The Catholic Resistance Circle in Berlin and German Catholic Bishops during the Holocaust

Phayer, Michael

doi:10.1093/hgs/7.2.216

Cited by 3 publications

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“…There is also evidence indicating that the reverse story holds. One of the strongest rescue networks in Protestant Berlin was build around a circle of Catholics coordinated by social worker Grete Sommer (Phayer, 1993) It has also been claimed that German Catholics were in general more tolerant towards Jews due to their minority position, especially compared to their co-religionists in Catholic Austria (Pulzer, 1988).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide: The Collective Rescue of Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust

Braun

2016

Am Polit Sci Rev

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This article hypothesizes that minority groups are more likely to protect persecuted groups during episodes of mass killing. The author builds a geocoded dataset of Jewish evasion and church communities in the Netherlands during the Holocaust to test this hypothesis. Spatial regression models of 93 percent of all Dutch Jews demonstrate a robust and positive correlation between the proximity to minority churches and evasion. While proximity to Catholic churches increased evasion in dominantly Protestant regions, proximity to Protestant churches had the same effect in Catholic parts of the country. Municipality level fixed effects and the concentric dispersion of Catholicism from missionary hotbed Delft are exploited to disentangle the effect of religious minority groups from local level tolerance and other omitted variables. This suggests that it is the local configuration of civil society that produces collective networks of assistance to threatened neighbors.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide: The Collective Rescue of Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust

Braun

2016

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Indeed, early work on the role of civil society in particular cases highlights various promising instances of civil society resistance to mass killing. For instance, Fein's seminal studies shows that where the Catholic church and other churches actively opposed anti-Semitism and, later, deportation, violence against Jews was lower than in cases where Christian organizations were acquiescent or supportive of the violence (Fein 1979; see also Phayer 1993). Similarly, Longman (2010) finds that dissent and non-cooperation by some Christian churches slowed down and displaced genocidal violence in some Rwandan communities.…”

Section: The Optimists: Civil Society As Restrainermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A large body of work has focused on the important role played by civil society and non-governmental actors in initiating different forms of rescue, evasion, and assistance in the midst of different cases of mass killings, as well as the political pressure they have applied in bringing about the ends of civil conflicts (Nilsson 2012;Gbowee 2011;Robinson 2010). In cases as diverse as Nazi Germany (Fein 1979;Phayer 1993), Nazi-occupied Holland (Braun 2016;Varese and Yaish 2000) and France (Moore 2010), Rwanda (Longman 2010), India (Varshney 2002), East Timor (Robinson 2010), Colombia (Kaplan 2017), the Ottoman Empire (Tevosyan 2004), and Eastern Europe (McMahon 2007), churches, civic organizations, labor unions, local community councils, and transnational networks played important roles in halting or foiling killings, providing protection, and reducing the number of killed overall.…”

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confidence: 99%

A Source of Escalation or a Source of Restraint? An Empirical Investigation of How Civil Society Affects Mass Killings

Chenoweth

Perkoski

2019

SSRN Journal

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Why do some state-led mass killings end quickly while others endure for over a decade? And why do some states murder millions of constituents during the course of mass killings, whereas other states seem to "retreat from the brink" after killing thousands (Straus 2012)? A large body of work has focused on the important role played by civil society and non-governmental actors in initiating different forms of rescue, evasion, and assistance in the midst of different cases of mass killings, as well as the political pressure they have applied in bringing about the ends of civil conflicts. Despite many inspiring and hopeful cases of collective action under systems of intense repression, other research finds civil society can play a much more malevolent force in the context of mass killings. In this paper, we test some basic mechanisms that emerge from the literature on more general relationships between civil society and mass killings. We find that, in general, a relatively participatory and autonomous civil society is correlated with shorter mass killings. However, we also find that active civil societies are associated with higher rates of lethality, particularly when those civil society sectors are active in highly unequal polities. Because most mass killings are relatively short, our findings suggest that civil societies in states with uneven access to power are more commonly correlated with shorter, deadlier spells of government violence. This conclusion seemingly supports the view of civil society skeptics, at least in contexts where mass killings have already begun.

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Totalitarianism: Questions about Catholic Resistance

Phayer

2001

Church Hist

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After the war was over leading Catholic laity and the lower clergy pointed their finger at their bishops, faulting them for not having the backbone and willpower to stand up to Hitler. Was this fair? Bishops said they tempered their criticism of Nazism because Hitler punished their priests rather than them. Were the bishops being candid and forthright with this statement? If so, was this the right strategy? Jesuits urged the bishops to become active in the Kreisau Circle of resistance. They did not. Should they have? Pope Pius XII gave the German bishops freedom to do as they saw fit regarding speaking out about the Holocaust. They spoke only guardedly. Should they have said more? The Concordat, the agreement between the Vatican and the German government, surprised German Catholics who had been warned again and again about Nazism. Was the Concordat a mistake? Once signed, should the church have stuck to it once Nazi racial policy had become manifest? There was an active Catholic resistance circle in Berlin. Were there others? If not, why not? Questions about Catholic resistance run on and on. Are they worth probing, trying to answer? In the end no matter what is said about Catholic resistance, the six million will have perished. And, in the end, no German managed to put an end to Hitler, although the Swabian Catholic, Klaus von Stauffenberg, came close. Is a discussion about Catholic resistance an exercise in futility?

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The Catholic Resistance Circle in Berlin and German Catholic Bishops during the Holocaust

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide: The Collective Rescue of Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust

Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide: The Collective Rescue of Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust

A Source of Escalation or a Source of Restraint? An Empirical Investigation of How Civil Society Affects Mass Killings

Totalitarianism: Questions about Catholic Resistance

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