Mothers in the Fatherland by Koonz Claudia

Author:Koonz, Claudia [Claudia Koonz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136213793
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

The Cardinal closed with "Blessings from the bottom of my heart. May God preserve the Reichs Chancellor for our Voik."24 In Berlin a special high mass commemorated the Concordat. National Socialist flags and banners adorned the cathedral and the Nazi marching song, the "Horst Wessel Lied," accompanied the recessional. The Church leadership, which only months before had opposed racial thinking, had reversed its position. Bishops like Conrad Gröber concluded, "Race and Christianity are not contradictions, but orders of a different kind that supplement one another." Expressions like "Heil Bischof" and "Jesus is our Führer!" became the clergy's stock-in-trade. In some churches, priests held memorial services in honor of two Catholics who had been "martyred" for the Nazi cause before 1933. One priest, exiled for his left-wing views, commented cynically that the Catholic leaders advertised their nationalist wares with a sign outside their shop window that read, "We carry all items that are sold by the competition, but our quality is better."25

On the Woman Question, Catholic men rivaled Hitler in proclaiming the restoration of motherhood in a warrior nation. Vice-Chancellor von Papen boasted about "the Germanic aversion to death on a mattress," and urged Germans to revive warrior virtues.

What the battle-field was for the man, motherhood was for the woman. . . . The maintenance of eternal life demanded the sacrifice of the individual. Mothers must exhaust themselves in order to give life to children. Fathers must fight on the battle-field in order to secure a future for their sons. . . . A man who is not a father is not a man. . . . Even more true is the saying that she who is not a mother is not a woman. . . .26

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