The Papacy and German bishops had already protested against the
Nazi sterilization of the "racially unfit". Catholic protests against the escalation of this policy into "euthanasia" began in the summer of 1940. Despite Nazi efforts to transfer hospitals to state control, large numbers of disabled people were still under the care of the Churches. Caritas was the chief organisation running such care services for the Catholic Church. After Protestant welfare activists took a stand at the Bethel Hospital in August von Galen's diocese, Galen wrote to Germany's senior cleric, Cardinal
Adolf Bertram, in July 1940 urging the Church to take the moral position. Bertram urged caution. Archbishop
Conrad Groeber of Freiburg wrote to the head of the
Reich Chancellery, and offered to pay all costs being incurred by the state for the "care of mentally ill people intended for death." Caritas directors sought urgent direction from the bishops, and the Fulda Bishops Conference sent a protest letter to the Reich Chancellery on 11 August, then sent Bishop
Heinrich Wienken of Caritas to discuss the matter. Wienken cited the commandment "thou shalt not kill" to officials and warned them to halt the program or face public protest from the Church. Wienken subsequently wavered, fearing a firm line might jeopardise his efforts to have Catholic priests released from Dachau, but was urged to stand firm by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber. The government refused to give a written undertaking to halt the program, and the Vatican declared on 2 December that the policy was contrary to natural and positive Divine law. Bishop von Galen had the decree printed in his newspaper on 9 March 1941. Subsequent arrests of priests and seizure of Jesuit properties by the
Gestapo in his home city of Munster, convinced Galen that the caution advised by his superior had become pointless. On 6, 13 and 20 July 1941, Galen spoke against the seizure of properties and the expulsions of nuns, monks, and the religious, and criticised the "euthanasia" programme. In an attempt to cow Galen, the police raided his sister's convent, and detained her in the cellar. She escaped the confinement and Galen, who had also received news of the imminent removal of further patients, launched his most audacious challenge on the regime in a 3 August sermon. He declared the murders to be illegal and said that he had formally accused those responsible for murders in his diocese in a letter to the public prosecutor. The policy opened the way to the murder of all "unproductive people", like old horses or cows, including disabled war veterans. He asked "Who can trust his doctor anymore?" He declared, wrote Evans, that Catholics must "avoid those who blasphemed, attacked their religion, or brought about the death of innocent men and women. Otherwise they would become involved in their guilt." Galen said that it was the duty of Christians to resist the taking of human life, even if it meant losing their own lives. In 1941, with the
Wehrmacht still marching on Moscow, Galen, despite his long-time nationalist sympathies, denounced the lawlessness of the Gestapo, the confiscations of church properties, and the Nazi "euthanasia" programme. He attacked the Gestapo for converting church properties to their own purposesincluding use as cinemas and brothels. He protested against the mistreatment of Catholics in Germany: the arrests and imprisonment without legal process, the suppression of monasteries, and the expulsion of religious orders. But his sermons went further than defending the church, he spoke of a moral danger to Germany from the regime's violations of basic human rights: "the right to life, to inviolability, and to freedom is an indispensable part of any moral social order", he saidand any government that punishes without court proceedings "undermines its own authority and respect for its sovereignty within the conscience of its citizens". Galen said that it was the duty of Christians to resist the taking of human life, even if it meant losing their own lives.
Reaction "The sensation created by the sermons", wrote Evans, "was enormous". Kershaw characterised Von Galen's 1941 "open attack" on the government's "euthanasia" program as a "vigorous denunciation of Nazi inhumanity and barbarism." According to Gill, "Galen used his condemnation of this appalling policy to draw wider conclusions about the nature of the Nazi state. He spoke of a moral danger to Germany from the regime's violations of basic human rights. Galen had the sermons read in parish churches. The British broadcast excerpts over the BBC German service, dropped leaflets over Germany, and distributed the sermons in occupied countries. Following the war, Pope Pius XII proclaimed von Galen a hero and promoted him to Cardinal. The regime did not halt the murders, but took the program underground. Bishop
Antonius Hilfrich of Limburg wrote to the Justice Minister, denouncing the murders. Bishop
Albert Stohr of Mainz from the pulpit condemned the taking of life. Some of the priests who distributed the sermons were among those arrested and sent to the concentration camps amid the public reaction to the sermons. Bishop von Preysing's Cathedral Administrator,
Bernhard Lichtenberg, met his demise for protesting directly to Dr Conti, the Nazi State Medical Director. On 28 August 1941, he endorsed Galen's sermons in a letter to Conti, pointing to the German constitution which defined euthanasia as an act of murder. He was arrested soon after and later died en route to Dachau. Hitler wanted to have Galen removed, but Goebbels told him this would result in the loss of the loyalty of
Westphalia. The regional Nazi leader and Hitler's deputy
Martin Bormann called for Galen to be hanged, but Hitler and Goebbels urged a delay in retribution till war's end. In a 1942
Table Talk Hitler reportedly said: "The fact that I remain silent in public over Church affairs is not in the least misunderstood by the sly foxes of the Catholic Church, and I am quite sure that a man like Bishop von Galen knows full well that after the war I shall extract retribution to the last farthing." With the programme now public knowledge, nurses and staff (particularly in Catholics institutions) increasingly sought to obstruct implementation of the policy. Under pressure from growing protests, Hitler halted the T4 programme on 24 August 1941, though less systematic murder of disabled people continued. The techniques learnt from
Aktion T4 were later transferred for use in
the Holocaust.
1942 Pastoral Letter In the United States, the
National Catholic Welfare Conference reported that the German Catholic bishops jointly expressed their "horror" at the policy in their 1942 Pastoral Letter:
Mystici corporis Christi In 1943, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical
Mystici corporis Christi, in which he condemned the practice of killing the disabled. He stated his "profound grief" at the murder of the deformed, the insane, and those suffering from hereditary disease... as though they were a useless burden to Society," in condemnation of the ongoing
Nazi "euthanasia" program. The Encyclical was followed, on 26 September 1943, by an open condemnation from the German Bishops which, from every German pulpit, denounced the killing of "innocent and defenceless mentally handicapped, incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages, and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of a foreign race or descent." Paragraph 94 of
Mystici corporis Christi reads: ==See also==