I am posting the following excerpt of a recent piece by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Theology at the Seminary at Tyndale University in Toronto, with his kind permission. His research shows that support of Hitler was especially strong among German speaking Mennonites in western Canada who had recently emigrated from Russia:
Mennonite support for Hitler and his vision for Germany was very real and public on the
Canadian prairies until the start of WWII.
The most read newspaper in Manitoba, the Winnipeg Free Press, reported on a large
Winnipeg pro-Hitler rally (January 30, 1939, page 3) with the byline: “Hitler Salute: Local
Germans hail re-birth of fatherland under Fuehrer.”
The photos show the Mennonite Young People's Choir performing at the event. The choir was led by John Conrad, a Russländer
(1920s Mennonite immigrant). Conrad founded an ensemble in 1935 that evolved into the
Mennonite Symphony Orchestra; he actively directed choirs with the Manitoba Mennonite
Youth Organization.
The pictures also show the youth and others giving the Hit!er salute
with arm raised.
On the prairies upstanding Russländer Mennonites were praising the Führer two years
before German armies would enter Ukraine and convince Mennonites there to do the same.
Reference in the article to the "ill will" of a "certain press" is a thinly veiled reference to one
of Hit!er’s anti-Semitic tropes of the “Jewish press.” Russian Mennonite émigré and leader
Benjamin Unruh in Germany, and German Mennonite pastors like Gustav Kraemer, for
example, did the same.
Unruh was only one—but the most powerful—of a handful of Russian Mennonites in
Germany who regularly, but especially in 1938 and 1939, fanned the flames of pro-Nazi
sentiments in the Canadian Mennonite paper, Der Bote. Their voices were complemented
by a few of their “followers” primarily “in and around Winnipeg,” as David G. Rempel
recalled (a contemporary to Unruh).
Unruh was adamant that Mennonites had a role to help purify and sanctify Germanism and
support Hitler’s effort to bring wholeness and fulfillment to the German people. “Being true
to God implies being true to one’s Volk, which in turn requires faithfulness to the nation,” as
Frank H. Epp summarized Unruh’s Bote arguments.
...It is not surprising that MCC in North America remained entangled with Unruh and National
Socialism through the 1930s—years before Mennonites in Ukraine (living under a news
embargo) would get to know Hit!er as a liberator.
---Notes---
Pics: Winnipeg Free Press, January 30, 1939, p. 3; Winnipeg Evening Tribune, January 30,
1939, p. 3,
https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A1368295/manitoba_metadata; picture with J. P. Klassen and John Konrad, Winnipeg Evening Tribune, July 20,
1936, p. 2, https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/island
Notes:
• “MCC and National Socialism,” MCC Intersections, Fall 2021, https://mcccanada.ca/media/resources/12017.
• D David G. Rempel, Recollections, summer 1939, pp. 65-69. From Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, David Rempel Papers, MS Coll. 329 2B Annex, box 36, file 29.
• Cf. Frank H. Epp, “An Analysis of Germanism and National Socialism in the Immigrant Newspaper of a Canadian Minority Group, the Mennonites, in the 1930’s” (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1965), 227, 228, 229
• David G. Rempel , Recollections, summer 1939, 65-69. ” See Klassen's articles in Der Bote, February 2, 1938, pp. 2f; March 30, 1938, p. 2; December 14, 21, 28, 1938, pp. 2, 2f., 1f. respectively. For Walter Quiring, see especially “Staatstreu und Volkstreu,” Der Bote, January 11, 1939, pp. 2f.
• Letter to David G. Rempel (English), from D.R. (illegible), Sept 25, 1935. From Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, David Rempel Collection, Box 1 Correspondence, 1932-1991. Box 1, file 1.
Here's a link for more background and detail:
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