Adolph Hitler And So-Called "Traditionalists"

 

Disturbing trends among those claiming to be Traditionalists include those who (a) seek to make the idea of a flat Earth a dogma, (b) make geocentricism a dogma, and most disturbingly (c) sanitize notorious dictator and mass murderer Adolph Hitler. I've seen the trend of the latter worsen over time. It affects many Millennials and now some Generation Z people as well. For some reason, they seem to like positions that seem "extreme"(which, unfortunately, is why many of them became Traditionalist) or make them somewhat out of the ordinary. They are young historical revisionists who think the Nazis were "good guys;" they were anti-Communists and got "bad press" because of Jewish conspiracies lurking behind every door. 

Traditionalists get enough flak standing for the truth without these pseudo-Traditionalist jokers giving us a bad name by associating us with ideas that are not merely whacky (like the "flat Earthers"), but try and rehabilitate a man and a political movement that were evil to the core. Some go so far as to declare Hitler as a "hero." The purpose of this post is to show the depths of depravity and anti-Catholicism that are inherent both in Hitler and the Nazi Party. May it, God Willing, show those people the error of their ways. Second, I hope it can help my readers refute any of this pro-Hitler/Nazi nonsense that may come their way. 

I will not address their claims regarding race and Jewish people. It is enough to show that the man they idolize and his political regime were an abomination before God.  For sake of brevity, I will refer to the "Traditionalist" apologists for Hitler as "Nazi Apologists" or "NAs." 

To My Readers: NAs will try to discredit a source based on whether or not the author is Jewish. The (illogical and fallacious) upshot is that all Jewish people cannot make a valid argument and they have a biased opinion that makes everything inherently untrue or untrustworthy. Some will go so far as to claim that a source is unreliable if the author had a distant Jewish relative, even if he/she is not Jewish. In logic we call this the Genetic Fallacy, i.e., the act of rejecting or accepting an argument on the basis of its origin rather than its content. I remember two pro-abortion women here in NYC who refused to listen to a nun who was a biologist and taught biology at Fordham University, attempting to inform them about the humanity of the unborn, because "you're a nun." What does that have to do with the arguments based on biological facts? A "recognize and resister" with whom I was acquainted refused to read anything from a sedevacantist because "they are all schismatic lunatics." Don't fall into the trap. It springs from the NAs paranoid idea that "everything bad is the result of a Jewish conspiracy and every single Jewish person is involved." They must deal with the arguments, not their origin.---Introibo

WARNING!! This post contains material that is extremely graphic, and may be found very disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.

Was Hitler Catholic?

Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) was baptized as a Catholic and was ostensibly practicing the Faith until the age of 18. Both atheists and NAs like to claim he was Catholic, but didn't practice the Faith. People can make claims all they want. The crux of the issue is whether or not the claims are backed up by sound reasoning and sufficient evidence. One of the so-called "New Atheists," Dr. Richard Dawkins, enjoys quoting Hitler as saying,  "...as late as 1941 he told his adjutant, General Gerhard Engel, 'I shall remain a Catholic forever.' (See The God Delusion, [2006], pg. 274). Was Hitler Catholic? Not by a long shot. Yes, he was baptized in the Church, but the "god" he worshiped was not the historical Jesus Christ Who founded His One True Church.  Even Dawkins admits, "Hitler, oddly, was always adamant that Jesus himself was not a Jew."(Ibid, pg. 276). Why would the world's biggest anti-Semite worship a Man born of a Jewish woman as God?  The answer is simple: he didn't. 

According to historian Weikart:

 It's true that Hitler's public statements opposing atheism should not be given too much weight, since they obviously served Hitler's political purposes to tar political opponents. However, in his private monologues, he likewise rejected atheism, providing further evidence that this was indeed his personal conviction. In July 1941, he told his colleagues that humans do not really know where the laws of nature come from. He continued, "Thus people discovered the wonderful concept of the Almighty, whose rule they venerate. We do not want to train people in atheism." He then maintained that every person has a consciousness of what we call God. This God was apparently not the Christian God preached in the churches, however, since Hitler continued, "In the long run National Socialism and the church cannot continue to exist together." The monologue confirms that Hitler rejected atheism, but it also underscores the vagueness of his conception of God. [...] While confessing faith in an omnipotent being of some sort, however, Hitler denied we could know anything about it. [...] Despite his suggestion that God is inscrutable and unfathomable, Hitler did sometimes claim to know something about the workings of Providence. [...] Perhaps even more significantly, he had complete faith that Providence had chosen him to lead the German people to greatness.

(See Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich, [2016]; Emphasis mine). 

Hitler's beliefs were a blend of scientism and "scientific occultism" also called "boarder science" (i.e., "science -based occult practices"). Just as many occultists defend their practices as being "backed by science" (e.g., feng shui, reiki, etc.) Hitler did the same. According to researcher Kurlander:

As the SS paper, the Schwarze Korps, explained in 1936: ‘We want in no way to deny that there are things which are invisible to our natural faculties. We also do not want to oppose a science that occupies itself with research on such matters . . . What we reject unequivocally is any obvious swindle that is based on deception and exploitation of stupidity and therefore constitutes criminal activity.’ Provided that the occult doctrine or practitioner was sufficiently ‘scientific’ in character, the Third Reich appeared reluctant to carry out any police action. Hence the German Society for Scientific Occultism (DGWO) negotiated the first few years of the Third Reich fairly easily. So did the major astrological associations and journals. They were generally allowed to police themselves in terms of practising ‘scientific’ occultism – provided they promised to stop publishing horoscopes of Nazi leaders. Hitler even sent a note thanking the president of the German Astrological Association (DAZ), Hubert Korsch, for organizing the 1935 Astrologer’s Conference taking place in Wernigerode.

(See Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich, [2017], pgs. 102-103; Emphasis mine). 

Hitler only mentioned being Catholic once in the quote given by Dawkins. Hitler also wrote of "gods" and "goddesses" proving, if all of his religious utterances are to be believed literally, that he was a polytheist. The gods are referred to in Mein Kampf-"the manifestations of decay showed only that the gods had willed Austria's destruction" [vol. I chap. 3]-and there are references to goddesses as well: to the "Goddess of Suffering" [vol. I chap. 2] and the "Goddess of Destiny" [vol. I chap.5]. There is even a "goddess of eternal justice and inexorable retribution" which Hitler believed "caused Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the most mortal enemy of Austrian- Germanism, to fall by the bullets which he himself had helped to mold" [vol I chap.1].

Publicly, Hitler pushed what was deemed "Positive Christianity," which term he used in point 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform: "the Party as such represents the viewpoint of Positive Christianity without binding itself to any particular denomination." (See ghdi.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=4811). 

 The new Nazi idea of Positive Christianity allayed the fears of Germany's Christian majority by implying that the Nazi movement was not anti-Christian. That said, in 1937, Hans Kerrl, the Reich Minister for Church Affairs, explained that "Positive Christianity" was not "dependent upon the Apostle's Creed", nor was it dependent on "faith in Christ as the son of God", upon which Christianity relied, rather, it was represented by the Nazi Party: "The Führer is the herald of a new revelation", he said. (See Shirer, William, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, [1960], pgs. 238-239). 

The Nazis used "boarder science"--occultism that parades as science:

Despite the continuing difficulty of being recognized as ‘pioneers’ by mainstream science, some ‘border areas’ of the sciences had gained recognition in the Third Reich. These included scientific astrology, the study of ‘[cosmic] rays [and] other parapsychological phenomena like apparitions, telepathy, and clairvoyance’. In order for this promising trend to continue, Bender recommended that occultists dispense with phrases like ‘parascientific’ and ‘paranormal’ in favor of ‘border areas’ or border science. It was better to couch one’s experiments in an ‘epistemology of science’, Bender [an astrologer] insisted, than to traffic openly in ‘spiritualism, esoteric teachings and esoteric lodge activities’ that could not be proven. (See Kurlander, pg. 133)

The irony is that the evidence indicating an important link between Nazism and the supernatural has never been greater. In the mid-1920s Hitler almost certainly read Ernst Schertel's parapsychology tome Magic: History, Theory, Practice, underlining sentences such as 'Satan is the fertilizing, destroying-constructing warrior' and 'He who does not carry demonic seeds within him will never give birth to a new world.' ...(Ibid, pg. x).

Kurlander also reveals how the Nazis held a seance on the night of February 26, 1933 using clairvoyant Erik Hanussen who "predicted" the next day's Reichstag fire, which helped justify the Nazi imposition of martial law. Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess sponsored astrology, "cosmobiology," and other esoteric medical practices. SS Chief Heinrich Himmler encouraged research on the Holy Grail (the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark got their story-line from such records, albeit with great artistic license), witchcraft, and medieval devil worship (Luciferianism).

In my personal experience, Fr. DePauw knew of a story, circulated by many high-ranking prelates, that circa 1941 Pope Pius XII called together all the cardinals of the Curia, and late at night in St. Peter's Basilica, attempted a "long distance exorcism" of Hitler and the Nazi officials. The story has never been proven (or disproven). 

These occult views and the heretical conception of God held by Hitler are incompatible with Catholicism.  On March 14, 1937, Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical letter Mit Brennender Sorge (On the Church and the German Reich).  His words prove more true than ever, as greater evidence has been brought forth confirming his every contention. In paragraph # 7, His Holiness writes:

The believer in God is not he who utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God. 

Hitler's belief in occultic practices and promotion of "Positive Christianity," with a nebulous conception of God, are clearly condemned.  He also referred to "gods" and "goddesses;" Paragraph #9 of Pope Pius XI's encyclical reads:

Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

Far from being Catholic, Hitler was an occultist and someone who was also driven by Darwinian scientism. 

Was Hitler a Sodomite and Pervert?

That Hitler was a supreme pervert is beyond question. Multiple lines of evidence from various sources show him to be sexually deranged.

•  Hitler was a coprophile, (a deviant aroused by human feces) and had relationships with at least seven women (by some accounts eight women), one of whom was his niece. Due to his perverted and twisted ways all four women who were definitely involved with Hitler attempted suicide.

Based on the O.S.S. report and other sources, Waite has written, "The idea that Hitler had a sexual perversion particularly abhorrent to women is further supported by a statistic: of the seven women who, we can be reasonably sure, had intimate relations with Hitler, six committed suicide or seriously attempted to do so." In addition to Geli, "Mimi Reiter tried to hang herself in 1928; Eva Braun attempted suicide in 1932 and again in 1935; Frau Inge Ley was a successful suicide as were Renate Mueller and Suzi Liptauer." Perhaps the most dramatic of these was the mysterious death of thirty-year-old Berlin film actress Renate Mueller. Her director, one A. Zeissler, later told the O.S.S. that she had confided in him shortly after spending a night with Hitler in the Reichschancellery how distressed she was at the nature of the sexual practices Hitler demanded of her—with which, to her mortification, she complied. She claimed Hitler "fell on the floor and begged her to kick him. . .condemned himself as unworthy .. . and just groveled in an agonizing manner. The scene became intolerable to her, and she finally acceded to his wishes. As she continued to kick him he became more and more excited."

Let's begin with the affair of the purloined pornography. The most detailed account of the episode comes from Konrad Heiden, one of the first and most respected journalists to chronicle Hitler's rise (he was widely credited with coining the term "Nazi"). Author of four books on Hitler and the Nazis, forced to flee Germany in the thirties, Heiden was described in his New York Times obituary as "the best known authority outside Germany on the party and its leaders" in the pre-World War II period.

Heiden's magnum opus, Der Fuehrer, is remarkable for its portrait of Hitler's Munich circle, a now nearly forgotten collection of misfits, hunchbacks, sexual outlaws, moral degenerates, decadent aristocrats, ex-cons, and occult con men. Heiden calls Hitler's Munich circle "armed bohemians." They were Fascist libertines who spent boisterous days in the Cafe Heck and the Osteria Bavaria, stuffing themselves with pasta and pastries. While pimps scoured Munich schoolyards to supply boys for SA chief Ernst Rohm's predatory appetites, Hitler was reported to have been present at dissolute gatherings at the home of party photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, who had a wide acquaintance among artists, models, and other demimondaines. [i.e., prostitutes]

In 1929, according to Heiden, "Hitler wrote the young girl a letter couched in the most unmistakable terms. It was a letter in which the uncle and lover gave himself completely away; it expressed feelings which could be expected from a man with masochistic-coprophil inclinations, bordering on what Havelock Ellis calls 'undinism.'. . .[i.e., an obsession with or a sexual pleasure derived from water, esp urination and urine]. 

(See archive.vanityfair.com/article/1992/4/hitlers-doomed-angel; Emphasis mine). 

• Hitler was effeminate and bisexual. The Nazi Party was mostly comprised of sodomites.

According to Shirer (cited above):

Though Hitler reflexively acted with brutality, the Fuhrer exhibited many traits associated with homosexuality, including heightened aesthetic sense, intuition, mental acuity, dramatic flair and duplicity.

He desribes Rohem (1887-1934; leader of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing) as a “stocky, bull-necked, piggish-eyed, scar-faced professional soldier with a flair for politics and a natural ability as an organizer. “Like Hitler, he was possessed of a burning hatred for the democratic [Weimar] republic. A tough, ruthless, driving man, albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual.” (Emphasis mine).

According to historian Lothar Machtan (Hidden Hitler [2001]), “homo-eroticism and homosexuality were cornerstones of fascist male-bonding culture prior to 1933.” As news of the homosexuality in Nazi ranks became more talked about by the average German, a four point plan was devised to repair their reputation: (1) documents revealing the truth about the rampant homosexuality within the Nazi Party would be seized and then destroyed; (2) Rohm, an open sodomite, would be murdered; (3) new anti-sodomite laws would be introduced; and (4) sodomites in the higher echelons of the Nazi Party would either be married off, imprisoned, or murdered. (See also, Lively and Abrams, The Pink Swastika, [1995]).

US intelligence later discovered that Hitler was never promoted during WW1 because of his “sexual orientation” and that he was arrested in Munich in 1919 for “pederasty and theft." Indeed, former Nazi, Otto Strasser said that when Hitler became Nazi Party leader in 1921, “his personal bodyguards and chauffeurs were almost exclusively homosexual." Two of these bodyguards, Ulrich Graf and Christian Weber, were expected to satisfy their boss’s needs whenever necessary...However, while gay Nazis were being butchered or imprisoned, Hitler was having a secret affair with his Munich chauffeur Julius Schreck. The two were apparently devoted to each other and enjoyed romantic trysts at the Hotel Bube near Berneck, the midway point between Berlin and Munich. Their affair lasted until Schreck’s sudden death from meningitis. When he heard the news, Hitler wept uncontrollably for several days. Schreck had fulfilled Hitler’s fantasies about the great love between a powerful man and his obedient servant. The homosexual Bavarian, King Ludwig II — who had conducted a 20 year affair with his coachman — was one of the German dictator’s heroes. (See irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20391500.html).

Lively and Abrams put forth a vigorous case that while some homosexuals (and those on trumped up charges of homosexuality) suffered under Hitler and his Nazis, The Pink Swastika attempts to show that that there was far more rape, torture, and murder committed by Nazi deviants/homosexuals than there ever was against homosexuals. The book draws heavily on two sources; Samuel Igra's book Germany's National Vice, which documents the homoerotic foundations of German militarism, and The Nazis and the Occult by Dusty Sklar, which documents the occult roots of Nazi ideology. There are many other sources listed as well. It is as fascinating as it is scary to read.

Why would Hitler found a Party made up of deviants? There are several reasons. First, he wanted people--pimps, murders, and homosexuals--who would be willing to go against traditional morality. Second, homosexuals fit in with Hitler's occult beliefs. Pagan "priests" and "priestesses" were often homosexual. The modern pagan religion of Wicca embraces homosexuality and worships nature. The swastika itself comes from non-Christian, pagan religions. It was used at least 5,000 years before Adolf Hitler designed the Nazi flag. To this day it is a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism. It is a common sight on temples or houses in India or Indonesia. Swastikas also have an ancient history in Europe, appearing on artifacts from pre-Christian European cultures. Remember the Bible says homosexuality is the result of "worshiping the creation rather than the Creator" (See Romans 1: 18-27). Third, many homosexuals had violent, even murderous inclinations.

Sodomites may be divided into those who act effeminately ('fems") and those who disguise their unnatural vice under a veneer of being virile and manly ("butches").  The latter were the ones who wanted to revive the pederastic military cults of the pagan pre-Christian era. Their leaders included top Nazis Adolf Brand and Ernst Roehm. They despised the pacifist and effeminate homosexuals; and these were the ones whom were persecuted. Heterosexuals served the purpose of procreation, but the effeminate didn't procreate or share their militaristic vision. Hence, they were seen as subhuman. 

Hitler was indeed a bisexual pervert who formed a party of sodomites. The "pink triangles" were little more than a cover-up for the pink swastika. 

Were Hitler and the Nazis Benevolent Towards or Tolerant of Catholicism?

Above, I had noted that Hitler was ostensibly a practicing Catholic until age 18. There is evidence that goes against this contention. Hitler’s closest childhood friend, August Kubizek, wrote that for the entire time he knew Hitler, he (Hitler) not only never attended Mass, but refused to go with his mother when she attended. She was very disappointed and begged him to go to Mass but, evidently, she eventually came to “terms with the fact that her son wanted to follow another path” —his father’s. (See Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew: A Boyhood Friend Recounts Growing Up with the Future Fuhrer of the Third Reich, [1955], pg. 95).  Hitler was never more truthful than when he stated in one of his speeches: I myself am a heathen to the core. (See The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939, ed. Norman Baynes, [1942], pg. 369).

• Hitler's opposition to Christ and His Church in his own words.

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. (See Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941–1944, trans. Norman Cameron [1953], pg. 6).

As a National Socialist and opponent of the Jews, it is impossible for me to continue to belong to present day Christianity, because it is supported by the Old Testament, which is Jewish and friendly to Jewish things. (See Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis, [2005], pg. 105).

Compare Pope Pius XI:

 In Jesus Christ, Son of God made Man, there shone the plentitude of divine revelation. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by His Son" (Heb. i. 1). The sacred books of the Old Testament are exclusively the word of God, and constitute a substantial part of his revelation; they are penetrated by a subdued light, harmonizing with the slow development of revelation, the dawn of the bright day of the redemption. As should be expected in historical and didactic books, they reflect in many particulars the imperfection, the weakness and sinfulness of man. But side by side with innumerable touches of greatness and nobleness, they also record the story of the chosen people, bearers of the Revelation and the Promise, repeatedly straying from God and turning to the world. Eyes not blinded by prejudice or passion will see in this prevarication, as reported by the Biblical history, the luminous splendor of the divine light revealing the saving plan which finally triumphs over every fault and sin. It is precisely in the twilight of this background that one perceives the striking perspective of the divine tutorship of salvation, as it warms, admonishes, strikes, raises and beautifies its elect. Nothing but ignorance and pride could blind one to the treasures hoarded in the Old Testament. (See Mit Brennender Sorge, para. #15). 

You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness? (See Speer, Inside the Third Reich, [1969], pg. 115). 

Hitler had this to say about Christianity because of its ethic to protect the weak and helpless:

Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.

(See Alan Bullock, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, [1964], pg. 389).

In a talk given by Hitler on April 7, 1933, Hitler made it absolutely clear that in Germany’s future there would be “no place” in the German “utopia for the Christian Churches” and “nothing will prevent me from eradicating totally, root and branch, all Christianity in Germany.… A German Church, a German Christianity, it is all rubbish.… One is either Christian or German.” (See Poewe cited above, pg. 112; Emphasis mine). 

• Hitler's treatment of the Church and Her clergy.

Some of these NAs go so far as to state that Fr. Maximillian Kolbe was not killed by Nazis, due to Nazi hatred of the clergy, but by tuberculosis.  I do not recognize Fr. Kolbe as a saint or beatus, as he was "beatified" by Montini and "canonized" by Wojtyla. However, on May 12, 1955, Pope Pius XII gave him the title Servant of God, which means his life was considered worthy to be investigated for canonization. In my layman's opinion, I think a true pope would have canonized him had the Great Apostasy not taken place. There have been arguments made as to whether or not a true “odium fidei” ("hatred of the Faith") was present for him to be a true martyr. Wojtyla decided that Kolbe should be recognized as a martyr because the systematic hatred of the Nazi regime was inherently an act of hatred against religious faith, meaning Kolbe’s death equated to martyrdom. A true pope did not make that judgement. Moreover, there has been testimony that hatred of Catholic clergy was present when Fr. Kolbe was murdered. I would say he was a Confessor of the Faith, rather than a martyr. Bottom line: the Nazis were no friends to the Church or its clergy; it should be clear they hated both.

The very idea that the Nazis were "nice" to the clergy is completely without merit. Beginning in 1936, Hitler embarked on a campaign of "immorality trials" against Catholic clergy in Germany to discredit the hierarchy. They would, for example, summon a priest to a house to give the Last Rites, only to have a prostitute waiting and someone to take a picture as he went in and promptly left. (For more about said "immorality trials," see content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,757889,00.html). That the Nazis could accuse anyone of immorality is the quintessential case of hypocrisy. 

Fr. DePauw, who had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Dunkirk, and held at a concentration camp, saw first hand the Nazi hatred and atrocities committed against the Catholic clergy while there. (Fr. was not yet a priest; he would be seriously wounded escaping with his best friend, and ordained on April 12, 1942). One brave voice against the Nazi campaign against the Church was Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber. He would ordain two men to the priesthood that couldn't be more different, and would become bitter enemies at Vatican II: Fr (later Bp.) Blaise Kurz, and Fr. (later false pope) Joseph Ratzinger. Here is what Karol Jozef Gajewski, scholar of European history wrote:

Senior clerics who challenged the Third Reich in its racist and anti-Christian policies included Bishop Clemens Count von Galen of Munster, Archbishop von Preysing of Berlin, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, Cardinal Schulte of Cologne and possibly the most famous of all, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Munich. His series of Advent sermons, preached from the pulpit of St. Michael's Church aroused national and international interest. They became so popular that thousands listened, some even in the streets outside. In the first of the sermons, preached on December 3, 1933, Faulhaber defended Christianity by defending the people from whom it had sprung: the Jews. He reminded them that Christianity made no racial distinction between Jew and Gentile, but asked only that its adherents should possess faith. The next month shots shattered the windows of his first floor study. In March 1934, the published edition of his sermons, "Judaism, Christianity and Germanism" was banned for its "slanderous views on the State."

Faulhaber continued his denunciations of Nazi policy on Catholic schools, youth organizations, rigged elections, sterilization laws, attacks on the Pope, and attempts to replace Christianity with what he called "fake" religion. The Nazis maintained their propaganda campaign against Faulhaber relentlessly.

Faulhaber played a considerable role in the writing of the great anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge ("With Burning Anxiety") issued in March 1937. It denounced repeated attacks on the faith, the breaking of almost every article of the Concordat, and Nazi ideological and political theories. The encyclical was smuggled into Germany under the eyes of Gestapo agents who had been warned beforehand to expect some kind of protest from Rome. Copies were printed secretly in various parts of the country and the underground Catholic network was engaged to distribute it to parishes throughout Germany. Hundreds of helpers, in cars, on motorbikes and bicycles, handed copies secretly to clergy. According to the Daily Telegraph (London) of March 22, 1937: "the encyclical stated the Nazis had made it plain, that they were waging a 'war of extermination' against the Church, and after countless rebuffs the Pope had decided to make a final stand."

The reaction to the encyclical's publication was immediate. The German regime sent a formal protest to Rome; it was swiftly rejected by Cardinal Pacelli. An enraged Hitler and Goebbels gave orders to bring to trial dozens of clerics on charges of immorality and "slanders against the State." Gestapo and SS squads were dispatched to find which presses had produced the encyclical: 12 were confiscated and editors rounded up. In one parish, Essen in the diocese of Oldenburg, seven girls were arrested inside a church as they handed out copies after the Palm Sunday service.

The death of Pope Pius XI in February 1939 and the election of his successor, Cardinal Pacelli, drew sneers from Das Schwarze Korps ("The Black Corps"), house magazine of the SS and mouthpiece of Heinrich Himmler. It referred to Pius XI as the "Chief Rabbi of the Christians, boss of the firm of Judah-Rome." Cardinal Pacelli had already been labeled in the paper as an ally of Jews and Communists in a series of cartoons and articles published at the time of his official visit to France in 1937.

Sometimes new Nazi policies would be imposed from above, sometimes they would be rescinded as the dictates of political events changed or new strategies were adopted by Berlin. Harassment could be disguised or even halted. In August 1936, for example, when the Olympic Games were taking place in Berlin, orders were given to stop persecution against Jews, Catholics and Protestants and to hide show trials from the eyes of foreign journalists. The machinery of persecution roared into action again as soon as the correspondents left.

With the coming of war in 1939, Hitler favored postponing the total destruction of Christianity to more effectively prosecute the war. Others in the party, however, thought it a mistake to slow the Kirchenkampf, the battle against the Church. Martin Bormann reminded SS leader Himmler in 1941 that, "the influence of the Church must be entirely eliminated."...

(As published Inside the Vatican magazine, November 1999, pgs. 50-54; "Nazi Persecution of the Church"). 

Conclusion

Adolph Hitler was many things; a mass murderer, an occultist, and a despiser of all things Christian. He was not some "misunderstood leader" who wasn't all that bad; nor was he in any way benevolent to the Church. Hitler and the "Nazi Traditionalists" can call themselves "Catholic" but they fail the test of Our Lord Himself, "By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire." (St. Matthew 7: 16-19).