dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
COL. STOREY: That's correct. With Your Honor's permission, rather than to quote the whole document I have summarized it here. Bormann's letter cites as examples the hostile divergence between Nazism and the churches, the attitude of the latter on the racial question, celibacy of the priests, monasteries and nunneries. Bormann further declares that the churches could not be subjugated through compromise but only through a new philosophy of life as prophesied in Rosenberg's writings. Bormann proposes the creation of a National Socialist catechism in order to give that part of the German youth which declines to practice confessional religion a moral foundation and to lay a moral basis for National Socialist doctrines, which are gradually to supplant the Christian religions. Bormann suggests that some of the Ten Commandments could be merged with the National Socialist catechism and states that a few new commandments should be added, such as: "Thou shalt be courageous; Thou shalt not be cowardly; Thou shalt believe in God's presence in the living nature, animals, and plants; Thou shalt keep thy blood pure;" et cetera . He concludes that he considers the problem so important that it should be discussed with the members of the Reich directorate as soon as possible. And now one quotation from the fifth paragraph on the first page of that translation. I would like to quote Paragraph 5 of the first page: "Christianity and National Socialism are phenomena which originated from entirely different basic causes.
COL. STOREY: Both differ fundamentally so strongly that it will not be possible to construct a Christian teaching which would be completely compatible with the point of view of the National Socialist ideology; just as the communities of Christian faith would never be able to stand by the ideology of National Socialism in its entirety...." And then I quote from the last paragraph on Page 5 of that document: "The Fuehrer's deputy finds it necessary that all these questions should be thoroughly discussed in the near future in the presence of the Reich leaders"-Reichsleiter-"who are especially affected by them...." I next offer in evidence Document 107-PS.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you suggest that the Blockleiter would have to be present at that discussion? 17 Dec. 4S
COL. STOREY: Your Honor, in connection with the policy directives, the Fuehrerprinzip goes from the top to the bottom; and if that policy is adopted, they may, by directive, send it as far as the Blockleiter. He says to discuss it in connection with the Reichsleiter, who are the Party directors; and I assume that, if the Party directors establish it as a policy, then they were to issue appropriate directives to the other subordinate members. Mr. Lambert has suggested also that it would not be possible to discuss this matter with all the Leadership Corps and therefore they discussed it with the Party directors.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Does that show they did discuss it with the directors?
COL. STOREY: No, Sir, that doesn't follow; but it shows that it was a subject of discussion for the board of directors of the Nazi Party.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but the question is, who are the directors?
COL. STOREY: Five or six of them sit here; a total of 16.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but I thought that you were asking us to declare the whole of the organization down to the Blockleiter as criminal.
COL. STOREY: That is true, Your Honor, but this is one evidence, one instance of the criminality of the organization and we cannot prove at each stage that all of them knew about it. We are trying to select different offenses and different crimes that were committed within the Party. Document 107-PS, Exhibit USA-351, which we now offer in evidence, is a circular letter, dated 17 June 1938, addressed by the Defendant Bormann as Reichsleiter and Deputy of the Fuehrer to all Reichsleiter and Gauleiter. Bormann's letter encloses a copy of rules, prepared by Reichsleiter Hierl, setting forth certain restrictive regulations with respect to participation of the Reich Labor Service in religious celebrations. I quote permanent portions of the directions issued by Reichsleiter Hierl, beginning with the first paragraph in the list of directions in Document 107-PS, on Page 1 of the English translation: "The Reich Labor Service is a training school in which the German youth should be educated to national unity in the spirit of National Socialism.... "What religious beliefs a person has is not a decisive factor, but this decisive that he first of all feels himself a German. "All confessional discussions are forbidden in the Reich Labor Service because it disturbs the comrade-like harmony of all the Labor Service men and the Labor Service women. 17 Dec.46 "This is also the reason why an participation of the Reich Labor Service in revivals and other meetings and festivals of religious character are impossible." The Tribunal will appreciate that the position of the Defendant Bormann, as Deputy of the Fuehrer of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party and Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery, and the position of the Defendant Rosenberg, as the Fuehrer's representative for the whole spiritual and philosophical education of the Nazi Party, give to the views of these defendants on religion and religious policy the highest official backing.
COL. STOREY: The anti-Christian utterances and policies of these two defendants reveal a community of mind and intention amongst the most powerful leaders of the Party which was amply confirmed, as the evidence will show, by the actual treatment of the churches since 1933 and throughout the course of the conspiracy. I now offer in evidence Document 2349-PS, Exhibit Number USA-352, which is an excerpt from the book The Myth of the 20th Century , written by the Defendant Rosenberg. I quote from that document: "The idea of honor-national honor-is for us the beginning and the end of our entire thinking and doing. It does not admit of any equal-valued center of force alongside of it, no matter of what kind, neither Christian love, nor the Free-Masonic humanity, nor the Roman philosophy." I now offer in evidence Document 848-PS, Exhibit Number USA-353, which is a Gestapo telegram, dated 24 July 1938, dispatched from Berlin to Nuremberg, dealing with demonstrations and acts of violence against Bishop Sproll in Rottenburg. The Gestapo office in Berlin wired its Nuremberg office a teletype account received from its Stuttgart office of disorderly conduct and vandalism carried out by Nazi Party members against Bishop Sproll. I quote from the fourth paragraph of Page 1 of the English translation of Document 848-PS, which reads as follows: "The Party, on 23 July 1938, from 2100 on, carried out the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll Participants, about 2,500-3,000, were brought from outside by bus, et cetera. The Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the demonstration. This town took a rather hostile attitude toward the demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the Party member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people forced their way into the palace, searched through the rooms, threw files out of the windows, and rummaged through the beds in the rooms of the palace.
COL. STOREY: One bed was ignited....The Bishop was with Archbishop Grober of Freiburg and the ladies and gentlemen Of his menage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this chapel and molested those present. Bishop Grober was taken for Bishop Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth." The Gestapo official in Stuttgart added that Bishop Grober desired "to appeal to the Fuehrer and to Reich Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick," and the Gestapo official added that he had rendered a detailed report of the demonstration after suppressing counter mass meetings. On 23 July 1938 the Reich Minister for Church Affairs, Kerrl, sent a letter to the Minister of State and Chief of the Prasidium Chancellery, Berlin, stating that Bishop Sproll had angered the population by abstaining from the plebiscite of 10 April. I now offer in evidence Document 849-PS, Exhibit Number USA-354. In this letter Kerrl stated that the Gauleiter and Governor of Wurttemberg had decided that in the interest of preserving the State's authority and in the interest of quiet and order, Bishop Sproll could no longer remain in office. I quote from the third paragraph of the first page of the Document 849-PS: "The Reich Governor had explained to the Ecclesiastical Authority that he would no longer regard Bishop Sproll as head of the Diocese of Rottenburg on account of his refraining from the election in the office and that he desired Bishop Sproll to leave the Gau Wurttemberg-Hohenzollern because he could assume no guarantee for his personal safety; that in the case of the return of the Bishop of Rottenburg he would see to it that all personal and official intercourse with him on the part of State offices as well as the Party offices" and the Armed Forces would be denied." Kerrl further states in the above letter that his deputy had moved the Foreign Office, through the German Embassy at the Vatican, to urge the Holy See to persuade Bishop Sproll to resign his Bishopric.
COL. STOREY: Kercl concludes by stating that should the effort to procure the Bishop's resignation prove unsuccessful, "the Bishop would have to be exiled from the land or there would have to be a complete boycott of the Bishop by the authorities." On 14 July 1939 the Defendant Bormann in his capacity as Deputy of the Fuehrer issued a Party regulation which provided that Party members entering the clergy or undertaking the study of theology would have to leave the Party. I now offer in evidence Document 840-PS, Exhibit Number USA-355; and this is a copy of a regulation by Bormann, relating to the admission of the clergy and students of theology into the Party. I quote from the last paragraph of the English translation, which reads-I quote. "I decree that in the future Party members who enter the clergy or who turn to the study of theology have to leave the Party." In this directive Bormann also refers to an earlier decree, dated 9 February 1939, in which he had ruled that the admission of members of the clergy into the Party was to be avoided. In this decree, also, Bormann refers with approval to a regulation of the Reich Treasurer of the Party, dated 10 May 1939, providing that "clergymen as well as other fellow Germans who are also closely connected with the Church cannot be admitted into the Party." I now offer in evidence Document 3268-PS, Exhibit Number USA-356, which contains excerpts from the Allocution of His Holiness Pope Pius XII to the Sacred College, June 2d, 1945.
COL. STOREY: In this address His Holiness, after declaring that he had acquired an appreciation of the great qualities of the German people in the course of 12 years of residence in their midst, expressed the hope that Germany could "rise to new dignity and a new life once it has laid the satanic specter raised by National Socialism and the guilty have expiated the crimes they have committed." After referring to repeated violations by the German Government of the Concordat concluded in 1933, His Holiness declared; and I quote from the last paragraph of Page 1 of the English translation of Document 3268-PS: "The struggle against the Church did, in fact, become ever more bitter; there was the dissolution of Catholic organizations; the gradual suppression of the flourishing Catholic schools, both public and private; the enforced weaning of youth from family and Church; the pressure brought to bear on the conscience of citizens, and especially of civil servants; the systematic defamation, by means of a clever, closely organized propaganda, of the Church, the clergy, the faithful, the Church's institutions, teachings, and history; the closing, dissolution, confiscation of religious houses and other ecclesiastical institutions; the complete suppression of the Catholic press and publishing houses.... "In the meantime the Holy See itself multiplied its representations and protests to governing authorities in Germany, reminding them, in clear and energetic language, of their duty to respect and fulfill the obligations of the natural law itself that were confirmed by the Concordat. In these critical years, joining the alert vigilance of a pastor to the long suffering patience of a father, our great predecessor, Pius XI, fulfilled his mission as Supreme Pontiff with intrepid courage.
COL. STOREY: "But when, after he had tried all means of persuasion in vain, he saw himself clearly faced with deliberate violations of a solemn pact, with a religious persecution masked or open but always rigorously organized, he proclaimed to the world on Passion Sunday 1937 in his Encyclical, Mitbrennender Sorge, that National Socialism really was: the arrogant apostasy from Jesus Christ, the denial of His doctrine and of His work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty and dignity.... "From the prisons, concentration camps, and fortresses are now pouring out, together with the political prisoners, also 'the crowds of those, whether clergy or laymen, whose only crime was their fidelity to Christ and to the faith of their fathers or the dauntless fulfillment of their duties as priests. "In the forefront, for the number and harshness of the treatment meted out to them, are the Polish priests. From 1940 to 1945, 2,800 Polish ecclesiastics and religious were imprisoned in that camp; among them was the Auxiliary Bishop of Wloclawek, who died there of typhus. In April last there were left only 816, all the others being dead except for two or three transferred to another camp. In the summer of 1942, 480 German-speaking ministers of religion were known to be gathered there; of these, 45 were Protestants, all the others Catholic priests. In spite of the continuous inflow of new internees, especially from dioceses of Bavaria, Rhenania and Westphalia, their number, as a result of the high rate of mortality, at the beginning of this year did not surpass 350. Nor should we pass over in silence those belonging to occupied territories, Holland, Belgium, France (among whom the Bishop of Clermont), Luxembourg, Slovenia, Italy. Many of those priests and laymen endured indescribable sufferings for their faith and for their vocation.
COL. STOREY: In one case the hatred of the impious against Christ reached the point of parodying on the person of an interned priest, with barbed wire, the scourging and the crowning with thorns of our Redeemer."
THE PRESIDENT: I think perhaps it would be time now to adjourn.
COL. STOREY: If the Tribunal please, before adjourning yesterday afternoon, Your Honors properly asked a question or two about Documents 3051-PS and 3063-PS, to which I think I have an answer that will help the Tribunal. Your Honors will recall, with reference to Document 3051-PS-I believe it might be of assistance to turn to that document.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
COL. STOREY: Your Honors asked yesterday afternoon, since this had to do with the SD and the SS, how the Party was involved. And I should like to quote Paragraph Number 1 on Page 2 of the English translation, which answers this question, and I am quoting: "The Chiefs of the State Police or their deputies, upon receipt of this teletype, must get in contact by telephone with the political administration (Gauleitung or Kreisleitung) having jurisdiction over their districts and must arrange a joint meeting with the appropriate inspector or commander of the Order Police to discuss the organization of the demonstration. At these discussions the political leaders are to be informed that the German Police have received from the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police the following instructions, in accordance with which the political leaders should adapt their measures." That had to do with the preparation for the general anti-Jewish uprisings. Now, with reference to Document 3063-PS, which follows just below that one, if Your Honor pleases.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
COL. STOREY: That, if you recall, Your Honor, was a report from the Supreme Party Court Justice Buch to the Defendant Goering concerning punishment for the uprisings that followed the 9th and 10th of November demonstration. I should like to quote the portion signed by the Defendant Goering. It is, I believe, the second page of the English translation. It is dated "Berlin, 22 February 1939": "Dear Party Member Buch: "I thank you for forwarding the report of your special court on the proceedings concluded up to now concerning the excesses on the occasion of the anti-Jewish incidents of 9 and 10 November 1938, of which I have taken cognizance. Heil Hitler! Yours, signed, Goering." And then, passing, Your Honor, to Page Number 1, immediately following, of the English translation, I think the next two paragraphs will answer Your Honor's question. I quote: "On the evening of 9 November 1938 the Reich Propaganda Director, Party Member Dr. Goebbels told the Party leaders assembled at a reunion in the old town hall in Munich that in the districts"-Gaue-"of Kurhessen and Magdeburg-Anhalt anti-Jewish demonstrations had taken place, during which Jewish shops were demolished and synagogues were set on fire. The Fuehrer, at Goebbels' suggestion, had decided that such demonstrations were not to be prepared or organized by the Party; but so far as they originated spontaneously, they were not to be interfered with either. Besides that, Party Member Dr. Goebbels interpreted the sense of the contents of the teletype of the Reich Propaganda Administration of 10 November 1938...."
THE PRESIDENT: What does "12:30 to 1 o'clock" mean there?
COL. STOREY: That is the time of the teletype message, I assume, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
COL. STOREY: "It was probably understood by all the Party leaders present, from the oral instructions of the Reich Propaganda Director, that the Party should not appear outwardly as the originator of the demonstrations but in reality should organize and execute them. Instructions in this sense were telephoned immediately-thus a considerable time before transmission of the first teletype-to the headquarters of their districts"-Gaue-"by a large part of the Party members present." Now Your Honors properly asked yesterday afternoon how the Blockleiter would be affected. Your Honors will recall that, in the instructions to the Blockleiter defining his offices, it was stated that his instructions would be received orally and they would be transmitted orally and never to use writing except in extreme cases. Therefore I say that these quoted portions clearly indicate that the Party was in fact used in connection with these famous 9 and 10 November 1938, anti-Jewish demonstrations. Now, reverting back to the text where I left off yesterday afternoon: The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party participated in the confiscation of church and religious property. I offer in evidence Document 072-PS, which is Exhibit Number USA-357, a letter dated 19 April 1941 from Reichsleiter Bormann to Reichsleiter Rosenberg. This letter exposes the participation of the Gauleiter in measures relating to the confiscation of religious property. I now quote from the last paragraph of Page 1 of the English translation of Document 072-PS, which reads: "The libraries and art objects of the monasteries confiscated in the Reich were to remain for the time being in these monasteries insofar as the Gauleiter had not directed otherwise...." On 21 February 1940 the Chief of the Security Police and SD, Heydrich, wrote a letter to Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, proposing that certain listed churches and monasteries be confiscated for the accommodation of so-called "racial Germans." The Tribunal, of course, will recall Himmler's position.
COL. STOREY: After pointing out that on political grounds outright expropriation of religious property would not be feasible at the time, Heydrich suggested certain specious interim actions with respect to the church properties in question, to be followed progressively by outright confiscation. I now offer in evidence R-101(a)-it is right towards the end of Your Honor's Exhibit-as Exhibit USA-358. If Your Honors please, there are several of those documents under R-101, and at the bottom you will notice they are labeled "a," "b," and "c." The first one is R-101(a), and I quote the first five paragraphs on Page 2 of the English translation: "Enclosed is a list of church possessions which might be available for the accommodation of racial Germans. The list, which I beg you to return, is supplemented by correspondence and illustrated material pertinent to the subject. "For political reasons, expropriation without indemnity of the entire property of the churches and religious orders will hardly be possible at this time. "Expropriation with indemnity or in return for assignment of other lands and grounds will be even less possible. "It is therefore suggested that the respective authorities of the orders be instructed that they make available the monasteries concerned for the accommodation of racial Germans and remove their own members to other less populous monasteries." There is a marginal note opposite this paragraph that, translated, means "very good." "The final expropriation of these properties thus placed at our disposal can then be carried out step by step in the course of time." On 5 April 1940 the Security Police and Security Service SS sent a letter to the Reich Commissar for the consolidation of Germandom, enclosing a copy of the foregoing letter from Heydrich to Himmler of 21 February 1940, proposing the confiscation of Church properties.
COL. STOREY: The letter of 5 April 1940 is included in the Document R-101(a), just introduced in evidence; and I quote from the second sentence of the first paragraph thereof, on Page 1 of the English translation of Document R-101(a): "The Reich Leader SS has agreed to the proposals made in the enclosed letter and has ordered the matter to be dealt with by collaboration between the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service and your office." I now offer in evidence Document R-101(c), Exhibit USA-358. This is a letter dated July 30, 1941, written by an SS Standartenfuehrer whose signature is illegible, to the Reich Leader of the SS. The letter supplies further evidence of the participation of the Gauleiter in the seizure of church property. I quote from the first three paragraphs of the English translation of Document R-101(c), at the bottom of the page: "With reference to the report of 30 May 1941, this office considers it its duty to call the Reich Leader's attention to the development which is taking place in the incorporated Eastern countries with regard to seizure and confiscation of church property. "As soon as the Reich laws on expropriation became effective, the Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter in the Reichsgau Wartheland adopted the practice of expropriating church real estate for use as dwellings and paying the appraised value into blocked accounts. "Moreover, the East German Agricultural Administrations Limited, reports that in the Warthegau all church-owned real estate is being claimed by the local Gau administration." I next offer in evidence Document R-101(d), which immediately follows Exhibit Lumber USA-358 already in evidence. This is a letter from the Chief of Staff of the Main Office to Himmler, dated 30 March 1942, dealing with the confiscation of church property. The letter evidences the active participation of the Party Chancellery in the confiscation of religious property.