There were many political parties in Germany, but none remained in power when the Nazis took over. There was no Christian tax authority. You misunderstand the church tax which many European countries have. When a Christian registered with the government as being either Catholic or Protestant, the government charged him a tax. The churches had no authority to tax Germans. It was the church members who were being taxed by the government. Today in Germany Catholics, Protestants or Jews pay a religious tax, worth an extra 8-9% of their income tax bill.
The Dawes and Young bonds issued to the church states right on the bonds that the churches have the ability to increase the taxes on the people in their taxing area by up to 10% of their wages. That is why people invested in the bonds. The government of Germany credit was no good. The German government bonds were sold on the taxes of alcohol, tobacco and the train system.
Yes, today the tax system is different and what is withheld from the employee’s wages for the church is tax deductable.
I would have to do internet research to find the data again. But, I have read where the churches were able to collect the taxes directly and hire civil employees controlled by the church itself.
I said the Nazis were Pagan and atheist, and they were. Their goal was to destroy any Christian influence and replace it with a new religion based on the paganism of the past and racial superiority.
Their goal was to stay in power and rule, just like any other government power. To do this they try and destroy the competition. So what you are saying is that the “Christian influence" was there and was the competition.
The Nazi party in Germany never received more than 33% of the vote. Hitler never won an election. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by then President Paul von Hindenburg. After the adoption of the Enabling Act of 1933 and after abusing his position legal means. as Chancellor, Hitler began to exercise dictatorial powers through
Agreed.
I’m afraid you have sadly misunderstood the Nuremberg Trial evidence. The Nazis were not fighting any so called “Christian Political Party." They had ceased power and were seeking to rule Germany completely. They had three targets they sought to destroy—the Christian Churches, the Unions and the Jews.
Christian Churches, political competition, Unions, Communists, Jews, anti-Nazi group.
You wrote: “In 1933 the church and Nazis had a signed agreement. The church was to stay out of politics and it of course did not. In 1938 the concentration camps became a holding place for people with “asocial behavior". The Nazis stared WWII in 1939."
In 1933 a treaty was signed between the Vatican and Germany. It’s called a Concordat, which is a treaty between the Catholic Church and a state. The Concordat of 1933 was for the purpose of guranteeing Roman Catholics their rights in the then Weimar Republic. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of Pope Pius XI and President Paul von Hindenburg of Germany. It was a treaty the Nazis never honored. There was no agreement between the Nazis and any German church.
Look at the over all picture, how the Boy Scouts and summer camps and education system worked. Look at housing and the welfare systems worked. There had to be a working relationship.
As the first targets of the Nazis, the Christian pastors and priests were among the first sent to concentration camps. Once in the camps they were used as pawns to control any opposition from the Vatican. If the Vatican spoke out against the Nazis, their priests and other Christians in the camps would suffer. This is a fact and has been testified to many times by Christians and Jews who were there. You can look it up.
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals conducted by the Allied forces of World War II for the prosecution of the leadership of Nazi Germany. They presented evidence of the inner workings of the Nazis and their goals. They have proven through evidence presented that one of the first targets of the Nazis were the Christian Churches. There were 24 Nazis on trial for their lives. Twelve were given the death penalty, others imprisoned up to life, a few acquitted. This is not history “written on Newspaper records." This is not history that can be rewritten. This is not hidden from the public. It is there for everyone to see and learn what the Nazis did and who they targeted. Yale University offers the record of these trial online if you want to know the truth of what happened.
Just like the bible, people read into it what they want. The fact is if the Nazi’s wanted to destroy the church, they would have arrested the top people of the church and closed the churches. They did not do this. Why? One would think that their must have been a lot of Christians in Germany yet. The actions that took place show that the people of Germany were dissatisfied with the church.
The churches position was that people were born into a class system and should accept that status in life. It was the loans of the Dawes Bonds that required Germany to outlaw slavery. The Church had no problem with slavery. What I am trying to point out here is that you have to understand the Church back then is much different than today’s church.
What you are saying about the Nazi’s position on religion could also be said today about the United States position of teaching in the school systems of America. Using your same conclusions one would have to say that the American system is an Atheist system that is trying to destroy the churches.
LilySmith, what happened to your last post? Are you deleting your posts?
“LilySmith, what happened to your last post? Are you deleting your posts?”
No, it wasn’t me. It must have been the powers that govern this site. I had to re-register this morning and start from scratch. I copied my last post to a word program so it wouldn’t be lost just in case.
Mike,
In a search for Dawes and Young bonds, it appears they were bonds issued by Germany after WWI which were sold on the international market and payable in gold which raised 800 million gold marks in order for Germany to pay its debts under the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. After 1934 the German government breached its obligations to pay interest on the bonds. I didn’t find anything related to a Christian Church.
What I’ve read of the evidence documented and presented in the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazis persecuted Christian clergy sending them to concentration camps, took over church property and schools, and began to teach Nazi ideology. The Boy Scouts, summer camps and education systems were taken over by the Nazis teaching Nazi ideology. “Martin Bormann, in June 1941, issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and National Socialism. The decree provided: 'For the first time in German history the Fuehrer consciously and completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand. With the Party, its components, and attached units the Fuehrer has created for himself and thereby the German Reich leadership an instrument which makes him independent of the church. All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer with help of the NSDAP, must be eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This (influence) must be broken completely and finally.”
The documents presented at the Nuremberg Trials give us a look into the plans and motives of the Nazis. You cannot make it say what ever you want. It says what it says. The Nazis did arrest the clergy sending them to concentration camps, drum up protests against them, murder them. The Nazis did take over their churches and schools and teach Nazi ideology that was incompatible with Christianity. They did do this.
From the Trials: “The struggle against the Church did, in fact, become ever more bitter; there was the dissolution of Catholic organizations; the gradual suppression of the flourishing Catholic schools, both public and private; the enforced weaning of youth from family and Church; the pressure brought to bear on the conscience of citizens, and especially of civil servants; the systematic defamation, by means of a clever, closely organized propaganda, of the Church, the clergy, the faithful, the Church’s institutions, teachings, and history; the closing, dissolution, confiscation of religious houses and other ecclesiastical institutions; the complete suppression of the Catholic press and publishing houses…”
No, none of this can be said about the United States.
Look at the history of Germany, the power struggles and power changes. Didn’t the Lutherans, Protestants and Methodist also have power changes in Germany at one time?
In a search for Dawes and Young bonds, it appears they were bonds issued by
Germany after WWI which were sold on the international market and payable in
gold which raised 800 million gold marks in order for Germany to pay its
debts under the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. After 1934 the German
government breached its obligations to pay interest on the bonds. I didn’t
find anything related to a Christian Church.
After WWI Germany had no credit and could not sell a bond to save its life. The Mark was worthless. The Dawes Loan was designed to save Germany, which it did. The Marshall Plan is based on the Dawes Plan. I list four bonds in the Post that were issued to the churches in Germany by the Dawes Plan. The bonds were issued by J.P. Morgan in New York. Only one of the 125 issues of the Dawes and Young loan was a German government loan. Why that was is because of the way the tax authorities were set up.
A lot of the cities in Germany were once small kingdoms and still had taxing authorities and printed their own money.
That’s what I am trying to tell you is that the towns and churches had a lot of government power. It was a lot different than the system used in the U.S.
The bonds were not in Marks, they were mostly payable in dollars or gold but not Marks. The amount was 2 Billion dollars worth of bonds sold. History says the bonds were to pay war debt. But if you look at history, countries very seldom paid its war debts. The bonds were really used to get Germany’s economy up and going to stop the spread of Communism.
Check your dates again; by June 1941 Hitler was passing many laws because the industrialist and bankers were moving assets out of Germany.
Your post shows that Hitler clearly saw the church as his political competition.
Again the Nazis taking over Church property is understandable because the schools and other government departments were operated by the churches, now the Nazis were taking them over and need the buildings.
On your research I would take anything that happen from 1941 to July 1945 as happening in a state of total confusion and desperation. Top Nazis were moving to South America and getting out of Germany. The policies from 1933 to 1940 reflect the goals and needs of the Nazis. The Nazis mainly needed food and oil. As no country would accept the Marks the Nazis needed to deal in Dollars, Pounds or Gold.
You brought up the Catholic Church. What did the Catholic Church do? We know they moved their gold to New York. And Catholic Church was the main method of getting the Nazis with their gold to South America. Dr. Levy has been trying of decades to force the Vatican to release those documents that show the close working relationship between the Vatican and Nazis.
Don’t get me wrong. What the Nazis did was wrong. But I can not swallow the fact that one political group can change the spiritual beliefs of a major country and so many people over night with no major protests from the Church leaders, the industrialist, the bankers and other countries.
What I see with the Nuremberg Trials is to satisfy the public, release Hitler’s banker and bury the rest of the crimes because they need the country up and running to stop Communism.
This is a point that not too many American’s know about. Harry D. White was accused some years latter of having the printing plates for money sent from America and given to the Germans to print money. No records of the amount of money the Germans printed have ever been released. But it is said to be over 2 billion dollars. Back then that was a tremendous amount of money. When Washington was confronted how the printing plates got to the Germans, nobody in Washington seem to know. In WWII the bankers of Germany were working with the US bankers thought out the war. The BIS Bank of International Settlement was created after the war to pay the Dawes bonds. The banker chosen to head the BIS was Hitler’s banker who got released from the Nuremberg Trials.
Mike,
If you read my post I said the bonds were payable in “gold marks.” In other words, they were denominated in marks but payable in gold. That’s how the bonds were able to be sold despite the deterioration of the
the paper currency. Read my quote again:
“In a search for Dawes and Young bonds, it appears they were bonds issued by
Germany after WWI which were sold on the international market and payable in
gold which raised 800 million gold marks in order for Germany to pay its
debts under the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. After 1934 the German
government breached its obligations to pay interest on the bonds. I didn’t
find anything related to a Christian Church.”
You said: “Your post shows that Hitler clearly saw the church as his political competition.”
No, Hitler saw the church as an ideological foe. He had to destroy the Christian Churches because of Christian teaching and sought to replace them with a pagan religion similar to the past and based on racial superiority. The Christian Churches were not in control of the German government when Hitler took over. The Weimar Republic was a form of democracy. There may have been political parties with the name Christian in them, I don’t know, but this is not who Hitler was coming against. He was coming against the religion of Christianity, seizing their property, imprisoning and killing their clergy, and perverting the teaching.
The Nuremberg Trials deal with the time the Nazis took over Germany and the atrocities they committed on the Christian Churches, the Unions and the Jews.
The idea that the Catholic Church collaborated with the Nazis is absurd and a hateful lie. They were the victims of the Nazi regime who sought to kill their clergy, steal their property, and pervert Christian teachings. Many clergy died in the concentration camps and the Catholic Church worked to save many Jews from the camps.
You said, “Don’t get me wrong. What the Nazis did was wrong. But I can not swallow the fact that one political group can change the spiritual beliefs of a major country and so many people over night with no major protests from the Church leaders, the industrialist, the bankers and other countries.”
No major protests from the church leaders?? Seriously? They were sent to concentration camps and murdered because of the protests and rejection of Nazi ideology. Read the Nuremberg Trials and the documents from that time contained there. No kidding the Nazis did wrong, and they did wrong to their own people first. If you doubt the Nuremberg Trials than you are simply a conspiracy theorist with no understanding of the situation than that you make up in your own mind. The Allied Forces defeated Hitler and the Nazis at the cost of countless lives. The communist Soviet Union led the trials. Why would they cover for the Nazis–their bitter enemies?
If you want to deny all evidence and plunge into conspiracy theories with nothing to back them up, then I won’t waste my time on that. If you want to know the truth, seek out the actual evidence.
If you read my post I said the bonds were payable in “gold marks." In other words, they were denominated in marks but payable in gold. That’s how the bonds were able to be sold despite the deterioration of the
the paper currency. Read my quote again:
“In a search for Dawes and Young bonds, it appears they were bonds issued by
Germany after WWI which were sold on the international market and payable in
gold which raised 800 million gold marks in order for Germany to pay its
debts under the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. After 1934 the German
government breached its obligations to pay interest on the bonds. I didn’t
find anything related to a Christian Church.“
The Dawes and Young’s were not issued in Marks or Gold Marks. Germany needing the dollar bonds after the bonds were widely used in Germany did make a law forbidding any Germans from owning Dollar bonds, now you have to understand that all the bonds by law were required to be kept in the Bonds Bank. So when the German government stole the bonds from the people they replaced the Dawes Gold (Dollar) Bonds with the worthless Gold Mark bonds which no country or the stock exchange would even trade with. The Gold Mark Bonds were paperless bonds issued by the German government.
No, Hitler saw the church as an ideological foe. He had to destroy the Christian Churches because of Christian teaching and sought to replace them with a pagan religion similar to the past and based on racial superiority. The Christian Churches were not in control of the German government when Hitler took over. The Weimar Republic was a form of democracy. There may have been political parties with the name Christian in them, I don’t know, but this is not who Hitler was coming against. He was coming against the religion of Christianity, seizing their property, imprisoning and killing their clergy, and perverting the teaching.
The Christian Political Parties have always been the strongest in Germany except for the time Hitler ruled.
The Nuremberg Trials deal with the time the Nazis took over Germany and the atrocities they committed on the Christian Churches, the Unions and the Jews.
The idea that the Catholic Church collaborated with the Nazis is absurd and a hateful lie. They were the victims of the Nazi regime who sought to kill their clergy, steal their property, and pervert Christian teachings. Many clergy died in the concentration camps and the Catholic Church worked to save many Jews from the camps.
Sometimes the truth hurts. Can you tell me how the Nazi’s got to South America and got their money to South America? Start by finding who was getting them the passports.
You said, “Don’t get me wrong. What the Nazis did was wrong. But I can not swallow the fact that one political group can change the spiritual beliefs of a major country and so many people over night with no major protests from the Church leaders, the industrialist, the bankers and other countries.”
No major protests from the church leaders?? Seriously? They were sent to concentration camps and murdered because of the protests and rejection of Nazi ideology. Read the Nuremberg Trials and the documents from that time contained there. No kidding the Nazis did wrong, and they did wrong to their own people first. If you doubt the Nuremberg Trials than you are simply a conspiracy theorist with no understanding of the situation than that you make up in your own mind. The Allied Forces defeated Hitler and the Nazis at the cost of countless lives. The communist Soviet Union led the trials. Why would they cover for the Nazis—their bitter enemies?
The Churches had world connections, show me all the protest stories in the New York Times written at the time by the or on behalf of the Churches. You make it sound like the church was under attack. Name the highest church leaders that the Nazi’s killed. I would expect at lease a pope or two.
The Soviet Union was still at war with Japan and it took the Soviet Union years just to reopen the banks in East Germany. The Soviet Union had just gone through a civil war and was far from being organized.
History seems to get twisted by the groups that are using the history. For example the Jews fought for Germany in WWI and Israeli Jews offered to fight for Hitler in WWII, Hitler turned the Jews down so they fought for Italy instead.
Before the United State got involved in WWII the church was looking at the Nazi’s creating an empire that would have included most of Europe. You are trying to tell me the church was fighting the Nazi’s, which the Nazi’s had the power to crush the church at anytime.
What I think is that the Nazi’s were mostly Christians and the political leaders of the Nazis wanted to control the Church and change the religion and eliminate the Church over a longer period of time with a new state religion.
If you want to deny all evidence and plunge into conspiracy theories with nothing to back them up, then I won’t waste my time on that. If you want to know the truth, seek out the actual evidence.
The only conspiracy theory I see here is that the Churches fought Hitler with all their power. That the church organized all these pastors that got arrested to fight the Nazi’s.
There are several books out on the subject; some even refer to Hitler’s pope.
Are you separating the stories that happened after 1941? Yes, after 1941 everybody changed to the winning side. The Nazi’s had been arresting pastors a long time before that and I want to know why the Church did not fight the Nazi’s with everything they had. The world Olympics were in Germany, where were the protests. No major protests from the church leaders?? Seriously? Yes, would that have been a good time for the church to protest to the world?
The idea that the Catholic Church collaborated with the Nazis is absurd and a hateful lie.
Read the books about how the Nazi’s got to South America and then tell me it was a lie, but please back that up with how they got there and how they moved their funds if you say all these books are just lies.
Just a note, out of the 125 issues of Dawes bonds, the Dollar went off the gold standard, so the bonds were all paid in dollars and not gold because they were issued under the laws of the State of New York. That is except the Church bonds, they are the only bonds that got paid in gold by Germany. Not even the biggest cities or the biggest companies in Germany could force Germany to pay them in gold and by law they were suppose to be paid in Dollars. Nobody has been able to find out why Germany paid those bonds in Gold.
Mike,
You’re confusing political parties with the name Christian in them to the Christian Churches. They are two different things. Germany has a multi party system. Here’s a list of the political parties that existed prior to the Nazis:
Bavarian People’s Party (BVP) - Bavarian Regionalist (1920-1933)
Centre Party - Christian Democrat/Conservative (1871-1947)
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) - Communist (1919-1956)
Communist Party Opposition (KPO)- Communist
Conservative People’s Party (KVP)
Free Conservative Party (FKP)
General German Workers’ Association (ADAV)
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) - Socialist (1917-1922)
German Conservative Party (DKP) - Conservative (before 1918)
German Democratic Party (DDP) - Left-Liberal (1918-1930, became the German State Party, which lasted until 1933)
German National People’s Party (DNVP) - Nationalist-Conservative (1918-1933)
German People’s Party (DVP) - National-Liberal (1918-1933)
German Progress Party (DFP) - Left-Liberal (before 1918)
German Racialist Freedom Party (DVFP) - anti-semitic (early Weimar period)
German Workers’ Party (DAP) - precursor to the Nazi Party (1919)
National Liberal Party - Right Liberal (before 1918)
National Socialist German Workers’ Party - aka the Nazi Party (NSDAP) (1919-1945)
Progressive People’s Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD, still in existence)
Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (SDAP) (since 1875 Social Democratic Party of Germany)
Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAP) (since 1875 Social Democratic Party of Germany)
Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAP) (between 1931 and 1941/45 an Social Democratic Party left of the SPD)
Before 1918 Germany was an empire with an emperor. After WWI Germany became a democratic republic with a parliamentary system. Read about the Weimar Republic to understand the government in place prior to the Nazi ascension, who ran the government and what problems they had. Germany was never run by the Christian Churches and the churches never issued bonds.
You’re the one claiming the Catholic Church for whatever reason helped the Nazis who ran get to South America. Where’s your evidence? I have provided evidence and documentation that the Catholic Church as well as all other Christian religious groups were victims of the Nazis, their clergy sent to concentration camps and murdered, their property seized, their schools taken over to teach Nazi ideology. I have shown you documentation that the Nazis considered the Christian churches, including the Catholic Church as an ideological problem that needed to be eliminated and replaced with a new pagan religion. So why would the Catholic Church help former Nazis who had persecuted them and killed their priests?
From the trials: “From the prisons, concentration camps, and fortresses are now pouring out, together with the political prisoners, also ‘the crowds of those, whether clergy or laymen, whose only crime was their fidelity to Christ and to the faith of their fathers or the dauntless fulfillment of their duties as priests. “In the forefront, for the number and harshness of the treatment meted out to them, are the Polish priests. From 1940 to 1945, 2,800 Polish ecclesiastics and religious were imprisoned in that camp; among them was the Auxiliary Bishop of Wloclawek, who died there of typhus. In April last there were left only 816, all the others being dead except for two or three transferred to another camp. In the summer of 1942, 480 German-speaking ministers of religion were known to be gathered there; of these, 45 were Protestants, all the others Catholic priests. In spite of the continuous inflow of new internees, especially from dioceses of Bavaria, Rhenania and Westphalia, their number, as a result of the high rate of mortality, at the beginning of this year did not surpass 350. Nor should we pass over in silence those belonging to occupied territories, Holland, Belgium, France (among whom the Bishop of Clermont), Luxembourg, Slovenia, Italy. Many of those priests and laymen endured indescribable sufferings for their faith and for their vocation. In one case the hatred of the impious against Christ reached the point of parodying on the person of an interned priest, with barbed wire, the scourging and the crowning with thorns of our Redeemer.”
Your conspiracy theory makes no sense.
It was not the Israeli Jews who sided with Hitler during WWII because the nation of Israel didn’t exist until 1948. It was the Muslim Arabs of Palestine and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini who sided with Hitler. He allied with Hitler in order to “solve the Jewish problem” as well.
"In any case, there is no doubt that Haj Amin’s hatred was not limited to Zionism, but extended to Jews as such. His frequent, close contacts with leaders of the Nazi regime cannot have left Haj Amin any doubt as to the fate which awaited Jews whose emigration was prevented by his efforts. His many comments show that he was not only delighted that Jews were prevented from emigrating to Palestine, but was very pleased by the Nazis’ Final Solution’.”
The Nazis did crush the church. Have you not been reading the evidence I’m quoting from the Trials? If you are unwilling to believe what’s right before your eyes, then I can’t help you find the truth.
The Dawes bonds were issued by the German government, not the churches. There are no “Church bonds.” Hitler ended the paying back of the bonds. He certainly wouldn’t have paid the churches anything at the same time he was arresting and murdering their clergy and seizing their property.
You’re confusing political parties with the name Christian in them to the Christian Churches. They are two different things. Germany has a multi party system. Here’s a list of the political parties that existed prior to the Nazis:
Bavarian People’s Party (BVP) - Bavarian Regionalist (1920-1933)
Centre Party - Christian Democrat/Conservative (1871-1947)
…
Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAP) (since 1875 Social Democratic Party of Germany)
Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAP) (between 1931 and 1941/45 an Social Democratic Party left of the SPD)
All this is miss direction to me. As we have Communist and Socialist Parties today in the United States it would be wrong to claim they are the major powers in the United States, is that what you are claiming theses groups that were in Germany? Are you claiming they were the major political power and not the Christians?
Before 1918 Germany was an empire with an emperor. After WWI Germany became a democratic republic with a parliamentary system. Read about the Weimar Republic to understand the government in place prior to the Nazi ascension, who ran the government and what problems they had. Germany was never run by the Christian Churches and the churches never issued bonds.
Again misdirection, I never said the churches ran the country. It would be like saying the Democrats or Republicans run the country. What I said was the Christians were the main political party. Just like we have the Christian Movement in America which was the reason for the War on Drugs being passed.
You’re the one claiming the Catholic Church for whatever reason helped the Nazis who ran get to South America. Where’s your evidence?
This is common knowledge today. Please do a internet search and I do not think you will have any trouble. If you do let me know and I will help you.
I have provided evidence and documentation that the Catholic Church as well as all other Christian religious groups were victims of the Nazis, their clergy sent to concentration camps and murdered, their property seized, their schools taken over to teach Nazi ideology.
Again, misdirection. What I ask for was proof that the leadership of the Catholic Church was fighting the Nazis. There were a lot of victims of the Nazis. That does not mean that they were all fighting the Nazis.
I have shown you documentation that the Nazis considered the Christian churches, including the Catholic Church as an ideological problem that needed to be eliminated and replaced with a new pagan religion.
Tell me about this pagan religion, what was the name of the top priest and where was their main church, I would like to read some more about this pagan religion that was in Germany.
So why would the Catholic Church help former Nazis who had persecuted them and killed their priests?
You have yet to name any of the top managers of the Catholic Church who were persecuted by the Nazis. Are you telling me that the Nazis were so stupid that they did not know how to close a church? That the Nazis knew so little about warfare that they did not know how to capture and arrest the leadership of the church?
Again you go your own direction. Did you miss the part that data after 1941 should not be used? That in that time period Germany was losing the war and the Nazis were trying to survive.
Your conspiracy theory makes no sense.
So far you have not provided any data that has been requested from 1933 to 1940 and so I am not surprised by your conclusion.
It was not the Israeli Jews who sided with Hitler during WWII because the nation of Israel didn’t exist until 1948. It was the Muslim Arabs of Palestine and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini who sided with Hitler. He allied with Hitler in order to “solve the Jewish problem" as well.
I’m sorry, are you saying they were not Jewish and were not living in what is known by most people today as Israel?
“In any case, there is no doubt that Haj Amin’s hatred was not limited to Zionism, but extended to Jews as such. His frequent, close contacts with leaders of the Nazi regime cannot have left Haj Amin any doubt as to the fate which awaited Jews whose emigration was prevented by his efforts. His many comments show that he was not only delighted that Jews were prevented from emigrating to Palestine, but was very pleased by the Nazis’ Final Solution’.“
The Nazis did crush the church. Have you not been reading the evidence I’m quoting from the Trials? If you are unwilling to believe what’s right before your eyes, then I can’t help you find the truth.
So, what you are saying is that all the Christians Churches and institutions in Germany were closed or destroyed by the Nazis before 1941. That’s news to me.
The Dawes bonds were issued by the German government, not the churches. There are no “Church bonds.” Hitler ended the paying back of the bonds. He certainly wouldn’t have paid the churches anything at the same time he was arresting and murdering their clergy and seizing their property.
The bonds were issued by the American Banks. Of the 125 issues the 1924 German Government 7% External Loan due in 1949 was the only German Government bond of the Dawes Loan. The other German Government bond was the German Government 5 ½% International Gold Loan of 1930 of the Young Loan. Together they are called the Dawes and Young Loan.
The Church bonds were backed by the Church and not the German Government. American Banks issued the bonds because of the Churches ability to tax.
The Roman Catholic Welfare Institutions in Germany at the time operated hospitals, asylums homes for the blind, crippled, old people and convalescents (totaling about 3,300 institutions) and other organizations including schools.
The money from just one of the bonds went to the German Catholic Charity Union, Catholic School Organization of Germany and the German Union of Catholic Brotherhood Homes.
Lily, you’re going to have to trust me on the bonds or you can learn the hard way. Ether way I will help you with the data. Just a note, the latest book out about the Dawes and Young bonds is by F. Paul Seabrook, and I was named in the Acknowledgements for my help.
Hitler ended the paying back of the bonds.
Yes he did. A lot of counties would stop payments of their bonds. So they could buy the bonds at a discount on the stock exchange. This was before the SEC was around. What Hitler did was pass laws where all payments of private bonds would have to be made by the Bonds (Bunds) Bank. The Church bonds and the other Dawes and Young bonds now had to make their payment to the German Government (Bonds Bank) and not the banks in the United States and then Germany would decide which counties and banks got paid.
He certainly wouldn’t have paid the churches anything at the same time he was arresting and murdering their clergy and seizing their property.
The bond payments were coming from the Churches not the Government. Remember the Churches had the U.S. banks issue and sell the bonds and then give the money to the Church. The Church had to make payments to pay back the loan. The United States went off the gold standard. Nobody wanted the German Mark. The Churches received the bond money in Dollars and had to make payments to the bondholders in Dollars.
Germany had no Dollars. And what few Dollars they had the German Government needed for supplies. So Hitler had no choice but to stop the flow of Dollars out of Germany by stopping the bond payments. He created the Bonds Bank and offered payments in Marks or Mark Bonds and Mark Gold Bonds, but nobody wanted them.
The Protestant Church was also a very large organization in Germany and operated many institutions. They also had Dawes Loans.
The Point Being, the Christian organizations in Germany was huge and required the employment of hundreds of thousands of people. Any way you slice it, they were part of the Government.
Mike,
I’m saying that after 1918 Germany had a Constitution and a parliamentary system much like Britain, but their new representative democracy was very weak and constantly changing until the Nazis took over. Remember, before the Nazis took control they had won 33% of the seats in the parliament. I’m saying the Christian Churches, be they Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Jehovah’s Witness, or whomever, were not running the government. Therefore, the Christian Churches could not tax German citizens, nor could they sell government bonds. I have no idea how many Christians there were in Germany or how much they influenced the government in power, and neither do you. There were many Germans who were atheist, communist, Jewish, socialist, and so on. To say that the weak Weimar Republic did everything Christians wanted them to do is nonsense.
Now the Nazis come along and seized power from a weak democracy to establish a dictatorship. One of their first order of business was to stifle all Christian activity from all religious groups and freethinkers. They attacked their clergy, sent them to concentration camps, murdered some, seized the private property of the churches, forbid the teaching of Christian ideology and perverted it with paganism, stirred up rioter against Christians and sought to end Christianity in Germany, and for this you think the Catholic Church helped the Nazis escape to So. America. If you think this is common knowledge, your listening to people with an anti-Christian or anti-Catholic agenda who don’t mind lying about it. The fact that it’s on the internet means nothing if it isn’t from a truthful and credible source backed up by evidence, and you have none.
You want proof the Catholic Church was fighting the Nazis. Have you not read the documents I’ve quoted that laid out the plan of the Nazis to end the existence of the Catholic Church? Here: "A most intense drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church. After a strategic concordat with the Holy See, signed in July 1933 in Rome, which never was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent persecution of the Catholic Church, its priesthood, and its members, was carried out. Church schools and educational institutions were suppressed or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching inconsistent with the Christian faith. The property of the Church was confiscated and inspired vandalism directed against Church property was left unpunished. Religious instruction was impeded and the exercise of religion made difficult. Priests and bishops were laid upon, riots were stimulated to harass them, and many were sent to concentration camps.
“After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with greater vigor than ever. We will present to you from the files of the Vatican the earnest protests made by the Vatican to Ribbentrop summarizing the persecutions to which the priesthood and the Church had been subjected in this twentieth century under the Nazi regime. Ribbentrop never answered them. He could not deny. He dared not justify.” Nuremberg Trials
You can look up these documents at Yale University–Nuremberg Trials. It’s all there.
As you may note, it says that “After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with greater vigor than ever.” That would be after 1939.
The new paganism devised by Alfred Rosenberg was laid out in his book, “Myth of the Twentieth Century.” I’ve already quoted it to you. In it he calls for the “Myth of the Blood” and said, “Today, a new faith is awakening – the Myth of the Blood, the belief that the divine being of mankind generally is to be defended with the blood. The faith embodied by the fullest realization, that the Nordic blood constitutes that mystery which has supplanted and overwhelmed the old sacraments.”
Look up Alfred Rosenberg.
The Nazis were in power after 1940, so I’m not sure why you pick this as an arbitrary date as if those put in the concentration camps after the start of the war don’t count. The bottom line is the Nazis targeted the Christian Churches, clergy was sent to concentration camps, church property was seized. That’s been documented.
It was not the Jews who sided with Hitler in Palestine, it was the Muslim Arabs.
If you can’t be truthful with dates and insist on making everything about what happened prior to 1939, before the start of the war, then you want a skewed picture and you want to perpetrate an untruth. I’m looking for the truth, not a conspiracy theorist concoction of nonsense. If that’s what you’re after, then we have nothing more to discuss.
If prior to the Nazi takeover, some Christian churches bought Dawes bonds, I don’t know the problem with that. They were helping to pay back the debt of Germany after WWI. But the churches didn’t issue the bonds. If you want to perpetrate the nonsense that all Nazis were God fearing Christians, then you don’t want the truth and must deny the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I don’t know what else to tell you.
Therefore, the Christian Churches could not tax German citizens, nor could they sell Government bonds.
Yes, the Churches could and did tax the people. And no the Churches could not sell Government bonds. Government bonds were sold by the banks and Post Office. The Church sold Church Bonds sold by the banks, Churches and stock exchange.
Maybe this will help. You had two forms of money, notes and bonds. We know notes as Dollar Bills. The bonds were just another form of a note. But it was like a Dollar Bill that paid interest but also had risk. The risk was that the company that wrote the bonds would go broke. The Bonds were written by the Cities, Towns, business and governments. It was not uncommon for a company to print its own money.
The Churches dealt with the education and welfare of the people such as food and housing. The Government dealt with the wars, trade, court system, roads and controlled the banking system.
How this came about was that there were a lot of small kingdoms made up of one town. The king or richest person in that town bought the rights to own the Church in that town from the main Church. This was a big money maker for the king by being the priest too. There were thousands of these small one town kingdoms. There was only one church in each town. When the king or priest died his wife or kids would inherit the Church. And they may change the town’s religion because they could make more money with the other religion.
The Main Churches did not like the small kingdom churches having the ability to change religions so they passed a law that the priest were married to the church and could not have a wife. This way when the priest died the church building went to the Main Church.
These small kingdoms had to pay tribute to the larger kingdoms. They did this by collecting taxes. In the small kingdoms the churches were the schools and banks as well as the hospitals.
I think you can get the idea how the churches developed in Germany now.
To say that the weak Weimar Republic did everything Christians wanted them to do is nonsense.
Read what I said. I said that the people were very upset with the Church.
One of their first order of business was to stifle all Christian activity from all religious groups and freethinkers.
I disagree, they were only stopping the political activities of the Church.
They attacked their clergy, sent them to concentration camps, murdered some, seized the private property of the churches, forbid the teaching of Christian ideology and perverted it with paganism, stirred up rioter against Christians and sought to end Christianity in Germany, and for this you think the Catholic Church helped the Nazis escape to So. America. If you think this is common knowledge, your listening to people with an anti-Christian or anti-Catholic agenda who don’t mind lying about it.
You have not yet explained how a great number of Nazis got to South America. And I do not think you want to find out.
You make this sound like a religious war. It was not a religious war, it was a political war.
Germany, having a population of 67,000,000 people in 1935 was not that concerned about religion. The problems they were facing is that they were a manufacturing country that had just lost a war and the other countries did not want to buy Germany products. Germany had no money and Germany did not grow enough food to feed itself.
How would you like to be a ruler in that situation? Do you really think that you would have time to worry about religion?
Germany had no buyers for their products, so to keep the people working they built military products.
To keep the people fed they created money and stole money from its citizens when that did not work anymore they invaded their neighbors for food and money.
If you can’t be truthful with dates and insist on making everything about what happened prior to 1939, before the start of the war, then you want a skewed picture and you want to perpetrate an untruth.
No, I said prior to 1941. That is when the Nazis started to move funds and families out of Germany because they knew the war was lost. The Nazis were covering up evidence and committing a lot of crimes because they knew they would soon be out of power. That covers from 1933 to 1940. The next five and a half years were war years under Marshall Law. This post is about the relationship between the Nazis and Christians on how Germany was governed in those years. We all know about the mess during the War years.
But what is not talked about is the pre-war years and the relationship between the Nazis and the Christian Churches.
But the churches didn’t issue the bonds.
I list the names of four Church bonds of the Dawes loans in the first post. What more do you want?
Again, you tell me about the pagan religions that were taking place in Germany. But you have been unable to name the pagan religion.
Are you able to tell me with a guess what percentage of clergy went to the concentration camps before 1941? Maybe ½ of ½ of ½ of a percent of the clergy in Germany.
If prior to the Nazi takeover, some Christian churches bought Dawes bonds, I don’t know the problem with that.
The point was that the Churches were able to sell the bonds based on their ability to levy taxes. To be a taxing authority means you have a governmental type of power.
Mike,
Dawes and Young bonds were sold by the German government to pay the debt they owed after WWI. They were never issued by the churches. If a church sold a bond to fund itself in some way, it wasn’t a Dawes or a Young bond, and it wasn’t a government bond. The churches had no authority to tax people. When a bond is sold, it is bought voluntarily because the buyer expects to be paid interest on the money he’s lending. That isn’t a tax. A bond is issued to raise money with the promise that it will be paid back with interest.
You don’t have to explain what a bond is to me. I understand the concept very well. What you do need to do is stop saying the church had anything to do with Dawes and Young bonds, and stop saying the church had the authority to tax people, because both of those are demonstrably false.
Christian churches provided Christian education and helped people as a part of their religion, not as a function of the government.
How far back in history are we going now to talk about small kingdoms, and how does one town make up a lot of small kingdoms? You are off on some tangent and I have no idea what you’re talking about, and don’t think I care to figure it out. It has nothing to do with the rise of the Nazis, their hatred of the Christian Churches and the fact that the Catholic Church was a target of the Nazis not a co-conspirator that helped them run to So. America. The Nazis opposed the churches on ideological terms–both religious and political. It’s demonstrated in the writings of the Nazis themselves. You close your eyes to it because you enjoy the conspiracy theory you indulge yourself in. But the facts and evidence are against you.
You wrote: “Germany, having a population of 67,000,000 people in 1935 was not that concerned about religion. The problems they were facing is that they were a manufacturing country that had just lost a war and the other countries did not want to buy Germany products. Germany had no money and Germany did not grow enough food to feed itself.”
Then you don’t understand the intent of the Nazis. Let me quote again from the Trials, "The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. It is not because the Nazi themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they become guilty of crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive warfare that the offense becomes one of international consequence. To remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.
"We will ask you to convict the Nazis on their own evidence. Martin Bormann, in June 1941, issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and National Socialism. The decree provided:
"'For the first time in German history the Fuehrer consciously and completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand. With the Party, its components, and attached units the Fuehrer has created for himself and thereby the German Reich leadership an instrument which makes him independent of the church. All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer with help of the NSDAP, must "be eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This (influence) must be broken completely and finally.
“‘Only the Reich Government and by its direction the Party, its components, and attached units have a right to leadership of the people. Just as the deleterious Sequences of astrologers, seers, and other fakers are estimated and suppressed by the Estate, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed. Not until this has happened; does the State leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are people and Reich secure in their existence for all the future.’”
The Christian religion was one of the three main targets of the Nazis.
You said, “No, I said prior to 1941. That is when the Nazis started to move funds and families out of Germany because they knew the war was lost.”
Your timeline is wrong. The end of the war didn’t come until 1945. The D-Day invasion by the Allied forces took place on June 6th, 1944 and victory by the Allies was far from certain.
You said, “But what is not talked about is the pre-war years and the relationship between the Nazis and the Christian Churches.”
From the Trials: "And how the Party had been securing the Reich from Christian influence, will be proved by such items as this teletype from the Gestapo, Berlin, to the Gestapo, Nuremberg, on July 24, 1938. Let us hear their own account of events in Rottenburg.
“‘The Party on 23 July 1939 from 2100 on carried out the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants about 2500-3000 were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the demonstration. This town took rather a hostile attitude to the demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the Party member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw files out of the windows and rummaged through the beds in the rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to the other objects of equipment in the rooms and the palace, the flaming bed could be thrown from the window and the fire extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this chapel and molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth. Finally the intruders realized that Bishop Groeber is not the one they are seeking. They could then be persuaded to leave the building. After the evacuation of the palace by the demonstrators I had an interview with Archbishop Groeber who left Rottenburg in the night. Groeber wants to turn to the Fuehrer and Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr. Frick, anew. On the course of the action, the damage done as well as the homage of the Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop I shall immediately hand in a full report, after I am in the act of suppressing counter mass meetings…
"‘In case the Fuehrer has instructions to give in this matter, I request that these be transmitted most quickly…’
"Later, Defendant Rosenberg wrote to Bormann reviewing the proposal of Kerrl as Church Minister to place the Protestant Church under State tutelage and proclaim Hitler its supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed, hinting that nazism was to suppress the Christian Church completely after the war (See also 098-PS).
"The persecution of all pacifist and dissenting sects, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was peculiarly relentless and cruel The policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use their influence for the Nazis’ own purposes. In September 1933 Mueller was appointed the Fuehrer’s representative with power to deal with the ‘affairs of the Evangelical Church’ in its relations to the State. Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with power to control this Church. A long conflict followed, Pastor Niemoller was sent to concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal discipline and administration of the churches occurred.”
Dawes and Young bonds were sold by the German government to pay the debt they owed after WWI. They were never issued by the churches. If a church sold a bond to fund itself in some way, it wasn’t a Dawes or a Young bond, and it wasn’t a government bond. The churches had no authority to tax people. When a bond is sold, it is bought voluntarily because the buyer expects to be paid interest on the money he’s lending. That isn’t a tax. A bond is issued to raise money with the promise that it will be paid back with interest.
LilySmith,
Here are five Dawes Loan Bonds issued by the US banks for the churches, the German Government is not responsible for these bonds the Churches are. The credit the churches used to sell the bonds to the United States citizens was their ability to tax.
St. Petri Church, Bremen 1926
Beuron Benedictine Monastery
Protestant Church (Welfare Inst) 1926 $5M
Roman Catholic Church in Bavaria 1926 $5M
Roman Catholic Church Welfare Institution in Germany 1926 $6M
Bonds like these were not sold for American Churches because they had no proven way to pay back such large loans.
You don’t have to explain what a bond is to me. I understand the concept very well. What you do need to do is stop saying the church had anything to do with Dawes and Young bonds, and stop saying the church had the authority to tax people, because both of those are demonstrably false.
Wrong again. I just listed 5 Church bonds with the ability to tax. What more do you want? These bonds are part of the 125 issues of the Dawes and Young Loan.
I think it would help if you spent some time investigating the bonds and the Churches ability to tax. Once you understand the government of Germany in that time period you will understand all the functions conducted by the Church.
Christian churches provided Christian education and helped people as a part of their religion, not as a function of the government.
Wrong again.
How far back in history are we going now to talk about small kingdoms, and how does one town make up a lot of small kingdoms? You are off on some tangent and I have no idea what you’re talking about, and don’t think I care to figure it out. It has nothing to do with the rise of the Nazis, their hatred of the Christian Churches and the fact that the Catholic Church was a target of the Nazis not a co-conspirator that helped them run to So. America. The Nazis opposed the churches on ideological terms—both religious and political. It’s demonstrated in the writings of the Nazis themselves. You close your eyes to it because you enjoy the conspiracy theory you indulge yourself in. But the facts and evidence are against you.
I was trying to explain how the churches taxing system came to be. You seen unable to deal with those facts. Just trying to help you out with a little history.
But now I am getting the feeling that you are just playing a game. When you start making statements that have no bearing on the subject and refuse to look at the facts presented then you are not helping discuss the issues. Try and leave your personal beliefs out. I have help write the book on these bonds and have been involved in the last four major lawsuits involving these bonds so if I do not agree with you, you now know why.
Then you don’t understand the intent of the Nazis. Let me quote again from the Trials, “The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. It is not because the Nazi themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they become guilty of crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive warfare that the offense becomes one of international consequence. To remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.
Again, you are making up you own history base up a prosecutors statement. This was a trial not necessarily the true facts of history. These trials were very politically motivated.
“‘For the first time in German history the Fuehrer consciously and completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand. With the Party, its components, and attached units the Fuehrer has created for himself and thereby the German Reich leadership an instrument which makes him independent of the church.
This pretty much states that Hitler was able to make a government that was not under the control of the church, for the first time in Germany’s history. That does not say that the churches were still not part of the government. Just like the banks were run by the bankers but Hitler had political control.
All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer with help of the NSDAP, must “be eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This (influence) must be broken completely and finally.
Again they are saying the Churches had power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches.
“‘Only the Reich Government and by its direction the Party, its components, and attached units have a right to leadership of the people. Just as the deleterious Sequences of astrologers, seers, and other fakers are estimated and suppressed by the Estate, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed. Not until this has happened; does the State leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are people and Reich secure in their existence for all the future.’“
This is saying that the state and church should be separate. Just like in the U.S.
You said, “No, I said prior to 1941. That is when the Nazis started to move funds and families out of Germany because they knew the war was lost.”
Your timeline is wrong. The end of the war didn’t come until 1945. The D-Day invasion by the Allied forces took place on June 6th, 1944 and victory by the Allies was far from certain.
End of the German part of WWII was July 1945.
The people in the know, knew that if America entered the war, Germany would lose. America entered the war in 1941.
I stand by my statement. The bankers and industrialist started moving funds out of Germany in 1941, that’s because they knew the Nazi’s were going to lose. The Nazi’s according the SEC was moving large amounts of funds to places like South America in 1941 because they understood they could not win the war. This was also shown in the stock markets around the world. The price of the Dawes and Young Bonds also stop going down and starting go up in 1941 because it was known that Germany was going to lose the war.
In released documents from the Department of Treasure, the United States and Germany started working together in 1941 on the methods of welfare of food and money for the people of Europe to be ready to implement the minute the war was over. That way there would be less starvation and disruption.
You said, “But what is not talked about is the pre-war years and the relationship between the Nazis and the Christian Churches.“
“‘The Party on 23 July 1939 from 2100 on carried out the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants about 2500-3000 were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the demonstration. This town took rather a hostile attitude to the demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the Party member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw files out of the windows and rummaged through the beds in the rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to the other objects of equipment in the rooms and the palace, the flaming bed could be thrown from the window and the fire extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this chapel and molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth. Finally the intruders realized that Bishop Groeber is not the one they are seeking. They could then be persuaded to leave the building. After the evacuation of the palace by the demonstrators I had an interview with Archbishop Groeber who left Rottenburg in the night. Groeber wants to turn to the Fuehrer and Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr. Frick, anew. On the course of the action, the damage done as well as the homage of the Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop I shall immediately hand in a full report, after I am in the act of suppressing counter mass meetings….
“‘In case the Fuehrer has instructions to give in this matter, I request that these be transmitted most quickly….’
“Later, Defendant Rosenberg wrote to Bormann reviewing the proposal of Kerrl as Church Minister to place the Protestant Church under State tutelage and proclaim Hitler its supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed, hinting that nazism was to suppress the Christian Church completely after the war (See also 098-PS).
“The persecution of all pacifist and dissenting sects, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was peculiarly relentless and cruel The policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use their influence for the Nazis’ own purposes. In September 1933 Mueller was appointed the Fuehrer’s representative with power to deal with the ‘affairs of the Evangelical Church’ in its relations to the State. Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with power to control this Church. A long conflict followed, Pastor Niemoller was sent to concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal discipline and administration of the churches occurred.”
Again you have proved that the Nazis did not know or have the ability to arrest the top management of the Church. The most they could do is hassle a few people. In a country of 67,000,000 people this is not a major event.
What you have is the Nazis closing down the political party of the Christians who would have been the direct competitors for leadership of Germany.
Kind of like what Obama has been doing with the IRS.
Just got this email from the lawyers today. This is a step in getting the information from the Catholic Church in working with the Nazis.
VATICAN CITY: A formal request has been made to Vatican Bank president, Ernst von Freyberg, to audit approximately 30 current and former Vatican Bank accounts that were identified as having laundered Holocaust era assets from the Balkans. The account information was gathered from several sources including government reports and the testimony of former Special Agent William Gowen who served in Rome in 1946-1947. The request comes immediately after the Vatican Bank’s current bid for transparency which includes a new website, an ongoing audit of private accounts and the appointment of several Vatican Commissions to combat money laundering at the tarnished institution.
Dr. Jonathan Levy, The attorney for several thousand claimants, Holocaust victims, their heirs, and organizations, has also asked the European Union Ombudsman and the European Commission to lend their good offices to the effort since the Vatican City State is an associate member of the Euro Zone. The funds at stake were derived from the Ustasha Treasury, consisting of gold and valuable looted from Yugoslavia during the Second World War and deposited at the Vatican Bank in 1946. The new Vatican Bank website states that the bank also known as Institute for Religious Works is under the jurisdiction and laws of the Vatican City and its courts. Previously, the EU Commission had abstained from becoming involved claiming there were doubts as to the jurisdiction involved.
Austin Cline wrote in About.com
Atheism and Agnosticism
Adolf Hitler & Christian Nationalism:
A popular image of the Nazis is that they were fundamentally anti-Christian while devout Christians were anti-Nazi. The truth is that German Christians supported the Nazis because they believed that Adolf Hitler was a gift to the German people from God. German Christianity was a divinely sanctioned religious movement which combined Christian doctrine and German character in a unique and desirable manner: True Christianity was German and True German-ness was Christian.
Christian anti-Semitism:
Anti-Semitism was an important aspect of the Nazi state, but the Nazis didn’t invent it; instead, they drew upon centuries of Christian anti-Semitism and extensive anti-Semitic theology in Germany’s Christian community. The Nazis believed that Jewishness was more than just a religion, a position which was supported by religious leaders who supplied the Nazis with baptismal and marriage records to help identify converted Jews.
Nazi’s and the Christians In America we have Christian movements. But the Christian political parties are non-existent; they work quietly inside of the Republican and Democratic Parties. That because our government made a deal with them. They are allowed to be tax exempt only if they do not run political parties. A little bit of that separation of State and religion. In Germany the Christians or mainly Germany’s Roman Catholic population controlled the Center Party. The Protestants stayed away from the Center Party. And it was this battle for political power that opened the door for groups like the Nazi Party. The Nazi’s were not a religious movement, just a political party; therefore the Center Party did not look at the Nazis as having any strength behind them. The Nazis started out as a political movement, just like the Zionist today. Nothing got done in Germany unless it had the backing of the Christian coalition. It is still that way today in Germany. These political alliances go back to the beginning of the Nazi Party. In other words, if the Christian political parties did not want the Nazi Party to exist, they would have been gone. After WWI , hyper inflation hit Germany. A lifetime’s retirement savings for a worker could only buy a cup or two of coffee. In a 10 month period the US Dollar went from 4 Marks to the Dollar to 4.2 billion Marks to the Dollar. The greatest movement of wealth at that time in history was the money from the United States to Germany. The Dawes & Young Loans of 1924-30, over $2B went to Germany. And not without strings attached. Many items the US made Germany comply with to get the loans went against the churches and governments management ways of Germany. I’ll list a couple big ones. 1. Germany had to implement communist reforms in the workplace in that the labor unions had to be managed by the workers and not the company. 2. Overtime for men only, after 40 hours of work in a week, another communist idea. 3. Germany had to outlaw slavery all together in Germany, against the churches thinking. 4. Germany had to move the banking system to the private sector like in the United States. 5. No citizen was bound to disclose his religious convictions to the government. Some of the money we loaned to the German Government went directly to the churches. And there were a few loans made directly to the German churches. For example; St. Petri Church, Bremen 1926 Beuron Benedictine Monastery Protestant Church (Welfare Inst) 1926 $5M Roman Catholic Church in Bavaria 1926 $5M Roman Catholic Church Welfare Institution in Germany 1926 $6M In reading the conditions of the loans to the churches I was surprised that the loans were backed by the churches ability to tax the people. If needed to pay the bonds the churches had the ability to raise the taxes on the people under their tax authority by up to 10 percent of their income for just the payment on the bonds. How could this be? In Germany the Churches are allowed to employ civil servants and to levy taxes on its members and to directly collect the tax. In other words Germany is sharing its sovereignty with the Churches. Today two-thirds of Germany’s population pays the church tax. And today other groups are allowed to charge a tax. Like Jewish synagogues, the Salvation Army, the Latter Day Saints, and the German Humanist Association. These taxes are deducted against the Federal income tax. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, German Humanist charging a church tax. Point being that the churches and state was intertwined. Now back to the topic, the first power move by the German Government (the Nazi party and the Christian Churches) was to take back the control of the independent banking system the US required Germany to setup. If the Christian Churches did not want the Nazi Party to take the banking back, Hitler would of never had enough power to do it on their own and without the banking he could not have started WWII. History tells us that the Church Tax was use in the U.S., George Washington and others backed the tax. It was people like Thomas Jefferson that repelled the tax. Then other colonies followed, some took a long time to change. It is my option that the German Churches were afraid to oppose the Nazi Party for fear of losing its tax system. I think the churches always knew what was going on in Germany. They were to much involve in management and political issues not to know. And the number of Christians did not go down because of the Nazi Political Party, so most of the Nazi’s were most likely Christians. Point Being – Let’s keep the churches out of the political offices and elections in the U.S. Am I missing anything?Hi! ... Very interesting post. Being German, let me add my comments. I totally agree that church / state separation is the best thing political ever. No European nation has this in written form. In some sense or another Europe is still "Christian", despite its secularity. In regard to WWII though, although you're correct in everything you say, there are Christians and there are Christians. The ones you mention I call the "gray people", as they go along at wish, and that's the majority. But there were Christians, Protestant and Catholic, that resisted Hitler. In the Catholic instance, being an "international organization", it was sooner, the resistance that is, but also less effective. The Vatican, and I always allow for the benefit of doubt, was not sure how to deal with Hitler, whether he was only, as hoped for, an enemy of communism and capitalism, or whether he was indeed evil. Protestants, on the other hand, tied to state and church, going back centuries in that mindset, were less repulsed at first, some even supporting the Nazis. The Confessing Church, when it split from the German Church, were the real Protestant Christians, willing to die, as they did. Your point is a very good one though; church and state must not be mingled, and secondly, that "gray Christian majority" really did make things possible. Without them, Hitler would have kept painting postcards. - Fucked up reality. All these "nice people" really created the holocaust. - Very, very good thing to remember that. I think we Germans did. Sometimes even too much, wallowing in self-hatred. But it's still good to remember these things, and very hopefully keep them from happening again.