Hitler’s ‘courtship’ of Britain was thus becoming increasingly confident and assertive, with threats of sanctions. Bearing in mind also that Hitler’s calculations were based on a completely false notion of British policy, which was in no way aiming for an alliance with Germany but rather attempting to lock it into a system guaranteeing European security, the path to open rivalry was inevitable.
Domestic consequences of the preparations for war
This fixation on war had a direct impact on domestic politics, leading to more radical measures against the Jews, while at the same time Hitler tried under the banner of the fight against communism to find a modus vivendi with the Catholic Church.
Hitler’s direct influence can be traced even in the details of these anti-Jewish measures. The ministerial bureaucracy resumed its efforts to remove Jews from economic life at a conference of senior civil servants on 29 September 1936. The Olympic Games had closed a few weeks before and so there was no more reason to hold back on the persecution of the Jews.120 Now the regime’s main concern was to exclude them from the economy but in such a way as not to slow down the dynamic of rearmament. As Hitler had demanded in the Four-Year Plan memorandum, the state began to appropriate Jewish property. The enormous efforts focused on rearmament made the economic situation precarious, however, and as a result the measures taken could not for the time being be too drastic. Although discrimination (for example exclusion from certain professions) was intensified, any further measures were delayed while the economy was at risk. Such measures included, for example, the proposed general ban on Party members having business dealings with Jews, a general ban on public bodies giving contracts to Jews, or the exclusion of Jews from land transactions and from economic involvement in the cultural sphere.
The demand Hitler had made in the Four-Year Plan memorandum for a ‘special Jewish tax’ was one of a bundle of anti-Semitic draft bills discussed by the ministerial bureaucracy at the turn of 1936/37.121 Although at the end of 1936 he had ordered that this tax be enacted in law by the time sentence was pronounced in the trial in Switzerland of Wilhelm Gustloff’s assassin, which was expected imminently, in December 1936 the plan was deferred, when the ministerial bureaucracy was unable to meet this deadline; Göring had vetoed the tax because of the continuing precarious economic and foreign exchange situation.122 Then, in the spring of 1937, Hitler made a personal decision to delay the process of identifying Jewish businesses, which had been pursued by the relevant ministries up to that point. In the summer work on the details of the Reich Citizenship Law, which had been announced in 1935 as part of the Nuremberg Laws, was also delayed.123 Instead Jewish businesses were to be identifiable indirectly through the adoption of a trade emblem for non-Jewish businesses. As these examples show, Hitler was more than ready to modify the methods used to persecute the Jews, and if necessary to adapt their pace, to suit other political objectives. Whereas an emblem for Jewish businesses and a special tax for Jews were in fact introduced in the autumn of 1938, a ‘Reich citizenship document’ as envisaged in the Reich Citizenship Law was, as stated above, never implemented.
Hitler also altered his policy with regard to the Catholic Church as a result of his drive to prepare for war. In contrast, however, to the radicalization seen in his persecution of the Jews, during the summer and autumn of 1936 he temporarily moderated his aggressive policy towards the Catholic Church and even appeared willing to compromise.
Less than three weeks after the elections of 29 March 1936 the regime had resumed its policy of hostility towards the Church. All private pre-schools were forbidden by law, which was a measure aimed principally at monastery schools.124 The Ministry for Churches was still unwilling to engage in negotiations over the as yet unresolved issue of Catholic organizations, while the regime exploited the uncertain legal position in order to put more pressure on them.125 The prosecutions of Catholic orders for foreign exchange offences were resumed in the spring.126 The regime also initiated a campaign against Catholic priests and lay brothers for alleged cases of sexual abuse. In a magazine article in mid-April Heydrich wrote of ‘over 100 monks’ who would be brought to book for ‘the vilest and most disgusting moral crimes’. The trials began at the end of May and were accompanied by a campaign against monasteries as ‘hotbeds of vice’.127
This campaign was largely Hitler’s doing. To Goebbels he expressed the view that homosexuality pervaded the whole Catholic Church: ‘It must be eradicated.’128 Even so, in mid-July Hitler told the Justice Minister to halt the trials until the Olympic Games were over.129 After the Games, however, he was undecided about whether to proceed with them again130 and in October decided to suspend them for the time being.131 Important factors in this decision were the emerging alliance with Italy and also the consideration that during the Spanish Civil War there had been graphic descriptions of alleged atrocities perpetrated by communists on Catholic believers; these would cease to be credible if priests in Germany were being systematically persecuted.
The German Catholic Church for its part was altogether aware of and actively pursued the opportunity to use the struggle against ‘Bolshevism’ in Spain as a bridge to the regime and to expand its own scope once more. In their pastoral letter of 19 August, in other words at the precise point when the Olympic Games were over and the renewed prosecution of priests was looming, the German bishops made a clear overture to the government, for we read regarding Bolshevism: ‘With God’s help may our Führer succeed in dealing steadfastly with this immensely difficult problem through the loyal cooperation of all national comrades!’132
On 4 November 1936 the Munich Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber had a three-hour meeting with Hitler on the Obersalzberg, intended by both sides to gauge whether the ‘fight against Bolshevism’ constituted a sufficiently robust foundation for the future relationship between the regime and the Church. After Hitler and Faulhaber had agreed that ‘Bolshevism’ was their common ‘mortal enemy’ discussion moved to the regime’s future Church policy. Hitler brushed aside Faulhaber’s complaints about Nazism’s hostility to the Church, namely, in addition to the prosecutions of priests, the secularization of schools, the activities of the German Christians, and the exclusion of Church associations. Faulhaber was surprised that Hitler distanced himself from Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century in extremely negative terms. Yet Hitler went on the offensive against Faulhaber when the topic of the ‘Church’s fight against racial laws’ was raised (at which point the hitherto calm discussion threatened to become heated), justifying compulsory sterilization as being essential for the good of the nation as well as being ‘God’s will’. Apart from this particular bone of contention, Faulhaber was generally very impressed with Hitler: ‘The Führer has a command of diplomatic and social formalities that is better than a born sovereign’s’, he noted. He did not let events take him by surprise, as governments in the Weimar Republic had done, but rather ‘he moves deliberately towards them’. He expounded ‘his ideas vigorously and confidently with self-control’. At various moments, however, he could become ‘very solemn and almost emotional’. He had, for example, said: ‘The individual does not count. The individual will die. Cardinal Faulhaber will die. Alfred Rosenberg will die. Adolf Hitler will die. That makes one reflect and be humble before God.’ There was no doubt that Hitler had a ‘faith in God’ and recognized Christianity as the ‘cornerstone of western culture’. ‘Less clear’, however, was his ‘view of the Catholic Church as a divine institution with its divine mission independent of the state, with its immutable dogmas, and with its historical and cultural greatness’.133
Immediately after this meeting the regime had to accept a painful defeat in its conflict with the Catholic Church. In Oldenburg the state government had at the beginning of November ordered that crucifixes should be removed from schools, but massive protests from the Catholic population had forced it to reverse this decision.134 In addition, on 1 December 1936 the law concerning membership of the Hitler Youth came into force –
a direct attack on the Church’s youth work. By means of this law, ‘German youth within Germany’ would be brought together ‘in its entirety’ and would be ‘educated physically, intellectually, and morally in the spirit of National Socialism to be of service to the nation and the national community’. The law explicitly stated that parents and schools were also required to participate in the programme of education, thus making it indirectly clear that (even if membership of the HJ was not at this stage made compulsory) the state would not tolerate any other agencies providing education. It was evident that Church youth work was being ruled out.135
A few weeks after his discussion with Hitler, Faulhaber composed a pastoral letter from the German bishops in which, possibly encouraged by the opposition in Oldenburg, he summed up the essence of the meeting from his point of view: The Church’s support for the regime’s efforts to ‘guard against Bolshevism’ was dependent on the upholding of the Concordat.136 Faulhaber sent Hitler the draft on 30 December 1936, referring to the contents as the product ‘of our agreement’ reached when they had met at the beginning of November.137 He concluded the letter with the words, ‘May Providence continue to preside over your doings!’
Hitler, however, took a rather different view from Faulhaber. As far as he was concerned, there was no ‘agreement’, but rather he intended to use his Church policy as a means of exerting pressure on the Catholic Church to continue supporting his ‘fight against Bolshevism’. What he understood by support was, however, an unreserved commitment to his regime.138 Faulhaber’s pastoral letter, which set conditions for this support, inevitably aroused his displeasure. As he explained on 4 January to his lunch guests, the Catholic bishops had ‘yet again fired off a pastoral letter opposing us’. Tirades against the Churches then followed, culminating in the statement that Christianity was ‘doomed’. Its destruction might ‘take a long time, but it will come’.139 These words marked a new phase in Church policy, which was to lead in 1937 to the most serious conflict to date with the Churches.
22
Conflict with the Churches and Cultural Policy
On 30 January 1937 the Reichstag met for a session intended by Hitler to demonstrate to the world that the regime had consolidated its position. At the ensuing meeting of ministers in the Reich Chancellery, however, there was a scandal. Hitler thanked the members of the cabinet formally for their work and announced that he intended personally to receive all ministers who were not yet Party members into the NSDAP and confer on them the ‘Gold Medal’. Then, as Goebbels noted, the ‘unimaginable’ happened: Paul von Eltz-Rübenach, the Reich Minister for Transport and Post, flatly refused this offer, citing as his reason the regime’s policy towards the Churches and demanding that Hitler explain himself, which the latter refused to do.1
Although Hitler claimed to be affronted by this disruption of the event, he was in fact aware that Eltz-Rübenach, a Catholic, was opposed to his Church policy. At the beginning of December he had voted for the Hitler Youth Law in cabinet only on condition that no ‘religious values’ would be destroyed; a few days earlier he had asked for the same assurance in a two-and-a-half-hour personal meeting with Hitler, which he then reported to Cardinal Faulhaber.2 Hitler was extremely suspicious of his Transport Minister: ‘When he sneezes, soot comes out, he’s so black’, he told Goebbels on 4 January.3 Inevitably, Eltz-Rübenach was immediately required to resign from his posts. In the months following Hitler took the opportunity to use the cabinet circulation procedure to gain consent for a further law that had previously met with resistance from Eltz-Rübenach.4 The planned Reich Schools Law, which aimed to impose the community schools favoured by the National Socialists, was intended to complete the process, already in train, of doing away with Church schools.
Eltz-Rübenach’s public opposition to Hitler’s Church policy was a clear signal that the regime was heading for a fundamental conflict with the Churches, and not only with the Catholic Church but with the Protestant Churches too. From the end of 1936 it was becoming increasingly clear that the efforts of Reich Churches Minister Kerrl to unite the fragmented Protestant Church would fail. Then, on 12 February 1937, the Reich Churches Committee, created by Kerrl in 1935, resigned. Kerrl announced that the Churches would be subordinated to state governance,5 and Hitler, who at a lunch in January had left Kerrl in no doubt about his dissatisfaction with the latter’s Church policy,6 then summoned Kerrl, Frick, Hess, Himmler, and Goebbels, as well as the state secretaries Hermann Muhs (Churches) and Wilhelm Stuckart (Interior), at short notice to a meeting on 15 February on the Obersalzberg.
At the meeting Hitler severely criticized Kerrl; at this point, as Goebbels records, Hitler claimed he could ‘do without a conflict with the Churches. He’s expecting the great world struggle in a few years. Germany can lose only one more war, then that will be it.’ For this reason the measures Kerrl was planning, which amounted to the creation of a summus episcopus (in the shape of the Minister for Churches), were out of the question for they could only be implemented ‘with the use of force’. In the short term Hitler accepted a suggestion from Goebbels that the Party and the state should keep out of disputes within the Protestant Church and that a synod should be elected to create a constitution so that the quarrels could take place in that arena. Within a year, Goebbels claimed, ‘they’ll be begging the state for help against each other.’7 Hitler therefore decreed that a general synod be elected so that the Protestant Church could create for itself ‘a new constitution and with it a new organizational structure with complete freedom and according to the wishes of the Church members’.8 The project was immediately given a propaganda spin as ‘the Führer’s conciliatory move to aid the Protestant Church’.9
After only a few days, however, Hitler changed course. Although at a meeting of high-ranking functionaries on 22 February about the ‘Churches issue’ he again justified his policy with reference to his wide-ranging foreign policy objectives, in contrast to the previous week he no longer wanted to keep the peace with the Churches in order to be able to survive the imminent ‘great world struggle’, but rather to neutralize them beforehand. ‘Separation of Church and State, an end to the Concordat’, was Goebbels’s summary. ‘Not the Party against Christianity. Instead we must declare ourselves to be the only true Christians. Then the full power of the Party will be turned on the saboteurs. Christianity is the watchword for priests to be destroyed, just as socialism was once the call to destroy the Marxist big wigs. For the time being, though, we’ll wait and see what the other side does.’10 Even so, it was five months, the end of July, before the preparations for the Church elections were finally discontinued. The idea was never taken up again.11
In the meantime relations with the Catholic Church had also, and dramatically, deteriorated. Annoyance at the Hitler Youth Law, the threat of the Reich School Law, the prosecutions for currency and sexual abuse offences, the seemingly endless negotiations about the conditions for implementing the Concordat, also the state’s clear lack of interest in putting its policies towards the Church on a legal basis12 finally prompted the Vatican to state its position clearly. On 21 March the Pope issued the encyclical ‘Mit brennender Sorge’ (With Deep Anxiety). It had been composed by Faulhaber in consultation with Pius XI and Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli personally and was widely circulated among German Catholics. It marked the nadir of relations between the regime and Catholicism. The Pope spoke out against the harassment of the German Churches, the Nazi notion of ‘belief in God’, and racial ideology.13 Hitler demanded that the document be ‘completely ignored’ and on 23 March the Ministry for Churches banned its dissemination.14
At the beginning of April Hitler geared himself up to retaliate. In a telephone call he told Goebbels he now intended to ‘let rip against the Vatican’. In concrete terms this meant the resumption of the prosecutions of priests for sexual offences, which had been suspended in the summer of 1936. The judicial authorities were given their instructions.15 They were to start with a group of prosecut
ions that were already with the public prosecutor in Koblenz. As the ‘overture’ Hitler was considering ‘the gruesome sexually motivated murder of a young boy in a Belgian monastery’.16 Naturally the propaganda media responded to this prompting and used the Belgian murder (which, it transpired, had occurred in quite different circumstances and had not even been committed in a monastery) as the start of an extensive campaign against the Catholic Church, which provided an effective backdrop to the series of trials in Koblenz that began at the end of April.17 In total more than 200 members of religious orders and priests were found guilty in 1936/37 of sexual abuse. While the prosecutions (as with the case of currency offences) were instigated for political reasons, on the whole they were based on altogether credible accusations.18
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