What do you think?
Rate this book
The Catholic Church And Nazi Germany
"The subject matter of this book is controversial," Guenter Lewy states plainly in his preface. To show the German Catholic Church's congeniality with some of the goals of National Socialism and its gradual entrapment in Nazi policies and programs, Lewy describes the episcopate's support of Hitler's expansionist policies and its failures to speak out on the persecution of the Jews. To this tragic history Lewy brings new focus and research, illuminating one of the darkest corners of our century with scholarship and intellectual honesty in a riveting, and often painful, narrative.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
12 people are currently reading
185 people want to read
About the author
Guenter Lewy
31 books10 followersGuenter Lewy is a German-born American author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the applicability of the term genocide to various historical events, where Lewy denies both the Romani genocide and the Armenian genocide.
In 1939 he migrated from Germany to Palestine. After World War II, he migrated to the United States to reunite with his parents. Lewy earned a BA at City College in New York City and a MA and PhD at Columbia University. He has been on the faculties of Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., and was a frequent contributor to Commentary.
In 1939 he migrated from Germany to Palestine. After World War II, he migrated to the United States to reunite with his parents. Lewy earned a BA at City College in New York City and a MA and PhD at Columbia University. He has been on the faculties of Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., and was a frequent contributor to Commentary.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 4, 2016
UPDATE May 4, 2016 ... finally finished ... This is a very difficult book to read, both because of the material and also Lewy's complicated style of writing, which sometimes seems as circuitous as the Catholic pronouncements he is presenting and explaining. Nevertheless, it is a treasure of information.
Lewy's bottom line conclusion is damning: although a few priests and even fewer bishops tried to oppose Hitler and his annihilation of Jews, most did not. The Church as an institution did nothing. The fundamental reason for this was the Church's centuries-long denunciation and persecution of Jews, which locked its own position and that of German Catholics into an attitude of indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews.
In the final analysis, Pius XII did not disagree with Hitler that the Jews were a menace to be eliminated. There is no evidence that Pius XII condoned Hitler's mass murder of Jews, but neither did he say a single word to condemn it. Lewy's conclusion, and mine, is that this was a total and disgraceful abdication of the Church's pretension to moral authority.
Cardinal Faulhaber, who is a character in my new historical novel, appears many times in Lewy's book, and thus I have gained many opportunities to raise questions in my novel as to what Faulhaber thought as he dealt with his Church's appropriate role and his own personal dilemma.
***
UPDATE Apr 30, 2016 ... I have returned to read the chapters describing the Churches interactions with the Nazis subsequent to Hitler's achieving the Chancellorship. I have read only a few pages, but already I cannot accept Lewy's cleansing conclusion that German bishops did not foresee what Hitler was planning. Not so. They knew. So did Pacelli, who brushed aside the concerns of the German bishops in order to make his deal - Enabling Act for Concordat.
UPDATE Oct 20, 2012 ... in 1933, the Catholic Church made an unholy bargain with Hitler, exchanging a Concordat which they thought would protect Church financial interests for destruction of the Catholic political parties and the legal enabling of Hitler's totalitarian regime. Lewy describes what the Church did, but not the inner thinking of Pius XI, Pacelli, and German bishops who provided an enormous diplomatic victory to Hitler when his rule was still fragile.
... "the affirmative vote of the Catholic Center Party to the Enabling Act made resistance to the Nazi regime impossible … the Concordat lent the sanction of the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Germany to the destruction of the Center party … the Curia consented to the liquidation of all Catholic organizations having a political program and helped strengthen the emerging totalitarian regime."
LEWY DOES NOT ANSWER ... What did German Church officials (Faulhaber) think they were doing? Did they foresee the consequences? Did they see any options? Did they knowingly delude themselves?
******
Previous Notes ...
I’m in the midst of reading and reviewing Gellately’s “Backing Hitler.” Given the chronological status of my novel-in-progress, I will stop reading Gellately when I have completed the sections on Hitler’s rise to Chancellorship in 1933 and his brutal transformation of the German republic into a totalitarian dictatorship. (I’ll go back to it again later.)
To complement Gellately’s view, I am also reading those chapters of Guenter Lewy’s “The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany” which cover the same time period.
In his introduction, Lewy quotes a 1975 statement by a joint synod of the German Catholic dioceses ... “In spite of the exemplary conduct of a few, a religious community that was primarily interested in its own survival and the smooth functioning of its own institutions ... remained silent in the face of the crimes committed against the Jews.”
This silence began very early, but it was not the original reaction of the Church to Hitler and the Nazis. The Church’s attitude toward Hitler was initially very negative.
... In the early 1920s, Cardinal Faulhaber in Munich spoke out against the antisemitic actions and statements of the Nazis.
... In 1928, there were warnings by German bishops about the “one sided glorification of the Nordic race,” followed by Church proclamations that Catholics could not become members of the Nazi Party.
... In 1931, German bishops “forbade Catholic priests to take any part whatever in the National Socialist movement.”
Then Hitler became Chancellor (in 1933).
Hitler’s views were clear ... “We shall trap the priests by their notorious greed and self-indulgence ... They will swallow anything to keep their material advantages.”
The Vatican, influenced greatly by Cardinal Pacelli (later the wartime Pope Pius XII), “was anxious for German Catholicism to come to terms with Hitler.”
The Vatican undermined the German Center (Catholic) Party with the result that Hitler received the votes of the Center Party which allowed the passage of the Enabling Act which gave him dictatorial powers. NOTE: Lewy points out that Hitler might have forced it through anyway, but if he had, he could never claim that his rule resulted “from a legal assumption of power.”
Shortly thereafter, the Catholic bishops withdrew their prohibition of Catholic membership in the Nazi Party.
Lewy reports that Catholics, their bishops foremost among them, tended to overlook the terror which at this point was already falling on the shoulders of Marxist, Communist and liberal enemies, including most prominently the Jews.
Hitler, in a rare meeting with two Catholic bishops, raised the Jewish question, pointing out “that the Church always had regarded the Jews as parasites and had banished them into the ghetto.” Hitler said, “He was merely going to do what the Church had done for 1,500 years.” Lewy does not report any response to this statement of the bishops in Hitler’s presence, or of any representative of the Church later on.
Shortly after that (July 9, 1933) a Concordat was agreed upon between Nazi Germany and the Holy See, described by Lewy as an important achievement of the Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli.
Lewy reports that some writers claim that consent of the Catholic Center Party to the Enabling Act was a prior requirement for Hitler to start serious negotiations for a concordat. It was an “open secret,” Lewy states, that “the Curia regarded the German Catholic parties as expendable.”
Hitler immediately (and predictably) claimed the Concordat was “solemn recognition” that the Vatican supported the Nazi government. He stressed the significance of the Concordat “in the urgent fight against the international Jews.”
With the Enabling Act and the Concordat in hand, Hitler proceeded to implement the Nazi reign of totalitarian terror which ended with the destruction of Germany as well as the countries it invaded, and the deaths of 6,000,000 Jews.
Lewy's bottom line conclusion is damning: although a few priests and even fewer bishops tried to oppose Hitler and his annihilation of Jews, most did not. The Church as an institution did nothing. The fundamental reason for this was the Church's centuries-long denunciation and persecution of Jews, which locked its own position and that of German Catholics into an attitude of indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews.
In the final analysis, Pius XII did not disagree with Hitler that the Jews were a menace to be eliminated. There is no evidence that Pius XII condoned Hitler's mass murder of Jews, but neither did he say a single word to condemn it. Lewy's conclusion, and mine, is that this was a total and disgraceful abdication of the Church's pretension to moral authority.
Cardinal Faulhaber, who is a character in my new historical novel, appears many times in Lewy's book, and thus I have gained many opportunities to raise questions in my novel as to what Faulhaber thought as he dealt with his Church's appropriate role and his own personal dilemma.
***
UPDATE Apr 30, 2016 ... I have returned to read the chapters describing the Churches interactions with the Nazis subsequent to Hitler's achieving the Chancellorship. I have read only a few pages, but already I cannot accept Lewy's cleansing conclusion that German bishops did not foresee what Hitler was planning. Not so. They knew. So did Pacelli, who brushed aside the concerns of the German bishops in order to make his deal - Enabling Act for Concordat.
UPDATE Oct 20, 2012 ... in 1933, the Catholic Church made an unholy bargain with Hitler, exchanging a Concordat which they thought would protect Church financial interests for destruction of the Catholic political parties and the legal enabling of Hitler's totalitarian regime. Lewy describes what the Church did, but not the inner thinking of Pius XI, Pacelli, and German bishops who provided an enormous diplomatic victory to Hitler when his rule was still fragile.
... "the affirmative vote of the Catholic Center Party to the Enabling Act made resistance to the Nazi regime impossible … the Concordat lent the sanction of the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Germany to the destruction of the Center party … the Curia consented to the liquidation of all Catholic organizations having a political program and helped strengthen the emerging totalitarian regime."
LEWY DOES NOT ANSWER ... What did German Church officials (Faulhaber) think they were doing? Did they foresee the consequences? Did they see any options? Did they knowingly delude themselves?
******
Previous Notes ...
I’m in the midst of reading and reviewing Gellately’s “Backing Hitler.” Given the chronological status of my novel-in-progress, I will stop reading Gellately when I have completed the sections on Hitler’s rise to Chancellorship in 1933 and his brutal transformation of the German republic into a totalitarian dictatorship. (I’ll go back to it again later.)
To complement Gellately’s view, I am also reading those chapters of Guenter Lewy’s “The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany” which cover the same time period.
In his introduction, Lewy quotes a 1975 statement by a joint synod of the German Catholic dioceses ... “In spite of the exemplary conduct of a few, a religious community that was primarily interested in its own survival and the smooth functioning of its own institutions ... remained silent in the face of the crimes committed against the Jews.”
This silence began very early, but it was not the original reaction of the Church to Hitler and the Nazis. The Church’s attitude toward Hitler was initially very negative.
... In the early 1920s, Cardinal Faulhaber in Munich spoke out against the antisemitic actions and statements of the Nazis.
... In 1928, there were warnings by German bishops about the “one sided glorification of the Nordic race,” followed by Church proclamations that Catholics could not become members of the Nazi Party.
... In 1931, German bishops “forbade Catholic priests to take any part whatever in the National Socialist movement.”
Then Hitler became Chancellor (in 1933).
Hitler’s views were clear ... “We shall trap the priests by their notorious greed and self-indulgence ... They will swallow anything to keep their material advantages.”
The Vatican, influenced greatly by Cardinal Pacelli (later the wartime Pope Pius XII), “was anxious for German Catholicism to come to terms with Hitler.”
The Vatican undermined the German Center (Catholic) Party with the result that Hitler received the votes of the Center Party which allowed the passage of the Enabling Act which gave him dictatorial powers. NOTE: Lewy points out that Hitler might have forced it through anyway, but if he had, he could never claim that his rule resulted “from a legal assumption of power.”
Shortly thereafter, the Catholic bishops withdrew their prohibition of Catholic membership in the Nazi Party.
Lewy reports that Catholics, their bishops foremost among them, tended to overlook the terror which at this point was already falling on the shoulders of Marxist, Communist and liberal enemies, including most prominently the Jews.
Hitler, in a rare meeting with two Catholic bishops, raised the Jewish question, pointing out “that the Church always had regarded the Jews as parasites and had banished them into the ghetto.” Hitler said, “He was merely going to do what the Church had done for 1,500 years.” Lewy does not report any response to this statement of the bishops in Hitler’s presence, or of any representative of the Church later on.
Shortly after that (July 9, 1933) a Concordat was agreed upon between Nazi Germany and the Holy See, described by Lewy as an important achievement of the Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli.
Lewy reports that some writers claim that consent of the Catholic Center Party to the Enabling Act was a prior requirement for Hitler to start serious negotiations for a concordat. It was an “open secret,” Lewy states, that “the Curia regarded the German Catholic parties as expendable.”
Hitler immediately (and predictably) claimed the Concordat was “solemn recognition” that the Vatican supported the Nazi government. He stressed the significance of the Concordat “in the urgent fight against the international Jews.”
With the Enabling Act and the Concordat in hand, Hitler proceeded to implement the Nazi reign of totalitarian terror which ended with the destruction of Germany as well as the countries it invaded, and the deaths of 6,000,000 Jews.
October 18, 2012
I've never been a fan of organised religion (because really, what is the point of being told what to believe - I either believe it or I don't), but this just makes it seem so much. The main thing that I've learnt in this book is that the Catholic Church is excessively opportunistic and for all their idealistic rhetoric, they're only interested in what benefits the Catholic Church as an institution and not about what's right, or true, or important. I don't know why I found this surprising, but I did.
September 10, 2020
In our blog on how Christians coped under the Nazi regime in Germany we consulted the main sources referenced in the Wikipedia article on this topic:
For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler, Victoria Barnett, 1992.
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, Guenter Lewy, 2000, 1964
Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany, Robert P Ericksen, 2012.
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/christians-under-hitlers-german-nazi-regime/
At the time of Hitler about 97% of Germans were registered as Christians, a third were Catholic, two-thirds were Protestant, most were Lutheran or Reformed Christians. The histories of how the Protestant Church and Catholic Church coped under Nazi Germany, though they overlap considerably, are two very different histories.
My main criticism of all three of these books is they assumed the reader is already acquainted with the detailed history of Nazi Germany. We felt compelled to include many references to the Wikipedia articles on the many key events that signaled turning points in the social history of Nazi Germany. We wonder why Victoria Barnett did not include a chapter with detailed biographies of the two leading members of the Confessing Church, Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
We picked up some insights in the book Complicity in the Holocaust, which covers the history of both the churches and the universities during the rise of Hitler, consent and collaboration with the Nazi regime, and how these institutions processed their past during post-war de-Nazification.
Guenter Lewy’s book, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, is on its second edition, reissued to incorporate the Catholic archives opened by the Vatican on the role of the Catholic Church during World War II. Lewy also used the Gestapo archives as a source. We found this to be a compelling narrative on a specialized topic, the Catholic Church under Hitler.
We found Victoria Barnett’s book on the Protestant Confessing Church movement to be absolutely captivating. She used as a primary source countless interviews with many in the Confessing Church movement. Many people think that the Nazi death camps were mainly in Poland, most people do not realize that Nazi Germany had thousands of labor and death camps, there were many labor camps in Germany. The reason why Germany never asked their housewives to be Rosy Riveters was because they enslaved many Jews, political prisoners, French POW’s, and many Poles and Eastern Europeans in their labor camps. Although these labor camps had a high mortality rate, few labor camps in Germany had gas chambers disguised as showers.
Victoria Barnett includes many excerpts from these interviews. This is from the interview describing a German labor camp near a parish (p. 101):
When the prisoners were taken to their work-place, one saw them- emaciated, wraith-like. Parish members and school children often put bread unobtrusively on the street curb, out of pity, so that the prisoners could grab it and get a little more nourishment. This happened even during the war, when food was rationed.
These interview excerpts relate how one German remembered how her lessons as schoolchild made her ashamed to be a German after her defeat (p. 27.):
We had the feeling we had no future. We suffered the consequences of World War I, which had broken out before we could walk, and we thought that we would never have a chance.
She tells of her thoughts as a teenager of how Hitler caused many Germans to be proud of their Fatherland (pp. 27-28):
We didn’t exactly have the wish for revenge, I don’t think it was about that, but we wanted to regain our national importance. We didn’t’ want to be somebody again- that sounds so much like ambition, it wasn’t that either- but we wanted to be German brothers alongside German brothers. Then along came this man who could hit things right on the target, and who stood for a united, great German Reich. That was the sweetest sound to our ears.
The interviews that described how Hitler was able to turn the German people against their Jewish neighbors are particularly chilling.
Many of the books I have consulted for my blogs on how Christians cope under Fascist regimes have interesting histories of their own, some even have these histories on their own Wikipedia pages.
These books are also a source for a summary blog on the lessons learned from histories of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Vichy France, the Spanish Civil War, and Apartheid South Africa:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/christians-coping-under-fascism-in-wwii-warnings-for-christians-under-trump/
This blog also references a blog on the Vatican II decree on Religious Freedom, which discards the medieval notion that the absolute monarchies and the Catholic Church are partners, and the modern notion that since the Communism is the enemy of the Catholic Church, and since Fascism is the deadly enemy of Communism, then the Church can tolerate Fascism. Vatican II embraces democracy and rejects fascism.
For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler, Victoria Barnett, 1992.
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, Guenter Lewy, 2000, 1964
Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany, Robert P Ericksen, 2012.
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/christians-under-hitlers-german-nazi-regime/
At the time of Hitler about 97% of Germans were registered as Christians, a third were Catholic, two-thirds were Protestant, most were Lutheran or Reformed Christians. The histories of how the Protestant Church and Catholic Church coped under Nazi Germany, though they overlap considerably, are two very different histories.
My main criticism of all three of these books is they assumed the reader is already acquainted with the detailed history of Nazi Germany. We felt compelled to include many references to the Wikipedia articles on the many key events that signaled turning points in the social history of Nazi Germany. We wonder why Victoria Barnett did not include a chapter with detailed biographies of the two leading members of the Confessing Church, Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
We picked up some insights in the book Complicity in the Holocaust, which covers the history of both the churches and the universities during the rise of Hitler, consent and collaboration with the Nazi regime, and how these institutions processed their past during post-war de-Nazification.
Guenter Lewy’s book, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, is on its second edition, reissued to incorporate the Catholic archives opened by the Vatican on the role of the Catholic Church during World War II. Lewy also used the Gestapo archives as a source. We found this to be a compelling narrative on a specialized topic, the Catholic Church under Hitler.
We found Victoria Barnett’s book on the Protestant Confessing Church movement to be absolutely captivating. She used as a primary source countless interviews with many in the Confessing Church movement. Many people think that the Nazi death camps were mainly in Poland, most people do not realize that Nazi Germany had thousands of labor and death camps, there were many labor camps in Germany. The reason why Germany never asked their housewives to be Rosy Riveters was because they enslaved many Jews, political prisoners, French POW’s, and many Poles and Eastern Europeans in their labor camps. Although these labor camps had a high mortality rate, few labor camps in Germany had gas chambers disguised as showers.
Victoria Barnett includes many excerpts from these interviews. This is from the interview describing a German labor camp near a parish (p. 101):
When the prisoners were taken to their work-place, one saw them- emaciated, wraith-like. Parish members and school children often put bread unobtrusively on the street curb, out of pity, so that the prisoners could grab it and get a little more nourishment. This happened even during the war, when food was rationed.
These interview excerpts relate how one German remembered how her lessons as schoolchild made her ashamed to be a German after her defeat (p. 27.):
We had the feeling we had no future. We suffered the consequences of World War I, which had broken out before we could walk, and we thought that we would never have a chance.
She tells of her thoughts as a teenager of how Hitler caused many Germans to be proud of their Fatherland (pp. 27-28):
We didn’t exactly have the wish for revenge, I don’t think it was about that, but we wanted to regain our national importance. We didn’t’ want to be somebody again- that sounds so much like ambition, it wasn’t that either- but we wanted to be German brothers alongside German brothers. Then along came this man who could hit things right on the target, and who stood for a united, great German Reich. That was the sweetest sound to our ears.
The interviews that described how Hitler was able to turn the German people against their Jewish neighbors are particularly chilling.
Many of the books I have consulted for my blogs on how Christians cope under Fascist regimes have interesting histories of their own, some even have these histories on their own Wikipedia pages.
These books are also a source for a summary blog on the lessons learned from histories of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Vichy France, the Spanish Civil War, and Apartheid South Africa:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/christians-coping-under-fascism-in-wwii-warnings-for-christians-under-trump/
This blog also references a blog on the Vatican II decree on Religious Freedom, which discards the medieval notion that the absolute monarchies and the Catholic Church are partners, and the modern notion that since the Communism is the enemy of the Catholic Church, and since Fascism is the deadly enemy of Communism, then the Church can tolerate Fascism. Vatican II embraces democracy and rejects fascism.
July 18, 2014
My Amazon review -
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3VVB8QL...
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3VVB8QL...
September 12, 2021
Great book. Really helped me with my assignment on Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church. The author had extensive, in depth research which was great. Lewy does have a standpoint in this book but it is backed up by factual evidence and expertise. Quite a heavy read but totallt recommend for anyone who would like to gain in depth knowledge of the topic.
April 23, 2016
Read for paper for HIST 3729
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews