L’Osservatore Romano states the “mission” of Germany against Bolshevism, from the mouth of Bishop Hudal, in an article juxtaposed with a photograph of Cardinal Pacelli - Sept. 28, 1934
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Sept. 28, 1934 L’Osservatore Romano states the “mission” of Germany against Bolshevism, from the mouth of Bishop Hudal, in an article juxtaposed with a photograph of Cardinal Pacelli. English translation
Historians have recognized the centrality to Hitler’s ideology of the “mission” to be a bulwark against Bolshevism. E.g., Waddington (2007), pp. 1-11 and historians cited therein.
No historian yet identified has mentioned this Vatican article about Germany’s mission,
Sept. 28, 1934 L’Osservatore Romano, page 3, juxtaposing picture of Cardinal Pacelli with this article about a speech by Bishop Hudal:
“Rome, Christianity and Germanism: At a Lecture by Bishop Hudal in Trier”
In the course of a recent conference of the Görres Society in Trier, a lecture was given by His Excellency Bishop Hudal, Rector of the College of St. Mary of the Anima in Rome. His chosen theme is of the greatest current relevance and – at the present moment in Germany – is extremely delicate: “Rom, Christentum und deutsches Volk” (Rome, Christianity and the German People). The select audience of this leading academic association of German Catholics, including most notably the Bishop of Trier, the President of the State of Rhineland [Koblenz-Trier], and Duke John George of Saxony, followed Bishop Hudal’s talk with rapt attention and warmly applauded him in agreement and gratitude.
We are looking forward to a summary of the salient points of this lecture, as the proceedings of the conference have not yet gone to press.
The speaker took his starting point from the episode told by Tacitus, in the second book of his Annals, of the two brothers Flavius and Arminius, who found themselves fighting, one on the side of Rome, the other against Rome. This episode, said the most excellent Bishop, has value as a symbol that still has significance even in our day. When the two opposing armies were facing each other from the opposite banks of the modern-day Weser River, the two brothers, accosting each other across the river, spoke, the one of the “magnitudo romana” [Latin: the greatness of Rome], the other of the “fas patriae” [Latin: the right of the country]. The scene was repeated many times in German history. The cultural upheavals of the German people, especially during the course of the 15th and 16th centuries, seem accompanied by the roar from the Germanic Pantheon coming forth from the abyss.
We find in the Germans, on the one hand an enthusiasm for the civilization of southern Europe, and on the other hand a struggle and incessant search that would like to reconcile the two civilizations, one of which, via the Imperium Romanum [Latin: Roman Empire], disseminated Christianity with such success into northern Europe.
Many want to think that in the Middle Ages the contrast between the Germanic genius and the genius of Rome was the result of the antithesis between the sacrum imperium [Latin: holy empire] of the Popes and the lay empire of the German Nation; that would be, it seems to them, the essentially most profound problem of Germanic history. To clarify this problem well, it is necessary to follow the tracks that the German genius has indelibly stamped in its encounter with ancient civilization, and then with that of Rome, above all as the center of Catholicism.
We must examine, that is, whether the German genius has not indeed had an essential part in the religious formation of Western thought and thus also in the formation of a culture and homogeneous civilization in Europe.
We do not share Spengler’s idea that civilizations are subject to ineluctable organic laws of development and decay. Civilization is certainly more than the result of influences of the land and the climate, of blood and of race, even as these are elements of remarkable influence.
Traveling through Germany, one is profoundly impressed at the sight of Gothic cathedrals and ancient Germanic monuments, testimonies, all of them, to Roman history and German history.
This coexistence and harmony of the two civilizations was, it is certainly true, undermined by the destructive philosophies of Chamberlain, Nietzsche, Lagarde and similar writers, but today the West needs unity in its moral decisions; it needs to collect its thoughts within the rock that is the bulwark for those who believe in Christ.
The speaker thus illustrated, with numerous examples from history, the efficacious collaboration of the Church of Rome and the German genius in the formation of Western civilization. The city of Rome itself, he said, bears the profound imprint, more than any other city, stamped upon it by the German genius.
The great dispute between Gregory VII and Henry IV gets assessed from a spiritual point of view, by eternal values, since in the final analysis, it was interiorly about the goal of instilling in the spirit of the time a more perfect understanding of the Christian spirit.
The deplorable religious struggle of the 16th century was fatal for Western civilization. Its devastating results were presaged already by Melanchthon, the disciple of Luther, who, in his commentary on the Book of Daniel, given to Archduke Ferdinand after the session of the Diet of Speyer, expressed his fears for the fate of Western civic unity and confessed to seeing collapse, in the upheavals of his day, a millenium of Roman and German history. Since that time the German people limp along, like Amfortas in the legend [of Parsifal], with a wounded heart, which all the glories of their history do not have the power to heal.
Rome and the German people, working in concord in past times, built a new ideal of civilization upon the civilization of old, and more recently they have been seeking since the 16th century to draw closer. This aspiration to draw near again, to collaborate in a new concord for new tasks, represents the tragic impulse – because it still remains unfulfilled – in the history of the German people.
Between Rome and the German people there exists no contrast by reason of race, because Rome does not represent a race, but rather an indelible expression of a great civilization. Man of classical antiquity gave to civic progress the contribution of his practical sense, the fruit of worldly experience and of the vigor of the expressive forms in his creations; Germanic man, for his part, has brought with him the impulse toward the infinite, the restlessness of seeking and of dialectic, the inclination to mysticism and romanticism, with ardent enthusiasm for all the issues of the time, gifts of high value that preserved ancient civilization from the rigidity of formalism. Christianity, triumphant over pagan antiquity, then conferred upon Rome and Germanism a spirit of new heroism.
Today the German people are presented with the vital question of whether they are going to have the strength to break free from the dissolute doctrines of their 19th century philosophers and turn back anew to Rome to find the liberating syntheses for their civilization. The German people have a mission all their own, which is to mediate between East and West and to act as a trusted bulwark against Bolshevism. For its part, the mission of Rome will always remain the same, which is to act as a faro delle genti [Latin: light to the nations]. The more that particular civilizations freely progress, the more they need an integrating center that is the custodian of eternal truth.
A great son of the Church, of German blood, Nicholas of Cusa, stated in his last will: If I die in Rome, may my body be buried in Rome but my heart returned to German soil; if I die in Germany, may my body stay there but my heart go to Rome.
In the same way – concludes Bishop Hudal – we too want to love Rome and the Fatherland with all our hearts.
Source: L’Osservatore Romano, Sept. 28, 1934, p.3. Original document in Italian
Note: A summary of Hudal’s lecture in Trier can be found in the annual volume of proceedings of the Görres Society, Jahres- und Tagungsbericht (1934). This detailed multi-page summary contains no mention of Nazi Germany’s “mission.”