The Second World War ended differently from previous wars. When the German forces surrendered in May 1945, there was no longer any recognized authority with whom a state of peace could be established. British troops were in Germany because they had been fighting there and, although known as the ‘British Liberation Army’ elsewhere in Northwest Europe, in Germany it would be the ‘British Occupation Army’. The army could not immediately return to Britain as it now needed to ensure that the Military Government, and subsequently the civilian ‘Control Commission Germany’, could carry out their tasks in safety. One major goal was to re-establish a state organized along democratic lines. The role of the German churches in assisting this would be important and meant that relationships between the British and German churches and faith groups were crucial. One group that was to become involved, at least initially, with this task were British army chaplains. Among the British Occupation Army were some 300 members of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (RAChD). Since 1920, these were organized into two administrative groups – Catholics in one group and all the remaining chaplains in the other. This system of dual administration would remain among the chaplains serving in Germany. Chaplains were priests and ministers serving with the blessing of the faith group which they represented, being recruited on a ratio of 1:1000 to the adherents of their faith community churches. By the time they arrived in Germany most were well embedded with the headquarters or unit to which they were attached. As no detailed study of army chaplains in the Second World War covers this period, this chapter will discuss the challenges faced by members of the RAChD in the summer of 1945 as they settled into a strange land in a unique situation. It will look first at a specific instruction that banned chaplains from having any other than formal relations with the German population in general and, specifically, with German churchmen. It will then examine the tensions that developed as chaplains carried out their ministry as part of the forces of occupation. Finally, it will consider the uncertainty that existed over the role of chaplains in the long-term relationship between the British and German churches.

Preparation for the occupation: non-fraternization

After the break-out from Normandy in August 1944, there had seemed to be a possibility that the war would be over before the end of the year.

The complicated structure of the Protestant Church in Germany has often been difficult for British observers to understand. The movement, which had first attracted attention in October 1517 with Luther's outburst against abuses in the Catholic Church, had resulted in several different groups with varying theological emphases. When these groups had become allied with local structures of political authority, a patchwork of ‘state’ churches had developed across what was to become Germany. They were sometimes linked together under the title of ‘Evangelical Churches’. As Scholder has shown in his monumental work on the German churches in the inter-war period, these churches had found that the democratic arrangements of the post-1919 Weimar Republic required a new approach to the relationship of church and state. This had not been fully worked out when in 1933 Hitler staged his constitutional coup d’état, and another new set of circumstances had to be faced. The three main Protestant Church groupings, Lutheran, Reformed, and United, found themselves under pressure to reorganise into a centralised ‘German Church’. Whether this scheme might have succeeded under a different kind of regime is unknown. It would have had the advantage of creating a single body but would most likely have always been contested on theological and regional grounds. In the event, the opposition to the Nazi proposal was almost immediate and resulted in, amongst other things, what was essentially a ‘church within a church’, the grouping that became known in English as the ‘Confessing Church’.

As well as this complex relationship with the state there was also a relationship between clergy and people which needed to be understood. Most churches included at least an element of democratic selection for both local and central appointments. It was less easy – than for instance in the Catholic Church – for a local clergyman to be removed because of his previous political opinions. Such views might well have been shared with many in his congregation. Leaders were not simply centrally appointed and thus could not be removed arbitrarily without causing concerns about how the due processes within the church would be affected. Treatment of clergy with divergent views to that of the State had been a major issue for the Protestant Churches during the Nazi period. It was important that it did not become so again for the British administration.

The Religious Affairs Branch was finally formed, as a separate entity within the Control Commission's British Element, on 5 January 1946. It was then no longer a section of an organisation whose primary focus was elsewhere. It could take its place alongside the Education Branch. The change was essentially one of status. It did, though, indicate a victory for those such as Bishop Bell who had argued that the work of the religious affairs staff was of enough importance that it needed to be recognised officially as a separate entity. The letter detailing the new status did, however, contain an indication of the confusion that existed within the Commission, and undoubtedly more widely, about its function. The head of the new branch was to have the following responsibility to the head of the Division:

Although the letter did not acknowledge it, the remit was wider than the Christian churches. The creation of a separate Branch to handle Religious Affairs was the final development of planning that had begun, as has already been shown, in the autumn of 1943.

There had been a debate about how to approach ‘religion’ among British and American planners from the start of thinking about the control that would be needed in Germany after the end of the fighting. That debate would continue in subsequent discussions about both the title and the responsibilities of the part of the Control Commission to be concerned with religion. One founding block of the Religious Affairs Branch of the British Element of the Control Commission Germany lay in the Education and Religious Affairs subsection of the German Section of the Special Staff for Civil Affairs in SHAEF. Although most of that organisation was eventually to form the basis of the Education and Religious Affairs Section in the United States Zone, it was still, in the spring of 1944, a joint US and British body. The American attitude to Germany, and the work of the Education and Religious Affairs Section in its formative period, have been charted by Marshall Knappen.

Among the tasks assigned to the Religious Affairs staff was that of approving visits to the British Zone by church leaders. The branch was responsible for handling applications from anyone who had reasons for contacting one of the faith communities. There is no record of the number who applied to visit over the five years that the work was carried out. At the start, with resources limited and travel difficult, there was a strict policy on visits. Few were allowed. As restrictions eased the number of visitors increased. There are references throughout the life of the Control Commission to the monitoring and organising role played by the Religious Affairs Branch. It is, though, the early visits that were most significant as they provided both a picture of church life in Germany in the period after the end of the fighting and a sense of what British church leaders believed was their role in relation to German faith leaders. British church leaders were among the first non-military or governmental people of national importance to visit Germany. Similarly, German church leaders were among the first of their countrymen who made officially sponsored visits abroad. They too needed permission, which had to be obtained through the Branch.

The first person known to have arrived from outside Germany and who visited the churches came not from the United Kingdom but from Switzerland. His journey was made before the Control Commission had begun its work. Stewart Herman had been the Minister of the American Church in Berlin until it was closed in December 1941, following the declaration of war by Germany on the United States. After a time in the United States, working with the US Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, he returned to Europe to become Secretary of the Department of Reconstruction of the nascent World Council of Churches, working from their headquarters in Geneva. As a Lutheran, with experience of life in Germany, he possessed an understanding both of the German Evangelical churches and of some of the pressures that they had faced during the Nazi period. In his new post he was keen to see what had happened to the churches during the years that he had been absent from Germany. In the summer of 1945 Herman was able to visit much of Germany.

The role of religion in the public space is hardly a favoured topic in a contemporary secular state. Religion and Politics are best kept apart. Even when reference is made to a ‘moral compass’ it is rarely conceded that the defining of the cardinal points on its card are the responsibility of any single faith group or denomination. It is easy to assume that this modern Anglo-Saxon understanding of government has a long pedigree. Recent historians of Europe post-1945 may thus be unaware of the role of specific Christian churches within the life of Europe at important moments during history. This work seeks to tell the story of how the British government handled the integration of the major German churches, as well as smaller Christian groups and faith communities, into the new state that was created out of the wreck of the Third Reich.

The end of World War Two faced the Allied powers with a whole series of questions. Some of them had been anticipated and planning had taken place to try to answer them. Others were unexpected and required resources to be devoted to them that had not been provided previously. It was a given that the Nazi regime would be replaced. It was not anticipated that the replacement would take place amidst the ruins of a country where almost all normal life had come to a standstill. It was anticipated that a process of Denazification would be needed. It was not appreciated how far membership of the Nazi party had permeated all aspects of German life. It would be difficult, and take time, to differentiate those who belonged to the Party for ideological reasons from those who joined to preserve their way of life. It was anticipated that the allies would work together to create a new German state. It was not appreciated that the divergent interests of the four nations involved would make such a process difficult, and in the end impossible. It was not anticipated that the collapse of normal life, together with massive population movements, would bring challenges that threatened the very fabric of society. As Friedmann commented,

Sometime in early May 1945, Cardinal Bertram, the Archbishop of Breslau, wrote a note to the priests of his archdiocese, instructing them

As Scholder commented, in an essay from which the extract above has been taken, some traditions were deeply ingrained. It is not clear whether in the chaotic state of Europe in May 1945 the instruction was ever carried out, or indeed if the instruction was even sent. Breslau had been encircled by Soviet troops since February 1945 and finally surrendered on 6 May. Bertram had left the city in late February or early March 1945 and spent the rest of the war at his summer residence at Johannesberg Castle in the Czechoslovak part of the diocese. It seems unlikely that anyone in SHAEF would have been aware of its existence of the instruction. Had they been it might have caused them to be even more suspicious of the Catholic Church in Germany than many already may have been. One of the questions which faced those who were to be responsible for the future oversight of religious matters in Germany was how to react to a Catholic Church which many believed had, with only isolated exceptions, rarely displayed much obvious opposition to the Nazi regime. Bertram may have been more percipient, in coupling prayers for the future of the Church in his diocese with the other petitions in his intention for the service, than he fully recognised. The archdiocese would eventually become part of the Catholic Church in Poland as the diocese of Wrocƚaw. Commenting on the state of the Catholic clergy, Kuber has written:

When I began my training at Wesley House Cambridge in 1972 the Principal was the Reverend Professor Gordon Rupp, the Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History. To the students he brought alive the church situation in post-war Germany. Whilst most of us knew at least the outlines of the German ‘Church Struggle’ against Hitler we remained ignorant, as many are today, of what happened after May 1945. Gordon, a Methodist, had been asked by the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, to accompany him on his first post-war visit to Germany, in the early autumn of 1945. Part of the visit would be as members of a World Council of Churches sponsored delegation to a meeting of German Protestant church leaders to be held in Stuttgart. That was an important gesture of recognition. It was in sharp contrast to the way the German Protestant churches had been treated at the end of World War One; something of which Bell was aware. During seminars in Rupp's study he would reflect on that visit, often opening a drawer and taking out a typewritten piece of paper. It was his own copy of the Stuttgart Declaration, for he had been present, with Bell, at the occasion of the meeting that had produced it. I have often wondered what had become of that fragile piece of history as his papers do not seem to have survived. His reflections on the events and personalities of the German Protestant Church were though given substance in his Macintosh Lecture for 1974, delivered at the University of East Anglia. It was my privilege to accompany him to that lecture. Subsequently published as I Seek My Brethren, it has remained a moving insight into the situation in Germany in the autumn of 1945. It also introduced me, somewhat obliquely, to the work of the Religious Affairs staff of the British Element of the Control Commission, a main theme of this book. I hope that this book does a little to express my thanks to him.

As a member of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department I served for some eleven years in Germany during the period 1977 to 1997. My final posting was as the Assistant Chaplain General responsible for the oversight of all British non-Catholic army chaplains in Germany.

Religious Affairs Adviser

(from January 1945 also Head of Religious Affairs Branch)

Brigadier R. L. Sedgwick (August 1945 to April 1946)

Mr J. N. W. Gwynne (August 1946 to January 1948)

Mr K. Macassey (January 1948 to December 1948)

Rev E. H. Robertson (acting December 1948 to May 1949)

Maj. Gen. (Retd) S. C. M. Archibald (May 1949 to May 1950)

Evangelical Church Section

(combined with Minor Denominations in December 1949)

Rev A. Cotter (August 1945 to October 1946)

Rev Dr I. Wilson (October 1946 to September 1947)

Rev H. P. Kingdon (December 1947 to December 1949)

Catholic Section

Mgr R. L. Smith (June 1946 to December 1947)

Mr H. J. E. D. Howard (December 1947 to March 1949)

Fr J. B. Sandeman OSB (May 1949 to May 1950)

Minor Denominations Section

(combined with Evangelical Church Section in December 1949)

Revd A. Birkmire (between 1946 and August 1947)

Revd E. H. Robertson (August 1947 to May 1949)

Revd B. Nisbet (August 1949 to December 1949)

Evangelical and Minor Denominations Section

Revd B. Nisbet (December 1949 to May 1950)

As individuals were being recruited to form the religious affairs staff for the British Element of the Control Commission Germany, nobody appeared to have fully appreciated whether there would be any impact on the workings of the staff, or indeed on the wider Control Commission as a result of the experiences of the Jewish community under the Nazi regime. There also appeared to be little official awareness that in the concentration camps there would be both Jews who were German, as well as others who had been forcibly taken from their homes, elsewhere in Europe. There would also be, albeit in tiny numbers, German Jews who had survived within the wider community. All the groups deserved to be recognised as a single community that had survived a dreadful persecution. At the same time, it would also have to be recognised that they were separate communities having different needs. With the additional questions as to who a German was and how such ‘Germanness’ would be defined, it should perhaps have been unsurprising that many ‘German’ and other Jews were to see themselves as primarily defined by their Jewishness. To complicate matters further there was a growing sense that their nationality would best be defined by being part of a new Jewish state centred on Jerusalem. Such a sense of identity created especial problems for the British authorities. They administered ‘Palestine’, the area which many Jews saw as their desired future home. Conflicting policies within the British government raised sensibilities that were to cause major problems over the next few years. Some of these feelings would be encountered in the British Zone, not least in the attempts to rehabilitate the liberated Jews from the Bergen-Belsen camp who were being treated in the Bergen-Hohne barracks complex some three miles away. The programme to meet the needs of that group would have to deal with a complex mix of national identity, religious aspiration, international relations, and human charity. Neither the camp at Bergen-Belsen nor that at Bergen-Hohne were part of the remit of the Religious Affairs staff. Although they would be called upon to consider general matters of policy, the organisation of the camps lay with others, mostly those working with Displaced Persons.

It was in May 1945 that the Allied demand for an ‘unconditional surrender’ was finally met, and the Third Reich came to an end. With that end came not just military defeat but the loss of any legitimate national authority. In almost all aspects of politics, administration, education, transport, business, and planning there was no longer any functioning German government. These areas were to be taken over by the four Allied powers. Only in matters of faith, where the Allies had promised freedom of worship, were things different. Even in this area of German life there were some discontinuities. Whilst not much might appear to have changed at a local level, centrally things were different. It was announced that authority in the churches was to remain with Germans. That was an easy statement to make but belied a variety of problems. Authority among the main Protestant churches was not clear and was to be contested. Authority in the Catholic Church was also unclear, but for different reasons. The decision as to where it lay would depend on the future nature and extent of Germany. Other religious groups would need to consider what changes would be needed in their administration and oversight following the end of Nazi rule.

So, whilst the concept of one single wiping of the slate clean has a considerable amount to recommend it, there are problems in using it as a simple understanding the nature of German history. By May 1945, some parts of Germany had been under Allied control for six months. Both in the East and the West the front lines had already swept over sections of the Reich. While in the East the defeat was to result in alterations to borders that would define the new Germany, it also meant that much of what was to become the GDR remained a battlefield until the final weeks of the war. The post-1945 administration of the Eastern areas of much of what had been the German Reich before 1939 was to be part of the story of Austria, of Czechoslovakia, and of Poland, and can find only passing references in this work. It did though create one anomaly, which has continued into the twenty-first century. That was the area around the former German city of Königsberg, which since 1945 and the Potsdam Agreement has been under Russian administration and known as Kaliningrad.

The defeat of Nazism was a joint affair involving many nations. The control of what was to constitute post-war Germany was to be a self-imposed task of the four major powers. As has been noted, each of those nations, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, was to have its own allotted zone. In that zone it would have a degree of freedom of action. Each nation had its own approach to priorities and methods of operation. There was, though, an intention to move towards the creation of a new German state. As a result, there was an understanding that collective decisions by the four powers were also needed to help form the rules by which any such new state would be governed. The principal mechanism was to be an Allied Control Authority. Located in Berlin it was anticipated that it would handle matters that dealt with the whole country as well as arbitrating on differences between the individual allies. To achieve uniformity required discussions between the powers. These discussions needed to be formalised if they were to bring about agreement. So, a system of inter-allied committees within the Allied Control Authority was created. Amongst these, as part of the Internal Affairs and Communications Directorate (DIA & C), an Allied Religious Affairs Committee (ARAC) was brought into being. It was to be one of nine committees within the Directorate alongside others dealing with Health, Education, Nutrition, Intelligence, Public Safety, Post and Communications, Civil Administration, and a Committee of Deputies. Some of the committees had a series of formal sub-committees. ARAC was given the power to form working parties but never had a sub-committee dealing with any aspect of its work. The DIA & C was the largest Directorate, in terms of the number of sub-divisions, within the Allied Control Authority. Religious Affairs was not the most significant of its Divisions.

Each of the four powers eventually handled religious matters in their own zone in a different way. There had been an attempt to create a unified policy before the Control Commission came into operation in Germany. An attempt had been made to put together what was entitled ‘Directive No. 12: Religious Affairs’.

When, in May 1949 a retired former Gunner, Major General Sidney Charles Manley Archibald, took up the post of Religious Advisor and Head of the Religious Affairs Branch, he knew that the employment would last at most a year. Indeed, previous indications given by the Head of the Military Government had caused some people to conclude that it would only last a few months, a casualty of the cost cutting taking place throughout the organisation as it approached the end of its existence. Archibald was, though, to serve the full year. The Branch was barely reduced in size during his time in office and continued to function until the end of May 1950 when the zonal administration came to an end. General Archibald had been a career soldier. As he explained in a letter to Bishop Bell, when taking up the post, it had been his custom to send a regular digest of his activities to his superiors. The result of that practice was that a record of the main activities of the Branch, during its final year, can be found in the Bell Papers at Lambeth. In addition, Archibald also wrote a memoir of his service career which contained information on his time in Germany, both as Head of the Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad and then subsequently as Director of the Religious Affairs Branch of the Control Commission. These two documents have given an important insight into the Branch during its final months.

Archibald had had dealings with the Branch during his previous posting as Head of the British Relief Agencies. He recorded that the thought of taking over as the Director of Religious Affairs was ‘somewhat alarming’. He was interviewed by a senior member of staff at the Foreign Office, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and by General Sir Brian Robertson from Commission headquarters. This reflected what he felt was the experience he had of working for two masters, the Control Commission and the Church, and most notably for ‘Dr Bell, then bishop of Chichester and the Archbishop of Canterbury's representative’. It is of interest that he commented in his memoir, written in 1958, that, ‘I have never liked the Germans…and the more that I saw of them the less I liked them.

Members of the Religious Affairs staff of the Control Commission were not chaplains. In most cases they were not ordained. Some, at various times in the history of the organisation, were either serving or were ex-military personnel. However, by the time the Control Commission staff arrived in Germany in the summer of 1945 to start their work, one group of British clergymen had already been in the country for some months. Those were the chaplains serving in the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (RAChD). The relationship between the two groups, army chaplains and Control Commission staff, and their respective tasks, would need to be clarified both at a central and at a local level to ensure that the work of both organisations was not compromised. This chapter looks at some of the ways in which the relationships came to be defined in that first summer of the Commission's operation.

The RAChD of 1945 was different from that of World War One and different again from the modern chaplaincy service in the British army. Following a reorganisation in 1920, all chaplains, except for those from the Catholic Church, came under a single administrative structure. The Catholics had felt unable to join an organisation which would be headed by an Anglican. They thus belonged to a parallel organisation within the army. The larger ‘unified’ Department, as it was known, had worked reasonably well during World War Two. It was this organisation that administered the approximately 290 chaplains from the Church of England, Church of Scotland, other Presbyterian churches, the Methodist Church, and chaplains appointed by the United Board from Congregational, Baptist, and other smaller denominations who in the summer of 1945 were serving in Germany. The RAChD in 2nd Army, the largest British formation in 21 Army Group (21 AG) was under strength by some thirty chaplains. Many of those serving had been with their units since the Normandy landings in June 1944. They were led by the Revd J. W. J. Steele, the Assistant Chaplain General of the 2nd Army. In the arcane structure of the RAChD he held the rank of Chaplain to the Forces Class 1, ranking for military purposes as a Colonel.