Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

HITLER VERSUS NATIONAL SOCIALISM 633claimed: 'Reich Chancellor Hitler still belongs to the Catholic Churchand has no intention of leaving it.'Certainly, he had stated that '... the priest in politics we shall eliminate... we shall give him back to the pulpit and the altar.' And to satisfy himthe party of the Catholic Church itself took care to eliminate the priestfrom politics; Kaas, the prelate, on May 6, retired from the leadership ofthe Center Party, went to Rome, and found a position in the Vatican.But Bruning, his successor, carried on, and had conferences with Hitler,who had not as yet revoked his bid for collaboration. Actually, the partyof the Church did, for a few months, share the government with theNational Socialists; in Bavaria Count Quadt-Isny, the new leader of theBavarian People's Party, served as Minister of Economics.Step by step, the Catholic Church abandoned political resistance toNational Socialism. The same German bishops, who three years beforehad warned against the un-Christian movement, declared in aconference at Fulda, March 28, 1933, that after Hitler's Reichstagspeech of March 23, with its conciliatory words for the Church, they feltjustified in 'hoping that the above-mentioned general prohibitions andwarnings need no longer be regarded as necessary,' and recommendedobedience to the legal authorities. The prohibitions and warnings hadbeen issued while the National Socialists were merely marching throughthe streets and issuing threats; they were withdrawn when thousandswere murdered or beaten to a pulp in concentration camps.By retreating on the political field the Church hoped to keep itsspiritual power intact. But was this possible?For centuries it had been true that the cleavage into two sects ofapproximately equal strength — if Austria was included — had helpedto tear Germany apart. But now: 'As soon as a man puts on the brownshirt,' said Rosenberg, 'he ceases to be a Catholic or a Protestant; he isonly a National Socialist' — and what else could this mean except thatthe National Socialist had ceased to be a Christian? At all events, this isexactly what Rosenberg had meant by his words. In a society where theindividual was nothing and the nation was everything, God could benothing unless he was the nation; this was no philosophical hairsplitting,but a state of mind