Appointment with Hitler

...Why dwell on differences when so much common ground remains unfilled...

...To BE SPECIFIC: Hitler and his accomplices did not complete the Holocaust...

...Still, despite this unsettling hint that "the so-called 'real-world' question of Hitler and the Jews" may not be serious because not all its askers are serious, McCarthy does take it seriously enough to venture a reply...

...Eventually I spent a year in various Paris libraries, reading through volumes of magazines and the minutes of meetings from the 1930s, following the foreign-policy debates not of Christians but of adherents to another "faith," that of the French left...

...On February 9, 1933, ten days after Hitler came to power, the Oxford Union Society, a celebrated training ground for future national leaders, had voted, by just short of a two-to-one margin, that its members would "in no circumstances fight for its King and Country...

...Pacifists endorsed, encouraged, passionately urged policies that, as near as we can tell with our limited human powers, helped bring on the world war...

...It should not tempt us into facile analogies...

...They did not establish uncontested reign over the Eurasian continent, from Siberia to the British Isles...

...I wonder how rigorously he has looked at the grounds for that statement...

...I was CERTAINLY not raised to be a pacifist...

...It was given similar prominent attention in the Washington Post...

...we did not have to think through our judgments about the war...

...Out of a moral repulsion against war, men of high intelligence made excuses for Nazism, portrayed Hitler as a peace-loving veteran who had known the horrors of war firsthand, and relentlessly denounced any display of French firmness in the face of German demands...

...This one example should loom large enough to cast a giant question mark against the automatic hostility which many who consider themselves peacemakers feel and express toward any new proposal about weapons or strategy...

...yet when we return to the debates at the time of Munich, we find both statesmen and pacifists in thrall to the notion of heeding the lesson of August 1914 and determined to do anything to prevent a local crisis from erupting into general war...

...One pacifist who discussed the Oxford Union episode was the Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy...

...I was also reading those of some other French left-wing intellectuals and political activists...

...While the moral lessons of the pre-World War II years cannot be applied unrevised to the nuclear age, they cannot be ignored either...

...of dryness any where, that I am most close reachers deep inside my body and stirs the silent seeds of all I hold dear...

...This little bit of history hardly disposes of all the claims of pacifism or the moral objections to war...

...and by its ambiguous outcome in Soviet expansion, Cold War, and potential nuclear globicide...

...The march of Nazi Germany to world war and Holocaust constitutes a kind of threshold case for thinking about the morality of peace and war...

...No one that I recall raised the question of the Second World War's morality at the time of the D-Day anniversary...

...If they bowed to it, that was because it was the authority of the gun — direct, deadly, and overwhelming...

...But even this larger view of pacifism, McCarthy wrote, "inevitably meets the so-called 'real-world' question of Hitler and the Jews...

...A number of bishops told me about the profound evolution that had taken place in their attitudes on war and peace...

...Reagan...

...Thanks to such subversive influences, by high school I was writing term papers on the immorality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not the prevailing view in a Midwest Catholic high school in the fifties...

...that until our nation has achieved justice at home it has no business intervening on behalf of justice overseas...

...More to the point, Macdonald was dealing with the question posed "after Hitler had conquered the continent" and the question posed to the Jews under Hitler's sway...

...There are several things wrong with this reply...

...Let me offer an obvious example...

...Hasn't the Bomb changed everything...

...Certainly there are examples to support this case...

...Whether one thinks of the few truly squalid cases of collaboration with Nazism or of the many run-of-the-mill examples of self-righteousness or wishful thinking, the history of pacifism, at least in the 1930s, is nowhere near as uncomplicated as Colman McCarthy imagines...

...Particularly in religious journals, where questions about the morality of warfare are constantly being raised, an opportunity was lost...

...Among them was the far from perfect French freedom that stood in the way of Nazi outrages, against human dignity...

...They are not right, however, to pass over the questions of conscience raised by the war against Hitler...

...Even more to the point, it seemed to me, was another anniversary...

...love leads us out - out of our own strict forms towards other forms that as we touch them melt, falls backwards, shining, into the lantern's heart...

...Presumably ndt...

...In fact, one of the lessons of the 1930s, too readily forgotten, is the danger of historical analogies...

...What I learned about pacifism in those circumstances was not especially edifying...

...The mystery of God on the cross, and in the camps...

...Absorption in the moral problems of totalitarianism had already introduced me to Christians whose opposition to Nazism finally convinced them to accept forms of armed resistance — people like Emmanuel Mounier in France and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany...

...A friend dreamed I had given birth...

...Belatedly perhaps but definitely, most of the left in France and England supported military resistance to Hitler and his allies...

...People suspicious of militarism often sneer at the Roman proverb, "If you wish peace, prepare for war.'' It is, they suggest, a kind of Orwellian inversion, used to justify the acquisition of arms which only render more likely (and more destructive) the war they were meant to prevent...

...Pacifism, he insisted, should not be equated with appeasement...

...They did not develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles...

...If moral positions do not stand up when tested against those realities, then it seems their proponents have a heavy burden of explaining why their positions should be compelling today...

...McCarthy believed that, although pacifists "now see many of their positions shared by mainline Catholic and Protestant groups," the Oxford Union news stories had treated pacifism unfairly...

...that the arms buildup or the aggressive actions of our adversary are primarily reactions to the fears we ourselves have induced...

...Reagan's vision of East-West conflict...

...Nor do I propose even to begin answering them...

...I do not see how we can seek understanding in this area without having in mind what is virtually the paradigm case of evil for our time and culture...

...Is that actually true...

...The odd thing about this question is that those who ask it have forgotten that this is pretty much what most of the Jews of Europe did in reality, not because they were pacifists, for they weren't, but because they, like most people today, had become accustomed to obeying the authority of the state: that is, essentially, because they recognized the authority of force...

...Pacifists frequently quote that, imagining that it applies only to the normal thought patterns of politicians, diplomats, and military strategists...

...Did he reflect on his previous conclusion...

...the silence of the Father while the Chosen One, and his Chosen Ones, meet their deaths...

...Pacifism may have contributed to the public climate in which appeasement in Europe and isolationism in America flourished, but it is hard to separate the impact of moral appeals from the probably larger role of plain cynicism and national selfishness...

...I do not mention them in that spirit...

...But when the moment of truth arrived, that resistance did not materialize...

...bishops' nuclear pastoral, especially since the letter was sometimes misrepresented in the media as "pacifist...

...With the coming of nuclear weapons, Einstein wrote, everything changed "except man's thinking...

...The recognition by non-resisting Jews of "the authority of force" was in fact quite different from the habitual deference to the state practiced by the rest of us...

...What about English and French citizens who were sensitive to the moral problems of warfare — and yet observed Hitler rearm and Nazi power go from victory to victory, in the Rhineland, in Spain, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia...

...At least among American Catholics, pacifists have had to struggle to get any kind of hearing whatsoever about the morality of warfare...

...With that legitimacy, it seems to me, comes a responsibility, including a responsibility to address certain obvious, although not at all simple, questions about a central event in our history...

...This historical experience is one of the reasons why some left-of-center French Catholics took a rather wary view of the U.S...

...To hear echoes of that unhappy time is not necessarily to abandon all such claims in regard to events today...

...Not all the judgments of this group, any more than the pacifists', were accurate or wise...

...Beyond a significant group of committed pacifists, there are also many Christian leaders who stop short of embracing pacifism not because they are compelPeter steinfels is the editor of Commonweal...

...But it was at least part of the meaning of our presidentially botched V-E Day memorial that war solves some problems...

...Whether one condemns or justifies them, from one side or another, the conclusion turns very little, with the possible exception of the Middle East conflicts, on the nuclear dimension...

...I would also agree that war always plants the germs of new problems of future violence, which sooner or later will spring up to be confronted...

...Probably he only wanted to suggest what I have already admitted, that questions like this can be advanced simply as a rhetorical gambit to shatter idealistic pacifism on the hard rocks of the "real world...

...Would it have been truer to the Gospel for this nation to have refused engagement in World War II...

...12 July 1985: 397 Does that really have anything to do with us...

...For Christians the question of pacifism is intimately linked to the problem of evil, and what God reveals to us, in Jesus, about suffering, about death, about sacrifice, about resisting that evil...

...it is another and, in his view, more effective form of seeking justice and resolving disputes by means of moral force, reason, non-cooperation, and organized mass resistance...

...in my younger years, I am sure my parents believed it would be more than sufficient if I simply turned out a law-abiding citizen...

...Still, it is troubling to recognize that pacifists would have done out of altruism and principle what others actually did out of self-interest and short-sightedness...

...The chronicle that includes Franz Jaegerstaetter and the miracle of a conscience holding true in the face of every kind of abandonment, that includes Pastor Trocme and the village which he organized to rescue Jewish children from a merciless state, should, also include those examples of the will to peace deteriorated into massive self-deception...

...And what about so many other claims regularly made in the religious press by peace activists: that war is caused by exploitation of the third world, by racism, by sexism, by mutual misunderstanding, by the military-industrial complex...

...This fiftieth anniversary repudiation of the Oxford Union pledge was reported in a feature story on page one of the New York Times...

...It is not true, moreover, that the policy of appeasement was the work of pacifists or more generally of the left...

...The pacifist minority was not in power...

...Eventually they decided that there were values even more precious than keeping the peace...

...Or was he simply silent...

...The truth about these propositions is not simple...

...But reticently and painfully they concluded that keeping the peace demanded arming and taking the risk of confronting Hitler...

...the riddle of our responsibility in a world, and for a world, over which we do not claim ultimate sovereignty—all these are terrible questions I do not presume to pursue...

...They, too, had been in strong opposition to much of France's foreign policy...

...I don't think I have the courage to stand out that way...

...Or, as actually happened, should he have been prevented from conquering the rest of the continent and from retaining what had been conquered...

...You can't get too far in front of them...

...it does force us to reflect, to be precise, and perhaps even humble, in our arguments...

...Sarah laughing at god's visitors angels chasing wind, the oak outside my window I Shall not bear a child as spruce But like the bloody oak, marooning to the sky, Green Apples It's city mornings when buildings seem to crawl that you speak to yourself of green apples: fallen on thin grass in an orchard they wait to be lifted, to be pressed like hard hearts can float in the fall of pcrfurne...

...What I have said, so far, only scratches the surface...

...At the same time this concern with the morality of modern warfare tied into a growing awareness of the churches' terrible failure to oppose the tide of totalitarianism in the 1920s and '30s...

...CONFRONTING THE MORAL QUESTION OF WORLD WAR II Appointment with Hitler pp4^^ PETER STEINFELS AMONG the several deplorable side effects of the Bitburg controversy was this: the question of the moral meaning of the war against Hitler's Germany was submerged in the question of the moral insensitivity of Mr...

...But his reasons were revealing: "The people aren't ready for that...

...But it is also true that in the case of Hitler's adversaries, the wisdom of the proverb seems sustained...

...It does not tell us what to think about the contras or Star Wars or Mr...

...that defense by military means is no longer possible...

...It is an exception, however, that only bolsters my concern...

...My only point is that the events preceding and during the war against Hitler are at the heart not only of a political and ethical examination of pacifism, but also of our theological understanding of it...

...But by and large I found that their vision — roughly speaking, a secular counterpart to just-war theory — was politically more acute and morally more sustaining...

...While reading a recent book on Christian mysticism by no less a master of the spiritual life than William Johnston, I was suddenly caught up by the sentence: "If there is a nuclear war (which God forbid) it will be fought for money, for oil, for petrodollars" (his italics...

...Was McCarthy suggesting that Hitler's campaign to wipe out the Jews did not occur in the real world...

...Yes, nuclear war is qualitatively different from anything in the past...

...Consider the Falklands/Malvinas war, the Grenada invasion, Israel's several conflicts with surrounding states, Nicaragua's and El Savador's fights with their respective guerrilla insurgencies, the struggle between Afghans and Soviet invaders, and of course America's role, dominant or minor, in all these wars...

...We were all pressed to make a judgment about the president...

...The question pacifists must pose (and not leave to some debater) is whether Hitler should have been prevented from conquering the continent in the first place...

...during my junior year, he published German Catholics and Hitler's Wars on the Commonweal: 396 support the German church lent to Nazi aggression...

...better war preparations—not necessarily more—would have forestalled the German onslaught or at least have contained it...

...At the time I found this silence disturbing, and I thought of it again in connection with the Bitburg events...

...In addition, there is the serious position, also given a certain legitimacy in the bishops' pastoral, particularly in regard to the defense of Europe, that conventional warfare remains the most morally viable alternative to nuclear holocaust...

...Reagan could ignore the reality of concentration camps and still claim any voice in the moral debates of twentieth-century humankind...

...The danger is of a completely different dimension...

...These men, too, insisted that pacifism did not mean acquiescing in tyranny...

...By college I had arrived at a rough version of the bishops' current ambivalent judgment on our nuclear deterrent...

...Nonetheless, the post-Vatican II idea that pacifism was "a valid option" was already taken for granted in a home that received the Catholic Worker every month and followed the debates about nuclear weapons in Commonweal...

...But I wonder if my bishop friend 12 July 1985: 395 actually made that argument...

...Obviously, that is not the whole story of pacifism...

...After all, between the 1930s and our day we have crossed a historic divide...

...Zahn had studied the way moral principles were applied, or not applied, by those called upon to support Hitler's wars...

...Remembering the prelude to the Second World War in Europe, we might justly ask whether it doesn't apply to pacifists as well...

...Today I wonder what we would say if Mr...

...The Jews suffered no uncertainty about the illegitimacy of Nazi authority...

...Appeasement was the work of respectable citizens who were more afraid of Communism than fascism, of confused politicians, and even of generals averse to taking risks...

...Colman McCarthy thought that pacifism is not understood because its practitioners are not in the history books, and, quoting the Vatican to the effect that spending On armaments kills the poor, he concluded: "No such legacy of death is on the conscience of pacifists...

...Two years ago students at Oxford passed a resolution effectively repudiating the notorious Oxford Union motion of fifty years previous...

...It was noted, perhaps as a curiosity more than anything else, on the networks and elsewhere...

...What materialized instead was the sorry spectacle of a few of those pacifist intellectuals setting up as embittered Nazi propagandists in occupied France, attacking the Allies and the Free French, and spinning fantasies of a peaceful United States of Europe established under Hitlerian auspices...

...When I asked if he thought the use of military force was ever justified, he would not go beyond saying, "War never solves any problems...

...Not even my great respect for Colman McCarthy could keep me from blinking at that "so-called...

...The fact is that pacifism of the sort which would refuse to fight for King and Country, or for Constitution and Country, or for NATO and Country, has a very respectable place today in the churches, especially in the circles that are most visibly present in numerous struggles for social justice...

...In a few weeks, many of those most concerned about peace will be drawing the nation's attention to the fortieth anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...12 July 1985: 399...

...Were the pacifists, here and in Europe, who opposed rearmament in the 1930s best fulfilling Christ's call to be peacemakers...

...He does so by quoting Dwight Macdonald...

...They are right to do so...

...by its undoubted atrocities, including deliberate terror bombing of civilian centers like Dresden...

...But it is part of the story, part that should not be ignored...

...What about those on the other side of Germany's borders...

...And deterrence, resting on intercontinental missiles and nearly instantaneous responses , has turned many of the rules of warfare upside down...

...They, too, had deplored armaments...

...Heed the lesson of Munich, is a formula repeated at the outbreak of any international crisis...

...They did not inherit British and French colonies...

...But confronting them, it seems to me, is an essential admission ticket to the discussion...

...If he did not, I can easily imagine some reasons why...

...They are, however, basic questions that can no more be ignored than Mr...

...by its dragooning and numbing of consciences...

...led by an alternative moral position out only as a concession to personal unreadiness or pastoral practicality...

...These are questions which unfortunately have sometimes been asked in a polemical manner, as debaters' devices, and as though the validity of pacifism turned utterly on some yes-orno reply...

...At the same time, not all wars are nuclear...

...Finally, there is the fact that while the nature of weaponry may have changed so drastically as to negate many of the "lessons of the thirties," the typical operations of diplomacy and nation-states, of human nature even, remain depressingly constant, as pacifists themselves are quick to insist...

...Today pacifism has won a new legitimacy in the American Catholic church, a legitimacy recognized in perhaps the most important American episcopal document of recent decades...

...They did not kill or enslave, as they had planned, sufficient numbers of Poles to secure Lebensraum in Eastern Europe...

...no one else has been so persistent, or effective, in doing so...

...They, too, wrote of organized nonviolent resistance...

...I was not only reading the arguments of pacifists that year in Paris...

...This was brought home to me at the November 1982 meeting at which the Catholic bishops discussed the second draft of the pastoral letter on nuclear arms...

...There are those who would argue that these consequences were outweighed by the European war's vast loss of life and, more importantly, by its taking of life...

...Ironically, it may have been the work of Zahn — a scholar and pacifist I have always admired, and whose concern for individual moral responsibility in regard to war I share — that set me in a direction away from his own convictions...

...It is perfectly true that war never solves all problems, even though people in wartime are apt to think it will...

...Those questions do not encompass all that can be said about the morality of war in our time...

...They, too, desperately wanted to avoid war...

...One explained that he would not "go so far'' as Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle in opposing the nuclear deterrent or even conventional arms, nor would he quite reject all national defense by military means in principle...

...Yet it stirred no serious discussion in religious circles...

...Commonweal: 398 The Jilting of Mary Brown Telling the woman easily and politely she could not sleep in the barn, the last roan nearly twice in the chest and Ac soft prison then, child grown to father gone who would bring her rich presents should she remain Platonic Poem to a young girl Just Married and feel the light stream through my fingers - warm, and escapes—as through your own linked fingers it must slip out, dissolve, turn dark, be gone, Suns spend their giant powers on the night, their fiery wattage dwindling into points and even the stones, trapped in unyielding forms, long for the rain's downfalling, the hands of air desire is a dying into air...

...It is also true that thinking clearly about those preparations was hampered by the suspicion with which not only pacifists but the non-pacifist left as well looked upon all things military...

...In an essay on pacifism, Macdonald had pointed out that though the Jews were not pacifists, they had ended up practicing non-resistance in any case: Pacifists are often asked: What would you have advised the Jews of Europe to have done after Hitler had conquered the continent — to submit peacefully to the Nazis and go along quietly to the gas chambers...

...But would the opportunity have been seized, even in the absence of the president's unfortunate performance...

...Reagan had used it rather than his own inept constructions...

...Gordon Zahn was on the faculty of Loyola University in Chicago, where I was a student...

...But it is at least chastening to know how many similar statements were made in the 1930s either to extenuate Nazi belligerence or to cast doubt on the legitimacy of any military response...

...Every day, in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Asia, we are paying the long-term costs of past wars...

...The answer can only be yes and no...

...Non-pacifists who nonetheless had serious moral misgivings about particular aspects of American foreign policy or about our nuclear arsenal could not help but appreciate the pacifist effort...

...IN NOTING the lack of pacifist reaction to the fiftieth anniversary of the Oxford Union resolution, I should have granted an exception...