Betrayal Read online

  Gerhard Kittel

  Unlike Althaus and Hirsch, Gerhard Kittel did not write prolifically about politics. He was not a systematic theologian and could not match their ability to tie Luther and the German theological tradition to the post-World War I needs of the German Volk. He was a very prominent theologian, however, with a famous father, a prestigious chair in the highly reputed theological faculty at Tubingen, and the editorship of a major reference work, The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Though less inclined to philosophy than Althaus or Hirsch, Kittel fully shared their views on the events of 1933. He quickly joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and threw his energies and considerable reputation into the Nazi cause.

  Kittel's link to the nineteenth-century theological tradition was unusually direct, given his father's career. Rudolf Kittel had established himself as a premier scholar by the turn of the century, producing a new translation of the Old Testament that inspired appreciation even among Jewish readers. Gerhard focused on New Testament studies, but he developed an expertise in the language and culture of Judaism at the time of Jesus so that he could examine early Christianity in that light. Ironically, his early writings on Jews and Judaism give an impression of respect. He notes the great similarity between Talmud and New Testament and thereby affirms Jesus' Jewish roots:

  One need only make these connections clear to know how absurd and historically false it is, without any exception, to attempt to separate Jesus and Christianity from the Old Testament and from the spiritual history of its people.... The ethic of Jesus did not arrive unassisted, it did not grow ex nihilo. ... It is nothing less than the most concentrated development of that powerful movement of Israelitic-Jewish religious history which finds its condensation in the literary complex that we call the Old Testament. That means, obviously, that Christianity, which prides itself on being the "majesty and moral cultivation of Christendom" ... may never forget that the Old Testament is not in its Bible by accident. All Christian culture and all Christian ethics have their roots in the moral consciousness of Old Testament piety. That cannot and may not be wiped away."

  Kittel's praise of Judaism and respect for Christian ties to Jews did not last into the Nazi era. On the contrary, he parlayed his expertise into prominence among those academics who tried to create a scholarly foundation for the National Socialist worldview. This began on 1 June 1933, when he gave a public lecture in Tubingen on the Jewish question. In this lecture Kittel argued that Jews in Germany should be considered guests, not citizens. This would allow special legislation to remove them from positions of influence, such as law, medicine, education, or journalism. Kittel acknowledged that many upstanding, innocent Jews would be hurt by this policy, and he realized that Christians in particular might be tempted to feel sorry for them. But, he concluded, God does not ask Christians to be sentimental or soft: "It is hard if officials, teachers, and professors, who have no guilt except that they are Jewish, must move aside. It is hard if Germans, who with their fathers and grandfathers have conditioned themselves for hundreds of years to being equal cit izens, must find themselves again in the role of the foreigner. But such considerations must never lead to a sentimental softening and paralysis."" Anticipating criticism, Kittel showed that he was not prepared to back down: "We must not allow ourselves to be crippled because the whole world screams at us of barbarism and a reversion to the past.... How the German Volk regulates its own cultural affairs does not concern anyone else in the

  One of Kittel's former admirers, a rabbinical scholar at Cambridge University, wrote to complain: "It is a grievous disillusionment to find that one's idol has feet of clay." But to his suggestion that Kittel had bowed to political pressure, Kittel would only respond, "I can answer you in no other way ... except that I stand by my former opinion.... It is also not true, as you suggest, that I wrote my book under political or any other kind of pressure. What I say today I have said for many years, only I always had hoped that insightful men would understand what was necessary before violence set in.""

  As if to prove there was no inconsistency in his stance, Kittel spent the next decade trying to show the difference between the Jews of the Old Testament, whom he still accepted, and the Jews of the modern world, whom he saw as the bane of German and Western Christian existence. Much of this work appeared under the auspices of an antisemitic organization established by Walter Frank-the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany. Kittel was a charter member of this Nazi organization and also of its Research Section on the Jewish Question. From its founding in 1936, Kittel had spoken at its meetings and sat on the dais with Nazi dignitaries and antisemites. His work no longer drew upon biblical sources, nor did he analyze the teachings of Jesus. Rather, he tried to show the racial and moral breakdown of the Israelites of the Old Testament into the "degenerate" Jews of the modern world.

  Kittel argued that the Diaspora beginning in about 500 B.c.E. left the Jews without a homeland and caused them to give up their healthy, rural existence for the corrupting lifestyle of the city. Accepting racist stereotypes, he suggested that intermarriage produced a "mongrelization" of Jews. Then, accepting the illogic typical of antisemitism, he argued that these mongrelized, inferior Jews were trying to take over the world and might well succeed. Working together with the racial scientist, Eugen Fischer, Kittel coauthored an entire volume of Frank's journal, Forschungen zur Judenfrage, in which they argued that the story of Esther is a prototype of the Jewish drive for world power: "There is always one goal: power over the world.... Always, at all times, whether in the first or the twentieth century, the dream of world Jewry is sole domination of the world, now and in the future.""

  He also analyzed obscene terra cotta figures found near Trier, which were thought to date from the third or fourth century. Since these caricatures depict men and women in "shameless" poses, Kittel was convinced they represent hostility to Jewish men who tried to seduce or rape Aryan women: "Perhaps it is ... no accident that these judgments show themselves to us-if in veiled form-just where the world of the old [Roman] Empire, which had brought the Jews along with it, came up against a [German] population of unbroken instinct and youthful power.""

  Kittel also wrote for an antisemitic journal published by Joseph Goebbels, in which he stated that in the Talmud, "a deep-seated hatred against the nonJew comes to expression, out of which all consequences are drawn, right up to the full freedom to murder; for example, when it can read: You may kill even the best among the gentiles, just as you would smash the brains of even the best snake.""' Kittel tried to prove his claim by citing passages that suggest a different moral culpability for actions, depending upon whether Jews or nonJews are affected. He admitted that animosity toward foreigners can be found in many cultural traditions, and he acknowledged other Talmudic passages that endorse love and justice. However, Kittel believed that modern Jews have "seized upon" these milder traditions, while they are weak and vulnerable, only to hide their real intention to take over the world, with murder as a secret weapon.'- This eccentric interpretation of the Talmudic tradition appeared in 1943, long after Jews had disappeared from German streets and the murder of Jews had become Nazi policy. Furthermore, Kittel admitted after the war that early in 1943 he had learned of the annihilation of Jews from his son who served on the Russian fronts" It seems hard to avoid the conclusion that Kittel offered Goebbels and his readers a justification for preemptive violence against Jews!

  Kittel's last public statement on Hitler, National Socialism, and the Jewish question came in 1944 in a guest lecture at the University of Vienna. Unabashed by his knowledge of horrors committed against Jews, he continued to justify Nazi policies against the "Jewish threat." He blamed the fall of Rome on careless racial practices that led to the racial decomposition of its citizenry. In fact, he said, as the power of Rome faded, Jews had threatened to take over the world and were halted only by the strength and determination of Christianity. Kittel noted that the Enlightenment and liberal democ
ratic ideas opened the floodgates to Jewish emancipation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but Hitler had now risen up to save the day. National Socialism and Christianity stood together as twin bulwarks protecting western civilization against the Jewish menace.54

  Gerhard Kittel's behavior and motives are hard to fathom, especially in light of his relatively friendly treatment of Jews and Judaism prior to 1933. It is possible that he practiced sheer opportunism, attempting to advance his career by endorsing the prejudices of the regime. He seems to have recog nized quickly that he could claim to be the leading expert on the Jewish question among theologians, and this allowed him to swagger in the hallways of Walter Frank's institute and elsewhere. However, in postwar statements Kittel vigorously defended his academic integrity and Christian commitment. He even compared himself to Moses, called by God against his will."" He had felt an obligation to join the NSDAP and to work from within to provide a spiritual corrective (note that Kittel writes of himself in the third person here): "Kittel was in a special, wholly unique situation.... A completely unique opportunity was given to him to become accepted in circles outside the church and to build for them a path to the truth. This was an opportunity which in this form was available to Kittel and to no one else. So, if he had kept silent and made no use of this opportunity, an essential and irrecoverable positive element would have been omitted in the struggle over the Bible and Christianity. On this basis Kittel felt himself bound to express himself within the scope of his Christian and scientific convictions wherever he could.""'

  The problem with Kittel's "spiritual corrective" is that it matched so closely the vulgar antisemitism of Nazi ideology. He defended himself in 1945 by claiming that he was no more antisemitic than Paul: "Certainly Kittel has exposed the degeneration in modern as well as ancient Jewry as sharply as any antisemite.... In these cases, however, Kittel can point to the fact that the words of Paul on the Jews of his day were often interchangeable with the antiJudaism of contemporary heathens."62 He also implicated Jesus: "Never has a more terrible judgment been spoken against the so-called world Jewry as a demand for power than in the 'woe' of Jesus Christ in Matthew 23:15; never a more negative characterization of the Jewish religion as a religion of privilege than that found in John 8:40-44!""'

  In truth there is in the Christian tradition a long history of abuse of Jews and Judaism. Kittel certainly damaged his postwar reputation by allying himself so closely with the rhetorical justification of Hitler's treatment of the Jews. His stance is now stigmatized, and his actual scholarship, or pseudoscholarship, for the Nazi cause seems hopelessly outside the boundaries of academic inquiry. However, it is also a reflection on the theological tradition he inherited that this bright and successful man could justify "spiritual" antisemitism both before and after 1945.

  Conclusion

  This study of Althaus, Hirsch, and Kittel implicates three Protestant theologians in terms of their support for the Nazi state and their insensitivity toward Jewish victims. Does it do more than that? Does it have broader implications about German Protestants and the Holocaust? Several questions must be considered.

  First, is this study fair, even to Althaus, Hirsch, and Kittel? Does it correctly represent their lives and who they were? Without doubt, the passages quoted and arguments cited illustrate their most positive statements about National Socialism and their most negative statements about Jews. Althaus probably lost his enthusiasm for Hitler by the time of Kristallnacht, and all three expressed some restraint on the Jewish question. For example, they were hesitant to endorse purely racial categories or unnecessarily brutal policies toward Jews. But there is simply no doubt that they endorsed Hitler, publicly and enthusiastically, nor is there any doubt that they accepted the basic antisemitic assumptions of the Nazi worldview. They may have preferred cultural explanations to racial or materialistic ones, but they agreed that Jews posed a problem that Germany must solve.

  Are Althaus, Hirsch, and Kittel representative figures? Althaus and Hirsch may have been more enthusiastic and outspoken than the average theologian in their political response to Hitler, but there seems no reason to believe their views fell completely outside the norm. Christians during the 1920s tended toward conservative, antidemocratic and anticommunist politics, and most Germans tended to be hypernationalistic in response to the Versailles Treaty. Members of the Protestant clergy and university professors shared these tendencies, and these are the tendencies that led Althaus and Hirsch to endorse Hitler. Kittel may have succumbed to and participated in the anti-Jewish propaganda of the Hitler state more than most theologians, perhaps due to the opportunity provided by his area of expertise. However, he can also be seen as a moderate figure in some respects, as in his refusal to question the place of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible. Despite the outrageous nature of his anti-Jewish writings, he always claimed to be giving the Christian, spiritual critique of Jews. There is no convincing reason to believe he was widely adrift of the typical antisemitism of Christians in Germany.`'

  Do these theologians really represent rather than misuse the widely admired theological heritage of the nineteenth century? We know that their careers prospered, that they were among the brightest and most successful of their generation. They were leading figures in prestigious theological faculties at Erlangen, Gottingen, and Tubingen, and each published prolifically, bending the shelves of many a library and lending their words, their names, and their editorial skills to leading journals. They knew their predecessors and self-consciously built upon the German theological tradition. The nineteenth-century heritage can and should be studied on its own, but it was, at the very least, vulnerable to the interpretations extracted by Althaus, Hirsch, and Kittel.

  Some might argue that these men abused Christianity, that they could not have been Christian and taken the stance they did. It is important to note their self-understanding in this regard. Each of these theologians recognized the difference between nominal Christianity and a Christianity based upon personal faith and a personal meeting with and acceptance of Christ, and each professed himself in the latter camp. These men were often asked to preach on Sunday mornings, and they practiced their piety throughout the week, with regular Bible reading and prayer. Their self-definition as believing Christians cannot be doubted.

  Did these religious men influence the German people? It is difficult or impossible to trace the words of an Althaus, Hirsch, or Kittel directly to the mobile killing units or the death camps. It is even difficult to trace their words directly to sermons preached in country churches or lessons taught in Sunday school. We know, however, that they taught a generation of pastors and religious educators, and we know their publications brought their ideas far beyond the sound of their own voices. Once we know the content of their lectures and publications, once we know their enthusiasm for the Nazi state and their willingness to bring Christian teachings into line with a viilkisch Germany, once we recognize their scorn for Jews and Judaism, is there not a prima facie connection with Nazi brutality? We cannot simply assume that Christian teachings opposed Hitler and the Holocaust. "Ordinary men" proved willing to execute brutal orders against Jews, their Christian training providing far less impediment than we might like to think.

  Introductions The German Christians and the "Racially Pure" Church

  signboard hanging in Lippe, Westphalia, in 1935 crudely summed up the views of the German Christian Movement (Glaubensbewegung "Deutsche Christen"): "Baptism may be quite useful, but it cannot straighten a nose."' The German Christians, as adherents of the movement came to be called, believed National Socialism and Christianity to be mutually reinforcing. Racist antisemitism formed the core of their program. Accordingly, they aimed to purge Christianity of everything they deemed Jewish and to reconstitute the church as an association of blood and race.

  Studies of the churches and the Holocaust often presume a natural opposition between Christianity and Nazism. That assumption reflects important ideals but falls short as a mea
ns to understand the role that church people played in the Third Reich. As late as 1940, after years of Nazi propaganda deriding Christian institutions, over 95 percent of Germans remained taxpaying members of a recognized church.' The overwhelming majority of those people never resisted Nazism in the name of their Christian faith. What vision of Christianity enabled them to reconcile devotion to a religion that grew out of Judaism and endorsed its principles of justice and love with the imperatives of a regime predicated on brutal antisemitism? In what forms did Christians in Germany and in German-controlled Europe-many of whom supported or at least tolerated Nazi plans to annihilate Jews and eradicate Judaism-continue to practice their religion? An important part of the answers to these questions involves the approximately six hundred thousand members of the German Christian Movement.' With their self-conscious attempt to fuse Christianity and National Socialism, the German Christians articulated a task that faced every Christian who accepted Nazism as legitimate. Studying this specific group thus provides insights into attitudes of broader circles within German society as well.

  The German Christians were a group of predominantly Protestant laypeople and clergy in Nazi Germany.' From the movement's official formation in 1932 throughout the Nazi era and even beyond, its members acted out their vision of a "racially pure" church. Even before Adolf Hitler became chancellor, the self-styled "storm troopers of Christ" began to attack Jewish influences in Christianity. Drawing on a range of precursors that included Martin Luther as well as overseas missionaries, they created an ecclesiology defined by race. For the next twelve years, despite endemic factionalism, vociferous opposition at home and abroad, and an ambivalent reception from the National Socialist state, the German Christians continued to seek a synthesis of Nazi ideology and Protestant tradition and to agitate for a "people's church" based on blood. With their fusion of traditional Christian antiJudaism and biological racial obsessions, the German Christians represented a blend of what Donald Niewyk has dubbed the "old" and the "new" antisemitisms.'