A staunch German monarchist, conservative, nationalist, medievalist, traditionalist and patriot, he considered the Treaty of Versailles unjust and viewed Bolshevism as a threat to Germany and the Church.

[6] Following this, in September 1943, another condemnation was read at the order of von Galen and other bishops from all Catholic pulpits in the diocese of Münster and across Nazi Germany, denouncing the killing of "the innocent and defenceless mentally handicapped and mentally ill, the incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of a foreign race or descent".

He was not an easy student to teach, and his Jesuit superior wrote to his parents: "Infallibility is the main problem with Clemens, who under no circumstance will admit that he may be wrong.

He made visits to the sick and poor, became president of the Catholic Young Men's Association, gave religious instruction in the schools, and for his efforts he was named Papa Galen by the parishioners he served.

A commanding presence (6 feet 7 inches (2.01 m) tall) — his rooms were furnished simply, he wore unpretentious clothing, and he spoke plainly — he did not like the theatre, secular music (except for military marches), or literature.

[15] Following the German surrender in November 1918, Galen, still in Berlin, worked to create soup kitchens, aid societies, and clothing drives to deal with immediate problems of hunger and poverty.

Galen deplored the fall of the monarchy and was suspicious of the new Weimar democracy, believing that "the revolutionary ideas of 1918 had caused considerable damage to Catholic Christianity.

[17] Galen openly supported the Protestant Paul von Hindenburg against the Centre Party's candidate, Wilhelm Marx, in the presidential elections of 1925.

Galen was known as a fierce anti-Communist (he later supported the battle by the Axis powers on the Eastern Front against Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union[18]).

His views on Communism were largely formed as a consequence of the Stalinization and relentless persecution of Christians within the Soviet Union after 1918, during which virtually all Catholic bishops were either killed or forced underground.

At a meeting in Münster of the Association of Catholic Academicians in June 1933, Galen spoke against those scholars who had criticised the Nazi government and called for "a just and objective evaluation of [Hitler's] new political movement".

[1] As bishop, Galen campaigned against the totalitarian approach of the Nazi Party in national education, appealing to parents to insist on Catholic teaching in schools.

Together with Munich's Cardinal Faulhaber and Berlin's Bishop Preysing, Galen helped to draft Pope Pius XI's anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern) of 1937.

"[26] In retaliation, two senior SS officers visited Galen to pressure him into endorsing Rosenberg's doctrines publicly, threatening the confiscation of Church property and an anti-Catholic propaganda campaign.

One of them was the future SS General Jürgen Stroop, who later recalled, "Bishop von Galen was a great gentleman, a true aristocrat, a Renaissance prince of the Church.

"[27] Galen began by commending Stroop's mother for her devout Catholicism, then categorically refused to accept or praise Rosenberg's doctrines of euthanizing or forcibly sterilizing disabled people.

Until his death, he refused to admit that referring to Jews as "degenerate", "rejected", and "lost" or labeling anarchism, communism, socialism or liberalism as "Jewish", in any way aided the Nazi regime or and its racist antisemitism.

In March, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern), accusing the Nazi government of violating the 1933 Concordat and of sowing the "tales of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church".

[30] There were mass arrests of clergy and church publishing houses were expropriated, followed by widely spread abuse allegations and staged morality trials against members of religious orders and priests.

[31] In 1941 Galen welcomed the German war against the USSR as a positive development[32] as he had rallied also to the cause of Germany when Hitler invaded Poland, offering a patriotic benediction.

[37] In 1941, with the Wehrmacht still marching on Moscow, Galen, despite his long-time nationalist sympathies, denounced the lawlessness of the Gestapo, the confiscations of church properties, and the Nazi euthanasia programme.

[43] On 13 July 1941, Galen attacked the regime for its Gestapo tactics of terror, including disappearances without trial, the closure of Catholic institutions without any stated justifications, and the resultant fear imposed on all Germans.

[45] On 3 August 1941, Galen's third sermon described the continued desecration of Catholic churches, the closing and confiscation of convents and monasteries, and the deportation of mentally ill people to undisclosed destinations, while a notice was sent to family members stating that the person in question had died.

Joseph Goebbels and party pragmatists preferred to wait until the end of hostilities to avoid undermining German morale in a heavily Catholic area.

According to Robert Jay Lifton, "[t]his powerful, populist sermon was immediately reproduced and distributed throughout Germany — indeed, it was dropped among German troops by British Royal Air Force flyers.

Parts of a sermon he gave in 1943 are said to have been used by the Nazis to aid in the enlistment of Dutch men to voluntarily join the Waffen SS against the Soviet Union.

[58] Kuropka, referring to Wilhelm Damberg's discovery which in his opinion had not received enough attention so far, pointed out that the diocesan leadership in Münster had instructed all its pastors in June 1938 to recommend a brochure against anti-Semitism titled "The Nathanael Question of Our Days" ("Die Nathanaelfrage unserer Tage") to all faithful to read.

[61] While not as explicit and not as effective as the vocal German episcopate's 1941 protests, in September 1943, von Galen and his fellow bishops in Germany drafted another condemnation of Nazi racial persecution and ordered it to be read from all pulpits in the diocese of Münster and across Germany, therein denouncing the killing of "the innocent and defenceless mentally handicapped and mentally ill, the incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of foreign race or descent".

While some clergymen refused ever to feign support for the regime, in the Church's conflict with the State over ecclesiastical autonomy, the Catholic hierarchy adopted a strategy of "seeming acceptance of the Third Reich", by couching their criticisms as motivated merely by a desire to "point out mistakes that some of its overzealous followers committed" in order to strengthen the government.

In an interview with Swiss media, Galen demanded punishment for Nazi criminals but humane treatment for the millions of German prisoners of war who had not committed any crimes and who were being denied contact with their relatives by the British.