This Document 072-PS gives Bormann’s answer to me, in which he points out that Heydrich insisted absolutely on continuing this research and said—I quote: “The scientific refutation of antagonistic philosophy can only be carried out after preliminary police and political preparation.” I considered this attitude absolutely untenable, and I protested against it.
These are the pertinent comments which I have to make on these numerous documents. I refused to write official Party tracts of religious semblance or to have catechisms written by my Party offices. I always strove to take what I considered to be a National Socialist attitude in not considering my office a “spiritual” police force; but the fact remained that the Führer had charged Bormann with the official representation of the Party’s attitude toward the church.
My answer to all of these letters is missing, and I do not recall whether I replied to everything, or whether I gave these answers orally to Bormann at conferences. But despite the fact that all of these answers are lacking, the Prosecution have stated that both of us, that is Bormann and I, had issued decrees for religious persecution and had misled other Germans into participating in these religious persecutions.
I would like to summarize and state on principle that this is ultimately a thousand-year-old problem of the relationship between secular and church power, and that many states have taken measures against which the churches have always protested. When in modern times we look at the laws of the French Republic under the ministry of Combes, and when we look at the legal system of the Soviet Union, we see that both have supported the officially promoted atheist propaganda in tracts, newspapers, and caricatures.
Lastly, I would like to say that in all cases the National Socialist State, so far as I know, gave to the churches more than 700 million marks annually out of the tax receipts for the maintenance of their organizational work, and that up to the end.
DR. THOMA: Witness, the chief of the Party Chancellery, Bormann, in the course of time, met you in still keener opposition. Was the reason for the, one may well say, enmity between you and Bormann the fact that in church matters you were considerably more tolerant than Bormann, himself?
ROSENBERG: It is difficult to say just which reasons played a role here. That this hostility was as deep as it finally revealed itself to be, specifically when dealing with Eastern problems, I realized only later, much later. Ultimately I had to admit, of course, that in a large movement many temperaments and many views may exist, and I did not except myself from having shortcomings and faults which could be criticized by others. I did not believe that differences and opinions could lead to a hostility of such proportions that it would result in undermining the official position of the opponent.
DR. THOMA: Were religious services in the Third Reich, regular Sunday services, and so forth limited in any way?
ROSENBERG: I cannot tell you that at the moment. As far as I know, religious services were never forbidden in the whole of Germany up to the end.
DR. THOMA: Now I come to the Einsatzstab. I give you Document 101-PS, (Exhibit USA-385) in which the essential matters are summarized, and I refer you to the document book of the French Prosecution, Document Number FA-1, in particular. How did the establishment of Einsatzstab Rosenberg come about?