Inspired by the True Story of an American in Nazi Germany
Historical Fiction
Date Published: April 15, 2024
INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS
Throughout the Third Reich, millions of Germans pledged allegiance to Adolf Hitler. In the Bavarian village of Schwarzenfeld, they followed an American citizen.
As he struggles to rekindle the faith of a guilt-ridden Wehrmacht veteran,
a morose widow, and her grieving teenage son, Fr. Viktor Koch, C.P. is
haunted by self-doubt. What is driving him to stay in the Third Reich? Is he
following a higher plan, or the mystic compulsion of his German heritage?
Exposed to American ideals, his parishioners grow restless under Nazi rule.
Relying upon his ingenuity to keep them out of prison, Fr. Viktor solicits
aid from an unlikely intercessor—the Nazi charity worker who
confiscated his monastery for state purposes.
In April 1945, American liberators make a gruesome discovery: the SS have left a mass grave of concentration camp victims on Schwarzenfeld’s borders. Enraged by the sight, the infantry commander orders the townspeople to disinter 140 corpses, construct coffins despite material shortages, dig a grave trench, and hold a funeral ceremony—all in 24 hours. If they fail to fulfill this ultimatum, he vows to execute all German men in town.
Fr. Viktor has to pull off a miracle: he must convince his countrymen that his followers are not the enemy. Their humanity is intact. And most of all, they are innocent.
About the Author
Katherine Koch is a renaissance woman from San Antonio, Texas. By day she is a professional web administrator, digital marketing specialist, and graphic designer. By night she is an independent scholar, historian, and writer. She is captivated by stories of the Passionist missionaries in her family, all of whom have a peculiar knack for tumbling into harm’s way during history’s most fascinating time periods.
Contact Links
Twitter/X: @KKochWriter
INTRODUCTION
Schwarzenfeld is a
backwater village nestled in the rambling, pinecovered
hills of southeast
Germany. To an observer in the 1940s,
it is a typical
Bavarian farm town. The houses are austere plaster,
topped by
red-tiled roofs. A stately, white-walled castle broods
overhead like a
relic from a bygone age, its presence whispering of a
history that
stretches back to the medieval era. Only a far-flung train
station hints at a
connection to modern times. For centuries, two
sharp gray
steeples have dominated the skyline—one belonging to a
rococo parish
church, the other to a hilltop shrine—and both stand
as a testament to
the Catholic fervor that burns deep in Bavarian
culture. Months
have passed since a car rolled along the dirt-paved
roads, for
automobiles are a rarity here. A pedestrian ambling along
Schwarzenfeld’s
main thoroughfare, the Hauptstrasse, is far more
likely to
encounter a cattle herd lazing about the street, or farmers
hauling their
wares by wagon. However, one fact makes this nondescript
village the most
remarkable place in the Third Reich: in this
town, Germans have
given their loyalty to an American.
This U.S. citizen
is Fr. Viktor Koch, C.P., a missionary and
Pennsylvania
native who left America to found a new province for
his religious
order, the Passionists. All members of this monastic
community have
vowed to sow a novel doctrine—they declare
suffering the
great and terrible equalizer of humanity, uniting every
soul on earth
regardless of nation, race, or creed. Intuition tells Fr.
Viktor that
Germany, the vanquished aggressor of World War I,
needs this
far-reaching message more than any other country. He
is a foreigner by
birth, but not by culture or language. A son of
German immigrants,
he speaks fluent Hochdeutsch with a round,
downy American
accent.
Appointed to lead
the new European province, he departs for
Bavaria in 1922,
at age fifty. From the start he proves his mettle.
Accompanied by Fr.
Valentin Lenherd, C.P., his closest friend
and fellow
Passionist, he bears witness to the turmoil that wracks
his ancestral
homeland. Inflation and unemployment ravage the
country like twin
plagues. Not even a bucketful of German marks
can buy a loaf of
bread. The Weimar government forbids new
religious orders
from opening institutions in Germany, condemning
the Passionist
mission to failure, but Fr. Viktor is undeterred. At
times like this,
he is apt to quote his favorite adage: “God provides.”
Instead of
conceding defeat, he wheels and deals with Bavarian
cardinals, holds
whirlwind fundraisers in America, and opens two
monasteries—one in
Munich, Germany, and a second in Maria
Schutz, Austria.
He relishes each victory over the German government,
celebrating every
triumph with a fine cigar.
In 1933, when he
visits Schwarzenfeld and decides to build
a new monastery
beside the Miesbergkirche, the hilltop shrine
overlooking their
town, the population hails him as a hero. He has
$200,000 in U.S.
funds at his disposal—enough to hire every ablebodied
laborer in the
impoverished village, plus tradesmen scouring
the countryside
for work. Thus, as Adolf Hitler beguiles a desperate
nation with
economic miracles, the devout Catholics of Schwarzenfeld
find an American
priest ushering them from poverty into plenty.
They reverently
call Fr. Viktor “our Provinsche,” a moniker derived
from his official
title, provincial.
When the winds of
oppression and war sweep through Europe
once again, Fr.
Viktor struggles to ignore grim predictions made by
Fr. Stanislaus
Grennan, his superior in America: the German province
will prove to be a
total failure. In 1937, the Nazis
close his monastery
in Munich. Gestapo
agents begin hunting down foreign missionaries
and drive them
from European shores, including American Passionists
who joined the
German mission. Through sheer coincidence,
Fr. Viktor finds a
legal loophole that prevents his own deportation.
After the first
panzers rage across Poland’s border, German priests of
military age
receive call-up notices from the Wehrmacht. A province
forty-one members
strong drops to thirteen overnight. The most
devastating event
occurs in February 1941: Fr. Valentin Lenherd, his
comrade through
tribulation, dies of cancer. Fr. Viktor barely has
time to grieve
before the next threat unfolds.
By April 1941,
Hitler’s persecution of the German Catholic
Church is entering
a new phase. Nazi authorities have confiscated
monasteries
throughout Bavaria, evicting their inhabitants and
reallocating the
facilities for secular purposes. One organization
that benefits from
these mass appropriations is the Nationalsozialistische
Volkswohlfahrt (NSV), the public welfare department
charged with the
task of opening rest houses, military hospitals,
and shelters for
German citizens fleeing cities plagued by air raids.
In Schwandorf, a
town six miles south of Schwarzenfeld, NSV
office director
Wilhelm Seiz receives orders from the State to house
one hundred
children evacuated from Hamburg. Searching the
Oberpfalz, his
attention falls upon a spacious residence that suits
his needs
perfectly. Confiscating this building is not a straightforward
matter: a
foreigner owns the mortgage, and an international
scandal might
erupt if the occupants refuse to leave peacefully, but
the fires of
Seiz’s determination are stoked. Though he is only a
minor official, he
has cultivated connections in the party. He will
stop at nothing
until the property falls into NSV hands.
The building he
wants to acquire is Fr. Viktor’s monastery in
Schwarzenfeld, the
Miesbergkloster.
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