Selections of Alois Hudal’s Writings on the Jews

Bishop Alois Karl Hudal (31 May 1885 – 13 May 1963) was an Austrian Catholic bishop, theologian, and long-serving rector of the Pontificio Istituto Teutonico di Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome (1923–1952) — the venerable German national church and college in the Eternal City. Ordained a priest in 1908 and holding doctorates in theology from both Graz and Rome, Hudal served as Professor of Old Testament Studies at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz from 1919 to 1923 before being called to Rome. He was consecrated Titular Bishop of Aela in 1933 by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, who was then Papal Nuncio to Germany and Cardinal Protector of Santa Maria dell’Anima. Hudal served in the Holy Office and was involved in the censure of anti-Christian National Socialist writings, including those of Alfred Rosenberg.

His principal works bearing on the themes reproduced below are Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus: Eine ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung (The Foundations of National Socialism: An Ideological-Historical Inquiry, Leipzig-Vienna: Johannes Günther Verlag, 1937), which contains a dedicated chapter (pp. 81–94) on “Die Judenfrage — Der Antisemitismus” (“The Jewish Question — Antisemitism”) and related material in its concluding chapter (pp. 234–253), as well as his posthumously published memoirs, Römische Tagebücher: Lebensbeichte eines alten Bischofs (Roman Diaries: Life-Confession of an Old Bishop, Graz-Stuttgart: Leopold Stocker Verlag, 1976; reprinted Graz: Ares Verlag, 2020), written c. 1962.

The passages reproduced here bear on the following themes of his thought: the theological versus racial framing of the Jewish Question, the witness of Thomas Aquinas and the medieval councils to the traditional Catholic position on the Jews, the theological doctrine of grace-based versus race-based chosenness and the consequent concept of Israel’s “historical guilt” in reinterpreting the former as the latter, Christianity as the fulfillment and supersession of Israel’s religious vocation, the theological rootlessness of secularized Jewry as the condition of its destructive potential, and the eschatological insufficiency of Zionism as a merely ethnic resolution to Israel’s homelessness. They are reproduced here for scholarly and historical purposes. Hudal’s framework is entirely pre-Nostra Aetate (1965). He explicitly situates the Jewish Question within the tradition of the medieval Church and insists throughout on the necessity of a theological rather than merely biological perspective — indeed, he argues that the reduction of the Jewish Question to racial biology ultimately leads away from Christianity itself.

I. The Jewish Question as Primarily a Theological Problem

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Ch. IV: “The Jewish Question — Antisemitism” (pp. 81–94)

Leipzig-Vienna: Johannes Günther Verlag, 1937

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“The error of certain leading National Socialist writers in this doubly delicate question…lies above all in a radicalization which ultimately seeks to trace all the dark aspects of world history back to the Jews. This radicalization, in its conclusion, leads to the rejection of the Old Testament and to a reinterpretation of the person of Christ, who, due to His non-Aryan origin, becomes scarcely tenable for radical antisemites.”

“In fact, history teaches that the exaggeration of the Jewish Question has almost always led to the abandonment of Christianity, as the example of Marcion illustrates. It is also noteworthy that radical antisemites particularly reject Catholicism.”

“the fate of the Jews among the nations, and thus the Jewish Question as a whole, cannot ultimately be explained merely by racial or political factors but necessarily also requires a theological perspective to avoid adopting unjust views that would conflict not only with truth but also with basic human dignity.”

“Only where Judaism has lost its religious foundation and become ideologically rootless has it truly acquired a destructive potential.”

“it is historically false and morally never justifiable to use the misconduct of a portion of the Jewish population as grounds for discrimination against all Jews living among the German people.”

II. The Witness of Thomas Aquinas and the Medieval Councils

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Ch. IV (pp. 81–94)

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Already in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas, in his writing De regimine Judaeorum, expressed opinions regarding Jewish economic dominance scarcely less severe than those voiced by certain modern antisemites.”

“Likewise, the medieval ecclesiastical councils and diocesan synods enacted anti-Jewish regulations that show a clear resemblance to modern measures, albeit grounded not in racial-biological reasoning, but rather in theological justifications.”

“the Church will not recognize the racial dimension of either the baptism of Jews or mixed marriages, while at the same time refraining from opposing measures aimed at limiting Jewish influence in public life, since it is an empirical fact that the assimilation of Jews to a foreign ethnic identity often remains merely superficial.”

“no serious objection can be raised against state legislation that, as an act of self-defense and to guard against the influx of foreign elements, seeks to protect its own ethnic identity and, for reasons of state policy and national interest, enacts certain exceptional provisions regarding members of the Jewish people, even if such laws do not align with the principles of the modern constitutional state, for the principles of the modern state, first created by the French Revolution, are not, from the standpoint of Christianity and ethnic identity, the best.”

“While the medieval Church adopted a stringent stance on the issue of Jewish intermarriage, state-imposed constraints since the 19th century prevented adequate acknowledgment or understanding of this problem. Authorities readily granted dispensations from religious impediments without sufficiently considering that intermarriage involves more than merely ensuring the partner’s openness to authentic Christianity; it also raises questions about desirability from religious and ethnic standpoints.”

III. The “Historical Guilt” of Later Judaism: Grace Versus Race

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Ch. IV (pp. 81–94)

(Hudal here approvingly cites and reproduces an official statement of the Kirchlicher Anzeiger für die Erzdiözese Köln, drawn from a special study responding to Rosenberg’s Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts)

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“There are indeed specific Jewish ideas that Jesus and Paul resolutely opposed. These ideas are rooted in the notion of the racial superiority of the Jewish people over all others. This idea does not originate from the Old Testament, where Israel enjoys only a precedence of grace, not of race. Later Judaism, however — and this is its historical guilt and the ultimate cause of its downfall — reinterpreted the grace-based precedence proclaimed in the Old Testament as an inherent racial superiority. Cause and effect were reversed: no longer — as in the Old Testament — does Israel’s distinction rest on God’s grace, but rather, God’s grace rests on Israel because it is considered the noblest of all nations… This is the genuinely Jewish doctrine against which John the Baptist, himself a Jew, protested, as also recorded by the Jewish Evangelist Matthew (3:9); against which Jesus fought an unbroken battle; and against which, when it later threatened the young Church of Christ, none other than Paul achieved decisive victory.”

(Hudal’s own comment, immediately following the above passage:)

“From this follows an important observation regarding any attempt to understand and resolve the Jewish Question solely from a racial perspective.”

IV. Supersessionism: Christianity as the Overcoming of Israel’s Self-Deification

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Ch. IV (pp. 81–94)

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Christianity is the overcoming of that deification of race first evident and dogmatized in the later phases of Israelite history, a phenomenon which, in contrast to scientific racial research, is thus not a modern creation. Thus, wherever Christianity loses its binding power in advanced stages of European history, the possibility of a new deification of race arises. This Jewish-German historical parallel over two millennia is deeply remarkable.“

“It is further apparent that racial antisemitism seeks to attack not only Judaism, but also Christianity, which it rejects as an ‘alien’ and ‘Oriental’ religion. Its ‘ethics of compassion’ and ‘ideal of humility’ are regarded as incompatible with the spirit of an aristocratic master race. On this level, two claims to chosenness stand in hostile opposition: the Jewish claim, divinely revealed and grounded in grace, and the German claim, self-asserted, arising from ethnic or racial consciousness of the fullness and consecration of its own essence, in which an earthly hierarchy is expressed.”

“It is particularly significant that these destructive ideas, long rejected by serious Protestant scholarship, are now spreading among the public and becoming undesirable ideological by-products of political movements.”

V. The Theological Rootlessness of Secularized Jewry

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Ch. IV (pp. 81–94)

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Judaism first gained equal rights through the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. Since this event, which in liberal circles was repeatedly praised as the dawn of a new era and of the modern constitutional state, the numerous defensive measures and laws of the medieval Catholic Church concerning the status of Jews in Christian society were increasingly dismantled under state influence.”

“As Christians and Catholics, we have not the slightest reason to defend those elements of Judaism which, after the World War, seized leadership of the workers’ masses in a Marxist direction and abundantly exploited them for selfish ends. Yet precisely because we condemn all injustice, we guard against any generalization as though only Judaism were to blame for social and political disorders in history.”

“However, one cannot leave unmentioned the reproach that even the best segment of German Jewry failed to draw a clear line between themselves and the radical agitators, or to publicly state that no commonality of views or aims existed. This omission — perhaps from misplaced solidarity or fear that such protests might draw more attention to an unpleasant fact, was misguided.”

VI. The Homelessness of Israel: The Jewish People Without a State

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Ch. IV (pp. 81–94)

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“The Jewish people has become homeless and, since the fall of its own state, has not found a new national vocation.”

“For an understanding of Judaism in world history, the destruction of its state in 586 B.C. is decisive. If one compares the books of the Old Testament written after this event, one already finds two tendencies that have since become characteristic of all Judaism: (1) Wisdom literature, presenting a philosophy that touches on the cosmopolitan cultural ideals of the late Hellenistic world, though always reaffirming Judaism’s religious mission; (2) an ethnic tendency, voiced in the Maccabean books, embodying the struggle for the true kingdom. Since then, the Jews have been a people without a homeland, the perpetual emigrants of world history, whose restlessness within foreign cultural spheres partly stems from the loss of this national center.”

“The Jewish people as a whole cannot be classified within the usual racial categories. Its foundation is not material but spiritual, not the physical factor of ‘blood’ but the spiritual factor of a historical will.”

VII. Zionism as “Alien Utopia”

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Ch. IV (pp. 81–94)

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Zionism, as a Jewish ethnic-national idea, has perhaps experienced some momentum through the shock of the German upheaval; yet for the great majority of Jews it remains an alien utopia, while the two-thousand-year historical void in their ethnic history remains the more compelling reality.”

“In a much more radical sense than in the case of the Germans, the Jews constitute a ‘people without space’. Neither from below (through the ideology of ‘blood and soil’), nor from above (through spiritual-religious reflection and renewal), can a conscious Jewish unity be achieved.”

VIII. A Non-Aryan at the Root of the German Spiritual Crisis

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, Conclusion: “Fascism — Bolshevism — Christian National Socialism” (pp. 234–253)

(English translation: The Journal of American Reform, 2025)

“Ever since the non-Aryan David Friedrich Strauß shook the foundations of Christian belief in Protestantism with his Leben Jesu (1835) and the Alten und neuen Glauben (1872), this crisis has never ceased, for Strauß exerted the profoundest influence for decades, including on Nietzsche’s attitude towards Christianity.”

IX. From the Memoirs: On Justice and the Jewish Tradition

Römische Tagebücher: Lebensbeichte eines alten Bischofs

Graz-Stuttgart: Leopold Stocker Verlag, 1976; reprinted Graz: Ares Verlag, 2020. Written c. 1962, published posthumously.

(No published English translation of the full work exists; passage cited in English translation in secondary literature; cf. en-academic.com, citing p. 21)

“We do not believe in the eye for an eye of the Jew.”

Sources

All passages are drawn from, or independently confirmed against, the following primary editions and translations. No word has been altered.

Primary Texts (German originals):

English Translations Used:

  • “National Socialists, the Jewish Question and Antisemitism — Hudal, 1937.” The Journal of American Reform, 3 June 2025. First English translation of Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, pp. 81–94 (Chapter IV: “Die Judenfrage — Der Antisemitismus”). All passages in Sections I–VII are drawn from this translation: https://americanreform.substack.com/p/national-socialists-the-jewish-question
  • “The Conclusion to the Foundations of National Socialism — Hudal, 1937.” The Journal of American Reform, 1 October 2025. English translation of Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, pp. 234–253. The passage in Section VIII is drawn from this translation: https://americanreform.substack.com/p/the-conclusion-to-the-foundations

For Section IX (Römische Tagebücher, p. 21):

Biographical Information and Contextual Sources: