Cross & Swastika

Adolf Hitler was born & bred a Catholic and his first political stronghold was Bavaria, the most intensely Catholic part of the Reich. Last week on the Fuehrer's orders Bavarian Minister of Interior Adolf Wagner closed every Catholic public school in Bavaria, fired 670 teachers, secularized 966 schools. This was in flagrant violation of the Nazi Concordat with the Vatican (TIME, July 17, 1933 and ailing Pope Pius, attended by twelve cardinals, was reported to feel that an open diplomatic rupture between the Hooked-Cross (Swastika) and the Cross cannot be much longer avoided. Meanwhile the great bulk of German Protestants who, like the Catholics, are resisting Nazi encroachments in spiritual matters as best they can, were subjected last week to fresh raids, arrests and browbeatings by police. The Protestants' leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Niemoeller, onetime submarine commander, bobbed up in his pulpit after a police grilling to say of Nazi Church Minister Hans Kerrl: "He regards faith in Jesus Christ as an absurd side issue!" With the Fatherland careening into the most ominous crisis of faith since the Russian Revolution, Adolf Hitler's delirious Jew-baiting friend Julius Streicher roared at Nuernberg: "Every Catholic priest convicted of immorality must be beheaded! Since I no longer belong to the Church I am much nearer to God."

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