Clear-eyed and full of trust I see
Ahead, around, and over me —
Like Siegfried, I will rise up straight
To open Germany’s golden gate. [2]
The verses are feeble, terribly feeble, and not even blood-thirsty. But look at the response! “The author calls himself a scholar,” continues Jungvolk. “He really should know that the National Socialist youth takes its duties damned seriously and has no need to be reminded of the same by a cuckoo. Our only advice to this sort of ‘educator of youth’ is this: ‘Hands off the leadership of youth!’ ”
That’s how to pick a quarrel! And hope the victim will twitch!
But it will not. School is not a good enemy: it is incapable of resistance, nor is there the chance of instigating a countermovement.
And the Church, the priests, teachers of religion, former leaders of religious unions? What about them?
That’s better, now. There’s resistance, and protest, here.
The struggle has been long, full of secret arrests, persecutions, public calumny, opinions repressed, suppression of organizations and instruments of the Church, and the wholesale incitement of youth away from it. The Apex was the trial of Pastor Niemoeller; and the protest of the army chaplains, because they were part of the army, was of special significance.