The Confessing Church and Hitler's Foreign Policy: The Czechoslovakian Crisis of 1938

Abstract

The Confessing Church did not address itself to Hitler's foreign policy until war seemed imminent during the Czechoslovakian crisis of September, 1938. On the day of the Munich Agreement (September 30) liturgies of thanksgiving were held instead of a prayer service of confession and intercession written and circulated a few days earlier by three members of the Provisional Administration of the Confessing Church, Albertz, Bohm, and Miller. A controversy was touched off the following October 27 when the S.S. newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, printed the prayer service and accused its authors of treason. Confessing Church moderates, led by Bishops Marahrens, Wurm, and Meiser, made no accusations of treason, but publicly disassociated themselves from the authors. Confession and intercession were unsuitable for the occasion, said the critics, and the failure to mention explicitly Hitler and the Sudeten Germans was a grievous error. On both counts Confessing Church radicals defended the prayer service and accused the bishops of yielding to pressure from Nazi authorities. The authors denied that either what the prayer service contained or omitted constituted a criticism of Hitler's foreign policy. Even though the Confessing Church did not question the morality of Hitler's foreign policy or consider whether it could in good conscience support a Hitler war effort, the prayer service set a precedent, followed by many Confessing Church clergymen thereafter: instead of proclaiming the righteousness of Germany's cause and praying for victory, Albertz, B6hm, and MUiller confessed Germany's sins, interceded for all peoples, and prayed for peace.