[2] After the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, in seeking to preserve the unprecedented gains that Catholics had made in the government and in senior civil service positions under the Republic, Berning and many other German bishops were initially supportive of the new regime.

This support was intensified when the government announced its intention to reach a concordat with the Vatican that was widely expected would protect the rights of German Catholics.

In exchange for the withdrawal of the Church from an active role in politics, the agreement promised freedom of religion and protection for Catholic lay organizations.

Over the next years, thousands of priests, nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many on trumped-up charges of immorality or smuggling foreign currency.

However, as late as August 1940, at the German Bishops Conference held in Fulda, Berning was described as being one of the "outstanding speakers" and "the foremost exponent of rapprochement between the Church and State".

Reports indicated that he had repeatedly stated his conviction that the Church should abandon any opposition to the Nazi regime, and that his influence appeared to be in the ascendant.

[8] As the persecution and concentration camp imprisonment of Catholic priests became more widespread, Berning began to be increasingly critical of the regime in sermons in Osnabrück Cathedral, though he was never as vociferous and persistent a critic as his fellow bishops Clemens August Graf von Galen of Münster and Konrad von Preysing of Berlin.

[9] The Nazi government instituted a policy of involuntary euthanasia for mentally ill, physically deformed, and incurably sick individuals in October 1939 that became known as Aktion T4.

[10] However, in a sermon on 8 June 1941 in Rulle, a small village in the municipality of Wallenhorst, Berning became one of the first high church officials in Germany to publicly oppose the regime's euthanasia program, when he protested that "the protection of human life" was no longer being safeguarded.

[11] As a Prussian State Councilor, Berning negotiated often, but mostly unsuccessfully, with the Reich government to intervene on behalf of individuals, including the former Social Democratic Reichstag member Julius Leber.

Following the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Nazi regime, Berning continued in his position as bishop and did not comment on his role under the Third Reich.

In the post-war period, Berning campaigned for the integration of those German refugees who fled or were expelled from the former eastern territories of Germany ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union.