(f) The Nazi conspirators suppressed religious organizations. On 28 May 1934, the State Police Office for the District of Duesseldorf issued an order concerning denominational youth and professional organizations which stated in part as follows:
“Denominational youth and professional organizations as well as those created for special occasions only are prohibited from every public activity outside the church and religious sphere.
“Especially forbidden is: Any public appearance in groups, all sorts of political activity. Any public sport function including public hikes and establishment of holiday or outdoor camps. The public display or showing of flags, banners, pennants or the open wearing of uniforms or insignia.” (R-145)
On 20 July 1935, Frick, as Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior, issued secret instructions to the provincial governments and to the Prussian Gestapo that Confessional youth organizations were to be forbidden to wear uniforms, or uniform-like clothing, to assemble publicly with pennants and flags, to wear insignia as a substitute for uniforms, or to engage in any outdoor sport activity. (1482-PS)
On 20 January 1938 the Gestapo District Office at Munich, issued a decree which stated in part as follows:
“The Guild of the Virgin Mary (die Marianisch Jungfrauenkongregation) of the Bavarian dioceses, including the diocese of Speyere, together with its branches and associations and the Societies of Our Lady (Jungfrauenvereinen) attached to it, is by police order to be dissolved and forbidden with immediate effect.”
Among the reasons cited for this action were the following:
“The whole behavior of the Guild of the Virgin Mary had therefore to be objected to from various points of view. It could be repeatedly observed that the Guild engaged in purely worldly affairs, such as community games, and then in the holding of ‘Social Evenings’.
“This proves incontestably that the Guild of the Virgin Mary was active to a very great degree in a manner unecclesiastical and therefore worldly. By so doing it has left the sphere of its proper religious task and entered a sphere of activity to which it has no statutory right. The organization has therefore to be dissolved and forbidden.” (1481-PS)
According to the report of a Security Police “church specialist” attached to the State Police Office at Aachen, the following points were made by a lecturer at a conference of Security Police and Security Service church intelligence investigators in Berlin, on 22 September 1941: