In dealing with the persecution of the Church, Colonel Wheeler read to the Tribunal Hitler’s assurance given to the Church on the 23rd of March 1933 in Hitler’s speech on the Enabling Act, an assurance which resulted in the well-known Fulda Declaration of the German bishops, also quoted by Colonel Wheeler. That was Document 3387-PS, which was Exhibit USA-566. This deceitful assurance of Hitler’s appears to have been made at the suggestion of Von Papen 8 days earlier at the Reich Cabinet meeting at which the Enabling Act was discussed, on the 15th of March 1933. I refer to Document 2962-PS, which is Exhibit USA-578, and it is on Page 40 of the English document book. I read from Page 44, that is at the bottom of Page 6 of the German text. The minutes say:
“The Deputy of the Reich Chancellor and Reich Commissioner for Prussia stated that it is of decisive importance to coordinate into the new state the masses standing behind the parties. The question of the incorporation of political Catholicism into the new state is of particular importance.”
That was a statement made by Von Papen at the meeting at which the Enabling Act was discussed prior to Hitler’s speech on the Enabling Act in which he gave his assurance to the Church.
On the 20th of July 1933 Papen signed the Reich Concordat negotiated by him with the Vatican. The Tribunal has already taken judicial notice of this as Document 3280(a)-PS. The signing of the Concordat, like Hitler’s Papen-inspired speech on the Enabling Act, was only an interlude in the church policy of the Nazi conspirators. Their policy of assurances was followed by a long series of violations which eventually resulted in Papal denunciation in the Encyclical “Mit brennender Sorge,” which is 3476-PS, Exhibit USA-567.
Papen maintains that his actions regarding the Church were sincere, and he has asserted during interrogations that it was Hitler who sabotaged the Concordat. If Von Papen really believed in the very solemn undertakings given by him on behalf of the Reich to the Vatican, I submit it is strange that he, himself a Catholic, should have continued to serve Hitler after all those violations and even after the Papal Encyclical itself. I will go further. I will say that Papen was himself involved in what was virtually, if not technically, a violation of the Concordat. The Tribunal will recollect the allocution of the Pope, dated the 2d of June 1945, which is Document 3268-PS, Exhibit USA-356, from which on Page 1647 (Volume IV, Page 64) of the transcript Colonel Storey read the Pope’s own summary of the Nazis’ bitter struggle against the Church. The very first item the Pope mentioned is the dissolution of Catholic organizations and if the Tribunal will look at Document 3376-PS on Page 56 of the English document book, which I now put in as Exhibit GB-244 and which is an extract from Das Archiv, they will see that in September 1934 Von Papen ordered—and I say “ordered” advisedly—the dissolution of the Union of Catholic Germans, of which he was at the time the leader. The text of Das Archiv reads as follows:
“The Reich Directorate of the Party announced the self-dissolution of the Union of Catholic Germans.
“Since the Reich Directorate of the Party, through its Department for Cultural Peace, administers directly and to an increasing extent all cultural problems including those concerning the relations of State and churches, the tasks at first delegated to the Union of Catholic Germans are now included in those of the Reich Directorate of the Party in the interest of a still closer co-ordination.
“Former Vice Chancellor Von Papen, up to now the leader of the Union of Catholic Germans, declared about the dissolution of this organization that it was done upon his suggestion, since the attitude of the National Socialist State toward the Christian and Catholic Church had been explained often and unequivocally by the Führer and Chancellor himself.”