Posted on 03/05/2015 4:44:32 PM PST by Colofornian
David Conley Nelson has spent years researching the LDS Church during the Third Reich, resulting in the new book Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany.
Though it’s not officially out until February 26, the book will be launched Sam Weller’s in Trolley Square, Salt Lake City, tomorrow evening.
It’s not right to say I “enjoyed” this book, because it was disturbing to discover how deeply some Mormons bought into Nazi ideology. But it’s required reading for anyone interested in Mormon history and the larger question of a religion’s responsibility to procure justice for the oppressed – even when it means putting that religion’s own institutional advancement at risk. — JKR
RNS: You note in the book that Mormons in the 1930s were not just tolerant of Hitler but downright enthusiastic about his policies, including things like getting rid of brothels and passing laws against homosexuality. Why were Mormons such strong supporters of Nazism?
David Conley Nelson: Ordinary Mormons were ordinary Germans. Hitler was very popular, so they supported the government. There’s nothing unusual about that. But also, the LDS mission presidents recognized the vulnerability that an American-led church had under this dictatorship, and they put together a program to formalize the church’s support of the government. By doing so, they resurrected the 12th Article of Faith, which the Mormons had not obeyed before during their history of missions in Germany. Between 1851 and 1918, Mormons had been banned in a lot of the German states, so to get around that they would register as English teachers, students, or commercial developers instead of as missionaries.
So in the 1930s the mission presidents formulated this program to keep the church safe, but then found opportunities that were too good to pass up, especially in genealogy. In the past they had been banned from German archives because pastors did not want their records used to baptize the dead as Mormons. But during the Reich, suddenly all these ordinary Germans had to prove their ancestors were not Jews, so the Church’s genealogy program experienced newfound freedom. By the time Nazi Germany was in full swing, just about every branch had a genealogical president, two counselors, and a secretary.
The shocking thing is that there seemed to be very little sensitivity to the racial reasons for genealogical research. Newspaper articles would appear in the Deseret News, bragging about how much success the Church was having in Germany with the new government. The same newspaper was also running AP articles about the plight of the Jews. So the Church knew what was going on in Germany, but emphasized cooperating with the Third Reich.
RNS: One of the sadder stories in the book is of LDS First Counselor J. Reuben Clark, whose anti-Semitism seems to have been off the charts. Even after the war, he was still handing out copies of the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Nelson: Mike Quinn says it best: J. Reuben Clark was an anti-Semite, but it was an anti-Semitism fueled by the xenophobia and nativism of the Progressive Era. Through his legal and business work Clark had the conflicting view that Jews were Communists on the one hand, but that they also embraced capitalism and were cheating in their businesses. I’ve seen no evidence that he changed his mind about Jews after the war.
RNS: In the final portion of the book you lay out the case of teenage activist Helmut Hübener, one of the few Mormons who opposed the Third Reich (and was ultimately executed for it). Was Hübener motivated by a desire to save the Jews?
Nelson: No. I have not found in the writings any evidence of his being philosemitic or ever denouncing what was happening to the Jews. Although Hübener can be considered an idealist, I think he saw the Jewish question as one where he could never persuade people. So many Germans were in agreement with Hitler about the Jews that he would have instantly lost his credibility with his German audience. I don’t think he was anti-Semitic, but he was pragmatic.
Hübener was motivated more by what he saw as Hitler’s influence coming into his own branch, the St. Georg branch in Hamburg, where the branch president and first counselor were Nazi enthusiasts and others were members of the SA and SS.
RNS: It seems plausible that after WWII, Mormon leaders would want to be seen as embracing Hübener’s story, but you note in the book that the Church actually suppressed a play and other writings about Hübener until the 1990s.
Nelson: Hübener is what I call the consummate memory beacon. He was someone whose story could be brightened or dimmed according to what was needed at the time after the war.
When the play originally happened at BYU in the tumultuous 1970s, there were some sensitivities. Some within the LDS hierarchy worried that Hübener’s story would motivate young Mormons in South America to rebel against their own governments.
Also, there was sensitivity at home. Some 4,000 German Mormons had emigrated after the war. Most of those people had suffered in the war, but some of them were perpetrators whose hands were dirty. Many didn’t like the Hübener story, because they embraced the 12th Article of Faith as justification for what they had done in the war: Good Latter-day Saints help the government and trust in God. They saw Hübener as a traitor.
This reflects the overriding support given the Third Reich by Protestant Churches in Germany at the time. See this report:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html
On the other hand, the Catholic Church was aligned against Nazism, though on the personal level a great number of individual German Catholics were as supportive as other Germans of the time.
If freepers would just quit feeding these trolls they would probably lose interest and leave. The problem is, there is a pack of trolls here that keep feeding each other.
Salon Kitty was an intelligence honey trap run by the SD aimed at foreign dignitaries.
The Nazi party always advocated bourgeois morality, at least publicly. Himmler did once try to setup an SS baby factory, but his officers, most of whom were married, balked at the idea.
I think Colofornian is a closet Mormon with a weird complex. Or nutts.
And the article portrays one young Mormon from that era in a positive light...but you wouldn't be able to tell that by the knee-jerk reaction we've seen on the thread.
Actually, the problem is the word "troll" has become diluted" to me. I'm, not sure what the word means anymore in the classical sense.
Used to be you could come here for great conversation, friendship even, some disagreement and in the end it was, well, just good conversation.
Not so sure anymore, everything you write is somehow suspect and can be turned into (interpreted) something you didn't even mean to write.
It's really getting ugly out there. Goebbels and Bernays are doing the "happy dance" for sure.
"Hitler was a Christian..."...
You're telling us that you think Hitler was a "Christian?"
(And this is the so-called "authoritative" author for making your claims about German Protestants?)
Read my earlier post on the thread that references the Barmen Declaration, which is where three Protestant denominations began officially bucking Naziism...1935.
You sure about that? The brunette lead singer from ABBA (yes, ABBA) was the product of that very program, and it had more than limited success.
And the Nazi Ernst Rohm was a flagrant homosexual, and his Brown Shirts were known to lean that way too. One reason why he got offed during Krystal Nacht. Hitler, according to US intel, had either five or six lovers/mistresses, all but one of whom would commit suicide. E. Braun among them.
And the first was, I believe, Gelli, his half-niece. So we will have to disagree on these topics.
Good one!
Him and his apprentice.
(Thank y’all for visiting tonight...making this thread the most-popular FR religion thread in the last 24 hrs! That’ll draw other lurkers!)
***And a hearty dose of John Moses Browning to his lousy Reich. ***
And when the Nazis took over Belgium they began to make use of John Browning’s designs against the Allies.
***..the daily Two Minute Hate.***
You mean the exposing of things the LDS want kept secret?
And don’t forget the Lebensborn program of the SS.
There were pastors whom went to the concentration camps because they opposed Hitler. Ever hear of Dietrich Bonhoeffer whom for a time taught in New York went back to germany and later died in one of the German Concentration Camps shortly before the war ended. There were others whom went against Hitler. The Mormon church was a big part of racism against blacks, why not Jews and Gypsy’s too? Oddly enough it was an American company that provided the cyanide for the death camps!
He got to see Hitler in a parade and took a picture but the SS guard behind them took his camera. He and his mission companion also were arrested one night and interrogated all night as "American Spies". They did convince the gestapo they were just young missionaries.
Some Mormons were sympathetic to Hitler but many were not. For example Helmuth Hubner was one of the youngest men executed for resisting Hitler but his Bishop was for pro-Hitler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_H%C3%BCbener.
Complicating thing was how it was hard to tell how loyal someone was or wasn't. In one area his barber (who's SS uniform hung on the wall by the barber chair) asked my grandpa (who was 20 years old) if he would donate money to help save some Jews. My grandpa didn't know if it was a trick or not. After the war he contacted him. the barber was serious. He was helping smuggle Jews, but also an SS member.
Generally German Mormons were like other Germans, some were for Hitler some were against and most were just trying to survive. My grandpa and his companion had a car with guards assigned to follow them around during the day so non-Mormons and Mormons alike were reluctant to meet with them. He said even as Americans in Berlin they knew Hitler was evil but it was still hard to be unnafected by the propaganda. He said in the American media (at the time in the 1940's) they always show Hitler's frenzied speeches, frothing at the mouth. But in most speeches he actually spent an hour working the crowd up to that crescendo. So the Hitler the Germans saw was more deliberate and reasoned than what Americans at the time saw. More worrisome is my Grandpas take on America tight now. He is 96 now. About 4 years ago he sent a letter to the extended family stating that the America now (politically, media, propoganda) feels like his time in Germany in the late 1930's.
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