Mormon leaders were also sympathetic. J. Reuben Clark believed, with John Maynard Keynes and others, that Germans had not received a fair deal from the Allies in the Versailles Treaty and thought he understood why Germans, in their desire for recognition and the restoration of their injured national pride, had turned to Hitler. But although Mormon leaders or members could support some ideas like the restoration of national pride, the opposition to Communism, and the desire to overcome the moral decadence of the Weimar era, there is no evidence that Mormon leaders or members generally ever believed in or sympathized with National Socialist doctrines. They lamented the behavior of the Nazis toward the Jews but, like countless others, did not understand the central role of the murderous anti-Jewish hatred in Hitler and his Third Reich policies until it was too late.

. . .

Thus, throughout the years of the Third Reich, the Mormon position vis-à-vis the Hitler regime was rigorously nonpolitical. The leadership in Salt Lake City, to whom all Mormons looked for guidance, considered the Hitler regime legitimate if, as J. Reuben Clark called it, "detestable"; it appeared to have the support of the German people, a powerful factor because of Mormon respect for democracy. Moreover, what the German government did to the Mormons was more an internal political matter than an international moral one. The First Presidency's primary objective was not unlike the Catholic position: to keep the Church in Germany intact, to continue to try to gain converts among the Germans, even though the increasing political turmoil made proselyting progressively more difficult and unrewarding, and to avoid giving the government cause either to dissolve the Church or persecute its members. In 1985, I sent a five-page, twenty-two-question survey to sixty former German missionaries living in the United States, querying them about their experiences with Jews before the Holocaust, and followed up with several oral histories. The survey results confirm that the mission presidents and missionaries in Germany fully supported the Church's position, as did Mormons in the United States. It did not keep some missionaries from developing animosities toward the regime; it was also true that some were positively impressed by Nazi achievements, especially in counteracting the impact of the Depression, bringing optimism back to the people, and bringing order back to the country.