Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

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I am not a Mormon. I am a Catholic who has done substantial reading on the allegations of Catholic complicity with the Nazis. My interest was in seeing how other faith traditions handled their relationships with totalitarian National Socialism.

This book provided that information and more. The author, David Conley Nelson, provides a survey of Mormon history in the United States and its development of a mission program in Germany. Frankly, I know very little about Mormon history, which is an oversight inasmuch as Mormonism is one of the few religions in America which can be said to have its own cultural region, namely, as Dr. Nelson points out the “Mormon Cultural Region” surrounding Utah. Ignoring Mormon history amounts to ignoring a substantial geographic history.

I was also surprised to see how much political influence Mormons were able to wield in American politics and diplomacy. An interesting feature of Mormonism is how Mormon religious leaders move back and forth between the American secular and political world and the Mormon religious world. For example, Ezra Hart Benson was Secretary of Agriculture before he became “Prophet, Seer, and Revelator.” J. Reuben Clark was a diplomat and had connections with the American diplomatic establishment while he was the second highest ranking person in the Mormon hierarchy. Dr. Nelson mentions the case of Dallin Oaks who went from BYU Dean to the Utah Supreme Court to the Mormon First Presidency.

Mormons were, therefore, able to play upon this connection with the American government in their dealings with German governments, ranging from the Second Reich to the Third Reich, in opening doors to their missionaries.

Dr. Nelson seems to want to play up a narrative of a shameful accommodation of the Mormon Church with National Socialism, but, frankly, the data points seem to be skimpy and points in all directions, exactly as one might expect when humans are involved. The Mormon population of Germany numbered around 30,000 in approximately 1930. Mormons were a suspect group that didn't fit into the dominant religious and cultural paradigms where one was either Catholic or Protestant. Presumably, Mormons learned to keep their heads down and their noses clean.

In Germany, the Mormon leadership - American mission leaders - played up their adherence to the Twelfth Article of Faith, which mandated that Mormons support the temporal government and obey its laws. Dr. Nelson points out that this mandate was often honored in the breach where Mormons felt that their mission was impeded by German laws and they could get away with a violation of those laws. In other words, Mormons were a lot like other people, although, perhaps, a little more flexible than scrupulous when compared with other religious groups.

Naturally, under the aggressively threatening Nazi regime, Mormons were not likely to be bastions of resistance to unconscionable Nazi policies. Frankly, though, the Protestant German churches may have had an even stronger tradition of obedience to the secular state. Catholicism did have a theology of tyranny and a tradition of opposition to tyranny that threatened the Church, which was a reason that there were Catholic opposition groups that plotted Hitler's assassination, such as the ring around Claus von Stauffenberg, or, as we know now, the Catholic resistance that attempted to coordinate through Pius XII to overthrow Hitler. Nonetheless, the Catholic doctrine also counseled prudence when success did not seem likely.

Dr. Nelson points out that Mormon theology began to develop doctrines of the primacy of conscience over the Twelfth Article after World War II. I suspect that all Christian traditions underwent similar developments for similar reasons and that the solution to the issue of conscience and obedience remains vexed, conditional and prudential for everyone.

Mormons had heroes and villains like everyone else. There were Mormons who saved Jews and Mormons who participated in Nazi savagery. Other faith traditions have a similar mix. Why some should be heroic and others vicious and bestial will probably remain a deep mystery until the end of time. The answer is undoubtedly grounded in the deep structure of the human soul, rather than particular religious doctrines.

However, I found myself admiring several of the “memory beacons” that Dr. Nelson presented. For example, Max Reschke, who let his anger push him to amazing acts of generosity, and who paid the price with time in concentration camps, is a fascinating character. As Dr. Nelson points out, though, Reschke was forgotten because his life was not entirely “faith promoting” because of his tendency toward infidelity. Similarly, the youthful Helmuth Hubener, who was executed at 17 for spreading anti-nazi newsletters offers an example that seems to mirror the more famous White Rose resistance group. Dr. Nelson explores the reason that Hubener was forgotten, remembered, and then deliberately reduced to non-person status by the Mormon church, perhaps for political reasons or because of perceived political reasons.

On the other hand, the actions of the Mormon Church in failing or refusing to provide succor to Jewish converts to Mormonism is less edifying. Dr. Nelson offers this example:

“The church's response to another lifelong Austrian Mormon of Jewish linage was not as perfunctory but it contained the same refusal. Richard Siebenschein, also of Vienna, wrote two letters, dated December 25 and 28, 1938, addressed directly to Heber J. Grant, with whom Siebenschein claimed to have shared an apartment “in the boarding house of Mrs. Parker” when both served as Mormon missionaries in Tokyo in 1901. Claiming that he wanted only an “affidavit as required by the law of the USA for entry into your country.” Grant's former missionary companion pled: “We are not in trouble through no fault of our own, except our [Jewish] descendence.” This time, J. Reuben Clark responded with a chatty letter that detailed the present circumstances of each missionary with whom Siebenschein served in Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. He said President Grant was away from the city, but that the Prophet would be pleased to know Siebenschein remember him and had written. Then, in a startling switch of tone, Clark reverted to his form-letter verbiage, asking to be “excused” from providing such assistance because the church received “so many requests of this sort.””

Obviously, this is the kind of thing that makes one's blood boil and might incite one to make rash judgments about Mormons generally, but the fact is that it was not the Mormon Church that was responsible for this act of abandonment but one particular Mormon, namely J. Reuben Clark, who was an inveterate anti-semite, whose anti-Semitism might have been fortified by the belief that Jewish Mormons would support his political opponents. Dr. Nelson points out that by and large Mormons in the Mormon Cultural Region were not particularly antisemitic on cultural grounds and that Mormon doctrines might tend to make them philosemitic. Perhaps if Clark had not been there, then the official church's response might have lived up to Christian tenets.

Dr. Nelson also points to other unedifying instances arising, in his view, from adherence to Article Twelve:

“Without a dredged-up doctrine that mandated rendering obedience to civil authority, which the Mormons ignored earlier in their German experience, there may have been no need to appoint Arthur Zander to become St. Georg branch president or Alfred C. Rees to become the Berlin mission president. A less enthusiastic advocate of Nazism may have diffused Hübener's rebellion and saved the lad's life. Philemon Kelly's patient approach to solving problems with the government at the lowest possible level would have averted the specter of a pro-Mormon article in the Völkisher Beobachter, spiritual radio broadcasts from Berlin to Utah, and a mission president who said “Heil Hitler” and attended a Nuremberg Nazi Party rally.”

Perhaps, but history is often 20/20 in hindsight. When these things happened, the death camps did not exist, and may not have been imagined by the most ardent Nazis. Judging people then by what we know now is bad history. It is also unfair, something we need to keep in mind when we realize that we will be judged in the future by people who also know the outcomes of our decisions.

So, all in all, this was a fascinating book, albeit one that is too easily turned into a cudgel for easy moralizing.

History and human life are far too complicated and subtle to simply reduce to easy moralizing.