page_title: Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany
section_title: German Priests and religious
hierarchical_section_title: Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany / Within Germany / Institutional resistance / German Priests and religious
caption_attribution_description: Augustin Rösch (right) with Provincial Orro Faller (left) and Presedent of Caritas International Monsignor Eggert (middle)
context_page_description: Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany was a component of German resistance to Nazism and of Resistance during World War II. The role of the Church during the Nazi years was always, and remains however, a matter of much contention. Many writers, echoing Klaus Scholder, have concluded, "There was no Catholic resistance in Germany, there were only Catholics who resisted." The Vatican policy meant that the Pope never challenged Catholics to side either with National Socialism or with Catholic morality, and Pius XII was so adamant that Bolshevism represented the most terrible threat to the world that he remarked, 'Germany are a great nation who, in their fight against Bolshevism, are bleeding not only for their friends but also for the sake of their present enemies'. In a letter of autumn 1941 Pius XII wrote to Bishop Preysing, "We emphasise that, because the Church in Germany is dependent upon your public behaviour...in public declarations you are duty bound to exercise restraint" and "requires you and your colleagues not to protest."
context_section_description: While Hitler did not feel powerful enough to arrest senior clergy before the end of the war, an estimated one third of German priests faced some form of reprisal from the Nazi government. Bishop von Preysing was protected from Nazi retaliation by his position, his cathedral administrator and confidant, Provost Bl. Bernard Lichtenberg, was not. A strong opponent of Nazism, Lichtenberg had been active with the Catholic Centre Party. Lichtenberg served at St. Hedwig's Cathedral from 1932, and was under the watch of the Gestapo by 1933, for his courageous support of prisoners and Jews. He became a confidante of Bishop von Preysing from 1935. He ran Preysing's aid unit (the Hilfswerke beim Bischöflichen Ordinariat Berlin) which secretly gave assistance to those who were being persecuted by the regime. From the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 onward, Lichtenberg closed each nightly service with a prayer for "the Jews, and the poor prisoners in the concentration camps", including "my fellow priests there". Lichtenberg met his demise for protesting the Nazi policy regarding euthanasia directly to Dr. Conti, the Nazi State Medical Director. On 28 August 1941, he endorsed Galen's sermons in a letter to Conti, pointing to the German constitution which defined euthanasia as an act of murder. On 23 October 1942, he offered a prayer for the Jews being deported to the East, telling his congregation to extend to the Jews the commandment of Christ to "Love thy neighbour". For preaching against Nazi propaganda and writing a letter of protest concerning Nazi euthanasia, he was arrested in 1941, sentenced to two years' penal servitude, and died en route to Dachau Concentration Camp in 1943. He was subsequently honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations.
  The Blessed Rupert Mayer, a Bavarian Jesuit and World War I army chaplain, had clashed with the National Socialists as early as 1923. Continuing his critique following Hitler's rise to power, Mayer was imprisoned in 1939 and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. As his health declined, the Nazis feared the creation of a martyr and sent him to the Abbey of Ettal, but Myer died in 1945.
  Laurentius Siemer, Provincial of the Dominican Province of Teutonia, became a steadfast opponent of the Nazi regime and had contacts with the Resistance. The Gestapo arrested Siemer in Cologne in 1935, as part of the "Currency Fraud Cases" targeting Catholic clergy, and held him in custody for several months. He was influential in the Committee for Matters Relating to the Orders, which formed in response to Nazi attacks against Catholic monasteries and aimed to encourage the bishops to intercede on behalf of the Orders and oppose the Nazi state more emphatically. He spoke to resistance circles on the subject of Catholic social teaching as the starting point for the reconstruction of Germany, and worked with Carl Goerdeler and others in planning for a post-coup Germany. Following the failure of the July Plot, Siemer evaded capture and hid out until the end of the war.
  Also involved in the German Resistance was Christian workers' movement activist and Centre Party politician Fr. Otto Müller. Müller was among those who argued for a firm line from the German bishops against legal violations of the Nazis. In contact with the German military opposition before the outbreak of war, he later allowed individual opposition figures the use of the Ketteler-Haus in Cologne for their discussions and was involved with Catholic politicians and July Plotters Jakob Kaiser, Nikolaus Groß and Bernhard Letterhaus in planning a post Nazi-Germany. After the failure of the July Plot, the Gestapo arrested Müller, who was imprisoned in the Berlin Police Hospital, where he died.
  Parish priests such as the Lübeck martyrs – Johannes Prassek, Eduard Müller and Hermann Lange, and the Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink were partly inspired by August von Galen's anti-euthanasia homilies. They shared disapproval of the Nazi regime, and the four priests spoke publicly against the Nazis – initially discreetly – distribu
caption: Augustin Rösch (centre) was the wartime Jesuit Provincial of Bavaria and one of three Jesuits in the inner Kreisau Circle of the German Resistance.
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