You are a German child, so think thereon,
What at Versailles your enemies have done!
“But the Fatherland sitteth on the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty….” Is it National Socialism or is it religion?
It is both; it has to be. The words and concepts are synonymous and interchangeable. At morning chapel, the platform is decorated with the swastika. Hitler’s photograph hangs under the crucifix. Choirs of children sing the heroic deeds of the Nazis: the glorious explosion of a bridge by Leo Schlageter; the death of Horst Wessel. Even such Christian festivals as confirmation are utilized. “Just after dark,” a report begins, “the school was lined up on the parade ground with lit torches; a central flame was kindled, and the boys to be confirmed were admitted into the first hundred, or upper school. The headmaster made an address in which he stressed their new obligations in pursuing those personal ideals of Honor, Cleanliness, and Courage, which their country demanded. He then presented each boy with a side-arm, which his new status in the first hundred requires him to wear, and with a text. These texts closely resembled the ‘Graces’ said occasionally before meals; for example: ‘One does not beg for justice, one must fight for justice.’”
Pagan festivals, too, are given the same rank and importance, and are celebrated everywhere. The Sonnenwendfeiern (solstice festivals) are in particular favor. Participants leap the bonfires, swearing eternal faithfulness to National Socialism, which “continues in its course like the sun.” And the Nazis rejoice over the “lovely custom.” Political Education, the organ of the Saxon N.S. Teachers’ Union, writes: “What has suffered most in the course of the last thousand years of our history has been the connection with the religious treasure of our ancestors, which, however, could not be entirely done away with. That is easy to understand — in spite of the methods of force used in Christianizing our ancestors — which resulted in the conscious and stubborn derogation of the so-called heathen worship of idols, the memories of whose festivals, however, could not be entirely obliterated from the memory of the people….”
To retain the respect of the outer world, the Nazis have taken the easiest way out, placed the “so-called” before the “heathen,” and referred to “the religious property of our ancestors.”
The ensuing confusion is great. The faithful of all religions in Germany fight passionately for their beliefs, and, because of outside pressure, have the only organizations in the country which could not be suppressed or driven underground. A few members of these groups do still protest — and our wholehearted respect and sympathy goes to them. They are the relatively small number who, because of their moral qualities “and their fear of God,” are not qualified to take part in the “conquest of the world by the Nazis.” They are persecuted, like the Jews, with every kind of slander, pseudo-science, and open pornography. And the Nazis see to it that school-children learn what evil-doers the clergy are — the clergymen who are imprisoned for the sake of their faith, these “moral criminals” and “seducers of the young.” Care is taken to “enlighten and inform” German children on this point.
A newspaper, chosen haphazardly, lies before me. It is the Freiburger Zeitung of June, 1937, and two closely-printed pages deal exclusively with reports of “immorality” trials throughout the Reich. Even if the material disgusts the editors, they have no choice; it is an official report, and must be printed. “A sequence of horrors…. Monks trespass against cripples…. The lunatic asylum as a place of refuge…. With dragging steps and trembling limbs, physically deformed, these poor victims stood stuttering and weeping before the judge in order to repeat, with horrible gestures, their despairing accusation against the bestial criminal…. All kinds of unnatural lechery…. Debauches of greatest magnitude…. Horrible homosexual crimes…. Thirteen poor crippled children subjected to abominable misdemeanors in the cell of a cloister…. The child raped, and a bunch of roses given to the mother!… Disgusting shamelessness of a criminal in a priest’s cassock….” Page after page, in three thousand other German papers as well as in Freiburg; day by day, for weeks. And the verdicts of “Not guilty,” which the judges are again and again compelled to hand down, are, by decree, printed in a corner, in small type.
A credible report from the Rhineland states that pupils have become possessed by pathological sexual aberrations, as a result of reading newspaper accounts of criminal actions. Usually the school does nothing to cure this disease; on the contrary, it promotes it. The children swarm in front of the Stürmer stands, discussing these things excitedly. Sexual psychosis is already so widespread that trust is failing; the doctors in the public schools are, even now, not permitted to examine girl pupils except in the presence of the teacher. A true incubus has taken possession of large sections of the population. Its political use is clear: the Catholic Church “is to be made impossible and to be destroyed.”
The campaign fought on a sexual basis has assisted this attempt of Hitler’s. Shortly after the “immorality” trials, Catholic priests were forbidden to teach Religion in German schools, losing one of the oldest privileges of the Church, and giving the Nazis a final sphere of influence.