THE BISHOP OF MUNSTER

In war- time there is a natural skepticism which hesitates to believe accusations made by one belligerent against another. Our reaction to this is to say, �Oh, that is only propaganda.� There is, therefore, a special importance in the evidence of German hostility to Christianity which comes from a German source. Bishop Galen is a patriotic German. He is by no means of the type that is anxious to blackguard his own countrymen. Indeed, he has been attacked, unfairly, as some may think, by Lord Vansittart for his failure to criticize general German policies. However that may be, his patriotism and his detachment from politics strengthen the force of his evidence.

The story of his protest aroused a considerable newspaper interest. But the documents in the case have not hitherto been collected into permanent book form. Mr. Patrick Smith�s collection supplies a very deep need, and will be one of the important historical documents of the war.

This book, making public for the first time in English the full translation of the powerful sermons and official correspondence of the Bishop of Munster, Count Clemens August von Galen, will do much to answer the empty charge, frequently heard today, that Christianity has failed. The truth of the matter is that Christianity, like long forgotten villages in England, only begins to mean something to the majority of our people when struck at by the enemy. The mailed fist raises features on our maps that we had scarcely ever noticed before. It has been a comfortable, though regrettable habit of ours to take the good things for granted, both places and philosophies, peace itself and the British Empire, our own country and even our God. That is the way it has been with Christianity, forgotten except as an enduring symbol and silent cipher; heard only as an unctious phrase dripping from dull pulpits.

Hitler in his own barbaric way is opening our eyes to the value of the Christian concept of life which we must now fight to defend. It will cost us much to preserve the decent standards that two thousand years of Christianity have evolved, but the cost awakens in us a new appreciation of that Christian civilization. Hitler's smash and grab raids allover Europe have taught us more of geography and the map than our teachers succeeded in impressing upon our childhood memories. Who taught you that Narvic is in Norway? Hitler or your school atlas? Yet It is more than Trondheim and Vichy, bigger things than Hamburg and the Ruhr, that have appeared on our maps. Hitler has picked on a target that we have suddenly realized is Christianity and all that Christ taught! How many men would have bothered before to remember that it was Christ who preached the personal integrity of the individual against any and every Caesar who might seek to absorb him into the totality of the State. Christ honored Caesar, but not as the figure of absolutism; He rendered to Caesar, but emphatically reserved to God His share. No totalitarianism there, but a simple division of the sum of human loyalties. Hitler, however, knows'. None of this and would sweep the table of all our stakes, those on time and those on eternity.

It needs a very brave man to rap the knuckles of that grasping hand and to stiffen the courage of other men against the orgy of robbery. And that is what Bishop von Galen has done. With a courage overmastering all personal fear, he has worked upon the Christian formula, demonstrated how its truth is applicable even today, and solved many vexed and intricate problems for us, as well as for his own people. Without making of the pulpit a political platform for the defense or for the damning of any national policy as such, and without dismembering the Cross of Christ to make of it a weapon for the bludgeoning of a threatening political party, the Bishop has preached a holy and Christian philippic against perverted justice and against the sadistic cruelties of the Gestapo; and, with the vigor of a St. John the Baptist, has exposed the crimes against national and personal integrity, as well as the base solicitations of the totalitarian touts who would possess both the body and soul of their fellows, and who lust after power over the intimate loyalties of man to God. Yes, it calls for high-minded courage to denounce the insensate, passion of the modern Herod, lustily intoxicated at the banquet of his victory celebration5. Himmler has demanded his head on a charger, but so far the Bishop has not even been thrown into prison. That he is, so far as we know, still at liberty, in a land where the name of liberty is no more than a' hushed and frightened whisper from other days, or where the word freedom is only a broken aspiration heard from the lips of some tortured victim in the concentration camp, is sufficiently striking. It is testimony not to the freedom of speech enjoyed under the rule of the New Order, but to the diabolic astuteness of Hitler in his campaign against the Christian bodies, and especially against the Catholic Church. His amazing wickedness and insight make deep analysis, and are psychologically sound, when he declares that he will not fight the Church in the open with bloody persecution. Give the Church martyrs, he says, and you set up figures to be rallying points round which resistance can be gathered. Rather trample the Church on the trumped-up charge of treason and avoid any frontal attack on religious beliefs as such. Not open persecution nothing so crude or invigorating to the spirit of an oppressed minority. With Hitler subtlety curls its lips into a sneer at the sacred duties of Christians, and makes mocking insinuation beat down the ramparts of centuries-old Christian resistance against pagan ideas of bond and free. It issues in pitying laughter at the crucified Christ as compared with that magnificent blonde beast, the superman of Nietzsche.

As I perused the pages that follow in this book I remembered how twenty-three years ago I had reviewed for the New Witness a similar book, Cardinal Merciers Own Story, in which the Lion of Flanders had boldly accused the swashbuckling German occupiers of Belgium of arresting priests on spurious grounds, persecuting nuns, seizing ecclesiastical institutions and property, secularizing schools, and generally oppressing the Church. Truly the leopard has not changed its spots. But whereas Cardinal Mercier protested against what Germany did to an alien people, the Bishop of Munster protests against what Germany is doing to her own people. The courageous bishop directed his protests not merely to the Gestapo, but to the highest authorities in the State - to Hitler and Goering, but all in vain, for nothing is too sacred to be sacrificed to the Nazi lust for power. There have been others in history who have tried these tactics and who have been opposed by other brave bishops. Julian, Roman Emperor in the fourth century, was such a blood brother to Hitler and pattern to the modern Teuton leader. Their ideas run on parallel lines. Yet Julian, the apostate from the Christian faith, failed, and dying, wounded in battle, acknowledged his failure and composed his epitaph with the cry, "0 Galilean, Thou hast conquered!" Christ, on whom Christianity rests, had triumphed, while the great St. Athanasius, twice exiled for the cause of Christ, puts the memory of Julian's madness into the charm of simple language when he comments, "A little cloud has passed away." The lowering darkness of the Hitlerian madness will as infallibly pass because the Nazi State, which is not so much a State as a Society for the Abolition of All Things but Itself, cannot encompass Christianity so long as there are men of the courage of Bishop von Galen in Germany to speak the words of. St. Peter to the Council in Jerusalem: "We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging him upon a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these things."

Bishop von Galen has courageously borne witness to the present-day crucifixion of Christ in his Church, through the members of His mystical body, and has testified to the supreme rule of morality, that where loyalties clash, the higher must prevail. . . . "We ought to obey God rather than men." Truth, Right, Justice, the solemn holiness of the pledged word, and the other expressions of the Christian concept still stand fixed and immovable outside the embracing ring of modern totalitarianism. It may be, as G. K. Chesterton has written, that "the State has returned with all its ancient terrors out of antiquity; with the Gods of the City thundering from the sky and, marching with the pageant in iron panoply, the ghosts of a hundred tyrants," but if it be that they have returned, then certainly they will be cast headlong, back again into a dark and shameful antiquity. Christ cast out the devil of ancient paganism from the soul of a world possessed satanically, holding in cruel slavery the majority of its peoples for the satisfaction of a Roman Empire. Now once again that demon afflicts the world, with seven devils more wicked than itself to try to force entrance into the soul of mankind. It cannot prevail. History proves its failure in the past and the everlasting truth of Christ's promise guarantees the final collapse and destruction of that which is false and evil.

I wish this little book, setting forth the brave words of a true pastor of souls prepared to lay down his life for his sheep, a very wide circulation in the admirable English dress in which Mr. Patrick Smith has here presented it.

This is a very small book on a very large subject. I have tried to set out the sermons and correspondence of the Bishop of Munster, sketching in just sufficient background for those readers who may find themselves unfamiliar with the developments of the antagonism between the Catholic Church and the Nazi regime. I should like to record here my thanks to all those who have helped me in the compilation of this book, and especially to the Honourable Richard Hope. To my wife I am indebted for her invaluable advice in translation.

To a critical observer who has watched the rise of Nazism as well as its conduct in World War II, there can be little surprise in noting its marked antagonism to organized Christianity. Nazism lives on power. It must be all pervading or die. It can brook no interference, civil or religious. That is why the Reichstag became a mere puppet-show when Hitler came to power. That is why the judicature of Germany was so radically altered, as to represent but a mere shadow show of legal procedure. That is why Hitler created the complex uniformed grandeur of Nazi troops in an attempt to make it a substitute for that of religious ceremonial. And that is why the Gestapo came into being-to watch all German citizens.

Much has been written about the religious persecution of Nazism. It started with the Jews: but the Nazis did not rest there-they drove wedges into the Protestant Church, dividing it into the "German Christian" Church and the "Confessional Christian" Church. But the Catholic Church was more solid and difficult. Even trumped-up cases against Franciscans with which Goebbels flooded his Press in 1936 and earlier, failed to undermine the faithful.

All the time Rosenberg-the mystic Balt-was busy on his Ersatz for Christianity, with Germany as the Deity and Mein Kampf its Bible. The Nazi youth is as a result reverting to barbarism-it .is growing up believing in Germany as a country of the Herrenvolk, believing in racial intolerance and in the joy of making war. It is being fostered in the tradition of the Gestapo, the controlled Press-it is being educated (if such it can be called) in an erroneous and narrow, not to say biased way of thought - it is being dragooned to follow in the way of Himmler's terror organization, whose foul work has spread from Germany into every corner of Europe.

Enough is to be found in the daily Press on conditions in Germany today. Each day brings new reports of some further restriction, of some further act of violence or heathenism.

Last year a book was published by the Theodor Fritsche Verlag in Berlin. It was called Gott und Volk (God and Nation). In it is a clear picture of the new officially sanctioned "German Faith."

Here are a few quotations to show the kind of faith the Nazis mean to establish in Germany-and beyond if they can.

"Two fronts are clear. One is called Christianity - the other Germany. There is no third. There is also no compromise."

"We Germans have been called upon by Fate to be the first to break with Christianity. It is an honour."

"A thousand bonds tie us to the Christian belief, but one blow will make us free. To make ourselves strong and ripe for this step is our task of honest obligation."

"Every epoch has its sign. Two epochs and two signs oppose each other today: the Cross and the Sword. The sword is the weapon of the fighter. The sufferer drags the Cross."

"We are on the offensive. The front of the Cross has a strong and a weak flank. The strong is the Catholic. The weak is Protestant. We are fighting against both. The tortured, pain-torn figure of the crucified Christ will disappear. Our heroes must again carry swords in their fists."

On Baptism it says: "We will receive the newly born into the community of the nation, not as Catholics, not as Protestants, but as Germans."

On Marriage: "In future there will only be a German consecration of marriage. Marriages will not be concluded in the name of the Church."

On the Bible: "Take the Old Testament and burn it in consecrated places. And thank God that He sent the Fuhrer."

On Civilization: "The age of Christian civilization is past. Only German civilization has anything to say. We are German. Therefore we cannot be Christians. The German has two obligations, earthly and heavenly. As long as he has two masters, the Fuhrer and the Saviour, he will not find his way to eternity."

On Education: "Everyday, every hour, which our youth spends in church is lost. We want to educate them to tear Christianity out of their hearts: only Germany has a place there. How do we want to educate our children? As though they had never heard of Christianity!�

A quarter of a million copies of this book have been distributed already in Germany.

It will be remembered that in President Roosevelt's speech on Navy Day, 1941 (27th October) he declared: "The United States Government has in its possession a document made in Germany by Hitler's Government.[1] It is a detailed plan, which, for obvious reasons, the Nazis do not wish to publicize just yet. . . . It is a plan to abolish all existing religions, Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish alike."

This plan, "The 30-Point Plan," has been drawn up by Rosenberg, who for years has been an intimate associate of Hitler, and whom Hitler appointed a philosophical and religious official of the Nazi Party.

Rosenberg's plan-which is an elaboration of the foregoing exposition in Gott und Volk quoted above - has already been accepted in high Party circles and is already being put into effect-notably in the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls organizations, on which the Nazi party depends for its continued existence.

BISHOP GALEN - THE MAN

The author will, it is hoped, be forgiven for sketching in once more the well-known details of religious persecution today. The interested reader will find in the Dean of Chichester's book[2] a sound and comprehensive view of the whole situation.

Against this neo-pagan background, then, the out- spokenness of those in Germany who still hold fast to their religious convictions, and profess their hatred of that aspect of Nazism which seeks to rob them of their freedom in spiritual matters, is all the more courageous.

Few men have, however, stirred the world by their courage and frankness as did the Bishop of Munster, Count Clemens August von Galen, last year. His three sermons, denouncing the "inner enemy," i.e. the Gestapo and its works, have gone round the world. They have permitted us to see the inner situation in the Third Reich as a German himself views it. "We demand justice," cries Galen, "or our country will perish- from inner corruption and rottenness."

Mgr. Galen comes from an old Westphalian family (ironically enough the Nazi racial theorists describe the Westphalians as the purest of the German tribes). The Galen family has given many good Catholic leaders and priests to Germany. An ancestor of his, Mgr. Christopher Bernhard, was Bishop of Munster in 1650 and, more recently, an uncle of his was auxiliary Bishop of Munster.

Count Galen's father was a leader of the Centrum Party, the Catholic Party of the pre-Hitler period. Bishop Galen himself was born at Dinklage, Oldenburg, on the 16th March 1878. He studied at lnnsbruck for the priesthood and was ordained in 1904. He worked in Berlin - becoming President of the Workers' Circle. He saw military service as a Field-Curate 1914-1918, and when the war was over went back to Berlin. Ten years later, he went to Munster and it was-in his parish church of St. Lambert's that he preached the first of his now famous sermons.

Count Galen was consecrated Bishop of Munster in 1933 - the year Hitler ascended to power. He has thus seen the growing animosity of the Nazis to Christianity - and especially to the Catholic Church from the very start.

Bishop Galen says this of himself and of his family: "We Galens are neither particularly clever nor handsome, but Catholicism is in our bones."

There are many stories told of him; his is a personality about which legends soon spring up.

Should he become a victim of the Nazi regime, he will indeed be reckoned among the martyrs of the Catholic faith.

There are reports that Himmler had already asked for his arrest earlier. The Gestapo came to his palace to take him away. Re met them with perfect composure and asked them to wait a moment. The Bishop then went into another room and after a few minutes reappeared in mitre and episcopal vestments. "I am ready to go," he said. The Gestapo, however, refused to arrest him. Another time he is said to have threatened to carry the Host alone' through the streets of Munster if the traditional Corpus Christi procession were banned.

An American journal records a dramatic incident in the cathedral at Munster. Bishop Galen from the pulpit was inveighing against the great interference of the Nazi authorities with family life and religious duties.

He was interrupted by a young Nazi who demanded in a loud voice: "What right has a celibate to talk about the problems of youth and marriage?"

The Bishop commanded silence with an emphatic thump on the pulpit and replied: "Never will I tolerate in this cathedral any reflection upon our Fuhrer!"

There is no doubt that Galen is a patriot. Because of it, his condemnation of the outrages of the Gestapo and the dire warnings that the Reich will collapse if Himmler goes on with his tyranny, is all the more damning.

Dr. Maier-Hultschin, a former Catholic newspaper editor in Germany, says of Bishop Galen: "He is undoubtedly the most popular bishop in Germany. His every pronouncement travels round the Reich in record time."

Not only the people inside Germany, but also many German soldiers at the front, have received copies of Galen's sermons. They have created a sensation the like of which has not been known in Germany since Hitler assumed power and stifled liberty.

There were heavy R.A.F. bombing attacks on Munster in July 1941. The Bishop of Munster, Count Galen, used the occasion of these raids by the "external" enemy, as he called them, to give added point to a sermon he preached about the activities of the "internal" enemies of Germany. He delivered his address on Sunday, 13th July 1941, from the pulpit of his old Church of St. Lambert's in Munster, where he had been its priest from 1929 until his elevation to the Bishopric of Munster in 1933-the year Hitler seized power.

Here is the full text in translation of the first of the three remarkable sermons which he made in Munster on the 13th and 20th July and the 3rd August 1941. They have been heard since not only in Munster, not only in Germany and Europe, but throughout the whole world.

"Dear Catholics of St. Lambert's, "I have felt the need of coming in person to read from the pulpit of the parish church of Munster my pastoral letter on the events of last week, and the desire of expressing my heartfelt sympathy especially to my former parishioners. In some parts of this parish of St. Lambert's damage and casualties have been particularly heavy, as indeed they have been in other parts of the city. I trust the action of the appropriate municipal and Government authorities will relieve some of the suffering, but I rely particularly on your mutual love and the results of today's collections for the Catholic Charity League, Caritas, and the Parish Relief Organization.

"I had intended to add a few words on the meaning of the visitations, to say that God visits us to take us to Himself. God wishes to take Munster to Himself. Our forefathers were truly at home with God, in His Holy Church. Their life was indeed sustained by faith in God, by the holy fear of God and by love of God-their political life, as well as their family and social life. Has it always been thus in our time? God wants to take Munster to Himself.

"I had intended to think for a few moments with you to-day on this theme. But I have had to abandon it, for today I feel obliged to speak publicly of something else - of a perturbing event which has befallen us at the end of this week of terror.

"Munster has not yet recovered from the appalling devastation which the external enemy and military adversary has inflicted on us. To crown all, yesterday, at the end of this dreadful week, yesterday, on the 12th July 1941, the Gestapo, confiscated both houses of the Society of Jesus in the city, Sentmaring House in the Weserlerstrasse and Ignatius House in Konigstrasse. Only yesterday, they drove the owners from their own property, they forced the Reverend Fathers and lay brothers to leave without delay, not only their houses, not only our city, but also Westphalia and the Rhine Province. The same hard fate has overtaken the good Sisters in Steinfurtstrasse. Their convent has also been confiscated, the Sisters have been expelled from Westphalia and must leave Munster by 6 o'clock this evening. The houses of the two Orders, all they contain, and all their possessions have been sequestered for the 'Gauleitung'[3] of Northern Westphalia.

And so we see that the assault upon monasteries, which already has been raging for some time in Austria, in Southern Germany, in the recently acquired territories of Western Poland, Luxembourg, Lorraine and in other parts of the Reich, has now been let loose in Westphalia. We must be prepared for the repetition of such terrible news in the next few days, when one monastery after the other will be seized by the Gestapo, and their occupants, our brothers and sisters, the children of our families, loyal Germans, will be thrown out into the streets like profligate slaves and chased out of, the country like vermin. All this is happening at a time when everyone is trembling in fear of new air raids which may kill us all, which may turn anyone of us into a homeless refuge. At such a moment as this, innocent, deserving men and women, esteemed by many of us, are being hounded out of their modest homes; German citizens-our fellow citizens of Munster, are being made homeless fugitives.

"And why? I am told: for political reasons! Other reasons have not been given. No inmate of these monasteries has been accused of any offence or crime or summoned before a court or indeed sentenced. If anyone of them is guilty, let him by all means be brought to justice. But are the innocent to be punished too?

I ask you, who for years have seen the Jesuit Fathers and the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception leading their quiet lives, lives wholly devoted to the worship of God and the salvation of their fellow-men, I ask you: Does anyone of you consider these men and women guilty of a punishable offence? Who would dare to prefer a charge against them? If anyone does dare, let him then make good his charge! Not even the Gestapo has preferred such a charge, much less a court of justice or the Public Prosecutor. I publicly testify, as the bishop who has the official control over these Orders, that I have the greatest respect for the quiet, modest Missionary Sisters of Wilkinghege, who are being driven out today. Their house was founded by my venerable episcopal friend and fellow countryman, Bishop Amandus Bahlmann, who founded the house chiefly for missionary work in Brazil. He worked devotedly and untiringly for Germany's good name in Brazil.

"I testify as a German and as a bishop that I have the greatest respect and veneration for the Jesuit Fathers, whom I have known intimately for fifty-six years since my early youth. I testify that until my dying day I shall remain attached in loving gratitude to the Jesuit Fathers, my teachers, tutors, and friends, and that I hold them in even greater veneration at this moment, when Christ's prophecy to His disciples is once more being fulfilled in them: 'As they have persecuted me, even so will they persecute you. If you had been of the world, the world would love his own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.�

"Thus I greet you to-day from this church in the name of all faithful Catholics in the town and diocese of Munster, as the elect of - Christ, hated by the world. I greet you in affectionate love as you go out into unmerited exile.

"May God reward them for all the good they have done us! May God not punish us and our city for the unjust treatment arid exile of these faithful disciples. May God in His omnipotence restore to us our dear banished ones, our brothers and sisters!

"My dear children in Christ! Because of the grievous visitation which has come over us from enemy air raids, I had at first intended to keep silent in public about other measures recently taken by the Gestapo, which indeed provoke my public protest. But if the Gestapo ignores those events which have rendered homeless hundreds of our compatriots, if it continues at this of all times to cast our innocent fellow citizens into the streets, to banish them from Westphalia, then I dare no longer hesitate to express in public my justified protest and give this grave warning.

"Many times already, and quite recently, we have seen that the Gestapo imprisons blameless and respected Germans without a verdict from the courts and without giving its victims an opportunity to defend themselves. The Gestapo has deprived them of their liberty, expelled them from their homes and interned them in some other part of the country. In the last few weeks even two members of my immediate council, the Cathedral Chapter, were suddenly dragged from their dwellings by the Gestapo, taken away from Munster and exiled to distant places, which they have been forced to accept as their domicile.

"I have received no answer whatever to the protests which I sent some weeks ago to the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs.[4] But this much at least was confirmed when I telephoned to the Gestapo. The Reverend Canons are under no suspicion or accusation of any criminal act. They have been punished by banishment entirely without fault of their own, without any charge and without a possibility of defense. Dear brethren! Listen carefully to what I am going to tell you. It has been officially confirmed that the Reverend Canons Vorweck and Echelmeyer have not been accused of any punishable act. They have done nothing worthy of punishment. And yet they are punished with exile!

"And why? Because I, their bishop, did some thing displeasing to the Government. When, in the course of the last two years, four vacancies in the Cathedral Chapter were filled, the Government announced in three cases that it did not approve of the appointments. Under the terms of the Prussian Concordat of 1929, interference from the Government is expressly forbidden; I therefore confirmed two of the four appointments. Let them bring me before the courts, if they think I have acted contrary to the law. I am certain that no independent German court of justice will be able to condemn me for my action in filling the canonries.

"Is the reason why the Gestapo has been instituted to replace the courts of justice, the fact that the Gestapo's actions in the Reich are not, alas, themselves subject to juridical revision? Every German citizen is utterly defenseless before the power of the Gestapo. I repeat: utterly defenseless. Many of our fellow citizens have personally experienced this during the last few years; our religious instructor, Friedrich, for instance, who is being held, a prisoner, without trial or sentence. Likewise the two Reverend Canons, who are now exiled. Likewise our monks and nuns who have suddenly been driven from their homes, from their city and province.

"Not one of us is certain, though he be the most loyal, the most conscientious citizen, though he knows himself blameless, not one of us, I say, is certain that he will not one day be dragged out of his house, deprived of his liberty and shut up in the dungeons and concentration camps of the Gestapo.

"I am well aware that this may happen to me, perhaps today or on some future day.[5] And it is because I shall then no longer be able to speak publicly that I will speak publicly today, I will openly warn them not to continue on this course, which I am firmly convinced will call down God's punishment and bring our people and country to misery and ruin.

"In protesting against these punitive measures of the Gestapo, in publicly demanding the abolition of this state of affairs and the legal revision or repeal of all these Gestapo measures, I am doing no more than what the Governor-General of Poland, Reichsminister Dr. Frank,[6] has done. In February of this year he wrote as follows in the periodical Akademie filr deutsches Recht: 'We aim at that proper equilibrium of internal order which prevents criminal law from turning into the absolute power of the public prosecutor over prisoners, who from the outset are condemned and deprived of all means of defense. The law must provide the individual with the legal possibility of defense, and of establishing the facts, thus protecting him against arbitrariness and injustice. . . . Otherwise we had better not speak of criminal justice but only of the power to punish. It is impossible to reconcile a system of justice with verdicts which allow of no defense. It is our task to proclaim authority in every form just as emphatically as others do, to express the principle that it is our duty boldly to protect the authority of law as an essential constituent of any enduring power.' This is what the Reichsminister, Dr. Hans Frank, once wrote.

"As a bishop, whose duty it is to proclaim and defend the divinely appointed law and moral order, which grants every individual inalienable rights and liberties, before which, according to God's will, all human interference must cease, I feel the call, like Dr. Frank, boldly to uphold the authority of law and denounce the condemnation of innocent men without legal defense as an injustice which cries to Heaven.

"Brethren in Christ! The imprisonment of many blameless men without a chance of defense and without a legal verdict, the restrictions on the liberty of the two Reverend Canons, the breaking up of monasteries, the expulsion of innocent monks and nuns, of our brothers and sisters, force me today publicly to remind you of the eternal and unassailable truth: Justitia est fundamentum regnorum: Justice is the only sure basis of every State.

"The right to life, to inviolability and to liberty is an indispensable part of every moral social order. The State has, of course, the authority to restrict the rights of its citizens by way of punishment; but the State has this authority only as far as lawbreakers are concerned, whose guilt must be proved by impartial juridical procedure. Any State which oversteps this divinely imposed limit, and permits or causes the punishment of innocent men, undermines its own authority and the respect for its dignity in the conscience of its citizens.

"In recent years, it has, alas, been our lot to observe again and again that more or less heavy sentences, usually imprisonment, have been imposed and carried out on victims whose guilt has never been established in a regular court of justice, and who were not given an opportunity to defend their right nor prove their innocence.

"How many German citizens are languishing in police detention, in concentration camps, how many have been banished from their native places although they have never been condemned by a public court of justice! How many, after being exonerated by the court, or after completing the term of punishment imposed by the court, have once more been seized by the Gestapo and kept under arrest! How many have been expelled from their homes or from their place of work! I remind you once more of the Reverend Bishop of Rothenburg, Johannes Baptista Sproll, an 0ld man of seventy, who but recently was forced to celebrate his 25th Episcopal Jubilee far from his diocese, because the Gestapo expelled him from his bishopric three years ago. I mention once more our two canons, the Reverend Fathers Vorwerk and Eehelmeyer. I think further of our revered religious instructor Friedrich, who is languishing in a concentration camp. I will refrain from mentioning further names today. The name of an evangelical pastor who, in the last war, risked his life for Germany as a German officer and submarine commander, and has been deprived of his liberty for years now, is known to you all. We have the greatest respect for his courage and the bravery with which this worthy German confesses to his Christian faith.[7]

"From this last example you see, dear brethren, that the request which I am publicly making today is not for something denominational or specifically Catholic, but for something which concerns all Christians; it is a request for something fundamentally human, national, and religious.[8]

"Justice is the foundation of the State. We deplore with the greatest anxiety to see today this foundation being shaken, and that justice, a natural and Christian virtue, which is indispensable to the ordered condition of every human community, is not being granted and upheld unequivocally for all men. N at only for the sake of the rights of the Church, not only for the rights of the human personality, but also because we love our people and feel deep anxiety for our fatherland, that we beg, we ask - yes, we demand justice. Who would not fear for the stability of a house, when he sees that its foundations are being undermined.

"Justice is the foundation of every State! Only if those in authority themselves bow in reverence before the royal majesty of justice and use the sword of punishment in the service of justice alone, can they with any prospect of permanent success honestly oppose the illegal use of force by those who happen to be stronger; only then can they honestly oppose the degrading of the weak to humiliating slavery. Those in authority can only count on the true adherence and the free service of honorable men if their measures and punishments are seen in the light of impartial scrutiny to be free from all arbitrariness and in keeping with the immaculate scales of justice.

"For that reason the exercise of judgment and punishment without the possibility of defense, without the verdict of a court of justice, 'the condemning of prisoners out of hand without a hearing,' as Dr. Frank calls it, gives rise to a feeling that there is no justice and to an attitude of anxious timidity and servile cowardice, which in the long run must destroy the national character and disrupt the national community.

"All right-thinking Germans share this conviction and this fear. A high legal official said so frankly and boldly in 1937 in the Reichsverwaltungsblatt.[9] He wrote: 'The greater the absolute powers of an authority, the more necessary it is to have clear proof of their proper use; for miscarriages of justice will make themselves felt all the more strongly, and the danger of arbitrariness and abuse of these powers is all the greater. If the administration exercises no jurisdiction, there must be some established method of impartial control, so that there can arise no feeling of lack of justice, which in the long run would be certain to harm the national community.'

"When the Gestapo imposes its penalties, juris- diction on the part of the administration is excluded. Since none of us knows of a way which would admit of the impartial control of measures taken by the Gestapo, of its restrictions on personal liberty, of its deportations, its arresting and incarceration of German citizens in concentration camps, there is already a widespread feeling of a lack of justice and indeed of cowardly timidity among the German people which grievously injures our nation.[10]

"My episcopal office, which requires that I defend the moral order, the oath, which I have sworn before God and the representative of the Government, to prevent, as far as possible, all harm which may threaten the German State, urges me to utter a public warning about the deeds of the Gestapo.

"My brethren, people will perhaps reproach me with weakening the home front of the German people through using such frank language during the war. To that reproach I make the following reply: It is not I who am the cause of any weakening of the home front, but those who, disregarding the war, disregard the external distress of the people here in Munster, and at this of all times, at the end of a week of terror from fearful enemy air raids, impose hard penalties on innocent citizens, without a verdict of the courts or the possibility of defense. It is these men who weaken the home front when they punish our fellow countrymen, our brothers and sisters, deprive them of their property, cast them out into the street and banish them from the country; it is they who undermine the sense of justice, it is they who weaken the security of the Reich and the trust in our Government. I, therefore, raise my voice in the name of the righteous German nation, and in the interests of the solidarity of the home front. As a German, as an honourable citizen, as a representative of the Christian religion and as a Catholic bishop, I cry aloud: We demand justice! If this cry remains unheard and unheeded, if the rule of justice is not restored, our German nation and country will, despite the heroism of our soldiers and their glorious victories, perish from inner corruption and rottenness.

"Let us pray for all those in distress, particularly for our exiled monks and nuns, for our city of Munster, that God may spare us further trials. Let us pray for our German people, for Germany and its leader: Our Father. . ."

On the day following this outspoken sermon from St. Lambert's Church, Bishop Galen sent telegrams of protest on the action of the Gestapo to Goring, to the Reich Minister of the Interior,[11] to the Reich Minister of Justice, Gurtner, and to Lammers, Chief of the Reich Chancellery. It will be remembered that in his first sermon, Bishop Galen announced that he was still awaiting a reply to his telegram to Kerrl, the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs which he had already sent some weeks before.

After the attempts made by the enemy since the 6th July to destroy the city of Munster in dreadful night raids, the Gestapo began on the 12th July to sequester the monasteries and houses of the Orders of the city and district and to expropriate them, with their contents, for the benefit of the Gauleitung. The inmates, innocent German men and women, honorable scions of German families, many of whose members are fighting as soldiers for Germany, are being robbed of their homes and property, thrown into the streets, and exiled from their home province. I ask the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor, in the interests of justice and the solidarity of the home front, for protection of the freedom and property of Germans against the tyranny of the Secret State Police and against robbery for the benefit of the Gauleitung.

"Reich Minister and Head of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 17th July 1941, Vosstrasse 6, Temporary Headquarters of the Fuhrer.

"I have forwarded your telegram of 14th inst. to the Reichsfuhrer SS. and Chief of the German Police[12] in the Reich Ministry of the Interior for further consideration."

The Bishop of Munster returned to his charge against the Gestapo when he preached the following Sunday, on the 20th July 1941, from the pulpit of another Munster church, Ueberwasserkirche.

This is what he said: "On this Sunday there will be a collection which I have directed to be made in all the parishes of the diocese that have not yet suffered war damage. This collection is on behalf of the inhabitants of Munster. I hope that, through the intervention of the appropriate municipal and Government authorities and the brotherly help of the Catholics of our diocese, whose gifts the 'Caritas'[13] will now administer and distribute, distress of many kinds can be alleviated. Thanks be to God, for several days there have been no further attacks by the military enemy upon our city. But, alas, that I must say it: the attacks of our enemies within this country, the beginnings of which I spoke of in my sermon last Sunday at St. Lambert's, have been continued during recent weeks, regardless of our protests, regardless of the intense grief thus caused to the victims and their relatives.

"Last Sunday I publicly deplored and condemned as an injustice crying to Heaven the action .of the Gestapo in breaking up the homes of the religious Order in Wilkinghege and of the; Jesuit Fathers in Munster. They confiscated their houses and furniture, cast the inmates out into the street and expelled them from their home province. The Convent of Our Lady of Lourdes m the Frauenstrasse has also been sequestered for the Gauleitung. I did not know then that on the very same day as I was preaching, Sunday, 13th July, the Gestapo was occupying and confiscating the Convent of St. Camillus, the Monastery of Sudmuhle and our Benedictine Abbey in Gerleve, and that the Reverend Fathers and lay brethren were being driven out of their homes. On the 15th July the Sisters of the Holy Cross in House Aspel near Rees had to relinquish their property and leave the district. If Christian charity had not taken pity on these homeless men and women, they would have been exposed to hunger and the inclemency of the weather.

"A few hours ago I received, in addition to all this, the tragic news that yesterday, on the 19th July, at the end of a second week of terror for Munster, the Gestapo had seized and expropriated the large Missionary Monastery you all know at Hiltrup, the German Provincial House of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. The Fathers and Brethren still living there had to quit their homes and their property by 8 o'clock last night. And they, too, have been expelled from Westphalia and the Rhine province. "The Reverend Fathers and lay brethren still living there - I emphasize the word 'still,' because from among the Hiltrup missionaries there are at I the moment, as I happened to learn recently, 161 men doing their; duty as German soldiers on active service, some of them in the front line. Fifty-three are working as ambulance men, looking after the wounded. Forty-two clerics and sixty-six lay brethren are serving their country as active soldiers, some of whom have already been decorated with the Iron Cross and other medals. The same is true of the Reverend Fathers of Sudmuhle, of the Jesuit Fathers at Sentmaring and the Benedictine monks of Gerleve. Whilst these "German men) in loyalty to their oath and at the risk of their lives, are fighting for their country in true comradeship with their German brothers, their country is being brutally taken from them without any legal cause, and their monastic homes destroyed. When they return, as we hope, victorious, they will find their monastic communities expelled from hearth and home and their homes destroyed by strangers and occupied by enemies. How will this all end?

"It is not indeed a question of finding temporary, shelter for the homeless inhabitants of Munster. For the monks and nuns were ready and determined to restrict their living accommodation to the bare minimum to provide immediate shelter for the homeless and to look after them. No, that was not the reason for seizing the monasteries. I am told that the Gau Film Headquarters are being installed in the Convent of the Immaculate Conception at Wilkinghege, and that a maternity home for unmarried mothers is being established in the Benedictine Abbey. I have not yet heard what is being done in Sentmaring, in Sudmtihle, and in Vennenberg. And so far no newspaper has published reports of the victories which the Gestapo have won at no risk to themselves over defenseless monks and unprotected women, nor indeed have reports been published of the conquests which the Gauleitung has made at home at the expense of the possessions of German citizens!

"On Monday, 14th July, I caned upon the Provincial Vice-President and asked that the liberty and property of innocent Germans might be protected. He explained that the Gestapo is a completely independent body and that he could not interfere with any measures it might have taken. But he promised to convey my com- plaints and requests to the Provincial President and Gauleiter, Dr. Mayer, immediately. It was of no avail. On the same day I sent a telegram to the Imperial Chancellery of the Fuhrer in Berlin. My telegram read as follows: 'After the military adversary had been attempting since the 6th July to destroy Munster by air-raids, the Gestapo began on the 12th July to seize the monasteries and houses of religious Orders in the city, and neighborhood of Munster and to expropriate them and their furniture for use of the Gauleitung. The inmates, innocent men and women, respectable members of German families whose relatives are at present fighting as soldiers for Germany, are being deprived of their homes and property, hounded into the streets and banished from their home province. I beg the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor, in the interests of justice and the solidarity of the home front, to protect the freedom and property of German citizens against the arbitrary measures of the Gestapo and against their spoliation in favor of the Gauleitung.'

"I sent similar telegraphic appeals to the Imperial Statthalter of Prussia, Reich Marshal Goring, to the Minister of Home Affairs, to the Minister of Church Affairs, and finally to the High Command of the Army as well.

"I had hoped that if no consideration of justice, then at least recognition of the bad effect on the solidarity of the home front, would in time of war move these authorities to stop this action against our brothers and sisters. I had hoped that they would not refuse chivalrous protection to innocent German women. It was of no avail, the actions continued. And now has come to pass what I had long anticipated, and prophesied last Sunday. We are standing before the ruins of inner national unity, which in these last days has been brutally destroyed.

"With great urgency I pointed out to the Provincial President, to the various Ministers and the High Command of the Army, that these out- rages upon blameless German men, this brutality towards defenseless German women, mocking all chivalry, could only arise from deep hatred of the Christian religion and the Catholic Church. I pointed out that these machinations amount to the sabotage and destruction of national unity. Can there be national solidarity with the men who hound our monks and nuns, our brothers and sisters, out of the country like outlaws, without legal cause, without any investigation or possibility of defense or legal verdict? No! I can have nothing in common, either in thought or feeling with these men and all others responsible for these deeds. I shall not hate them, but I wish from the bottom of my heart that they may realize their wrong and reform their ways. In the same spirit, I immediately sent a prayer to Heaven for the soul of the Ministerial Director Roth, who died suddenly on the 5th July. He was a Catholic priest, at first in the Archdiocese of Munich, and for years, without the permission and against the wish of his bishop, had been, an official in the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. He wrote and published under his own name many pamphlets injurious to the rights and offensive to the dignity of the Church. Now he has suddenly been drowned in the swift current of the River Inn. May God be merciful to his poor soul!

"Thus we will pray for all those who persecute and calumniate us, in accordance with the Savior's command. But as long as they do not change, as long as they continue to rob innocent men, to drive them out of the country and to imprison them, I reject any kind of fellowship with them.

"The community of outlook and purpose in our nation has been irremediably harmed, against our will and regardless of our warnings. I cannot imagine that the townsmen and peasants of our old-established families, who are now risking their lives at the front for Germany, can ever feel any sort of community of outlook with the persecutors and banishers of our regular clergy and nuns. We shall obey them, in so far as it is their business as the representatives of lawful authority to give us orders. But there can be no community of outlook, no feeling of inner solidarity with these persecutors of the Church, with these destroyers of monasteries who drag from their convent homes defenseless women and girls, the children of our best families, our own sisters, from homes where, in work and prayers, some have for tens of years done nothing but good for the nation. I should be ashamed before God and before you, dear brethren, I should be ashamed in the sight of our noble ancestors, of my chivalrous father,[14] God rest his soul, who with unrelenting earnestness exhorted, brought up and guided my brothers and myself to cherish gentle respect for every woman and girl, and chivalrously to protect the innocent oppressed, particularly those who, as women, are images of our own mothers, images indeed of the great Mother of God in Heaven. I should be ashamed to have anything in common with men who expel innocent and defenseless women from house and home, who hunt homeless and penniless men and women out of the country. In addition, there is something which I clearly showed last Sunday in St. Lambert's Church: these punitive measures of the Gestapo against innocent men, condemned without a verdict or legal charge, without a chance of self-defense, the banishment of those who from the start are condemned without a hearing, as Dr. Frank, the Reich Minister of Justice, puts it, undermines the security of the Reich, saps the feeling of justice and destroys confidence in the leadership of the State.

"To be sure, we Christians do not start revolutions. We shall continue to do our duty faithfully in obedience to God and from love of our people and country. Our soldiers will go on fighting and dying for Germany, but not for those men who, by their cruel actions against our regular clergy and nuns, against their brothers and sisters, wound our hearts and dishonor the German name in the sight of God and man. We shall go on with our fight against the external enemy, but we cannot fight with weapons against the enemy within our own gates, who tortures and strikes at us. We have only one way of fighting: by strong, persistent, and dogged endurance. Harden yourselves and stand fast! We see clearly enough what lies behind the new doctrine which they have been forcing upon us for some years now, how they have banned religion from the schools, suppressed our societies and, now are out to destroy the Catholic kindergartens; behind all this lies the abysmal hatred of Christianity, which they mean to root out. "If I am rightly informed, the Director of Political Training, Herr Schmidt,[15] frankly proclaimed it a fortnight ago at a compulsory meeting which included schoolboys and schoolgirls, and District Leader Mierig enthusiastically applauded and promised to do his utmost to realize these plans.

"Harden yourselves and stand fast! At this moment we are not the hammer, but the anvil. Others, mainly strangers and apostates, hammer us; by violent means they wish to twist our nation, ourselves and our youth away from our attitude towards God. We are the anvil and not the hammer, but what happens in the smithy? Ask the blacksmith and listen to what he says. Whatever is forged on the anvil receives its shape not only from the hammer but from the anvil as well. The anvil cannot and need not strike back. It need only be firm and hard. If it is sufficiently tough, firm and hard it usually lasts longer than the hammer. However violently the hammer may strike, the anvil stands in quiet strength, and for a long time it will play its part in helping to form whatever is being forged. Thus it is with the unjustly imprisoned, the innocent who have been expelled, and the banished. God will stand by them so that they do not lose the form and bearing of Christian firmness when the hammer of persecution strikes them bitter blows and inflicts upon them unjust wounds. It is our regular clergy, our brothers and sisters, who are being forged now. The day before yesterday I was able to visit some of the banished ones in their pro- visional shelter and to speak with them. I was edified and inspired by the brave attitude of these good men, of these weak and helpless women, who have been roughly and ruthlessly driven from their convent home, from their chapel and from the presence of the Tabernacle. And now with heads erect, conscious of their innocence, they go into unjust exile and trust to Him Who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. Yes, they rejoice in that joy which the Saviour recommends to His disciples: 'Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you for My sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in Heaven!' Indeed these men and women are masterpieces of the Divine Forge, Our youth is now being forged between the hammer and the anvil, youth growing up but still not yet mature, still malleable, We cannot save them from the hammer-blows of unbelief, of hostility to Christianity, of false doctrines and morals.

"What is being taught them and forced upon' them at their clubs and during their hours of attendance at the youth organizations which, we are told, they have voluntarily joined with the consent of their parents? What do they learn in' these schools which to day they are forced to attend, without deference to the wishes of their parents? What do they read in their new school books? Christian parents, just look at the books, particularly the history books, used in the secondary schools. You will be horrified to see with what disregard for historical truth they attempt to fill ingenuous children with distrust of Christianity and "the Church, aye, with hatred of the Christian faith![16] In the privileged State schools, I mean the Hitler schools, the new training colleges for future schoolmasters and school-mistresses, all Christian influence, indeed all truly religious activity is excluded as a matter of principle. And what is happening to the children who, last spring, were sent away to distant parts because of the danger of air raids? What religious instruction, do they receive? Can they practice, their religion?

"Christian parents! You must have a care for all these things. Otherwise you are neglecting your sacred duties, otherwise you cannot satisfy the requirements of your own conscience and of Him Who entrusted you with children in order that you might lead them on the path to Heaven.

"We are the anvil, not the hammer. You cannot protect your children from the hammer blows of hostility to religion and the Church, but I repeat: the anvil plays its part too in molding the form. Make your home, make your love and loyalty as parents, make your exemplary Christian life the strong, tough, firm and unyielding anvil that bears the weight of the hostile blows and tempers the still feeble strength into an implement of God's will, never swerving from His service. Almost all of you, without exception, are being forged at this time. How many of you are dependent on pensions, State investments and children's allowances? Indeed, who is still independent today and the free master of his property or business? It may be, especially in wartime, that rigid control and regulation, the concentration and compulsory taxation of production and consumption are necessary, and who would not bear it for love of his nation and country? But hand in hand with this goes the dependence on many persons and Government departments which not only limit individual freedom of action but also bring freedom of conscience into danger and temptation if they represent an anti-Christian view of life and try to impose it on those whom they control. This dependence is particularly great among officials. What courage, what heroism must animate many officials if, despite all pressure, they are to prove themselves Christians and loyal Catholics and publicly confess their faith.

"At the moment we are the anvil for all the blows that rain down upon us. We continue in most loyal service to the nation and fatherland, but we must always be ready to act with great courage and sacrifice on the principle that God must be obeyed before man. God speaks to each one of us through conscience formed by faith. Steadfastly obey the voice of conscience. Take as your example the Prussian Minister of Justice in the olden days. I have mentioned him before. Once his King, Frederick the Great) demanded of him that he should quash a lawfully found verdict of the courts to meet the King's wishes) but he gave this magnificent answer: 'My head is at the disposal of your Majesty) but not my conscience. I am ready to die for my King) I will obey him even to accepting death at the hand of the executioner. My life belongs to the King, but not my conscience.

"Is the race of noble men who think and act in this way extinct? Are there no longer any Prussian servants of this same stamp? Are there no longer townsmen and peasants, craftsmen and workmen with a similar outlook and of the same nobility of mind? I refuse to believe there are none. And therefore I repeat: Harden yourselves, do not yield; stand firm like the anvil beneath the strokes of the hammer. It may be that obedience to God arid conscience will cost us our lives, our freedom and our homes. But let us die rather than sin. May God's grace, without which we are powerless, give us and preserve in us this unshakable firmness.

"My dear Catholics of Munster! After the side aisle of the cathedral had been pierced by a high explosive bomb in the night of the 7th July, a bomb which struck the outer wall in the following night destroyed the fountain of St. Ludger, the memorial to the late Bishop Johann Bernhard's return from exile in 1884. The statues of the two bishops Suitger and Erpho on both sides of the memorial are badly damaged. The stone figure of the first Bishop of Munster was left almost intact. He raises his undamaged right hand in blessing, pointing to Heaven, as though, by means of this well-nigh miraculous preservation of the statue, he wished to exhort us: whatever may happen, hold fast to the Catholic Faith, revealed by God and handed down to us by our forefathers. Amidst all this destruction of human works, amidst all the anxiety and distress, I exhort you in the words which the first Pope spoke to the persecuted Christians: Humble yourselves therefore under the almighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the God of all grace, who "hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever."

"Let us pray for our relatives and for the religious Orders, for all those who suffer unjustly, for all in distress, for our soldiers, for Munster and its inhabitants, for our nation and fatherland and for its leader. Amen."

On the Tuesday after his second sermon against he Gestapo, Bishop Galen sent the following letter Reichsminister Dr. Lammers. Here are the contents of the letter, showing the same outspoken forthrightness which we have already found in the Bishop�s utterances from the pulpit:

I thank, you most humbly for your reply of the 17th July 1941, to my telegram of' the 14th July 1941. I had informed the Reic4 Governor in Prussia, Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, also the Reich Minister of the Interior, the Reich Ecclesiastical Minister and the Reich Minister for Justice in the same way of the unjustified acts of violence of the Gestapo and had asked for legal protection for the freedom and property of innocent Germans, for chivalrous protection for defenseless German women. From none of them have I so far received even an acknowledgment.

"Meanwhile the Gestapo has continued to treat irreproachable, highly respected German men and women, members of the best German families, in the same fashion as before; to deprive them, without examination or the verdict of a court, of their modest property, to drive them from their homes without any means of support at a few hours' notice, to expel them from their home province of Westphalia and from the Rhine province, simply because they belong to Catholic Orders. I refrain from giving you details illustrating more closely the brutality and ruthlessness of these proceedings. But I can assure you that our Westphalian people would be untrue to itself and unworthy of its noble forefathers if it did not feel the greatest indignation and the deepest bitterness against the officials who carried out these actions and those who gave them their orders, as well as against those who profited by these acts of force. So far as I can judge, the sense of national community with these circles is for most, of us incurably destroyed and has become impossible for any decent man!

"If I say 'so far as I can judge,' I nevertheless take the liberty of reminding you that not only am I a son of this most German of provinces and of a family that has been settled here for centuries, but that, as spiritual adviser and Bishop, I am closely acquainted with the feelings of the population here.

"I therefore permit myself to tell you frankly, Herr Reichsminister, that the contents of your reply of the 17th July 1941, not only disappointed me deeply, but also filled me with the greatest anxiety for our people and Fatherland.

. . . I must assume that my telegram of the. 14th July 1941 was forwarded on the instructions of the Fuhrer to the Reichsfuhrer SS. and' Chief of the German Police.

"It was precisely against the Secret State Police, under the leadership of Herr Himmler, that I. had asked for protection of the freedom and property of innocent Germans. If now this same Herr Himmler is to give further consideration' to the fate of the protest raised with the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor against the proceedings of the Gestapo, then it is a foregone conclusion that my intercession for freedom and justice, my efforts to uphold the home front, will have no result. . . . For this man is the responsible authority of the Gestapo, and thus the man who is responsible for their actions is made judge in his own case! This means that the rule of terror of the Gestapo will continue to weigh as a fearful burden upon all our fellow Germans. The Gestapo will continue to dispose arbitrarily of the freedom and property, nay, of the personal inviolability and even the lives of German citizens. There will be nothing to stop it from continuing to act on vague, unexplained 'grounds of State policy'; it will continue to be possible for honorable German men and women who have fallen into disfavor with the Gestapo, who have perhaps been slandered by some cowardly informer, to be deprived of their property, exiled from their home, imprisoned in the Gestapo's dungeons and concentration camps or even put to death. There will continue to be no fulfilment of what Reichsminister Dr. Frank has declared to be the indispensable requirement of every National Socialist guardian of the law: The law must guarantee to the individual the legal possibility of defense, of throwing light upon his case and thus protecting himself against tyranny and' wrong. It is impossible to combine the edifice of justice with the condemnation of a completely defenseless person, etc. . . .'

"If, however, as a result of the preoccupation of the responsible Fuhrer with other affairs, the Gestapo is allowed now, in the midst of war, to shatter the home front of the German people, I know that I, as a German, as representative and defender of German freedom, as the Bishop responsible for nearly two million German Catholics, I know that it is my bounden duty, without regard to personal consequences, to raise my voice in accusation of the inner enemies who are bringing our people and Fatherland to ruin; to warn the people and its Government and to recall them from the path which as is shown by the experience of history and by the laws of nature, will lead to a moment when our German people and Fatherland, despite the heroism of our soldiers and their glorious victories, will collapse through inner decay and rottenness.

"I take the liberty of submitting to you the enclosed carbon copies of the two sermons which, compelled by the distress of our people and the sense of responsibility lying upon my conscience, I delivered on the past two Sundays here in the city of Munster, which has been in large measure destroyed by enemy air-raids. I submit them with a most humble request for due cognizance and consideration.

On Sunday, 3rd August 1941, the Bishop of Munster preached once more from the pulpit of his old parish church of St. Lambert's. The Gestapo had in the meantime closed more of the religious houses.

1. "I regret to have to inform you that the Gestapo has continued its war of destruction against the Catholic Orders during this past week. On Wednesday, the 30th July, it occupied the Provincial House of the Sisters of Our Lady in Muhlhausen, which formerly belonged to the See of Munster. The majority of the nuns, who come of Munster families, were thrown out, and were compelled to leave the district of Kempen on the same day. According to reliable reports the Gestapo took over and confiscated the monastery of the Missionaries of Hiltrup on the 31st July. The Reverend Fathers there have been expelled."

2. "I have already publicly declared here in St. Lambert's on the 13th July, after the driving out of the Jesuits and the Poor Clares from Munster, 'None of the inmates of these foundations is accused of any crime, nor has been brought before a court, nor condemned.' I hear now that rumors are being spread in Munster that these religious, especially the Jesuits, have, however, been accused and in some cases convicted of treason. I declare: It is a gross calumny of our fellow-Germans, of our brothers and sisters, which we cannot tolerate. I have already denounced one fellow, who dared before witnesses to maintain this was .so, to the Chief Prosecutor. I express the hope that this man will with all speed be brought to task, and that our courts will still possess courage enough to convict and punish such slanderers who, having robbed blameless fellow-countrymen of their goods, dare to try to rob them of their honor too. I demand that all you who are listening to me now-indeed, all worthy fellow-citizens, to make sure of the name and address of any who accuse our religious who have been thrown out of Munster, as well as that of any witnesses to these allegations. I hope there are still men in Munster who have the courage to testify before the law against such who poison the community - if need be in 'person, declaring their names on oath. I request these people, should they hear any accusations spoken in their presence against our religious, immediately to give notice of this to their priest or to the episcopal General Vicariate and to place the fact on record. I owe it to the honor of our religious, to the honor of the Holy Catholic Church, to the honor of our German people and that of our city of Munster, that I should ask for the legal explanation of the facts and see to it that punishment be meted out to the base slanderers of our religious."

After reading the Gospel for the Day, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, the Bishop gave as his text: "And when Jesus drew near, seeing the city, He wept over it."

�The Gospel of today records an astonishing event: Jesus weeps. The Son of God weeps. Whoever weeps must be in pain, either physical or mental. At that moment Jesus was not yet in physical anguish and yet He was weeping. What tremendous suffering there must have been in His heart and in His soul if He, the most courageous of men, wept. Why does He weep? He is weeping over Jerusalem, the holy city which He loved so much, the capital of His people. He is weeping over her inhabitants, over His own countrymen, because they do not realize the punishment that is to come upon them, the punishment which He foresaw in His omniscience and which His divine justice has decreed. 'If thou also hadst known the things that are to thy peace.' Why did the people of Jerusalem not know it? Jesus had given the reason a short time before: 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!' But I, your God, your King, wished it, but you did not. How well sheltered, protected and defended is the brood under the wings of their mother. She gives them warmth, she nourishes and defends them. I too wished to protect and defend you against all danger. I wanted this, but you did not.

"That is why Jesus is weeping; that is why God is weeping. . . . Over the folly, the injustice and the crime of man's refusal and over the evils that come from it, which, in His divine omniscience He foresees and which in His justice He must decree. Evils that come when man opposes his will to the Will of God and rejects the warnings of his conscience and the loving requests of his Divine Friend, the best of Fathers. 'If thou hadst but known, even on this day, the things that are to thy peace; but thou wouldst not.'

"It is a terrible thing, it is incredible injustice and corruption when man sets his will against the will of God. 'I would. . . but thou wouldst not.' That is why Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem.

'My faithful brethren, in the pastoral letter of the German bishops of the 26th June which was read in all the churches of Germany on the 6th July[17] it was stated: 'There are, no doubt, according to Catholic doctrine, commandments which are not binding when their fulfilment demands too great a sacrifice, but there are sacred duties of conscience from which no one can release us and which we must fulfil even at the cost of our lives. Never, and under no circumstances may a man, except in the case of war and legitimate defense, kill an innocent person.'

"I have already had occasion on the 6th July to add the following elucidation to the words of the pastoral letter:

"For several months we have heard reports that, on orders from Berlin, patients who have been ill for a long time and who appear to be incurable are forcibly removed from homes and clinics. As a rule their families, after a short; time, are told that the patient has died, and that the body has been cremated and that the ashes can be claimed. Generally one suspects, and this suspicion borders on certainty, that those numerous cases of unexpected death among the mentally deranged are not natural, but often deliberately caused and are the result of the doctrine that it is justified to suppress 'life which is unworthy of being lived.' According to this' doctrine, it is justifiable to kill innocent men when it is thought that their lives are no longer useful for our people and for our country. This horrible doctrine seeks to justify the murder of innocent men and gives legal sanction to the forcible killing of invalids, of the maimed, the incurable and the enfeebled.

"As I have happened to find out, the practice in homes and clinics in Westphalia is to draw up lists of such patients who are to be transferred elsewhere as 'unproductive citizens,' and after some time put to death. During this very week, the first batch of these patients has been sent from the clinic of Marienthal near Munster.

"German men and women. . . Paragraph 21, of the Code of Penal Law, is still valid. According to this, anyone who deliberately kills a man by premeditated act will be executed as a murderer. It is in order to protect the killers of these poor sick people - members of our families- against this legal punishment, that the patients who are to be put to death are removed from their place of residence to some distant institution. Some disease or other is then given as the cause of death, but as the bodies are immediately cremated neither their families nor the regular police can afterwards find out whether the disease is genuine nor what was really the cause of death. I am assured that at the Ministry of the Interior and at the office of Dr. Conti,[18] the Head of the Reich Doctors, no attempt is made to conceal the fact that a great number of mental patients have actually already been deliberately put to death and many more will follow in the future.

"In Article 139 of the Penal Code it is laid down that anyone who knows from a reliable source of any plot against the life of a man and who does not inform the authorities or the intended victim of it in time, will be punished. . .

"When I heard of the proposal to remove patients from Marienthal in order to kill them I informed, on the 29th July, the Public Prosecutor, the Tribunal of Munster and also the Head of the Munster Police in a registered letter as follows:

"According to information which has reached me during this week, a great number of patients from the provincial clinic of Marienthal are to be removed as citizens alleged to be unproductive (it is said on the 31st July) to the clinic of Richenberg, in order to be put to death immediately, as has already been done, according to general opinion, in the case of other patients who have been similarly removed. As such procedure as this is not only contrary to the moral law, both divine and natural, but should also be punishable by death, according to Article 211 of the Penal Code, it is my duty in accordance with Article 139 of the same code to bring it to the notice of the authorities. I demand immediate protection for my fellow countrymen who are thus threatened, from those who intend to remove them and kill them, and I demand to be told of your decision.'

"No news has come to me yet of any steps taken by the Tribunal or by the police.

"On the 26th July I had already sent a strong written protest to the Provincial Administration of Westphalia which is responsible for the institutions to which these patients have been entrusted in order to be cared for and cured. It was all to no purpose. The first contingent of innocent people have left Marienthal under sentence of death and from the clinic of Wastein I am told that eight hundred patients have already been taken away.

"We must therefore expect the news that these poor defenseless patients will sooner or later be killed. Why? Not because they have committed any crime deserving of death, not because they have attacked one of their wardens or nurses in such a way that the latter in legitimate self defense might be forced to save their own lives by using violence against their assailants. These are cases in which the use of force, even at the risk of killing, is legitimate and even in many cases obligatory, just like killing an armed enemy soldier in a just war. No, it is not for reasons of this kind that these: unhappy patients are to be killed: it is simply because in the opinion of some doctor, in the view of some committee, they are 'unworthy to live: because in their eyes they belong to the unproductive citizens. It is judged that they can no longer produce riches, and that they are like old machines which can no longer work, like an old horse which has become incurably lame or like a cow which can no longer give any milk. What does one do with such an old machine? One destroys it. What does one do with an old cow or any unproductive cattle?

"But I do not wish to push this comparison too far. The justification of this comparison and the light it throws on the situation is too terrible. We are not here dealing with machines or horses or cows whose sole purpose is to serve man and provide him with riches. They may be destroyed or slaughtered when they no longer fulfill, their purpose. We are speaking here of human beings, of our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, poor people and invalids. . . unproductive beings - perhaps! But have they for that reason lost their right to live? Have you or I the right to live only as long as we are 'productive'? So long as others, therefore, regard us as 'productive'? If one sets up the principle that unproductive men may be killed off, then woe betide all invalids who, in order to produce wealth, have given, sacrificed and used up their strength of body. If one may violently dispose of all unproductive persons, then woe betide our gallant soldiers who come back to their country, wounded and maimed and sick.

"If once it is admitted that people have the right to kill unproductive persons - it concerns at the moment poor, defenseless lunatics-then the murder of all unproductive persons, i.e. of incurables, of cripples, of folk maimed by war or work, indeed of us all, when we grow old and feeble, and unproductive, will be fundamentally tolerated. Anyone can then issue a secret order extending this treatment of lunatics to other categories of so-called 'unproductive' persons, to incurable consumptives, the senile, to those invalided by their work, and to those severely wounded by the war.

"None of us then will be sure of his life. Any committee can put a man on the list of unproductives, when it judges that he has become 'unworthy of life.' No police can protect him, no court can avenge his murder and deliver the murderer to the punishment he deserves. Who can have any confidence in a doctor? He has only to certify his patients as unproductive and he receives the order to kill them. If this horrible doctrine is tolerated, admitted and practised, it is impossible to imagine to what depths of depravation it will lead: what mutual suspicion and distrust it will cause even in close family circles. Woe to men and woe to the German people if we transgress the sacred commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' which was given to us by God on Mount Sinai in thunder and lightning and which God, our Creator, engraved on the human conscience from the beginning of time. Woe to the German people if we not only tolerate this crime but allow it to be committed with impunity. '

"I want to give you an example of what is actually happening now. At Marienthal there was a man about fifty-five years old, a peasant from a country parish near Munster-I could give you his name-who for some years has been suffering from some mental disease and has been cared for in the provincial clinic of Marienthal. He was not completely mad; he could receive visitors and was always pleased when his family came to see him. About a fortnight ago, he had a visit from his wife and one of his sons, a soldier at the front, who was home on leave. The son was very devoted to his sick father. Their parting was not easy, for who could know if they would see each other again, for the son might well fall on the field of battle, fighting for his countrymen. This son, the soldier, will never see his father again in this world because he has been put on the list of 'unproductives'; one of the members of his family who went to see the father at Marienthal was refused admission and was told that by order of the Council of Ministers of National Defense the patient had been removed elsewhere, but no one knew where. An official notice would be sent to the family in a few days' time. What will this notice contain? Will it be like other similar notices, that the man has died, that the body has been cremated, and that the ashes will be handed over on the receipt of money to cover expenses? And so the son who is now at the front, risking his life for his German countrymen, will never see his father again because these same Germany countrymen have put him to his death. The facts I have told you are absolutely true. I could give you the name of the patient, his wife and his soldier son as well as their addresses.

"'Thou shalt not kill.' God engraved this commandment on the conscience of man long before any penal code imposed penalties, for murder, long before any court or tribunal prosecuted and avenged homicide. Cain, who slew his brother Abel, was a murderer long before courts or states existed, and tortured by his conscience he confessed: 'My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon. . . everyone therefore, that findeth me, shall slay me.'

"'Thou shalt not kill.' This commandment of God, the only Lord, Who has the right to dispose of life and death, was from the beginning written in the heart of man, long before God on Mount Sinai gave this law to the children of Israel in this short, concise sentence engraved on stone and handed down in the scriptures, which as children we learnt in the Catechism. 'I am the Lord, thy God - thus begins this eternal law - Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' He is the one God, the eternal, supreme, omnipresent, all-powerful, omniscient, infinitely holy and just God, Who has given us this commandment. Our creator and our sole judge: out of love for us He has written these commandments in our hearts and has revealed them to us. For they express the need of our nature created by God. They are the immutable principles of human social life based on reason, pleasing to God, wholesome and holy. God, our Father, wishes by these commandments to draw us His children round Him as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. If we men respond to His orders and His promptings, then we are protected, guarded and preserved against the destruction that threatens us, just as the chickens under the wings of their mother.

"'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth her brood, and thou wouldst not!'

"Is history repeating itself again here in Germany, in our land of Westphalia, in our city of Munster? Where in Germany and where, here, is obedience to the commandments of God; the eighth commandment lays down 'Thou, shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' How often do we see this commandment shamelessly and publicly violated?

"The seventh commandment says: 'Thou shalt not steal.' But whose property and possessions are safe when our brothers and our sisters, monks and nuns, are forcibly and brutally robbed of their convents and who protects property now if it is illegally seized and not restored? The sixth commandment: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' Think of the instructions and assurances given on the question of free love and maternity outside marriage in the notorious open letter of Rudolf Hess, who has since disappeared, which was published in the papers. And in matters of this kind what indecency and vulgarity do we not see everywhere here in Munster? To what lengths has not the impropriety of dress gone amongst our young people? That is how modesty, the guardian of purity, is being destroyed, and the way prepared for adultery.

"And see, too, how the fifth commandment is ignored. 'Thou shalt not kill,' we see it violated under the very eyes of the authorities whose duty it is to enforce respect for law and life, when they allow the deliberate killing of innocent human beings as well as the sick, solely because they are 'unproductive,' because they can no longer con- tribute to the wealth of the world.

"And how is the fourth commandment observed, which demands respect and obedience to parents and superiors? The authority of parents has already greatly diminished and is more and more shaken by the demands made upon the young against the wishes of their parents. How can one preserve a genuine respect and conscientious obedience towards State authority, the commandments of God: if one is fighting against and seeking to destroy faith in the only true God, the supreme Being, the Lord of Heaven and earth?

�The observance of the first three commandments has long since lapsed in German public life and here also in Munster. Many desecrate and secularize Sunday and feast days and try to remove them from the service of God. The name of God is constantly ridiculed, dishonored and blasphemed and as for the first commandment: 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me,' in the place of the one, true, eternal God, men have created, according to their own fancy, their own gods, "' Which they adore - Nature, the State, the Nation or the Race. For many, in the words of St. Paul, their god is their belly, their own comfort, to which everything is sacrificed, even honour and conscience for the pleasure of their sense, the lust for wealth, and ambition. Is it surprising, then, that they try also to claim divine prerogatives, and to make themselves the masters of the life and death of their fellow-men?

"When Jesus came near to Jerusalem, seeing the city, He wept over it and said: 'If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that were to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee when thy enemies shall beat thee to the ground and thy children who are in thee: and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.'

"With His earthly eye Jesus saw only the walls and the towers of the city of Jerusalem, but in His divine knowledge He looked far beyond and saw into the inmost heart of the city and its inhabitants. 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children as a hen doth her brood under her wings and thou wouldst not!' That was the great sorrow in the heart of Jesus which brought tears into His eyes. I desired your happiness, but you did not wish it. He saw how sinful, how terrible, how criminal, how wicked was this obstinacy. Man in his meanness, this transitory creature, was opposing his will to the Will of God. In his madness and his sin he was flaunting the Will of God. That is why Jesus wept for this terrible sin and its inevitable punishment. God is not mocked.

"Christians of Munster, did the Son of God, in His omniscience, only see Jerusalem and her people? Did He weep only for Jerusalem? Is Israel the only people to whom God has given His fatherly protection and love? Is Israel the only people who have rejected divine truth, cast aside the law of God and rushed headlong into ruin? Did not Jesus, in His omniscience, also see our German people, our country of Westphalia, our city of Munster, our land of the Lower Rhine. Did not He also weep over us and over Munster? For a thousand years He has taught us and our ancestors the truth; He has led us by His law: He has nourished us with His grace: He has drawn us to Him as the bird gathers her brood under her wings. Has the omniscient Son of God seen that in our own time He would have to pronounce upon us that same sentence? 'Thou wouldst not, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another.' How terrible would that sentence be.

"Dearly beloved brethren, I hope that it is not too late. It. is certainly time to realize now on, this very day what alone can bring us peace, what alone can save us and preserve us from divine punishment. We must admit openly and unreservedly that we are Catholics. We must show by our attitude that we wish to direct our lives by the commandments of God, taking this as our motto: Rather let us die than sin. We wish by sincere prayer and penance to draw down upon us, our city and our dear German land, divine grace and forgiveness.

"But those who continue to provoke the wrath of God, who blaspheme our faith, who despise His commandments, who make common cause with those who drive our young men away from their religion, who despoil and expel our monks and nuns, who deliver over to death innocent human beings, our brothers and sisters - with such people we refuse to consort, we withdraw ourselves from their influence, so as to remain untouched by their blasphemous way of thought and action, which would expose us to the punishment which the God of justice must and will administer to all those who, like the ungrateful city of Jerusalem, I do not wish that which God wishes.

"Oh, God, grant that all of us now on this day, i before it is too late, may realize the things that are for our peace.

"Oh, heart of Jesus, oppressed even unto tears by the blindness and the sins of men, help us by Thy grace to seek always that which is pleasing to Thee and reject what is displeasing, so that we may dwell in Thy love and find rest in our souls. Amen.

�Let us pray for our sick, who are threatened with death, for our religious in exile, for our soldiers, our people, our country and our leader.�

These, then, are Bishop Galen's sermons. The reader will draw his own conclusions from them.

Two things, however, are clear. Galen is a patriot. But he is also a protagonist of justice. When the war is long since over, he will be remembered as a man who defied the Gestapo, as the man who knew Germany could not survive if it continued on its ruthless path of injustice and oppression.

Bishop Galen holds sway over two million Catholics in Westphalia. It is safe to assume he is a figurehead to whom many more millions throughout the Reich turn. Germany now numbers some fifty million Catholics among her population. Whatever may be his views on other matters, he is a staunch, Catholic and a passionate lover of justice.

There have been many reports as to the fate of the Bishop of Munster following these sermons. One report states that Himmler wanted Count Galen shot. But Hitler, knowing the Bishop's tremendous influence throughout Westphalia, decided it would be safer to leave him alone.

Another report states that the Gestapo searched his home under pretext of looking for illegal radio apparatus-"If you want to find anything like that," said Galen, "you will have to look for it in your own headquarters."

Addressing pilgrims at Kevelar, the Bishop declared of the Nazis: "They can take my head, but not my convictions."[19]

According to the latest information, the Bishop of Munster has been arrested after his three sermons. One report adds that the arrest caused much excitement in Munster that Galen was released after one day's detention and carried back shoulder - high to his palace.

He was also stated to have been urged in official quarters to travel "for his health," preferably abroad.' Galen replied that his health was good, and that he did not need a vacation. There is little doubt that the citizens of his own town will do all in their power to protect him and themselves against the extremities of the Gestapo.

He is now reported under house arrest, though otherwise unharmed. The Nazis may well take no action against him, since, true to their usual practice, they veil their assaults on religion and morals with apparent regard for respectability.

In the name of millions of his fellows, Galen appealed to Hider against Himmler, Heydrich[20] and their systems of control. "You," he said, �you, the leader of Germany, must judge." And Hitler has given his judgment in favour of the Gestapo the real authority in Germany: the authority which persecutes the Jews, the Poles, the Czechs, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Dutch and the Belgians -the authority which has murdered hundreds of French, Czech, Polish, Norwegian and Serb hostages in cold blood.

Today, when Hitler is throwing the youth of Germany into the bloody battles of the Eastern Front he has also declared war on his own countrymen because they ask for justice instead of the Gestapo.

Bishop Galen is not the only one to speak up against the Nazis. Mgr. Bornewasser, Bishop of Trier, has also bravely denounced the Nazi doctrine of paganism which can state that "'God flies with the strongest bombing squadrons.'[21]

Courageous and outspoken as are the bishops and other high dignitaries of the Catholic Church in Germany, perhaps the bravest of all are the hundreds of ordinary Catholic parish priests who uphold their religious convictions knowing that they do so at the dire peril of their lives. Virtually powerless, they are yet following the lead Bishop Galen has given them at the known and imminent risk of being flung into a concentration camp. They are fighting because they know that Nazism - which they despise - is out to destroy the Christian tradition and all it means.

[1] Copies of this document, it is reported, have been widely circulated all over the Reich.

[2] The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Germany (1938); II

[3] Hitler�s Germany is divided into Provinces or "Gauen," each of which has its political leader, or "Gauleiter." "Gauleitung" corresponds to the Provincial Government.

[4] Reichsminister Kerrl, who died suddenly in December 1941. Born 1887, at Fallersleben, he studied law, later became Prussian Minister of Justice. In 1935 was appointed Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, which was supposed to make for cooperation between the Reich Government and the Christian Churches. Kerrl once referred Hitler as "Leader of the German Churches."

[5] There have been several reports of the Bishop being under house arrest. One report speaks of him being taken back shoulder-high, through the streets, after only one day's detainment.

[6] Always an ardent Nazi and violent anti-Bolshevik. Appointed Bavarian Minister of Justice at the outset of Nazi movement. As early as 1926, Frank declared: "Whatsoever benefits the nation is right: "Whatsoever harms it is wrong. Service to the nation is divine service." He became Governor-General of Poland 1939, to consolidate the Nazi rape of that country. Ironically and significantly enough, he had been in Warsaw for the three preceding years "to strengthen the cultural relations between the two countries." He is forty-two years old and Cabinet Minister without Portfolio.

[7] He is, of course, referring to Pastor Niemoller, who was arrested for outspoken criticism of Nazism in 1937. Has been incarcerated in Sachsenhausen ever since. The Nazis call it "honourable detention."

[8] This is a point which some recent writers to the Press have overlooked.

[9] Reich Administrative Gazette.

[10] This is a German describing his own countrymen an authentic testimony of the influence of Nazism on the masses.

[11] Wilhelm Frick. Born 1877- A Nazi of long standing. Took part in Munich Putsch of 1923. The first Nazi to become a Minister under the old system (Minister of Interior in Turing, 1930). Became Minister of Interior in Hitler's Cabinet in 1933.

[12] Himmler, of whom too much is known.

[13] Catholic Charity League.

[14] Ferdinand, Graf von Galen. A leader of the Catholic Zentrum Party.

[15] Fredrich Schmidt: Gauleiter of Wiirttemberg. Henchman of Rosenberg. The Vatican radio, on the 5th and 6th November 1941, broadcast extracts from Schmidt's anti-Christian work, Dos Reich habe Aufgabe (The Reich has a Mission).

[16] This is not the only charge that can be leveled against Nazi history books.

[17] Drawn up at Fulda; a protest against the summons to make the choice between country and God. It shows that the arraignment of the Nazi Government was not lightly agreed and embarked upon in the middle of the war. This pastoral carefully refrains from any acceptance of the official Nazi claims for their cause. Bishop Galen, acting on this pastoral, is arraigning the whole spirit and purpose behind the Hitler Government and not merely the narrower Catholic issues involved.

[18] Conti's function is that of Minister of Health.

[19] cf. p. 31, Galen on Frederick the Great's Minister of Justice.

[20] Who has been shot by Czech patriots (June 1942) since these words were written.

[21] Bergmann, The German National Church.

AND THE NAZIS

ARCHBISHOP OF LIVERPOOL

For

CONTENTS

BISHOP GALEN - THE MAN

I