Instead, Rosenberg counterattacked. He replied with his own two-hundred-page polemic, The Church’s Shadowed Men, which defended Myth by insisting that the book laid claim to a truth that went deeper than historical or theological accuracy. “That which I maintain in my Myth of the 20th Century and see as absolutely necessary for our epoch,” Rosenberg said, “would endure even if all the historical evidence contradicted every detail of it.” Shadowed Men was immediately placed on the Index beside Myth, much to Rosenberg’s delight.
By the end of 1934, Myth had sold more than 150,000 copies. Shadowed Men sold twice that number. Within a year, sales of Myth itself had doubled. By 1935, the book was into its seventieth edition, with 353,000 copies in print.
For all Rosenberg’s profit and pleasure, Hitler was very possibly annoyed by the scandal. He disliked Myth, considered it unreadable, and said he had managed to read only a small portion of it. As an author, he may have been chafed that Myth had received so much serious critical attention, unlike Mein Kampf. He wouldn’t have been pleased that the public attention elevated Myth to a position where it was viewed as an ideological companion to Mein Kampf. Rosenberg had repeatedly lobbied Hitler to accord Myth official status, which he had refused to do, but the book had risen to de facto official status on the tide of its proscription. It eventually sold more than two million copies, making it second only to Mein Kampf as the best-selling book of the Third Reich.
Of more serious consequence for Hitler were the religious implications. According to paragraph 47 of the updated ecclesiastical law of 1900, “the penalty of excommunication is forthwith incurred by all, who, though conscious of law and penalty yet read or keep or print or defend books of heretical teachers or apostates maintaining heresies.” It now became a sin punishable by automatic excommunication for millions of Roman Catholics, including students, to read or own the Rosenberg book.1 Not only were the millions of German Roman Catholics whom Hitler had attempted to appease through a concordat with the Vatican suddenly confronted with a choice between competing claims of church and state, but Hitler’s own party colleagues were forced to take sides in the Rosenberg debate, which is exactly what the Austrian bishop Alois Hudal had intended.
In the negotiations leading up to the concordat in the spring and summer of 1933, Hudal had identified two distinctive camps within the Nazi movement: the “conservatives” such as Göring and Goebbels, who were concerned mainly with political power, and the party “radicals” such as Rosenberg, who promoted a bizarre cultish Aryan ideology. As a complement to the indexing of Rosenberg’s Myth, Hudal recommended a public relations campaign to expose these divisions and force Hitler to take sides.
“In L’Osservatore Romano and all other possible newspapers abroad, and also in speeches, yes, even speeches, the expectation and hope should be emphasized that Adolf Hitler and Franz von Papen would like religious reconciliation,” Hudal proposed in an internal Vatican memorandum. He urged that this “be repeated again and again—in different variations.” Hudal believed that public expectation could compel Hitler and Papen to distance themselves from the radicals and embrace fully the terms of the concordat as part of their “duty to the happiness” of the German people. “Thus and in this sense, the position of the Vatican and all possible Catholic papers abroad must be the identical demand in the identical spirit: Papen and Hitler, Hitler and Papen!” Hudal thumped. “Only in this manner can a potentially beneficial mood be created.”
By recommending the indexing of Myth and the launching of a press campaign, Hudal intended not only to expose and aggravate a public schism within Germany, but also to bolster his own credibility within the Vatican in anticipation of a second and even more consequential phase to his plan. Once the Nazi movement had been polarized, the “radicals” alienated on the extreme left and the “conservatives” lured into the Christian camp, Hudal intended to propose a theological blueprint for the melding of Roman Catholic belief with National Socialist doctrine. Hudal saw great potential here.
In his study of National Socialist ideology, Hudal recognized a number of fundamental alignments between Catholics and Nazis. Both shared a common belief in blind obedience to authority. The Nazi notion of the Führerprinzip was little more than a secular rendering of papal infallibility. Both Nazis and Catholics shared a deep-seated antipathy toward Jews. Hudal noted that as early as the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas had in his treatise De regimine Judaeorum warned of the attempt by the Jews to rule the world. If the Nazis could be persuaded to abandon “anti-Semitism” in favor of “anti-Judaism,” that is, hating the Jews as a religious rather than a racial community, Hudal believed that the Germans could create a catechized form of fascism that would represent the most powerful political and social force on the Continent and serve as a bulwark to the greatest common threat to Europe: the spread of Bolshevism. Hudal spoke of a “Wehrmacht of the spirit,” and noted that the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, had himself declared that the greatest threat to communism was a fusion of fascism and Roman Catholicism.
In the autumn of 1934, Hudal traveled from Rome to Germany to assemble a comprehensive library of books on National Socialist ideology. He then returned to Rome to begin work on the theological architecture for his plan. When Hudal outlined his strategy during a private audience with Pius XI, the pope listened patiently then told the Austrian bishop that he had misjudged Hitler and his movement by assuming that National Socialism represented a belief system. “There you have made your first mistake. You cannot talk about anything spiritual in this movement,” the pontiff told Hudal. “It is a massive materialism.” To Pius’s mind, there was no desire on the part of the Nazis to compromise with Christianity, and there never would be. The movement was about tactics and power, not faith or belief. At the end of the audience, Pius told Hudal that he did not believe in the “possibility of an understanding” between Nazis and Catholics, but he wished Hudal “good luck” with his enterprise. Hudal disregarded the papal counsel. He had read Mein Kampf and had noted the passages in chapter one in which Hitler talked about his time as a choirboy at the Benedictine monastery at Lambach and its impact on his person. “Since in my free time I received singing lessons in the cloister at Lambach, I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals,” Hitler had written on page 6. “As was only natural the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.” Though Hitler’s interests migrated with time, those early years left an indelible impression. One need only look at the swastika carved into the keystone of the Lambach monastery or listen to Hitler’s music instructor, the aging pater Bernard Grüner, talk about his former pupil. “The swastika here in our abbey impressed itself upon the child, and the little Hitler dreamed of it endlessly,” Grüner told one journalist in the summer of 1933.
For Hudal, the residual impact of these years manifested itself everywhere in Hitler’s later life, from the black “twisted cross” on the white host-shaped background set against the blood-red banner to the “cathedral of light” at the annual party rally in Nuremberg, to Hitler’s frequent allusions to biblical and liturgical rhetoric in his public speeches. “And the power and the hope and the glory of the Fatherland,” Hitler concluded one address in raging crescendo, then gasped a brief, seemingly reflexive denouement, “Amen.” As an Austrian Catholic, Hudal felt he “knew” Hitler.
In the spring of 1935, when Hudal approached Papen with his proposal for a Catholic-Fascist fusion, Papen instantly saw the potential and believed it would appeal to Hitler, not just for tactical reasons but also because of its deeper resonances with his Austrian-Catholic upbringing. “That a prelate of such stature, a native German from the old Danube Monarchy would devote himself to the German question with ‘burning passion’ would have to make a strong impression on Hitler,” Papen reasoned.
As vice chancellor, Papen over the last two years had spent time with Hi
tler on a regular basis, and on several occasions had engaged with him in religious discussions. Like Hudal, Papen felt he knew Hitler. That spring, when he discussed Hudal’s proposal a number of times with Hitler, he was encouraged by the “great interest” Hitler showed in the idea. Papen advised Hudal not to publish his opus until he had had an opportunity to share it with Hitler personally and secure his personal endorsement. Hudal agreed to wait.
On June 8, 1936, during a meeting with Hitler and Goebbels, Papen presented Hudal’s draft manuscript, extolling its ability to bridge the gap between Catholic theology and Nazi ideology, which would form a bulwark against the Bolshevik threat. As Hudal anticipated, Hitler seemed amenable to the idea. Goebbels remained skeptical. He took the manuscript and said he would review it. A week later he sent Papen a list of seventeen points of serious contention. “Book of Bishop Hudal forbidden. Papen lobbied hard for him,” Goebbels scribbled in his diary. But Papen did not relent. He shared Goebbels’s response with Hudal, and recommended the bishop make the suggested amendments. Then he wrote to Hitler urging him to endorse Hudal “in order to keep this man capable of fighting for us and not to expose him to the clique of cardinals who are his superiors and can silence him forever if his upcoming book is officially banned.” The deliberations dragged on into the autumn.
As intended, the Hudal manuscript seeded dissension among the Nazi elite. Papen, of course, pressed hard for publication. Rosenberg was outraged that a bishop would “dictate” terms to the party. In early October, Hitler, tired of the posturing and infighting over the Hudal manuscript, said he would “determine whether or not that book will appear in the Reich, and that is that.” He “endorsed” the book. Hudal’s Foundations of National Socialism was published that month by Johannes Günther Verlag, in Vienna. The fissures among the Nazi Party elite were clear, the lines hardening, but the alignment appeared to be tilting in Hudal’s favor. “If I had not acted resolutely, the book would still not be published, since Goebbels still has not given his official ‘yes,’ while Göring, Hitler, Hess and Neurath are for you,” an inside source of Hudal’s reported, then enthused, “We will reach our goal!!! Even against Rosenberg.”
By October 1936, Hitler had wearied of the incessant public scuffles with the Church and even more so of Rosenberg’s Myth. He dismissed it as the product of a “narrow-minded Balt who thinks in horribly complicated terms.” According to Hitler, even the title was wrong. The Nazi movement was based on modern science, not a “myth.” As a National Socialist, Rosenberg should have known better. He should have called his book Knowledge of the Twentieth Century, a title that would have underscored the empirical advancements of human understanding in the twentieth century. Further, Hitler hardly knew a Nazi leader who had read the book, let alone understood it.
In September 1935, Hitler had already publicly distanced himself from the party radicals. “His speech is a singular rejection of Rosenberg and Streicher,” Goebbels noted in his diary. “And both of them applaud the loudest.” But Hitler was also tiring of Goebbels. For nearly two years, the minister of propaganda had orchestrated a series of “indecency trials,” exposing sexual abuses among the clergy. Goebbels had headlines splashed across the daily papers until the public grew weary. On October 25, Goebbels wrote of the end of his campaign against the clergy, and Hitler’s desire to resolve differences with the church. “Trials against the Catholic Church temporarily stopped,” Goebbels noted in his diary. “Possibly wants peace, at least temporarily. Now a battle with Bolshevism. Wants to speak with Faulhaber.”
Hitler’s desire to speak with Michael Faulhaber was significant. As archbishop of Munich and Freising, Faulhaber was not only the spiritual steward to the largest Catholic community in Germany, but also one of the fiercest critics of Nazi ideology. Jews, Protestants, and Catholics alike had packed the Munich Cathedral to hear his Advent sermons in December 1933, when he patently rejected Nazi ideology and embraced the German Jews as “brothers.” When the government demanded a list of Jews who had converted to Christianity between 1900 and 1935, Faulhaber complied by informing them that 331 “Israelis”—138 men, 178 women, and 15 children—had been baptized in Bavaria. Nazi officials demanded the names, but Faulhaber refused to provide them or even the specific years of conversion. They were now Roman Catholics; they would not be abandoned or betrayed by their church. “National Socialist ideology adheres to its law on blood and race, ‘A Jew remains a Jew,’ whether he is a baptized Jew or not,” Faulhaber stated. But “from the perspective of the bishops in which the former Jew according to the word of Paul from 2 Corinthians 5:17 becomes a ‘new-born being,’ a true child of God, through baptism, we hold out our hand to him as does any other diocese in this confirmation. With this the baptized Jew has received a right from the Church authorities to be treated as a Christian and no longer as a Jew and at least not to be handed over to anti-Semitic enemies.”
Faulhaber was as principled as he was imperious, both intellectually and spiritually. Like Schulte, he had hailed Hitler’s appointment as chancellor for the stability and promise it brought to Germany, especially in the fight against Bolshevism, but he was not to be moved on matters of faith, morals, or principle, especially when it came to the more radical aspects of Nazi ideology. As early as the spring of 1930, Faulhaber had warned of the dangers of Rosenberg’s Myth at a bishops’ conference in Fulda, where he had cited and critiqued extensive passages. Hitler had alluded to this gathering in his meeting with Cardinal Schulte when he blamed the “bishop in Munich” for popularizing Rosenberg’s book.
During Faulhaber’s first Advent sermon in December 1933, the Munich bishop had assailed the Rosenberg-style radicalism that was penetrating German society. He did not mention Hitler’s chief ideologue by name but the allusions to Rosenberg’s work were obvious. Faulhaber noted that racial research, “in itself a neutral matter in regard to religion,” had been “assembled for battle against religion and was shaking the very foundations of Christianity.” Faulhaber spoke of a necessary response on the part of the church. “When it comes to such voices and movements the bishop cannot be silent,” he stated. Faulhaber was no less direct when he arrived at the Berghof on the morning of November 6, 1936.
The Obersalzberg was shrouded in mist. An autumn drizzle fell, chilling the Alpine air. Hitler led Faulhaber to the privacy of his second-floor “study” in the company of Rudolf Hess. No sooner were they seated than Hitler told Faulhaber he was going to say things that the cardinal was not going to like but that needed to be stated openly.
Echoing Hudal’s thesis, Hitler said that Bolshevism was a threat not only to Germany but also to Christianity. He noted the emergence of the left-wing Popular Front movement in France, the rising threat in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other countries, and especially in Spain, where at that very moment, the fascists were fighting communists for control of Madrid. “The Catholic Church must not allow itself to be deceived,” Hitler said. “If National Socialism does not become the master over Bolshevism, then it will be over with Christianity and the Church in Europe.”
Hitler then turned to the matter at hand: the relationship between National Socialism and the Catholic Church. “Christianity is insolubly bound to our people and to the Occidental culture by a thousand-year-old history,” he told Faulhaber; he also said that in his briefcase he had 380 cases regarding priests who had been accused of preaching against National Socialism. The Catholic Church needed to abandon this “ridiculous bagatelle” against the state. With the looming Bolshevist threat, both Catholics and fascists had greater worries. However, “if the Church continues to oppose National Socialism and continues the battle, then National Socialism will have to continue without the Church,” Hitler told Faulhaber. He went on for nearly an hour.
Faulhaber listened patiently and then responded. No one needed to lecture him about the Bolshevik threat, he said. He had been preaching vehemently and repeatedly against Bolshevism for a decade and a half. He cited his speech at the Catholic
gathering in Salzburg in 1921, when he denounced Bolshevism as “the greatest affliction of our time.” He said he had spoken out similarly again in 1921, in 1922, and in 1930. Hitler could rest assured that the Church had long recognized the danger of communism. The Church supported the national government and respected the head of state. But Hitler needed to understand, in no uncertain terms, that the Church did not do this out of “tactical considerations.” The Church was willing to obey the laws of the state as long as they did not violate fundamental principles. “I believe that in no religion is the notion of authority emphasized more strongly than in the Catholic Church,” he told Hitler. “But certainly when your officials or your laws offend the Church dogma or the laws of morality, and in so doing offend our conscience, then we must be able to articulate this as responsible defenders of moral laws.”
The Nazi government, Faulhaber charged, regardless of what it said, had waged war for the last three years on the Catholic Church. Not only were Nazi youth events scheduled on Sunday mornings to keep young people away from communion, but more than six hundred religion teachers had lost their jobs in Bavaria alone, and the number would soon rise to nearly seventeen hundred. Worse still, the state had introduced policies the Church could never endorse, including the sterilization of criminals and people with genetic defects.
Faulhaber lectured for a solid hour, with Hitler listening mostly in silence. However, when Faulhaber complained about radicals, and recalled recent plays, handbills, and speeches calling for the “eradication of Christendom,” Hitler protested. He told Faulhaber that “when there was peace between National Socialism and the Church, all that will stop. We have nothing to do with this movement!” Hitler insisted, “I have always told my political party chiefs that I do not want to play the role of the religious reformer,” Hitler insisted. “I do not want to do that and I will not do that.”
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