Jesuits and Nazi Germany
The Jesuit Provincial, Augustin Rosch, ended the war on death row for his role in the July Plot to overthrow Hitler.
Several Jesuits were prominent in the small German Resistance, including the influential martyr Alfred Delp of the Kreisau Circle.
[5] But Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government and it desired the subordination of the church to the State.
[6] According to historians Kershaw, Bullock, Evans, Fest, Phayer, Shirer and others, Hitler eventually hoped to eradicate Christianity in Germany.
It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives.
[14] Jesuits Jakob Notges and Anton Koch wrote firmly against the anti-Christian sentiments of the official Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg.
Wlodimir Ledóchowski accurately surmised Hitler's perfidious nature, and predicted the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and he used the Jesuit-run Vatican Radio service to broadcast condemnations of Nazi crimes in Poland, that led to German Government protests and assisted underground resistance movements in occupied Europe.
[16] Prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials submitted that Hitler and his inner circle engaged in a criminal conspiracy and slow and cautious policy to eliminate Christianity.
[19] The Jesuit-educated Bishop Clemens August von Galen's famous 1941 denunciations of Nazi euthanasia were partly motivated by the seizure of Jesuit properties by the Gestapo in his home city of Münster.
[20] In Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945, Paul Berben wrote that under the reign of the Nazis, clergy were watched closely, and frequently denounced, arrested and sent to concentration camps.
[21] The Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp (in German Pfarrerblock, or Priesterblock) incarcerated clergy who had opposed the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.
[23] The Blessed Rupert Mayer, a Bavarian Jesuit and World War I army chaplain, had clashed with the National Socialists as early as 1923.
[25][26] With Poland overrun in 1939 but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, the small German Resistance wanted the Pope's assistance in preparations for a coup to oust Hitler.
[33] Alfred Jodl noted in his diary that the Germans knew the Belgian envoy to the Vatican had been tipped off, and the Führer was greatly agitated by the danger of treachery.
[42] The Catholic conservative Karl Ludwig von Guttenberg brought the Jesuit Provincial of Southern Germany Augustin Rösch into the Kreisau Circle, along with Alfred Delp.
"[43] According to Gill, "Delp's role was to sound out for [the group's leader] Moltke the possibilities in the Catholic community of support for a new, post-war Germany.
[47] The group rejected Western models, but wanted to "associate conservative and socialist values, aristocracy and workers, in a new democratic synthesis which would include the churches.
[47] Delp wrote: "It is time the 20th Century revolution was given a definitive theme, and the opportunity to create new and lasting horizons for humanity" by which he meant, social security and the basics for individual intellectual and religious development.
[49] Another non-military German Resistance group, dubbed the "Frau Solf Tea Party" by the Gestapo, included the Jesuit Fr Friedrich Erxleben.
[60] The majority of French Jews survived the occupation, in large part thanks to the help received from Catholics and Protestants, who protected them in convents, boarding schools, presbyteries and families.
Vatican Radio was run by the Jesuit Filippo Soccorsi and spoke out against Nazi oppression – particularly with regard to Poland and to Vichy-French antisemitism.
[70][71] Jesuit-run Vatican Radio reported in November 1940 that religious life for Catholics in Poland had been brutally restricted and that at least 400 clergy had been deported to Germany in the preceding four months.
Among the most significant Polish Jesuits to survive the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp was Adam Kozłowiecki, who later served as a Cardinal.
