Quote:
Background: The Nazi Party’s Central Propaganda Office, the Reichspropagandaleitung, published a monthly bulletin for speakers. It was designed to be kept in notebooks, divided by subject area.
This is material issued to speakers from August 1935 at the beginning of a propaganda campaign against the Catholic Church. These words became the foundation of thousands of speeches delivered in every corner of Germany.
I have a large collection of this material, which can be rather hard to find, so I have posted an index to my collection.
The source: Aufklärungs- und Redner-Informationsmaterial der Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP., Lieferung 20 (August 1935), pp. 1- 7 (Kirche: Polit. Katholizismus).
|
Away with the Subversive Activities of Political Catholicism
Two-and-a-half years of positive National Socialist governmental work lie behind us, two-and-a-half years of visible successes in all areas of political, economic, and cultural life. Adolf Hitler and his movement led the German people to the present practical and plain constructive activities and steady, continuing growth, and away from the chaos of the November democracy, from the directionless cattle-trading policies of the black-red-gold parties (i.e., Center, Marxist-Jewish), from the looming danger of final Bolshevist destruction.
Through a unique series of vast efforts, the National Socialist government has succeeded not only in stopping the growth of the army of unemployed in Germany — a problem that the know-it-alls of the System tried in vain to solve for years — but have succeeded in finding jobs for 5 million of the about 7 million unemployed, restoring satisfaction in life for these people. In every area of public life, cleanliness and decent attitudes have once again become normal, and all those who put their own self ahead of the requirements of the people’s community are ruthlessly wiped out.
The National Socialist spirit of decency and cleanliness, in contrast to the licentiousness, agitation, and subversion of the past decade, is clearest in the cultural sphere. Is it not a joke that while the hyper-Christian Center Party, “the defender of religion,” was in a government coalition with Marxism, wild propaganda orgies of the Marxist-Bolshevist atheist federations were the order of the day, while today each Catholic or Protestant can declare his religious beliefs without any hindrance? Is it not plain fact that under Center Party-Marxist rule, every base instinct filled the stage, film, books, and arts, infecting the German people with filth and smut to an unbearable degree, while today total cleanliness prevails in every branch of culture, without sinking into ridiculous prudery?
And internationally? National Socialism has cut the oppressive chains of the dictate of the enemy powers that were destroying the people and Reich by conditions that could not be fulfilled, the chains of the Versailles dictate, which the black-red-gold front of organized traitors to our people and nation had signed, even though it harmed the whole German people. Germany once again stands free and respected among the nations — this despite the furious agitation of the black-red-gold mob of émigrés and their allies in all the nations of the world.
World Jewry and Marxism behind the Scenes
The National Socialist state stands unshakably on firm foundations. It rests not only on state institutions, not only on the battalions of the S.A., the S.S., and the political fighters of the movement, but also in the hearts of the whole people. Even the most evil-minded critics, even the perpetual nitpickers and complainers, can find only the most trivial things to complain about. Their biggest gripe is that the National Socialist state give them so few reasons to criticize. The blind hatred that rages against the new Germany that above all comes from abroad finds little acceptance, since no half-way thinking German people’s comrade can deny the historic achievements of the Führer and his colleagues.
Even the most stubborn Marxist rat catcher who still believes that he can lure the German worker with his pink or ultra red theories of world betterment has had to realize that his arguments have failed completely in Adolf Hitler’s state. Despite all the lovely prophecies of the Marxist party bigwigs, not only did the National Socialist state not collapse miserably within a few months, but rather it is stronger than ever. Marxism, on the contrary, is steadily losing ground in all the countries of the world, and facing a growing number of opponents from day to day. The Red and gold internationals of Marxism and Jewish Mammonism have enough problems of their own today — the march of their “warriors” has grown slow and weary.
Political Catholicism, the Enemy of the German People
While the National Socialist government, despite all efforts of its enemies, continues to build a future for the German people, while its work has succeeded in filling the German people with new hope and joy, winning back for it the world’s respect, while it works hard to heal the wounds inflicted on the German people by a decade of black-red-gold economic mismanagement, an old enemy of the German people is again raising its head:
Understand us carefully here! — We make a basic distinction between religious Catholicism and political Catholicism. We refuse now, as during the System Era, to lump together religious and political Catholicism, particularly since we know that the overwhelming majority of German Catholics have always rejected the evil machinations of Catholic politicians, just as the highest Church dignitaries have done. Pope Leo XIII himself said:
“The misuse of religion for political purposes is the greatest sin.”
National Socialism has proven that it is happy to grant the Church what the Church claims. The National Socialist government concluded a Concordat with the Roman Catholic Church very soon after its takeover of power. It regulated relations between the two, stated rights and duties, and granted the Church wide-ranging privileges. It did this with confidence that the Church would respect the Concordant and give clerics firm guidelines to stay away from any political activity, to be loyal to the National Socialist government, and not to stick their notes in things that are not their concern, and that they do not understand.
National Socialism is not an Enemy of the Roman Catholic Church
Despite the fact that the Roman Catholic clergy took a clear stand against National Socialism in the years prior to the National Socialist takeover, despite the Center Party demagogues in priestly garb who joined with atheistic Marxism in the years before 30 January 1933 to agitate against National Socialism all over the country in the filthiest ways, despite clerics like the notorious Dr. Moenius, who dressed in his priestly raiment carried out infernal agitation against heroic German front soldiers and against Germany in general, without any objection from Church authorities, despite the fact that honored and loyal fighters of the National Socialist movement such as Gauleiter Peter Gemeinder in Frankfurt/M were denied church burial while mass murderers such as Kürten [a German serial killer] received the sacraments without any difficulties, despite the fact that even cardinals and bishops such as Faulhaber and Gföllner accepted and spread the silliest lies and slanders about National Socialism in more or less official statements, even adding to them, the National Socialist government offered the hand of peace to the Roman Catholic Church. No National Socialist has the intention or the wish to unleash a new battle intended to alienate the German Catholic from his faith and Church.
As firm as National Socialism must be in matters of the existence and future of the German people in the political, economic, and cultural spheres, it is tolerant in the area of religion — as long as it is not forced to respond to churchly intolerance and arrogance. As long as the Roman Catholic Church stays within its boundaries, as long as it deals with the religious lives and experiences of its faithful, and as long as it does not interfere in the areas of politics, economics and culture, those areas that the National Socialist government reserves entirely to itself in the interests of the whole of the people, each church and religious group in Germany can conduct its activities unhindered and free of outside influence. We are and remain of the opinion that the honest affirmation to a religion by each German will be respected, as long as it does not conflict with German views of justice, morality, and customs. We think we are in agreement with Pope Leo XIII, who in his encyclical on government of 1 November 1885 wrote:
“The Church does not condemn rulers who, for the sake of securing some greater good, or averting a great evil, tolerate false religions.”
Religion and Politics
To mix religion with politics, however, to use the religious views and sentiments of wide circles of our people for political business, for ungerman purposes, is just as contemptible and indecent as mixing politics or religion with business. Political Catholicism mixes religion and politics, and even worse, religion for it is only a means to an end, a means to gain political power. Before 30 January 1933, the representatives of political Catholicism were the “Center Party” and the “Bavarian People’s Party,” the black partners of that black-red-gold coalition that governed the German people into collapse. The Center and Bavarian People’s Parties were led by influential clerics of the Catholic Church, by clerics who had apparently forgotten that Christ himself said: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Hand in hand with Jewish stock exchange swindlers and Marxist blasphemers, they made Germany into the plaything and joke of the world. These two forces hostile to the people, and therefore also to religion, concealed their treasonous policies under the cloak of religion, bringing Catholicism into disrepute. Like all other organizations that were enemies of the state and people, they were swept away by victorious National Socialism, the embodiment of German thought and feeling.
“The Nation is not the Highest...!”
The ghost of the Center Party is still present today, however, in the form of political Catholicism, which claims the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in all areas of human life. It is a spirit that attempts to subordinate all government and public forces to the power of the Church. In his bishop’s letter issued shortly before 30 January 1933, Johannes Maria Gföllner, Bishop of Linz, said it clearly:
“The nation is not the highest power, nor may the state be idolized; The highest power for each nation is and remains religion.” (that is, the Catholic Church)
This arrogant statement that clearly proves political Catholicism’s desire for power is further developed by the statement of the Jesuit Lehmkuhlm, a Center Party advisor for many years, in The Voice of Maria Lach (1876, p. 195):
“... it is false, incorrect, even crazy statement stemming from the dirty source of indifference if one proclaims that people have the right to freedom of conscious... The state is obligated to be Catholic.”
The Jesuit Liberatore is even clearer. He demands:
“One may elevate the state as high as he wishes, increase its majesty to the highest, but its subordination to the church remains unquestionable... The civil rulers must be subordinate to the pope. The pope is the supreme judge of civil laws.”
Political Catholicism’s battle for supreme authority in Germany is no recent development. For over a thousand years, political Catholicism has fought with every legal and illegal means to gain political power in Germany.
Treason against People and Nation by Political Catholicism
Past decades provide us with sufficient evidence of the anti-German, anti-people policies of political Catholicism’s representatives. After years of observing Germania, the leading organ of political Catholicism in Germany, Bismarck gave a speech on 28 November 1885 in which he made the following devastating judgment:
“Do we not find that in all the difficulties that the German Reich has abroad, from Spain to Russia, from Poland, from England to the seas around Greece, wherever some difficulty surfaces for Germany, Germania at least rejoices in every failure of German policy, gladly notes it, stresses it, spreads it, criticizes and minimizes any success; in short, do we not see it always on the side of our opponents? Germania does not represent Germany, it never even once represents German interests. That leads us to this conclusion: It opposes the interests of the German Reich wherever it can, from whence it is but a small step that is also taken: Catholic voters are persuaded by it.”
Any later action, any later statement of political Catholicism is suited only to further support this hard, but just judgment of one of the greatest and most far-sighted men in German history. Thus, in the Paderborn Bonifatius pamphlet (1895), there is a conscious rejection of love of fatherland and of patriotic feelings:
“We are first of all Christians, first of all Catholics, and see modern patriotism as a kind of barbarism, a crime against humanity, a sin against brotherly love, a departure from Christianity... We, therefore, leave modern patriotism to our old cousin, the German Michel, whom we are happy to leave in love with patriotic nonsense.”
From such an attitude to intentional, public betrayal of our people and fatherland is only a small step.
Was it not the Catholic and Center Party leader Matthias Erzberger who, during the war, was always there when the willingness of the German people to fight was being sabotaged during its gigantic battle for its existence? Was it not the same Erzberger who joined with the revolutionary Emil Barth to offer unconditional surrender to the victory-drunk enemy powers? Was it not Prelate Kaas, an important dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church, who in 1921 — during the occupation — made agreements with the French, and along with other treasonous statements, said to Tirard, the president of the Rhineland Commission:
“If I become Bishop of Trier, I will work for the independence of the Rhineland.”
Revenge for the Reformation
Is the Center Party man and traitor Pastor Moenius not correct when he triumphantly claims: “Catholicism breaks nationalism’s back!” He is right a thousand times over if he means political Catholicism, for if we consider the history of our people, we must always conclude that political Catholicism sided with the enemies of Germany, that it constantly strove to weaken Germany, to reduce the inner unity of the German people and weaken its right to life, that it joined with Bolshevism in its arrogant blindness. Why is political Catholicism always in bitter enmity against everything German? Why, for example, the dislike of the Bishop of Linz (Gföllner) against “German” nationalism (and only that kind), which he put in these words in his pastoral letter:
“An extreme form of the principle of nationalism that knows and recognizes only national states is at least very questionable, because it cannot be realized without injuring historic rights, without using morally impermissible means.”
The notorious Moenius answers this serious question:
“Since the Reformation, which succeeded only partially, Catholic part of the population is like an arrow in the side of the Protestantism. It is —to the annoyance of the National Socialists — ultramontane, and hinders the building of a national state.”
Furthermore, the Observatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, openly admitted in Nr. 118 of 24 May 1923 that German Catholicism
“Both during the World War as well as under the current conditions devotes its strength and organizational ability to eliminating the tragic departure from the Roman Church that occurred 400 years ago.”
What do both of these statements from Catholic circles mean? Pastor Moenius cynically states with his familiar shocking shamelessness that political Catholicism knows no other goal than hindering the formation of a German national state, and the official Vatican organ supports this outrageous statement by praising the fact that during the thunder of battle of the World War, in which Germany was fighting a world of enemies for the sake of its homeland and its possessions, and during which millions of the bravest and most loyal sons of the homeland — whether Catholic or Protestant — gave their lives for people and Reich, during this fiery time of death, Catholicism put its energy, its strength, and its organizational ability to use not to defend the homeland, but rather to carry out a counter-Reformation to regain what the Roman Catholic Church had lost four hundred years ago during the Reformation. It could hardly have found a more suitable time to pursue such special interests! While at the front fathers and sons were dying with faith in Germany’s future, far from the front they were attempting a Roman Catholic counter-Reformation.
The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
This treasonous political Catholicism is once again at work today, eagerly attempting to sow weeds that will destroy the constructive efforts of the National Socialist government. Then there are those familiar practitioners of Jesuit sophistry who hide behind the mask of the innocent citizen who attempt to tear down everything that does not agree 100% with their opinions and theories. We know the phrases that these peculiar politicians always use, phrases of “racist nonsense,” “false nationalism,” “hate-filled enemies of religion,” of the “nationalization of religion,” we know them all — these eternal arguments of political Catholicism, this if and but.
Currency Speculation
We know that political Catholicism would be much stronger in Germany if it did not face a strong government and a determined, powerful popular movement. Nevertheless, these foxes are at work again today, attempting in more or less hidden ways to cause difficulties for the new state that is fighting a just battle for its existence. The numerous trials of recent months of high-ranking members of Catholic religious orders for currency speculation show to a frightening extent how far they are from popular sentiments, how distant from the people’s community a large part of these so-called Catholics are. They are not interested in what the leadership of the German people offers, in what is vitally necessary in the interests of the whole people, for they know no nation as we understand it, but rather they know only the large state of the Church, which in their view is a state within a state, or the state that they believe should be above all other states.
Enemies of Public Health
At present, the political agitators are making the most noise about the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Ill Offspring, and there enough cases known in which the faithful have publicly urged the violation of this law. They urge disobeying the law, even if the result is unhindered births of the physically, mentally, or psychologically ill, resulting in thousands and tens of thousands of cripples running about, vegetating to the honor of political Catholicism, half human, half animal! These obscurantists know the dismal statistics as well as we do, which have forced the National Socialist state to take action against such decay. As Albert Friehe writes in his book What must the National Socialist Know about Genetics:
“According to Judge Ebermayer, a single criminal family stemming from a drunken mother in 1810 had no less than 894 descendents by 1893, among whom were 181 prostitutes, 142 beggars, 76 serious criminals, 7 murderers, 40 residents of poor houses. Together, they cost the state about 5 million marks. A criminal family in America, begun by a bordello owner and drunkard, has been carefully studied. There were 800 descendents, of whom 700 were imprisoned at least once. 43% were alcoholics, 16% prostitutes. Legal costs devoured the enormous sum of 13.5 million marks.
The American criminal family of the “Jukes” is notorious. “Juke” was the nickname of a tramp born in New York in 1720, whose two illegitimate sons married five degenerate sisters. In 1877, of the 1200 descendents, 440 were feeble-minded, 310 were beggars who together had spent 3200 years in the poorhouse, 130 were criminals, including 60 thieves and 7 murderers. Over half of the women fell into prostitution. Only 20 learned a trade, 10 of them while in prison. By 1915 there were 2820 descendents, of whom half were alive. 600 of them were feeble-minded and epileptic, but only three of them were in an institution. The costs to the community were 11 million marks.”
These facts are further demonstrated in issue 1 of the series National Socialist Science, in an article titled “Racial Twilight and its Mastery through Mind and Action as a Fateful Question of the White Peoples” (by President Prof. Dr. Karl Astel):
“The so-called serious genetic burdens within the German people will astound those who have not previously studied the matter.
According to Lenz, whose figures are by no means exaggerated — even higher figures are sometimes given — among the 66 million people in Germany are:
Feeble-minded about 1.5%
1,000,000
Idiots about 0.25%
160,000
Mentally ill about 1.5%
1,000,000
Epileptics about 0.15%
100,000
Psychopaths about 7%
4,500,000
Blind
about 0.015%
10,000
Serious visual impairment about 0.075%
50,000
Deaf about 0.025%
16,000
Hard of hearing about 0.075%
50,000
Physically weak or infirm about 10%
6,600,000
According to the Reich Physicians’ Leader at the Reich Party Rally in Nuremberg in 1934. the financial cost for only the most serious cases of genetic illness is 1,200,000,000 marks annually.
The expenditures are spread across the categories of genetic illness as follows:
Genetic Cripples
30 million
Genetically deaf
15 million
Genetically blind
5 million
230,000 mentally ill
160 million
Training of caretakers
71 million
250,000 feeble minded
200,000 drunkards
400,000 psychopaths
200 million
Labor losses due to genetic illnesses
300 million
Legal and police costs
250 million
A genetically ill person 60 years of age has cost the Reich 50,000 marks.
What does all this mean? What does it mean when, for example, a German city pays 7.50 marks daily to a drunkard’s family, but only 3.50 marks to an unemployed engineer with a wife and nine children, so the man must first become a drinker to improve his circumstances? When as much must be spent for an idiot child as would be needed for 4-5 healthy German children? According to the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, these people are more important than all scientific knowledge, so they cry bloody murder about the National Socialist state whose wise genetic policies and careful, justified elimination of incurable defectives are working to make the German people once again into a healthy, strong, youthful people.
“The Racial Standpoint is Despicably Heathen”?
Closely related to the agitation against the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Ill Offspring is political Catholicism’s battle against the powerful discoveries in the area of racial science. Bishop Gföllner is even clever enough to declare that the National Socialist standpoint is completely irreconcilable with Christianity, calling it a return to despicable heathenism. Nearly all Roman Catholic politicians fighting the National Socialist state play the same tune.
They cannot help it. These people still hold to the thinking and ideologies of the dark ages that burned great minds at the stake, strangling the healthy thinking and feelings of the nation in smoke and ashes.
But a new age is dawning, with new people, new ideas, and new thinking, with people who are as ready to pray to their God as their fathers and grandfathers were, but who do not accept the dogma of slavish subordination as the rule of their lives, but who rather affirm the ideas of honor and freedom. The world is marching forward, and a new science of the nobility of race and blood is developing. Those who always live in the past want to throw these scientists into prison once again, to force them to renounce their discoveries, and therefore the truth, as great thinkers like Copernicus, Galileo, and others were once compelled to do against their better judgment. These obscurantists believe that they still have the power to extinguish every torch that brings new light and new knowledge and new thinking for humanity.
Every German-thinking people’s comrade must resist the arrogant attempts of such people to oppose the state and National Socialist principles. When, for example, an itinerant Catholic preacher stands behind the pulpit and preaches to Catholic Germans that he prefers a Negro, a mulatto of pure soul, to a sinful Aryan, when he says that the Semitic race must be esteemed because Christ the man is of Semitic ancestry, when he calls on his hearers to fight for Rome and to be dissatisfied, then even the most faithful Catholic can only shake his head about such backwardness, narrow-mindedness, and ignorance, and leave such an apostle of agitation and hatred to himself.
An Organized Campaign against National Socialism
We must now consider whether the countless attacks and complaints of Catholic agitators against National Socialism and the German people are isolated events, or whether they are part of a systematic, organized campaign. The multitude of such occurrences makes it clear that political Catholicism’s battle against the new Germany is organized, that it is aimed at disrupting National Socialism’s constructive efforts, that both an open and a concealed war is being waged against the German people, a war in service of Catholicism’s centuries-old plans for world domination, a continuation of a centuries-long Catholic battle against the German spirit. Consider the various statements by bishops and cardinals, above all the arrogant behavior of the Bishop of Münster, who had the gall to call for a speaking ban for Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg, the Führer’s representative, and threatened protests from Catholic circles if his demand was rejected.
We are Defending Ourselves
We, however, have no intention of quietly accepting this campaign against the German people. We have no intention of allowing hysterical cowl-wearers, foreign to the people and the world, to risk even one word that goes beyond the realm of religion. We have no intention of allowing our youth to be influenced and misled by otherworldly politicians who receive their instructions from beyond Germany’s borders.
The German people has awakened. 15 years of educational work, 15 years of hard battle for the soul of the German people against political Catholicism and its allies, red Bolshevism and golden Jewry, have made us National Socialists alert and shown us who the enemy is. He who believes that he can carry on policies hostile to the state and people under the cover of religion, he who believes that he can risk the future of the German people, its blood and its nature in the cause of a supranational principle, we will reveal his filthy handiwork.
We advise him who prefers Negroes or Mongols to his own people’s comrades to carry out his spiritual labors among them, but to leave our people to be blessed by German methods .
Where does the German Catholic Stand?
The German Catholic knows what he has to do. National Socialist Germany has never hindered or refused him the right to stay true to his Catholic faith, and to practice his religion. In political and cultural life, however, he is and remains a German, for he has had to learn over the years of shameful decline that political Catholicism led the people to ruin, and that under its rule the Godless kept growing in strength. Knowing his duty to the people and the state, the German Catholic affirms without hesitation the cause of his people.
It was Adolf Hitler who took up the battle against the Godless Marxist movement, and led it to victory. It was Adolf Hitler who freed German Catholicism and Protestantism, the German churches in general, from the confusion of partisan and religious conflict. In his speech in Berlin on 23 March 1933, Adolf Hitler said:
“The national government sees in the two Christian confessions the most important factor in preserving our ethnicity. It will respect the agreements between them and the German provinces. Their rights will not be touched. It expects and hopes, however, that the tasks the government has undertaken for national and moral renewal will receive the same respect. It will treat other religions with objective justice. However, it cannot tolerate it if membership in a certain religion or a certain race results in ignoring general legal obligations, or even is seen as a license for criminal deeds, or the toleration of crimes. The government wants proper relations between church and state.”
The Führer’s words are the German people’s words! The German people demands a strict separation of politics and religion! The German people wants to see priests who serve God, but who do not egotistically seek after political power! The German Catholic demands the destruction of political Catholicism, so that the Catholic faith will not be harmed. — The German Catholic raises the cry: Away with all obscurantists!
https://research.calvin.edu/german-p...chive/rim5.htm