Griech-Polelle book refutes image of bishop as ‘larger-than-life’ resister in Nazi Germany

Beth Griech-Polelle, history, was looking for a hero when she began researching Clemens August Graf von Galen, a Catholic bishop in Nazi Germany. What she found was an ordinary man with all-too-human contradictions.

In a new book, Griech-Polelle examines von Galen’s contradictions, chiefly his willingness to denounce a Nazi euthanasia program but silence on the treatment of Jews.

Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism, Griech-Polelle’s first book, was published in the fall by Yale University Press.

The author studied resistance to the Nazis for her doctoral dissertation at Rutgers University, where she received a Ph.D. in modern European history in 1999. Because von Galen’s name kept coming up in her reading, she thought he was a “larger-than-life resister,” but finding no elaboration on what he had done, she felt his legacy merited closer examination.

He was brave in many respects, she said, noting that he risked his life in the summer of 1941 by delivering a sermon that took the Nazis to task for a euthanasia campaign in which they killed 70,000-80,000 of their own sick, elderly, disabled and mentally retarded people.

Once his Aug. 3, 1941, sermon became public knowledge, von Galen thought the Gestapo would arrest him, Griech-Polelle says. But it didn’t happen, and that, she argues, gave him an opportunity to take the “final step” of speaking out against the brutal persecution of the Jews and others. He was, however, “absolutely unwilling to do that,” she says, as were Pope Pius XII and other church officials at the time.

The reasons were both internal and external, according to Griech-Polelle, who notes that von Galen had the education, the aristocratic background and the access to high political figures—in short, the clout—to break ranks had he chosen to do so.

But, like the Nazis, he was also conservative and nationalistic. In 1933, he became the first Catholic bishop appointed by the Nazis, who thought they could work with him because of his nationalism. He later said that any German soldier who died while fighting communists in the Soviet Union would go directly to heaven—an indication, Griech-Polelle says, of his feeling that “the greatest threat to Germany, Western Europe and Western civilization was the spread of Bolshevism.”

To many people in that time and place, Jews were associated with Bolshevism. Von Galen already carried some fundamental anti-Semitism, believing that their rejection of Jesus had condemned the Jews. In his mind, then, it wasn’t hard to buy into a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy and the prevailing Jewish stereotypes, Griech-Polelle says.

Besides, trying to protect Jews would have incurred the Nazis’ wrath—too great a risk for a man who hadn’t forgotten the persecution of Catholics by the Bismarck government in the 1870s, she notes.

So he fought for what he defined as “Catholic causes,” meaning churches, schools and other institutions that the Nazis tried to seize, rather than for people, says Griech-Polelle. She maintains that denomination should have been irrelevant, especially to a bishop who had the moral authority to urge listeners to open their doors to those in need.

While acknowledging the gift of hindsight, Griech-Polelle, herself a practicing Catholic, says it’s “shameful” that Pius XII and his subordinates didn’t seize the opportunity to put into action the Gospel of loving your neighbor as yourself.