As undoubted as the "resistance" of the Catholic Church and Catholics in the "Third Reich" seemed to most contemporaries of the years 1933 to 1945 after the horrors of the Second World War, the behaviour of these very Catholics has meanwhile become unclear and controversial after decades of historical research. Not only is there doubt as to whether "resistance" is the right word, but the involvement of Catholics in the Nazi state and their co-responsibility for the crimes of the regime are increasingly being brought to the forefront of research interest.
The lecture will attempt to analyse the various positions on the topic of "Catholics in the 'Third Reich'" and to place German Catholicism in the social history of the Nazi state.
The occasion of our event is the 80th anniversary of the death of Willi Graf, who was sentenced to death by the Nazi justice system for his undisputed resistance activities. It is important to commemorate his Christian-motivated struggle against the regime of injustice of the National Socialists as a member of the student group White Rose and his execution on 12 October 1943.