Clemens August Graf Von Galen - German Patriot

German Patriot

Von Galen openly supported the Protestant Paul von Hindenburg against the Catholic candidate Wilhelm Marx in the presidential elections of 1925. He was known to be a German patriot and a fierce anti-Communist who favoured the battle on the Eastern Front against Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union. His views on communism were largely formed as a consequence of the Stalinization and relentless persecution of Christians within the Soviet Union since 1918, during which virtually all Catholic bishops were either killed or forced underground. He welcomed the 1941 German war against the USSR as a positive development

A sermon the Bishop gave in 1941 served as the inspiration for the anti-Nazi group The White Rose, and the sermon itself was the group's first pamphlet.

Generalmajor Hans Oster, a devout Lutheran and leading member of the German Resistance, once said of Bishop von Galen:

He's a man of courage and conviction. And what resolution in his sermons! There should be a handful of such people in all our churches, and at least two handfuls in the Wehrmacht. If there were, Germany would look quite different!

The published sermons of Von Galen show that he condemned the racist deportations of the Nazis. Von Galen, further, suffered virtual house arrest from 1941 until the end of the war.

After the war, his indignation turned on the British occupiers, who, in his view, complicated by hostile acts (including starvation rations for the common people) an already difficult life in post-war Germany. The British responded by taking away his car and thus preventing him from visiting parishes and carrying out planned confirmations. On April 13, Galen went to American authorities to protest against Russian soldiers' raping of German women, and against American and British forces' plundering of German homes, factories, and offices, especially at night. On July 1, 1945, he denounced "the ransacking of our homes destroyed by bombs", "the pillaging and destruction of our houses and farms in the countryside by armed bands of robbers", the "murder of defenceless men", "the rape of German women and girls by bestial lechers" (it was estimated that 2 million German women were raped, with a ten percent death rate mainly from suicide; women of other nationalities were raped, too), and the indifference of the occupying authorities to the risk of famine in Germany: all these horrors finding justification on the basis of "the false view that all Germans are criminals and deserve the most severe punishment, including death and extermination!".

In a joint interview with British officials, Von Galen told the international press that, "just as I fought against Nazi injustices, I will fight any injustice, no matter where it comes from". He repeated these claims in a sermon on July 1, 1945, which, as in the Nazi years, was secretly copied and distributed throughout occupied Germany. The British authorities felt attacked by Von Galen's sermon and ordered him to renounce it immediately; he refused. His rising popularity may have contributed to their decision to subsequently allow him free speech without any censorship. In an interview with Swiss media, Von Galen demanded just punishment for real Nazi criminals but humane treatment for the millions of German prisoners of war who had not committed any crimes but were prohibited by the British from any contact with their relatives. He criticized British dismissal of Germans from public service without investigation and trial, noting that the Nazis had done the same in 1933, but that the Nazi victims had at least continued to receive pensions. He forcefully condemned the expulsion of German civilians from former German provinces and territories in the east annexed by communist Poland and the Soviet Union.

SS-General Kurt Meyer, accused of complicity in the shooting of 18 Canadian prisoners of war (POWs), was sentenced to death. Galen intervened at the request of the family. On second review, a Canadian general, finding only "a mass of circumstantial evidence", commuted his death sentence. Meyer served nine years in British and Canadian POW prisons. The British forces tried to get support by inviting Dr. Bell, the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, to meet Von Galen for a three way-meeting in October 1945. Bell adjudged Von Galen as possessing enormous moral power, a passion for justice, and well-educated behaviour, and as being very concerned for his people and a defender of ecumenical cooperation.