In October of 1939, Hitler authorized the killing of people with incurable diseases. The authorization document was backdated to September 1st because "[t]he start of the war seemed the propitious moment for inaugurating this still more radical eugenic program, which...promised to yield much needed hospital space and to eliminate 'useless eaters'" as compared to the 1933 "Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring" (Lewy 263). The victims were selected on the basis of information disclosed by unwitting doctors on questionnaires sent to the asylums. Patients were primarily killed in gas chambers that would later serve as the prototype for those used in the killing of millions of Jews and other Nazi targets. Notification of death was sent out to next of kin citing an unexpected cause of death and notification that the body had been cremated. A high degree of purposeful bureaucratic confusion, propagandizing of the "unfit to live," and outright lying allowed the Nazi regime to carry out their euthanasia program.

 
 

However, despite the regime's efforts, the program met with enough public outcry that it was forced to cease its operation in August of 1941 and go underground after killing more than 100,000 "patients." Officials reported that "the euthanasia program had become an open secret. The population, including Party members, the report added, reacted with revulsion and horror" (Lewy 264). Popular support against unfavorable actions of the Nazi regime could still be mounted even in 1940. In August of that year, Cardinal Bertram objected to the program believing that "such destruction of the innocent not only violated the Christian moral law, but offended against the moral sense of the German people and threatened to jeopardize the reputation of Germany in the world" (Lewy 264). Protestant Pastor Paul Braune issued a memorandum regarding the program in July of 1940 citing a lack of "legal, medical, ethical, and political" acceptability (Matheson 88). Bishop Clemens von Galen was perhaps the most effective of clerical protesters to the Euthanasia program.

 

 
 

The Bishop delivered sermons against the "mercy killings" that were later printed and widely disseminated throughout Germany. The Bishop warned his parishioners that the arbitrary killings of the 'unproductive' could extend to wounded soldiers. Guenter Lewy in The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, concludes Bishop Gulen's sermon, writing "Woe to the German people when innocents not only could be killed, but their slayers remain unpunished" (Lewy 265). Gulen's protest garnered large public support from the community and angered Nazi officials who under the advise of Goebbels resisted any punitive measures against the Bishop due to the political implications of further outraging his supporters.

 
 

The number of victims of the euthanasia program was not decreased by its underground status. However, the bishops continued to speak out against the program, which is important in considering that the program never again became public policy. Further, when questionnaires similar to those received at the inception of the euthanasia program were again sent to Catholic asylums, Cardinal Bertram refused to "co-operate with this census" (Lewy 26). The reaction of the public and the non-reactionary stance of Nazi officials to the controversy, stand as an example of remaining power of church influence over public opinion despite the regimes efforts otherwise. The national census taken on May 17, 1944 shows that the resident population of the Greater German Reich (not including Bohemia and Moravia) was 79,375,381 of that, 75,393,799 "belonged to a church, religious society, or religious/ideological community" (Matheson 99). Indicating that had the churches chosen to take a stand against the Nazi Final Solution, they might have reached an enormous audience. John Cornwell argues in his book Hitler's Pope, that the Catholic protests to the removal of crucifixes and to the euthanasia program "extended in a multiplicity of local instances across Germany, from 1933 onward, the history of the Nazi regime might have taken a different course." Further, Cornwall quotes J.P. Stern who writes "It seems beyond any doubt that if the churches had opposed the killing of the congenitally insane and the sick, there would have been no Final Solution" (197).

 

Works Cited:

Cornwall, John. Hitler's Pope. Penguin Books: New York. 1999.

Lewy, Guenter. The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. McGraw-Hill: New York. 1964.

Matheson, Peter. The Third Reich and the Christian Churches. T. & T. Clark: Scotland. 1981.