GERMANY: God’s Due

Out of censor-ridden Germany seeped news last week of a 4,000-word letter sent to Reichsführer Adolf Hitler last month, in which ten responsible pastors of the German Evangelical Protestant Church daringly protested against the entire credo and technique of the National Socialist Party. This remarkable document, phrased with an air of winning deference, indicted: 1) Nazi concentration camps; 2) the Nazi espionage system within the country; 3 ) the extralegal powers of the secret political police; 4) Nazi persecution of the German Protestant churches; 5) the Nazi philosophy of “blood, race and soil”; 6) the training of school children in “the old German paganism”; 7) the Nazi glorification of the Aryan race; 8) antiSemitism; 9) the basic Nazi doctrine of “nationalist utilitarianism” by which only what is good for the State is good; and 10) the falsification of the real results of the so-called 99% Reichstag election last March.

Rising to an unprecedented height of boldness, the pastors concluded: “Our people are trying to break the bond set by God. That is human conceit rising against God. In this connection we must warn the Führer that the adoration frequently bestowed on him is due only to God. Some years ago the Führer objected to having his picture placed on Protestant altars. Today his thoughts are used as a basis not only for political decisions but also for morality and law. He himself is surrounded with the dignity of a priest and even of an intermediary between God and man. . . . We ask that liberty may be given our people to go their way in the future under the sign of the Cross of Christ, in order that our grandsons may not curse their elders on the ground that their elders left them a state on earth that closed to them the Kingdom of God.”

Last week, their letter still unanswered, the pastors let it be known that if the Reichsführer did not reply within two more weeks, they would publish their letter and circulate it secretly among the Godfearing. Since Germany wants no overt trouble with its own churchmen while the Olympic games are going on, the pastors had five more weeks of grace.

Last week Hitler’s newspaper, the Völkisclier Beobachter, gave a tacit answer to the pastors’ letter. With easy logic, it asserted that since Der Führer is always right and since Der Führer is the party and the party is Der Führer, therefore, what any Nazi functionary does in Der Führer’s name is also always right unless reversed by the Nazi Party or Der Führer.