Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

By the time Bormann wrote his circular, antagonism among churchgoers had already intensified through bans on Church publications, the replacement of Catholic nuns by ‘brown sisters’ from the Nazi welfare organization (the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, or NSV), the shifting of celebrations of feast days from weekdays to the nearest Sunday, and attempts to abolish school prayers. Rumours spread that baptism of children would soon no longer be allowed, and that priests would be turned out of their presbyteries. In some localities, the closure of monasteries, eviction of the monks, and sequestration of monastic property to accommodate refugees or provide space for Party offices caused immense anger.¹⁶⁷

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