Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (11 page)

Bishop Neuhäusler then returns to the further protests from German bishops … after a long and fatal pause of three years: Cardinals Bertram and Faulhaber in August and November 1940; Archbishop Gröber and Bishop Bornewasser von Trier, the Bishop of Limburg and of course the infinitely courageous Bishop of Münster, Count Galen – all in 1941; and finally a pastoral letter from all the German bishops, dated September 12, 1943, and certainly remarkable for the period, in which the bishops protest not only against euthanasia but against the murder of “innocent hostages, prisoners of war or penal institutions, and human beings of foreign race or extraction”.

“After this flood [of proof) of protests by the bishops against euthanasia,” wrote Bishop Neuhäusler, “I was asked by one of the defending counsel [present at a meeting on March 3, 1967, when the Bishop was consulted for five hours about the attitude of the Catholic Church towards euthanasia during the relevant period] why the bishops had been silent for so long after their initial protests in 1934. I was able to say that, after all, one could not shoot at rabbits which were either not there or at the very least not visible. There was no destruction of unworthy life in 1938 to 1939, at least not on a large scale, certainly not with knowledge of the public.” He was, however, to add (a remark of sad significance) “I myself made an effort to ‘bring light into this darkness’ by sending, around 1939, a
Domkapitular
to the two places at which one suspected euthanasia was being carried out: Grafeneck and Hartheim: both in vain. No one around these towns knew anything or dared to say anything. It was only when whole buses of patients were fetched at night from hospitals and asylums [in 1940] that one had grounds for protest.”

This is a valid argument only if protest by the Churches against acts incompatible with morality or human rights is to be determined by the extent to which these acts are
public knowledge.
Although – Bishop Neuhäusler is right – these appear to be the standards that have been applied, at least during the 1939–45 period we are concerned with in this book, it is difficult to see how they can be justified on any moral grounds.

The argument has been made to me that the Mayer Opinion, even if it was presented to the Papal Nuncio and several bishops, was merely taken “cognizance of”, not “approved”; and that this in no way committed the Catholic Church to Mayer’s interpretation of doctrine or attitude. This is of course true; there is no proof that either Bishop Wienken, Bishop Berning, Cardinal Orsenigo, or even Drs Roth or Patin necessarily agreed with all or any part of Professor Mayer’s Opinion. But this argument by-passes the crucial point: that this Opinion was commissioned and then made known to these authorities for one specific purpose: to find out if the Church would
actively
oppose a Euthanasia Programme by the State. The answer was clear enough to Hitler; there would be no immediate and concerted action. And indeed there
was
none. The record is deplorably clear; the killing of mentally – and incidentally, physically – sick German and Austrian children began in the late summer of 1939, even before the infamous Hitler order was signed. And by October the complete programme was in full swing.

According to all the evidence now on hand, whether knowledge was official or unofficial, obtained through fair means or foul, transmitted through practising or lapsed priests, it was literally impossible for the Church – which has what has been called the “best information service in the world” at its disposal – to have been in ignorance. And whichever way one looks at it there is that appalling hiatus between the summer of 1939 and the spring of 1940 when no one in the German Churches raised their voice.

The first to speak up was the Protestant Bishop of Württemberg, Theophil Wurm, who on March 19, 1940, addressed an outraged letter of protest to the Minister of the Interior, Dr Frick. Even then – and by this time tens of thousands must have been dead – the Vatican did not speak. (The Pope was merely to refer months later, on December 15, 1940, to “the courageous letter from Württemberg” in a letter to Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin. Nor was the Holy Father heard from when his own German cardinals, Bertram and Faulhaber, at last protested in letters to Reich Minister of Justice Gürtner, in August and November 1940.)

On November 27, 1940, one year and two months after the official beginning of the Euthanasia Programme, the Holy Office met in conclave and made its first official statement on the subject of euthanasia. But even this, the mildest of pronouncements, stating that the “extinction of unworthy life by public mandate [was] incompatible with natural and divine law”, was only mentioned once, in Latin, on the Vatican radio (December 2), and in the
Osservatore Romano
(December 6), equally in Latin, of course. It remained virtually unheard in Germany.

“Virtually” because, extraordinarily enough, one German bishop, Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, on March 9, 1941, read it from the pulpit of St Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin.

It has always seemed puzzling to me that, while the famous sermon of the Bishop of Münster, Count Galen, on August 3, 1941, has generally been credited with forcing Hitler to stop the Euthanasia Programme, not a single book I have read has mentioned this sermon delivered by the Bishop of Berlin.
*
Even the “Letters to the German Bishops”, Volume II of the six volumes published so far by the Vatican of documents and letters pertaining to World War II, only mentions this remarkable sermon in a long footnote.
*

“With the same devotion to principles,” said Bishop Preysing, “with which the Church protects matrimony, the moral focus of the people, she also protects the individual’s right to life. We know that nowadays exceptions are claimed in theory and practice, to the holy right of the innocent to life and protection. These exceptions are being justified on medical, economic, yes even eugenic grounds.… The law of God proclaims that no earthly power, including the State, has the right to take the life of the innocent. This divine law is irrevocable.…” The Bishop continued to say that the Pope had “very recently” decreed that the law of the Church which states that “there is no justification and no excuse to take the life of the sick and weak for any reason whatever … be once again confirmed.”
†
Following which the Bishop read out the Holy Office pronouncement.

The occasion for this sermon was a mass in commemoration of the coronation of Pius
XII
. The Pope’s only reaction to this sermon – which subsequently was so mysteriously fated to be forgotten by all historians – was to thank the Bishop (on March 19, 1941) for his letters – “of 10, 11, and 17 January; 8, 15 and 22 February, as well as of 6 March [in which the Bishop had included a draft of the sermon] of which We have taken careful cognizance, especially too of your sermon on the occasion of the coronation mass at St Hedwig’s. We welcome every honest word with which you bishops defend the right of God and of the Holy Church in public.…”

(“Nobody cared about what those fellows said in church,” said Dieter Allers, when I asked him how the population reacted to the sermons by Preysing, Galen and others. “Hardly anybody went to church anyway,” he said. “All we cared about was our crust of bread and getting the war over and done with.” I believe that Herr Allers underrates the effectiveness of word-of-mouth information. Nevertheless, he may of course be right; in which case one would have thought that it was even more essential – now that the Churches had begun to admit to the knowledge about euthanasia — that their information, and particularly the stand finally taken by the Holy Office, be disseminated in print, whatever the risk.)

The only place in Germany, however, where the pronouncement of the Holy Office was seen in print, was in one single paper, the little
Diocesan Gazette
of the little town of Rottenburg, in Württemberg (significant, if one remembers that the first churchman to speak out was the Protestant Bishop of Württemberg) on March 24, 1941 – in Latin. By now the Euthanasia Programme had become a public scandal and courageous Churchmen all over Germany did protest against it. Five months later, whatever the reason, Hitler ordered it stopped.

Pope Pius
XII
himself only spoke out against euthanasia – clearly and succinctly – in his Pastoral Letter
Mystici Corporis
which appeared on June 29, 1943. By then it was irrelevant to the 60,000–80,000 children and adults, many of them no doubt incurably insane, many others merely handicapped, with illnesses for which cures have since been found, who had been murdered.

For many years now the general assumption has been that Hitler’s order to stop the Euthanasia Programme was a direct result of pressure by the Churches and the public.

But Dieter Allers was to tell me that when Brack and Blankenburg discussed his new assignment with him, which was to begin as of January 1, 1941, they said specifically that it was “
for half a year
”. “We expect to finish by latest July,” Allers quotes Brack as saying.

A similarly puzzling remark was made to me by a spokesman for the Vatican, Father Burkhart Schneider,
SJ
– a historian of considerable reputation – who, commenting on the Galen sermon, said that it was of negligible importance.
*
“The Programme was almost finished anyway,” he said, “they had more or less killed all those they had intended to kill. And in some respects, in fact, it continued.…”

What Professor Schneider was referring to here was what was done in several of the euthanasia institutes
after
the Programme was “officially” stopped, when under the code name “14 f 13”, thousands of concentration-camp prisoners, politicals, “habitual” criminals and Jews were certified as “incurable” (in German:
invalid
–literal translation–patient) and gassed.
*
Every one of the former T4 people I discussed this development with professed to deplore it now, but to have been in total ignorance of it at the time.

*
For instance, a letter from Ivone Kirkpatrick, British Minister to the Holy See, to Robert Vansittart, Under Secretary of State to the Foreign Office, August 19, 1933.

*
Separate from the Nuremberg law enacted a week later, directed against the Jews.

†
Condemned to death on August 28, 1947.

*
The SD, headed by Heydrich, was composed of the Security Police, which included the Gestapo or SIPO – or Secret Political Police; the KRIPO – the criminal investigation department; and the information branches. The SS, which began as Hitler’s bodyguard, became over the years a vast empire within the State, served by its own troops and headed by Himmler. After the death of Heydrich in 1942, the SD was assimilated into the SS, but even prior to this the two organizations complemented each other with exchanges of personnel and information.

*
Joseph Roth died, in the summer of 1942, ostensibly by drowning in the River Inn.

*
The
Einsatzgruppen
– action groups of the Security Police – were employed for killing civilians in occupied Eastern territory.

*
A possible answer to this legitimate question was provided by Herr Hartl, who told me in 1973 that Brack, apologizing for his silence, had told him while in prison in Nuremberg that he had returned to the Catholic faith in anticipation of the death sentence. “He said,” claimed Herr Hartl, “that in return for his silence the Church had promised to look after his family.”

*
He died later that year.

†
Subsequent to the original English publication of this book – and before its announced publication in three predominantly Catholic countries – Father Robert A. Graham S.J., one of the four editors of
Les Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatif à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale
, acknowledged – if grudgingly – in the March 1975 issue of
Civilta Cattolica
that the Mayer Opinion, the existence of which had heretofore been denied by all Catholic authorities, was in fact written.

*
Incorrect: Drs Josef Roth and Wilhelm Patin were still priests when these events occurred and the people allegedly “informed” included a number of bishops and at least one cardinal.

*
Nor did Bishop Neuhäusler mention him in his circular naming those who protested.

*
this page
, Vol. II,
Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatif à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale.

†
Subsequent to the English language publication of this book, the author learned that Bishop Preysing’s sermon was quoted on
this page
of
The Nazi Persecution of the Churches
by John S. Conway (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968).