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27 page printout
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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**** ****
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Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
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THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL No. 3
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HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
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FOR EIGHT YEARS
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by Joseph McCabe
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HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATION
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GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS
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**** ****
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Chapter I
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SOCIALISM EMPTIES THE CHURCHES
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The aim of the Black International is to protect and augment
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the power and wealth of the Church. Since however, the clergy do
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not share their power, much less their wealth, with the laity, we
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may define this aim more sharply. It is to protect and augment
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their own wealth and power, especially that of the higher clergy
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and the Pope and his Court. History compels us to add that in
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pursuing this aim the Black International is not restrained by any
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considerations or sentiments which are not strictly ecclesiastical.
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That statement, a Catholic may object, may be formally correct
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but it is malicious. The Church, he holds -- because in this
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respect the priests have taken him into their confidence wants
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wealth and power only in order that it may more effectively promote
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the spiritual interests and eternal welfare of men. So we
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understood; and we understood also that that is why the priest
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must, whenever it is necessary, ignore all ordinary human emotions
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and interests. What are the things of time compared with those of
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eternity? It is a nice formula. The sufferings of 100,000,000
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Chinese under the red hooves of the Japanese are doubtless sad to
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contemplate but the spiritual welfare of all Asia requires that the
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Pope shall not say so to his friend the Mikado. The first of
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Pacelli-Pius's famous Five Peace Principles, which won the
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admiration of the world, is "the right to life and freedom of all
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nations, big and small, powerful and weak. But the spiritual
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welfare of the Abyssinians (and the Spaniards, Albanians, Greeks,
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Serbs, etc.) is much more important than life or freedom so he had
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no harsh words for his friend Mussolini.
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We might, indeed, if we had leisure to go into these matters,
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inquire whether the enormous accession of wealth and power to the
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Church after the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century
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and again during the Renaissance was really followed by a great
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spiritual uplift or by a remarkable corruption of both people and
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Church. But we have not time for these digressions. Here we have to
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consider contemporary events.
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
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Now we saw in the first booklet of this series that the need
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of the Black International to protect its wealth and power was
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never greater than it is today. In my Decay of the Church of Rome
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(1909) I proved to the satisfaction of everybody except Catholic's,
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who have a short way of differing from me without reading me, that
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in the course of the nineteenth century the Church lost, in actual
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seceders and descendants of seceders, about 100,000,000 followers.
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It lost almost if not quite as many during the next 35 years, or
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between 1900 and 1935. The leakage steadily continued, even
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increased in all countries except those, such as Ireland and Poland
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in which the priests could keep then people in blinkers. The
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progress of Socialism, against which the Church had declared war to
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the death, made the leakage worse, and after the Russian Revolution
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it became a flood. In Spain, Italy, Austria, and Latin America we
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have the decisive evidence of electoral statistics, which show a
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world-loss of at least 60,000,000 since the last war. Even for a
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small country like Czecho-Slovakia Catholics, we shall see, admit
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a loss of about 2,000,000 in fifteen years, and the drift continued
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in America and Britain. Nor was it only a question of the
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humiliation of losing so many members. The Church in Germany was
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estimated to have a wealth of $20,000,000,000, and it was melting
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away.
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These spectacular losses are the key to the policy which
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Pacelli followed, first as Secretary of State and then as Pope Pius
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XII. When you know of these indisputable losses, which are not
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obtruded upon public notice, you see that the line followed by the
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Black International was quite inevitable in view of its primary
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aim. It is the folk who do not know of the losses who are puzzled
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by the plain evidence of the Italian Church's enthusiastic support
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of Mussolini in all his crimes, the Vatican's open alliance with
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Japan, or the Pope's strident call upon various governments to
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cooperate with him in the extinction, by war, of Bolshevism in
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Spain, Russia, China, and Mexico. Therefore in dealing with each
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country in which we trace the action of the Black International I
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give definite evidence from electoral statistics or Catholic
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admissions of the enormous losses of the Church. In the last book
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I showed this in the case of Italy and South America.
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It is vitally necessary in the case of Germany. References to
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the Church in that country suggests to the reader at one moment
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that it is tremendously wealthy and powerful -- a good third of the
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nation -- and the next day represent it as cowering powerlessly
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under the Nazi lash. The American public his been particularly
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puzzled by Cardinal Mundelein making himself the chief spokesman of
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the Church. Here was a great Churchman, praised in the highest
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terms by the Pope and the warmest friend of Pacelli when he visited
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America, scourging the Nazis at a time when no statesman in the
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world ventured to warn his people of the coming evil.
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The human side of these consecrated movements is always
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interesting. Mundelein sent larger sums to the Papal treasury than
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any other cardinal in the Church and promised even vaster funds
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when prosperity returned to Chicago. So the Vatican courageously
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refused to condemn him when requested by Hitler to do so. Besides,
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it was convenient to have a rather muddle-headed enthusiast
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assuring America that these charges of vice against the holy monks
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
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of Catholic Germany were wicked Nazi fabrications to cover a
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persecution of the Church. It was not necessary to tell Mundelein
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that, as we shall see presently, the Pope had already suppressed
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the whole body of these Franciscan monks in Westphalia for
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comprehensive corruption -- they were all in jail Anyway -- and
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that the Catholic bishop of Berlin had told Hitler in a published
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letter that the bishops of Germany admitted that there was a large
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amount of "moral perversity" in the monastic world. How could
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Mundelein know that the Vatican and the German hierarchy were still
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pressing Hitler to be friends? He had sworn to exterminate
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Bolshevism, after a kiss of betrayal, and there was nothing in the
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whole world that the Vatican more fiercely desired than the
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destruction of Bolshevism, by hook or by crook, in every country.
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When the Pope, who would presently so solemnly assert "the
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right to life and freedom of all nations," was asked to condemn the
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invasion of Norway, the beginning of Hitler's monstrous enslavement
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of Europe, he objected that there were only 2,000 Catholics in
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Norway and he had to think of the consequences for the "30,000,000
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Catholics of Germany." What he meant was that, since the Church of
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Rome does not admit that a man can quit it when his reason or his
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conscience demands this, there were in Germany some 30,000,000 men
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and women and their children who had received Catholic baptism. In
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1905 the Church claimed to have 25,000,000 members. Taking into
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account the beautiful fertility of Catholic parents these ought by
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1940 to have grown to at least 35,000,000. In point of fact it is
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easy to show that there were at the latter date not more than
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15,000,000 German Catholics, probably not more than 10,000,000.
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This implies a loss in the present generation of at least
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15,000,000, probably 20,000,000; and this loss is not so much due
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to the action of the Nazis as to the rapid growth of Socialism and
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Communism since 1918. It implies also a proportionate loss of
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wealth.
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The new world-conditions which led to the disintegration of
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the medieval Church everywhere -- the advance of culture, universal
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free education, cheap literature and free libraries, the growth of
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urban and industrial populations, etc, -- had had at least as
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devastating an effect in Germany as in Britain and America. Think
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of the huge circulation of such writers as Nietzsche and Haeckel.
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In cities like Berlin hardly a fifth of the inhabitants went to
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church. But in Germany the Roman Church had special conditions.
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Bismarck had switched off his attack on Catholicism from 1872 to
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1881 and directed it to the Socialists, and he now had the
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enthusiastic alliance of the Church. Some say that Socialism is a
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crime, and some that it is folly, but the Church said that it is a
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sin; which, of course, is much more likely to got men to avoid it.
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The Catholics organized politically in a Center Party and a
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Bavarian People's Party, and there was a very sharp line of
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division between. Catholic votes and those of the sinful Socialists
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and even worse Communists. Thirty years ago the Social Democratic
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Federation dropped its official opposition to all Churches, on the
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painfully familiar plea of Socialist leaders that this would
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shorten the path to power, but this did not affect the
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irreconcilable hostility between Socialists and Catholics. In fact,
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when Communism in turn became a powerful force, as it did in
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Germany, and in the Vatican policy Socialists and Communists were
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lumped together as Bolsheviks, the mutual antagonism was increased.
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
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I have earlier explained that in the very promising new phase
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of German life between 1924 and 1930 the Catholics and Socialists
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cooperated politically, and when Nazism grew they had another link
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in hatred of their common enemy. Catholics for the first time rose
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to the highest offices in the state. But the bishops knew, and
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Pacelli who lived in Germany from 1917 to 1929 saw, that the
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leakage from the Church was now disastrous. Before the 1914-1918
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war the Catholic vote had already fallen, in spite of the high
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Catholic birth rate. from one-fifth to one-sixth of the total
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electorate, whereas Catholic writers like the Jesuit Father Krose
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had estimated that by superior birth rate alone Catholics would
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raise their percentage of the population by one percent every
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decade. After the war their percentage, instead of rising, fell
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steeply, though the masses of Catholic peasants and farmers
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continued to have large families while the masses of non-Catholic
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urban workers increasingly practiced birth control. It is enough to
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quote the figures at the last democratic elections. In November
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1932, when the last entirely free election was held, the combined
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Catholic vote was 5,326,583 in a total of 35,000,000 votes or not
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much more than one-seventh. In March, 1933, when Hitler was
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Chancellor and there was a good deal of trickery and intimidation
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-- but, we shall see, complete freedom for the Catholics -- the
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Catholic vote was 5,496,054 in 39,316,873, or less than one-
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seventh. Catholics who were represented in American literature as
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one-third of the population could not in this supreme crisis get
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one-seventh of the adult community. Their proportion would have
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been even less if they had not had the energetic support of the
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Jews against Hitler, as the Catholic Emil Ritter shows in his work
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Der Weg des Politischen Katholizismus (1934). The Jews were ordered
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by their rabbis to vote with the Catholics, and in Berlin the
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Catholics ran a Jewish candidate.
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Now turn to the other side, At the time when the Church began
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to fight the Socialists the latter could poll only 349,000 votes.
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By 1907 the Socialist vote had risen to 3,010,800. The total number
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of voters had doubled: the Socialist vote had increased ten-fold:
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the Catholic vote had, taking into account the growth of
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population, considerably decreased. But again it will be enough to
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quote the final figures, just before the sun of freedom sank below
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the horizon. In November, 1932, the Socialists and Communists
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polled 13,712,292 votes, or much more than a third of the adult
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community, Before the March election Goering's men had fired the
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Reichstag to raise the Communist scare and, as Hitler was
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Chancellor, Socialists and Communists were forbidden to hold
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meetings and their papers suppressed, so the Communist vote fell
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considerably and the Socialist vote slightly. Yet the two parties
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still cast 12,321,684 votes, or moire than twice as many as the
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combined (and free) Catholic parties and nearly a third of the
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whole. The Nazis, I may add, even in the final election, with the
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help of the Communist scare, the Pope's blessing -- as we shall see
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-- and corrupt tactics, did not get one-half of the total vote
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(17,265,823 votes out of 39,316,873). Germany never voluntarily
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accepted Hitler. His party took power because it was the largest of
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ten.
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Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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4
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|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
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The glibness with which works of reference continue year after
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year to say that Catholics in Germany are one-third of the
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population, or 25,000,000 out of 75,000.000, make the German puzzle
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worse than ever for most people. How could a group of men who set
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out upon one of the most colossal aggressive enterprises in history
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begin by defying and persecuting one-third of the nation in
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addition to a savage repression of the still larger body of
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Socialists and Communists? Why are all our experts (or oracles)
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convinced that the overwhelming majority of the German people
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support Hitler yet pay respectful attention to the shrieks of men
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like the late Cardinal Mundelein that the Catholic third of the
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nation is bitterly persecuted?
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The truth is plainly shown in the above figures. As late as
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the November election of 1932 -- we shall see presently what
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happened after it -- the Catholic hierarchy was violently opposed
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to Socialism and Communism as well as to Hitler and insisted on
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Catholics voting for Catholic candidates. This was easy in Germany,
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where the main body of the Catholics is found in certain provinces
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where they form the great majority of the community. On this
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occasion, moreover, the appeal of the bishop to their flocks was
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the most urgent and solemn since Bismarck had fought the Church 60
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years earlier. Is it seriously suggested that any large proportion
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of genuine Catholics voted, in so grave a crisis, either for the
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Socialists or for the bunch of apostates who, their leaders said,
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were just as anxious as the Socialists to abolish the Church? If
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you want to make an allowance for invalids and other possibilities
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remember that on the other hand the Catholics had the support of
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half a million Jews, who were too scattered to have their own
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candidates. In the circumstance's the voting figures give us a much
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safer indication of the truth than any statements of writers.
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These figures show that in 1932 Catholics were 13 percent, not
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33 percent, of the adult community. A desperate apologist might
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suggest that in Germany, differently from in other countries, the
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young are more religious than the older folk and this would give
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the Church a larger total than the election figure's suggest. Such
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an apologist would have to be very ignorant of German conditions.
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In Great Briton, priests publicly admit that in many towns 50
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percent of the boys quit the Church when they leave the school. And
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in Britain the atmosphere is not quite as poisonous for the young,
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from the Church angle, as in Nazi Germany. You have heard of the
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Strength through Joy movement, but you may not have heard how
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youths have a song with the refrain, "On the heath and in the
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meadows I lose my Strength through Joy," how working girls sing on
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the streets a hymn to Mary which suggests -- I forget the exact
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words -- that her name was probably Cohen and her baby was born on
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the wrong side of the blanket. But suppose we take a generous view.
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Thirteen percent of the nation in 1932 meant about 12,000,000
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Catholics. Make what allowance you like for absenteeism from the
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polls (though every possible voter was whipped up) or other
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factors, but you cannot raise that figure to 15,000,000, which is
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only half what the Pope claims.
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And it is admitted that since 1932 the Church has suffered
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further and catastrophic losses. The organization which held the
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Catholic body together is torn to shreds. Think of the numerous
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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5
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HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
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societies (Knights of Columbus, Daughters of Mary, etc.) which in
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America are extremely important in keeping the faithful loyal and
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docile to the clergy. They are all suppressed in Germany. The two
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political parties are dissolved. The Catholic press, the supreme
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instrument of the clergy, is ruined. "All that remains of the one-
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time great Catholic press of Germany," said the Vatican Radio in
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March (1941), "are a few parish magazines, and even these have to
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||
be edited with the greatest care." All Catholic schools in the
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||
Catholic provinces have been closed and all the charitable and
|
||
other institutions which were one of the chief advertisements of
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||
the Church have been taken over. All religious brothers, nuns,
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||
etc., have been ignominiously expelled from education and every
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||
Catholic child knows from its Nazi playmates that this is said to
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||
be on account of a discovery of a plague of some kind of shameful
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||
wickedness amongst them. A ghastly reproach has been put upon the
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||
whole by jailing thousands of them for moral turpitude and
|
||
seduction of the young. Then there is the economic pressure, as
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||
good jobs must be got from Nazi bosses, the social pressure, and so
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||
on. There cannot be more than 10,000,000 Catholics in Germany
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||
today, and that means a loss of at least 15,000,000, if not
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||
20,000,000. The Catholic author of a special article in the London
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||
Daily Express (November 15, 1939) the most widely circulated paper
|
||
in the world said that by 1936 priests in the Rhineland admitted
|
||
that they had lost half their flocks and added that "if the Nazis
|
||
remain in power another decade Roman Catholicism may be obliterated
|
||
from Germany." That is stronger language than I have used.
|
||
|
||
Any man who finds this difficult to understand may reflect on
|
||
the following experience. A friend of mine, a person of high
|
||
character and a Catholic by baptism, went in 1937 to pay a
|
||
prolonged visit to relatives and friends in the Rhineland, his old
|
||
home. Everywhere he found the Catholics speaking with genial
|
||
disdain both of the Nazis and the Church. It was a mainly Catholic
|
||
district, and when my friend asked what they thought of the charges
|
||
of vice against the monks they laughingly replied that they had
|
||
always had a suspicion about life in those institutions. Catholic
|
||
belief, in other words, was never so deep amongst them as Catholic
|
||
writers pretend. They just wanted to be left alone to drink and
|
||
feed and smoke in the way of their fathers. How are such folk
|
||
likely to have fared under the pressure of the last five years?
|
||
|
||
However that may be, stupendous losses are, as I said,
|
||
admitted. And these losses are the key to the Vatican policy in
|
||
Germany. It is to check them and to recover ground that, in spite
|
||
of one deception after another, the Vatican has ordered German
|
||
Catholics to submit and has tried year after year to enter into
|
||
alliance with Hitler. That is why the Pope in spite of his discreet
|
||
letters of sympathy to Queen Wilhelmina and King Leopold and his
|
||
protests against the ghastly attempts to annihilate the Poles after
|
||
they had been conquered, never uttered one word of straight moral
|
||
condemnation of any one of the long series of cynical breaches of
|
||
treaties, ruthless aggressions, and foul treatment of subject
|
||
peoples by which the Nazi government has roused against itself the
|
||
anger and disgust of the whole free world except its Catholic
|
||
allies. That terrible indictment I will proceed to justify point by
|
||
point.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
Chapter 11
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE POPE JOINS THE GANG
|
||
|
||
|
||
We saw that two grave dilemmas confronted Pacelli when, in
|
||
1930, he became Secretary of State to the late Pope and took over
|
||
the supreme control of the international policy of the Vatican.
|
||
There was an acrid quarrel with Mussolini over the terms of the
|
||
Treaty and Concordat he had signed and a request from Japan that
|
||
the Papacy should recognize its annexation of Manchuria, which the
|
||
conscience of the civilized world condemned. We saw how he resolved
|
||
these dilemmas. He linked the Church firmly to two partners of the
|
||
criminal Conspiracy; which would come to be known as the Axis. He
|
||
had hardly accomplished this, when the third problem arose. Hitler,
|
||
doubtless encouraged by the holy alliance with Italy and Japan,
|
||
sent an emissary to ask for recognition of his share in the brewing
|
||
plot against civilization. He got it. The Black International
|
||
joined the gang.
|
||
|
||
When you sum up events in this bold fashion many folk shake
|
||
their heads skeptically, so, although in the mad rush of life in
|
||
our time it seems almost to be ancient history -- it is less than
|
||
ten years old -- I must briefly repeat the evidence of what
|
||
happened in 1932. Remember that Pacelli knew Germany thoroughly. He
|
||
had left it, after twelve years close observation of its life, in
|
||
1929, and his new office as Secretary of State compelled him to
|
||
watch carefully the critical course of events in that country.
|
||
|
||
Bitterly as he hated Socialism, because he expected it
|
||
everywhere sooner or later to turn to the Russian model and declare
|
||
religion "the opium of the people," he was fully aware that in face
|
||
of the Nazi threat and in view of the distress which the world-
|
||
slump and the sudden cessation of loans had brought upon the
|
||
country the Catholics were cooperating with the Socialists under a
|
||
Catholic Chancellor, Bruning, and later the Catholic General von
|
||
Schleicher. Bruning was a shrewd opportunist who leaned to the
|
||
Right or the Left as occasion required, but he was a good
|
||
statesman. As long as he held together the coalition of Liberals,
|
||
Catholics, Jews, Socialists, and Communist the Nazi's had no chance
|
||
of success. It was in very large part the Vatican that ruined this
|
||
defense and the leadership of Bruning by forcing him away from the
|
||
Socialists and patronizing the Nazis.
|
||
|
||
That Pacelli was guilty of a criminal blunder must be
|
||
admitted. He knew that Hitler had already given proof of his
|
||
duplicity and of his infamous intentions but like Mussolini, he
|
||
gambled on the success of Nazi militarism and the spinelessness of
|
||
the democracies. All the world now knows how first the German
|
||
industrialists, headed by Thyssen and Hagenberg, brought their
|
||
millions to the Nazi treasury and used every means in their power
|
||
to influence their Liberal and Radical workers in Hitler's favor.
|
||
The new Nazi Party emerged from as slimy a mess of intrigue and
|
||
deception as one can imagine. Hitler had won a large body of the
|
||
workers -- the Nazi group had started as a semi-Socialist working-
|
||
class movement, pure and simple -- by promising to improve their
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
condition at the expense of "the bloated capitalist." By 1931
|
||
Hitler welcomed the gold of the capitalist -- and any other gold
|
||
that came along -- and sold his semi-Socialism. Ambassador Dodd,
|
||
who was then in Berlin, describes in his Diary how he saw the
|
||
royalists and land-owners as well as the industrialists buzzing
|
||
round the Nazi headquarters.
|
||
|
||
Hitler double-crossed them all. He took their money and rose
|
||
in November, 1932, to the electoral strength which I have
|
||
described. In 1930 the Nazi vote had been one-sixth of the whole.
|
||
In 1932 it was one-third. But they had used up all their resources
|
||
and were very dejected. They could get no more from the Liberals
|
||
and Conservatives and they could not approach the Socialists and
|
||
Communists, however ready they were to sell what soul they had to
|
||
the devil. What about the Catholics?
|
||
|
||
Von Papen was the queerest figure in the bunch of Nazi
|
||
leaders. His Catholic standing was such that he received a high
|
||
decoration from the Vatican -- he is a Chamberlain of the Papal
|
||
Court -- and he was a friend of the very conservative President
|
||
Hindenburg and the Prussian aristocrats. In the summer of 1932 he
|
||
had, through his influence with Hindenburg, got the Chancellorship
|
||
away from Bruning, though he had in turn soon lost it to the
|
||
Catholic General von Schleicher. Note carefully that Germany thus
|
||
had three Catholic Chancellors (Premiers) in succession, an honor
|
||
of which they had not hitherto dreamed, under the Liberal-Socialist
|
||
coalition, which Pacelli helped to destroy in favor of the Nazis.
|
||
Von Schleicher, in close touch with the German hierarchy, adopted
|
||
an even more pronounced policy of cooperation with the Socialists
|
||
against the Nazis than Bruning had followed. With their support he
|
||
dared to publish the fact that the aristocratic Prussian land-
|
||
owners had shamelessly dipped into the public funds, and Von Papen
|
||
easily persuaded Hindenburg to protect their noble caste by
|
||
dismissing Von Schleicher and making Hitler Chancellor. He would
|
||
now control the next election; and the greasy Goering would do
|
||
dirty work in the country for him.
|
||
|
||
About the same time, the beginning of 1933, Von Papen was sent
|
||
to Rome to propose an alliance with the Vatican. It is quite stupid
|
||
to affect to dispute these statements because Von Papen in a
|
||
published speech (Der 12 November, 1933, p. 7), which I have read,
|
||
actually boasts of his work. On November 9, 1933, he made this
|
||
speech to a very large audience of Catholic working men at Cologne,
|
||
speaking as one Catholic to others and rousing them to support
|
||
Hitler. He said, unctuously: "Providence destined me to render an
|
||
essential service in the birth of the government of the national
|
||
regeneration." As his bosom friends, Hitler and Goebbels, were
|
||
apostates and half the secondary leaders were notoriously
|
||
sodomists, I do not wonder that folk find this chapter of German
|
||
history perplexing, but that Von Papen did in fact propose to
|
||
Pacelli, in Hitler's name, that he should order the German
|
||
Catholics to drop their hostility to the Nazis in return for, when
|
||
they attained power, a favorable Concordat with the Church --
|
||
during his twelve years in Germany Pacelli had tried in vain to get
|
||
this -- and that Pacelli accepted is abundantly proved, and most
|
||
clearly by the subsequent course of events.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
Early in 1933 the statement was widely repeated. in the German
|
||
Press that the bishops, meeting at Fulda, had received instructions
|
||
from Rome to abandon the hostility to Hitler and had passed these
|
||
on to the clergy. It is further stated in all histories of the time
|
||
that in preparation for the March election only Catholics and Nazis
|
||
were allowed to organize and appeal to the country. See, in
|
||
particular, the account, which will certainly not be accused of
|
||
anti-Catholic bias, in Seldes (The Vatican). He adds that one of
|
||
the Catholic clerical leaders, Msgr. Kaas, was sent to Rome to
|
||
advise Pacelli to agree and that he said of Hitler: "This man, the
|
||
bearer of high ideal's, will do all that is necessary to save the
|
||
nation from catastrophe."
|
||
|
||
I gather that there were already some in the German Church who
|
||
were in favor of alliance with Hitler. A few years later one of the
|
||
most important priests in Munich died and his funeral was
|
||
officially honored by the Nazi government; and in the heat of the
|
||
later struggle, when many German Catholics blamed Cardinal
|
||
Faulhaber, head of their Church, the Valerist paper, the Irish
|
||
Independent (August 13, 1938), which was in close touch with the
|
||
clergy, said that "Cardinal Faulhaber was very friendly to National
|
||
Socialism in the beginning" -- in other words, until Hitler double-
|
||
crossed the Vatican. Hitler had by this time begun to wash out any
|
||
suspicion that he would, if returned to power, injure the Church.
|
||
In one of his first speeches in the Reichstag, on March 23, 1933,
|
||
he said that "as we see in Christianity the unshakable foundation
|
||
of the moral life so it is our duty to continue to cultivate
|
||
friendly relations with the Holy See and to develop them."
|
||
|
||
The great majority in the Church could not so easily reconcile
|
||
themselves to cooperation with a disreputable bunch of apostates
|
||
and sodomists, and there were many complaints in the Catholic press
|
||
when the bishops circulated the Papal order to observe at least
|
||
benevolent neutrality. The terms of the order are, of course, not
|
||
known but we may gather them from the result. The Annual Register
|
||
for 1933, says, in recording Hitler's triumph at the election: "The
|
||
gigantic swing-over of the Catholic middle-class in West and South
|
||
Germany to the Nazi Party broke the power of the old middle-class
|
||
Catholic parties, the Center and the Bavarian People's Party" (p.
|
||
169). The word "gigantic" will seem misplaced if you look back upon
|
||
the electoral statistics I have given. The Catholic vote fell but
|
||
not so heavily. But note that the writer is referring only to the
|
||
middle class, and it is significant that the Catholic vote fell
|
||
even by 20,000 when every party feverishly whipped all its
|
||
supporters to the poll.
|
||
|
||
It is, at all events, another witness to the change of
|
||
attitude of the Catholics under ecclesiastical direction, and a
|
||
fourth, and still more important witness, is a French priest
|
||
writing later in the French Catholic fortnightly, the Revue des
|
||
Deux Mondes (January 15, 1935, article "Le catholicisme et la
|
||
politique mondiale") and boasting of it as one of the diplomatic
|
||
triumphs of the Vatican.
|
||
|
||
But surely these witnesses are superfluous in view of the
|
||
acknowledged fact that on July 20, 1933, Pacelli proudly signed the
|
||
Concordat he had arranged with the Nazis. Does anybody suppose that
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
the Nazis' who are now represented as from the start a horde of
|
||
irreligious blackguards, went out of their way after they had won
|
||
their triumph, to promise Rome that they would respect rights which
|
||
it claimed and that were drastically opposed to their principles?
|
||
The man who writes history on suspicions and assumptions, cannot
|
||
complain if his readers are skeptical, but the apologist who
|
||
suggests such things as this must have readers who are incapable of
|
||
ordinary judgment. Hitler's aim was to form a totalitarian state in
|
||
the most literal sense: a state in which every implement of
|
||
instruction or mind-forming should be used by Nazi officials to
|
||
instil racial pride and a readiness for aggressive war. Yet the
|
||
first thing he does after securing power is to promise a Church
|
||
which he hates that it shall control the education of millions of
|
||
children, continue to have a press that is pledged to
|
||
internationalism and peace, and draft its members into societies
|
||
and fraternities for the cult of a Jewish Bible and a Gospel of
|
||
Peace. He was carrying out a bargain; but one that he never had the
|
||
least intention of honoring in practice.
|
||
|
||
We no more say that the Black International put Hitler in
|
||
power than we say that it caused the war. We will not even linger
|
||
to consider how much influence the Papal policy had amongst the
|
||
various corrupt factors that put him in power. The point is that
|
||
the Cross embraced the Swastika: the Pope joined the Gang. The
|
||
Vatican sold its position as international moral censor as
|
||
shamefully as it had sold it to the other partners of the Axis.
|
||
Incredible? Then let the apologist quote any Papal condemnations of
|
||
the appalling crimes against humanity and civilization that have
|
||
been committed every year since Hitler seized power. I decline to
|
||
count mild protests against actions which injured the Church.
|
||
|
||
The world, bemused by a press which could see nothing in the
|
||
future except "the menace of Bolshevism," took little notice of
|
||
this at the time. But let it not now be suggested that perhaps
|
||
Pacelli himself understood Nazism no more than the majority of
|
||
folk. After twelve years in Germany for the single purpose of
|
||
studying developments! A few years later editors began to profess
|
||
that they wished they could penetrate the secret of Nazi policy. It
|
||
was tragicomic. The substantial part of Hitler's program -- it was
|
||
expanded when he saw the criminal sluggishness of Fiance and
|
||
Britain -- had been for years in Mein Kamph. In 1938 I put in the
|
||
form of a program, in Hitler's own words, statements of his aims
|
||
which are scattered over, and often repeated in, that immense flood
|
||
of twaddle. It will be of use if I reproduce the main part of it
|
||
here.
|
||
|
||
"We must see that the strength of our people has, its roots,
|
||
not in colonies, but in land of our own in Europe (p. 754). The
|
||
regaining of our lost provinces cannot be achieved by solemn
|
||
appeals to God as pious hopes but only by force of arms (708). The
|
||
South Tyrol and our lost provinces can be won back only by a bloody
|
||
struggle (708). The most sacred right in the world is the right to
|
||
land that you can till yourself and the holiest sacrifice is the
|
||
blood you shed for it (755). Our policy in the East [Russia] must
|
||
be that we will win more land for the German people. Since we need
|
||
strength for this, yet the mortal enemy of our people, France,
|
||
strangles us mercilessly, we must make every sacrifice that is
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
necessary to destroy the position of France in Europe (757). This
|
||
policy can be carried out only by an alliance with England (689).
|
||
There, is no English, American, or Italian statesman who was ever
|
||
pro-German. Any man who says that we can form alliances with
|
||
foreign nations in virtue of a pro-German spirit in the leading
|
||
statesmen of those countries is either an ass or a liar (698). The
|
||
alliance with England and Italy will enable Germany to make its
|
||
case, under the shelter of such a coalition, all the preparations
|
||
that are needed for a final settlement with France (755)."
|
||
|
||
There, written nearly twenty years ago, is the whole program
|
||
of duplicity, callousness, and aggression. As the current
|
||
"translation" of Mein Kampf, subsidized by the Nazi government, was
|
||
grossly fraudulent. I translated these sentences, which are
|
||
expanded and justified at great length in the work, from the 1935
|
||
(mature) edition, and sent them to two editors of radical London
|
||
papers, with a circulation of about 4,000,000 copies, who professed
|
||
to be puzzled about Hitler's intentions. Both refused to print my
|
||
article, and Britain slumbered and blundered on.
|
||
|
||
If any man supposes that Pacelli and the Vatican did not know
|
||
the contents of Mein Kampf, which already circulated by the
|
||
million, he must have a singularly low estimate of the ability with
|
||
which their work is conducted. Before Pacelli put his pen to
|
||
parchment the Day of the Long Knife, about which Nazi youth's had
|
||
sung chants all over Germany for two years, occurred. More than
|
||
100,000 Jews, Communists, Socialists, Pacifists, etc., were
|
||
barbarously treated and robbed of their possessions and in many
|
||
cases their lives. Pacelli amiably continued to work out the
|
||
details of his compact with the devil, and the church bells rang
|
||
when it was signed. And the German bishops deputed Cardinal Bertram
|
||
to assure Hitler that they were "glad to express as soon as
|
||
possible" their joy at the agreement and their "sincere readiness
|
||
to cooperate to their best ability with the new government" (the
|
||
Catholic Universe, August 18, 1933). Hitler's followers, especially
|
||
the notorious pervert Roehm and his friends, scorned the concordat
|
||
and insulted the Church, and infringements of the agreement began
|
||
at once. But when Catholic writers say that Cardinal Faulhaber at
|
||
once took a firm stand against the Nazi they gravely mislead their
|
||
reader's.
|
||
|
||
The sermons which Faulhaber delivered can be read in an
|
||
English translation Judaism, Christianity, and Germany, 1933). They
|
||
are a painful exhibition of moral cowardice and sycophancy. I have
|
||
already quoted the Valerist organ saying that Faulhaber was
|
||
favorable to Nazism "in the beginning." It adds that "the fact that
|
||
he found it impossible later not to oppose certain elements of
|
||
their policy, hurt us as well as annoyed them." What were these
|
||
elements? Did he, as a Catholic prelate professes to regard as his
|
||
duty, censure Hitler for his perjury in violating his solemn oath
|
||
to preserve the Constitution? Did he denounce the brutality of the
|
||
attack on Jews and Socialists? Not a word. His attack was purely
|
||
theological. The Anti-Semitic language of the Nazis was opposed to
|
||
the Catholic doctrine that the Old Testament was inspired and that
|
||
Jehovah was the God of Christianity and was incarnated in the Jew
|
||
Jesus. The Nazis laughed at him. Rosenberg, who had at that time
|
||
some idea that because I admired pre-Nazi Germany I could be won to
|
||
support them, sent me a copy of his drastic reply.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
In the preceding book I said that Pacelli at this time wrote
|
||
the most severe attack on Hitler that ever carne from a Papal
|
||
source. He was engaged in his mission -- not a "good will" mission
|
||
but arranging a bloody Fascist reaction -- in South America. From
|
||
there he sent to Cardinal Schulte at Cologne a letter in which he
|
||
roused German Catholics against the Nazi leaders. "When in Satanic
|
||
pride, false prophets arise, pretending to be the bearers of a new
|
||
creed," he said, it behooved the faithful to stir themselves, I
|
||
cannot trace that the Cardinal passed on the warning to his flock
|
||
but, in any case, what was the point of the attack?
|
||
|
||
In June (1934) Hitler had surpassed his record of outrage to
|
||
date by the infamous Blood Purge in which Catholic leaders like
|
||
General von Schleicher and Strasser were murdered together with
|
||
Roehm and other notorious perverts. The excuse was a confused plea
|
||
that the party had to be morally purified and that there was a Plot
|
||
against Hitler. But whereas in the Russian executions, about which
|
||
the world press poured out streams of indignation, the conspiracy
|
||
was proved in open court after trials which distinguished foreign
|
||
lawyers declared unassailable, there was no pretense of a trial in
|
||
Germany. Hitler, already under the influence of the semi-insane
|
||
egoism that developed after his success, shouted "I am the law and
|
||
justice in Germany", and the men -- hundreds of them -- were shot
|
||
down in their houses or their cells! Was this what Pacelli
|
||
condemned? Not at all. He had heard that the Nazis were helping
|
||
Catholics who favored them to found in Germany a National Catholic
|
||
Church, acknowledging no obedience to Rome and finding room for
|
||
Nazi doctrines. Notice carefully that Pacelli denounces the Nazis
|
||
as "pretending to be the bearers of a new creed". So it was with
|
||
the protests of the German Catholic bishops which are quoted. They
|
||
protested against the increasing violations of the Concordat by
|
||
interference with their schools and their Catholic organizations.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Chapter III
|
||
|
||
|
||
HOW HE HELPED HITLER IN AUSTRIA
|
||
|
||
|
||
We shall resume presently the revolting story of how the Pope,
|
||
with Pacelli at his elbow, helped Hitler to consolidate his power
|
||
in Germany but at this point it is necessary to turn aside and
|
||
consider what was happening in Austria. Bavaria is a sister-state
|
||
of Austria rather than of Prussia, and from Munich, its capitol,
|
||
Pacelli had watched very closely the development in the southern
|
||
Republic. It was of absorbing interest from the ecclesiastical
|
||
angle. Austria was the only country in the world where a Catholic
|
||
priest, Msgr. Seipel, a man of intense loyalty to the Vatican, had
|
||
supreme power. During fourteen year's after the war Seipel, a
|
||
professor of moral theology and a leader of the Christian Socialist
|
||
movement, was either himself Chancellor (President) or the power
|
||
behind the Chancellor. He represented the Church, for it at once
|
||
transpired that there was as much Socialism in Christian Socialism
|
||
as there is science in Christian Science.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
The state was thus a theocracy, the only one in the world
|
||
except Thibet, and as such of profound interest to every Vatican
|
||
official. This interest was all the greater from the fact that,
|
||
while the state was Catholic, its capitol, Vienna, was Socialist
|
||
and Atheistic. Socialism and Communism had made the same progress
|
||
in Austria after the war and the expulsion of the emperor as they
|
||
had made in Germany. In Vienna, Linz, and other industrial towns
|
||
the Socialists had outvoted the Catholics and Liberals in the
|
||
municipal elections and had won control and carried out their
|
||
principles in a civic policy. Two features of their rule must be
|
||
noted.
|
||
|
||
The first is that the Austrian Socialists were emphatically
|
||
anti-Catholic. The well-known amiability (Gutmuthlichkeit) of the
|
||
Austrian character saved them from the worst libels of Bolsheviks
|
||
that were served upon the world-press, but the fierce hostility to
|
||
them of the Church, which made fruitless constitutional efforts to
|
||
capture Vienna, hardened their attitude to it. Here every vote cast
|
||
for Socialist or a Communist was sternly pronounced a vote against
|
||
the Church. "Even to this day," says C.A. Macartney, a
|
||
distinguished and conservative scholar of Rambridge University,
|
||
"the real battle of Austrian Socialism is directed against the
|
||
Church" (The Social Revolution in Austria, 1926, p. 54). And the
|
||
Socialists continued to win, large numbers from the Church year
|
||
after year and to gain ground in the country. At the 1927 election
|
||
they polled 830,000 votes outside Vienna and increased their vote
|
||
in Vienna by 120,000. Is it a mere coincidence that in that year
|
||
the Christian Socialist government began to resort to persecution
|
||
and violence?
|
||
|
||
The second feature was of no interest at all to churchmen but
|
||
ought to have been -- and was not -- frankly described in the
|
||
press. It is that while Austria as a whole under its clerical
|
||
'statesmen' was so badly administered that the League of Nations
|
||
had to step in periodically to save it from bankruptcy, Vienna, in
|
||
spite of the heavy depression caused by the mutilation of the
|
||
country at Versailles, effected a very remarkable social
|
||
improvement. I was in Vienna when it took 500 Kronen -- a Krone
|
||
used to be worth 50c -- to buy a small apple, and a very small
|
||
cake, or the cheapest postage stamp, and half the workers were so
|
||
near "starving" that, the police told me, civil war was feared. Yet
|
||
after years of this, and still seriously crippled economically,
|
||
Vienna made extraordinary progress in education, housing, and other
|
||
social reforms. I have described it elsewhere and need say here
|
||
only that every impartial social student in Europe acknowledged it.
|
||
Macartriey says that in a few months the Socialist Municipal
|
||
Council "did more to better the condition of the masses than had
|
||
previous decades of legislation from above": Catholic legislation,
|
||
you understand, A London daily which is opposed to Socialism said
|
||
of this Socialist administration after the Catholics had
|
||
treacherously destroyed it that it had been "a model of democratic
|
||
government, as close to the ideal platonic Republic as the world
|
||
has ever seen" (News-Chronicle, February 12, 1935).
|
||
|
||
The British editor was wrong on one point. Vienna was not
|
||
closer to the ideal Republic than Moscow, and Madrid and (with
|
||
reserves on account of the mass of illiteracy) Mexico City were
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
approaching it under Socialist rule. If it seems rash to claim that
|
||
this was of no interest from the ecclesiastical angle you have only
|
||
to reflect on the facts. Had the Vatican, indeed in this case
|
||
Catholics throughout the world, given any consideration to the
|
||
actual social fruits of Bolshevism when from 1935 onward they
|
||
shrieked for its extinction in Russia, Spain, and Mexico? The laity
|
||
were obviously ignorant of the truth. Their Catholic press never
|
||
mentioned countries or cities under Socialist rule except to repeat
|
||
the most venomous libels about their social condition. Were the
|
||
higher clergy equally ignorant? If you can suppose that they were,
|
||
you have to conclude that they were blind to every issue but one --
|
||
the wealth and power of the Black International.
|
||
|
||
As I have written at length elsewhere, particularly in the
|
||
Appeal to Reason Library No. 5., on the development in Austria I
|
||
sum up the events briefly, with the addition of a few details that
|
||
have since transpired. The most important of these additions is
|
||
that we have now to review all these events since 1930 in the light
|
||
of Pacelli's scheme to have Socialism destroyed by alliance with
|
||
anti-Socialist powers, however criminal and unsavory they might be.
|
||
In 1934 his plan was not fully developed. He saw Socialism spread
|
||
in Germany but the destructive power was still almost below the
|
||
political horizon when he left the country. He saw it spread, with
|
||
devastating consequences to the Catholic missions, in China, and he
|
||
linked the Papacy with Japan. He saw it in South America and went
|
||
there to bring the Church and the wealthy to a practical agreement.
|
||
He saw it in Mexico but, for lack of definite evidence, we do not
|
||
say that in his visit to the States he encouraged the idea of a
|
||
beautiful Catholic-Wall-Street alliance. He saw it in Spain and
|
||
promoted the slowly maturing plot to destroy it. He saw it in
|
||
Russia, but until 1936 he still dreamed of a friendly alliance with
|
||
the Soviet authorities, and it was only when he definitely
|
||
abandoned this hope that he gave the Church the slogan: Extinguish
|
||
Bolshevism in Russia, China, Mexico and Spain. It was already
|
||
extinct, with his assistance, in Germany and Italy.
|
||
|
||
In 1933 his plans were still piecemeal, and Austria was the
|
||
next obvious, province for his intrigues. By this time it was
|
||
evident that in a field of fair propaganda and free discussion the
|
||
Socialists won every time, and it could not plausibly be said in
|
||
the case of Austria, as it was lyingly said of Italy and Germany,
|
||
that Socialism led to distress and disorder. The only serious
|
||
criticism I have seen of the fine social work done in Vienna is
|
||
that it was financed by foreign loan's which were advanced for a
|
||
different purpose. That is false The city council at Vienna never
|
||
received any part of the advances. They went to the Christian
|
||
Socialist government, which means in large part to the Church.
|
||
Vienna paid its way by taxes and a financial system of great
|
||
ability.
|
||
|
||
There was a special difficulty in the case of Austria: the
|
||
mutual jealousy of Mussolini and Hitler, who still hated and
|
||
distrusted each other and each wanted control of Austria. The
|
||
Vatican favored Italy, especially as before the end of 1933 Hitler
|
||
betrayed his duplicity and Austria was predominantly Catholic. In
|
||
1931 the Pope, assisted by Pacelli, had issued an Encyclical to the
|
||
effect that the Italian corporative state was (especially as it
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
bowed to Canon Law, put education under the Church, and heavily
|
||
subsidized the clergy) the model for Catholic countries. The
|
||
corporative state meant, of course, the destruction of Socialism
|
||
and Trade Unions, the workers being drafted into corporations under
|
||
the firm hand of Church and State, and the recognition of the
|
||
capitalists right of private property (or all the wealth he could
|
||
make) with a right of the state to conscript such of the wealth as
|
||
it needed. Portugal had adopted the scheme, as France and Spain
|
||
have since done.
|
||
|
||
Hitler, though he affected to despise the Austrians, was by no
|
||
means willing to see it pass under Italian influence or, as the
|
||
Catholics wanted, restore the imperial rule, but he was not yet in
|
||
a position to force a bargain upon Mussolini. As I quoted, he had
|
||
written long before this in Mein Kampf that Germans must win back
|
||
by force of arms even the South Tyrol from Italy, which had been
|
||
awarded it, at Versailles. This meant the annexation of Austria. He
|
||
cynically watched the Church coquetting in Austria with Italian
|
||
Fascism. If they chose to destroy Socialism for him, so much the
|
||
better. And Socialism was, in spite of its steady progress, doomed
|
||
from 1927. It not only mocked the financial ineptness of the
|
||
national government but it brought to light a series of grave
|
||
scandals in connection with the government and its supporters.
|
||
Seipel rallied to his support all the industrialists and landowners
|
||
and looked round for a knight in shining armor like Mussolini or
|
||
Hitler.
|
||
|
||
Prince Starhemberg, a conceited puppy of the type of Ciano or
|
||
Suner, but a wealthy noble, chose himself for the part. By Seipel's
|
||
treacherous connivance and with Italian assistance he was allowed
|
||
to create a private Fascist army, the Heimwehr -- "created in its
|
||
final form by Seipel," says the Annual Register, and Seipel did
|
||
nothing independently of the Vatican -- which very obviously
|
||
intended to attack the Socialists and Communists. In fact,
|
||
Starhemberg provoked a clash prematurely, but the Catholic
|
||
government had so small a majority in the Reichsrath that it was
|
||
beaten. Seipel was driven from the Chancellorship and streams of
|
||
Austrians quitted the Church (1933).
|
||
|
||
Seipel and the Church put into the Chancellorship a priest-
|
||
ridden little man of peasant extraction and no particular ability
|
||
whom the American press came to glorify as "gallant little
|
||
Dollfuss." You may remember how he "stood up to Hitler"; though it
|
||
was not clearly explained at the time that in resisting Nazism he
|
||
was defending Fascism. In his first budget as Chancellor he
|
||
admitted a deficit of $70,000,000, a colossal sum for so small a
|
||
state and after all the loans, and he rarely had a majority of more
|
||
than one in Congress. The railway-men, who were very largely
|
||
Socialists, disclosed the fact that, against international
|
||
agreement, he was allowing Italy to use Austrian railroads to send
|
||
arms secretly into Hungary; which also Italy and the Vatican wanted
|
||
to make Fascist and allied to Italy. Dollfuss solemnly assured
|
||
France and Britain that the traffic should cease, but he secretly
|
||
maintained it, and the Socialists again exposed it. So "the
|
||
Socialist watch-dog had to be destroyed." That is the language of
|
||
the Annual Register in its impartial summary of the events of 1933.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
Dollfuss went to Rome and had long talks with Mussolini and
|
||
Pacelli; with, incidentally, a talk to the Almighty in St. Peters.
|
||
You will, of course, not for a moment suspect that he discussed
|
||
with Pacelli the plot to destroy Austrian Socialism. The Church
|
||
never interferes in polities. But the course of the events that
|
||
followed the return of Dollfuss to Vienna clearly shows that this
|
||
second step in Hitler's march to world-domination was facilitated,
|
||
like the first, by the Black International. And in order to avoid
|
||
all suspicion of the use of tainted sources I will give a short
|
||
summary of these events as they are described, objectively, in the
|
||
Annual Rdgister, which certainly does not lean to Socialism or
|
||
Atheism.
|
||
|
||
Before he had set out for Rome Dollfuss had given a solemn
|
||
engagement (his second) to France that he would take no action
|
||
against the Socialists for disclosing the Hungarian-Italian
|
||
traffic. France and Britain feared Civil war in Austria and were
|
||
assured that all parties would be forbidden to store arms. They
|
||
were probably aware that both parties were collecting arms, but
|
||
while the Fascist Heimwehr was encouraged and made no secret of its
|
||
armament, the government took every measure to hamper the
|
||
Socialists, who had to store arms very secretly in their model
|
||
tenement-blocks. On his return, however, Dollfuss, the idol of the
|
||
clergy, disowned his solemn engagements and assumed dictatorial
|
||
powers. Mussolini had promised to see him through.
|
||
|
||
He closed the Reichsrath (Congress) and announced that Austria
|
||
was to be "a corporative authoritative state." He suspended the
|
||
Mayor of Vienna and abolished the municipal government or paralyzed
|
||
it by cutting off its financial resources. He allowed Starhemberg's
|
||
army to take over provincial towns and to show itself openly in
|
||
Vienna. There is, in fact, evidence that agents of the Heimwehr
|
||
offered to sell pieces of artillery to the Socialists in order to
|
||
encourage them to rebel. It wits obvious that they were very
|
||
seriously threatened with extinction, but the prospect of success
|
||
against the government and the Heimwehr (which had artillery), with
|
||
Mussolini in the background, was so poor that there was no
|
||
agreement on a plan of revolt when the Catholic Fascists put into
|
||
circulation a report that they were in a few days going to enter
|
||
the blocks of workers tenements in search of the hidden arms and
|
||
Dollfuss publicly supported the Heimwehr, large numbers of the
|
||
Socialists and the Communists decided to fight. Dollfuss lied to
|
||
the world about the struggle he had provoked. He announced that 137
|
||
men, women, and children were killed. The number was at least 1500.
|
||
Eleven of the leaders were executed and 1188 men and women were
|
||
imprisoned; and many of these prisoners testified in court that
|
||
they were tortured in jail in the traditional and almost invariable
|
||
fashion of clerical counter-revolutions. So sordid was this chapter
|
||
of Catholic history from beginning to end that the impartial writer
|
||
in the Annual Register (1934, p. 194) concludes his account in
|
||
these ironic words:
|
||
|
||
"At the cost of hundreds if not thousands of lives . . . the
|
||
Heimwebr Fascist movement, which was created in its final form by
|
||
the late Chancellor Msgr. Ignaz Seipel, achieved in 1934 its oft-
|
||
proclaimed aim of the destruction of the Social Democratic Party,
|
||
their violent ejection from the control of Vienna to which two-
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
thirds of the people had elected them, and the sweeping away of
|
||
parliamentary government in Austria. Thus culminated the anti-
|
||
Socialist policy inaugurated by the late Msgr. Seipel in 1926."
|
||
|
||
Seipel had died in 1922, and "gallant little Dollfuss" had,
|
||
after a visit to the Vatican, carried his policy to its logical
|
||
conclusion. Whatever difficulty we may have in some cases in
|
||
tracing the intrigues of the Black International there is none
|
||
here. The struggle was ecclesiastical. It was directed by priests
|
||
and aimed at restoring the power of the Church from beginning to
|
||
end. Pacelli had won his first campaign in his war for the
|
||
extinction of Bolshevism.
|
||
|
||
The Socialists had taken the chief part in the revolution of
|
||
1919 against Church and State. It had been, a Socialist historian
|
||
says, "the most peaceful and the most humane of all revolutions,"
|
||
for the successful republicans "had not hurt a hair of anybody's
|
||
head." The only error of this writer is his claim that it was a
|
||
unique revolution in its humanity. Five democratic revolutions in
|
||
Spain during the nineteenth century. several in Italy and Portugal,
|
||
and all the revolutions of 1848 had had the same character; and the
|
||
Spanish revolution of 1932 had lived up to the democratic
|
||
tradition. And the treachery and truculence of the clerical
|
||
counter-revolution of 1934 had followed the model of all such
|
||
movements. Yet journalists and essayists everywhere continued to
|
||
speak of the Reds as dangerously prone to violence and the Church
|
||
as the world's noblest guardian of peace, humanity, and justice.
|
||
Who are the real Reds?
|
||
|
||
The Church followed up its victory with the customary
|
||
inhumanity. All funds and buildings belonging to the workers were
|
||
confiscated, and the arbitrary arrests of Socialists continued. By
|
||
the beginning of 1937 there were 24,000 political prisoners,
|
||
largely men and women who had had no trial, in the jails of
|
||
Austria. In that year Miss Margery Fry, a very sane and respected
|
||
British prison-reformer, Wm. Rackham of Cambridge University, and
|
||
Professor Kimberg, a high authority on prisons, traveled over
|
||
Europe on a tour of inspection. They were not permitted in any
|
||
country to see how political prisoners were treated, and were not
|
||
allowed to visit any jails in Austria, Italy, Germany, and
|
||
Portugal. But they brought back and told in the British press a
|
||
horrible story of overcrowded jails in Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria,
|
||
and Yugo-Slavia, of the use of torture and brutality by jailers and
|
||
police, of semi-starvation and cruel conditions, of tens of
|
||
thousands who had never had any sort of trial. On the very day on
|
||
which I write this a cautious Liberal British paper (News
|
||
Chronicle, September 25, 1941), describes just such brutality in
|
||
Spanish jails today. And the world-press still refused to see in
|
||
these things the shadow of things to come.
|
||
|
||
That was the new situation in Austria: overcrowded jails,
|
||
refusal of trials, torture, and brutality by Catholic jailers. And
|
||
over it all the Church waved its blessing. Cardinal Innitzer issued
|
||
a special address to the workers, saying that their Holy Mother the
|
||
Church affectionately welcomed them back to the fold. There was not
|
||
much tenderness about the process, for the Church at once set up an
|
||
intolerable tyranny. Every government employee must attend church
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
regularly or be fired. Every teacher must go to confession at least
|
||
once in three weeks. The splendid system of education which, to the
|
||
admiration of the educational world, the Socialists had created was
|
||
destroyed and text books of the most mendacious Catholic type were
|
||
substituted. Socialist efficiency was replaced by Catholic-Fascist
|
||
inefficiency. Though the worst of the world-depression had now
|
||
passed. Austria fell into a condition of semi-famine, and the
|
||
priests used even this for their purposes. The Annual Register
|
||
tells us that the priests at first refused all foreign aid so as to
|
||
"force those in distress to apply to Catholic organizations", and
|
||
two Englishmen were arrested for giving money to starving people.
|
||
Fifty out of sixty seats on the State Cultural Council were
|
||
allotted to Catholics.
|
||
|
||
How Pacelli must have rubbed his hands! So did Hitler. On the
|
||
ruins of the Socialist-Communist movement the Nazis of Austria
|
||
quickly grew in power. They murdered Dollfuss, whom the priests
|
||
replaced with the unhappy and purblind Schuschnigg. Hitler drew
|
||
nearer to Mussolini and bought off his interest in Austria by
|
||
promising him, with his usual brazen dishonesty, that be should not
|
||
only have Savoy, Coisica, and Tunis from France and Dalmatia from
|
||
Yugo-Slavia but he should continue to be the dominant power in
|
||
Hungary and in all countries south of the Danube. That suited
|
||
Pacelli. The Catholics of Austria added to the Catholics of Germany
|
||
would give the Vatican a stronger hand in its new deals with the
|
||
Nazis, and there might be a glorious bloc of Catholic powers from
|
||
Portugal (when the new revolution was accomplished in Spain) to
|
||
Bulgar. If I were a man of pinity I should be disposed to quote the
|
||
old Latin adage: Those whom God wishe's to destroy he first makes
|
||
mad. The destruction of Socialism in Austria and enslavement of the
|
||
whole country to Cardinal Innitzer was a most beneficent removal of
|
||
obstacles to Hitler's annexation of the country. To this and the
|
||
share of the Black International in it we will return later.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Chapter IV
|
||
|
||
|
||
HITLER EXPOSES THE SHAME OF THE CHURCH
|
||
|
||
|
||
Pacelli had soon repented of the hasty attack on Hitler which
|
||
he had sent from South America to Cardinal Schulte. Apart from weak
|
||
complaints that the Nazis did not observe the Concordat and a
|
||
sharper note when he saw the Gestapo men annihilating his treasured
|
||
Polish Church by castration and other gentle Nazi methods, he has
|
||
never condemned Hitler. Certainly he has never condemned Nazi crime
|
||
and bestiality as such, though all the world recognizes that he had
|
||
a magnificent field for moral censorship. And his restraint, if you
|
||
like to call it that, was not due to any better observance of the
|
||
Concordat in Germany. On the contrary, Catholic schools and
|
||
associations were disappearing. But to challenge Hitler would lead
|
||
at once to more drastic treatment of the Church and he must try to
|
||
win a compromise.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
An opportunity occurred in 1935. The rich Saar province had at
|
||
the Congress of Versailles been entrusted to the League of Nations
|
||
-- really to the exploitation of French industrialists -- for 15
|
||
years, and the time had now expired. The inhabitants were to vote
|
||
whether or no they would return to Germany. They were
|
||
overwhelmingly Catholic so that an issue that was of the greatest
|
||
possible importance to Hitler was to be decided by the Church; for
|
||
it would be preposterous to suggest that in so delicate a matter
|
||
the local hierarchy would act without instructions from the
|
||
Vatican. On January 6 the bishops of Speier and Trier, the heads of
|
||
the local Church, Issued a letter of instruction that was to be
|
||
read in every Catholic Church of the province. Whether or no you
|
||
call this interfering in politics they ordered their people to vote
|
||
for Hitler. "As German Catholics," they said, "it is out duty to
|
||
uphold the greatness, the Welfare, and the peace of our
|
||
Fatherland." On the following Sunday, 13th, the voting day, special
|
||
prayers were said after Mass for a victory for Hitler (London
|
||
Times, January 18). On the same day (18th) the Catholic Times
|
||
boasted that Hitler owed his triumph to the Catholics of the Saar,
|
||
and it remained to be seen how grateful he would prove. The bells
|
||
rang in every Catholic Church when the overwhelming vote in favor
|
||
of Hitler was announced; just as they had rung in every Church of
|
||
Italy for the triumph of Mussolini.
|
||
|
||
Hitler made no change in his policy of ignoring the Concordat.
|
||
More Catholic schools and associations were closed, and Cardinal
|
||
Faulhaber vaguely threatened in one of his sermons to excommunicate
|
||
the Nazi leaders: not for their crimes, of course, but for
|
||
interfering with Catholic education. Hitler had directed that
|
||
Catholic parents in Munich should vote whether they wanted to send
|
||
their children to Catholic or to national schools. As a result of
|
||
the vote the pupils attending Catholic schools fell from 36,464 to
|
||
19,266, and the pupil's of Nazi schools rose from 33 to 65 percent
|
||
of the whole. Every priest knew that this meant further enormous
|
||
leakage from the Church.
|
||
|
||
It must have put Pacelli in a painful dilemma when, soon after
|
||
this, Hitler demanded a vote of confidence from the entire country.
|
||
He had just, in defiance of France and the League of Nations, taken
|
||
a very serious step in the realization of his aggressive plan. He
|
||
had sent troops to occupy the Rhine provinces which by the terms of
|
||
the Treaty were to remain demilitarized. The German people were to
|
||
pronounce upon his entire policy: his crimes to date and the
|
||
aggressive campaign of which, as everybody knew, the defiance of
|
||
Versailles was the first clause.
|
||
|
||
One would have thought that here was a fine opportunity to
|
||
take refuge in the worn cliche that the Church never interferes in
|
||
politic's, but the German hierarchy composed a letter that was to
|
||
be read in every Church before the vote was taken. It is one of the
|
||
many clerical masterpieces of improper advice masquerading as
|
||
evasion, which the last ten years have produced. The bishops
|
||
recognized the painful dilemma of the faithful. If they voted for
|
||
Hitler they might seem to approve of various "measures antagonistic
|
||
to the Church" which he had ordered. So they are free to vote as
|
||
they will. But if any of them care to vote for Hitler they could do
|
||
so with a clear conscience by saying to themselves: "We give our
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
vote to the Fatherland but that does not signify approval of
|
||
matters for which we could not conscientiously be held responsible"
|
||
(Catholic Times, March 27, 1936). In other words, Vote for Hitler.
|
||
We recognize the accents of Pacelli-Pius.
|
||
|
||
The vote of confidence was a farce as such. The point of
|
||
interest is that the Black International which had helped to put
|
||
Hitler in the saddle in 1933 still supported him in spite of all
|
||
his outrages and his open menace to the world's peace. This was in
|
||
gratitude for favors to come, and it is one of the most acute
|
||
ironies of the time that while the priests were instructing the
|
||
Catholic laity in the moral acrobatics by which they could vote for
|
||
Hitler that most brazen of adventurers since Caesar Borgia was
|
||
actually at work on a measure that would deal the German Church and
|
||
the Papacy the most terrible blow they had suffered since Luther
|
||
had nailed his theses to the Church door at Wittenberg.
|
||
|
||
This was the revelation that monasteries which were
|
||
represented in Catholic literature -- even in works that circulated
|
||
in America -- as fragrant gardens of piety and virtue were
|
||
cesspools of moral perversity and that the vice was widespread
|
||
amongst the parochial clergy. I have given an account of the early
|
||
stages of this exposure in the Haldeman-Julius booklet Vice in
|
||
German Monasteries (1937), which is, as far as I can ascertain, the
|
||
only lengthy account in the English language. Had so spectacular an
|
||
exposure, on so vast a scale, been made in regard to any other body
|
||
or Church than the Roman Catholic the press would have erupted into
|
||
its largest scare-type and its warmest moral indignation. Such is
|
||
the backstairs influence of the Black International in America and
|
||
Britain that journalists had to suppress, or publish lies about
|
||
the greatest sensation of the year 1936. Here let me round off the
|
||
story and set it in the light of later disclosures.
|
||
|
||
All that the great majority of Americans knew about the matter
|
||
was that Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago, as part of his indictment
|
||
of the Nazis for persecuting the Church -- which was itself
|
||
conducting a far worse persecution in Poland and Austria and soon
|
||
would be in Spain -- charged them with fabricating an atrocious
|
||
libel against the German clergy and said that of the 25,635 priests
|
||
of Germany only 58, or a quarter of 1 percent, had been arrested on
|
||
a vice-charge. This was a statement (which no one in America could
|
||
cheek) made by the German bishops, and it was an audacious evasion,
|
||
if not untruth. The B.U.P. and Reuter message which conveyed the
|
||
words of the bishops added, significantly, that "eleven Roman
|
||
Catholic priests were arrested in Munich this week-end" and told of
|
||
two other arrests for assaults on little girls a few days later.
|
||
The figure is preposterous but the implication is worse. The
|
||
"thousands" of offenders of whom the Nazis spoke were not priests.
|
||
They were monks or what the Catholic calls lay brothers.
|
||
|
||
The difference is important. Priests in Germany as in America
|
||
have parochial duties, an important part of which is visiting homes
|
||
in the husband's absence and being visited by girls and women, like
|
||
ministers of other denominations. All of them have female domestic
|
||
servants in their houses. When they are disposed to violate their
|
||
vow of chastity they have ample opportunities, and of this sort of
|
||
indulgence the German law takes no more cognizance than the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
American law does, as long as they do not seduce minors under their
|
||
charge. Their circumstances do not particularly incline them to
|
||
sodomy. It is in the monastic communings, especially of lay (or
|
||
non-priest) brothers, who are devoted to teaching and the care of
|
||
the sick, mentally feeble, etc., that the pretense of special
|
||
holiness breaks down. The word "monk" is not a technical but
|
||
popular word, and it is applied to these in Catholic literature.
|
||
The large communities and work of charity are particularly
|
||
recommended in Catholic literature as proof of the Church's
|
||
inspiration, and they and the nuns number, or numbered, ten's of
|
||
thousands in Germany. Those of the Franciscan Order were
|
||
particularly praised, and the largest community of them, at
|
||
Waldbreitbach, in Westphalia, were described as a holy institution
|
||
to which no other religion could show a parallel.
|
||
|
||
It was just here, at Waldbreitbaeb and other Franciscan
|
||
communities, that the police were busy gathering evidence at the
|
||
very time when the bishops were telling Catholics to vote for
|
||
Hitler, and proof was accumulating that these holy places were not
|
||
only comprehensively but revoltingly corrupt. Father-confessors
|
||
seduced for years the young novices who came in. Monks confessed in
|
||
the witness-box how on the holiest days (when all monks feed and
|
||
drink most) they reeled along the corridors to the chapel and
|
||
halted in dark corners I have told all that from their own
|
||
confessions in court. There is nothing like it in Boccaccio or
|
||
Rabelais; and it had been going on for an indefinite time. There
|
||
had been prosecutions early in the century, but in those days one
|
||
quickly let the Catholic curtain fall again if it revealed anything
|
||
nasty.
|
||
|
||
One point only must be repeated here. The charge that the
|
||
trials of the monks were travesties of justice, on a level with the
|
||
Berlin trial of the Communists for the burning of the Reichstag, is
|
||
entirely false. The public is apt to assume this, since the Nazi
|
||
variety of justice is notorious and the plain man has no means of
|
||
checking statements about Germany. But men like Mundelein or the
|
||
German-American priests who assisted him must have known better.
|
||
One such priest visited Germany to ascertain "the truth" in 1938
|
||
and lingering in Britain to communicate this personally ascertained
|
||
"truth" to the British press -- and Catholics, as usual, got
|
||
replies to him excluded from the press -- he returned in triumph to
|
||
America. His verdict was just what Mundelein said: Less than 60
|
||
priests in Germany had been prosecuted, and the rest was Nazi
|
||
fabrication. This priest knew that the German bishops from whom he
|
||
got his figure admitted the depravity in monasteries's of religious
|
||
brothers, that the Vatican also admitted it by suppressing whole
|
||
provinces of them for irregularity of conduct, and that the
|
||
Catholics of Germany fully admitted it.
|
||
|
||
There can be very little doubt that Hitler directed the
|
||
prosecution. He knew that he had in this epidemic of vice a ground
|
||
that would go very far even in the eyes of Catholics to justify his
|
||
refusal to honor the terms of the Concordat he had signed. But he
|
||
also knew that he would give the bishops a means to stir the
|
||
Catholic body bitterly against him instead of winning its support
|
||
unless such charges were proved beyond cavil. He took care that
|
||
this was done.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
The arrests and trial's were, in the first place, almost
|
||
entirely in the Catholic provinces where these communities are most
|
||
numerous and, as it proved, most vicious; as the small communities
|
||
in Protestant provinces are as critically watched as in America and
|
||
Britain. All the police-officials charged with the preliminary
|
||
inquiries and the arrests were Catholics and the courts
|
||
predominantly Catholic. Every witness against the monks was a
|
||
Catholic, and nearly every one of the accused pleaded guilty,
|
||
blaming the morbid conditions of the life and the drunkenness that
|
||
was permitted. The trials were held, in the normal form, in the
|
||
high courts of the capitals of these Catholic provinces (mostly
|
||
Cologne, Bonn, Coblentz, and Munich) and were reported daily in the
|
||
chief papers of the provinces, which have three Catholic reader's
|
||
to one non-Catholic; and these papers fully sustained the verdicts
|
||
and admitted the guilt.
|
||
|
||
Are these just Nazi allegations? Not at all. During 1936 and
|
||
1937 I followed the trials in these papers -- effectively, Catholic
|
||
papers -- chiefly the Koinische Zeitung and the Westfalische Kurier
|
||
checked by Berlin and Munich papers, and got the details from them.
|
||
They even sometimes rapped their own prelates on the knuckle's for
|
||
trying to gloss over or deny the ugly facts. I read fairly lengthy
|
||
reports of scores of individual trials of monks, priests (sometimes
|
||
of high rank), and even a nun (for seducing boy-pupils). Nine out
|
||
of ten of the monks were convicted of sodomy, as were most of the
|
||
priests, though some were charged with indecent relations with
|
||
young girls (down to 12 or 13) and were proved by their
|
||
parishioners to have done this over a period of many years.
|
||
|
||
The charge was generally sodomy, and this, as I said, fully
|
||
explains why there were, comparatively, so few priests. Fornication
|
||
is not an offence in law, and so the priests do not as a rule come
|
||
under the notice of the police. There were a few arrests of zealous
|
||
priests for attacking the government (over the Concordat) in
|
||
sermons and many prosecution for smuggling currency out of Germany.
|
||
The police found that the Church used demure looking nuns and
|
||
venerable friars, their holy costumes stuffed with notes, to make
|
||
a profit in the sternly forbidden exchange-transactions or to
|
||
smuggle money to Rome. But in the overwhelming majority of cases
|
||
the charge was sodomy, and the next most frequent charge the
|
||
corruption of young girls. The World Almanac for 1939 says (p.
|
||
236):
|
||
|
||
"Up to October, 1938, more than 8,000 Catholic monks and lay
|
||
brothers had been arrested by Nazi officials, approximately 50
|
||
percent of the 16,000 members of German monasteries, on various
|
||
charges, including immorality, sedition, breaches of exchange laws,
|
||
abuse of the pulpit, collecting fund's without government
|
||
permission, or failure to fly the Swastika flag on national
|
||
monuments. Forty-five monks, 176 lay-brothers, and 21 monastery
|
||
employees were sentenced on immorality charges: 188 priests were
|
||
acquitted or released without trial."
|
||
|
||
It is pleasant to find that an American publication had the
|
||
courage to print so much -- no British publication had, and I
|
||
failed to get a publisher for a book -- but the details are
|
||
misleading. "Arrested by Nazi officials" does not mean the Gestapo,
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
but, generally, Catholic policemen and officers. The list of
|
||
charges is misleading because sodomy far outnumbered the others;
|
||
and the last sentence is particularly unfortunate. Over the period
|
||
of nearly two years in which I followed the trials 90 percent were
|
||
for vice, and very few of the accused escaped, and then only in
|
||
virtue of an earlier amnesty. Many of these were priest-monks,
|
||
though of the 400 Franciscan monks of the Westphalian province, who
|
||
were the first to be arraigned, 61 (mostly the directing priests
|
||
and superiors) got secret warning and fled the country (many to
|
||
Rome), which left a disproportion of priests to monks in the 276
|
||
who were arrested. The province was found to be wholly corrupt and
|
||
the Pope abolished it after a few trials. The non-monastic priests
|
||
who were arrested were scattered over Germany and only casually
|
||
mentioned in the press, but of the cases I collected nine-tenths
|
||
again were for vice (boys and little girls), hardly one in ten was
|
||
acquitted. Later there were more numerous arrests for "sedition" or
|
||
criticism of the "persecution of the Church".
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Chapter V
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE POPE CONTINUES TO COURT HITLER
|
||
|
||
|
||
Hitler is a rotten speaker: raucous in voice, graceless in
|
||
gesture, and loose in the composition of his speeches. It is not
|
||
"personal magnetism" that makes him a power with the young -- the
|
||
older are mostly driven to his gatherings -- but a belief in his
|
||
genius that is artificially created by years of the most elaborate
|
||
and most persistent boosting. The most effective speech he ever
|
||
made was on January 1, 1939, when he replied to the Vatican and
|
||
world-complaint that he persecuted the Church. There was, of
|
||
course, a fallacy in his argument. Unquestionably he wanted to
|
||
change the Catholic Church in Germany in a sense which the Vatican
|
||
could not possibly accept and of this he said nothing, but his
|
||
direct reply to the charge of persecution of religion was
|
||
effective.
|
||
|
||
The German government has always subsidized the Churches but
|
||
Hitler had more than trebled the subsidy. Between 1933, when he
|
||
took office, and 1938 it rose from 1,50,000,000 Marks to
|
||
500,000,0,00 a year. What was your subsidy to the Churches, he
|
||
asked of France, Britain, an America? He had never closed a church,
|
||
and he left the Roman Church the richest land-owner in south and
|
||
west Germany. It drew 1,500,000,000 Marks a year from its property
|
||
alone. (German papers give its wealth as $20,000,000,000). All that
|
||
he asked was that priests should behave themselves as respectably
|
||
as other citizens. "Paederasty and the corruption of children," he
|
||
said, "are punished by law like other crimes in this state." The
|
||
roars of applause in this case expressed the sentiment of
|
||
practically the whole of Germany.
|
||
|
||
And the Black International knew it. In foreign countries they
|
||
dare not stake their case on the question whether the vice-trials
|
||
were or were not genuine. An impartial press-inquiry would soon
|
||
settle that. They preferred to use their censorship of the press to
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
prevent any mention of them or to confuse the public with a vague
|
||
charge of persecution and talk about smuggling currency and
|
||
criticizing the Nazis. I cannot speak for the American press but as
|
||
far as I could ascertain no British paper even mentioned the
|
||
Sensational trials that were spread over 1936 to 1938 and then
|
||
extended to Austria. Was there ever such self-denial on the part of
|
||
newspaper men? You know why.
|
||
|
||
At the Vatican and in Germany this was clearly recognized. The
|
||
trials had begun at the end of May (1936). After ten trials the
|
||
Pope suppressed the Westphalian province of the Franciscan Order,
|
||
its largest and richest province, for irregularity: a step without
|
||
precedent in modern times and so grave that only a desperate hope
|
||
of disarming Hitler can have prompted it. But the trials went on
|
||
until the influx of foreigners for the Olympic Games made it
|
||
advisable to suspend them. Some of these foreigners might be able
|
||
to read German and learn how monks of pure Aryan blood talked
|
||
indecency to children under ten on the steps of their houses, raped
|
||
helpless youths in their hospitals . . . In the period of
|
||
suspension, with 260 friars still in prison awaiting trial, the
|
||
bishops, who probably knew how far the search for culprits would
|
||
reach -- for evidence had been given in court that youths had
|
||
reported the matter to ecclesiastical authorities and been silenced
|
||
-- approached Hitler. The British press reported in August that
|
||
they had conferred with Hitler on the "currency-charges" against
|
||
priests and monks. There were then few currency-charges but
|
||
hundreds of vice-charges, so we know what they wanted; especially
|
||
as there was nothing to protest against in the fines for smuggling
|
||
currency.
|
||
|
||
Next month the bishops, now clearly under Pacelli's orders,
|
||
made a fresh attempt. On September 12, 1936, the Nazionale Zeitung
|
||
published a copy of a letter from the bishops to the faithful which
|
||
was to be read in all the Catholic Churches of Germany next day. It
|
||
trusted that Hitler would bury the past and admit Catholics to
|
||
cooperate with him in the fight against the ever-increasing threat
|
||
of world-Bolshevism which shows its sinister hand in Spain, Russia
|
||
and Mexico. As they added that "guns are not enough to fight the
|
||
Bolshevik danger -- a sound lead is necessary to secure victory,"
|
||
they very clearly wanted Hitler to crush Bolshevism in Russia by
|
||
war and so consecrated his program of aggression. And as these
|
||
words of theirs are an echo of words that the Pope had used a few
|
||
weeks earlier it is obvious that Pacelli was the author. He had at
|
||
last, in the summer of 1936, matured his program and found his
|
||
slogan: the extinction of Bolshevism in Russia, Spain, and Mexico.
|
||
Sometimes to give respectability to his Japanese alliance, he added
|
||
-- China. As I have earlier said, the A.F.L. defeated his plan to
|
||
get America to attack Mexico, but it remains true that he wanted
|
||
the war. The rest of his slogan stands. He was pledged to support
|
||
the plans of aggressive war of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the
|
||
foulest nations on earth.
|
||
|
||
Hitler ignored the bishops, but Pacelli still pressed. On
|
||
November 4 the Times reported that Mussolini was pressing Hitler to
|
||
come to terms with the Vatican, as this would not only give him
|
||
more weight in the "clerical state" which Franco was to set up in
|
||
Spain but would help him in his designs on Austria: a hint at the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
part the Church would play when the time came to annex that
|
||
country. Mussolini was at this time a practicing Catholic once
|
||
more. Also he had begun, with the enthusiastic support of the Black
|
||
International his brutal campaign in Abyssinia and his hypocritical
|
||
action in Spain.
|
||
|
||
A week later (Times, November 13, 1936) Hitler had a request
|
||
for an interview from Cardinal Faulhaber. He received him
|
||
grudgingly and more or less secretly, and when the Cardinal put
|
||
before him the request of the bishops and asked in return for the
|
||
control of Catholic education by the Church, the Minister of
|
||
Education, whom, Hitler had invited to be present, advised him to
|
||
refuse. The Churches were, he insisted, negligible allies, as they
|
||
had lost their power over men's minds in many part of the world."
|
||
The offer of the Church was refused, and the destruction of
|
||
Catholic schools, as new vice-trials of the religious teachers gave
|
||
a pretext, and associations continued.
|
||
|
||
Nevertheless the Vatican remained on such terms with Germany
|
||
that when, in March, 1937, there was a mild rebuke of breaches of
|
||
the Concordat in a new encyclical and Mundelein continued his
|
||
violent campaign in America, the German government sent a complaint
|
||
to Rome. Catholics boasted that the Vatican refused to listen, but
|
||
there was no breach. Indeed, a month later Count Preysing, the
|
||
aristocratic Catholic bishop of Berlin, addressed another appeal to
|
||
Hitler (Times, July 3, 1937). It is in this that we get the
|
||
admission of monastic corruption. It said that the bishop's "do not
|
||
deny that in certain orders of lay brothers many members had been
|
||
drawn into a sphere of serious moral perversities." Perhaps one
|
||
could not expect a more strongly worded admission from such a
|
||
source, but the shifting of responsibility from the priests to the
|
||
lay brothers is very misleading. These lay brothers of the
|
||
Franciscan Order, of whom nearly 300 in one province were arrested
|
||
for sodomy, were under the direct authority of the clerical heads
|
||
of the Order, were periodically examined by representatives of
|
||
those authorities and were in each monastery ruled by a number of
|
||
priest-monks. Evidence was given by the brothers in the trials that
|
||
the epidemic of vice had been reported to the authorities in these
|
||
periodical examinations which are (of the most intimate character)
|
||
and no notice had been taken.
|
||
|
||
There was no modification of the Nazi policy. In December the
|
||
Pope feebly complained to his cardinals, when they came to him with
|
||
their Christmas greetings, of the persecution in Germany. The
|
||
excuse was, he said, that the Church interfered in polities. Even
|
||
the cardinals must have smiled when the aged and not very clear-
|
||
headed Pope went on to say that "no fair-minded man" could Say that
|
||
the Church ever interfered in politics. A few month's earlier he
|
||
had summoned the powers to crush by war the kind of government
|
||
which the people of Spain and Mexico had freely chosen and
|
||
supported at every election: the form of government which, whatever
|
||
its beginning, had won the support of the entire Russian people, as
|
||
all the world now realizes. At that very moment the Vatican was
|
||
working with its murderous allies to change the political form of
|
||
Spain, had mercilessly intervened in polities in Austria for years,
|
||
had given, its blessing to the enslavement of the Abyssinian
|
||
people, and had helped to establish Fascism in South America.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
One might have expected that in these circumstances the Papacy
|
||
would assert what was left of its moral dignity and abandon the
|
||
dishonoring opportunism that had characterized its relations with
|
||
the brutal Nazis since 1932. On the pretty theory of the Papacy
|
||
which is put before the world its duty was to denounce the crimes
|
||
of Nazi Germany and the menace to the world of its naked ambition
|
||
and let German Catholics take such punishment from the criminals as
|
||
Catholics are supposed to endure with heroism rather than bow the
|
||
knee to iniquity.
|
||
|
||
It may be objected that at the most we can accuse Pacelli, who
|
||
was entirely responsible for the policy of the senile Pontiff, of
|
||
an error of judgment in a grave dilemma. That would be a
|
||
misrepresentation of the position. He clung to his German, Italian,
|
||
and Japanese allies, not singly to avert persecution from Catholics
|
||
in their dominions -- and we must remember that even in this the
|
||
real concern of the Black International is the loss of members
|
||
under the strain -- but because his policy coincided with theirs.
|
||
When the time comes for China to recover its territory, as it
|
||
surely must come if the poison is to be got out of the veins of the
|
||
world, Roman Catholic influence in the Far East will be very justly
|
||
restricted. The Vatican has irretrievably pledged itself to the
|
||
Japanese bully. in Italy it is not less firmly pledged to the
|
||
support of Mussolini. What Cardinal Hinsley said, that if Mussolini
|
||
falls the "cause of God" - of the Black International -- falls,
|
||
remains true. Socialism would get control of Italy, and the time
|
||
has gone by for triumphant democrats to handle with kid gloves the
|
||
reactionary elements that have shed blood whenever they temporarily
|
||
recovered power; besides that Fascist Italy is indispensable to the
|
||
Pope's fantastic plan of a great bloc of Fascist-Catholic powers to
|
||
offset the influence of the democracies, or their rich Catholic
|
||
minorities, in the Church.
|
||
|
||
And beyond all this is the Church's indispensable need of a
|
||
Fascist atmosphere in any state in which it is to flourish. As I
|
||
have shown, the apparent progress of the Church in such democracies
|
||
as America and Britain is a fallacy. Not only does it lose instead
|
||
of advancing if the birth rate is taken into account, but migration
|
||
from backward Catholic countries is the adequate explanation of the
|
||
apparent progress. In France, where there has been no such
|
||
immigration on a large scale, the membership of the Church fell in
|
||
30 years from 30,000,000 to about 5,000,000 when (in 1871) the
|
||
country became a democracy; and it was the same in Italy and Spain
|
||
as long as they were democracies. There is not a single exception
|
||
to the law that free discussion is fatal to the Roman system. Its
|
||
effect is merely modified in America and Britain by the conspiracy
|
||
of the Black International to intimidate editors, publishers,
|
||
booksellers, librarians, etc., and the drastic law that. Catholics
|
||
shall not read critics of the Church.
|
||
|
||
Hence in Germany a policy that is purely ecclesiastical and
|
||
takes no account of moral and social considerations has to cling at
|
||
all cost and in spite of all rebuffs to the hope of disarming the
|
||
hostility of the Nazis and helping to maintain them in power. Both
|
||
the rebuffs and the policy of appeasement continued. On October 15,
|
||
1938, the Volkischer Beobachter, a recognized Nazi organ, said: "We
|
||
are armed to continue the battle against Catholicism to the point
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
HOW THE CROSS COURTED THE SWASTIKA
|
||
|
||
of total annihilation." Vice-prosecutions multiplied, and the Nazis
|
||
called for, and would presently obtain, the suppression of all
|
||
Catholic schools in Bavaria. And remember that while Catholic
|
||
influence in America could, by getting the essential facts
|
||
concealed from the American public, represent this as a piece of
|
||
wanton persecution of religion, every German knew that it was done
|
||
on the ground judicially established in hundreds of cases, that the
|
||
most respecter Catholic teachers, the brothers who were vowed to
|
||
chastity and asceticism, were corrupt and corruptors. The
|
||
philanthropic institutions-schools, orphanages, infirmaries, etc.,
|
||
of which the Church had been so proud were taken over by the
|
||
authorities and entrusted to laymen.
|
||
|
||
I am in this booklet confining myself to Germany so that the
|
||
reader may get a clear view of the strange situation in that
|
||
country insofar as it concerns the Church. It must, however be
|
||
understood that the humiliation of the proud Church in 1938 was far
|
||
greater than we realize if we restrict our attention to Germany. In
|
||
Spain the Vatican and the Nazis were actually cooperating in that
|
||
holy war for the extinction of Bolshevism, which was now Pacelli's
|
||
ruling passion. In Austria and Czecho-Slovakia the Black
|
||
International rendered even more useful service than cooperation.
|
||
It prepared the way for those bloodies's triumphs of the Nazis
|
||
which history will record to the deep shame of the western
|
||
democracies; the triumphs of lying by which Hitler preserved his
|
||
armies for the attack on France, Britain, and Russia and gradually
|
||
pressed all the rest of Europe into the position of bleeding slaves
|
||
in his war-galley. How the Vatican helped him to do this, and how
|
||
Pacelli became Pope in 1939 and contemplated the ghastly
|
||
consequences of his policy yet persisted in it while the whole
|
||
civilized and free world was filled with moral indignation will be
|
||
told in a later book.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
|
||
us, we need to give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
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