How Many Children in Bethlehem Did Herod Kill?

Nazi Persecution of the Christian Churches

In yet another of the ENDLESS debates over the supposed Christianity of Hitler, a Jewish member of our discussion board provided the following two links showing how Hitler and the Nazis persecuted the Christian Churches.

THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
To: Major William Coogan
From: Lt. Carl E. Schorake
July 10, 1945

This memo was prepared for the Nuremburg Trials. I found the opening paragraph of page 8 especially illuminating:

"1. _THE NATURE OF THE PERSECUTION_
Throughout the period of National Socialist rule (of Germany), religious liberties in Germany were seriously impaired. The various Christian Churches were systematically cut off from effective communication with the people. They were confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religous funcitions, and even within this narrow sphere were subjected to as many hinderances as the Nazis dared to impose. These results were accomplished partly by legal and partly by illegal and terroristic means."

The second reference comes from a UPI report on Nazi vs. Christian conflict and can be found at Analysis: Nazis vs. Christians
"By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religion Correspondent
Published 1/14/2002 8:46 PM

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- The daughter of Hitler's foremost German foe reacted with satisfaction Monday to the news that a Holocaust survivor's granddaughter has drawn attention to a rarely mentioned historical fact: The Nazis planned to destroy Christianity in Germany and beyond.
"This is what my father had been saying since 1937," exclaimed Marianne Meyer-Krahmer, daughter of Carl Goerdeler, who was hanged in early 1945 for his leading role in the attempt to overthrow Hitler's regime.
His family, daughter Marianne included, wound up in a concentration camp and shackled to their beds every night, she recalled in a telephone call from Heidelberg.
Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, would have become German chancellor in a democratic government, had one of the 30-odd coup attempts against the fuhrer succeeded.
Goerdeler, funded by Robert Bosch, traveled around the world before World War II trying to warn leaders of Hitler's intentions. His message was: Hitler wants to destroy three enemies -- first the Jews, then the Christians and ultimately, capitalism.
"Judaism has inflamed his hatred with its doctrine of the one God who affects man's entire life with his laws and commandments," Goerdeler confided to his Political Testament, which he deposited in New York before war broke out.
"Next, his hatred will turn on the Christian religion. Humility and charity render him rabid ... Hitler puts himself in the place of Christ."
This flies of course in the face of what columnist Joel Miller of WorldNetDaily.com, an internet publication, calls the popular myth that the persecution of the Jews was fundamentally a Christian enterprise.
Now, Julie Seltzer Mandel, a Rutgers University law student, published U.S. intelligence papers detailing the Nazi plan to destroy Christianity.
Sounding almost verbatim like Carl Goerdeler, the summary of these papers call this plan "an integral part of the National Socialist scheme of world conquest."
The first document published so far is a 108-page outline the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's precursor, had prepared for prosecutors at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in 1945..."

Please read through these articles if the question of the Christianity of Hitler and/or the Nazis is one that interests you. The Internet myth that Hitler was a Christian is well known to many here, of course, and based on the UPI report, it is even propogated by columnist Joel Miller of WorldNetDaily.com. As the Jews might say... OY VEY!!! I guess that Dan Rather and Newsweek are not the only ones to get their facts grotesquely wrong.

Peace,

Nomad