In Nazi Germany a small proportion of influential catholic priests openly professed National Socialist ideology and identified themselves with the purposes of the Nazi movement, treating Adolf Hitler as the national Messiah. They were called ‘brown priests’ (braune Priester). Among them was Karl Adam, considered the most distinguished German Catholic theologist of the time. Adam argued in favour of the validity of racist ideas of the National Socialism and proposed a Nazi interpretation of the Jewish origin of Jesus, supporting it with an anti-Jewish interpretation of dogmas on the immaculate conception of Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus. After the Second World War, Adam never admitted his Nazi theological and pastoral activity and never apologised for it. His actions are presented by the authors of this article.  

Even today, Adam is, not rarely, considered an eminent religious thinker, a precursor of the Second Vatican Council and the renewal of the Church. In the last two decades, Polish translation of Adam’s two prewar books were published: (Natura katolicyzmu) Das Wesen des Katolizismus and Jezus Chrystus (Jesus Christus). The authors of this paper put forward a thesis that Adam’s collaboration with the National Socialism can no longer be ignored in the assessment of him as a person and of his theological oeuvre.