Crucifix Decrees

The Crucifix Decrees (Crucifix Struggle) were part of the Nazi Regime’s efforts to secularize public life.[1] For example, crucifixes throughout public places like schools were to be replaced with the Fuhrer’s picture. The Crucifix Decrees throughout the years of 1935 to 1941 sparked protests against removing crucifixes from traditional places. Protests notably occurred in Oldenburg (Lower Saxony) in 1936, Frankenholz (Saarland) and Frauenberg (East Prussia) in 1937, and in Bavaria in 1941.[2] These incidents helped to encourage Nazi party leaders to back away from crucifix removals in 1941.

Historical significance

Significance within the Crucifix Decrees lies within the single-issue based event that it was. The following list are some of the events related to the Crucifix Decrees:

  • From 1935-1941, there were many cars blowing horns, church bells ringing in order to produce a general sense of disruption.
  • Many mother's visited delegation meetings and threatened to remove their children from school.
  • Women were putting crucifixes around their children going into school's necks.
  • In 1935, a group of men pushed their way into a school to replace Hitler's picture with a crucifix.
  • The Bavarian Government Presidents expressed concern about the interference of Holy days and the morale of the Catholic population in August 1937.
  • In upper Franconia women wrote letters to their husbands on the war fronts to tell them what was going on at home in order to show how the war and home fronts were not on the same page.[3]

However, another significant note is how there were different reactions to the crucifix decrees on Nazi leaders' sides. For example, in Oldenburg during 1936 a Gauleiter speech the crowd expected him to rescind the crucifix decrees, but he began his speech on racial problems in Africa.[3] Another example occurred in the district of Ebergs where not a single crucifix was removed from the start.[3] These examples show how single issues ranged among Nazi officials' levels of strictness.

One German term "Handlungsspielraum" is the collective opinion being expressed in a way that the regime has to respond to. This term signifies that organized protest, like those in the Crucifix Decrees among others, forces the regime to take notice and possible action.

Furthermore, these events were part of Gleichschaltung on a larger note because of the all-encompassing mentality of the regime. This was a sign that the regime was taking a step into religion, yet not completely voluntarily on the citizens' side.

A woman's role

The regime saw noteworthy public protests by primarily Catholics, like those resulting from the Crucifix Decrees, and women. Public protest in the war increased as each event was single-issue based. During wartime, with more women on the home-front there were more issues that became oppressive and therefore women found this as a "source of complaint".[4] For example, the Rosenstrasse Protest and the Witten Women’s Protest were two reactions against specific actions: the Rosenstrasse Protest being one event and the Witten Women's Protest being a string of events.

References
  1. Neuhäusler, Johann (1946). Kreuz und Hakenkreuz. 2. Kathol. Kirche Bayerns.
  2. Zur Sache--das Kreuz! : Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Konflikts um Kreuz und Lutherbild in den Schulen Oldenburgs, zur Wirkungsgeschichte eines Massenprotests und zum Problem nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft in einer agrarisch-katholischen Region. Kuropka, Joachim. (2., durchgesehene Aufl ed.). Vechta: Vechtaer Druckerei und Verlag. 1987. ISBN 3884410377. OCLC 17298934.CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. Ian, Kershaw (2002). Popular opinion and political dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933-1945 (New ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0199251118. OCLC 50479485.
  4. Protest in Hitler's "National Community" : Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response. Stoltzfus, Nathan,, Maier-Katkin, Birgit, 1962-. New York. ISBN 9781782388241. OCLC 898529574.CS1 maint: others (link)

Further reading
  • Fest, Joachim C., (1997). Plotting Hitler's Death : the Story of the German resistance (1st Owl book ed ed.). New York: H. Holt and Co. ISBN 0080504213. OCLC 37626211.
  • Robert., Gellately, (2001). Backing Hitler : Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford: OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780191604522. OCLC 955228505.
  • Bukey, Evan Burr, (2000). Hitler's Austria : popular sentiment in the Nazi era, 1938-1945. Mazal Holocaust Collection. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807825166. OCLC 40907702.
  • Claudia Koonz (2003). The Nazi Conscience. New Haven: Harvard University Press.
  • Kuller, Christiane (2015). Stoltzfus, Nathan; Maier-Katkin, Birgit, eds. Protest in Hitler's "National Community": Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response. New York: Berghahn Books.
  • Stevenson, Jill (2015). Stoltzfus, Nathan; Maier-Katkin, Birgit, eds. Protest in Hitler's "National Community": Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response. New York: Berghahn Books.
  • Stoltzfus, Nathan (2016) , Hitler’s Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany, New Haven: Yale University Press, chapter III, "Germany's Confessional Divide and the Struggle for Catholic Youth."
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