PeaceDocs | Bibliography | Lessons of the 20th Century
CHAPTER 12: The Lessons of the Twentieth Century
Introduction
880. Bokenkotter, Thomas. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. Rev. ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979, 301-67.
A very useful introduction to the social and intellectual currents in the Catholic church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These include Christian Democracy, Social Catholics, worker welfare associations, the Catholic workers and Catholic labor union movements, which all had mass appeal and sought to instill traditional Catholic ideas of social justice into the new capitalist world of the nineteenth century. Decentralization and individual responsibility were also cornerstones of the movements. Good background for the foundations of modern Catholic thought on peace and justice.
Bokenkotter also provides a very useful comments on the popes of the twentieth century and notes that they followed a consistent policy that contained an increasingly strong criticism of capitalism and that stressed the rights of the poor and the oppressed. The major work of the modern papacy for peace has been in the realm of world order and internationalism, including limitations on national sovereignty and its efforts for disarmament.
880.1 Brock, Peter. Pacifism in Europe to 1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.
A fundamental study.
881. Geany, D.J. “Catholic Action,” NCE 3: 262-63.
This refers to the organized movement of Catholic lay people directed by the church hierarchy. Pius X was the first pope to use the modern concept, and Pius XI gave it definition. By the time of Pius XII it was already being replaced by the term “lay apostolate.” John XXIII played down the formal hierarchical elements in the institution. Primarily aimed at issues of personal, familial, and social mores — secondarily at social and economic issues — Catholic Action focused on those aspects on modern liberal societies that the hierarchy was uncomfortable with or incapable of addressing. The movement never really became political in the sense that it opposed the status quo or sought to change fundamental political, economic, or social structures and had little effect on the rise of Fascism, Nazism, or European militarism. Demonstrates the limitations of Catholic work for peace and justice in the early twentieth century.
882. Holmes, J. Derek. The Papacy in the Modern World. New York: Crossroad, 1981.
A survey of the twentieth century, including detailed discussion of Benedict XV and World War I; Pius XI and Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; Pius XII, the Nazis, Soviets, and World War II.
883. Rhodes, Anthony. The Power of Rome in the Twentieth Century: The Vatican in the Age of Liberal Democracies 1870-1922. New York: Franklin Watts, 1983.
This and 884 provide an excellent introductory history of the papacy in the twentieth century. This volume begins with the reign of Pius IX, and includes discussions of the Kulturkampf in Germany, Leo XIII and the new Catholic social message, and Benedict XV and World War I.
884. —. The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974.
Discusses the equivocal attitude of Pius XI toward the Italian Fascists and their invasion of Ethiopia, his ultimate support of Franco in the Spanish civil war, and his gradual withdrawal of support for Catholic political parties, all in the interests of harmony with the secular state. Rhodes views the Reich Concordat of 1933 in much the same light, an attempt to preserve church liberties from the secular state and to ally with the state against the threat of “godless socialism.” He also traces Pius XI’s progressive disillusionment with the Nazis, culminating in his explosive condemnation in the bull Mit Brennender Sorge.
885. Vidler, Alec. A Century of Social Catholicism. London: S.P.C.K., 1964.
Traces the movement as a reaction to the industrial revolution and as an attempt to interpret the new methods of work and production in the light of traditional Catholic social teaching. Pages 125-29 and 143-47 examine Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII.
Catholic Peacemaking in the Twentieth Century
886. Bainton, Roland. Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace. Knoxville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1960.
While the peace movements of the nineteenth century stemmed from the international peace societies, both Catholic and Protestant mainline churches tended to avoid contact with them.
887. Beales, A.C.F. The History of Peace. London: G. Bell, New York: Dial, 1931.
For a general introduction to Catholic peace history in the twentieth century. This focuses on the peace societies in Europe and the United States with brief introductions on pacifism, internationalism, papal arbitration, Catholic and Christian peace societies, and worker’s peace groups. Beales notes the suspicion with which papal peace initiatives were met, but records the brilliant record of Benedict XV, who was a pacifist in both theory and practice. Useful survey.
888. Biocca, Dario. “Il nuovo pacifismo e il dibattito sulle consequenze economiche dell’imperialismo e della guerra: 1913-1915,” Nuovo Rivista Storica 66 (5-6, 1982): 547-63.
Not seen.
889. Cooper, Sandi E. “The Guns of August and the Doves of Italy: Intervention and Internationalism,” Peace and Change 7, 1-2 (1981): 29-44.
Focuses on the debate among the middle class and intellectuals over maintaining Italy’s neutrality during World War I, with Italian peace societies leading the way. Until the 1890s liberal internationalism was the central theme of Italian peace societies. Such internationalists were not pacifists, however, and they opposed Tolstoy’s and the Quakers’ opposition to military training. Even while militarism became a central concern during the 1890s, with the invasion of Belgium in World War I the peace societies shifted decidedly in favor of military intervention. A good introduction to liberal, secular peace movements that are not pacifist and have no particularly inherent opposition to war.
890. Jougnelet, Suzanne. “Un pacifiste dans la Grande Guerre. Les letters de Roger Martin du Gard de 1914 à 1918,” Revue de Bibliothèque Nationale 1,2 (1981): 99-107.
Not seen.
Papal Peace Efforts
891. Brière, Yves de la. L’organization international du monde contemporain et la papauté souveraine. 3 vols. Paris: Editions S. Spes, 1924-30.
Papal peace efforts, stemming from the pope’s position as the universal pastor. Typical of the internationalist “pacifism” between the world wars.
892. —. Église et paix. Paris: Flammarion, 1932.
While the church has always professed a doctrine of peace and has always worked for the “pacification of peoples,” its peacemaking was “not a sentimental pacifism, confused and lacking in judgment, but indeed a positive concept, realistic and fertile, in harmony with all the postulates and all the just scruples of patriotism.” For de la Brière these include the military requirements of defense and war.
893. Fernessole, Pierre. La papauté et la paix du monde de Grégoire XVI à Pie XI. Paris: Beauchesne, 1948.
Begins with a good historical survey of papal peace activity before Gregory XVI, and then divides his main study into the era before World War I, including Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X. Then devotes a separate chapter to Benedict XV and to Pius XI.
894. Flannery, Harry W., ed. Pattern for Peace: Catholic Statements on International Order. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1962.
This is probably the most useful collection of papal documents on papal peacemaking in the twentieth century. Includes writings of every pope from Leo XIII to John XXIII, including documents from papal secretaries of state. This work is indispensable for Catholic peace history.
895. Guerry, Émile M. The Popes and World Government. G.J. Roettger, trans. Baltimore: Helicon, 1964.
Focuses on Pius XII’s internationalism under a variety of topics, including the community of nations, international order, natural law, the rights and duties of states, obstacles to a community of nations, the disruptions of war, and the church’s role in forging a community of nations.
896. Herberichs, G. Théorie de la paix selon Pie XII. Paris: A. Pedone, 1964.
Not seen.
897. Koenig, Harry C., ed. Principles of Peace: Selections from Papal Documents, Leo XIII to Pius XII. Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943.
Like Flannery’s (894) this is an excellent collection of papal letters, addresses, radio broadcasts, and encyclicals covering the popes of the twentieth century to World War II.
898. Schaefer, Mary C. A Papal Peace Mosaic 1878-1936. Excerpts from the Messages of Popes Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI. Washington, DC: CAIP, 1936.
A brief collection of excerpts from papal writings on war and peace.
899. Sweeney, Francis, S.J., ed. The Vatican and World Peace: A Boston College Symposium. Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1970.
Here is a collection of congratulatory essays by learned and powerful men, handsomely bound and printed, expounding the merits of the internationalist system. “Twenty copies of this book,” the reader is reassured, “have been specially bound in full vellum.” Includes 902 and 914.
900. Wright, J.J. “Peace: Modern Papal Teaching.” NCE 11:41–45.
Pages 41-42 offer examples of papal texts ranging from Leo XIII to Pius XII that demonstrate that modern Catholic teaching of peace as the work of justice has characterized papal thought throughout the twentieth century.
Pius XII
901. Blet, P. “Pie XII et la France en guerre,” Revue de l’Église Française 69 (July 1983): 209-32.
Briefly reviews the career of Mgr. Pacelli as a papal diplomat in France and his efforts to reconcile both European powers bent on war and factions within France during and after the struggle.
902. Cardenale, Archbishop H.E. “The Contribution of the Holy See to World Peace in the Areas of Diplomacy, Development and Ecumenism.” In Francis Sweeney, S.J., ed. The Vatican and World Peace: A Boston College Symposium. Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1970, 79-121.
Pius XII’s record with the Jews has not gotten a fair hearing. He wrote at least 124 letters to the German bishops condemning atrocities against the Jews, and in 1942 publicly condemned German genocide of Jews in Poland. While the allies did nothing to save the Jews, Pius XII’s quiet work through church agencies saved 860,000 throughout Europe.
903. Conway, John S. “The Silence of Pope Pius XII.” See 904, 79-108.
The dispute over Pius XII’s complicity with the Nazi regime’s atrocities.
904. Delzell, Charles F., ed. The Papacy and Totalitarianism Between the Two World Wars. New York: John Wiley, 1974.
Includes 903, 906.
905. Duclos, P. Le Vatican et la seconde guerre mondiale. Paris, 1955.
Not seen.
906. Ellsberg, Patricia Marx. “An Interview with Rolf Hochhuth.” See 904, 108-24.
Hochhuth’s play, The Deputy, became an overnight sensation and revived the controversy over Pius XII’s complicity through silence with the Nazis. Hochhuth discusses the play, his characters, and his critics.
907. Falconi, Carlo. The Silence of Pius XII. Bernard Wall, trans. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.
There were many areas in which the pope knew of German atrocities and war crimes: against the Jews, in Poland, and Yugoslavia. Even though he was often urged to speak out, the pope chose to remain silent. Falconi maintains that this was not from fear but from “respectable if inadequate motives.”
908. Friedlander, Saul. Pius XII and the Third Reich. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.
A collection of documents on papal diplomacy. The pope’s silence in relation to the Holocaust and the war is one of the main themes of the collection. Good background material.
909. Gonella, Guido. The Papacy and World Peace: A Study of the Christmas Messages of Pope Pius XII. London: Hollis and Carter, 1945.
Commentaries on the messages of Christmas 1939, 1940, and 1941, with excerpts from the Christmas messages of 1942, 1943, and 1944. Gonella prefaces this collection with remarks that papal peacemaking for Pius XII was the “work of justice” and that international peace could only be achieved through justice on a world scale. Pius repeatedly called for an international organization that would have the legislative and judicial powers of the League of Nations but that would also have stronger powers to compel nation-states to order. The rights of minorities, of the oppressed and poor, arms control and disarmament, the rights of conscience, and the law of nations were also constant themes of the pope’s messages.
910. Halecki, Oscar, with James F. Murray. Eugenio Pacelli: Pope of Peace. New York: Creative Age Press, 1951.
Traces Pacelli’s early life and career, his early papacy and World War II, his first peace efforts, and the pope’s five-point peace plan outlined in Summi Pontificatus. Then follows his relations with Hitler and Stalin, postwar reconstruction, the pope’s attitudes to the communists, and his encouragement of the United Nations.
911. Hehir, J. Bryan. “The Just-War Ethic and Catholic Theology: Dynamics of Change and Continuity.” In Shannon, Thomas A., ed. War or Peace? The Search for New Answers. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982, 15-39.
By the end of World War II, Pius XII had reduced the classic just-war criteria of defense, avenging evil, and restoring violated rights to only one: defense from unjust attack. While pacifism remained unacceptable to the pope, his narrowing of just-war causality helped move the church closer to a pacifist stance.
912. Holmes, J. Derek. The Papacy in the Modern World. New York: Crossroad, 1981.
Reviews the large amount of research on Pius XII and the Holocaust and notes that the pope received many letters of thanks after the war from Jewish groups for his saving hundreds of thousands from the Nazis. Holmes examines the issues of Pius’ silence raised in Rolf Hochhuth’s controversial play, The Deputy. Holmes notes that the playwright based his portrait of Pius’ complicity with the Nazis on a letter deliberately sent to deceive Berlin about his real efforts. In so doing he has clouded the pope’s record and memory. In the end, however, Pius’ exercise in restraint in an effort to avoid even greater evil played into the cynical hands of the Nazis. His efforts to save individuals ultimately cost him his reputation.
With the end of the war Pius became a fervent proponent of a new international system and gradually came to view all the old moral categories of defense as outmoded in light of new weapons, including nuclear ones.
913. Rhodes, Anthony. The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974.
Examines the problems of Pius XII’s reign: the German Catholic support of the Nazi war effort, papal opposition to the Italian war effort, Catholic resistance in France and Belgium, and Catholic complicity with the Nazis in such areas as Croatia. Rhodes surveys all literature on Pius XII’s silence over the Holocaust and concludes that open opposition would have resulted in the pope’s murder at the hands of the Nazis and even greater persecution of Jews and Christians alike. Open excommunication of the Nazis, he argues, would not have prevented the atrocities of Hitler’s regime.
914. Walsh, Michael, P., S.J. “Introductory Remarks.” In Francis Sweeney, S.J., ed. The Vatican and World Peace: A Boston College Symposium. Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1970.
Walsh sums up papal peace efforts as a “question of fulchrums and levers.” “Stalin asking the question, ‘The Pope — how many divisions has he?’ was missing the point.”
German Catholics, Nazis, and World War II
915. Chickering, Roger P. “The Peace Movement and the Religious Community in Germany 1900-1914,” Church History 38 (1969): 300-311.
By 1900 internationalism had come to replace personal nonviolence as the meaning of pacifism. Societies for disarmament and international law were at their peak in the years just before the first world war. In Germany such peace societies tended to be predominantly Protestant and middle class, and to be closely monitored by the state. Pacifist groups had no influence at all and were derided by every group in German society, including the church, which was one of the groups’ most strident critics. In the end the internationalist “pacifists” failed utterly to prevent war.
916. Claver, Henri. “Une résistance allemande à l’hitlerisme,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Réligieuse 62 (July-September, 1982): 261-68.
Not seen.
917. Conway, John S. “The Struggle for Peace Between the Wars: A Chapter from the History of the Western Churches,” Ecumenical Review 35 (Jan. 1983): 25-40.
Examines the World Alliance of Churches for Promoting International Friendship founded in Constance in August 1914 with the support of the Carnegie Endowment. The movement was predominantly protestant and middle class until 1918 when the devastation of the war forced it to realize that its amateur and sentimental approach had been totally ineffective. Only then was a new emphasis put on individual conscience and Gospel morality.
918. Gallin, Mary Alice. “German Resistance to Hitler; Ethical and Religious Factors.” Ph.D. dissertation. Washington, DC: Catholic University, 1961.
On the religious resistance in general.
919. Graml, Hermann, H. Mommsen, H. Reichhardt, and E. Wolf, eds. The German Resistance to Hitler. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Emphasizes the political resistance. Church resistance is covered by 926.
920. Helmreich, Ernst C. The German Churches Under Hitler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979.
An excellent study of the attitudes of all churches to the Nazi regime. Sections on the Catholic response are very useful to a study of Catholic peacemaking during the period. Analyzes the background of German Catholicism in the nineteenth and twentieth century, the Nazis fear of possible Catholic resistance, and Catholics’ early criticisms of the Nazi Party as anti-Christian. Yet Helmreich also carefully delineates the conflict within German Catholicism between this criticism and the desire among German Catholics to prove their loyalty to the state. He asserts that churchmen were also naive about the true intent of the Nazis and glossed over their own anti-Semitism.
Traces Catholics’ loyalty to the Center Party in the 1933 election that brought Hitler to power and their continued opposition to the SA and SS. Follows events from the Reich Concordat between the Vatican and Hitler’s government in 1933, the years of conflict over church freedoms and moral criticism of the Nazi program, and Pius XI’s strong condemnations of the Nazi government. Helmreich demonstrates that German Catholics did not give absolute obedience to the German state. Many, in fact, suffered for their opposition. With World War II, however, Catholic laity and clergy alike rallied around the German nation and people. Unlike the Protestant churches, however, Catholic support was conditional, and Catholics continued to protest many of the Nazis domestic policies, in some cases causing Hitler to back off for fear that increased Catholic resistance would hurt the war effort.
Helmreich observes through carefully assembled evidence that although Catholics did suffer in large numbers for their opposition to certain Nazi policies, all in all “there were no conscientious objectors” to Hitler’s wars. He also remarks that in the end German Catholics must share the blame of their country for anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the other disasters of the war. Having said this, however, he notes that the German churches stood almost alone in criticizing the Nazi state.
921. Koebner, Thomas. “Vom ‘Pazifismus’ der dreissiger Jahre: Der Aktivismus deutcher Intellectueller im Exil (1933-1945), Parlament 33, 40-41 (1983): B9-B16.
Not seen.
922. Lewy, Guenter. The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
This is a study of the church’s relations to Hitler and his regime. Traces developments from church relations to the Center Party, Hitler’s election and early rule, the Reich Concordat, and the Fulda Bishops’ Conference and its warnings against the Nazis. Then traces the shift in Catholic attitudes supporting the Reich in the political sphere, but its continued opposition to the Nazis’ “moral” and “religious” neopaganism: the conflicts over eugenics and euthanasia, over church privileges and liturgical practices. Lewy then examines the role of the church in World War II, the bishops’ support of the war effort, the role of the papacy in the war and the Holocaust.
Lewy observes that the Nazis feared the church’s strength and asserts that had it leveled excommunications and interdicts upon the Nazis it could have been effective in halting the regime’s brutality. After the war Pius XII claimed that there had been an active Catholic resistance, yet the record, and the bishops’ own condemnation of any revolt against the Reich, must make this role minimal.
923. Littell, Franklin H., and Hubert G. Locke. The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974.
A collection of essays, including 928.
924. Oppen, Beate Ruhm von. Religion and Resistance to Nazism. Princeton: Center for International Studies, Princeton University Press, 1971.
This address surveys the general problem of church resistance. Von Oppen notes that, according to surviving secret police reports, Catholic resistance was better defined and more vocal than Protestant and gave the Nazis far greater trouble. Many examples survive of Catholic denunciations of anti-Semitism and other racial policies. The paper also gives several individual examples of Catholic resistance to Nazi war and social policies, including that of the Catholics Franz Jaegerstaetter, Bishop von Gallen, and Bernhard Lictenberg.
925. Walker, Lawrence D. “Priests vs Nazis in the Diocese of Limbourg, 1934: The Confessional Factor,” Historical Social Research-Historische Sozialforschung 23 (July 1982): 55-65.
The bishop encouraged political dissent against the Nazis and made his diocese a center of protest. Such protest stemmed naturally from the Catholic tradition of opposition to the secular state and was a legacy of the Kulturkampf of the nineteenth century.
926. Wolf, Ernst. “Political and Moral Motives Behind the Resistance.” In Hermann Graml, H. Mommsen, H. Reichhardt, and E. Wolf, eds. The German Resistance to Hitler. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970, 193-234.
A general survey of all church resistance. Catholics are discussed on pages 224-26. Catholic resistance was based on an opposition to the Nazis “un-Christian naturalism” and grew reluctantly. At heart church leadership feared the destruction of hierarchical structures and thus the self-destruction of the church itself. They therefore backed away from any total break with the Nazi government. There were, however, many notable individuals who did protest. These included Franz Reinisch, Max Josef Metzger, and A. Delp. Since the war, however, these isolated individuals have been built up to create a legend of Catholic church resistance.
927. Zahn Gordon. “The Case for Christian Dissent.” See 931, 243-63.
With rare exceptions German Catholics cooperated with the Nazi war effort. Individual resisters included Franz Reinisch and Max Josef Metzger. More significant, however, was the radical shift among the hierarchy from active support of such peace groups as the German Peace League after World War I to avid support of the Nazi war effort. Such a collapse of the peace movement was due as much to the extreme nationalism of many German Catholics as to the brutal suppression of the peace groups by the Nazis immediately after they came into power. Authoritarian interpretations of the just-war theory, excluding the layperson from any competent evaluation of the war’s justice, also contributed to the demise of a peace movement. Zahn notes that the “presumption of justice” on behalf of the state’s ability to wage war and of the individual’s incompetence to question this justice is a true wild card for the state, a joker in the deck of the just-war theory.
928. —. “Catholic Resistance? A Yes and a No.” See 923, 203-37.
During the postwar Adhenauer years in Germany, largely as a result of leftist revisionism, there grew up in Germany the postwar myth of church resistance to Adolf Hitler. While such claims of church resistance have often been exaggerated, in the final analysis the church remained the only institution in German society that mounted any effective opposition to the Nazis. This opposition had a paradoxical nature, however, what Zahn terms the “patriotism-and-protest” dynamic. The church as an institution, an ecclesia, was jealous of its freedoms and privileges and made every effort to maintain them. It did so, however, within the context of the Reich Concordat and traditional arrangements between church and state in German society. It protected the realm of God: liturgy, popular devotion, moral issues, such as euthanasia and eugenics, the immunity of clerics from military and other service; while it left what was Caesar’s — war and peace, and political policy — entirely to the state and urged obedience on church members. The hierarchy also had to compete with the fanatical nationalism of the Catholic laity, with the cult of the nation and of the new German “manliness.”
When it came to the duty of Catholics to serve their country, however, the Catholic hierarchy displayed an ultra-nationalism that equated service to Christ with service in Hitler’s armies and that never questioned the legitimacy of the Führer himself. Thus whatever social and moral opposition the church had mounted beginning in 1934 crumbled with the coming of war in 1939.
Zahn then asks the logical question to these findings: did the German bishops underestimate the potential for resistance of 30 million Catholics? Protest against Nazi domestic issues had drawn thousands to the bishops’ standards, and this should have assured them that withdrawal of support was a real possibility, yet the hierarchy continued to give the Nazis their full loyalty. Zahn concludes that the bishops themselves truly believed in the Reich, thus leaving the Nazis to choose the terms of the debate. “If there is any single overriding lesson to be learned from this, it would seem to be that the religious community must never become so enmeshed in its support for a given socio-political order that it looses its potential to be a source of dissent and disobedience.”
929. —. German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962.
This is a scholarly, well argued and well annotated study of the problem of Catholic complicity with the Nazi war effort. Zahn summarizes much of the research he presents in other articles. (See 927, 928, 930.) The book traces the shift from the strong support by Germany’s Catholic bishops for the German Peace Union immediately after World War I to the nationalistic support they gave to the Nazi war effort. The bishops, and most German Catholics, Zahn notes, were willing to give the text “render to Caesar” as broad an interpretation as possible, equating the “Good Catholic” with the “Good German,” the “soldier of Christ” with the defender of the German Fatherland against the Bolsheviks. Official Catholic thought sided decisively against social upheaval and made the strongest presumption in favor of the state’s right to decide on the justness of its own wars. Such active association of the church with the secular state thus eliminated all questioning and dissent.
930. —. “The German Catholic Press and Hitler’s Wars.” See 931, 204-29.
The German Catholic press had clear and definite criteria to judge the justice of Hitler’s wars. The question is: did they? Zahn concludes that the Catholic press shared the extreme nationalism of German Catholics. While they generally opposed many of the Nazis’ domestic programs, they were decidedly in favor of their wars, and emphasized that Catholics should continue to do duty to Folk and Fatherland. After the suppression of independent Catholic papers in 1935, the remaining official diocescan papers not only failed to condemn Hitler’s wars, but by caving in to censorship in order to continue publishing they also became, wittingly or not, an arm of Goebbel’s propaganda machine.
931. —. Zahn, Gordon. War, Conscience and Dissent. New York: Hawthorne, 1967.
A collection of Zahn’s essays, including 927, 930, and 942.
Individual Witness
See also our supplementary bibliography for Franz Jägerstätter on WorldCat
932. Fahey, Joseph J. “Pax Christi.” In Thomas A. Shannon, ed. War or Peace? The Search for New Answers. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982, 59-71.
Relates the story of Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas of Lourdes, who was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and imprisoned for his vocal opposition to the occupation of France and the persecution of the Jews. After the war Théas founded Pax Christi as an act of reconciliation with his former German enemies. “To make peace,” he has said, “one must learn to forgive, for to forgive is to make peace.”
933. Gill, Eric. Autobiography. London: Cape, 1940.
Gill was an innovative English engraver, book designer, sculptor, and intellectual whose art and life pursued a return to the community and life of the pre-industrial age while simultaneously contributing to the new style of expression of the 1930s and 1940s. His circle included many of Great Britain’s leading Catholic peacemakers. At Capel-y-ffin in Wales Gill, his wife, and their associates formed a modern monastic community, a precursor to artistic communes of the 1960s and Lanza del Vasto’s Community of the Ark in France.
Gill linked his nonviolence to an acute interest in the pursuit of social justice as an antidote to the exploitation that he found in the modern capitalist world.
934. Merton, Thomas. “An Enemy of the State.” In Thomas Merton. The Nonviolent Alternative. Revised edition of Thomas Merton on Peace. Gordon Zahn, ed. New York: Farrar, Strauss Giroux, 1980, 134-38.
Merton’s reflections on Franz Jaegerstaetter and the publication of Gordon Zahn’s In Solitary Witness (945). Merton declares that the single individual enjoying God’s grace is greater than the whole church without God’s grace (a view shared by the medieval Franciscan Spirituals. See 547–559). Jaegerstaetter understood that nonviolent resistance involved giving rather than taking life, and that only spiritual weapons could prevail against the great Anti-Christ. Merton concludes by declaring that after the Second Vatican Council no Catholic can escape the obligation to refuse obedience to unjust commands.
935. —. “Danish Nonviolent Resistance to Hitler.” In Thomas Merton. The Nonviolent Alternative. Revised edition of Thomas Merton on Peace. Gordon Zahn, ed. New York: Farrar, Strauss Giroux, 1980, 165-67.
A very important appreciation of courageous and effective noncooperation, illustrating the role of the Danish nation in nonviolence that converted even the SS from exterminating the Jews. Merton recounts how, when the Jews of Denmark were forced to adopt the yellow star, the king immediately took to wearing one in public. He was soon joined by most of his subjects. This and other acts of nonviolent resistance finally persuaded the Nazis that to continue their deportations would lose them the cooperation of the people and would require vast allotments of troops to keep an entire population at bay.
936. —. “A Martyr for Peace and Unity: Father Max Josef Metzger (1887-1944).” In Thomas Merton. The Nonviolent Alternative. Revised edition of Thomas Merton on Peace. Gordon Zahn, ed. New York: Farrar, Strauss Giroux, 1980, 139-43.
Reflections on the Catholic priest executed by the Gestapo for preaching peace, Christian unity and nonviolence.
937. —. “Passivity and Abuse of Authority.” In Thomas Merton. The Nonviolent Alternative. Revised edition of Thomas Merton on Peace. Gordon Zahn, ed. New York: Farrar, Strauss Giroux, 1980, 129-33.
An extended meditation on Ignace Lepp’s Christian Failure. Merton examines the examples of individual clergy and laity whose popular spirituality bore witness to Christian truths when learned and powerful churchmen were lost in moral confusion and complicity with the warmakers. Merton’s words recall the ideas of medieval Franciscan Spirituals who declared that when all else in the church fails, truth may abide in one person alone, such as the Virgin Mary alone at the foot of Christ’s cross. See 547–559.
938. Origo, Iris. A Need to Testify. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
A series of portraits of nonviolent opponents to Mussolini. These include Lauro de Bosis, Ignazio Silone, Ruth Draper, and Gaetano Salvemini.
939. Riesterer, P. Father Rupert Mayer, S.J. London, n.d.
Not seen.
940. Shen, Lucia Simpson. “A Martyr’s Voice,” America 152 (March 2, 1985): 171-74.
On anti-Nazi priest A. Delp. Reviews his life, conversion to Roman Catholicism at 14, his work as editor of the Jesuit magazine Stimmen der Zeit, and Nazi suspicions of him for his writings there. Nazi censorship only increased Delp’s resistance, his help to Jews and his activities in the Kreisau Circle, an interfaith and interclass group aimed at reconstructing Germany after the war. With the assassination attempt on Hitler, the Circle, though not linked to the plot, was destroyed and its members, including Delp, condemned to death.
His prison experiences only heightened his Christian witness as we learn from his Prison Meditations, smuggled out on scraps of paper. Shen concludes the article with a summary of Delp’s sermon on the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, stressing that the saint was a peacemaker; that she gathered around her the powerless, poor, and sick; and that Christians must protect life. “And woe to those who have destroyed a human life, who have desecrated an image of God.”
941. Steinfels, Peter. “Appointment with Hitler,” Commonweal (July 12, 1985): 395.
Asks once again the popular question for pacifists: what would you have done about Adolf Hitler? Answers pacifists that the just war must sometimes be considered.
942. Zahn, Gordon. “Conscientious Objection in Nazi Germany: Martyrdom, 1943.” See 931, 177-91.
A summation of his research on Franz Jaegerstaetter, who had his own answer on what to do about Hitler, with parallels to the trials of conscience in contemporary America.
943. —. Franz Jaegerstaetter: Martyr for Conscience. Erie, PA: Pax Christi, n.d.
An abbreviated version of 945, with reflections on the situation in modern America.
944. —. “In Praise of Individual Witness: F. Jaegerstaetter’s Refusal to Serve in the Nazi Army,” America 129 (Sept. 8, 1973): 141-45.
Traces the spread of the Jaegerstaetter story since the publication of In Solitary Witness (945). Focuses on the story as a plea for the rights of conscientious objection and a call for amnesty for the opponents of the Vietnam War.
945. —. In Solitary Witness. The Life and Death of Franz Jaegerstaetter. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1964; reissued, 1977; reissued, Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1986 and thereafter.
Franz Jaegerstaetter was an Austrian farmer, family man, and sexton of his village church who had a simple grammar-school education and the popular spirituality of his day. With the coming of the Anschluss in Austria, however, and the almost universal support among Austrians for Hitler’s annexation of their country, Jaegerstaetter began to express serious reservations about the morality of the Nazis. When finally drafted to serve in the German army, he refused, earning the ridicule and contempt of neighbors, local clergy, and even the diocese of Linz. Finally arrested and taken to prison in Berlin, the farmer was urged repeatedly by friends, priests, even Nazi officers who has come to admire his courage, to accept noncombatant service. He refused, basing his conscientious objection firmly on the Gospel injunctions against killing, on love of enemies, and in imitation of Christ’s own nonviolence. Finally, in 1943 he was executed in his Berlin prison.
The story of Jaegerstaetter’s opposition would have disappeared along with the records of so many other resisters to Hitler had it not been for a series of his letters from prison, the smuggled prison statement he wrote shortly before his execution, his Commentaries (a collection of his short essays on moral and political issues), and for Zahn’s patient reconstruction of testimony from surviving witnesses. Zahn presents English editions of all Jaegerstaetter’s writings as appendices.
This is a fascinating and emotional story that verges on hagiography, yet it is also a professional work of modern sociology and oral history, thoroughly researched and clear in its sources and interpretations. This synthesis is a model, and a testimony to the true value, of professional research when tied to peace studies.
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