How was a loyal Catholic, for example, to understand Pius XII’s own December 8, 1939, pastoral letter, Asperis Commoti Anxietatibus, addressed to chaplains in the various armies of the warring nations, of whom over 500 served in Hitler’s army? He urged the chaplains on both sides to have confidence in their respective military bishops, viewing the war as a manifestation of the will of a heavenly Father who always turns evil into good, and “as fighters under the flags of their country to fight also for the Church.”⁵ (Italics added)

This perplexing contradiction is demonstrated again by the pope’s letters to the bishops on both sides. In an August 6, 1940, letter to the German bishops, Pius expressed his admiration for Catholics who “loyal unto death give proof of their willingness to share the sacrifices and sufferings of the other Volksgenossen [fellow Germans].”⁶

In fact, when the Vatican’s Berlin correspondent for the official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, once asked Pius XII whether he would protest the extermination of the Jews, the pope told him that he could “not forget that millions of Catholics serve in the German armies.

Consciences Face the Church

Search as he would, Catholic scholar and educator Gordon Zahn could find documented evidence of just one among 32 million German Catholics who conscientiously refused to serve in Hitler’s armies. Aside from churchmen prosecuted for political opposition to the Nazis, he found a total of seven persons between Germany and Catholic Austria who conscientiously refused to take the military oath.¹³ You probably wonder why there were so few.

Zahn answers that his extensive interviews with people, who knew these men produced the “flat assurance voiced by almost every informant that any Catholic who decided to refuse military service would have received no support whatsoever from his spiritual leaders.” Ironically, those few who did refuse and stuck to it were actually an embarrassment to their “spiritual leaders.”

For example, in requesting clemency from the Nazi court for a priest who refused, Archbishop Konrad Gröber of Freiburg wrote that the priest was “an idealist who has grown ever more estranged from reality. . . . who wanted to help his Volk and Vaterland but who proceeded from the wrong premises.”¹⁴ Others were denied Communion by prison chaplains for violating their “Christian duty” to take the Nazi military oath.¹⁵

“I consider the greater heroes to be those exemplary young Catholic men, seminarians, priests, and heads of families who fought and died in heroic fulfillment of duty,” he continued. Even the Nazi’s court-appointed attorney Feldmann used this argument in an attempt to get Jägerstätter to compromise, noting the millions of Catholics, including clergy, engaged in combat with a “clear” conscience. Finally, Feldmann recalls, he challenged him to cite a single instance in which a bishop in any way discouraged Nazi military service.¹⁷ He knew of none.