Unveiling the Unknown Crusaders of World War II

Introduction by Charles A. Coulombe The following article was originally submitted by our dear friend Gary in April of 2014. At the time, it was considered inopportune to publish — a decision that I certainly agreed with. Back in those palmy days of Obama’s second term, any apparent understanding if the motives of those of the European Right who chose to fight on the Axis side was tantamount to an endorsement of Hitler. To-day, we have in some ways the opposite problem. For many young people in particular, opposition to Hitler is seen as an endorsement of Zionism. The truth — whether in 1939, 1945, 2014, or now, is far more complex. For those who have read my recent series for Catholicism.org, The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right, the varied nature of the French Right in particular complicated the great question of the day. One thing that is important to remember is just how hated Communism was by the French Right in particular and the European Right in general: they had witnessed since 1918 the murder of the Russian Imperial Family; the horrors of the Russian Civil War; Communist atrocities in Hungary, Slovakia, and Bavaria during short-lived Soviet regimes in those countries; the Communist-inspired war on the Church in Mexico in the 1920s; the atrocities committed by the Communists in Spain during the 1936-39 Civil War there; and the collaboration with the invading Germans by the Communists subsequent to the 1939 Hitler- Stalin pact. It was only with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 that Communists throughout the world suddenly remembered patriotism — and worked to take control of the Resistance Movements — and tried, with some success, to take them over. As we chronicled in the earlier series, most of the French and European Right regarded the National Socialists as a movement of the left — “Brown-Shirted Bolsheviks.” But defeat at their hands forced the Men of the Right into all sorts of practical considerations. Who were the greater threat to what was left of old Christendom: the Soviets, or the National Socialists? This question divided the European and French Right, and its effect can be seen in the life of Fr. Georges Grasset, whom Gary describes in the following pages as “…the priest I most would have wanted as my spiritual director during my lifetime as a Catholic.” Fr. Grasset’s participation came about due to his devout allegiance to Count Pierre Louis de La Ney du Vair, a deeply anti-Nazi organiser of youth for Vichy France. In the event, of course, given the vast numbers of Russians and other ex-Soviet citizens who joined the German ranks, had Hitler been sincere about a Paneuropean Crusade against Bolshevism, he would no doubt have won the war. But it was more important to him and the National Socialist leadership to follow out their racial doctrines on the Eastern Front than to defeat the enemy. Thus, to many Russians and Central Europeans, they made Stalin look like a preferable alternative. In the long run, of course, those of the European Right who chose resistance against the Axis turned out no better than those who chose collaboration. In the new post-1945 Europe created by the Soviet-American Dyarchy, there would be no room for the kind of countries or the kind of Continent envisioned by such people before the War. It was for precisely that kind of Christendom forbidden by the victors of 1945 — which doubtless would equally have been forbidden had the Axis triumphed — that the staff and contributors of Triumph, of whom Gary was a prominent member, struggled. This present time of fog and vagueness could use a little more of Gary’s famous clarity. The Unknown Crusaders of World War II by Gary Potter AS THE one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of World War I approaches, we’re seeing magazine articles and film documentaries about the conflict and we’ll see more as the centenary draws nearer. I’ll have some things to say about it on another occasion. Right now World War II is on my mind. It has been since writing for this website in February an article in which I spoke of the French government headed by Marshal Philippe Petain during 1940-44. Americans think of the “greatest generation” fighting in Europe during World War II as fighting against the Nazis. They did that, but it would be truer to say that the U.S. and England fought against Europe, not simply the Nazis. To make my point, here’s a statistic: At the height of the war one out of three men fighting on the German side on the Eastern Front against America’s and England’s ally, the Soviet Union, was non-German; and it was in the East, not Western Europe, where the outcome of the war was really determined. Besides Germany, the following nations had men fighting on the Eastern Front: Finland, Norway, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Some of these nations — Hungary, Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania — were allies of Germany and their men fought as troops of their national armies. Other fighters were volunteers from neutral or German-occupied nations — France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway. There were also more than a million men from within Soviet territory, mainly Russians and Ukrainians, who went over to the German side. Many non-Germans fought for Germany elsewhere than on the Eastern Front. For instance, there were three thousand Indians in German uniform in Western Europe, but they were a special case. They thought of themselves as fighting against the Brits, not in defense of Europe. (The international airport in Calcutta is now named for their leader, Chandra Bose. He has also been honored on an Indian postage stamp.) In all, about twenty percent of the men in German uniform were non-German. Again, that number excludes the men fighting alongside Germans in the uniform of their own country. There were some Brits who fought for Germany. The number of them is impossible to nail down but there were at least hundreds of them. One was the son of a member of Churchill’s cabinet. Another actually served in the SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, the SS men who were Hitler’s personal bodyguard formation. Other numbers are much more impressive. Speaking in terms only of the Eastern Front: 800,000 Hungarians, 500,000 Romanians, 500,000 Finns, and other hundreds of thousands down to little Denmark which sent 4,000. France, the European country about which I know the most, had 10,000 men on the Eastern Front. Another 50,000 fought elsewhere in German uniform. The last men in German uniform to fight in the defense of Berlin were Frenchmen who belonged to the Charlemagne Brigade of the Waffen SS. This was in the Berlin subway system against Red Army troops advancing on the city’s center through the tunnels. They fought to the last man. A cynic might observe, “Why not? They had no place to go.” That was true, but I think more was involved — honor for one thing, but even more than that if we consider that many volunteers, like many Germans themselves, were fervently anti-Nazi. I used to know one. He died year before last. He was the priest I most would have wanted as my spiritual director during my lifetime as a Catholic. As a young man he fought on the Eastern Front with the L.V.F. (Legion des Volontaires Francais; Legion of French Volunteers). Why would a man who detested Nazism put on a German uniform to fight? In the first place, France became an officially neutral country, half-occupied by German troops, after her 1940 armistice with Germany. A Frenchman who wanted to fight couldn’t do it in a French uniform. He was like the Americans who signed up with the Royal Canadian Air Force when the U.S. was still neutral. But why fight? The answer can be found in some lines written in 1941 by Alfred Cardinal Baudrillart, rector of the Institut Catholique de Paris, France’s leading Catholic institution of higher learning, a university with an attached seminary. His Eminence wrote as men of the L.V.F. were about to embark for training at a German base in Poland: “As a priest and a Frenchman I dare say that these Legionnaires rank among the best sons of France. At the forefront of the decisive battle, our Legion is the living image of Medieval France, our France of resurrected cathedrals. And I underline, for I am quite sure of it, that these soldiers are doing their part to prepare the great rebirth of France. In truth, this Legion in its own way constitutes a new chivalry. The Legionnaires are Crusaders of the twentieth century. May their arms be blessed.” The living image of Medieval France? A new chivalry? Crusaders of the twentieth century? In the eleventh century a French Pope preaching on French soil summoned the knights of France and Europe to the First Crusade. In the thirteenth century the French with King St. Louis IX at their head were still leading in the defense of Europe against the enemy of those days, Islam. In World War II the heartland of Christianity, Europe, was threatened again, this time by the forces of liberalism and its own most extreme expression, Communism; and as of old new knights were rising to defend the Continent and Christian civilization with it. That is what Cardinal Baudrillart was saying. It is a view — indeed a vision — unfamiliar to most Americans and even alien to them, but as we have seen here millions of men shared it and fought for it, men most in the U.S. have not known even to exist. But here and there the memory of them is still honored, and, yes, when the honors become public, as when a statue of Hungary’s wartime leader Admiral Horthy was recently unveiled in Budapest, news media screech that “fascism” is on the rise. However, as long as the memory remains alive, so will the conviction in the hearts of men who care that one day the nightmare of modernity will end. * * * * * * * * * * * * In speaking as I do, I echo Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern). To the present day, this encyclical, written in German and read from every Catholic pulpit in Germany on Palm Sunday, 1937, is criticized by some for not naming Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party when it condemns those who “exalt race, or the people, or the State to an idolatrous level” and demonstrate a “fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church.” The Gestapo had no trouble understanding of whom the document spoke. Its agents raided chanceries throughout the country and seized and destroyed all copies of it they could find. Diocesan newspapers that printed the text were shut down by the regime. At his conclusion, before imparting his Apostolic Blessing, Pope Pius wrote: “Like other periods of the history of the Church, the present has ushered in a new ascension of interior purification on the sole condition that the faithful show themselves proud enough in the confession of their faith in Christ and generous enough in suffering, to face the oppressors with the strength of their faith and charity. May the holy time of Lent and Easter, which preaches interior renovation and penance, turn Christian eyes towards the Cross and the risen Christ; be for all of you the joyful occasion that will fill your hearts with heroism, patience and victory…The day will come when the Te Deum of liberation will succeed to the premature hymns of the enemies of Christ.” If you enjoyed this article you will also enjoy Gary Potter’s live talks available here.