My Battle Against Hitler

by Dietrich von Hildebrand,John Henry Crosby

  Of course this paragraph was itself absolutely unacceptable, yet over the years the Nazi posture toward Christianity and especially toward the Catholic Church had totally changed. Or, to be more precise, Hitler had dropped his mask, and now his hatred for Christ and the Catholic Church, which merely for tactical reasons he had hidden, came into the open. The open persecution of the Church was already under way by this time.

  Sadly, none of my arguments made much of an impression on Toynbee’s assistant. Only one remark seemed to catch his attention. I said, “I have known Papen for a long time, and I must tell you that I would never shake his hand ‘because he is no gentleman.’ ”

  The spring saw much discussion around a “disastrous book” called The Foundations of National Socialism by Bishop Alois Hudal (1885–1963), the Austrian Church’s leading representative in Rome. (The book must already have been available in late 1936 given that von Hildebrand wrote a critical review in the November 15 issue of the Ständestaat.1 In 1920, the historian Ludwig von Pastor had warned von Hildebrand, “Do not trust this man. He is consumed by ambition. He is a devious and untrustworthy person.”

  Hudal had published a book in which he sought to demonstrate that National Socialism and Catholicism were in principle entirely compatible. Only in a few minor points did Hitler need to improve his understanding. The book gave the impression that there was 95% agreement, or at least harmony, while only 5% in National Socialism needed modification.

  To grasp the true monstrosity of the book, one has to realize that it appeared after the publication of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, and that the persecution of the Church in Germany was already in full swing. Naturally, we responded in our journal in the most energetic way. We devoted almost an entire issue to this book, which we rejected in very sharp terms. Hudal ended up having no success with the book. It was prohibited in Germany because the Nazis did not deem it sufficiently “orthodox.”

  Thus, his betrayal turned out to be entirely ineffectual. The excuse that through this book Hudal would ease the situation of Catholics in Germany also proved to be completely mistaken. Obviously, Hudal’s book was a totally illegitimate attempt to serve the cause of “peace” between the Church and National Socialism. Its failure to have any public efficacy was thus a just punishment for what was truly a betrayal of Christ. Of course, the excuse for the book was itself an expression of “the end justifies the means,” yet even from a purely utilitarian perspective the whole thing proved to be fruitless.

  About this time, von Hildebrand’s brother-in-law Fedja Georgii came under suspicion with the Nazi authorities. He had in fact done nothing to oppose them, though he had never made a secret of his principled rejection of National Socialism. The suspicion could have “catastrophic consequences” for Fedja and his family. To clear things up, Fr. Alois Mager suggested they visit Franz von Papen, whom he knew.

  Fr. Alois saw through Papen just as I did, and Papen must have known that Fr. Alois was not a Nazi. But the personal acquaintance with Papen made it possible for Fr. Alois to call on him with Fedja and to ask him to clear Fedja of the false suspicion. They went to Papen and everything was satisfactorily resolved.

  The meeting was also very gratifying for me. Fr. Alois told me that, among other things, the conversation touched upon me and my journal. Papen said, “That damned Hildebrand is the greatest obstacle for National Socialism in Austria. No one causes more harm.” This made me very happy because it meant that my work and my battle in Austria had not been for naught.

  The Kulturbund was very active in Vienna. I rarely managed to attend the always interesting lectures which regularly took place there. I did go when Berdyaev came to speak. I had met Berdyaev in Paris and knew that he was a significant and profound thinker. He spoke very beautifully, yet in the middle of the lecture, just as he was speaking about God (it sounded liked “Good” in his very heavy Russian accent), he began making his grimaces. These grimaces were a nervous affliction, which I had already noticed when I first met him in Paris with Count Pange.*7

  I invited Berdyaev to my political evenings where he made many beautiful and interesting contributions to the discussion. At one point he said, “The world is anthropocentric, yet man himself may not exist like this. He must be theocentric.” This thesis was both beautiful and deeply true. But it was also particularly salutary at a time defined by collectivism and materialism in so many different forms. Overall, Berdyaev made a great impression on the guests.

  I remember one occasion in 1937 when Dempf came to visit me. Whether he came before or after Easter, I no longer recall. He was very nice and friendly. He must have known that he had received the professorship which had been promised to me. Of course he could not help that his appointment had been an injustice to me. But how totally different it was to speak with him than with any of my other philosophical colleagues!

  What could I have discussed with Reininger?*8 Certainly, Reininger was a friendly, proper old gentleman, but we had nothing to say to one another. Schlick was very friendly to me on a human level, and he was an outspoken opponent of National Socialism, yet as a logical positivist it would be hard to imagine someone philosophically more antithetical to me. He was also completely unreligious.

  Against this background, Dempf was a true consolation. His noble face, his deep piety, his kind and unostentatious manner, his philosophical openness, and his sincere opposition to National Socialism, all of this set him worlds apart from my other philosophical colleagues in Vienna. I still remember Dempf being moved to tears as he spoke about the resistance to National Socialism by various circles of German Catholic youth; the feeling that he had abandoned them by coming to Vienna filled him with emotion. Much as his disposition won me for him, we never managed to develop an ongoing relationship.

  Meanwhile, Klaus Dohrn and Eugen Kogon had become very good friends. Klaus had gotten acquainted with Kogon through Count Caspar Preysing who worked together with Kogon in managing the properties of Prince Josias von Hessen. Kogon had totally changed his political stance and had become a complete opponent of National Socialism. He was also interested in the Ständestaat and eventually emerged as a potential buyer.

  The reunion with Fr. Stratmann was a great joy for me. I had last seen him in Rome, where he served in the Sacred Penitentiary at Santa Maria Maggiore, probably in 1935 or perhaps even in 1933. He had undergone a great deal. At the very beginning of the Hitler regime, he had been arrested and, to make a point of humiliating him, had been locked up in a prison ward for troubled girls. This turned out to be quite fortunate for him because the ward was under the authority of a woman who was Catholic. She treated Fr. Stratmann with the greatest respect and reverence. He said, “She was like a mother to me.”

  He was then brought before a court because his pacifism was deemed to be treasonous. The judge treated him shamefully, yet luckily this took place early in the Nazi regime when everything was still much less drastic and strict. It was impossible to prove anything more than his principled pacifism, which in those days was not sufficient for a conviction. He was released but threatened with more drastic consequences if he did not abandon his pacifism in the future.

  Von Hildebrand now returns to his description of the four-part lecture series at the Pauluswerk in May 1937.

  Sadly I no longer recall the sequence and the spacing of the lectures. One of the lectures was given by Senator Pant—unfortunately rather disappointing, for he did not have any special interest in the topic. What he said was certainly correct, but it was neither deep nor original nor particularly well delivered. I had the impression that even then his health was no longer so good.

  Then again, his distinction lay not in being a significant thinker, but in his courage, his readiness to make sacrifices, his moral integrity, his refusal to make compromises, and his piety. He fought for all that was good and true, which itself was far more important than being able to contribute deep and interesting ideas. But obviously this lecture was not really suited to dr
aw out his great qualities. It was, I think, the last time I saw this noble man. Overall, the lectures were quite a success and Oesterreicher was very pleased.

  A few days after my lecture, Gretchen and I were invited by a certain Baroness Pereyra. There I met Baron Zessner-Spitzenberg,*9 and also a young aristocrat who attacked me because of my lecture at the Pauluswerk.*10 He had only read about it in the newspapers. “How can you approve of this awful Jewish lot being taken up into the Church? You should be glad that they are not in the Church.”

  I replied to him, “If you are arguing that the conversion of disagreeable people is undesirable, then you would also have to consider as undesirable the presence of any Prussians in the Church.” Apart from addressing his terrible argument, I said to him, “How can you pass such a sweeping judgment against the Jews? Hebbel says so truly, ‘The Jew is neither better nor worse than the man.’*11 The noblest people I met in my life were Jews.” It was a fierce discussion which simply showed again how even people who wanted nothing to do with the Nazis could be incredibly clueless and infected by Nazi poison.

  One evening we heard on the radio the awful address of Goebbels against the clergy. It was in response to a speech by the cardinal of Chicago*12 who referred to Hitler as a “paperhanger,” adding humorously, “and I’ve heard, not a very good paperhanger.” Goebbels responded with a dreadful speech in which he made “revelations” about the alleged moral degeneracy of the clergy in Germany. He began by quoting the Catholic press from 1906/07 at the time of the famous Eulenburg trial.*13 Prince Eulenburg, who was persona grata at the court of Emperor Wilhelm, was accused of homosexuality. The Catholic press at the time insisted that everything be revealed and prosecuted in court, regardless of Eulenburg’s social position.

  Goebbels read this aloud and then added the following, “Oh you angel of premonition! What was said back then must now be applied to the shocking moral degeneracy of the clergy.” This was followed by a stream of totally ridiculous slanders. Finally he cried out, “I would never allow my daughter to go to confession because I have no way of knowing what might happen to the poor innocent girl.” The whole speech was delivered in a tone both terrible and melodramatic. But what really stood out in an awful way was the spirit of untruth and of hatred for Christ, along with the brutality and baseness of Nazism.

  In May, Professor Schlick was shot by a student at the University. The student was mentally ill. I was deeply shaken by this murder. Although I considered Schlick disastrous from a philosophical perspective, I had great regard for him as a kind person and for his courageous rejection of Nazism.

  Sometime after the murder his son came to me and asked me to take up the defense of his father in my journal. He wanted me to respond to the outrageous article in the Schönere Zukunft, which claimed that the shooting of Schlick was simply a primal protest of the people against the anti-metaphysical Jewish stance of Schlick. While Schlick was not himself a Jew, he was taken to be a representative of the Jewish spirit, which was supposed to be profoundly anti-metaphysical and destructive. The shooting of Schlick was not a murder but in itself a healthy protest against the Jewish spirit in Schlick.

  The son of Schlick asked me to rebut this article. Naturally, I immediately agreed. It was a curious situation for me to have to defend Schlick, whom I completely rejected as a philosopher. On the other hand, the terrible article in the Schönere Zukunft demanded an absolute repudiation. So I wrote an article in the Ständestaat in which I began by showing that the murder of Schlick was based entirely on personal reasons, having no connection to his philosophy. But then I also showed how completely false it was to claim that the Jewish spirit is anti-metaphysical. Maimonides*14 and Spinoza*15 were Jews, and both of them metaphysicians. Bergson,*16 Husserl, and Cohen*17 were all Jews, yet one certainly cannot accuse them of developing a destructive philosophy. But I primarily emphasized how grotesque it was to connect the murder of a non-Jew with anti-Semitic propaganda, to use the murder as an occasion for such propaganda.

  * * *

  *1 Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944), French writer.

  *2 Alfred Toynbee (1889–1975), English historian known for his twelve-volume A Study of History.

  *3 Gilbert Murray (1866–1957).

  *4 Eduard Beneš (1884–1948), then president of Czechoslovakia.

  *5 Konrad Henlein (1898–1945).

  *6 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical on March 14, 1937.

  *7 Count Jean de Pange (1881–1957), French historian.

  *8 Robert Reininger (1869–1955), professor of philosophy in Vienna.

  *9 Hans Karl von Zessner-Spitzenberg (1885–1938), leader among the legitimists, incarcerated at Dachau where he died.

  *10 Entitled “The Jews and the Christian West,” von Hildebrand’s lecture was first published in Oesterreicher’s journal, Die Erfüllung, in 1937. A portion is featured in this volume on p. 270ff.

  *11 Friedrich Hebbel (1813–63), German dramatist and poet.

  *12 George William Cardinal Mundelein (1872–1939).

  *13 Prince Philipp Eulenburg (1847–1921), diplomat and friend of Emperor Wilhelm II.

  *14 Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), most significant medieval Jewish philosopher of religion.

  *15 Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), Dutch philosopher.

  *16 Henri Bergson (1859–1941), French philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for literature.

  *17 Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), German philosopher and influential representative of neo-Kantianism.

  ESCAPE FROM VIENNA

  March 1938

  The memoirs of Dietrich von Hildebrand break off in late August 1937 at a moment of high drama. In that same year, his brother-in-law Theodor (Fedja) Georgii was told by Franz von Papen, the Nazi ambassador to Austria: “That damned Hildebrand is the greatest obstacle for National Socialism in Austria. No one causes more harm.” What Georgii could not have known at the time was that von Papen was then hatching a plot to assassinate von Hildebrand.

  The evidence of this plot is documented by historian Rudolf Ebneth in what remains the definitive history of von Hildebrand’s journal, Der christliche Ständestaat.1 Ebneth quotes a secret dispatch from von Papen to Hitler himself, dated April 30, 1937, and marked “top secret.” Here are the key lines:

  To: The Führer

  From: Ambassador Franz von Papen

  As the Essen National Times has already reported, a National Union for German Liberation was recently established here. This organization seeks to overthrow the Nazi regime and is trying to unite the enemies of Nazi Germany under a single leadership. The mastermind behind these intrigues is the all-too-well-known expatriate emigrant Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand, editor of the weekly journal, Der christliche Ständestaat.…

  Because of the importance of this matter and fearful that the suspects might be warned and their tracks covered, I have immediately sent copies of the enclosed documents to the Director of the SS, Himmler.…

  We may be able to strike a severe blow against these extremely evil and dangerous enemies of the Reich working in Austria.2

  This was not the first time that Hitler had received reports about von Hildebrand’s journalistic activities. In a lengthy dispatch to the Führer dated June 13, 1935, Papen had written: “In speaking with the [Austrian] Foreign Minister, I took the opportunity to express the sharpest possible protest against the rhetoric of various [Austrian] publications. Among these Der christliche Ständestaat, published by the emigrant Hildebrand, is the worst offender.”3

  Some years ago, the FBI was able to locate a number of documents that show how von Hildebrand’s intellectual resistance was noticed even in the United States. The most remarkable of these is an undated memorandum (likely from the early 1940s) apparently signed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover himself. Hoover writes:

  Hildebrand and his son Franz are engaged in operating the “International Catholic Office for Refuges’ Affairs” at 11 West 42nd Street, New York City. This report from the New York Fie
ld Division indicates that [sic] subject is a “famous foe of Nazism.”

  The file further reflects that Hildebrand was dismissed in 1938 [actually in 1933] from the Munich University because of anti-Nazi activities and that his good friend, Chancellor Dollfuss of Austria, was instrumental in bringing subject to the University of Vienna, where in addition to his professorship he edited the most violently anti-Nazi publication in Austria. Von Papen reportedly made repeated requests of the Austrian Government for the suppression of this newspaper.4

  These are just some of the most impressive documents mentioning von Hildebrand that have come to light. Ebneth cites numerous documents in his study,5 yet there is good reason to believe there are more waiting to be discovered. Historians should take up the important task of assembling a complete record of von Hildebrand’s activities as mirrored in the remembrances of his contemporaries, in the press of the day, and also in government archives.

  While the memoirs trail off in 1937, von Hildebrand’s story certainly does not. The fullest published account of the period extending from 1937 to his arrival in New York City in 1940 is found in the thrilling final chapter of Alice von Hildebrand’s biography of her husband, The Soul of a Lion,6 which she bases on outlines and on extensive notes von Hildebrand had made for these years. We also have the accounts of two eyewitnesses who describe his flight from Vienna in 1938. There were in fact two flights from Vienna, and the first is related by his friend Hellmut Laun (1920–81), as we shall see momentarily.

  In early 1938, as the Anschluss gained momentum, von Hildebrand realized that he would soon have to leave Vienna. From the chief of the secret police in Vienna, he had learned already in January 1935 that the Gestapo were spying on him; they had even rented the apartment directly across the street to watch his every move. But the danger to him was more acute. As a result, he had arranged with friends in Salzburg, which is very near the German border, to notify him the moment there was any sign of German mobilization. Since the telephones were presumably tapped, the caller was simply to say, “If Anna still wishes to see her grandmother, she must leave immediately.”