Abstract
The Nazis declared the Catholic order of the Jesuits “public vermin”
[Volksschädlingen] – the same term it
used to describe the Freemasons. Its members were persecuted, interned,
and sometimes murdered. Conspiracy theories about the Jesuits had
circulated since the seventeenth century, and the order had already been
banned repeatedly. During the Nazi regime, these conspiracy theories
were put in the service of the goal of reducing the influence of the
Jesuits, who ran secondary schools and engaged in youth work. Entitled
“The Jesuit: The Obscurantist without a Homeland,” this propaganda
pamphlet by Hubert Hermman warned against the Jesuits’ “dark power” and
“mysterious intentions.”