"Secular schools can never be tolerated because.....

[Obamaknowzz]

..... such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.

( Adolf Hitler, in 26 April 1933 in a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933; from Ernst Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1979, p. 241. )


:crazy:

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Hitler said it then. Many like-minded 'Murkins are saying it today.

We never learn.

[struggle4progress]

14. Perhaps one generally ought not to quote Hitler: he was a notorious liar,

who frequently told audiences what he thought they wanted to hear, as the world learned after Chamberlain was suckered, and when he was actually honest, his comments could be vicious and hateful

[FiveGoodMen]

15. You thought it was necessary to point out that Hitler was not to be trusted?

[struggle4progress]

19. It's appropriate to remember, when someone quotes him to prove some point

[FiveGoodMen]

20. What point do you think the OP was proving?

[struggle4progress]

21. Here's an interesting fact! It's possible to quote somebody to prove a point

without actually proving the point! And so, actually, I don't think he proved anything

But, of course, various responses to the OP -- such as yours -- DO indicate some people thought a clear point was being made, and responded accordingly

Hitler was a liar, and lots of people were stupid enough to believe him: so they started skipping down the road to Naziville with little real idea where the road led. Although I think it is quite stupid to quote Hitler, I also think the particular quote in the OP would be quite stupid even if it were not a Hitler quote, and I think someone would be quite stupid to agree with such a stupid quote, whether or not that someone recognized it as a Hitler quote. Whether or not someone stupid enough to agree with the stupid quote would be stupid enough to start skipping down a road towards Naziville with little real idea where the road led is a somewhat different question, on which I might reserve judgment

I suppose this sort of thing is regarded as a cute little sneer in some circles, perhaps in yours, for example, but I'm unimpressed

[Obamaknowzz]

23. Hitler's actions ("Iron fist")in the streets of Germany were well known

from the 20's going forward. Those who backed him in the West knew goddamn well what was going on and some were so enamored of him they tried to employ his methods. After WWII the Vatican was instrumental in helping his minions escape on the ratline and reestablish themselves.

Don't you find it curious how an institution that is suppose to be a reservoir for good could align with the worst evil?

[struggle4progress]

26. Your crankish approach to history will produce no insight or understanding into

the time or the people: rather than beginning with facts and forming your conclusion from the facts, you first choose your conclusion and then collect or invent facts to support that conclusion

[Obamaknowzz]

29. Well, that's exactly what your are doing here, since you haven't

provided one fact to back up your claim.
your kampffor bullshit is more like it.

[struggle4progress]

30. Vide #13, #16, #17, #18 infra

[Obamaknowzz]

31. Don't tell me......You don't know about the Vatican and "ratlines", etc???

Dude, you are missing the forest for the proverbial trees. Now I wouldn't expect any joe on the street to know about it, but someone supposedly versed in fascism's relation to religion, etc.....?

[struggle4progress]

33. If you are asking whether I think the Vatican had an official policy

of helping known Nazi war criminals escape to Argentina, then the answer is No, I do not think the Vatican had an official policy of helping known Nazi war criminals escape to Argentina

To even consider it as a thesis, one must be completely ignorant of the history of Nazi attacks on the Catholic Church: whatever shortcomings one finds in Vatican behavior during the Nazi era, sympathy for the Nazis is not simply not there; the Vatican was motivated by a primary desire to protect Catholics from the Nazis

The murky story of Nazis escaping to Argentina occurs in a period of chaos in the post-war ruins of Europe, with its huge displaced homeless and hungry population. As Argentina had been neutral during the war, the Nazis had some contacts with Argentina that facilitated relocation there. The Allied authorities in the defeated territories, charged with restoring orderly conditions, had some interest in exporting anyone who might serve as a trouble-making focus, and some deals were probably cut to facilitate intelligence service goals. Beyond that, quite a number of people had no papers or questionable documentation: so some emigration documents were issued without knowing the actual identity and criminal background of the person involved. You will, I do not doubt, also find some evidence that particular rightwing German Catholics with Nazi sympathies helping Nazis escape: but, of course, that is different than the idiotic assertion it was Vatican policy

[Obamaknowzz]

35. Forget it. Neverfucking mind. I am not wasting my time on people

like you anymore. One thing I've learned is if someone does not want to learn, they will not. Your specious interest in the subject says it all.

[TZ]

44. You are talking to someone who has an agenda

Which is that Hitler was an atheist. Therefore anything you post is going to be attacked to make his point. Its a tired old position but it seems that the easiest way to dimiss complex arguments from atheists is to say that Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin were atheists...

[struggle4progress]

45. I don't think that I've ever made that particular claim, since my

own inclination is to suspect Hitler was something of a Wotanist, though I cannot prove it; see http://www.shoaheducation.com/thor.html

My "agenda" -- as far as discussions of the Nazi period go -- is historical accuracy: as fas as I can tell, it is simply untrue that the Vatican supported Hitler and the Nazis. The Nazis set out to control and destroy the churches in Germany and the occupied territories, and I have provided a number of links in this thread to show that. Given the actual historical record of Nazi seizure of church properties, closure of monasteries and convents, summary execution of priests, and so on, it is really difficult to imagine that the Vatican would have regarded the Nazis as allies or would have been sympathetic to Nazis in the post-War era

[darkstar3]

46. Close, but not quite

Hitler didn't set out to destroy the Church. He sincerely felt he NEEDED the Church in order to cement his power over the people. His goal was no mere destruction, but reformation with HIM and GERMANY as the head mucky-muck instead of the Pope and Rome.

[struggle4progress]

47. Even totalitarian tyrants operate under political constraints:

Why the Nazi's paid a life-long pension to a chassidic rabbi, and provided stormtroopers to safeguard his yeshiva.
by Leah Abramowitz
... A rabbi had a yeshiva, located on 35 Munz Street in the middle of Berlin, which was not only left standing on Kristallnacht, but armed SS guards were actually placed in front of the rabbi's house, bodily protecting him and his disciples from Nazi hooligans ... Two years after Hindenburg came to power in 1931, he was forced to appoint Adolph Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. The rabbi ceased to attend official gatherings, but his pension and stipend for the yeshiva continued until his death in 1941. Thus during the early years of the Holocaust, while Jews were being deported or put into slave labor all over Europe, while anti-Semitism became official policy and synagogues and other Jewish institutions were burning, the German government continued to support one chassidic rabbi and his followers in the middle of their capital city ... Unfortunately, all this lasted only until Rabbi Kupperstock died, from natural causes. The yeshiva was confiscated and his students were deported to concentration camps ...
http://www.ashkenazhouse.org/protrabbi.html
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/48944861.html

This story (if true) is not evidence of some secret Nazi sympathy for chassidism, nor is it evidence that chassidic jews conspired to support Nazism: it merely demonstrates that the Nazis decided it would be politically inexpedient to attack Kupferstoch's Berlin yesiva while Kupferstoch was still alive

For the same reason, Bishop von Galen was not hanged for condemning the Nazis, despite advice from lower level functionaries simply to hang him and be done with it: he was at the time too prominent, and higher level Nazis took the view that such people could be handled after the war. Less prominent opponents did not enjoy the protection provided by such a high profile and were dealt with more summarily

[darkstar3]

48. Non-Sequitur.

Whether the Nazis let a particular Jew live for reasons of political expediency is irrelevant to this part of the conversation.

You claimed that the Nazis set out to control and destroy the church, and you did so in the guise of "historical accuracy". But this claim is simply untrue, as evidenced by many of Hitler's own writings, as well as many of the quotes posted here.

[Angry Dragon]

51. Then the church needs to release the pope's papers for that time period

instead of hiding them

[Angry Dragon]

50. Hitler was a devote Catholic

[struggle4progress]

52. If so, you ought to be able to demonstrate some standard indicators

of devout Catholicism -- such as making confession, taking communion, and attending services on days of obligation. There is, so far as I know, no record of any such behavior

We do have an extensive record from the Nazi period of documents like the following:

NSDAP Kreisleitung Eisenach ————————————————————— 1 July 1941
Memo Nr. 23/41: To all Kreis Speakers and Training Speakers

I ask you to inform me immediately if you and your family have any commitment to a church or church-related organization, alongside your commitment to the Führer's worldview.

If yes, I ask you to tell me if and when you intend to voluntarily break that commitment. A political leader and propagandist may have no other commitment, if he wants to be an honest National Socialist, than that to the Führer and the party.

He and his family must serve the German people and its Führer without any reservations, and trust him absolutely.

Please respond.

Heil Hitler
Köhler
Kreisleiter
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/koehler.htm

[FiveGoodMen]

25. I'll try again: WHAT point do you think the poster was trying to prove?

[struggle4progress]

27. Let's not play coy games

[FiveGoodMen]

28. That's what you call a direct question? A coy game?

[struggle4progress]

34. I actually answered your question in #21

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Translated: the children won't learn how to obey without thinking first if they are in secular

schools.

[edhopper]

7. I think the point is

not that today's fundamentalist that insist on religion in education are Nazis. It's that they are full of shit when they say Hitler was an atheist and insisted on removing religion from education.

[Obamaknowzz]

9. That's interesting. I'm going to look into that claim by the Righties.

[darkstar3]

3. Um...

I'm trying to think of an exception to Godwin's Law here, since I do like this particular snippet compared to today's arguments against atheism, but I'm just not seeing it.

[Obamaknowzz]

4. ......

“The advantages of a personal and political nature that might arise from compromising with atheistic organizations would not outweigh the consequences which would become apparent in the destruction of general moral basic values. The national government regards the two Christian confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality: their rights are not to be infringed.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Reichstag, Berlin, March 23, 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 371. )

[FiveGoodMen]

8. Godwin's Law is total bullshit

If a comparison is valid, it should be made.

How else can we learn from history?

[Obamaknowzz]

10. Godwin's law

From Wikipedia,
Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Hitler or Nazis or their actions. The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering genocide, propaganda, early 20th century eugenics (racial superiority) or other mainstays of the Nazi Germany, nor, more debatably, to discussion of other totalitarian regimes, since a Nazi comparison in those circumstances is appropriate. Whether it applies to humorous use or references to oneself is open to interpretation, since this would not be a fallacious attack against a debate opponent.

I'd like to hear his take on this. I'm betting he's a devout Christian.


:dilemma:

[eppur_se_muova]

11. As an online discussion grows longer the probability of someone citing Godwin's law approaches 1. nt

[darkstar3]

12. Very true.

:)

[ZombieHorde]

37. Godwin's Law has failed here because the thread began with a Hitler/Nazi/Holocaust reference and

therefor can not approach 1 since the thread began at 1.

[Obamaknowzz]

5. .......

“National Socialism has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State. For their part the churches cannot for a second doubt that they need the protection of the State, and that only through the State can they be enabled to fulfill their religious mission. Indeed, the churches demand this protection from the State.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a Radio Broadcast July 22, 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 375. )

[Obamaknowzz]

6. More...

"“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago — a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

“Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we pull ourselves together and make ourselves free!

“And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press, 1942, pp. 19-20. )

[struggle4progress]

16. See the account of his former roommate, August Kubizek, "The Young Hitler I Knew" at p 95

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=223716&mesg_id=223751

[struggle4progress]

17. Religion and the Reich

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=176477&mesg_id=176477

[struggle4progress]

18. Susannah Heschel on the Nazi Church

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=112061&mesg_id=112061

[struggle4progress]

13. It's a bit of a shame to treat Helmreich's book as you do, given what

he actually attempted to accomplish

... the author has set out to give a comprehensive account of an enormous subject without any particular interpretation ...
E. C. Helmreich's The German Churches under Hitler. Background, Struggle and Epilogue
( Detroit: Wayne State U.P., I979. $30)
J. R. C. Wright
The English Historical Review, Vol. 97, No. 382 (Jan., 1982), pp. 230-231

... Hitherto this field has been dominated (especially in the United States) by revisionist works attacking the hero stories produced in the immediate post-war years by the veterans of the church struggle in Germany, and by their admirers elsewhere ... Helmreich tries so hard to be fair both to the churches' warmest defenders and to their severest critics that he makes portions of the story which were exciting in the works of passionate partisans pedestrian and dull ... He mentions heroic protest where it can be found, does not gloss over blindness and failure, but makes it understandable (without excusing it) in the circumstances of the time ...
Ernst Christian Helmreich. The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1979. Pp. 617. $30.00
John Jay Hughes
German Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Oct., 1979), pp. 393-394

... The complexities of four hundred years of German ecclesiastical life and church-state relationships are masterfully delineated by Helmreich as he sets the stage for Hitler's attempt at Gleichschaltung ("coordination") of the German churches to Nazi policy ...
The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle and Epilogue.
By ERNST CHRISTIAN HELMREICH. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1979. 616 pp. $30.00.
Arthur A. Preisinger
Source: Church History, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Sep., 1980), pp. 346-347

... Hitler, as Helmreich demonstrates, was indifferent to Christianity, regarding it primarily as an important device for control of minds and resources. He was not averse to presenting himself as a believer when this posture furthered his purposes. However, he became furiously truculent whenever sectarian divisiveness or doctrinal piety impeded designs for a mighty and totalitarian Reich. Beyond this, as is well known, he sought to purge Christianity of Old Testament and other "Jewish" influences, and blend it with paganistic folk ingredients ...
ERNST CHRISTIAN HELMREICH.
The German Churches Under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue.
Pp. 616. Detroit, MI; Wayne State University Press, 1979. $30.00
Elmer N. Lear
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 447, The Social Meaning of Death (Jan., 1980), pp. 120-121

... Helmreich makes as clear as is possible the complex relationships between the Reich church, the intact Land churches, and the German Christians and Confessing church. Knowing that the latter two were factions that could be found within Land churches and even within parishes gives some idea of the complexity of the situation, which was not only complex but also fluid, responding variously to the changing pressures, tactics, and policies of the state. Hitler finally gave up trying to do anything with the Protestants and adhered more and more to a policy of strict separation of church and state, but that did not end his troubles with the recalcitrant Confessing pastors and the courageous Land bishops Meiser and Wurm. The latter was remarkably outspoken and had much to do with putting a stop to the euthanasia program. The Catholic church was better able to protect itself, since it was neither bedeviled by a German Christian faction sympathetic to Nazism nor plagued by problems of church organization and unity, and after 1933 the concordat provided some degree of protection. There were instances of heroism, but it was the finest hour of neither church. "Neither hierarchy nor pope ran away, none succumbed, none won crowns of martyrdom; all lived on to fight for their faith another day" ... an achievement of sorts, given the circumstances ...
ERNST CHRISTIAN HELMREICH. The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1979. Pp. 616. $30.00
Lawrence D. Walker
The American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 5 (Dec., 1981), pp. 1110-1111

... What is missing from this book is the incessant noise of the loudspeakers of Goebbels, the stamp of the jackboots, the swirling swastikas around the church altars, the fulsome praise of the Fuhrer from those pastors who had forsaken their
Bibles for Mein Kampf, or worse still attempted to combine both in a frothy brew of Germanized racist Christianity; the eager support by the majority of church men for nationalistic and racist propaganda, forsaking their critical judgment; or
the time-serving opportunism of other churchmen who found it prudent to pretend there was no clash of loyalties, and in so doing, aided the demonic forces of Nazism ...
The German Churches under Hitler. Background, Struggle, and Epilogue.
By Ernst Christian Helmreich. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1979. Pp. 616. $30.00.)
John S. Conway
The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul., 1981), pp. 468-469

[Obamaknowzz]

22. A shame? So you think this is about Helmreich's book?

:eyes:

I suggest you cut down on the quantity of what you read, sit back and employ your brain to analyzing a small portion of it.

[struggle4progress]

24. Helmreich make a careful attempt to describe accurately what happened

[Obamaknowzz]

32. How has what I posted conflict with Helmreich's take? ....

and if it doesn't then how have I done a disservice to his take?

[trotsky]

36. Here, let me explain.

You made the terrible, terrible mistake of assuming that a bad person who claimed to be religious might just have believed what he was saying.

It's perfectly fine when it's a decent person like MLK Jr. or Jimmy Carter or whoever - then it's OBVIOUS they are a good Christian.

But if they misuse or misinterpret (according to liberal believers) the scripture, then they are obviously a lying, manipulative atheist.

See? Quite simple. Just don't ask them about it, because all you'll ever get is the No True Scotsman fallacy.

[Obamaknowzz]

38. It is easy to dissemble as struggleforwhatever is doing when...

ALL of the relations between the Vatican and Hitler are excluded from the discussion and especially as I cite above in a question, the continuing relationship between the Vatican and Hitler's minions AFTER WWII; combined with the fact that Mussolini's version of the Iron Fist, his alliance with Hitler etc., PROVE that the VAtican failed in it's most important task serving as a beacon of good. The Catholic Church is inherently fascist economically and as an "opiate of the masses". It is and, always has been, against the downtrodden, from Assissi, to Wyclif, to Huss, to the Reformation it has always come down, in the final analysis on the side of big money and opposed to social justice.

[struggle4progress]

39. Three Sermons in Defiance of the Nazis by Bishop von Galen

Sermon by the Bishop of Munster, Clemens August Count von Galen,
on Sunday 13th July 1941 in St. Lambert's Munster

...yesterday, at the end of this week — yesterday, 12th July — the State Secret Police confiscated the two residences of the Society of Jesus in our city, Haus Sentmaring in the Weseler Str asse and the Ignatius-Haus in Königstrasse, expelled the occupants from their property and forced the fathers and lay brothers to depart without delay on that very day, not merely from their residences, not merely from the city of Münster but from the provinces of Westphalia and the Rhineland. Yesterday, too, the same cruel fate was inflicted on the missionary sisters of the Immaculate Conception in Steinfurter Strasse, Wilkinghege. Even their convent was seized and the nuns are being expelled from Westphalia: they have to leave Münster by 6 o'clock this evening. The premises and possessions of these religious orders are confiscated and assigned to the authorities of the Gau of Northern Westphalia.

Thus the attack on the religious orders which has long been raging in Austria, South Germany and the newly acquired territories of the Warthegau, Luxembourg, Lorraine and other parts of the Reich, has now stricken Westphalia ... I commemorate our venerable teacher of religion Friedrichs, now in a concentration camp ...

Sermon by the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Count von Galen,
on Sunday 20th July 1941 in the Liebfrauenkirche, Munster

... Last Sunday I lamented, and branded as an injustice crying out to heaven, the action of the Gestapo in closing the convent in Wilkinghege and the Jesuit residences in Munster, confiscating their property and possessions, putting the occupants into the street and expelling them from their home area. The convent of Our Lady of Lourdes in Frauen strasse was also seized by the Gau authorities. I did not then know that on the same day, Sunday 13th July, the Gestapo had occupied the Kamilluskolleg in Sudmühle and the Benedictine abbey of Gerleve near Coesfeld and expelled the fathers and lay brothers. They were forced to leave Westphalia that very day.

On 15th July the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Vinnenberg, near Warendorf, were expelled from their convent and from the province. On 17th July the Sisters of the Cross were driven out of their convent, Haus Aspel in Rees, and forced to leave the district of Rees ...

Then a few hours ago I learned the sad news that yesterday, 19th July, at the end of this second terrible week in our region of Munster, the Gestapo occupied, confiscated and expropriated the administrative centre of the German province of the Holy Heart of Jesus, the great missionary house at Hiltrup, which is well known to you all. The fathers and lay brothers still living there were given until 8 o'clock yesterday evening to leave their residence and their possessions. They too are expelled from Westphalia and the province of Rhineland ...

Sermon by the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Count von Galen,
on Sunday 3rd August 1941 in St. Lambert's Church, Münster

To my regret I have to inform you that during the past week the Gesta po has continued its campaign of annihilation against the Catholic orders On Wednesday 30th July they occupied the administrative centre of the province of the Sisters of Our Lade in Mühlhausen (Kentpen district). which formerly belonged to the diocese of Münster and declared the convent to be dissolved. Most of the nuns many of whom come from our diocese, were evicted and required to leave the district that very day. On Thursday 31st July. according to reliable accounts, the monastery of the missionary brothers of Hiltrup in Hamm was also occupied and confiscated by the Gestapo and the monks were evicted ...

I am reliably informed that in hospitals and homes in the province of Westphalia lists are being prepared of inmates who are classified as “unproductive members of the national community” and are to be removed from these establishments and shortly thereafter killed. The first party of patients left the mental hospital at Marienthal, near Münster, in the course of this week ...

http://www.churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/vongalen(n).htm

[struggle4progress]

40. ... Charges Raised against Galen as a Result

Division Chief — Propaganda
Berlin, 12 August 1941
To the Reich Minister for Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment
Concerning: Catholic Action

At the end of July and the beginning of August several meetings of a rather select committee of the Bishops' Conference of Fulda took place. It was decided at those meetings to continue the line of increasingly sharp opposition. The execution of those decisions becomes evident in three pastoral letters of the Bishop Count von Galen of Muenster. In the pastoral letters of 13 and 20 July the bishop attacked the Gestapo with harsh words because of the closing of several Jesuit houses and convents of the Mission Sisters of the Immaculate Conception; he calls the officials of the Gestapo thieves and robbers. Then he connects those confiscations with several bombings of the city of Muenster and calls them just punishment from heaven for the misdeeds of the Gestapo. In these pastoral letters he glorifies Pastor Niemoeller and attempts to disprove the charge of disturbing the unity of the people by claiming that it is only the Gestapo which is destroying the unity of the people.

After such attacks against official organs of the state, stronger in form and tenor than the earlier mentioned, more hidden accusations, the Bishop of Muenster on 3 August in a sermon to his diocesans came out with the most severe attack against the leadership of the German government ever made during the past decades. After first dealing again with the closing of those religious houses and convents he turns against the execution of measures concerning Euthanasia for incurable cases of feeblemindedness ...

I personally retain the viewpoint that, if the Fuehrer should agree with my proposal to hang the bishop, we could safely still continue along the lines used so far. However, should the Fuehrer reject this proposal and postpone a reckoning, and defer action in the present case also, until after the war, I herewith request that it be considered whether Dr. Goebbels should not try, as far as might be possible, to pursue the course he suggested.

Tiessler

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1572

[struggle4progress]

41. Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany

by Robert A. Krieg. Continuum. 234 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed by BRENNAN HILL, Ph.D., professor of theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio ...

... the Catholic hierarchy opposed the Nazi Party in its early days, and once the party came into power, nearly 25 percent of the German hierarchy were openly critical of Hitler and his government. The bishops from at least seven dioceses bravely spoke out against the abuses of National Socialism and some of them paid a heavy price for their opposition.

Bishop Sproll’s life was threatened and he was banished from his diocese of Rottenburg. Bishop Clemens August von Galen (beatified in October 2005) had to witness 29 of his Münster priests and his own brother imprisoned, and then he himself was marked for execution. Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich had his office trashed and his life threatened by storm troopers.

The author has also carefully researched theologians who opposed Hitler. Individuals such as Engelbert Krebs, Hans Reinhold, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Joseph Schmidin, Max Metzer, Jesuits Rupert Mayer and Alfred Delp, as well as the majority of Catholic theologians at the universities of Bonn and Münster, openly opposed Hitler and his brutality.

They too felt vicious retaliation from the Nazis. Storm troopers would commonly disrupt their classrooms and attack their homes. Romano Guardini and Krebs were dismissed from their positions; Schmidin was murdered in a concentration camp; Metzer and Delp were executed ...

http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Feb2006/books.asp



Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany
By Robert A. Krieg. New York: Continuum, 2004. 256 pp., $24.95 paper ...

Two main insights emerge from this book. One is that any kind of claim that either German Catholic leaders or the Vatican were enthusiastic about Nazism must be rejected. The evidence is clear that most Catholic leaders were quite sure that elements of Nazi ideology, and then vicious Nazi policies, were antithetical to Catholic values. The question was not whether Nazi neopaganism and human rights violations were wrong, but how and whether and at what cost to resist.

The other key insight is that the reflexively antimodern stance that characterized much of Roman Catholicism until the 1960s was the greatest source of theological/political confusion on the part of those who were temporarily taken in by the allurements of Nazism ...

DAVID P. GUSHEE
UNION UNIVERSITY
JACKSON, TENNESSEE

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3244/is_4_46/ai_n29144967/

[struggle4progress]

42. Twenty-Ninth Day: Tuesday, January 8th, 1946

The Trial of German Major War Criminals
Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany
7th January to 19th January, 1946

... In 1939 and 1940 a new activity began. Cloisters and abbeys were seized and disbanded, and many churches belonging to them closed ... Despite all these measures the results were not satisfactory, and so priests were then not only arrested, but also deported to concentration camps ... Provicar Lampert was released but required to remain in Stettin, where later he was re-arrested, and was executed in November, 1944, after having been condemned to death by secret proceedings

There is attached to this report a three-and-a-half page list entitled: "List of churches, nunneries, monasteries and ecclesiastical objects of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, seized, that is, confiscated, and of the institutions, confessional schools, etc., disbanded." Unless the Tribunal requires it, I shall not read these names ...

I quote further from the fourth and following paragraphs:

Direct hostility to the church was revealed in regulations against orders and monasteries, Catholic schools and institutions, against religious foundations and activities, against the buildings of ecclesiastical houses and institutions; without the least rights to defend themselves they were declared enemies of both people and State and their existence destroyed ... Catholic literature, newspapers, periodicals, church papers, religious writings were stopped, books and libraries destroyed ...

I ask that the Tribunal take judicial notice of it under Article 21 of the Charter and I suggest that I be permitted to summarise rather than read it.

It describes the maltreatment of Catholic priests-four hundred and eighty-seven of whom were sent to concentration camps as hostages-dissolution of religious orders, suppression of religious instruction in Czech schools, suppression of Catholic weekly and monthly publications, dissolution of the Catholic gymnastic organisation of 800,000 members, and seizure of Catholic Church property. It describes the entire prohibition of the Czechoslovak National Church and confiscation of all its property in Slovakia and its crippling in Bohemia. The report describes the severe restriction on freedom of preaching b the Protestants, and the persecution and imprisonment and execution of ministers, and the suppression of Protestant Church youth organisations and theological schools, and shows the complete subordination and, later, the dissolution of the Greek Orthodox Church. It states that all Evangelical education was handed over to the civil authorities, and that many Evangelical teachers lost their employment ...

Unless, the Court requires otherwise, I suggest that it is not necessary to read each of these certificates, which are all similar. I quote from Document 3263-PS, the first paragraph:

For quite a long time the religious situation in the region called 'Warthegau' has given cause for very grave and ever-increasing anxiety. There, in fact, the Episcopate has been little by little almost completely eliminated; the secular and regular clergy have been reduced to proportions that are absolutely inadequate, because they have been in large part deported and exiled; the education of clerics has been forbidden; the Catholic education of youth is meeting with the greatest opposition; the nuns have been dispersed; insurmountable obstacles have been put in the way of affording people the help of religion; very many churches have been closed; Catholic intellectual and charitable institutions have been destroyed; ecclesiastical property has been seized ...

I pass now to Page 2, fourth paragraph of the English text, the fifth paragraph of the German text:

... Then, while numbers of ecclesiastics were exiled or constrained in some other way to take refuge in the Government General, many others were transferred to concentration camps. At the beginning of October, 1941, the priests from the dioceses of the 'Warthegau' detained in Dachau already numbered several hundreds; but their number increased considerably in that month, following a sharp intensification of police measures, which culminated in the imprisonment and deportation of further hundreds of ecclesiastics ... No less painful was the fate reserved for the regular clergy. Many members of religious orders were shot or otherwise killed; the great majority of the others were imprisoned, deported or expelled ... The diocesan seminaries of Gniezno and Poznan, of Wladislavia and of Lodz were closed. The seminary in Poznan for the training of priests destined to work among Polish Catholics was also closed ... Not even the nuns were able to continue their charitable activities without molestation. For them was set up a special concentration camp at Bojanowo, where towards the middle of 1941 about four hundred sisters were interned and employed in manual labour ...

... The Tribunal will recall, from the previous reading of this document, the imprisonment of 2,800 priests and lay brothers in Dachau alone from 1940 to 1945, of whom all but about 800 were dead by April, 1945, including an Auxiliary Bishop ...

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-04/tgmwc-04-29-01.shtml

[trotsky]

43. Yes, that's true.

And somehow, throughout history, they've maintained a loyal cadre of apologists and enablers who tell us to disregard all that and instead judge the institution solely on its handful of decent people and not on the rotten, corrupt hierarchy and structure. Today some of these people spam threads when they lose an argument.

[Igel]

49. I'll bite.

Let's assume he meant what he said. Not entirely unreasonable. After all, character was both race-based and religious, and important.

In fact, he points to a faultline that still exists in the cultural value of education, what it's good for, what its purpose is. You see it on DU. You see it in the press.

Originally teachers in rural America were to be role models, good people, so that the young could emulate them and be good people. That was first and foremost: Character education. That presupposes a set of values held in common between the teacher and the parents, or at least a set of values the teacher can be seen to abide by.

Teachers were also to inculcate facts, appreciation for certain things, teach how to think. For some, this was the primary goal of education: To impart information, knowledge, skills.

A third purpose was adduced later, around the time that Hitler made this speech: To acculturate students, to provide a common American culture by providing the *same* character education or knowledge set to all the students, whatever their background. This is the social engineering aspect, because the culture taught would necessarily be at odds with most of the parents' cultural perspectives. This was the era of huge waves of immigration.

While I have no doubt that Hitler would have said what he needed to say to achieve his ends, I also believe he believed his ends were moral and good. I'd also assume that he'd want the schools to teach character and values--just as Dewey wanted a common set of progressive values taught to American kids, so Hitler would want what he considered "proper" values taught to German kids. There was a lot of commonalities between the US, Britain, Germany, Russia, and some other "enlightened" countries at the time--the details differed, but the overall thrust was eerily similar.

Hitler--like Stalin and others--also had a damned irritating thorough knowledge of language. He'd often say things that were utterly ambiguous. Of course, only they knew they were ambiguous; you'd listen and assume he was speaking using *your* definitions, but he'd know he meant *his* definitions. Then you'd sagely nod your head and agree, but you'd be agreeing on the choice of words, not what the words meant. For some, that's enough.

Note that these three strains continue. Some parents want their kids' education to focus on character, in accord with parental morality. Some teachers view education as imparting knowledge and understanding. And yet others want the school system to engineer society, and provide us with a common perspective (invariably, as with Dewey, their own, just not a melting-pot or specifically "anglo" culture).

Oddly, though, Hitler said that all religion must be derived from faith. This is different from how you'd usually want to understand "religion." It's not the set of doctrines that's at issue: A Catholic does not derive the formal features of his belief system from "faith." He derives it from his catechism. It's not the body of believers. Perhaps, referring to dictionary.com s.v. 'religion' it's "the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith."

If so, Hitler's saying that all character and practice of ethical values or doctrines is derived from faith. This seems fairly reasonable and not blasphemous. Sort of an old-fashioned use of the word, but so be it. Having it contrast with "secular" makes sense, too, even if secular education today does seek to instill values and practices based on faith (just not faith in a supreme being). Hitler wasn't an atheist; I don't know that I'd call him Catholic or even Xian. Some Nazi posters pointing out that nuns, with their vow of chastity, were essentially the enemies of the Volk because they withheld their wombs and genes from increasing the ranks of the Volk. On the other hand, sometimes he seemed Xian. I'd note that Stalin had no trouble seeking common cause with the Orthodox Church when he needed to, even though he'd spent a decade trying to destroy said church. Saddam, having secularized Iraq for many years, added strictly religious words to the flag and engaged in a big mosque-building campaign when he needed to. I don't think either found religion.