The most visible and successful leader of resistance against Hitler in Germany was a Catholic bishop, Count Clemens von Galen of Munster. This man was an old-fashioned German patriot and conservative, and had not left a great impression as priest. His promotion to a smallish episcopate in mostly Lutheran Lower Saxony was not regarded with great expectation by anyone; the general feeling seems to have been that he was advanced faute de mieux, and because of his illustrious forebears. But from the moment he became a Bishop, he stared down courageously and tirelessly all the criminals in the Reich Government, discouraged ministers from even visiting his city, and denounced every crime he could hear of. A giant of a man, six foot four and with the manner of a sergeant-major, he had a faith as simple and firm as all his other principles, and while he would probably have volunteered to go as the humblest of chaplains to serve the German army, he hated like poison the whole Nazi world of political immoralism and pantheist fraud. The Pope signalled his support for him by summoning him to Rome - he, the Bishop of little Munster - along with the Cardinals Archbishops of Berlin, Cologne and Munich, for the conference on German affairs from which Mit Brennender Sorge sprang. His two crowning achievements were the great speech against euthanasia, which single-handedly put an end to the Nazi murder of the old and sick in 1941, and the fact that, in spite of their hatred for him, the Nazis were unable to lay a hand on him. In 1945, he was made a Cardinal - again, a most unusual honour for a bishop of lesser rank - but he died almost immediately, surrounded by the love of his people and the admiration of all the civilized world.
Cardinal von Galen was a hero cut out of rock, and certainly not every high prelate was willing to take the same risks. Worse still, outside Germany there were Catholics who were willing to take the help of Germany to settle matters with their domestic enemies - the Vichy French, the Slovaks, the Croats. But in general, the Church was understood to be in opposition to the Nazi regime from beginning to end, and when the war was over, Jewish communities from across Europe thanked the then Pope Pius XII for everything he had done for them (including saving the lives of almost the whole Italian Jewish community). The Lutherans had their heroes and their martyrs - foremost among them Karl BArth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer - but they were simply not able to act as effectively as Popes PIus XI and XII and Cardinal von Galen were. The collapse of the Confessing Church left them living, effectively, the lives of the catacombs, and they did not have the time or opportunity to recover organizationally.
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Date: 2008-06-04 02:35 pm (UTC)Cardinal von Galen was a hero cut out of rock, and certainly not every high prelate was willing to take the same risks. Worse still, outside Germany there were Catholics who were willing to take the help of Germany to settle matters with their domestic enemies - the Vichy French, the Slovaks, the Croats. But in general, the Church was understood to be in opposition to the Nazi regime from beginning to end, and when the war was over, Jewish communities from across Europe thanked the then Pope Pius XII for everything he had done for them (including saving the lives of almost the whole Italian Jewish community). The Lutherans had their heroes and their martyrs - foremost among them Karl BArth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer - but they were simply not able to act as effectively as Popes PIus XI and XII and Cardinal von Galen were. The collapse of the Confessing Church left them living, effectively, the lives of the catacombs, and they did not have the time or opportunity to recover organizationally.