The Gestapo official in Stuttgart added that Bishop Groeber desired “to turn to the Fuehrer and Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr. Frick, anew”; and that he had found a full report of the demonstration after “suppressing counter mass meetings.” (848-PS)
On 23 July 1938 the Reich Minister for Church Affairs, Kerrl, sent a letter to the Minister of State and Chief of the Praesidium Chancellery, Berlin, stating that Bishop Sproll had angered the population by abstaining from the plebiscite of 10 April (849-PS). In this letter Kerrl stated that the Gauleiter and Governor of Wuerttemberg had decided that, in the interest of preserving the State’s authority and in the interest of quiet and order, Bishop Sproll could no longer remain in office. The letter reads in part as follows:
“* * * The Reich Governor had explained to the Ecclesiastical Board that he would no longer regard Bishop Sproll as Head of the Diocese of Rottenburg on account of his refraining from the election in the office and that he desired Bishop Sproll to leave the Gau area * * * because he could assume no guarantee for his personal safety; that in the case of the return of the Bishop of Rottenburg he would see to it that all personal and official intercourse with him on the part of State offices as well as Party offices and the Armed Forces would be denied.” (849-PS)
Kerrl further stated in the foregoing letter that his Deputy had moved the Foreign Office, through the German Embassy at the Vatican, to urge the Holy See to persuade Bishop Sproll to resign his Bishopric. Kerrl concluded by stating that should the effort to procure the Bishop’s resignation prove unsuccessful
“* * * the Bishop would have to be exiled from the land or there would have to be a complete boycott of the Bishop by the authorities * * *.” (849-PS)
On 14 July 1939 Bormann, in his capacity as Deputy of the Fuehrer, issued a party regulation which required party members entering the clergy or undertaking the study of theology to leave the party (840-PS). The last paragraph of the regulation reads as follows:
“I decree that in the future party members who enter the clergy or who turn to the study of theology have to leave the party.” (840-PS)
In this directive Bormann also referred to an earlier decree, dated 9 February 1937, in which he had ruled that the admission of members of the clergy into the party was to be avoided. In that decree also Bormann referred with approval to a regulation of the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, dated 10 May 1939, providing that—
“clergymen, as well as other fellow Germans, who are also closely connected with the church, cannot be admitted into the party.” (840-PS)
In the Allocution of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, to the Sacred College on 2 June 1945, His Holiness, after declaring that he had acquired an appreciation of the great qualities of the German people in the course of 12 years of residence in their midst, expressed the hope that Germany could rise to new dignity and new life once it had laid the satanic specter raised by National Socialism, and after the guilty had expiated the crimes they have committed (3268-PS). After referring to repeated violations by the German government of the Concordat concluded in 1933, His Holiness declared: