the Christian conservative faith
of the Third Reich's top leaders
in their own words ! |
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[ 1 ] ~ 2~
of the Nazis' Roman-Catholic leadership
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After reading this page, you will understand why the Roman Catholic Church
regularly threatens liberal Catholics with excommunication and the like,
while rarely doing much of anything to curtail the writings and/or activities
of conservatives in their church, no matter how outrageously immoral their behavior.
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While this page deals with the Roman-Catholicism of many of Hitler's associates in the top leadership of the Third Reich, it is building upon the foundation that I laid in my page about/Hitler's-conservative-Catholic-faith, a good example of which is the following quote :
"The national (i.e. Nazi) government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. . . .
I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity . . . We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent (prior administration's) immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years." (i.e. during the Weimar Republic) (from Hitler's "My New Order" Radio Broadcast on July 22, 1933 . . .The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922 – 1939, Vol. 1. pp. 871 – 872, Oxford University Press, London, 1942)
Throughout the Third Reich, no matter how savagely the many prominent R. C. Nazi leaders acted,
their standing as "good Catholics" was never challenged publicly by their church's leaders
until defeat or death had removed those Nazi Catholics from power!
The leadership of the Nazi regime was a virtual Catholic men's group, a chapter you might say, of the Knights of Columbus or Knights of Malta.
[ from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html ]
the largely Roman-Catholic leadership
of the Nazi regime was in lock-step
with its fellow R.-C. leader :
Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Josef Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Müller, Rudolf Hoess, Julius Streicher, Fritz Thyssen (who bankrolled the Nazi' rise to power), Klaus Barbie, and Franz Von Papen were all Roman Catholics, as were the heads of all of these NAZI countries : Leon Degrelle of Belgium, Emil Hacha of Bohemia-Moravia, Ante Pavelic of Croatia, Konrad Henlein of Sudetenland, Pierre Laval and then Henry Petain of Vichy-France, and the R.C. priest, Msgr. Josef Tiso, of Slovakia, (who was never defrocked even after the demise of the Nazis).
Although these were among the most visible Catholic lay people in their countries at the time, did Pope Pius XII excommunicate a single one of them? NO. How can anyone say that this pope did "all that he could", when he failed to take this obvious measure so as to make it clear to the millions of Catholic faithful who were enabling the Nazis to carry out their campaigns of mass murder, not only against Jews, but against their fellow Catholics in Poland, that they should have no part in these monstrous of crimes and most mortal of sins? Apologists for Pius XII who claim that their crimes caused these people to be "automatically excommunicated" miss the point that excommunication isn't intended to tell GOD who is a Catholic and who isn't but to tell THE FAITHFUL whom to shun.
The R. C. fascist dictators
of the 20th Century 1
( one of whom was a Catholic priest in good standing with
his church before, during and even after the holocaust ) : |
- Belgium's Leon Degrelle
- Bohemia-Moravia's
Emil Hacha
- Croatia's Ante Pavelic 3
- Germany's Adolf Hitler
- Hungary's Ferenc Szálasi2
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- Italy's Benito Mussolini4
- Slovakia's Fr. Josef Tiso5
- Spain's Francisco Franco
- Sudetenland's Konrad Henlein
- Vichy-France's Pierre Laval
- Vichy-France's Henry Petain
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Note 1:
The list of heads of state above was originally compiled by a Hugo Borreson, from Virginia, but thanks to information that I learned from Catholic critics, in Oct. of 2008, I removed some names from that list, as - for various reasons - they did not belong on it, such as Augustin Voloshin, Miklos Horthy, Engelbert Dollfuss, Andrej Hlinka and Anton Koroshec This list features only Catholics who headed the Nazi "axis" nations during the World War II era. Although the Portuguese fascist dictator Salazar - who spent 8 years preparing to become a priest - was a sympathetic ally of the Nazis, his nation never formally joined the Axis nations.
For a more complete list of Roman Catholic dictators around the world see Note 6 below. |
| Note 2:
[ the R.C.C.'s effort to insure
insure that this R.C. Fascist
leader of "Iron Cross", and
the person most responsible
for the mass-murder of most
of Hungary's Jews,spend
his eternity in heaven! ]
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| Note 3:
After quickly eliminating the relatively few Jews in their country, the Roman Catholic leaders of Croatia unleashed such mindless fury on their other non-Catholic neighbors that even their German Nazi allies were appalled. See CatholicArrogance.Org/ CroatianHolocaust.html or wikipedia.org/Ante_Pavelic.
Note 4:
Although Mussolini had turned against his church in his earlier adulthood, he and Pope Pius XI became close allies in the 1930s and 40s. |
Note 5:
Hitler with the Nazi head of Slovakia |
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Note 6: A more complete list of Roman Catholic dictators around the world would need to include Ngo Diem of Vietnam, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the Duvaliers of Haiti, and a whole litany of Catholic dictators in the many countries of Latin ( i.e. Roman Catholic ) America.
Efraín Ríos Montt (president of Guatemala from 1982 through 83) was one of the few mass-murdering dictators of Latin America who was NOT a Roman Catholic. He was a minister of the ultra-conservative Pentecostal "Church of the Word" based in California and one of the many conservative, "anti-communist", Christian dictators supported by the Reagan administration.
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Note 7: I didn't determine the religion of all of the people in question by digging them up from their graves and demanding to see "their papers". What I did was Google their names, together with words like "Catholic", "Protestant", "Christian", or "Lutheran", to find worthwhile information on the www. Since I was brought up in that period myself, I know how difficult it was to escape the religion of one's youth. What is perhaps most note-worthy about the subjects of this website is that no matter how monstrously they behaved, none of them managed to get themselves excommunicated by those who had the power to do it, either their pope or their bishops!
Ever since the defeat of these monsters, their church has been trying to distance itself from them. But, what good will it do to undertake that process now, when the monsters are powerless? The time when it would have achieved its purpose was when they were at the height of their power, and the Roman Catholics of Europe might well have been moved to oppose these monsters, instead of following them?
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the Roman Catholics in Nazi Germany's Leadership :
Among the many Nazi leaders who were Roman Catholics, in addition to Adolf Hitler, were Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Müllerv and Rudolf Hoess, (not to be confused with Hitler's Deputy Fuëhrer and secretary, Rudolf Hess below).
Hermann Goering, on the other hand, had mixed Catholic - Protestant parentage, while Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, Albert Speer, and Adolf Eichmann had Protestant backgrounds. Not one of the top Nazi leaders was raised in a liberal or atheistic family.
To be sure, the Roman Catholic Church wants to distance itself from all of these monsters now, but it made no attempt to do so at the time, when it could have made a tremendous impact. We only know of two individuals that Hitler killed personally: his wife Eva Braun, and himself. To kill ten million other people, Hitler needed millions of helpers, like the guards photographed below by the 2nd in command at Auschwitz, where an average of 6,000 Jews were being exterminated every day. He didn't get those helpers from some planet like Mars. He found about two thirds of them in the pews of the Protestant churches and the other third in the pews of the Roman Catholic churches,
The clergy all knew how much Hitler needed all of these helpers and how mad it would have made him if they were to tell the millions of their sheep how horribly sinful it was for them to have any part in the Jewish Holocaust. And the pope himself deliberately chose not to inform the consciences of his German subjects. As Lewy reported,
"When Dr. Edoardo Senatro, the correspondent of L'Osservatore Romano in Berlin, asked Pius XII whether he would not protest the extermination of the Jews, the Pope is reported to have answered, "Dear friend, do not forget that millions of Catholics serve in the German armies. Shall I bring them into conflicts of conscience?" The Pope knew that the German Catholics were not prepared to suffer martyrdom for their Church; still less were they willing to incur the wrath of their Nazi rulers for the sake of the Jews whom their own bishops for years, had castigated as a harmful influence in German life. . . The failure of the Pope was a measure of the Church's failure to convert her gospel of brotherly love and human dignity into living reality."
(The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, p. 304 )
- Fritz Thyssen (Roman Catholic), the single most important financial and industrial supporter of Adolf Hitler from 1924 through 1939. As a devout Catholic, he would have been especially amenable to advice from his church to stop supporting Hitler's rise to power. He gave up all his properties in Germany in 1939 when his conscience moved him to renounce Hitler and he fled the country. In 1941 he had a part in writing a book about his financing of the Nazis called, "I paid Hitler". In 1940, he had written an important article in the Swiss Arbeiterzeitung entitled, "Pius XII, As Nuncio, Brought Hitler to Power." Thyssen's American banking partners, George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush, who had been helping to finance Hitler's rise to power since 1924 continued to do so for another three years, until the U.S. government closed them down for "supporting the enemy" in 1942. (See www.JesusNoRepublican.Org/about/bushfamily.html ) Thyssen was caught by the Nazis, spent about three years in concentration camps and after the war was tried and punished relatively mildly for his part in Hitler's crimes.
The Devil's Disciples
by Anthony Read
a book published in several languages
focusing on Hitler's inner circle of
Nazi leadership : Göring, Goebbels, and
Himmler, along with their nearest rivals,
Bormann, Speer, and Ribbentropt.
- Heinrich Himmler (Roman Catholic) was born October 7, 1900, as the son of a secondary school instructor and strict Roman Catholic. . .
This mass murdering monster was brought up much like the Fuëhrer whom he idolized, as a devout Roman Catholic, and was careful to attend mass regularly. And Hitler had similar sentiments about his protege:
"A man often seen as the very personification of evil, Heinrich Himmler was ( i.e. had been made by his friend, Hitler) not only head of Hitler's SS police, but was also in charge of the death camps in the East. The account of Himmler's life and his impact on the rise and fall of the Nazi state make a gripping and horrifying story. But more than this, it is a profound moral and intellectual inquiry into the nature of evil in the human character.
Although Adolf Hitler held the ultimate responsibility for the killing of six million Jews, it was Heinrich Himmler who essentially laid the detailed plans for the Holocaust.
[ from http://www.auschwitz.dk/Himmler.htm ]
"Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer of the SS, Gestapo and German police forces, seemed to be the one most impregnated by clericalism amongst the Catholic members of Hitler's entourage. His father had been director of a Catholic school in Munich, then tutor of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria. His brother, a Benedictine monk, lived at the monastery of Maria Laach, one of the Pan-German high places. He also had an uncle, Jesuit Joseph Gebhard Himmler, who had held the important position of Canon at the Court of Bavaria."
"The S.S. organisation had been constituted, by Himmler, according to the principles of the Jesuits' Order. Their regulations and the Spiritual Exercises prescribed by the founder of the Jesuit order, St. Ignatius of Loyola, were the model Himmler tried to copy exactly... The whole structure of the direction was a close imitation of the Catholic Church's hierarchical order. A mediaeval castle, near Paderborn in Westphalia, called "Webelsbourg", was restored to serve as what could be called a SS monastery."
Walter Schellenberg, former chief of the German counter-espionage.
"The German author Walter Hagen reported: 'The Jesuits' general, Count Halke von Ledochowski, was ready to organise, on the common basis of anti-communism, some collaboration between the German Secret Service and the Jesuit Order'. As a result, within the SS Central Security Service, an organisation was created, and most of its main posts were held by Catholic priests wearing the black uniform of the SS. The Jesuit Father Himmler was one of its superior officers.
After the Third Reich's capitulation, the Jesuit Father Himmler was arrested and imprisoned at Nuremberg. His hearing by the international tribunal would have apparently been most interesting, but Providence was keeping a watchful eye: Heinrich Himmler's uncle never appeared before that court. One morning, he was found dead in his cell, and the public never learned the cause of his death." Walter Hagen, op.cit., p.358.)
[ More at www.spirituallysmart.com ]
- "The son of a bookkeeper, Josef Goebbels was brought up in a devoutly Catholic home. His parents hoped he would be a priest, but he saw his future as a writer and instead studied philosophy and literature, earning a Ph.D. in drama in 1921. Goebbels' literary aspirations were never realized, however. He received endless rejections from newspapers and publishing houses and ultimately, his pompous overwrought style made him more suited to the life of political rhetoric.
Joseph Goebbels (seated) with his wife Magda, their eldest son (standing and in uniform) and the six young children whom they killed before they and Hitler killed themselves in order to escape capture by the invading Russian forces
Goebbels was so close to fellow Catholic Hitler that Adolf served as first witness at Goebbels' Catholic marriage. The Goebbels admired Hitler so much that they gave all the children they had together H-names : Helga, Hilda, Helmut, Holde, Hedda and Heide. But at the end, Magda confided to her trusted friend and sister-in-law, "In the days to come Joseph will be regarded as one of the greatest criminals Germany has ever produced. The children will hear that daily, people will torment them, despise and humiliate them. (In order to spare them that fate) We will take them with us, they are too good, too lovely for the world which lies ahead".
The eldest son by Magda's previous marriage, was in the Luftwaffe, and he was the only family member to survive the war.
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"He was much disliked because of his malice and ill will, and though a mesmerizing orator, he lacked charisma. Nevertheless, he was a man of tremendous enthusiasm with an endless supply of ideas, and as a master of mass psychology, he became indispensable to Adolf Hitler."
In 1928 Hitler made Goebbels his propaganda chief. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Goebbels began to clamp down on all forms of artistic expression, banishing Jewish writers, journalists and artists from Germany's cultural life. He took control of the news media, making sure that it presented Germany's domestic and foreign policy aims in terms of Nazi ideology. He played probably the most important role in creating an atmosphere in Germany that made it possible for the Nazis to commit terrible atrocities against Jews, homosexuals and other minorities. In some instances, he authorized the violence himself. On November 9, 1938, after a German diplomat had been killed by a Jewish teenager in Paris, Goebbels issued instructions for "spontaneous demonstrations" to be executed against the Jews during the night. The subsequent pogrom, often referred to as "Kristallnacht," led to the deaths of 91 Jews, the incarceration in concentration camps of 30,000 others and the destruction of about 7,000 Jewish businesses and more than 900 synagogues."
[ from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX98. html ]
"By exploiting mob emotions and by employing all modern methods of propaganda he helped Hitler into power. In 1928, Goebbels was elected to the Reichstag, and when Hitler seized power in 1933 he made Goebbels propaganda minister. This position gave him complete control over radio, press, cinema, and theater; later he also regimented all German culture. Goebbels placed his undeniable intelligence and his brilliant insight into mass psychology entirely at the service of his party. His most virulent propaganda was against the Jews. As a hypnotic orator he was second only to Hitler, and in his staging of mass meetings and parades he was unsurpassed. Utterly cynical, he seems to have believed only in the self-justification of power. He remained loyal to Hitler until the end; in Apr., 1945, he killed his family and himself while Berlin was falling to Soviet troops."
[ from http://www.answers.com/topic/joseph-goebbels ]
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"Reinhard Heydrich (Roman Catholic) was one of Hitler's most ruthless Nazis and second in importance only to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization and the principle planner of the Final Solution. There was even talk of his one day succeeding Adolf Hitler."
According to the article at www.excatholicsforchrist.com/articles.php?PageURL=heydrich.htm , which provides as its source, Heydrich, The Face of Evil, by Mario R. Dederichs, 2005, "Heydrich's father, Bruno was an Evangelical Christian, it seems and a Freemason of the Orient Lodge! His mother, Elizabeth, however was a devout practicing Catholic and it would be her choice to have the young Reinhardt baptised a Catholic. . . In 1931 he married Lina, herself a Catholic who had been convent educated."
Unlike Hitler, who survived several assassination attempts, Heydrich was assassinated by partisans before he could execute his plans to kill millions of innocent Jews.
[ from www.shoah.dk/Henchmen/jpg_rheydrich.htm ]
- "Heinrich Müller (Roman Catholic) was Reinhard Heydrich's right hand man,
and carried on with his boss's diabolical work after Heydrich was assassinated.
After Heinrich Himmler and Reinhardt Heydrich, he was one of the most influential and feared Nazis in the Third Reich.
The author of the well-written article at www://excatholicsforchrist
.com/un-touchable-who-protected- martin-bormann -and- gestapo- muller/ described Müller as a "Roman Catholic and regular churchgoer, providing as his sources "The search for Gestapo Muller", by Charles Whiting and "Nazi Hunter, Simon Wiesenthal".
this 1938 photo features four of
the top R.C. Nazi leaders in Austria :
Seyss-Inquart, (leftmost) with
Hitler, Himmler & Heydrich
- "Reinhard Gehlen (Roman Catholic) was Hitler's Chief of Intelligence. Gehlen was a devoutly Roman Catholic member of the Knights of Malta, a Vatican military order. After the war, Allen Dulles, a fellow Knight of Malta and the uncle of Jesuit priest Avery Dulles, brought Gehlen and other Nazi criminals over to the US to work for the CIA and NASA. This operation, called "Paperclip", was sponsored by J. Peter Grace – a devoutly Roman Catholic man and a high-level Knight of Malta. According to Jesuit-trained author John Loftus, Gehlen trained Mossad at one point."
[ http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63389 ]
- Franz Von Papen (Roman Catholic) had headed the powerful Catholic "Center Party" and been a close friend of Pope Pius XII from the time that he had been the Papal Nuncio to Germany. Were it not for Papen, President Von Hindenburg might never have been persuaded to make Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. He beame Hitler's first Vice-Chancellor and the Catholic statesman who negotiated the infamous Concordat of 1933 on behalf of the Nazi government. After the war, the allies spared his life, eventually freed him and he returned to the good graces of the Catholic Church. He declared, "The Third Reich is the first power which not only recognizes, but puts into practice the principles of the papacy."
- Klaus Barbie (Roman Catholic) , called the "Butcher of Lyon" because of his role as chief of the Nazi Gestapo in Lyon, France during the worst period of the Holocaust, 1942-1944, where he took part personally in torturing French resistance fighters. As a young man he was so pious that he planned to study theology. During his trial he was still pious enough to proclaim "When I stand before the throne of God I shall be judged innocent".
- Hans Frank (Roman Catholic) was the Nazi appointed lord of Poland during the worst of the extermination of millions of Jews and Christians. ( All six it the Nazi death camps were located in Poland.) In Dec. of 1941, when the Nazis were thinking of changing their approach to "the Jewish problem" from just removing them from civilization to concentration camps to exterminating them from the earth altogether, Hans Frank gave this advice in a speech to Nazi leaders : "So liquidate them yourselves.' Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feelings of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible." Before he was executed for his monstrous crimes, it is reported that "Hans Frank himself reconfirmed his Catholic Faith and received Holy Communion and Absolution before being led to the gallows." According to Catholic belief, no matter how much suffering he inflicted on millions of his fellow human beings, Frank thereby earned eternal happiness in heaven.
- Josef Kramer (Roman Catholic) the commandant 'butcher of Bergen-Belsen" was born in Munich as an only child and grew up in a middle class family. His parents Theodore and Maria Kramer brought him up a strict Catholic. "
Oswald Pohl(Roman Catholic) a Nazi official and member of the SS (with a rank of SS-Obergruppenführer), involved in the mass murders of Jews in concentration camps. While awaiting execution after his conviction at Nuremberg, he.returned to his Catholic roots.
- Julius Streicher (Roman Catholic) was the Rush Limbaugh of Nazi Germany, whose gross anti-semitic mass-produced Der Stürmer influenced the German masses almost as much as his good friends Hitler and Goebbels. Although he abandonned the faith as an adult, he was the product of a very devout Bavarian Catholic family, See http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/julius-streicher.shtml . He was the ninth child of a Roman Catholic primary school teacher, and became a school teacher himself in Nuremberg.
- Rudolf Hoess (or Höss ) (Roman Catholic) was one of history's greatest mass murderers, the architect and SS Commandant of the largest killing center ever created, the death camp Auschwitz, whose name has come to symbolize humanity's ultimate descent into evil. Responsible for exterminating 2,5 million people in World War II, he was a mild-mannered, happily married Catholic who enjoyed normal family life with his five children despite his view of the crematoria chimney stacks from his bedroom window.
Rudolf Hoess would testify during the War Crimes Trials after WW2 that at peak efficiency Auschwitz had the capacity to 'process ten thousand victims per 24 hour day,'
- Martin Bormann (Christian) became very anti-Christian latter in life,
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Martin Adolf Bormann, Jr. (born 1930) was the first of Martin Borman's ten children. "As a child during World War II, he saw furniture in the house of Heinrich Himmler made from human skin and bones. His mother, realising that a lamp shade given to her by Himmler must also be made from human skin, went home and burned it. He says that the memory of this has haunted him throughout his life.
After the war, he became a Roman Catholic and was ordained as a priest. He was severely injured in 1969 and was nursed back to health by a nun. In 1971, they renounced their vows of celibacy and married. Mr Bormann has been a tireless campaigner to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and oppose the activities of Holocaust deniers." [ from
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Adolf_Bormann ]
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but. . . "Bormann first became acquainted with Hitler at his 1929 wedding to Gerda Buch. Her father was a chairman of the Nazi Party Court, and a powerful figure in Nazi circles, so Hitler served as a witness to the marriage. And a year later Martin and Gerda’s first son was christened Adolf, after his Godfather, Adolf Hitler." (McGovern 20-21). Doesn't this suggest that both of these leading Nazis were Christian enough to have celebrated Bormann's wedding and the christening of his son either in Hitler's Catholic Church, or in Bormann's Protestant one?
For much more on the collaboration of leaders
of the Catholic Church with the Nazis, check out
CatholicArrogance.Org/RCscandal.html
a group of R.C. leaders
at the opening ceremonies
of the Nazi Party congress
from left to right Joseph Goebbels, Robert Ley, Heinrich Himmler, Victor Lutze (the only non-Christian),
Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler and Julius Streicher. (Nuremberg - June 9, 1938)
"Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and most members of the party's "old guard" were Catholics", wrote M. Frederic Hoffet. "It was not by accident that, because of its chiefs' religion, the National-socialist government was the most Catholic Germany ever had. . . This kinship between National-socialism and Catholicism is most striking if we study closely the propaganda methods and the interior organisation of the party. On that subject, nothing is more instructive than Joseph Goebbel's works. He had been brought up in a Jesuit college and was a seminarian before devoting himself to literature and politics. . . Every page, every line of his writings recall the teaching of his masters; so he stresses obedience. . . the contempt for truth. . . "Some lies are as useful as bread!" he proclaimed by virtue of a moral relativism extracted from Ignatius of Loyola's writings..."
Frederic Hoffet: "L'lmperialisme protestant" (Flammarion, Paris 1948, pp.172 ss).
religious statements
made by famous
Christian Nazi leaders :
In a country where 99% of the population considered themselves "Christians", it should come as no surprise that most of Hitler's henchmen, along with the vast majority of German citizens, were Christians. Except for a very few who rejected Christianity (like Bormann and Rosenberg), the rest used their influence (whether through belief or political action) to support both Catholicism and Protestantism.
- Hermann Göring (a Lutheran who was proud of his Catholic mother) said :
"God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany."
- (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
Herman Goering's 1935 "wedding of the year" at Berlin's historic
Protestant cathedral, where Adolf Hitler (right) was the best man.
"How shall I give expression, O my Fuëhrer, to what is in our hearts? How shall I find words to express your deeds? Has there ever been a mortal as beloved as you, my Fuëhrer? Was there ever belief as strong as the belief in your mission. You were sent us by God for Germany!"
- (Reden und Aufsatze, Munich, 1938)
"Although he himself was a Catholic, Hitler wished the Protestant Church to have a stronger position in Germany, since Germany was two-thirds Protestant."
- (Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol.9)
"The Fuëhrer wanted to achieve the unification of the Protestant Evangelical Churches by appointing a Reich Bishop, so that there would be a high Protestant church dignitary as well as a high Catholic church dignitary."
- (Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol.9)
"With the Catholic Church the Fuëhrer ordered a concordat to be concluded by Herr Von Papen. Shortly before that agreement was concluded by Herr Von Papen I visited the Pope myself. I had numerous connections with the higher Catholic clergy because of my Catholic mother, and thus – I am myself a Protestant – I had a view of both camps."
- (Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol.9)
"I myself am not what you might call a churchgoer, but I have gone now and then, and have always considered I belonged to the Church and have always had those functions over which the Church presides– marriage, christening, burial, et cetera – carried out in my house by the Church."
- (Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol.9)
Just as it was noted above that Martin Adolf Bormann, Jr, grew up to to be quite the opposite of his infamous father, Herman Goering (who was of Catholic & Protestant background) had a younger brother who was very different from his notorious sibling. Albert played the part of a small scale Oskar Schindler, by saving a number of Jews, [from www.auschwitz.dk/Albert.htm and www.ncregister.com/ blog/the-good-goering].
"The pious Catholic parents of Joseph Goebbels raised him and his two brothers in that faith. He spoke of Hitler as "either Christ or St. John.". . . "Hitler, I love you!" he wrote in his diary.
"A Jew is for me an object of disgust. I feel like vomiting when I see one. Christ could not possibly have been a Jew. It is not necessary to prove that scientifically – it is a fact."
- in his attempt to win the eternal gratitude of Hitler, (from Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
"We have a feeling that Germany has been transformed into a great house of God, including all classes, professions and creeds, where the Fuëhrer as our mediator stood before the throne of the Almighty."
- in a broadcast, 19 April 1936
- Heinrich Himmler (Catholic )
"I swear before God this holy oath, that I shall have unquestioning faith in the Fuëhrer of the German Reich and people."
- reminding his hearers about the oath taken by all SS men as well as by the military forces (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990).
"You Einsatztruppen (task forces) are called upon to fulfill a repulsive duty. But you are soldiers who have to carry out every order unconditionally. You have a responsibility before God and Hitler for everything that is happening. I myself hate this bloody business and I have been moved to the depths of my soul. But I am obeying the highest law by doing my duty. Man must defend himself against bedbugs and rats – against vermin."
- in a speech to the SS guards, (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
- Rudolf Hess (a Protestant)
"No matter what human beings do, I shall some day stand before the judgement seat of the Eternal. I shall answer to Him, and I know he will judge me innocent."
- in a statement to the Nuremberg Tribunal, (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
"We believe that the Fuëhrer is fulfilling a divine mission to German destiny! This belief is beyond challenge."
- speech, 20 June 1934 (Reden, Munich. 1938, p. 25)
"With all our powers we will endeavour to be worthy of the Fuëhrer thou, O Lord, has sent us!"
- address to political leaders, Munich , 21 April 1938 (Rolf Tell, Sound and Fuëhrer)
"You take an oath to a man whom you know follows the laws of providence, which he obeys independently of the influence of earthly powers, who leads the German people rightly, and who will guide Germany's fate. Through your oath you bind yourselves to a man who – that is our faith – was sent to us by higher powers. Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through he strength of your hearts!"
- in his speech, "The Oath to Adolf Hitler," 1934
- Rudolf Hoess (Catholic)
"In his Nuremberg cell, told psychologist G.M. Gilbert how he got brought up in a rigorous Catholic tradition:
"My father was really a bigot. He was very strict and fanatical. I learned that my father took a religious oath at the time of the birth of my younger sister, dedicating me to God and the priesthood, and after that leading a "Joseph" married life [Catholics are taught that Joseph and Mary never had sex]. He directed my entire youthful education toward the goal of making me a priest. I had to pray and go to church endlessly, do penance over the slightest misdeed – praying as punishment for any little unkindness to my sister, or something like that.
- (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
"When asked if his father ever beat him, Hoess replied that he was only punished by prayer. The thing that made me so stubborn and probably made me later on cut off from people was his way of making me feel that I had wronged him personally, and that, since I was spiritually a minor, he was responsible to God for my sins.
- (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
- Robert Ley (a believer of some sort in God - denomination, if any, unknown.)
"Dr. Robert Ley held a number of positions in Hitler's Germany. He was Reichorganisationsleiter (Reich Organization Leader), responsible among other things for much of internal party education. He was also head of the German Labor Front (DAF), the Nazi "union" .
He wrote in his personal "statement of faith", "We believe that there is a Lord-God in Heaven, who created us, who leads us, who directs us and who blesses us visibly. And we believe that this Lord-God sent Adolf Hitler to us, so that Germany may become a fundament for all eternity.".
" Catastrophe was only narrowly averted. It was all due to the faith of one man! Yes, you who called us godless, we found our faith in Adolf Hitler, and through him found God once again. That is the greatness of our day, that is our good fortune!
-, in his speech, "Fate – I believe!"
"Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something. Only faith is sufficient. The Fuëhrer in Nuremberg said: "Woe to him who does not believe!" He who does not believe has no soul. He is empty. He has no ideals. He has nothing to live for. He has no sunshine, no light, no joy in life. He is a poor, poor man. What is wealth? What are possessions? What does it all mean? Problems come despite them, only faith is left. Woe to him who does not believe!
-, in his speech, "Fate – I believe!"
"Our god is the wonderful law of creation, whose amazing unity of all things shows itself if wonderful flowers, in growing trees, in new born children, in the secrets of a mother, in the growth of our people, in work and accomplishment and creation, in life itself. It is the joy we have in everything. How beautiful everything is. Do you feel the same way? I am so happy to be alive.
-, in his speech, "The Jews or Us...," 1939
- Julius Streicher (Catholic )
"After Hitler's release from prison in December 1924, Streicher hailed Hitler's return to politics as a "gift of God," a judgement the Fuëhrer never forgot. Streicher held an enthusiasm about allegations that the Jews murdered non-Jews in order to obtain blood for the feast of Passover. He charged that Jews hated Christianity and mankind in general. Streicher went to grotesque lengths in his attacks on Jews claiming the discovery that "Christ was not a Jew but an Aryan."
"If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the Jewish blood is finally to come to an end, then there is only one way – the extermination of that people whose father is the devil..."
- paraphrasing John 8:44 as his justification for extermination (Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol. 12)
"Only the Jews, he shouted, had remained victorious after the dreadful days of World War I. These were the people, he charged, of whom Christ said, "Its father is the devil."
- [See John 8:44, for Christ's accusation of father the devil], (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
"Germans must fight Jews, that organized body of world criminals against whom Christ, the greatest anti-Semite of all time, had fought.
"
- (Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
During the Nuremberg trials, Streicher was asked about his participation in the Nuremberg Race laws of 1935. He responded:
"Yes, I believe I had a part in it insofar as for years I have written that any further mixture of German blood with Jewish blood must be avoided. I have written such articles again and again; and in my articles I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the Jews should serve as an example to every race, for they created the racial law for themselves – the law of Moses, which says, "If you come into a foreign land you shall not take unto yourself foreign women." And that, Gentlemen, is of tremendous importance in judging the Nuremberg Laws.. These laws of the Jews were taken as a model for these laws. When after centuries, the Jewish lawgiver Ezra demonstrated that notwithstanding many Jews had married non-Jewish women, these marriages were dissolved. That was the beginning of Jewry which, because it introduced these racial laws, has survived throughout the centuries, while all other races and civilizations have perished."
- (Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol. 12)
When asked if there were any other anti-Semitic publications, other than Der Stürmer, published in Germany, Streicher replied:
"Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In this book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them..."
(Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol. 12)
"Now it goes to God!" -, his last words before his hanging, as he mounted the gallows platform to his death, on Purim Fest, 1946.
[Purim describes a Jewish holiday, celebrated in the spring to commemorate the hanging of Haman, biblical oppressor of the Jews].
(Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
- Joachim Ribbentrop (a Protestant)
"May God save Germany!" Joachim Ribbentrop, his last words before his hanging,
(Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990)
[ from http://jews-for-allah.org/messianic-jews/christianhistorywithjews/henchmen.htm ]
Why weren't Hitler and the
other top R. C. Nazi leaders
ever excommunicated ?
Why don't Catholics ever ask why their church never excommunicated any of the German Catholics who directed the Jewish Holocaust, i.e. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Josef Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hoess, Julius Streicher, Fritz Thyssen, Klaus Barbie, or Franz Von Papen, all well-known Roman Catholics, as were all of these heads of other Nazi states: Degrelle of Belgium, Pavelic of Croatia. Laval & Petain of Vichy-France, Fr. Josef Tiso of Slovakia?
Catholics say "just because you were born and/or baptized into a church does not make you "a Catholic or Christian". But it does, in man's eyes - which is what you and I are, and what all these people were. What people are in God's eyes we humans can't claim to know.
If any church wants to claim only high quality members as "genuine, " then, it shouldn't count untested infants or adults as members, as the R.C. church does, and it should instantly excommunicate those revealed to be unfit. And instead of boasting of having "over a billion members", maybe it should claim closer to "a dozen" !
Pope Pius XII was quite happy to wield his powerful excommunication tool shortly after World War II to dissuade Italian Catholics from even joining the Communist Party, which was very popular in their country at the time.
In 1955 Pope Pius XII himself proved how effective a tool excommunication could be when he used it on the Argentine dictator, Juan Peron for jailing several priests and nuns who had objected to his abusive rule. In just three months Peron's regime collapsed and he had to flee the country in fear of his life, (although he returned to the presidency in 1973).
Actually, Germany Catholic bishops did insist that membership in the Nazi Party was incompatible with membership in the Roman Catholic Church, prior to the year 1933.
When the Nazis went from just having horrendous ideas to gaining the power in 1933 to act on those ideas, virtually all public resistance to the Nazis by the R.C. church authorities ceased. Throughout the 12 year Nazi reign of terror, not one of the multitude of Nazi leaders who were Roman Catholic ever committed a crime against humanity monstrous enough to get himself publicly excommunicated from his church!
Even after the Nazis were defeated and no longer posed any threat to the pope, the Vatican, or the Catholic Church anywhere, did Pope Pius XII allow the Vatican to be used to protect thousands of Catholic war criminals such as the above to escape punishment for their war crimes? YES. Whose side was the pope on?
Here are some of the more infamous war criminals the Vatican did its best to protect from prosecution by the victors of World War II:
- Adolf Eichmann, "the architect of the Holocaust",
,
- Alois Brunner, referred to as his "best man" by Eichman,
-
Dr. Josef Mengele, "the Angel of Death",
- Franz Stangl, commandant of the Sobibór and of Treblinka extermination camp,
- Gustav Wagner assistant to Franz Stangl,
- Klaus Barbie, "the Butcher of Lyon",
- Edward Roschmann, "the Butcher of Riga",
- Aribert Heim, Mauthausen concentration camp's "Dr. Death",
- Walter Rauff, believed responsible for nearly 100,000 deaths
- Otto Wächter, who from 1939 on, as governor of the Cracow district, Wächter organized the persecution of the Jews and ordered the establishment of the Cracow Ghetto in 1941. Wächter is mentioned as one of the leading advocates in the General Government who were in favor of the Jewish extermination by gassing and as a member of the SS team who under Himmler's supervision and Odilo Globocnik's direction planned Operation Reinhard, the first phase of the Final Solution, leading to the death of more than 2,000,000 Polish Jews. After the war Wächter lived in a Roman monastery "as a monk", under the protection of Bishop Hudal, until 1949, when he died "in the arms" of Bishop Hudal at the Roman hospital of Santo Spirito.
- Andrija Artuković, "the Himmler of the Balkans"
- Ante Pavelic, head of Catholic Croatia, arguably the most murderous regime in relation to its size in Axis-occupied Europe.
one Nazi leader
who
was excommunicated:
In 2008, an internet apologist for Pius XII who calls himself "Tribunus" described this web page of mine as follows: "Your highly unoriginal and mendacious information is simply a regurgitation from your own black propaganda web-site," and proceeded to inform me that Pius XII had in fact excommunicated some of the above. When pressed, he could give me only one example. Here's what I learned, after a minute's research, about that one example :
"From 1940, the Belgian Roman Catholic hierarchy had banned all uniforms during Mass. On July 25, 1943, in his native Bouillon, (the head of state) Degrelle was told by Dean Rev. Fr. Poncelet to leave a Requiem Mass, as he was wearing his SS uniform, which Church authorities had strictly forbidden. For assaulting, beating up and sequestering the priest, Degrelle was excommunicated. The excommunication was later removed after confession by the Catholic chaplain of the Walloon Assault Brigade when it became clear that the unit was to be engaged on the Cherkassy front line." ( so as to avoid his being sent to hell if he should die in battle with this unforgiven deadly sin on his soul)
[ from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle ]
It is obvious from this episode that the Catholic Church's position was in effect "torture and kill all the Jews you like, but don't you dare put a finger on one of our own priests."
one Catholic who is proud
of sharing his faith
with "top Nazi leaders
After reading this web page of mine, one good Catholic wrote to tell me :
Date: Sun, April 27, 2008
"I really did not know that. It has made me very proud to be a Catholic.
Kind Regards.
Pat O'Callahan"
my idea of fellow members
Catholics can to be proud of:
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the officer who came closer than anyone to removing Hitler with a suitcase bomb was a devout Roman Catholic. God bless him, that was a truly heroic way of giving his life for his country.
Gordon Zahn was a Catholic social scientist who went to Germany in the 1970's in search of evidence of heroism on the part of Roman Catholics. What he found and eventually wrote about was quite the opposite of what he had hoped to find. Among other findings was the fact that there were only seven known cases of "conscientious objectors" among Catholics during the entire Third Reich. Thanks to Zahn's writing about one of these, one of these was beatified in 2007, and I have published a page about a hero his church won't canonize, because his lonely heroism is a perfect illustration of the truth of the prophet's cry, "Where there is no vision, the people perish".
Check out the joke
- which view as a "book" -
called The Myth of Hitler's Pope
One of the main thrusts of "Rabbi David Dalin" - whose main income seems to be as a professor at an ultra-conservative Roman Catholic institution they call "Ave Maria University" is an attempt to shift blame for the Nazi Holocaust from the Catholic Pope in Rome to the Muslim Mufti in Palestine. Although the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, may well have been a more willing collaborator of Hitler's than was the Pius XII - and therefore more culpable morally -, how crucial to Hitler's diabolical mission was the Mufti's support?
I don't know how many Muslims there were in Germany to be moved by the Mufti to embrace the Nazi agenda, but my reading tells me that some 98% of Germans were either Catholics or Protestants. Allowing for the Jews, the Jehovah Witnesses, the atheists and agnostics, the "Bolsheviks" that Hitler claimed were under every bed, how many of the balance were Muslims? Compared to the number of Catholics and/or Lutherans who helped Hitler by rating out their neighbors, sharing their church records to help the Nazis distinguish Christians from Jews, filling the ranks of the millions of people needed to serve as police, soldiers, sailors, airmen, train operators, guards, executioners, crematorium operators, etc., etc., how many Muslim followers was the Mufti able to persuade to do Hitler's bidding? The answer, of course, is only a tiny, insignificant fraction of the number of Christians who did the bidding of their Nazi Catholic and Protestant leaders.
See our extensive refutation of many of the other pathetic arguments in Rabbi Dalin's book at CatholicArrogance.Org/HitlersPope.html.
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