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Local Catholicism as Transnational War Experience: Everyday Religious Practice in Occupied Northern France, 1914–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2012

Patrick J. Houlihan
Patrick J. Houlihan
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The Great War is not a historical episode that easily lends itself to studying the subtleties of religious belief systems. Believers on opposite sides claimed that they were engaged in a just war of defense against aggression. They argued that God was on their side, and they prayed for victory of their nation—even if that meant the destruction of their fellow believers who were now considered the enemy. Despite Catholic claims to internationalism and universalism, the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops and prominent clerics in the public sphere devoted themselves to national causes. Clerical nationalism seemed to overwhelm Christian fellowship, and the clerical nationalist paradigm often served as scholarly shorthand for the experience of religion during the war, especially for long-term studies of Christianity and war. The implacable hostility between French and German Catholic bishops became a convenient symbol of European national enmity in an age of total war.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 233 - 267
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2012

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References

1 A pointed literary exchange of national stereotypes and accusatory polemics between French and German clergy began with the French publication of Baudrillart, Alfred, ed., La guerre allemande et le catholicisme (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1915)Google Scholar. This work was published by the “Catholic Committee of French Propaganda Abroad” (Comité Catholique de Propagande Française à l'Étranger) with the joint sponsorship of Cardinal Léon-Adolphe Amette of Paris and Cardinal Louis Luçon of Reims. In 1935, Baudrillart would be named a cardinal by Pope Pius XI. The main German response emerged in 1915 as Pfeilschifter, Georg, ed., Deutsche Kultur, Katholizismus und Weltkrieg. Eine Abwehr des Buches, La guerre allemande et le catholicisme (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1915)Google Scholar. The volume was published with the indirect support of many German bishops, though it did not have the official approval of the Fulda Bishops' Conference. Most notably, the work reflected the particular influence of Michael von Faulhaber, the Bishop of Speyer and later Cardinal of Munich, who wrote one of the essays, entitled “Our Religious Culture.”

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12 Maier, Hans, “Political Religion: A Concept and its Limitations,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 1 (2007): 5–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an entertaining and polemical work, see Burleigh, Michael, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics from the Great War to the War on Terror (New York: HarperCollins, 2007)Google Scholar.

13 Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 8Google Scholar. The experience of Belgians during the war had vast symbolic importance for all the war's participants, and the practical reality of Catholic religious life in occupied Belgium has received some attention. Dauphin, Frédéric, “Le clerge paroissial en Belgique: La perception de l'occupation allemande,” Revue du Nord 80, no. 325 (1998): 367–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Schaepdrijver, Sophie, La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale, trans. Spitaels, Claudine and Marnix, Vincent (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2004)Google Scholar. For reasons of limited space, however, this article bypasses many issues associated with Belgium in order to focus on events in northern France and thus more effectively engage the meta-narrative of French-German conflict over the course of the twentieth century.

14 To complement the archival source base of German Catholic chaplaincy, this article has made use of the diaries of several chaplains that exist as extended reflections over the course of the entire war. These long-term narratives complement more fragmentary and isolated reports about occupation found in the German archives. Additionally, materials from French published primary sources as well as the Vatican Archives provide a more balanced assessment of the occupation narratives. The chaplains' reports cover the spectrum between official public duty and personal private rumination, and this article has made use of reports from across the spectrum. To approach a localized, personalized religiosity beyond the chaplains' official line, however, this article has emphasized chaplains' semi-private communications such as letters and diaries. The official reports, termed “pastoral reports” (Pastoralberichte) or “activity reports” (Tätigkeitsberichte), were issued by chaplains as part of their duty as military officers responsible for the religious worship opportunities offered to soldiers and civilians where the chaplains were stationed. These reports were issued by chaplains through military channels at least quarterly, though some assiduous chaplains wrote more often. Eventually these reports wound up at the central offices of the Catholic chaplaincies for the various federal states of the German Empire, for which Bishop Heinrich Joeppen of Prussia assumed overall supervision of the German Catholic chaplaincy. These reports survive at both the Germany Military Archives (Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau) as well as church archives. Many chaplains also wrote quasi-official letters and reports to their religious superiors on the home front and to leading church figures, the most visible of whom was probably Michael von Faulhaber, Bishop of Speyer, later Cardinal of Munich, and the official head of Bavarian Catholic chaplaincy. These documents are found in Faulhaber's personal papers at the Archdiocesan Archives of Munich-Freising. Chaplains also made more personal notations and diaries, which have been preserved at disparate church archives. Some of these personal notes and diaries show various degrees of preparation for possible public audiences, sometimes being typewritten copies revised from original handwritten manuscripts in Sutterlin script or Gabelsburg shorthand, for instance.

15 “Traditional religious services and spiritualism, prayers and amulets, the suffering of Christ and the intercession of the saints, ordinary piety and extraordinary revelations all contributed to the religion of wartime. Yet it is hard to reconstitute prayers, fears, and suffering when they leave few archival traces.” A. Becker, “Faith, Ideologies, and the ‘Cultures of War,’” 241.

16 For a comparative imperial perspective on the position of central European Catholic chaplains, see Patrick J. Houlihan, “Clergy in the Trenches: Catholic Military Chaplains of Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2011).

17 For an excellent comparative overview of chaplaincy throughout the ages, see Bergen, Doris L., ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004)Google Scholar. For German Catholic chaplains during World War I, see Betker, Frank and Kriele, Almut, eds., Pro fide et patria! Die Kriegstagebücher von Ludwig Berg 1914/18. Katholischer Feldgeistlicher im Grossen Hauptquartier Kaiser Wilhelms II (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998)Google Scholar; Vogt, Arnold, Religion im Militär. Seelsorge zwischen Kriegsverherrlichung und Humanität. Eine militär-geschichtliche Studie (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984)Google Scholar; Wollasch, Hans-Josef, ed., Militärseelsorge im Ersten Weltkrieg. Das Kriegstagebuch des katholischen Feldgeistlichen Benedict Kreutz (Mainz: Matthias Grünewelt Verlag, 1987)Google Scholar; Ziemann, Benjamin, “Katholische Religiosität und die Bewältigung des Krieges. Soldaten und Militärseelsorger in der deutschen Armee, 1914–1918,” in Volksreligiosität und Kriegserleben, ed. Boll, Friedhelm (Münster: Lit, 1997), 116–36Google Scholar.

18 For a classic examination about the fundamental cultural patterns of religious believers coping with the threshold of chaos that threatens the perceived general order of transcendence, see Geertz, Clifford, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89–125, esp. 93–104Google Scholar.

19 Albert, Franz, Handbuch für die katholischen Feldgeistlichen des Preußischen Heeres (Vilnius: Verlag der 10. Armee, 1918)Google Scholar.

20 Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (hereafter BHStA), Abt. IV (Kriegsarchiv), MKr. 13852, 184: Nr. 246457a, KBKM, Ausschnitt aus dem preußischen Armee-Verordnungsblatt Nr. 45 vom 31.8.1918, 502. Emphasis in original.

21 Archivio Segreto Vaticano (hereafter ASV), Seg. di Stato, Guerra 1914–1918, Fasc. 474, 11r–12v: “Facultates et declarationes pro sacerdotibus durante bello,” ex June 24, 1915.

22 BHStA, Abt. IV (Kriegsarchiv), Bd. 13850, 299: Jan. 31, 1918, Etappen-Inspektion 6. Armee, IId. Nr. 142 pers. an das Armee-Oberkommando 6.

23 Erzbischöfliches Archiv Freiburg (hereafter EAF), Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 497, entry of May 23, 1916. On that day, Chaplain Ebner noted that he had monitored the French catechism lesson for the ten-year-old son of his French host (Quartierwirt) in the village of Sugny.

24 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (hereafter BA-MA), PH 32, Bd. 391: Protokoll über die Konferenz des Hochw. Herrn Feldpropstes der Armee, Dr. Joeppen mit den Oberpfarrern und Feldgeistlichen der 1., 3., u. 7. Armee am 18. Sept. [1918] in Charleville, 6.

25 BA-MA, PH 32, Bd. 391: Bericht 24. Sept. 1918: Konferenz in Brüssel, 2.

26 BA-MA, PH 32, Bd. 391: Protokoll über die Konferenz des Hochw. Herrn Feldpropstes der Armee, Dr. Joeppen mit den Oberpfarrern und Feldgeistlichen der 1., 3. u. 7. Armee am 18. Sept. [1918] in Charleville, 6.

27 Eppstein, John, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published by the Catholic Association for International Peace, 1935), 29–62Google Scholar.

28 For a reconsideration of the grand narrative of modernization, see Saler, Michael, “Modernity and Enchantment: A Historiographic Review,” American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 692–716CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Even with the best of sources and modern data assessment techniques, systematized assessment of religious collectives, let alone the recovery of individual religious subjectivity, is an unreachable limit. The methodology of this essay, therefore, is deliberately pointillist in the hope that the alternative patterns of religious behavior described here may be subjected to further scrutiny. In the meanwhile, scholars must avoid the extremes of categorical generalizations of religious group identity based on national stereotypes.

30 Kocka, Jürgen, “Comparison and Beyond,” History & Theory 42, no. 1 (2003): 39–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 For an overview, see Winter and Prost, The Great War in History.

32 Atkin, Nicholas, ed., Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Twentieth-Century Europe (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Gevers, Lieve and Bank, Jan, eds., Religion under Siege, 2 vols., vol. I: The Roman Catholic Church in Occupied Europe (1939–1950) (Leuven: Peeters, 2007)Google Scholar.

33 Becker, Jean-Jacques and Krumeich, Gerd, La grande guerre: Une histoire franco-allemande (Paris: Tallandier, 2008), 177Google Scholar. See also Nivet, Philippe, “Départements envahis,” in Dictionnaire de la Grande Guerre 1914–1918, ed. Cochet, François and Porte, Rémy (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2008), 321–24Google Scholar. Despite Belgium's important symbolic role in Allied rationale for the war, the Belgian experience of occupation has only recently received scholarly attention. See De Schaepdrijver, La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale.

34 Becker, Annette, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: Humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914–1918: Populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Noêsis, 1998), 14–15Google Scholar.

35 Emerging scholarship has begun to hint at the complicated loyalties of individuals who do not neatly fit into national frameworks. See De Schaepdrijver, Sophie, ed., “We Who Are So Cosmopolitan”: The War Diary of Constance Graeffe, 1914–1915, 2nd ed. (Brussels: Archives générales du Royaume, 2008)Google Scholar. For the Belgian example of collaboration, see De Schaepdrijver, La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale, 251–85.

36 A. Becker, War and Faith. More recently see Becker, Annette, “Die Religionsgeschichte des Krieges 1914–1918. Eine Bilanz,” in Alliierte im Himmel. Populare Religiosität und Kriegserfahrung, ed. Korff, Gottfried (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, e.V., 2006), 33–45Google Scholar. Becker's fundamental work on occupation not only brought to light a marginalized episode in French historical remembrance but also revised an uncritical history that relied on idealized literature and memoirs to represent moments of peace and fraternization between occupier and occupied. See A. Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre, 17. Becker's criticism refers primarily to the only serious English-language work on the occupation until that date, namely Cobb, Richard, French and Germans, Germans and French: A Personal Interpretation of France under Two Occupations, 1914–1918/1940–1944 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983)Google Scholar. Cobb relied heavily on Barthas, Louis, Les carnets de guerre de Louis Barthas, tonnelier: 1914–1918, ed. Cazals, Rémy (Paris: La Découverte, 1997 [1978])Google Scholar; Cru, Jean Norton, Témoins: Essai d'analyse et critique des souvenirs de combattants édités en français de 1915 à 1928 (Paris: Les Étincelles, 1929)Google Scholar.

37 A. Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre, 377. See also Smith, Leonard V., Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, and Becker, Annette, France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 45–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the notion of the “war culture,” see Audoin-Rouzeau and A. Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War.

38 Zuckerman, Larry, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 2Google Scholar. “Occupied Belgium was a forerunner of Nazi Europe.”

39 Becker, Annette, Les cicatrices rouges, 14–18: France et Belgique occupées (Paris: Fayard, 2010), esp. 295–313Google Scholar. Philippe Nivet's recent work also indicates that the occupation of northern France is attracting more scholarly interest, though here, too, the temptation is to view the episode as part of the 1914–45 continuum. See Nivet, Philippe, La France occupée: 1914–1918 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2011)Google Scholar.

40 Gross, Jan T., “Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration,” in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, ed. Deák, István, Gross, Jan T., and Judt, Tony (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 15–35, esp. 15Google Scholar.

41 Gross's own edited volume on the issue of occupation calls attention to the lexicographical fact that the term “collaboration” dates from a statement of Marshal Pétain from October 24, 1940, and has an explicitly narrow meaning in several European languages: namely, the association with Nazi occupations during World War II. Ibid., 24.

42 Nivet, “Départements envahis,” 323. Cf. A. Becker, Les cicatrices rouges, 249–70.

43 The most prominent English-language work by Helen McPhail, who also translated important French scholarship on the Great War into English, pointedly discloses her sympathy for the French people and French culture in a work that proposes to speak about “the Long Silence” and yet is itself practically silent about the religious life of French citizens under occupation. See McPhail, Helen, The Long Silence: Civilian Life under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918 (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999)Google Scholar. Cf. Blancpain, Marc and Carnoy, Marcel, La vie quotidienne dans la France du Nord sous les occupations (1814–1944) (Paris: Hachette littérature générale, 1983), 199–314Google Scholar.

44 Blancpain, Marc, Quand Guillaume II gouvernait “de la Somme aux Vosges” (Paris: Fayard, 1980)Google Scholar; Cnudde-Lecointre, Carine, “Monseigneur Charost, évêque de Lille durant la Grande Guerre,” Revue du Nord 80, no. 325 (1998): 355–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dauphin, “Le clerge paroissial en Belgique,” 367–82; Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre, 309–26; Gromaire, Georges, L'occupation allemande en France (1914–1918) (Paris: Payot, 1925)Google Scholar; Mayeur, “Le catholicisme français et la Première Guerre mondiale,” 377–97. More recently, see Cholvy and Hilaire, eds., Religion et société en France 1914–1945. See, for example, Calippe, Charles, La Somme sous l'occupation allemande (27 août 1914–19 mars 1917) (Woignarue: La Vague verte, 2003 [Paris: Téqui, 1918])Google Scholar; Postic, Fañch, ed., Moi Louis-Joseph Le Port: Curé dans la France occupée: 1914–1918 (Rennes: Apogée, 1998)Google Scholar. For a collection of journals and an editorial overview, see Becker, Annette, ed., Journaux de combattants et de civils de la France du Nord dans la Grande Guerre (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1998)Google Scholar.

45 Despite ever-increasing international research collaboration on World War I, especially through the influences of the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Peronne near the Verdun-Somme battlefields, Jay Winter and Antoine Prost have recently reminded scholars that the historical remembrances of the war remain fragmented according to different national trajectories in the course of the twentieth century. See Winter and Prost, The Great War in History. Thus, World War I for Britain remains ultimately futile as a waste that led to appeasement and eventually World War II, “their finest hour” where Britain finally and decisively stopped German expansionism. In complete contrast, the Great War in French memory retains an aura of almost holy enthusiasm most famously demonstrated through the union sacrée: in the French conceptualization, a successful defense of the nation that occludes the humbling defeat and embarrassing complicity of World War II. One could also mention disparate interpretations for Russia and the United States, among other participants.

46 Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre, 309.

47 For all the declared antimodernism of Pope Pius X, on the issue of occupied northern France, ironically Canon Law in 1914 administratively agreed with the latest precepts of international law, formulated in the Hague Convention of 1907. See Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations; Peters, Edward N., ed., The 1917 or Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law: In English Translation with Extensive Scholarly Apparatus (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

48 Hague IV, Sect. III, Art. 42–56: Yale University's “Avalon Project” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp#art42 (accessed March 14, 2012).

49 McMillan, James F., “French Catholics: Rumeurs Infâmes and the Union Sacrée,” in Authority, Identity, and the Social History of the Great War, ed. Coetzee, Frans and Shevin-Coetzee, Marilyn (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1995), 117Google Scholar.

50 Calippe, La Somme sous l'occupation allemande, 88–90. Cf. Acta Apostolicae Sedis: Commentarium Officiale (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1909-present), vol. 7, 526.

51 Aubert, Roger, Les deux premiers grands conflits du Cardinal Mercier avec les autorités allemandes d'occupation (Louvain: Peeters, 1998)Google Scholar. See also Mercier, Désiré, Cardinal Mercier: Pastorals, Letters, Allocutions, 1914–1917 (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1917)Google Scholar.

52 Pollard, The Unknown Pope. For a beautifully illustrated plea signed by a group of French children who had just made their First Communion and appealed to the pope for a “durable peace, based on justice and law,” see ASV, Segretario di Stato, Spoglio, Benedetto XV, Nr. 1 (unindexed): April 13, 1916, letter signed by L. Poulin, curé de la Sainte-Trinité.

53 Houlihan, “Clergy in the Trenches.” Vogt, Religion im Militär, 455–648.

54 Benjamin Ziemann has calculated that during 1915–1917, the Bavarian Army, which was around seventy percent nominally Catholic, rose from 380,000 to 530,000 soldiers, while the number of Catholic chaplains increased from only 170 to 189 chaplains. Furthermore, this meant that a Bavarian Catholic chaplain was responsible for ministering to around 1,600 Catholic soldiers in contrast to 665 peacetime parishioners. See Ziemann, “Katholische Religiosität und die Bewältigung des Krieges,” 119–20.

55 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 513, 519, entries of June 25 and July 21, 1916.

56 For the dioceses under occupation and the impact of destruction on the administrative records, see volume 2 of Boulard, Fernand, ed., Matériaux pour l'histoire religieuse du peuple français: XIXe-XXe siècles, 3 vols. (Paris: Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1982–95)Google Scholar.

57 Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre, 278–83. Fontana contextualized the original figures drawn from Rouvier, Frédéric, En ligne: l'Église de France pendant la Grande Guerre (1914–1918) (Paris: Perrin, 1919)Google Scholar.

58 Cholvy and Hilaire, eds., Religion et société en France 1914–1945, 35. Dansette, Adrien, Religious History of Modern France, trans. Dingle, John, 2 vols. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961), vol. 2, 331Google Scholar.

59 A. Becker, Les cicatrices rouges, 101–30.

60 Horne, John and Kramer, Alan, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 419–31Google Scholar. The Germans summarily executed the civilians in the period from August-October 1914, charging them with sniping at German troops. In fact, as Horne and Kramer have shown, in the confusion of the advance, the Germans, fearing the actual franc-tireurs of 1870–71, mistook gunfire from German units as representing sniper fire from imagined partisans.

61 For instance, three priests (Mathieu, Buëcher, and Lahache) were shot in Besançon on November 29, 1914; seven were shot in Cambrai in September of the same year; and one year into the war, by August 1915, eleven priests had been executed in Nancy. For the three shot in Besançon, see La Croix, October 1, 1914, 1, cited in Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre, 311. For the seven killed in Cambrai and the eleven executed in Nancy, see La Croix, Sept. 23, 1914, 2–3, and La Croix, Aug. 24, 1914, 3; both cited in Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre, 312.

62 A. Becker, Les cicatrices rouges, 13–14.

63 Geyer, Michael, “Rückzug und Zerstörung 1917,” in Die Deutschen an der Somme 1914–1918, ed. Hirschfeld, Gerhard, Krumeich, Gerd, and Renz, Irina (Essen: Klartext, 2006), 163–79Google Scholar.

64 For example, Calippe, La Somme sous l'occupation allemande, 80.

65 The literature on the secularization question is immense. As general guides with comparative analyses, see McLeod, Hugh, Religion and the People of Western Europe, 1789–1989, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; McLeod, Hugh, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848–1914 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000)Google Scholar; McLeod, Hugh and Ustorf, Werner, eds., The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 40, entry of September 5, 1914.

67 Ibid., 71, entry of September 26, 1914 (sic, ca. September 28–29, 1914).

68 Ibid., 85, entry of September 29, 1914.

69 McMillan, “French Catholics,” 129. Further micro-studies of French religious life should problematize the disparate French responses to the German invasion.

70 Postic, ed., Moi Louis-Joseph Le Port, 118–19, 190.

71 ASV, Segretario di Stato, Guerra 1914–1918, 244.D.7, Fasc. 106, 163: Nov. 30, 1914, Nunziature Apostolica del Belgio.

72 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 128–30, entry of November 8, 1914.

73 The German military, as did the militaries of other nations, established a network of official brothels to provide outlets for the sexual needs of the troops. See Sauerteig, Lutz, “Militär, Medizin und Moral. Sexualität im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Die Medizin und der Erste Weltkrieg, ed. Eckart, Wolfgang U. and Gradmann, Christoph (Pfaffenweiler: Centarius, 1996), 197–226Google Scholar. The brothels became a major point of contention between Catholic and military authorities.

74 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 517–18, entry of July 12, 1916.

75 Ibid., 221, entries of February 8–9, 1915.

76 Ibid., 505–6, entry of June 17, 1916.

77 One French cleric, Louis-Joseph Le Port, would comment on the Germans' reintroduction of Catholic prayer in the schools, “What a kick to the French government!” Postic, ed., Moi Louis-Joseph Le Port, 9. The conflicts over religious education can be approached through Clark, Christopher and Kaiser, Wolfram, eds., Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 63–4, entries of September 20 and 23, 1914. Cf. Calippe, La Somme sous l'occupation allemande, 80–87.

79 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 92–3, entry of October 11, 1914.

80 BHStA, Abt. IV (Kriegsarchiv), 1st Bay. Landw. Div, Bd. 62, Akt 4, “Übersicht über die Seelsorge in francös. (sic) Gemeinden im Bereiche der I. Bay. Landw. Division.”

81 Delahaye-Théry, Eugène, Les Cahiers Noirs. Notes quotidiennes écrites d'Octobre 1914 à Novembre 1918 par une Lilloise sous l'occupation allemande (Rennes: Éditions de la Province, 1934), 72, 77Google Scholar.

82 Throughout the war, one of the most persistently recurring refrains in Eugène Delahaye-Théry's journal was, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I have confidence in You.”

83 Delahaye-Théry, Les Cahiers Noirs, 77, 130.

84 Ibid., 10. For the service at the Church of St. Étienne the next day, she wrote that the preacher was a German military chaplain, a Bavarian Capuchin monk who wore the robe of his order, which “unfortunately” had been prohibited for ten years to French Capuchins.

85 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 476, entry of February 29, 1916.

86 ASV, Segretario di Stato, Guerra 1914–1918, 244.D.7, Fasc. 106, 117: June 8, 1915, Brussels, General-Gouvernement in Belgien, Sekt. IV d2, Nr. 1198/15.

87 For example, on May 22, 1915, Eugène Delahaye-Théry noted that the Church of St. Maurice in Lille was reserved for the Germans from 9:00–10:00 in the morning, with no French citizens permitted to enter the church. Delahaye-Théry, Les Cahiers Noirs, 71–2.

88 Archiv der Bayerischen Franziskaner (hereafter ABF), PA I, 991 (3) (Polykarp Schmoll Tagebuch), 15.

89 Ibid., 22.

90 Erzbischöfliches Archiv München-Freising (hereafter EAM), NL Faulhaber 6779/1: Picture-Postcard, July 6, 1917, from P. Oskar Krafft, Feldgeistlicher, B. Feldlazarett 30, D. Feldpost 865 to Faulhaber.

91 Delahaye-Théry, Les Cahiers Noirs, 10.

92 A. Becker, ed., Journaux de combattants et de civils de la France du Nord dans la Grande Guerre, 197–8.

93 Brown, Malcolm and Seaton, Shirley, Christmas Truce: The Western Front, December 1914, rev. and expanded ed. (Basingstoke: Papermac, 1994)Google Scholar; Jürgs, Michael, Der kleine Frieden im Großen Krieg. Westfront 1914: Als Deutsche, Franzosen und Briten gemeinsam Weihnachten feierten (Munich: C. Bertelsmann, 2003)Google Scholar.

94 EAF, Na. 16/1 (Kriegstagebuch 1914–1918 von Fridolin Mayer), 80–83, entries of December 24–25, 1914. Cf. Calippe, La Somme sous l'occupation allemande, 85.

95 EAF, Na. 16/1 (Kriegstagebuch 1914–1918 von Fridolin Mayer), 79–80, entry of December 24, 1914.

96 Ibid., 79–80.

97 Calippe, La Somme sous l'occupation allemande, 80–82.

98 Cf. Baadte, Günther, “Katholischer Universalismus und nationale Katholizismen im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Katholizismus, nationaler Gedanke und Europa seit 1800, ed. Langner, Albrecht (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1985), 89–109Google Scholar; Stambolis, Barbara, “Nationalisierung trotz Ultramontanisierung oder: ‘Alles für Deutschland. Deutschland aber für Christus.’ Mentalitätsleitende Wertorientierung deutscher Katholiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift 269 (1999): 57–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 128–30, 140–6, entries of November 8 and 13, 1914.

100 Ibid., 403–4, entry of September 30, 1915.

101 Cnudde-Lecointre, “Monseigneur Charost, évêque de Lille durant la Grande Guerre,” 355–66 ; Dauphin, “Le clerge paroissial en Belgique,” 367–82.

102 BA-MA, PH 32, Bd. 390: Militär-Pfarrer-Konferenz (7. Armee) in Laon, April 20, 1915.

103 Calippe, La Somme sous l'occupation allemande, 73–74.

104 Ibid., 75–76. Fontana, drawing on Calippe, claims that German chaplains did not often fulfill subsidiary roles serving under French priests. See Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre, 317.

105 Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre, 317.

106 ABF, PA I, 991 (3) (Polykarp Schmoll Tagebuch), 23.

107 EAF, Na. 44 (Jakob Ebner Tagebuch), 151, 161, entries of November 22 and December 1, 1914.

108 EAM, NL Faulhaber, 6779/2: Supplement to the booklet, “Einige praktische Bemerkungen für die hochw. Patres anläßlich des Krieges.”

109 Eugène Delahaye-Théry noted that after the massive artillery damage to the Church of St. Maurice in January 1916, even the combined German and French victims of the attack were buried in separate services. See Delahaye-Théry, Les Cahiers Noirs, 145.

110 Ibid., 348.

111 Two captured French military chaplains, Zimmermann and Scorssery, attempted to get back their field chapels that were captured at Verdun. They had written to the Bishop of Paderborn, and the accusation was funneled through the military chaplaincy of the 25th Infantry Division, Etappen Inspektion AOK 5. See BHStA, Abt. IV (Kriegsarchiv), M.Kr. 10851, Nr. 156: Preussisches Kriesgsministerium Nr. 1104 from Jan. 16, 1917, to the Königlich Bayerisches Kriegsministerium.

112 BA-MA, PH 32, Bd. 17, Generalquartiermeister IIc Nr. 19420 general order from June 10, 1917.

113 BHStA, Abt. IV (Kriegsarchiv), M.Kr. 10851, Nr. 205, “Das Erzbischöfliche Ordinariat Bamberg an das Generalkommando des II. BAK Würzburg,” March 21, 1919.

114 For an account of the chaotic political economy of Bavaria, see Geyer, Martin H., Verkehrte Welt. Revolution, Inflation, und Moderne: München 1914–1924 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115 A. Becker, War and Faith; Dauphin, “Le clerge paroissial en Belgique,” 367–82.

116 Most recently, see A. Becker, Les cicatrices rouges, 249–70, 295–313. See also Martinage, Renee, “Les collaborateurs devant la cour d'assises du Nord après la très Grande Guerre,” Revue du Nord 77, no. 309 (1995): 95–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar. French prosecutions of collaborators remained focused on the events of World War II. Unlike the social stigmatization after World War II, French women who cohabitated with German soldiers after World War I did not have their heads shaved. See LeNaour, Jean-Yves, “Femmes tondues et repression des ‘femmes à boches’ en 1918,” Revue d'Histoire Moderne & Contemporaine 47, no. 1 (2000): 148–58Google Scholar.

117 Some German Catholics, however, certainly did feel an embittered sense of defeat and betrayal, perhaps most notably Bishop (later Cardinal) Michael von Faulhaber of Munich, who had been heavily involved in the leadership of Bavarian chaplaincy during the Great War. Nevertheless, the most comprehensive study of the “stab-in-the-back” legend emphasizes the decisive influence of the Protestant social-moral milieu in advancing a sense of religiously charged nationalist disappointment. See Barth, Boris, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2003), 150–71, 340–59, 555Google Scholar. For an argument about the specifically Catholic linkages to Nazism, see Hastings, Derek, Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

118 Paul Doncoeur, S.J., “Die Gegenwartshoffnungen der Katholiken Frankreichs auf religiösem Gebiete,” Stimmen der Zeit 103 (1922): 200Google Scholar. “Trotz all dem, was uns hier unten einen Augenblick auseinanderreißen kann, ist es doch ein herrlicher Gedanke, daß auf der ganzen Welt die Seelen nach Millionen zählen, die alle für die Ehre desselben himmlischen Vaters sich mühen. Da erwacht in uns das Bewußtsein, daß wir Brüder sind, geboren aus demselben Blute, das aus demselben Herzen floß auf ein und demselben Kalvarienberg. Möge dieses Gefühl der Zusammengehörigkeit aller Söhne der Kirche triumphieren über all die Hindernisse, die sich der Liebe und der Vereinigung entgegenwerfen, für die unser Heiland betete im hohenpriesterlichen Gebet: Ut sint unum.” The phrase “high-priestly prayer” refers to the last discourse of Christ recounted in John 17: 1–26.

119 Gregory, Brad S., “The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion,” History and Theory 45, no. 4 (2006): 132–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gregory has cautioned against the formation of a “secular confessional history” based on “theologically atheistic, metaphysically materialist, and culturally relativist” assumptions that “overtly or tacitly explain religion by reducing it to something else.” Gregory argues that such a way of thinking is itself a form of belief in which the postulates of the natural sciences are applied to religion.

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123 See, for example, Burleigh, Sacred Causes.

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