Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany by Rudolph Herzog Read Free Book Online Page B

Church was hardly a monolithic institution, and a schism soon opened up between the Nazi “German Christians,” led by a Protestant pastor named Ludwig Müller, and the opposition “Emergency Association of Pastors,” led by Martin Niemöller. Müller, a personal acquaintance of Hitler, was appointed Imperial Bishop. He wasn’t known for his intellectual prowess and was certainly no match for his opponents from the traditional church, particularly Niemöller. He was given a number of unflattering popular nicknames and became the butt of ahost of more or less successful jokes:
    When Goebbels published his book
From the Imperial Court to the German Chancellery,
the Imperial Bishop couldn’t rest until he’d written a work of his own. The title was:
From Leading Light to Dim Bulb.
    Another quip from the time was that the Imperial Bishop had such thick skin he didn’t need a backbone. Despite Müller’s shortcomings as the head of the “German Christians,” the Nazis reached an arrangement with both Catholic and Protestant churches, although threats were still constantly needed to ensure that no one disturbed this artificial harmony.
    Clerics who were critical of the regime enjoyed sympathy among the populace, since they were the only ones in society left after the initial period of purges and bullying who continued to represent an alternative system of belief to Nazism. One joke praised the Catholic bishop of Münster, Count Clemens August von Galen:
    In one of his sermons, Count von Galen criticized the educational programs of the Hitler Youth. A member of the congregation interrupted him: “How can a man without children dare to speak about education?” Von Galen countered, “Sir, I’m not going to tolerate any criticism of our Führer in my church.”
    Von Galen earned the nickname “the Lion of Münster” for his fearless resistance against Nazi educational policies and euthanasia programs. Germans admired him for taking a stand, despite the risk of retribution, against the murder of retarded persons, apolicy that outraged many people at the time. A Nazi ministerial counselor tried to justify the program by arguing that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” had been not the word of God but rather “a Jewish invention” aimed at “denying their enemies an effective defense in order to dispose of them all the more easily.”
    Von Galen survived the Third Reich, but countless other clergymen were killed in what was known as the “pastors’ block” of the Dachau concentration camp. The persecution of men of the cloth who criticized the regime may have inspired a number of satirical riffs on religious holidays. Examples include “Maria Incarcerata” and “Maria Denunciata.” The Latin of the Lord’s Prayer was also parodied, with the line “et ne nos inducas temptationem” (lead us not into temptation) changed to “et ne nos inducas concentrationem”—a clear reference to the concentration camps.
    The crimes the Nazis committed during the Third Reich were only possible because the German courts had also been brought into line. In 1935, authority over the judicial system was transferred from the federal states to the central government. As soon as they seized power, the Nazis began systematically preparing German lawyers and judges, traditionally a conservative lot, to function in a state not based on the rule of law. The Association of National Socialist Attorneys trained young judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers. The new doctrine of the German legal system was that judgments should be rendered in the interests of the government, and there was no need to stick too closely to laws. “The healthy opinion of the people” was elevated above legal guarantees, the phrase
healthy opinion
serving to whitewash the justice that the fascists meted out as they pleased. At least some German citizens watched in consternation as the Nazis ran roughshod over the German constitution—a concern reflected