Good Little Germans is an expression often used in discussions about World War Two.  It is not meant to be complimentary; rather, it ironically refers to the ordinary German People.  Those run-of-the-mill folks who, while knowing of the depravity of their Nazi rulers, did nothing to oppose it.  They obeyed the law, paid their taxes, served in the military.  They were, indeed, Good Little Germans.

Granted, most Germans did just that, hoping, in our all-too-human fashion, that this (the Nazi horror) would simply pass away.  Of course, as we know today, some fifty years later, it did not just pass away.  Not, at least until after a Second World War had been fought, tens of millions of innocent lives destroyed and an entire continent wrecked almost beyond repair.  This was an enormous penalty for those who wished only to be left alone.

But not all Germans succumbed to this fatal temptation.  There were, here and there, a few Germans who saw and understood the Nazi Regime that had engulfed their beloved Germany and who in various ways, did what they could to oppose it.

We know now of the gallant, if pathetic, efforts of the White Rose Circle.  A group of young, Christian university students who, well aware of the evils of the Regime, printed anti-Nazi flyers and passed them out.  They were quickly rounded up by the Gestapo and after a farcical trial, executed by beheading.

We know too of Franz Jaggerstatter, a married middle-aged Austrian farmer with a family who, in 1943, refused adamantly to answer his call-up for service in the Nazi Wehrmacht (military) because, as a Catholic Christian he understood the wickedness of the Regime.

He too was beheaded.

There was Karl Leisner, a young Catholic youth leader imprisoned by the Regime and who died as a result of his captivity in a concentration camp.

We know of the noble Archbishop of Munster, Clemens Von Galen, who denounced the Nazi Regime from the pulpit of his Cathedral while Gestapo agents copied down his every word.  Ironically, his own city of Munster was the first chosen by the American High Command to be the object of their Terror Bombing Raids (aimed to deliberately kill large numbers of innocent civilians).  There were, doubtless, many others, known only to God.

And then, there was my friend Fridolin Huber with whom I lived during my stays in Germany.  He was an Obergefrelter in the Wehrmacht in World War Two; that is, he was a non-com in the German army.  His infantry division went into Russia some twenty thousand strong; they came within 50 kilometers of Moscow.

A few hundred survived; among whom was my friend Fridolin.  Invalided back to Germany, he was given a post in communications, his specialty.  He now had the freedom to look around and to think.

Coming, as he did, from a strong, Catholic background in southern Germany, he realized now the wickedness, the utter evil of the Nazi Regime.  And so Fridolin joined the July 20^th, 1944 Plot of the German generals (including Rommel) and others to assassinate Hitler and to sue for peace with the Allies.  Had it been successful, millions of lives would have been saved.

Unfortunately, it failed and in its aftermath, the Gestapo rounded up and killed some 6 thousand people associated in any degree (including even their relatives) with the Plot.  Many were hung up alive on meat hooks, like sides of beef, to suffer a cruel and painful death.

Fridolin Huber was, however, a survivor.  He had already lived through the almost terminal horrors of the Russian Front; he now survived the failure of the July 20^th Plot.  Deserting the Wehrmacht, he made his way down through the Schwarzwald, (the Black Forest) to the Rhine River, the border between Germany and Switzerland.  His father had been a forester in the Schwarzwald.  So Fridolin knew the terrain.

Fridolin, an excellent swimmer, swam across the Rhine while sentries on the German side shot at him.  Once ashore, he was interned by the Swiss authorities until the end of the war.

It is interesting that his brother, although no Nazi, refused to forgive him because “you betrayed the Fatherland.”  Eventually, I was told, he came around and was reconciled with Fridolin.  Still one could reasonably ask; who was the true German patriot; who was most faithful to the best of the German Fatherland, Fridolin or his brother?

What relation has all this to do with us, a half century later?

We presently live under an American Regime that frequently calls upon us to ignore the morality of what it does; to unthinkingly follow its orders even though, as many believe, they are often totally opposed to our Catholic Christian beliefs.

We are faced with a similar dilemma, a kind of Fridolin’s Choice: do we follow the directives, the orders of our present American Regime, or do we follow our conscience, that is, the informed voice of our Catholic Christian belief?

Or will we, like the Germans, continue to be Good Little Americans.

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