that every shade of pre-fascist ideology – understood critically as false con-
sciousness, as masking of racial, national, or class interests, as untruth – be
it religion or free-thinking, nationalism or pacifism, elite theories or folk ide-
ologies, would be swallowed up by the totalitarian trend and stream toward
alternative Future I, which was little troubled by philosophical or religious
inconsistencies. According to Adorno, fascist rationality consisted in the estab-
lishment of an omnipotent power system rather than in the enforcement of
any philosophy or theology. Thus, Adorno warned, the importance of the
dogmatic content of the religious medium should not be overrated. However,
for Adorno it was worth studying, how such a concrete medium as religion,
apparently quite separate from fascist doctrine, was, nevertheless, transformed
to fit totalitarian purposes. Adorno was sure that fascism could not possibly
succeed on its way to alternative Future I without creeping into all the dif-
ferent and divergent forms of life in antagonistic civil society.
Crystal Night
What Adorno had to say about Thomas concerning anti-Semitism was true
for Father Coughlin as well, who had once been a priest here in Kalamazoo,
Michigan, where this essay is written (Adorno 1997). According to the opin-
ion of the radio-priest Coughlin, later of Detroit, the harsh historical lessons
of the Crystal Night, in consequence of the assassination of a German official
by a young Jew in Paris, were inevitable (Baldwin 2001). When in the after-
noon before the Crystal Night I, as an eleven year old boy and member of
the Catholic Youth movement, came out of the central swimming pool of
Frankfurt a. M., I saw close by the huge old Frankfurt synagogue burning
(Siebert 1995). There were firefighters around, but they did not fight the fire
coming out of the doors and windows of the synagogue, but only protected
the swimming pool and the neighboring buildings. After having walked to
Frankfurt’s main street, the Zeil, I found it empty, except that commodities
flew out of the many Jewish stores, including broken and shattered crystal
lamps, which gave the horrible day and night their name. In the evening, I
heard on the radio, that thousands of Jewish men had been put into prison.
Next day, I heard both priests of my Sta. Familia Parish, Father Georg W.
Rudophi and Father Hermann Schlachter, condemn the horrible events of the
previous night (Siebert 1993, 1995). Not so Father Coughlin of Detroit! A few
days after the Crystal Night, on Sunday afternoon, 3.00 pm, November 20,
1938, Father Coughlin entitled his weekly broadcast sermon: Persecution –
92 • Rudolf J. Siebert