclusion. However, the main narrative is fairly captivating even if you have little knowledge of sociology or political science.

[Larry Epp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and sometimes disturbing the way Mennonites and German nationalism became entangled. An "academic" read, no page turner.

Interesting to see the way Mennonites self concept was shaped and reshaped by events, geography and faith. Glad to see Goossen point out that there was (nor is there now) no monolithic unity of view on among Mennonites about what constitutes their "peoplehood."

[Quinn Swartzendruber · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very insightful look into A side of Mennonitism that I knew little about. While this book is definitely on the scholarly side and took me a bit of time to make my way through, it was worth the effort.