The Mormons fared well under the Nazis, even though they could easily be identified by their missionary work and their self-contained community life: a style of life and worship which made them in many ways closer to the Jehovah's Witnesses than to Christian Scientists. They were, at first sight, easy and obvious targets for closure. If, as Heydrich and Bormann intended, policies towards the sects were to be used as both placatory and warning gestures to the major churches, the Mormons, well-known and little trusted, had much to fear.

Not only did the Mormons fare the best of all the five groups discussed here, but they also remain largely absent from Gestapo reports on sectarian activity. Mormons were not named as potential subversives and their major sufferings during the Third Reich came not from persecution but from losses due to bombing in the war. How this remarkable escape came about is the subject of this chapter.

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With the growth of the Nazi party, however, the Mormons began to experience some harassment at their public meetings and church records note the occurence of attacks on individual Mormons. Such incidents were seen in church circles as evidence of the violence of young extremists, not as any formal pressure from the Nazis and in 1933 it was felt that there was nothing to fear from a Nazi government. The sect was obedient to the state and was willing to undertake any civil or military duties members might be called upon to perform. Article 12 of their creed makes obedience to the civil authorities mandatory for all Mormons. They had proved, during World war One, that their links with America were no hinderence to their patriotism and they had achieved a good working relationship with the governments of Weimar. No-one in the church expected that things would be any different under the Nazis. Since political and moral conservatism were factors likely to encourage the sects to welcome Nazism as a bulwark against bolshevism, none were slow to exploit characteristics they felt they had in common with the new party or its leader. In the area of behaviour these included abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, for which Hitler was noted, and the Mormons too were able to point to their own principles on diet and health. More than any other of the sects, however, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints was able to stress areas of similarity between their practices and those promoted by the new regime.

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Nor was the advantage only to the Nazis. Mormons use genealogical records in their search for the names of relatives who they can offer for post-humous baptism, and under the new state, itself obsessed with genetics, found, quite naturally, that these records were suddenly more available. In the process, of course, the Mormon researchers were quite happy to use the records for the purpose for which they were intended and many received letters of praise from the government for their zeal in tracing their Aryan ancestry. In 1933 Mormon teachings on race were likely to find favour in Nazi eyes. God, it was explained, had cursed Cain with a black skin which marked him out as inferior and thus unable to enter the Mormon priesthood. Only at the last day would God make all blacks white and remove the curse. From this kind of racialism to the vicious antisemitism of the Nazis may seem a long step, and Mormons were neither any better nor any worse than most other sectarians in their treatment of the Jews in the Third Reich, but nevertheless, to the Nazi ideologues, it was a start.

In spite of what seemed a sympathetic response to the new racial laws, if Mormon teaching on the blacks was anything to go on, officials of the movement were questioned closely on what they felt about Jews and the Old Testament. They were apparently able to satisfy the Gestapo, for after initial questioning in 1933 little more was heard of the matter, although spies from the Gestapo did attend Mormon meetings to check that all was well. One meeting obviously did not satisfy the officials and it was closed, but this was an exception. In common with the major churches and the other sects, Mormons found that their youth and scouting activities were subject to closure, especially when Nazi rallies were in progress. There was no complaint from the group about these restrictions which, in any case, were limited and temporary. Cooperation with the authorities was evident right from the beginning and the Nazis met no resistance or evidence of criticism from the Mormon church. Literature deemed to be suspect because of its references to the Old Testament and to the Jews was handed over without question on demand. Practical responses to Jews and, more especially to Jewish converts to Mormonism differed between branches, as the case of the Hamburg branch discussed below will show. Probably most Mormons simply kept quiet if there were things which they did not like about what, to them, was the lawfully constituted government; a government their church enjoined them to obey. For some Mormons nationalism quickly became pro-Nazi zeal but for most the issues were not that clear.

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Mormons continued to stress the links between the Nazi party and Mormonism reflected in Nazi organizational structures and in the practice of monthly fast days, and even in Nazi interpretations of racial history. These apparent links provided those who welcomed Nazi rule with yet another justification for supporting the regime and were used as arguments to explain and plead for Mormon safety and protection in the Third Reich. Like the Witnesses, they had already sent telegrams and documents to Hitler and high ranking Nazis outlining and explaining their teaching. For those within the Mormon church to whom National Socialism was seen as a welcome and appropriate regime for Germany at this particular time in her history, the links between their faith and the politics of the Third Reich were clear. Rumors persisted that Hitler had read the Book of Mormon and that Mormon teachings were highly regarded in the highest government circles. There is no evidence that this was true and what Mormons saw as imitation was simply a similarity in outlook. It is not, perhaps, that surprising, after all, that the strong, disciplined Mormon community, with its economic, social and familial teachings should have areas of overlap with National Socialist social policy.

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Mormons were able, on the whole, to report to visiting church officials that all was well with the church in Germany. The mutual respect between the Nazis and Mormons may have been more one-sided than the Mormons thought, but at least a combination of acceptable views, wealthy and influential spokesmen and an ideological similarity in certain areas of Weltanschauung kept Mormons free to worship and continue with their missionary work in an atmosphere of unparalleled freedom.

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Interestingly enough, even the press in the Nazi period shared the favorable view of Mormonism, where normally it was virulent in its attacks on sects. In 1938 an article was published in a Berlin journal which analyzed, praised and recommended the highly successful economic and social programme of Utah. Ever political and ideological scavengers, the Nazis were happy to make use of whatever came their way. Just as Himmler had plans to use the Witnesses as a Nazi vanguard in eastern Europe after the war was over, so the Mormons were, in some circles, seen to present a workable model economic programme. This, together with an acceptable Weltanschauung, which, for all its religious idiosyncrasies, presented no real challenge to the Nazi state, gave the new officials one more reason to allow Mormonism to survive.

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Not all branches were so anxious to take Nazism on board and it was the Hamburg branch which appears to have had amongst its membership some of the most vehement pro-Nazis to be found in the German Mormon church. As early as 1938 this branch had banned all Jews from entering church premises, be they converts to Mormonism or not. Here, as elsewhere, liturgical changes were made to please the new masters; Hebrew words were eliminated from services and hymns and liturgy ceased to use the Old Testament.

One Jewish Mormon, Salomon Schaward Schwartz, at whose family the ban on Jews at the Hamburg branch had probably been directed, was arrested and taken to Theriesenstadt where he is believed to have died. Other branches were wary in their reception of Jewish converts and in 1941 when what appeared to be a genuine convert from Judaism to Mormonism sought baptism, it took the intervention of the mission president at the service itself to persuade the officials to go ahead. Nor can it be argued that the sect was merely protecting itself from phoney converts seeking safety in its ranks, for in the racial policies of Nazi Germany, a Jew was identified by his birth, not his religion, and Christianized Jews were taken to the slaughter as readily as their non-Christian brothers and sisters.

It does appear, however, that the example of the Hamburg church was an extreme one. Here one of the church officials was a member of the S.A. and was to be seen at services in uniform. The president and some members were pro-Nazi; most were simply silent. Mormons may have seen the advantages of the nationalist and economic policies of Nazism, have welcomed the return to the traditional role of women and the family, and have seen in Nazism a strong bulwark against Communism, but Mormons were not alone amongst religious people in being persuaded that Nazism was on the side not only of the Christian virtues but of Christianity itself. It is perhaps surprising, however, that a group so comparatively new was willing and able to offer legitimation to the new state; even more surprising that this was accepted.

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Hübener and the others appear to have seen their resistance as a logical outcome of their faith, however much of their brethren might have denied such a connection. The boys had apparently observed the attitude of the pro-Nazi president of their church, seen what had happened to Schwartz and his family and had made a decision to act fully in accordance, in their view, with their faith. They had been part of a larger youth resistance movement in Hamburg in which young people, mostly working class, had agitated persistently against the Nazis and Hübener and his comrades may perhaps best be understood in the context of youth resistance in the Third Reich rather than in the context of their membership of the Mormon church.

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Mormons survived the Nazi regime, with, in their view, no real challenge having been experienced to their views or way of life. They had shown themselves loyal and has used their influential financial and political contacts with skill and success. In order to survive some compromises had to be made. The post-war church reinstated the posthumously excommunicated martyr, and work is currently being done at Brigham Young University about the three boys from Hamburg. 74 Mormon writings about the history of the German branch at this period stress the hardships experienced by both soldiers and civilians during the war. The Mormons, in common with the other sects, made no comment condemning Nazi racial or eugenic policies. Their concern was, like the others, with their own survival. For them, as for all except the Witnesses, this was understood to mean the survival of the church and church members without any harassment from the authorities. This survival was achieved, for Mormon services were not halted, and the absence of the sect from the reports of government spies suggests that they were not even consistently observed.

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Mormons, like other Christian minority groups had also experienced enough hostility since their arrival in Germany to suggest that they would come under scrutiny from the new order. On the face of it, Mormons were quite likely to be the targets of Nazi hostility, well known and quite noticeable via their door-to-door missionary work. In the event, Mormons' sophistication and wealth, together with their reputation for economic and social success, both in Utah and in the management of their church community, saved them from trouble. At least as likely as the Christian Scientists to have to plead the case and even more likely, on theological and internationalist grounds to be unsuccessful, the Mormons proved themselves supremely skilful in survival strategies.

There is no doubt that this success is surprising, especially when it is noted that the group barely came under scrutiny from Gestapo investigators. Mormons not only avoided persecution, but actually received awards from the government for their zeal in charity work and their genealogical researches. To survive, the sect engaged upon a conscious and skilfully operated policy of close cooperation and by avoiding conflict with the authorities they were able to 'render unto Caesar' without any denial of faith. The Mormon Articles of Faith ordain that Mormons give 'subjection, obedience and honour' to 'kings, presidents, rulers'.

German Mormons, on the whole, behaved as conservative and nationalist German citizens and supported Hitler in policies which seemed quite in line with the principles of discipline and self-help so central to their church life. Nazism was, Mormons believed, a legally ordained government and thus had to be obeyed. Obedience was not difficult since the alternatives, communism or anarchy seemed both dangerous and antipathetic to the Mormon world view.