[Box on page 5]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Monday, September 25, 1939.

German Soldiers Rallied by Churches

Protestant and Catholic Exhort to Reich Victory and Just Peace

Wireless to The New York Times

FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAIN, Germany, Sept. 24​—Periodicals of the German Protestant and Catholic Churches are now publishing many exhortive articles explaining the duties of soldiers fighting in the defense of their country and admonishing the German soldiers to fight in the spirit of Saint Michael for a German victory and a just peace.

The archangel is shown, brandishing a battlesword and piercing a dragon with a holy lance, on the front page of Catholic papers.

In the western and southern German Catholic dioceses, the clergy headed by the Archbishop and Bishops, are actively engaged in work for the welfare of refugees evacuated from the western frontier districts. Many cloisters have been transformed into hospitals and the monks and nuns are working under the direction of the Red Cross.

The Catholic Bishops of Germany have issued a pastoral letter stating:

“In this decisive hour we admonish our Catholic soldiers to do their duty in obedience to the Fuehrer and be ready to sacrifice their whole individuality.

“We appeal to the faithful to join in ardent prayers that the Divine Providence of God Almighty may lead this war to blessed success and peace for our fatherland and nations.”

Each Bishop in addition has issued a special message to his own diocese, including the Bishop of Rottenburg in Wuerttemberg, who was expelled from his diocese last year for refusing to vote in a national Socialist election.

Cardinal Archbishop Bertram, head of the German Episcopal Congregation, has similarily issued a patriotic message to his flock urging that all “be strong in your heart, all you who confide in God Almighty.”

The Position of the Churches

How did the churches feel about their members going off to war against fellow believers in other lands? Well, at Christmastime clergymen parroted the message of peace that the angels delivered at Christ’s birth, and they praised Jesus as the Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6) Yet, they did not object when their members killed persons of the very same religion in the opposing trenches, whether it was on Christmas or any other day of the year!

Church historian Roland H. Bainton reports on the situation when the United States entered World War I: “American churchmen of all faiths were never so united with each other and with the mind of the country. This was a holy war. Jesus was dressed in khaki and portrayed sighting down a gun barrel. The Germans were Huns. To kill them was to purge the earth of monsters.”​—Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, pages 209, 210.

Yes, the churches paid lip service to peace. But at the same time pulpits became recruiting stations for the nation’s war effort. British Brigadier General Frank P. Crozier said of the situation during World War I: “The Christian Churches are the finest blood-lust creators which we have, and of them we made free use.”

That the position of the churches was indeed hypocritical was acknowledged by the late Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick. He admitted: “Our Western history has been one war after another. We have bred men for war, trained men for war; we have glorified war; we have made warriors our heroes and even in our churches we have put the battle flags . . . With one corner of our mouth we have praised the Prince of Peace and with the other we have glorified war.”

The situation did not change during World War II. Please read the New York Times article reproduced on this page that appeared during the first month of that war. It reinforces what Friedrich Heer, a Roman Catholic professor of history at Vienna University, later acknowledged in his book God’s First Love:

“In the cold facts of German history, the Cross and the swastika came ever closer together, until the swastika proclaimed the message of victory from the towers of German cathedrals, swastika flags appeared round altars and Catholic and Protestant theologians, pastors, churchmen and statesmen welcomed the alliance with Hitler.”​—Page 247.