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

HITLER VERSUS NATIONAL SOCIALISM 637him an admission that the Church must be 'free of state guardianship.'But he did make it clear that the Protestant Church must be run inaccordance with the 'leader principle.' The very titles of the newleadership had for German Protestant ears an ugly ring of Papism: therewould be a 'Reich Bishop' with a number of other bishops under him.Taking Muller by surprise, the majority of the Church body elected astheir bishop a man of their ranks, Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh,a widely respected Churchman and by no means a National Socialist.His election was an open insult to Hitler, because Bodelschwingh wasthe director of a famous home for the feeble-minded, caring for thosepeople who, in Hitler's opinion, should have been exterminated for thegood of the race.At this point, open warfare broke out between the Church and theparty. Almost anything might have provoked it, for these were twofaiths which could not live at peace with one another. The most obviouscause for conflict was the racial question, for the German Christiansdemanded that only Aryans be admitted to the Church, and especially tothe clergy. The number of German non-Aryans who had ceased to beJews was later set by National Socialist statistics at one million; overthis relatively small number the German churches of bothdenominations waged an intense struggle. The Church as such could notrenounce these people, for Christ had said: 'Ye shall teach all thenations.' The Catholic Church went even farther, and refused to admitthat non-Aryans had ceased to be Germans; in a pastoral letter of June10, 1933 — the last of its kind for many years to come — the Catholicbishops declared 'that national unity can be achieved, not only by likeblood, but also by like mentality, and that exclusive consideration ofrace and blood in judging state membership leads to injustice.' In theProtestant Church the German Christians, with their insistence on theintroduction of the 'Aryan clause' into the articles of faith, stood twothousand years of church history on its head. For the history of theChristian Church had begun with the principle that all Christians mustbe circumcised Jews, and only when this principle was discarded didChristianity begin to grow and to 'teach all nations'; now, in 1933, it wasno longer permissible for a Christian to have