Enclosed please find a copy of the letter of the High Command of the Navy as well as a copy of my reply of this date, for your personal information.
Heil Hitler!
by [illegible]
signed: M BORMANN
2 enclosures
NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN WORKERS PARTY
Berlin—Wilhelmstrasse 64
The Deputy of the Fuehrer
Munich—Brown House
April 5, 1940
III/Dr. Kl-Pu
To the High Command of the Navy
Berlin W 35, Tirpitzufer 72/76
Subject: "Church Services" Your letter of 9 Feb 1940—AMA/M Wehr IIb B. Nr 896
In the opinion of the party the term "Church Service" cannot be objected to. I consider it fitting since it properly implies meetings arranged and organized by the churches.
Those Germans who are not members of a Christian Church may be offended by an announcement in a daily newspaper that only the members of the Christian confession are holding a "divine service". After the National Socialist State has created the conception "God-believing" [Gottglaubig] especially for those Germans who confess the belief in God and who have placed their lives in the "Service of God"—without being members of a Christian confession—it can no longer be justified to refer exclusively to the Services arranged by the Christian confessions as "Divine Services", even in the National Socialist dailies.
Heil Hitler!
signed: M BORMANN (acting)