When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it aimed to destroy Polish national consciousness. As a symbol of Polish national identity and the religious faith of approximately two-thirds of Poland's population, the Roman Catholic Church was an obvious target of the Nazi regime's policies of ethnic, racial, and cultural Germanization.

Jonathan Huener reveals in The Polish Catholic Church under German Occupation that the persecution of the church was most severe in the Reichsgau Wartheland, a region of Poland annexed to Nazi Germany. Here Catholics witnessed the execution of priests, the incarceration of hundreds of clergymen and nuns in prisons and concentration camps, the closure of churches, the destruction and confiscation of church property, and countless restrictions on public expression of the Catholic faith. Huener also illustrates how some among the Nazi elite viewed this area as a testing ground for anti-church policies to be launched in the Reich after the successful completion of the war. Based on largely untapped sources from state and church archives, punctuated by vivid archival photographs, and marked by nuance and balance, The Polish Catholic Church under German Occupation exposes both the brutalities and the limitations of Nazi church policy.

The first English-language investigation of German policy toward the Catholic Church in occupied Poland, this compelling story also offers insight into the varied ways in which Catholics-from Pope Pius XII, to members of the Polish episcopate, to the Polish laity at the parish level-responded to the Nazi regime's repressive measures.

About the Author

Jonathan Huener is Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont and author of Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945-1979.

Reviews

Jonathan Huener, professor of history at the University of Vermont, has produced a definitive study of the Catholic Church in western Poland under German occupation

-- Kevin P Spicer, C.S.C., Stonehill College * Contemporary Church History Quarterly *

Jonathan Huener's careful examination of the fate of the Catholic Church in western Poland-the Nazi German "Warthegau"-during World War II triangulates an impressive variety of sources in German and Polish to assess Nazi religious policy and the experience of Polish Catholics victimized by it. . . . This is essential reading for those interested in Nazi empire, Polish nationalism, or the history of the Catholic Church.

-- Jadwiga Biskupska * H-Poland *

Huener's book is an impressive new contribution to scholarship on Nazi church policies and occupation policies and will be essential reading for all those working in these fields. Nicely complementing Catherine Epstein's biography of Arthur Greiser, it provides a meticulously researched and judicious account of Nazi rule in this pivotal German-Polish borderland.

-- Jim Bjork * Central European History *

This impeccably researched study proffers an invaluable analysis and a first Anglophone synthesis of Polish, German, and Catholic sources, while it also assimilates an important secondary literature in Polish and German, including the recent, ground-breaking Polish historiography on the Holocaust.

-- Monika Rice * Journal of Church and State *

The Polish Catholic Church under German Occupation by Jonathan Huener is an engaging study that asks important questions about the Nazi attitude towards the Catholic Church in general, and the Polish Catholic Church in particular. Interestingly, as Huener emphasizes, the Nazi policy towards the Catholic Church was neither consistent throughout the war nor uniform in all the Nazi-occupied territories. . . . The book is a fascinating addition to what we know about the way the Nazi regime operated. It is great work that will be beneficial to historians of Poland, the Second World Word, and Nazism. But it is also a great book for both undergraduate and graduate students.

-- Anna Mller * Church History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253054043
Author Jonathan Huener
Format Paperback
Page Count 374
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 549g