Abstract
This new study of Catholic chaplains in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War represents a well-researched monograph on a topic long-neglected by English language historiography. It skilfully combines analysis of a range of primary source materials, ranging from priests’ wartime letters to interviews conducted with former military chaplains decades after 1945. The result provides both an institutional history of the Catholic Military Chaplaincy in Nazi Germany, but also insights into the mentalities which enabled clergymen to support the Wehrmacht’s war effort. The book’s final chapter offers fascinating discussion of former chaplains’ memories of their wartime service after 1945, and the meanings they continued to invest in their roles within the Wehrmacht. Faulkner Rossi’s main argument, that the Catholic chaplains ‘failed’ to comprehend that ‘compromise with a racist, genocidal regime was antithetical to everything their faith stood for’ (p. 255), stands squarely within a historiographical tradition pronounced within North American research in this field since the 1990s, highlighting the absence of clerical protest against Nazi atrocities.
Wehrmacht Priests commendably presents the reader with an extremely detailed institutional history of the Catholic Military Chaplaincy during the Third Reich. Faulkner Rossi provides a colourful portrayal of the institution’s controversial head from 1936 until January 1945, the Field Bishop Franz Josef Rarkowski, an individual whose appointment owed much more to his nationalist sentiments than his chequered career as a priest and theologian. She also offers in-depth examination of the career of Rarkowski’s deputy, Georg Werthmann, who, during the war years, served in France, the Baltic States, and occupied Poland and the Czech lands, before being captured by the Americans in Bavaria in late April 1945. The extensive notes he penned following German defeat in May 1945, detailing his experiences as Catholic Field Vicar-General, serve as a key source for Faulkner Rossi’s analysis. The study chronicles the manifold pressures placed upon military chaplains by the largely unsympathetic Nazi authorities, such as the ban imposed on further recruitment to the chaplaincy in October 1942, which served to exacerbate existing shortages of personnel. The regime’s introduction of National Socialist Leadership Officers into the Wehrmacht as of 1943, also posed a threat to military chaplains’ pastoral functions. Nevertheless, as Faulkner Rossi demonstrates, these areas of institutional conflict did not undermine most priests’ support of the Reich’s war effort, which was rooted in much deeper loyalty to the German nation, Heimat (homeland), and anti-Bolshevism. In this sense, the Catholic Military Chaplaincy emerges as an excellent example of Winfried Süss’s concept of ‘antagonistic cooperation’ between the Nazi regime and German Catholic Church during the Second World War.
Beyond this institutional framework, this study provides fascinating discussion of the intellectual and psychological resources the military chaplains drew upon to sustain themselves during the war years. Faulkner Rossi cites demonstrations of passionate support of the German war effort, with one seminarian claiming that the war against the Soviet Union represented ‘a battle of civilization; the civilization of the Christian world against the Judaeo-Bolshevik will to destruction’ (p. 187), and another appealing that ‘May the love of God always inspire me to remain a true, brave and courageous fighter, true to the oath to battle for Führer, Volk and Fatherland’ (p. 189). The study is alert to the range of psychological responses to the war in the East demonstrated by Catholic chaplains, with examples of alcoholism, depression, and sexual indiscretion also highlighted.
It is nevertheless slightly disappointing that Faulkner Rossi’s study does not provide more room for such analysis of individual subjectivity. With the exception of Georg Werthmann, the study does not track the attitudes and emotions of a core group of chaplains throughout the war in great detail via analysis of letters or diaries, with quotations from a wide range of individuals instead used impressionistically as evidence throughout the text. This results in a study in which the thoughts and attitudes of Werthmann as a chaplaincy leader occupy centre stage, whereas those of his subordinates are less clearly elucidated. As Faulkner Rossi freely admits, ‘This book is not a social history; there is no rigorous exploration of the backgrounds of the various men in question’ (p. 2). This may result from the fact that her discussion of the military chaplaincy during the Second World War is rather squeezed between long introductory and concluding chapters on the years 1918–1939 and those after 1945. In terms of structure, it would have been preferable to see a greater focus on the title’s key and original theme: the responses of Catholic military chaplains on the ground to involvement in the Reich’s war effort and all that entailed, and rather less discussion of the familiar topic of church–state relations in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939.
On the whole, however, this study represents a highly engaging and enlightening study of an important topic. It is an extremely welcome addition to literatures on the Wehrmacht and Catholicism in Nazi Germany.