Franz
Jägerstätter and the Indestructibility of Free Will

by Ryan McMaken

Recently
by Ryan McMaken: Government
Gone Wild: For Greater Glory and the Cristeros

“If I must
write…with my hands in chains, I find that much better than
if my will were in chains.” – Franz Jägerstätter 

2012
marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the papal encyclical Mit
Brennender Sorge (“With Burning Anxiety”) which denounced
National Socialism and any ideology that “divinizes” the state
“to an idolatrous level.” Such ideologies were increasingly widespread
in Europe in 1937, and after four years of Hitler, the German
state had become increasingly brutal, and even those who escaped
slavery or murder saw what few rights they had left under siege.
Things would become much worse, and by 1943, when the end began
to come into view following the disastrous defeat for the Reich
at Stalingrad, there were few Germans left who were willing to
resist.



In
1937, however, the full extent of Nazi repression and mass murder
was yet to be seen, and Church sympathizers were able to distribute
300,000 copies of Mit Brennender Sorge, which was written
in German, and not the usual Latin, to be read by German Catholics
en masse. 

In these early years of the Reich, it
was thought that the Germans might be convinced to somehow overturn
the Nazi tide through resistance by the faithful. At the core
of the argument was that the National Socialist ideology, itself
a form of extreme nationalism, was illegitimate and contrary to
natural law.  The encyclical stated:

…Whoever
exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form
of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental
value of the human community – however necessary and honorable
be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions
above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous
level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and
created by God.


Such
notions, long predating the Third Reich of course, were an obstacle
to the state, and by 1937, the Nazis had already begun to restrict
the free exercise of religion in general, to which Pius responded
that:


The
believer has an absolute right to profess his Faith and live
according to its dictates. Laws which impede this profession
and practice of Faith are against natural law…Human laws in
flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated with
a taint which no force, no power can mend…


Unfortunately,
the document did little to promote widespread resistance to the
Reich. In fact, Nazi officials interpreted the release of the
encyclical as proof that German Catholics were enemies of the
Reich, and thus the document led to a redoubling of efforts by
the Nazi regime against German Catholic parishes and institutions
through arrests, seizure of property, and the prohibition of public
displays of faith such as the celebration of religious events
on any day other than Sunday.

The
repression that followed even this rhetorical resistance on the
part of the Catholics set the stage for even worse repression
that would later follow, and by the 1940’s, the German Catholic
resistance, along with the German resistance in general, was down
to a tiny number of courageous Germans, many of whom were imprisoned
or murdered for their efforts.

Among the
more famous of the Catholic resistance were Bishop Clemens von
Galen of Münster and Willi Graf of Sophie Scholl’s group,
The White Rose. Yet by the 1940’s the Catholic resistance had
been cut off from Rome and the rest of the world and the remaining
laymen and clergy who were still willing to resist would find
that they were very much alone. 

While von Galen
managed to avoid execution, Graf and many others of diverse religious
and ideological backgrounds, such as Hans and Sophie Scholl, were
not so lucky, facing death by guillotine for various crimes against
the German Reich.

Among the
many executed resistors was Franz Jägerstätter, who
was put to death for refusing to fight for the National Socialist
state.

Jägerstätter was an Austrian who
after the Anschluss of 1938 found himself a German citizen.
A farmer with a rudimentary formal education, he had been the
only one in his village to vote against the annexation of
Austria, and even his one vote had been expunged from the official
vote to show unanimous support for the National Socialist takeover.
By 1943, Jägerstätter had had already long been a critic
of the Nazis, and was known to say “pfui Hitler” in response to
“heil Hitler” from others in his village.

Jägerstätter,
who gave the impression of being an extremely run-of-the-mill
farmer, was nevertheless devoutly religious, and over time came
to the conclusion that National Socialism was fundamentally incompatible
with his faith.

Although
he was not inclined toward political activism, he was eventually
forced into a position of resistance. Made a citizen of the Reich
against his will, Jägerstätter was drafted into the
army and forced to take part in training exercises which took
him away from his wife and his three young daughters for long
periods of time.

His experiences
in the army only strengthened his resistance to the National Socialist
war machine, and following a long series of delays and furloughs,
Jägerstätter was ordered to report for combat duty in
March of 1943.

Concluding
that he would not kill Poles or Russians for the glory of the
German state, Jägerstätter reported for combat duty
and declared that he would not fight. He was immediately arrested.

In 1943,
he was tried, convicted of treason and “demoralizing the
troops”, and on August 9^th, 1943 at 4:00 pm, he
was executed by guillotine in Berlin-Brandenburg prison.

Jägerstätter,
who would be declared a martyr by the Catholic Church and titled
Blessed
Franz Jägerstätter in 2007, had remained almost
completely unknown outside his home village in the years following
the war. Thanks largely to
the work of sociologist Gordon Zahn, however, information
on Jägerstätter has become increasingly accessible in
recent decades, and with the 2009 release of Franz
Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison,
edited by Erna Putz, English-speaking audiences now finally have
first-hand access to the Austrian farmer’s religious and political
thought.

In his letters
and private notes, Jägerstätter’s religious writings
illustrate thinking of a clear and straightforward nature while
his political writings illustrate mature, sophisticated and even
iconoclastic positions.

By the 1940’s,
Jägerstätter, spurred on by Mit Brennender Sorge
and perhaps also by the anti-Nazi dissent of the local Bishop
Johannes Gföllner, looked upon National Socialism as something
to be resisted, possibly at even the cost of one’s life.

For a German
or Austrian who was actually paying attention during this period,
it was perhaps not difficult to see the inherent incompatibility
between Nazism and Christianity.

The notorious
Nazi judge Roland Freisler, for example, had declared before the
war that “Christianity and we are alike in only one respect:
we lay claim to the whole individual. From which do you take your
orders? From the hereafter or from Adolf Hitler? To whom do you
pledge your loyalty and your faith?”

Long before
the Anschluss, in 1933, when such things could be said without
risk of a lengthy prison term, Bishop Gföllner of Linz in
Austria declared publicly that “Nazism is spiritually sick
with materialistic racial delusions, un-Christian nationalism,
a nationalistic view of religion, with what is quite simply sham
Christianity.”

Again in
1937, Gföllner stated that “It is impossible to be both
a good Catholic and a true Nazi.”

By 1941 though,
Gföllner’s death ushered in a new Bishop in Linz who spoke
much more cautiously on such matters.

Indeed, the
Nazi crackdown against the Catholics of the Reich following the
publication of Mit Brennender Sorge meant that the free-speaking
bishops in the model of Gföllner were quickly becoming a
thing of the past, and this silence spread to Austria after 1938.
Dissidents like Bishop von Galen were atypical, and for the most
part, clergy at all levels began to view open resistance against
the National Socialist regime as not only foolhardy, but very
nearly suicidal.

This meant
that those like Franz Jägerstätter who actually did
resist, would find themselves on their own with little help from
clergy or laymen.

This lack
of outside reassurance did not daunt Jägerstätter. Writing
in 1942, he referred back to Mit Brenender Sorge and concluded
that since National Socialism is “even more dangerous than
Communism” the Christian was therefore morally free to refuse
military service: “Is it not more Christian for someone to
give himself as a sacrifice then to have to murder others who
possess a right to life on earth?”

Typical for
Jägerstätter, in such comments, he was communicating
a personal mode of thinking that was far more radical than the
popular interpretation of political matters at the time.

In the introduction
to Erna Putz’s edition of Jägerstätter’s texts, Jim
Forest notes that, “if not a doctrine found in any catechism,
it was widely believed [at that time in Europe] that any sins
you commit under obedience to your government are not your personal
sins but are regarded by God as the sins of those who lead the
state.”

In fact,
this was precisely the advice Jägerstätter received
from the new bishop of Linz, Joseph Fliesser, with whom Jägerstätter
met to discuss the morality of his upcoming conscientious objection.

According
to Jägerstätter, the bishop may have feared that Jägerstätter
himself was a Gestapo spy and preferred to not even discuss the
matter, but counseled in favor of obedience. Jägerstätter
later commented, without anger, that “[t]hey don’t dare commit
themselves or it will be their turn next.”

But in response
to the argument that one is not morally responsible for immoral
acts he is ordered to do, Jägerstätter dissented. According
to Forest, “for Franz it seemed obvious that, if God gives
each of us free will and a conscience, each of us is responsible
for what we do and what we fail to do, all the more so if we are
consciously aware we have allowed ourselves to become servants
of evil masters.”

Not allowing
oneself to become a servant of “evil masters” was of
particular importance to Jägerstätter. He repeatedly
criticized his fellow members of the “German-speaking people”
for allowing the National Socialists to take power. Referring
specifically to the Catholic regions of Bavaria and Austria, Franz
asked:

Are Austria
and Bavaria blameless in that we now have a N.S. [National Socialist]
state instead of a Christian one? Did National Socialism simply
fall on us from the sky?

He went on:

I believe
that the German-speaking people never participated as strongly
in Christian charitable activities as they are now engaging
in the N.S. organizations. Nor were they as ready to contribute
their money to church programs.

Frequently
in his writings, Jägerstätter referred to National Socialism
as a “stream” which pulled so many people along in its
current, and from which it was difficult to escape.

The nature
of this stream helped explain why so few actually resisted the
National Socialist regime, for as Franz noted, there are many
“who do not want to swim against the stream because to do
so is more difficult than to allow oneself to be washed along
by the waves.”

Yet in Jägerstätter’s
mind, resistance was always possible no matter how strong the
current of the stream might be. No matter how difficult, Jägerstätter
wrote that resistance would be worth it:

Many among
us have already died, though not for Christ but for a N.S. victory.
Was a no such an impossibility and more beyond the capability
of many people in 1938 than a yes? I believe not. But what can
a no still bring about? Will it require the participation of
many people? Without a doubt, one person need not ask others
what it would mean and accomplish. For each individual, a no
would have value in itself because it would free that individual’s
soul.

Once the
individual refused to consent, he could then take concrete action
to refuse to participate in the regime:

In order
to come to this personal decision, someone must be ready to
stand up for Christ and the Christian faith, even if it means
giving up one’s life. These people who have come to this decision
can immediately withdraw from the N.S. Volk community
and make no donations to it. Further, if they want to exercise
Christian love of neighbor, they can contribute their wages
to the poor without the help of the W.H.W. [the Winterhilfswerk,
the Nazi welfare agency] or the Public Assistance program. Then
they will be free to do with themselves as they want.

Jägerstätter
did all of this himself at great personal cost to himself in the
form of alienation from his neighbors and in the form of lost
income from the state, from which he refused to accept public
assistance.

Interestingly,
we see here in Jägerstätter’s political program a plan
of mass civil disobedience that could have been inspired by Etienne
de la Boetie’s Discourse
on Voluntary Servitude, although it is unlikely that Jägerstätter
ever read it.

In fact,
we find in his writings a man who understood the key to undermining
political power in the face of a dictator with untrammeled power.
In Murray Rothbard’s introduction to the Discourse, he
states that

Thus, after
concluding that all tyranny rests on popular consent, La Boétie
eloquently concludes that “obviously there is no need of
fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically
defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement.”
Tyrants need not be expropriated by force; they need only be
deprived of the public’s continuing supply of funds and resources.
The more one yields to tyrants, La Boétie points out,
the stronger and mightier they become.

Some would
undoubtedly argue that open disobedience would only bring greater
repression form those who did remain obedient, but in Jägerstätter’s
mind, he failed to see how things would be worse had others like
him actually stood their ground:

Things
would be no worse today for genuine Christian faith in our land
if the churches were no longer open and if thousands of Christians
had poured out their blood and their lives for Christ and their
faith. This would be better than now watching silently as there
is more and more acceptance of falsehood.

In Jägerstätter’s
time, as today, most saw resistance to tyrants as foolishness.
It was much better to comply and save one’s skin. The Catholic
clergy certainly did its part to talk Jägerstätter out
of his plan of action.

Jägerstätter’s
local parish priest, who had himself served time in prison for
speaking against Hitler, said that “I wanted to talk him
out of it, but he defeated me again and again with words from
the scriptures.”

Later, as
the threat of execution became ever more real, Fr. Ferdinand Furthauer
also tried to talk him out of it, and later regretted his intervention
saying “I often pray that Franz Jägerstätter may
forgive me.”

Franz’s wife
Franziska was one of the few who supported him. According to Erna
Putz, “[i]t was immediately clear to everyone that conscientious
objection would cost Franz his life. His mother tried through
relatives to change her son’s mind. Franziska spoke to him too,
at the start. But as everyone tried to talk him round, as the
arguments went on and he was quite alone against them all, she
stood by him ‘If I had not stood by him, he would have had no
one,’ she explained.”

Although
many dragged their heels in going along with the regime, why did
Jägerstätter draw such a clear line which brought condemnation
down upon him? We know it was not just resistance to National
Socialism’s inherent anti-Catholicism. The reasons were many.

Jägerstätter
explained that “I cannot and may not take an oath in favor
of a government that is fighting an unjust war.” It is unclear
under what circumstances Jägerstätter would have been
willing to take up arms for the state, although he did outline
his objections to the National Socialist program specifically.

Of great
importance is the fact that Jägerstätter simply did
not believe the Nazi propaganda. Hitler’s speeches and the speeches
of his propagandists frequently mentioned God and the defense
of Christian civilization as justification for the war. Jägerstätter
clearly rejected this on the grounds that the National Socialists
were anti-Christian, but also on the grounds that wars of conquest
are, in their very nature counter to the act of actually defending
the faith.

When our
Catholic missionaries went into pagan lands in order to make
people Christian, did they go in with fighter planes and bombs…[a]re
we Christians today smarter than Christ himself? Do some of
us truly believe that we can rescue Christian belief in Europe
from a decline…by means of this massive shedding of blood? Did
our good savior, whom we should always follow, go against paganism
with his apostles as we German-speaking Christians are now going
against [Bolshevism]?

We see that
it was not just the nature of National Socialism, but also the
war itself that Jägerstätter so opposed. And it is important
to note that he knew little of the true horrors of the war. What
he did know about the atrocities and death camps of the east was
largely hearsay and rumor in Jägerstätter’s place and
time. He simply knew that bombing women and children in the name
of national defense or in the name of defending the faith was
not something he was going to support.

What of the
advice others gave to him to save his own skin and rejoin his
family? For Franz, these arguments failed even on a practical
level. Consenting to go fight in the war, where he would be called
upon to kill innocents, was only playing the odds. There had been
already 750,000 casualties for the Reich at Stalingrad alone.
If Jägerstätter were shipped off the eastern front,
what were the odds he would ever return? So many men in his village
had already been killed in action leaving behind impoverished
widows and orphans. So Jägerstätter had the choice of
playing the odds, abandoning his convictions and hoping he might
avoid a meaningless death on the front. Or he might refuse to
kill for the state, even if it meant certain death.

If one is
to risk one’s life, Jägerstätter thought, would it not
better to do it for Christ than for Hitler? In Jägerstätter’s
view, if no one is guaranteed another day on earth, why let what
little time one has left be wasted in fighting for the National
Socialists? Why not die a free man rather than a slave?

In his last
note, Jägerstätter wrote “Now I’ll write down a
few words as they come to me from my heart. Although I am writing
them with my hands in chains, this is still much better than if
my will were in chains.”

Very few
came to the same conclusion, and at the end, even Jägerstätter
longed for some corroboration of his position. This came mere
hours before his execution, when he was told that Fr. Franz Reinisch
had been recently executed for also refusing to fight for the
Reich. This news strengthened Jägerstätter’s resolve
all the more, and although we now know that over 4,000 priests
had been executed by the Nazis for various sorts of disobedience,
these cases were known by few at the time.

Jägerstätter
was executed as a traitor on August 9^th and his ashes
were buried in a nearby cemetery, far from his family.

In the following
years, Jägerstätter’s former neighbors regarded him
as either an impractical eccentric or as an outright traitor,
and they offered his widow little help. In one interview, Jim
Forest noted that after calmly recounting the death of her husband,
Franziska Jägerstätter “broke down in tears while
describing the subsequent behavior of her neighbors.” Franziska
even lived in fear and later explained that “I thought no
one would ever know about him. I hid his letters under my mattress
for decades.”

Since then,
Jägerstätter has become the patron saint of conscientious
objectors and a hero to antiwar activists.

His story
and his writing have much to teach not only Christians, but also
anyone who seeks freedom of conscience and who opposes war and
authoritarian regimes in the face of a complacent and obedient
population.

For now,
we Americans can still legally criticize
the state – most
of the time – and at the moment, there is no conscription.
But history has shown that such a state of affairs is hardly guaranteed
in this country or any other country.

It is still
possible for now in many cases to say “no” without risking
death or a lengthy prison term. But the time may come when it
is not as easy, and then many will face choices like those faced
by Jägerstätter. But even then, refusing to obey will,
in the words of Jägerstätter, “free that individual’s
soul.” It is always still possible to do something, and according
to Fr.
John Dear, “In an insane world, Franz points the way:
refuse to fight, refuse to kill, refuse to be complicit in warmaking,
refuse to compromise.”