Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany

rdf:langString Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany

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rdf:langString Norman Davies

rdf:langString Anton Gill

rdf:langString Peter Hoffmann

rdf:langString August von Galen, Bishop of Münster

rdf:langString Theodore S. Hamerow

rdf:langString Alfred Delp SJ

rdf:langString Bishop Clemens August von Galen of Münster

rdf:langString Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse

rdf:langString Konrad von Preysing of Berlin

rdf:langString Saint Edith Stein

rdf:langString Pope Pius XII secretly acted as an intermediary between the German Resistance and the Allies, during preparations for the coup.

rdf:langString Claus von Stauffenberg, a Catholic nobleman and leader of the 1944 July Plot.

rdf:langString The Wolf's Lair conference room soon after the failed assassination of Hitler. The Nazi oppression of the churches was a motivating factor for the involvement of Stauffenberg and other leading conspirators in the July Plot.

rdf:langString Josef Müller was sent to Rome in 1939 by the German Resistance, to seek assistance from the Pope in a plot to overthrow Hitler.

rdf:langString August 2016

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rdf:langString Catholic Resistance to Nazism

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rdf:langString Alfred Delp Mannheim.jpg

rdf:langString CAvGalenBAMS200612.jpg

rdf:langString Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg small.jpg

rdf:langString Claus von Stauffenberg .jpg

rdf:langString E.Klausener0001.jpg

rdf:langString GHSaliege3.jpg

rdf:langString Irena Sendlerowa 1942.jpg

rdf:langString Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2006-0217, Berlin, Ansprache des neuen Bischofs Preysing.jpg

rdf:langString Malina, J.B. - Orbis Catholicus, 1 .jpg

rdf:langString Saint Edith Stein.jpg

rdf:langString Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1972-025-10, Hitler-Attentat, 20. Juli 1944.jpg

rdf:langString On the Road to the Wolf's Lair: German Resistance to Hitler

rdf:langString An Honourable Defeat

rdf:langString Extract from Britain's Catholic Herald, Oct. 1938

rdf:langString Protest of the Dutch Bishops, 1942

rdf:langString Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw

rdf:langString The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945

rdf:langString Intended "Broadcast of Government" of the 1944 July Plot conspirators.

rdf:langString Proposed radio broadcast to follow the July Plot against Hitler of 1944.

rdf:langString God requires this protest from us, God who does not allow murder. It is required of a Catholic conscience. Each being, calling itself human, has a right to brotherly love. The blood of the innocent calls for vengeance to the heavens. He, who does not support this protestis not Catholic.

rdf:langString The invasion was a reply to a courageous sermon the Cardinal had preached in the Cathedral earlier in the evening, in which the Cardinal told his packed congregation that " in the last few months you have lost everything!' This sermon marked the end of Cardinal Innitzer's attempt to establish a religious peace with the Nazis. The attempt has failed. Cardinal Innitzer is now in line with his German brothers openly urging Catholics to resist anti-Catholic measures.

rdf:langString Any description of the Rising which does not present the role of religion in the experiences both of soldiers and civilians is not worth reading. As death in all its forms grew ever more prevalent, the Roman Catholic religion, with its emphasis on redemption and its belief in the afterlife, grew ever more relevant. Religious observance stood at unusually high level throughout the Rising, among both insurgents and civilians. Priests held regular masses in all parts of the city, often in abbreviated open-air services among the ruins. They were on constant call to administer the last rites, and to conduct funerals ...

rdf:langString Who among "the Soldiers of Christ"ecclesiastic or laymandoes not feel himself incited and spurred on to a greater vigilance, to a more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ's enemies ... who ... wantonly break the Tables of God's Commandments to substitute other tables and other standards stripped of the ethical content of the Revelation on Sinai, standards in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no place?

rdf:langString We demand juridical proof of all sentences and release of all fellow citizens who have been deprived of their liberty without proof ... We the German bishops shall not cease to protest against the killing of innocent persons. Nobody's life is safe unless the Commandment, "Thous shalt not kill" is observed ... We the bishops, in the name of the Catholic people ... demand the return of all unlawfully confiscated and in some cases sequestered property ... for what happens today to church property may tomorrow happen to any lawful property.

rdf:langString "There are sacred obligations of conscience from which no one has the power to release us and which we must fulfil even if it costs us our lives."

rdf:langString Ours is a time of great tribulations of which two are foremost: the sad destiny of the Jews and the plight of those deported for forced labor. ... All of us must be aware of the terrible sufferings which both of them have to undergo, due to no guilt of their own. We have learned with deep pain of the new dispositions which impose upon innocent Jewish men, women and children the deportation into foreign lands. ... The incredible suffering which these measures cause to more than 10,000 people is in absolute opposition to the divine precepts of justice and charity. ... Let us pray to God and for the intercession of Mary ... that he may lend his strength to the people of Israel, so severely tried in anguish and persecution.

rdf:langString The shattered freedom of spirit, conscience, faith and opinion will be restored. The churches will once again be given the right to work for their confessions. In future they will exist quite separately from the state ... The working of the state is to be inspired, both in word and deed by the Christian outlook ..."

rdf:langString For years a war has raged in our Fatherland against Christianity and the Church, and has never been conducted with such bitterness. Repeatedly the German bishops have asked the Reich Government to discontinue this fatal struggle; but unfortunately our appeals and our endeavours were without success.

rdf:langString The Catholic Church... had generally viewed the Nazi Party with fear and suspicion. It had felt threatened by a radical ultranationalist ideology that regarded the papacy as a sinister, alien institution, that opposed denominational separatism in education and culture, and that at times appeared to promote a return to Nordic paganism. The establishment of the Third Reich seemed to portend the coming of a bitter conflict between church and state.

rdf:langString It quickly became clear that [Hitler] intended to imprison the Catholics, as it were, in their own churches. They could celebrate mass and retain their rituals as much as they liked, but they could have nothing at all to do with German society otherwise. Catholic schools and newspapers were closed, and a propaganda campaign against the Catholics was launched.

rdf:langString [T]heories began to appear which denied the unity of the human race, affirming an original diversity of races. In the 20th century, National Socialism in Germany used these ideas as a pseudo-scientific basis for a distinction between so called Nordic-Aryan races and supposedly inferior races. Furthermore, an extremist form of nationalism was heightened in Germany by the defeat of 1918 and the demanding conditions imposed by the victors, with the consequence that many saw in National Socialism a solution to their country's problems and cooperated politically with this movement. The church in Germany replied by condemning racism.

rdf:langString Let us once again tread the path of justice, decency and mutual respect! In this spirit each of us will do his duty. Let us follow the commands of God which are engraved on our conscience, even when them seem hard to us: let us do everything to heal wounded souls and alleviate suffering.

rdf:langString [This is an] "Hour of Darkness" ... in which the spirit of violence and of discord brings indescribable suffering on mankind ... The nations swept into the tragic whirlpool of war are perhaps as yet only at the "beginnings of sorrows" ... but even now there reigns in thousands of families death and desolation, lamentation and misery. The blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, which, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization, written in indelible characters in the annals of history, has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits, relying on the powerful intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace.

rdf:langString Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany was a component of German resistance to Nazism and of Resistance during World War II. The role of the Catholic Church during the Nazi years remains a matter of much contention. From the outset of Nazi rule in 1933, issues emerged which brought the church into conflict with the regime and persecution of the church led Pope Pius XI to denounce the policies of the Nazi Government in the 1937 papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. His successor Pius XII faced the war years and provided intelligence to the Allies. Catholics fought on both sides in World War II and neither the Catholic nor Protestant churches as institutions were prepared to openly oppose the Nazi State. An estimated one-third of German Catholic priests faced some form of reprisal from authorities and thousands of Catholic clergy and religious were sent to concentration camps. 400 Germans were among the 2,579 Catholic priests imprisoned in the clergy barracks at Dachau. While the head German bishop generally avoided confronting the regime, other bishops such as Preysing, Frings and Galen developed a Catholic critique of aspects of Nazism. Galen led Catholic protest against Nazi "euthanasia". Catholic resistance to mistreatment of Jews in Germany was generally limited to fragmented and largely individual efforts. But in every country under German occupation, priests played a major part in rescuing Jews. Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide estimated that Catholic rescue of Jews amounted to somewhere between 700,000 and 860,000 people – though the figure is contested. The martyrs Maximilian Kolbe, Giuseppe Girotti and Bernhard Lichtenberg were among those killed in part for aiding Jews. Among the notable Catholic networks to rescue Jews and others were Hugh O'Flaherty's "Rome Escape Line", the Assisi Network and Poland's Żegota. Relations between the Axis governments and the church varied. Bishops such as the Netherlands' Johannes de Jong, Belgium's Jozef-Ernest van Roey and France's Jules-Géraud Saliège issued major denunciations of Nazi treatment of Jews. Convents and nuns like Margit Slachta and Matylda Getter also led resistance. Vatican diplomats like Giuseppe Burzio in Slovakia, Filippo Bernardini in Switzerland and Angelo Roncalli in Turkey saved thousands. The nuncio to Budapest, Angelo Rotta, and Bucharest, Andrea Cassulo, have been recognised by Yad Vashem in Israel. The nationalist regimes in Slovakia and Croatia were pro-clerical, while in Slovene, Czech, Austrian and Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, repression of the church was at its most severe and the Catholic religion was integral to much Polish resistance. Author Klaus Scholder writes: "There was no Catholic resistance in Germany, there were only Catholics who resisted." The Vatican policy meant that the Pope never challenged Catholics to side either with Nazism or with Catholic morality, and Pius XII was so adamant that Bolshevism represented the most terrible threat to the world that he remarked "Germany are a great nation who, in their fight against Bolshevism, are bleeding not only for their friends but also for the sake of their present enemies." In a letter of autumn 1941 Pius XII wrote to Bishop Preysing, "We emphasise that, because the Church in Germany is dependent upon your public behaviour...in public declarations you are duty bound to exercise restraint" and "requires(d) you and your colleagues not to protest."