Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

  A highpoint of popular unrest provoked by Nazi attacks on the Church occurred in predominantly Catholic Bavaria in the summer of 1941. The Gauleiter of the ‘Traditional Gau’ of Munich and Upper Bavaria, one of Hitler’s oldest allies, Adolf Wagner, acting in his capacity as Education Minister, had ordered in April the removal of crucifixes from Bavarian schoolrooms. Whether, as was later claimed, he was trying ‘to give visible effect to the teaching handed down by Reichsleiter Bormann, that National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable opposites’, or whether he was acting on his own initiative cannot be established.168 Wagner’s order went out several weeks before Bormann’s circular, which cannot, therefore, have provoked the ‘action’. But Wagner probably read the signals coming from Party headquarters earlier in the year and acted – without apparently any consultation in Bavaria itself – to give direct meaning to the anti-Church drive in his own province, where the power of Catholicism was a thorn in the side of the Party, by attacking the very symbol of Christianity itself.

  The result, in any case, was to stir up a torrent of embittered protest, articulated above all by mothers of schoolchildren. Their letters to loved ones at the front were read by soldiers incredulous at what the ‘Bolsheviks in the homeland’ were doing, and threatened to have a damaging effect on the troops’ morale. Mass meetings in village halls, refusal to send children to school, collection of signatures on petitions, and public demonstrations by angry mothers meant that the matter could not be ignored. One petition, accompanied by a signed list containing 2,331 names, ran: ‘The sons of our town stand in the east in the struggle against Bolshevism. Many are giving their lives in the cause. We cannot understand that particularly in this hard time people want to take the cross out of the schools.’169 Wagner was forced to revoke his earlier order. But things had become so chaotic that Party functionaries in some areas only then started actually removing the crucifixes. It was autumn before the heat generated wholly unnecessarily by the issue gradually subsided. The damage done to the standing of the Party in such regions was immeasurable and irreparable.170

  Hitler did not escape the wrath of Bavarian Catholics. Farmers in some areas removed his picture from their houses. ‘Rather Wilhelm by the grace of God than the idiot of Berchtesgaden (Lieber Wilhelm von Gottes Gnaden als den Depp von Berchtesgaden)’ was a sentiment registered in Munich.171 But the Führer myth – of his ignorance of actions carried out behind his back by his underlings – was still strong, if not wholly unscathed. ‘The Führer doesn’t want this, and certainly knows nothing of this removal of the crosses,’ shouted one woman during a demonstration.172 ‘You wear brown shirts on top, but inside you’re Bolsheviks and Jews. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to carry on behind the Führer’s back,’ ran an anonymous letter traced to a woman in the Berchtesgaden area.173 As such remarks indicate, the strength of feeling on the Crucifix issue was entirely compatible with support for Hitler, and for the ‘crusade against godless Bolshevism’, which Catholic Bishops themselves had applauded.174 But the Crucifix issue, though confined to one part of Germany, had cast momentary light on the increasing fragility of backing for Party and regime as the inevitable radicalization and lack of coordinated, pragmatic policy intensified. Aggression turned outwards, as long as it was painless and successful, was largely unobjectionable, it seems. But as soon as aggression was directed inwards, at widely held traditional belief systems as opposed to unloved but harmless minorities, it was a different matter altogether. The ‘total claim’ made by Nazism, its intolerance towards any institutional framework the Movement did not control, and the inbuilt ‘cumulative radicalization’ of the system meant, therefore, an inexorable trend towards greater, not less, social conflict.175

  This now emerged in an issue at the very heart of the regime’s ideology as, in midsummer 1941, serious disquiet over the ‘euthanasia action’ came out into the open. All too credible rumours about the killing of asylum patients had been circulating since summer 1940. Taking place in selected asylums within Germany, in close reach of major centres of population, it had been impossible to keep the ‘action’ as close a secret as had been intended. Those in the immediate vicinity saw the grey buses arrive, the patients unload and enter the asylum, the crematorium chimneys continually smoking.176 Occasionally, as at Absberg in Franconia in February 1941, there had been public demonstrations of sympathy for the victims as they were loaded on to the buses to take them to what everyone knew was a certain death.177 The secrecy, and absence of any public statement, let alone law, authorizing what was known to be happening, stoked the fires of alarm. Protest letters landed in the Reich Chancellery and the Reich Justice Ministry. Some were even from dyed-in-the-wool National Socialists.178 Others, on occasion not mincing words, were from prominent churchmen.179 But the churchmen up to this point had kept their protests confidential. On 7 July a pastoral letter from German bishops was read out in Catholic churches, declaring that it was wrong to kill except in war or for self-defence.180 But this veiled attempt to criticize the ‘euthanasia action’ left no obvious mark. The death-mills stayed working.

  Then, on 3 August 1941, Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, the Catholic Bishop of Münster in Westphalia, referring to the pastoral letter, in a most courageous sermon in the St Lamberti Church in Münster, openly denounced in plain terms what was happening. Galen, deeply conservative, anti-liberal, and anti-socialist, had been thought in some Church circles in the 1930s even to be a Nazi sympathizer.181 In June 1941, like some other Catholic bishops, he had welcomed the attack on the Soviet Union and offered his prayers for the ‘successful defence against the Bolshevik threat to our people’.182 But by July, as Münster suffered under a hail of British bombs, he delivered a series of sermons denouncing in the most forthright terms the Gestapo’s suppression of religious orders in the city.183

  On 14 July, a day after a sermon attacking the closure of the monasteries, Galen sent a telegram to the Reich Chancellery requesting Hitler to defend the people against the Gestapo. The following Sunday, 20 July, he read out the telegram in church. Two days later he wrote to Lammers with what could only be seen as a criticism of Hitler and his state. The Führer’s involvement with foreign and military matters was such, Galen remarked, that he was not in a position to deal with all the petitions and complaints sent to him. ‘Adolf Hitler is not a divine being, raised above every natural limitation, who is able to keep an eye on and direct everything at the same time. However, when as a result of this overloading with work of the responsible leader… the Gestapo shatters unrestrained the home front… then I know (I am called upon)… to raise my voice loudly.’184

  Popular unrest at the closing of the monasteries was also brought to Hitler’s attention by Lammers on 29 July while a protest by Bishop Franz Rudolf Bornewasser of Trier was being discussed. It seems likely that Galen’s telegram, and the contents of his letter to Lammers, were referred to Hitler at the same time. Bishop Bornewasser’s confidential protest had already linked the unrest over the closing of monasteries to the disquiet about the killing of ‘unworthy life’. Galen now did the same – but in public. His fury over the dissolution of the monasteries lit the fuse for his open assault on the Nazi ‘euthanasia programme’.185

  In his sermon on 3 August, Bishop Galen again pilloried the Gestapo for its attacks on Catholic religious orders. Then he came to the ‘euthanasia action’. ‘There is a general suspicion verging on certainty,’ the Bishop stated, ‘that these numerous deaths of mentally ill people do not occur of themselves but are deliberately brought about, that the doctrine is being followed, according to which one may destroy so-called “worthless life”, that is kill innocent people if one considers that their lives are of no further value for the nation and the state.’ In emotional terms, Galen pointed out the implications. People who had become invalids through labour and war, and the soldier risking his life at the front, would all be at risk. ‘Some commission can put us on the list of the “unproductive”, who in their opinion h
ave become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves. Who will be able to trust his doctor any more? He may report his patient as “unproductive” and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted, and followed.’186

  Even before Galen delivered his sermon, Hitler had been sufficiently concerned about morale and popular unrest at such a critical juncture of the war that he had issued orders to Gauleiter to cease until further notice all seizures of Church and monastic property. Under no circumstances were independent actions by Gauleiter permissible. Similar instructions went to the Gestapo.187 According to Papen, Hitler attributed all the blame to the hotheads in the Party. He had told Bormann that the ‘nonsense’ had to stop, and that he would tolerate no conflict, given the internal situation.188 It was simply a tactical move. Hitler sympathized with the radicals, but acted pragmatically.189 As his comments a few months later made plain, he fully approved of the closure of the monasteries.190 Only the need for peace in relations with the Churches to avoid deteriorating morale on the home front determined his stance. Events in the Warthegau (where by 1941 94 per cent of churches and chapels in the Posen-Gnesen diocese were closed, 11 per cent of the clergy murdered, and most of the remainder thrust into prisons and concentration camps) showed the face of the future.191 A victorious end to the war would unquestionably have brought a renewed, even more savage onslaught on the Churches. But in the context of such widespread unrest, Hitler had to take seriously the impact of Galen’s sermon on the killing of asylum patients, a copy of which had been brought to him by Lammers.192 Moreover, with that sermon, reproduced in thousands of clandestine copies and circulated from hand to hand, the secrecy surrounding the ‘euthanasia action’ had been broken.193

  The Nazi leadership realized that it was helpless in the circumstances to take strong action against Galen. It was suggested to Bormann that Galen should be hanged. Bormann answered that, while the death penalty was certainly warranted, ‘considering the war circumstances the Führer would scarcely decree this measure’. Goebbels acknowledged that if anything were undertaken against the Bishop, support from the population of Münster and Westphalia could be written off during the war.194 He hoped that a favourable turn in the eastern campaign would provide the opportunity to deal with him.195 Not surprisingly, since he was aware of Hitler’s concern about the decline in morale in the wake of the Church conflict, Goebbels spoke against arousing public discussion over ‘euthanasia’ at precisely that time. ‘Such a debate,’ noted Goebbels, ‘would only inflame feelings anew. In a critical period of the war, that is extraordinarily inexpedient. All inflammatory matters should be kept away from the people at present. People are so occupied with the problems of the war that other problems only arouse and irritate them.’196 Goebbels’s comments on popular opinion during his visit to Führer Headquarters on 18 August must have reinforced Hitler’s view that the time had come to calm the unrest at home. On 24 August, Hitler stopped the T4 ‘euthanasia action’ as secretly as he had started it two years earlier.197

  On the very same day, Hitler, through an internal Party circular, ordered replacement buildings for damaged hospitals in areas threatened by bombing raids to be constructed. The barrack-like prefabricated constructions were to be attached to asylums and nursing homes, which were to have their existing patients relocated in order to make room for air-raid victims. The costs of the removal of the patients were to be borne by the ‘Community Patients Transport Service’ – precisely the same organization, run by the Chancellery of the Führer, whose buses had carried the asylum inmates to their deaths in the ‘euthanasia’ centres. Specifically acknowledging the disquiet which this would cause, the order – signed by none other than Hitler’s doctor, Karl Brandt, who along with Bouhler had been authorized in autumn 1939 to carry out the ‘euthanasia action’ – stated that relatives would be informed in advance about the destination of the patients, and would be able to visit them there. The press would undertake a propaganda campaign to explain what was happening and prevent rumours spreading.198

  In his sermon of 3 August, Bishop Galen had cleverly brought the ‘euthanasia action’ into connection with the bombing-raids on Münster, which he hinted were a ‘punishment of God’ for the offences against the Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Galen’s sermon had linked the three areas – attacks on the Church, ‘euthanasia’, and bombing-raids on German cities – in which alienation of the population from the regime, and the consequent threat to morale, was greatest. The population of the industrial belt of Westphalia were bearing the brunt of the raids. As SD reports pointed out, morale in the area was suffering accordingly. At the same time the attacks on the monasteries and religious orders in the area had reached their high point. And this was at precisely the juncture when the patients from the Westphalian asylums were being deported to the ‘euthanasia’ killing-centres. Any attempt to provide emergency hospitals for the victims of the air-raids, to combat the effect on morale, had to make use of the spare capacity of the asylums. But this could only be attained by removing the patients. And this would immediately give rise to further unrest. It was in the grip of this strait-jacket that Hitler bowed to the pressure created by Galen’s protest. His pragmatic solution, it seems, was to halt the T4 ‘Action’ in order to be able to offer the hospital care for air-raid victims, and the accompanying assurances necessary to calm the unrest in Westphalia and restore morale.199

  By the time of Hitler’s ‘halt order’, the T4 ‘euthanasia action’ had already killed more than the 70,000 victims foreseen at the outset of the ‘programme’.200 Bouhler had in fact boasted to Goebbels as early as January 1941 that 40,000 mentally sick patients had already been liquidated, and that there were another 60,000 still to be dealt with.201 By the end of 1941, the number gassed, starved to death, or poisoned with lethal injections was nearer 100,000 than 70,00o.202 The ‘halt order’ ended the ‘euthanasia programme’ neither completely nor permanently. Tens of thousands of concentration-camp prisoners, ill or incapable of work, were, after selection by doctors, to perish in existing, or newly established, ‘euthanasia’-centres by 1945.203 As for the T4 personnel: new tasks were rapidly found for them. The experts in gassing techniques were, within a few weeks, already being redeployed to start the planning in Poland of a far larger mass-killing ‘programme’: the extermination of Europe’s Jews.

  V

  In his lengthy talk with Hitler on 23 September, Goebbels took the opportunity to describe the state of morale within Germany. Hitler, remarked the Propaganda Minister, was well aware of the ‘serious psychological test (Belastungsprobe)’ to which the German people had been subjected over the past weeks. After the notable slide in morale, Goebbels pressed Hitler, who had not appeared in public since the start of the Russian campaign and had last spoken to the German people on 4 May, following the victorious Balkan campaign, to come to Berlin to address the nation. Hitler agreed that the time was ripe, and asked Goebbels to prepare a mass meeting to open the Winter Aid campaign at the end of the following week.204 The date of the speech was fixed for 3 October. Even on the day before, Goebbels had a struggle with Führer Headquarters to establish that Hitler would, indeed, be coming to Berlin to speak in the Sportpalast. Only in the evening did Hitler finally confirm his appearance. Goebbels was now at last able to make the preparations. That day, 2 October, ‘Operation Typhoon’, the great offensive against Moscow, had been launched.205 The early news from the front was good. The scene for the speech could not have been better, thought Goebbels. He hoped the Führer would be in good form. ‘The impression of his address in Germany and in the entire world will then, after a six-month period of silence, be an immense one.’206

  In his proclamation to the soldiers on the Eastern Front at the start of ‘Operation Typhoon’, Hitl
er described Bolshevism as essentially similar to the worst kind of capitalism in the poverty it produced, stressing that ‘the bearers of this system are also in both cases the same: Jews and only Jews!’207 Now was the last push before winter to deliver the enemy ‘the deadly thrust’.208 Similar sentiments were to dominate his address to the nation.

  Around 1p.m. next day, Hitler’s train pulled into Berlin. Goebbels was immediately summoned to the Reich Chancellery. He found Hitler looking well and full of optimism. In the privacy of Hitler’s room, he was given an overview of the situation at the front. The advance was proceeding better than expected. Big successes were being attained. ‘The Führer is convinced,’ commented Goebbels, ‘that if the weather stays moderately favourable the Soviet army will be essentially smashed within fourteen days.’209 Through the proclamation, every soldier knew what was at stake: annihilating the Bolshevik army before the onset of winter; or getting stuck half-way and having to put off the decision until the following year. Hitler was of the opinion that the worst of the war would be over if the attack succeeded: ‘for what will we gain in new armaments and economic potential from the industrial areas lying before us! We have already conquered so many sources of oil that the oil which the Soviet Union had promised to us on the basis of earlier economic treaties now flows to us from our own production.’210 The USA were in no position to affect the course of the war. Once Germany had the decisive Russian agricultural and industrial areas in its possession, ‘we will be fairly independent and can cut off the English imports through our U-Boats and Luftwaffe’.211 Hitler was in no mood for compromises. He thought it necessary to come to a clear decision with Britain, since otherwise the ‘bloody showdown would have to be repeated in a few years’. He did not think it likely that Stalin would capitulate, though he could not rule it out.212 He also thought the ‘London plutocracy’ would continue to wage tough resistance. But his view was ‘that everything that happens is on the whole the product of fate’. It was good, in retrospect, that none of the peace feelers since 1939 involving Poland, France, and Britain had come to anything. ‘The most cardinal problems would then have still remained unsolved, and would doubtless sooner or later have again led to war. Another military force besides ours must never exist in Europe.’213