How “Catholic” Was the Early Nazi Movement? Religion, Race, and Culture in Munich, 1919–1924

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Race And Culture ◽  
Basic Level

Amongthe more durable tenets of postwar West German historiography was the widespread conviction that Catholicism and Nazism were, at some most basic level, mutually exclusive entities. While a flood of critical studies in the 1960s began to erode this conviction at least around the edges — as scholars subjected to greater scrutiny the actual responses of Catholic opinion leaders, the German episcopate, and the Vatican to the Nazi regime — the image of a fundamental, albeit not quite perfect, incompatibility between Catholicism and Nazism has remained essentially intact to the present day. The durability of this image has been due to some degree to the steady stream of primarily apologetic monographs produced by a large and energetic Catholic scholarly community in Germany, whose works have stressed the heroic oppositional stance and victimhood of the Catholic Church during the Third Reich.

scholarly journals Mit Brennender Sorge: An Exegesis on the Encyclical to the Third Reich

Elements ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Valdez
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German People ◽  
Or Organization

Throughout the 1930s, the ascendance of the Nazi regime not only diminished the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, but alos directly countered fundamental Catholic doctrines. In face of the mounting atrocities of the German government, Pope Pius XI, with the help of Eugenio Pacelli, nuncio to Germany, and German Bishop Michael Faulhaber, in an unprecedented outreach to the entire German faithful, issued the encyclical <em>Mit Brennender Sorge</em>. Appealing particularly to the youth and the laity, the encyclical challenged Germans to use conscience as a final resort in assessing the validity of a religious institution or political movement. In its address to the German people, Mit Brennender Sorge reflected the delicacy of the relationship between the Holy See and the Nazi regime by not referencing any person, party, or organization specifically. Nevertheless, the purpose and the timeliness of the encyclical was lost on few, partially dispelling the widespread belief that the Catholic Church turned a blind eye to the Third Reich.

The Attitude of the Catholic Church toward the Jews: An Outline of a Turbulent History

Numen ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 209-228
Author(s):  
Konrad Szocik ◽  
Philip L. Walden
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
The Third ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Papal States ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Church

The practice of imprisoning Jews in ghettos and marking them out with special signs (as was introduced by Pius vi in the Papal States, inter alia, in 1775) is associated more with the Nazism of the Third Reich than with the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the Church maintained its policy of perfidis Judaeis until the beginning of the 1960s, when it was stopped by Vatican ii, probably because of the pressure of social and political factors. This topic is, however, difficult to explain, often very controversial, and subject to many different interpretations. Here we show that anti-Semitic ideas were present in the Church before Vatican ii, and that they have a religious, theological, and philosophical background. We discuss those interpretations which, in an ideological sense, connect anti-Semitism in the Church with the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. This article underlines the revolutionary change in the Church’s attitude toward Jews in Vatican ii, a change caused primarily by the Holocaust.

The Language of Ideology: Lingual Manipulation of Readers in German Literature of the Third Reich

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Michael Press
Keyword(s):  
German Literature ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
Underlying Basis ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
German People

In recognizing more than just hyperbole in their critical studies of National Socialist language, post-war philologists Viktor Klemperer (1946) and Eugen Seidel (1961) credit persuasive words and syntax with the expansion of Hitler's ideology among the German people. This popular explanation is being revisited by contemporary philologists, however, as new historical argument holds the functioning of the Third Reich to be anything but monolithic. An emerging scholarly consensus on the presence of more chaos than coherence in Nazi discourse suggests a new imperative for research. After reviewing the foundational works of Mein Kampf (1925) and Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), the author confirms Klemperer and Seidel’s claim for linguistic manipulation in the rise of the National Socialist Party. Most importantly, this article provides a detailed explanation of how party leaders employed rhetorical language to promote fascist ideology without an underlying basis of logical argumentation.

Turning Headlines into Lies

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-71
Author(s):  
Karl Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Public Office ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German Citizen

This chapter criticises the Neue Freie Presse. Unlike its liberal colleagues in Berlin, it does not want to be taken by surprise. Being one of the old guard, it surrenders but never dies—surrendering even before the battle has begun. It was the Neue Freie Presse which assured its readers in print that “tranquillity and order prevail” in the Third Reich and that “every German citizen of the Jewish faith can go about his business” at any time and even after the exclusion of Jewish doctors and lawyers from public office. On the eve of the boycott, the Neue Freie Presse even printed the announcement by one firm that in their sphere of operations, there has been no incidence of persecutions against Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

Diplomatie en «Realpolitik» : Aspecten van de Belgische politieke en diplomatieke relaties met het Derde Rijk, 1933-1935

Res Publica ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-242
Author(s):  
Guido Convents
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
International Security ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
First Moment

Although Belgian diplomats analysed the nazi-regime from the very first moment as intrinsically crimina!, inhuman, dictatorial and revenge seeking, they showed the nazis in 1934-1935 that dialogue was possible.  The nazi-diplomacy, with secrecy as a keystone, permitted some of the most important Belgian politicians and businessmen to meet the.nazi-leaders without being disapproved by public opinion or even parliament.  This resulted in a «practical» way to improve political and above all economical relations between Belgium and nazi-Germany. It can be seen as a Belgian answer to the inability of France and Great Britain to force the Third Reich to respect the international security treaties which were to guarantee the sovereignty of Belgium.

Memory and the Cityscape: The German Architectural Debate about Postmodernism

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen James-Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Community ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Way ◽  
At Home

Few tools of Nazi propaganda were as potent or as permanent asarchitecture. At the instigation of Hitler, who had once aspired to bean architect, the Nazi regime placed unusual importance on thedesign of environments—whether cities, buildings, parade grounds, orhighways—that would glorify the Third Reich and express its dynamicrelationship to both the past and the future. Architecture and urbandesign were integral to the way the regime presented itself at homeand abroad. Newsreels supplemented direct personal experience ofmonumental buildings. Designed to last a thousand years, these edificesappeared to offer concrete testimony of the regime’s enduringcharacter. A more subtle integration of modern functions and vernacularforms, especially in suburban housing, suggested that technologicalprogress could coexist with an “organic” national communityrooted in a quasi-sacred understanding of the landscape.

Tailoring Truth

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-36
Author(s):  
Mikkel Dack
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The Third ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Insight Into

As part of the post-war denazification campaign, as many as 20 million Germans were screened for employment by Allied armies. Applicants were ordered to fill out political questionnaires (Fragebögen) and allowed to justify their membership in Nazi organizations in appended statements. This mandatory act of self-reflection has led to the accumulation of a massive archival repository, likely the largest collection of autobiographical writings about the Third Reich. This article interprets individual and family stories recorded in denazification documents and provides insight into how Germans chose to remember and internalize the National Socialist years. The Fragebögen allowed and even encouraged millions of respondents to rewrite their personal histories and to construct whitewashed identities and accompanying narratives to secure employment. Germans embraced the unique opportunity to cast themselves as resisters and victims of the Nazi regime. These identities remained with them after the dissolution of the denazification project and were carried forward into the post-occupation period.

Between Rome and the Godless: Martin Niemöller’s Apologetic Moves, 1930–50

2021 ◽  
pp. 74-94
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ziemann
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Third ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Third Reich

Martin Niemöller’s apologetic interventions from the late 1920s to the early 1950s reveal a complicated trajectory. He stood at the front line of the Protestant struggle against aggressive secularism in Weimar Germany. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Niemöller quickly emerged as the figurehead of attempts to defend the dogmatic integrity of the Protestant churches, yet also maintained the conversation with the German Christians in a common front against the ‘godless’ Bolsheviks and Freethinkers. After he had seriously contemplated converting to the Roman Catholic Church from 1939 to early 1941, he returned to a combative assertion of his Protestant identity vis-à-vis the Catholics in the early Federal Republic. Overall, the chapter argues that the dynamics of the religious field during the Third Reich are best understood as an intensification.

Strange Bird

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele K. Troy
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
The Third ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Third Reich

This book is about the Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism. Albatross was, from its beginnings in 1932, a “strange bird”: a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. A precursor to Penguin, it distributed both middlebrow fiction and works by edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks in English from the heart of Adolf Hitler's Reich. The book reveals how the Nazi regime tolerated Albatross—for both economic and propaganda gains—and how Albatross exploited its insider position to keep Anglo-American books alive under fascism. In so doing, the book exposes the contradictions in Nazi censorship while offering an engaging detective story, a history, a nuanced analysis of men and motives, and a cautionary tale.

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