Die Katholiken und das Dritte Reich: Kontroversen und Debatten , and: Die katholische Kirche im Dritten Reich. Eine Einführung (review)

Abstract

Die Katholiken und das Dritte Reich: Kontroversen und Debatten. Edited by Karl-Joseph Hummel and Michael Kisener. 2nd edition. (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh. 2010. Pp. 318. euro19,90 paperback. ISBN 978-3-50677071-4.) Die katholische Kirche im Dritten Reich. Eine Einfuhrung. Edited by Christoph Kosters and Mark Edward Ruff. (Freiburg: Verlag Herder. 2011. Pp 220. euro19,95. ISBN 978-3-45 1-30700-3.) After Germany's defeat in 1945, German Catholics were strongly criticized for failing to mobilize resistance against the Nazi regime. In the 1950s and 1960s they were even more bitterly criticized for their failure to prevent or protest the persecution and mass murder of the Jews. In response, German Catholic historians formed the Commission for Contemporary History and published a large number of documentary and narrative volumes. The tone was largely defensive. Now, eighty years after the Nazi rise to power, the time has come for a summary of where the current debate stands. The two books here under review, presumably sponsored by rival publishers, have remarkably similar titles and are collections of essays on very similar topics. No fewer than four scholars are to be found in both books, with inevitable recapitulations and repetitions. All are, in fact, engaged in defending German Catholicism from the kind of recurrent moralistic and anachronistic judgments such as those by Daniel Goldhagen or John Cornwell. But they are aware that such sweeping attacks have to be met with scholarly integrity, based on historically accurate analyses, which these books seek to provide. The dilemma for these historians is that the standards of assessment have been drastically raised. Making a convincing case for the Catholic political choices during the Nazi era is no easy task even in the hands of these experienced scholars. For instance, in their elucidation of the background of the 1933 Concordat, both Matthias Stickler in the first of these books and Heinz Hurten and Rudolf Morsey in the second repeat their long-held views that this was essentially a defensive measure, but say nothing about the widespread support for the new regime by most Catholics. Morsey states that the latest research has conclusively proved that there was no connection between the collapse of the Catholic Centre Party and the signing of the Concordat a month later, thus refuting the earlier canard of a quid pro quo. He claims that the Concordat provided an effective barrier against Nazi infiltration, but ignores the fact that the Catholic hierarchy clung to its supposed safeguards even after the Nazi anti-Catholic campaign was glaringly obvious. The bishops have never admitted making a mistake. In both books Michael Kisener examines the polemical arguments about whether Catholics can be seen as part of the anti-Nazi resistance. On the one hand, numerous priests were imprisoned for trying to oppose Nazi encroachments and persecution. …