Mormons, Nazis, and Anti-Semitism

[_Buffalo]

Should we not expect more from an Apostle of the Lord?

Mormon apologetics is all about lowering expectations. You get the opposite message on Sunday, though.

[_harmony]

From Nevo:

The first organized mass killings of Jews took place after the invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1941. The "Final Solution" as we know it wasn't implemented in earnest until the summer of 1942.

The "Final Solution" was not a foregone conclusion in 1941 even among the Nazi leadership, so it is absurd to castigate Clark for "refusing" to condemn it.

This statement is a lie.

Is it Nevo’s lie? I don’t know for certain, but I suspect it is because Nevo has studied the issue and is a smart guy…albeit somewhat unprincipled. But I figure there’s a 95% chance that Mr. Nevo is knowingly misrepresenting the facts.

It's entirely possible to simply be wrong, without being a liar. I prefer to err on the side of just being wrong.

In point of fact, the Einsatzgruppen--Hitler’s mobile killing units--perpetrated the first mass killings of Jews shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland in September of 1939. From then on, the Einsatzgruppen followed Hitler’s main army into the conquered territories, killing Jews, intellectuals, communists and others in similar proportions to the concentration camps.

Nevo knows this because anybody who has systematically studied the Holocaust knows this.

You don't know what Nevo knows, because you aren't Nevo. And maybe Nevo was only referring to the concentration camps, not the mobile killing units. Maybe he didn't know about the mobile killing units.

Let’s jump forward to September of 1945, at which point people in the United States had learned of the full scope of the Holocaust. In 1945, did J. Reuben Clark condemn the attempted extermination of the Jews?

Apparently not.

J. Reuben Clark remained an “ardent” anti-Semite to the end of his life.

Should we not expect more from an Apostle of the Lord?

Only if we actually think they channel God. Otherwise, they're just men with all of the failings of men.

[_Nevo]

In point of fact, the Einsatzgruppen--Hitler’s mobile killing units--perpetrated the first mass killings of Jews shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland in September of 1939.... Nevo knows this because anybody who has systematically studied the Holocaust knows this.

Actually, I don't know this. I wasn't aware that the Einsatzgruppen were rounding up and executing Jews en masse prior to 1941. In fact, everything I've read suggests otherwise.

Let’s jump forward to September of 1945, at which point people in the United States had learned of the full scope of the Holocaust. In 1945, did J. Reuben Clark condemn the attempted extermination of the Jews?

Apparently not.

Clark condemned war and killing on numerous occasions, no matter who the perpetrators or victims were.


Edit

I did some checking, and Corpsegrinder is indeed correct that there were mass killings of Jews during the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. The Einsatzgruppen, aided by others, shot some 16,000 Polish civilians in the month of September alone and "in the course of this massive outbreak of violence against the civilian population hundreds of Polish Jews were arbitrarily murdered by the police, the Self-Defence Corps, and members of the army, and in a series of cases locked into synagogues and burned alive" (Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 145.

Christopher Browning details specific incidents in his book, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939—March 1942: "At Rozan a military police sergeant and a Waffen-SS artillery man drove 50 Jews 'into a synagogue and shot them without any reason. On September 11 Groscurth noted that SS-Standarte Deutschland 'had shot Jews by the row without judicial proceedings.' On September 18 the music director of the SS-Leibstandarte shot 50 Jews in Blonie. This event was apparently common enough that the commander of Army Group South, Runstedt, had to answer, in response to an inquiry from the commander of the 10th Army, Reichenau, that at least from the army no order had been issued to shoot Jewish civilian prisoners. On September 22 'near Pultusk 80 Jews were slaughtered like cattle by the troops.' On September 20th the 14th Army reported 'mass shootings, especially of Jews' by the Woyrsch Einsatzgruppe" (Browning, Origins, 20).

So I stand corrected. I'm afraid my reading on the subject of the Holocaust has largely centered on the evolution of Nazi policy toward the Jews and I was thinking of statements such as Browning's that "in June 1941 a solution to the Jewish question was still envisioned by the German leadership in terms of forced resettlement that, though inherently destructive, did not amount to the systematic mass murder of all Jewish men, women, and children." (Origins, 253). I should have looked at what was actually happening on the ground before claiming that there were no organized mass killings of Jews before 1941.

[_Nevo]

This will be my last post on this thread, but before I leave I thought I would add some additional perspective from Quinn regarding Clark's views vis-a-vis Nazi Germany:

In the eyes of most Europeans and Americans during the 1930s and 1940s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Germany were the fiends of Europe. However, Reuben had mixed views about Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party. On the one hand, he described Hitler's 1934 purge-trials of fellow Nazis as "an assassination tribunal." Prior to his first visit to Nazi Germany, Reuben wrote: "The German authorities have, I am very sure, kept all of the bad of Kaiserism (probably jettisoning much of the good); at any rate, they seem to have kept their criminal methods." After his second visit, he told a general priesthood meeting that "there are things about it that to me are detestable." This criticism was compatible with the anti-Nazi evaluations of most contemporaries and historians.

Nevertheless, his views did not imply total repudiation. His complex reactions paralleled the views of Charles A. Lindbergh, America's national hero of the 1920s and 1930s. What a biographer has written of Lindbergh almost exactly describes Reuben's response to Nazi Germany:

"Despite his world-wide travels, he had never visited Germany before the summer of 1936. Neither he nor his wife spoke or read the German language. He never met Adolf Hitler, and he never embraced Hitler's National Socialism. He disapproved of much that occurred in Nazi Germany. At the same time, however, he admired the German efficiency, spirit, and scientific achievement and technological accomplishments. To a degree he began to 'understand' and sympathize with certain German attitudes and actions in the 1930s, even when he did not approve of them."

.... Although his attitudes were close to those of the Lindberghs, especially Charles, Reuben saw Nazi Germany through the perspective of his long experience in diplomacy and international law. And he had to confront Nazi realities in terms of his administrative concerns about the Latter-day Saints who lived there: 'By 1930, Germany had 12,000 Mormons, more than any [other] country in the world except the United States.'

— D. Michael Quinn, Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 282-283.

I also recommend Quinn's recent presentation, "Pacifist Counselor in the First Presidency: J. Reuben Clark, 1933-61."

[_Morley]

.... His complex reactions paralleled the views of Charles A. Lindbergh, America's national hero of the 1920s and 1930s. ....

Thank you, Nevo. This, however, is hardly an endorsement. Lindbergh's racial bigotry and sympathy for Nazi Germany were two of the darkest blemishes on his personality.

[_Nightlion]

It would seem then that Helmuth Heubener resisted the Nazis not because of his Mormon upbringing, but rather in spite of it.

I have a fond affinity with Helmuth Heubener. Possibly on more than one level. Primarily, he is the ONLY example of possible SAINT I have heard of. And how fitting that he was excommunicated. Casting out the righteous. Two counts.