The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany, 1945–75: The Case of Gordon Zahn

In September, 1959, the American Catholic sociologist and pacifist, Gordon Zahn, delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Sociological Society. His paper, “The Catholic Press and the National Question in Nazi Germany” deplored the support of the German Catholic hierarchy for “Hitler’s predatory wars.” Zahn, a tenured professor at Loyola University, Chicago, quickly found himself embroiled in a prolonged transatlantic controversy and the subject of a dogged campaign against him. The members of the network against him included prominent CDU politicians, leaders in the Zentralkommitte der deutschen Katholiken, two German cardinals and a high-ranking Vatican official, Cardinal Bea, who put pressure on the president of Loyola University to fire Zahn.

This paper argues that the ferocity of the campaign against Zahn stemmed from the tight links between politics, religion and the process of working through the recent past in Germany. The debates surrounding Zahn’s controversial theses emerged as a referendum not only on the role of religion in politics but on the support of leading Catholic politicians and clergy for Germany’s rearmament efforts. In carrying out his research on Catholic peace-movements during a Fulbright year in Germany, Zahn tapped into a loose grouping of Catholic nonconformists, “peacemongers” and opponents of Adenauer’s regime. Though members of the network against Zahn succeeded in temporarily derailing publication of his book in the United States and Germany, their measures ultimately backfired, transforming the debates about the Catholic past into a discussion of tolerance in a democratic society. The battle for the Catholic past centered on how to position German Catholicism in a modern, democratic society. This paper is based on more than two years of research in fifty archives in six countries.