east would be over within eight weeks.157) Ardent Nazis were naturally jubilant, outright opponents depressed. But the deep anxieties and hopes of an early peace — a victorious one if at all possible, but above all an end to war — among the mass of the population could not for long be banished. And, however great the reported victories of the Wehrmacht were, no end seemed in sight. As the summer wore on, it was obvious that Stalin had far from used up his last reserves. Scepticism in the reports started to mount. Moreover, accounts of hard fighting, fierce resistance by the Red Army, and, especially, of ‘horrible bestialities’ and the ‘inhumane way of fighting of the Bolsheviks’ and ‘criminal types’ in the ‘Jewish state’, not unnaturally increased the worries, whatever the scale of the victories, of those with fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands at the front.158
A young soldier, just married and home on leave, left an indication in his diary of the mood after only two weeks of fighting when he attended a Sunday morning service in his church: ‘There were read out — in a quite matter-of-fact way — the name, year of birth, date and place of death of the dead and fallen, and precisely these cold facts had a doubly moving effect. The widows sobbed throughout the church…’159 But such observations did not prevent approval of Nazi aims. The same soldier noted, a few days later, his approval of the antisemitic films
Attitudes towards the war — and the need to fight it — were divided. In stark contrast with the views of this soldier, the wishes of a farming community in northern Franconia, according to the outspoken report of the local Landrat, could scarcely have been more distant from the ideological aims of the Nazi leadership. There was in his area, he wrote, ‘not the least understanding for the realization of plans for world domination… Overworked and exhausted men and women do not see why the war must be carried still further into Asia and Africa.’161 At the end of August, the same Landrat wrote: ‘I have only the one wish, that one of the officials in Berlin or Munich… should be in my office some time when, for example, a worn-out old peasant beseechingly requests allocation of labourers or other assistance, and as proof of his need shows two letters, in one of which the company commander of the elder son answers that leave for the harvest cannot be granted, and in the other of which the company commander of the younger son informs of his heroic death in an encounter near Propoiszk.’162
From the point of view of most ordinary Germans, the ‘good times’, as they remembered them from the 1930s, were over. Conditions of daily life were deteriorating sharply. The cause of this was, they saw, the war. What was needed was an end to war and return to ‘normality’, not yet another — unnecessary, as many people thought — extension of the conflict, and now against the most implacable and dangerous enemy. Daily concerns dominated the mood, alongside fears for loved ones at the front. Reports from cities highlighted the ‘catastrophic state of provisions’ and anger at food shortages and high prices. Industrial workers were becoming increasingly alienated by working conditions and wage levels. The ‘little man’ was again the stupid one, the SD from Stuttgart reported as a commonly held view. He was having to work hard at great sacrifice, as had always been the case, to benefit the ‘big noises (
On top of this came new worries. It was while the ferocious warfare was raging on the eastern front that, within the Reich, the Nazi regime’s renewed assault on Christianity, which had begun in early 1941, reached its climax. At the same time, the disturbing rumours — which over the previous year had spread like wildfire — about the killing of mentally sick patients taking place in asylums were causing intensified disquiet. Elimination of ‘life not worth living’ had an increasingly threatening ring to it, potentially for every family, as psychologically scarred as well as physically badly injured young soldiers in ever larger numbers were brought back from the front and housed in hospitals, sanatoria, and asylums throughout the Reich.
Despite Hitler’s own repeatedly expressed wish for calm in relations with the Churches as long as the war lasted — the reckoning with Christianity, in his view, had to wait for the final victory — a wave of anti-Church agitation, accompanied by an array of new measures, had taken place during the first half of 1941. The activism appears in the main to have come from below, as anti-Church radicals exploited wartime needs to try to break the vexing hold — strengthened by the anxieties of the war itself — which the Churches continued to have on the population. But it certainly had encouragement from above, particularly through Bormann and the Party Chancellery. In a confidential circular to all Gauleiter in June 1941, Bormann had expressly declared that Christianity and National Socialism were incompatible. The Party must struggle, therefore, to break the Church’s power and influence.165 Whether this represented Hitler’s wishes, given his essential stance on relations with the Churches during the war, is extremely doubtful. On the other hand, Bormann never acted directly contrary to what Hitler wanted. Most probably, he misinterpreted on this occasion Hitler’s repeated rantings about the malevolent influence of Christianity and sent the wrong signals to Party activists.166
By the time Bormann wrote his circular, antagonism among churchgoers had already intensified through bans on Church publications, the replacement of Catholic nuns by ‘brown sisters’ from the Nazi welfare organization (the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, or NSV), the shifting of celebrations of feast days from weekdays to the nearest Sunday, and attempts to abolish school prayers. Rumours spread that baptism of children would soon no longer be allowed, and that priests would be turned out of their presbyteries. In some localities, the closure of monasteries, eviction of the monks, and sequestration of monastic property to accommodate refugees or provide space for Party offices caused immense anger.167
A highpoint of popular unrest provoked by Nazi attacks on the Church occurred in predominantly Catholic Bavaria in the summer of 1941. The Gauleiter of the ‘Traditional Gau’ of Munich and Upper Bavaria, one of Hitler’s oldest allies, Adolf Wagner, acting in his capacity as Education Minister, had ordered in April the removal of crucifixes from Bavarian schoolrooms. Whether, as was later claimed, he was trying ‘to give visible effect to the teaching handed down by Reichsleiter Bormann, that National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable opposites’, or whether he was acting on his own initiative cannot be established.168 Wagner’s order went out several weeks before Bormann’s circular, which cannot, therefore, have provoked the ‘action’. But Wagner probably read the signals coming from Party headquarters earlier in the year and acted — without apparently any consultation in Bavaria itself — to give direct meaning to the anti-Church drive in his own province, where the power of Catholicism was a thorn in the side of the Party, by attacking the very symbol of Christianity itself.
The result, in any case, was to stir up a torrent of embittered protest, articulated above all by mothers of schoolchildren. Their letters to loved ones at the front were read by soldiers incredulous at what the ‘Bolsheviks in the homeland’ were doing, and threatened to have a damaging effect on the troops’ morale. Mass meetings in village halls, refusal to send children to school, collection of signatures on petitions, and public demonstrations by angry mothers meant that the matter could not be ignored. One petition, accompanied by a signed list containing 2,331 names, ran: ‘The sons of our town stand in the east in the struggle against Bolshevism. Many are giving their lives in the cause. We cannot understand that particularly in this hard time people want to take the cross out of the schools.’169 Wagner was forced to revoke his earlier order. But things had become so chaotic that Party functionaries in some areas only then started actually removing the crucifixes. It was autumn before the heat generated wholly unnecessarily by the issue gradually subsided. The damage done to the standing of the Party in such regions was immeasurable and irreparable.170
Hitler did not escape the wrath of Bavarian Catholics. Farmers in some areas removed his picture from their houses. ‘Rather Wilhelm by the grace of God than the idiot of Berchtesgaden
